Mazaròl Lions : Chapter 25 "Not Part of The Plan

Everything seems to be so quiet without any warning even though the people on Elio’s screen are still moving around. In fact, there are still sounds coming out from his earpods but weirdly it doesn't get through inside Elio’s ears. It feels like there are walls that cut off the sounds to his Elio’s (gendang telinga) Not only can he not hear anything at the moment but he also can’t feel anything on the keyboard where his hands are planted. The pressure inside his body is never this heavy, it’s a lot heavier when he got his first time to get into this company. All of these happened at the same time right after Elio heard that question from Heliodor as if he got hit by a truck out of nowhere. There are too many things that he needs to proceed right now but his body can’t move an inch as the same with his brain can’t think of anything. At the same time, one of Elio’s parts keeps telling him to hold it all together and try to snap him out of it as he needs to give any response or answer to Heliodor. Too bad, it’s too late and that one part is not enough to pull Elio out of it. “Hey,” Heliodor calls him and places his hands on Elio’s shoulder “I was asking you a question just now.” From the sudden touch, the blood circulation starts to flow but not at the correct condition which makes his heart beat faster, his sweat starts generating in his palms. Also from that, it just makes Elio realize that it’s been more than a year since someone called his real name other than Lucas. These reactions are real and once again Elio fails to hide it from the person who is standing behind him and watching him with so much joy dancing in his eyes. The more reactions come from Elio, the wider Heliodor grins become. One more movement as Heliodor takes this as his chance to torture him slowly, he takes his hands off from Elio’s shoulder and bends down to look directly into his face. Usually people won’t notice what kind of face they make in these kinds of situations but Elio knows exactly what face he is making right now. It’s a kind of face that is enough to entertain the person in front of him as he can see the glimpse of his grins getting wider, almost like his cheeks are going to disappear. “What do you think of it, Sam Elio?” Heliodor says, repeating such a question which gives Elio another hit of spark down to his spine. No point in trying to look strong or nothing happened because Heliodor must already know that Elio is panicking right now. But still, Elio tries to calm himself down as he quietly takes a deep breath but his eyes already surrender to fight back. “She is the leader after all.” Elio manages to reply without looking at Heliodor’s side. “Hmm.. interesting.” He replies casually with a raised eyebrow and nods his head, still not leaning away from Elio. Instead, he puts his arm on the desk and lands his head on his palm then looking at the screen. “They are such professionals. You see this?” He says and points to one of the screens where it shows Sapphire and Aquamarine are still following the auction’s activities. At first Elio wants to ignore him but he can’t because Heliodor is waiting for his response by looking back at him. Defeated, he takes his eyes to look directly to the pointed screen. “Our little boy has a knife inside his left sleeve that is as small as a pinky finger yet as sharp as sabertooth’s fangs. Probably has a strong enough string on it for them to lift them up there.” he continues like he is observing the team. Elio remains silent as he is paying attention to what Heliodor is trying to say right now. But not all of it because he notices that this is his chance to calm himself down and tries to stay focused in all aspects. “While the girl, I saw that she had already prepared some kind of smoke bomb that can get through the x-ray. She put it on her thighs and it must be easy to trigger it.” Finished with his examination, Heliodor looks at Elio. “A very clever team, right?” he says with a smirk on his face. Trying to act normal, as always Elio’s response must be nodding his head instead of saying anything back at him. After getting the response he is waiting for, Heliodor is the first one who breaks eye contact with him as he looks back to the screen, still in the same position. “But I found something more interesting in here.” he says with his devilish grin just like before as points to another screen. Doesn’t want to fall into his game again, Elio obeys him as he looks at the screen where he is pointing at. Just from the two things that Heliodor said to him are already pushing Elio to his limit of holding his back but now, this is passing the line. One last view from the screen finally breaks the chain inside of himself. Out of nowhere, out of all the people, how can everything turn like this at the same time? Even though Elio knows how well and smoothly this person’s life went through, still, the chance he is attending these kinds of activities is zero. It’s Lucas and the woman he has mentioned last year is beside him, linking her arm with him while watching the auction from the side tables. Five minutes ago, Elio’s face looked pale just like a half living human but now it’s getting darker. Frightened? Yes, Terrified? Of course, but there is more right now. He clenches his fists tightly, his nails almost get through his skin, and his eyes become as sharp as a tiger, overflowing with anger. “What a happy newly married couple.” Heliodor continues and turns his head to look directly at Elio. That’s it, Elio snaps from all of Heliodor’s tricks as he stands up quickly from his seat and grabs Heliodor shirt’s collar then slams it at the nearest van’s wall. “What is this?!” Elio shouts angrily and grabs Heliodor’s collar with both of his hands. Looking and hearing this reaction from Elio which he never did before makes Heliodor roar with laughter and his grin is still there, not even slightly changing. “What do you mean by ‘what is this’, partner?” he replies and grabs Elio’s hands “This is how you served a lion! A king above all!” he exclaims excitedly. After saying that, he roars with laughter once again, louder than before, with his head looking up, how satisfied he is with himself. His laugh is explaining why he can manage to run this business with all of the criminals around him and not hesitating to give such a harsh test for them. It looks totally terrifying right now as it gives more pressure to Elio but he still doesn’t want to lighten his grip on his collar. The anger is still there, raging like an ocean's wave in a thunderstorm, and he grits his teeth tighter than before, almost looking like a tiger who is challenging the king of the jungle. “Don’t mess with me!” Elio shouts once again, warning him with his threat. Again, as a lion who is mentally strong from others, Heliodor looks at him directly into his eyes which gives Elio another pressure. “Or what? What are you going to do, Sam Elio? This is not in your plan, right?” He says. Elio is still looking at him with piercing eyes but his mind kicks in to understand what Heliodor just told him. Your plan which means Elio's plan, nor Heliodor’s or team’s, personally from him. It can only possible one thing for now, Heliodor knows and notices how Elio’s working all this time, a thing that always has his back. Seeing the drastic changes from Elio’s expression and face, it makes Heliodor smirks and lays his head back on the wall. “Never thought that I would notice it in such a meantime, huh?” he says with his mocking voice “Nice bot you raised there, boy. I know how powerful and smart Funkids is.” Funkids, Heliodor knows about it. It’s Elio’s bot who is helping him all the time through all the missions. Strongest security system against viruses, hackers. The fastest to read the codes in just one scan and solve all of it in just a flick of fingers. Smartest AI that Elio makes is to become perfectionist but only for hacking and hijacking systems. The table turns once again inside Elio as the pressure gives in as the anger starts to drain back inside. The grips are getting loosen each second and Elio slowly steps back away from him, looking completely terrified with how powerful Heliodor is. Checkmate, the fight between tiger and lion is outmatched, completely lost. Watching this with pure joy in Heliodor's face, he fixes his necktie and brushes his suit lightly. “Well, that was fun, Sam Elio. Never thought someone as calm as you would actually get out of control like that.” Heliodor says while on his way back to the bench where he put his coffee before. “Impressive though! You’re the first one that can hold in for around four minutes if I’m not mistaken. New record! Everyone will fall in just a minute. Boring, right?” He continues and takes a sip from his coffee. Elio is still there standing like a statue not knowing what he needs to do because letting out all of his anger right now won’t change anything in an instant. The most important thing is that Lucas is still there and he can’t do anything other than obeying his leader’s orders. “Oh, anyway.” he speaks up with a high annoying voice which takes Elio’s attention immediately because it sounds like he still has a surprise. Correct, those three are not enough for Heliodor, he still has one more thing to do, torturing Elio silently from inside and ripping apart his mind. “I said four minutes, right? Maybe it would be better if you take a look at the screens now because you were literally taking away your attention from it for that long, right?” he says and points at Elio's working place with his eyes. Again, one victory for Heliodor because Elio totally forgot about his job and no one wonders if Elio doesn’t hear the other members' voices as he strikes his head to look back toward his screens. It’s a mess, totally out of control which he doesn’t know would happen because this is not in the plan that they informed before. Somehow the audience are running around, looking panicked, as the guards are running to somewhere inside and outside the building. Elio immediately sits back on his chair and turns on his mic so he can hear what happened inside there. Sound of people shouting for help, footsteps, breaking things, a total disaster in the audience area which means this sound is coming from Sapphire and Aquamarine. “Aquamarine!” Sapphire shouts her partner's name. Aquamarine hears her and shoots his knife to the one of the ventilation that they have planned before as the escape plan. The knife is completely attached, Aquamarine circles one of his arms around Sapphire’s waist as she also puts her arm around Aquamarine’s neck to hold on and takes her smoke bombs out. Once she gets rid of the trigger, the smoke starts to fill in the area and Aquamarine pulls the trigger so they get pulled up there. It also shows up in Elio’s screen and weirdly they are the first one that Elio lands his eyes on to look for. Seeing like they could manage to get away from the auction place that is almost surrounded with the guards, Elio looks to other screens where the members are. There are a lot of guards on the ground area of the colosseum and Spec is still in his previous position, looking around with his sniper. Thankfully they might not be noticing or suspect him because none of them are walking upstairs. At this moment, Elio thinks it’s better to look for another one, he doesn’t hear anything from them three. “Howl? Where are you?” Elio says through the microphone since she is the one that showed up first. “Tanzanite? Thank goodness you finally answered us. What happened there?” It’s Howl’s voice, she is responding to Elio. Getting that question only makes Elio mad as he clenches his fists tightly again but fortunately he manages to endure it. “I think they cut off the signal.” Elio lies naturally “Where is your position?” avoiding specific explanations. “I’m going to help the others.” She simply replies in hurry. That’s not a part of the plan. Elio, who has a diligent brain, can easily memorize the other job and position they need to do from the beginning up until this mission ends. This is one of the reasons why Elio can’t find her on his screens, she is not following the plan that has been planned from Lion. Another reason is because Elio can’t put all of his focus on her because another part of him keeps telling him to look for Lucas. Lucas is a civilian, doesn’t have any kind of experience or never getting into a fight with others, he is not supposed to be in here, in the battlefield of lions and tigers. Now Elio just realizes that he doesn’t hear anything from the lions, no sound at all or anything that mixed with the tigers. “What did they tell you?” Elio asks Howl. “They told me that there is an emergency and they were not able to tell Sapphire and Aquamarine.” she replies right away, still on her way to the position where they have told her to. Something is off because Howl literally just needs to keep up the signal with others. What happened in that short four minutes? Elio glances over at a lion who is sitting with a smug face playfully, just like he is waiting for Elio to look at him. They must have planned something below their nose which it’s most probably related to the mess that happened inside the auction. “Need a hand there, partner? Or is Funkids already enough?” Heliodor says, noticing how Elio seems to struggle with the current situation. He gets up from the bench and approaches Elio once again while holding his cup in his right hand. getting attacked like that, unintentionally threatening his brother, and now making a disaster in the auction as the tigers are still in there and the lions nowhere to be found, Elio once again fills up with rage inside of him. “What did you do?” Elio says while looking at Heliodor with his piercing eyes, especially wanting to erase that face on him. Heliodor’s response only makes Elio want to pull out his heart and rip it right away because Heliodor tilts his head to the side, acting like he knows nothing about it. This is wasting time. Elio says inside of him and looks back toward the screens, trying to figure things out and helping the others on his own. Now his priority to look out is Lucas who is probably still near the auction place. No matter if he is already getting out of the place, Elio wants to make sure that nothing happens to him. To find someone in this crowd, Elio already set up a system in Funkids to find a specific person just by his own record data. With that, it’s easy to find Lucas in this massive crowd in just less than a minute. Found them! At first Elio feels relief at the sight they are in the right direction to get away from the auction place but suddenly Lucas stops right away. He is looking at the person right next to him, a woman, she must be the person that Lucas keeps telling him about. Elio zooms in the screen only to see that the woman is holding her stomach, she must be in pain but what’s the cause? Suddenly Elio remembers what Heliodor just said, that is something that Elio doesn’t know about Lucas and his love life. What a happy newly married couple. With this realization hitting him, Elio looks back behind him right toward Heliodor who is holding his tab on his left hand now. First sight Heliodor’s eyes are still on his screen but noticing that Elio suddenly moves to look at him, he looks back at Elio with a smirk on his face. “What did you do to them?” Elio says and stands up from his seat. The anger inside of him is boiling like a magma to the point where he really wants to do bad things toward the person in front of him. “Them, who are you referring to? Your team members or Lucas Acin and his pregnant wife?” Heliodor replies with his annoying and teasing voice. Hearing his reply, it makes Elio’s eyes open wide, his veins pop out from his arms because of how tight he clenches his fists. There is nothing left to hold his anger, hence he charges toward Heliodor, grabs his collar once again, and slams his body at the van’s side with all of his strength. “Don’t you dare lay a finger on them!” Elio threatens him. Half of Elio knows that letting out all of his anger now won't help him or anything but his anger is at the rate like a tiger goes rampage just for a drop of blood from a lion. Never thought a nerd and loving programs like Elio has such a huge strength, Heliodor lets his guard down a bit which makes him choked from Elio’s slam. But again, when he looks at Elio’s furious eyes, Heliodor smirks again. “Little bit disappointed with your chosen words, partner. You already saw her holding her stomach and Lucas immediately looked at her. What do you think?” Heliodor replies once again with the same voice. This time, Elio finally holds back his emotions as he throws Heliodor on the floor and goes back to his working place. Funkids is still set to lock on Lucas’s face so Lucas and his wife stay on the screen. The situation is getting worse because suddenly the auction place is going to be locked down from all sides and Lucas is still in there, helping his wife to get up who seems to still be in pain. Seeing this, Elio’s hands start to tremble and his eyes full of anger change into terror. Out of nowhere again, a sudden loud voice gets through his microphone and notices that the explosion is coming from inside the auction place. Checking every screen in front of him, Elio’s spines shiver from the sight of Howl, who is badly injured and just got out from smoke that is probably from the explosion. There are two sides that need his help but Elio’s brain can’t work like he wanted because his emotions are getting more and more overwhelming. A pair of hands touch Elio’s shoulder once again from behind him as this person bends down to get closer to Elio’s ears. “Now, now, partner… What are going to do about it?”