Chapter 94: Ch132. Trip
Kurt’s senses didn’t let out a single sound to warn him about Nikolai’s crazy angry fist coming towards him, despite the blatant strong emotions that could basically be felt in the air coming from the young man.
But after a moment, when Nikolai simply didn’t break eye contact with Kurt, he opened his mouth slowly.
"This is for making us believe that you were dead..." Nikolai said. And in the next moment, he pulled Kurt close in an almost bear-like hug. "I’m glad you’re not dead, friend. But... Why is everyone knocked out? And... Why did I see myself with a mechanical arm?"
Kurt looked at Evellyn, who had already approached, and as they exchanged glances, they both laughed their hearts out, and Kurt almost cried from the laughter, leaving Nikolai tilting his head and frowning.
"It’s kind of a long not-so-long story, man, and I promise you I’ll explain everything, since you must already know a lot more than you did three years ago. For now, however, let’s wait for everyone to wake up. I have some explaining to do, and I’m sure you’ll be of great help since your girlfriend there basically tried to kill me."
Nikolai looked like he had a short circuit for a moment.
He looked from Kurt to Cinthia, and to Kurt again, for several seconds until he was finally able to break the silence.
"What? Cinthia? What do you mean by girlfriend? And why did she try to kill you?"
Kurt exchanged glances with Evellyn again, and they burst out in laughter once more.
"Bro, the way you just assumed that I was talking abut Cinthia." Kurt kept laughing. "It’s priceless! But yeah, it was her."
They laughed some more as Nikolai turned red as a tomato, but Kurt explained what happened.
And after some talk, Cinthia and the others started waking up.
Nikolai acted quick and swift, immediately talking to her and showing her that everything was alright.
Cinthia, however, just glared at him and left him with Kurt and Evellyn, cursing so much that a drunken sailor would be proud of her.
"You sure it’s okay to leave her like that?" Kurt asked Nikolai, when he saw her shoot a murderous glare at him.
"Yes." Nikolai shrugged. "Even though she..."
"She...?" Evellyn egged him on.
Nikolai fidgeted with his fingers after breaking the silence.
"She... She confessed to me..." His eyes didn’t leave the floor.
Both Evellyn and Kurt wanted to chuckle, but they noticed how seriously confused Nikolai was.
"Can I ask you an honest question, Nikita?" Evellyn squeezed his shoulder.
Nikolai just nodded.
"How would you feel if she was in danger, along with the rest of us?"
"What do you mean?" He frowned.
"would you save her before anyone else, if we all were in danger, and you could save us?"
Nikolai’s eyes lit up.
"Oh, I see what you did there." He chuckled. "I would save her, sure. But I wouldn’t save her especially, you know?" He sighed. "She is a human being, so she does not deserve to die, but I would save her because of it. Nothing else."
"You’re lucky that she can’t hear you, man." Robby appeared in front of them, all of a sudden. "She would kill you."
Nikolai slapped him in the back of his head, carefully as to not hurt him.
But Kurt had a different reaction.
"Were you always this sneaky?" Kurt raised his eyebrow.
He knew that his senses didn’t trigger anything, because Robby had no intention to harm.
But to know that the kid could be just like how he watched, before he was introduced to the group, to him...
***
Octavius was sitting at his desk, going through some paperwork while a woman stood in front of his desk, waiting for him to finish.
And only after a few moments, when the president of the association waved with his hand, she started speaking.
"Sir, you ordered us to issue a black list and initiate Purge Protocol, but I’m not so sure on how it will affect the public opinion about the Association."
Octavius slid his fingers through his hair, looking slightly up, to meet the woman’s amber eyes.
"Olivia..."
"Mr. President, Sir?" She flinched ever so slightly at the way he called her name.
"It’s been three years since the last incident with an open Nest, right?"
She nodded.
"So, why do you think we still need wielders?"
Olivia thought for a while, her curious dark eyes narrowing to a slit as her fingers rubbed her chin.
After a few seconds, she just shook her head, clueless.
"Exactly." He chuckled. "We don’t. We don’t need wielders anymore, because I found out what the real threat is, and I’m going to erase it from this world myself."
He got up as Olivia breathed in, wanting to ask more questions.
"I won’t say another word, Olivia. You have a single, very simple job, don’t you?"
"Yes, sir?" Her lips trembled, bobbing up and down.
"And what is your job, Olivia?"
"To make sure that your orders are followed to the t..."
Her hands trembled, and she began sweating cold, as her feet begged her to walk out the door.
But Octavius simply said a single sentence, before letting her leave.
"Issue the black list on every wielder that doesn’t belong to the Association. And make sure the Purge Protocol is initiated as soon as possible, so that we can have everything ready for the irregulars." He gave it a brief pause. "Even more now, that things seem to be drawing to a close." He smiled wickedly.
***
"Why do you trust that professor Rodrick so much?" Cinthia asked, frowning. "For all I know and care, he might as well be one of the bad guys too, you know? Wolf in sheep’s clothing."
Kurt thought for a moment, and answered.
"For all I know and care, he was being controlled by Rhegal, or, as you knew him back then, Headmaster Sterling. After I knocked some sense into him, he did everything he could to protect you all." He got up and stretched. "That’s why, even though I don’t say I trust him, I’m giving him the benefit of doubt. Innocent til proven otherwise."
Kurt walked around for a few seconds, then he looked at Cinthia, with a smirk on his face.
"Also, I’m pretty confident that, if he turns out to be, like you said, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, I can take him down easily."
He wasn’t, however.
Not because Kurt didn’t think he was strong enough to take Rodrick down in a head-on fight.
But because of what he represented to him in other world-lines that Kurt himself had already experienced before.
But he left the thought in the back of his mind, leaving it there for only if the time came.
He looked at Robby, who had apologized to him a few minutes before, and remembered the little chat they had about the boy’s sneakiness.
"Eve, you said that Japan might be a good idea, right?"
She nodded.
"So, how about we all go there?"
Everyone exchanged glances with each other.
"But... We’re fugitives." One of the irregulars said. "How do you think we can get through an airport or even a bus station?"
Kurt smirked.
"I wasn’t thinking about taking a bus or a flight."
Cinthia got up, sighing.
"Do you happen to know anyone there, in... Japan?"
"Now that you asked, that’s why I was talking about Rodrick before. Eve told me that the president of the Association himself, said that Rodrick fled to Japan because it’s one of the very few countries that are still reluctant, if not resistant, to accept the Ishir advance."
She narrowed her eyes.
"Which means that, if we go, we might have a chance to regroup, get back in shape, train, grow stronger, and make the comeback of a lifetime." Kurt sighed. "God knows what could happen when we come back, so we better be prepared, right?"
Cinthia was about to say something in return, but Kurt’s statement was too vehement for her to even try to retort.
"So, how do you expect us to travel to Japan?"
Kurt smirked once again, and suddenly, all shadows in the abandoned underground parking lot began moving.
On the walls, on the floor, on the ceiling.
Everywhere.
"Wait, you don’t meant that-" Cinthia tried to say, but everything became silence and darkness in less than a second.
***
One second later, a storm of shadows broke from the floor in Tokyo Haneda International Airport.
A small group of five individuals that were passing by, after a troublesome flight, caught the glimpse of strange shadows moving on the floor.
One of them, a man with long hair tied up in a wildly combed ponytail, slanted eyes, tall and lean, carrying a katana, stared at the shadows intently.
He immediately drew his katana from its sheath and assumed a fighting pose.
His other four friends did the same soon after.
Kurt and his group appeared from the shadows right in front of the five japanese wielders.
And as they exchanged glances, Kurt knew something went slightly wrong there.
’Why Tokyo Haneda, of all places?’ He thought to himself, not wanting to fight right after his arrival.
"Does anyone here know any japanese?" Cinthia mocked as the five wielders glared at them.
