Minerva's Heart That Beat Ever so Loudly

When a heart beats, its heavy sound can be heard from various places around the body. As if it were the loudest, most influential sound the human ear could hear, one beat could overtake the sound of any other.

Bang!

The sound of a bullet firing echoed from the depths of the Heart of Pactolus, reverberating in waves as it reached the outskirts of the district.

"What was that?" A Dexus among the crowd asked, situated at the south side evacuation site.

The heavy pound of Zika's rifle firing brought wake to the Eye of Minerva, now gazing a line of death upon its target. Within this line, following straight to the end, was one of ten limited bullets soaring towards its victim.

"She fired! Take cover!" Hugo called out.

Wardell who'd just backed away, now dove further to ensure his own safety. Before his body could even hit the floor, behind him—

—PTHOOM!

A giant gash emerged from where the white-body had stood.

"Holy shit!!!"

Crimson dust flew everywhere, stained by the iron scent of blood. As the curtain of dust settled, it opened to reveal the horrendous red-body—the white-body now cemented into the floor below, with a geyser of blood that sprayed to its limits up above.

The three front-liners were left speechless.

"What the… Zika, that was you?" Axel asked.

There was no reply. But there was no reply needed. No other person in the entire espionage branch of the Cardinal Nexus weld a sniper rifle better than she did.

"Target status?"

"Terminated," Zika replied to Hugo.

"As expected. Are the rest of you down there okay?"

Jasper by now had calmed his mind down. "Somewhat… But Zika, that was an amazing shot. I would even consider it overkill."

"Maybe it was," Axel said. He stood near a white-body's corpse, observing it. "I'm not sure if any of these guys are even Sins."

"But what's done has been done. And what's been done needed to be done. If it weren't for the use of her rifle, you might have all been done for. That last one was gaining an advantage over you guys."

Jasper sighed. "Yeah, you're right. It was a good call Hugo, thank you." He looked at Wardell, who began recovering from his dive. He stuck out his hand, "Are you okay?"

Wardell looked up. He noticed the helping hand, one he'd normally reject, but instead took up the offer. "All good," he was lifted by Jasper.

"You did a great job on this assault. Your attack power is immense, and has always been."

"You already know," Wardell flexed a muscle. The two laughed it off, lighthearted now that the battle was over. But they were wrong.

From behind cover, and in an instantaneous burst, a white-body blurred past Axel.

"Huh—?" He felt his holster lose a bit of weight. "That's the one that nearly struck me the first time!"

The white-body dashed rapidly towards Jasper, who barely noticed the nimble footsteps that approached.

"Jasper!" Axel called out. But it was nearly too late. The white-body had eyes on its target, as if a bounty were set above Jasper's head. It pounced high into the air, and far forwards. In his hand, he held a blue-handled dagger—Axel's.

Normally, Jasper would've been able to react by this time. But his Duality was sheathed, brought back to its base form of a beam. Normally, he could easily parry the attack that was about to fall onto him, but his mind still recovered from its recent relapse. It lacked in signal communication; his thoughts now heavy, were heavily delayed.

Axel's dagger, either Clad or Crux, now terminally approached Jasper's neck.

"Third Setting: Javelin Setting!" A long beam immediately came soaring in Jasper's direction all of a sudden.

"Wh—!!!"

Impalement. The sharpened edge of the Lance of Eternity had blown right through the white-body's chest, carrying its body with it as it struck and stuck into the ground.

"I'm here!" Suto yelled out. He ran over, checking if he'd brought danger to anyone else. "Wow, just in the nick of time!"

"Better late than ever," Axel chuckled. "I'm kidding. You just saved my brother's life, thank you!"

Jasper sighed of relief. "Too many people to thank for my mistakes today. You're all miles ahead of the expectations I've set for this team. Thank you, all."

"No, why are you thanking us?" Axel came forward. "You're the one putting your life on the line when your brain hasn't even fully recovered from its surgeries. We should be thanking you!"

"Honestly yeah… You don't even need to be out here fighting with us. As our valuable leader, you could easily be sitting far away alongside Hugo and communicating to us instead." Wardell shook his head. "Why don't you just do that?"

"Because what good leader would do that? Sit back and watch my fellow teammates fend for their lives? At that point, you'd all be nothing more than my goons—the exact opposite of what you guys are. Plus, Hugo's already got that role down and secured. I'd rather communicate to you all right here in person." He sighed. "I don't look down on any of you, so I expect that none of you look up to me either, understood?"

The others took a moment to reply. "But…"

"No buts," Jasper laughed. "Accept it. You're all my teammates. Nothing less, nothing more, and that goes the same for me."

They all smiled together, finally at ease now that the battle was truly finished. Three dead, the other three subdued, they cleared up the white-bodies that littered the streets of Pactolus. Of the subdued, one had no legs, the other had only one, and the third had its entire lower half removed. These three white-bodies were immediately brought to the Cardinal Nexus' medical facility to guarantee their lives, as they were needed for interrogations. The other dead three were brought to the Cardinal Nexus Health Facility where numerous detailed autopsies were done on their corpses. The official in charge of this task had some news to give.

"Jasper Garrison?" He had called a given number.

"Yes, that's me."

"Hi, this is Hanks from the Cardinal Nexus' Health Facility. I'm the official in charge of the investigation you brought to me."

"Ah… Concerning the three 'white-bodies' I've provided you, right?"

"Yeah. So, I've come across a rather interesting find… Even after running numerous autopsies on all three corpses, we weren't able to deduce any matching DNA results."

"What?" Jasper was shocked. "How is that even possible?"

"I don't know. I had no words either. This is the first case ever that we haven't been able to match an identity to a corpse."

"How about a face scan?"

"You see… Their faces were… Unrecognizable."

"What do you mean?"

"Their skin was an unnatural pale white, and their beady eyes… They were completely black, as if their irises had diluted to an alarming size. As for their faces; its shape was similar to that of a young adult, but had wrinkles like a 70 year-old. It was so odd…"

"All three of them had facial characteristics like this?"

"Not just alike. Each of the three looked exactly the same, as if born from the same womb. You get me?"

Jasper furrowed his eyebrows. "This doesn't add up."

Hanks exhaled. "It doesn't add up to me either kid. Listen, all I'm saying is that we won't be able to fetch you identities if that's what you're looking for."

Jasper sighed hearing this.

"But… I do have some other news. Me and my team were able to observe another unusual detail."

"And that is?"

"We found unnaturally high levels of testosterone in each body."

"Testosterone?"

"Yes, and I mean extremely high levels. Not the usual amount you'd see produced in a normal male body."

"Hmm…" Jasper was brought to thought.

"Yeah, anyways, that's about the gist of what we got. If it wasn't what you were looking for, then sorry kiddo. We tried."

"No, thank you Hanks. It was a great deal of information."

"No problemo. See ya."

The phone hung up.

Once again, it left Jasper to think. "They all looked the same? And all had untraceable DNA? High levels of testosterone… It feels like there's something darker at play here…"

Jasper felt like saying something to someone about this, but he shook it off instead. The deed was done.

"We'll get more valuable information out of the three alive anyways." He turned to his dorm. Dragging his feet along, he made his way up; his heart beating in unison with each step up the stairs. What he didn't know were the hundreds more that beat many miles under; a place of never-known, a place of used-to-be.