"Under a bunch of garbage bags, behind the guard station."

Because seeing things like that made Eld want to kill the man even without a personal experience, he had no way to make the connection that something similar happened to Lelan. There was no pity in Eld's eyes or voice; rather, it was understanding.

There were a few options Eld could think of. Lelan could stay here; he was fairly certain he could take the thief on his own, now that they found him. Whether Lelan killed the man or not...well, he wouldn't pass judgment. Not in this situation, not knowing what he could very well do to the thief.

The other option he voiced, because it seemed like a good plan. "You can report him, you know." It stop this, and it would even get some of the guards away from the station; hopefully, there wouldn't be too many this late at night. That would make apprehending the thief much easier.

"Yeah . . ." Lelan sighed.

He lifted his hand up to his forehead, pushing back his hood slightly as he palmed his forehead. Right. They had something to do. Honestly, Lelan had almost forgotten about that. They'd have to get on that, taking care of their thief and getting their stuff back and all . . .

Which sadly felt juvenile at the moment.

Lelan didn't get out of the chair. He knew where his feet were going to be taking him once he did, and he didn't like that route. So he didn't go anywhere, not yet. Rather, he leaned forward as if he were going to stand, but refrained. He could wait a moment.

"Go on outside, I'll meet you there."

Eld hesitated; was it okay to just leave Lelan here? If it were any other circumstances he'd never leave someone alone like this, whether or not he actually liked them. But...this time, there was someone that needed him more. Even knowing time was stopped, he hated to be away for too long.

"Alright," he relented at last.

Why did he have to worry about him? If it weren't for Lelan, he wouldn't be in this situation...or rather, Kageko wouldn't be in hers. But that was just the way he was. Despite how he acted, Eld didn't Lelan was necessarily a bad person, which made simply thinking how he felt he should--that he was an ally of convenience, and nothing more--difficult.

Giving one last solemn glance at him over his shoulder, Eld stepped outside. He was happy to give him a moment alone, if that was what he needed. But he was anxious to get back to the guardhouse and the thief. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he stared up at the orange-tinted night sky...

Lelan nodded to Eld as he left the house. Minutes would pass before anything happen, before Lelan even stood up. From outside, Eld might be able to see from the window Lelan's shadow as he stood up, and for nearly a minute, he paced. The shadow of Jericho continued to pass back and forth from one end of the room to the other, until finally it came to a stop, and then after a moment of waiting, started to disappear.

Another minute passed.

"Ha--unnh?" an older man's voice started first angry, but quickly became confused.

Bdmmf--!

"Oof! Who the hell are--?!"

Schllk--

"A-agh!! What are y--?!"

Schllk--

"A-- ah-- guurhh--"

Bmmffd--

"Ur-- gh-- guh--"

Schlllk--

". . . . ."

Schlllk-- schllk-- schllk-- schllk-- schllk-- schllk-- schllk. Schlk! Schlk! Schlk! Schlk! Schlk! Schlk!! Schlk! Schlk-- shlkshlkshlkshlkshlkshlkshlkshlkshlkshlk-- SHLLK! -- SHLLK! -- SHLLK!

". . . ."

Dmf-bmf-

More time passed. Fortunately, time meant nothing here. Though the voice of someone else had been heard, presumably brought in, presumably someone else touched, the orange hue did no die. The sphere remained covering the area, bathing the night in a dark saffron--

Lelan closed the door behind him when he left the house. His hands were pushed down into the pockets of his hooded jacket. His hood was up again, barely hiding the splotch of blood upon his right cheek. The shadows cast over his face let his eyes go unseen, from the bridge of his nose and up. There was no masking the red stain on his jacket, though. It was wet and caked on and soaked in.

Some reactions were called for, given the situation, but not that. It was a little extreme. At least . . . for anyone else. Lelan stopped once he was beside of Eld, not mentioning a thing about what happened in there. It could only be assumed, now--but indeed, Eld was going to have to attend to his primary job after this was over.

"Lead the way," he mouthed, his voice barely above a whisper, so low that Eld would almost have to just guess and make an assumption.

Eld was unable to hide his uneasiness as Lelan stepped out of the building. Lelan didn't need to say a word for Eld to know what happened; whether or not that was the right thing to do...well...that wasn't for him decide. Perhaps he would have killed him too, perhaps not...but he certainly couldn't bring himself to save him.

It was times like this that he question if he was truly as good of a person as he liked to believe.

But even if he deserved to die, that man's death had sounded...especially gruesome. Any sane person would want to kill him, seeing what he was about to do to that child, but...wouldn't just killing him accomplish the same thing?

Will I do something like that in just a few minutes?

He didn't have the luxury of pretending it didn't happen, either. Even after he rescued Kageko, he'd have to come back and send that man's soul. He could guess what the destination would be, and he was always a little edgy when he sent someone there, deserving of it or not.

Eld barely heard Lelan's whisper, but with no other sound to clash with it heard it he did. He nodded mutely, not trusting his voice at the moment, and started back to where the thief was.

Jericho followed by Tsukimono's side, ignoring the blood on him. It didn't bother him yet. It just made him feel as if he'd have to wash his clothes sometime in the near future. He liked this jacket; it was comfortable and undeniably fitting. Multipurpose, even. Getting rid of it without finding a new one first wasn't an option.

Once they were back in the alleyway again, Lelan spotted the trashbags. The thief was partially visible, despite Eld's attempts to cover him up again. Lelan approached the mountain of trash bags and stopped, staring down at it like a statue.

"This it?" Lelan asked rhetorically.

He grabbed a trash bag and tossed it away, revealing the thief's head. It was the answer to his question. For a moment, the adolescent stared at what they had to deal with. A guy with two Gaiasouls . . . well, if all went well, they wouldn't have to worry about it at all.

"You ready?" Lelan asked, his voice regaining tone. He was speaking again, that was for sure; his tone was still dark, but he could be heard. Given time, though, he was sure to bounce back.

"Yeah, I'm ready." His tone was stoic--a multitude of thoughts and feelings rose at the thought of confronting this man, remembering what he'd seen, but there was a single one that dominated them all.

Get her back.

He wasn't sure how Lelan wanted to do it, but he knew his action for certain--wrenching the scythe out the thief's hands, even it meant using his supernatural strength to do it. He wasn't going to let him have her any longer than necessary, now.

Eld still wasn't sure if touching the scythe would also wake up the man, so he placed his hands around it, ready to grip the shaft tightly and pull as soon things got going.

He nodded to Lelan--it was his ability, his call on whether Eld should first try and just pull the scythe away, or if he wanted to give the thief a kick or something to start...

Lelan glanced back at Eld, nodding to him. It was a good idea, that: grabbing the scythe and getting ready to rip it away from the thief as soon as he had the chance. He'd have to wait, though. Once the thief was moving in their time (or lack thereof), Eld would be able to wrench it away from him. As it was, though, Eld would find it physically impossible. Despite his strength, he wouldn't be able to budge it an inch until Lelan had done his handiwork.

"All right, asshole. Time to wake up," Lelan declared as he knelt down beside the thief.

The son of a bitch had given them a lot of trouble. He didn't deserve mercy, as far as Lelan was concerned. Death? No, not really. A good ass kicking, however . . .

So, he didn't hold back. What awakening was best for this guy? A rude one. Lelan reared back his fist and with expert precision lodged it into the gut of their thief, quite literally pushing him back into the trash, forcing his eyes to snap open and arms to grasp wildly for his stomach as he lurched back and coughed loudly, spitting up a mixture of blood and mucus and saliva--

All the while, Eld had attempted to wrench the scythe away from the thief, but . . . something changed with extreme suddenness--



--as his vision would spark with awkward hues of purple and blue, mixed with black all over, melding and mixing like some sort of surreal painting, only that it didn't hit his vision. Or did it? Perhaps it did, but he wouldn't be able to tell, as his muscles would reflex and recoil and hurl himself back with a sudden sense of delirium, and for a moment, all control and coherency would be lost as the world he knew was temporarily taken away and replaced with an incoherent babble of colors that all threatened to drag him down to hell if he'd let them--

A babble of thoughts and colors and hues and emotions and pains and pleasures and memories and memories and memories--



They stood across from another another, his scythe drawn, the other weaponless, eclipsed by that gray world, a scythe with two blades, matted on both sides with a sullen redness, and as the blond, roughed up man before him grinned, he brushed aside the lock of hair that consistently covered the right side of his face, namely his right eye-- and Eldridge Tsukimono knew true Chaos.



--and pangs of joy and hate and love and anger and regret and misery and darkness, so dark, so comfortably dark, and the colors gave way to that oily blankness . . .



It was brief and it was sudden, enough that it got in the way, and by the time Eld would come out of it, he'd find Lelan already breaking into a run down the road, now quite a distance from Eld, and a vague image down the road signifying the target . . .

Eld pulled with all his might, determined to free Kageko from this man finally--

And then his world was awash with color, sound, sensation, all jumbled into one big blur, as though someone had taken some kind of illicit drug and injected far too much of it directly into his brain. He was flailing, drowning, adrift in a sea that he couldn't even fully perceive.

Only a single image was ever given clarity: a blonde man with hair continually covering half of his face, bloodied and battered, standing across from him...

What the hell was that? was the first thought that entered his mind once he was aware again. He blinked rapidly as he came to, looking around, and remembered what he was doing.

A string of curse words in two different languages escaped his lips as he lurched to his feet, taking off down the street, trying to ignore the pounding in his head and the way the sudden transition from surreality was causing his vision to spin slightly as he desperately tried to catch up to Lelan and the thief.

It wouldn't take Eld long before he'd have caught up to Lelan at least. Lelan was running as fast as he could, but in actuality, despite his street smarts and rough background, he wasn't as athletic as Eld. It wasn't a fair comparison, though. Eld didn't look it, but there was something about him that made him a natural athlete, whether he liked it or not. Chances were he didn't like it. But that didn't mean it wasn't useful.

Though Eld had started long after Lelan was running, he'd inevitably pass the other boy up, but only as the thief, a little closer now, turned a corner.

"Shit! Don't let him out of your sight!" Lelan shouted at Eld, who he had to concede was much faster than he.

They were still outside of the normal realm of time, though, giving them a decided advantage with what kind of scene they could make here--but as they were, they needed to catch up to their thief first.

"I won't," Eld promised as he passed Lelan. Indeed, he was a natural athlete...well, not quite natural, really. He knew why it suddenly seemed like he could be in shape--better than in shape, actually, in top condition--without even trying. Or at least he had a pretty good guess, and there was nothing natural about it.

With Lelan behind him, and streets largely empty due to how late it was, Eld could now let loose with some of his Qi without worry, but unfortunately the thief rounded a corner before he could get a shot off.

It's not going to be that easy, bastard.

Instead of rounding the corner as well, Eld cut it--by jumping up to the roof of the building, from which he'd be able to see where the thief went. If he was quick enough, he may even be able to cut him off.

Eld cleared the building easily, but the thief was already a distance away. He was tall and lanky; he didn't have the build of an athlete, but Lelan couldn't catch him on his own, that much was for sure. He had something to boast physically, at least, even if he was frantically trying to outrun his pursuers. Frantic, perhaps--it seemed so, at least . . .

There was a distant whine and a creaking echo as the thief's footsteps pierced the air. He was running fast, but there was a new sound, one that beget a tearing sound, but only of cloth . . .

It only took a few steps of Eld running across the rooftop before he'd be greeting by a familiar attack: a hook launched straight at his face, fired off at an intense speed, attached to a chain that was now distant, but seemed to present no limit to its length. It came at Eld quickly and without warning, the only sound it presented being a hissing whine of chains.

The assault arced up over the rooftop and aimed straight for the Reaper in hot pursuit of the thief. He was on to them--and better equipped than he looked.

Deja vu.

Eld had one distinct advantage over the thief: he knew what both the Gaiasouls (assuming he only had the two, anyway) were capable of, more or less, and the thief seemed to have no idea who and what he was.

It was...a nice change of pace from the usual, Eld was force to admit. He also was apparently not the most tactically wise person ever--who shot a chain at someone they were trying to get away from?

So Eld ducked the chain and then reached out and grabbed it and pulled, which would either jerk the thief back or let him pull himself forward. Either way, he'd gain some ground, and as long as he remained holding onto it, unless he could release the chain (something he never saw Lelan do) he wouldn't be able to truly escape.

When Eld ducked, the chain continued to pass over him, showing no limit yet to its length, despite the fact that the thief would be a small speck in Eld's eyes. He was nearing the end of the street, where the the only option would be to turn another corner, which he did without even think about it. He ran fast. Too fast. Eld could probably catch up with on foot eventually, but he was making turns and the like, reducing the efficiency of anyone chasing after him.

Clearly, this wasn't the first time he had to evade pursuers.

Lelan was about in the middle of the street, now. The thief was faster than him only by a couple miles per hour, and no matter how fast Lelan ran, the thief progressively became farther away. That didn't stop him, though. As soon as he saw Eld grabbing onto a familiar chain, Lelan knew it was time to start worrying. That meant . . .

"He can use Sarrevous already?!"

Mentally he cursed like a sailor and turned the corner, grabbing the corner of the house itself to avoid falling over in the process--and continued the pursuit.

The chain descended from the two story rooftop into the street, where it commenced hugging the walls of structures on the right side of the street, becoming taught quickly and departing from the walls around the next corner, where the thief had made a right and continued. Eld hadn't stopped him just yet--if this could even stop him like this at all.

Is there no end to this chain? Eld wondered; it didn't seem like it, but it did make the thief easy to track. Unfortunately, he was also very fast, dodging around corners and making it so he couldn't just sprint and catch up.

Instead, he tried a different plan. Whenever the thief rounded a corner, Eld, still on the roofs, rather than turning at the corner he was on turned immediately, trying to keep parallel to him. While the thief was limited to wherever there were streets, Eld, on the rooftops, lacked that restriction; his only obstacles were roofs that weren't flat and any that were significantly taller than the ones around it.

With this, he hoped to accomplish one of two things: have the thief lose track of him and accidentally turn towards him, allowing Eld to ambush him from the rooftops; or get around to the other side of him so that he could drive the man back towards Lelan, who was lagging behind.

At all times, though, he made sure he could see the thief, tracking his movements, slowly gaining on him, and waiting for the chances to cut him off or catch up.