Materiarth Genesis: Blue Moon

Chapter 8 : Black and Silver

"Aguri? Did she just said, Aguri?" Elwyn mumbled to himself as he watched the Takeaway Girl confidently boasting on her victory against Demon Mask, who was still buried under a pile of broken steel and unopened snack packets from the destroyed newsstand  

"I knew it! It is her!" Joker said, and Elwyn noticed the glint of excitement in the Spirit's echoing voice.

Almost half a year of being surrounded by nothing but cold, steel walls had given Elwyn a lot of to converse with Joker, who had recently made him his new Spirit Vessel back then. From those hours and hours of listening to the Spirit's voices inside his head, Elwyn came to know more about the Spirit, but mostly Joker told more stories about his previous Vessel, the man named Yueji Aguri.

The same man he last saw before he got captured.

The first and last time he saw this Yueji Aguri, the two of them were surrounded by the harsh snowstorm of Etherfrost Plains. The skies, the ground, everything was painted in white. His body was freezing that day, but his blood and soul was boiling at burning at the sight of the purple-haired man, as he found himself a worthy opponent that. But before Elwyn could even raise his spear against the man, his knees had buckled and he had collapsed face first into the snow before everything went dark. The next thing he knew, he was lying on a metal bed with a very thin mattress, surrounded by grey walls and ceiling made of impenetrable steel, and the first person who greeted him when he woke was none other than Joker himself.

For six months, Joker was the only thing that kept him entertained besides the hours of push-ups and handstands he did to fill all the free time he had. Joker had shared many things about Yueji Aguri; his childhood, his lifelong journey and adventures, and of course, his family. He had a wife, a woman by the name of Ayumi Yoshizawa, and like her partner, she was also a Spirit Vessel. Together, they had two children, twins. A boy named Asuka, and a girl named Tokine.

And that girl stood before him.

XXX

Tokine started panting heavily. Her arms felt painfully hot and her legs were shaking unsteadily. She could no longer feel a single trace of Vandal's energy in her, and only now she realized that she barely had any of her own energy left.

"Bailing out as soon as the fun ends, huh Vandal?" Tokine said, and as she expected, it did not reply to her. Vandal never liked having a two-way conversation with her. "Freeloading bastard," she cursed under her breath, hoping that the Spirit was listening to her.

"Oww!" suddenly she yelped, feeling something had just stung her thigh and shoulder. She looked at her own body, noticing the burning slashes on her limbs caused by Demon Mask's energy blades. Blood had started to ooze out from the wounds, flowing down her arm and leg in thick red streams. "Great! Just what I need right now."

She turned her eyes towards Elwyn, the glowing blue visor of his helmet stared back at her. "Hey, it's Elwyn, right!? Mind taking a girl to the nearest hospital?" then, as she was about to approach him, her legs tipped her backwards. Her hearing started to grow numb, and her vision was blurring out. She was blacking out from exhaustion.

Her wobbling calves knocked into something cold and hard, toppling her backwards like an uprooted tree. She heard loud metallic clunks coming towards to her, but it was then muffled out by a loud splash. The last thing she felt was herself sinking into a body of warm water before blacking out.

XXX

"Wait! Hey, wait!" Elwyn shouted, rushing towards the Takeaway Girl as she was tumbling backwards into the glowing pool of water. But it was too late. The fountain gave a heavy splash as her whole body fell hard into it, the water momentarily radiated brighter before unleashing a blast of blue shockwave that would have blown Elwyn backwards had he not been rooted down by the weight of the Bashytser.