The Attack of the Rubeki (2)

"Help you... with what?" I asked the girl.

Frankly, this girl being my mom felt unbelievable. Ever since I was born into this world on December 17, 2445, I had never known my parents at all.

The thought of having a parental figure was so foreign to me, I had learned to adapt without one. It was far fetched, that my mom had found me... but maybe she was looking for me?

"I want to reunite every last parent with every last child. It is my wish. I know, that sounds confusing... but there are others out there. Do you know where I can find Charlie?" She asked me.

I was taken aback, thinking about where she heard that name from. 

The Rubeki around us perfectly curved, as if they were purposefully avoiding us. I didn't realize at first, but upon not being attacked for a considerable amount of the conversation, I turned to Twilight once more.

"Where are these Rubeki going? Why are they avoiding us?" I asked her. I wondered if she was the one controlling them, but she wouldn't reveal any information to me.

"I wonder about that... perhaps I'm in cahoots with the person controlling them." Twilight suggestion. She fluffed her hair and pulled out a thin needle from his back the size of my axe.

"You never answered me. Where can I find the man named Charlie?" She added. I held my ax tighter, prepared for any strike she might try to make.

"I have no idea where he is. You said parents and children, plural. Who else are you looking for?" I tried my best to avoid Twilight's naturally adamant voice, but she clicked her tongue in irritation.

This woman wasn't my mom. She seemed impatient.

"Rin and Ren, Griff, Ellios, Alex, David, and Tyler. These are the children I am looking for whose parents I know. Surely, you must know at least one of them." Twilight mentioned. There was something odd that she said in her sentence that sounded...desperate. The fact she was here when Sky warned us to be cautious of invaders was worrying.

Screw it.

I swung the ax directly to the right of her head. She blocked it with the needle, even though I didn't plan to hit her with it, and then she attempted to pierce my throat with the thin object.

"You would dare attack your own mother?" She asked me.

"Quite the coincidence that Sky told me to defend and you showed up when he wasn't here, after all this time. Let alone knowing the people that were with us on the beach. I don't care who you are, my mother, my father, my sister, whoever you might be. You are an enemy to me now." I told her.

Twilight nodded and snapped her fingers, causing the black domain around us to fade into the sky. With that, Rubeki started to hone in on me.

"Then now you may know, that it is me who controls the Rubeki. Enjoy your time here, son. I have people to go find." Twilight said.

She retreated into the darkness of smoke that was the Rubeki, and with her disappearance, the Rubeki grew thick in number once more.

As if it were magic, as soon as Twilight disappeared, the Rubeki seemed to grow stronger. They were leaving stamps of footprints in the ground that relentlessly dug everything up and threatened the livelihood of the people who lived in Alicas. I stopped for a moment, shooting my body back and forth with powerful charges from the gun in my hands to observe that Shike was taking out a large group of them at once using his ability. 

The ingenuity of his usage of his ability had always struck me as tantalizing and unreachable, but I soon noticed that my very own unique ability could be used in ways I hadn't yet thought about.

I ran against the horde of the Rubeki, shooting out light charges of bullets that barely pierced through the smoky bodies. Then, using all of the energy I had been building up between shots, I let one loose, acting as a cannon ball that exploded into a cluster of shrapnel, taking out over what looked like fifty Rubeki all at once. If I could keep pulling that shot off, I would find myself close to success. 

Although, I saw this as an opportunity to overcome a challenge, I never even considered why it was happening. Why did Twilight bring the Rubeki here, after they were locked in The First Trial for so long?

The answer to my question remained unanswered until I looked further than just the closest Rubeki to me.

The people on the streets were being consumed by the smoke. Those who couldn't escape vanished into the black smoke, becoming fragments of the Rubeki as they ran further and further into the center of Alicas.

Then, they began to deform themselves.

What I had thought to be the obvious answer to a simple action the Rubeki took became horrifyingly real as they morphed into people. The Rubeki had undergone a change unfamiliar to even Shike and Belle, based on their faces filled with shock.

The Rubeki, now mingled in with citizens all around Alicas, started to brandish Sabers of black coloring, all focusing onto one central point.

"Shike..." They mumbled. 

They walked right past me as they surrounded me with insurmountable numbers, and I felt a shock of fear shoot up my spine as the footsteps from a larger Rubeki echoed across the field.

"I see we have another ranger! How exciting..." A Rubeki mumbled. It seemed to be much more intelligent than the others, muttering full sentences instead of one name.

"And you are?" I asked, observing the green smoke looming around his body, which quickly faded away into a quiver that sat tightly on his back.

"I am Pestilence, a fragment of Providence. It is nice to meet the one who is allied with Sky."