147

 

147.  Behind the Smoking Barrel

 

Memories gushed into Vance's mind as he stared at Cliff Walden.

 

He could remember all the times they'd argued with each other and fumbled at acting like they'd gotten over it later. He could remember the first time he met Cliff, in that dusty bed in the Land's End sheriff's department, and all the times he'd wondered what happened to him after the tournament. The tall, blond gunman turned his stubbled chin to the side and glanced down with his deep brown eyes, and Vance felt another wistful wave rush over him. It was more powerful than suddenly running into a friend again. It felt more like...

 

...family?

 

"Glad to see you're alright." Cliff looked paler than before, but that familiar warmth still crested his face. "What say we save the catching up for later?"

 

"What the hell just happened?!" Takeda Kanryusai's voice blared through a loudspeaker behind the robot's head. "The Demolysm blast disappeared!"

 

"Oh, it didn't disappear." A wry smile spread on Cliff's face as he patted his left arm with the edge of his shotgun. "I've got it all locked safely away in here."

 

"Who are you?!" Vermilion Red's voice boomed out from the cockpit. "Another bedfellow to evil?!"

"I'm Cliff Walden. Vice-Captain of the 4^th Division of the Guild of Dimensional Knights."

 

"The Guild of Dimensional Knights?" Cerulean Blue scoffed. "He works for the Church! Kill him! Kill him with fire!"

 

"Cliff!" Vance said. "It's no use trying to reason with them. They aren't human!"

 

"Oh, I know," Cliff replied. "The artificial nature of their psynergy is so obvious."

 

"Obvious?" Vance frowned. "How obvious?"

 

"It's strong, alright," Cliff continued. "But that's all it is. Pure brute force...uncontrolled, void of nuance...and easy to utilize."

 

Metal groaned as the fused robot swung an arm across the ground. Armored with the yellow blocks of the Gorgorotha, the Radisraker's blue whips slid across the factory ruins, kicking up dust and blowing debris toward Cliff.

 

"Artificial?! We'll show you artificial!" Aureolin Yellow screamed.

 

Cliff stood his ground, raised his free arm and blocked the giant-sized fist. His impact sent pockets of excess force ripping through the air, and a struggle between rainbow and tan psynergy began.

 

"How?!" Takeda screeched from his perch. "With all the rangers' and robots' psynergy auras combined, they're technically SS class! How could you possibly take such a direct hit and then block us again?!"

 

"Hear that, Vance?" Cliff kept his arm firm as he spoke calmly. "They think I actually let myself get hit by that uncontrolled mess."

 

"You absorbed it," Vance ventured. "With your gun, right?"

 

Cliff nodded with a smile and held up the dulled metal shotgun. "It can only hold a certain amount of psynergy, Vance, but you know what it's really good at?"

Cliff aimed the shotgun sideways and fired.

 

"Spitting that psynergy back out."

 

Vance watched the psychic beam slice straight through layers of æsotech, psynergy, and circuitry, leaving the Demolysm Robo's right arm a gangled mess, and realized something.

 

This isn't normal psynergy. The core of his beam is the same tan psynergy I've always known... But it's coated in another layer of metapsynergy. Did he just repurpose everything he absorbed in the blink of an eye?!

 

"He cut right through the remote shields!" Cerulean Blue screamed. "Turn on the reserve shields!"

 

Nodes all over the robots churned to life, adding more artificial psynergy to the rainbow cloud surrounding the machine.

 

"Mixam and I took the technology from the gun he made for me years ago and created something new," Cliff said. "Something far stronger."

 

"Open fire!" Vermilion Red commanded. "All stations go!"

 

The robot unleashed enough blasts to completely blot out the horizon, smothering Vance and Cliff with pure energy. It was the epitome of exorbitance, and they were trapped below it all.

 

As lasers showered out from the arms, head, and glowing pink chest of the robot, it steamrolled forward to finish off its prey. Cliff let his gun dangle down from his wrist, slid his right arm over and up his left, and scrunched up the sleeve of his duster.

 

"For years, I've carried my sin around with me...but now, I've finally found retribution."

 

The white color of Cliff's left arm gleamed in a way that no human flesh ever could. Alabaster white, it pointed up toward the sky with a curled fist. There was not a single opening, cord, or node visible on the sleek appendage, but it emanated with power. With Cliff's metapsynergy focused and compressed, his fleshless fist created a vertical beam of psynergy that kept every blast of machine psynergy from reaching them.

 

"Acceptance and forgiveness," Cliff continued, "that's the path to retribution. When I was younger, I thought forgiveness was only a fantasy – that each sin you committed was a chain that bound you for the rest of your life, weighing you down more and more the older you got."

 

Rainbow lasers swirled downwards into Cliff's argent arm, as if flushed down an imaginary drain. Once again, a silence stunned the surroundings, and Cliff slowly angled his fist toward the Demolysm Robo's head.

 

"Everyone sins," Cliff went on. "It's a cycle. And in order to truly forgive yourself..."

 

Cliff's left hand popped down from his wrist, revealing a glowing barrel. In the next moment, it erupted with a flood of psynergy that contained both the power from the Demolysm's initial blast and the robot's most recent volley, but was only one fourth of the size.

 

"...you need to accept, and let go."

 

After Cliff's robotic arm expelled the blast, he fired a rapid salvo of psynergy orbs with precise aim, cracking through the robot's shields before they had the chance to block anything.

 

Compared to Cliff Walden's metapsynergy, which was padded and energized with two helpings of absorbed psynergy, the robot's æsotech, metal, and circuits were helpless. They couldn't generate enough power needed to block the blow in the time it took to reach them, and so they were demolished.

 

"You fell for the same trick twice." Cliff continued to blow the massive target into chunks. "Shame on you."

 

Within seconds, the treads at the bottom of the robot had been shot to ribbons. Unable to support the weight of the rest of the amalgamation, the tank base of the Dreadknought collapsed, and a shattering crash echoed through the skeleton of a factory. Cliff's initial blast had already dropped the top half of the machine in its own smoking remains, leaving only the glowing pink orb of the Laconizoid visible among the smoldering metal.

 

Cliff placed his shotgun under his left arm, lined up both barrels and released two corkscrew streams of brilliant tan psynergy which spiraled into one as they pierced the core of the robot. The machine of destruction hunched over with an awful churn, struggling to support its own gorged remains.

 

"Everyone! Hang on!" Shocking Pink called from within the center, as the innards of her robotic beast poured out from the gaping hole left by Cliff's last attack. "Commander Takeda said we had a 100% chance of victory!"

 

"Pink is right!" Cerulean Blue joined in. "Commander, where are you?!"

 

"Commander?" Aureolin Yellow echoed.

 

"He's gone!" Vermilion Red shouted. "His Versilipod left its docking point!"

"Commander..." Myrtle Green wheezed from the bottom of the pile. "He... abandoned us?"

 

"Maybe this... really is..." Vermilion Red continued in a dramatic voice. "The end..."

 

"Wait just a moment!" A black spot in the sky called out. "All is not lost, my compatriots!"

Gasps sounded from within the half-crumpled robot as a man dressed in a black spandex jumpsuit with long platinum blond hair soared down toward the wreckage. "'Tis I..."

 

"Obsidian!" Vermilion Red cheered. "The masked crusader who goes only where the wind calls him, who obeys no one save for his own inner sense of justice: Obsidian Black!"

 

"Indeed!" Obsidian pulled out a bladed flute from his back and began twirling it around in mid-air. "And I have come to save–"

 

Obsidian Black's words cut off as his body plummeted into a pile of metal. A considerable dent had been placed in the back of his head by a portal-assisted punch from Vance, which was enough to send the android crashing into the wasted heap of the Demolysm Robo.       

 

Cliff let out a satisfied sigh and turned to Vance. "Nice. Glad to see I'm not the only one who's been training."

 

Vance crossed his arms casually. "I could have taken care of them. Just didn't want to ruin your entrance."

 

Cliff rolled his left sleeve down, looked his friend deep in the eyes, and let out a warm laugh. "It's good to see you, Vance."

 

"It's good to see you too, Cliff." Vance smiled. "And...thanks."

 

"You're welcome." Cliff let out a sigh. "I'd just gotten into the city when I felt your aura surge from far away – I just instantly knew it was yours, so I followed it here. Are you with Captain Azuka and the others?"

 

"Captain Azuka?" Vance furrowed his brow. "The other Knights are here?"

 

"You didn't know?" Cliff asked. "What are you doing here then?"

 

"I came here to destroy this place," Vance answered. "Grayson's using this dimension to create these brainwashing machines. He's trying to take over Earth with them."

 

"Grayson's involved with this?" Cliff motioned to the ruins of the factory. "Damn, I had no idea. I just knew that Captain Azuka brought the rest of the Guild here to escape the Church, so meeting up with them was my first priority after I finished my training."

 

"Training?" Vance asked. "With who?"

 

Cliff flexed his enhanced arm. "Mixam. Come back to town, and I'll introduce you. He's the one who gave me this new arm."

 

"Wait, hold on a second," Vance said. "You brought someone else with you?"

 

"Yeah, we both just got here," Cliff answered. "He uh, doesn't like to fight, though, so I just had him wait back in the city."

 

"Perfect," Vance said. "Can you call him or something?"

"Well, sure." Cliff tapped his bicep. "Why?"

 

"I came here with some others, fleeing Grayson," Vance continued. "Cliff, I can't explain it, but he's insanely powerful. He can change reality, he can regenerate...it doesn't make any sense. I escaped and stuck everyone in regenerators in the palace back there, then came here to destroy this factory. Do you think you could ask Mixam to go check up on them while we finish up here?"

 

"The palace? Sure," Cliff answered. "Is Eden alright? Has she been hurt?"

 

Eden...

 

The minute the name fell into Vance's ears, his train of thought was utterly derailed, and panic flooded his mind. Eden...what am I going to tell him?

 

"Eden..." Vance mouthed back shakily.

 

Cliff raised an eyebrow, and for the first time, his lips curled down into a dark

 

*************

 

frown painted Ito Kashitaro's face as he trudged across the long bridge that led to his private quarters in the southeastern wing of the Shieikan. Two low-ranking guards who kept watch over his wife and servants nervously called out to him, but he ignored them and shoved open the paper screen door with a grunt.

 

This stray tower had been erected long ago under the orders of Hijikata Toshizo so that he could use it to exile problematic entities as he pleased – and Ito was undoubtedly at the top of that list. 8^th Division Captain Todo Heisuke was the one who had first introduced Ito, his swordsmanship mentor, to Kondo shortly after the creation of the Shinsengumi. The warm-hearted commander had taken a liking to the clever, affluent, and powerful man, while Hijikata had immediately despised him.

 

"Kashitaro!" Ito's wife Ume bowed in fearful reverence as soon as she saw him enter the residence. She was the daughter of his own swordsmanship teacher, and he had taken her as his wife ten long years ago. "How was your trip to–"

 

"Out of my way, hag!" Ito growled, then kicked the frail woman to the side and stomped into his personal chamber. Ume remained frozen on the ground for a moment, and the wrinkles in her grimace tensed as she struggled not to show any evidence of pain.

 

"Kondo...Kondo..." Ito mumbled the name of his commander in a haze of rage. "I have to contact him first, before Hijikata or any other of those buffoons has a chance to find out what conspired down there. Goddamn Koga, that selfish fool! I can't believe he made me spend so much time in that filthy teahouse!"

 

Ito angrily palmed a metal panel on the wall, activating the inner-wired communications system that had been installed throughout the stronghold.

 

"Kondo...Kondo..." Ito repeated. "Pick up, damn you!"

 

After some time, Ume  returned, carrying a tortoiseshell tray with two sculpted cups of hot tea. "I brought you some tea, dear..."

 

"Shut up and leave me alone, you stupid bitch. Can't you see I'm busy?!" Ito screamed, then spun around and swung his arm up to shoo her away.

 

Ume let out a shriek as Ito's hand slapped the tray and splashed scolding hot tea all over her skin and kimono. Biting her lip, she quickly mopped up the spilled tea with her flower-embroidered kimono, making sure to keep her face down. Ito had once told her she was beautiful and promised to love no one but her, but that had been long before they were married.

 

"Ito?" Kondo's face suddenly flashed on screen. The Shinsengumi commander's topknot looked a bit off-center, as if he had hastily fixed it back into position. "What's the matter?"

 

"I'm declaring a manhunt!" Ito seethed. "A foreign devil attacked me and fled this morning in the town square. He is to be found before the sun goes down, and must be shown no mercy!"

 

"I'll put Yamanami on it at once," Kondo said sternly. "But it seems as if they've gotten inside our walls as well, Ito! I'm on my way to some of them right now – they're in our infirmary!"

 

"What?" Ito gasped, his fury only momentarily ceasing due to his surprise. "But how can that be? Only Sasuke and his associates have access to the portals within the Shieikan!"

 

"We'll have to get to the bottom of it later," Kondo huffed, then flashed Ito a confident smile. "Don't worry! If anything I'm only concerned that they'll be a bore, considering the firepower we're packing!"

 

"Kondo, you must listen to me," Ito said sternly. "If the man in the square was any indication, these foreigners are not to be trifled with. They–"

 

"Well, all the better, then!" Kondo guffawed. "I've been aching for a good fight!"

Next: Triggered Monsters