The Red Hand

Chapter 36 – The Extra Gift.

Once the girls had had enough fun at Akagi's expense, she asked Mika if she wanted to return home.

"I think that would be for the best," she said with a wry smile. "There's been so much happening over the last few days, and right now, I just want to give my parents a big hug." The mental exhaustion from this weekend's events was visible on her face, it was clear that she had reached her limit.

"I figured," Akagi stood up. "If you need help explaining things to your parents, just ask me or Kana." she figured they might deny their son was capable of such horrific acts.

"I don't think that will be necessary." Mika sighed. "I'm not going to tell them, it's better that they never find out just what Kai was doing; I doubt their hearts could handle it." She couldn't bear to tell her parents the truth, and she figured it would be better if they continued to believe him as the kind son they always knew.

"That's your decision." Akagi shrugged. Whether she kept them in the dark or told them the truth was none of Akagi's concern.

"I think that should be my cue to return home too," Naomi interjected. "It's been a crazy weekend, and I have some things to attend to before school tomorrow." She gave a sidelong glance at Akagi.

"Then I will have Yumi drop the two of you off at your respective homes." Akagi snapped her fingers, and the priestess appeared next to her.

"Yes, My Lord?" Yumi instantly responded to Akagi's summons.

"Take Naomi and Mika to their homes for me please." Akagi requested her assistance. "And give this to Naomi when you drop her off.” she whispered as she slipped Yumi the letter given to her by Ryuji.

"Of course," Yumi nodded. "Please come with me and gather your things; I will transfer you when you're ready." The two girls followed Yumi into the other room to gather their school bags.

"I guess I should head out too." Hishya was going to return straight to Tokyo after finishing up here.

Akagi stopped her. "No, I would rather you stay for a little while longer, we have some FWO business to attend to, and I would prefer you be here for this." Akagi was going to finally look at the special extra reward she was granted by Mizumi and wanted Hishya around for backup.

"???" Hishya tilted her head. "Ok, but I don't like the sound of that."

“Yeah, but its something that needs to be done, and if push comes to shove I'd prefer the both of us be here in case things go south.” Akagi's tone turned serious, she had no idea what the reward was so having Hishya as backup made sense.

After about ten minutes, Naomi and Mika returned with their school bags.

"You two have everything?" Akagi asked.

"Yup." (Mika x Naomi)

"Alrighty then, I'll see you two later, and good luck on those exams." Akagi gave a cheeky grin. She was quite happy to never have to study again and was more than happy to rub it in their faces.

The two high-schoolers let out a sigh and rolled their eyes, before walking off with Yumi. Kana decided to accompany them so that she could see them off. With Yumi's teleportation, it was only a few minutes before both girls were returned safely to their homes. Once Yumi and Kana returned she grabbed them and along with Hishya went into the middle of the garden in a large flat area. She contacted all of her followers currently in the estate and told them to gather around, she wasn't going to take any chances with whatever she was given by the game.

"Jeez, there are a lot of people here." Hishya counted over thirty of Akagi's subordinates forming around them. "Are you preparing to go to war or something?" Hishya asked half sarcastically.

"I have no idea what the game gave me, and I'm not taking any chances." Akagi reached into her inventory. "If it's an enemy, I'll bring down every last bit of force I have down on it all at once." After fiddling around for a minute she found the item that she was given in her inventory and pulled it out.

It was a small blue and black cube approximately two feet in diameter. The outside was marked with magical runes and it shone as magic flowed within the patterns. "Ok, now what the hell is this thing." Just as Akagi said this, the cube began to glow bright blue. In response, she flung it into the garden and prepared her weapon. After around a minute of glowing, a large yellow vortex opened, and a young girl was flung out.

"Ow! Ow! Ow!" the mystery girl cried in pain as she landed face first in the rocks. "Why would you throw the anchor? Do you know how delicate it is!" she dusted herself off and looked toward Akagi. "And did you have to.... wait.... so... long." her words slowed as she noticed the blade at her throat. Akagi wasn't taking any chances with an unknown person suddenly appearing in her home and quickly placed the girl in a compromising position. Simultaneously all of her subordinates trained their weapons and/or magic on this girl, if she tried anything her life would be ended in a flash.

"Now then, you're going to start answering my questions," Akagi's eyes glowed, and her face turned serious. "And if I don't like what I hear, or you try ANYTHING, you die." Her voice briefly distorted. "Do you understand?"

The girl was terrified by this display of power and began to shake, but she still managed to answer. "Y-yes."

The young girl in front of Akagi had short blue hair like Mika's but lighter, almost the same color as Kana's eyes. It seemed to sparkle with magical energy, and her eyes were the same color. She was short, perhaps the same height as a ten year old, and wore a blue dress with a red bow, the same kind one would see the young daughters of nobles wear in FWO. She appeared to be harmless, but Akagi wasn't letting her guard down.

"First thing, name." Akagi held her blade at the girl's throat.

"My name is Mizumi," she responded meekly. Hearing this name, Akagi's grip on her blade grew tighter and she pressed it closer to her neck.

"Are you the same Mizumi that sent me that message in FWO? The one about me being a limit breaker?" If so, then that meant that this girl may have been responsible for the FWO incident.

"Y-yes, I am. I sent you that message just before logout." the girl seemed on the verge of tears as she answered.

"Were you the one responsible for trapping everyone in FWO?" Akagi's voice grew dark.

"Um..." the girl hesitated, only to have Akagi press the blade up against her skin.

"Talk or die. Those are your options." Akagi gave the girl an ultimatum.

Akagi's voice terrified the girl, and she began to cry, but no one intervened, not even Kana.

"Waaa... I... I.... yes.... yes... I did... waa." The girl squeaked out a response as she cried.

Her admission caused Hishya to tighten her fists and her knuckles to turn white, and Kana cupped her hands over her mouth in shock.

"Why?" Akagi asked the crying girl. "Why would you do that? Do you know how many people died because of you!" She might have been grateful for receiving these powers, but that didn't mean she approved of trapping innocent people in a death game.

"B-because... if... if... I didn't." the girl continued to cry. "WE ALL WOULD HAVE DIED!" the girl loudly exclaimed. Akagi hadn't expected such a response, and was momentarily taken aback.

"Explain the situation! What do you mean you would have all died?" Akagi pressed for answers. "What did that have to do with trapping people in the game and killing them!" Akagi showed no signs of stopping her questions; she didn't know if this girl was truly afraid or if she was faking, and honestly, she didn't care. All she wanted was answers, and she was going to press this girl until she gave them.

The girl continued to cry for almost a solid minute before she calmed down enough to speak. Kana had tried to move forward to comfort the girl, but she was stopped by Hishya whose palms were covered in blood. In her anger she'd partially transformed and squeezed her hands so hard that she ended up digging her, very sharp, dragon nails into them causing blood to spill out from her palms.

"Stay back, Kana," Hishya said in her much more authoritative draconic voice. "If anything were to happen to you, I don't even want to imagine what Akagi would do. So don't get any closer." She walked forward and stood next to Akagi. She released most of her draconic power and was sporting horns, a tail, wings, claws, and her face and arms were covered in scales. She reached into her own personal inventory and drew her signature sword, the legendary flame blade, Sun Strike. Kana could do nothing but sit back behind Chloe and Yumi's protection; she was sure this little girl was going to die.

With the overwhelming presence of Hishya and Akagi bearing down on her, the girl had no choice but to speak. Hishya wasn't going to save her, if anything, she probably wanted to kill her more than Akagi.

"I want answers too." Hishya stared the girl down. "You better have a good reason for trapping people in the game for four years and killing almost two thousand of us!" she pointed Sun Strike at the girl. "If you were the one responsible for everything, then you should know just how bad your situation is if Akagi and I are pointing our blades at you." Hishya gave the girl a glare that could kill.

"We... We had to flee our home." the girl said in a weak voice. "The war between.... between mortals, and spirits... if we would have stayed.... we would have all been destroyed." the girl had stopped crying but was still unable to speak properly.

"And what did this war have to do with us?" Akagi spat out her question.

"We... we needed a connection... a connection to another world." the girl stammered. "We placed all the remaining spirits in a pocket dimension and searched for a way to leave our world." the girl explained.

"Spirits? Is that what you are? Not a god?" Hishya asked.

"NO!" she exclaimed. "We are not gods, many think of us as such, but we aren't." She looked at Akagi. "If anything, we are more like creatures of magical energy, but unlike you, we have physical bodies."

"Ok, so you wanted to flee your war-torn world." Akagi looked at her. "And while that's all well and good, you still didn't answer the question." She let her sclera turn black. "Why did you kill so many innocent people?!?"

The girl flinched. "B-because we needed a proper connection to this world," she explained. "Normally, moving between worlds is impossible, so I needed an anchor point. I manipulated the creation of that game so that it would mimic the pocket dimension as closely as possible. Once that was done, I needed to have people on your end synchronize their souls with the pocket dimension to stabilize the connection." she continued. "A side effect of this was that anyone who died within the game would be killed because their soul was linked to their game avatar."

“How could you even have the power to do all that? If you could manipulate events in this world as much as you did, could you not just cross over without endangering people?” Akagi asked.

“I don't really understand the magic used to do all this. The other elders gave their lives to make this work and I was only given information on what to do and the basics. Anything more advanced, such as intricate details about how it all functioned on a technical level, is beyond me.” Mizumi became sad as she recalled the loss of her friends.

She looked at Hishya. "Please, believe me, it wasn't my goal to kill anyone, but we had no choice. If we didn't escape, my entire people would've been exterminated! So we decided to take the risk; we knew people could die, but...." her voice grew weak, and she didn't finish her statement.

"You decided that your own lives were more important than ours." Hishya finished her sentence for her. "I suppose that makes sense, you killed a bunch of strangers so that people you knew about would survive. It makes sense logically, but I don't think that's any solace to the people that died." Hishya understood that they had no choice, but that didn't mean she liked it. During the FWO incident, she lost a lot of friends, and always wanted a chance to make the person who did this suffer. She may have been grateful that she'd been cured of her disease, but that didn't mean she wasn't angry about all those lives lost.

Mizumi couldn't refute her, after all, Hishya was right; that was exactly what they thought.

"Even with the synchronization complete, we still needed a proper point of entry into your world." She looked at Akagi. "I thought all was lost but then, I noticed that you had the potential to break the barrier between worlds, even for a brief moment." Akagi figured this was the whole "Limit Breaker” thing.

"What was so special about me? Why was I the only one able to absorb the Shadow Lord and become a limit breaker?" Akagi really wanted to know the answer to this question.

Mizumi took a second to gather her thoughts. "With the pocket dimension synchronized to the game, I saw that if I merged your soul with the Demon, I could create a stable connection point for us to cross into your world." She looked at Akagi, who was shocked by her revelation. "I don't know why, but for some reason, you were very compatible with that Demon."

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