Need Your A Heart

"Tony!" Harry cried out as he saw the last of his friend turn into a ball.

Desmond had figured it out. The squad had been fighting for a long time, being on edge and expending a lot of energy. Every time it felt like they were about to run out of energy reserves, it was usually otherwise. They shouldn't have had the strength to create something as massive and explosive as the giant spear. Unless, their energy was somehow infinite, or it was constantly being refilled.

And as five of the seven squad members had either died or had shown their powers already, then there were only two people who could have been giving that kind of support; Kai or Tony.

One of them had created the orange spear shell that covered Zhao Yun's, while the other had been feeding them energy.

Either way, they were dangerous as they had been in the back lines waiting to strike during the late game. So he decided to take them both down before the tide of the battle suddenly flips.

Desmond skipped chewing and straight up gulped down the ball.

Without hesitation, he leapt straight for Kai.

However, Harry suddenly appeared before him, with bloodshot eyes and a shield in front of him. "Retreat!" He yelled out to his teammates. "I'll hold him off!"

Desmond swung his hand to the side, shattering Harry's barrier and throwing him aside. He continued his chase at the evacuating crew, only to find his path blocked by light beams.

"Tsk. Almost forgot about you." Desmond suddenly squatted and soon leapt off the ground. As he got to Nova's level of altitude, she dodged, however, placing his feet behind him, he blasted forward in mid air.

"!!!" Nova was shocked by the sudden development. This must be how he had escaped their joint attack. He had some how learnt a new... skill? But how?

Nova didn't know, and more importantly, didn't have much time to back off again and dodge. So she activated her ability and formed a shield of light before her.

BOOM!

The shield was obviously no match for Desmond's bestial might, however, it did make his hand sizzle from touching it.

"Dang it!" He cursed as he jumped backwards, not to retreat, but for an all out attack of his own.

He held his hand up and pointed it straight at Nova. This time, without a stone, the air around his palm started to compress into a marble sized spinning ball and wind rings started to form around it, falling into the ball and increasing it's destructive power.

Nova's eyes shot open. She hadn't seen what this ability was, but as far as she could tell, it was extremely dangerous. So she shot darts of light at him, but they all broke as soon as they got close. It was like Desmond himself was surrounded by a protective forcefield.

Nova panicked as nothing she threw at him would connect, and now, the spinning ball with rings around it had shot out of his hand.

*SWOOSH*

At the last moment though, a white line suddenly appeared in the sky and pulled Nova away from the incoming attack.

"What?" Desmond didn't see what had just happened. But he had suspected Nova might dodge, so his plan was a little more complicated than him simply throwing a slow attack at her.

"Oh no!" Kai's face was overcome with nervous sweat as he stared at the size increasing wind ball falling towards them. The rest of his squad members also stopped in fear. At this point, even running was useless. If they somehow managed to get away from below the bottom of the wind sphere, they wouldn't be able to escape the aftershock it would create from impact.

"... I'm sorry... This is all my fault." Harry fell on his knees.

"Nah, that Infected thing was an unknown so we were bound to mess up anyway." Aaron held his shoulder.

"Hopefully with the little info we now have on an Infected, no one will get hurt.", Zhao Yun.

"Yeah, but if we want our mission to not be a total screw up, at least one of us is going to have to get out of here alive. Now who should it be?" As Kim said that, the squad members subconsciously turned to face Kai. No doubt, with his almost perfect memory, analysis and unique ability, his death wouldn't just affect those close to him, but an entire province.

So the rest had made up their minds, that if they somehow worked together, they might be able to blast him out to a safe distance, therefore saving him. But...

"G... Guys?" Kai looked ahead with dilated pupils. He was frightened.

"I know what you want to say kid, but your ability is definitely going to be of much use to Ansel." Zhao Yun tried to explain.

"And sorry, that we might have to burden you with, you know...? Visiting our families once in a while and—"

"Would you just shut up and look?!" Kai suddenly yelled as he pointed to the sky. It was then that the squad realized that he wasn't even paying attention to them, and that they were still alive after their corny last words.

When the rest of the squad looked up, they noticed that the giant ball of wind was just spinning in mid air, not falling down. It was strange, but when they looked at the bottom of the sphere, they caught sight of the reason for the ball's halt in descent. An even more peculiar figure with his black coat fluttering in the sky stared down at them with a raised eyebrow.

"Dramatic much?" Asher's voice breezed into their attentive ears and melted into their frozen brains.

"Yeah." Kai muttered, letting out a sigh.

"Well if that's what this is, then apologies before hand..." Asher reverted his eyes and turned to look forward. "... I'm about to turn your play, into a horror show."

The five hundred meters in diameter ball suddenly burst into black flames. And although Void Flame was like a type of fire, it only shrouded the sky and turned everything dark instead.

The crew on the ground stared at the flowing black sky without even a glint showing in their eyes, it was as if the flames were sucking in the light too. In fact, there was no light, neither under the flames, nor near it. The area they were in formed a secluded tunnel from the sky down, as if setting up a meeting place for death himself, and his victim.

"Strange, why did that wind sphere feel so hard to control?" Asher mumbled curiously. The ball he had just stopped was made with wind, but if his wind ability was not bearing the suffix, 'Domination', then he most definitely wouldn't have been able to stop it's advance.

Asher wondered why that was. Did Desmond also have Wind Domination?

"Hey you!" Desmond's voice suddenly sounded in the ghostly quiet environment. "Scram, you're ruining the fun."

Asher brought his head downwards to look at the man in the eyes. "That's impossible. I'm all about this kind of, 'fun'."

A black spear appeared in mid air, pointing down at Desmond's head. However, before Asher could fire it, a white blur suddenly flew to block Desmond.

"Nova?"

"Stay back Ash, this one's mine." Nova who had just come out of nowhere had a stern look on her face as she stood on the back of a flying white and golden feathered bird.

"..." However, Asher just stared back into her eyes, showing his unwillingness to comply. But after a second, he sighed in resignation.

"Fine." He agreed. "But be careful, that guy's tricky."

"Hmm?" Nova tilted her head in question at why Asher thought that. However, as she followed Asher's eyes and looked behind, she saw Desmond 'tiptoeing' out of the battlefield. The Infected knew that with Asher standing around, his chances of winning were bleak. The fact that Asher had taken out his unstoppable wind ball of destruction easily could only mean they were either on the same level, or the man in black was stronger. And since Asher had all of a sudden popped up, who's to say more of his strength level aren't on their way?

"Oops." Finding out that Nova had noticed his attempt to quietly escape, he jumped into the air and started flying away.

*BOOM!!!* *BOOM!!* *BOOM!* *BOOM*

Actually, Desmond was just intermittently building air pressure under his leg and leaping horizontally through the sky, making it look like he was flying.

He hadn't used this move as his first choice of escape because of how loud it was, but even with the noise it made, it was quite a fast skill.

Albeit, not fast enough.

Desmond was forced to halt as a white sword was unexpectedly placed in front of his eyes.

"Your heart..." Nova held tightly, a shiny white amulet on her right hand as she stood tall on an exotic looking owl. Pointing her blade at his forehead, she completed,

"...I need your heart."