Arcadia

What I Must Protect

A crunching sound signaled the start of Jet's battle. With a follow-up punch, he forced wind energy around his arm into a condensed funnel, boring a hole right through a machine soldier's head. 

Jet spat in a disgusted manner as he watched the robot drop down to its knees, completely decapitated.

A young boy sitting on the ground looked at Jet. Despite Jet having saved him from the machine, he looked with eyes of fear. Jet noticed this, but decided to ignore him as two more soldiers sensed his actions and open fired on him.

"I told you all to leave, didn't I?!" roared Jet, while knowing full well that these hollow technologies could not understand him. He blocked incoming bullets with the wind from his arm and powered through one robot, taking its hands off in the process. Jet laughed as the armless bot exploded in front of him.

Meanwhile, Yura rushed to the child's side. She crouched down and gently caressed the trembling youth's head. She wiped off a single tear that fell off the boy's eye.

"Are you hurt?" 

The boy shook his head before looking at Jet once more. Jet had just finished off another machine soldier, this time boring a hole right through its midsection with a wind-powered uppercut.

"W-who is he?" asked the boy with a shaky voice. "Is he a monster, just like the ones father told me stories about?"

Yura eyed Jet and the destruction he brought. At that moment, Ren's words about impressions came echoing back in her head. "I've never seen Jet like that..."

She quickly snapped out of her daze and corrected herself by patting the scared boy's head. "Don't be scared of him. I can tell you that he's a good guy deep inside. Come on, I'll get you somewhere safe."

She helped the boy stand up and shot a glance at Jet. The latter didn't seem aware, due to him being busy charging and battling the other machine soldiers who responded as backup. 

Yura accompanied the little boy towards a covered location away from the streets. On their way there, Yura drew Lucent Heart out by reflex upon hearing a digital noise that she had grown sick of hearing, even if it was for the past hour only.

"DEMONIC THREAT DETE-"

The robot's initiating line was not even finished when Yura thrust her rod and pushed it off. It spun around and aimed at Yura with its small gun, when out of the streets came a large panther-like creature. It pounced on the robot, forcing it to misfire.

Yura used this opportunity to take the boy to cover. When she looked back, the panther broke the robot's head off with one swipe.

He slowly transformed into human and stared at Yura. The two locked eyes with each other before he was hit from behind by a barrage of bullets. He staggered a few steps forward and turned back.

"It pisses me off.... What happened to the sacred agreement?!"

In a flash, he was an animal once again and leapt towards the robot firing at him. He was hit several more times before managing to sink his claws into the helmet of the machine, crushing it similar to what Jet did not too long ago.

Yura held herself back from entering the fray, hearing some noise coming from all over the area. This was followed by the sound of an explosion behind her. As a small structure crumbled down, she saw the remains of the machine soldier, while a normal-looking man stood tall over it. He flicked his long hair and buried the lead pipe he held onto the robot's chest. 

"My, my. They really want to play this game with us, huh?"

On his call, the wounds that covered his body quickly healed. He watched as other people scampered around as his group fought the robots.