Month Four: Finlis Vega?

"That name, Finlis Vega? That's a weird one... I've never heard a name like that. Or, well yours too, Asterio," Ren said. She walked in the dark street beside Sky as he followed strands on the road. Using the small grooves in the street placed by the thieves, he began to track their path they took to get to headquarters in hopes that he could find the twentieth one.

"Every name is weird, if you think about it. Ren, Rin, Ellios is a pretty odd one too. Finlis doesn't bother me in the slightest," Sky admitted to her. Ren sighed, rubbing the back of her head while watching Sky continue forward with a straight face.

"You know, I don't think it's normalized enough for people to say this, but your changes are remarkable," Ren admitted to Sky. It wasn't in a flirtatious or romantic way, but she was astonished with the man who led her off of the beach when she first awoke.

"I really appreciate you saying that, and I hope that I can be such an idol from here on out as well," Sky said with a smile.

"Yeah, you definitely will be. Look at all you've done! Just this night alone! You certainly don't play around, that's for sure," Ren told him. She admired the way Sky grew, and wanted to improve just like him.

Sky stopped dead in his tracks after Ren's compliment and turned his head toward the graveyard where his friends had been buried. He watched the strands outline the path to the graveyard, and Sky began to think the worst.

He kept a level-head, running with a slight jog over to the graves to see the final thief, digging into the grave of Illya Asterio. Sky kept cool, in total contrast to his previous personality. Sky would've killed the man instantly.

"Want to explain what you're doing?" Sky asked the grave-digger.

"I hope it's not too confusing what I'm doing. Digging into the grave of an Asterio," The man said. Sky nodded, stepping near the grave to pick the man up by the back of his collar, and throwing him at a tree. Strands enhanced Sky's muscles, allowing him to do inhumanely strong things like that.

"I know what you're doing, I just wanted to hear it from your mouth. So, where's the key?" Sky asked. He was able to tell from the get-go that the man was a thief based on his black clothing. At first glance, Sky believed his clothing to be the same strand clothing that made up his old outfit.

"In my mouth," The man told Sky. He picked the key up and dropped it into his mouth, swallowing it with no problem at all. It shouldn't have been possible with how big the key was. Upon analyzing the strands, Sky realized that the person digging in Illya's grave was capable of creating them and manipulating them. What was supposed to be an impossible skill for normal people, the thief was doing it almost perfectly.

"I can see strands, you just turned the key into strands, a perfect display of strand manipulation. What does the name Finlis Vega mean to you?" Sky asked the grave digger. He turned his head up from the motion of swallowing the key and looked at Sky with a wicked smile, visibly reacting to the name.

"The name of my master? The name of the one who will tear you down from the top?" The grave digger asked Sky. He sighed, it hadn't been the first time Sky heard such a thing, ignoring the severity of the threat.

"Sure he will. Just tell me where I can find him," Sky mentioned to the thief. His eyes were stuck in a wide-open position, realizing that Sky hadn't been the person to tease with a fight. In fact, it almost appeared that Sky was itching for one.

The thief jumped out of the grave and threw three darts at Sky, all of which were stopped in midair thanks to his Mom's gravitational abilities. He dropped two of them into the ground, and picked one up to analyze it. He couldn't tell what was in it, but they were darts of some kind.

"Was this an assassination attempt? Can I safely assume that you believed your ideals to be more important than your life?" Sky asked the thief. He primed himself, preparing for battle. The thief put his daggers up in an attacking position, and from his side, a large saber cut him in half, through his arms, through his body, and every bone that followed.

His guts spilled out into the graveyard as the sun had set completely. He tried to push his weak body up, realizing the damage that he took and how he would soon be dead. The thief knew Sky never took a life, so he began to smile in a mess of wicked pleasure that he would be fully restored.

"Go on! Fix me up! I know you, we all know you! You don't have the guts to kill people, so you think you fix people and then send them off on their merry way! Haha! Ignorance!" The thief laughed.

"I tried to rehabilitate those who perform wrongdoings. The fear of death usually places that fear of never making it to a good afterlife in their bones, it makes them God-fearing men when they're at the end of their rope. You? You don't believe in that, do you?" Sky asked the thief. He sadistically shook his head back and forth while continuing to laugh.

But as he shook his head to the right, the thief's head fell off onto the ground after Sky ran a saber through his neck. Coated in blood, Sky knelt down beside the thief and watching his eyes warp in confusion.

"Your ears still work, don't they? Then, listen to me. If there's no afterlife, good for you, if there is? I'm sorry to punish you. Your best bet would be to use those strands you have to restore your body, or sit there... and die..." Sky slowed down his speech as the eyes in the thief's head slowly rolled back into the skull, the facial muscles relaxed, and all components of his body slowly turned off.

"I didn't think you'd kill anybody..." Ren mentioned, but Sky seemed unfazed.

"This was a duplicated Strand-Being," He clarified.