Griffin Tail

Nineteen: Gory Violence

Content warning: death, violence, blood

Present day: Just outside Griffin Tail High

The moment they stepped outside that portal, the violence hit them. Literally.
A man in a white coat, stained red, shot past them, his sword clattering to the ground as he rolled ungracefully to a halt, followed by somebody in a crimson cloak.

"Come on, she's this way!" Blythe tugged Ato's arm and lead the way through the battlefield.
Kasai followed them, scampering quickly at their feet.

This was crazy. Ato had never seen anything like this. As he chased after Blythe, his eyes darted around the ever changing battle around them – there were sounds of gunfire and clashing blades and smells of smoke and cordite and blood. White coats flashed and blades clashed. The movement was dizzying. He pulled his attention forwards. Like a chaotic labyrinth, his surroundings blurred and shifted - he'd completely lost sight of Blythe and the dragon.

Something whistled by him and he spun, faced with the snarl of a man in white, his blade swinging. Ato gasped and ducked, grabbing the swordsman's wrist and holding it away. The man used his free hand to throw a desperate punch, but Ato was faster, stronger, kicking the man's knees to throw him off balance.

"Sorry!" Ato shouted over the chaos as he sent his elbow into the throat of his opponent.

The man gagged, dropping his sword and Ato snatched it up, moving on without waiting to watch the man fall to the floor.

"Webber, you idiot!" Blythe burst through a crowd, his face red from blood and fury. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Sorry!" Ato said again. He noticed Trinity in Blythe's arms, her pale skin caked in dirt and blood. He couldn't see her face behind her tangled hair, but it didn't look like she was breathing. "Where's Kasai? The dragon?"

"Forget it! Come on, let's go already!"

He knew he had little choice here. Ato reopened his portal and pulled his two comrades into his pocket dimension, then immediately opened another one  into Griffin Tail's med bay.
"Go on without me, I have to find Kasai."

Blythe nodded. "Don't die on me now, asshole; I owe you."

Ato made sure they were safely in the hands of the doctors before closing the portal. "You're welcome..."
He braced himself as he re-entered the battle field, the wave of chaos hitting him once more. The hunter's sword was uncomfortably heavy in his hands; it felt too long and clumsy for his taste, but what other choice did he have? A blade was a blade and beggars can't be choosers.

"Kasai!" He called out. The ocean of violent people churned without response.
Now that the majority of the First Wave had retreated, the Hunters were encroaching on the school. It was all happening too fast. The school was at a panic, that much was obvious to Ato as he weaved his way through the violence. Yes, they had been practicing self-defence their whole lives, but nobody could have planned for the horrors that this war had yet to release.

Gradually, Griffin Tail's second wave of warriors was released. Among them, the head master himself. Ato could sense Olaf's incredible power from where he stood - the old man's movements were fluid and calculated, his heightened senses lending themselves to the man's heightened awareness; he carried no weapon - he focused on his enemies' weak points, sailing through hunter after hunter while his comrades backed him up, defending their leader.

The Hunters' focus was on them now; they recognised the threat – and this one, they took seriously.

***

On the open road...

"What gives you your place in both the Mage and human worlds..."

Yuzu's words had stuck with Tris as she travelled with the Resistance convoy. The road was long - she didn't know quite where they were headed, but she knew that an important battle lay ahead – one that she had bean dreading for many years. She'd been staring through the tinted windows of this jeep for a while now, watching the unfamiliar terrain rush by. Her mind was buzzing like the engines around her.

She sighed and looked away, her gaze falling to her hands as she clutched the lightning bolt pendant of her necklace. She never went anywhere without it – her mother had made it for her father who had bestowed it upon her. It still reminded her of her family: important people she could barely remember. She held the pendant and admired it closely, taking in every little crack or chip or scratch in the cloudy, yellow glass, pausing as she caught her reflection in its uneven surface.

Her eyes. Tris had always been ashamed of her pink right eye, the permanent mark of her draconic genetic modification – she thought it made her a freak. She didn't choose to be born this way. Hell, her parents probably wouldn't have wanted this either. She held the pendant tight to her chest and turned back to the window, her watch eventually making eye-contact with her reflection. Her left eye, green like emerald. She wondered which parent she inherited it from.

Where do I belong?

Now that she gave it some thought, Tris didn't feel as though she really belonged in either world - let alone both. Something that she had learnt from living among humans, is that they fear that which they do not understand – and magic is one of the world's greatest mysteries.
There are, of course,  those who don't believe in magic or dragons – Tris almost wanted to laugh, though, it's not as though Abnormals make themselves known – after all, everyone at Griffin Tail is taught to live in the shadows, spending so much time studying human behaviour and self-defence that they scarcely give the mortals a chance to understand them.

What was Tris' place in all this?  She'd been leading a double life for almost as long as she could remember – one in which she is forced into a lie, and another where she can never truly be free. The thing these two lives have in common is fear. Humans fear magic, Abnormals fear Hunters. They all fear death.

Was war really the right path to go down?

[[End of Chapter 19: Gory Violence]]

Author's note // AYUP, it's been a while, I'm a bit rusty, do forgive me. I'm just really glad to be writing again. Hopefully I'll get to work on my Abnormal graphic novel sometime this summer, so stay tuned for that :D

Stay Amazing ~ BBandVal