Reincarnated Into A Dead Woman's Body In Another World-Chapter 446: Arc 6, - 62: Stealthless Encounter

Saruleus Hall; an auditorium located in the western wing of Palais Celneir. While it took a moment to walk all the way here and against the current, the detective and the would-be detective made it to one of the doors that led into it.

A moving painting glittered and glimmered with a lady with coifed blonde hair and in a silver dress twirling under rain drops—her heels were bright gold and an umbrella hung loosely around her wrist alongside a pearl bracelet.

The words danced onto the painting, ’The Lady in the Gold Stilettoes’ it read. "What’s this even about?" Fumeko squinted an eye at it.

"Never got around to seeing it, but I heard it’s decent," Rose replied. "Basic premise is that lady gets ahold of a pair of shoes that solves all her problems. If you think that it might correlate with the cult’s intentions, I’m sure there’ll be something here."

Fumeko straightened up and placed a hand on the door, "It’s more so I don’t understand theatre..." she scoffed. "If the world worked like that, hell, give me those shoes."

"I think you figured out the appeal," Rose entered with a head cocked against the wall and crossbow at the ready. She glanced next to her find the shorter brunette, only to find wisps of shadows instead.

The room was lit gold, the curtains had drawn to a close, the props were scattered and the seats littered with food, drink and more. To their eyes, everyone hastily left and everything was in disarray—what could the cult possibly want here, except...

Before Rose could even descend down the curved floor and rows of red seats, Fumeko was already blinking between the box seats high and low.

It was not too different from the seats on the floor, that being left in a hurry and things scattered about. She then blinked onto an aisle to reconvene with the detective.

Rose checked the top side of her wrist; the blue glow was still present on both of them, but fading. "The Firefly and the drama-girl went south to get up. We went west. So why hasn’t the glow completely disappeared yet?" the question was rhetorical of course.

The both of them turned their eyes to the stage and kept going up. "Looks like we know why the suspicious individuals were here," Fumeko blinked towards the stage.

"Namora wait!"

"Phew!"

"Woosh!"

What Fumeko failed to notice at first was what Rose seemed to warn her against. A bullet fired from the curtain’s edge, with nothing but the barrel of a musket poking out.

However the bullet only found purchase upon a theatre seat’s upholstery as the brunette blinked into the air, reappeared where the gun fired and with her dagger slashed it by the barrel upwards. "Pang!"

Fumeko ripped the curtain back and saw the cultist in a red mask, who’s only visible feature was their eyes, which were in fact surprised by the fact that half the length of their firearm was on the floorboards.

With a feminine yell, the cultist turned tail and ran. Fumeko flipped her dagger around, but- "Woosh!" "Woosh!" "Woosh!" In wisps of shadows, she blinked up into the air, to the left and the back and then again into the aisle of seats.

"BSH!" "BSH!" "BSH!" A series of gunshots were what caused her to flee.

"A coterie of cultists I imagine?" Rose began unscrewing her right earring that dangled. "Got me worried there for a second."

Fumeko stared daggers at the stage and pulled aside curtain, "Didn’t know you cared."

"I’d have to be the one explaining to your dad, so," the detective took strides forward and kept her head lower than the raised platform of the stage.

She plucked her earring with a click and with a flick of her wrist lobbed the conical piece through the gap in the curtain. "Tfffhhhh."

The earring gyrated rapidly, releasing a thick white gas that hissed to fill the vicinity. Coughing, sneezing and croaking voices soon followed and upon hearing that, Rose put a hand on the stage and leapt herself onto it.

She aimed her crossbow true into the dissipating smoke of disrupted cultists. Her eyes scanned the scene as quick as she could, "Lovely masks; all fashion, no function’s not quite my fancy though." "Fthck!"

Her crossbow string snapped and fired the purple-tipped bolt. "Shck-shcvk-shck-Shck-Ftth!" Through the tear gas, she lined the shot perfectly and immediately shot through the heads of four cultists before piercing through a thick rope and pinging into a wood beam.

The four bodies dropped; the purple on the tip of the bolt dusted away and the rope snapped. A stage light came crashing down between the remaining cultists. "CRASH!"

The floorboards collapsed inwards and glass fragments scattered alongside tiny metal bits. "AHHHHH!!!!" Rose’s gaze was drawn upwards as a scream resonated above.

_

Merely a few minutes earlier, ascending up the not so endless rows of steps, the remaining pair made their way into the fly lofts. The ventilation shafts made a maze across the domed ceiling.

Riggings held up bridges of metal walkways and led around various corners. It seemed like the fly lofts were connected throughout multiple stages and halls. Cables and ropes were by the hundreds in their view.

Having gotten there in a slight rush, Hotaru held onto the railing and caught her breath. She glanced down and saw some stage; her hands wrapped around the railing tighter. "Any luck Tiffany?"

A few steps ahead, Tiffany let out soft echoes into the space. "The perpetrators are not within the void’s purview. Within the realm between reality and cinema we now exist—within Palais Celneir no less.

Alas, one cannot marvel in one’s own time, for evil is afoot," with a dramatic pose and a lamenting sigh, she continued echolocating- Her eye widened then narrowed, "May thy guard be swift dear firefly of azure hues, for the performance be nigh."

Hotaru’s ears bristled; watery claws formed from her fingertips and she caught up to the pale blonde’s side. Tiffany guided the redhead through the upper spaces, along and above a few stage halls.

Around a corner they snuck and turned; the scent of blood was the first thing to hit their senses, before the sound of hundreds of footsteps became more apparent.

Orders were barked quietly but picked up by crimson ears. Tiffany’s head poked around the corner and surveyed the scene of cultists in red masks across the span of a fly loft.

She crouched lower and landed on her knees, "Hark," she whispered. "A familiar contraption of sizeable stature lies thither."

Hotaru’s head popped above the pale blonde’s. She saw the same cultists, but there, bolted down onto the stage and stretching up nearly to the ceiling’s height, was a cylindrical pillar covered by black cloth—a sphere atop covered as well. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

"Wasn’t it a different shape or is the cloth just covering it," the redhead muttered.

"One postulates I, with mine prowess provided by the Sea of Stars, may disrupt and destroy all that stands before us," a ripple of silvery-white waved up her visible eye.

"I’m sure that’ll help against all those muskets, but if that’s the same pillar we’ve been seeing, first of all how did it get here and second, your voice won’t break it, even Jotou couldn’t do it completely."

"Hmph."

Hotaru’s ears spiked even more all of a sudden. She turned and behind the wooden beam they were hidden by, she spotted a cultist aiming a musket who was sneaking up on them.

"Tiffany, scream!" the redhead grabbed the eccentric blonde by the shoulders and twisted her around like a shield to hide behind.

Completely taken off guard, Tiffany parted her lips and shouted, "WHAT!?" silvery-white echoes rippled forward.

"Blast-vvhvh." Upon discovery, the cultist fired their shot, but the sound alongside the bullet was buffeted back by Tiffany’s spell and the cultist dropped the musket and held his ears with a grunt of pain.

A similar gunshot could be heard from way below, followed by a series of other sounds. Hotaru sprang up from behind the pale blonde and sunk her claws into the cultists before he could react and sapped his life till he collapsed.

Around the corner, Tiffany poked a head and realized any chance they had at stealth was long gone. Even so, there were just as many cultists facing her direction as there was facing down towards the stage.

Some elements of white smoke ascended up and Tiffany narrowed her eye before stepping into view. "Behold worshippers of falsehoods, thou on this glorious day bear witness to the void.

For I, Stella Vespertillio, the Child of Void within the Sea of Stars, have judged thine souls to be forfeit," she posed with a hand tracing down her one eye and not many cultists seemed to fire immediately, though they took aim; they seem, enthralled?

"Crash!" One of the light fixtures fell from the rigging onto the stage below. Taking the opportunity, Tiffany screamed ahead. "AHHHHH!!!!"

The cultists took cover, hid behind wooden beams present and fired off shots that were impeded by the ripples of echoes blasting it back.

Hotaru held down her own ears and squinted from behind Tiffany. "Why didn’t they fire...? Don’t tell me- Were they really stopped by dramatics?" there was a look of mild annoyance as she paired her words with the cult’s usual agenda.

Meanwhile, down below, Rose saw at least two bodies drop off of the edge of the railing above and fell to either their deaths or great injuries.

The detective pressed her back against the wall, away from the curtain’s edge and the cultists’ line of sight. From under the hem of her dress, she withdrew another bolt she had from the casing around her thigh and loaded it into her crossbow, which began loading it itself without her touch.

"BOOM!"

Rose turned her head towards the seats to see an explosion in the middle of one of the rows. Fumeko reappeared in shadows by her side and had in her unequipped hand, severed wires bunched up in her grip.

"There’s bombs rigged under the seats; I tried to disarm one, but looks like cutting the wires just sets it off. So turning off the electricity might make this whole theatre blow up," she threw the wires off the stage.

"Right... If you’re not trained to disarm a bomb, now’s not the time to practice," Rose reloaded her crossbow by the crank to its side quicker. "I think your friends might up there."

Fumeko glanced up and blinked into the air towards the fly loft above. Rose plucked a rose off of the corsage on her right shoulder, turned the corner and flung it into where the stage light dropped.

A mist of purple dust puffed off of the corsage in the absence of it. The remaining cultists who had not ran from the position, took aim, but Rose tapped her left earring at which point the rose beeped once.

"Boom!"

The purplish stud earring under some strands of hair glowed for a moment before it dissipated. The explosion of the red rose blew up the floorboards and sent the stage light onto concrete below.

If the cultist were not a scatter of red mess at this point, they were long gone from this area. Rose then looked up, took off her fascinator hat and firmly pressed it into the middle of her corset.

The top bit flattened down to the brim and made some mechanical noise as if it clicked into place. She was about to grab the flimsy-looking fabrics on the hat, but then she realized the winches that held ropes and cables by the side of the stage.

She dashed over to it; while doing so, she snapped her stiletto heels. One heel snapped into the shoe and allowed her to walk flat on her left foot. The other heel snapped back and popped up into the air.

With both her shoes flat, she caught the right heel in her grip and held the rope with her hand that wielded the crossbow. She clicked the stiletto heel which seemed to have a button and a compartment to eject a sharp knife.

"Slish!"

A clean cut through the rope by the winch sent her flying upwards, counterweighted by a tinted glass framed in metal that crashed into the stage while she gracefully took her exit and landed on the walkway above, crossbow aimed.

Gunshots fired off, fended off by sonic waves that Tiffany had to quell for a moment as she saw Fumeko blinking onto the hidden pillar.

Hotaru had a few gunshots that scraped her face and other parts, but she healed just as quickly, leaving only some bloodstains. The four convened unintentionally.

Fumeko twirled her dagger and cut the cloth over the sphere, "How many of these things do you have!!?" The fabric was cut and unravelled.

Just then, a flea jumped at her unseen and it grew larger and larger, growing muscle and taking a different shape. The brunette was jumped by a mountain lion that grappled her and knocked her off the sphere.

Her eyes flinched shut; Fumeko grunted and yelled as she felt claws pierce into her adventuring attire, past Hotaru’s spell and its enchantments to draw blood with ease. In a moment’s notice, she blinked out of its grasp to anywhere she could see.

The mountain lion roared and landed onto a walkway, its claws causing sparks as it slid. Fumeko blinked towards Hotaru in not more than three seconds, clutching her back as a single strap of her pinafore came undone.

"Depends," a voice bellowed out from nowhere. "How much longer will you dare persist against what you cannot hope to end?" Ambrose walked into view as the cloth draped the stage floor, revealing yet another octagonal pillar, wailing with a greyish-white glow.