Chapter Text
CHAPTER 12
Loss
By the time Livio got to what was left of this stupid building’s main hall, he was about ready to just give up on being nice and shoot Midvalley anyway.
He had a throbbing migraine from his brain having to frantically repair the damage from Hornfreak’s music more than a few times by now, his vision still wasn’t completely back yet, and most of all he didn’t know where Nai and Meryl were. He was getting fed up. At least he knew where Milly was, even if she’d proven stubborn enough to even ignore Razlo knocking her out in frustration when she kept trying to put herself in danger.
And then a bomb had to go off, on top of all that!
Part of him-- the part that was still just a kid named Livio-- didn’t really want to kill Midvalley. He’d been one of the more normal Guns, and sometimes he seemed as if he hadn’t wanted to be there, either. But…but the rest of him-- the Doublefang, the undertaker, the man using the name Chapel-- knew mercy was beyond him anymore. Even if Nai’s desperate, sincere attempts at it, at sparing lives, had…
But there was no more time to worry about that. There was Midvalley, standing over the other one-- Hoppered the Gauntlet, he thought. No sign of Nai or Meryl yet.
He cocked his gun, pointed it at Midvalley’s back. The other man whipped his own gun around to point it at him in turn.
“You’re still alive,” Midvalley said.
“Takes a lot more than that t’kill me,” Livio said, wryly. “Besides, whatever that light was earlier seems to have destroyed all of the debris that coulda given me a hard time.”
Midvalley hissed a nervous breath. “Put down your gun already, Chapel.” He said. “I’m done. I don’t want to fight anymore.” Brown eyes flickered to look over his shoulder. “After all, aren’t you still playing this game of yours? Livio Wolfwood, Knives the Reaper’s new best friend.”
His breath hitched. How did-- when did-- when did that name get spread around? He’d been so good trying to avoid using Nico’s--
But he couldn’t deny that it…it felt good to hear it said.
Before he could respond, the rubble shifted and moved, and Livio’s heart skipped a beat, clenching as feathers unfurled from a pile of debris, a wing stretching towards the sky.
“Can you feel that?” Midvalley asked him, his own eyes fixed on that wing. “I wonder if that really is what an angel feels like-- something higher than human, so much so that the rest of us look like ants. If this thing wanted to, it could kill us all-- wipe us out, with nothing but bloodstains left behind. Both of them could.”
The musician swallowed. “I want to get out of here,” he said. “Away from these monsters. You understand, don’t you?”
“I can’t say I don’t,” Livio said, lowering his gun-- albeit only a fraction. “Why put on such a big show, though, if y’just wanna get out of here?”
Midvalley snorted. “Make it look good?” He asked bitterly. “I don’t know. But I do know one thing: if you’re serious about what you’re up to, so am I. Maybe you’re hard to kill, but against that? You know how it’s going to end-- those monsters…those angels are going to tear each other apart.”
He wished he didn’t agree with that. He wished he wasn’t the one walking Nai to that fate.
But before he could say anything more, that wing flapped, fluttered, lit up bright, as it twisted and flared-- “The hell?!” Midvalley yelped. “What’s it--”
The ceiling shattered downwards, and all three conscious men in the room’s attention whipped towards it. As the dust settled…as it settled, there he was, standing from the crouch he’d landed in, dark gold eyes burning beneath blue hair.
Legato.
“Well, isn’t this a fine outcome,” he said, gaze scanning over the room. “As expected from our master of sound. Our angel will be most pleased. You may rest, Gauntlet…and now shall we return home?”
There was a stillness, a silence. Livio’s gaze met Midvalley’s. The musician looked-- resigned, he realized. Resigned, and determined, and-- shit--
“Midvalley, don’t--!!”
Too late. Throwing his pistol to the side, the musician’s hands went to his saxophone, teeth gritted as he spun towards Legato, glaring at him with the fear and rage of a cornered animal with nowhere left to run.
A shot rang out.
Livio’s eyes snapped to Hoppered. The man’s arm was raised, trembling, veins popping against his skin as he struggled against Legato’s terrible power. His gun was in it, and-- and blood bloomed across Midvalley’s white suit.
“NO!” Hoppered howled as Midvalley fell backwards in slow motion, landing still on the ground.
Everything happened fast after that, and before Livio realized, they were all pointing guns at each other. Hoppered had his trained on him, he had his on Legato, and Legato’s arm was out, forcing that massive, ever-larger mass of feathers away from him.
The rubble had fallen away as that mass had grown, and Livio’s eyes tracked to it. Nai was there-- frozen, eyes wide, those feathers wrapping around him in such a way that he seemed to not even be present in his own head, curled into himself on his hands and knees. It was terrifying, to see him looking so vulnerable. So…wrong.
“I could faint,” Legato said, eyes fixed on the bloody form of Midvalley, a tear streaking down his face. “Betraying our beloved angel. And before my very eyes! Death is the only outcome of such a thing.”
“Wh…why?” Hoppered groaned. “How did you…?”
“The Beast,” Legato responded, and Hoppered’s eyes widened.
“But we…”
“That’s correct,” a new voice said. “But it’s a little more complicated than that.”
All attention turned towards the newcomer-- a woman, it seemed, with the same dark skin and light hair as the boy called Zazie, the same eerie, almost glowing eyes. “That wasn’t very nice of you,” she-- they-- said. “Do you know how hard it is to get a new terminal? At least this one’s not too bad.”
“Shit!” Livio hissed, pointing his other fang at them, his first still trained on Legato.
They pulled a gun in turn, glaring at him. “Don’t try anything, Chapel,” they warned. “It’s impossible to kill us entirely, you know.”
“Sounds familiar,” Livio said, voice strained, but Hoppered once again drew everyone’s attention.
“I don’t get it,” he began, fury in his pained, ragged voice. “But you were onto us the whole time, weren’t you!? Toying with us!”
He was-- oh shit, Livio thought. He’s fighting Legato’s power. He watched that arm struggle, straining, trying to move the gun that was pointed his direction towards the blue-haired man. Legato hissed a breath, eyes narrowing, and Livio realized-- all his attention was on keeping Nai’s wings in check. He couldn’t focus on everyone at once.
God, he thought, as more guns found their way into hands. This was sure one hell of a stalemate. Four-- no, five, if Nai counted-- of them, fingers on triggers, just waiting for someone to slip. To breathe just that little bit differently, and then gunfire would echo like fireworks.
And then, suddenly--
Suddenly, Meryl shot up through the feathers, the wings, eyes filled with terrified tears but blazing with determination, a gun in her hand as she fired at Legato.
And that was enough to set all of them off. Livio could barely see who was firing at who in the chaos, feeling bullets tear into him in wounds that healed in moments, annoying and painful but not enough to send him to his knees.
The gunsmoke clearing, Legato was on a knee, eyes filled with righteous fury. “You--” He snarled. “All of you are flawed! So many unnecessary feelings, when all one needs is devotion to our angel! If you cannot even serve him faithfully, then you all die here!”
Meryl screamed, suddenly, and his eyes snapped towards-- oh shit. Midvalley’s bleeding form had been dragged upright, the man half-conscious, with eyes wide and mouth open in a scream of his own that he couldn’t force out as Legato pulled at his body like a sadistic puppeteer, the pistol he’d dropped earlier in a twitching, struggling hand.
Even as that gun shifted to point at Hoppered, Nai’s wings exploded outward with an inhuman scream from their source, Meryl terrified and tangled in their feathers, as a great and terrible blade burst forth from them, a reaper’s scythe, a guillotine, a flaming sword. The very thing that had destroyed Jeonora Rock-- that had likely destroyed July.
“Nai!” Livio shouted, fear clutching his heart like a vice. “Meryl! Meryl, run! That’s--”
A nail, bloodred and massive, slammed through the blade like it was made of paper, pinning it to the ground.
Nai’s eyes seemed to come into brief focus, just for a moment, before he screamed again, thrashing against the nail, wings and feathers and blades seeming to almost consume his body whole, energy like lightning roiling around him, a localized natural disaster threatening to break free.
“This is bad, he’s losing control--” Livio choked out, throwing a hand over his eyes and trying to force himself against the solid wall of air pressure between them, trying to get closer, though he didn’t know what he’d do if he could make it there. “Meryl, get out of there! You're too close!”
Meryl stared at him, eyes filled with tears, wide and frenzied, and she gestured frantically-- oh shit. “You’re stuck!?”
This was bad. This was so, so bad. If he hurt Meryl-- if he accidentally hurt her, or worse, then Nai would-- Nai would--
He was broken, when he left. You should have seen his eyes, Livio. All the fight had gone out of him. It was your fault. Because he hurt you. Because you made him hurt you.
No, no, no, he couldn’t let that happen--
Distantly, he heard Legato laugh wildly. “Oh, you saved me--” He cried, and Livio realized a nail had buried itself into the man’s foot, or just close enough to snap him from his rage. “I am as much a sinner as ever! I was about to destroy that which my angel held most dear!” His eyes rolled wildly around him, finding everyone else’s faces in a frenzy. “Yet still-- yet still, I will not suffer traitors!”
The gun in the half-conscious Midvalley’s hand clicked, its safety off.
Nai screamed again, all eyes flashing towards that mass of-- of feathers--?
It had begun to recede, Livio realized. Receding and pulling back inside him, as Nai clutched his shoulder, prosthetic fingers buried into his flesh hard enough blood dripped from them. His blades whipped around him, tight and tucked close, more blood flying from so many cuts-- more and more, how many had he had previously, there were so many-- that mass that had once been an arm looked worse, and worse, eyes and mouths and tiny hands pulling away from it, like it was some kind of horrible amalgam of bodies, and he let out another scream, a banshee howl filled with so much pain it dragged tears from his eyes where he was sprawled, the shockwave pressure from Nai’s power having knocked him off his feet.
With that scream, he threw himself at Hoppered, blades and feathers coming up like a terrible, monstrous shield as Legato unloaded Midvalley’s gun -- the man himself crying out in horror, begging for it to stop, blood spilling from his mouth and the bullet wounds in his chest -- at the prone Hoppered.
Legato screamed in rage as the sound of gunfire faded, and threw his hands out as if to attack them all himself-- but a third nail ran through one of his arms.
A shadow flew through the air to land among them, then, and Livio’s attention snapped to them as they yowled in pain where they’d landed sprawled gracelessly.
It was a-- a man-- no, that was a woman. A blonde woman was there in neat and tidy upscale clothes, lips painted red and clutching a briefcase. Shaking herself off, she leveled the stunned and furious Legato with a glare. “You stop that, Bluesummers,” she scolded. “Idiot, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Crimsonnail…” Legato growled, and Livio’s blood went cold.
Crimsonnail? Like, as in the thirteenth Gung-Ho Gun? The secret one, the most dangerous one? Elendira the Crimsonnail?
Oh, this just got that much worse, didn’t it?
Elendira strode over to Legato, huffing out a breath. “Come on now,” she told him. “We’re going back. You’ve been getting too carried away. You’d best remember your place…” She stomped on the nail buried in his foot. “Or I’m going to have to kill you, dear.”
She grabbed a fistful of Legato’s hair, and turned towards the rest of them as a chain dropped from what Livio now realized was an airship floating over their heads, dragging her comrade towards it and hopping onto the metal bar at its end. “You’re welcome!” She called to them. “Consider yourselves saved. But not for long, really-- maybe it would have been the true mercy to let you all die here, but…ah, well. Nonetheless.”
She smiled. “You know those rescue ships on their way here? Well, our darling angel intends to invite them all to Paradise as well. The more the merrier, as he’d say~! Your last hope for another option will be gone before your eyes.”
“Are you insane?!” Livio shouted. “You know he’s just going to kill everyone, yourself included! Why do any of you help him?! This isn’t mercy, it’s just murder!”
Elendira smiled at him. “Well, we all have ways we want to live what’s left of our lives,” she said mildly. “And if God supposedly loves me no matter what I do, then, why not have a little fun before I go? It isn’t like I won’t be going to his Eden along with the rest of you.”
She wiggled her fingers at him, winking. “Toodles!”
And with that, she and Legato were gone.
In the quiet, he heaved himself upright, tearing over toward where Nai and Hoppered lay, Meryl scrambling up to join him. By the time they got there Nai was conscious, if bleeding heavily, kneeling there with hands wrapped loosely around the still, cold hand of Hoppered, whose eyes had closed for the last time.
“N-Nai, your arm…” Meryl whispered, tears streaking her face as she began to tremble.
Hollow eyes looked up at her, and he didn’t even bother to smile. “...it’s alright,” he said quietly, empty. “I’ll be fine.”
No, Livio thought, swallowing bitter bile. No, you won’t be. You never were.
They spent the next three days recovering. Milly had gotten beaned with some debris and ended up in the hospital, and between her and the countless cuts Nai had taken from-- from himself, Livio thought unhappily-- the doctors had their work cut out for them.
At least Midvalley had made it, too, with Livio having dragged him along to the hospital as well. They’d been able to patch up the bullet wounds he’d taken, though he was still horribly shaken from Legato’s actions and how close they had all come to dying at the hands of an out of control angel.
Once Nai had recovered, Livio helped him bury Hoppered. He was an undertaker, after all. It was the least he could do.
But as he watched Nai stand there on the hill, blue eyes so far away, his gut wrenched once more.
He would be burying the man beside him soon, too, wouldn’t he?
New best friend…no. He was and always would be this man’s executioner.
God, but he wished it were different. But in the end…in the end, his fangs always found the throats of the people he loved most, didn’t they?