Corpse March

Chapter 4

“Heyyyy, Kuroko. Come here to give me one last scolding?”

Haru can’t keep the malice out of her voice.

“I figured as much.”

A girl as gaunt as a shadow puffs the last of her cigarette and throws the stub on the ground next to the dead Monarch. The brand name ‘Gilded Glow’ is emblazoned on the filter. It smolders there, giving off what little smoke it has left to offer. In stark contrast to Haru, whose school uniform looks like it could use a wash, a girl dressed in a neatly pressed suit stands on the opposite side of the hallway with her hand on the alarm. Her face is somehow an equal blend of severity and nonchalance. 

“This is in clear violation of our contract with the Monarchs, Haru.”

“Screw that.” 

Haru spits on the ground just to show how much her own loyalty is worth. 

“Then I suppose we buddies have no other choice than to settle this the hard way?”

“Don’t act like we were buddies. We were never buddies. We never even spoke.”

Haru snags KANNIBAL’s neck with her foot before kicking it into the air and back into her hands. 

“I’m referring to us as ‘buddies’ in the context of our agency’s buddy system. Are you certain you wish to follow through with this? Betraying one’s partner is considered a particularly heinous act. Not to mention that the Monarch School for the Gifted is a powerful enemy to have. Consider your next actions carefully. You could be tampering with forces that are far beyond either you or my control–”

“Shut up! I’ll do what I want, dammit! Tell me about the consequences after they come!”

“Very well.”

Haru slings her ax onto her shoulder, using the crook of her neck as a fulcrum while Kuroko lowers herself down into a proper battle stance. Her inwardly bent knee combined with the awkward-looking way she positions her arms make her resemble a blend between a limp puppet and a ninja. 

“Let’s go, Haru.”

“TAKE THIS!!!”

Haru extends her hand in front of her body and splays her fingers. 

“FLAME BOLT!” 

Haru incants the spell with little grace or finesse, and the resulting spell reflects that.  A snake-like tendril of fire emerges from her palm before darting forwards. It ricochets along thin air, weaving blinding zig-zags into its flight pattern as it closes in on Kuroko.  

“Garrotte.”

Kuroko incants with sureness backing her voice, like she’s leaning against a wall, idly counting the minutes. Tiny threads form in the air, they form a loose web around the tip of the bolt of fire before closing in. The lines go taut as they almost seem to strangle the line of light. The flame bolt freezes in place as it’s captured. In one instant, it struggles against its restraints but in the next, it’s already extinguished, its smoke seeping through the gaps in the net. 

“FLAME BOLT!!!”

In spite of all their sparring, Haru seems to not have learned a single thing. She casts the same spell, incanting even more loudly and with even less care this time. The resulting flame bolt is larger, wilder, and undeniably weaker. Such a spell doesn’t even warrant a spell to defend against. Kuroko merely focuses on the weakest part of the spell and pierces it with a solid punch. There’s the satisfying sound of a crunch as the core shatters and the flames all fizzle into smoke. The acrid smell stings her nose while the smoke stings her eyes. She waves her hand in front of her until enough smoke clears that she can see Haru again. 

“FLAAAAME BOOOLT!!!”

The final flame bolt barely even qualifies as a spell. And as such, Kuroko merely bats it aside, the flames exploding into smoke once again. For a spell that’s meant to raze, it’s pitiful that all that it accomplishes is making her eyes sting a little. But that’s when she realizes. Haru is many things. Crude, impulsive, and altogether stupid, but she can also be terribly clever at times. In the tiny span of time that the smoke screen existed, Haru smashes the glass box and cuts through the device imprisoning the vice president. As the newly freed girl massages her now freed wrists, her eyes almost seem to glow with sheer hatred as she stares right through Kuroko.

“Good luck getting that paycheck now, Kuroko!”

“Hmph.”

Haru’s mocking tone grates against all natural sensibilities. Especially since she’s bent down, pathetically trying to pry her ax from the magnetic grip of the device. Kuroko considers her options. She can run, and they would probably let her, but that’s the worst possible outcome. If she runs, so can they, and it’s her job to keep them inside of this facility. She needs to buy time for reinforcements to arrive. She can fight, but the vice president more than likely outclasses her in terms of raw fighting ability, never mind base magical capability. The correct choice here is naturally to just cut and run. But even then…

“To keep the Papilio and other Monarchian Property within the confines of the Campus. Those were the precise stipulations of my contract with the Monarchs.”

She pulls the lever on the alarm. A droning noise fills the halls of the campus. The Vice President only sneers at her. 

“So you’re choosing to fight? Instead of running away, you’re choosing to fight?”

“I can’t keep you within the confines of this Campus without fighting.”

“Then come at me however you like.”

Kuroko quietly mutters a spell under her breath. Too quietly. Rather than commanding the spell to burst forth, she only politely asks it to. The resulting spell is sluggish– lazy. The barrage of monomolecular wire that materializes is still blindingly fast, but its cutting power has undeniably diminished. She isn't sure if it's the spell quality or the extreme durability of the vice president's skin but all that the spell accomplishes is a mere scratch, barely even breaking the skin on her torso and leaving no mark at all on her arms and legs. 

“Excuse me.”

The vice president says it like it’s a command. Kuroko feels it before she sees it. A sudden gale force wind. There’s no time at all to think, all she knows is that she has to defend right now. She raises her arms, only to have them immediately broken by a vicious punch. It’s like they’re not even made of bone, they’re just sticks being stepped on. She feels pain in places she didn’t even know she could feel pain. But she remains steadfast. Planting her feet on the ground, she fights back against the force as much as she can. Somehow, she manages to shorten a flight distance of a full kilometer into a single step backwards. 

Before she can fully recover from the first punch, the second one comes. This one’s gunning for her head. She runs the numbers. If the last punch broke her bones like it was nothing, then this next one should be a killshot. She considers countering for a moment before she remembers that both of her arms are broken. 

The best she can do is dodge. She feels a nick open itself in her cheek where the punch grazed her. No, not even that. That’s just the extreme shearing forces coming from the air displaced by the punch. This girl’s sheer strength is insane. She keeps bobbing and weaving, around, through, and in between the punches. Each time, a little bit more of her skin and her jacket are scratched but that’s fine, she just keeps dodging. No matter how close she cuts it, she keeps on dodging. 

Then it happens. What she’s been waiting for, an opening. Rather than the lightning quick jabs she’s been throwing her way thus far, this one is comparable to a vicious straight. She overextended, if only by an inch or so. It’s not much but it’ll have to do. She ducks under the punch. Then, as her opponent’s pulling back, she bites down on her arm. Her teeth don’t even break the skin but that’s fine, all she needs is a solid grip. She yanks backwards, hard, nearly breaking her neck in the process. Once she manages to leverage even an inch of imbalance in her opponent, she goes for the jugular. She sweeps the vice president’s leg, and she goes down with a tremendous thud. It was a graceful maneuver, all things considered, so she follows it up with an disgraceful maneuver. She stomps down on her like she’s stepping on a bug. Acting on instinct, the vice president raises her arms to protect her face and chest. Luckily for Kuroko, her arms are where she was going to strike anyway. 

The first stomp breaks her block. The second stomp presses one of her arms against the floor. She feels the familiar creak of bones beginning to break. She tries to stomp down again but she hears the sound of something igniting.

“Flame bolt.”