TRAILING SHADOWS

"Whoa... Easy, easy, Lady!" Kalagar chuckled, putting his hands before him in mock surrender. "I do not really enjoy being touched, passively and actively." He added, smirking.

"Yea, right! Obviously!" Niniola rolled her eyes at him, her anger knowing no bounds.

She flung a pointer finger of the right straight at his face.

"How... Dare You?" Niniola roared.

Already, the dust had begun to clear about

 Visibility was getting restored to some certain degree, making it possible to see the sprawled bodies of everyone who had gotten hit by the lightning discharge from the Lightning Sage earlier. 

Groans resounded weakly from all sides where the Irunmoles were. Assassin, mercenary, lightning guards, it didn't matter. They were the ones in the thick of the fighting and so therefore, had gotten more hit than the ones they were chasing. A couple of them popped white glowing pills into their mouth, while remaining still to regenerate themselves.

Kalagar's Lightning discharge had truly done a number on them.

Kalagar merely shifted Niniola's hand and turned to the back, letting the fuming and streaking girl by herself. He walked some steps back to where his tent had stood, observing the scene of it's current state now.

He lowered down to the bend of his knees, stopping. Before him lay two drumsticks if barbeque covered in dust and chopped fried leaves at a little distance from the other.

"Hmm..." He sighed, his large palms grabbing both sticks in the ground with a pained expression on. "Aww... These babies had to get wasted because of your skirmish here. Thunder is not exactly stable due to the recurring Lightning storms, yet, you guys had to rough it out here." Kalagar closed his eyes for a brief moment even as he folded his hands into fists, the meat crumbling to bits of matter that dissolved into the air.

"Are. You. Serious?" Ninola fired, walking go him from behind. "That is what you care about? Meat??"

He rose to his feet, shrugging. "My tent is gone too, obviously. Now, how am I supposed to camp it here away from the bustle of the realm?" Below him was the incinerated remains of what was once a tent, the pegs in the ground remaining the only solid evidence that anything tangible had really been there.

"Oh... Niniola." Kalagar turned around, grinning while rubbing his hands together. "I could a favor from you. Could you run over to the Council House of Thunder and get me yet another spatial supplies for camping ring? Just tell them Kalagar and they'll understand." Kalagar said, putting his hands on her shoulders as he tried to shove her around towards the street.

"Let me alone." Niniola complained, slapping his hands off her shoulders. She was now standing in the path of the street way. 

"I am not running your errands, understood? Not when you're the cause of the attack yay happened." She threw her hands into the air, frustrated with a stomp of her foot. "What am I even saying? I am supposed to be getting Sunday to Earth already. Not have any chitchats with you."

"Earth? Earth for what?" Kalagar frowned, crossing his arms over his torso as he stared down at Niniola, due to his height.

"He's sent to some human girl. And we were going to Earth when Yay... you fired everyone blindly." Niniola pointed her hands at him.

"Ugh! Why come here when there is a deployment zone in Ilu Obatala then?" Kalagar scratched his hair. "Except you are running from..."

"How is that the point here? Hello, focus" Niniola snapped her fingers, completely pissed.

"So, what is the point, my fair lady?" Kalagar swallowed,leaning towards her with his arms still crossed.

"The point that you..."She snapped her fingers again, rolling her right hand beside her head to depict crazy. "you know, attacked everyone at point-blank without determining who was the victim. Strike a bell?" She eyed him, head to toe and back again.

(A/N: Gosh! This girl really got the nerves.)

"Oh that!" Kalagar righted himself, laughing. "That, that! I knew you would interfere which you did so, guess our team work was good?"

He swallowed, gulping as Niniola's eye narrowed till they appeared to be just horizontal slits.

"Okay, maybe not that." He flapped his hands. "But hey, it's been long since I did that so I'm quite rusty. Besides, I needed an all round technique just so everyone could cool off, you know?

Also, I tried to minimise the power level that's why some of you didn't get serious hits to death."Kalagar gesticulated.

"Seriously?" Niniola stomped a foot again, drawing closer to him. "You call them minimised?"

Kalagar froze for a brief moment, no words coming from him. Then the next moment, he shrugged, his shoulders sagging as he exhaled. 

"You try having to do a technique as that when you have just an incomplete soul and tell me how successful you'd be at minimising damages okay?" He shrugged, turning around, with a saddened look on.

At this, Ninola did not know how to react. She blinked, c.o.c.king her head to stare at the back of the huge, beefy but yet miserable outline.

So, this was the Infamous Lightning Sage she had heard stories about?

"What do you mean incomplete?" Ninola asked.

"Didn't you hear of it? I sealed half of my soul to solidify the holding capacity of the Control Array of Trixius's imprisonment. His seal, I mean." Kalagar turned around to face her now.

"It was this. Give half of a soul to hold Trixius down or he would break through out of it. I made the sacrifice, split my soul, lost half if my powers and dropped to the bottom of the charts." He leaned forward, putting a hand on her shoulder. "But I knew that it was only a weak failsafe, yet the best available to us. It was not going to hold him forever otherwise Trixius would never have reached out to Sunday. That's why I made sure to train harder, till I became this powerful again. But without a full soul, even this power is much of a headache if I cannot control it well. Agh... This is so sad."

"I am so sorry. I never knew this was how it was." Niniola cooed, her eyes containing unspoken apologies.

Kalagar facepalmed. "Now, would you go..." He made to turn her around. "Go get the things like I asked of you. Do not worry, Sunday is in safe hands, okay?" He assured her, watching the guilt stricken Niniola begin to run down to the street to carry out the errand.

**

Ibiyemi had sobbed, seeing how Sunday had treated her earlier. She was heartbroken but what she did not know that it was not Sunday but Bane all along.

And so, in her ignorance, she rose to her foot just as soon visibility became clear to sine degree for her to see, oblivious that just right before her was Sunday and the discussion between Kalagar and Niniola.