image [https://i.imgur.com/7p4z8tW.png]
Once the group got their bearings, Carmen gave Cassidy a subtle nod, prompting her to take point. Cassidy immediately dashed forward, quickly appearing behind the Headmaster. With one swift motion, she aimed her left palm at his feet and began conjuring up a whirlpool of water.
When the water finished ensnaring the Headmaster's ankles, Carmen expanded her gravity field, catching him inside and completely freezing his body. Before he could make an attempt to retaliate, Cassidy closed her hand and squeezed tightly. The pool of water burst upwards into a deep blue pillar that violently swirled in place. The ground shook and rumbled as a spray of watery mist blasted out in all directions.
Not wanting to waste any time, Carmen followed up with an attack of her own. She glanced to her left and to her right, utilizing her gravity manipulation to lift up every piece of debris she could see. Once the pillar of water was completely surrounded, Carmen fired every chunk of marble and wood she could into it, increasing their weight and density tenfold.
The collision was brutal as their makeshift blender rapidly spun, seemingly grinding the Headmaster into a pulp. Cassidy and Carmen waited with bated breath, hoping that their efforts would be enough to even the playing field. Tensions rose to impossible heights, until a sudden flash of yellow light burst from the pillar of water.
Water rained down in every direction as Cassidy's skillful ability was completely undone. Headmaster Quinn sent a simple smirk in their direction as he stood there, completely unscathed.
'You can't be serious!'
Shock and disbelief raced across Carmen's face as she saw his body. However, before she could think of her next move, the Headmaster's fist began to charge with a dense amount of Core Energy. He suddenly punched his fists together, causing a massive wave of energy to radiate outwards. The force lifted Cassidy and Carmen off of their feet, sending them flying in different directions.
Carmen crashed into a bookshelf on the opposite side of the room, causing books and debris to cascade down, fully covering her body. Cassidy was thrown backwards until her head collided with a solid marble statue. The impact was loud and visceral as she was knocked completely unconscious, her body slumping against the statue's base.
"Well that was rather anti-climactic. I guess I expected a bit too much from a group of mere first years." Headmaster Quinn quipped with a dark chuckle.
He slowly began walking towards Cassidy, charging the Core Energy around his fist once more. As he got closer, Carmen started pushing all of the broken wood and books off of her, trying her best to recollect herself. She eventually looked over and saw the Headmaster’s hand aimed at Cassidy, glowing with a violent yellow aura.
Headmaster Quinn thrust his fist downward, but to his surprise, Rivell leapt in the way and activated his Manifest’s shield. A green bubble quickly formed around him and Cassidy, however, it provided very little protection. The Headmaster’s fist shattered the shield and went straight through Rivell’s chest, sending crimson blood in all directions.
The moment Carmen witnessed this atrocity, time for her stopped completely. Her heart fell to the absolute deepest and darkest depths imaginable as she watched Rivell’s limp body get tossed to the ground, lying still amongst all the chaos.
“I was coming for you next, boy. But, I guess you were just eager to die. Oh well…” Headmaster Quinn said, wiping the blood off of his arm.
Carmen’s wide-eyed gaze slowly shifted downwards until she met with Rivell’s dilated pupils. He stared at her while the pool of blood around his body raced outwards, staining the white marble tiles with red. The scene was impossibly quiet as Rivell’s Manifest faded away, his Core Energy pattern ceasing to exist.
Headmaster Quinn stepped over Rivell's body with the utmost disrespect and began his approach towards Carmen. He sent her a devious grin, prompting Carmen to slowly look up with a terrifying scowl upon her face. When their eyes met, a power he had never felt before erupted from Carmen. The Core Energy coming out of her was absolutely dark, vile, and sinister. Headmaster Quinn quickly stopped in his tracks and began experiencing a heavy feeling of uneasiness.
‘What is this energy!? It’s… So evil!’
Before he could process what was happening, Carmen suddenly tilted her head back and started screaming with the most skin crawling wail he'd ever heard. The loud, piercing scream echoed across the campus, sending shivers down many of the surviving students' spines. The Headmaster was frozen with fear once she finally stopped her pained wails, watching closely as Carmen slowly got to her feet.
Curiously, her body began transforming before his very eyes. Carmen’s silver hair was now pure white and her skin became incredibly pale. Her once piercing red-eyed gaze was now a light gray color and her teeth grew sharper.
When she lifted her head, thin black lines raced down from her eyes to her chin and two black horns emerged from her hair, making their presence fully known with each passing second. When her transformation finished, she was nigh unrecognizable. The Headmaster made note of her new appearance and immediately began to wonder about something.
‘What is going on here!? Why did this girl transform into a Boundless?? How is that even possible!?’
He was dumbfounded by what he saw and began to feel incredibly anxious from the unreal amount of Core Energy coming from Carmen. His body screamed for him to flee, but he knew this girl wouldn’t allow for that. He eventually collected his nerve and started charging his fist, powering it up to the absolute limits of power he could muster. Unsurprisingly, Carmen wasn’t phased at all and proceeded to take a single step towards him, casually crushing the ground beneath her foot.
“DIE!” Headmaster Quinn screamed out, now rushing towards her with his fist reared back.
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He wanted to end this fight with a single decisive blow, hoping to cause enough damage to buy him enough time for an escape. His fist rippled in the air as he brought it forward, teeming with copious amounts of Core Energy. However, once he entered Carmen’s space, she simply raised her hand in front of his fist. It immediately stopped his approach, seemingly unable to proceed any further.
“Huh!? But how?” He exclaimed, noticing the invisible force resting between his fist and her hand.
Not only could he not push past her barrier, but he also began to realize that his body was now completely frozen in place. Carmen slowly looked him in the eyes, her expression so incredibly cold and empty. He stared back at her with a fearful gaze, bracing himself for whatever was coming next.
Then, without a single warning, the Headmaster’s arm collapsed in on itself. It folded in every gruesome and impossible way imaginable, as though someone were simply crumpling a piece of paper together. He screamed out in pain as he watched his arm be reduced to nothing.
As Headmaster Quinn was locked in place, yelling out pain filled obscenities, Carmen shifted her focus back to Rivell. She slowly walked over towards him and crouched down, lifting his head up to her chest and hugging him tightly. Carmen gently rocked his body, hoping that he would somehow wake up and be okay. Once she realized that he was gone, a single tear streamed down her cheek.
After taking a brief moment, Carmen laid Rivell back down. She got to her feet and swiftly summoned her Manifest. When the rapier appeared in her hand, Headmaster Quinn noticed that it looked a bit different than before. It maintained its all black and purple aesthetic, but the detailing and physical make up was similar to that of bones.
Carmen turned her attention back to the Headmaster and elegantly thrust her rapier at him. The amount of power generated from this one simple motion, blew out the entire back wall of the building, sending glass and brick in all directions. The Headmaster was released from his gravitational bonds and thrown into the air, causing him to plummet five stories towards the ground outside. He crashed onto his back and when he looked up, he saw Carmen peering down at him from the edge with her Manifest in hand.
She traced an ink-like symbol in the air with her rapier, painting with effortless flicks of her wrist and arm. The night sky suddenly shifted to a deep purple color as an eclipse started to occur over the moon. Once the eclipse reached totality, the western half of LaVeda’s massive campus was completely flattened and destroyed by immense gravitational weight. Windows shattered, multiple buildings fell, trees burst, and the very ground below crumbled from the incredible force.
In that same instance, the purple rune was crushed, allowing the many barriers around campus to lift and the rampaging students to immediately fall unconscious. The Headmaster’s also body began turning back to normal as he was crushed further by unfathomable amounts of weight. Weakened and shirtless, the frail old man laid at the center of a crater, completely at the mercy of his student.
He helplessly watched as Carmen slowly floated down to his location, landing in front of him and glaring menacingly with her gray eyes. As she stood there, her shadow began to grow and move on its own. Black ink rose out from her shadow and quickly took hold of Headmaster Quinn's legs, gripping them tightly until they eventually snapped like twigs. He cried out in anguish, pleading for her to stop torturing him and to just end his misery.
Carmen gave the Headmaster no reply as she continued her dark stare. She simply pointed her Manifest at him, preparing her final attack. However, whe she reared her rapier back, a sudden blast of dark pink smoke exploded onto the ground. Carmen quickly backed away, but after inhaling a few breaths of the smoke, she began to feel tired and heavy. She immediately fell down to one knee and struggled to keep her eyes open.
As she tried to fight her fatigue, Carmen’s hair began shifting back to silver and the horns on her head receded. Her gray eyes returned to their original vivid red hue and the sharp teeth that protruded from her mouth went back to normal. The Eclipse started to fade away, causing the sky to return to normal and the immense level of gravitational weight to cease. Carmen slowly looked up and saw a man with a blank white mask, wearing an all black tuxedo. Despite the destruction and dust around him, he was immaculately dressed.
“I’m terribly sorry, but we still have a great need for the Headmaster. I unfortunately can’t allow you to kill him.” The man said with a proper and polite tone.
“Who.. Who are you?” Carmen asked, struggling to keep her eyes open.
“I am Watcher Delandy, pleased to make your acquaintance, Carmen Belouis. Now if you’ll excuse me, we really must be going. I’m sure we’ll meet again some day.”
He gave her a deep bow, angling his head and body with the utmost precision. Carmen looked confused by his polite theatrics, but as soon as she blinked, the masked man and the Headmaster were gone. At this point, her fatigue was too much to overcome and within that same moment, Carmen fell over and went completely unconscious.
image [https://i.imgur.com/d60vRFl.png]
Many hours after the LaVeda University tragedy, Carmen awoke in the school’s infirmary. She slowly sat up and gently rubbed her head to alleviate the slight headache she had. Her mind was incredibly fuzzy as she wondered how she ended up here. Once she looked around at all of the injured students, she couldn’t help but shudder from their pained moans.
When she finally collected herself, Carmen began to recount the events from earlier and her eyes went wide. She threw the sheets off of her bed and quickly got up, rushing out of the room and down the hall. In a panic, Carmen looked everywhere to find her friends, hoping everyone was okay.
She rounded the corner and finally saw a few familiar faces, Cassidy, Caleb, and Mariah. But as she approached, she noticed that Cassidy was sobbing loudly. Immediately to their left was a wall with a few pieces of paper pinned to them. As Carmen got closer, her heart beat rapidly. Caleb looked up and saw Carmen walking over, causing him to rush in her direction. His pace made it seem like he didn’t want her to see something.
“Carmen, I don’t think you-” He hesitantly said, but stopped talking as she walked right past him.
She stood in front of the wall and scanned the contents attached to it. “Missing or deceased” was written in bold at the top of one of the papers. Her eyes went line by line until eventually stopping. Directly in the middle of the list was a painful discovery.
Rivell Munis - DECEASED
“How? T-There’s no way. Surely it was just a bad dream...” She softly said, not wanting to believe that her first true friend was no longer around.
Carmen’s mind went blank and the world around her stopped. Nothing made sense to her anymore. Caleb came in from behind and pulled her away. He tightly hugged her and tried his best to comfort Carmen during this incredibly hard time. However, Carmen didn’t hug him back nor did she cry, she just stood there with a blank and lost expression. After a brief moment, Carmen slowly pushed Caleb off of her and began walking away aimlessly.
“Where are you going?” Mariah asked with a concerned tone.
Carmen gave no response and continued on down the hall. Mariah was about to follow after her but Caleb quickly grabbed her arm, shaking his head.
“Let’s just leave her be for now.”
They looked on at Carmen walking in the distance as the sounds of Cassidy’s cries echoed in the hallway.
Carmen walked in silence for a while before arriving back at her dorm room. She laid on her bed and stared at the ceiling, wondering what went so wrong. She gripped the silver and black pendant around her neck tightly, pondering deeply.
“Mother.. Homura.. I wish I could ask you guys what to do in this situation… I feel so… Numb.” She quietly muttered under her breath.
Carmen rolled over on her side and assumed the fetal position, still gripping her pendant tightly. She laid there and stared at the wall, still not fully processing or grieving the loss of Rivell.