Chapter 25: Highway To Hell!

I'M BACK!

Just like I said in my other fanfic. Writer's block has been a bitch lately. But now, I'm slowly picking up the pace of this story.

So enjoy today's chapter!

Peace!

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Isaiah stepped out of his portal and saw Wong and Tina were waiting for him. He found himself on top of a roof where Wong was meditating and Tina was crouching and observing the roads.

"Hey Wong." the boy called.

The man looked up and heard the familiar voice.

"Isaiah."

Isaiah saw the portal closed and Tina joined the duo.

'Seems like the sun has already set,' the boy thought as he looked at the dark sky.

"So where are we?" asked Isaiah.

"We are on the roof of Stonehenge school in Amesbury," Tina replied.

"And how far is that from Stonehenge?"

"About 10 km from there."

"I see. How are we going to go there?"

Wong answered this time,

"We will open a portal at 5 km then walk the rest of the way. Let's go."

They entered the mirror dimension and opened a portal before walking through. The group now found themselves on an empty road with grassland covered with snow on both sides of the road. They quickly began to make their way toward Stonehenge.

"Stay vigilant. From now on, we don't know what might happen," said Wong and his companions nodded.

They continued to walk in the silent sky. The eerie night as well as the biting cold didn't help with the tense atmosphere they were in as they made their way to the historical monument.

For fifteen minutes, they walked in silence. Normally, they wouldn't be able to see in the dark, but with Eldritch Magic enhancing Wong's and Tina's eyes and (Reinforcement) enhancing Isaiah's eyes, the night was no problem for them. However, Isaiah suddenly stopped. Wong and Tina also noticed it and stopped. The man was about to ask what was wrong when the boy held a hand up to stop him and tapped the side of his own head.

Understanding the message, Wong and Tina used Telepathy to communicate.

'What's wrong, Isaiah?' the man asked.

'I sense some weird energies at Stonehenge. I never sensed something like this before.'

This alerted the two older sorcerers.

'I see. Can you describe the energies you're feeling?'

However, Isaiah shook.

'I can't. There are too many energies mixing with one another.'

Wong rubbed his chin,

'Hmm'

'Maybe it's because, just like the Ancient One said, Stonehenge is a weak point in this realm's dimensional fabric, therefore, making energy leak.'

Wong looked at her,

'But that's the thing. It should not leak. Even if it's Stonehenge.'

'Hmm. We can discuss this later. First, we must find a vantage point where we can also hide,' Wong said.

Isaiah looked at both sides of the road and just like before there were only plains.

'But why?' he asked.

Wong looked at him confused,

'What do you mean "why"?'

'I mean why do we have to find a place to hide when we are in the mirror dimension?"

"Even if we can see what's happening, we won't be able to hear anything since we are in a parallel dimension. Plus there is also the fact that others may have access to the Mirror Dimension and we don't want any more problems to occur,' the man replied and Isaiah nodded.

They exited the road and began walking on the grass before exiting the Mirror Dimension. Once they were out, they continued to walk while making as little noise as possible without magic. Finding a vantage point proved to be a difficult task since they were only plains in all directions.

'Isaiah, do you sense anyone?' asked Wong.

Isaiah closed his eyes and expanded his senses in all directions, however they were overwhelmed by the massive amount of energy at the Stonehenge monument.

He clicked his teeth,

'I can't. The energies are messing with my senses.'

'Then can you see anything?' asked Tina.

Isaiah directed his Reinforced eyes towards Stonehenge, but he didn't see anything.

'I don't see anything. Everything looks normal.'

Wong nodded,

'Then let us rest while we observe.' Wong said and the group sat on the snow far enough for Isaiah to see Stonehenge without anyone noticing them.

Wong then whispered,

"By the Icy Tendrils of Ikhtalon."

The Asian man chanted the spell and faced his right-hand palm towards the sky. Cold wind and snow materialized above the palm and Wong directed it in front of him. The spell grew in size as it spewed ice and snow in front of them. After a few seconds, he stopped his spell and there was now a huge bank of snow and ice in front of them that they could use as cover and surveillance base. It also blended with the landscape since there was an enormous amount of snow on the plains. On the outside it looked like a bank of snow, however, he had created a room inside of it creating some sort of igloo. He also left a slit in the igloo so that they can see Stonehenge. The group then went inside to rest.

The night was cold and the boy noticed Tina shivering a little. Just because sorcerers enhanced their bodies with magic, it did not mean that they were immune to extreme temperatures.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

The woman smiled and nodded,

"I'm fine, Isaiah."

"But you're shivering."

"A little cold won't bother me."

The boy looked at her before lifting his hand towards her. The familiar sparks of Eldritch magic appeared as a formation appeared in front of his hand. He then let the formation engrave itself in Tina's clothes.

"What formation is that?" Wong asked.

Isaiah didn't answer before doing the same for Wong. Once finished, he snapped his fingers and they both had relieved smiles as the heating formation did its work.

"Is this a heating formation?" Tina asked in wonder.

The boy nodded,

"Yes, I created it for cold weather. Just because we train to resist temperature changes does not mean that we can't find means to warm ourselves up."

The heat from the magical formation helped keep them warm despite the cold of the English winter. Every now and then, Isaiah would observe Stonehenge, however, there were no changes.

'Isaiah.' Tina called at one point of their stakeout.

The boy turned his head to the woman,

"Yes?"

"We never spoke much. I wanted to hear your story."

"My story?"

"Yeah. The story of your life."

"Well, there's isn't much to it."

Tina shook her head,

"No matter what life it is, it is always worth being told."

Isaiah looked at her and slowly nodded. He then told her and Wong. The two adults only knew Isaiah as the child who survived a disaster and not Isaiah Sharpe.

After half an hour of recounting his life, he finished. Although he left a lot of things out such as his reality-warping abilities or the true power of his eyes or even his connection to an extra-dimensional plane of knowledge outside of the multiverse. In fact, the details about his powers are very very vague.

"I see... You've had a hard life." Tina said after hearing the story.

Isaiah shook his head at her comment,

"I didn't have a hard life and I have the Ancient One to thank for that," Isaiah said with a small smile,

"What about you guys?"

Tina spoke,

"Since you told me your story, it is only right to tell you mine. My name is Tina Minoru. I am a simple woman who doesn't have any attachment left except for the Order."

"What do you mean?" asked the boy.

"I don't have anyone left for me on earth. I'm an orphaned child who lost her parents when she was 12 years old. I also had no other living relatives. Due to that, I had to survive by scrapping for food in the streets of Japan. for four years, I lived without a home. Unfortunately, I had to commit many thefts to survive. Japan is not a place for the homeless. It isn't like those western countries where they would sometimes help the ones who had no shelter. In Japan, people in the streets were the trash of society." she said with a sad smile.

Wong and Isaiah simply listened to her tale without interrupting her.

"However, it was not all pain and misery. I met many people like me. For one reason or another, they were living in the streets. We sympathized with each other and started to meet up. Over the years, our little group became larger and they became my family just like I became theirs." the woman continued with nostalgia on her face.

Her smile then fell.

"What happened?" asked the young sorcerer.

"One day, after getting some food, I returned to our usual hideout."

(Flashback)

A 15-year-old Tina Minoru was happily running back to an abandoned factory, in the rain, where she and her friends lived. After a few minutes of running with the food in her hands, she arrived at her destination. She sneakily ran to the backdoor of the factory and entered the building.

"Everyone! I got some food!" she called out.

No one answered.

"Hm? Guys?" she called out again.

No answer.

She slowly walked to where they would gather.

"Hey, guys! If this is a joke, it's not funny!" she called out again.

All of a sudden, an awful smell hit her nose,

"What the hell!? It smells awful!"

*Splish* *Splash*

She felt something water beneath her sole,

"Huh?"

Unfortunately, it was too dark to see so Tina continued to walk. She started hearing voices, but they were not familiar to her. At that moment, she started to tense up, The voices grew louder.

"Get someone to clean this mess up." someone said.

"Tch! Fucking brats shouldn't have stolen from us!" another one said.

"STOP! PLEASE STOP! LET THEM GO, PLEASE!"

"Shut up, bitch!" another man said.

"Knock her out. We still have some use for her." the same voice who ordered for clean-up said.

"Alright, boss."

"STOP! LET THEM-ACK!"

A resounding smack was heard and the girl's voice stopped being heard.

This time, Tina recognized the voice.

''Chiyo!' Tina thought.

The girl slowly walked up to a crate and hid behind it. She then peaked her head to see what was happening and, when she did, her blood ran cold.

There, in the central room, were her friends on the floor unmoving as a pool of blood began to flow beneath them. Only Chiyo seemed to be alive as she was laid on the shoulder of a huge man. A group of men surrounded her fallen friends as they remained unmoving. One of them had a cigarette in his mouth as he looked at the bodies with a scowl. He looked like the boss of the group. The one beside him, a subordinate it seems, asks the man,

"What do we do with the bodies?"

"Dump them in the Tokyo Bay."

"Yes sir."

'What?' Tina thought in shock.

Her heart started beating loudly as if it want to burst out of her chest. She started to shiver at the sight of her dead friends. Unknowingly, she took a step back and kicked a rock by accident.

All the men turned their heads at the source.

"Who's there!?" the boss called out.

Receiving no answer, the boss turned his head towards one of his men and gestured it toward the source. Nodding, the man started walking toward where Tina was. Tina remained frozen as the man slowly walked up to her location. Just as he was about to reach her, the large doors of the factory opened abruptly. Everyone turned to the main entrance and saw an old man around 60 to 65 years old walk in. He had a checkered shirt as well as khaki pants with black boots. He also wore a grey flat hat that elderly men typically wore. Tina had seen multiple old men wear that kind of hat.

"Oi, Old man! The fuck are you doing here?" the boss called out.

The old man looked at him and sighed.

"Yare Yare. Youngsters these days have no manners and respect for their elders."

This ticked the boss off,

"Huh? Do you want me to bash your face in, you shitty geezer!? Get out of here before you worsen your situation?"

Tina observed the situation from her hiding spot unable to move.

The old man stopped walking and looked at the morbid scene the gangsters have caused and sighed.

"Life lost at such a young age," the old man started, "it's a pity. Life should not be played with like that so carelessly. They did not deserve this."

His tone then changed as the atmosphere suddenly started weighing on them. The gangsters and Tina started experiencing suffocating pressure.

"Unfortunately, the same can't be said for you."

The boss started shivering before shouting,

"KILL HIM!"

With that order, his subordinates started to resist the pressure and ran to the old man to end his life.

Tina simply observed the scene in shock as the first gangster reached the old man. The younger man cocked his fist back and swung it toward the older man's face. To Tina's shock, the latter held his arms up, and grabbed the attacker's first and shirt, before swinging him over his back and onto the floor.

*BANG!* *CRACK!*

In one move, the thug was thrown headfirst onto the floor instantly killing him. The other attackers stopped in their tracks when they saw one of their comrades easily killed.

"What the fuck are you doing! Kill him!" the boss once again shouted and his minions obeyed.

Tina watched with morbid fascination as the old man easily destroyed the thugs one after another with strength and agility that did not belong to one his age. It was something straight out of a martial arts movie. In no time, all the minions were either killed or crippled. The elderly man had just finished with the last one when he heard...

*Click*

Turning around, he saw the boss had a gun against the temple of Chiyo.

"Hands up, geezer or she'll get a bullet in her brain!"

The old man slowly started walking to the thug. The latter started trembling when he saw the old man not listening to him.

"Oi, Geezer! I said don't move!" the boss said, but the elderly didn't listen.

Seeing no choice, the boss was about to shoot Chiyo when the elder suddenly extended his hand and an orange-gold whip made of energy emerged from his hand and trapping the gun before it went off.

"Wha-"

Before the boss could finish whatever he was saying, the man pulled the whip along with the gun which he threw it away. The boss dropped Chiyo as he fell on his ass. He tried to back away as fear replaced his previously cocky expression.

"D-Don't come closer you M-MONSTER!"

The old man stopped in his track,

"Monster? In your eyes, I may be the monster. But weren't you in this position just a few minutes ago? When you kill someone, you also have to be prepared to be killed, don't you think?" the old man said as the pressure grew tenfold.

The latter started walking towards the boss who threw his hand forward and started to back away,

"S-Stop. Get away from me. Please spare m-me! I'll do anything!"

"Hoh? Anything?"

"Y-Yes! Anything! Money, women, weapon, power, anything!"

The old man rubbed his chin,

"What's your name, boy?"

The boss had a hopeful expression,

"Kizuhara Ryuji, sir!"

The old man nodded,

"I see. Well, then Ryuji-kun." the elder started as he crouched down to the boss's eye level, "Can you bring these kids back?"

At that moment, the boss's face suddenly turned pale at the request.

"Well?"

"N-No s-sir."

The old man tilted his head as his eyes bore into the thug's eyes,

"Then your "anything" is not really anything, right?"

Seeing no option to fight, the thug opted to run away. He turned around and was about to run away when the old man suddenly conjured an orange-gold knife construct and threw it toward the thug's heart and pierced it. Without a sound, the thug dropped dead leaving a silent atmosphere and the smell of the blood. The sound of the rain outside grew intense as Tina was crouching behind the crate in shock at the events that transpired in front of her.

Seeing that the boss is dead, the old man sighed,

"You can come out now."

The sentence froze Tina at the fact that she had been spotted.

With a sullen expression, the old man took his hat off and placed it on his chest,

"I'm sorry, I couldn't come sooner. If I had known, I would've done something about it."

Tina slowly got up and showed herself to the old man as the latter stood quiet. Tina Minoru walked past him and kneeled in the pool of blood where her friends laid. Seeing that her friends were really dead, she started to sob uncontrollably. For years, these teenagers were her only family in her miserable life. Now, it was all gone.

(Flashback end)

"After that, we had to leave because the sound of the police was heard. It seemed like all the fighting alerted someone on the outside. I asked the old man's name and he said that it was Shirogane Tanaka or Tanaka Shirogane in English. He altered the memories of the thugs who were left alive so that they can tell an exited version of a story as well as confess any other crimes they did. He quickly brought us home and left Chiyo at her house after altering her memories. Chiyo was the only one in the group who had a family even if she doesn't like them very much. He wanted to alter my mind too, but he stopped." Tina said.

"Why?" asked Isaiah.

"Because he noticed something about me. He said that I had potential. Master Shirogane then gave me a choice: To learn about the mysteries of the world or forever be ignorant. Seeing him fight, I wanted to learn that. So he booked me a ticket to Hong Kong and told me to go to the Hong Kong Sanctum. That's where my journey on the path of magic began." Tina finished her tale.

"What about your friend Chiyo?" asked Isaiah.

"I asked Master Shirogane to erase any memories about me and our friends and replace them with others so she won't be in trouble with the police."

Tina then looked down,

"It was better that way. She won't have to deal with the trauma of her friends being dead and one is gone."

A hand was placed on her shoulder. Tina looked up and saw Wong give her a small smile. For a man who always scowls, a smile was a once in a blue moon thing.

He was about to say something when Isaiah interrupted him,

"Guys, I think I saw something."

Both adults looked through the slit of the igloo when they spotted a red glow at Stonehenge. Isaiah narrowed his eyes and focused on the glow. The red glow suddenly expanded and formed a circle in mid-air.

Isaiah then saw a foot come out followed by the rest of the body. It was a person wearing a full black robe with a red demonic-looking mask. On their shoulder was an unconscious person. Afterwards, more and more people exited the circle.

The eleven-year-old sorcerer realized that they were exiting a portal. After a few minutes, a lot of people came out of the portal. Most of them wore the same black rob and red masks. Finally, the portal closed. Isaiah gave a quick count of the people. There were over a hundred of them who wore black robes and red masks while there were 25 civilians. He recognized some of them from the papers Sol Rama gave them.

"It's them!" he said. "It's the victims of the kidnappings!"

Wong nodded,

"So it seems."

"Then we should go rescue them," Tina said and was about to leave when Wong stopped her.

"Wait a second. We should see what they want."

"Isn't it obvious? I mean Hell is going to cross paths with our realm and Stonehenge just happens to be the easiest point of access," Isaiah said.

"But can you fight more than 100 people? We are only three people. We'll get killed." Wong said.

"No, you won't," Isaiah replied.

"How can you be so sure?"

"Then you can call for backup while I stall them." the boy said as he left the igloo.

"Isaiah, wait!" Wong tried to stop him, but the boy didn't listen.

Tina turned to Wong,

"It doesn't matter, Wong. Isaiah's right. We have to go. The dimensional fabric is already weak as it is. If they tamper with it, it could bring a lot of trouble.

Wong looked conflicted but nodded nonetheless.

" Alright, let's go. I will assist Isaiah and you will call for backup."

"Yes, sir," Tina replied and both of them followed Isaiah.

Isaiah started running towards Stonehenge. He saw that the victims were placed at the center of the rock monuments. Some of the robed people went around Stonehenge and started chanting. To his senses, the mix of energies started to become chaotic. As he got closer, he could sense some kind of energy in all of the kidnappers unlike mana or Universal Energy. If his theory was correct, then these people have a connection with Hell. Just as he crossed the street and jumped over the fence, a red barrier suddenly expanded from Stonehenge. Seeing that, he continued running, took off his glasses and projected a knife.

As soon as he took off his glasses, the world cracked as multiple lines of Death appeared in his vision. He looked at the ones corresponding to the barrier and cut one of them. The line was about 10cm long, but it worked magnificently.

The barrier was torn apart like paper and Isaiah continued to run.

"What!?" one of the enemies said in surprise as the barrier was easily breached.

"Someone's here to interrupt the ceremony!"

"Kill them!"

They all turned to the intruder and saw Isaiah.

"It's just a kid!"

"Well, this kid destroyed your barrier," replied Isaiah.

"It doesn't matter if it's a kid or a granny. Kill them."

The enemies then raised their hands as red energy bubbled in front of it. Isaiah looked around and saw most of the enemies about to attack him while others continued to chant. The chaotic energies around Stonehenge started to distort.

He raised his hands and created a dome of Eldritch magic to defend himself as bullets of that weird magic power started pelleting him.

"ISAIAH!"

The boy turned back while maintaining the barrier and saw Wong and Tina start to fight.

"Did you call for backup?" the boy asked.

"I did, but there is also a similar situation in South America so they can't immediately send reinforcement!" Tina replied as she wrapped her whip around one of the robed people's necks and bashed them to the ground.

"Wong! Capture or elimination!?"

Without hesitation, Wong replied,

"Elimination."

At that Isaiah grinned,

"Alright!"

Isaiah activated (Thought Acceleration) and reinforced his body. He gripped his dagger and had a wicked grin before springing into action to send these lunatics onto their very own highway to hell.