49 Unknown Assailants

A/N: Sorry for the delay, I was making a sandwich.

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(Noir POV)

"Put it in stealth mode," I commanded as I stood in the cockpit of the ship.

Before me were windows, being as wide as they are, I could see a full 180 degrees around me. This made it easy to see the rundown structure in front of me. The stone path leading to what was once clearly a house was cracked and had numerous weeds growing from it. It was composed mainly of wood… probably, it was hard to tell with how many vines shrouded the place in its greenery.

The roof looked like it would collapse any second, and the brick chimney at the top already had. Despite all of this, on this clearly abandoned island, and inside this poorly maintained house, Clarice was inside.

There was no ship bearing the Altee crest, nor any other transportation that could've brought her here besides the around 15 meter long airship crudely docked and well hidden with the foliage being so highly grown. The ship held no crest from what I or Luxion could observe, nor any flag or other indication of a possible owner.

The conclusion? As expected, Clarice, in fact, did not come here by herself, nor did she come willingly. I was free to jump to that conclusion seeing how with a quick scan Luxion determined there were two people, both male, on the first floor and then below that another person, presumably a woman and unmoving.

"On second thought", I spoke, frowning lightly, "maybe those assholes will get off my back if I did a service and openly saved her."

[I dread that you seek approval from those lowly bunch, if you were to listen to my advice, there would be no need to.] Luxion, in a typical sarcastic way, circled me.

"I have two women, and a family who were born and raised in this Kingdom, it certainly does complicate things doesn't it?"

[They'll move on, no advancements made by your brilliant ancestors were made without sacrifices.]

"I'm sacrificing my eagerness to blow those wretched nobles in the academy to smithereens, I'd say that's plenty."

[Oh come on, you know you want to. Look you don't even have to be the one to do it, claim I went rogue, I'll take all the blame if it is for this noble cause.]

"I'm going in." I ignored yet another attempt from Luxion to commit genocide and instead opened the hatch that led to the outside. The ship cast a long shadow over the house and quickly alerted whoever was inside to our arrival.

They were at least intelligent enough to not come outside and give away their location. I could hear them though, their muffled shouts as they planned their next action.

Right as I landed on the grass of the island, Sable came and landed right next to me. It opened to let me in, Luxions constant upgrades improving the ease at which I do so.

It felt even lighter than before, and within seconds I was moving through the foliage, scanning everything I passed by to make sure I wasn't running into any traps.

When I came across the ship, my sword tore right through the metal frame, and embarrassingly through a gas pipe as well. The sparks made it combust and seconds later the smoke cleared to reveal that much of the grass had been burned away to reveal the dirt ground.

[Master…]

Appearing in the helmet of my armor was a straight-faced emoji followed by the voice of my Ai.

"You should really start telling me about these upgrades, I didn't expect it to be that sharp." I defended myself, trying and failing to wipe away some of the oil now plastered on my armor. Thankfully none of it had caught on fire and I was saved from finding out if there was some sort of fire extinguisher built in.

My quick scan came up empty, pretty sloppy work for a hideout of criminals, but to be fair I'm still pretty clueless on what's going on.

"I'm going in, there's a cellar door in the back, I'm going to get Clarice first, watch my back just in case." I cautioned and rushed down said doors. They were locked, but I wasn't exactly trying to hide my position.

Boom

The wooden door exploded to show stairs leading down. I could already hear the muffled calls of the person down here. My metallic footsteps were loud on the cold rock floor. A left, then right, and then another right. It was like a maze, but my intuition guided me to the increasingly loud shuffles of clothes and the feminine groan.

Exactly as expected, after a sharp right corner I saw who I was looking for. Bound by rope that wrapped around her legs and tied them to her wrist, she was on the floor, squirming and writhing. I frowned at her wide green eyes filled with fear and tears.

I ejected myself from the armor, and rushed to her. "N-Nauu!" She called to me in semi-disbelief, though her words were blocked by the makeshift gag in her mouth.

I pulled it out, letting her take a deep breath in before she screamed my name once more. "NOIR! IT'S YOU?!" More a question than an observation her eyes turned even sadder and she bawled.

"Please, I want to go home. Get me out of here." She begged, clinging to me tighter with her sheer desperation than she ever could with actual limbs.

She looked unharmed, which was just about the only plus. "I got you," I whispered comfortingly, my hands ripping apart her bindings and freeing her.

I sped out of there, determined to get her away from the mess that I was about to cause. Keyword "was", as as soon as I had gotten back in Saber and took off with Clarice in hand, the house blew up. Burning debris flew everywhere and I activated the proximity shield attached to block it all from hitting her.

"W-what?" Clarice gasped straight after another sob. All that was left of the prison she was just in was a pile of burning rubble some of which she couldn't even make out anymore. That explosion was powerful, powerful enough that Noir was sure no one had survived it. The only question was, why did it go off in the first place?

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