But Brain quickly regained his composure, answering in a voice as steady as ever.
"It doesn't matter. Those fools have already served their purpose. As long as we break Nirvana's seal, even if the legal guilds catch up to us, we'll still be the ones laughing last."
He paused for a moment, then turned slightly to look at the smallest, thinnest figure standing at the far left of the group.
"Angel, it's your turn to be useful. I don't care how you do it, but hold off our pursuers and buy me more time to break Nirvana's seal."
At the command, the young girl who had inherited Sorano's old codename flinched visibly, her small body trembling.
"Yes, I, I understand."
With that, she came to a stop and turned around, resolute as though prepared to face death, taking a deep breath as she readied herself for whatever unknown enemy awaited.
Brain didn't spare a single thought for whether the girl might lose her life because of this order. The moment she was left behind, he pushed the remaining four to move even faster, and within a few breaths the sound of their footsteps had faded entirely.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
"Eek!!"
A sharp whistle of displaced air cracked through the silence. Left behind like a discarded pawn, the girl codenamed Angel froze stiff, and only after a moment did realization dawn on her, her head slowly tilting up toward the sky.
Up above, Kabe, dressed in a black short sleeved shirt and pants, looked down from on high at the small girl who had suddenly broken off from the group. Taking in her round, still baby faced cheeks and her snow white short hair, his expression shifted subtly.
'This girl. Could she possibly be...'
A guess began forming in his mind. He descended slowly, landing lightly in front of her. The girl codenamed Angel stared up at him in stunned disbelief, her legs instinctively carrying her back a step.
She hadn't been with Brain, hadn't been brought into the world of magic, for very long. But even so, she still recognized this face, one that was practically known to everyone in Fiore. Being told to hold off pursuers from the legal guilds had already felt like an impossible task. Being asked to stand against the God of Destruction himself was no different from being sent to die.
Watching the girl's trembling body, Kabe's stern expression softened just slightly, and even his voice, without him quite meaning it to, gentled.
"Little sister, what's your name?"
"...Angel."
After a brief silence, the girl answered quietly, thinking to herself that since she'd only been told to stall for time, talking a little more with him wouldn't make any difference.
Kabe, meanwhile, was turning something over in his own mind.
'Angel? Wasn't that Sorano's old codename? So this is Brain finding a replacement after I poached her.'
"That's just your codename. I'm asking for your real name."
The girl had no idea why he was so insistent on knowing her name, but since she clearly couldn't win a fight against him anyway, she simply told him the truth.
"Yukino. My name is Yukino."
At that, Kabe silently thought, 'Just as I suspected,' and felt a wave of anger rising in his chest. He'd already thought the girl looked somewhat similar to Sorano the very first time he laid eyes on her, and combined with the two of them sharing that same striking white hair and the same youthful, delicate features, it was exactly why he'd stopped to ask in the first place.
Sensing that Natsu and the others were still some distance behind, Kabe took a breath and spoke quickly.
"Listen, Yukino. I don't know what lies Brain has filled your head with, but right now, all you need to do is listen to me. Your long lost sister, Sorano, is one of my companions. She's spent all these years looking for you, and she's on her way here right now, coming up behind me. So tell me, do you want to keep listening to Brain's nonsense and help him with his schemes, or would you rather stand aside quietly and wait for your sister to arrive so the two of you can be reunited?"
"I..."
Yukino opened her mouth, her pupils shrinking, her mind momentarily unable to process what she'd just heard.
'Sister? My sister is right behind him? Is he telling the truth? Am I about to see my sister again!'
Without so much as a moment's hesitation, the instant her thoughts began working again, she was about to answer. But suddenly, her hand moved on its own, reaching for her waist and drawing out a golden Zodiac key, pointing it straight at Kabe.
"Open, Gate of Libra! Libra, crush him with your gravity!"
A flash of light burst forth, and a sun tanned, sultry, masked woman appeared, dressed in an Egyptian style dark green bikini, a golden scale held in each hand. The moment Libra, the Celestial Spirit of the Scales, arrived, she wasted no time. Both hands pressed down, unleashing gravity heavy enough to crush an ordinary person's organs to paste, bearing down directly on Kabe.
"That's it, Libra! Crush him flat!" Yukino pressed on with the order.
Libra still said nothing, simply pressing her hands down further, layering on even greater gravity onto her opponent. But it wasn't long before she noticed something was wrong. Watching Kabe stand there beneath her gravity without so much as swaying, her eyes, visible above her veil, widened little by little.
Kabe, for his part, had felt the full weight of that gravity by now and finally spoke up.
"Is that really all you've got? This much gravity wouldn't even be enough to help with my training."