"...I beg your finest pardon?" Caelus stares at Alice in disbelief while unintentionally letting go of his hand. Of all the things he expected coming out of Alice's mouth, calling Phil her cousin isn't on his list at all.
People might say 'Well, they're both rabbit Thiren!' and Caelus would argue with a 'can you see ANY family resemblance!?' and 'just because they're both rabbits doesn't always mean they're related!'.
Meanwhile, Trigger stares at Caelus with a raised eyebrow. Of all things she was expecting, Caelus being formal and polite wasn't one of them.
"You claim to be Phil's friend, and yet you didn't know?" Alice asks suspiciously, her hand slowly reaching her waist.
"To be fair, he didn't tell me much about his life. I didn't know he was a Legwork until I found out myself," Caelus says with a shrug. "And I'm not going to force him an answer, especially when he wasn't fond of his family."
"...what do you mean by that?" Now, it's Alice's turn to be confused.
"...you claim to be his cousin, and you didn't know about that?" Caelus retorts, causing Alice to flush
"H-he always told me his home life was fine through letters or emails, and whenever I went to visit, there was nothing unusual," Alice stammers before shaking her head. "A-and, did you just use my words against me!?"
"I didn't specifically use your words," Caelus replies, causing Alice to pout.
"As much as I love to see you both banter," Trigger decides to gain their attention. "We got a situation here, remember?"
"Right, the kidnapping..." Caelus mutters as he grips his bat tighter.
"Again, why was my cousin kidnapped in his own mansion?" Alice asks as Caelus sighs.
"TL:DR, your cousin runs away from home after dealing with his family's bullshit for years, and a mercenary seems to target him and his family for possible corruption. We're here to rescue him and find out what happened." Caelus explains before turning around. Alice stands in silence, trying to process what she just heard before shaking her head and following them.
"I'm coming with you," Alice demands, and before Caelus could argue, she pulls out her sabre. "If what you said was true, then my cousin is in danger, and I would be a terrible family member if I did nothing."
"You do realize by doing this, you would risk your family's reputation when this gets out, right?" Trigger asks as she adjusts her rifle.
"...I know, but my grandpa asks me to take care of my family once I inherit my family's remaining fortune," Alice says before giving them a determined expression. "And Phil is family, so I'm going no matter what."
"...how good are you in battle?" Seed asks, earning a disapproving look from Trigger.
"Seed..." Trigger says in exasperation.
"Sorry, Trigger. But, I would do the same thing if I were her..." Seed goes silent and Trigger understands her, which only makes her sigh.
"...before you argue with her, remember what you did on the last mission?" Caelus asks, causing Trigger's eyes to twitch.
Without another word, Alice Thymefield has joined the party (temporarily).
"...so, how are we gonna do this?" Alice asks in confusion. "We're just gonna barge in or we sneak into the mansion?"
"Destroy everything on the path," Caelus says with zero hesitation.
"Are you trying to save my cousin or bury him alive!?" Alice asks in disbelief, and then, suddenly, they all feel a tremor. The party tensed up as they heard something banging loudly behind the door.
"...Alice, did the Legwork family happen to buy some sort of wild, exotic predators like those crazy rich guys in movies?" Caelus asks as he charges his bat.
"No, and for the record, the rich people from TOPS aren't your stereotypical rich guys from movies," Alice responds, and suddenly, the door frame flung towards the party. Caelus reacts quickly by moving forward and destroying the door.
From the mansion, something that beyonds their expectations has crawled out of the mansion. A horde of monsters, looking eerily similar to Ethereals, roars and rushes towards the party, specifically towards Caelus.
Caelus summons the Architect's Lance without hesitation and creates a flaming barrier around his party. As the monsters try to reach Caelus, their bodies are burned by the barrier, causing them to step back.
"W-why are there Ethereals here!?! Outside the Hollow, nonetheless!?!" Trigger asks in disbelief as she senses one of them jumps towards them and Trigger shot it down with zero hesitation.
'Okay, this is not what I expected when I decided to go and rescue Phil. Why are there so many Ethereals popping out of nowhere!?' Caelus glances at his surroundings and all he can see are monsters trying to reach him.
"G-get away!" Alice exclaims and she slices one of the monster's hands off, causing blood to spill out of the wounds and the monster to stumble. This causes everyone to freeze, wondering why the blood is red. For Trigger, she wonders why she smells iron in the air.
'...now that I look at it closer, they look like rabbits...' A pit slowly forms inside Caelus's stomach. He didn't like where this was going.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Earlier
"..." Both Phil and his mother are having a stare-off, and an uncomfortable silence fills the air. Zhao moves her left leg awkwardly while Phil's father simply sighs.
"Have you considered they might have fallen asleep?" The father asks as Phil scoffs.
"Did you guys truly see my knowledge as valuable or was it just a farce all this time?" Phil asks mockingly. "But, then again, you guys are nothing but a pair of neglectful assholes who are too busy basking in their profits to even care about any-!"
Before Phil could finish his sentence, his mother slapped him harshly, her face turned red in anger.
"Watch your damn tone, young man," The mother hisses.
"Or what?" Phil asks boldly. After everything that happened, Phil simply didn't care about consequences anymore. He may have lost everything thanks to that stupid dean and that pink dumb bunny, but he won't let his parents get what they want, an obedient and weak-willed son.
Even if he's gonna get killed after this.
Zhao can't help but grimace at what she saw. Everything she heard and saw hits close to home, the way the family saw their child based on their values, how they sound uncaring towards the child with little to no value, and how they treat their most valuable ones. It reminds her of the time before she joined Krampus, and it sucks.
Before she could excuse herself to leave from this uncomfortable moment, she and the others felt a powerful tremor from the mansion and a loud banging.
"What's going on!?!" The father demands answer and all he got was a loud roar along with a high-pitched scream that slowly died down. Then, they could hear a sound of broken wood and the tremor grew weaker.
"This smell..." Zhao sniffs before gripping her greatsword and staring at the Legworks. "What did you guys do?"
-----------------------------------------------------------
Back with the party
"I don't recall Ethereals bleed red..." Seed mutters.
"Red!?" Trigger asks in shock. "Did we attack a predator!?"
"I don't think these could be considered animals," Caelus grimaces as he twirls his baseball bat.
"How are we gonna get past this!?" Alice asks in a panicked tone. She hopes her cousin wasn't injured by one of these.
"That's the easy part," Caelus says before he spits the barrier and applies it to each of them. Without letting them process what's going on, Caelus has started knocking the monsters away from them and creating a path.
The party stares at him in silence before they follow suit, either slicing off or shooting down the incoming monsters on the back. As they charge through the horde, Mem had noticed several memory shards flying around and picked them up.
It was a mistake for her as upon touching it, she saw a scene so horrific, she dropped the memory shards by accident. Utterly shaken by what she saw, she immediately flew towards Caelus.
"Mem!" Caelus glances at Mem while continuing to charge. "Memi mem mi mem mem!"
"...what?" What Mem said stunned Caelus, and he stopped and stared at Mem in sheer disbelief before looking at the monster with a wide, horrified expression.
"Caelus!?" Trigger asks in shock, wondering why he had stopped as she shoots the incoming monsters. "Caelus, what happened!?! Why did you stop!?!"
"...children..." Caelus mutters as Trigger looks confused.
"Caelus?" Trigger asks in concern.
"They're children...." Caelus mutters shakily.
"Guys?" Seed asks as she uses her floating laser turrets to blast an incoming horde.
"The monsters...they were children of Legwork...." Caelus reveals, which stuns Trigger, Seed, and Alice in silence.
"....w-what?" Of all the things Trigger had expected, this isn't one of them. Caelus's eyes glow blue and he glances around. All Seed and Alice could see was Caelus' eyes grow wider and wider before he shut his eyes.
"...." Caelus gently pushes Trigger back before summoning barrier and rock walls around Trigger, Seed, and Alice. Then, he mentally commands the drones to detach from the baseball bat and summons the Path of Destruction into the bat, creating a powerful golden aura around it.
With a primal roar, he uses all of his strength to slam down his bat, creating a powerful shockwave that disintegrates every monsteraround him while also destroying a heavy chunk of the mansion, showing Phil still tied down, the Legworks collapsing on the floor, and Zhao taking cover under her greatsword.
The people in the mansion stare at the mass destruction in sheer disbelief as Caelus, with golden blood flowing out of his wounded arms, slowly approaches them. Behind him, the stone wall shatters, revealing his party safe and sound and the flame barrier disintegrates.
Zhao had met a lot of people in her life as a member of Krampus, and even encountered the top dogs along with deadly Ethereals inside the Hollows. But, neither of them manages to trigger the primal fear buried inside her until Caelus.
"....I'll deal with your cutton butt later," Caelus says coldly as he walks past her and slowly approaches the Legworks.
"Mr. and Mrs. Legwork, consider your days fucking numbered." Caelus spats with nothing but cold rage, slowly raising his baseball bat as it glows golden. "Because I am here, to bring you Destruction."
To be continued