Years ago, our hero was still a young trainee, he would swing his greatsword in a small courtyard of the VHC, day and night.
Eisenwald was known to be a heavy sword for anyone wielding it. So adequate strength needed to be built from the get-go. Aaron would train to fail until he could lift that sword like a Lecourt knight...
Clearly, this would not go ideally...
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The boy, 13 years old then, would fuss and try to kick it away in his frustration, but to have his leg crushed by its thick blade...</i>
This went on for several days. Once, an older boy, around 19 years old, approached him in the courtyard...</i>
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He pointed at the blasted sword. Aaron grunted and approached its silver, spiral hilt...</i>
The stranger looked over the boy and his sword...Silver eyes, messy chestnut hair, and some light scars on his face and forearms...</i>
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Aaron could do no better to hide his confusion. He wanted to reply, sarcastically to vent out.</i>
But something in Beryl’s unwavering, serious gaze in his eyes told him that he might just be right...</i>
He grabbed the hilt with his own two arms. Summoning all of his strength, he almost tore off his arms trying to pull the blade away from the ground...</i>
He let go of his grip and fell to the ground...</i>
Beryl asked the boy to step aside. He grasped the hilt with his own two arms and lifted the blade up with a good amount of effort and grunting...</i>
Aaron looked in awe, with a slight hint of jealousy. After Beryl put the blade down, Aaron rushed and held onto the camo-coloured cloth on his forearm...</i>
The boy looked into his eyes, again. Beryl’s words had the power to draw him in with every try...</i>
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He clenched his fist...</i>
Aaron remained silent. No combination of words could ever be enough to act as a valid reaction to what Beryl was spouting…</i>
Both hunters kept their silence for a minute. Aaron couldn’t utter a word between Beryl’s heart-out description...</i>
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A week passes...With the seniors patrolling the streets nights in a row, the city restlessly recovered from the damage dealt during the boulevard horror.</i>
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From the moment Shroud walked outside the bank halls, with Beryl’s mutilated corpse in his arms, it took no more than a day to spread the news of the hunter’s horrific death.</i>
A hunter’s death is common. It’s a risky job, and neither the hunters nor the citizens ignore the mortal threat standing aside the silver heads at every step of the path. Most would be used to reading the obituary, and seeing it full of hunter names that they would pray for one minute, then send to the back of their heads to deal with for another time...</i>
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The casket is traditionally carried by seniors and juniors if the hunter had any…Shroud carried it by himself, all in silence, on one hand…</i>
The ceremony took a while. A lot of people had stuff to say…</i>
He took a blue handkerchief out of his pocket, and slowly wiped away his tears…</i>
But Beryl was steps ahead of me. While I was busy laying waste, the Titan they made me bring was saving surviving victims from every bat that could swipe right beneath me…Worst of all, he didn’t even call for help. “Keep going, Shaka, I got ‘em!”’.</i>
Shaka lifted his silver mask up in the air…</i>
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And our heroes were there, with Url and Lau caressing the tearful Cassandra…</i>
Although, with everything looking grim, Url was still hung up on one important issue…</i>
A few days ago, right outside the southern gates…</i>
Whispered the boy as he was angrily walking towards the dense dark forest…</i>
Just as the two seniors were ready to throw arms, Suiga popped up from behind with a suggestion…</i>
Shroud pulled back and grunted for a while…</i>
Suddenly he grabbed the samurai one-handed and lifted him up…</i>
He threw him over the gates and outside the city, much to his partner’s shock…</i>
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Patricia walked around handing beverages to the people attending from an iron rack on wheels, making small screechy sounds as she pushed it delicately around the table… </i>
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Beside him was an iron ashtray, its top hidden by smushed, burned cigar buts... </i>
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The dark hooded individual that none could place the other day had joined them, but from a distance, deciding to sit further from the rest...</i>
The chief saw through his rusty monocle, Shroud’s fist clenching on the edges of his steel-enforced chair...Luca worked up his words, while Samuel started shivering in fear...</i>
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With people in shock, Eliakim pulled away his cigar and kept his gaze counter to Shroud’s, as he slowly set himself up...</i>
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Luca and Shroud snicker…</i>
Lady Sarah, with her legs up on the table, thumb on brown, gold embroidered cowboy hat shadowing her face from the rest of the group…</i>
Too much talking. Eliakim saw his cigar’s cinder fainting away, so he grabbed his zippo lighter to ignite its burned end and take a nice, deep puff…</i>
Affright and delighted was the scientist after the priestess sent a generous, bright smile his way…</i>
Four sets of eyes other than Philomena’s showered him with derision…</i>
The dark-hooded man came forward and slammed his palm on the oak table. The sound of tough, metal armor under the oversized black hood crashing on the old oak set off the seniors…</i>
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A short lapse of seconds after Eliakim’s puff, the individual slowly lifted off the top of his hood…Shock conquered the hunters once again…</i>
He puts the hood back and leaves immediately…</i>
Later in the evening, while the sun prepares to set…</i>
Somewhere close to the city outskirts, was a small opening inside the dense forest where the moon would leave its light for the few rocks and ponds it held host to…</i>
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Said the calm samurai, in the most generous, mellowing tone he could at the moment, always avoidant of Aaron’s gaze…</i>
Aaron did not respond. His gaze was lost in the ashen aftermath of yesterday’s fire…</i>
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Inside the crude re-telling of Beryl Grut’s death, Suiga connected the dots and figured out how Aaron was jointly calling out his own pain…A kid forced to be a hunter…and no other option than to like it…</i>
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The samurai did not struggle…As if the Titan could have easily choked him to death…he took on the guilt and accepted his fate, slowly drawing back his own tears…</i>
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Even with his eyes open, Suiga felt and sounded like a ghost weeping for love…</i>
Suiga took one last glance, at his fallen comrade staring into the empty abyss...His figure fainted away as he walked forth between the trees…</i>
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Whispers...and...some grunting... monstrous in nature...</i>
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One good look over their necks and he saw the distinctive twin marks of a dependent...</i>
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His arm stopped in time once he froze from Url’s horrid plague mask...</i>
Through the old mask Url watched over Suiga’s swollen eyes...He placed his palm upon his comrade’s battered shoulder...</i>
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The old man’s squinty eyes opened in shock, as he couldn’t realize when he was in danger and when the hunters even arrived…Url approached him gently…</i>
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He turned to see the old man smiling…</i>
Hours later…Aaron’s daydreaming walks through the forest brought him to the same spot…</i>
Little splashes of blood, disintegrating and charred pieces of vampire around the field…</i>
Weirdly, the Titan felt a hint of concern with the corpses… He kneeled around the grass and searched for clues…</i>
He threw away the corpse and got up to dust off his clothes and be on his way…</i>
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Fear in the shape of a cold, quick wind up his skin conquered Aaron’s primal senses…</i>
Louis threw a trinket Aaron’s way. Dropping on the ground, he runs to see what his senior tossed him.</i>
A lock of Cassie’s braid…given her red hair, he had to turn it around a few times to notice the blood sticking on his glove, and drooping on the soil… </i>
5 seconds of cold, void terror, 2 seconds for Aaron to throw the lock and rush toward Louis with Eisenwald in hand, fueling his rage with every step…</i>
He smashed another pillar, but Louis just jumped down, just like a little girl playing jump rope in the schoolyard…</i>
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The man was similar to an older version of Shroud, with just enough hints of the Human Dracula’s face. Along with a combat stance mirroring the Sword Dancer, to remind the boy of the three most menacing hunters he’s ever heard or met...</i>
His cloak also opened from the front, letting Aaron’s eyes notice the black armor he was donning…In particular, the black chest plate embroidered with the sigil of a muscular warhorse… </i>
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Aaron''s hope was lost when Louis knocked him over and stomped on his chest with the sole of his metal boot...</i>
Aaron’s efforts to lift the hunter’s foot off his pecs proved as hard as pulling a sword from a thousand-year-old mountain…The old man was oozing with the strength of a god...</i>
The silver-eye hunter weakened his grip. In response, Louis slowly pulled his foot off the boy, sure of his obedience now that he established superiority in strength…</i>
Louis kept on pushing his foot on Aaron’s chest…</i>
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Raising the gauntlet of his left arm, he succeeded in blocking a slash of black fire coming right at him…</i>
Suiga came out rushing from the woods, blade at the ready…</i>
Louis took off his sole from Aaron’s chest and left him to bleed, as he approached the samurai…</i>
The young hunter tried to get every word out, but the blood from his lungs would catch up to him…</i>
Suiga dared not take his stare away from Louis. With a still, calm expression, he gripped his sword and observed the hunter all while engaging in his conversation…</i>
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Louis, unfazed, waited until the Lecourt reached him just enough to stop moving at high speed, and blocked her wind-enhanced stab with a single grasp of the sword’s blade…</i>
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He staggered, tried to disperse the flames away, but that left him unguarded and open to the Lecourt flying head first onto his chest…</i>
As he walked towards them he lifted his arm. Lau rebounded and rushed towards his lower body. The myriad stabs with which she could poke through vampire flesh and paralyze even nobles had no effect on his black metal plates...</i>
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The wind strike raised quite the dust and grass. But Louis remained still and proud, holding back the sword from his chest with his one arm...</i>
Frustrated, she tried to call out her winds and float away before the hunter’s grasp on her sword got firmer...</i>
Three quick, desperate blasts later, she was staggered by mental shock...</i>
Louis almost seemed disappointed. He pulled by the sword, slammed her twice to the ground, then threw her away...</i>
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He pulled, and kicked Suiga to the gut, then punched him to the ground with one strike...</i>
Pulling Suiga from his leg, he threw him towards Lau. Approaching slowly, he pointed his fist to the two downed juniors...</i>
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Click. The sound of a gun being loaded with ammunition came out of the hunter’s gauntlet as the canisters sprung out and in...</i>
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Opening his eyes in confusion, he felt no pain, neither anguish from hot bullets piercing his flesh...</i>
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The beaten, bruised, bleeding Willheart stood in his own, half-rippled feet, and grabbed Louis’s arm before he sent his friends to the infirmary and who knows what else...</i>
His silver eyes emitted a wave of hatred. Of bloodlust and anger that fueled his body to stand up and pull away the arm, despite his ribcage shattered like broken glass…</i>
Aaron summoned all of his strength and punched Louis hard enough to knock out a few of his teeth and slam him to the ground. Suiga and Lau quickly got up and jammed their swords close to Louis’s throat…</i>
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As Louis got up, he dusted off his cloak, but Aaron’s hands had other plans.</i>
He grabbed the hunter’s chest plate and rocked him back and forth...</i>
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To the railway dumping site, Url and Cassie sit in wait for the rest of the hunters to arrive…</i>
Cassie ran after them, throwing herself with punches onto Aaron, further smashing his broken ribcage…</i>
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As Aaron twitched from the doctor’s masterful needle application, he tried to look at his teammates…</i>
Hours earlier, in the same area, the group was sitting around a beaten old vampire, who had dressed as a harmless farmer...</i>
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She pointed her finger high at Cassandra’s dumb-founded smile...</i>
Fidgeting her fingers, and blushing bright red, she twirls the end of her boot against the gravel ground...</i>
A white note. Scribbled as if a maniac had gone wild with the pen, someone had written about the hunter’s positions and reasons for strolling out in the dense southern woods and given them to the vampire lurking...</i>
Url just stood there, humming in thought...</i>
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Aaron rested dumb-founded, but mostly ashamed, hearing his comrades were ready to risk their lives for a person who had treated them like garbage for the past three days...</i>
He stood up, grabbed the huntress like a ragdoll and turned her around every direction, searching for her crimson colored braid...</i>
The moment his words entered her ears, the red spots on Cassie''s cheeks expanded to the entirety of her face, all while Aaron still spun her around...</i>
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<i>Apparently, her own reddish rash was contagious for the frustrated hulk, more so when he lost control of Cassie and she managed to hook herself onto his body for a bear hug that even he couldn''t get himself out off...</i>
Url: Well, guess someone''s mood is finally lifted.
Aaron: Ugh...I''ll show how much I hate you now if you don''t get off of me, how are you so strong!!???
<i>Cassie stopped caressing her chief when she noticed his eyes had left her and changed their focus to Suiga, who was just calmly shying away from the commotion, eyes toward the ground...</i>
Still hurting from the stitches. He walked towards Suiga…</i>
Aaron’s open, rugged palm slammed against Suiga’s cheek so hard, it left a physical imprint aligned to his lifelong eye scar…He grabbed the back of his head and pressed his forehead against his own...</i>
Url tries to hold Aaron and Suiga with his bandages while Lau mocks them from behind Cassie’s cape…</i>