Reunited Part 2

Yellowstone District's Dock:

Falling out the portal, catching my balance on the wooden bords under my shoes, the waves crashing on sand and the shallow salty breeze, all align with the memory of my past, the moment I laid eyes on it all.

Jumping out after me, Nako pauses to take it all in herself. "We're actually here?" She directs the question towards me, knowing that I'm more familiar to the place than her.

"Yeah, this the place." I lift my hand, pointing across the bridge, eyeing a vacated building, after my response. "See that building over there." I speak. "It looks exactly like the one in the photo you showed me."

Fingers underneath her chin, Nako shifts her head from side to side, thinking in a funny way. "It could be...But there is also several buildings in the area."

"True," I walk off from her side, heading to the building I pointed to. "But my gut tells me, they'll be in a building that's more fixed up, than a pile of rubble."

Skipping behind, Nako grabs hold of my shirt sleeve. "Don't be a dumbass! I know that." She then let go, glancing down at the docks. "It's just seeming a bit too easy. The building being here in bright day light, Nakuro not being here. I'm positive this is a trap."

I look over to Nako. She's starting to get cold feet about it all, trembling at the thought of wanting to face Nakuro again. I guess she was really shaken back there on the train.

"Yeah, we discuss this earlier. You sounded well prepared before, what got you shaken?"

She clacks her tongue at me. "I'm not shaken. J-Just trying to reassure you. - Also, you been talking a lot of crap lately!" She spits out, poking her finger on my chest. "On the roof top mostly. For someone suicidal, you been acting very chummy lately!"

She was obviously still upset about what I said earlier, about her not having a personality, taking it out on me to cover up her unhedged behavior. I find it cute in an odd way, this side of her.

"You know what, I don't care anymore, let's get going. The quicker this mission is over with, the quicker I don't have to hear your voice for a while." She marches ahead of me, anger by it all.

This girl, the more time I spent with her, the more colors I see. She's crazy, calm, intelligent, and have a temper. I find these traits of hers rather surprising, being someone who threatens to kill me from time to time. If life wasn't as chaotic as it is now, we might have been friends...

"Zenith," Using my name for the first time, Nako takes me away from those deep thoughts of mine, pulling on a lock, chain to the building handles. "Shape your shadow into a key for this."

"A key?" I move closer to her, placing my hand on her shoulder, wondering why I couldn't just break down the door.

"Yeah. What if there's explosives or something behind here? We can't just barge right in." She tells me, pulling the lock on the chain to me.

"Didn't take you for the logical type." I'm reminded of how she barged in and nearly killed me and my uncle, proceeding to wrap the shadow around the lock instead, crushing it to pieces.

"I may have a few screws lose, but that doesn't mean I go everywhere gun blazing. Heard you was a catastrophic type, waiting to happen. So, you know, came to kill. " She shines that usual devilish grin of hers.

The winds rustle the poorly built door, creaking it open during our debate, revealing the inside of the ghastly like building to us.

The insides of the building were gaping at us, empty, darken, having tiny rays of lights beaming out the cuts of the damage roof top and walls, sparkling the numbers of tiny gray stones that replaced the floor. This building gives me a vibe that a team of construction workers just up and quite on it, just as the feel I got back in Ruby District.

"There's nothing in here..." Nako voice echos to me, stepping in to eye the scenery better than me.

She was right, the building had nothing in here. No broken-down boats veil by covers and no old aware house machine. We're the only things to set foot in this unwelcoming building.

"A bit drafty." I look around for anything off put about the building, dragging my hand across the wooden walls that rot away. "There's probably a secret passage somewhere."

Nako taps me on my shoulder, pointing out the strange hole at the far corner of the buildings floor way. A square like entrance to the underground.

"I think I found our secret passage." She takes off before I could say anything to her, heading towards the hole in the floor.

Back to following the girl's instincts, I brainlessly follow her, arriving to eye down the tunnel of stairs beside her. It's very clear that someone else open this the moment we enter. I set up plain as day, that cause my legs to freeze in place.

"Come on." Is her only comment about the secret passage that screams fly to a web, taking entitative with the first step down.

Though she seems more shaken by all of this than me, I'm reminded that this girl deals with stuff like this on a daily basis, taken charge. She acts as Ella would on missions.

I can't help but realize; Everyone is in a different league than me. Their strength, their leadership, their knowledge. In the face of an enemy, these people bare the symbol of an adult, while I remain a child in war.

How are you so strong?

"So," Nako, placing her hand on the wall, slowly goes down the steep staircase, keeping track of her feet with little light to go off of. "Juna. What is that girl to you?"

I can tell she just wants to talk to me a bit, unknowing how deep these steps lead. Not to mention, that I do owe her a piece of myself, after bugging her about Chi.

"Funny..." I place my hand on the wall as well, keeping close to Nako. "Meniko ask me the same thing when we first met. I'm pretty sure she liked me."

"That girl really do have odd taste don't she. You'll think she would want to be with someone more upbeat."

I glance to the side, finding out she views me in a different light than her little sister. "Anyway... Juna was a dear friend to me. Someone that I loved. Even if she had this odd quirk of showing me the reality of things."

-"Ah, Basically, she trampled on all your optimistic thoughts." Nako deciphers what I meant under seconds.

"... You can put it that way." -

-"Wait," Nako stops in front of me, turning her face and lifting it to me. "When you say dear friends, you mean both of you never went out?"

It embarrasses me to admit, seeing that we were by each other's side since childhood, but Nako was spot on. Never have we, not even once, dated. My love that girl was completely one sided...

I give Nako, a bashful laugh as my reply, hand behind my head.

"Wow, what a bummer. Here I thought you two were lovers the way you looked at me." Nako faces back forward, disappointed by her discovery, continuing down.

"Can I really blame her... It's her choice at the end of the day."-

Nako places her arm out in front of me, stopping in her tracks again. I eye forward as well, catching what she sees, a room full of dim lights, metal plates stamp to the walls. An entire base, having chairs surrounding a silver table in the middle of it. And, in the first chair... - A girl looking directly at us with green hair, lighter than her sister's. Meniko tied to the chair, staring back us both, widen eyes.

-Nako takes off, Meniko being the first thing to catch her full attention about the room, throwing the conversation out of the way, going to her sister's aid.

Nako squats down, taking her sister's wrist in her hands. "...Everything's fine." I hear a bit of whining in her voice, as her sister shakes her head constantly, trying to pull her hands away from her. "Coco, you have to stay still for me, otherwise-

Using my powers, the same way I did for the first time on the lock, I do it on the ropes and tape on her mouth. Nako looks up at me, tearing up as she smiles, while Meniko looks down at her bare feet, petrified.

"Why... Why did you bring him..." Her hands trembled on the white long dress she wears, having what looks to be choke bruises on her neck.

What the hell did the Sigma Flames do to her?

-"Zenith's a friend of yours right, I brought him to help out." Nako, turned back to her sister aid, she sees the bruises on her also, finding her frighten look strange just as me. "I know we haven't seen each other in a long time, but -

"N-No! That's not it!" Meniko shouts out to her, digging her nails into her head, legs shaking as tears drop to the floor. "Iota wanted this... He said you would come... It's a set up. How couldn't you not tell?"

-My eyes dart across the room, expecting him to step out the shadows. Instead, far at the other end of the table, laying back against another chair, Vile is chained, out cold, head leaning forward, ready to fall face flat to the floor.

-Next to him, holding onto the chair, was the one who wore a metallic mask, shining a bright red eye, on the left side of their face, wearing the same exact hoodie as the one on that night.

- He has to be Iota... I didn't sense him earlier, but now, an enormous wave of power emanated from the man in the mask, gritting my teeth and paralyzing the thought to budge my finger.

"Nako..." I call her name, even though i wanted nothing but to hold my tongue right now.

-A blast of wind rushes passes me, splattering something to the wall, and next, silence fell. I hesitate to, but, hearing no response from Nako, I cock my neck back, face to face to her head bludgeon on the metal plates, oozing down the cracks as her body slides down and- Splat. She lays lifeless on the floor before us all.

"No! No, no! No! Please... Don't... I can't anymore! Stop... Please! No..." Meniko starts screaming to the top of her lungs, barrowing her head to her lap, as clamps her hands over her ears, as if hearing her own screams tortures her more.

-leaping off the floor, I ball my hand into a fist, bursting flames of shadows out of the left side of me, rushing towards the enemy in tears. - A chain shoots out from behind Iota, wrapping around my arm, quickly neutralizing my powers, causing me to tumble over a chair and fall to the floor on my own flounder.

"Look at you..." Iota lets go of the chair Vile sits in, disappearing and reappearing in front of me, placing that very same hand on top of my head, fingers clamping between my hairs. "Childish... Naive... Hesitating to action.... To think Ella trained you for years, is mockery."

Who the hell is he- I use the bit of strength I have left to stand back up, still chained, connecting a punch to his mask, the chair falling over in the background.

His head slightly budges a bit but he reface me, holding a stare that's vivid even behind the mask he wears, lifeless and empty. Iota red eye then glows, and going along the glow, I catch a glass tube rising up further back where Vile sits.

In that glass tube, a body floats in some sort of purple liquid, numbers of wires connected to the machine, supporting its energy.

The person inside... Her natural light brown hair and lifeless figure is easy to recognize... -

Iota then presses a button on his neck, revealing his face, his hair matching the girl inside the tube. My jaw drops.

"It... Can't be... You..."

-Back then, when the sun shined brighter than the darkened clouds of today, he was the closes one to Zel. He achieved the top five in ranks before Ella ever made her debut...

Iota... He was the hero Juna inspired to be in our past-

"Myune..."