The One Left Behind [Part 1]

When Mellow Proudmoore opened his eyes again, he was naked and floating within a glass tube filled with thick, oxygenated liquid in a room lined with various scientific instruments. He smothered the shock and disbelief from this revelation with purpose and immediately set to work finding a way out.

He remembered dying to that prick of a Director back in the facility he and Fate had infiltrated in the Kaiserreich, but he wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth and question how he was still alive.

He kicked up from the bottom of the tube and pushed the top off, climbing out. He felt the air around him and shuddered at the temperature. It was freezing!

“First off, clothes.” He whispered to himself, wiping off as much of the fluid as he could from himself. “God, it’s cold in here.”

Before he could start his search, the sounds of approaching footsteps made him freeze. He jumped upwards and clung to the ceiling as the door. A set of surprised gasps preluded the appearance of three lab-coat clad individuals and two soldiers rushing into the room. The soldiers were armed with automatics, a brand that was more or less the same kind he and Fate encountered in the Kaiserreich, the peashooters that couldn't have dented the metal of his sword or Fate's Device.

God, he must've been gone for a while now. How was his partner doing? Galacta Knight?

That tentacle dude, what’s his name… Merkins? Marcel? Mercer?

Mellow dropped behind the group while they were still gawking at the empty tank and rushed them. First to go were the soldiers, who were killed with quick snaps of their necks. Two researchers were knocked aside with powerful backhands that sent them flying with enough force to crumple the metal walls they hit. The last one Mellow grabbed into a headlock and pulled him to the ground.

“Where are the exits?” he whispered.

“Y-You’ll never get out of here alive!” the man cried, but his defiance was fearful. “The XSG will hunt you down!”

“Probably.” Mellow shrugged and flexed his arm, breaking his neck. “But I’ll make them work for it, at least.”

The man fell limp and Mellow tossed him aside. He took one of the soldier’s uniform and weapons, finding them to be a little too tight for his stature. He ran out grumbling, shooting surveillance cameras and made a dead sprint down the hall as fast as he could; which amounted to him outpacing a car.

It wasn’t long before he ran into a group of soldiers, who shouted at him to stop and opened fire when he didn’t comply.

“That the best you got?!” Mellow bellowed, sliding under most of the bullet volley and firing at them as momentum carried him across the floor. “Git gud, scrubs!”

Alarms blared and Mellow picked up his pace as more soldiers poured into the hall to stop him. Mellow jinxed left and right; firing controlled bursts of bullets that brought down an equal number soldiers while Nullifying spells and beating the casters senseless. But the further he went, more bodies were thrown his way with increasingly heavier firepower at their disposal.

Mages raised walls of earth and unleashed torrents of fire. Martial artists stalled him long enough for fireteams to encircle. Soldiers were armed with energy weapons, and even light assault vehicles obstructed his path.

But Mellow persevered and fought past it all with all the experience and skill he could muster. Mages were killed with precise headshots or thrown knives. Martial artists were beaten with a combination of his Savate and gun kata. Energy weapons replaced his slug throwers and the heavy vehicles were hijacked and fired until they were overwhelmed by sheer weight of fire poured in his direction.

“Mellow Proudmoore.” A voice spoke through the base's PA, and Mellow grit his teeth as he recognized who it was. “I have a few theories as to how you miraculously came back to life, but I'm nonetheless curious as to what remade the heart I desintegrated a few days ago.”

“How about you suck a dick and choke on it?” he shot back, gunning down another fireteam and their mage before they could get in his way. “Where the hell did you kidnap me?”

“Kidnap? I wasn’t aware that corpses could be kidnapped.” The Director laughed. “Your friends proved themselves to be quite an annoyance, you know. Your trespass into my Gottfried facility preluded a troublesome event, which still leaves me quite dissatisfied to this day.”

“What, one of your experiments got loose?” Mellow snarked back. “I hope it bit your testacles off!”

There was a long pause and Mellow took a second to smirk at a surveillance camera. He hit a nerve there, he was sure of it. Whatever it was that broke loose after he died must have been very important to him.

“My daughter was more than just an experiment, you fiend!” The man snarled as Mellow dispatched a squad of martial artists with his own mastered Savate. “What I did to her was for her own good, even if she hates me for it. It had to be done, because she had to be strong enough to survive on this cruel world. What would you know about a parent's duty to their children? What have you lost to make you think you hold the moral high ground here? You remember all those people you killed, don't you? Or has your revival messed up your memories?"

"At least I didn't turn my child into whatever cybernetic monstrosity you turned yours into!" Mellow barked a laugh and dispatched a heavy trooper by shooting a primed grenade into a exposed slot on their armor. "I'm guessing you jacked her up with all sorts of weapons and augments that she can't even be considered human anymore. Did you make her test her new toys on some captured enemy soldiers too?" Mellow's grin grew at the quiet seething he heard from the base PA. "Did you tell her all that pain in those faulty prototypes were worth it?"

"You realize that you have no hope of escaping, don’t you? Even if you do miraculously make it out of this facility, the forces stationed outside will hunt you down and drag you back.” the Director snarled. "And when you've been brought back to my lab, I will make you regret you were even born."

“Probably.” Mellow shot back and wall-ran over a fireteam, gunning down the people that tried to stop him. “Until then, I’ll do my best to give you guy the biggest headache imaginable!” the young man burst through another set of doors and found himself in a motorpool with dozens of vehicles. He grinned, a plan to escape coming to mind. He looked at a surveillance camera and flipped it off. “I’m surprised you didn’t come down personally to stop me, asshole.”

“I did not have to.” The malicious satisfaction in his voice made Mellow falter. “I've sent more capable people to do that.”

A set of chains tore down the door he had gone through earlier and wrapped themselves around him. They pulled, and Mellow had a few scant milliseconds to curse before he was pulled back into the hallway he was previously in.

The young man was subjected to the cruelty of being bodily dragged across various hallways, down a flight of stairs, and battered on the walls of when he was dragged around corners. His attempts to grab hold of something were for naught as the chains pulled with great force as to literally tear whatever anchor Mellow could find off whatever it was attached to.

He came to a stop in a storage facility, line with stacks of metal shipping containers. Sharpshooters were stationed on the tall stacks, armed with weapons that ranged from bows and arrows to hi-tech rifles and enchanted muskets. They all took aim at Mellow, but didn’t fire for some reason.

“Bah!” came a tomboyish voice from atop one of the container stacks. “He could not even free himself from my chains! I thought you said he was supposed to be challenging, Doctor Gottfried?”

Mellow pushed himself to his feet and beheld his attacker; a woman with cat ears and a tail who couldn’t have been older than him. He noted that the chains which brought him here had retracted back into her body. He growled and readied himself for battle.

“Aah, I said he ‘was’ a challenge. He is not a challenge now, I’m afraid.” The Director laughed. The woman pouted.

“Who the flying fuck are you—“ Mellow was cut off when a chain wrapped around his neck and threw him skywards. He impacted a container stack, punched through, and cratered into the ceiling.

“Such language.” the woman tutted. “What parent taught you such horrible manners?”

Mellow peeled of the ceiling and fired, bathing the woman in plasma bolts. They impacted her to little effect, and she sighed in disappointment. A wave of her hand prompted the sharpshooters to fire, and Mellow cursed as he danced through the rain of projectiles and chains, firing back where he could.

“So, tell me about him Doctor.” The young woman ignored the cursing and gunfire to focus more on her comrade. “Why do you ask me to capture him? What's so special about him that you would want him back in your laboratory?”

“Well, I first met him back in Gottfried when I invited him and his team into my facility. He is superhuman, though his armaments were no different to the gear we’ve fielded so far. But he is powerful enough to have fought through my forces, and even managed to wound me when we fought in the simulator there.” there was pause and a a mocking laugh. “A shame it didn't do much else, right Mister Proudmoore?"

"Why don't you suck on a dong and die?!" Mellow shouted back.

"But yes, he is managed to defeat my outdated battle body. As you can see, it was not enough to defeat me. Prior to his sudden resurrection, he died sacrificing himself to stall me long enough to allow his friends to escape.”

“Friends?” the woman cocked a brow.

“Yes." the Director's voice took on a smug tilt. "You might recognize them as the Summons you killed a few days ago.”

The woman froze and turned to Mellow. Fire burned in her eyes, and she summoned various chains to her side. They lashed out and pushed aside the many container stacks, forming a large space that reminded Mellow of an arena.

“Oh really?” she strode forward and grinned maliciously.

“…Killed?” Mellow blinked and his face turned into a mix of fury, shock, sorrow. “Bullshit. Bullshit, you’re lying!”

“Did I strike a nerve somewhere?” the woman laughed and sent her chains forward. Mellow shot them all out of the air. “Were your pathetic friends really that precious to you?”

“What did you do?!” Mellow cried, evading the chains to fire uselessly at the woman. “How did you get to them!? They weren’t in the same dimension!”

“We’re the XSG, you blithering fool. We have access to forces and abilities that easily let us kill Immortal Beings even when they’re hiding in their own Realms, especially one as dumb and naive as the child goddess who summoned you here!” she laughed and summoned larger chains. “We invaded her Divine Realm and made a fool out of everyone there! They didn’t even stand a chance! There were no survivors!”

Mellow rushed forward, reason and thought disappearing before the wave of rage that consumed him. Chains grazed his skin, spilling blood and tearing his protective clothes like paper.

He couldn’t believe it. He refused to. His sacrifice, all his efforts… all of it amounted to nothing?

He managed to get within an inch of grabbing the woman before her chains restrained his movement. She met his snarling glare with a smug look and wrapped her chains around him tightly. They pulled, and Mellow was forced to the ground. She leaned down, giving Mellow a look at her modest cleavage down her loose shirt, but the young man was too enraged to care at the sight he was presented with.

“They didn’t even put up that good of a fight! They weren’t even able to save their summoner!” she laughed in his face. “Especially that Morgan guy. A useluess wannabe knight who thought he could overcome my Justice!”

The chains pulled him away, dragging his face through the ground before whipping upwards to repeatedly slam him against the walls and floor. Mellow made no sound of pain even as his bones broke and flesh tore under the harsh torment. Instead he struggled against his binds, speaking through the agony through sheer willpower and unbridled rage.

“What did you do to them!?” Mellow screamed. “You bitch! What did you do to my friends?!”

“We killed them, what else?” she smirked. “Our orders were to specifically make them suffer, even. It was fun to watch them all flail and die to no effect.” She giggled as she made a game of using Mellow as a badminton shuttle between he chains. “The Morgan guy especially. I had a little fun with him, you know. I slammed him into the ground a lot of times and ran him through with my chains. Then I sentenced him to his well deserved fate of being judged by my Scales of Justice. A pity I only could make him feel a small tad bit of it. Him seeing his allies die like the pathetic worms they were kinda made up for it though.”

The chains grabbed him out of the air and threw him into the floor. He bounced and skidded across the solid surface, coming to a stop at the woman’s feet. She crouched before him, the boyish shorts complementing her toned legs almost deliciously.

“A fitting end to him, really.” She sighed, satisfied. “He was a fool to question my Justice. To side with a filthy Immortal being of all things was an affront to what it means to be a true Knight, and to make light of what I fight for was unforgivable. He was really handsome, though. Definitely better looking than you. Even his last words were pathetic; he actually tried to tell me that my Justice was disguised villainy! The absurdity of it nearly made me kill him myself.” She scoffed and stood up. “As if I could let such an insult slide.”

A broken hand grabbed her ankle and Maftet blinked in surprise. She looked down and found him trying to crush the captive limb with the strength of torn muscles. He tilted his bleeding face up to meet her surprised gaze with one of utter bitter hatred.

“Disgusting.” Maftet sneered, pulled her leg away, and stomped on the offending hand. Then she had her chains drag him away.

Only then did she notice the five belts worth of various grenades laying where Mellow had previously laid.

The resulting explosion was strong enough to rock the entire chamber, and created a hole where Maftet fell through. She yelped as she fell, more in surprise than any pain, and her control over her chains wavered just enough to let Mellow go.

The young man said nothing as he picked up a spare sniper rifle and sprinted for the nearest door on broken legs.

He had to escape this place. He had to get away from these monsters.

He had to work hard and get enough power to stop whatever they were planning to do with Arraegier and the Nothing Pieces she had. He wasn’t strong enough to face them now, but with enough training and by making friends here and there, then maybe—!

The door opened and a muscular man stepped through. He beheld Mellow and snorted in amusement as he fired his sniper rifle at him.

“I see you played around with your prey again, Maftet.” He chuckled, and bent low. “It looks like I will have to step in.”

“Don’t you dare, Scopas!” came the screamed reply, dozens of chains erupting from the floor. “He’s mine!”

The giant man laughed and charged. He ignored the high-caliber rounds that hit him, the bullets crumpling upon impact against his bare skin and flesh. Mellow rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding the man’s charge as well as the various chains that tried to run him through. He emptied the rest of the clip into his opponent’s back, then withdrew his sidearm and knife.

Scopas grinned at his defiance and stomped on the floor hard. Cracks spread across the ground and he dug his fingers into one of the broken pieces. He hefted it up easily and threw it faster than Mellow expected him to.

The young man crouched low, dodging the projectile and the follow-up chains. He rolled back and evaded an aerial stomp from Scopas, taking aim and firing at his face. The small bullets bounced off his skin, plinked off his eyes, and crumpled against his teeth.

"Your efforts are pathetic!" Scopas laughed, letting Mellow fire in vain. "You are as disappointing as your fellows that we killed!"

He kicked away from Scopas to avoid another stomp and more chains, rolling to his feet. He emptied the rest of the magazine at the bull-man, throwing the empty gun at him when there were no more bullets to fire. With a yell, he charged at Scopas to engage in melee.

“You are certainly brave, I will grant you that.” Scopas acknowledged as Mellow threw himself into combat. He further impressed him with his display of dexterity, dodging Scopas’ kicks and punches whilst evading the many chains that Maftet sent his way. “But bravery does not equal victory. For all your skill, your power is but a candle to my brilliant star!”

Mellow dodged another volley of chains and use them as leverage to hop off and reach Scopas’ face. The knife flashed as he swung, but broke when it made contact with his cheek. Scopas moved, grabbed Mellow’s arm before he could pull away, and tore it off with a casual jerk of his limb. His free hand grabbed the rest of Mellow out of the air and held him aloft despite his struggling, uncaring of the fact that the knife’s blade was still stuck over his left eye.

“Hah! Your struggles are amusing! Truly, you must be quite the annoyance to battle in a proper battlefield where you level every possible advantage you can get against your opponent!” Scopas nodded, dropped the torn limb, and raised his fist. “But such struggles amount to nothing before me, the Slayer of the Great Beast of Declos!”

He punched, the blow breaking every bone in Mellow's torso and rupturing a few organs, and Mellow was sent flying. He impacted the far wall and remained stuck on it, slumping forward as a bleeding and broken mass of meat. The floor shifted and Maftet re-emerged from a hole she made, dusting herself off as the common soldiery surrounded Mellow’s unmoving form.

“Well done, you both.” The Director praised. “A little messy, but we all need to have some fun every now and then, yes?”

“Whatever.” The cat Anima scoffed as the soldiers proceeded to pull Mellow off the wall. She eyed the severed arm thoughtfully and sent more of her chains out, stabbing into Mellow’s remaining arm and tore it off with agonizing slowness. She threw it aside callously, uncaring for the suffering she inflicted on him. “That was for embarrassing me.”

“…I was going to remove it anyway, so no harm done.” The Director laughed. “Well, none to me, anyway. I shall send him to my lab for modification and indoctrination.”

“Hoh? Another test subject for you to play with?” Scopas laughed. “I pity him now. You are not known for your gentleness with new subjects to test you knowledge on!”

“For Science, some sacrifices have to be made.” the Director replied. "Besides, I have to teach him a lesson about respect and proper manners around his betters. Why not make it permanent?”

“Hmph.” Maftet snorted. “Just get him ready for missions.”

“Of course, of course.” The PA cut off and repairs teams arrived on station to begin clean up. Scopas looked at the severed arm and picked it up as the soldiers prepared Mellow for transport to the Director’s laborator, casually inspecting it.

“It was quite foolish of him, wasn't it? To choose to fight when he could have ran?” He mused, turning the limb over. “He must have known that he didn't stand a chance against us, especially when I arrived. I am not sure if I should praise him for his bravery or highlight what an idiot he is for doing so.”

“You? Praising someone weaker than you?” Maftet scoffed. “That's rich.” Maftet smirked as Mellow was carted out. “Have fun at the Doctor's office~”

The young man didn't even bother resisting as he was carried out of the room. He said nothing even as the soldiers around him jeered and spat at him, mocking him for his weakness and how he could go against the XSG and its ultimate goal of freeing mortal-kind from the control of the Immortals.

In his mind, he couldn't stop the images of his comrades and his partner being subjected to tortures far worse than what he'd been subjected to.

In his heart, the once raging rage and fury had burnt itself out. In its place was bitter regret and utter despair.

He closed his eyes and let the tears flow, body shaking and sobs filtering through clenched teeth.

"I'll get you all back for this." Mellow promised quietly, and the soldiers around him laughed. They didn't realize that he was referring to the XSG. "Somehow, someway, I will get you all back for this. I swear on every god out there and with every fiber of my being that you'll suffer for the things you've done. Mark my words, you monsters."

His promise bounced off the walls, but no gods heard him.