Fan Fiction ❯ Black Orchid ❯ In the City of Time ( Chapter 29 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Addiction: Yeah, I haven't written lately because of summer school and Gaia Online. Very addicting. I worked forever to get the sports vest and the goth pants. Now my avatar looks cool! Anyways, if you like anime and video games and that sort of junk, go to GaiaOnline.com; it's very cool, even if it IS still in alpha testing. Anyways, we're finally here. Read and review, people, we're getting closer to Arc's past.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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The Clockwork City, Adonis. The City of Time gleamed in the morning light. Sharp, pristine, and above all, orderly. Vins valued order greatly. Order was the path to perfection, the path he had chosen.
People hurried about like ants, ordered and efficient, each knowing exactly what to do. And if they didn't...
His gaze flickered to one of the town squares, resting on the bladed machine that rested there.
Well, not many people broke the law twice.
He turned and walked back in from his balcony, the small clicking sound of gears this created lost in the greater noise of millions of cogs crunching together, chains rattling along, wheels slowly spinning. It was the sound of order. The sound of logic. His city was even more perfect than he was. It was the embodiement of order.
And it had no clue of the chaos that would soon be visited on it.

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"Arc?"
"Hmm?"
"You've been acting strange ever since we got here," said Orchid as they walked down the stone work paved streets. The buildings here were impressive, all of them tall and highly decorated, with a certain industrial machine feel to them. Most noticable of all was the fact that, no matter where you were, you only had to turn a little and you could find a clock. They were everywhere, and people seemed to live by them. All around the trio, people busily scurried about, too rushed to notice the newcomers. "Is something wrong?"
"No," said Arc quickly. He upped his pace a little to walk in front of the other two, lost in thought. He could feel it. Pumping through his body, like blood. He thought it had left him. He had merely left it, and now that he was back, it was part of him once more. As it always had been. Time.
"Are those Heartless, kupo?" asked Montblanc, interrupting Arc's thoughts. When he looked, several figures were moving towards them, and all the citizens scurried out of their way.
"Yes," said Orchid, as Nearbloom materialized in her hand. The figures were definately Heartless, easily recognized by their black bodies and yellow eyes. Their build was similar to that of a soldier, but their livery was completely different. They had four thin, wide gears covering the upper part of each arm, two on each arm. They also had smaller gears on their hands covering the backs, along with metallic claws. Their chests were covered with metal armor, marked with the Heartless crest, with gears and chains sticking out in odd places. Green, pointy caps rested on their heads, the kind that would be jolly had they not been on the Heartless.
"So, they're even here..." muttered Arc under his breath. He readied his fist, then launched himself at the Heartless.
"Deluge!" shouted Montblanc, who had mastered the spell soon after Orchid had. A jet of water shot out of the end of his rod, slamming into some of the Heartless that had dodged Arc and where heading for them. They were knocked flat by the constant stream of water, and were sent sliding across the stony pavement and into a wall.
"Take this!" yelled Orchid as Nearbloom struck into the face of one of the gearfreaks. It instantly exploded into dark particles, then was sucked into the keyblade. As she looked around, she could see more of the geared up Heartless coming towards them, coming out of alleyways. "Aw, man..."
Soon, they were upon them. Montblanc was unleashing a barrage of magic upon them, while Orchid and Arc rained terror upon them with keyblade and fist.
"Outta my way, you little-" Arc started. He stopped as he fell, attacked from behind at the knees. He managed to swing his fist under him momentarily to kill the Heartless that had done it, but he couldn't keep from falling to the ground. "Oww..."
"Arc!" shouted Orchid. When Arc looked up, there was a gearfreak leaping right for him.
"Oh, shi-"
He never finished his curse, because just then, a blast of power, only visible by the way it disturbed the air and the images of anything behind it, struck the Heartless. The trio watched as the Heartless, trapped within the blast, grew larger. Then the gears on it began to decay, crumbling to nothing, until it was nothing but a large shadow. Seconds later, it was a blob of black, and then it was gone as the blast ended.
"What was that?" exclaimed Orchid.
"I told them not to touch you. But as soon as they sense a heart, they just forget their orders. Like little sacks of greed."
The voice, so cold and perfect, chilled the very bones of the girl and the moogle. But it truly scared Arc. It had been two years since he had heard that voice. And he knew whose it was.
"Vins..." he whispered as he got up. He stared at the man before him. He was slender, and stood tall. His long, white hair drifted gracefully behind him with every step, and a faint clinking of gears followed him as he strode confidently forwards. His pale, perfect face stared at Arc with frigid, ice blue eyes. He wore an open rich, blue coat with broad shoulders and short sleeves, lined with golden cloth at the edges. His shirt was a fine white silk, and his legs were wrapped in tight pants that were of a slightly darker hue than his coat. Shining metal greaves, wrought with all sorts of latches and mechanisms, encased his feet and lower legs, and a similar gauntlet covered his left forearm. His right forearm was deeply imbedded within the mechanical cannon that had destroyed the Heartless. Roughly four feet in length with a wide opening, it looked very dangerous, especially after they saw it in action.
"I'm glad you remember me, Arcanis," responded the man calmly.
"Who is he? And what did he do with that gun?" asked Orchid, unnerved by the cold grace of the white haired man.
"My name is Vins Mousseux," answered the man. "I am the ruler of this city, my perfect Adonis."
"And that thing," added Arc, pointing with his left at the gun, "is one of his projects, that I guess he finished while I was gone."
"Ah, so you remember this?" said Vins with some amusement, patting the huge weapon on his right arm. "My project to use time as a weapon. That fool Heartless just experienced several hundred years in several seconds."
"What do you want with us, Vins? Why did you save me?" asked Arc suspiciously.
"I simply saved you from that gearfreak because I wanted to deal with you personally," explained Vins, no hint of emotion in his voice. "It's been so long since I've seen you, after all."
"How do you know Arc, kupo?" asked Montblanc.
"He used to live here, until I banished him two years ago," stated Mousseux.
"Two years ago? That's when you said you moved to Hollow Bastion!" Orchid said to Arc.
"So that's where you went," murmured Vins. "A very nice place indeed. And now Dar'ck stays there."
"What have you done with him?" demanded Arc.
"He's being taken care of," he responded. "Master Elias is seeing to him now."
"I swear, if you've hurt him in any way..." threatened Arc.
"Hmph. You're still as tiresome as ever. Making threats and vows that you can't keep, Arcanis."
"I'll kill you now!" yelled Arc, charging at the man.
"How very annoying," said Vins calmly, leveling his cannon with Arc.
"Arc!" screamed Orchid. But there was nothing she could do. Vins had already unleashed the power of time on Arc, straight at him.
"Now die."
There was a blur, and Arc's figure became indistinct and took on a blueish hue, then dissappeared. Then, it blurred back into focus again, but about a foot to the left. Most of him had moved out of the way, but as the stream of time exploded outwards, it still caught his stony gauntlet that covered his right arm.
"You've grown rusty, Arcanis," stated Vins simply as the he cried in pain. Before their eyes, Orchid and Montblanc watched as Arc's enormous fist, his weapon, crumbled to dust in the blast of time. "You can barely even slice the seconds in half."
Arc fell to the ground, clutching his right arm. But there wasn't an arm there to clutch. Inside of his gauntlet had been nothing. His arm just ended halfway down his upper arm, some loose wires sticking out from his now shredded sleeve.
"Now that we're rid of that toy," started Vins, lowering his cannon to Arc's face as he walked up, "I'll kill the rest of you too."
"Leave him alone, Vins!" shouted a voice. Several long knives came flying through the air to imbed themselves in Vins's weapon. Sparks sprayed out of where they struck, and Vins hastily backed away from Arc while disengaging the cannon from his arm. Once it was off, he threw it away, mere moments before it exploded in a spray of shrapnel.
"Jenine?" asked Arc, looking up. A figure jumped down from a nearby roof to land on the stones between Arc and Vins. She had long, blonde hair, tied up in a pony tail, and blue green eyes. She looked to be in her late teens, but her slight build left her looking much smaller than Arc, despite only being a little shorter once he was standing again. She wore tan baggy pants, like what a mechanic would wear, along with what seemed to be the bottom half of a leather trench coat strapped to her at the waist. Inside of it, they could see row upon row of knives hanging from it, each one identical to the ones that had destroyed Vins's time cannon. Her top was only covered by a small, plain black tube top, which left much of her light, cream colored skin exposed. Other than that, she only wore a pair of well worn gloves and a pair of similarly battered goggles on her forehead.
"It's definately me, Arcanis," she said, pulling out two more knives, one in each hand.
"Have you come to defend this criminal?" asked Vins coldly, shaking out his right arm, which had a gauntlet identical to the one on his left.
"You're the one who's a criminal, just attacking him for no reason!" yelled Orchid, jumping and preparing to smash the keyblade into Vins. The man looked at her with only slight interest. And then he was gone. Orchid swung, then landed hard on her feet, completely baffled by her target's disappearence.
"Nice try, but you'll have to be much faster," said Vins. He was standing a ways off. "You're lucky I don't have my Kikuichimonji with me. Well, no matter. You'll be seeing me later. Spend your time wisely."
As soon as he finished, he disappeared, leaving only a faint blue after image for a moment.
"He'll probably send some of his clockworks here soon, Arcanis," said the new girl, apparently named Jenine. "Let's get you and your friends to the base now, and talk later."
"Fine," agreed Arc, still clutching what was left of his right arm. "Let's go."
Jenine smiled. "Welcome home, Arcanis."