Welcome to Part 11 of Azure Striker Gunvolt: Fleeting Memories! If you missed any of parts 1 through 10, make sure you read those first.
Part 11
Although he really didn’t have any basis for it, Rei firmly believed in his intuition.
In this case, his intuition was right.
From behind him, a man wearing a flashy looking bandanna charged in, scooped up the bag they dropped, and ran off with it.
“Hey, wait!” Rei screamed at the thief.
He began to chase down the perpetrator. In that next moment, the bandanna-wearing man threw something in Rei’s direction. Rei only caught a glimpse of it, but he was certain that what he could see was a some sort of strange spherical object that was flashing red. He could only assume that it had to be something dangerous and that coming into contact with it would be bad news.
Rei ascertained that there was nobody else was around him, kicked his feet off the ground and leaped aside as hard as he could. The red ball was flying in an arc that was heading right for the spot Rei was standing in.
The moment the strange object hit the ground, a massive blaze burst forth and began to spread rapidly. The blast sent Rei flying.
“Gyaaaaaaaah!”
Next thing Rei knew, he was hurling into the shelves of a nearby clothing store. Fortuntely for him, all of the clothes hanging up acted as a pseudo net and helped cushion the impact. His pledge to always protect his sister came in handy as he was more prepared to deal with a situation like this. He managed to escape without any serious wounds or broken bones.
However, Rei was not unharmed. While none of injuries were life threatening, he was suffering from some burns caused by the blast and his entire body hurt from being flung into the shelves.
He dusted himself off and stood up, but there was an unavoidable, awful stench burning into his nasal cavity. He looked over at where he was standing before being sent flying from the blast and saw a bunch of small explosions going off. One shot after another, these small explosions where going off like mad in every direction. Before long, the place enveloped in a thick black smoke.
Weeeeeeeeeooooooow weeeeeeoooooooow…
That was no doubt the fire alarm blaring it’s ear-piercing wail. An emergency bell was ringing so loudly that Rei could feel the reverberations.
Screams could be heard from all over, and the lovely atmosphere of all these people having a good time shopping was wiped away in an instant.
“This has to be an Adept…!” Rei thought to himself.
More screams. People were trying their hardest to escape. Miu was paralyzed by fear; she could barely even move.
That’s when the flashbacks came back to haunt Rei once again.
“…No! I gotta protect Miu!!” He was trying as hard as he could to find off the invasion of dreadful images in his head.
He grasped his hand to his chest, shook off the cold and dark thoughts that were creeping in, and rushed over to Miu as fast as he could.
However, Miu didn’t notice, and before Rei realized it, Miu, who was frozen with fear up until a moment ago, gathered herself and started chasing after the unknown criminal.
“That son of a…!!” Miu was furious…
Rei ran as hard as he possibly could, desperately trying to catch up to his sister.
“How dare you do that to my big brother!!” Miu yelled.
Partially blinded by rage, Miu caught up to the violent criminal. Up until then, he had been throwing his fiery spheres at random, but when Miu drew near, he turned, looked her dead in the eye, and hurled another flaming sphere.
This one however, was coming right at Miu.