After taking shelter from the rain in front of the glass doors entrance of one of the surrounding buildings, Emilia immediately brought back Ryu down to the ground with her question.
"What happened to you?"
"Oh, this?" Ryu pointed at his transparent left hand with his right one. "Basically, I'm not allowed to mess with this place or interact with anything that exist within it."
With arms behind his hand, Ryu started floating higher in the sky, but only high enough that he was still close enough to the ground an Emilia.
"The only exception is you. I'm only visible and audible to you. But I can't physically interact with you. To put it simply, I'm just a phantom that can only follow you around. Everything from now on is all on you," Ryu continued, visibly amused and excited for whatever reason.
"I see…" Emilia felt both a sense of relief and doubt wash over her as the circumstances, actions and words of her new partner left her perplexed.
"So, what do we do next?" Emilia stared inquisitively at the spectral boy floating in the air who gave her a side glance.
"Simple," he started, a smirk full of mischief plastering itself on his lips.
"Time to explore!" he replied, hands and arms stretching out widely.
"What!? What do you mean by that?" Emilia started internally questioning Ryu, the little bit of trust she had in him fading slowly.
"Well… I mean…" Ryu tilted his head sideways, pressing his index fingers together shyly as if trying to hide his real intentions.
"Hehehehe," he scratched the back of his head while grinning like an idiot.
Emilia could only give a deadpan expression as she started questioning how useful Ryu would be.
"Don't worry. It shouldn't be too long now," Ryu affirmed, his words seeming to hint at something.
"Huh? What do you―!?" Emilia's words got stuck in her throat as the windows on the 4th floor of the building diagonal to her position shattered, followed by the exploding and crumbling walls.
"And there we go! Right on time!" Ryu crossed his legs mid-air, his interlocked fingers clasped behind his head as a bright smiling expression etched itself on his face.
From the dust cloud around the breach of the building, a silhouette jumped out of it, its figure expelling itself from the dust only to reveal a young child, a boy who seemed to be between 8 and 10 years old.
With his black hair swaying in the air, becoming damp from the rain, he landed on the ground, his orange-white shoes grinding against the ground from the momentum.
Emilia's eyes could only widen as she saw the scene unfold. The boy, dressed in his white-orange hoodie and green trousers, slightly turned his head, glancing at her as their eyes locked onto each other.
For the short moment that seemed to stretch infinitely, a strange feeling gripped Emilia's heart. It was mix of relief, serenity and unease that washed over her.
Whether it was because of the resemblance or her own perception of the boy, she was convinced from the bottom of her heart that the child in front of her was Ace. It had been barely enough to even make her forget that something else was going on before them.
Without even sparing a word, the boy presumed to be Ace shot his head back to the building breach he came from, his eyes slightly widening at that moment.
"Kill… Sur… vive… Kill… Kill… Survive…. Sur… Kill… Survive…" a broken voice echoed from the breach, crashlanding onto the ground as it stood before them.
A face shrouded in misty black. Subtle glitches appearing randomly on his slim yet toned body. A short-sleeved tunic and chest plate covering up his upper body. A black scarf wrapped around his neck. Brown trousers clothing his lower half. White bandages wrapped up to his forearms. And in his grip, a chipped yet seemingly robust sword covered in dried-up purple blood.
Emilia's eyes widened with dread and panic at the sheer intensity of the oppressive malice and bloodlust emanating from this shadow-faced warrior. It didn't matter if it looked human, it was dangerous. That's what her instincts were screaming as cold sweat started dripping down her face.
"What is that?" she muttered under her breath.
"That?" Ryu chimed in, still as relaxed and smiling as ever. "That is our goal."
Emilia glanced at him before her eyes refocused on the threat in front of her.
"But for the other one, I really thought he'd be hard to get a hold of. But luckily for us, we won't need to look for him anymore. Target Ace has been found," Ryu pointed at the boy, one eye open while the other one was closed.
"Now we need to get out of this situation. How about a tactical retreat?" Ryu appeared in front of Emilia upside down with an amused smile on his face.
"And how do we―?" Emilia didn't have the time to finish as a sudden gust of wind blew so strongly the dust rose up, momentarily blinding Emilia's eyes.
With her vision blurred as she got rid of the dust in her eyes, devastating sounds resounded around her. The sound of the ground quaking and cracking beneath her foot. The shattering of windows and crumbling of concrete echoed in her ears.
As her vision came back, she gasped in astonishment as she found a giant crater stretching out across meters away. And with another ear-piercing sound, she found that the once perfectly structured crossing and the buildings that stood tall around her had been disfigured into ruins.
Detonations and explosions of pure force followed one after another in rapid successions as dust and stones rose up from the ground violently, and the raindrops were repelled outwards from the shockwaves.
'What… what is that?' Emilia could only stare as the young boy, Ace, evaded the creature's fury of attacks even if barely.
"You shouldn't just stand around like that," Ryu's voice pulled Emilia back from her thoughts. "This might be our chance to solve things quickly without having to waste too much time here."
As if those few sentences were enough, Emilia took a deep breath as a pulse of energy shout from her feet to the ground. More precisely, the boundless amount of water surrounding her.
With a focused gaze that tried to follow the two opponents engaged in battle, her eyes noticed the subtle opening between Ace and the shadow-faced warrior, and without wasting a single moment…
She imprisoned the shadow-faced warrior in an ever-expanding sphere of water that fed off the drenched ground and the falling rain, its form slowly being pushed back further and further into the distance as its size continuously grew to the point that the buildings in the vicinity started to get consumed it.
'Now, freeze!' she clenched her hands into a fist as the giant sphere of water turned into ice, the visibly drowning shadow-faced warrior becoming restrained in the freezing cold water that had turned into an iceberg.
Ryu whistled in awe as a single thought followed.
'Well, damn. Pretty impressive.'