Closed Off

--Dani's Perspective--

After I made it to the bunker, a loud rumbling shot across the inside, and I was trapped by one of the entrances.

My arm was pinned under a rock, but it wasn't a problem since I could still use strands. I healed myself of the fatigue I felt earlier and pushed away rocks as I peered deeper into the bunker.

I was told to come here if I was feeling weak at all, and when I got here, everything went like this? Was somebody watching me?

"Hey! What's your name again... Dani! Can you help me out?!" I heard a young boy say. I looked around in a confused matter, to see the orange-haired boy lying under a metal pipe. He didn't look injured, just stuck.

I lifted the pipe off of him with my gravitational ability and pushed it out of the way so he could get himself out.

"Thank you! Geez, I'm not sure what happened to me there... hey, do you know where Quake is? I want to help," He asked me. I'm not sure I remembered his name... and when I shot him a confused look, he explained that his name was Ra.

"You want to fight Quake? Can you even hold your own?" I asked him.

"Of course, I can! I'm quite the smart boy, I'll have you know," Ra explained to me, but I shrugged it off, knowing that wasn't enough for this situation.

"I don't think it's the best idea. You're not an Arkian," I told him, but he clarified for me that he was.

"My Dad was an Arkian, Kire Madio. He's a part of Quake, I want to see him again," He mentioned to me.

That's right... I remember hearing about these two being interconnected. Father and son...

"Do you think he'll still accept you as his son? You know, he's here with a ton of violent people here to take my boyfriend's life, and you want to talk to him?" I asked him one more time, and he seemed solidified.

"Okay, fine, let's go then, but we have to sneak around so we're not spotted," I told him, heading for the entrance to the bunker.

"Hey, when you lifted that pole off of me, how did you do it? Usually, I can see the strands, but I couldn't that time," Ra commented, crouching a safe distance behind me while I peered over a half-wall to see if anybody was in front of me.

"It's my ability, and they're not strands that I use. I can manipulate the gravity of most things I can see," I clarified, moving toward a nearby building.

This one wasn't destroyed, but there were others that were. I had to be careful not to interact with them too much because that probably meant Quake was nearby. If I can see Kire, I hope that Ra will handle the rest and I don't have to fight.

I wasn't in terrible shape, but I wouldn't be winning any fights if I got into one. I'm not used to exercising my strands to this level and keeping a level head because the last time I did I was pumped full of drugs and under extreme medical care to bounce back on my feet. That damn Entity... it took all of my stamina away and almost my life along with it.

I wondered how Illya was doing...

"He has orange hair like mine, he shouldn't be hard to miss," Ra whispered ahead to me while scanning the area around us.

We jumped over broken blockades in the city to separate roads and hid behind trash cans and street poles, only to find a part of the city that was untouched.

"Not this way, we probably have to move more toward the gate," I told Ra.

He nodded, looking ahead toward the front of the city.

I felt something sharp buzz in my head and flexed my arm as a weird instinct, when all of a sudden, a flying body was slammed into a building right by us, going through the wall, and landing on the floor on both of his feet.

The figure had orange hair!

I held Ra down and covered his mouth, shaking my head toward him. If we revealed ourselves while that person was on a reasonably high level of the guard, we would be killed, I'm sure of it... I can feel it.

"Just wait a second, let's see who was chasing Kire," I told Ra when Alatus peaked her head out of the window.

"Force arrows meant to blow you away. You're far from everybody else, are you sure you want to keep going?" She asked, jumping from the third story of the building to land cleanly on her feet.

Fudo and Lia turned the corner right behind her, and Ra took a sharp glance at Lia.

"I don't trust that girl..." Ra told me.

"We didn't either," I shortly replied, watching what would happen next.

"Again, Alatus, I don't think you and I feel fatigued in the same way. As long as I'm not dead, I won't stop," Kire explained. Alatus clicked her tongue and drew her arrow.

"I told you, Lia. We shouldn't try talking to him. People like this are better off dead," She explained, keeping both eyes locked onto Kire.

"Alatus... wants to kill my dad? That doesn't sound like her... why? I couldn't have predicted that from a mile away... what did Dad do?" Ra asked himself. He put his finger to his lip while watching the exchange between Alatus, Fudo, Lia, and Kire. I wasn't sure if I truthfully cared or not if Kire lived or if Ra got to talk to his Dad again. All in all, as long as we win, I don't care about anything... is what I would like to say.

This was the right thing to do, however, and I would make sure nothing would kill Kire until Ra could try and talk him out of it.