Two identical raindrops struck his cheeks, tracing arcs past his jaw and spreading across his collarbone.
Embers flickered weakly within Bell's grip, drifting a step behind before solidifying into a burning sword. Its tip dragged across the ground, leaving a shallow line of melted tiles and ash in his wake.
Raindrops began to fall from the sky in long, vertical ropes. Some struck Wiene's blood on his chest, dragging that thin red layer down his skin and washing it into the cracks between tiles.
Finn's front foot slid half an inch forward, his rear heel digging into ground. He held his Fortia spear parallel to the floor, eyes fixed on Four rushing away through rain.
"Bell... Why stand between us and the monsters? Shouldn't we adventurers be on the same side?"
"We should... But it's not about them, Captain Finn. It's about a promise and a debt." Water droplets evaporated before reaching him, ribbons of vapor peeling off his skin and trailing in his wake.
Ais' arm shook slightly as she brought Snowflake up, leveling it forward. Her golden eyes trembled, the winds swirling around her flickering unsteadily.
But then her gaze landed on Four's back vanishing into the distance. She forced her arm steady, compressing the winds even tighter around herself.
Turning back toward Bell, her brows furrowed, hair whipping sideways by her own wind. "...Bell."
His step paused for a fraction, hovering mid-air, the soles of his bare feet glowing orange-red. He pushed forward, charred footprints branding the tiles where his heels landed.
"Do we really have to fight?" Riveria asked, the base of Magna Alf striking the floor, six interlocking magic circles of frost revolving to life beneath her.
"Been wanting to meet the lad who's got the whole city talking." Gareth spread his fingers wide, and his war axe flew back into his grip, settling across one shoulder. "But words never tell much about a man. Fists usually do."
Rainfall on the street behind Bell hovered mid-air, caught in rising steam that dragged those droplets upward. They collided with others still falling, rain meeting rain, both dissolving into mist.
Lefiya took a cautious step back, her elven ears twitching up and down, body locking in place.
Bell's free arm rose to the back of his head, fingers closing around Hestia's ribbon.
He held it there for a single second.
I'm about to break my promise to you, Goddesses.
With a sharp tug, the blue ribbon gave way. His long hair came loose, cascading down his bare back like a curtain.
This promise, broken for hers.
A stray gale erupted nearby, wrenching the ribbon from his grasp. It flew higher and higher, embers glimmering along its edge, setting it alight under the dying rain.
He watched it ascend and burn.
Droplets slid across its burning length, and similar droplets streaked across a window in another part of Orario.
Astraea sat in a chair, chin resting on her palm and elbow on the table. She gazed skyward through that window, watching the same rain streak down Babel.
"When will Bell come back?" Hestia asked in a low voice, sitting opposite Astraea, both arms spread across the table.
"Don't worry, Hestia. He always comes back, just give him time." Artemis sat with one leg crossed over the other, arms folded beneath her chest, her eyes tracing arcs of lightning flashing through clouds.
"Besides, he promised to stay away from trouble," Astraea said, and her eyes dropped to the polished surface of their bronze table, where her own reflection gazed back.
A similar reflection gazed back at a different face in another part of Orario.
Freya walked through a crumbling bronze corridor, her reflection moving alongside her.
Loki cackled behind her as the sound of clashing steel filled their surroundings.
Abruptly, Freya halted.
Her face snapped sideways, eyes peering through the bronze walls toward Daedalus district.
In the Daedalus district, another woman had stopped abruptly. Her wet locks of white hair swung around as she snapped her head in the exact same direction.
Alfia.
A drop of water fell from her hair, landing in a puddle beneath her and sending ripples across its surface.
Similar ripples spread across another puddle as a white boot skipped past it. Ryuu raced through Daedalus district, vaulting from one rooftop to the next.
She drove Alvs Lumina forward, tearing a path through the rain, vanishing in a green blur surging past streets and buildings alike.
"Hold on... Bell."
But a brown blur howled toward Bell from meters away, the rain parting in two curtains around it.
"Ghost of Sparta! Take my return greeting!" Tiona grinned, her fist an inch from his face, the building behind him bowing backward from displaced air.
Finn's eyes shrank to pinpoints. "Fall back, Tiona!"
She didn't hear.
Clunk.
An eight-spoked wheel loomed above Bell.
His hooded bangs finally pulled back, revealing pitch black eyes behind white hair.
And he moved.
Bell's hand closed around Tiona's face. Fingers clamped on her jaw and cheek.
A leaning stall flickered on his left—a crumbling wall on his right—a flash—a slash—a door—a bin.
His arm locked, fingers against her skull, and he ground her through the world.
Tiona's back hit a wall and it disintegrated to ash. Bricks became shrapnel, mortar to dust. They punched into a living room, through a dining table, through the far window, glass exploding outward in a sheet of lethal rain, and into another building.
A bedroom. A wardrobe. A wall. The bedframe shattered around Tiona's spine like paper, mattresses detonating into a storm of feathers and springs.
"HAAAAH!"
Tiona's hand found his wrist and her fingers dug in. She tried to pry his grip loose, and her strength was enough to bend adamantite, yet it bent nothing. His hold didn't shift a millimeter.
Past the back wall. Through a narrow alley so tight their shoulders scraped both sides, plaster exploding in white sheets. Into the next building's front, brick caving inward around them like water. A kitchen came and went in a single flash of pots, marble, the smell of something still cooking, gone before it registered at all.
A staircase came next. They went down. Each step blasting beneath Tiona's back as Bell drove his heels into her chest, carving a diagonal ravine through the building's skeleton.
Floor three collapsed into floor two caved-in to basement, and the earth cratered, launching them back skyward in a geyser of soil and stone.
They were still rising.
Gareth rocketed above from the left. His war-axe already arcing in an upward crescent of steel, momentum and decades of refined skill aimed at Bell's ribs.
Finn erupted up from the right.
Fortia spear having completed half of a thrust, its tip a silver edge aimed at the exact spot left open if he intercepted Gareth.
Both arrived at once.
Bell slammed his foot deeper into Tiona, sole digging deeper into her chest, and he pushed.
Rainfall above Bell inverted for meters, droplets hanging, trembling, before reversing their fall entirely, erupting back toward clouds as if the sky itself had flinched.
Tiona's eyes blew wide. Her entire body became a springboard, arcing inward for a fraction before the force expelled her downward, her back smashing into a rooftop six stories below, tiles spewing in every direction.
Bell launched upward.
Left leg extended. Right leg folded.
His left shin exploded against the shaft of Gareth's axe mid-arc, and the rain simply stopped existing for a hundred meters, parted by a shockwave. Momentum bled sideways, the axe-blade redirected into a downward sweep that opened a distant building by wind displacement alone.
The axe wrenched free of Gareth's grip, spinning end over end into the ground. His fingers closed on the space where it used to be. His arms were still rising when gravity pulled the rest of him back down.
Simultaneously, Bell's flaming sword swept rightward.
The blade met Fortia spear.
Steel screamed against fire. Sparks erupted as Fortia's tip deflected outward, and in that open space, Bell's folded knee pressed against Finn's abdomen.
Flames detonated.
Finn burst away. A ribbon of fire carved across three rooftops before he killed his body's momentum with a micro-adjustment that popped his ankles out and slid them back in the same motion.
Both readjusted their stances. Gareth from the ground. Finn from a rooftop.
Gravity acted on Bell next, and he landed.
On the face of a building, four stories up, horizontal, as if the wall itself had become floor. Where his heels should have met brick, the surface had already given way, an abyss of pure black open in stone.
And from within that black, two hands reached out. Pale and graceful, fingers closing around his ankles with a gentleness that had no business existing in the middle of everything Bell had just done. They held him horizontal and steady against a vertical building.
Bell hung there, hair falling away from his face, rain falling past him in long silver lines, and for one moment the entire street went quiet.
Below, Tiona crawled from her crater, coughing blood and grinning.
"AGAIN! That was—"
Her words died in her throat, blood and rain running down her chin, grin frozen in place.
Bell was not even looking at her.
His pitch black irises swept across the rooftops nearby.
Finn twirling his spear on one. Ais bent into a stance on a rooftop behind his. Gareth having vaulted to a rooftop adjacent Finn's, war-axe back on his shoulder.
Twenty magic circles flared from five rooftops away, Riveria and Lefiya's chants about to finish.
Tione helped Tiona up on the ground.
For the first time since the start of their fight, Bell spoke.
"Enough warm up. Or do you want to continue?"
Finn looked up and smiled, his canines flashing as rain drenched their Familia and Bell. "No, it's enough. Let's fight for real now."
The Captain of Loki Familia looked at the still wheel above Bell's crown.
"We've finally confirmed what we wanted to."
Tightening his grip on Fortia's shaft, Finn declared.
"You're not unstoppable after all, Bell."
Bell's expression remained calm, eyebrow twitching a fraction upward.
"...Oh? Interesting."
...
..
.
[Author's Thoughts]
Hahahaha! Bell I'm your biggest fan! Go fold them all in two! Maybe not the ladies. Except the amazons of course, they can handle it.
And bro Finn, what do you mean by that? Not unstoppable?
(Author's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets at Finn's words)
And that scene... Hiss, standing horizontal on a vertical building four stories high, an abyss open on the building's face, two dainty hands pushing out from unending darkness to hold his ankles, and support his body to defy gravity. Oof...
... Anyway, have a fabulous day, everyone!