Allen was surprised yet also confused, but aware of his surroundings; the amount of crimson lights had seemingly increased. Since when did Noel gain more special droids?
Breaking the dead air, Noel raises her voice; she knows what he is concerned about. “I snatched those droids from her control. Don’t worry, brother.”
..
“—Brother? So this is the reason why you left us, sis?” Behind the mask of thick fog, a woman in combat armor stood out from the ground, brushing off the soot and debris that covered her, spitting out blood and releasing strong killing intent. Yurian fixes her gaze on Allen.
“At least I have just one sibling. Unlike you guys.” Noel releases her fixed stare over Yurian. She also looks around at the shadow figures surrounding Yurian behind a wall of clouds, knowing that they had been observing from the start, Noel labeling each of their names with her speech one by one as she starts stating: “Right?—
“—Yurianov.” The woman that stands before her eye, Yurian, with the bloody scarlet hair for all the prey she has slain, is the warmonger among conductors. A psychopathic maniac.
“—Asimov.” The man with the appearance of a demi-cyborg, lightened with a fluorescence circuit pattern from the blurry cloud and fully augmented with combat parts, does not wield any melee weapons. The white flash.
“—Pandora.” A girl with a teenager's appearance, loaded with heavy firearms beneath her silhouette, piloting a giant exo-skeleton suit, packed with heavy mobile artillery. Merciless sadist.
“—Cruella.” Maybe a girl, unsure, maybe a boy. By appearance alone, it's hard to judge, but Cruella, from her silhouette alone, had a pun of long hair. Carrying the most horrible weapon alone, a giant pair of scissors. A character of Bipolar’s nightmare.
“And lastly. I should have killed you—Karma, if not for Atra.” A big, muscular man, wielding a giant, glyph-ornate mace just like the Yaksha statue in the myths. Silent, grim, and dreadful.
All of them are conductors, coming with a tremendous amount of droids under their command. Including Spectres and Yakshas, the finest combat-automatons Apex ever possessed, these ultimate warfare robots in their arsenal come in numbers.
“I couldn’t remember the rest; oh right, I killed them already. No more reunions.” Noel emphasizes her wryly sarcastic tone and cold blood. She cut off the conversation, ignoring the unnecessary matter; to them, she was well known enough, despite Allen not knowing both sides' motives. Also, expectedly, those conductors weren't even irritated at all; they didn't even cast any body language nor make any impression on their faces. His gut feelings tell him that, unlike Noel, they harbor only bottomless irrational desire and disparate lunacy. To put it together, Allen rather describes them as emotionless beings, like a cursed vessel that contains only pure sin and arrogance and doesn’t share the same rationale as ordinary humans.
“This way you speak sounds more like you than those sissy punch lines.” Said Yurian. The Conductors, they feel no sympathy for their fallen kindred at all. As soon as the clouds dispersed, Cruella stepped forward from the group. “I miss you so much, my Grand Sister.” Cruella licks the edges of her sharp scissors’ blade. “I wanna taste your blood a lot.” She pops her tongue over the blade, swallowing her own freshly bled blood while also letting it clearly flow out of her lips with psychopathic euphoric smiles. Cruella’s voices are mixed, half masculine and half feminine, making it impossible to differentiate resonated glitches in her voice(s). Cruella was a twisted schizophrenic, the most distorting form of human envies representing.
Three conductors were stepping forward, leaving Pandora and Karma behind the scenes. “Don’t let our sis make contact with any part of yourself. Keep that in your mind, everyone.” Asimov warns fellow conductors. “Don’t lose your subs* (subordinates) like Yurian.” Yurianov steered her deadly glance over Asimov’s satire immediately, and she clicked her tongue pungently. But from what Asimov said, it seems to be the truth, right after Noel threw Yurian, some of her droids turned against her.
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‘Trinity was such arrogance. They were so proud of their arts, but that is the cause that will be turned against them in the end.’ Allen remembered what Noel told him before an entire building collapsed. And it seems to be an undeniable truth, those eyes stare only at Noel while slowly moving toward her. To the conductors, only one who wields absolute strength conquers all, unconditionally. If they can't bring her back, they will succeed instead.
This battle game is not simple, yet the conductor's thoughts are somewhat in a different league from any ordinary mortal; every one of them is a trained elite-mastermind. They’re inhuman beings in the shell of humans. Allen and Noel were surrounded by Automatons dropping slingshots everywhere; Automatons were deployed more from an aircraft up-far beyond. Mercy, compromise, and negotiation aren’t what they were trained for. They only had one solution to all the answers. Violence.
“Now you need to stay away from this circle.” Noel insisted that Allen should leave. Unarguably, he’d only stay as her deadweight. Five conductors, letting him walk straight away, did not even once leer their eyes on him.
“So. Now you no longer have any setbacks, Sis.” Said Yurian.
“My setback, Huh—?” Noel chuckles menacingly. “Don’t beg me for any mercy later on, Yurianov.”
.. “Bring it on, Karma.” After Asimov’s words, Karma waved his hand down, releasing a swarm of flying devices that floated down to the battlefield.
Those were Orchestrator-cubes [an object: high-tech devices that expand the conductor’s network capability]. Karma did not just land a pile of trash; he brought armies of trash along. Many droids jumped down from the skies like robot-suicidal-rainfall and some were walked out from undercover out of nowhere around Noel and conductors. This is their scheme, the conductors’ grand scheme; it was all planned.
Soon enough, the moment Karma crushed his hand, all the Orchestrator-cubes detonated themselves, leaving squads of automatons (test-droids, random junk robots) under Orchestrator’s control uncommanded. Thousands of malfunctioning trash-automatons he bought are glitching around the battleground uncontrolled. The connection field swarmed with thousands of constant re-routing protocols from malfunctionings, heavily searching for their connection disruptively, which impactfully interrupted Noel’s power and mind.
“You guys do learn from your mistakes; well played.” said Noel. Her face went a bit pale due to the heavy interference. Yet her wound and internal damage haven’t recovered well, making this the worst situation she could ever sit in.
With the desperation she exposed, if I were in the same shoes as her, I believed that I would give up so easily. But in her eyes, she never stepped back—not even a single step.
“Even you would have a hard time hacking a few out of thousands. This time, I won’t go easy on you, Milady Noel, or should I call you—” Karma spoke of his first sentence and only his sentence from now on. All of a sudden, the atmosphere went wrong; it was grim, intense, and filled with suspicious killing intent. Someone was in absolute anger; it was Noel.
“Don’t even dare..” Noel threatened him furiously; her blood flowed visibly from her veins to her face. I could witness an emission of particles in the form of red sparks floating around her, along with abnormal air pressure, from a distance.
Karma grins. “Our Empress,—”
“.. to speak of my name, Karma!”
“—The Vermillion Witch—”
“.. Karma!! Know your goddamn place!!”
“—of Annihilation, Maestro Noel, the Fourth.”
“Arghhh—hhh!!” Noel releases her devastative torrent of red jolts, which electrocute all droids in her surroundings. Though the Red-sparks didn’t reach the conductors, even though sparks toasted her own units, it was a clear message of defiance to all conductors. Fixing her own intensive stare over Karma and the other four, Noel channels a terrific flow of anger vehemently because it was the last thing she would ever tell Allen, or definitely never intends to do so. In the great history of this world, the Vermillion Witch was the one who tore apart the Underworld’s and the Centralica’s peaceful era, bestowing absolute annihilation in Vermillion blazes. That grave in the ruins of the city was one of the results of her command as conductor and firing all those gigantic-artilleries over the Underworld’s sector in the past.
The shocking truth slammed Allen immediately; his notions clashed with tragic history. The spectacle of violence and destruction before his eyes makes it even worse; the represented image is now all clear. ‘The Vermillion—then, she was the reason why my Noel died in that floating garden, fallen down to the Underworld’s outrage, and now Noel (Allen’s dead sister), her soul—my sister—resides within her.’ Allen's thoughts now link many incidents back together. He looked into her eyes, which were slowly turning back toward him with sorrow and disappointment.
“I know. I’m so sorry, my dear brother.” She did not speak out but only moved her trembling lips to express her deeply grievous regrets. The silence was so loud, it resonated and stabbed deeply in Allen’s heart. This wasn’t betrayal, therefore it also wasn’t redemption, but it was ultimately a shocking fact. Let alone in his heart, Allen is now utterly mystified; the man’s will was completely destroyed—inside out, but it was too far beyond turning back to Allen. His vow shatters inside his heart; the situation forces him to walk-dead with no other choice.
“I'm sorry, Allen.” Her voice wavered, tears forming in her eyes. “I’m really, really sorry, brother.” .. Allen clenched his fists, speechless from a distance. But the situation won’t give them even a slice of private time. A heavy ballistic shell landed in front of Noel, unexploded. The action was packed with conductor intent for finding consensus and killing in order to resolve any conflict, finding the apex fighter, their ruler. From time to time, their only resolution came from skirmishing.
“Ready to give us all you've got, Milady?” said Karma, along with creepy sights of bloodthirst from the other four.
“As you wish. Y’all insolence.”
The Orchestrator & The Conductor II (2/2)