Chapter 87: Ch126. Prisoners
That was when Kurt’s senses warned him, and he dodged the lightning bolt that came towards him by a hairsbreadth.
He turned around and looked at Robby.
He seemed to have regained some of his strength.
But still, using his awakened treat seemed to take a toll on him, since he was panting, while glaring at Kurt with savagery.
"You played that trick very well." He kinda laughed. "You almost got me telling you some serious stuff, but I won’t fall for it. You’re an agent, aren’t you?"
"I’m no-" But as soon as Kurt tried to say anything else, Robby began throwing lightning bolts at him like rain.
So he dodged and dodged.
It felt like child’s play to Kurt. Even more now that he had just come back from a world where he experienced such an amazing power up.
But still, after a few seconds of dodging and dodging, it started to become annoying.
"Look, I don’t want to hurt you, Robby... Just let me-"
"SHUT UP! I WON’T FALL FOR IT AGAIN!" Robby shouted. "AND AS SOON AS I MANAGE TO KILL YOU, I’LL GET BACK HOME!"
For a second, Kurt saw himself in that boy.
When his mother was killed, he felt like he lost everything.
And Robby had, indeed, lost everything.
But the game had been dragging on for too long, and that by itself had made Kurt’s patience run very thin.
He raised one hand, and raised a shadow from the floor, that looked like a translucent black wall, deflecting all of the lightning bolts.
"I won’t ask again, Robby."
"SHUT UP, YOU ASSOCIATION’S BASTARD!"
"ENOUGH!" Kurt shouted.
But he didn’t attack.
All he did was release his killing intent, and a little bit of his renewed energy.
That alone was enough to make Robby freeze like a statue, right in the middle of conjuring another lightning bolt.
The air got heavy in his lungs, and the world began spinning around him, faster and faster, out of control.
He felt it hard to breathe, and felt like he was going to vomit.
But he couldn’t do anything.
Because if he moved even a single inch, he felt like the massive threat in front of him could easily end his life.
"I won’t say that again. I’m not an agent of the Association." Kurt began. "And I’m not after your friends because I’m myself an irregular."
By the mention of that word, Robby’s eyes grew wide.
"I’ll retreat my aura, now. So please, enough with the games. I have friends waiting for me, so if you could just tell me about that hideout, I might be able to find them there."
Robby managed to nod ever so slightly, and Kurt withdrew his killing intent.
All of a sudden, Robby fell to his knees, panting harder than he was when shooting his lightning at Kurt.
He needed several minutes to recover from it, and so, Kurt waited.
When Robby was back at some strength, he coughed and asked.
"How... How are you so strong? I mean... With that much power, you could easily wipe the entire Association, I guess..."
"You might’ve been right at a certain point here, but now I’m not so sure."
"What do you mean?"
"I don’t wanna talk about it. Now, would you kindly tell me about that hideout of yours? I’m pretty sure my friends are waiting for me there..."
"I didn’t say we had a hideout." Robby retorted, pouting.
"Yeah." Kurt chuckled ever so slightly. "You just rained lightning on me like I had poked you where you had a bruise. Also, now you just used the word we, so kudos for trying to not tell me."
Robby grimaced.
"You’re really not here to hunt us?"
Kurt shook his head.
"Okay. But I need to, at least, know your name, right? I mean, no one will accept you there willingly with you having your face covered with a mask."
"I can’t, not now, kid." Kurt shook his head again. "There’s a reason I’m using this mask, and to show my face so nonchalantly would just be throwing it away."
Maybe it was something Kurt had said, or just something that had been let out in the air.
But Robby’s eyes went wide, bloodshot with barely contained rage.
"You... You’re the guy, right...? Kurt... Blake?"
Kurt regretted not having a skill that could change his face, because he couldn’t hide it from the boy.
Even more when all he could say was silence.
"You... You killed my brother..."
Robby glared at Kurt, as he slowly took off his mask.
And once Robby saw Kurt’s face, his jaw fell low, and electricity began crackling around him.
"So that’s the face of the dude whom my brother told me was the strongest in the whole academy, huh...?"
Robby’s words caught Kurt slightly off-guard, even though he was ready to block each of the lightning bolts that the kid might have prepared for him.
However, the words Robby said after that, caught Kurt even more off-guard.
"You’re not gonna stop me, and you’re not gonna hurt me." He panted heavily. "If you’re even half the dude my brother told me you are, you’re gonna wait for me, and when I get strong enough, I’m gonna hit you so hard you’re gonna beg for death..."
His eyes were wet when he turned around and entered the building.
Kurt did feel guilty about what Robby said.
About him being the cause of his brother’s, of Simon Delaware’s death.
But even though he felt it deep in his heart, he had more urgent matters to attend to.
So he vanished in the shadows, and began following the boy.
But it didn’t matter how Kurt tried to hide, it felt like Robby knew he was being followed.
Because for the days that went by, he didn’t get in a single place that Kurt felt like being their hideout, whoever they could’ve been.
Kurt just assumed that the we that Robby talked about, could be the other irregulars.
Meaning that maybe Evellyn and Nikolai were with them.
But the more time passed, the more Kurt thought that Robby was too smart for his own age, and ended up fooling him into believing that there was a hideout for the irregulars.
When in truth, it was just him and his pursuit for vengeance.
Kurt learned a lot about Robby in the days that followed.
How he was a really smart kid, avoiding the agents and blending into the crowd like he could become invisible.
Robby had a talent of his own.
Talent that Kurt felt in his gut, when he felt the nostalgia hitting him.
As he remembered the time he was the other Kurt, living in the streets, and living off of what he could steal.
It didn’t matter to Kurt that one day, Robby finally got sloppy, and unwillingly showed Kurt the entrance to the hideout.
He did want to see his friends back.
He had to help them.
But at the same time, he started feeling sympathy for the boy.
He even thought that Robby would make one hell of a rogue himself.
But before Kurt could get any ideas, he had to find a way to reach Robby’s heart.
"That’s gonna be a problem..." Kurt said to himself in a hush, while watching Robby perform a secret handshake with a seventeen year old-looking girl.
And going inside an abandoned convenience store, near the edge of town.
"Took you long enough, kid..." Kurt smirked.
He reached his senses into the old convenience store, and felt the presence of many other people there.
And he laughed to himself when he found out that everybody was living in the underground of that store.
"An Underzone..." He shook his head, vanishing in the shadows, just to reappear down there.
He immediately activated his [STALKER], so he wouldn’t be noticed when he appeared out of nowhere in the middle of that many people.
So when he saw the many faces, scanning one by one to see if he could find Nikolai or Evellyn, he could hear Robby’s voice from a certain distance.
He was talking to another girl.
That girl was as familiar to Kurt as a few of the other people in that abandoned underground parking lot.
She had short hair, and the sleeves of her t-shirt were ripped off.
The girl had a nasty scar over her neck, that wasn’t there three years ago.
And her arms were tattooed from fingers to elbows.
Kurt could never forget her eyes, though.
Fierce and determined, like she always had been.
’Cinthia...’ Kurt thought, focusing his senses to filter the noise, and allow him to hear only Cinthia and Robby’s voice.
"I know what I saw!" Robby hushed. "It was him!"
"And so you waited this long to come back, just because you thought he was following you?" Cinthia raised a brow. "How come you want me to believe that, all of a sudden, you have grown into a stealth thief or what?"
Robby glared at her, and for one second, Kurt thought there would be another storm raging out soon.
But there wasn’t any.
Robby just puffed his cheeks, breathed in deeply, and kept talking.
"He even mentioned Evellyn and Nikolai’s names."
That caught Cinthia off-guarded.
"But he... Robby..." Cinthia knelt down to his eye-level. "The dead can’t. Come. Back. To life. And that’s what Kurt Blake is. Dead."
Kurt’s eyes went wide for a second, after Cinthia’s statement.
He looked down, shaking his head.
’So everybody thinks I’m dead...? Then why the holoposters?’
"He isn’t!" Robby retorted. "Wherever he has been hiding all this time, he’s back. And he’s even as strong as how the files shows that Octavius Blake was."
The argument got a little heated up for a few moments, but Cinthia managed to calm Robby down.
She took him a bit farther from the group, so they could talk more privately, and Kurt followed them, hiding in the shadows.
"You can’t seriously expect me to believe that, Robby. I mean it. He was strong and all, but after the headmaster’s death... I can ’t believe he managed to survive." She sighed.
And for a moment, Kurt even believed that she actually liked him.
"He was just a coward that hid behind his technique to show off. He died, and left us into this whole mess that is now ours to clean up, so stop spewing nonsense, and let’s get ready for the next supply raid! We’re almost running out of water, so we need to hurry before everyone here starts getting edgy."
Cinthia turned to leave, and Robby got ready to say something.
But instead, Cinthia turned around again, and interrupted him.
"And even if he was alive, he would know that Evellyn and Nikolai were caught by the New Dawn. Why would he even bother come looking for us?"
Kurt’s eyes went wide, and he almost couldn’t control his anger.
But suddenly, he emerged from the shadows, unmasked, letting everyone notice him.
His eyes glowed in bright green.
"What?"
