Seeing Red

Job Details:

Sign-Up page 18, Post Number 442

-In the Special Experiments Room-

Wearing her green-and-gold outfit and wearing her Argent Gloves, Leona carried in her hands a black box with a red cross on it. She could already feel the adrenaline flowing into her body and the box had not even been opened yet. Today she was going to test the Aggression Pack with herself as the test subject. Since she had found the artifact, it was her responsibility to test it. In preparation for this dangerous test she had deliberately left all of her weapons in her room, even the knife she normally carried in her boot.

Leona was not going into this test entirely blind. She had read the autobiography of the pack's owner and had learned a bit about its effects; this information had prompted her to seek it in the first place. She had also come across the aftermath of a pack-fueled rampage and saw what an ordinary person with no magic could do under its effects.

A grave robber she had found in Silent Cemetery was the original "owner" of the Aggression Pack. He had fallen victim to a pack of zombie dogs patrolling the cemetery, but he had killed eight of the zombie dogs before succumbing to his wounds thanks to the effects of the pack. Their heads had either been stomped on the ground until they caved in or had been bent backwards with a forceful kick to the muzzle. As its name implied, the Aggression Pack flooded the body of its user with adrenaline and amped up their aggression to levels beyond what normal humans could achieve.

According to Blazkowitz' autobiography To Infernus And Back, the Aggression Pack could heal wounds upon activation as well as deaden pain receptors so that the user felt no pain. However, the heightened aggression also prevented the user from distinguishing friend from foe; this meant that any living thing in the immediate area was a target. The book was informative but lacking in some key information, namely the duration of the pack's effects. She was here to fill in the gap for Silver Wolf's records.

She entered the cylindrical two-story room and faced the stone wall with the Silver Wolf banner hanging on it high above her. The first floor was completely empty because she did not want to leave anything that could be used as a weapon within her reach. On the second story were stationed six of the younger staff members of the guild and a wooden table full of notebooks and writing supplies plus Leona's copy of To Infernus And Back for staff members to refer to. Their task was to observe and record the effects the Aggression Pack had on Leona. A strong magical barrier protected them from her, but if the barrier were to falter they were instructed to leave Leona in the room and run for their lives.

"Are we ready to start testing?" Leona asked the staff members.

"Ready when you are, Guild Mistress." A young blond-haired male answered loud and clear. Leona saw that some of them were nervous about the testing but were trying their best to hide it. The Guild Mistress herself was apprehensive about testing the Aggression Pack. No noble thoughts of responsibility or sacrificing one's well-being for science and knowledge could ease her feelings. However, it was her responsibility to test the pack so that no one else had to run the risk.

Leona wanted to determine if the Aggression Pack could be used for anything beneficial or if it was purely a tool of war that had to be destroyed. If it was determined that it had some benefits, it would be kept and carefully experimented upon. If it was determined that no good could come from it being kept in the world, Leona would find a way to destroy it so that it could not be used for evil. That was her responsibility and her duty as Silver Wolf's Guild Mistress.

Leona took a deep breath. What she was about to do could be dangerous, but it had to be done. Leona then nodded.

"OK, let's begin." Leona said to them. The staff members sat down and began observing the Guild Mistress standing in the middle of the first floor.

"According to the book, the Aggression Pack can heal wounds." A female staff member with brown hair read aloud. Leona would test that first, but she had left her weapons in her room. How could she inflict a wound deep enough to test the pack's healing effects?

"We don't have any weapons, Guild Mistress." Another staff member announced.

"Don't worry. I'll handle that." Leona said to the observers. Raising her hands and channeling magic into them, Leona called on a summon with the power to cut her.

"Falcon Swordsman SUMMON!" Leona called out. Moments later the Falcon Swordsman appeared in front of her. He stood up and brandished his weapon, then faced the blonde.

"What would you ask of me?" Falcon Swordsman asked Leona.

"I want you to cut my arm. Just a light cut." Leona told him in all seriousness, presenting her right arm to him. His mouth slowly opened as he stared at her. He could not believe what he was hearing.

"You... want me to cut you? With my sword?" The swordsman asked, not fully understanding the request she had made of him.

"Yeah. Just a light one, though. Just enough for me to bleed." Leona answered in the affirmative. Even with Leona's permission, he still hesitated to act on the request. The thought of attacking his mistress for any reason was foreign to him. She could see the internal conflict in his eyes. Leona rolled up her right sleeve and presented her arm to him.

"Give me a light cut." Leona instructed. The Falcon Swordsman still refused to act.

"Do it!" Leona insisted. He sighed. He carefully moved the tip his saber across her right arm. Leona groaned as she felt the blade make a precise incision in her arm. The Falcon Swordsman stepped back and Leona showed her bleeding arm to the concerned observers.

"My arm's bleeding. I'm about to open the Aggression Pack." Leona said to them. A queasy female nodded and Leona opened the black box. Inside was a standard test tube of a clear liquid that had the viscosity and look of common cough syrup.

"The Aggression Pack's contents are a single standard glass test tube with a clear liquid inside. The liquid in the test tube has the viscosity and look of common cough syrup." Leona reported to the observers. The sound of pen meeting paper accompanied her words.

"Now I'm ingesting the liquid. I'd say that the test tube contains 8 milliliters of liquid." Leona reported. Again the observers jotted down Leona's observation. She opened her mouth and drank the liquid, which had a bitter copper taste.

"I'm tasting copper." Leona commented laconically. She watched the wound, which was still bleeding lightly. The Falcon Swordsman's cut was not deep enough to cause permanent harm and it had missed all major vessels, so the Guild Mistress was in no danger of bleeding to death. That was a good thing because the pack's healing effect had not activated yet. Blood continued to run down her arm and drip onto the stone floor.

[Word Count: 1,252]
[Total Word Count: 1,252/3,500]

Leona watched her right arm waited for the healing effect to begin as the observers watched her like a hawk. It had been a full minute since Falcon Swordsman had given her the cut at her request. She held up the bleeding cut for the observers when one of them murmured and pointed at her arm.

"Guild Mistress, it's healing! The wound's healing!" A young woman with shoulder-length brown hair alerted Leona. Leona looked at her arm and saw that the wound had already stopped bleeding and was beginning to close up. She watched the wound close up and the flesh heal over like the sword cut had never been inflicted on her arm. The entire healing process took about three minutes from start to finish, so the healing effect was far from instantaneous. Still, it would keep someone who had been hurt alive and give them a chance to retaliate against their aggressor.

Leona listened to the sound of notes being jotted and looked at Falcon Swordsman, who was just as surprised about the healing as the staff members and Leona herself. She was starting to feel a surge of adrenaline and with it the increase in heart rate and energy like the book had predicted, but it by itself was not enough to send her into a roaring fury against anything nearby. Maybe it was because she was not in combat but in a controlled setting.

"I'm feeling an adrenaline surge. I'm feeling an increase in heart rate and an increase in energy, but it's not enough to send me into a blind rage. I think it's because I'm not currently in a fight." Leona reported to the observers and added her opinion as to why she was not already trying to harm them or Falcon Swordsman. They seemed inclined to agree. Then one of them made a suggestion.

"If you're not in combat, maybe you can use a summon to simulate combat." A young woman with copper red hair suggested to Leona. That idea made sense. It was a lot safer to fight with a summon than it was to fight with a staff member. If Leona hurt a summon they could simply be dispelled and come back good as new later, but if a staff member got hurt they could not be healed so easily. There would also be repercussions from the Magic Council and a high likelihood of an inquiry from the Rune Knights.

"That's a good idea. I'll do that." Leona voiced her agreement with the idea. She dispelled Falcon Swordsman and instead brought out Sky Champion Rafale. He had the speed to avoid Leona and the strength to deal a strong enough punch to provoke the feeling of being in a fight.

"SKY CHAMPION RAFALE!" Leona called out, raising her arms skyward. Moments later he appeared and brandished his weapons, then turned and faced Leona.

"What would you ask of me?" He asked Leona.

"Put your weapons away and hit me. Hit me with your bare hands." Leona answered. Rafale stared at her incredulously. Like with Falcon Swordsman, getting the summon to willingly hit her was going to be a hard sell.

"Hit me with your bare hands. Punch me in the face, the chest, wherever. I'll be OK." Leona assured Rafale, who was not enthused with what he was being told to do. He put away his purple energy blades and drew back a fist but hesitated to throw a punch. She could see the reluctance written on his face.

"I'll be OK, Rafale. Do it." Leona instructed him again. Rafale hesitated for a moment, then drew back his fist and slugged her in the right cheek of her face.

"I didn't feel it." Leona announced for the benefit of the observing staff members. Rafale drew back his fist and hit her again in the same place. Leona was knocked back but did not feel any pain.

"I still didn't feel any pain." Leona announced. She felt another surge of adrenaline. She also felt a flash of anger and thought that she saw a flash of red cross her vision.

"Did... did her eyes just flash red?" One staff member asked another; the second person dropped their pen and stood up from the table so that they could get a closer look at the Guild Mistress.

"I think they did." The second person, the young woman with copper red hair, answered. Rafale drew back his fist and hit Leona in the stomach, causing her to double over. Leona saw another flash of red, then saw it linger. Here was the bloodshot vision the book described Blazkowitz experiencing after using the Aggression Pack.

"Her eyes are bloodshot! They're red except for her pupils!" The red-haired young woman announced just before Leona looked straight at her. The staff member took a step back and Leona shifted focus from her to Rafale, the one who had been punching her in the face and stomach. The fact that Leona had told him to hit her was irrelevant to her adrenaline-soaked mind. She only knew that she had been hit by the man in green and that she wanted revenge.

"Leona, what's going on?" Rafale asked his summoner.

"You'd better run!" An observer warned Rafale. Before he could move Leona sprinted towards him and grabbed at his arm. He jumped back just in time to avoid being grappled and performed a jump straight into the air, hovering just out of Leona's reach.

"According to the book, the adrenaline rush heightens the user's aggression and blocks their pain receptors." A brown-haired male commented while reading through To Infernus And Back. Below him Leona was jumping at Rafale and attempting to grab his ankles to drag him down to the ground so that she could knock him around. The five other observers were busy jotting down notes and occasionally watching the spectacle below them.

"How long has this been going on?" The blonde female staff member asked her colleagues.

"I'd say a good minute since the bloodshot eyes appeared." Another brown-haired male with green eyes answered, glancing at his notes for reference.

"How long do you think it will last?" The red-haired young woman inquired.

"Good question. The book doesn't say anything about the effect's duration. I suppose that's why the Guild Mistress assigned us to observe and record what's happening to her." The blonde woman answered. Meanwhile Leona was doing her level best to catch Rafale and jumping for all she was worth, but the worried summon was staying out of her grasp by simply hovering in place.

"It looks like the Aggression Pack really does make the user unable to tell friend from foe. It also makes the user throw any semblance of tactics out the window. Notice how she's just jumping straight at the summon without trying to gain some height first by standing on something?" The brown-haired male thumbing through Leona's book noted to his colleagues.

"She had the first floor cleared out for a reason. Do you want her coming after us with a broken table leg or a broken chair leg?" The redhead asked. The group thought about the answer and went silent. It was for the best that their Guild Mistress was confined to the first floor while under the effects of the Aggression Pack.

[Word Count: 1,258]
[Total Word Count: 2,510/3,500]

-Thirty minutes later-

The observers noted that Leona had stopped trying to grab Rafale's ankle and drag him down to the floor. Her eyes had also lost their bloodshot look and had returned to normal. Leona herself was on her hands and knees breathing heavily... her legs were hurting and she was too tired to even stand up. They remained in the safety of the upper floor and spoke to Leona, but not before holding a small discussion to see who would be the one to speak to her. It became a game of who had done what and the person who had done the least would get stuck with the task.

"Hey, I cleaned the kitchen for the last few weeks. I'm not gonna risk getting her angry again." The brown-haired male thumbing through To Infernus And Back declared.

"I cleaned the hot springs every time for the last two months. I'm not talking to her either." The blonde woman offered her reason why she was exempt from the task.

"I've been re-arranging the guild library. Do you know how much dust is on the shelves of the library?" The second brown-haired man chimed in.

"FINE. I'll do it." The redheaded woman volunteered. She stepped up to the edge of the balcony and called down to Leona.

"Are you OK, Guild Mistress?" The redhead asked the blonde. Leona looked up in her direction and saw Rafale hovering overhead. What was he doing here?

"Yeah. I'm fine. Just really tired. It's too much effort to even stand up." Leona replied. She heard the sound of furious scribbling on paper. Notes were being made about something, but what and why?

"Do you remember anything about the last thirty minutes?" Came another question. Leona felt drained.

"No, not really. What happened?" Leona asked a question of her own.

"You tested the Aggression Pack on yourself, remember? Remember when you had the Falcon Swordsman cut your arm so that you'd bleed enough to test the healing property of the pack? Remember when you had the Sky Champion guy punch you in the face and stomach until you got angry?" The redhead responded to the questions with still more questions. The redhead's words brought back a lot of memories. They were vague ones, but Leona remembered what the staff member was talking about now. She remembered summoning Falcon Swordsman and Sky Champion Rafale to help with the experiment. Her face and stomach also began to hurt from the punches now that the deadening effect was wearing off.

"I'm remembering now. It's kinda vague, but I know what you're talking about." Leona finally answered the staff member. She tried to stand up but could not stand up for more than three seconds, so she crouched down, inelegantly plopped down on her backside and sat on the stone floor to recover her strength. Rafale stopped hovering and gently lowered himself until his feet touched the floor.

"Are you OK?" Rafale asked Leona.

"Aside from my face, my stomach, my legs, and feeling like I just ran a marathon, yeah, I'm fine." Leona answered. She had not been this tired since the most recent job with Dr. Anna in the Forgotten Deserts, when she explored a long-lost temple that belonged to the Lestrek people. Two of the three trials were physical in nature and taxed Leona's stamina to the limit. Even with her new enhanced adrenaline rush ability she was exhausted by the end of the Trial of Endurance.

"I must have hit you too hard. Sorry about that." Rafale apologized meekly.

"It's OK, Rafale. I told you to hit me as part of the Aggression Pack test. In a way, it worked because I didn't feel you punch me until well after the fact." Leona told him. The Aggression Pack certainly made her feel no pain, but she was not sure whether that was due to the adrenaline or if the deadening of pain was an effect separate from the adrenaline rush. She would have to test it again, but for the next test she would need a willing participant, someone on her level or stronger. She would also need someone she could trust not to steal the Aggression Pack or inform on her to the Rune Knights.

"I get the feeling that this Aggression Pack's more of a last resort measure than a primary combat item." Leona opined to the staff members. The redhead continued to speak to her on the behalf of the others, who looked concerned that the pack-induced rage was not yet over.

"I'm inclined to agree with you, Guild Mistress. According to our notes, you fixated on getting to the Sky Champion and didn't even bother trying to find a way to get to us. You just kept jumping up to try and get the Sky Champion even when he was well out of reach. You didn't try to find a way to get a height advantage like jumping off the second floor or calling another summon to fly you to his height. Speaking of which, you didn't even use magic." The woman recounted in a calm and matter-of-fact voice. Leona blushed in deep embarrassment.

"Maybe it was for the best that I didn't use my magic." Leona opined.

"After reading through the book you loaned us, we seem to think that it's not that you can't use magic. You can still use it, but your mental state is so rage-addled that you can't think at a high enough level to use it." The redhead reported. That statement made sense. Leona vaguely recalled being so irrationally angry at Rafale that her only thoughts were pulling him down to ground level and punching his face in. That was all she could think about.

"So it's not something that can turn someone into an invincible combat mage?" Leona asked.

"We think not, but more testing will be needed to confirm or disprove that theory. However, we did learn a lot from today's test. We'll begin pulling together our notes and make a final report within the week." The red-haired staff member informed Leona. The blonde was relieved that all the embarrassment and exhaustion had been worthwhile. While the Aggression Pack could still be dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands, it did not confer invincibility like the blonde feared it would. It would still need to be kept away from the public and kept secure in the guild vault because it was too dangerous to let the world at large know about. Its existence would be kept secret until Leona could find trustworthy mages to tell about it, and chances were high that those mages would be members of the Silver Moon Faeries alliance.

On a brighter note, the Aggression Pack did heal her wound and prevent her from feeling pain, so there was a chance that some good may yet come out of the testing. If Silver Wolf could isolate the healing and pain-blocking components of the solution contained in the pack, they could become the basis for new healing products. The only problem was that she had drank all of the solution for this test without analyzing it first. Now what would she do?

Leona picked up the test tube she had drank the solution from, put a small cork she had found in the box back in the tube's mouth, and put the tube back in the box. Almost immediately she noticed that a small pool of liquid was forming in the bottom of the tube. Could it refill itself after each use?

Leona was too tired to observe it and the staff members had already dispersed to compile their notes for a final report, so she leaned on Rafale and shuffled out of the Special Experiments Room to put the Aggression Pack back into the vault for safekeeping. Further testing would have to wait for another day. At least the guild had learned some things about the Aggression Pack that they did not know previously. The Special Experiments Room had also proved its worth today by keeping the observers safe from a rage-addled Leona.

All in all the day was a success.

[Word Count: 1,408]
[Total Word Count: 3,918/3,500]