His expression paling with dread, he looks back at Serpanz, quietly asking, “How, how do you know, about that?”
“Because one of Saul’s thugs, feeling remorse, brought it to my attention. That was why he was suspended for some of the semester, but came back just in time for the Royale Project. I would have had him gone the whole semester, but his folks back in Riaquen wouldn’t accept that, they wanted him to maintain his battle morph’s supremacy at the college. But it didn’t help you out any, the damage had already been done. You became a sad shamble of your former self. You were so traumatized that you couldn’t fight anyone else, and after classes you would hide in your apartment all day. You don’t remember any of that?”
“…I, I’ve tried to forget it, actually. But, things got better the next year, with my new abilities provided by drug enhancement and with Saul being gone.”
“Wrong, Cain. Things got worse. I hoped that you had recovered, and been humbled, from the ordeal, but those powers of yours made you as cocky and arrogant as before. It wasn’t long until you were terrorizing your fellow students just as Saul had, except you were taking greater joy in it, and soon I came to regret ever feeling sorry for you.”
“You felt sorry for me? Heh, that was kind of you.” A strange, somber gleam comes to Cain’s eyes. “You probably don’t know what it’s like to be afraid, do you, professor? Being the big, bad gym instructor, and chief of security here on campus. You don’t know what it’s like to feel so weak, so powerless, so craven that you’re terrified of everything around you, the only thing concerning you being getting to the next day in one piece, every day. Do you, Orcra?”
“…Actually, I do, Cain. Although, it wasn’t for me that I felt powerless.”
Lost in his misery, Cain doesn’t notice Serpanz’ confession and continues his own. “It was horrible, you know? I almost sympathize with the freshmen I torment, because I was once one of them, I was once the despised weakling. But, I couldn’t live like that, you know? I had to get stronger. I had to become stronger, to rise above others, so that I wouldn’t fear them any longer, and instead they would fear me. I tried training my morph back home, but, it wasn’t working, I would freeze up with panic in an actual fight. Not until my parents got me the special prescriptions did I regain my confidence, and then, the next year at college was great.”
He chuckles, his eyes glistening with tears. “I won the college tournament, and everybody was afraid of me! I monopolized the flow of money at the casino and became rich, I bedded a few women, and soon I had my devote followers working for me. I was a boss student, and I was king of the campus. And I have been! But, then, he came along, this year.”
Cain looks imploringly to Serpanz. “What makes him so different from me, huh? How is he so strong, as a freshman, when I wasn’t? How does he have so many, even other boss students, supporting him? Everyone feared him, sure, but now, they don’t, they like him! How can that be? How can he be greater than them, than me, without them fearing him!?”
“…Faith. It’s faith, Cain.” Serpanz explains, “Matt has shown he is honest, humble, and strong willed, and that, along with his powers outmatching yours, inspired others to see him as the one to counter you, the liberator to take down the tyrant. His actions and character have also made them his friends, and friends are more willing to serve than slaves. When it comes to leading others, to uniting them in following your will, or even to ruling over them, faith in you is a greater bond than fear of you.”
Cain absorbs the information, blinking in dull understanding. “Faith, huh? Faith, instead of fear. Heh, I suppose that makes sense. Then I guess that makes me the fool, after all. Maybe, if I get the chance, I should go find Matt, and…” Cain’s expression suddenly pales and twists, his eyes going wide, as his body bends and curls with him crying out in agony.
Startled, Serpanz reaches for him, asking, “Cain, what is it? What’s wrong?”
She and the other officers are confused, and worried, when they hear Cain making a sound like something between laughter and crying. “You’re lying, professor. They say you’re lying, you’re in league with him, with all of them, against me. Can’t you hear them? Can you hear their whispers exposing you for the freshmen sympathizer that you are, the injustice you are doing to me, and suggesting how I should deal with it? Oh, they are very nice suggestions, yes, very nice, hehehe.”
“Cain, calm down, and listen to me. Who is they? What are they telling you to do?” With a subtle gesture, she tells the officers to step back as she does, putting distance between them and their subject.
Struggling up onto his knees, Cain continues with madness gleaming in his eyes, “They, they say, I failed them. They are unhappy, but they, they are willing to, to forgive me. They will give me another chance, another chance to redeem and avenge myself, to take back what is rightfully mine. But you, you are in the way, and they want you out of the way. I, I will not fail them, again. I must, hehe, I must obey them. I must please them, must honor, must give them gratitude for their guidance. They, they want, a SACRIFICE!”
***
In a flash of green, Cain enters a demented form of his battle morph. His armor is darkened and twisted, a festering green and black, with cracks and folds and spots of irradiated crystals spiking out. His helm is also malformed, the fin bent down over half of his face to be a grotesque mask, half obscuring his wicked grin. His sword flickers and phases as sickly energy, and his shield and forearm have fused and warped into a monstrous pincer, snapping like hungry mandibles. With the radiation energy crackling along his crystal growths, he cackles maniacally as it fluctuates outward, threatening to reach the others while they morph and leaving an aura of radiation upon him.
One of the officers, a Gunman, doesn’t wait for Cain to attack first when he fires his right arm, an assault rifle, into his back, puncturing holes of green in him. Whirling around, Cain winds up a lightning whip from his blade and whacks the Gunman, tearing a jagged wound across his face and chest and stunning him before he closes the distance and seizes him in his pincer. Crushing the arm and ribs he had clamped onto, Cain lets his radiation surge through him and over the Gunman, zapping and burning him all over in rapidly accumulating wounds.
Once the wounds turn bloody red, Cain readies his blade, eager for a fatal thrust through him, before something else thrusts into his back, deepening and widening one of his wounds there. He spins around in rage, throwing the Gunman into the Spearman behind him, and gathers crackling volts of radiation at the tip of his sword. Before he could cast it upon them, a different spell blasts him from the side, knocking him down with a yellow crater of a wound below his shoulder, but he leaps back onto his feet to face the Magician. When he casts another bolt at him, Cain puts his open pincer before him to catch it, literally devouring the magic and spitting it back out, twice as large, as a sphere of radiation that explodes upon the Magician, dealing heavy damage as orange wounds split open all over him as he falls.
Glee showing on his monstrous face, Cain turns back to the other two officers, and the rising slice of his sword throws a volt of radiation that cuts through the Spearman, having him stumble back and both of them in dire condition. Cain becomes so focused upon them, shambling towards them with his blade ready, his pincer clacking hungrily, that he doesn’t notice the swarm of serpents until they are upon him. From all sides, in varying sizes, the Snake clones sprout up, hissing furiously, and sting with their fangs all over him, opening up new wounds or deepening the trauma of the recent ones. He staggers in surprise, swatting at the clones like they were insects, until one of them slips around his legs and coils, lassoing them and tripping him over onto his back as the rest continue biting him.
Only on the ground for a moment, Cain snarls in rage as his crystal growths activate, and bolts of radiation spear out of him to slice and shred the serpents surrounding him. He stands up, his crystals yet crackling with unstable magic and orange wounds appearing as spots and stripes on him, with the largest being
a fissure almost crossing his spine. Oblivious to his condition, Cain instead seems aware of whom the Snake clones came from, and he watches the shadows of the night all around him, ignoring the falling back officers, waiting for her to make a move. When he feels a slight tremor through the ground near him, he tenses, holding off a reaction, until the real Snake bursts out of the soil behind him, arcing her neck above him and bearing her razor sharp fangs, and he whirls around with a shout to cut cleanly through her with his sword.
In the instant after cleaving through Serpanz sticking out of the ground, Cain appears pleased as he looks intently at where he cut, expecting wound energy to come splashing out. Instead, Serpanz’ long length twitches, bends, and crumples into dirt and rocks before him. He can only stare at the pile of dirt, not understanding how this Snake, which looked physically complete unlike the clones made of magic, could have also been a clone, until a hiss blows over him like an ominous breeze. Before he can respond, fangs dive into the large wound on his back, shear and tear through it, and rip back out when Serpanz recoils from the strike, flicking her forked tongue in and out.
His wounds then crimson red, a stunned Cain turns back to Serpanz, meeting the onyx gaze of her snake eyes, and his expression curls with a growl as he prepares his magic for a spell to strike back. Instead, to his greater shock, the radiation energy fails to charge through his wounded body, the crystals spark with volts spitting at each other, and he is twisted and bent by a discharge of the radiation, nearly split in half along where his back wound was. His broken body spouting green radiation and red wound matter, Cain gasps, his one eye wide with horror, before he demorphs in a blurry flash of red and collapses upon the ground unconscious.
***
Shortly after Cain demorphed, Serpanz returns to her human form and joins the other officers, also demorphed, in standing around him, looking down at his pale body clad in the white sheet. “Well, that’s that,” she says nonchalantly. “Now we can add more counts of attempted murder to his list of crimes.”
The officers grimly nod before one of them says, “That was close, on his end. When his body ruptured from his magic bursting out of his control, I thought he was going to die.”
“Yeah, he was lucky, to be quick enough to demorph before his health completely ran out.”
Another officer asks, “But, how did that happen? Why did Cain’s own magic tear him apart?”
Serpanz replies, still looking down at Cain, “There are two factors behind that. First, when my clones were attacking him, they weren’t striking at him without aim. They were picking out points along his body near the crystals to cut the links of his spell charging system, and my own bite through his back damaged the system’s core. And second, the magic itself. You may have noticed how unstable it was, its irradiating power not natural like other magic. Cain was so mad, he didn’t comprehend the risk of such power, and when he failed to properly charge it the power back lashed against him and broke out violently.”
The officers nod again, and the third looks to Serpanz and asks, “Professor, um, we saw Cain’s battle morph, and we’ve seen his mentality. Do you think he has, uh, that one disease?”
“Yeah. I had my suspicions before tonight, based on the rumors about his behavior and his new powers in the tournament today, but now I’m sure of it.” She looks up to the officers, her tone and expression cold. “Rasputin’s disease. A mental illness that gradually makes the subject insane, as well as twist and corrupt his battle morph with unstable powers. He must have got it from those drugs he takes for his ‘invincible’ abilities. This means he’s an even greater threat to others and himself than we thought, and we’ll have to respond accordingly.” She gestures to Cain, and the other officers lift him up as she commands, “Take him back to the infirmary, and keep him under heavy guard. We’ll see him off in the morning back to his home state of Tirez, for treatment of his disease and justice for his crimes.”
Chapter 17
Indignation of Love
***
The morning after the tournament portion of the Royale Project, James awakens in the infirmary. Blinking his blue eyes open, he takes in his surroundings. The small room is bleached white, like the blankets of his bed and the sheet he wears, and a small machine beside him is connected to him by wires, monitoring his pulse and other vital systems. He wonders what could have woke him when he hears it again, a gentle knocking on the door across the room from him. Then he notices the nurse poking her head in from beyond the slightly opened door, asking, “James Iroshen? I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“I’d hate to crush your hopes, so I’ll say you’re not,” he sorely replies. “What is it?”
“Um, there’s someone out here who’d like to see you, if you were awake.”
“Well, I’m awake now. Might as well.” James finds himself regretting his given permission, though, when Irene is let into the room. She is also yet in a ward patient’s sheet, the curves of her figure showing when she moves, and he doesn’t like the look of the sneer on her face. Once the door closed behind her, she coyly asks, “Feeling any better, my dear?”
“Yeah, I suppose. Everything’s healed, except for my pride.” James tries to ignore an arousal within him from seeing her in a shawl. “What do you want now?”
“Oh, I just wanted to check on my closest ally and friend, that’s all. And tell you the big news.” Flashing a wicked grin, she comes over and sits on the bed, rattling James’ nerves further. “It seems Cain’s number has finally come up. They’ve got him for setting up Matt and Rose fighting each other, the intent to kill Cynthia back in the gym, and attacking Professor Serpanz and other officers last night when they were questioning him. Some more officers came in, just as the nurses were discharging me, and they carted his sedated form out of here for the train stations. They’ll be taking him back to Tirez, where he’ll be made to answer for his crimes.”
His discomfort at Irene’s presence changes to concerned interest at the news about Cain, and James lays back to look at the ceiling, sighing. “I was afraid something like this would happen. If he could have just kept his head down until we graduated and got out of here. But no, he had to lose his mind in the arena, and to make matters worse follow it up with attacking a professor and college officials! I don’t know if even our families’ money and influence will get him out of this mess.”
“Yeah, and what a mess it is. But at least neither you nor I got caught in it, as well. Are you glad I convinced you to stay away from him, now?”
“…Somewhat. I guess I owe you for that, now that what I feared has happened.”
“Oh, I was hoping you’d say something like that, James.” Her tone becoming sultry, Irene sneaks a hand under the blankets, tracing over James’ leg as she pulls up his sheet. “I know just the thing you owe me, then.”
Flustered, and for an instant aroused again by her touch, James grabs Irene’s arm and yanks it away, trying to sound firm. “No. Not here. They may have freed you to go, but I’m still being monitored, if you happened to notice. They see something like my pulse increase, or for that matter hear us through the door, we’ll both be in our own kind of mess.”
“Aw, no need to fret, James dear.” Smirking sweetly, she leans down and whispers, “You know the one nurse out there, with the short green hair? She’s a fellow student, and has an internship by working directly with the other nurses here at school.” The smirk grows into a grin with a twinkle in her golden eyes. “We’ve slept together a few times, and I could get her in here to join us.”
James groans as logic and lust struggle against each other in him. “I don’t need to hear about your past passions, I’ve heard enough of that. Can you tell me anything more about my cousin?”
Frowning, Irene sits up and says, “Oh, I don’t know. I think one of the nurses and guards were discussing how he’s got some kind of disease.”
“Disease? You mean, like a mental illness?”
“Yeah, I guess. One of them said some
thing like, uh, Rasputin? Whatever that means.”
“Rasputin’s disease!?” Paling, James lies back down from his jolt sitting up, the machine nearby beeping as his pulse quickens. “Fire Spirit burn it all. It all makes sense now. Those damned drugs of his. That’s where it all started!”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, Cain’s special powers, that make him nearly invincible? They come from special drugs his parents got for him, but they aren’t on the market. They were experimental prototypes, developed by our military branch, and should not have been provided to common citizens, but his parents used their money and connections to get him some. And now, we’re finding out why they were experimental.” His pulse continues rising on the machine as he rambles on, “Side effects include headache, nausea, insomnia, chronic pain, disorientation, and Rasputin’s disease!”
Taking note of the machine reacting to James’ temper, Irene suggests, “You may want to calm down, before the nurses come in here.”
Taking a deep breath, James tries to, but he says, “I just, I just wish, we had known sooner. If we could have gotten those drugs away from him, if I had done more to correct him, then it wouldn’t have come to this.”
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