Breathing heavily as he grabbed a woman by the neck while supporting her body through a blade through the stomach, Ester hurriedly twisted his body around and was struck by how silent his surroundings were.
Grey eyes darting around with confusion as nothing moved in his peripheral vision or his actual vision, Ester noticed how even the body that should've been struggling to remove the blade in her stomach or hand on her neck while he used her as a shield wasn't moving in the slightest.
And now that he was looking at her face properly through cracked and bloodied lenses, her head was lolling in a fashion only possible when you broke their neck.
'Ah.' The realization came belatedly. 'She was the last of them.'
Abruptly the fight started, abruptly it ended.
And with that belated realization came the ebbing of the Adrenaline flowing through his veins and the recollection of all the pain he had been ignoring.
'Ah where the void are my painkillers.'
Despite how often he used the Tork family members as shields, the number of times where it nearly backfired and he nearly lost his head weren't small.
With how often the gangsters resisted being turned into his shield, Ester had to both pay attention to their flailing movements and the movements of their compatriots who would end his problems in several blows.
And as a result, Ester lost his respirator, his right arm got dented in the delicate finger joints, his arm blade was chipped at the edges and his body was suffering from a not so insignificant number of cuts which burned with contact with fresh air.
Quite literally, it was burning.
The fact that itchiness and irritation incarnate decided to tickle his lungs with every breath he took didn't help.
Covering his mouth with a cloth, Ester ignored the tenants called Aching and Weariness settling into the house called Ester's body as he looked around at the devastated area.
Nearly two dozen corpses littered the marketplace with their flesh, the still warm blood seeping into the cracks inundating the ground.
Of these corpses, eight of them were actually backstabbed and killed by their fellow gangsters, six he killed personally, three he used as shields and the other seven...
[Are you okay idiot?]
Eva took care of them.
If they thought taking Eva as a hostage would've been easy, they were swiftly proven wrong.
The old man for all his flaws didn't teach them flawed ways to fight after all.
"Fuck no." Ester answered Eva with a groan, his limbs heavy with tiredness as he looked for some painkillers.
[Then maybe don't pick fights with gangs controlling the entire town next time?] Eva sarcastically said before she handed him a bottle of drugs. [Painkillers, Coagulant, Blood Maker and Caffeine.]
"Thanks" Grabbing and letting the bunch of pills fall into his throat, Ester let out a gag as he tasted the air. "And maybe you should stop being so ugly that all their eyes land on you."
[I was going to give you a respirator, but I guess you don't want it.]
Ester bowed as low as his injuries allowed him, which wasn't a lot. "Your highness the greatest and most beautiful trash bag of all the trash bags, may you grant me the honor of breathing air that doesn't hate me?"
Eva let out a hiss of air as she was caught off guard at how formal he suddenly became. [F-fine, I took the liberty of replacing the respirator tube by the way, your old one had a hole in it.]
Shuffling to the side and revealing the frame that was hidden behind it, Ester widened his eyes in recognition as he spotted the notches he made to mark it as his own, a brand new respirator tube connected to it like she said.
Hurriedly grabbing the Frame and detaching the Respirator unit connected to it, when he let the straps hang onto his face, Ester took in his first breaths of clean, filtered air.
*Sfsfsf
Gaining a respite from the actual hell this planet's atmosphere was, Ester briefly relaxed his posture and neatly stumbled onto the bench where the Frame sat.
"Phew." Taking off the broken goggles that were properly destroyed, Ester blinked away the burning sensations attacking his eyes whilst taking the goggles that Eva gave him. "I don't suppose you have any new clothes?"
[None that aren't ripped and soaked in blood like yours.]
"Fair." Ester picked at the bloody coat stickily clinging to his skin as the air interacted with the bio molecules and destroyed it with a hiss.
He wasn't kidding when he said that the air wanted to kill them for just existing.
Letting the shirt cling to his skin now more iron laced water than blood as the air destroyed the cells making it up, he briefly noted how his wounds sealed up at a speed visible to the naked eye.
It was still slow as void, but it was a lot faster than it was usually.
"So..." Ester lifted his head and looked around at the destroyed under market, fiddling with the frame's clamps a tad longer than he normally would've if he still had intact right hand fingers. "Do you think we can still buy what we need?"
[...] Eva stared silently at Ester without answering.
"...Hey, are you okay?" Ester lightly poked her stomach. "You didn't get more brain damage than you already have did you?"
[...Huh? Oh yeah.] Belatedly realizing that Ester was addressing her, she removed the strange look in her eyes [No brain damage? Yeah, no brain damage]
Sensing something was up but sensing that Eva didn't want to talk about it, he eventually let the metaphorical sleeping dragon lie, repeating himself.
[Ah. Why buy what we need when we can just take it?] Eva looked around.
Ester followed her gaze and couldn't help but nod his head at the sight of the number of empty stalls.
Most of them were broken as a result of the brief scuffle, and even more of them were empty as their owners took their wares with them, but the stalls that still had their wares while being abandoned?
If the owner of those stalls had something to say, they shouldn't have abandoned them to where they couldn't be looted in the first place.
Glancing at Eva who's body was here but her mind was somewhere else entirely, Ester shook her shoulder "You get that side and I get this one?"
[Sure.] Eva absentmindedly rubbed the metallic hand covering her shoulder. [But I feel like we're forgetting something]
Ester stared at his hand and sincerely wondered what the void happened to Eva. "Are you by chance forgetting if you hurt your head?"
[Where's the Gravitator?]
Ester blinked.
"Well" Ester looked around quietly before touching his head and wondering if he was the one that received brain damage. "Is it gone gone or is it still where we last left it?"
[I checked, its gone gone.]
"...Do you remember what that old man taught us?"
[Yeah, I can tell the exact thing that you're talking about.]
"Do you remember what that old man taught us about tracking?"
[How to make sure whoever takes your stuff regrets it? Yep.]
"Did you already check the surroundings so that we can go beat up whoever took our stuff?"
[I was just waiting for you.]
"Well what are we waiting for? The end of the world?"
[We can wait for the end of the world if you want.]
"You know what I'm talking about you bitch." Ester laughed playfully as he raised his arm.
[No I don't you bastard.] Eva's eyes turned into crescents as she playfully tapped his raised arm with the back of her wrist.
"So where to miss Princess?"
[Right this way little prince.]
Gesturing towards an alleyway, Eva led them along a set of winding paths that led them deeper and deeper into the underground.
On the surface, Ash town seemed like a small place, but the underground was a whole 'nother world that they slowly navigated.
Ester put the rough estimates for the population to be around a thousand.
But moving on from the population of Ash town to what they could tell, the trolley carrying their things had been stolen by opportunistic bastards aiming to make a quick buck hence why the stall behind theirs was roughly looted.
Finding out who and where exactly the thieves were was difficult when you're an unfamiliar face.
But when you hold blades to their necks, people talk.
Especially when it looks like the ones looking for the opportunistic thieves know what they're doing.
Especially so when rumor spread that they took out the Gang leader and all of the enforcers he took with him
Now as to why the speed of rumors spreading round was faster than the speed of their tracking, it would be due to two reasons.
The first was that tracking got harder when several other people stepped over the tracks.
The second was that it was a whole lot harder to be faster than people who knew where they were going if you yourself didn't know where you are going.
So with some not so subtle threats and the odd bribe of drugs, they eventually found themselves next to a flight of stairs heading down towards a room that had its ceiling broken apart by the Reckoning.
And wouldn't you know it?
The Pickie that tried to take Eva's bulb was there.
Staring at the Pickpocket who crossed his arms at the sight of them, Ester stepped forwards before freezing in place.
Feeling a tingle on the back of his neck, when he looked around, Ester was able to spot several eyes peering at him from within the shadows, the subtle glint of blades briefly reflecting the light.
'Never thought I would be fighting again so soon.'
Letting the soaked blade exit his arm in one smooth motion, Ester noted that he should clean it later as the Pickie hurriedly raised his hands in surrender, his voice placating. "Woah woah woah! Let's not get hasty here!"
Pausing in his motions, Ester glanced back at Eva who froze similarly, hands holding a pair of daggers soaked in greyish iron tinted fluid.
Turning his attention back to the Pickie who stood still at a vague distance that allowed a tactical retreat of an attack depending on the circumstances, the Pickie opened his mouth.
"First off, as the previous leader of Ash Town, I thank you for killing the Man sent by the Tork family."
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Tree that got good results in the IELTS test