Dantega:Volume 3 Chapter 8

(PART 2)

"I-I’m sorry to interrupt." Tsubiri said meekly, shuffling her feet and averting her gaze.

The sight of Messor embracing him has given her a throat drying pain in her chest; it was like she had suddenly walked into an invisible wall that forced her to back away in confusion upon impact.

Ubica’s reaction is to try and pry himself out of Messor’s arms as though he was caught red handed doing something criminal.

"Tsubiri! This is..."

Messor looks up at his panicked face and she can read his emotions simply by seeing his her sudden appearance had thrown him into a jumbling mess.

Instead of letting him go she puts her head into his chest and mockingly glances at Tsubiri, "Oh? It looks like we've been caught, Ubica."

Ubica’s shoulders jolt in shock. "Whaaa!?"

Tsubiri's eyes start to water up, as soon as she feels the first tear drop onto her cheeks she turns around and runs away into the crowd.

"Hey wait!" Ubica shouts.

He nudges himself out of Messor’s grasp and asks, “What did you do that for!?”

“I’m just having a little bit of fun.”

With a click of his tongue he turns and runs after Tsubiri.

Messor watches him disappear into the sea of people, she chuckles for a moment and then turns around to lean on the guardrail.

"I didn’t think it’d be her." she says to herself with a frown and a devilish smile. “Now I know who to get rid of.”

Underneath her hands, the railing of the stone bridge begins to rot and decay, pieces of it falling into the lake cause loud noises that catch the bystander's attention.

Messor takes her weight off of the guardrail and exits the crumbling bridge, under the night sky her bright gold eyes shine when she says, "I won’t let her have him."

Like a signal to her declaration, the bridge she once stood on collapses violently into the lake.

---

Tsubiri is still running as fast as she can through the city with her head down and not caring where her final destination will be; she has completely enveloped herself into the heart of this maze like town. She stops and finds herself in a darkened alley way, and after looking around for a second she gets an uneasy feeling about where she has found herself, so she back tracks back into civilization and the bustling atmosphere of the city streets.

It looks like she is in a town square of some sort since it seems like there are even more people in this area than there are anywhere else. A lot of them are throwing coins into a fountain that rests in the middle of the square. In this fountain sits a large statue of a deity and they are paying their respects to it.

"Uhhhh..." she mumbles, she keeps scoping the place for the way in which she came but she is becoming more and more disheartened, all the streets around here look the same. "Ahhh I’m even more lost now!"

Tsubiri puts her hands on her head in frustration at getting herself into this situation, however, her comical expression quickly fades into dourness when she thinks back on what had just happened that brought her here.

"I'd rather be lost than have to see that ever again."

Her eyes water and she uses the back of her hand to wipe them.

"I shouldn't be so surprised, it's not like I'm owed his affection... but damn this really hurts."

Walking aimlessly among the crowd she feels similarities to the situation she was in when she was abandoned at the castle of La'Juune. Though the circumstances are completely different, the feeling of being stranded and alone in a big place are pretty much the same.

With her weary head hung down and her eyes to the floor, she carelessly bumps into people while thinking to herself, (I wonder if anyone will come looking for me?)

The negativity of these now uncontrollable thoughts are starting to eat away at her and the feeling of being an unwanted nuisance is taking large bites at her heart. In truth, this is something that she had always thought of herself as for as long as she can remember, Xavier and everyone else around her in the castle treated her like a useless employee. So it shouldn't be any different now even though she finally has developed an identity of her own. Her thoughts are betraying the person she is now by connecting her worth to her past life of simply following orders to survive. The feeling of that worthlessness has seeped its way back into her like melting snow slipping through a crack on the surface of her heart.

(This is what I get for allowing myself to get complacent… I was dumb to think that things have changed for me.)

It's getting more difficult to hold back the water in her eyes with her sleeve when all of these inner depressing emotions begin to resurface in a torrent, she is in a miserable state and is feeling dreadfully lonely.

She continues to turn down streets only to become more lost and the panic is officially starting to settle in her subconscious.

(If I don't come back tonight... will they leave me?) she thinks, assuming that they all don't care about her enough to wait for her return. (No that’s a silly thought, Ubica definitely wouldn’t leave me behind.)

As soon as she says his name in her head, the image of him and Messor flashes through her mind.

Tsubiri starts to run in an attempt to break all the negativity in her head by doing something physical, weaving throughout the townsfolk she honestly thinks that she'll never find her way back when she unintentionally yells, "Someone help me!"

This shout grabs the attention of the people passing by, they all wonder if she is being chased by someone or is in danger. But naturally, like most people do they ignore it and go along with their daily lives. Whatever happens to her is none of their concern, they shrug it off like thinking that someone else will help her out sooner or later. This kind of attitude is molded into most people, if helping someone else would more than likely come of no benefit to them, it’s much easier to ignore the person in need and go about their business.

But it would seem her plea has caught the ears of a certain person in the crowd, through the talking and murmuring of the people a voice is faintly heard.

"Tsubiri!!"

Though it can't be recognized immediately, she understands that it is someone she knows because he knows her name, and the one and only person she can think of who would be looking for her is Ubica.

"Tsubiri!"

Surprised, she listens carefully toward the source of the voice and starts to run towards it.

(Ubica!) she thinks to herself, the tears that remained on her cheeks fly behind her in the wind. (He’s not going to leave me behind after all!)

She runs through a few more people when she hears her name being called once more, she squeezes herself between another couple until the source of the voice can be seen.

“Huh?”

To her shock she comes upon the familiar face of Strauphius.

---

"Where did she run off to!?" Ubica yells, he is following what he believes to be the direction in which Tsubiri went.

Having no luck he clicks his tongue and decides it might be better to check from above, he jumps up atop the three story buildings and hops over the alleyways they cast over from one structure to another. From a higher view he can see that this city is shaped like a labyrinth; if one is not careful it would be very easy to become disorientated.

"Knowing her, she's probably lost." he said with his eyes glued to the ground, "But she couldn’t have gotten too far away."

Scouring through the crowds of people from above, he’s suddenly stricken with the heaviness of anxiety. It’s an inexplicable dread that arrived so fast he had almost lost track of where he was jumping and fallen off the roof of a building.

"Someone’s here… I need to get to her quickly."

---

"What are you doing here Strauphius?" Tsubiri asks as she tries to wipe what's left of the tears off her face.

Even if he isn't the person she wanted to see at this moment, she is still relieved that someone at least came for her.

"I got worried when all of you didn't return so I came out to find you."

"O-Oh... thank you.."

"Are you crying?"

"Ah no it’s nothing."

She turns her back to him and hurriedly rubs her face.

Strauphius begins to have an unusual, serious aura about him when he asks, "What's wrong?"

"It’s really nothing, I was just panicking because I was lost."

He walks up to her and puts his hand on her shoulders to turn her around.

"Wasn’t it actually him?” he asked sternly, his expression deadpan and intense.

This makes her uncomfortable, she doesn't like being touched and being so close to him adds to the edge. But, as of this moment Strauphius is the only one who bothered to look for her so all of these feelings are washed away when she remembers why she is so distraught.

"W-Well kind of...."

"What did he do?"

"I just let my wishful thinking cloud my judgement. But I'd rather not talk about it to be honest with you."

"It’s better to talk about it instead of holding it in, I’m here to listen so you can unload your emotions onto me.”

Growing more and more uncomfortable, Tsubiri averts her gaze and stammers; she doesn’t know how to react to his attempt to cheer her up.

“It’s really, just, well… um, you see…”

“If he treated you bad then forget about him!"

With his shout he begins to shake her shoulders, causing her eyes to grow large with surprise.

"Eh? Forget about him? But--"

"But nothing! If he has the nerve to hurt you then you should go for me! I'll never take you for granted!"

Having him confess to her so abruptly is causing her head to spin. There hasn’t been anything in their interactions since they have met that would warrant such a thing, and as he looks at her with eyes so full of sincerity she can’t help but wonder just what she has done to make him feel this way.

She bites her lip and takes a moment to conjure up her reply, she looks him in the eyes and says, “I’m flattered, but I’m sor---"

"Get your hands off her!"

WHAAAAM!!

Strauphius is suddenly sent flying violently into one of the street side buildings. Upon the impact, he lands onto the ground in a heap. Still conscious, Strauphius shakily tries to stand to his feet and looks up at his assailant with his mouth bleeding and shoulder hanging dislocated at his side.

Tsubiri is even more shocked about this than she was at the sudden confession. Turning her head to where Strauphius once was, she sees the sight that she has wanted all along.

"Ubica..?"

---

Niomyo is walking along the city streets with a sour look on her face, she has been sent by Trojia to go and find everyone else since they've been gone so long. It would seem that those remaining at the hotel were now starting to think something was up as well.

"Right after the Princess says that she'll never punish me, she sends me out to do this stupid job as a punishment for my outburst... What a contradiction this is!"

Her talking to herself in such a manner causes passersby to stare but she ignores them, all she wants to do is find them quickly and get back to the hotel so she can sleep. These long days of travel really wears on her, if it wasn't for the horse drawn carts acquired in the last town she doubts she’d have any energy left for anything.

She sighs and is becoming more and more agitated when she starts to get a little confused as to where she is going; it's always hard to find someone in a big place when the searcher has no clue where the target could possibly be. The elongated sigh turns into an angered grunt and she bitterly takes a random turn down an alleyway.

After passing through it she is in another area that looks almost exactly the same as the last, she clicks her tongue and sends a curse towards someone she’s imagining in her head. "I'd love to meet the architect of this stupid city so I can punch him in the face."

She is about to turn around to go back through the alleyway when she notices there is some kind of commotion just ahead, a few dozen people are crowding around a fairly small space so she decides to investigate out of curiosity. Once there she swivels her way in between the crowd until she reaches the center. She jolts back in surprise, knocking into someone when she sees Ubica, combatively standing in front of Tsubiri while looking down on a grounded Strauphius.

"Strauphius? I could've sworn he was at the hotel when I left... what in the world is going on?"

Instead of jumping in and getting involved, she hides a few rows into the crowd and watches silently.

---

Realizing what had just happened, Tsubiri shouts into the back of Ubica, "Why did you go and do that for!?"

"Do you know how to get back to the hotel?" he asks tensely, shunning her question.

"Haah? Of course I don't! This place is a freakin' death trap!"

"Damn it."

"What do you mean damn it!?" She starts to punch his back with the sides of her hands as she shouts, "And also, do you mind telling me just what the hell you were doing with that Messor girl!?"

Ubica turns, grabs her hand, and pulls her head under his arm. While gritting his teeth with a frustrated smile he begins to give her a brutal noogie. "Now's not the time for that, airhead."

"Owowowowow let go of my head you jerk!!!!"

"Not until you've calmed down!"

"I am calm! I am calm!!!"

He releases her and she rubs her head excessively, with a child-like face she says, "I don't get it, I don't get what's happening here."

"I promise... I'll explain everything to you later." Turning back toward Strauphius he says, "The only thing I can say now is that all of this is not what you think it is."

Strauphius gets to his feet, he looks so hurt that it is almost sickening seeing his arm droop down like that, he spits blood out of his mouth before the tips of his lips widen into a cynical smile. He raises his dislocated arm and with his left he pulls in towards his shoulder blade, reconnecting the joint, the sound it makes made all the onlookers a little nauseous.

Out of his awful looking smile comes a small laugh that rises in tone to a hysterically pitch. "Kukukuku.... Huuaahaha.... HAHAHAHAHAH!!!"

Everyone, including Tsubiri and Niomyo find this beyond odd; the last twenty seconds were extremely disturbing, all the way from the injury to his whacked out reaction to it.

Once done laughing Strauphius points at Ubica and says in an unfamiliar tone of voice, "I knew I'd find you old pal!!!"

Tsubiri backs away in shock. "Strauphius?"

Ubica reasserts his position in front of her and says, "That's not Strauphius."

"Oh! Well shit since my cover was blown I might as well get rid of this disguise."

Strauphius takes his index finger and taps it on his forehead, with that, an ugly gray light shines around him, causing him to be engulfed. Once gone, a different form is revealed.

He has bright orange hair and eyes of an amber shade, he stands rather short and when the light fully fades it becomes obvious that he is a kid who looks around the age of eleven or twelve. This appearance contradicts his deep manly voice.

He throws his arms open, causing his dark blue robe to flail back and says, "What's the matter Ubica? You aren’t happy to see me?"

Ubica is forcing a smile back as he stares at the kid with wide eyes. "At first I didn’t even recognize you. You’re a child now?"

A vein surfaces on the boy's head. "I’ll admit that I’m disappointed that you don’t even recognize your own handywork.”

"That’s funny, I don’t remember shrinking you.”

"What you did to me is no laughing matter, taking away my collection of souls and forcing me to start over… I’ve been waiting for a thousand years to get my revenge on you for that."

Ubica is finding it hard not to laugh, “If it took you a thousand years just to grow into a pint sized version of yourself, don’t you think you’re being a little too ambitious?”

The kid has a giant frown on his face and he bites his lip when out of a light surrounding his hand comes a blade that has a large circle shape at its tip. "I don't wanna hear any kind of shit from you old pal. At least I wasn't sent to rot in a pit for all that time."

Once the kid said that, Ubica's demeanor turns serious and he pulls out his sword as well. "So what is it that you intend to do here?"

The kid points his sword out and has a sick smile when he answers, "Kill all your friends and capture you."

The pressure emitting from the two makes it hard for Tsubiri to stand, she takes a step back and says, "Who is this guy Ubica?"

Before Ubica can answer, her question is quickly answered by the kid.

"The name's Mammon."

Ubica nudges her away and says, "This guy is really dangerous, I want you to run as far away as you can."

"I already told you, I have no clue how to get back!"

"That doesn't matter, wherever you run off to or how lost you get, I’ll always find you."

She blushes at his words and begins to back track subconsciously, she is moving slow and this makes him very impatient.

"Now go!"

With this, Tsubiri takes off running.

Mammon raises his circled sword and says, "Like I'll let that happen."

Within an instant, the entirety of thirty blocks of building, streets and people, is covered by a massive and ugly gray churning circle; the stars up above disappear and all of what's above their heads looks to be the moonless night sky.

"Everyone in this radius is fucked. I recommend that all of you people start to scat! Perhaps you might be able to prolong your lives for a short while!" Mammon shouts.

The onlookers are confused, but perhaps because of his appearance they don't immediately take his threat seriously he spots this and grows angered at their belittling glares, so in order to show them how dire their situation is, he points out his sword into the crowd and says,

"Ebuillo, prove em' to be foolish."

Out of his sword comes a bubble of some sort that is a similar color to the massive circled ball that they are surrounded by, it floats gently towards them and weaves throughout the people until it stops. All of them stare at it like it's harmless, a child even comes up and pokes at it so he can make it pop. But as soon as he touches it the sphere expands and engulfs a group of fifteen or so, some of them completely enveloped and some of them have only half of their bodies in.

"Get out of there!" Ubica shouts.

But it is too late.

In the blink of an eye the bubble retracts and implodes, when it does it makes a soft little 'pop' but the innocent sound does not depict the carnage seen by the aftermath.

The perfectly decapitated bodies are left standing as they were when they were once whole, the imploding bubble literally took what it surrounded inwards along with it. Some of the fifteen people were all gone except for the bloody stubs of their feet and some were missing the area that should be above their waists. They all fall to the ground simultaneously and the sounds they made were more of a squishing noise than a thud. The people all scream in horror upon seeing this, and panic ensues when they all run away as fast as possible. Increasing their anxiety and fright is the sound of Mammon laughing and hurling more of those death bubbles into the crowds of people scurrying away from danger.

"HAHAHAHAH!"

A couple people fell and were quickly trampled close to death by the others, not one person stopped to help.

"Look at how selfish all of you are!! The true nature of humanity always shines brightest when confronted by an existential threat!!!"

He keeps laughing hysterically as he hurls even bigger bubbles into buildings, whether human or not, once the bubble implodes it takes perfectly circled chunks out of whatever it touches.

Seeing how bad things have gotten, Ubica rushes him with his red diamond katana ready to strike; he swings his sword in an upwards motion but Mammon blocks it.

There was so much force in Ubica's swing that it knocked Mammon twenty feet upwards into the air, he did a little flip and then landed on one of his spheres.

He chuckles and looks down on Ubica as he floats gently in the air. "Awwh, it looks like your little girlfriend didn't make it very far."

Ubica turns pale when he said that because the first thought that went through his mind was that she was hit by one of his attacks when she was running away.

He turns quickly and shouts, "Tsubiri!!"

But to his relief he finds her very near to him on the ground holding her knee.

"Are you okay!?" he asks.

Tsubiri looks up at him with a sour face and a tear in her eye as she says softly, "I-I tripped."

"Well that’s a relief" He scratches his head in frustration and says. "And here I thought you were a good runner."

"It's not my fault that there was a pothole in the road you jerk!!"

"An important part of running is watching where you’re going!"

The two hurl playful insults at each other as if the last couple of minutes never happened, more than a few veins start to show all around Mammon's face when he feels like he is being completely ignored.

“You two can shut the fuck up now!

The two stop their bickering and look at his little red angered face; their initial reaction upon seeing what looks to be a kid throwing a temper tantrum, is to laugh, and it's obvious to him that they're forcing themselves not to do it, which makes him even more mad.

Mammon hurls a large bubble out of his sword towards them but Ubica quickly regains his composure and hits it with his sword, sending it flying off in another direction.

"All jokes aside, just who is this kid exactly?" Tsubiri asks again.

Mammon grits his teeth and shouts, "You should remember the name of someone who is killing off people like flies, you stupid bitch! I am the Demon of Greed Mammon!”

“How did you find us?" Ubica asks.

To which and demon replies, “I dwell in the avarice of others, and your little rag tag group is chalk full of it."

Mammon is one of the Seven Demons of Hell, his role in the Hierarchy is to represent, and tempt people into 'Greed', also known as 'Avarice', or 'Covetousness'. He is very similar to Beelzebub, who represents 'Gluttony', both of them are a sin of excess, and the two are also similar in that their existence isn’t completely tied to their actions.

Greed is applied to a very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of wealth, status, and power. Avarice is more of a blanket term that can describe many other examples of greedy behavior. These include disloyalty, deliberate betrayal for personal gain. The list is large, included are also the scavenging and hoarding of materials or objects, violent theft and robbery, trickery, or manipulation of authority are all actions that may be inspired by greed.

Because he dwells in these types of emotions that reside naturally within humans, he is able to take on their form and know exactly what their thoughts and desires are. Mammon used some of these tactics when he took the form of Strauphius in order to tempt Tsubiri into his arms to take her hostage.

"That shouldn't be enough to pick out our location within a vast amount of people with the same sins."

Mammon smiles and shrugs his shoulders. "That would normally be true, but the souls of your humans have recently gone through a transformation right?"

Ubica's breathing sharpens as he continues.

"Not many people in Purgatory are 'aware', so when six people who have such souls are all in one group I figured it had to be you." He floats down atop his bubble and finishes, "What's good about your little group is that they are all greedy, so much so that this, along with their growth made it beyond easy to spot."

"So what you're saying is that you were able to find us because of their new abilities?"

Mammon chuckles and replies, "No, what I'm trying to say is that I was able to find you specifically because of The False Prophet."

Ubica jumps back in surprise, his throat becomes dry and asks, "W-What do you mean?"

"We all know that she is with you, and I know that the powers that come along with being 'aware' are not easy to obtain overnight. By that I could tell that someone definitely helped them, which really helped me out a great bit because I've been stuck in this shitty world searching for you for weeks."

A heavy feeling surfaces in Ubica's body, he clenches the handle of his sword extremely hard and thinks, (She couldn’t have known this would happen… would she?)

Ubica’s focus trails off into confusion and suspicion, and in the brief moment of distraction the demon makes his move. Mammon sinks into his bubble and the bubble implodes, in a split second the bubble reappears right behind Ubica. It grows from the size of a baseball to a sphere about ten feet in diameter, and out of it comes Mammon with a huge smile on his face.

"Ubica look out!!" Tsubiri yells.

But her words don't reach him in time to break him out of his distracted state.

Mammon swings his blade and slices right into Ubica's back, his knees buckle at the shock and he falls to the ground in what feels like slow motion.

"UBICA!!!"

While falling in a trance, Ubica thinks to himself, (Messor… this can't be true, can it?)

Once this thoughts trail off into a dark oblivion, he falls face first on the ground and slips away into unconsciousness.

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