Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter thirty-nine

The older teen brushed his fingers across my back, sending a jolt of lightning up my spine as he put himself in his spot on my blind side.

I knew that we would both make it through this. We had to.

Either both of us make it, or neither of us does. I won't live in a world where I'm the only one.

—-

Chuuya POV

We ran towards the battle with all of the reckless abandon of the teenagers that we are. But we were careful to keep a careful distance from one another, holding one another at arm's length so that our abilities would not interact and interfere with one another. It wasn't the first time that we had done this, but it was by far the hardest time for me to do so.

Even as I watched the younger boy tearing the stray enemies that had managed to make it this far into the Apollo cabin's ranks, handling them with a sword art that I knew that Ane-san would be proud of if she were here to see, I couldn't stop myself from seeing the boy that only orchestrated the battles that everyone else fought, only stepping in to handle the ability users that most other couldn't. Here, the bandaged teen's only true defense back home was useless. I just had to remind myself that none of the weapons would ever leave a mark on the other boy, not after the idiotic stunt that he pulled in the Underworld, and focused on my own task.

The mackerel and I ran through the ranks of those on our side, pushing towards the front of the conflict where the two tides met and tried to tear one another apart, blatantly ignoring the way that the demigods called out to us and tried to tell us to stop.

Stomping on the ground, I let my ability run rampant through my body, watching as the world turned into a shade of red and that was all but invincible against everything but a certain shade of blue. A hole formed beneath my feet as the broken bits of the bridge rose up into the air around me, each one as sharp as the arrows that the campers behind me were firing, but a hundred times more deadly in nature.

Hands in pockets, I rose up into the air, crouching on a large chunk of concrete just as I had done all of those months ago outside of Rando's mansion. Everyone and everything looked small as I towered over them all. I thought about the situation at hand and looked at it as I thought that Mori and Dazai would have me do, using the advantage that I had to strike while not restarting to an overwhelming amount of violence that could get myself hurt as well.

Using the rock shards still floating around me, I fired projectiles down at the enemy ranks like a sniper operating beneath the guise of night, aiming for those that were getting too close to the archers for my own liking. I watched with glee as some of the smaller, less armored monsters turned to dust as the rocks pierced their hearts or ran straight through their brains like a bullet.

But I could only hold back like this for so long.

Down below I could see the other ability user making his way through the demigods and monsters that were bent on killing the boy before he even had the chance to see the age of sixteen. He cut them down unsparingly and without bias of whether they were monsters or demigods, though he did pretend to at least keep the pretense of handicapping the children of the gods whenever the move allowed him to do so rather than right out kill them. I didn't pretend that this was out of some misguided belief of saving them, knowing that he couldn't care less whether or not they lived or died by his blade. He only spared some of their lives so that those watching from our side wouldn't be suspicious of either of us.

It wasn't until the boy reached the heart of the enemy forces that I properly rejoined the battle, because I knew that with what he was about to do, he'd be too preoccupied to handle the monsters slipping right past him.