System Hunt: Regalia

A tempered glass shield moved to repel the leaping Belua. “Get down!” Sam yelled a second too late, his eyes shut just as the ugly thing bit into her neck.

“God damn it!” Yoko cursed as her clone began to turn to black dust. The clone stabbed and hacked at the accursed creature until nothing of her was left save her clothes.

Sam’s glass shard ran it through immediately afterwards, he set the tempered glass shield to cover the new vulnerability but they were quickly becoming overwhelmed.

Yoko, the original, roared and emptied bullets into the Belua creeping over Sam’s shield. Its head burst open in three different places before it bothered to let go and fall where Sam sent another flurry of glass shards into it’s prone, vulnerable form.

From atop the SUV Sam surveyed the absolute mess he and his fellow Regalia Wielder were in. Putting aside that he’d finally discovered another person cursed with Regalia, Sam worried neither they nor the family within the SUV would be leaving Manila’s apocalypse alive.

Yoko stepped back, leaning against the SUV as she ran her fingers through her hair in hyperventilated panic. She shook her head as the screeching Belua multiplied around them. A blackened branch surged at her from the side but Sam quickly responded, repelling it with his glass saucer.

“Yoko! I don’t think I can—!” His head pounded, a searing migraine pulsed through the veins in his temple before receding, albeit temporarily. He didn’t need to check his Regalia to know the seven bars of Glass Control he had were nearly used up.

He was calling on glass from everywhere, tearing it off the sides of buildings, office windows, soda bottles, car lights, bulbs— everywhere he could reach all while spending precious RGP on maintaining fine control on the massive range of glass he was showering on the persistent Belua.

[Available RGP— 1403]

Yoko wasn’t faring well either though. Of the seven clones he’d met her with only four remained standing, defending against the Belua. Sam had little to no idea how her Regalia powers worked but it seemed Yoko the Original couldn’t damage Belua the same way her clones did.

It’s amazing enough to be able to clone yourself though but why doesn’t she make more? He wanted to ask several times over the past fifteen minutes they’d been fighting off Belua, but it clearly wasn’t the right time.

Still— “Yoko, come on, we can do this.” Sam could hardly believe the words as they came out of his mouth. Even with a plethora of shards dangling above his head, raining on each and every horse-headed Belua that came close it was a tight fight.

They numbered in the uncountable and a few of them could command the burning brambles, roots and trees that were growing out of the nearest buildings. He shot a collection of shards at three drumming at his shield, only managing to pierce two as one vanished into black dust and reappeared a few feet behind where it should have died with a loud, defiant neighing that seemed to cheer on its fellow abominations.

“The Tikbalang are strong and too many…they’ll overwhelm us and…I shouldn’t have stopped here. I should have just kept running.” Sam heard Yoko babble to herself. She’d been calling the Belua ‘Tikbalang’ and it sounded like the right name for the horse-headed men.

“Yoko, I don’t know what you’re talking about but…you stopped to save these people for a reason.” Said family had remained in place in the SUV; two young boys and their injured father, there was no way they could contribute to the fight.

Nyx snuggled closer in the backpack, meowing as she buried herself in or attempted to. Sam blinked down at her and then realized something he should have right from the start. Wincing as another migraine flared through his skull, Sam dug through the backpack and retrieved the second gift Alex had left him with.

“Yoko, stand up and kill the Belua!” He tossed the DSF’s Holy gun down at her, it nearly landed on her head as it fell.

Yoko shook her head, “Guns don’t do anything, at least not in my hands.”

“That one will, trust me.”

She raised a brow at him but Sam wasn’t looking, his focus entirely on managing the tempered shields he had. Two were beginning to crack from being battered by thick tree roots and once they did he’d been forced to sacrifice the one he used as a saucer, essentially trapping himself here with Yoko and the family of three.

Don’t be a coward. Don’t be a coward.

He’d set two shields up front, moving them back and forth so Yoko’s clones could have a guard to fall back behind. The third glass shield stood almost permanently against the open half of the SUV, ensuring any Tikbalang he didn’t notice coming didn’t get to them instantly. And the last held up the rear where fortunately few Tikbalang were coming through and Yoko’s two other clones had his back.

In-between this all were shards of glass hovering in a tight, protective circle, padded heavily at the sides so any Tikbalang Belua coming through would suffer first before reaching the shields or the clones.

“Give me an opening.” Yoko said, finding her resolve once more.

Sam obliged, opening the shields and parting a small space in his ring of shards for the murder hungry Tikbalang to flood through. She fired the first Holy Bullet and the recoil forced her back as it tore clean through the Belua’s chest.

“Oh fuck yes!” She braced herself this time and fired another shot. The Holy bullet glowed a bright blue as it punched through the Belua’s uneven knee. Yoko’s clone moved out from behind Sam’s shields, machete swung with haste and hate sliced its head clean off.

With Yoko back in the fight, Sam felt some relief and bothered to dial Alex on the band she’d given him before they parted ways. He’d already done so the moment after Yoko had revealed herself as a Regalia Wielder— mostly to brag about how he’d found one before her— and Alex had promised reinforcements on their location.

That was fifteen minutes ago. Not impatient, just…on the cusp of dying. The band connected a second after he dialled her and Alex’s stern solider voice came through, “Hang in there Sam, we are on our way.”

“I just thought I should let you know that I’m running out of fingers to hang on!” Sam yelled, the neighs, shrieks and now Yoko’s indiscriminate firing of Holy Bullets made for a loud scene.

“We’re converging, ten more minutes Sam, hang on.”

The connection cut before Sam could decry the lengthy ETA. His head seared again and he quickly retrieved his Regalia while Yoko had the Belua’s unfettered ire. Nyx purred at his hands and he ruffled her fur while he swiped, “It’s okay, we’re getting out of here soon, I promise.”

As if to spite those very words, a thick, burning root spurt out from the ground itself and smashed against the glass shield covering his rear. His migraine flared, heart leaped into his throat as he turned around to witness something he’d only seen once before.

A single Tikbalang controlled the branch with its arms extended, behind it a group of four other Belua began walking into it, sacrificing themselves to fuse with the one. The Tikbalang commanded another root out of the earth, this one stabbed straight through Yoko’s unarmed clone, lifting it in the air where several branches spontaneously exploded out of it.

Fuck me… Sam gulped, shifting his full attention to the Tikbalang as a third and fourth of its kind fused through it, turning it giant. It stood at least twice as tall as usual and its aura spoke of strength tripled.

Sam moved his shield forward to deflect another root strike that would have taken out another one of Yoko’s unarmed clones. “Go, help Yoko, I’ll handle this!” he yelled, summoning shards from his defence circle and forging them into three long spears.

With a thought he fired them at once, aiming for the head, knee and lower torso of the giant Tikbalang. And yet, like a true fiend the Belua slapped the glass spears aimed at his head aside but allowed the other two to pierce it, except, rather than run it through as Sam’s glass would, they stuck in only a few inches deep before falling off.

The Tikbalang snorted, teeth grinning in wide mockery of Sam’s glass as it stomped its hooved foot forward. A root jutted out of the earth so fast Sam barely had a chance to bring his tempered shield before him, but he did and it shattered into a dozen pieces.