Chapter 44: Encore, Encore!

Even in his vice-like grip, the staff nearly slipped out of Ace’s clammy palms as he smacked the floor with it. As the metal rang, he opened up another pool of Essence to force the corpses away from him. Another bed of electrified moray eels leapt from the pool. Electric bolts arced through the air, but they were only enough to fry and fray the threads holding the corpses together. 

With a frustrated shout, Ace swung wide. Corpses soared over the edge of the rooftop. The threads stretched to latch onto the side of the building stubbornly, much to his chagrin. One leapt into the air, all four limbs pointing right at his face. He sent out a beam of raw Essence into its chest. Flesh exploded in a shower of putrid blood and concrete shrapnel. 

Ace raised a hand to his forehead and used the clean part to flick away his sweat. Calm down, he reminded himself, letting out a shaky exhale. Calm! Down!

What helped was that the corpses were unrecognisable lumps of flesh. Yet, every strike was unbearably heavy, but he barely had time to dwell on his feelings. 

He could not get himself killed, not when Dante was fighting Faust.

I need something more! 

In the past few weeks, not only had he been working on large creatures, but he had also been reading up on chimaeras, attempting to manifest them. But mental block after mental block had been hurled in his way. For normal creatures, he had the liberty of exploring how they looked, smelled, moved and sounded, but a single chimaera could embody countless forms. Every manifestation he had attempted had faltered and failed.

But there was something Ace knew he would have no trouble with – one that had become all too familiar to him over the years. Should I use it?! A rush of adrenaline coursed through his veins as the edges of the image materialised in his mind. 

Ace closed his eyes, seizing the threads of his imagination in the darkness. Dante’s words echoed in his mind. “You’ve great potential. Continue to work hard. Have confidence in yourself.”

Crashing onto his knees, Ace slammed his palms into the pool he had established for the moray eels. The incantation he came up with tumbled out of his mouth, spraying spit mixed with sweat, expanding the pool. “The myths of men shall not bind you! Your home will be wherever I make it to be!” 

The moment the image sharpened in his mind’s space, Ace’s eyes flew open. “Come to me!” he called out desperately.

The mythical Merlion with the head of a lion and the body of a fish breached the surface in a luminous cascade of Essence. Droplets scattered like liquid stars as its leonine head emerged first, its mane streaming with condensed power. Its body followed, serpentine and scaled, each fin edged with light that pulsed in rhythm with his racing heart.

The Merlion surged upward, its broad back rising to meet Ace and lifting him from his seated position. He let out a triumphant laugh, his fingers tangling firmly in the coarse, shimmering mane that felt both solid and ephemeral. 

In jerks and bobbles, Ace quickly got a grip on its movement. The Merlion’s spine curved and flexed with each tug on its mane that oriented it to the hordes of corpses. It responded to his intent, its massive form pivoting with surprising lightfootedness. Its claws dug deep gouges into the ground, sending up sprays of dirt and stone. Its tail lashed behind them, scales catching the sunlight, as it lowered its great head and awaited Ace’s next command.

“Roar!”

The Merlion bared its fangs and opened wide, revealing a cavernous throat. A sphere of pure Essence materialised between its jaws, small at first, no larger than a pearl. But it grew rapidly with Ace’s will. The air around them warped and shimmered, distorting like heat haze, and a high-pitched whine built in intensity as the Essence compressed tighter and tighter. 

The Merlion roared. 

The beam burst forth. Ace winced as the blast tore across the courtyard with the sound of a thousand thunderclaps. Corpses that were shambling forward were simply obliterated and never reformed. 

Ace twisted the reins on his newly formed Vision. Its head snapped toward the stragglers, its forelegs swiping them off the building with brutal ease. Roar. Swipe. Claw. On the fourth command, a sharp pressure clamped around his chest. He groaned. Shit! I used too much Essence too quickly!

The Merlion buckled beneath him, and he tumbled through it. Pain exploded up his spine as he crashed to the ground. Gasping, he coughed, tasting iron. Above him, the Merlion burst apart into a shimmering rain of Essence.

Stand and fight! Ace swore as the slapping of flesh and the grinding of concrete started once more. His body, weighed down by fatigue, felt as if it were on fire. He could only hear his heart pounding in his ears.

Badum-badum-badum-

“Mama…”

Badum.

“Mama… I can’t…”

Ace’s body jerked to life at Oliver’s voice. He staggered to his feet, whirling around to find the boy standing behind him.

Why is he here? How did he get up here?! 

“Hey, hey. You shouldn’t be here.” Ace rushed over to Oliver’s side, sneaking a look over the ledge. The corpses were still stuck on the ground floor. Whatever remained of them wrenched apart broken pillars to make limbs bit by bit. 

There was still time. 

Ace crouched down to the boy’s eye level. Oliver’s face was untouched. There were no stitches on his pristine skin. He let out a shaky sigh of relief. “What’s happening?” Oliver asked quietly, his eyes brimming with tears. “Why is that man fighting Papa? Where’s M-Mama? Mama?” 

“I’ll help you look for Mama,” Ace reassured Oliver. “But first, we need to get you somewhere safe.”

“My legs hurt…” Oliver whimpered. His tiny hand balled up the denim of his overalls. “Walking hurts…”

Ace guided Oliver into a seated position. “Is it okay if I take a look at them?” 

Oliver nodded timidly and pulled up his pant leg. 

Ace’s heart fell to the pit of his stomach as he took in the dark stitches that covered Oliver’s calf. He touched it, and Oliver immediately recoiled.

How?! Do I use my Essence? But would that hurt him? What if it does? Should I take my chances? His mind scrambled for solutions. His tongue ran dry as he tried to assure Oliver, who was blubbering softly.

The answer came in the form of a sharp throb in his left arm.

I can absorb the stitches just like how I absorbed the Cursed Essence from Kazuya! Ace stripped off his shirt quickly. Metal clanged against the floor as he discarded his armour carelessly. He gently propped up Oliver’s right leg on his thigh.

Ace smiled at Oliver. “It’s okay, this big bro knows how to fix your leg!” 

Oliver held his stuffed clownfish up to his nose, nuzzling it affectionately. 

The weight of the boy’s calf on his thigh vanished as his confidence grew. Ace shifted his eyes away from Oliver’s toy fish to bring his attention back to his leg.

One moment's worth of distraction was all it took for a whole leg to tear apart in his hands.

Ace’s eyes flicked back to the stuffed clownfish. The bloodied toy lay between Oliver’s spliced eyeballs. Unshed tears clung to the curves of eyes that brimmed with innocence and hope. 

The sickening splat of chunks of flesh and bone falling between Ace’s fingers made him jump. Warmth seeped into his clothes, drenching the fabric. Was blood this red and this warm? His vision blurred, and all he could hear was the beating of his own heart as he stared at his hands, unmoving. The air stopped dead in his lungs. He started to shake uncontrollably.

What it could have been. 

What it should have been.

Ace slowly lifted his head. This time, he came face-to-face with Kayla Faust.

The corpses had made their way up to them. 

Kayla’s body had been absorbed into another corpse. Tears flowed out from Kayla’s hollow eyes, her neck straining towards the bloodstained toy lying on the ground. 

All Ace could see was Kayla’s face. His body went numb, the presence of his enemies fading into the background. He knelt in his spot, slack-jawed and numb, his body feeling like it could fall forward and backwards at the same time.

Red seams streaked across Kayla's face, drops of blood oozing through the gaps. The segments of her head ripped apart before slapping together in one swift contraction of the threads.

Applause broke out.

Blood and dust spattered everywhere like confetti. Teeth and bricks chattered and clacked as the corpses bounced up and down, dancing as wickedly as the threads made them.

No use. Ace’s thoughts echoed around and around. No use. No use. No use. No use. No use. No use.

No use. No use. “ACE!” No use. No use. No use. No use.

Ace blinked slowly. Surely his ears were playing tricks on him. He was alone, alone with his own voice and applause. 

“ACE! HEY ACE!” The voices were louder now and drowned out the applause. Warm hands cupped his face, snapping him out of his daze. Leonhart was crouched in front of him, blood pooling around the soles of her boots. 

Ace reached out and grasped her wrists with bloodied hands. He opened his mouth, but no words came out. It was as though there was a phantom hand choking the air out of him. “Breathe,” Leonhart whispered and inhaled. 

Ace followed Leonhart’s pace, and his vision slowly sharpened. Yet the adrenaline rush continued surging through him. He could see Leonhart and only Leonhart. “Why are you here?” he managed to ask, albeit in a monotonous voice. 

Leonhart gently wiped away the blood on the bracelet around his wrist. Ace realised that he had gotten so used to wearing it that he sometimes forgot he had it on. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly as she pressed her thumbs into his palms. “I built a tracker in here without asking for your permission. It sensed that you were in trouble, so we ran over. We were thirty minutes out, so we took the Beacon to Yokohama.”

There was a mighty shout, and the surroundings snapped into clarity. “Have you told Felix?!” Jude yelled out as she delivered a roundhouse kick into a corpse’s face. 

“We have to!” Kazuya asked as he scooped Jude’s target into his shield and dumped it off the ledge of the building. He thrust his palms forward and conjured a dome, expanding its perimeter to push off the corpses and shield everyone. “We are going to get in trouble either way!”

“That’s fine, his friend is here with us anyway,” Leonhart said as she took a cloth from Gauss’s mouth, offering it to Ace.

Ace gripped the cloth in his fist. His arms were firmly locked to his side, refusing to budge. "I don't want to be the one to say this," Jude started as she marched towards him. She picked up his armour and thrust it into his face. "Put this back on now."

"What's the point?!" Ace lashed out. "It didn't make a damn difference!"

"I know!" Jude barked. "But will wallowing help? Look at yourself!"

Jude jabbed her finger at his arm, which was covered with withering veins of black and violet. "What would Mr Higashino think if you walked back to him with this?" she demanded. "Was your power so lacking that you had to turn to this?"

"But–"

"Whoever you were trying to save is gone.” Jude’s voice cracked slightly. "It wasn’t your fault. If everyone here beat themselves up like you are now, how many more would slip through our fingers?"

“We are here for you,” Leonhart added. “But now’s not the time for us to sit down. We have to fight. Can you fight, Ace?”

Ace looked at the armour, then at Jude. He exhaled and took it from her hands. “There we go,” Jude said as he slipped it on.

The carvings on the armour remained unlit as Ace stared at his relaxed palm, unsure of whether to close it. Leonhart helped make that decision by placing the freshly cleaned toy in his hand. "Gauss cleaned it for you," she said.

Ace turned to Gauss which had pulled a white sheet over Oliver's remains. He squeezed the toy and his armour glowed bright with newfound resolve, just in time to help Kazuya, who was beginning to crack under the weight of the corpses. “These things do not have cores. We have to incinerate the threads that bind them," he briefed. "We have to lump them together. But it’s not easy-”

“Hey, do you think the world stopped when you were gone?” Jude smirked. “But now we have you, we gotta change it up a bit.”

“Just follow Jude’s lead,” Leonhart said, readying her bombs. “I call it the ‘20-second-Triple-Whammy’!”

“Twenty-one seconds,” Jude corrected her. “Ace is back with us.”

Jude jammed two fingers between her lips, and a clean, pure whistle cut through the air, a beacon of serenity in the cacophony. Kazuya released his shield, and a suffocating fog promptly engulfed the corpses. Jude’s eyes glowed yellow as she got into the thick of it. Her Essence flashed in the cloud of grey, reminding Ace of lightning in storm clouds. Gauss followed up, a large met flapping behind it as it trapped the corpses that were kicked into the air.

“Kazuya!” Jude yelled as she landed on the rooftop. “Karmic shield!”

“Okay!” Kazuya spread his arms as far as he could reach. The fog dissipated, revealing a heap of bodies trapped within a large dome. 

“Nice job!” Leonhart gave Jude a hearty thumbs-up.

“What do you have?” Jude turned to Ace.

“What do you want?” Ace fired back.

“Hmph,” Jude raised her eyebrows. “Just give it your best shot. Leonhart! Bombs away!”

Leonhart charged up her bag of bombs, and Kazuya opened up a hole at the top of his dome. “Ace! Do your magic!” he exclaimed.

“Chimaera Manifestation: Merlion!”

Leonhart leapt up and tipped the bag into the dome right before the Merlion sent another beam of Essence into it. Kazuya sealed it off by clenching his fists. A bright flash and an explosion ripped through the air, the impact rippling across the dome. A grin spread across Kazuya’s face, and he clapped his hands, shouting out loud, “Right back at ya!”

Concentric circles covered the entirety of the dome, and a bright white light flooded the insides. Ace shielded his eyes with the back of his hand. He grunted as he tried to stop himself from sliding backwards from the gust kicked up by the blast. As the light dimmed, it left behind a yawning void where the dome had been.

“Damn,” Jude said as she peered down the mountain of motionless, shredded flesh. “That’s some crazy output.”

“Well, I think it was fantastic!” Kazuya cheered. “Go team! Go Blackjacks!”

The joy was short-lived as an adjacent building collapsed. At the same time, Ace spotted a small group of corpses emerging from it. They scuttled and dispersed like cockroaches. “Shit!” he exclaimed. “There are runaways that we haven’t dealt with!”

“We’ll handle it!” Leonhart winked. “Go help Dante!”

“Right! Be careful!”

The stuffed toy that he kept in his blood-soaked pocket felt like a boulder. You’ll pay, Johann Faust, he thought, clenching his jaw as he sprinted towards where he left Dante. You’ll pay! You’ll pay! YOU’LL PAY FOR THIS!