Nathaniel hated this. He hated running. He hated reducing Draconis to a shield.

But at the moment, he had no choice.

He had to find cover, otherwise the battle was over. While his alter could take hits from the other alters, Nathaniel himself could not. Even so, he could feel Draconis weaking under the constant barrage of the twin-gun alter user. Ever present was the tri-orb alter, the alter that had thwarted ever attack attempt by Nathaniel.

Finally, Nathaniel threw himself behind a reinforced wall. He could hear the bolts from the gun-alter begin to eat away at it, but for now, he was safe.

Draconis landed, and folded it's wings around itself. Nathaniel could see dents in the once flawless wings. Nathaniel winced with each impact. Draconis couldn't take much more of this.

Nathaniel scrambled on hands and knees over to a hold in the wall. To properly command Draconis, he had to be able to see the battle field. Finally, he could a hole that suited his purpose: He could see the other alter users, but they hadn't realized he had moved, focusing their attention on the wall and Draconis.

At his command, Draconis unflurred it's wings and climbed into the air. The hail of bolts followed, but Draconis, now airborne, had an easier time avoiding the blasts. Once again, Draconis spat energy. Again, however, the trio of linked orbs caught the blast, and sent it back at Draconis, which took the hit full on.

Draconis fell from the sky like a rock. The dragon alter hit the ground hard. Before it could recover, the gun alter was on it, placing his foot on the chest of the alter, and firing at point blank range. The trio of orbs positioned themselves in front of the mouth of the dragon, keeping Draconis from frying the other user.

Nathaniel sat behind the wall, powerless to do anything as he watched the two brigands slowly destroy his alter.

Calico's anger mounts as his armor clad adversary avoids attack after attack from the long gun in Calico's hand. Calico continues to fire, regardless of distance, skill otr anything else for that matter. Finally, he loses his last strain of self control. His mind reverts to a berserker state. Calico feels the energy filling his gun pulsing up his arm and out of his shoulder. He glances over and finds a gigantic cannon mounted on his shoulder, though he doesn't even comprehend the significance as he fires the huge energy bolt, hitting his enemy square in the chest, leaving him drained of energy and his opponent unconcious on the floor in front of him. Calico's maniac grin spreads as he moves towards the unconcious form of his adversary...

He steps into the wind swept night, glances up into he starry sky, and slips away into the night. To find both his employer and his paycheck, as well as his next job.

"C'mon, damn you, get farther away..." Kaita thought almost grimly as he kept shooting and limping. "Screw it, it'll be useless at this rate."

"Now!" Kaita yelled, that being the first thing he'd said in a while.

At that whim, the thing that looked like something covering his back began to unfold into something more. Two huge energy cannons were soon floating above Kaita's shoulders, ready to fire at a moment's notice.

Soon, they began charging up, but they didn't seem to stop there. He was taking all the energy he could to finish this once an for all. They soon began glowing a bright red, and Kaita could feel the heat coming off of them.

"More... I need to get him now! I need more!" he yelled, his voice not being able to be heard under the shooting from his arms and shoulders.

Raviel didn't know what to do anymore. It wasn't as if finding new powerful altar users was new...but he knew that he would have been totally blown away by that guy, and though he might have been joking at the time it appeared Renor seriously was going to attack the city.

"The Altar Police Force..."

Essentially a replacement of Holy, it didn't change the fact that they had power. Their numbers wouldn't be enough to directly overpower them, and he personally couldn't go up against the stronger members of the APF.

That was all the more reason he had to train. He needed to find that thing that was missing from him, so he could become more powerful.

Kinsei saw the new weapons pop up, and saw them charging. Kaita was going to try and finish him off. Kinsei smiled.

"I'm a little harder to kill than that, kid."

Kinsei flapped his wings, and flew forward at a high speed. He crossed Night and Day in front of his body. Hopefully, he could get close enough to strike out with them before Kaita managed to gather enough energy to fire his two new cannons.

As Nat huddled behind the wall, watching helpless as Draconis was being destroyed before his eyes, his memory decided to help him out once more. As single image popped into his head, but Nat grabbed it and held on it. Once he figured out what it was, he smiled, and looked out the hole once more.

With sudden strenght, Draconis threw the twin-gun alter user off, and flew into the air. As it flew, it changed. The jet black armor now turned a deep blood red, a second pair of wings grew in behind the first set. Draconis itself grew, and soon it was more the size of a small building than a human. It's eyes changed from blue to green. Finally, the transformation ended, and the second form of Draconis hovered in the air, regarding the two men below.

The gun-alter user opened fire once more. However, the red Draconis didn't even shudder as the energy bolts struck uselessly against the red armor. Draconis opened it's mouth and spat energy. Once again, the tri-orb alter intercepted and redirected the blast. Draconis, in a somewhat annoyed manner, deflected the bolt with backhanded strike. Growling in annoyance, the the dragon alter opened fire once more. However, instead of a single bolt, a stream of bolts came out of the dragon's mouth. The tri-orbs were not fast enough to catch them all. The gun-alter user die in a red haze as one of the bolts struck him dead on.

Draconis turned to the leader. Desperately, the alter user huddled behind his alter. Draconis took what appeared to be a deep breath, and fired. The ray was green, and thicker than the other bolts it had fired before. The beam broke against the tri-orb alter, and for a time, the three orbs seemed to be accepting the blast. However, the fin of one of the orbs broke off, followed by a chuch of armor...soon, the whole alter vanished in the green beam...and it's user soon followed.

No longer needed, Draconis faded back to wherever alters come from. Nathaniel stood from his postion. Within minutes of waking up, he had killed four men. Who were they? he thought to himself. Were they the ones who destroyed this village?

It took him some time, but Nathaniel found some clothes to replace his tattered uniform, and some food that hadn't been destroyed or carried off. At the edge of town, Nat found tracks. He couldn't tell if it was a road, or if it was the way the raiders went after they had had their fun, but Nathaniel didn't have much of a choice either way.

Nathaniel began to follow the tracks.

Kaita saw what this guy was doing and smirked. He was insane. If he thought he could survive this, then he'd truly lost it years ago. If now wasn't a good time, there never would be.

"OMEGA SHOT!" Kaita called out, signifying his attack.

All the energy that had been collected then was released. In a bright red flash that was aimed at the sky, the huge shot of energy continued unabaded, until it reached Kinsei. When it hit him, it seemed to split right where he was holding his swords.

Straining to see what was going on, Kaita could see that Kinsei was holding off the attack with his swords, making sure that he wasn't getting disintegrated. Was it just dumb luck, or was he planning on it? It didn't matter, Kaita kept pouring on the energy, forgetting about shooting his other guns in favor of blowing Kinsei apart with his energy cannons.

"I have to finish this..." Kaita muttered through all this, not noticing the ground was shaking from all the energy in the area.

Another thing Kaita didn't notice that Kinsei probably did, was that more energy than Kaita could probably dream of was starting to build up where Kinsei was blocking the shot. It was soon after this that something happened the neither of them probably planned on. It was really quite sudden too.

All around bother Kinsei and Kaita, a feedback explosion began spreading out, at first slowly pushing the two opponents in opposite directions, but then suddenly exploding with tremendous force, and blowing them both away in a flash even bright than Kaita's energy cannons, neutralizing their alters in the process. The light reached up into the night sky, lighting up a lot of the surrounding area, and possbily spreading out across most of the Lost Ground.

After all this, the ground finally gave way, forcing Kaita to run one way, and Kinsei to run another. When the thick clouds of dust finally cleared, Kaita could finally see his fierce opponent standing a long ways away, looking back.

"I couldn't do it... I almost had him... I almost beat him!" Kaita thought angrily as he stared at his opponent. This wasn't over...

The small nubs that remained of his wings were finally evaporating back to whatever zone they waited in. Kinsei was thankful that he managed to survive that onslaught of energy. He knew that Kaita couldn't decide whether Kinsei was brilliant or just lucky. And honestly, Kinsei didn't know himself. What he did know was that he hadn't died, his alter was gone, he had lost too much energy to call even Dawn and Dusk back, and the entire area they were in was about to collapse in on itself. His right arm hurt. Day was the defensive blade, so it managed to protect his left arm. Night, however, was purely offensive. Even while being hit with the explosion, it was still slashing out at anything it could get close to, leaving his arm exposed.

But, Kinsei had never left a fight unfinished, and he sure as hell wasn't going to start now! He rolled up his ripped sleeves, and charged forward. Before he could get even a fourth of the way to Kaita, the ground sunk in under his foot. He leapt back, avoiding falling into a gaping hole in the ground. He looked up at Kaita.

And smiled.

"This isn't over, Dead-eye. We'll meet again. Hopefully in a place that can handle our fighting."

Kinsei turned and began to walk away. As he walked, he held up his hand into the air.

As Kinsei disappeared into the darkness, Kaita could see the middle finger of Kinsei's hand standing proud.

Sev took a good look at the girl and shook his head. "Can't say I've seen her before. I'm sure something will come up."

Sev shruged, "Something tells me that whoever had me knows quite a bit about all the alter users in the lost ground. In fact..." At the particular moment the small device that he had been given went off. A quick inspection revealed the a scrolling text message which read, Alter attack on the city proper imminent in the next few days. Prepare.

Sev puzzeled over the message for a little while then repocketed the device and turned to Checkers. "It seems we are do for an attack by alter users within the next few days. You might want to get her somewhere safe. The battle is supposed to go down in the middle of the city but it could spill to all the way out here."

Checkers tensed and looked at his young charge. "I guess we'll have to find somewhere safe to stay." He says to Ume. "Do you know why these people feel the need to fight? Haven't enough people Died. Dose everyone think it's their destiny or something just because they have some sort of ability." Checkers sighs and finishes off the last of his meal.

"You got somewhere to crash? I'm going to be heading the the outermost edge of town and looking for somewhere for Ume to stay safe. I get the feeling if I leave the city now I'm going to be in for trouble."


((OOC:I can't see much of a way to reach my Second stage until the attack. Will that work for the story line?))