Mysteries

Flames danced around the edges of the clouds, gently kissing the metallic surface of a mechanical behemoth that rose slowly above the misty canopy. The slightly dirty colour of the clouds and the reddish orange flames tinted the metal of the ship with a strange hue, not unlike that of a sparkling piece of aluminum.

On the deck of this large mechanical floater, one of the ships that carried people off to unknown destinations, stood a tall and imposing red skinned man, his eyes holding a ferocious look resembling that of a brute.

His disposition, so alien and unlike anything a civilized person could have, was still gazing down through a gap in the clouds towards the middle tower. Once again they had done one of their missions. 100,000 people this time; 30,000 of which were fresh children.

The man looked on down as the rain poured under the clouds, drenching the ground under.

However, without warning, he turned his head to the right, eyes narrowed as if searching for something.

The flames that danced at the edges of clouds stirred, as if beckoned by a call and reacted dynamically, exhibiting life like behaviour.

Looking in the same direction for some time, he shook his head, later walking back inside.

The flames in the clouds continued to dance for a few more moments before they began to dim out.

However, just then, one of the embers exploded into a blazing pyre.

Shaaaaaa!

The yellowish orange flame exploded into a fire of predominantly red colour, mixed in with a tinge of orange.

The flames that exploded continued to dance as if they had been possessed, slowly drawing closer to the mechanical floater. And as it did, a foot extended from the Flame.

Step~

The footstep, although not at all loud and even unaudible due to the plethora of other noises in the air, seemed to echo particularly more than everything else.

Following the footstep, a full man emerged from the flames, Winston Heath, wearing a full white mask on his face, one that let no feature go uncovered.

His shoes were slightly higher, making him appear taller along with filling shinsu through his clothes to make him appear more muscular than he was. And lastly, he wore tightly fitting robes, akin to a Magician and a pointed top hat.

He walked with a slight limp in his steps, appearing somewhat crooked in his gait and held a cane in his left hand, the sign of a fine gentleman.

His skin, from the bits that could be caught from his hands and exposed ears were of a darker tone, different from Winston's usual skin colour.

It was, in essence the perfect disguise Winston could come up with considering he had not yet become a faceless. However, even without that, his current disguise coupled with the ability to change his voice through effective muscular control of the Magician and the illusion abilities of the Fool and Error pathways, he could effortlessly hide his actual identity.

Not that it would matter, but Winston was never one to take too many risks.

The man with the crooked gait, Winston walked along, reaching the gate through which he was supposed to enter. Stopping just before it, he looked around himself.

So high up, reaching here was surely not something Winston could achieve solely through flaming jump. Instead, what he had accomplished was flight.

Compressing shinsu under oneself to make a platform was easy enough, but 99.9% of regulars are unable to fly before reaching the 90th floor, with only the prodigies in wave controllers being able to do so.

Why?

It was not a simple matter of shinsu control or how much strength one could attain through that. The thing was the flow one had to follow to achieve flight, fighting against said flow and being able to suspend oneself with the flow. It couldn't be achieved through simple shinsu sensing, as that was just observing the surroundings using shinsu.

One had to see the shinsu itself to move along with it or fight against it. Only at the higher floors would regulars understand the flow of shinsu, though still not able to see it.

But what about Winston, who could skip all that with his spirit vision? He could of course, achieve flight!

Though the rain and other factors made it somewhat difficult to maneuver, that could be remedied by making a platform to stand on, and making the said platform move through the air instead.

And so, he had simply flew up to the clouds and used the Flaming Jump to approach the ship in one fell swoop.

Efficiency at its peak!

Naturally, finding the ship itself wasn't the tricky part due to spirit rod dowsing. The tricky part was actually making his way onto the middle tower. There sceneries on the way were... strange to say the least.

Without any more delay, Winston passed right through the metallic door. The door pathway was indeed great for sneaking into places.

As he did so, a super structure of metal pathways, containers and rooms unfolded before his eyes. It was something he had already seen through spirit vision and dream divination, yet seeing it here made no less of an impression.

He stopped for a moment, his figure turning illusory and disappearing into the air. Now invisible, he looked around.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands of containers were laying about on the ground and floating high up in the air, all of them filled with people and children as he could see.

Some of the containers held nothing but suspendium and were bound to the ground using complex chain networks.

And amid all of these, were workers. Lots and lots and lots and lots of workers. Most of them were humanoid, but many were not, appearing increasingly alien when compared to anything Winston had ever seen.

Winston didn't bother with any of that and simply moved forward through the walkways.

His goal?

Well...

~~~

Samuel suddenly perked up, turning his head down and smiling as he sat atop the floating ship.

"It has begun." He softly muttered to himself.

"What are you waiting for then?" A voice came from under his coat.

Samuel chuckled and held down his top hat as he stood up, his tailcoat fluttering wildly in the wind.

"I suppose it's about time for me as well."

~~~

Winston, under the guise of invisibility walked through the walkways, exploring the entire ship bit by bit. The entire ship was of a size comparable to 30 football fields stacked end to end lengthwise and 10 football fields width wise. Not to mention the plethora of floors it held. It was a gigantic labyrinth of twisting metal paths and never ending workers and steam pipes to the sides. The gravity too was weird in the ship. Some walkways, while mostly horizontal steeped straight up vertically; and the gravity followed suit, changing as per the needs of the road. The turns on the walkways were too eerie to make sense of. It was a random mesh of twisting straight paths, some turning at every 5 meters, while the other continued on the entire length of the ship. Strangely enough, none of the paths ever intersected each other save for the ones that hugged the walls and the steam pipes.

Steam pipes were also many, lined along the lines of the tracks and under them.

As for why they were specifically steam pipes, Winston wasn't sure. He theorized the structure to be running predominantly on liquid shinsu, which would also explain the reason the steam could be ejected out to cover the ship while it flew.

Maneuvering around the workers would prove to be difficult if he wasn't so agile due to the clown and magician potions. Of course, the strange structure helped a lot in movement, however paradoxical that may sound.

Walking around, he kept his spirit vision active, constantly observing everything. The people in the containers all expressed a collective emotion.

Sadness, fear and confusion. There were some that displayed more, but these were the most dominant. As for the workers, the only real emotion he could detect from them was an overwhelming desire to work. Just that. Complete the work as fast as possible, a desire that was fueled by fear.

What could make them have such fear, Winston understood it. It was the ranker, the red skinned brute that controlled flames.

As he walked, he came across the various engine rooms of the ship. Something he took the time to observe quite clearly.

However, after 3 hours of scouting out the ship and remembering all the spots where the people and the suspendium was being kept, he came across the room of the red skinned ranker.

Truthfully, speaking, Winston had initially thought he would come across more rankers, seeing how the news of the ship was leaked and there was supposedly threat from the ruling classes of the tower. However, that thought was quickly shaken up into oblivion. Why?

It was the large red symbol of three eyes in a triangular formation embossed onto the metal walls. Jahad's crest.

At that moment, Winston had been made well aware that this was not, in fact, a FUG operation. It was carried out by Jahad's own forces.

Winston silently watched the blood red crest on the wall and started walking away, not before taking another look at the room the ranker had occupied.

There were a variety of emotions he could see, but nothing particularly pointed itself out to him.

Then, just as he was about to walk off; he suddenly stopped.

Something's... wrong. His eyes narrowed dangerously as he looked around himself, feeling a threatening glare suddenly lock onto him. It was not to be said where the glare came from, but he could feel hostility suffusing out into the surroundings.

His intuition was truly overpowered.

Just as he was racking his brain, his hair suddenly stood on edge and his eyes shrank into needles as a vision suddenly overwhelmed his senses.

He saw himself, standing with his crooked gait enveloped by orange flames that sprouted out from behind him.

Then...

Shaaaaa!

Winston jumped, a mountain of fire erupting behind him.

Boom!

Grrrrr!

An explosion sounded, the ship trembled and the workers all shook on their feet.

Winston landed onto the ground and looked back at the fire. There was a dancing silhouette in the flames, one that looked roughly humanoid.

Then, from the heated air, walked out the red skinned ranker, his four arms appearing particularly threatening; one of which held a black coloured hook.

The illusion around Winston slowly withered away, leaving him visible.

"Too scared to barge right in, wasn't ya?!"

"How did you know?" Winston asked, his voice unusually hoarse and deep.

The red skinned man scowled and clicked his tongue.

"Ye think of me as some idiot?" The ranker yelled. And with that, his skin lit up with orange red flames, spreading out in the blink of an eye!

Shaaaaa!

Whooosh!

Snap!

As the flames approached him, Winston snapped his fingers with a crisp sound, disappearing from his place by submerging within the fire.

The ranker's eyes widened a bit as he watched Winston disappear into the flames, but then, his gaze hardened unusually.

With the hook in his hand, he violently swung behind him where lay still a last few pyres of fire.

And from those same flames arose Winston!

As Winston appeared out of the flames, his body bent at an impossible degree, something that would have torn his muscles and deeply injured all his joints, tearing his tendons and ligaments aside. His back bent inwards as he leaned back while mid air, narrowly dodging the attack aimed right at his torso. A Magician's ability to soften bones only aided the impossible flexibility they had.

Booom!

The attack cut through a large arc behind him, smashing right through the metallic hull of the ship and making a gigantic gash.

Winston looked behind him in some foreboding.

Then, he slowly turned towards the ranker.

"You's are some'at useful. Say what. Why don't ye work for me?" The red brute smiled with his crooked teeth, making Winston almost frown. Almost.

From beneath his mask came his deep and hoarse chuckle as he spoke.

"Why do you think I sneaked in here? It certainly wasn't to join your little game of pass the goods. And now that I've figured out this operation is run by Jahad, I doubt you'll simply let me go." He said. Though, he still wasn't completely convinced of the ship being Jahad's property. FUG or any other group could easily just emboss the symbol onto the ship for framing someone else. So, although he was 98% sure, he didn't eliminate the possibility of the ship belonging to some other organisation.

The red brute clicked his tongue in annoyance.

"Aw man." Then, his eyes suddenly seemed to glow with a baleful glow, appearing increasingly eerie in the brightly lit room covered partially with flames. "Looks like I'll just 'ave ta kill ya!"

And along came his maniacal smile.

~~~

A/N: Well that's somethin I guess. Cheers~

Throw some stones.