Show Yourself, Coward

Raiden tightened her muscles as much as possible around Sky, dropping her wine glass in the dirt right beside him as Sky unleashed a scream so bloodcurdling that all of his friends waiting at the bottom of the mound for him to return started to move back to his level.

"I don't care that you're related to Red! I don't care that I promised to save her sister! I will murder you! ULTIMA!" Sky screamed out. His voice whimpered throughout his sentence, remembering every single ounce of Wrath from Red's death, all the way until now. Sky screamed, gritting his teeth, and biting his tongue to subdue himself. He bled profusely while the Gaze of Wrath strengthened even further than before.

It was no longer an understatement to believe that the Gaze of Wrath was the most mind-numbing infliction of tension left on Earth.

"We can't possibly let that slide, can we? I mean, Ultima killed an unarmed girl, regardless of if it was justified or not," Raiden commented, looking at Khalil.

"Absolutely not. There was no justification for killing that poor girl, let alone one of Sky's comrades. She may have purposefully done so just to upset him even further. With that in mind, it's safe to call Ultima our collective enemy now. Sky, if you no longer lash out at us, we will support each other in our time to punish Ultima for her actions," Khalil explained, holding out his hand toward Sky.

"Punish? That's a funny way of saying murder," Sky said. He wouldn't take Khalil's hand unless he admitted to Sky that Ultima would be dead once he got his hands on her. Khalil, of course, couldn't grant him his wish and stood his ground.

"Look, I know things are unclear right now. You're angry, as anybody would be, Sky, but we cannot treat violence with violence," Khalil told him. Sky scoffed, breaking out into hysterical laughter.

"Are you serious? Let's see you say the same thing if one of your family members died in front of you. Let's see you have this bullshit mentality that we all deserve to live. You said it yourselves, I'm an Asterio, a being of violence, so let me do what I'm good at, and let me reach Ultima right now. I can travel at speeds you can't comprehend, I could break her legs right now," Sky told Khalil.

Regardless of if the feat was possible, Sky found something holding him back. It was the fact that Ultima was Red's sister. Even if he clarified out loud that he would kill her for that reason alone, Red was holding him back. The memories he cherished so much were backfiring, leading Sky to watch Ultima disappear over the hill in the distance.

"Do you feel better now?"

"Shut the fuck up,"

Sky snapped at Netsu, looking down at Ellie's lifeless body involuntarily twitching. Sky dropped what Khalil said, and what he decided himself because the Wrath had started to drown his ideals.

Sky zoomed off as fast as he has ever moved before, appearing right in front of Ultima in front of him. He thought to himself how unclear his mind was, and how he only had one motive. Sky would slash her throat out and dance in her blood.

As Ultima reacted to Sky's appearance, he held out one hand, priming Ali's ability to manipulate gravity and change Ultima's trajectory. He planned to push her back into the ground so she would get stuck.

To Sky's surprise, he launched the attack, and Ultima became the first person to dodge it. Her body blurred against reality and she jumped over the attack. Sky thought that it would've taken up everything in his field of view that was affected, watching her swing her bo staff down.

Sky narrowly avoided the strike from the staff in Ultima's hands, watching it collide with the ground, and eject some sort of smoke from the side that hit the ground.

While ejecting smoke into the ground, the opposite side came swinging toward the back of Sky's head. If he was hit with the weapon, he could only predict unfavorable things.

Sky unhinged his shoulder with strands and pulled it back, launching his body to the right just far enough for the staff to swing past his head.

"Oh?" Ultima's interest had peaked. Sky mutilated his own body to dodge her strikes, and it became a common fact that Ultima could damage the Invincible Asterio

As soon as Ultima landed on the ground, Sky and her came to a standstill.

"This won't be the first White Stone I killed today," Ultima commented. Sky sat for a moment until the statement reached his mind.

"No White Stones besides me exist anymore. What are you lying about?" Sky asked her, holding his saber in an attacking position.

"Orion Danafall attacked me, you know? Slit my throat, that damned idiot. He never stood a chance against me," She explained. Sky was still stuck, thinking about how that was possible at all.