THE ORCHESTRATOR & THE CONDUCTOR III
Metal sparks emitted from the clashing of the dancing swords play along with a few conductors. Cruella swings her big, deadly scissors like a whirlwind carelessly; even if it chops her fellow, she wouldn’t mind or give any damn care. The conductor, Cruella, wore her feminine, sadistic personality. One of the characteristics of her bipolar mania that could potentially unleash her full killing intent. White flashes are sparked, Cruella is pushed outbound as Asimov swaps in over Cruella's position to parry Noel’s deadly swing
“That was pretty close. I almost culled her.” Noel trails her gaze from the edge of her blunt blade crushing on the ground to the footprints that lead to Asimov carrying Cruella out of square.
“You grew a lot stronger, big sis; … Don’t tell me someone intentionally lent you the source.” Asimov trails his sight over Yurian, which dodges his sight. “I knew it.” — “You lunatic warmonger.” But his sight doesn't last longer than a few seconds.
Noel continues to stride out for Asimov, and as he focuses on parrying his grand sister's strike, he mistakenly steps in her deadly quarter. The executional pierce was pretty close; his grand-sister Noel did miss that on purpose. It wasn’t mercy, but her last warning.
Even though it is three against one, the superior grand-sister Noel is merely at her minimum disadvantage. But the broken weapon in Noel’s grip doesn’t seem so. It wasn’t durable enough.
It would be easier for her if she had something handy, but Trinity knew it pretty well; all they needed was to keep her in a tightly occupied spot. Pandora had no chance of joining the melee trinity’s rejoicing: Asimov, Yurianov, and Pandora. Their pace is unstoppable. It starts with Cruella’s deadly slashes of the big scissor whirlwind in a storm of chaos, Asimov’s trickery moves, and lastly, Yurian’s countermeasure to contradict Noel’s moves, putting Noel in a counterless corner.
At the other end, in the far distance, Allen, her lovely brother, stood in paralysis from the effect of the conductors’ menace. Anyone else would be in undeniable shock as well; it wasn’t the swordplay of any mere mortal; monsters were culling each other with inhumane speed and strength. They're the result of humanoid experimentation with strength equivalent to High-Specs-Androids (or even worse than that). The songs they sang and the sounds they conducted were the prelude to calamity — conducted by Maestro and Conductors.
All she did, Noel, —was just hold them back. Waiting… until Warren came to pick him up.
… “Warren?—” Allen wakes up, seeing his old friend at first sight and carrying him away from the battlefield on his back.
“That Missy, she asked me her last favor, using the broken drone to communicate with me. So I did her a favor; this is all I could do for her.” Warren said while continuing to carry Allen away from the battlefield.
“ . . . ” Allen went speechless.
“I’m as shocked as you are, brother, when I learn the truth…” Warren stops his steps, standing still.
“Well, Allen— Don’t take me as a bad example. I do make mistakes, some are irreversible. But the thing is… I never had a second chance like you, brother. So, whoever she is, will you still accept her? As your only sister.” Warren leered back his sight to Allen through his sunglasses, taking his time looking over the hesitating poor guy.
“Even if she was the Vermillion?” said Allen.
“Yes. Even though she was the Vermillion before, we never knew if she was still the Vermillion or your only family member left alive, Allen.” Warren lowered himself, putting Allen on the sand slowly. “Unlike me…”
“Don’t tell me that…”
"Yeah, Allen, you got it right. The Apex, they had taken Fawn days ago by those Spectres. Back then, when you were nowhere to be found. Not only did I lose my daughter, but also my only brother. So, I would like to make a truce. You don’t need to forgive our past conflict or scars; now I gain nothing from any of it.” “—But, yet, there’s someone who never gave up on you, brother.”
Warren looked back to the battleground, where they had walked a kilometer away. “I am amazed; not only had she endured Spectres alone, now there's something further than that called conductors.” Warren takes out his cigarette and lights it up. “All she did was keep you alive. I don’t know if you realized, but I believed you had never walked alone since the day you met her. So, You—”
“You know what you have to do. Right?” Said Allen.
“No, we know what we have to do; this is the last paycheck I owe that missy, and of course for Fawn’s death.” Warren said, dropping his cigarette to the ground. The two bump their fists against each other.
◤
The tide of battle is nowhere near its end. Only one side is exhausted and about to be worn off; Noel's hand is trembling from the immense sheer amount of forces taken to her defense.
“So you’re out now, sis? You know, I think maybe now is the time for us to succeed you.” Said Asimov.
Panting unwillingly, Noel stood on both knees, standing up to gaze over the blurry Asimov in her sight. “Don’t make me laugh, Asimov. I can do this all century.” Noel smiles with her usual cheerful face. “Your era has already ended. Soon.” Asimov dashes in and punches Noel's abdomen at high speed; in return, she grabs his shoulders and headbutts him with her remaining force. “Soon?”
“There is a reason why the sky is so clear; there is a reason why I lured all of you down here!” Noel shouted, and she even ripped Asimov’s right arm with her bare hand while other conductors watched in silence, doing nothing.
“You’re still reckless as ever; stop talking nonsense; all you did back then was just pure violence.” Asimov headbutted Noel back in return; both of their blood is dripping to each other's faces.
“Reckless? Pure violence? Right. Let me teach you all a lesson that might be your last. You’re all taught to be elite masterminds, but there’s one thing that could always come beyond y'all's calculations.” Noel combed her hair, rubbing the blood on her forehead.
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“And that is?”
“Luck, trust, and betting everything you have got. It is something y’all conductors will never learn. Loving and trusting. A bond—that is what I have learned so far in this underworld. So this is my last bet!”
Suddenly a large bag the size of a container was catapulted from somewhere, and then harpoons were launched from the old-fashioned ballista from another side in a cross direction, creating an interrupting smoke-screen-glitters.
Noel chuckles devilishly and casts both of her hands upon the skies. “You think that all of you are smart enough, but conductors only detect electronic signals. Not humans that you all were looking down on like pests.” After Noel raised her hand, the sound of the fuzzing wind began to get louder.
“Our search drone? What for?!”
“Watch and learn Asimov. You too, Yurian, use your head more than your muscles.” Those search drones flying up high in the cloud of interference glitters are heading to the only destination: ‘the orchestrator’s aircrafts.’
“A plastic bomb attached to the drone? But, since when did she?!” Pandora shouted after examining the flying drones through the cloud. It was impossible to take all of them down as she was firing those flights of drones.
“Since the start, you guys never wondered why I had too few droids under my command.” The moment Noel clenched her hand, that’s when the grand fireworks took place. The bomb-attached drones went inside an aircraft turbine, cockpit, and control room. Massive aircrafts fell down, illuminating the bright flashes as soon as they contacted the ground, casting a strong shadow over Noel's face from behind to the sights of conductors.
Noel stepped back, letting the conductors make their retreat to group up. Noel also raises her hand, grabbing the strong harpoon launched toward her in midair. In that harpoon package, she finds what she seeks. With the vials broken in her bare hand, Noel quickly drinks all the vials' contents and raises her best instrument. The signature vessel of her own arts, for once it was the effective weapon against cavalry, now it came to the right hand.
Along with flares of an illuminating circuit pattern, Noel widens her retina, which is filled with a strong gleam of vermillions, lowering her knees and firming her stance. She wields a lance with a polearm shape and an iconic axe edge, like her brother's armament. It was a conductor’s halberd that she chose.
What comes after the fog behind the fallen aircraft is a group of variant classes of Spectre droids. But the ultimate battle droid, Yaksha, was still at the conductors’ command, but that was second to none for Noel, who gained control of almost over a thousand spectres that have the same spectrum of vermillion crimson blazing in their eyes like Noel’s.
In summary, vials and weapons were thrown at Noel by the droid. She gained their control immediately, right after destroying Orchestrator’s aircraft. Noel just flipped the table and cornered those conductors in less than two seconds. The title Vermillion Witch wasn’t just a talk; she gained it through countless combats and tactics. No one knows how long she lived, but on the way down to the ruins where Allen found her, Noel, during her escape, had culled out hundreds of conductors on her way back then. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be in this weak state. But now Noel isn’t the same person; she clearly regained her nourishment. All thanks to those payloads in fallen aircrafts.
“Ready? Cruella?!—”
*Slashes*
Within a flash, Noel disappears from their eyes, stabbing Cruella out of nowhere while the circuit patterns are still glowing radiantly on her skin, almost shining like the dwarf star. She kicked Cruella out of her halberd’s edge, continuing to spin her wheel-of-the-death motion, which deflected the bullets that Pandora barraged at her.
Clocking herself up, Noel easily counters the white flash of Asimov by kicking against the direction in which he was diving. Her leg landed over Asimov’s trunk, flying him far away in the opposite direction from which he came.
“So this is our grand-sis's full strength all the time.” Yurian watches Cruella beaten down purely by fists.
“So, you like sharp blades. Right?—Cruella?” Noel pulls up Cruella’s hair, putting the edge of her halberd over her neck, but she repays Noel with a nasty smile and attempts to bite her neck like a mad dog. Mercilessly, Noel instead chopped the halberd over the hair, which she lifted Cruella with. Over the heartbreaking screams of Cruella, Noel replied to her. “The beauty you seek is in the ugliness of yourself, Cruella.” While Cruella mourns and collects shreds of her hair, Noel unhesitatingly impales over Cruella’s heart, ending her conductor's life along with the screeching of her grief for beauty in the end.
Yurian was too slow and stopped rushing in immediately after seeing Cruella impaled and folked up, uplifted to the sky—and hanged on the ground like Vlad the Impaler’s victim. Noel left the halberd that plunged Cruella over the ground and caught a new halberd that was thrown from one of her droids.
“If I leave any of you alive, Apex will find me soon enough.” She rotated back, looking over the other four. “Y’all have crossed me way too far. So make sure to bear my anger well.” Noel readied herself in an inhumane choreographic stance; she ran and plunged her halberd to the ground, leaning up forward with a sheer amount of force, and dropped-kicked over Yurian’s shield that was charging toward her. With the mastery of the Maestro title, Noel controls the flow of combat choreography moves. The main dancer, Noel, put a lot of pressure on her chorus, Yurian. Yurian had hardly followed the brandishes of Noel Halberd’s swirling over relentlessly; the aggression was beyond the imagination of any warlord. It was wild, crude, and restlessly unpredictable.
During the midst of chaos, many of Maestro’s droids failed to keep Yaksha and other conductors' droids busy. Some Yakshas even managed to reach Noel, creating a space for Yurian and Asimov to breathe. Those Yakshas were no ordinary killing machines; they possessed four-arms wielding four different mastery weapons. Sword, club, other melee weapons, and their signature plasma buster. The pace of its arm relentlessly occupied Noel with rivalry forces, but it was all parried by her quick motion of twirling cycles with the halberd. It was hard to penetrate in its strong energy shell of Yakshas; this unit was designed especially to handle conductors, especially Maestro; that’s why these conductors can command only up to twenty Yakshas. Just a few of them already carry a huge mental burden, and to occupy a Maestro like Noel requires double or triple efforts.
The clattering of the brute forces, the fiddling of the blades screeching on each sharp edge, and the echoing of the gunshots perfect the chaos-rhythm of this madness, the annihilation symphony.
Oscillations and violent clashes intensify the heartbeat inside every conductor's dancing blood (including Noel), driving them all crazy and charging over each other unsynchronizably. In the last dancing floor of Halberd’s play, we’re witnessing Noel shine in at her paramount moment, oscillating and swinging the mighty polearm like a strong pendulum on formidable opponents. An unwavering grand clock tower’s pendulum that destroys the synchronization of its surroundings into chaotic rhythms, disrupting nearby environments like strong interference ripples, Noel slowly gains her upper hand back over the war momentum. Even when Yurian lunged with her weapon, she was easily disarmed by her grand-sister Noel, who sophisticatedly knew many counter arts in melee quarters with her beloved polearm. After successful parries, Noel rotates herself, flipping the back of the polearm over Yurian's abdomen while also exerting powerful back kicks on Yurian's face.
Karma joined the fight, and with one swing of his immersive force, he could draw Noel back to the quarter, away from Yurian and Asimov.
“Hurry, Pandora!” Karma yelled, keeping Noel occupied with his, along with armies of droids that clashed with Noel’s. A barrage of artillery shells flew in her direction to obstruct Noel as she attempted to enter Pandora’s transmission range. She knew what it was—the trump card they were going to unveil, the last secret arsenal in their deck of cards.
“I do owe you again. Sorry for my selfishness, brother.” Noel mutters to herself alone, stepping back from the territory she aims to invade in Pandora’s range. Coming after, the strong spin of the conductor's flying hatchet reaches Pandora, and even though she parries it just on time with her bare hand, the interruption already causes her concentration to be disrupted, which eventually misses her target.
Pandora furiously growled as she shot her heavy machine guns over Allen's hideout. Later, the supply drops over the battlefield, and inside the package are syringes chilled inside the container.
The first one who hurried and took the shot from an ornate syringe was Yurian. Her body temperature rose unnaturally, along with the fumes of overheating steaming through her skin. The syringe is clearly a stimulant for the conductor. Yurian to overclock herself, betting her life on the verge.
“This is the reason why I want to end this cycle. You are all born just to suffer.” Noel said, pitifully looking at Yurian in her immense pain from overdrive side effects. “Y’all kept burning lives and souls for too long, endlessly, for too many generations. Thou shalt be released from this interminable suffering. I shall be a vermin.”
At the end of her words, Noel lunged the tip of her halberd over Yurian’s chest. The impaled girl resists; she grabs the polearm, pushing Noel back as if she had stabbed a heartless ragdoll. “Don’t make me laugh, big sis. You never feel our pain.” Yurian raises her chin, tears in her bloodstream from her eyes down to the neck, resisting death and nature's order on her last stand. The insurmountable weight of the conductor kept her from resisting her death. Yurian stabbed over the last syringe while keeping Noel moving backward.
“It might be my last dance, but the partner I shall take along with me is you, Noel! My beloved!”
“How touching is that… But, hell no.” Noel grabs Yurian’s head one handed as she leaps forward, letting the Halberd impale her chest deeper. “Maybe this is your only luck that your heart is placed on the right Yurian, but that doesn’t make any difference.” Noel rotates Yurian in the direction Pandora is shooting bullets from. After she dropped the body covered in bullets, Noel let out a long yawn.
“So, who’s my next challenger?” She even stepped over Yurian's cold body.