Raphael awakes to the sound of shattering glass. He leaps out of his bed in a millisecond and grabs the 1270 off of his nightstand while June gets out of her bed to grab her scythe that she had placed against the corner of the bunk bed.
“What's going on? What was that noise?” asks June as Raphael moves toward the room's wooden door.
“I don't know, but it could be a Demu! Get back while I go out and check.” says Raphael as he gauges his pistol.
June gives him a nod while backing up to the bunk bed. Although she has no fear at the time, she knows that something is about to go very, very wrong.
Raphael turns the knob of his door slowly, inching the door open with his pistol leading his eyesight. He peaks out the door, and sees a pink flash before the door launches off of it's hinges and throws him to the ground.
He feels someone moving on top of the door and can feel them walking off of it toward June. “Sherah... what happened to you...!?” says June in fright.
Using his telekinesis, Raphael launches his door off of him and back against the frame that it was supposed to be at. He rolls over onto his side and sees someone with bright pink skin and in tattered, torn apart clothing blocking a scythe strike from June and throwing her scythe to the side before backhanding her onto the bed.
Raphael lines his pistol up to fire at the person, but decides to issue a warning first. “Sherah, stand down right fucking now!” he screams at the top of his lungs.
Sherah looks back at him for only a second, but that is all he needs to see exactly what Sherah has turned into.
Her hair is mangled and torn like a savage. Her topaz eyes are now viper-like slits that hold no emotion other than anger. Razor-sharp fangs now adorn her mouth, giving her a monster-esque look. Her fingernails are no longer there anymore, instead exchanged with what look like obsidian claws.
The level of change that has happened to Sherah over-night completely amazes Raphael. She looks like a feral demon. The look that she shoots back at him freezes him in his place, giving Sherah enough time to grab June off of the bed and run toward the bedroom's window.
Raphael fires off three shots at Sherah as she sprints for the window, but they all miss her by great lengths. She smashes through the glass with a single leap and lands from the two story drop without a single wound.
Raphael pulls himself to his feet and runs to the window. Down in the backyard, he can see Sherah sprinting for the elevator entrance and slamming in the stump button.
Before Raphael can think of a way of getting down to the backyard fast enough to catch up with Sherah, he starts to have a massive headache. He kneels his head down, expecting a long, painful introduction into a new ability, but the pain leaves in a matter of seconds.
Raphael can feel his body become incredibly light after the pain has been swept away. Focusing his mind, his body slowly levitates up into the air, millimeter by millimeter, until his body is floating in the air.
Then the reality of the situation comes flowing back to him. He looks outside of his second story window and spots Sherah, still holding June, going down the elevator.
Using his new ability, he flies out of his broken window and arcs up into the sky. He looks down and sees the elevator hatch shutting.
Although he is still getting used to his new ability, he uses his mind to propel himself toward the stump button. By the time that he hits the ground, Sherah has already gotten off of the elevator and is proceeding into the bunker. Raphael hits the ground with a thud and slides for a few feet before stopping. Even though his clothes had gotten muddied up by the landing, he doesn't even care.
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He launches himself up to his feet and runs over to the stump button. He slams in the button as desperation starts to kick in. It feels to Raphael as if the elevator is taking hours to arrive when it has only been seconds.
When the elevator door's open, Raphael runs over to them and leaps down onto the levitating elevator plate. When he lands on the plate, he does a roll off of it before it has gotten to the point where the plate would be blocked by metal on all sides.
He lands in the elevator room on his hands and feet. He looks up and around the room, not seeing heads or tails of Sherah or June. He is about to think about where Sherah might be heading next, but then he sees Chiot and Henry appear in front of the doorway.
“Kid!” screams Chiot as he notices Raphael. “Sherah slipped by us and-”
“There's no time!” yells back Raphael as he checks the clip in his 1270. “She has June! Which way did she go!?”
“She went that way!” says Henry while pointing down the right hallway. “Get going, we'll be right behind you!”
Without another word, Raphael sprints out of the elevator room and down the right hallway with Henry and Chiot following close behind. After sprinting down the hallway and making a sharp turn, Raphael can see Sherah's outline at the other end of the hallway before she makes a turn and disappears out of sight.
Increasing his speed, Raphael rockets down the hallway after Sherah, hitting the hallway wall and coming to a complete stop while looking down the hallway that Sherah had disappeared around. He sees Sherah further down throwing a UMA soldier out of the way before continuing down the hallway.
After getting his bearings back together, Raphael pushes himself off of the wall and proceeds down the hallway after Sherah at a deafening pace. Raphael sees while he is running after Sherah that Urt has appeared out of nowhere and is blocking the way into the stairwell, which is where Sherah is heading full speed.
With great might, Sherah does a leap into the air and drop-kicks Urt through the stairwell's metal door, forcing it off of it's hinges. She kicks off of Urt and jumps down the stairwell to the second floor with Raphael following right behind her.
The drop down to the second floor gives Raphael a small boost when it comes to catching up with Sherah, but his distance to her is still too far for him to be able to grab her. Sherah bursts through the metal door with a shoulder ram-like move and then makes an immediate turn down the hallway toward the portal room.
Raphael can hear the portal technicians yelling something to some UMA soldiers in what appears to be a hasty conversation. “Hurry, dammit! She's coming right this way! Oh shit, she has June! Hurry and close it before she gets here!” comes one of the voices, which Raphael judges is a UMA soldier.
“I'm trying! It's like this portal has a disruptor for disruptors! Oh God! Form a line and stop her, she can't get through or we'll lose June!” says what seems to be a portal technician. Although Raphael doesn't have time to think about it, he is able to figure out that some kind of portal has opened in the portal room, and it isn't one of his organization's portals.
The realization spreads through him as he slides into the corner wall and continues to chase after Sherah. The Demu have opened a portal inside the bunker for Sherah to use to escape into their dimension. Seeing the desperation of the situation, Raphael increases his speed until he believes that he can go no faster. Getting him within ten feet of Sherah.
Raphael sees past Sherah further down the hallway where UMA soldiers are lining up in a defensive formation in front of the portal room in an attempt to stop Sherah from getting through. They have swords, shields, and he can also see Teruin behind the line, gathering particles of metal from the wall to use as projectiles.
Teruin launches a metal missile toward Sherah, which she dodges. The projectile goes over Sherah's ducking head and lands at Raph's feet as he runs by it. By the time Teruin has prepared another metal missile, Sherah is only a few feet away from the line of soldiers.
She ducks underneath of a sword strike and throws the soldier over top of her head. The soldier flips into Raphael and they both land in a heap on the ground.
By the time Raphael has gotten the soldier off of him, Sherah has altered her course and is about to run into the portal room. Teruin takes a swipe at her with a metal sword, but misses as Sherah takes off into the room.
Raphael gathers himself to his feet and runs into the portal room with Teruin. He sees a portal is open in the room's portal generator, which Sherah is running through at that very moment. He screams an extended “No!” as he leaps after Sherah with an extended arm, but he isn't able to grab Sherah, the portal closing as he flies by the portal generator and to the ground.
All hope isn't lost, though, as Teruin was able to jump on Raphael's back as he leaped and push off of him through the portal.
Raphael falls to the ground with a thud with his hand still extended. He remains there, motionless, for what he thinks has been hours. A low sob can be heard throughout the room. That sob is coming from Raphael. He is suppose to have only one mission, and that is to keep the Key safe. Now she is lost, taken captive by her former protector to some unknown place far away....