Derick W J Tan

He was in the police department headquarter. It was a big building with a very wide – and dark – lobby that had desks, plants, water tanks and bolted waiting chairs at every corner. Not exactly the best place the be at considering what would most likely happen in a few minutes.

He was alone. Because the man sitting cuffed in the interrogation room at the fourth level would be dead by sunrise, either by his hands, or by Ixion’s. Information was needed and that man had information. It was just a matter of how that information was going to be retrieved.

Jet black hair, short and dishevelled, but on purpose. His face long, jaw firm, and his eyes pitch black. Asian, like all the four specimens. As tall as Ixion, but much more bulkier with muscles. Strikingly handsome like the rest of them, to put it simply.

He was not happy though, because this was not cool.

“Not cool at all,” he said to the phone on the reception desk he was sitting on. “When you’re in a pact with The First, you don’t go breaking it.”

“You’re afraid of him?” Gordon asked.

“I prefer the word ‘respect’, Gordon.” He dusted his suit and shook his head. His brand new suit. “Not cool.”

“I’m sorry but just do me this favour and beat him up a little – don’t kill him.”

“That’s not for you to decide,” his pitch black eyes suddenly turned blood-red.

And before the man could argue, he ended the call, switched off the phone, and kept it in the inner left pocket of his jacket. He turned to the entrance – a stretch of glass with a pair of double doors in the centre – and count to three before he closed his eyes.

Every single glass object in the police station shattered with a single violent burst.

He opened his eyes. Ixion was here.

“Turn around,” said Geralt. “And go home.”

The face of a sweet girl with her hair tied into two little tails, running around the house like a giddy kid high on sugar came to his mind the moment he realized Geralt was here. And in the deepest recesses of his mind, Ixion thanked her, and made a note to thank her again later.

Because now he had a man to kill.

“Turn around,” Geralt said once more.

Ixion remained.

And the pact set in place by The First was violated for the very first time.

“Have it your way then.”

Geralt swung out a rapier – a sword – and surged to him with an immense burst of speed. By the will of his mind, the rows of chair on both his sides were ripped from the ground and sent crashing into the Geralt, but the third specimen simply jostled his way through.

So Ixion had an entire desk slammed into him.

Large, ceramic and glass pots began smashing themselves against him as the desk pushed him backwards, plants and soil flying all over the place until it finally stopped when he crashed against the back wall.

He shoved away the desk. His brand new suit was torn and stained with soil and fertilizers. Scratches and cuts were all over his face and body, and there were even pencils and pens impaled into his thighs.

“Freaking hell…” he mumbled as he yanked the stationeries out.

Sending the command to the cells in his body, his wounds began to heal and mend over the span of a few seconds, while his muscles began to toughen more to increase his strength while his pupils dilated further to compensate for the lack of light.

Another desk came flying straight at–

–Geralt raised his right arm and reduce the table into splinters and wood chunks.

He then followed by raising his rapier – formerly his cane – and shattered a tiny steel ball into bits.

The effect was immediate.

Ixion shrieked in pain as the bit of his mind was physically shattered, dropping onto the floor from the sheer intensity of the pain that wrecked his mind. He withdrew the remaining two steel ball bearings immediately and hid them somewhere safe. His entire body was shaking, weakened, when he pushed himself up. It was too dangerous to keep the other two bits of his mind flying around when Geralt was able to see them and even hit them.

The mental touch that he kept around his body alerted him of an intruder.

He raised his head and before he could send a ripple out, was slammed back into the ground with a fist straight into his face. Geralt pulled him up by the back of his head before seizing him by the neck and threw two more punches across his face, then a knee into the chest and an elbow down on his right shoulder blade before tossing him into the mountain of chair that he had made earlier.

Ixion was in pain both physically and mentally, but his head was still clear enough for him to begin preparing for his next attack. He sent his mental touch to the shards of glasses on the floor, picking up as many as he could with the tendrils of his mind and–

“-IXY!”

Geralt swung around and saw a girl standing outside of the building. She was bent over, panting hard as droplets of sweat fell from her forehead. Her face stricken with exhaustion and anxiety, though it was still a very attractive face, which was a problem because he had always had a soft spot for cute girls. He imagined that this one would be much more adorable if she wasn’t–

–Thousands of broken glass pieces began floating into the air between him and the girl.

“Freaking hell…!”

He raised his rapier and began flourishing it around his body, keeping his face low and eyes closed as the horde of glass pieces began to impale him. The muscles on his arms began to strengthen more and more, pushing the movement of his arms into a speed far beyond what a normal man could achieve. But as amazing as his speed was, allowing him to block most of the glass pieces that attacked him, he couldn’t maintain it without exhausting his body rapidly.

Bracing himself, Geralt ceased his movement and spun around to where Ixion was buried – protected – in the pile of chairs. He opened his eyes as the now millions of tiny shards began to pierce his defenceless body, but once he located where Ixion was – through a tiny gap – he flicked the centre of his rapier to activate the poison mixture and then threw it straight into the gap like a lance.

Tiffany watched as the moment the sword entered the heap of chairs, every single piece and shard of glass fell to the floor, motionless as they should be. And for a moment Tiffany stood motionless, struck by the realization that Ixy could be dead.

She began to scream.

“IXY!”

She dashed forward, ignoring the other guy who had fallen onto his knees and was injecting himself with something, running straight to the pile of chairs. It was too dark for her to see where Ixy was but she could see the sword sticking out. She wanted to just jump in and start tossing the chairs away until she found him, but she knew that if she did that, she might risk hurting him further.

All she could do was just stand there, powerless to help him, him who she loved so much but was now watching him die right in front of her.

“IXY!” she yelled again, praying that he would just respond, but he didn’t.

Tiffany started to cry but she rubbed away her tears as quickly as they came out, telling herself that this was no time to start crying and panicking. She had to do something so she turned around and–

–came face to face with the man who attacked Ixy.

She held back a scream, frightened by the two crimson rings that was now staring at her.

Geralt sighed and pushed past her as he withdrew a small corked vial from his belt which he opened and poured the content over his rapier, allowing the liquid to seep down into where his blade had pierced Ixion.

“Get away from him…” he heard the girl tell him, but ignored her, patiently waiting until enough of the antidote–

“–GET AWAY FROM HIM!”

He turned around and caught her with both arms, preventing her from launching herself at him. If she wasn’t a girl, he would have simply knocked her out and shove her aside. Instead, he simply stared at her as she began to cry harder, struggling to free herself from his hold.

Whoever this girl was, Ixion was very important to her.

Surprisingly, she managed to toss a punch into his face when he wasn’t paying attention, underestimating her ability to defend herself. He glared at her and fully expected her to stop moving out of fear, but the girl continued to fight back, kicking and punching until he finally spoke.

“Stop it,” she heard him said.

He released her and she watched as he grasped the handle of his sword and in one smooth motion pulled it out from the heap. With a flourish, he transformed the weapon into an ornate crimson cane – one that resembled a lot like the one Ixy had.

“Be thankful that your girlfriend came.” He was speaking to Ixy. “Last thing I want to do now is kill you and make a pretty girl like her cry some more.”

He then turned to face her and she saw the crimson rings in his eyes disappear.

“Dig him out and stop crying already,” he said before he began to walk off. “I can’t stand it when girls cry…”

The latter of what he said was lost to Tiffany because she wasted no time to listen or watch him leave and immediately started to pull out the chairs and push them aside. These were the kind of chairs that were bolted to the ground, but as heavy as they were, she somehow managed to find the strength to pull them away. Her tears were beginning to get on her nerves as they continued to pour, blurring her vision and forcing her to waste time wiping them off.

“Please be all right…” she whispered to herself as she kicked away a chair. “Please be all right…”

By the time she got him out, her fingers and arms were covered in scratches and most of her nails were already broken or chipped. She dragged him out of the heap and swept away the shards of glass on the floor with her bare hands before pulling him over the floor.

Tiffany fell to the floor, exhausted, and bent over his face as she shook him while mindful of the wound on his left shoulder.

“Ixy!” she yelled at him with what little energy she had left, but he didn’t respond. He didn’t even look like he was breathing. “Oh my god, oh my god! This can’t be happening! You can’t die! You’re not suppose to die!”

Her tears were dripping on his face, but he was still motionless, eyes closed. Touching his face only scared her more because her blood was rubbing off on his cheeks.

“No, no, no, no!” Her voice was choked with both tears and fears as she continued to shake him, trying to ignore the fact that his shirt and her hands were now drenched with his blood. “YOU CAN’T DIE! YOU CAN’T DIE, WAKE UP–”

“–Christ…” he mumbled. “Stop shouting at my face…”

“Ixy!” She started crying even harder as she pulled him into a hug. “Oh my god, you weren’t breathing an-and I thought you were dead! Oh my god, oh my god, I thought you were dead!” Then she dropped him and her voice got a little angry. “I thought you were dead!”

At first he groaned a little but then he started to laugh weakly until Tiffany stood up and ran away. He thought she was just playing around but as he continued to listen, he realized that she was leaving the station and had hurried down the steps into the streets, leaving him laying there all alone.

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me…”

- Chapter 25 (Loving A Specimen)