The mountain y in ruins, its jagged peaks reduced to a smoldering expanse of shattered stone and twisted rebar.
The city chunk Lady Blue had hurled at Nier, was a grotesque amalgam of skyscrapers, streets, and slums, sat embedded in the earth, a monstrous scar of concrete and steel.
Dust clouds swirled, choking the air with ash and the acrid tang of pulverized asphalt. Neon signs flickered feebly amidst the wreckage, their colors dulled by the gray haze.
Trees, uprooted and splintered, jutted from the debris like broken bones.
Above the devastation, a crimson crack split the sky, a jagged wound between boundaries of reality. Lightning-like tendrils of red energy shed out, sizzling as they tore through the fabric of space and time, cracking the boundaries of space, the air humming with an unnatural resistance. The rift pulsed, its edges fraying like torn cloth, a breach where was formed.
Lady Blue emerged from it, floating before the rift, her crimson aura fring like a wrathful star. Her boots hovered meters above the cratered destruction, her coat billowing in the windless void.
She gazed down at the wreckage, her predator like smile was gone now, and repced by a furrowed brow.
Her eyes, sharp and calcuting, scanned the rubble below. She had gotten carried away, too thrilled by the fight with someone who didn't crumple in one hit, someone outside the Squad Leaders. Had she accidentally killed the shapeshifter? The thought irked her; she had wanted to drag it to the doctor, not reduce it to paste.
However when I wr excited, she tend to get carried away a bit. So to ensure it was not dead, she began to search for it as she closed her eyes, her senses sharpening as she focused.
The shapeshifter's energy, Gaian, vibrant and holy, ced with the chaotic pulse of Flux energy, destructive and vile both had a distinct rhythm, a unique cadence she had memorized during their csh.
She reached out, probing the air, the debris, the very currents of reality for a trace. But as she could find nothing. No lingering spark, no fading echo of it's energy frequency. Even a corpse would radiate residual energy, but this was a void. Her lips curled into a scowl.
"How the hell did it slip me?"
She muttered, her voice low, tinged with annoyance and grudging respect.
"Slippery little bastard."
She sighed, arms crossing as she hovered.
"Next time, you're mine."
She said to the empty air, her tone a promise more than anything else.
With that she began to float backward, her form dissolving into the crackling red maw. The rift snapped shut, its edges sealing with a sound like shattering gss, leaving the sky unblemished once more.
Moments ter, the air shivered again. Not a crack this time, but a ripple, subtle and calm like a stone drop in till water. In the giant crater below, where the city chunk's shadow stretched across the broken earth, the darkness pulsed.
The shadow writhed, liquid-like, and a cwed hand burst forth, tearing through the inky surface. Nier stumbled out, colpsing onto the jagged ground, his body a patchwork of scars and half-healed flesh.
His breaths came in ragged gasps, his cells still trembling from Lady Blue's kick.
That single blow to his chest had done more than shatter bones, despite his padded defense's and iron armor, it had set his very molecules quivering, as if trying to rip themselves apart.
Even his shapeshifting, combined with Gaian energy, had struggled to keep him together. The cellur unraveling had stopped, but only after he had burned through a reckless amount of Negativity to stabilize his form. His reserves were dangerously low, his body screaming from the effort.
He pushed himself to his knees, dirt smearing his battered skin.
"I… escaped her."
He rasped, his voice hoarse but triumphant.
His pn had been desperate, insane, but it worked. As the city chunk hurtled toward the mountain, he had gambled everything on his newest magic spell: Shadow Space Creation. Sacrificing 300 units of Negativity, to create a perfect 30-meter box-shaped pocket dimension within the shadow cast by the plummeting city chunk.
He had hidden there, curled in the dark, silent void, while Lady Blue's senses scoured the wreckage above. The space, self-contained and inaccessible to her, had shielded him until she left.
Nier staggered to his feet, wincing as his muscles protested. His crimson eyes darted across the devastation, wary of any lingering trace of her aura.
Thankfully nothing.
She was gone...for now atleast.
But the cost of this escape gnawed at him. That much Negativity, burned in one go, left him drained, his reserves a flickering ember. He clenched his fists, frustration boiling in his chest.
As he said while rubbing his head.
"Fucking damn it."
He growled.
"I wasted so much just to survive that monster."
He spat into the dirt, his mind already racing.
"Sigh how unlucky do I have to be to run into a Hesta who has reach the Fifth and Finale Circle of their evolution. So that's how powerful a Hesta is when they reach the peak of their power. A perfect Hesta, sigh, and it hurts to know there atleast a hundred of these fuckers out there spread across the world."
Nier commented, as he look around taking in the sheer destruction around him.
"This is just disgusting, all that power in the palms of unhinged bitch. Sigh... Well, I can't compin, I should be lucky that I escape when I did."
"Still how much Negativity do I even have left."
[15,310]
"..."
Silence said to Nier, as he look at his hand.
"FWUCKKKKK!!!....
Nier cursed, from 60k to 15k in one night.
"...sigh, damnit, I need to recharge this, fuck looking for Monster's, I have Bel's trial to do tommarow night, I can't enter that bitch broke."
With that in mind, Nier began to shapeshift back into an eagle, and take for the skies once more.
He needed to recharge his reserve, and what better way, than use Wellspring and third eye to mind people who are truly miserable.
1:44 A.M - Anthen City - Sector 38 - Federal Assembly of Aeloria
Fūzokujō District - Southern Anthen
The alley reeked of stale booze and rust, a custrophobic slit between crumbling warehouses in Anthem underbelly. Grime-streaked walls loomed over a line of trembling figures, their wrists bound with zip ties, their faces pale under the flickering glow of a single streetmp.
Boys and girls, barely adults, stood shivering in tattered clothes, some in little more than their underwear, their skin smudged with dirt and sweat.
Among them, two girls, eighteen-year-old twins to be more precise stood shoulder to shoulder. The first one had long bck hair clung to her face, her blue eyes wide with with fear.
The second one was opposite of her, she had white hair glinting like moonlight, stared forward with silver eyes, her jaw clenched, a quiet fury radiating from her petite frame.
Both wore only bras and panties, their pale skin bruised and filthy, marked by rough handling.
Ahead, a half-dozen Yakuza enforcers lounged against a rusted van, their suits ill-fitting, their faces scarred and cruel.
The leader, a wiry man with a shaved head and a gold tooth glinting under the mp, counted stacks of cash on a folding table, his fingers flicking through bills with practiced ease, one can tell he done this many times.
His name was Taro, and his cold eyes darted up occasionally to scan the line of captives. Behind him, a hulking thug sharpened a cleaver on a whetstone, the screech of metal echoing.
"You idiots thought you could skim from the boss?"
Taro sneered, smming a fistful of cash onto the table.
"... I am sorry ok, with all the shit we been getting from Moonshine I had to use that money to keep the hub active Taro."
Boldrick said with shaking hands, as Taro look down on him, then.
SMACKK!!!
"Brgahhh!...
Boldrick drop to his knees holding his stomach in pain, as he vomit up his st meal, as as Taro gut check him, right after his rge feet stomp his head into the stone floor.
SMASSHH!!
"Ughaaa...
Boldrick scream in pain , trying to cover his head, as Taro keep beating down on him while insulting him.
"Three million short.
Three... Million!!... You can't fucking serious right... And then your try to bme Moonshine... What stupid fucking excuse!!"
THUDD!!
"...Bosss...
"WHATTT!?"
Taro shouted at the man beside him, one of his grunt's as he said.
"If you kill him, then the money owed will fall back on us."
"..."
"..."
"...tsk! Hate to admit but you are right!?... But someway or somehow this shit stain gotta pay up."
He said sighing to himself, as he pull his st cig from the box in his pocket lighting up, as he took deep inhales.
INHALLLE....EXHALLLLE!!...
The nicotine hit his lungs, as smoke curled from the light tip, as he looked at bruised Boldrick.
"Tell me Boldrick... how the fuck do you intend to pay us 3 million on the spot!?"
"Cy....
"Speak up."
"I was going to take some of our depth sves, and sell their organs to Cy."
"To cy, you can't be kidding me."
