Abri: Chapter IV
#1 of Abri
Unbeknownst to the surprising twist of fate, the green-haired lupine dropped his paw from her own, resulting in her own accidental fall into the Old Age entryway while the rogue male remained occupied in the Old.
Still occupying a smile that meant business, his sole intent soon became prevalent when the blood on his person began to boil and then disperse, exploding into multiple copies of himself, leaving the ex-captive with a sultry, almost exhausted look.
"Ah.....This gate means nothing to me, for there is pain everywhere--and that pain is inevitable...So I say no more!" he shouted, commanding the blood-covered copies into ramming against the gate, which heavily resulted in an onslaught of red rushing forward.
Meanwhile, after recovering from her fall, Fia sat up wearily, looking across from where she once was, gasping at the impact that was forcing it's way onto the gate.
"You have to stop this! Don't do it, okay!? Don't do it!" she cried, managing to catch his glance along with hers, shaking her head vigorously.
"This is our haven! You must understand that! Sto--"
"He won't listen to reason" a voice uttered from afar.
"Like, come on now. He's just a kid!" wailed another, yet different voice from the same direction, which soon revealed to be a squadron of two other female forces of the rebellion.
One was a crimson colored feline with a black "X" covering the left portion of her face, while the other was a bronze and brown speckled otter with an ambitious smirk. The first carried a sword while the other carried a bow and arrow.
Quickly rushing up to the aid of the limp wolf, the feline offered a quick exchange of glances.
"So this is the boy, huh? Well he doesn't look all that frightening, if you ask me."
"I-I...Who are you..."
"Two?" offered the female otter who came up quickly behind the other girls.
"My name is Faye, and little miss with the whiskers here is Rozalin" she answered, pointing at the cat.
Rozalin huffed at this, removing her sword from it's holster before rushing forth into the gate, slashing away at the first onslaught of bloody EX copies.
Her sword struggled to swipe through incoming crowds, which later got the feline in an exhausted position, panting as the otter came up to her side, leaping through the sky with her arrows that rained through the bloody reckoning.
Looking past her shoulder, Faye giggled.
"Looked like you could use some help, kitty cat."
"Just defeat them!"
"Te-he...No fun" she offered with a gentle pout, raising her bow towards the direction of the east where the main quarry of red "wolves" were heading their way.
"This is where we say our good-byes, so..."she grinned, the cloth on her tail beginning to glow.
"Mercury Shot!" echoed across the entryway, a radiant blue hitting the ground in front of the otter before dispersing into a group of plasma-ridden arrows, shooting upwards and through the crowd of unusual vessels.
Off to the side, the boy ran his paw against the earth and coughed, the poison quickly catching up to his newly vulnerable position. His eyes crept upwards at the two strange individuals every now and then, but he was in no position to fight.
He realized that what he once saw as hope was now futile, like everything else.
"Ventus!" cried the feline, stabbing her sword into the last group of bloody vessels before an outpour of razor sharp wind bursts made quick work out of them.
She sighed heavily after the initial threat was vanquished, darting her gaze to the rogue who was off to her left.
"Nice to meet you, stupid!" she growled.
He offered her a quick stare before falling back forward with his face into the ground, groaning.
Noticing this, the feline strutted over to his position quite quite calmly, resting the end of her sword into the crook of his neck, raising his head steadily to have him look at her and only her.
"Saw what you did with your arm there, my friend."
The otter swiftly came to stand at the boy's other side, resting an angle of her bow on the wolf's shoulder.
"Y'know...just because you traded your arm in for a new one doesn't mean that you can't pass the gate" she acknowledged, digging the form of her bow a bit further into the male's shoulder.
"Give it a snip or two, and I'm sure the thing will come right off..."
"Don't scare him, Faye."
"Hey! Hey! I wasn't the one that was up to his neck with a sword, you cat!"
The feline looked to the side and blushed.
"I-It...was for dramatic effect, is all."
The otter smiled before lifting the wolf's arm around her neck.
"Let's carry him off now--since we have the seal and all."
Rozalin nodded lightly before taking his other arm, pulling him up and off into the gate. She exchanged a quick glance at the boy, who was physically deteriorating from the effect of New Age's poisonous miasma.
"As long as you hold on to us, that arm will be purified once we pass through the gate, as will your body."
"Yeah" the otter smiled. " You have a lot of explaining to do, wolf boy, now don't you?"
She laughed to herself before they finally entered the gate, a bewildered Fia standing off to the side, still recovering from a mild run-in with poison.