A Little Piece of Heaven

[Fenrir]

“It’s fine. I always planned on doing this on my own.”

If anything, Akeno was less alone in this than she had thought she would be; no teammates, but Emmy had given her more support than she’d ever expected to receive from her mentor. It was only little things, some information every now and then, but she hadn’t blatantly sabotaged her like Sofia’s mentor had so she couldn’t complain; what was the story there anyway? Even the stand-in mentor had been useful, the one time they had spoken.

“Thanks anyway.”

Whatever happened to her from this point on, at least she couldn’t blame any of it on Emmy.

Crouching down next to Sofia, Akeno rolled the body over so that it was lying on its side; she placed a hand on its flank and held the body steady as she gripped the harpoon with the other and began the gory process of removing the spear from the corpse. It was easy at first, the haft of the harpoon sliding easily through the wound, but once it came to removing the barbed head Akeno felt it catch on something; clothing, flesh, bone, maybe all of the above.

Like she had done earlier with Mateo, Akeno braced the body with her knee before grabbing the harpoon with both hands and pulling at hard as she could. It came free, the hooked spear ripping through Sofia’s back and bringing with it a not inconsiderable splash of blood and other viscera. Akeno dropped the harpoon like it had burned her, standing up from the body and walking away, but not before the blood managed to cover her lower half in gore.

“Shit.” Breathing heavily, she moved to swipe a hand through her hair but stopped once she saw that her hand was also wet with blood. After a few second she let her hand fall, instead wiped it dry on her already stained trousers. A few moments later she turned back around, breathing at a steadier pace again, and picked up the harpoon and gun while steadfastly avoiding looking at Sofia’s corpse.

She looked left, towards the maze. She looked right, towards the stairs. Her options were to go back into the maze, try to find Mateo again and take his stuff, or to take the stairs and just… leave, get the hell out of here.

Akeno took the stairs.

ES10: AKENO KUDO CONTINUED IN The Waiting Game