NoGift

Luna only glanced coldly at the man wearing a fox mask.  He was known to them as "Kazumi".  Or at least that"s what he wanted them to call him.  The Apostles had 12 members.  Not everyone knew the ident.i.ty of each other.  It was especially the case for the younger members.    

There were four original Apostles, all of them were with the Pope from the very beginning.  Limos and Kazumi were two of the four.  Limos was the easiest to approach but the other three were the complete opposite.  It"s probably the pride of knowing that they were the strongest.  

Among the three, Kazumi always acted friendly towards the other younger Apostles.  But that"s just all it was - an act.  He would call you in an affectionate tone but if you just observed closely, you could easily feel that there"s no warmth in his voice.  

There was also that incident.  When he almost killed one of the younger Apostles because that person accidentally ate a snack specifically prepared for Kazumi.  If not for the timely arrival of the Pope, that Apostle would surely be dead by now.  Since then, the younger Apostles learned to be vigilant against him.  Although they were all arrogant, they still knew when to converge.  

For now.  At least.

Luna believed that with the pa.s.sage of time, he and his brother would be able to surpa.s.s the three.  He no longer paid attention to Kazumi and turned to his brother instead.  "Don"t mind him."

Solis glanced at Kazumi then looked at his brother.  He nodded.  Anyway, everything his brother said was right.  

Kazumi, of course, noticed the twins.  If he"s not mistaken, those two were the little princes from Anatolia.  In normal times, he would immediately tease the two.  But sadly, his attention was more attracted to the group of three persons on the other side.

One was a boy with a plain appearance.  With his discerning eye, he could immediately tell that the boy was wearing a human skin mask.  And it was a very good one at that.  Not many people could afford that kind of high quality human skin mask.  A sign that his ident.i.ty was not ordinary.  Then he glanced at the tall teenager standing next to him.

Seeing the teenager"s silver hair and purple eyes, Kazumi"s eyes brightened.  Wasn"t this Argent Blackbourne?  That Luce, how could he not tell them he"s meeting this guy today?  No wonder he didn"t invite them all today.  Most of them were always invited to celebrate the Festival of Creation ever since Luce was inaugurated as the Pope.  But surprisingly enough, this year, they were told not to come.

Obviously, it"s because of this Argent Blackbourne.  Did Luce think that they would just be a disturbance?  Kazumi pouted.  He"d definitely question him about this later.  It"s a good thing that he still decided to come despite Luce"s orders.  If not, then he would have missed such a fun situation.

He glanced at the unconcious woman the teenager was holding.  Then put his attention back at the silver-haired teenager.  He wondered what he"s doing here instead of being with Luce.  Did their talk fail and he actually escaped?  But Luce was not the type to let something like that to happen.  Unless, he allowed it.  Then he suddenly remembered Harley"s situation.  Could what have happened to him related to this teenager? 

Kazumi smiled.  How interesting.

As he was observing Argent, she was also observing him.

Argent stared at this man who looked like he was a member of some punk rock band with a very questionable fas.h.i.+on sense.  Seeing the reaction of the two kids, it was obvious that they knew the  guy.  So, another one connected to the Pope?   

Then she felt the tug on the her cloak.  She looked back and heard Lynx whispered, "That"s an Apostle.  A very strong one."

Lynx didn"t have the whole information about the guy.  He just knew that he"s strong.  The amount of information Dreich Gallere had about the Apostles was not enough.  Because it was only lately that their master took interest in them.  So it was also just lately that they entered their radar.  Which resulted in their lack of information.  Now they"re scrambling to gather everything as fast as they could.

This guy was one of the first Apostles they"ve known.  The reason he recognized him immediately was because of the fox mask he was wearing.  This person was not the careful type.  He didn"t bother limiting his range of activities.  Whenever he did things, he always did it with great aplomb.  As if telling everyone, "hey, I"m the one who did this".  That"s why it was easy for them to find him.

Argent glanced again at the punk-rock looking guy.  "What"s his Gift?"

"I"m not really certain.  But whenever he throws things, it explodes."

"I see."

"Hey, what are the two of you talking about?  Mind if I join?" he asked in a sing-song voice.

Argent ignored him and put her mother on Lynx" arms.  "Go.  Take my mother to the agreed meeting point.  I"ll handle things here."

"But--"

"Go," she said, cutting off whatever else he was about to say.

Lynx looked up at the duke, seeing his resolute appearance, he could only sigh in annoyance and with a bit of helplessness.  Well, this was what the duke requested himself.  Master shouldn"t blame him if something happened.  Right?

He gritted his teeth and then jumped off to one of the nearest trees.

"Wait- I didn"t say you could leave!" the man wearing fox mask complained.  Then he threw some kind of star shaped metal towards Lynx.

Argent used [Mizukodo] to move faster and increase her speed.  She immediately arrived at the trajectory of the object the man just threw.  She turned her bracelet into a sword.  She narrowed her eyes and saw that the object actually looked similar to an object called a "shuriken".  In the world she was originally from, during ancient times, this was a common weapon of a group called "ninjas" in country J.   

There was a slight sheen of light surrounding the shuriken.  If Argent was not mistaken, that was probably the guy"s Mana.  She raised her sword and swung it down in a very timely manner, cutting off the shuriken in half.  But it caused two explosions on both sides of Argent.  Which she quickly by jumping backwards.

She stared at the man who"s probably an Apostle.  She could feel by what happened just now how powerful the explosion caused by his Gift was.  And he only used such a small object.  She couldn"t help but wonder if the intensity of the explosion was directly proportional to the size of the object he threw.  

Argent knew they couldn"t leave here together unless someone fought with this guy and took his attention away.  She didn"t hesitate to choose herself.  It"s not that she looked down on Lynx" ability, on the contrary, she trusted it greatly.  That"s why she left the safety of her mother to him.  Because she knew he could keep her safe with that Gift of his.  

She couldn"t afford on letting her mother stay here with such a guy around.  Just by a few sentences, she could tell that this man was really not that stable.  Those types were usually truly dangerous.

Kazumi"s eyes shone when he saw Argent"s series of movements.  When he threw the shuriken, it should have exploded the moment it touched the surface of the sword.  But it didn"t.  Because the teenager"s movement was very fast that it took a second longer for the halved shuriken to explode.

But soon, the light on his eyes slowly faded.  It slowly became darker and darker. 

The teenager rushed towards him using familiar steps he hadn"t seen in a very long while.  He threw another shuriken at him just to test something.  Of course, the duke easily dodged it.  Then he did something that truly surprised him.  He raised that thin sword and swung it down in a certain way and manner that it produced such a big slash that went straight towards Kazumi.

He immediately got out of his trance and quickly evaded it.  He knew that steps and knew that move.  He looked straight at the tall teenager.  "Say, was the one who taught you swordsmans.h.i.+p named Hattori s.h.i.+ngen perhaps?"