Inverse System

"It's okay, you don't need to apologize to me. How could I harbor anything towards you if I wasn't even born at the time?" Emria consoled the distressed prince.

"But then… Mother died that day… And she was killed…" Zane's clenched fist began trembling vigorously. "It was those Econican mercenaries! That white-haired boy and the black-haired woman who saved him," the prince claimed, to which Emria sighed.

"Haha, you still haven't figured it out?" She asked as she reassumed her cheerful personality.

"What do you mean? That same boy is fighting alongside Chloe right now!" The ignorant prince claimed.

"No no no, you've got it all wrong!" Emria wagged her finger. "That white-haired boy was actually defending the town that day!" She informed, to which Zane recoiled in disbelief.

"What are you talking about?! I literally saw him slaughtering our soldiers!" He exclaimed.

"Those soldiers were big meanies. They were the ones who killed mom, not Rein," she asserted, the prince in bewildered incredulity.

"B-but…"

"Just believe me for now! I'm supposed to be your half-sister too! Geez, we don't have time for this," Emria complained, her personality shift just now beginning to register with Zane. "Give me your handcuffs. I'll get them off for real this time," Emria ordered, to which he complied.

*A few minutes earlier, on the surface…*

"You! You tricked me you son of a bitch!" The pink-haired man pointed angrily at Sho, who had previously distracted him from guarding the church.

"Do you realize what you've been guarding? You've been keeping the prince of Orthlys in solitary confinement. That is an act of high treason!" Sho replied in a hostile manner.

The barren left side of the city was only home to a church and a cemetery, with no population within a 200-meter radius of the sight. The rigid surface made for a difficult battleground, but nothing that Sho wasn't used to.

"What do you care? Ain't ya the prince of Econica? You got that fire Spring, so what's it matter to you?" The man accused, to which Sho twitched, then laughed mysteriously.

"So you saw it then," he uttered, a sudden flash of fire appearing on the tails of his body, enhancing all of his physical prowess. "You're right. For me, what your doing isn't wrong because of politics. I simply want to rescue an old friend of mine. Not to mention that he's the brother of someone very important to me," Sho assumed battle stance, summoning his nunchucks and holding them by both ends, stretching the chain that held them together in front of his face.

"Heh, fair enough. The name's Jona. Not to be rude or anything, but despite you being the prince of Econica, I still don't know your name," Jona exclaimed, Sho not taking any offense to his comment.

"My name is Sho Econ. This battle will be a quick one," he said, ramping up the ferocity of the flames that encased his body.

Without hesitation, Sho jumped forward at the defenseless man, and with untraceable speeds, delivered a torpedo kick into Jona's face, a flurry of flames following onto his visage. However, Sho suddenly retracted his foot, feeling a sharp-pointed object poking into his heel.

As the flames subsided from Jona's face, it came into Sho's view. A black shining drill had replaced where the pink-haired man's head used to be.

"Get ready, Sho Econ!" He yelled, transforming his arms into drills as well, then rushing towards Sho at incredible speeds, faster than what Sho thought was possible for a normal human.

Sho veiled himself in his crimson wings of fire, blocking Jona's forward drill attack. However, before he knew it, his blazing wings had all but dissipated, leaving his bewildered expression vulnerable to the charge of the drill man.

At the last moment, Sho used the flames still on his feet to propel him to the right, outside of the church that they were still standing in. Jona, however, was still able to clip Sho's left shoulder with the drill, making it gush out with blood, Sho losing sens of his left arm.

"Tch," Sho grunted as he landed outside of the church, holding his left arm in pain.

"What's wrong? You thought my Spring was just drills, huh?" Jona laughed hysterically, Sho getting his teeth as he analyzed the situation.

"Your drills… They can nullify Springs..?" Sho deduced, to which Jona grinned.

"Bingo! These are Spring drills, specialized to drill through Spring powers. Without them, that torpedo kick of yours would've flown my head off!"

"Shit… This is going to be harder than I thought," Sho said in his head. "Though I guess Rein did warn me. Each one of these guys has the power of an army, and this guy's no different," Sho surmised.

"What are you thinkin' to yourself there?" Jona prepared his drills once again and bent his legs, with the intention of lunging forward like before. "This next one's gonna be for trickin' me! You can't take advantage of my gullible nature and get away with it!"

Jona took off towards Sho, who instinctively activated his Spring and dodged, Jona's attack drilling through the floor he stood on instead of him.

"You can run, but you can't hide!"

Jona lunged forward again, and Sho dodged again, continuously making holes in the ground from where Sho dodged from. As he avoided Jona's attacks, Sho racked his brain for a strategy, a weakness he could use to his advantage.

"Think Sho, think! Use your surroundings, your environment to your advantage! What about this land could you use to your advantage!" Sho screamed in his head as he darted his eyes around the area, his eyes landing on the cemetery.

He suddenly shook his head, not wanting to defile the graves of the dead. His eyes landed on the church again, to which an idea popped into his head. He smirked and stopped moving.

"Oh no, I'm running out of energy!" Sho claimed with the worst acting that'd ever been seen.

"Ha! Thanks for telling me, idiot!" Jona lunged forward, believing Sho's words.

"Alright, I enticed him. If I'm right about this, keeping this up should give me the advantage…"