(Rem x Reader) Re:Reader - Starting YOUR New Life in Another World

Chapter 167: Someone He's Not

A/N: This chapter features artwork made by Notperf_Art on twitter. FFnet users will need to go to WP or AO3 to see it!

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Chapter 167: Someone He's Not

Outside, in the cold nighttime air, YN and Algol clamored over rubble, trying to navigate their way around obstacles as they pushed toward the Fourth District's floodwater control tower. The sky above them, overcast with clouds, hindered much of the moonlight they would have otherwise used to guide their path, but the biggest problem they kept running into was the city's sprawling network of canals.

While most of the floodwater had subsided, the damage it had inflicted remained. Most bridges the two wished they could have taken were either washed out or too damaged to be crossed safely. Frustratingly, they were forced to take detour after detour just to make any progress toward their destination.

So far off their intended path they had been pushed, they had inadvertently found themselves in the heart of the adjacent district.

YN: At this rate, it'll be quicker to get to this district's control tower and walk along the wall to the Fourth District Tower...

Although it would take longer, being so far from where the flood had actually occurred made it almost a certainty that a viable pathway would still be available. Every dead-end and turnaround they hit while trying to take a direct route cost them more and more precious time.

At what was basically within a stone's throw or two of that district's flood control tower, a sudden, massive roar shook both Algol and YN to their cores.

???: HMPH!

???: Gyyaaaaahhh!!!

As if falling from a nearby rooftop, an ongoing fight between two figures caught in an airborne frenzy slammed into the ground beside them. Though it was closer to YN, both of them felt the street beneath their feet give way, but only Algol was nimble enough to flip up and away from the crater that opened up.

Thinking that YN too could get away as easily as herself, mid-backflip, she gasped as her hands remained in her jacket pockets and saw her contractor accompany one of the two fighting figures down into a sea of busted and broken street pavers.

Algol: Aniki!

Immediately, upon landing, she rushed up the edge of the hole, and looked down.

Under the street, a sewer cavern ran, with walkways on either side to facilitate service to the utility. Where there certainly would have been a mix of municipal runoff and actual waste, was a pile of those same broken pavers, and standing on top of them, were two dusty figures. One, being her contractor, and the other being a golden-haired youth her memories knew well.

Yet there had been two figures besides YN in that fall, and as Algol's gaze snapped to where the other should have been, her eyes locked onto the now-located missing figure.

Algol: —tch!

Absolutely dwarfing Algol in height, on the opposite side of this street-wide hole that had opened up, was the other figure; someone who already was technically her and YN's foe too.

With what had to be four pairs of arms, their blue-skinned complexion, multiple cleavers held at the ready, and that fierce expression, Algol froze in place. The intimidation factor was more than she had ever felt before.

What made matters worse too, was that obviously, Algol and YN were now separated by a height equivalent to a two-floor building. But, for the time being at least, the figure that looked down at them from above made no move to join them down in the hole, and neither did they pay Algol any mind.