Chapter 20

I'm fucking back!!! And man! Does having a full-time job suck! And you wanna know why? It's because I only get two days off!!! TWO. FUCKING. DAYS!!!

Anyways! Enjoy!

Next update? Charming Demon!

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Chapter 20

It had been nine days since he lied to Stan Edger about the destruction of Kimiko's body. Nine days since he had smuggled her out of the lab and into the secrecy of the night. Nine days in which he'd learned more about his emotions than he had in his entire life leading up to it.

They were heading to the only location Noir could trust to keep her safe, a place Vought would never hope to find her.

Black Noir and Kimiko traveled mainly under a cloak of night, using their superhuman physique to traverse large distances that no vehicle could hope to keep up.

But even with their superhuman physique they still have to take a break every now and then despite their impressive stamina. It was during these breaks they communicated together in a language of nods and gestures, a silent conversation only the two of them could understand.

The bond between them, two damaged beings incapable of speech, deepened with each passing day as they spent time together.

Their journey had taken them across several states, through abandoned railroad tunnels and dense forests where the moonlight strained to break through the thick foliage. Noir avoided the highways and populated areas where Vought surveillance was more likely to pick up on their trail.

Occasionally, they would have to make trips to a store to restock their supplies. Fortunately, he had a device that could disable electronic devices, allowing them to safely gather what they needed. Without it, he would have never even considered the idea.

And during those small breaks, they would carve out for themselves moments of simple, human happiness.

They reveled in the mundane, in the acts that those without superhuman abilities took for granted. They relished each other's company in silence, existing together against the backdrop of a world that brought them nothing but pain.

In one such break, they found an abandoned playground hidden away in an overgrown field. Kimiko's eyes lit up at the sight of a rusty swing set, an artifact from a childhood they didn't get to live. A nod from Noir was all the invitation she needed.

She ran towards it, her usually stoic face breaking into a grin. As she settled onto the swing, her feet barely grazing the ground beneath, her gaze met Noir's and she beckoned for him to join. A moment of hesitation, then he moved forward, pulling himself onto the seat beside hers.

They swung in tandem under a blanket of stars splattered across the obsidian sky. The creaking swings and swaying grass around them were all the music they needed.

And many more of these moments happened during those nine days of traveling together.

But as they neared their destination on the tenth day, Noir's unease grew into a gnawing suspicion. Something was not right, a foreboding sense of danger creeping up his spine. He scanned their surroundings with heightened awareness, every nerve on edge.

They were being followed.

Noir's steely gaze pierced through the distance miles away, locking onto the figures who were stalking them with less than pure intentions.

His gaze hardened; eyes narrowed into thin slits of intense focus.

His enhanced senses picked up the faint sound of footsteps, muffled whispers just on the edge of audibility, and a peculiar scent that was unfamiliar yet distinct. He felt a deep sensation of unease prickling at the back of his neck.

There were ten of them in total, Noir counted.

Some flew through the air, while others silently pursued on foot, their eyes fixed on Kimiko.

"…?"

Sensing Noir's tension, Kimiko looked at him with a questioning glance. She reached out to touch his arm lightly, her fingers tracing a silent question over his tense muscles. He turned towards her; his eyes softened slightly as his helmet met her concerned eyes.

Despite their muteness, they somehow were able to understand each other despite no words being said.

He waved his hand lightly, a careful gesture meant to reassure her concern when he realized she wasn't aware of their stalkers.

Kimiko looked at him, her eyes narrowing slightly as she assessed his calmness to see if it was a lie. But trust prevailed over her concerns, and she nodded her head at Noir without question.

Noir's attention left Kimiko for a moment, shifting back to the figures following them. He could tell they were closing in, their cautious movements becoming more brazen as the distance between themselves and their targets began to lessen.

The pulsing lights of a hotel sign blinked in the foggy night ahead of them from a hotel that was outside of town, a lone beacon amongst the sea of darkness.

It was far from luxurious, but it would serve its purpose.

With a swift motion, Noir took Kimiko's hand into his own and made a beeline toward the building, pulling her along with him. Kimiko stumbled slightly over her own feet in surprise but quickly regained her balance, keeping pace with Noir's rapid strides.

"…!" She tilted her head in confusion at his hurried pace.

They made it inside and the hotel's dim lighting gave it an ominous feel; old wallpaper peeled off the walls while antique furniture was scattered about haphazardly.

"Bl-Black N-Noir?!"

Ignoring the flabbergasted man behind the counter, Noir slammed a heavy wad of cash onto the desk with a loud thud and raised his hand for the key to a room.

"O-Ok? Y-Your room n-number i-is 140, w-would you lik-"

He began to ask while raising their hand to give him the key to their room but was cut off as Noir grabbed the keys out of their hands and rushed up the stairs to their room.

It was a small room; with a single bed against one wall, a tiny bathroom just on its right, and a TV mounted on the wall.

Noir looked out the window to see if they were still being followed and after a second of searching, he found them miles away on top of a random building, glaring at the hotel they were in.

Kimiko looked at him quizzically as she adjusted her grip on the bag of supplies. She furrowed her brows in confusion when Noir signaled for her to stand in the corner, away from both the window and the door.

In his gut, he knew their trackers were getting impatient and they were going to attack at any moment. The adrenaline rush that came with this realization forced him to move quickly.

His posture was rigid, every muscle taut with anxiety. It wasn't like him to be this on edge; in Kimiko's eyes, Noir was always the epitome of cool, an unshakeable force in even the most precarious situations.

"…?" Kimiko's silent question hung in the air, her eyes filled with worry.

He sighed heavily before stepping away from the window. His hand went up to remove his helmet, revealing the dark lines of fatigue etching into his face as messy blonde hair fell over his hollow eyes.

"…!" Kimiko was taken aback by this rare sight.

Noir rarely removed his helmet during their travels, she could count on one hand how many times she saw his face without his helmet, if he removed his helmet then something was happening.

Now without his helmet, she could read the exhaustion and worry in Noir's face.

He gestured towards the bed, his eyes soft as he looked at her. Kimiko stayed rooted to her spot, confusion marring her features until she finally understood - he wanted her to rest and stay in the room.

She shook her head and glared at him, her eyes demanding to know what was going on.

Without a word, Noir reached out his hand to hers and gently pulled her towards the bed. He cast a furtive glance at the window as he did so.

"…" Kimiko's lips formed a silent protest, but she allowed herself to be led.

They sat together on the edge of the cheap hotel bed, the dull flicker of the television casting an eerie glow over them.

Noir looked deeply into Kimiko's eyes, his own filled with an intensity that made her heart race. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but no words came out. Noir frowned and shook his head at his failed attempt.

So, he instead used his hands to trace a single, silent phrase to her.

"We are being followed."

Her breath hitched in her throat, eyes quickly flicking towards the window. She was about to rise when he stopped her with a firm grip on her arm.

A wordless command.

"Stay."

Kimiko shook her head vigorously, her eyes sparkling with a fiery defiance as she moved her hands angrily through the air.

"Why?!"

Noir's gaze was steady as he held her wrists, stopping the angered flurry of her fingers. He moved his head to gesture at the window, his grip on her wrists still firm but not unkind. His mouth formed a thin line, and then he let go of her wrists.

He moved his fingers delicately in the air, each movement of his hand carrying a precise meaning.

"Dangerous. Ten, maybe more, not sure."

She pointed to herself, then to him, making it clear that she would not back down.

"Two of us! More dangerous!"

Noir gave a dry chuckle, the sound seeming foreign in the tense atmosphere of the room. The sight of a smile playing on his lips was equally strange to Kimiko, who had grown accustomed to his usually stoic demeanor.

He held up his hand, fingers spread wide as if to show her the inevitable gap between their pair and their impending foes.

"Yes, two of us," he signed back. "But you are tired, less dangerous, rest."

She shook her head again, her eyes burning.

"No."

Noir's gaze grew intense once more as he lifted his hands to sign again.

"Rest. I'll fight."

But Kimiko's eyes blazed in defiance.

"We fight, together."

Noir felt a strange mixture of admiration and frustration at the sight. Admiration for her tenacity and courage; frustration at her refusal to see reason.

With a sigh of resignation, he released one of her hands and ran a hand through his unkempt hair before shifting his gaze back towards the window and back at her determined eyes.

And yet Noir knew he couldn't risk it, he couldn't risk losing her.

He held her gaze for a moment longer before his features hardened; his decision was made.

Before she could react, he swiftly touched two fingers to the side of her neck - a swift pressure point technique he learned in case he ever needed to capture a target alive.

A wave of dizziness washed over Kimiko as her eyelids grew heavy. She tried to resist, but it was futile against Noir's expert maneuver. As she collapsed onto the bed, unconscious, Noir caught her easily and laid her down on the bed.

The room spun around him as he stood up, the adrenaline coursing through his veins giving him a temporary high.

He did not have much time before their stalkers decided to attack.

___________

…

…

…

"…So, are we just going to continue looking at them or are we going to get those fuckers or what!?"

The voice belonged to their lead stalker, a lanky man with spiky red hair and a nasty scar running across his cheek. He was floating in the air with his red cape billowing in the wind, glaring at the window where Noir and Kimiko had been mere moments before.

"No, we're going in soon," a second voice grumbled beside him. This one came from a much larger figure, dwarfing the redhead in size. He had the build of a mountain troll with almost as much gristle and scars. "So shut your annoying bitch ass up!"

"The fuck you say to me?! You piece of-"

"Enough with your childish bickering!" A woman's voice, cold as ice whispered into the air, her words sliding over each other like snakes. She was positioned a little further away, perched on top of an adjacent building, her dark eyes never straying from the window. "Just follow the plan and capture the target aliv-"

Crack!

Their bickering was put to a sudden stop as they heard something break through the still silence of the night. It was akin to a rumbling growl, growing louder and more beastly with each passing moment.

The three supes shared a confused glance before there was a ripping sound followed by a colossal 'whoosh'.

They turned just in time to see two enormous trees flying towards them.

The tree moved with terrifying speed, its leaves bristling against the moonlight and bark glistening with an unnatural sheen. Roots tangled together formed a deadly blunt projectile that moved with the force equivalent of a freight train.

With wide eyes and mouths agape, they could only gawk at the incoming sight. The two who were blessed with flight tried to move out of the way of the dangerous projectiles, but it was too late.

One of the trees crashed into the two airborne foes with a thunderous crash, sending them spiraling uncontrollably into the night sky. Their screams echoed through the silent night, cut short by the sickening thud as they hit a nearby mountain, nothing but messy red splat remained of them.

On top of the adjacent building, the woman barely managed to dodge the lethal projectile. She tumbled onto her side, quickly getting back on her feet, eyes wide with fear and shock. There was a hiss as she held out her hand and began to warn her other teammates of what had just happened.

"We've been spotted! Two of our flyers are dead! I need back up right no-!"

Suddenly, from behind her, there was a swift movement. She quickly turned around to face it but was caught off guard by a punch to her head.

A deafening crack splits through her skull, sending shards of bone and brain matter flying in all directions. The force of impact is so intense that darkness instantly consumes her vision as her head literally explodes into a bloody mess.

Black Noir stood where she had been before, his body already tensed and ready for the battle that was just beginning.

He searched through the body and found something that made his stomach drop.

A red vial gleamed dangerously through the night.

____________

Stan glared down at the information laid bare on his table.

It was a dossier of grim foreboding, detailing the unthinkable – a terrorist group crafting their own Compound V. His fingers traced over the screen as his mind whirred, soaking in the implications.

The report was riddled with scientific jargon, complex diagrams, and chemical equations that suggested the possibility of a day Stan Edgar had been fearing, the proliferation of their jealously guarded secret.

And all because of one rogue Supe that appeared from seemingly nowhere.

Kimiko.

Her unique physiology had allowed her body to produce a mutated form of Compound V, and it seemed that they found a way to harvest it.

A sense of trepidation gripped him as he read about the extraction process borne out of Kimiko's unique blood. They were using her like a blood bank, draining her life-giving fluid for their malicious purpose. It was disturbing, but at the same time fascinating how her seemingly inhuman capabilities had become the missing piece in the terrorist's chilling puzzle.

Black Noir had managed to send surveillance photos of grainy images showing a raven-haired Asian woman strapped to a glass tank with tubes connecting to her body to obscure machines humming with dark purpose as it drained her of her blood.

Stan swiped to a section filled with photos.

Crude labs hidden undercover in buildings, machinery jury-rigged from stolen equipment, and men in hazmat suits hunched over tubes filled with crimson fluid derived. There were vats filled with what he assumed to be raw Compound V extracted from the woman's blood, glowing an ominous red under the harsh lights.

The picture depicted a massive amount of blood stored away, enough to fill an entire lake, and that was just based on our assumption that it showed all the blood they had extracted.

How the woman managed to produce such an astonishing amount was beyond him. It seemed her powers were both a miracle and a curse, endlessly replenishing what was continually taken from her.

Stan's gaze shifted to another picture - this one showing Kimiko herself out of the tank but chained like an animal. Her eyes were hauntingly hollow with dark circles under them, her body frail and gaunt but still radiating an eerie strength.

He swiped the screen and landed on a video, this one now showing Kimiko's strained and painfilled face as she fought as if her life depended on it as they put a collar around her neck. Even without explanation, the video spoke volumes about the agony she was enduring as she desperately tried to tear off the collar to the point her hands were bleeding.

He sped up the video skipping three hours ahead and stopped after the three-hour mark.

Her pale skin looked ashen against the cruel shackles securing her to the glass tank, and her dark eyes, once filled with defiance, now held a distinct dullness, a testament to the torment she had been subjected to by the metal collar.

Stan took note of this.