Gamble

Just as Ryo slipped through the duct system once more after leaping through the casino, his overbearing body weight brought upon something he hadn't expected. The duct he crawled in collapsed entirely, sending him falling to the backrooms of the casino area. He landed on a patrolling casino guard. The duct pillar collapsed and toppled on top of both Ryo and the guard.

Vibrating electronic dance music boomed through the backrooms. Ryo seized control of the guard's throat just as soon as the guard did the same. Ryo delivered a solid punch to the guard's cheek, sending him toward a set of server machines and electronic wires sending power to the casino's machines and games. Bright sparks enveloped the guard's back, causing a temporary power outage to the casino room.

In the dark, Ryo activated his nanosuit and charged his shoulder toward the guard. The combined strength of his shoulder and the nanosuit sent the guard colliding against the solid wall, knocking him unconscious. After realizing the damage he had done to the mission objective, Ryo snatched his VIP pass and used it to rush out the nearest door.

"Main power deactivated," A voice through the speaker surged through the Meister's Casino. "Temporary power activating."

The lights flickered where Ryo sprinted out, and he slugged a patrolling guard who had been running past him with his arm. Ryo rushed toward him and seized control of his hands, which had been reaching for their pistol. He locked his fingers against the pistol's barrel, preventing the bullet from firing successfully as they wrestled on the ground for control.

The guard managed to win over the pistol, kicking Ryo in the gut. Ryo rolled back and slid toward an iron pillar for cover as the guard fired multiple bullets that ricocheted off the floors. Another bullet struck the floors and bounced off near one of the glass windows leading outside to the casino area. Panged screams and shouts erupted in the area, creating a momentous stampede rushing to exit the vicinity.

"Come out, you fucker!" The guard yelled, firing more bullets near the iron pillar. As the guard's pistol ran out of ammo, Ryo held his breath in and ignited his boosters, charging at him at full force. He collided with the guard and slammed him against a wall to knock him unconscious. Ryo pushed himself off and rushed toward the nearest exit once more.

The blaring alarm in the casino activated, sounding the hunt for Ryo and Natia. He found himself on a flight of multiple stairs leading up to the top floor, signaling him to move as fast as he could. As he ran, more guards hailed bullets from above, forcing Ryo to duck and move out of the way. He pushed himself through another door beside him to avoid fire.

Two Seething Vipers armed with their lethal poison-serrated blades met Ryo at the end of a well-lit hallway. Ryo eyed them both and inhaled deeply, retrieving his combat ax from his side holster. One of the Seething Vipers eyed the light above them and shot a bullet at it. The hallway lights flickered momentarily before shutting off entirely.

Without his helmet visor, Ryo could not see in the dark. Eyeing his ax for a split second, he chucked it directly in front of him; the yellow neon trim on his ax provided visibility towards his enemies for a brief second, watching them dash toward Ryo at lightning speed. Ryo charged forward and then proceeded to dodge the first few slashes and blows from the viper. The last strike stabbed Ryo through the arm, penetrating his nanosuit and scorching his skin in stinging agony. Ryo took the opportunity to grab the viper's arm and yank it up, snapping its bone and stealing its serrated blade.

The second viper slid underneath Ryo, aiming for his legs to slice. Ryo leaped over and quickly spun around, clashing their blades together. The viper swung overhead and vertically before lunging at Ryo with a stabbing jump attack. Ryo seized the viper's neck and hand, shoving him against the hallway wall.

The other viper whose arm was snapped off leaped into the air with both of its legs extended, kicking Ryo in the chest. Ryo fell toward the ground and rolled over with his serrated blade still intact.

Both of them charged at Ryo in unison; Ryo took advantage of the unarmed viper and slipped past it with a swift dodge. Knowing his combat ax remained on the opposite side of the hallway, Ryo recalled it with his mag booster. The bladed part of his ax soared back toward him, colliding with the back of the unarmed viper's head and slicing it in half. Remnants of the viper's brain and plague doctor mask splattered across the walls, coating them in maroon blood.

The last viper lunged toward Ryo with its serrated blade, kicking off the wall and striking him in the chest. The blow deactivated his communication systems, but it prevented the blade from piercing his chest entirely. As the viper continued pressure on his chest by pushing the blade, Ryo wrapped both of his shins around the viper's neck and performed a twisting movement. The viper hardened its resolve toward its neck, stopping Ryo from snapping its neck entirely.

The two of them held their positions, releasing their full strength to finish the other off. Ryo clenched his teeth and pulled his head back toward the ground. He gained sight of his ax and pulled it toward his left hand with his mag booster. He took the ax and sliced the viper's hand off, snapping its neck immediately after the viper lost control of its serrated weapon.

Ryo's face was coated in blood droplets from the viper's blood-spurting arm. The poison began numbing his skin temporarily before his nanosuit began providing a self-antidote to the region of impact. He clutched his pained chest and continued pressing on through the hallway, ramming his shoulder against the exit.

Another Seething Viper met Ryo on the opposite side of the exit, slicing through Ryo's head. He swiftly ducked down and pushed the viper off of the stairs. As Ryo rushed to ascend the stairs, the viper flipped around and pushed itself off of the wall, catching Ryo's legs as he moved up. The viper stabbed Ryo's foot with its poisonous blade and pushed it deeper inside.

Ryo yelled in pain and shuddered in terror. He kicked the viper's head to send it off of him before limping up the stairs as the nanosuit administered another self-healing antidote. The viper charged at him once more, but Ryo was ready. He caught the viper in midair and began squeezing the life out of him; it was the same way that he defeated Zack three months before stopping Genesis near the Hullbreaker Tunnels.

The poisonous liquid on the viper's back began leaking out from Ryo's constant pressure. The viper was unable to swing its blade at Ryo, or disengage in any manner. Shouting at full power, Ryo bound and suffocated the viper even further before snapping its spine in half. Ryo released the paralyzed viper and it collapsed down the stairs without another word.

After reaching the top of the stairs once more, Ryo found himself in an office area with a single door leading toward an unknown pathway. After taking a single step forward, his leg set off a nearly invisible tripwire. The tripwire ignited flames behind Ryo, lobbing three-dimensional animated and pixelated grenades behind his feet. Before Ryo had any time to react to the Jester's carefully planned trap, he lunged forward in a last-ditch effort to mitigate the damage that the grenades would bring.

Ryo covered his face while the pixelated grenades exploded, shoving him down the hallway. Deadly serrated shrapnel and rusty nails from the grenade lodged into Ryo's nanosuit. The explosion also crumbled the room's foundation behind him, barricading his only exit path.

"Fuck..." Ryo muttered as he sluggishly pulled himself up from the aftermath of the trap. The only door in front of him was a vandalized door spray painted with vibrant neon-colored graffiti. It was the initials C.W.

Ryo pushed the door without moving inside, believing there to be another trap inside waiting for him. It was an office room with antique dolls lined up against the walls. Pictures of an unknown family smiling at the camera were posted near the ceilings; several were dangled down from the aftermath of the grenade explosion. After taking a closer look at the family pictures, most of them were two little girls smiling and holding hands at the camera.

It managed to slip through his mind like an insignificant memory, but one of the girls looked like a younger version of Claire. Her short blonde bob was reminiscent of the first time he had met her, and her facial structure appeared undeveloped but accurate to her current facial features based on memory.

A slide of his toe forward was the only movement he could make. He silently crept toward the office desk, distracted by the twinkling city lights outside the broad glass window. His vision caught on a suspicious appearing item on the office desk illuminated by a table light pointing directly at it. It was an unknown cylindrical gadget with a pulsating orange light emitting from a miniature sphere embedded in its golden-trimmed core.

Ryo's deep breathing through his nose were the only audible sounds at that exact moment when he contemplated taking it. He held his left palm out, still weakened by the viper's poison, and snatched it from the desk. It was a gamble. The table light that illuminated the device dropped its lightbulb on the desk, revealing another handcrafted explosive device counting down what little seconds that Ryo had before it bombarded the entire office apart.

Holding in his breath, Ryo lunged out the glass window as the explosive device detonated on the top floor. The midnight twinkling vista nearly blinded Ryo as he forced himself down, skydiving through Aries with his sanity driven to his lowest point. The explosion incinerated all that was on the top floor. Ryo placed the gadget in his nanosuit's back pouch and pulled out his combat ax. While he soared down the tallest point of the Meister's Casino dropping at full speed, he sliced the building behind him to use it as leverage.

Ryo's ax dragged through the building as fell. He activated his ignition boosters. However, from the Jester's grenade trap, his boosters were impaired and rendered useless at the moment. He used both of his hands and held the ax firmly as he continued free-falling uncontrollably. Time passed as he fell through multiple stories with his ax continuously dragging. He constantly struggled with maintaining his balance as his feet dragged through the building's outdoor architecture.

Half a minute passed until Ryo could see that he was nearing closer to Kathuz's entrance. One of the obsidian platforms on the sparkling moon-lit ocean called to him as his escape route. Before his body collided with the ground, Ryo pulled his ax back and leaped toward the nearest dimly lit road. The streets were a ghost town with no one around to witness Ryo's plummet.

As he touched down on the road, he rolled forward to mitigate his fall while glass shards from above rained down on top of him. Despite him attempting to block his exposed face, some of the glass shards sliced through his cheeks and ears. Blood leaked out of his wounds as he applied pressure on his cheek. He limped down the street toward the Kathuz platform, seeking a break from the failed mission.

The Jester was not there.

Ryo prepared to leap toward the ocean and onto the obsidian platform when a familiar yelp of a voice forced him to turn down the darkened street.

"Ryo...!" Natia's panicked whimper calling for his first name was followed by tiny steps toward the dim light from the streets. Ryo turned his head, eyes wide open, waiting to embrace his comrade for a successful escape. However, an arm seized control of her neck, wrapping her in a forceful bind. Natia's face erupted in anguish as tears rained down her eyes and shriveled cheeks.

"Quite an entrance," Eve's voice rang clear as day as he emerged from the darkness, holding Natia hostage. A white revolver was aimed straight at Natia's temple, pushing and pressuring it with a strong force from Eve's right hand. The two of them moved out of the darkness into plain sight, and Ryo was caught in the face of it all. "She wasn't there now, was she?"

Ryo's eyes lowered themselves, fixating on Eve's taunting glare. The fact that Eve offered Natia as a sacrificial hostage indicated that he did not truly care for her beauty, nor her as a person. He tossed away her feelings for the past like trash, and it only infuriated Ryo even further for how dreadfully Natia was being treated. Their menacing eyes locked onto one another, and Eve soon caught on to Ryo's true identity.

"Wait a minute... I know you," Eve pulled his pistol back and cackled with a brimming fake smile. "You're that boy from the jazz club! And, wow... I never thought I'd run into you here! The last time I saw you were the time April Springwell started looking at me in the fucking eyes and started judging me for who I was," His true selfish and arrogant demeanor immediately replaced his ruse. "I bet you never expected Dynasteve here, did you now?"

"Let her go," Ryo ordered, fully turning his body toward Eve and Natia. He kept his deathly glare straight into Eve's eyes with unforgiving relent for Natia's condition. "Or I'll kill you." He coldly stated.

"What was your name again... oh, I swear... what was it again?" Eve clenched his teeth and tapped the revolver on his head. "I heard it before! That man who brought all of Genesis Laboratories down! Ryo Nakai! That's the one!" He cheered.

Eve puckered his lips. "To go so far as to end Rion Stormfield, making our lives hell. I mean, I'd have to know a celebrity like yourself, or I wouldn't be human myself! How you destroyed all of Genesis with your brilliant family, and how you left the gang you once rode on to live a brand new life."

Ryo's heart nearly stopped. How did he know that?

"That's right, I know all about you, Ryo Nakai," Eve murmured. "You're quite famous in these parts of town, you know. You and that pathetic April Springwell," Eve cracked his neck. "Poor girl. Heard she was locked up in the hospital because of that botched attack."

"Botched attack-" Ryo repeated after him, confused about his words. "She was struck by a car-"

"And you thought it wasn't intentional?" Eve said. "No. All of it was, and I waited for it for so long. You have no idea how long I waited. And I loved every second of watching her die. Her blood splattered all over the road, limping and convulsing. I lavished in all of it..."

"You..." Ryo clenched his teeth as Eve revived that horrendous nightmare back into his mind. Lightning struck his mind as rage seeped through his veins. The mere thought of April being struck by the car ruptured his heart in half, and Eve's assumed confession only made it rebuild itself from corruption. "Are you saying... that you did it?" He asked bitterly.

Eve smirked. "What if I said... I did?" He teased.

Ryo roared at the top of his lungs, erupting the anger concealed inside him. The cracks of his heart began to mend themselves, unleashing a fighting spirit of immerse rage. His speed dramatically increased to new heights, surpassing beyond Jinrai's level of agility.

"EVE!" Ryo roared like a wrathful flaming dragon. In the blink of an eye, Ryo vanished and reappeared in front of Eve with his fist primed. His punch connected with Eve's cheek, skyrocketing him toward a skyscraper on the opposite side of the street. Like a ragdoll, Eve's body accelerated toward the foundation of an entire skyscraper, and the mere collision split the skyscraper in half from the force of Ryo's punch. All of the glass windows on the skyscraper shattered simultaneously as the building toppled down entirely from Ryo's single attack. Eve was nowhere to be seen as the building created a chain reaction that began approaching their general direction.

Ryo grabbed Natia's hand and pulled her close before lunging together toward the Kathuz platform. He jabbed his fist against the surface to activate it. The platform began slowly descending below the ocean as the skyscraper toppled down like a domino on the street behind them. Shadows from the above formed, but the platform's entrance sealed off shut, confirming their escape from the premises.