Paul Verlaine
Verlaine was in his little assasins training ground. He didn’t have much to do, and it was getting quite boring as he played with a knife in his hands. Then something made him drop his knife.
It was an extruciating feeling of pain bubbling up from his chest and shooting through his body. It felt as though his body was constricting and bending in ways physically impossible as he fell to the ground. He groaned, coughed, and gasped for air as his mind seemed to spin with pain. He felt as though his body was on fire.
-”W-what…?”
He was barely able to get through gasps of air and pained breaths. He wanted to scream, but he bit his lip. He had far too much credibility and pride to let that happen.
After a few seconds, the pain went away, and a cold chill ran through his body. It finally allowed him to breathe as he desperately gasped for air as if he was just submerged underwater moments ago.
His eyes were watery, and it made it difficult to see, but he could recognize that glacier blue light almost as well as Chuuya could. It was Dazai. The thing was that Dazai was nowhere to be found. Verlaine didn’t need to look around to know that much. So how?
Verlaine straightened himself up, slowly raising before dusting himself off and grabbing his hat, which had fallen off. Then, suddenly, black flames surrounded and engulfed Verlaine. He knew what this was; it had only happened once, but he knew these flames and this feeling as he was surrounded by them.
-”Guivre?!”
This shouldn’t be possible! He lost his ability when Chuuya and Dazai dealt with him back during Stormbringer. The flames reached small things and scorched anything that touched it, setting a good portion of the room on fire. As Verlaine started to panic, he was thrown out of the flames. Not by an entity, but just as if the flames were rejecting him.
Verlaine looked at the flames in confusion before the flames started turning into a figure. The flames contorted, hardened, and shaped something before glowing a bright purple and popping. Leaving a being in its wake.
Verlaine looked at the entity in confusion. It had messy blond hair that seemed to be mixed with black in small pigtails. It was tall. Around 10’5 “, maybe? But despite its considerable height ,it looked rather young. Like a ridiculously tall child, maybe a tween.
It didn’t help that what it wore was a white hospital gown of sort,s as black chains —that seemed to glow purple— covered its body. They had been snapped, broken by pure force by the look of them. They covered the entity's body. Around its wrists, ankles, neck, chest, and waist as if these chains were to hold it in place.
It set Verlaine off. The being seemed to stare at Verlaine absentmindedly, its black sclera and black and purple star-like eyes staring at him, or perhaps through him. That is before black flames started erupting from it again. He heard groaning and grumbling as the being fell to its knees. Verlaine was tempted to walk closer but chose to stay a good distance away, tried to get to the door.
-”Paulaine…?”
The being uttered lowly in a questioning tone. The fire crackling and Verlaine's mind racing didn’t help with hearing such quiet words, but he did, nonetheless. He turned to face what was in front of him.
Horns of pure black and purple flames seemed to condense and form ones reminiscent of a goat's on its head. Its hands, now covered in large black and purple flames, created claws large enough to make a basketball look like a tenis ball in comparison. Large talons replaced its feet —reminiscent of dragons— copying its hands and looking practically the same, though their size hadn’t changed as much for the feet when compared to the size of its hands.
Verlaine stood there, combat knife in hand —even though he was more than sure it would do anything— and ready to attack the entity in front of him. He was more than sure this was Guivre, but he wasn’t going to back down to his own ability.
Guivre looked up at Verlaine before rushing at him. Verlaine barely had time to react, but he didn’t fumble too much at the sight of this. He simply moved out of the way before swooping around and regaining his stance.
Guivre rammed into the wall where Verlaine had just been before taking its head out of the giant hole in the wall and turning around. If Guivre was a human, he would have most definitely broken his neck from how he turned, it unsettled Verlaine.
-”What do you want, Guivre?”
Verlaine said sternly. Guivre seemed to have heard but didn’t seem sentient or conscious enough to process it.
-”Want…”
Guivre muttered as it ran at Verlaine. Verlaine dodged the attacks over and over again, but this time, he noticed how its eyes, unlike before, were now just pitch black. No stars, no purple, no glow, there was only a pitch black void for where its eyes were. They reminded him of Dazai when they had first met.
Verlaine continued to dodge any attacks thrown at him. He threw a kick at Guivre, hitting the ability right in the chest. It stumbled back slightly before throwing a ball of pure flames at him.
Verlaine tried to dodge out of the way but ended up getting slightly burnt. He lost a sleeve of his shirt and some of his pant leg, including his shoe, but he was fine. He looked himself over quickly for any burns only to find none.
Verlaine was surprised his ability hadn’t gone full singularity and destroyed everything, but he came ot the conclusion it was because it was much weaker compared to the past after the Stormbringer incident.
As the fight continued, Verlaine tried to escape quite a few times only to be —almost— burnt to a crisp by more fireballs. He needed to get to Dazai or Chuuya. Dazai would be unaffected by Guivre and could deal with it a lot easier than Verlaine was right now, and Chuuya’s already beat his ability at its full potential.
But then Guivre stopped. It stopped moving and stared at nothing in particular. Then, Guivre’s eyes returned to their normal stars and purple colouring.
-”Arahabaki…”
Guivre mumbled with a grimace before running off. It was more like blasting off, actually. Guivre was gone in the blink of an eye. Verlaine had barely heard what its ability had said but knew what it meant. Verlaine had to get to Chuuya before his ability did.