A sudden boom cracked the air like a cannon shot—followed instantly by a concussive shockwave that slamd into Jaune like a runaway freight train.
He didn't even have ti to brace.
The ground disappeared beneath him and his body was flung backward across the broken street. Windows all around him—long fractured by age—shattered into glittering shrapnel. Glass rained down like hail as Jaune crashed back-first into the side of a ruined storefront.
He hit hard, gasping as the breath was knocked from his lungs.
Then—another detonation.
And another.
BOOM—CRACK—BOOM.
It was neither fire nor explosions. Just force. Explosions of pressure so raw and pure they left the air trembling in their wake. Jaune scrambled to his feet, coughing, only to duck instinctively behind the shell of an overturned car as a fresh shockwave split the street open.
Wind blasted past. Dust and debris scread overhead. Sothing cracked hard against the fra of the vehicle as Jaune tucked into himself, arms over his head.
'What the hell is happening?!'
Heart hamring, he lifted his head and peeked through the shattered car windows.
And what he saw nearly stopped his breath.
Two blurs—barely visible even with all his focus—slamd into each other in midair with another pulse of energy. Sparks flew. Concrete fractured. Each clash sent ripples of force peeling outward in jagged rings that shattered anything too close. Light flickered from their weapons like welding arcs—raw power eting raw power in a collision that felt more like an earthquake than a fight.
The two combatants broke apart.
Jaune's eyes locked onto the one he knew: Raymond.
He stood tall on the cracked pavent, rifle raised in one hand and sword reversed in the other. His stance was low and focused, like a predator waiting to pounce. His sleek black-and-white armor looked slightly scuffed now—dirtied by the battle—but it was still intact. Still strong.
A controlled fierce fury rolled off of him.
Opposite him, standing amidst the rising dust and broken street, was a figure that made Jaune's stomach turn.
The man wore a helt shaped like a skull. Not a mask, but a full helt molded in the exact likeness of a Beowolf's head. Smooth white bone texture, obsidian black etchings curling across the temples. No eyes. Just red light glowing behind empty sockets.
His armor resembled Raymond's in structure—military-grade and futuristic. It was far beyond anything Jaune had ever seen—but it was darker. Red accents instead of white. It had weird crimson lines of so unknown language, etched into the plating. Over it all, the man wore a long black coat that fluttered in the hot wind, torn at the edges like sothing that belonged on a wraith.
In his hand was a spear—but not any kind of spear Jaune recognized.
Its base was tallic, etched with grooves and lined with rotating components. It buzzed faintly, like an engine barely idling. And as Jaune watched, the man raised a finger—and a floating tallic, magic rune shimred into existence in front of the weapon.
It flashed, pulsed—and the spear folded.
Gears twisted, tal realigned, and in a few rapid, precise clicks, the weapon transford into a massive gun—no, not a gun. A cannon. A brutal, oversized weapon that humd with raw power.
Jaune's blood ran cold.
The two of them spoke—voices distant and half-swallowed by the wind, but still audible.
"Identify yourself," Raymond barked. "This your one and only warning to lay down your weapon and surrender or I will put you down."
The skull-held man chuckled. Low and guttural. The kind of sound that made Jaune's instincts scream.
"Well, well," the man said, voice distorted and crackling through a voice modulator. "Look at you, getting all worked up. I wasn't expecting you to have any company on this route, you know? Thought this patrol zone was supposed to be only for you, Raymond Red."
His gaze shifted.
Even through the skull-helt, Jaune felt it. The weight of the man's attention. Like being stared at by a predator. One that stood at the apex of all others.
"Color surprised when I find a little Rank 0 runt, hiding behind your boots?" the man rasped. "That's disappointing, Raymond. Letting trash like that wander around unsupervised."
Raymond didn't answer.
"You know," the skull-faced man continued, casually, "once I take you down, I'll have to erase the witness too. Can't let the kid go ho with secrets, now can we?"
Raymond stiffened. "Arc! Exit the dream. Now."
Jaune jolted upright.
"R-right! Okay!"
'Why didn't I do that already?!' His hands shook. His brain scrambled for the ntal command. His heartbeat was loud enough to drown out thought.
.
[Exit Dream.]
.
The system should've imdiately sent him back.
But it didn't.
A screen blinked into existence in front of his eyes.
.
[DREAM AUTHORITY EXIT: BLOCKED]
.
Jaune's heart stopped and his hands shook from fear.
"I can't!" he shouted. "It's not working! It's blocked!"
The skull-masked man let out a slow, satisfied laugh.
He raised a single hand—and floating just above his palm was a crimson, blood-red rune. It was different from the ones that he had witnessed so far. It pulsed erratically, glitching and flickering like a corrupted hologram. The jagged edges and unnatural sharpness that pulsed around it... there was sothing seriously wrong with that rune.
Wrong in a way that made Jaune's skin crawl.
Raymond's face turned deadly serious.
"What do you an it's blocked?!" he asked without turning, eyes locked on their enemy.
The man answered for him.
"Exits are... inconvenient," he said lightly. "So I turned them off. "
The rune above his hand twisted violently, pulsing one last ti before vanishing into the air.
"No one's leaving," he hissed through that skull-helt, voice vibrating with cruel amusent. "Not until it's over."
The man turned his cannon toward Jaune. Not Raymond.
Jaune.
The barrel locked onto his hiding spot like a predator finally deciding it was ti to feed. In that instant, ti didn't just simply slow, it seed to collapse in his mind. Jaune felt it before he understood it. Like a string inside his chest pulled taut.
His lungs froze and his heart leapt into his mouth, pounding like it was trying to escape. His throat felt dry, too dry—like he'd swallowed ash. His tongue was heavy. His legs wouldn't move.
'No.'
He wasn't ready.
He wasn't anything.
Jaune was not a fighter. Not a hero. Barely even a survivor. Just a sixteen-year-old in trashy gear, covered in gri and blood, barely able to hold a sword without trembling. He couldn't even breathe right.
And the man across from him—this monster in human form that was wearing a skull-helm—he was smiling. That awful grin, barely visible through bone-white plating and flickering red light. The grin of soone who knew he was about to erase a life.
'I'm not going to make it. I'm not fast enough to move!'
Jaune's instincts scread at him to duck, to run, to do sothing. But his limbs wouldn't obey. They couldn't move fast enough. He didn't even have ti to close his eyes.
He could only watch.
The cannon fired. There was no sound.
Just a ripple—a tearing in the air—and the absolute certainty that he was about to die.
.
But he didn't.
.
A shape moved faster than thought, faster than fear. A sudden blur streaked in front of him, boots slamming down like thunder, and kicked the car he'd been hiding behind clean out of the way—into the path of the bullet, knocking it off course of Jaune.
The tal scream and exploded in shrapnel, away from the two.
Raymond.
Jaune recognized that silhouette imdiately. The broad shoulders. The reversed blade held in one hand. The calm, brutal focus radiating from his stance.
With a single slash, Raymond cut through the air—and through the next bullet that the man shot.
The massive shell, easily the size of Jaune's torso, split into two clean halves in mid-flight. Both chunks scread past Jaune, carving molten lines through the ground and tearing through the ruined storefront behind him like thunderbolts. Glass and plaster exploded.
Jaune gasped—then choked on it.
Because the gun-cannon kept firing, non stop.
Again. And again. And again.
One shot after the next roared through the air—and Raymond t each one. His sword flashed in tight arcs of blinding speed, carving clean through projectiles that should've flattened tanks. Each deflection sent shockwaves screaming outwards, but Raymond stood like a wall, cutting everything before it could reach Jaune.
Jaune crouched there, hands over his ears, shaking. Absolutely powerless.
Each shot he didn't die to made him feel smaller. Weaker. Pathetic.
'I'm dead weight,' he thought, teeth clenched so hard it hurt. 'I'm not helping—I'm just in the way.'
And then—the cannon went silent.
Steam hissed from its vents as the skull-held man gave a low chuckle. With a twist of his wrist, the cannon folded in on itself—segnts shifting, plates rotating—and transford once more into a spear. He leveled it toward Raymond, but his glowing eyes remained fixed on Jaune.
That grin didn't fade. It deepened, instead.
Jaune shivered and it wasn't from the cold.
He felt like prey. But Raymond didn't move. He could've attacked, maybe—but he didn't. And Jaune realized why, almost instant.
If Raymond advanced, if he left Jaune exposed for even a second, the man would lunge—and Jaune would die. That was the truth.
'He's protecting ,' Jaune realized. 'He's putting himself between us. Every second he holds back is for .'
The weight of that realization hit Jaune like a second bullet.
He wasn't just useless. He was costing soone else. And that… hurt more than the fear.
Worse than the sha.
Jaune's throat felt tight. The words caught, stuck behind the pounding of his heart.
But he forced them out anyway.
"W-why?" he croaked, barely audible over the wind and static charge still crackling in the air. "Why are you trying to kill us? Aren't the nightmare creatures the real enemy?"
He hated how weak he sounded. How lost. The man in the skull-helt tilted his head slightly at the question, like it amused him.
But before he could speak, Raymond cut in.
"He's just crazy," Raymond snapped, his voice flat with loathing. "That's all. So people snap when they're in this place."
The skull-faced man gave a low, almost pleasant laugh. Not angry. Not wild. Just amused. Leisurely. The sound crawled down Jaune's spine like a cold wire.
"Crazy?" the man said, feigning offense. "That's rude, Raymond Red. You wound ."
He turned slightly—just slightly—his attention shifting back to Jaune.
And Jaune wished he hadn't.
That red glow behind the skull-mask narrowed faintly, focused. He chuckled again, quieter this ti.
"Oh, sure. The "Creatures of Grimm" are fun to kill. Great training and good for letting off steam."
He raised his spear lazily, resting it against his shoulder.
"But this? This isn't personal, kid. Just business."
He lifted one gloved hand, tapping two fingers lightly to the temple of his helm.
"And it'd be a real sha if I didn't complete the task my leader gave ."
Jaune's stomach dropped.
'Leader? Task? Creatures of Grimm? What the hell kind of "business" involves assassinating people in the middle of a death realm full of monsters?'
He couldn't speak. Hell, he could barely think.
Because now there were layers—plans, politics, organizations. Things he hadn't even begun to understand. Things with structure. Purpose. And sohow, he was in the crosshairs.
Raymond's expression darkened. Visibly. He didn't raise his voice, didn't shout, but the weight behind his words was harder now. Sharper.
"Which organization?" he asked. "Who do you work for that wants dead?"
The skull-held man tilted his head again, mocking.
"Oops," he said, with mock surprise. "I might've said too much."
He took a step forward, casually dragging the tip of his spear along the ground. Sparks danced from the point.
"But I suppose it doesn't matter," he said, voice smooth and cruel. "You're both going to die anyway."
He grinned, and Jaune saw it again—just barely—behind the bone-white snarl of the helt.
That sick, delighted smile.
================================================================
AN: Im gonna start placing author notes in the chapter to mimic FF's style. Just a reminder, if we reach 10 reviews, I'll release additional chapters. Maybe 5?
To read up to 10 chapters ahead, check out patreon/TheFirstFire
Reviews
All reviews (0)