SAGE (under edit)

Chapter Forty Four - Whatever it Takes

Dante pressed a hand to his shoulder where a cut curved around to his back and trailed blood down the length of his arm. His breathing was laboured, though he knew they had only been fighting for mere minutes, but Jaegar's speed was incredible enough that it exhausted Dante merely through the effort of dodging him.

Despite that, Jaegar's strangeness made it difficult for Dante to consider him anything other than an unusual child with a short attention span. The young Elite now regarded Dante and Trey with his head tipped to the side, one hand toying with the frayed strands of his scarf that was coloured like a sunset to match his vibrant red hair. The three claws that extended over the back of the same hand grazed dangerously close to Jaegar's neck, but he didn't seem to notice.

Dante reached surreptitiously beneath his coat, his hand falling on the last few explosives he had hooked on his belt – but he couldn't use all of them, could he? Only one was a smoke bomb, another was a shrapnel bomb, but the last was a regular explosive that he couldn't risk detonating in a building submerged in the ocean. He was already doubtful of the building's integrity; he didn't need to diminish it further by blowing some of it up.

So Dante's hand dropped to the long knife strapped to his thigh, which he had swiped from a Crest Soldier before leaving Lion Crest. He glanced across to Trey who had his twin swords crossed in front of him, having pushed Jaegar back into the passageway only a moment ago. Behind Jaegar, Dante saw an entrance to what appeared to be a room of dark, unused cells.

Dante heard the commotion of the fight between Toren, Sydney and the other Elite behind them and he couldn't help but look over his shoulder and back down the passageway.

'Dante!'

Dante whipped around just as Jaegar flashed in front of him, his steel claws slashing through the air toward Dante's chest. Dante threw himself back, Jaegar's claws tearing through his shirt but only just missing flesh, and Trey appeared between them with one of his swords parrying Jaegar's claws.

Jaegar struck like a lion, his claws sweeping toward Trey's legs only to surge up in an arc to slice against Trey's chest. Trey crossed his blades in front of him, countering the strikes in quick succession, but Dante could see that Jaegar's speed was too much even for Trey.

'Get out of the way!' Dante shouted, and Trey lurched backwards just as Dante tossed his smoke bomb into the air between them. Jaegar's eyes widened like a child's drawn to something bright, and then the bomb exploded into a cloud of thick smoke that filled the passageway.

Hope you can see through smoke, Dante thought with a grin. His own eyes were trained to read the movement of smoke, how it filled a room or shifted with the wind, and he had also mastered the art of using his Kyra to filter smoke out of his system before it entered his lungs. He knew Trey had moved quickly enough to be on the edges of the smoke where it wasn't too dense, so Dante wasn't worried about him.

He focused his attention on Jaegar, his Kyra reaching out through the smoke for Jaegar's signature while his eyes watched the smoke drift around him. He heard a soft scrape against stone, but from the direction it came from and the tentative sound of it Dante knew it was only Trey shifting position – and then Dante saw the smoke churn.

He turned just as Jaegar burst through the smoke and Dante raised his knife, countering Jaegar's claws with a spattering of sparks. He snapped up his foot in a kick straight for Jaegar's ribs but he spun out of the way, and then Trey broke through the smoke in a whirlwind of steel as his twin blades arched through the air toward Jaegar.

Jaegar deftly avoided the swords and the smoke churned around them, whipped up by their flurry of movement which forced Trey back to where the smoke was thinner. Dante darted after Jaegar, catching hold of Jaegar's scarf to jerk him back before he could clear Dante's reach. Jaegar stumbled forward and Dante slammed his fist into Jaegar's cheek, just as Jaeger plunged his claws into Dante's shoulder.