//------------------------------// // Arc XII Episode XII: Sirens Ablaze // Story: Family Begins With You // by Jmaster49 //------------------------------// Tiara eventually took her seat, slumping down, and resting her head upon her arms. Rumble meanwhile, decided to speak up to Spoon. “...The hell did you just say?” Silver Spoon continued to tap on her phone with an uninterested, neutral expression, rolling her eyes. “I said that’s what he gets. Didn’t I say that? I believe I said that.” “...Wow,” was all Rumble could say in response. Such a lack of empathy left him in disbelief--even by Silver Spoon’s standards. “Really. Wow. I can’t believe you’d say some garbage like that about him. He saved our lives, you know.” With a pop! Silver Spoon blew a gum bubble and kept talking casually. “Yeah. And? You know how vampires are. One minute they do an act of goodwill and the next, they’re all like, trying to get you to join their weird culty-fetish group. Haven’t you read books on them? Seen TV shows? Anime?” “Oh my god, you can’t be serious,” Rumble replied while grabbing the bridge of his nose, “Don’t tell me you unironically buy into that weirdo fantasy crap like the Moonlight books. They make vampires look mega-dorky for the sole purpose of forced love triangles and treating girls like they’re prizes to be won.” He folded his arms. “Not to mention the fact that they seriously drag werewolves down to their level and pit the two against each other.” “Have you ever seen or dealt with a vampire before?” Spoon came back with a rebuttal. “No,” Rumble replied and turned her own argument against her, “But neither have you.” “Maybe, but all the books and TV shows have to be based off of something,” she snidely replied while raising a brow, “Don’t even get me started on Dracula. And you just admitted that Moonlight recounts them in such a way to where they feel gross and disgusting. I don’t think that’s someone that I’d wanna hang around. And neither should anyone else if they have any respect for themselves.” Rumble simply stared off into space while looking at her. He blinked once, then twice, then started rubbing his temples with his hands as he sat back in his seat. “I can’t even…I don’t even--” He looked to Button Mash for some support in this conversation, “Do you hear the inane BS that’s coming out of her mouth, my dude?” “...Uh…I-I think you might wanna keep watching,” Button replied while staring at the news, shaking nervously. “Wha…? Oh no…” At Crystal Prep… “Stop!” Sunset pleaded, “You don’t have to keep doing this! Before you know it, you’re gonna end up regretting your decisions!” “Insipid fool!” the beast screamed back, “I have no empathy for nor kind, nor do I desire to understand you. This world shall know malice!” Once Sunset heard that, all bets were off. If her opponent wasn’t willing to see the error of their ways, then she had no real reason to hold back any longer. “Alright then…if you wanna play it that way…” But before she could assert herself, she felt an uneasy presence nearby. Adagio, whose eyes had turned solid red, was twitching uncontrollably. Her voice was also abnormal, with a reverb similar to that of the hostile demon. “...Sunset…leave this to us.” “...Are you sure?” Sunset asked, then promptly looked into the sky. Dark clouds began to form as it started to rain. The wind started to pick up, and small rumblings of thunder could be heard from above. Moments later, Sonata and Aria had also stepped forward--their eyes were an equal shade of solid red. After having witnessed what was done to Keiji, the three of them were thrown into an emotional rage in which the magic within their bodies caused changes to the world around them. Just the same as when they had faced off against Sunset and her friends during the battle of the bands long ago…only this time, it was on behalf of someone else. “Get him out of here,” Sonata said with an uncharacteristically deep voice that was just as imposing as Adagio’s. “That’s our little brother she’s messing with. She’s going to pay the price one way or another.” “Okay but…make sure you don’t hurt Sour Sweet…” Sunset replied with a worried frown as she noticed the wind becoming more fierce and the air becoming more humid by the second with a sense of thickened dampness akin to fog out at sea… “Oh don’t worry about that,” Aria added, “We’re gonna make sure she survives…but that overblown ingrate with too much trunk for its own good has gotta go.” “I remember this now,” Sunset thought to herself as she watched the Sirens’ aura grow more potent by the second. “They’re about to revert back to their feral forms as sea monsters. This may be our only shot.” The pachydemon scoffed, eager to see just how strong the trio was. “Hmph. This shall be interesting will it not? Take a hint and leave the battlefield, Orangie.” It started to pull swords out of its multitude of arms, preparing to fight back… Sunset had no reason to doubt their power as she had seen it first-hand. With the severity of the weather being thrown into what felt like a seastorm, she had little time to dawdle. Her priority was getting the now-collapsed and unresponsive Keiji away from the situation. “Alright. Do you what you can, guys.” And with a burst of fire magic, she swiftly sprinted over and grabbed Keiji’s body, escaping from the situation with him. “Ready girls?” Adagio muttered as the fog started to become thicker with a more intense sense of humidity around the campus, lowering the demon’s visibility, “Ready to show her what happens when you dare to cross our family?” “Heehee! I do. Very much so,” Sonata said with an unhinged giggle as the darkened, cumulonimbus clouds above started to spark with more electricity messing with the demon’s sense of hearing, “I can't wait to kill it! She’s gonna feel this all the way to hell!” “The devil won’t even want her there,” Aria added as the wind started to force trees to bend, and push the demon back ever so slightly off its feet. “Let’s just delete it from existence…!”