Chapter 4 - Date With An Imperia

"So this is more about stealth than 'guns n' blazing'... Man, today was the one day I wanted to kick some criminals to the curb..."

Stultic buried his dreariness, clenching his fist with a few teardrops escaping his eyelids in an overly dramatic fashion. He twirled around the keycard in his hand to ease his heartbreak. He then went back to focusing on the real problem in front of him.

The underground tunnel system was an utter mess to put it lightly. You could learn to operate one of the Maglev Trains two times over before you ultimately got a mildly decent grasp of how to read the tunnel map. It was still undoubtedly one of the most impressive transport systems in all the world due to its special multi-layered design and its spotless cleaning service — even if you could easily get lost within mere seconds.

Unlike most, Stultic was known to be a "master" at navigating his way around the train tracks to get to his destination, utilizing the sheer never-ending insanity of its railways to his advantage while running from the cops or worse, the WARDENs themselves. He could guarantee a safe passage that was away from the Maglevs through the maintenance passageways, though without a keycard, they'd send a loud alarm to every cop in the vicinity. Getting his hands on a keycard was more arduous than it appeared.

Thankfully, the only things that may pose a sliver of threat were the speed-demon trains that rode the magnetic rails. The death rate to Maglevs was surprisingly high due to how many people accidentally — or purposefully — fell right in front of one. When someone navigates the tracks, it's insanity as one could fly by at any moment leaving little time to react. Luckily, he had another trick up his sleeves. The only difference between him and a regular tunnel-navigating weirdo was their hearing. He could hear things coming from much further away than the average human, but that also meant anything closer was unbearable. In this scenario, he couldn't have been more appreciative of his "curse."

As the tracks whirred with electricity, his legs acted on their own. He quickly strafed to the side, adhering to the walls of the tunnel with a "life-or-death" grip. The Maglev shot past with a whistling howl, causing the wind to rush to its side and blast Stultic directly in his pretty face and lifted his trusty black and blue coat into the air.

After the train had passed, he fell back down with a dreary look. He took out his phone to take a photo of his face, it made it seem as if a wild stampede of bulls held a race over his silky blue hair. Shuffling his hair back into its regular state, he continued to drag his feet down the tunnel in search of the location.

What had seemed like hours of exploration bored Stultic to his core. The noises of the trains passing by grew stale and more irritating the longer he stood near them. He eventually jammed rubber plugs into his ears and relied solely on his vision, which was said to be a death sentence by most maintenance experts. The onslaught of Maglevs showed no sign of stopping since rush hour was closing in, but Stultic resisted the winds and fought the tides.

Once the G set of tunnels had ended and the F set came to continue his torment, Stultic finally felt a sense of distortion. He frantically looked back and forth at the map and what was in front of him. It looked nothing like where he was. When running from the cops, he never focused too much on what tunnels he was using or how far he went in, hence why calling him a "master" was a bit questionable... He's very nimble, yes, but not very good at actually following directions. A sudden rumble made its way down the tunnel as usual and Stultic prepared himself just the same, but a difference was made evident the moment the Maglev neared.

He took off his earplugs and heard the rumble of metal crates. He usually heard people onboard the Maglevs since they were for public transport usage, so why crates? His suspicions only worsened when he heard a pair of hand cannons firing on one of the train cars. This was the Maglev target, but the definitions of "recon and stealth" may have just been thrown out the window and burnt to a satisfying crisp.

The Maglev drove down at escalating speeds. He was barely able to latch onto the very last set of doors on the train. He forced the doors to open. The last car seemed to be empty for the most part. He felt too afraid to check the cab in the back since the environment felt horror-like as is with all the flashing lights and eerie cries emanating from upfront. The only reassuring thought in his mind was that the cabs were quite large on the inside, making it easier for him to move. He reached the end of the first cab and the doors to the next opened automatically.

Looking through the window, he saw three soldiers wearing identical purple and white armoured business suits with special crests on their shoulders that resembled the bird's eye view of a tornado surrounding a sleekly designed skull in the centre. All designed for combat by the looks of them. They certainly weren't police officers either. The helmets were oddly shaped as if they were a hack job rather than well-designed. They even had what seemed to be wings on the sides. They looked startled by something in the next car. Since they were so distracted, he finally decided to make an entrance after staring at them for far too long.

The door slid open. The soldiers turned their heads towards the back, seeing Stultic with a delightful smile inching up higher. His face was smothered in overconfidence. The guard on the left stomped the floor repeatedly.

"We've got more problems to deal with today?!" He rapidly fiddled with the rifle in his hand, trying to ease his suffering.

"It's fine! Problems were part of the job description, remember?" the third guard said softly. Stultic yawned as he sat down on one of the seats to check his phone.

"Are you seriously checking your damn phone at a time like this?!" the first guard said scoldingly.

"Well if he has some sort of sick death wish, why not grant it to him? It's not like it'll take long." the second guard finally spoke to the surprise of the other guards. What Stultic hadn't called for was the fact that their suits were suddenly cloaked with the environment. For a brief moment, he did feel his heart stop. He took a deep breath to calm his nerves and got out of his seat. Casually inserting his hand in his pocket, he held out a light blue sleeping mask he bought from a store at the station. Placing it over his eyes, he grasped the hilt of his dagger behind him and drew it from its sheath with flare. Holding his dagger out in front of him, the edges of the blade suddenly ignited with a crystal blue glow.

"I'm gonna give you guys a fighting chance since I'm pretty ecstatic about this fight, so come at me with all you've got," Stultic got into a fighting stance. The guards stared at each other before firing at will. Bullets sliced through the air, penetrating through anything in their trajectory. It didn't take him very long to pinpoint each bullet that came his way. He jumped off a seat and twisted through the air, ignoring the rain of terror that was surrounding him.

His feet hit the floor and rushed forwards. The dagger suddenly shifted, changing its very form into a pistol-like weapon. It seemed eerily familiar to the weapon he used way back when. Pulling the trigger of his newly formed pistol, an electric blue bullet razed through the musky air. It ripped through the fabric seats and flew through the guard's armoured chest, creating a hole where his heart should have been. He was very... heartbroken. Ba-Dum-Ching. Stultic then dashed to the second guard, knocking the rifle into the air and booting it to the adjacent wall. He tugged his arm and used the guard as a body shield. The bait succeeded. The third guard fired yet the bullets had only sealed his partner's fate. Dropping the gunned body, he slowly walked over to the final guard and yanked the rifle out of his hands, bashing the man's skull with the stock of the rifle.

After placing the sleeping mask onto the third guard's eyes and tucking him into "bed," he dusted off his hands and cleaned the mess off his precious pistol with a beautifully made silk cloth which he proceeded to throw at the first guard. The blue light that emitted from its crevices faded once more and his gun shifted back to being a dagger. He let the blade slowly glide across the walls of the long metal cabs, whistling down to the next car with a grin on his face, though he was worried about something the guards had said. Something else was troubling them and it wasn't him.

The next car was motionless which would have been an amazing thing until Stultic looked over some of the seats. There were guards. A burnt hole straight through all of their chests with slight icy crystallization around the rim of the circular wound.

"What does this weapon even run on? A Magium?" Stultic tried to infer what happened with the little details he had. The shots all looked calculated and precise. Each one was in the same place on each body. It was as if a deadeye sniper had been in the car. His memory came to aid his thought process. If there was shooting onboard the train, it must've been because of whatever happened where he was standing, yet there were no guards with hand cannons that made the noise he heard. The rifles were loud but nowhere near as powerful as a shot from one of the big bad pistol-like cannons, meaning that the killer had hand cannons. Still, who had good enough accuracy, used hand cannons, and was dumb enough to risk their lives fighting so many guards other than-

"You've gotta be kidding..." A lightbulb had gone off in his head, but the answer he reached wasn't one of joy. It was one of raw, unsettling bad luck. There was only one person he thought of with that set of skills and one that was merciless to boot.

"If there is a God, please don't let it be her... Not now... Not in a place like this..." he said repeatedly as if he was preparing his body and soul for a ceremonious meeting with death itself. The train cars from then on were either silent and filled with bodies of dead guards or empty and left in shambles with the seats in a messy state and the baggage compartments wide open. According to the intel he received from Wendat, the Maglev itself was longer than the regular models on the tracks. With twenty-one cars left between him and the cab at the front, his journey was going to get worse.

Checking the next car before entry, he could already feel something was missing. Blinking his eyes a while to try and moisturize them, he found that he wasn't insane. The lights barely flickered inside the cars; maybe the power was nearly dead. He could only rely on the ones built into the tunnels which weren't that bright... The few seats in the back were missing and without the lights, it made it tough to tell if it was all the seats or only the ones in the back. The innards of the cab felt desolate. A desert of nothingness. He stared at the emptiness and felt his nerves wanting to go berserk. Inching into the cab, the sliding door clapped close behind him. Using his dagger as a torch, he saw two solid metal crates on both corners.

He moved towards the right crate silently, reaching out for the lid. After making a sparse opening for him to see what the crate held, his eyes were bombarded by a flash of green light. He chucked the lid to the side. He winced and floundered back, sagging against the wall to prevent himself from toppling over. His eyes were branded with the colour green. The crates must've carried the cargo Wendat asked for. A feeling of regret accumulated in his mind and he remembered that he forgot to read the informational handbook on his way to the station...

He looked over the crate's walls once more but the light was still as blinding as before. Even the sun's very own radiance would have trouble competing against the crate's glow. Closing his eyes, he placed his hands on the object inside. It was huge. The curves of the top made it feel like a barrel but much fancier than the ones that carried simple substances such as oil. It had ridges and edges that made it feel quite futuristic. It also felt symmetrical. Closing the crate, he opened his eyes and was finally able to see without viewing everything in a glowing green tint.

His fingers clenched onto the box, trying hard to lift it but it was futile. It was almost as if the box was screwed into the ground itself... It turned out to be a yes. The box was screwed into the floor itself. Sadly, not many mercenaries carry screwdrivers around, and it was an impossibility to consider that Stultic would prepare for anything in advance. It'd be a scary thing to witness Stultic being "prepared"...

The next few cars were the same. Some with the crates in random places around the cars. Some carried a trivial two crates. Others carried a decent nine crates. One carried an astonishing twenty-five crates in a single train car alone. If only Ashten came with him. He'd know how to deal with the crates in ten seconds flat. He was a total nerd when it came to fancy technology he could screw around with.

Stultic's reminiscing came to an end and his adventure continued. The second last car was ahead. The one directly connected to the front cab. Even with Stultic's cheeky and overconfident demeanour, he could feel his nerves twitching under his skin. At least this one seemed to have the chairs still attached to the floor of the car; providing a certain degree of protection from him and whatever would try to dismember him. He wished to keep it that way. He held his dagger upwards compared to downwards. His eyes squinted at the barely lit car to try and make a better view of what was up ahead. His fingers latched onto the hilt of his dagger firmly, his palms sweating excessively with each step forward. A chill spread throughout his body, so he moved to the left to heat up under the heating vent.

Abruptly, a powerful, crackling, frosty bullet of light then arrived from behind.

He could feel its cold temperature barely missing his right ear. Twisting his head back, he saw something that came from his worst nightmares. A wall-crawling thing with two pistol-like weapons in each hand and a crosshair for a head. It clung to the ceiling, staring down at the hopefully not-so-tasty prey. Stultic could barely even make out if it was human; the lights on its stealthy suit were the only indicators of a human-like figure, though he probably wouldn't have enough time to determine whether or not it was human because of how many bullets the "madman" was firing. He prayed it wasn't an arachnoid-human hybrid, because insects were scary as is — there didn't need to be any more creepy abominations of insects while he was around... Each bullet closely glided near his head, chest, arms, and some places he wouldn't want to say aloud.

At least he had experience dodging flurries of bullets from the WARDENs. They were always a pain in the ass whenever you gave them guns. They were very similar to deadeyes from cheesy western flicks. Still, he didn't look too startled by what he was fighting; he looked calmer than he should have been in such a situation. Something felt familiar about the killer. Their movements were fluid, yet sometimes brash and with a hint of struggle. It was a mixture that he knew too well. It was familiar to his own. Thankfully, no clones of his existed, so there was only one other person that came to mind; that person was none other than the woman who topped number one on his list of worst nightmares.

When she spoke, it confirmed his theory.

"Stop moving, jackass!"

He was right; his worst nightmare had arrived in person. He panicked and silently leaped behind one of the chairs. Darkness was his friend, yet it was also his enemy. He felt the arm of something beside him in the darkness. After closer examination, it seemed she'd already killed the driver. His chances of survival dwindled. What was he supposed to do? If he called for a ceasefire, she'd probably kill him for even being on the Maglev in the first place. If he tried to run, she'd shoot him onto the tracks where he'd be shocked to death by electricity. If he tried to give her a rubber duck as a "surrender gift," she'd shoot him in the shoulder. He knew this firsthand because she'd done that last time, but it was also the only option where he didn't die—

I'M DOOMED! he screamed inside his void of a brain, continuing to cry as he wished for a quick and painless death.

He slapped himself, pulling his consciousness together with every fibre of his body. He couldn't die here. Not while he still had a life ahead of him. He was Stultic, and if he was going to die, he'd die in a pile of french fries and tacos like a true burly man — though he wasn't burly. The silent pep-talk he gave to himself had brought him back onto his feet. He could do this. With the most absurd idea he left in his brain and all the courage he poured into his already overblown ego, he called out her name in an attempt to prevent her from shooting a massive, gaping hole through his beloved head.

"Mads?!" Stultic blurted, holding his breath.

This was the equivalent of him waving a white flag in defeat. He prayed that she thought before she acted for if not, he'd be dead in the next two seconds. The comfortable reclinable chairs on the train were cozy on a midsummer night's voyage; yet sadly, they didn't offer much protection from armour-piercing bullets. He heard the firing stop and a sigh come out of her mouth.

"Stultic?!" Madica asked.

—^𝐯——^𝐯— 𝐓𝐨 𝐁𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐞𝐝 —^𝐯——^𝐯—