Track 01

A man with streaked blond-brown hair braided back into a dual-coloured ponytail stood with his sword and his snarl over the lives of countless frightened civilians. An outer ring of lackeys stood with him, carrying blank expressions and wooden bows planked across their thighs. We were in the middle of a terrorist attack. And where was I?

Kneeled smack dab in the front row, forced into submission with the other poor, helpless individuals, on the more dangerous end of the group huddle. And why was I here?

Job hunting. Although, I seem to have screwed up somewhere along the line, because I was the one being hunted.

Whimpering and muffled sobbing sounds harmonized from behind; an entire flock of distraught people. Their fright was infectious. Whether that fear had sapped into my gaze or not, I did not know, I only remember feeling an intense blaze of hatred directed at the selfish man who coordinated the attack. Pace after pace after pace, I watched him march around in a little U that passed over my turf more often than others.

I remember simmering in my own rage with each clacking step. The slightest droplet of provocation could have set me off and flying out of this pan of prey and into the fight of my life. A few more seconds or a few more paces might have made me lose my cool and commit to an idea stupid enough to threaten my own life along with the rest behind me. A few more childish complaints from his voice on his headset and I’d be the one to cause the first death, because sitting here? Doing nothing. While they did whatever the hell they felt like! Would be the end of me.

“Is this some kind of joke?” the man had clicked a button infused into his belt and was now speaking on a headset banded over his scalp. “What did I propose to you officers? The release of my comrades, right? And I told you I’d know if you were screwing me over, right?”

Garbage. This man was a waste of a human being.

“My associate doesn’t seem too happy with what you so foolishly claim, from what I heard, only one of the eight prisoners in that list I sent you, were set free. I need all eight if you want even one of these 50-or-so to survive, understand? I’ll give you five more minutes.”

Despicable.

The man clicked his belt and swung his sword over to rest on his shoulder. This meant he was addressing us now.

“Listen up dimwits, your corrupt officers don’t seem to care about you enough to follow simple instructions so because of this, some of you will have to start dying in a few minutes.” hysteria exploded through the whimpering and the sobbing all around me, but I remained silent. These scum didn’t deserve my tears or the sight of my fear. Such an action would only receive satisfied smirks. Barbarians like these didn’t deserve the feeling of victory.

I knew what they were doing was with reason, I knew the people they were trying to free were wrongfully accused, I knew how corrupt our society was, but despite that… Despite the corruption, and the excuses and the pain and the motives, I could never forgive anyone – good or bad – who involved the innocent. I wasn’t a cop, justice, injustice, the two had no meaning to me, I honestly couldn’t care less whether the heroes or the villains came out on top, what I did care about was watching a human disregard another, specifically those who had no part in the conflict to begin with.

If our roles were reversed and I was up there holding the sword, fighting for what I believe to be right, there would never be a crowd of lives on the line. There would be me, my voluntary crew, and my enemy.

“You have a fierce look in your eye there, little lady. Are you trying to be the first to go?”

I had already been leaning against the brink of my patience, and he decided to isolate me then. My thoughts had already been taking me to levels of disgusted rage I didn’t even know I had and he chose now to segregate me.

His filthy hand held tightly on my cheek, and the silver light of a blade gleamed along the side of my neck and through my hazel hair.

“If you knew anything at all about the corruption of your government you couldn’t look at me like that.” He smirked the words in a seductive manor, trying to persuade me into seeing his views with some sort of psychotic dark humor.

If I knew, my butt! I do know, I thought. I’m not so ignorant as to not notice the public lies of our media. And yet I’m still glaring at you.

He was the one who didn’t understand; if I knew how to wield a sword, or a dagger, or a claymore, or a weapon of any kind, that’s the only way this situation would’ve changed. I would have taken the chance he gifted and stolen the blade he so foolishly threatened me with, bloodying my hands just to get it in my grasp and use it against him. I thought the whole scene out thoroughly in my mind; from yanking it out of his arms to DJ-ing the blade around until it met its true target. A simple and graceful finish. An elegant cadence, or better yet, a rondo; with blood oozing out of his chest, and a swift finale to my fury. The only flaw in my plan lay in his lackeys: They may or may not kill me before and/or after I get the job done. Oh yeah, and without decent knowledge on weaponry, the chances of someone like me pulling off an ideal stunt like that , were slim.

Nevertheless, the longer I was stuck in his clutches, being tilted from left to right as he tried to figure out if I was worth violating, the more I considered this potential death over another.

But mere seconds before I could make the biggest mistake of my life, a boy walked into the drama from the washroom’s turn-in hallway. He wore an opened light jacket that was short sleeved and black. Inside this was a striped red and black t-shirt that matched the wrist-warmers at both sides. His hair was a messy clump of unholy black tufts, padded down by a pair of vibrant-coloured headphones – which clearly took away all his perceptions of danger.

How did he manage to walk in here so casually? So devoid of worry? What kind of music could distract a person enough not to notice a terrorist demonstration? [author’s response: the best kind]

Slowly, in the utmost awkward silence, everyone’s gaze was being drawn in by his miraculous ignorance while he strolled on blindly towards the main villain, towards everyone’s biggest threat, and towards me. Eyes locked to the cinematic screen in his palm, thumb scrolling down his playlist of doom.

I narrowed my eyes at him and briefly wondered who here was the bigger idiot, this oblivious teenage kid, or the foe in front of me, who now lost interest in my cheeks.

“Hey!” shouted the terrorist. He swung his blade through my hair and back to his shoulder and met the boy halfway.

Using some sixth sense headphone-users always seemed to have, the boy started making a detour around the deadly road block without so much as a glance ahead. The terrorist’s blade swung down with rapid precision and cut off the kid’s line of sight to his phone. With this he glanced up, looking sleepy and uncaring – and like an even stupider pedestrian than I thought, if I might add.

“Sorry kid, but doesn’t seem like today’s your lucky day, you just walked straight into a hijacking. Now if you were smart, you would’ve stayed in that washroom and pissed your pants where it was socially acceptable.”

It didn’t seem like our predator fully understood how headphones worked, but our little comic relief, phone-possessed, fool depicted a clear description by tilting his head in confusion. By the looks of it, he must not have heard a single word of the ridicule-filled threat. Without realizing it, this boy just provoked an armed terrorist. Within me, grew a fear for his life stronger than my own.

The predator before him closed his eyes and gave a tight, pissed smile.

The boy raised a headphone off his bushy hair, unaffected by the shiny silver death-threat pointed his way, then waited for God knows what. A peaceful explanation? I don’t know, maybe the side of his brain carrying common sense was still lost somewhere in the music world.

It took five seconds. The pissed smile on the terrorist’s face remained stagnant, but only while his sword flew up. On its instant strike down, his expression changed to a cold scowl. Clothes, skin, and blood was ripped away from the boy’s body along with his consciousness. The impact dragged him backwards, down, down, down, and thud! Five seconds done. Time streamed on like normal after the first life was lost.

Screams of horror rang emptily through my eardrums, not nearly as deafening as the thud of his body hitting the floor, or the thud of my heart against my chest, or the echoes of the two. If I thought the mob was hysterical before, they were a psychotic mess now. The noises they made circled just outside the sound cloud of death, swerving my limbs into motion. I stood up with the grace of a zombie. My eyes were shaking as if trying to focus on something that wasn’t there. I wasn’t too sure, but I think some arrowheads were pointed at me by a few of the archers in the room. That would explain the red laser dots along my arms and upper body.

“This/ This/ This is what happens/happens, when people/when people upse-/upset/ upset me/ me/ me.”

That’s how I heard the murderer’s voice now; a broken recording of a faraway echo, or as if the needle of a phonograph could only find the shattered shards of his voice. This was also the condition of my better judgement now; broken and faraway.

“Your/ your/ your distraught / rot / rot / is only a frag- / frag- / fragment / -ment / -ment / of what we / we / felt / felt / felt for our f- / fren / friends / false / false / false / convictions / -tions”

What did that boy have to do with any of this? What was the meaning of his death? Why did he have to die for their dumb cause? Why a bystander? Why kill him? Why death. Why him?

Still infatuated by his own broken speech, the terrorist was getting closer to me again. No, wait, I think . . . I was the one approaching him this time. “Your / your gov- / government / -ment / is messed up / up / up / No / no / your society-”

Our society doesn’t need the likes of you. I thought. My hand raised, drifting closer to the view I had on his face. An arrow shot past my eyes from the side. He glanced in my direction now, smirking, and still speeching. I continued my trudge towards him. Another arrow zoomed by, this time grazing my arm. I froze. Something like fear tickled my numb limbs. He chuckled from a misunderstanding: “Afraid of a little pain, are we?” It wasn’t the pain of the arrow that caused my freeze up. I couldn’t care less about that. It was… it was-

“AAAAAAGGGGGHHH” the chuckle quickly broke into a bloodcurdling cry of pain as a sword pierced through his side. The murderer stumbled away… but, could he . . . still be considered a murderer anymore? The boy he supposedly killed was the same one who stabbed him through the waist. What was going on? How was he alive?

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I watched him die. No one could’ve survived that unless there was a hospital standing two feet over.

As the terrorist stumbled away, I was given a clear view of the messy haired boy. His previously deadened gaze now filled with life and determination, swirling with the same colours printed on his headphones. His striped shirt was ripped diagonally as he was cut, but the blood that was once spraying from his wound was gone, not a scar remained.

The cellphone, once in his hand, was replaced with a hilt to a long single-edged blade. The item itself seemed alive, glowing in sequence with all the colours in his eyes and headphone rims; red, then purple, then blue on a sleek black. The red cord, once plugged into his cell, was now a tail for his sword.

He was… a sell-soul!?

I’ve only heard rumors about them; crazy psychopaths who sold half their souls for inhuman capabilities. I wrote them off as myths; publicity stunts staged by the media, but there was no better explanation for this boy’s abilities. How else would one explain the glow in his eyes, the conversion of his weapon, or the full death-to-life self-revival? Normal people didn’t get up after being slashed across the chest with a sharp and deadly stabbing tool. Normal people didn’t unblinkingly face a team of terrorists on a moment’s notice.

I watched the bloody scene in a stunned daze. Unable to retreat back down to the crowd, I remained stagnant and standing as a simple target.

Without connecting his gaze with my own, I suppose he figured out I needed protecting because he positioned himself in front of me and the man he just stabbed. His stripped shirt remained ripped and painted in fresh blood. Yet his wound was missing and his weapon stood ready.

Although I’ve seen this boy come back to life once already, I didn’t want to see him die again, especially not after saving my life.

“You’ll pay for that, boy.” The man’s threat was strained by his own pain and weightened by a newly discovered rage. His intimidation-level spiked. Now, there was no telling what he’d do, and that made him a bigger hazard to every one of us. The sword he kept slinging over his shoulder came across as much more terrorizing being dragged against the floor with blood from his own wound streaking down its gleam. All the marksmen in the room steadied their arrows on the headphone user. The rebel leader held up a sword-held stop-hand for his fellow lackeys. This clearly gestured for a halt, but I flinched in anticipation for the various arrowheads I expected to see throughout our flesh.

Even hunched over in pain, this man was still larger in size than the headphone-user. However, the boy in front stood unwavering.

Was he truly unafraid? Or did he simply not hear the threat again? Regardless, his lack of fear or response was taken as a taunt by the ponytailed man and he dashed towards us for a fury-induced attack. The boy easily redirected the assault and made for an attack of his own.

He took a deeper stance downwards and yanked his blade back, causing the red wire to ripple in suit. It was close enough that I could touch it if I really wanted to. Of course, I had no intention of doing so. I watched his thumb swipe upwards along the fabric of the hilt. Beneath the surface, a faint glow of a screen lit up and a triangular bar rose from green to yellow, to orange, and an instant later, his weapon drove horizontally across our enemy’s chest. Not long after, it swooped back on a diagonal upwards slant, then again twice more at different angles, creating an asterisk of wounds on the man’s torso.

Stronger screams sounded from the crowd and then I noticed a bit too late of the arrows shot out from every direction towards us as the terrorist stumbled a safer distance away. The boy shot his gaze at me with a speed as deadlier than the arrows and next thing I knew, I was being tripped by him – the back of his ankle against my own. As I fell I watched him toss the blade with his right hand, catch the cord with his left, and grasp tightly at one of the huge earbuds on the side of his head. Wielding the sword like a long mace he swung towards the arrows and let out a gentle yell. My head hit the floor and I shut my eyes and hugged my head in pain, turning to the side and curling up into a ball. I heard clatters of fallen arrows around me and then rumbling of many feet.

The fall gave me an instant headache. The sounds of screams and footsteps and ringing brain damage, as well as metal against floor, Did. Not. Help. Despite this, I fought to open my eyes. I wish I didn’t.

At first, I only saw blurs of people’s feet running in every which direction. Then I noticed a broken arrow, and another, and another, and another. I tried grabbing one to verify if they were all real. Someone stepped on my hair. I grabbed that instead and tried to get up so I’d have less resemblance to that of a carpet to these idiots.

A cough directed my attention to the one right in front of me. The one I opened my eyes for. He was on all fours, breathing heavily. Blood was on the floor in front of him and… and…

“Can you…pull these out for me? …please.” He looked up at me, the swirl in his eyes were no more and they shook as if trying to find something to focus on, like my face for example. Blood dripped from his mouth to the splat on the floor. The sell-soul sword on the floor reverted back to being a phone before my very eyes.

“I can’t… heal- myself- if it’s still… inside.”

My jaw shook. I gawked at the three arrows sticking out of his back with complete, forever scarring fright. It was common knowledge never to remove an arrowhead from a wound without proper medical treatment, but it would probably go against common sense to question a guy could come back to life. I wasn’t about to disobey him, he saved my life without a second thought mere seconds ago – or minutes perhaps, not too sure what concussions did to your sense of time. I swallowed my fear and put a supportive hand around his chest then a trembling hand around one of the arrows jutting from his back.

“I’m sorry.” My voice cracked as I looked away and pulled one out as hard as I could. Unsuccessfully ignoring his cries, I tossed the arrow away and quickly fumbled to find the next one, still refusing to look. The second came out, and his cry was laced with far more pain than the last. My hand reached the final one, but I had to stop, he wasn’t even holding himself up anymore. One of his hands was weakly clinging onto my arm. The slightest squeeze from his fingers felt like a desperate plea for me to stop.

I couldn’t do this. “I-” I can’t do this. I was going to cry and tell him this, but a bluish light guided my eyes to the gruesome sight of his pierced back. The first arrow wound – I helped cause – was…glowing? There was a blue, now purple, light-flower twirling over the wound. The thinnest petals I’ve ever seen were weaving in and out of his skin and back into the flower formation, slowly but surely closing up the gash. A second flower began to bud out of the next wound. Seeing this gave me courage.

“H-hang in there okay!?” I cried. He didn’t respond, just kept trying relentlessly to continue breathing. “I-it’s just one more okay?!”

He nodded. I took a deep breath, then tugged the last one. He yelled louder than his voice allowed and it broke as a result.

“You’ll pay for this… little boy.”

My eyes widened as I looked up, abruptly forced back into the world I had forgotten still moved around us. To my great horror, I was greeted by the face of the man with a long blondish braid. Blood was draining from the star-shaped wound on his chest and tummy, flaking into the shreds of clothing hanging loose. He, too, was struggling to breath and an angry cold sweat dotted his face. Shrieks of his ruined plan zigzagged around his bubble of rage and I was all too aware of the death-threat dragging across the floor in his hand.

“You’ll regret interfering.”

His arm rose up high above his head with drunken struggle; if only it were just his arm unaccompanied by a tool for death. The boy in my arms couldn’t fight in his condition, this much was clear. The question was could I fight, holding a bloodied arrow and a self-reviving stranger.

The would-be murderer raised his other arm to the hilt of his sword, giving us a look of hatred people only give to the likes of vermin. I clenched the arrow and threw it at his head. It would have hit at least his cheek, had he not moved slightly to the right.

From the corner of my eye I saw the headphone-user reach for his music player-sword. The terrorist only smirked. The boy would be too late…

I blinked. They were both too late.

Before either could complete their move, two sharpened steel boomerangs criss-crossed in front of the hair-dyed man. Both boomerangs carried a chain and a familiar, much hated, insignia. The weapons reeled back and the moment the x-shaped chains hit his chest, the man yelled gurgling cry of agony. Bluish white jagged lines of light danced excitedly around his chest where the chains had bound him.

The electricity wasn’t necessary, and I’m sure they could have turned the voltage down by many notches if they truly wanted to, but that was just the kind of police force that controlled Ezveria. After a while, the lightning sparks died down and all that was left was an unconscious terrorist being dragged back towards the policemen at the end of each chain.

I glared at them for their display of brutality, trying to show just how much I disapproved through intense eye-contact. They may have saved my life, and this strange boy in my arms, but they needlessly harmed the culprit they already had trapped. It was like watching a bully being taken down by more bullies…or in this case more psychotic terrorists ganging up on one.

One, specific officer, wasn’t too fond of my gaze. He approached me and flicked an uncaring eye at the casualty in my arm.

“Is that the kind of look you give to the people who saved your life? …Or perhaps you’re one of those radicals?”

I only narrowed my eyes further and felt my lip curl up to a snarl. I tightened my hold on the Sell-soul boy, not out of a random urge to protect, but because I was pissed off, and he just happened to be in my arms. He squirmed a bit in his exhaustion and in my peripheral I caught the faintest glimmer of the radiance I saw in his eyes while he was fighting earlier.

Both of our stares must have been too much for him.

“Tch.” The man unclipped the boomerang at his utility belt, raising it high above his head. “I’m telling you to show some respect!” Then without a second thought, he slammed one end of his weapon against my temple. I felt the blow rattle my vision before I felt the world shut off.