Chương 149: 62 - TURNING POINT

"T'balt! T'balt!" All German could do was call his name. But there was no response. His body was crumbled up somewhere underground, and he wasn't moving. Not even a twitch.

"Attention, everyone." He called out to as many people as would be able to do something about it.

"T'balt is incapacitated. Is there anyone available who can get to his body? We need to find him before the enemy does?" Everyone heard him, but there wasn't much they could do. Trapped in the mist, they could barely find themselves.

"T'balt's down… where?" Cannon said aloud. But he was still locked in combat with the Glacier Bear. The giant came down on him with a sphere of solid ice within its claws. Cannon punched through it, shattering all the ice into tiny crystals that blew back in the beast's face. It let out a ferocious roar and started stomping on the ground around him. The thing's movements were so large that it displaced enough mist to give him short glimpses of its body before the mist quickly replaced itself.

He charged a leap that flew right up to the thing's chest 30 feet in the air. He was able to nail it hard in the chest with a loot-enhanced punch. It moaned its disapproval as it slowly fell backward. But he heard the screams of a bunch of people below it, Gracelandians and hunters alike. The bear stumbled before it fell, giving Cannon enough time to land hard on the ground and launch himself under the thing. He pressed up under its back before it hit the ground.

"Go. Move." He yelled at the people, struggling to keep it up as its icy body continued to frost over his limbs.

"My hands are full… can…" he strained.

"Anyone get to him?" German considered a moment.

"Vienna? Vienna, what's your status?" He didn't get an answer, and he couldn't pin her down anywhere. He struggled for what to do. But this was one of his jobs that he'd spent years perfecting: crisis management. There had to be someone…

"Tyene? … Tyene, I know you're there. What is it that you think you're doing?" She was leaned back in a beach chair, alone on one of Graceland's shores. The waves were rough, and the battle behind her was loud. But the moon was bright and full.

"I'm taking a load off," she said. She was without her jacket, bathing in moonlight that would only bring cold to her skin. And she had an open canned cocktail in her hand. It was mostly empty.

"I take it, you heard what I said."

"Yep."

"Then let me remind you. We're in desperate need of assistance. T'balt is unconscious, and we are quickly losing this fight." She emptied the can down her throat and toasted it in the air.

"Good. Then when things get reset, he won't even know what happened. It's better for him that way." German read her thoughts.

"So you're just willing to let everything everyone has worked for go to waste?" She laughed.

"It was a waste. Corlander is gone… And I still don't feel any better. In fact, I'm pretty bored of all this fighting. So yeah… I'm just gonna hang out here until everything blows over."

"I left him for you… I gave up everything to come fight on the losing side for you. And you're giving up?" There was scorn in the words but nothing in the tone.

"There's so much you just can't understand, slick. One of those things is that none of this matters. Nothing does in the end."

"If you don't fight. Then everyone here is lost."

"That's the point." German gritted his teeth. She was abandoning them, he and everyone else, content with letting them all die. But from where he sat, there wasn't anything he could do. Madam Mauve watched T'balt's near-unconscious body disappear from her grasp. It startled her to say the least, but she wasn't worried. The poison would do its job no matter where he went. She spoke into her earpiece.

"Well… Our biggest threat is no longer a concern." Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

"Is he in custody?" Hobbs asked.

"No. He disappeared somewhere, probably to take a nap in some beach house… for a long, long while. I was being vague but just so you know he's paralyzed."

"Copy that… Corlander seems to be out of reach of our coms. We only have what he left us to go on, so with that in mind I'm changing our objectives. Our mission is to: 1. Locate and procure the Loot Thief. 2. Apprehend the Bestower."

"Sounds reasonable enough. Let's get this over with. I'll need ample amounts of beauty sleep to recover from that helicopter ride." Mauve shivered under her dress.

"Since that Redeemer kid had hold of the Loot Thief, my team will sweep the area in case he's hiding on this island. I'd rather find him before he wakes up. Do you have eyes on the Bestower?"

"You mean are my eyes capable of looking up? Why, yes, they are, dear." She looked up through the mist, seeing the man hung up in his own statue in the center of the city.

"How vain can one man be?" But she also heard a faint melody coming from that direction. A song, muffled by the mist but still a song.

"Is someone doing a concert during all this nonsense?"

"That's your target. Go there and bring the man down from his throne." Hobbs said.

"Gladly. And I'll put an end to that racket while I'm at it."

"And Emil…"

"Yeah…" The man lazily answered.

"I can hear your beasts still going to town out there. I thought I told you to keep them under control."

"I can't help but notice you called them beasts in sentence 1 and then assumed I could keep them under control in sentence 2. If I could, they wouldn't be beasts. They'd be pets. And I hate pets."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Nothing…" Emil walked behind the skull eater, dodging piles of headless corpses. The specter attacked to his right, and the Glacier Bear fought above him.

"Listen, I don't care if you kill. Just check the loot for anything strange first."

"Aye aye." Commander Hobbs shook his head, signaling to his team. He lowered a pair of infrared goggles down to his eyes. It gave him and his team a clear view through the mist. They marched forward in formation, weapons aimed at all sides of them. They occasionally came across a Gracelandian or two. Strategy dictated that they incapacitated the enemy with less-lethals, pummeling them with rubber bullets until they stopped attacking.

Once apprehended, they would check their loot stacks for anything strange, then proceed to execute. Several men and women tried to get the jump on them, but their formation was too compact, and they had the advantage of vision, where the Gracelandians did not. They pushed around the edges of the city, searching each building. One of his soldiers had a scanning loot, much like Corlander's. If there was anyone inside with any loot, it'd let them know. They kicked the door open to a store, finding a couple inside.

Hobbs observed them, cowering behind the front desk, hiding from the mist.

"What do they got?" he asked his man.

"Just elementals."

"Then you're free to kill." The couple was put down by a firing squad, not even having the chance to scream. Hobbs walked back outside, letting the men finish the work.

"Where, oh where, could you be?" Suddenly he heard a sharp grunt, and another volley of fire. He strained when one of the bullets zipped past his head.

"What in God's name?" When he turned around, he saw that one of his men was on the ground dead. The others, fighting in some sort of panic.

"Someone's here!" One of them shouted. Hobbs quickly moved between his men, aiming his sidearm. But even with his goggles, he couldn't see anyone around them. No enemies, no magic.

"What does your scan read?"

"They got our scanner?" someone yelled. That's when Corlander looked down and noticed they were right. Their scanner had a knife wound in his neck. KIA.

"Shit," he said. It was a calculated attack. Something he would've done. But he couldn't help but notice that the man's own infrared goggles were missing. Suddenly there was gunfire coming from all around them. Pistol fire, steady and regimented. They could see where it was coming from, but as soon as their goggles saw the form fire, it would quickly disappear and reappear on the other side of them. No one had a clear shot. So they started to panic fire.

"Keep your damn training, men!" Hobbs yelled. But one of them dropped. Then a second and a third.

"Forcefield! Use the damn forcefield, you fuckign idiot!" His man summoned the shield, blocking the pistol fire. Then it stopped for a moment. Hobbs frantically searched around the area. Then he realized the mist was now hurting them far more than it was helping.

"Mauve," he called on the earpiece.

"Remove the mist from the northeastern quadrant." Several seconds later, the mist descended into the ground, clearing up the area. Hobbs threw off his goggles, strained dark eyes searching the streets, the walls, the plants, all of it. That's when he saw the shadow. It was moving, shaped like a person with no caster in the physical world. He fired at it, only for it to slip across the ground and underneath the forcefield. Then she emerged in physical form right between Hobbs and the forcefield caster.

She planted a pistol shot in the caster's neck. Hobbs reacted, firing twice into empty space. The shadow woman emerged behind him then.

"Goodbye, Commander Hobbs." He tried to turn around. The bullet entered his forehead instead of the back, and he slumped over on the ground. Vienna reloaded her gun, counting the enemies she had killed. 8 men dead, including Commander Hobbs. She turned from his lifeless body.

"Commander Hobbs and his team have been neutralized. I will proceed to rescue T'balt. Tell me his location." But German's response wasn't what she was expecting.

"Duck!" The bullet ripped off the top of her ear as she narrowly dodged a killing blow. It came from behind her. She aimed her gun but was unable to believe what she saw.

"I should've expected as much from you, Vienna," Hobbs said. He was sitting up, pistol in hand, looking at her. The bullet in his head slowly ejected itself, and the wound closed up in a matter of seconds. Vienna kept herself steady as Hobbs stood up and stretched his neck as if he had just been given a good workout. Then he smiled.

"I trained you exceptionally well."