O.C. Saar
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Omega Release | Chapter 14: Smash, Grab, Run
🕑 Added 2025-06-02 18:14:01 +0000 UTCI saw the priests starting to turn to face me, so before I got caught, I moved back to where Aren was waiting.
[Message]
[Aren:] What now?
I looked around, seeing some gaps in the upper shelves. I had an idea.
[Message]
[Raziel]: I’ll help you climb up to the third shelf in the corner. Use the empty shelf along the wall to shimmy to the next shelving unit. Once you’re in position, I’ll signal, and you’ll jump down and grab the box.
[Aren]: What’s the signal?
[Raziel]: I’m going to shoot the Priests.
[Aren]: You’re going to shoot the priests? What the fuck are you talking about? You can’t kill a priest!
[Raziel]: I know I can’t. Even if we managed to kill one, every priest in the area would know it and rush over to investigate. That’s why I’m going to go with EMP pellets. Those disable them for five seconds.
[Aren]: Five seconds? That’s it? Are you serious?
[Raziel]: In a regular fight, those five seconds don’t help much, especially since their reboot sequence makes them berserk, but it will be more than enough time for you to grab the box and for us to book it. The other priests won’t know what happened until the disabled priests reboot, so we’ll have a five-second head start.
Aren looked like he regretted every decision in his life that led him there, but he nodded. I helped quietly boost him up to the third shelf. As soon as the priests turned their backs, he moved with surprising agility to be in position right above the two. He didn’t make a single noise the entire time.
I’ll admit, I was very impressed.
I took out [Overdrive], wishing I could have charged up the shot before I fired it, but alas, the mechanism would make too much noise. I aimed at the two priests so that my shotgun blast would hit them both, and as they started turning, I nodded to Aren and pulled the trigger. The specially made ammo made only a muted “thunk” as the slugs were propelled forward through a powerful magnet. They landed on the priests, some hitting a couple of boxes, but they were slow and weak enough that they barely made a sound striking the containers.
The effect on the priests, though, was entirely different. As soon as the pellets struck them, they tensed up and froze in place, locked in what looked like poses of agony.
Aren jumped when I pulled the trigger and swiped at the box. He grabbed it and immediately started running towards me. He glanced down at the box, and his eyes widened in horror. I looked down at the box he was bringing me, and I felt everything slow down for a moment.
The metal on the box was dissolving rapidly.
He threw it at me, but the metal gave up as it flew through the air, and the box broke apart. The glass panels separated, leaving the gem glittering a beautiful red, flying towards me. Without thinking about it, I reached out for it and grabbed it.
Pain.
Pain, unlike anything I’d ever known, assaulted my mind, but I held on to the gem even as I felt on the verge of losing consciousness. Was this a security measure? My palm felt so itchy. Thankfully, and unfortunately, I was jolted awake, my thoughts refocusing a moment later as a deafening alarm started blaring, louder even than the sounds of the glass panels shattering on the ground. Then, I saw a priest rushing from the south side of the room toward us.
“Fuck! Run!” I screamed at Aren, putting the hand holding the gem in one of my jacket’s pockets and opening it, letting it fall into the lead-lined pocket that would protect it far better than my fleshy hand could. Hopefully, it would disrupt any tracking on it, too.
We jumped over a wide stack of boxes and turned to the right and then to the left. Doubtlessly, the priests outside were rushing in through whatever window was closest, so the way we came in was no longer viable. We’d have to break through the big double doors.
As I ran forward, I saw the black-robe Priest guarding those doors ahead of us turn to face us, her hood already filling with red light as he charged up his attack.
“Aren, your Tonfa!” I called, and Aren reacted immediately, bringing his [Stormspinner Tonfa] forward and engaging their shield as we ran toward the priest. A moment later, the priest fired her energy weapon, but thankfully, the tonfa withstood and absorbed the attack, although the sound they made wasn’t encouraging.
I fired [Overdrive] at the feet of the priest, making her lose her balance momentarily, but that moment was enough. We were able to slide past her and get to the doors. I put my hand on the knobs and turned.
They were locked.
I swore and turned to face the priest, who turned to me, chuckling.
“I sentence you to excommunication.” Said the Priest in a wheezing voice, already charging up her energy weapon again. Aren’s tonfa would probably explode if they absorbed another blast so soon. I saw another black-robed priest turn the corner to our left, running towards us, along with the two I had disabled and the first priest who started chasing us. Along with the ones I knew about outside and in the corridor, I realized that they had stationed 10 fucking priests in this deathtrap. What in the rings had I gotten myself into?
Having no better alternatives, I did the only thing I could think of.
“Not today, motherfucker.” I gritted my teeth and activated [Blood Boost]. I felt everything around me slow down as I sped up. I only had five seconds. I had to make them count.
I cocked my shotgun’s lever, engaging the [Overdrive Shot] subroutine, gave a mental command for the cylinder to rotate to the ultra-impact slugs I bought off Silver, hopped in place, and pulled the trigger while I was in the air. As my feet were about to leave the ground, I engaged the short-duration version of the [Rabbit Hop] subroutine of my greaves.
The Priest, about to incinerate us, was sent flying into the group of four rushing to catch up to us. They all collapsed in a pile of tangled limbs.
Unfortunately, I was not able to appreciate the comedic value of the moment, as the combination of subroutines I activated, along with the force of the shotgun, sent me flying backward like a human-shaped cannonball. I smashed through the doors with my back and kept going, striking something else during my flight.
The flight ended abruptly and painfully as I hit the wall. Still, thankfully, the combination of the protective qualities of [Coat of the Rust Reaver], its subroutine [Hunter’s Aegis], and whatever softened my landing kept me from collapsing into a ball of agony. At least I landed on my feet. Aren ran into the carpeted corridor after me and paled when he looked at something behind me. I turned around to see what he was looking at, and of course, the thing that I had hit was a priest. A priest who was now getting up on his feet, looking slightly miffed.
I heard a loud crash to my right and turned to see the door leading from the corridor to the front lobby smashed in and three priests rushing in.
There weren’t ten priests in this place. There were twelve.
Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.
“Aren, give me a tonfa, now!” I shouted, and the kid threw one my way without hesitation. “Follow me!”
I ran towards the three new assailants and swung the charged tonfa out. It struck the leading Priest and threw him back with explosive force. Not wanting to waste a moment, I turned left into a long corridor and activated the putty I had placed on the window earlier. The putty exploded, and the window shattered with a loud crash. I kicked open the door to the room with the cubicles, hoping some of them would think we tried to escape that way.
Instead, we ran down the corridor and took the door to the far left. The door led to the first room we had entered during this insane mission. A priest was already waiting for us in front of the closest window in the room. So, I did the only thing that felt logical. I grabbed Aren, tossed him at the priest while sprinting at full speed, and screamed, “Punch!”.
To his credit, the kid understood the assignment perfectly. He pulled his hand back and punched out with his tonfa in the air. He hit the Priest straight in the center of the chest and sent him flying through the window. Aren and I jumped after him. I landed on his face and drove him further into the ground. I didn’t stop moving for a second, my eyes immediately landing on the spot in the fence I had cut open, and I ran toward it. I dropped down and slid the last meter or so, kicking the piece of the fence away and getting through in one fluid motion.
Aren made to follow, but something he was wearing got caught in the fence. Terror appeared in his eyes as I pulled, but couldn’t free him. A second later, I saw a bright red flash, and he let out a shriek of agony and started flailing around. As soon as he touched the fence, it started falling apart, confirming my suspicions.
But this was not the time for that. I looked behind Aren, terrified that I would see a hole in his chest. Thank Terra, his injury was not deadly, but it still made me blanch. The priest had fired an energy beam at Aren’s left leg. Everything below the knee was gone.
Hearing the guttural-sounding priest’s cruel laugh, an anger I had not felt in many years boiled in my chest. I grabbed the useless feeling and shoved it deep down. This was not a fight I could win. I grabbed Aren, cradled him in my arms, and started running.
I jumped through the glass display of the abandoned grocery store, ignoring the lines of fiery pain blooming on my skin as the glass shards cut me. An energy beam narrowly missed my head, singeing some of my hair. I kept running and found the door in the back that we had initially gone through. I used my shoulder to smash the door open and pushed the kid to crawl to the other side.
“Go, Aren! I’ll hold them off! Go!”
“But…”
“When you’re through, I’ll follow you. Now go!” I roared, grabbing his other Tonfa and pushing him toward the opening leading to the alley.
I stood at the ready, red spots blooming on the metal door I closed behind us. Soon enough, the spots turned yellow and then white.
I cracked my neck. This was going to hurt. A lot. I activated [Blood Boost] again, and it felt like my head would split open. I could taste metal, but didn’t have time to pay attention to it. I activated the [Lightning Aegis] subroutine, the tonfa rotating incredibly quickly, even with my sped-up cognition. I held both shields up as a barrage of laser beams sought to turn us both to ash. I used my sped-up perception to try and intercept most of them, and what I couldn’t block, my [Hunter’s Aegis] reduced from life-ending injuries to life-threatening injuries, but time was running out, and so was my boosting ability. I knew I wouldn’t survive a third dose.
I ducked next to the door, taking a deep breath. I had less than a second before the Priests blew the doorframe and the wall to smithereens, so I pulled out [Overdrive], activated its subroutine, and stood back in front of the door, left hand holding a shield, right hand aiming at the priests.
This time, the EMP shells were not fired quietly. A storm of electromagnetic energy surrounded them as they flew towards the priests, catching them in a storm of energy that started to singe their robes and immobilized them for a few seconds.
The kid had reached the other side by then, so I followed as fast as possible. Just as I reached the other end, I felt a searing pain in the right side of my chest and heard the deafening noise of a building collapsing, but I ignored everything. I picked Aren up again and started running.
“You’re hurt!” I heard him say in alarm.
“Yeah, so are you, moron.” I wheezed back. We were getting close to my bike.
“No, you have a hole in your chest. A big one!” Aren said, his voice getting louder.
“That’s fine. I can deal with it.” I gritted my teeth, coughing up blood.
We finally found the bike, and I put Aren in the passenger seat. In a second, we were flying away from Zone 31 at dangerous speeds, dodging energy blasts firing our way. I was starting to feel faint.
“You’re going to die if you don’t do something!” I think I heard Aren scream, but it might have been the wind. Die? Me? Nah. Why would I die? I wasn’t opposed to the idea, but I was flying now. Flying is not a good time to die. But a nap would be great, right about…
“Raziel, please don’t die!” Aren screamed. That cleared up my mind, if only for a second. But a second is all I needed. With a mental command, I activated [Rust’s Embrace], and my cloak broke apart into dust, surrounding me in an auburn cloud. I instantly felt the healing energies flow into me. Glass shards embedded in my skin were pushed out, bone fractures were mended, and most importantly, a fist-sized hole on the right side of my chest started closing.
I coughed out a glob of blood and spat it into the cloud of metal, which absorbed the material and used it as fuel to accelerate the healing by a minuscule amount. By that point, we had gotten far enough from the priests that we were no longer in danger of getting shot out of the sky, thank Terra.
“Thanks for that, Aren.” I turned to him and gave him a smile, a genuine one. He had earned it. I pulled out an injector from my pocket and gave it to him. “Here, this will stop the bleeding of your leg.”
He looked taken aback and stuttered for a moment. “Yeah, well, if you died, the bike would have crashed, and I would have died too,” he said, trying to hide his embarrassment over his outburst, busying himself by grabbing the injector and stabbing it in what remained of his leg.
Seeing the state of his leg sobered me up. “I’m sorry about your leg.”
He waved me off. “Nah, it's okay, don’t worry about it.”
“You are… Weirdly okay with it.” I said, puzzled at his calm demeanor now that we had escaped.
Aren chuckled as if I said something funny. “I told you, don’t worry about it. The boss has a regeneration chamber. I’ll have my leg back in a week.”
I looked at the kid, waiting for him to say he was kidding. When he didn’t, I shook my head. “I don’t know how Kornok can afford to own, let alone run, a regeneration chamber. Explains why he wanted you back unharmed, though. If he takes the money for running one of those out of my pay, I might be fucked.” I said.
Aren shrugged. “We still have the contents of the box, right? And you got me out of there alive, even though you almost died for it.” He looked down and muttered despondently, “That has to count for something. Right? It has to.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than anyone else.
I shrugged, trying not to think about it, focusing on the kid’s safety for the moment. “We’ll see. First, we’re going to the Orphanage. You need to have your leg looked at and lie low for a little while. As soon as word gets out, every Priest on both Topside and Underside will be looking for someone your size, missing half a leg. We’ll figure out what we’ll do from there.”
Aren nodded shakily. My map detected a nearby elevator with Otherside access, and I flew down. As soon as the bike touched the ground of a quiet street, I picked Aren up, ordered my motorcycle to be dissolved for a frankly exorbitant fee, and called the elevator.
When the elevators closed behind us and we were finally safe from the priests, at least for the moment, we sighed in relief.
“So.” I started.
“Yeah?” Aren said, sounding sleepy.
I didn’t know how to broach the subject tactfully, so I decided to go the direct route.
“When were you planning on telling me you’re a Dissolver? Didn’t you think it was important to mention that my partner is a fucking Fluxborn?”
