"So…would either of you like to explain to me what the hell you're doing here?" Hannah grimaced as she eyed the two agents standing in front of her with contempt.
To say that the atmosphere in the area was tense would be putting it mildly. The dim lighting of the room paired perfectly with the cold wind that was now flooding in from the newly created hole that once housed the front entrance. And the presence of free-floating mana particles hung in the air like flies swarming around their next feast.
All three sorcerers present were silent for a moment before Skylar finally decided to be the one to break the tension. The 'earth magic' user took a second to scan the area before speaking. "Hannah Donovan, we're here to arrest you. Well…that's what the plan is. Whether or not that actually happens depends entirely on you."
"Arrest me, huh?" The strawberry-blonde sorcerer smirked. "On what charges?"
"Theft, racketeering, drug trafficking, assault, sexual assault, rape, kidnapping, torture, and a list of other things that I'm sure you already know about."
Hannah cut a quick glance toward Cyrus. A slight grin then appeared on her face before she decided to speak again. "Well…you're looking quite good these days. I like the hair, too. The curls really do it for me."
"Is that supposed to be some sort of joke?" The young 'tree magic' user responded with a frown. Despite his earlier resolve, Cyrus still found it difficult to be in the woman's presence. Just seeing her standing there in front of him was enough to shake his nerves a bit.
"No, just an honest observation." The woman shrugged.
The temperature in the room suddenly got colder. Not as cold as it was outside, at least not yet. But it was clear to both Cyrus and Skylar that their opponent was already getting ready to make her move.
"It's a shame, really. I was just wondering when the next time I'd be able to see you. I really enjoyed our quality time together, and you're exactly my type, too."
"Sorry, but I'm not interested in being your little toy anymore." Cyrus replied. He could now see his breath as he spoke.
"Are you sure?" Hannah immediately taunted. "I already had our next date planned out and everything. I was going to pump you full of some party drugs and have some fun with you in a nice hotel. It was going to be a lot better than the last time. Hey, do you wanna see the photos of you that I have saved on my phone? They're really good!"
'This bitch really is crazy.' Skylar scowled at their opponent. The 'earth magic' user had met some pretty deplorable people during his time as an agent, but Hannah was definitely up there based on their interaction so far. How this woman could so casually say something so vile with a sick smile on her face was beyond him.
Cyrus was silent for a few seconds as his mind flashed back to what he could remember of his time being held captive by the woman. Even now, the scars on his face and hands began to ache as the memories of a couple of months ago resurfaced inside his head. And the fact that the steadily dropping temperature in the room only added to that made those memories even more vivid.
"Look, I'm not going to sugar-coat it." Cyrus then said as his mana began to flare up inside of his body. "I'm here to pay you back for what you did to me and Freddy. We may technically be here to arrest you, but we both know that's not going to happen. Long story short, you're not making it out of here alive. I guarantee it."
"Oh?" Hannah pretended to look surprised before directing her gaze toward Skylar. "Is that right?"
"Don't look at me." The 'earth magic' user shrugged somewhat playfully. "My partner here is taking point on this operation. I'm just the backup. He's dead set on having a one-on-one with you. So whatever he decides to do is up to him."
Skylar was well aware of the fact that the Chief could hear everything that they were saying through his body camera. But he also knew that this was something that their boss had been expecting. The two of them had even had a little chat about it the day before. And even though they were under orders to capture the Iznana criminal that stood before them, if the 'ice magic' user just so happened to die before they could do that, then there wouldn't be too much of an issue. After all, what would be the point in crying over a dead criminal?
Now that Hannah seemed to fully grasp the nature of the situation that she was in, the woman knew that she was going to have to take these two down for good if she wanted to get out of here with her life. She couldn't risk getting captured here; she had way too much valuable information related to Iznana that would be dangerous for both her partners and her boss if it ever fell into the wrong hands. And she knew all too well that the DPA was good at making people like her squeal.
She had also rightly assumed that the DPA was probably making a move on her partners and minions at this very moment. After all, the department wouldn't be dumb enough to send only two agents after someone like her if they had the resources to spare. On top of that, Aaron wasn't answering his phone, something that her brother rarely ever did. And Mikyla still had yet to text her about their upcoming meeting, even though she should be out of her shop by now. So, it stands to reason that her people were also dealing with their own troubles at this very moment.
'I need to make sure that those two are okay.' The 'ice magic' user thought to herself as she activated her mana and began spreading it out over a larger area. 'We can figure out what to do after we all link up.'
"Well then, cutie, I'm not really in the mood to die today. So, I guess I'm going to have to deal with you first. How sad, you were my favorite toy after all."
Every breath inside the warehouse felt colder now. Too cold.
And just like that, Hannah was the first to make her move.
The woman suddenly slammed her palms together, and a ring of frost exploded outward. The concrete floor of the warehouse whitened instantly, groaning as hairline cracks spread like lightning in all directions. And the temperature plummeted sharply as a crystalline fog rolled in, swirling around her legs like obedient serpents.
Skylar hissed through his teeth. "Damn, that's cold!"
"I know." Cyrus murmured, seemingly unperturbed by the sudden drop in temperature. He then stepped forward, slowly, deliberately. "Let's get this over with."
Hannah lifted her hand and flicked her wrist, and a shard of ice the size of a javelin screamed through the air toward the 'tree magic' user's head.
Fortunately, Cyrus had been expecting something like this. So, without even moving a muscle, he activated his magic to counter the 'ice magic' user's attack. A dark green shield of mana then appeared right in front of him, intercepting the spear with a thunderous crack. Shards of the mana construct sprayed like glitter before evaporating into white vapor.
Now, it was Cyrus's turn to act.
In the blink of an eye, the young man reached into his pouch to grab a single seed before pouring a small fraction of his mana into it, one of the seeds that his mother had gotten him as a gift not too long ago. And at speeds that wouldn't have been possible for him before his training with Elaine, a slew of thick tree limbs erupted from the creation, lashing toward the woman like living whips.
"Redwood Bloom!"
In response, Hannah gracefully twirled through the winding branches, frost building around her designer boots as she did so. Each branch that neared her froze mid-lunge. The bark had turned brittle, fracturing into powder that drifted harmlessly to the ground. It was truly a testament to how potent her 'ice magic' was. Even though the woman was only a B-rank sorcerer, her skills when it came to using her powers were nothing to scoff at.
Hannah had the elemental upper hand in this fight, and she was planning on using it to her advantage.
"That all you got?" She taunted, her tone light and mocking. "I expected more from one of the DPA's finest."
Cyrus didn't answer.
Instead, he lunged forward. And as he did so, the ground responded. Roots from the previously destroyed branches burst upward, forming a spiraling construct that propelled him toward her at high speed. Hannah's smirk flickered, but only briefly. She raised both hands and slammed them downward.
A flash of blue.
A roar of cold.
"Deep Freeze!"
A massive ice pillar shot up beneath her, lifting her high into the upper level of the warehouse. Cyrus's roots smashed into the structure's base, sending cracks spiderwebbing across the surface, but Hannah only laughed as she leapt from the top, descending upon him like a falling star.
She struck the ground with a fist.
A wave of frost then rolled out, swallowing the floor. Cyrus jumped back, but the chill reached him quicker than expected. The ice had seized his boots, clamping him in place.
"Cyrus!" Skylar shouted, 'earth magic' already crackling under his palms as he separated the different parts of his shield into an attack formation.
"I'm good!" His partner barked. "Cover me!"
Skylar bit back a curse, but obeyed. He agreed to only step in if things got too dodgy for his liking. And they weren't there, at least not yet.
Hannah approached Cyrus with a predatory smile. The kind of smile that made him uncomfortable right down to his very core. "You really should've brought more backup. I can tell that you're not all the way there right now." She leaned forward slightly. "You're still afraid of me."
Cyrus didn't flinch, but something flickered in his eyes. She saw it.
She grinned wider.
"Did you tell all your little friends about how much fun we had together? I'm sure they loved to hear all about it."
"Fuck off." The young man shot back as he poured more mana into his feet to try and help him break out of the ice.
"Oh, struck a nerve, did I? You know, once this is over, I think that the two of us can-"
A storm of branches suddenly erupted from Cyrus's pouch like a forest reborn. But Hannah had the presence of mind to leap back just as one snapped toward her face. All while another was aimed toward her shoulder, and the other twisted around to strike her from behind. The 'ice magic' user used her body reinforcement to shatter the two with swift kicks, freezing three more solid and reducing them to shards with the back of her hand.
But more grew in their place.
Cyrus was much different than before when it came to his mastery over his powers. Thanks to his training with Elaine, he now had the ability to control the growth of his trees to a greater extent. On top of that, the speed at which he could create them was much quicker than before. His trees were still relatively slow compared to other magics out there, but their effectiveness had certainly grown in such a short amount of time.
'The boss was right. His mana control is pretty damn good.' Skylar thought to himself from near the entrance. He had met quite a few 'plant magic' users in his life, and few of them had this level of control over their abilities like this. It was easy to forget that Cyrus was still in his first year of being a sorcerer based on what he was seeing right now. But even now, he could see how much potential the guy had.
The warehouse was quickly becoming a living maze of wood and ice as the floor split between frost and roots while the two forces collided in bursts of steam and mana particles. Each attack was more than enough to cause serious damage if one were unlucky enough to get hit by it. And it didn't look like either Cyrus or Hannah was planning on letting up anytime soon.
Skylar stayed at Cyrus's back, deflecting stray icicles with well-timed bursts of compressed mana every few seconds. "She's pressing harder, watch your left!"
Cyrus didn't need the warning.
His left side suddenly flared with pain as one of Hannah's ice discs sliced past him, clipping his arm. Something that caused the young 'tree magic' user to grunt and stumble in response. Never one to not take advantage of a good opening, Hannah quickly decided to seize the moment.
A spike of ice formed instantly beneath her hand, and the strawberry-blonde sorcerer thrusted it upward toward the man's chest.
Cyrus crossed his forearm in front of him and reinforced his flesh with a small mana barrier just as the spike was about to touch him. The spike struck it, cracking but not breaking through. But the impact sent a wave of pain rattling through his bones.
Hannah's expression tightened. "Just as durable as I remember! But that's what I like about you!"
"You have no idea." He growled.
Cyrus then pushed forward, forcing his opponent back two steps. Hannah recovered quickly and swept her arm outward, sending a blizzard of razor-thin shards toward his face. Cyrus quickly ducked and rolled, finally tearing free from the ice trapping his feet as sparks of green mana shattered the frozen shackles with a violent twist.
"Getting tired already?" Hannah taunted.
Cyrus didn't respond with words.
He simply stood straighter.
This woman was more formidable than he thought when it came to fighting head-on like this. And the fact that the spell she had blanketed over the area was only increasing her lethality made it all the more clear to him. But even so, Cyrus had plenty of tricks up his sleeve. And it was almost time to play his trump card.
But before that, now that he was in close range after being freed from his frozen shackles, Cyrus decided that it was time to get down and dirty.
It was then that the fight shifted to straight hand-to-hand combat.
The first move was a simple jab aimed at Hannah's head that the young 'tree magic' user used to try and throw her off. But the woman managed to evade it just before getting hit. Hannah quickly followed up by trying to land an ice-covered fist on the right side of his jaw, but Cyrus countered just as quickly.
The two then began trading blows with one another with an impressive level of skill. Neither one was planning on giving the other a chance to try and use their magical attribute. But at the same time, they were desperately looking for any sort of opening that they could take advantage of.
'How did he recover so quickly?' Hannah briefly thought while dodging a roundhouse kick that was aimed at her head. 'It doesn't make any sense.'
Most of her previous toys took months to recover from what she had done to them. Much longer than the time since she had released this one back into the wild. He shouldn't have been able to move like this. Nor should he have been able to have such control over his magic. The drugs she had pumped him with took months to completely work their way out of his system under normal circumstances.
Something was off here, something that she still had yet to fully understand. But the woman decided to put those thoughts to the back of her mind and focus on what was right in front of her. Her primary goal right now was survival and escape. Everything else could come later after she met up with her brother and best friend.
"Argh!" Cyrus shouted as he landed a mana-infused punch to the woman's gut after finally finding an opening that he could exploit.
The blow was powerful enough to make Hannah stumble for a second and fall to her knees. However, she was far from out of this fight.
Just before Cyrus could land another hit, Hannah placed her palm on the ground and created a wall of ice that separated the two of them. The move was intended to give her a chance to catch her breath and come up with a new game plan, but that quickly came to a halt when the wall suddenly shattered just as she leapt back toward a nearby wall.
"Yeah…not happening." Skylar smirked as sections of his mobile armor floated in the air where the wall of ice previously stood.
"Tch." Hannah clicked her teeth in response. She had almost forgotten that this was technically a two-on-one fight.
"Oak Binding!" Cyrus announced as yet another wave of thick branches came flying toward Hannah. Fortunately for the 'ice magic' user, she was more than quick enough to avoid them. She then shot out another wave of frost that halted the attack in its tracks.
By now, there was a good bit of distance between her and the two agents. And she still had more than enough mana left in the tank to keep going for a while. But that wasn't a good idea. She needed to conserve her energy for when she got away.
'Shit, I left my gun in the other room.' The strawberry-blonde sorcerer briefly glanced at the area on the other side of the floor. 'If I had it, I would've already popped that tranny bitch in the face.'
"Alright, I'm done playing around with you." Cyrus suddenly said with a cold expression on his face. "I was planning on fucking with you for a bit, but that's obviously not a very efficient use of my time. I think it's time we really got this party started."
"Oh?" Hannah smiled mockingly at the man as two blue baangs formed in the air above her head. "And what did you have in mind?"
"This…."
Just then, the air in the room shifted. And a thick wave of mana suddenly flooded the area around Cyrus, spreading out in all directions.
Skylar's breath caught behind him. The 'earth magic' user immediately recognized what this feeling was. After all, plenty of his relatives had busted their asses to be able to do something like this. It was a unique feeling, a sudden vibration of mana within a person that you wouldn't be able to mistake for anything else. 'Wait, he has one? Since when?'
Suddenly, both Hannah and Skylar felt a subtle rumble beneath the ground. And the faint scent of living soil began to stir where there had been only frost.
Hannah noticed too. Although unfamiliar with it, she could automatically tell that this was different than what the young 'tree magic' user had previously displayed. Her smirk faltered.
"What are you doing…?"
Cyrus raised one hand.
"I've been waiting to show you something." He then said coldly.
The warehouse vibrated as though something massive moved beneath it. Then, a deep groan split the floor, causing dust to begin falling from the ceiling.
Hannah took an involuntary step back. Something wasn't right. The very mana particles in the atmosphere began to move erratically all around her. And the smell of fresh dirt was now filling her nostrils. The woman knew that something about this wasn't right and reflexively erected a mana barrier around her entire body.
Cyrus's eyes sharpened.
"It's my first time using this in these conditions. But that shouldn't be too much of a problem for me."
The ground then ruptured in a brilliant surge of thick branches and emerald light.
"Overdrive!"