Spoiler (Click to Show)
The young girl, looking around sixteen, declined as she walked by the bright reds and yellows of the tropical fruit juice kiosk. She ascended the glossy white tiled staircase leading to street level outside the train station. The girl covered her eye from the intense assault of light the midday sun brought upon the cityscape. Most of the pedestrians coming to and going from the biggest train hub in Sierra Pines glanced at the fetching young woman her black disheveled hair fell in a disorganized curtain behind her, one set of particularly long bangs covered her right eye and cheek. This contrasted greatly with the open, white and gold jacket she wore stopping just above her black thigh-highs showing just a thin sliver of pale skin but before long the passersby turned their attention elsewhere once they caught sight of the scary looking black blade and even more ominous looking book she had by her side.
“Where to?” The cab driver asked the girl climbing into the back seat. The girl remained silent, merely handing the man a slender sheet of paper. The man scanned the writing then huffed in response as the taxi lurched forward into the ever flowing, busy streets of the megatropolis. The girl sighed as she looked beyond the glass window gazing at the mass of people trudging along their daily lives. Her mind wandered, ever so often focusing on one or two from the crowd, suddenly one turned his head staring straight at her with a piercing gaze and twisted smile.
The girl rubbed her eye, blinking furiously hoping it was a trick of the heat haze only to find more and more from the crowd turn their unsettling visages on her with every try. The girl quickly averted her gaze and shut her eyes, her quickening heartbeat a pounding drum in her ears.
“No, no, I’m free, I’m free from that horrid place,” she whispered over and over. The girl’s racing heart beginning to calm from chanting the makeshift mantra. Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes to stare at her bloodstained hands; franticly looking around everything was dyed crimson like she was looking through a red filter, flesh and offal sprawled on the faux leather seat beside her, bloody handprints staining the windows, the torn rags she wore as clothes dripping red.
“Hey, you alright back there?”
The girl immediately looked up to see the driver looking clearly worried. She looked around again to find everything normal again, no frightening gaze from passersby, no blood coating anything, no visible stich work nor tear mark in her attire. Only now did she realize she was shivering like she was on the verge of hypothermia, aside from that she was sweating buckets and breathing so shallow she was reaching one breath per second. It was one of her PTSD attacks again.
“Oi, you sure I shouldn’t head to the hospital instead?”
“No need, I’ll be fine,” she replied with a shake of her head, “did we arrive yet?”
“Yeah, about a minute ago, you really sure you don’t need a doctor?”
“Yes, I’ll live,” she said after shakily handing the man several bills, “Thanks and sorry for the trouble.”
“Pleasure doing business but seriously I recommend a check-up.”
With that, the man drove off to find another person in need of immediate transportation leaving the girl in the relatively empty side walk. She turned her back to the street looking up at the tall apartment building, it was situated in the nicer, quieter part of the city, and the surroundings were calmer and cleaner than the bustling highways of the densely packed commerce district. She sighed deeply as the adrenaline from her panic attack began to fade; just the faintest ghost of a smile crossed her neutral expression.
“It’s been a while since I worked with Erik.”
*~*~*~*~
Erik felt like doing nothing today, the weather was simply too hot to do anything comfortably outside the range of an air-conditioner. This left him with little choice but lazing on a chair in a loose fitting shirt and a pair of shorts while burying his nose in a book he picked up a week ago from the bookstore a block east from the RHG complex. Madeline and Claire were also enjoying some down time after cleaning, planted on the couch in front of the flat screen still in their signature uniforms, every now and again breaking into giggling fits due to the comedy movie playing.
The two finally broke into full bouts of laughter when the doorbell rang. “I-I’ll get it,” Claire said as she wiped a tear from her eye, trying her best to calm her breathing. After a bit of putting her maid uniform in order, she opened the door to a familiar young lady. She had long messy black hair covering one eye, pale skin, a white jacket covering a dark colored T-shirt and mini-skirt, cloudy blue left eye staring straight at the maid.
“Good day Ms. Ikezawa, a pleasure to see you again,” Claire said with a soft smile.
“Likewise Claire, and I’ve told you before to just call me Yukino. It’s the least I could do for someone who took care of me for six months after my treatment.” Her tense shoulders relaxing just a bit.
“I was hardly alone, Madeline was there as well,” the maid replied with a straight face.
“But she already calls me by my given name,” The girl continued to stare, her murky blue eyes into Claire’s solid black.
“…Alright but only in private, I still have a standard to uphold; now please come in Master will be happy to see you,” the maid said while letting the swordswoman in.
“Yukino!” Madeline’s sudden cry brought Erik out of his book-reading reverie. He looked up just in time to see the blue-clad, silver-haired maid glomp the new arrival, the movie all but forgotten. The puppeteer quickly put down the book walking in front of the entangled duo while Claire tried to pry her co-worker off Yukino.
“It’s been a while, a year?” Erik started.
“Close, eleven months.”
“How was babysitting a wannabe necromancer?”
“Fine, the occasional “hero of justice” showing up now and again, he was rather competent I only had to step in three to eight times.” She replied still wrapped in Madeline’s embrace.
Erik nodded in understanding, “Jerome probably sees some potential in that one, anyway glad to see you, so why did you come to this city?”
“A job,” she answered bluntly.
“Madeline,” Erik called. The maid visibly deflated as she let go of the swordswoman. The two maids returned to the couch to continue the giggle-fest while the other two made their way to the dining room that was out of earshot.
Erik feeling rather peckish took a chocolate bar from the fridge; Yukino took off her jacket and fixed her hair showing the hidden right eye. It was just as Erik remembered; completely black from pupil to the sclera, the only other color coming from the cracks running through it like fractures in extremely dry, blackened earth pulsing with powerful red energies. The two sat opposite of each other on the table, Erik taking a bite from his snack.
“So can you eat anything?” Erik asked genuinely curious of her condition.
“No, anything going down my throat only brings up…memories…besides everything tastes the same, like…like blood and-”
Erik held up his hand, “that’s enough; you’re definitely stronger than before but no need to push yourself here, let’s be glad that you lost the need for food and drink, otherwise...so what was that job you were saying?”
Thankfully, Yukino took the change in subject, “A fetch and cleanup.”
Erik nodded taking another bite from the candy bar, “Fairly simple, why do you need my help in this?”
“Is it wrong for me to want to work with you again?” she replied with raised eyebrows.
“No, no,” Erik emphasized his point by shaking his head, “so when and who?”
“Tonight, one in the morning, first and only time Kyle Santiago’s travel route was leaked.” She produced a picture form her jacket. It showed a twenty-something scientist archetype, buttoned up shirt, lab coat, and clipboard in hand only thing missing was a pair of glasses on the man’s silver-haired head. He was in some kind of presumably immaculately white hallway talking to someone out of the shot. The picture itself was of low quality like someone pulled it off some closed circuit security cameras and used image enhancement software to bring it to borderline presentable resolution.
“Isn’t that the guy who caused a scandal for performing illegal human experiments with unstable Psitech?” Erik asked as he scanned the picture.
“Correct and someone wants to play big money for the man’s work then to shut him up. The employer called it, ‘helping out divine providence’.”
Erik stood up from the table and made his way towards his room, “Alright, just let me get changed. Oh and one more thing…”
*~*~*~*~
The alley way was rather wide, wide enough for a garbage collection truck to go through the divide created by the two rows of brick and mortar structures but a dump truck was the least frequent visitor of this back alley. Among the bags of trash from the businesses that line either side, the scattered papers and refuse that nobody, not even garbage teams, bothered to pick up, here the less than reputable of society gathered to evade the gazes of others, illegal substance salesmen and users, dirty deals between reputable entities large and small, street gangs and their racket victims, these two silent walls and the many others like them throughout the city bear witness to them all.
Yukino stood atop the roof of a currently closed small-time burger joint watching over the empty alleyway that her target would use to evade leaving any kind of footprint, digital or otherwise. She waited patiently slightly enjoying the small breeze that was caressing her face. She gently touched the claw-like mark underneath her corrupted eye.
“I don’t get it, you can’t eat the tiniest crumb or drink even a drop of water but you’re fine with unleashing violent, unholy-looking curses to kill people, isn’t that a bit weird?”
Her mind easily wandered back to that question when she was near Erik, he was the first person to directly ask after she joined the Menagerie, the group that saved her. It took her a while to answer back then but her response has never changed since.
“Watching a person die or be killed even killing a person with my own hands, that wasn’t the worst thing I had to endure. The memories taking a life brings up aren’t as bad as when I ingest something. It’s not that I didn’t feel anything back then, even now I still feel horrible and feel like breaking down sometimes but when I do kill I have a purpose. Every time I spill blood I tell myself that I’m helping the Menagerie, my family, I’d do anything for you guys. I lost everyone I cared about once and I’ll do my damned hardest not to have history repeat itself.”
“The target will be here soon, Master suggests preparing yourself,” Erik’s masked puppet, Gris, suddenly appeared near her.
“Thank you for the alert.” Yukino immediately turned her gaze from the puppet, it reminded her too much of the Warden, just replace its gears and metal with cartilage and bone.
The puppet disappeared just as quickly and as silently as it arrived. Soon after three identical cars turned into the dimly lit alley, all there were jet-black, had tinted windows and lacked identification plates, it would be a good assumption to say they were likely bullet proof and were packed with trained and armed guards.
The Hex caster took the jagged black saber in her right hand and the fear-inducing book in her left, her heart began to race but in a different way from her panic attacks, not out of fear but out of excitement. She knew it was wrong, that this was from the taint she was forced to ingest in the form of the Warden’s blood and flesh but she long decided to work with it than to oppose it completely, to use this foul gift to help her second family, with that she jumped.
The car at the front of the three vehicle convoy came to a screeching halt as Yukino smashed into the engine block flattening it into a pancake, the girl herself was perfectly fine as not only her eye but her whole body had changed post-liberation becoming stronger, faster, more durable among other things. On the other end of the convoy a similar event unfolded but instead of a blur of white, a ball of red crashed into the car rendering it unable to move; the assailant blurring into a mass of mist.
Back up front, the black vehicle’s five occupants began to climb out of the wreck, kicking or smashing the butts of their weapons into the doors if they had too. The suited men quickly spotted Yukino and pointed their guns at her but before they could fire the curse master had already slit one in the throat and proceeded to use him as a shield absorbing the accurately aimed bullets. No sooner had they riddled their comrade full of holes did a mysterious fog quickly envelop them, soon they not only lost sight of their attacker but of their allies as well as the fog blocked vision of everything more than a foot in front of them, their only indicators being the greatly muted bang of gunfire and diminished muzzle flashes. One man, crouching with his back to the car wreck, tried to reach the occupants of the third car via his earpiece, at first only static then he recognized the sound of more muffled gun fire, the man on the other end screaming incoherently. He was about to talk back when he felt a sudden chill run through his abdomen, gazing down he found a black saber impaling him to the car through his stomach. He looked up at the sound of footsteps, the girl who crashed into their car earlier was looking down on him with dead eyes, he raised his rifle but the sound that came next was the pained screams of a man.
Inside the second car, the suited agent at the wheel repeatedly tried and failed to contact his allies in the other two vehicles only getting static over the communication lines. The man crashed his fist into the steering wheel; the most likely situation was that everyone else was already dead. He would have floored it and pushed the vehicle in front of him if only he had a clear view of his surroundings and positions of the attackers, seeing as both were out of his grasp he wrestled between blindly driving through the fog or risk abandoning the apparently meager protection the vehicle afforded them and make the rest of the way on foot.
“Dammit, what are doing sitting here doing jackshit?!” The man’s charge whining like a spoiled brat was not helping either, “You promised me safe passage and a place to conduct my groundbreaking research far away from impediments such as morals and human rights. What happened to that part about Safe Passage!!”
“We are working on it,” the lead agent grudgingly replied.
“Just hurry up and get my person out of here! I will not allow my research be set back because of two wannabe assassins, you are professionals aren’t you? Then Do Something!!!!!”
They don’t seem to be wannabe anything. “F*** it, everyone get out we’re legging it,” the man at the wheel said unbuckling his seatbelt.
The other similarly suited three complied and formed a tight square around the scientist, the researcher tightly hugging a briefcase containing his prototypes. They slowly moved going one step at a time through the thick mist that absolutely refused t