Felix reached for his white gun. But his silent celebration was cut short by the blood that suddenly started pouring out of his nose, like a faucet in full swing, the sharp sting that made him cover up his own face with two hands.
"…Son of a bitch…" A pained voice spoke, startling the blue-eyed agent.
Felix lifted his gaze, the light in his other eye had faded, and were once again black and blue. He was shocked to see the young man still conscious, and even moreso to see him standing, if clinging to the walls.
Moritz gradually lifted himself up and pushed aside the broken drone that protected him from the blast.
"Fucking… fuck. Nobody told me that you've… got superpowers." Moritz's voice was strained while he worked his jaw. "And here I thought the only one I had to worry about was someone called Black Hound."
Still struggling to breathe, Felix picked himself back up and wiped off the blood on his mouth. Small streams of electricity flowed around his wounds, as if they were threads stitching him back together.
Barely able to stand, Moritz picked up the large drone and tore off the broken pieces, "What kind of magic… No, that's not a mystic art, is it?"
The exhausted agent lifted his gun to try and prevent the orange-haired jester from acting. But his hand could barely stay upright.
The jester aimed what had remained of the machine, the gun barrel, at Felix, and manually began to fire it.
With barely any energy left, Felix motioned his hand in a wave, creating a transparent, flickering blue curtain. A rapid, successive barrage of bullets.
The hard-light structure flickered and shattered, but it was enough to soften the impact.
With no bullets remaining, the jester lowered his weapon and weakly grumbled, "Fucking monster…"
Beaten and exhausted, both men struggled to even keep upright. An explosion from below shook the hallway and grabbed both of their attention.
"Huh?!" Moritz mumbled as he glanced to the side, where the explosion had come from.
But he stepped to the side as he saw a blue glimmer headed straight towards his head. He narrowly dodged Felix's coming fist, and pulled out a combat knife from behind.
He aimed for the agent's throat, to which Felix slipped past the swift slash and skid across the floor.
After escaping the lethal attack, the light around his body flickered away. The last embers of his energy extinguished.
The jester quickly fell back, "Whoa, I don't want to fight…"
"You tried to kill me." The agent huffed.
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean I was fighting you. I was just trying to kill you."
"That's—!" Felix suddenly felt his skin opening, and immediately realized that there was a shallow cut on his throat. He covered the newly formed wound on his throat and asked, "How… did…?"
"You might want to check what that noise was. But, before I skedaddle, can I ask you something?"
With agonized eyes, Felix looked at him and answered, "No."
"I heard the twelve organizations had a leaderboard, and that the top ten was supposed to be a cut above the rest... Are you one of them?" He asked his question all the same.
"You're not leaving here." Felix pulled out his black gun, but it felt heavy and shaky.
"So you didn't make the cut?" Moritz twirled his knife, "That's disappointing."
The jester waved him goodbye.
As he walked on ahead, Felix pulled the trigger, with a loud bang, the bullet penetrated the wall, leaving a crater on it. Yet the young man continued to walk.
"Huh?" He blurted out.
The agent fired two more times, yet as if completely unfazed, Moritz looked back at him with a large smirk. It was like the jester was skipping the space between Felix's vision, the man vanished from the bullet's trajectory.
He then threw his combat knife at Felix's head.
It spun forward and appeared easy enough to evade. But as Felix shifted his body to avoid it, something pierced the black coat of his shoulder.
"Urgk!" He yelped out as he looked at the combat knife buried into him, "What is this… what's going on?"
His face contorted with confused, but before he could properly react to it, he noticed that Moritz aimed his pistol at him.
Felix waved again, forming five thread-like lines of light from his fingertips.
But Moritz lowered his weapon, "Killing you is more trouble than it's worth, specifically in the price of bullets." He sighed and glanced at his pistol.
The damaged drone whirred in overdrive, it began to fill the area with an acrid smelling smoke.
"Welp, see ya!" The jester smiled.
"Come… back… here!" The wound on Felix's throat made it difficult for him to even shout.
"You're not too sharp, are you? I just spared your life, don't go wasting my charity on you." Standing on the edge of the corridor, he looked back with a vicious glare.
As the drone's spinning slowed to a halt, Moritz became different. His body flickered with red, green and blue outlines, distorting like a computer glitch. On top of his head, a jester's hat, flickering in and out of existence.
His cocky demeanor vanished, replaced with a dark anger and desperation. A grainy darkness poured out of him — bloodlust.
The brown jacket wrapped around him was now torn apart and barely holding together, and his face and body were covered in blood and bruises.
Moritz distorted even further, until it looked was three of them. Separated by green, blue and red, all staring back at him.
With a crackling snap, the jester shattered into pixelated pieces.
Felix blinked, and Moritz was gone.
"Illusion Tech…" He scowled deeper.
As soon as he vanished from the corner, Felix's shoulders relaxed and he dropped to his knees. Blood sputtered from his nose and mouth. There was an unbearable hot sting from his throat and nostrils.
Okay, so a bullet got to me… maybe a couple of bullets got to me…
I think I have a broken rib, maybe two. And all of my limbs are burning. Nothing to worry about. Just some random brat that wasn't in the intelligence report humiliated me.
This is fine. No, this is absolutely fantastic.
The agent grimaced. He let out strained, violent coughs through his scorched throat. He collapsed on the ground, shaking and holding himself tight.
Though his coat protected him from the onslaught of lead, his body was still burned with a throbbing pain, caused by each individual impact.
While the price of his own powers took it's toll, worsening his already labored breathing by clogging his nose with his own blood.
He groaned and grumbled for several seconds, before grabbing the knife in his shoulder. With a tight grip, he let out a hoarse scream as he pulled it out of his bleeding flesh.
His lungs emptied by his own pained shriek and refused to take in any air, and he was rolling in a puddle of his own blood.
Felix looked at his reflection in the stained knife, and quickly remembered the jester's last words to him:
"Don't go wasting my charity on you."
That word invited an unwelcome memory invaded his thoughts. The vision of a hand drenched in blood, reaching upward while trapped in rubble.
He grinned and looked at his own glowing blue eye, "May you be the fruit of all my endeavors… my prosperity, my charity, and my redemption..." He scoffed and agent angrily threw the knife on the floor.
Felix dragged himself toward the wall. As he leaned against it, he pulled out a small, red-marked bottle from his pocket and popped out one of its pills. A pain reliever, which he achingly swallowed through his burning throat.
Dozens of little zigzags began to form around him, slowly patching his wounds up.
As he caught his breath, however, a loud rumble reverberated through the building.
"Marie!" His worry forced him to reflexively get up, but he was far from fully healing, and he fell face first to the floor.
A string of explosions followed, and the Chief's words floated to the surface.
Maria, be on your guard, your opponent will be on your level with more experience.
He picked up his mask, his fingers trembling.
Bruised and battered by bullets, staying upright turned into a struggle.
But as he clung to the walls, wobbling with every step, the memory of Maria's blood dropping down his drove him forward.
"Marie… please be okay."
~