Chapter 24 - Pulp Fiction
By Kohikki
A man in a beaten military uniform stood at the top of a hill, lost in thought as he half-gazed over the charred expanses of Lower Actonia. Behind him the city of Orly lay in darkness, the towers of Comdot Estate presiding ominously over its sleeping subjects.
Cougar had spent the past few days lying in hiding, recovering his strength after his recent drubbing and pondering his next course of action. And then came to the horrific report, delivered somberly and reluctantly by his surveillance-minded colleague: She was dead. In a matter of minutes, before anyone could have intervened, she had been brutally stabbed to death by some kind of bloodthirsty monster. And then her mutilated corpse had been dumped on a farm somewhere, her death turned into a media spectacle to divert attention from the rebellion and serve as an example to others who might be inclined to oppose the tyrannical regime. As much as it sickened him, he had forced himself to take in all of the details of her murder, knowing that his only hope lay in learning as much as he could about what had happened to her.
He raised his head and stretched his lanky frame to its full height. The face that had once been so quick with an enigmatic smile was fixed in a look of grim determination. He closed his eyes, summoning the rainbow-colored particles of light to swirl around him. He had stood helplessly by while the woman he had been charged to protect had been taken into the hands of those who would ultimately see her as nothing more than a cheap sacrifice. And now there was only one thing left that he could do for her.
And so he started running.
Cille lay sleeping on the floor of yet another cell somewhere in Comdot Estate. For the last few days she had been constantly shuffled from room to room, and she had stopped trying to resist taking the mild sedatives that they had taken to giving her to make her more cooperative. She had also stopped trying to guess what her captors might be planning for her, instead taking some amount of comfort in the fact that she had thus far been relatively unharmed. She couldn’t help but wonder, though, what kind of mind games they might be trying to play with her, and what more sinister perils she might yet have to face.
Suddenly a loud noise somewhere close by roused her from her stupor. Was… was that an explosion? Could someone be trying to bomb the estate? Or was she simply dreaming? Raising herself up, she saw that the room had been engulfed in dust and smoke. Seized by a sudden coughing fit, she flung her arm over her mouth and nose and tried to peer through the haze. There seemed to be someone crouching in the middle of the room, shrouded in the smoke. Finally, as the dust began to settle, Cille made out a pointy shock of orange hair…
“Cougar!” she gasped.
The man looked up at her and managed a weak smile. He was clearly exhausted from his recent physical exertions. “Ms. Cillie… it’s good to see you again.”
She got up, still a little groggy from her enforced nap, and went to kneel next to him. “Are… are you okay? How did you get here?” she asked.
“There’s no time to explain things right now,” he answered abruptly. “I have to get you out of here.”
She nodded, and as they stood to go they heard a muffled noise from the other side of the room. Through the clearing haze Cille saw what looked like someone curled up on the floor, just beginning to wake up from a deep slumber. Instinctively she went to see who this person, presumably a fellow prisoner, might be, but Cougar put a hand on her arm to stop her.
“Don’t! Just leave her. We have to get out of here before she wakes up,” he warned.
“But…” Cille began, gradually recognizing the face of the girl lying on the floor, “that looks like Spice! They must have captured her too!”
“We can’t help her,” Cougar said. “You have to trust me. If we don’t leave here right now there’s a chance that neither of us will make it out alive.”
She searched his face, hardly believing that he could really be so determined to leave behind one of their comrades. “I don’t understand you. Why can’t we take her with us?”
“I… I can’t tell you how I know it, but she’s very dangerous. She’s been given –“ Cougar was interrupted by frantic coughing and sputtering coming from the corner of the room.
“Good god, she’s choking! We can’t just leave her here with all of this dust!” Cille insisted. She pushed past Cougar and would have marched right over to the prostrate girl if he hadn’t grabbed her arm more forcefully. She turned to rebuke him again, but stopped at the sound of chuckling coming from behind her. She turned back to see that Spice was sitting upright, cradling something shiny and metallic in her arms.
“Well isn’t this pretty… and stabby… yeah, stabby…”
“…Spice?” Cille murmured. Spice fell silent for a moment, and then lurched to her feet and turned to glare at Cille and Cougar. Her eyes were suddenly blood red, and in one hand she held a very long and very freaky-looking dagger. “It was you who woke me up from my nap, wasn’t it? Of course it was. You never could shut the hell up,” she growled, swinging the dagger between two fingers in Cougar’s direction. “And you,” she continued, turning her attention to Cille, “you think you’re so important, that everything has to be about you. Of course you have to be here disturbing my peace.”
Cille couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Somehow her reluctant colleague had been transformed into some kind of demon. Behind her, Cougar furrowed his brow. This was exactly the situation he had wanted to avoid.
“Dammit…” he muttered. “I didn’t shorten the world enough…”
It was clear that they wouldn’t be able to get away without a fight. The bloodlust in Spice’s eyes was unmistakable, and she seemed awfully delighted by her pointy new toy.
“Cillie, go for that opening in the wall,” Cougar instructed. “Get away from here as fast as you can.”
“Oh no you don’t, betch.” Spice darted in front of the hole before Cille could even make a move to escape. “I’m going to have a lot of fun playing with you. It’s my turn to get my way!”
Cille retreated a few steps, her eyes wide with terror even as she tried to stay calm and summon whatever courage she could muster.
Even with the small amount of self-defense that he had taught her, Cougar knew that Cille was not any kind of a capable fighter, and certainly no match for a dagger-wielding psychopath. His mind involuntarily flashed back to a vision of her mangled body, cowering beneath the monster’s repeated blows… No, there was no way that Cille would have ever survived this fight on her own. And even in his weakened state, he knew that it was up to him to get the both of them out of there alive.
“Cillie,” he said sharply, “I want you to stay back as much as possible. Let me handle this.”
Cille obeyed him, backing toward the wall, her eyes still transfixed on Spice and her weapon.
Spice bristled. “How dare you get in my way! Do you think you can tell me who I’m going to fight?” Suddenly she smirked and narrowed her eyes. “No matter. It’ll be even more of a pleasure to kill you both.”
And thus began the danse macabre à trois. Spice lunged at her adversaries, not seeming to care whom she hit or where as long as it caused pain and drew blood. For the most part Cougar was quick enough to evade her, although she seemed to catch on to his movement patterns more quickly than he would have expected.
“Zippy one, aren’t you?” she taunted, after a particularly close call that left a neat slice in the lapel of his jacket. “You’re lucky I don’t feel like working all that hard. I bet I could be even faster if I really tried.” Her eyes darted to one side, and she smiled cruelly. “Good thing your little mistress is such an easy target.”
Cille had mostly been trying to stay out of the way as Cougar worked to draw the attention of the knife-swinging madwoman. Unfortunately Spice seemed to be constantly aware of her proximity to the hole in the wall, so there was no chance of Cille slipping away while Spice was otherwise occupied. And now, having grown bored with pursuing Cougar, Spice was ready for some easy bloodshed.
Before Cille could duck out of the way, Spice launched her dagger at her shoulder. The blade cut through the muscle just above Cille’s collarbone and stuck crookedly in the wall behind her. Cille cried out in pain and tried to stagger away, only to find that the collar of her summer jacket was pinned to the wall. Spice sprang after the knife, and was met by a pink boot in the gut that sent both her and the dagger reeling. Scrambling after the weapon, Spice regained her footing and stood back to admire her handiwork.
“WTF,” she spat, her pride turning suddenly to disgust. “Whenever Soul Reapers get cut there, they just ooze blood. Where’s my blood? I WANT MY **BLEEP**ING BLOOD!”
She began lashing out with an even greater frenzy, driven to complete madness by her lust for more blood. This time, as much as Cougar tried to place himself between the murderous fiend and the target of her rage, there was no way that he could avoid getting cut himself. Cille was forced to defend herself as best she could, but her attempts at blocks and kicks were only marginally successful at fending off the blade’s advances.
“Stab… stab… stab…” Spice chanted, as if the word both embodied and invigorated her bloodthirsty fury. “STAB STAB STAB STAB STABSTABSTABSTABSTAB!!!”
Suddenly wrenching violently to one side, she caught Cougar in the jaw with the butt end of her weapon, sending him reeling back. With him out of the way, she closed in on the terrified Cille, who found herself backed into a corner. The manic, gleeful, savage gleam in Spice’s eyes and the mouth twisted in hatred conveyed more than any pointed insults ever could have. Cille flattened herself against the wall behind her, frantically searching for some way to save herself. For a moment Spice paused and regarded her victim almost pityingly, and then she sneered again. “See, you are nothing but a pathetic loser. You’re no better than me or anybody else. I should make you beg me for mercy, but then I’d have to listen to your screechy voice. The only thing you’re good for is STABBING!”
And with that, Spice raised her dagger, intent on finally dealing the death blow – or as many blows as it would take to satisfy the animal rage coursing through her veins. Fortunately for Cille, though, her enemy’s big speech had given Cougar enough time to regain his composure and plot his next move. Rather than attacking directly from the back and risking driving the upraised blade toward Cille, he dove toward Spice’s legs and lifted her backwards. Spice roared with anger and shock, and on her way back down dropped the blade. Before she knew what was happening, Cougar had her in a lock, pinning her arms behind her and wrapping an arm around her neck. She retaliated the only way she could now, chomping down on Cougar’s forearm. Even without nasty pointy teeth, the force of her bite threatened to crush his wrist.
“Cillie! The dagger!” Cougar called.
“Mmmpph mph mmph mmmm,” Spice interjected, only to get even more pissed at the realization that it’s hard to actually say anything with your mouth full of sleeve. There was no way she was letting go now, though. As long as she had a hold of some part of Cougar he wouldn’t be able to move freely either.
Cille cautiously stepped toward the fallen dagger and gingerly picked it up. The hilt was incredibly warm and sticky with blood. She felt an overwhelming urge to throw the defiled weapon as far away from her as she could.
“Cillie, listen to me,” Cougar said urgently, seeing her hesitate. “It’s up to you now. All I can do is hold her down. You have to make the strike.”
Cille looked back up at the girl glaring at her from behind Cougar’s arm. She had spent this entire battle fearing for her life, trying simply to avoid the blows of the merciless dagger. And now the dagger was in her hands, and the power to kill was hers to wield. And still all she could see was the face of a fellow human being, someone who she should have been fighting with, not against.
“I… I can’t… she’s… it’s Spice…” she stammered.
“Listen to me! She’s not the person you know! She stopped being Spice before this monster even woke up! If you don’t stop her –“ Cougar’s admonitions turned to a cry of pain as Spice mauled at his arm even more ferociously.
Cille squeezed her eyes shut and tried to choke down the bile that surged into her throat. How had it come to this? Why was she being forced to consider killing another human being? She had only ever wanted to do what she believed was right, and now her only option for survival was to take the life of someone who should have been an ally?
Hot tears sprang to her eyes. No, it wasn’t fair. But there were too many things that were out of her control, and more important things at stake than even her own principles of right and wrong. And suddenly one thing became clear, that right now there was only one thing that mattered: Cougar had risked his life to try to save her. And there was no way in hell she was going to stand there watching him suffer, doing nothing while yet another person she cared about was ripped from her life.
“GRRRRRAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!!!” The scream seemed to come up from unknown depths of Cille’s soul as she held the knife in front of her and charged toward their attacker. Cougar saw her coming and released his hold on Spice, ducking in front of her to present a more compelling target. She took the opportunity to rear back for a more deadly strike, this time brandishing her fingernails as if they were substitute knives. Barely knowing or caring what she was doing, Cille slammed into Spice, burying the blade in the midsection of her back. Howling in pain, the deranged girl began writhing in agony and clawing desperately at the dagger in her back.
Instantly taken aback at the realization of what she had done, Cille retreated, gasping for air. Cougar struggled to his feet and surveyed his fallen adversary, who had slumped to the floor wailing. Cille’s relief showed through her state of shock, but Cougar knew better than to think that their opponent was down for good. “Come on!” he shouted, grabbing Cille by the wrist and making for the hole he had punched in the wall.
The world became a blur as they raced through the rubble-strewn halls of Comdot’s lower levels. The only thing Cille was truly aware of was the man running just ahead of her, and it didn’t matter to her where they were going as long as she stayed by his side. And then he was scooping her up, pressing her body against his, and they were somehow hurtling through space even more frenetically than before. She clung to him as tightly as she could; desperately offering up what strength she had left in the hope that he would somehow be able to use it.
The sunlight outside the building was very nearly blinding compared to the dimness within. Doing his best to shield Cille from the blow, Cougar slammed shoulder-first into the outer wall of the Comdot Estate. On the other side he knelt slightly dazed, beginning to wonder if he had finally reached his limit. At this rate he wouldn’t even be able to muster enough Alter power to transform and control a getaway car. Cille lifted herself up from the rubble and turned back toward him. Visibly concerned at the sight of his weakness, she crawled to him and put a comforting hand on his arm.
“You don’t need to carry me,” she said reassuringly. “I can run. I’ll keep up with you.”
He looked up at her, and a faint glimmer of an appreciative smile shone through the pain in his eyes. He couldn’t stop now, when she still trusted him to lead her to safety.
They helped each other stand up, and took off running again away from the estate. By now they could hear the shouts of Ozzal’s guards converging on the point of the breakout. It quickly became clear that there were no good escape routes leading away from the estate, as all of the roads around Comdot had been heavily patrolled since the mass Syndicate arrests.
“Where… where should we…” Cille whispered breathlessly, as they slowed to a halt and looked around desperately for a way out.
Suddenly, to Cille’s amazement, there appeared a huge dark green sphere that looked strangely like an enormous watermelon. Cille braced herself, wondering if this was some new threat, but her companion seemed greatly relieved to see it.
“Thank you, my friends,” he murmured. Taking Cille’s hand again, he guided her toward the waiting orb, and they were enveloped by a vaguely sweet-smelling darkness.
Elian heaved a sigh of relief. From the moment Cougar had suddenly and explosively appeared in the cell he had been monitoring, he had been beside himself with anxiety watching the ensuing confrontation and his friend’s flight from their enemy’s lair. But Urizane’s teleportation skills were as dependable as ever, and it seemed that all that was left for the embattled pair was to ride out the trip in the giant watermelon.
Sure enough, before long the immense green sphere reappeared in the field next to Elian’s long-range surveillance rig. When it disintegrated, Urizane stepped forward, holding a limp body under each arm.
“Go get Scheris,” he said. “They’re going to need whatever help she can give them.”
***
In a secret hideout on the second floor of an abandoned law office in downtown Actonia, Landon Blaken had just received a most unexpected phone call. He sat in silence for a long time, his hands folded in front of his very thoughtful face. Then a woman in a black outfit came into the room. She could instantly tell that something wasn’t quite right.
“What is it? Did something happen?” she asked.
“It would seem…” he said slowly, “that Cille is no longer in Comdot Estate.”
“What? Did they get her body moved already? We didn’t expect her to be dead so soon, did we?”
“Not her body… her. There was some sort of explosion in the prison, and by the time those imbeciles got down there to check it out, she was gone – and Spice was on the floor with a dagger in her back.”
“The hell? She was able to beat Spice, even with the new stimulant?”
“I have no idea. There should have been no way she’d survive. Something must have happened to throw it all off. And the explosion knocked out the surveillance cameras that Ozzal had set up, so there’s no way for us to know.”
They were silent again for several moments, as the shock of this new bombshell continued to sink in.
“So…” she said gravely, “what in hell are we supposed to do now?”
Landon stood up abruptly, scraping his chair back away from his desk. “Get the story out to the Review anyway. We can’t afford to have our plans fall through now. Even if your predecessor isn’t actually dead, it should be enough if we can make everyone believe she is. There are plenty of dead bodies around since the riots. We’ll just have one of them done up and dumped in the planned spot. It’ll take a little more effort, but if we move fast we can still make this thing work. We’ll go ahead with the Syndicate meeting too.”
“And what about Cille? If she’s not actually dead, then…”
Landon sighed. “We’ll just have to hope she’s somewhere out of the way and stays quiet. In the worst case… we’ll just have our people on the lookout for her and they can finish the job quietly if need be.”
The woman nodded. In a way it saddened her to see Landon speak so coldly and ruthlessly about his fiancée. But they both knew – or at least believed – that what they were doing had to be done, and they had both accepted the sacrifice that had to be made. And she couldn’t really blame him, seeing as how she had been the one who had forced him to take these measures in the first place. He had certainly changed from the man she had once fallen in love with, so long ago…
Landon had turned his back on her and was now gazing out the window with his hands clasped behind his back. It almost seemed to her as if they were trembling slightly.
“There’s a chance,” she said hesitantly, “that what happened in my past can still be prevented in your future, even without Cille’s death. If we follow through with our plan, and knowing what I know, and if we can intercept Cille and keep her from making the mistakes I made… it’s possible that we can change the course of events enough that what happened in my timeline won’t happen in yours. At the very least,” she added with a wry grin, “the fact that I’m still here means that things in the future couldn’t have gotten any worse.”
“I hope you’re right,” he said after a moment. “But right now… we’ve got a murder to stage.”
“Right. I’ll take care of it,” she said quickly, and turned and left the room.
Landon stood there thinking for a while longer. From this window he could just barely see the ruined parts of a city that had already begun to devolve into the chaos that his new partner had told him about. If only she were right about this too… if only they could stop it from going any farther, without losing any more dear lives…
“Dammit, Cougar, if you had anything do to with this…” he muttered. Then he laughed quietly and shook his head. It would be just like that damned fool, wouldn’t it? And now Landon just hoped, for both their sakes, that it wasn’t all for nothing…
**********
The next morning Scheris stepped out of the isolated cabin that she shared with her friends from the former HOLY unit, still feeling a little wiped out from her healing efforts the previous evening. She yawned and stretched, idly wondering what there might be for breakfast, and then noticed Cougar sitting against a tree.
“Oh, you’re awake already?” she said cheerfully. As she approached her friend, she saw Cille lying on a blanket next to him, sleeping peacefully.
“I brought her out here for some fresh air,” Cougar said quietly. “No offense, but… you really need to tell Urizane to keep his **bleep** watermelons out of the house.”
“Oh, you know how he is. Tell him that and he’ll just spit watermelon seeds at you.”
Cougar didn’t answer, aside from a slightly bemused look in his eyes. It was beginning to seem to Scheris that there was something a little strange about him today, even beyond being tired out from the stress of the previous day. He was unusually quiet, for one thing, and as she watched him she thought she saw something pensive about the way that he gazed toward the girl sleeping next to him.
“What you did for her…” she ventured, “it was really amazing. Landon would be so grateful.”
“Yeah…” Cougar answered softly, the slightest hint of a shadow flitting over his face.
After a moment he sighed broadly and leaned back against the tree, stretching out his long limbs and looking contemplatively up to the sky. “I shortened the world…” he murmured, as if to no one but himself. A small, impetuous smile flickered across his face. “Heh… I always wondered if it were possible… to actually go fast enough… to actually turn back the flow of time…”
He leaned his head back and began chuckling. Scheris raised her eyebrow, wondering if he’d lost a few marbles back at Comdot.
They heard a small “mmph,” and Cille began stirring. At first she seemed not to notice or be concerned about where she was, being more preoccupied with the soreness in her body. Then she looked up to see Cougar looking back at her, and Scheris thought she saw the same kind of shy, pensive expression in her eyes that she had just observed in Cougar’s. Then Cille noticed the other girl standing near them, and a faint blush appeared on her pallid cheeks.
“Ms. Cillie,” Cougar said quickly, “this is Scheris Adjani, one of my former associates at HOLY. She used her Alter power to help restore our health after we were brought here yesterday.”
Cille looked up at Scheris and nodded, smiling appreciatively. “Pleased to meet you,” Scheris said, bobbing in a little curtsey. “Say,” she continued, before things could get awkward, “you want anything to eat? I was just gonna go see what the boys left for us for breakfast.”
“I… don’t really think I’m hungry right now…” Cille replied.
“Okie dokie. Well I am, so… I’ll see you later.” With a quick wink to Cougar, she turned and headed back to the cabin.
They watched her go, and then sat in silence for a few moments.
“So…” Cille said, “is it time for you to tell me what the hell happened back there?”
Cougar regarded her with a touch of amusement. He should have known it wouldn’t take her long to start the interrogation. “I knew you were in trouble, and I came after you. That’s really all there is to know.”
“And Spice? How did you know what would happen to her?”
“I’ve told you before, I know plenty of things,” he said, a little bit teasingly. “I suppose… you could say that’s an advantage of having the friends I do. Elian’s Alter gives him surveillance abilities. He saw things that told us you were in danger.”
“I see,” Cille answered, finding remarkably little to quibble about.
Cougar sighed. “What I really need to tell you… is how terribly sorry I am. It’s because of me that you were even in that situation to begin with. If I hadn’t let Ryuho take you…”
“That wasn’t your fault,” she interrupted. “I chose to go with him. I couldn’t let him keep hurting you. It’s not… it’s not because of anything you did.”
The troubled look on his face told her that he couldn’t accept such an easy way out. “I let him get a jump on me. All those years at HOLY, in all those sparring matches, never once did he manage to best me. And when it really mattered… I let my guard down.”
She looked at him sympathetically, not knowing what to say.
“I just… I truly never thought that you would be in that much danger,” he continued. “I know Ryuho – he’s a principled man, even if he gets carried away with his authority sometimes. He would never allow innocent civilians to be harmed if he can help it. And even though he’s still working within Ozzal’s military, he resents her for breaking up the HOLY unit that we had worked so hard to build up, just because she felt that it might have become too powerful. And so I thought that as long as you were in his hands, you would be at least a little bit protected from the rest of Ozzal’s corrupt minions. And at the very least you should have been worth more to them as a hostage or a pawn than as… as…”
Somehow she understood that he couldn’t go on. Impetuously, she reached out and took his hand.
“It’s because of you that I’m alive right now,” she said quietly and earnestly. “I understand that, even if I don’t know everything about what happened back there. And that means more to me than anything else you might have done.”
Their eyes met, hers offering the compassion that his seemed to so desperately need. His expression softened, and he looked down a little ruefully.
“I swore I would protect you, and I failed.” He paused, and then looked back at her resolutely. “I won’t fail again.”
**********
That night, as she lay on the verge of dozing off under the makeshift tent that her new friends had set up outside for her and Scheris, Cille had plenty to ponder about everything that had transpired since she began this mad adventure.
She still didn’t understand everything that had happened the previous day, and she sensed that there was much that Cougar would never tell her. He hadn’t even let her listen in when Elian filled them in on the morning’s news reports. But she knew now that she had something real to fight for, something more than vague ideas of right and wrong or wanting to be on the “good” side or trying to be a hero whom other people would admire. Just when she had felt totally abandoned, someone had come along who was willing to give everything he had to keep her safe. And it seemed to her, even from the little time she had spent with Hikki and the other Syndicate members that they all shared this commitment to each other and would try as much as they could to get each other through the trials they all faced.
If she could be a part of that, if she could offer her talents and devote herself to doing what she could to help and protect those people and further their ideals, then she could find some meaning in this maddening new life of hers. She owed that much to Cougar… to Raef… to Landon… and even to Spice, who had been forced to give up those ideals for a much crueler existence. She didn’t yet know what she would be able to do for her new comrades, as helpless as she was in combat, but she knew that she had to at least try. Even if it was only for the sake of that man to whom she had entrusted her life, and whose presence filled her thoughts as she finally drifted to sleep.
**********
“Aaah” Clarice slid back into the bath she’d just drawn for herself and closed her eyes.
She sighed, lately it would seem to her as though she’d not done much, she brought her face down to the water and grumpily blew bubbles in it as she thought of the fact that her job search was still unsuccessful and no one from the syndicate had contacted her in a while to do anything to take down Ozzal. She needed work damnit. Suddenly her phone rang, interrupting her train of thought.
“Hello?” she answered with a heavy sigh of grief.
“Oh, it worked this time” Samson said.
“Samson, oh. Hi!” Clarice said somewhat embarrassed that she’d answered the phone in such a manner to Samson.
“Your house is for sale?”
“Oh god, yeah that…” she sighed again.
“Did you move somewhere suddenly?”
“Ah, no… Well… I couldn’t pay for it anymore… So it got repossessed.” she groaned
“Oh. I see… That’s terrible. Where have you been staying?”
“Oh just with my family. They’re in town here of course. Actually only a bit away from my place… It’s hard to get any peace around here though, I live with my sister Mimori and her damned cats are all over the place.”
“Oh… Sounds kind of fun” Samson said somewhat awkwardly. “Actually, I was going to ask you, if I could stay at your place for a while. I keep fearing that the police or someone like that would do a search on me and find my home. And I’m worried for my sister in that kind of situation. But you’re already pretty stressed there, and I’d hate to impose”
“Oh, it would be fine. I think… unless Alex comes home. He’s not really a bad guy or anything just kind of broody and scary. Well, not really scary but uh, yeah… And I’m not sure which room you guys could stay in, but it should be fine.”
“No, really… I can find some other place”
“Well, I have one idea” Clarice sighed once again.
**********************
“Hey, wake up you! Wake up! Stop lazing about, you” Jake awoke suddenly to the Frenchman who had decided to take him in the night before shaking him with all his might in an effort to get him awake.
“Eet’s time to get ready to open for ze day now, so no more sleeping” He instructed as he went back to the kitchen.
Jake, still rather tired managed to drag himself out of bed. For a moment, Jake just kind of stood there, clueless as to what he was to do now.
“What are you doing back zhere?! I zhought you said you’d be helping out” Hikki whined from the kitchen.
“Oh right.” Jake thought to himself, emerging from the back room.
“So… What do you need me to do then?” He asked somewhat nervously. Jake hadn’t been in the company of a person who hadn’t either taken him in for safety or loathed him for being a failure in such a long while, being around Hikki who was clearly indifferent to him was kind of unnerving.
“Wash zome dishes or somezing” Hikki instructed.
The two carried out their individual tasks in a completely awkward silence for about an hour before the sound of someone pounding on the front door broke it.
“Coming, coming.” Hikki muttered somewhat impatiently.
He was just about ready to yell at whoever it was who was interrupting him from getting the café ready to open for the day until he saw who it happened to be.
“Ah! Samson! What brings you here zees early in the morning? Couldn’t wait to see me again, I assume?” Hikki winked.
“Not now, Hikki.” Samson groaned. For a few seconds Hikki stared at something that seemed to be poking out from behind Samson’s leg.
“..Samzon… It would seem zhat zhere is some kind uf…. Tiny person hiding behind you.” Hikki noted, somewhat confused.
“This is my sister, Anne” Samson said with a smile and stepped aside so she would stop hiding behind him.
“Oh my… She’s short izn’t she?” Hikki mused. “Like a tiny female you… it’s kind of disturbing” he sized her up. The girl did indeed look an amazing amount like her brother. The same dark brown eyes, a similar face and black hair that gathers a similar way in the front. “And so, what brings you and your… Person here so early in the day?”
“I’d like if we could stay here, Hikki. No, I’m not finally accepting all those passes you’ve been making at me and decided to come move in with you. It’s a matter of wanting to keep my sister here safe.”
“Ah, of course of course.”
“There’s room then, I take it?” Samson said somewhat cheerfully.
“Well, Zat would be if you’re be willing to zhare a bed wez me, Sammie” He grinned.
“What? You live here too?”
“Uf course, Zhose police bastards have probably udoku raided my home, zhere isn’t much udoku for me to return zhere now.”
“Oh, I see… Never the less, we’d both be willing to sleep on the floor behind the counter if necessary.” Samson suggested.
Hikki grabbed his shoulder tightly and brought his face uncomfortably close to Samson’s. He spoke in a whispered tone
“Oh no, Sammie, I could nevair allow you to sleep on somezing as cold and… Unloving… as a floor, I do insist zat you sleep on or… at least next to somzing a lot warmer” with the last word Hikki gently stroked Samson’s face..
“I knew I couldn’t trust you to be nice without being a damned pervert!” a voice from outside called accompanied by a shoe that flew through the air with incredible speed to make contact with Hikki’s face.
Hikki was knocked over from the combination of shock and the pure force behind that shoe.
“Oh joy, Clarice would zeem to ‘ave come to brighten ze day once again” Hikki grumbled.
Clarice took this as her cue to give Hikki and earful about treating Samson better and respecting the fact that he may actually in fact, not be interested in a romantic relationship with the man.
Anne watched intently at the actions of the people around her to take in what kind of environment she’d be subjected to now on a daily basis. She gazed over at Jake who was watching the three of them in a similar manner as her and smiled, laughing a little bit. Jake smiled back, he seemed rather happy in this kind of place, it was quite laid back.
“.. I’m… going to school now” she said quietly, attempting to slink out of the café without much commotion.
“You’ll be here when it’s over right?” she continued.
She tightened her backpack slightly, “The people brother has decided to associate himself with sure are a strange. But they don’t seem like bad people. It’s good he has friends” she gave a small sigh of relief.
“Look, Hikki. I really need to stay here. I’m worried that if I stay at home, I’ll get found more easily and I don’t want my sister to be in any danger… so if I could stay here and-”
Clarice cut him off.
“I’m staying here too”
With that, Hikki let out an impossibly loud laugh.
“You? Stay here? Weez me and Sammie? You muhst be joking, no?” He grinned
“Although… I would cohnsidair eet ef…” Hikki’s eyes darted in Samson’s direction.
Samson noticed this instantly and a look of disgust crept over his face.
“Whatever you’re thinking you can just forget it” Samson muttered.
“Eet’s not that bad a proposition. Pretty easy to agree to, I zhink.”
“Well then, let’s hear it, if it gives me a bad mental picture, I’ll break your fingers” Clarice glared at Hikki.
“Samson must sleep in ze same bed as me”
“Out of the question”
“Room, zen?”
“I’ll sleep there too”
“Are you out uf jour mind, woman?” Hikki yelled, getting irritated by Clarice and her pushiness. “No one stays now! Ee’m sorry, zhat es just ze way it ees”
“Fine, let’s make a deal; you can sleep in the same room as Sammie, alone. But the door must be unlocked and open at all times. And if you touch any part of him while he’s sleeping, I’ll cut whatever said part was off you in the morning” She smiled confidently.
“So, what do you say? Do we have a deal?” She continued.
Hikki sighed. “I zuppose so, always ruining mine and Sammie’s fun”
“My fun?! What you do to me is not considered fun, Hikki! It’s sexual harassment!”
******
“Why does EVERYTHING you make involve tentacles?!?! Can’t you be normal at all?”
Ozzal glared after the plate of taquitos she had just flung at her head scientist’s face. She had half a mind to go strangle him right there.
“And while we’re on the subject of you pissing me off, let’s have a little chat about this entertainment I was promised. ‘Better than boxing,’ you said. ‘Death match for the ages!’ And then before anything can even happen, the freaking cable goes out!”
“Yeah, we’re… we’re sort of still working on what happened there,” Matrix said tentatively. “But it’s really nothing to get upset about…”
“Nothing to get upset about? Not only did I not get to see my death match, but my new assassin got pwned. You think that makes me happy?”
Matrix grimaced. He was just as cranky not to have seen what happened between Spice and Cille, but he also knew what Ozzal was capable of when she was really angry.
“Spice has been recovering rapidly,” he pointed out. “She’s already almost completely healed. You’ll be able to use her again in no time.”
“I already have assassins who can’t do their jobs right,” Ozzal snapped. “Get back to me when you come up with a drug that doesn’t fail”
“Hey, there’s nothing saying that the stimulant was what failed,” Matrix said, his pride feeling slightly wounded. “Since we weren’t able to collect any data on the effects of the drug, we can’t make any conclusions about its effectiveness. Something bizarro must have happened that threw off the test conditions.”
“You mean like her intended victim suddenly disappearing?”
Matrix gulped. “Well… maybe… Spice ate her?”
Ozzal didn’t seem convinced. “Pics or it didn’t happen.”
“Well, we don’t have pics… you know, since the monitor blew…”
Ozzal growled. “I don’t want any more excuses. If you want another chance to prove that you deserve to be on my payroll, you’d better come up with a better idea fast.”
Matrix thought for a moment. “Well, there is someone… it wouldn’t be in a controlled environment, but it would make for an interesting matchup…”
Ozzal tapped her foot impatiently. “Yes?”
“I know just the person for Spice’s next mission – Jake Thompson. You’ve been wanting to track him down anyway, haven’t you? Why not send her after him?”
Ozzal narrowed her eyes, and then smiled smugly. “Yes… that old failure of yours might still be good for something after all.” She rubbed her hands evilly, anticipating the wicked hijinks to come. “Get me another one of those pills, and my gun. And some FREAKING DECENT TAQUITOS!!!”
******
Spice walked up and down the streets, eyes sweeping the horizon every few feet or so.
“Come on out Jake, don’t be shy now” Spice said with an evil cackle.
She continued down the street, checking out every little crevice and hole in lower Actonia, until she came across a church with large oak doors.
“Well, if Jake won’t come out to play, maybe I have to drag him out.” Spice thought, walking towards the church, grinning evilly.
“What the hell do you mean ‘He isn’t here?!’ You worthless piece of human trash!” Spice screamed at the woman, Nafah, who she’d found inside the church.
“Where did he go?!” she continued. “You know something don’t you!? It makes me sick. I could just kill you right now” Spice mumbled under her breath, hanging her head slightly.
Nafah kept quiet, examining Spice who she could sense was not herself, even though she’d never met her before this encounter.
“I haven’t an idea what you’re talking about. Please leave at this instant; I don’t want any trouble with you”
Spice prepared to pull out a small knife she’d been given, which she’d been hiding in her pocket.
“Not worth it” she smirked. “You’re not my target.”
Spice turned sharply and headed back out the door.
***********************
“I can’t even believe you haven’t bothered to sit through Pulp Fiction yet” Trunks stared off. “It’s one thing that you don’t care for Citizen Kane, I mean, at least you’ve seen that one, although the fact that it “bores” you doesn’t even make that much sense to me…You acknowledge that it was an incredibly well made film though, which is good, I can give you credit for that. Don’t get me started on the fact that you liked the Godfather. I swear that movie is about as overrated as. Well, that’s not really the topic here. But I don’t see how any self respecting film fan can call them as such without having at least seen Pulp Fiction once, I mean the way-”
“You going to buy something today or just come around to rant again?” The man behind the counter spoke with a British accent, not thick, but not faint, definitely discernable as British at any rate.
“Can’t an old friend stop by for a visit without buying something, Hill?” Trunks grumbled a little.
“Sorry, business has been pretty slow as of late for some reason or another. Wanna guess it?”
“Not really”
“I’ve heard you’ve been doing a bit with that group of Landon’s. That Blacken thing”
“Eh, not really. I just let them use my pub for a bit. A whole lotta good that did me.
Every other day it seems like the place gets trashed, good thing they finally stopped coming around. I don’t know how I’d have dealt with it if I needed to keep buying a new DDR machine every week or so, those things are costly and my high scores…” he trailed off.
“Mm, I see then.”
“Hey, who did you even hear that from anywa-” Suddenly, the doors of Hill’s weapon shop flew open.
“Oh, a customer.” Hill said somewhat surprised.
A figure walked somewhat shakily into the establishment, it was Spice, and she looked somewhat deranged in her current state.
“I need the biggest, sharpest thing you carry” Spice grinned. “Something… Stabby..”
**************
“W-wait… You’re… we’re… we’re leaving?” In a cloud of confusion, Kira watched Emiri as she packed everything from her room into a rather large bag as fast as it seemed she could.
“That’s the plan” Emiri answered involved in her packing.
“So what you said, about leaving, when you asked me if I’d come with you, you were serious then, we’re leaving?”
“Bingo!”
“Where will we go?”
“Who knows?”
“Isn’t that kind of important?”
“Probably…”
“Well then, think about it a little.”
“Okay, we’ll be drifters!”
“Hobos, you mean…”
“Drifter… Hobo… Whatever, I just want to get out of this place. I’m sick of it. I don’t care what Ozzal’s doing and I actually don’t want to kill anymore. I’m afraid that if Ozzal finds out, she’ll kill me.”
“You afraid? Fearing death?”
“It’s crazy isn’t it?”
“Something that priest said must’ve gotten to you.”
“Of course not. Just who the hell do you think I Am?” she said this all in a rather flat tone. Her catchphrase was just something that rolled off her tongue without much meaning to her now, it would seem.
“So we’re leaving then, where to first?”
“Maybe we should try to find jobs. That sounds like fun, doesn‘t it?”
“As what?”
“Whatever. Shoes salesmen, librarians… Oh, carnies!” Emiri finally finished packing up her things and slung her bag over her shoulder. “Well, let’s get a move on then, eh?”
The two walked down the stairs from the room, memories of past times they’ve done this before came flooding back to them, mostly unhappy ones. The two wouldn’t miss it.
Hopefully leaving would indeed spell a happier life for them.
Emiri touched the cool stone walls in this part of the stairway and stopped for a bit. It was the same place she’d first met Father Sadar. She considered for a bit how that one small occurrence, as random as any other meeting she’d ever had in her life has effected her so much. A faint smile appeared on her face.
Kira smiled as well, it made him happy to see Emiri this way, much kinder than she had usually been. He too was grateful to Father Sadar for the effect he’d had on Emiri.
After a few minutes they moved again, continuing on their way out. She spotted Larry still cowering in a corner down on the first floor.
“Hey, Larry! Say goodbye to everyone for me, will ya?” Emiri called out to him
Larry looked at Emiri with fear in his eyes.
“Oh, that’s right. I probably still scare him don’t I? Well okay, have fun anyway, see you around!” She continued on.
*****
In the back of Café de Lune, a few of the regular members of the syndicate had gathered. Angel, April, Cowboy, Samson, and Clarice were discussing the recent events.
“So that guy last night was Landon, huh?” Samson stirred his coffee.
“And Cille’s alive. That’s interesting” he continued. “Cille seems different, somehow…” he pondered, still stirring his coffee in thought.
“Well, admittedly, I didn’t know her very well. Never really had a conversation with her or anything” he finally took a sip. “Oh, this is good.”
“I see where you’re coming from, Samson” Angel chimed in.
“She did seem slightly different somehow, but my main concern was how the hell she is still alive? And where has Landon been all this time… I have no idea what’s going on anymore” she sighed.
“I’m never going be able to play my cello for a funeral” Cowboy moped a little and April patted him on the back in attempt to comfort him.
“Landon seems kind of scary” Clarice added. “But at least he’s a better leader than Hikki” she sighed. “Seems like it anyway.”
“Kind of strange that he’s back all of a sudden… And he seems like he has some kind of ace in the hole to finally end this? It’s kind of hard to imagine” Samson went back to stirring his coffee. “A nice thought though”
“Hikki, what do you think?” Clarice asked as she spotted him passing by the doorway.
“Moi?” he pointed to himself rather confused by Clarice addressing him for once in a non-violent manner.
“Of course”
“Well… Ee remember Landon being more charming, Ee zuppose.” He thought for a moment and started back to the café front.
“Wait… That’s seriously all you have to say about this?!” Clarice looked at him with a look of astonishing bewilderment.
“Should zhere be more?”
“You’re..really hopeless…” She sighed.
Suddenly, a scream sounded from the front of the café. Everyone in the back room’s blood ran cold.
“Was it Emiri again, The woman who took down seven of the syndicate’s members in the raid on Comdot.. That psychotic woman who so brutally murdered Heero?” Samson wondered.
Feeling brave, he decided to poke his head out of the room to see what was going on.
It was Spice, he could recognize her despite that fact that she looked so unlike herself in this kind of mad, animal-like rage. She held in her hand a long and incredibly sharp looking knife, the kind of knife that could gut a full grown shark.
It was rather obvious she had her eyes locked on Jake who was minding his own business tending to the muffins Hikki had instructed him to take out of the oven.
Spice began running towards him almost drunkenly and swung her blade with amazing strength, he quickly swung his head to the side missing her attack ever so slightly.
Jake suddenly realized that his small bit of peace was over.
Spice meant business.
He leapt back slightly and she followed without missing a beat.
He knew to avoid killing or even injuring more people than needed, he’d have to leave the café as soon as possible.
He turned and bolted as fast as he could towards the exit.
He could feel Spice right behind him. He reached back and grabbed her by the arm and managed to twist it back and position himself behind her.
“Let go of me!” Spice snarled at him, twisting her head back slightly to face him.
After realizing he had no intention whatsoever of releasing her, Spice started trashing around violently to break away.
Jake, though powerful, could feel his grip on the woman weakening. She jerked again, breaking free.
Still concerned about the safety of the people in the café, Jake’s mind turned back to trying to figure the fastest route out now that Spice was blocking the exit.
Spice ran at him again, it was obvious she didn’t intend to give him any time to think.
“Shouldn’t we help him?” Samson whispered to others who were hiding in the back.
“I didn’t bring any weapons with me, I’m afraid” Angel said apologetically.
“Fighting’s really not my thing” April sighed.
“Mine either” Cowboy agreed.
“Or mine” Clarice also agreed.
Everyone turned to Hikki.
“What are you all looking at me for? You all should already know zhat Ee’m entirely worthless in battle” Hikki sighed.
“Well, we should at least do something, cause a distraction or something like that” Samson suggested.
“But.. Samzon.. You might get hurt out zhere… Ee don’t know what ee would do wezout you” Hikki whined a bit.
“Ugh, what is wrong with you?” groaned Clarice. “Samson’s idea is good, we should all just go out there and try to distract her, then I’ll come up from behind and whack her over the head with something”
“Wait, are you sure you want to be the one who does that? You’d have to get pretty close to her.. You might get hurt” Samson was pretty obviously concerned for Clarice.
“It’s alright, I’ll be fine” She smiled.
In the front of the café, Jake was still trying to fend off Spice while making his way out of the café, which to his dismay wasn’t going as planned.
Suddenly, an assortment of random cooking supplies flew out at Spice from behind the counter.
“Ah! Not zhose ones, Zhey were very expensive!” Hikki sobbed a little.
Despite his complaining the stream of cookware continued to be hurled in Spice’s direction.
Annoyed, Spice turned towards the counter.
Clarice noticed her turn, and ran in from behind to hit her with a frying pan over the head.
Spice grabbed Clarice’s arm just as she was about to hit her.
“Clarice!” Samson cried out from behind the counter, he was no longer hiding due to having jumped up when he noticed Clarice was caught.
“Let her go, Spice! Why are you doing this?!” Samson tried to reason with her.
She ignored him and began to twist Clarice’s arm.
Seeing this, Samson became filled with rage and jumped over the counter, running as fast as he possibly could towards Spice.
He butted her in the stomach knocking her over for a moment.
“Clarice!, Now!” Samson yelled.
And Clarice swung the frying pan down at Spice’s head as hard as she could.
Spice was knocked out for the time being.
She lied there still.
“Do you think she’s dead?” Clarice panted, exhausted from what had just occurred.
“I don’t think so and…….. I’m glad” Samson said inspecting her. “ I mean, she’s still Spice.. I don’t know what’s gotten into her though” Samson sighed. “**bleep**, it’s started raining”
“You don’t like ze rain, Sammie?” Hikki asked collecting all his fancy cook ware that had been so carelessly thrown about.
“I don’t really have much against it in general.. I actually kind of like it. My sister tends to get depressed when it rains though.. Maybe I should pick her up from school today, she didn’t bring an umbrella, after all”
**********************
Cast of characters in order of appearance:
Straight Cougar as himself
Cille as Lucille Compton
Spiceweasel as Spice
Elian as himself
Urizane as himself
Blah canbespanish as Landon Blaken
Cille as Future Cille! (Does anyone kind of think she should maybe be DangerCille? )
Scheris as herself
Ryuho as himself
QueenoftheDorks as Clarice Rowe
MasterSamson as Samson Monroe
Cat Lady Mimori as Mimori
Alex Rowe as Clarice’s Brother (Last Exile)
Kohikki as Hikki Follet
Sports Master as Jake Thompson
Anne Monroe – Original character.. We’re allowed to have them, right?
Lazzo as Ozzal
Matrixman as Dr. M. Matrix
Inufan as Leah Nafah
Fool_on_the_Hill as Hill
Trunks378 as Trunks
Kira Izuru as Kira
Boxers as Emiri
mgangel as Angel
LirpaYamEnujYluj as April
CowboyCadenza as Cowboy
A man in a beaten military uniform stood at the top of a hill, lost in thought as he half-gazed over the charred expanses of Lower Actonia. Behind him the city of Orly lay in darkness, the towers of Comdot Estate presiding ominously over its sleeping subjects.
Cougar had spent the past few days lying in hiding, recovering his strength after his recent drubbing and pondering his next course of action. And then came to the horrific report, delivered somberly and reluctantly by his surveillance-minded colleague: She was dead. In a matter of minutes, before anyone could have intervened, she had been brutally stabbed to death by some kind of bloodthirsty monster. And then her mutilated corpse had been dumped on a farm somewhere, her death turned into a media spectacle to divert attention from the rebellion and serve as an example to others who might be inclined to oppose the tyrannical regime. As much as it sickened him, he had forced himself to take in all of the details of her murder, knowing that his only hope lay in learning as much as he could about what had happened to her.
He raised his head and stretched his lanky frame to its full height. The face that had once been so quick with an enigmatic smile was fixed in a look of grim determination. He closed his eyes, summoning the rainbow-colored particles of light to swirl around him. He had stood helplessly by while the woman he had been charged to protect had been taken into the hands of those who would ultimately see her as nothing more than a cheap sacrifice. And now there was only one thing left that he could do for her.
And so he started running.
Cille lay sleeping on the floor of yet another cell somewhere in Comdot Estate. For the last few days she had been constantly shuffled from room to room, and she had stopped trying to resist taking the mild sedatives that they had taken to giving her to make her more cooperative. She had also stopped trying to guess what her captors might be planning for her, instead taking some amount of comfort in the fact that she had thus far been relatively unharmed. She couldn’t help but wonder, though, what kind of mind games they might be trying to play with her, and what more sinister perils she might yet have to face.
Suddenly a loud noise somewhere close by roused her from her stupor. Was… was that an explosion? Could someone be trying to bomb the estate? Or was she simply dreaming? Raising herself up, she saw that the room had been engulfed in dust and smoke. Seized by a sudden coughing fit, she flung her arm over her mouth and nose and tried to peer through the haze. There seemed to be someone crouching in the middle of the room, shrouded in the smoke. Finally, as the dust began to settle, Cille made out a pointy shock of orange hair…
“Cougar!” she gasped.
The man looked up at her and managed a weak smile. He was clearly exhausted from his recent physical exertions. “Ms. Cillie… it’s good to see you again.”
She got up, still a little groggy from her enforced nap, and went to kneel next to him. “Are… are you okay? How did you get here?” she asked.
“There’s no time to explain things right now,” he answered abruptly. “I have to get you out of here.”
She nodded, and as they stood to go they heard a muffled noise from the other side of the room. Through the clearing haze Cille saw what looked like someone curled up on the floor, just beginning to wake up from a deep slumber. Instinctively she went to see who this person, presumably a fellow prisoner, might be, but Cougar put a hand on her arm to stop her.
“Don’t! Just leave her. We have to get out of here before she wakes up,” he warned.
“But…” Cille began, gradually recognizing the face of the girl lying on the floor, “that looks like Spice! They must have captured her too!”
“We can’t help her,” Cougar said. “You have to trust me. If we don’t leave here right now there’s a chance that neither of us will make it out alive.”
She searched his face, hardly believing that he could really be so determined to leave behind one of their comrades. “I don’t understand you. Why can’t we take her with us?”
“I… I can’t tell you how I know it, but she’s very dangerous. She’s been given –“ Cougar was interrupted by frantic coughing and sputtering coming from the corner of the room.
“Good god, she’s choking! We can’t just leave her here with all of this dust!” Cille insisted. She pushed past Cougar and would have marched right over to the prostrate girl if he hadn’t grabbed her arm more forcefully. She turned to rebuke him again, but stopped at the sound of chuckling coming from behind her. She turned back to see that Spice was sitting upright, cradling something shiny and metallic in her arms.
“Well isn’t this pretty… and stabby… yeah, stabby…”
“…Spice?” Cille murmured. Spice fell silent for a moment, and then lurched to her feet and turned to glare at Cille and Cougar. Her eyes were suddenly blood red, and in one hand she held a very long and very freaky-looking dagger. “It was you who woke me up from my nap, wasn’t it? Of course it was. You never could shut the hell up,” she growled, swinging the dagger between two fingers in Cougar’s direction. “And you,” she continued, turning her attention to Cille, “you think you’re so important, that everything has to be about you. Of course you have to be here disturbing my peace.”
Cille couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Somehow her reluctant colleague had been transformed into some kind of demon. Behind her, Cougar furrowed his brow. This was exactly the situation he had wanted to avoid.
“Dammit…” he muttered. “I didn’t shorten the world enough…”
It was clear that they wouldn’t be able to get away without a fight. The bloodlust in Spice’s eyes was unmistakable, and she seemed awfully delighted by her pointy new toy.
“Cillie, go for that opening in the wall,” Cougar instructed. “Get away from here as fast as you can.”
“Oh no you don’t, betch.” Spice darted in front of the hole before Cille could even make a move to escape. “I’m going to have a lot of fun playing with you. It’s my turn to get my way!”
Cille retreated a few steps, her eyes wide with terror even as she tried to stay calm and summon whatever courage she could muster.
Even with the small amount of self-defense that he had taught her, Cougar knew that Cille was not any kind of a capable fighter, and certainly no match for a dagger-wielding psychopath. His mind involuntarily flashed back to a vision of her mangled body, cowering beneath the monster’s repeated blows… No, there was no way that Cille would have ever survived this fight on her own. And even in his weakened state, he knew that it was up to him to get the both of them out of there alive.
“Cillie,” he said sharply, “I want you to stay back as much as possible. Let me handle this.”
Cille obeyed him, backing toward the wall, her eyes still transfixed on Spice and her weapon.
Spice bristled. “How dare you get in my way! Do you think you can tell me who I’m going to fight?” Suddenly she smirked and narrowed her eyes. “No matter. It’ll be even more of a pleasure to kill you both.”
And thus began the danse macabre à trois. Spice lunged at her adversaries, not seeming to care whom she hit or where as long as it caused pain and drew blood. For the most part Cougar was quick enough to evade her, although she seemed to catch on to his movement patterns more quickly than he would have expected.
“Zippy one, aren’t you?” she taunted, after a particularly close call that left a neat slice in the lapel of his jacket. “You’re lucky I don’t feel like working all that hard. I bet I could be even faster if I really tried.” Her eyes darted to one side, and she smiled cruelly. “Good thing your little mistress is such an easy target.”
Cille had mostly been trying to stay out of the way as Cougar worked to draw the attention of the knife-swinging madwoman. Unfortunately Spice seemed to be constantly aware of her proximity to the hole in the wall, so there was no chance of Cille slipping away while Spice was otherwise occupied. And now, having grown bored with pursuing Cougar, Spice was ready for some easy bloodshed.
Before Cille could duck out of the way, Spice launched her dagger at her shoulder. The blade cut through the muscle just above Cille’s collarbone and stuck crookedly in the wall behind her. Cille cried out in pain and tried to stagger away, only to find that the collar of her summer jacket was pinned to the wall. Spice sprang after the knife, and was met by a pink boot in the gut that sent both her and the dagger reeling. Scrambling after the weapon, Spice regained her footing and stood back to admire her handiwork.
“WTF,” she spat, her pride turning suddenly to disgust. “Whenever Soul Reapers get cut there, they just ooze blood. Where’s my blood? I WANT MY **BLEEP**ING BLOOD!”
She began lashing out with an even greater frenzy, driven to complete madness by her lust for more blood. This time, as much as Cougar tried to place himself between the murderous fiend and the target of her rage, there was no way that he could avoid getting cut himself. Cille was forced to defend herself as best she could, but her attempts at blocks and kicks were only marginally successful at fending off the blade’s advances.
“Stab… stab… stab…” Spice chanted, as if the word both embodied and invigorated her bloodthirsty fury. “STAB STAB STAB STAB STABSTABSTABSTABSTAB!!!”
Suddenly wrenching violently to one side, she caught Cougar in the jaw with the butt end of her weapon, sending him reeling back. With him out of the way, she closed in on the terrified Cille, who found herself backed into a corner. The manic, gleeful, savage gleam in Spice’s eyes and the mouth twisted in hatred conveyed more than any pointed insults ever could have. Cille flattened herself against the wall behind her, frantically searching for some way to save herself. For a moment Spice paused and regarded her victim almost pityingly, and then she sneered again. “See, you are nothing but a pathetic loser. You’re no better than me or anybody else. I should make you beg me for mercy, but then I’d have to listen to your screechy voice. The only thing you’re good for is STABBING!”
And with that, Spice raised her dagger, intent on finally dealing the death blow – or as many blows as it would take to satisfy the animal rage coursing through her veins. Fortunately for Cille, though, her enemy’s big speech had given Cougar enough time to regain his composure and plot his next move. Rather than attacking directly from the back and risking driving the upraised blade toward Cille, he dove toward Spice’s legs and lifted her backwards. Spice roared with anger and shock, and on her way back down dropped the blade. Before she knew what was happening, Cougar had her in a lock, pinning her arms behind her and wrapping an arm around her neck. She retaliated the only way she could now, chomping down on Cougar’s forearm. Even without nasty pointy teeth, the force of her bite threatened to crush his wrist.
“Cillie! The dagger!” Cougar called.
“Mmmpph mph mmph mmmm,” Spice interjected, only to get even more pissed at the realization that it’s hard to actually say anything with your mouth full of sleeve. There was no way she was letting go now, though. As long as she had a hold of some part of Cougar he wouldn’t be able to move freely either.
Cille cautiously stepped toward the fallen dagger and gingerly picked it up. The hilt was incredibly warm and sticky with blood. She felt an overwhelming urge to throw the defiled weapon as far away from her as she could.
“Cillie, listen to me,” Cougar said urgently, seeing her hesitate. “It’s up to you now. All I can do is hold her down. You have to make the strike.”
Cille looked back up at the girl glaring at her from behind Cougar’s arm. She had spent this entire battle fearing for her life, trying simply to avoid the blows of the merciless dagger. And now the dagger was in her hands, and the power to kill was hers to wield. And still all she could see was the face of a fellow human being, someone who she should have been fighting with, not against.
“I… I can’t… she’s… it’s Spice…” she stammered.
“Listen to me! She’s not the person you know! She stopped being Spice before this monster even woke up! If you don’t stop her –“ Cougar’s admonitions turned to a cry of pain as Spice mauled at his arm even more ferociously.
Cille squeezed her eyes shut and tried to choke down the bile that surged into her throat. How had it come to this? Why was she being forced to consider killing another human being? She had only ever wanted to do what she believed was right, and now her only option for survival was to take the life of someone who should have been an ally?
Hot tears sprang to her eyes. No, it wasn’t fair. But there were too many things that were out of her control, and more important things at stake than even her own principles of right and wrong. And suddenly one thing became clear, that right now there was only one thing that mattered: Cougar had risked his life to try to save her. And there was no way in hell she was going to stand there watching him suffer, doing nothing while yet another person she cared about was ripped from her life.
“GRRRRRAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!!!” The scream seemed to come up from unknown depths of Cille’s soul as she held the knife in front of her and charged toward their attacker. Cougar saw her coming and released his hold on Spice, ducking in front of her to present a more compelling target. She took the opportunity to rear back for a more deadly strike, this time brandishing her fingernails as if they were substitute knives. Barely knowing or caring what she was doing, Cille slammed into Spice, burying the blade in the midsection of her back. Howling in pain, the deranged girl began writhing in agony and clawing desperately at the dagger in her back.
Instantly taken aback at the realization of what she had done, Cille retreated, gasping for air. Cougar struggled to his feet and surveyed his fallen adversary, who had slumped to the floor wailing. Cille’s relief showed through her state of shock, but Cougar knew better than to think that their opponent was down for good. “Come on!” he shouted, grabbing Cille by the wrist and making for the hole he had punched in the wall.
The world became a blur as they raced through the rubble-strewn halls of Comdot’s lower levels. The only thing Cille was truly aware of was the man running just ahead of her, and it didn’t matter to her where they were going as long as she stayed by his side. And then he was scooping her up, pressing her body against his, and they were somehow hurtling through space even more frenetically than before. She clung to him as tightly as she could; desperately offering up what strength she had left in the hope that he would somehow be able to use it.
The sunlight outside the building was very nearly blinding compared to the dimness within. Doing his best to shield Cille from the blow, Cougar slammed shoulder-first into the outer wall of the Comdot Estate. On the other side he knelt slightly dazed, beginning to wonder if he had finally reached his limit. At this rate he wouldn’t even be able to muster enough Alter power to transform and control a getaway car. Cille lifted herself up from the rubble and turned back toward him. Visibly concerned at the sight of his weakness, she crawled to him and put a comforting hand on his arm.
“You don’t need to carry me,” she said reassuringly. “I can run. I’ll keep up with you.”
He looked up at her, and a faint glimmer of an appreciative smile shone through the pain in his eyes. He couldn’t stop now, when she still trusted him to lead her to safety.
They helped each other stand up, and took off running again away from the estate. By now they could hear the shouts of Ozzal’s guards converging on the point of the breakout. It quickly became clear that there were no good escape routes leading away from the estate, as all of the roads around Comdot had been heavily patrolled since the mass Syndicate arrests.
“Where… where should we…” Cille whispered breathlessly, as they slowed to a halt and looked around desperately for a way out.
Suddenly, to Cille’s amazement, there appeared a huge dark green sphere that looked strangely like an enormous watermelon. Cille braced herself, wondering if this was some new threat, but her companion seemed greatly relieved to see it.
“Thank you, my friends,” he murmured. Taking Cille’s hand again, he guided her toward the waiting orb, and they were enveloped by a vaguely sweet-smelling darkness.
Elian heaved a sigh of relief. From the moment Cougar had suddenly and explosively appeared in the cell he had been monitoring, he had been beside himself with anxiety watching the ensuing confrontation and his friend’s flight from their enemy’s lair. But Urizane’s teleportation skills were as dependable as ever, and it seemed that all that was left for the embattled pair was to ride out the trip in the giant watermelon.
Sure enough, before long the immense green sphere reappeared in the field next to Elian’s long-range surveillance rig. When it disintegrated, Urizane stepped forward, holding a limp body under each arm.
“Go get Scheris,” he said. “They’re going to need whatever help she can give them.”
***
In a secret hideout on the second floor of an abandoned law office in downtown Actonia, Landon Blaken had just received a most unexpected phone call. He sat in silence for a long time, his hands folded in front of his very thoughtful face. Then a woman in a black outfit came into the room. She could instantly tell that something wasn’t quite right.
“What is it? Did something happen?” she asked.
“It would seem…” he said slowly, “that Cille is no longer in Comdot Estate.”
“What? Did they get her body moved already? We didn’t expect her to be dead so soon, did we?”
“Not her body… her. There was some sort of explosion in the prison, and by the time those imbeciles got down there to check it out, she was gone – and Spice was on the floor with a dagger in her back.”
“The hell? She was able to beat Spice, even with the new stimulant?”
“I have no idea. There should have been no way she’d survive. Something must have happened to throw it all off. And the explosion knocked out the surveillance cameras that Ozzal had set up, so there’s no way for us to know.”
They were silent again for several moments, as the shock of this new bombshell continued to sink in.
“So…” she said gravely, “what in hell are we supposed to do now?”
Landon stood up abruptly, scraping his chair back away from his desk. “Get the story out to the Review anyway. We can’t afford to have our plans fall through now. Even if your predecessor isn’t actually dead, it should be enough if we can make everyone believe she is. There are plenty of dead bodies around since the riots. We’ll just have one of them done up and dumped in the planned spot. It’ll take a little more effort, but if we move fast we can still make this thing work. We’ll go ahead with the Syndicate meeting too.”
“And what about Cille? If she’s not actually dead, then…”
Landon sighed. “We’ll just have to hope she’s somewhere out of the way and stays quiet. In the worst case… we’ll just have our people on the lookout for her and they can finish the job quietly if need be.”
The woman nodded. In a way it saddened her to see Landon speak so coldly and ruthlessly about his fiancée. But they both knew – or at least believed – that what they were doing had to be done, and they had both accepted the sacrifice that had to be made. And she couldn’t really blame him, seeing as how she had been the one who had forced him to take these measures in the first place. He had certainly changed from the man she had once fallen in love with, so long ago…
Landon had turned his back on her and was now gazing out the window with his hands clasped behind his back. It almost seemed to her as if they were trembling slightly.
“There’s a chance,” she said hesitantly, “that what happened in my past can still be prevented in your future, even without Cille’s death. If we follow through with our plan, and knowing what I know, and if we can intercept Cille and keep her from making the mistakes I made… it’s possible that we can change the course of events enough that what happened in my timeline won’t happen in yours. At the very least,” she added with a wry grin, “the fact that I’m still here means that things in the future couldn’t have gotten any worse.”
“I hope you’re right,” he said after a moment. “But right now… we’ve got a murder to stage.”
“Right. I’ll take care of it,” she said quickly, and turned and left the room.
Landon stood there thinking for a while longer. From this window he could just barely see the ruined parts of a city that had already begun to devolve into the chaos that his new partner had told him about. If only she were right about this too… if only they could stop it from going any farther, without losing any more dear lives…
“Dammit, Cougar, if you had anything do to with this…” he muttered. Then he laughed quietly and shook his head. It would be just like that damned fool, wouldn’t it? And now Landon just hoped, for both their sakes, that it wasn’t all for nothing…
**********
The next morning Scheris stepped out of the isolated cabin that she shared with her friends from the former HOLY unit, still feeling a little wiped out from her healing efforts the previous evening. She yawned and stretched, idly wondering what there might be for breakfast, and then noticed Cougar sitting against a tree.
“Oh, you’re awake already?” she said cheerfully. As she approached her friend, she saw Cille lying on a blanket next to him, sleeping peacefully.
“I brought her out here for some fresh air,” Cougar said quietly. “No offense, but… you really need to tell Urizane to keep his **bleep** watermelons out of the house.”
“Oh, you know how he is. Tell him that and he’ll just spit watermelon seeds at you.”
Cougar didn’t answer, aside from a slightly bemused look in his eyes. It was beginning to seem to Scheris that there was something a little strange about him today, even beyond being tired out from the stress of the previous day. He was unusually quiet, for one thing, and as she watched him she thought she saw something pensive about the way that he gazed toward the girl sleeping next to him.
“What you did for her…” she ventured, “it was really amazing. Landon would be so grateful.”
“Yeah…” Cougar answered softly, the slightest hint of a shadow flitting over his face.
After a moment he sighed broadly and leaned back against the tree, stretching out his long limbs and looking contemplatively up to the sky. “I shortened the world…” he murmured, as if to no one but himself. A small, impetuous smile flickered across his face. “Heh… I always wondered if it were possible… to actually go fast enough… to actually turn back the flow of time…”
He leaned his head back and began chuckling. Scheris raised her eyebrow, wondering if he’d lost a few marbles back at Comdot.
They heard a small “mmph,” and Cille began stirring. At first she seemed not to notice or be concerned about where she was, being more preoccupied with the soreness in her body. Then she looked up to see Cougar looking back at her, and Scheris thought she saw the same kind of shy, pensive expression in her eyes that she had just observed in Cougar’s. Then Cille noticed the other girl standing near them, and a faint blush appeared on her pallid cheeks.
“Ms. Cillie,” Cougar said quickly, “this is Scheris Adjani, one of my former associates at HOLY. She used her Alter power to help restore our health after we were brought here yesterday.”
Cille looked up at Scheris and nodded, smiling appreciatively. “Pleased to meet you,” Scheris said, bobbing in a little curtsey. “Say,” she continued, before things could get awkward, “you want anything to eat? I was just gonna go see what the boys left for us for breakfast.”
“I… don’t really think I’m hungry right now…” Cille replied.
“Okie dokie. Well I am, so… I’ll see you later.” With a quick wink to Cougar, she turned and headed back to the cabin.
They watched her go, and then sat in silence for a few moments.
“So…” Cille said, “is it time for you to tell me what the hell happened back there?”
Cougar regarded her with a touch of amusement. He should have known it wouldn’t take her long to start the interrogation. “I knew you were in trouble, and I came after you. That’s really all there is to know.”
“And Spice? How did you know what would happen to her?”
“I’ve told you before, I know plenty of things,” he said, a little bit teasingly. “I suppose… you could say that’s an advantage of having the friends I do. Elian’s Alter gives him surveillance abilities. He saw things that told us you were in danger.”
“I see,” Cille answered, finding remarkably little to quibble about.
Cougar sighed. “What I really need to tell you… is how terribly sorry I am. It’s because of me that you were even in that situation to begin with. If I hadn’t let Ryuho take you…”
“That wasn’t your fault,” she interrupted. “I chose to go with him. I couldn’t let him keep hurting you. It’s not… it’s not because of anything you did.”
The troubled look on his face told her that he couldn’t accept such an easy way out. “I let him get a jump on me. All those years at HOLY, in all those sparring matches, never once did he manage to best me. And when it really mattered… I let my guard down.”
She looked at him sympathetically, not knowing what to say.
“I just… I truly never thought that you would be in that much danger,” he continued. “I know Ryuho – he’s a principled man, even if he gets carried away with his authority sometimes. He would never allow innocent civilians to be harmed if he can help it. And even though he’s still working within Ozzal’s military, he resents her for breaking up the HOLY unit that we had worked so hard to build up, just because she felt that it might have become too powerful. And so I thought that as long as you were in his hands, you would be at least a little bit protected from the rest of Ozzal’s corrupt minions. And at the very least you should have been worth more to them as a hostage or a pawn than as… as…”
Somehow she understood that he couldn’t go on. Impetuously, she reached out and took his hand.
“It’s because of you that I’m alive right now,” she said quietly and earnestly. “I understand that, even if I don’t know everything about what happened back there. And that means more to me than anything else you might have done.”
Their eyes met, hers offering the compassion that his seemed to so desperately need. His expression softened, and he looked down a little ruefully.
“I swore I would protect you, and I failed.” He paused, and then looked back at her resolutely. “I won’t fail again.”
**********
That night, as she lay on the verge of dozing off under the makeshift tent that her new friends had set up outside for her and Scheris, Cille had plenty to ponder about everything that had transpired since she began this mad adventure.
She still didn’t understand everything that had happened the previous day, and she sensed that there was much that Cougar would never tell her. He hadn’t even let her listen in when Elian filled them in on the morning’s news reports. But she knew now that she had something real to fight for, something more than vague ideas of right and wrong or wanting to be on the “good” side or trying to be a hero whom other people would admire. Just when she had felt totally abandoned, someone had come along who was willing to give everything he had to keep her safe. And it seemed to her, even from the little time she had spent with Hikki and the other Syndicate members that they all shared this commitment to each other and would try as much as they could to get each other through the trials they all faced.
If she could be a part of that, if she could offer her talents and devote herself to doing what she could to help and protect those people and further their ideals, then she could find some meaning in this maddening new life of hers. She owed that much to Cougar… to Raef… to Landon… and even to Spice, who had been forced to give up those ideals for a much crueler existence. She didn’t yet know what she would be able to do for her new comrades, as helpless as she was in combat, but she knew that she had to at least try. Even if it was only for the sake of that man to whom she had entrusted her life, and whose presence filled her thoughts as she finally drifted to sleep.
**********
“Aaah” Clarice slid back into the bath she’d just drawn for herself and closed her eyes.
She sighed, lately it would seem to her as though she’d not done much, she brought her face down to the water and grumpily blew bubbles in it as she thought of the fact that her job search was still unsuccessful and no one from the syndicate had contacted her in a while to do anything to take down Ozzal. She needed work damnit. Suddenly her phone rang, interrupting her train of thought.
“Hello?” she answered with a heavy sigh of grief.
“Oh, it worked this time” Samson said.
“Samson, oh. Hi!” Clarice said somewhat embarrassed that she’d answered the phone in such a manner to Samson.
“Your house is for sale?”
“Oh god, yeah that…” she sighed again.
“Did you move somewhere suddenly?”
“Ah, no… Well… I couldn’t pay for it anymore… So it got repossessed.” she groaned
“Oh. I see… That’s terrible. Where have you been staying?”
“Oh just with my family. They’re in town here of course. Actually only a bit away from my place… It’s hard to get any peace around here though, I live with my sister Mimori and her damned cats are all over the place.”
“Oh… Sounds kind of fun” Samson said somewhat awkwardly. “Actually, I was going to ask you, if I could stay at your place for a while. I keep fearing that the police or someone like that would do a search on me and find my home. And I’m worried for my sister in that kind of situation. But you’re already pretty stressed there, and I’d hate to impose”
“Oh, it would be fine. I think… unless Alex comes home. He’s not really a bad guy or anything just kind of broody and scary. Well, not really scary but uh, yeah… And I’m not sure which room you guys could stay in, but it should be fine.”
“No, really… I can find some other place”
“Well, I have one idea” Clarice sighed once again.
**********************
“Hey, wake up you! Wake up! Stop lazing about, you” Jake awoke suddenly to the Frenchman who had decided to take him in the night before shaking him with all his might in an effort to get him awake.
“Eet’s time to get ready to open for ze day now, so no more sleeping” He instructed as he went back to the kitchen.
Jake, still rather tired managed to drag himself out of bed. For a moment, Jake just kind of stood there, clueless as to what he was to do now.
“What are you doing back zhere?! I zhought you said you’d be helping out” Hikki whined from the kitchen.
“Oh right.” Jake thought to himself, emerging from the back room.
“So… What do you need me to do then?” He asked somewhat nervously. Jake hadn’t been in the company of a person who hadn’t either taken him in for safety or loathed him for being a failure in such a long while, being around Hikki who was clearly indifferent to him was kind of unnerving.
“Wash zome dishes or somezing” Hikki instructed.
The two carried out their individual tasks in a completely awkward silence for about an hour before the sound of someone pounding on the front door broke it.
“Coming, coming.” Hikki muttered somewhat impatiently.
He was just about ready to yell at whoever it was who was interrupting him from getting the café ready to open for the day until he saw who it happened to be.
“Ah! Samson! What brings you here zees early in the morning? Couldn’t wait to see me again, I assume?” Hikki winked.
“Not now, Hikki.” Samson groaned. For a few seconds Hikki stared at something that seemed to be poking out from behind Samson’s leg.
“..Samzon… It would seem zhat zhere is some kind uf…. Tiny person hiding behind you.” Hikki noted, somewhat confused.
“This is my sister, Anne” Samson said with a smile and stepped aside so she would stop hiding behind him.
“Oh my… She’s short izn’t she?” Hikki mused. “Like a tiny female you… it’s kind of disturbing” he sized her up. The girl did indeed look an amazing amount like her brother. The same dark brown eyes, a similar face and black hair that gathers a similar way in the front. “And so, what brings you and your… Person here so early in the day?”
“I’d like if we could stay here, Hikki. No, I’m not finally accepting all those passes you’ve been making at me and decided to come move in with you. It’s a matter of wanting to keep my sister here safe.”
“Ah, of course of course.”
“There’s room then, I take it?” Samson said somewhat cheerfully.
“Well, Zat would be if you’re be willing to zhare a bed wez me, Sammie” He grinned.
“What? You live here too?”
“Uf course, Zhose police bastards have probably udoku raided my home, zhere isn’t much udoku for me to return zhere now.”
“Oh, I see… Never the less, we’d both be willing to sleep on the floor behind the counter if necessary.” Samson suggested.
Hikki grabbed his shoulder tightly and brought his face uncomfortably close to Samson’s. He spoke in a whispered tone
“Oh no, Sammie, I could nevair allow you to sleep on somezing as cold and… Unloving… as a floor, I do insist zat you sleep on or… at least next to somzing a lot warmer” with the last word Hikki gently stroked Samson’s face..
“I knew I couldn’t trust you to be nice without being a damned pervert!” a voice from outside called accompanied by a shoe that flew through the air with incredible speed to make contact with Hikki’s face.
Hikki was knocked over from the combination of shock and the pure force behind that shoe.
“Oh joy, Clarice would zeem to ‘ave come to brighten ze day once again” Hikki grumbled.
Clarice took this as her cue to give Hikki and earful about treating Samson better and respecting the fact that he may actually in fact, not be interested in a romantic relationship with the man.
Anne watched intently at the actions of the people around her to take in what kind of environment she’d be subjected to now on a daily basis. She gazed over at Jake who was watching the three of them in a similar manner as her and smiled, laughing a little bit. Jake smiled back, he seemed rather happy in this kind of place, it was quite laid back.
“.. I’m… going to school now” she said quietly, attempting to slink out of the café without much commotion.
“You’ll be here when it’s over right?” she continued.
She tightened her backpack slightly, “The people brother has decided to associate himself with sure are a strange. But they don’t seem like bad people. It’s good he has friends” she gave a small sigh of relief.
“Look, Hikki. I really need to stay here. I’m worried that if I stay at home, I’ll get found more easily and I don’t want my sister to be in any danger… so if I could stay here and-”
Clarice cut him off.
“I’m staying here too”
With that, Hikki let out an impossibly loud laugh.
“You? Stay here? Weez me and Sammie? You muhst be joking, no?” He grinned
“Although… I would cohnsidair eet ef…” Hikki’s eyes darted in Samson’s direction.
Samson noticed this instantly and a look of disgust crept over his face.
“Whatever you’re thinking you can just forget it” Samson muttered.
“Eet’s not that bad a proposition. Pretty easy to agree to, I zhink.”
“Well then, let’s hear it, if it gives me a bad mental picture, I’ll break your fingers” Clarice glared at Hikki.
“Samson must sleep in ze same bed as me”
“Out of the question”
“Room, zen?”
“I’ll sleep there too”
“Are you out uf jour mind, woman?” Hikki yelled, getting irritated by Clarice and her pushiness. “No one stays now! Ee’m sorry, zhat es just ze way it ees”
“Fine, let’s make a deal; you can sleep in the same room as Sammie, alone. But the door must be unlocked and open at all times. And if you touch any part of him while he’s sleeping, I’ll cut whatever said part was off you in the morning” She smiled confidently.
“So, what do you say? Do we have a deal?” She continued.
Hikki sighed. “I zuppose so, always ruining mine and Sammie’s fun”
“My fun?! What you do to me is not considered fun, Hikki! It’s sexual harassment!”
******
“Why does EVERYTHING you make involve tentacles?!?! Can’t you be normal at all?”
Ozzal glared after the plate of taquitos she had just flung at her head scientist’s face. She had half a mind to go strangle him right there.
“And while we’re on the subject of you pissing me off, let’s have a little chat about this entertainment I was promised. ‘Better than boxing,’ you said. ‘Death match for the ages!’ And then before anything can even happen, the freaking cable goes out!”
“Yeah, we’re… we’re sort of still working on what happened there,” Matrix said tentatively. “But it’s really nothing to get upset about…”
“Nothing to get upset about? Not only did I not get to see my death match, but my new assassin got pwned. You think that makes me happy?”
Matrix grimaced. He was just as cranky not to have seen what happened between Spice and Cille, but he also knew what Ozzal was capable of when she was really angry.
“Spice has been recovering rapidly,” he pointed out. “She’s already almost completely healed. You’ll be able to use her again in no time.”
“I already have assassins who can’t do their jobs right,” Ozzal snapped. “Get back to me when you come up with a drug that doesn’t fail”
“Hey, there’s nothing saying that the stimulant was what failed,” Matrix said, his pride feeling slightly wounded. “Since we weren’t able to collect any data on the effects of the drug, we can’t make any conclusions about its effectiveness. Something bizarro must have happened that threw off the test conditions.”
“You mean like her intended victim suddenly disappearing?”
Matrix gulped. “Well… maybe… Spice ate her?”
Ozzal didn’t seem convinced. “Pics or it didn’t happen.”
“Well, we don’t have pics… you know, since the monitor blew…”
Ozzal growled. “I don’t want any more excuses. If you want another chance to prove that you deserve to be on my payroll, you’d better come up with a better idea fast.”
Matrix thought for a moment. “Well, there is someone… it wouldn’t be in a controlled environment, but it would make for an interesting matchup…”
Ozzal tapped her foot impatiently. “Yes?”
“I know just the person for Spice’s next mission – Jake Thompson. You’ve been wanting to track him down anyway, haven’t you? Why not send her after him?”
Ozzal narrowed her eyes, and then smiled smugly. “Yes… that old failure of yours might still be good for something after all.” She rubbed her hands evilly, anticipating the wicked hijinks to come. “Get me another one of those pills, and my gun. And some FREAKING DECENT TAQUITOS!!!”
******
Spice walked up and down the streets, eyes sweeping the horizon every few feet or so.
“Come on out Jake, don’t be shy now” Spice said with an evil cackle.
She continued down the street, checking out every little crevice and hole in lower Actonia, until she came across a church with large oak doors.
“Well, if Jake won’t come out to play, maybe I have to drag him out.” Spice thought, walking towards the church, grinning evilly.
“What the hell do you mean ‘He isn’t here?!’ You worthless piece of human trash!” Spice screamed at the woman, Nafah, who she’d found inside the church.
“Where did he go?!” she continued. “You know something don’t you!? It makes me sick. I could just kill you right now” Spice mumbled under her breath, hanging her head slightly.
Nafah kept quiet, examining Spice who she could sense was not herself, even though she’d never met her before this encounter.
“I haven’t an idea what you’re talking about. Please leave at this instant; I don’t want any trouble with you”
Spice prepared to pull out a small knife she’d been given, which she’d been hiding in her pocket.
“Not worth it” she smirked. “You’re not my target.”
Spice turned sharply and headed back out the door.
***********************
“I can’t even believe you haven’t bothered to sit through Pulp Fiction yet” Trunks stared off. “It’s one thing that you don’t care for Citizen Kane, I mean, at least you’ve seen that one, although the fact that it “bores” you doesn’t even make that much sense to me…You acknowledge that it was an incredibly well made film though, which is good, I can give you credit for that. Don’t get me started on the fact that you liked the Godfather. I swear that movie is about as overrated as. Well, that’s not really the topic here. But I don’t see how any self respecting film fan can call them as such without having at least seen Pulp Fiction once, I mean the way-”
“You going to buy something today or just come around to rant again?” The man behind the counter spoke with a British accent, not thick, but not faint, definitely discernable as British at any rate.
“Can’t an old friend stop by for a visit without buying something, Hill?” Trunks grumbled a little.
“Sorry, business has been pretty slow as of late for some reason or another. Wanna guess it?”
“Not really”
“I’ve heard you’ve been doing a bit with that group of Landon’s. That Blacken thing”
“Eh, not really. I just let them use my pub for a bit. A whole lotta good that did me.
Every other day it seems like the place gets trashed, good thing they finally stopped coming around. I don’t know how I’d have dealt with it if I needed to keep buying a new DDR machine every week or so, those things are costly and my high scores…” he trailed off.
“Mm, I see then.”
“Hey, who did you even hear that from anywa-” Suddenly, the doors of Hill’s weapon shop flew open.
“Oh, a customer.” Hill said somewhat surprised.
A figure walked somewhat shakily into the establishment, it was Spice, and she looked somewhat deranged in her current state.
“I need the biggest, sharpest thing you carry” Spice grinned. “Something… Stabby..”
**************
“W-wait… You’re… we’re… we’re leaving?” In a cloud of confusion, Kira watched Emiri as she packed everything from her room into a rather large bag as fast as it seemed she could.
“That’s the plan” Emiri answered involved in her packing.
“So what you said, about leaving, when you asked me if I’d come with you, you were serious then, we’re leaving?”
“Bingo!”
“Where will we go?”
“Who knows?”
“Isn’t that kind of important?”
“Probably…”
“Well then, think about it a little.”
“Okay, we’ll be drifters!”
“Hobos, you mean…”
“Drifter… Hobo… Whatever, I just want to get out of this place. I’m sick of it. I don’t care what Ozzal’s doing and I actually don’t want to kill anymore. I’m afraid that if Ozzal finds out, she’ll kill me.”
“You afraid? Fearing death?”
“It’s crazy isn’t it?”
“Something that priest said must’ve gotten to you.”
“Of course not. Just who the hell do you think I Am?” she said this all in a rather flat tone. Her catchphrase was just something that rolled off her tongue without much meaning to her now, it would seem.
“So we’re leaving then, where to first?”
“Maybe we should try to find jobs. That sounds like fun, doesn‘t it?”
“As what?”
“Whatever. Shoes salesmen, librarians… Oh, carnies!” Emiri finally finished packing up her things and slung her bag over her shoulder. “Well, let’s get a move on then, eh?”
The two walked down the stairs from the room, memories of past times they’ve done this before came flooding back to them, mostly unhappy ones. The two wouldn’t miss it.
Hopefully leaving would indeed spell a happier life for them.
Emiri touched the cool stone walls in this part of the stairway and stopped for a bit. It was the same place she’d first met Father Sadar. She considered for a bit how that one small occurrence, as random as any other meeting she’d ever had in her life has effected her so much. A faint smile appeared on her face.
Kira smiled as well, it made him happy to see Emiri this way, much kinder than she had usually been. He too was grateful to Father Sadar for the effect he’d had on Emiri.
After a few minutes they moved again, continuing on their way out. She spotted Larry still cowering in a corner down on the first floor.
“Hey, Larry! Say goodbye to everyone for me, will ya?” Emiri called out to him
Larry looked at Emiri with fear in his eyes.
“Oh, that’s right. I probably still scare him don’t I? Well okay, have fun anyway, see you around!” She continued on.
*****
In the back of Café de Lune, a few of the regular members of the syndicate had gathered. Angel, April, Cowboy, Samson, and Clarice were discussing the recent events.
“So that guy last night was Landon, huh?” Samson stirred his coffee.
“And Cille’s alive. That’s interesting” he continued. “Cille seems different, somehow…” he pondered, still stirring his coffee in thought.
“Well, admittedly, I didn’t know her very well. Never really had a conversation with her or anything” he finally took a sip. “Oh, this is good.”
“I see where you’re coming from, Samson” Angel chimed in.
“She did seem slightly different somehow, but my main concern was how the hell she is still alive? And where has Landon been all this time… I have no idea what’s going on anymore” she sighed.
“I’m never going be able to play my cello for a funeral” Cowboy moped a little and April patted him on the back in attempt to comfort him.
“Landon seems kind of scary” Clarice added. “But at least he’s a better leader than Hikki” she sighed. “Seems like it anyway.”
“Kind of strange that he’s back all of a sudden… And he seems like he has some kind of ace in the hole to finally end this? It’s kind of hard to imagine” Samson went back to stirring his coffee. “A nice thought though”
“Hikki, what do you think?” Clarice asked as she spotted him passing by the doorway.
“Moi?” he pointed to himself rather confused by Clarice addressing him for once in a non-violent manner.
“Of course”
“Well… Ee remember Landon being more charming, Ee zuppose.” He thought for a moment and started back to the café front.
“Wait… That’s seriously all you have to say about this?!” Clarice looked at him with a look of astonishing bewilderment.
“Should zhere be more?”
“You’re..really hopeless…” She sighed.
Suddenly, a scream sounded from the front of the café. Everyone in the back room’s blood ran cold.
“Was it Emiri again, The woman who took down seven of the syndicate’s members in the raid on Comdot.. That psychotic woman who so brutally murdered Heero?” Samson wondered.
Feeling brave, he decided to poke his head out of the room to see what was going on.
It was Spice, he could recognize her despite that fact that she looked so unlike herself in this kind of mad, animal-like rage. She held in her hand a long and incredibly sharp looking knife, the kind of knife that could gut a full grown shark.
It was rather obvious she had her eyes locked on Jake who was minding his own business tending to the muffins Hikki had instructed him to take out of the oven.
Spice began running towards him almost drunkenly and swung her blade with amazing strength, he quickly swung his head to the side missing her attack ever so slightly.
Jake suddenly realized that his small bit of peace was over.
Spice meant business.
He leapt back slightly and she followed without missing a beat.
He knew to avoid killing or even injuring more people than needed, he’d have to leave the café as soon as possible.
He turned and bolted as fast as he could towards the exit.
He could feel Spice right behind him. He reached back and grabbed her by the arm and managed to twist it back and position himself behind her.
“Let go of me!” Spice snarled at him, twisting her head back slightly to face him.
After realizing he had no intention whatsoever of releasing her, Spice started trashing around violently to break away.
Jake, though powerful, could feel his grip on the woman weakening. She jerked again, breaking free.
Still concerned about the safety of the people in the café, Jake’s mind turned back to trying to figure the fastest route out now that Spice was blocking the exit.
Spice ran at him again, it was obvious she didn’t intend to give him any time to think.
“Shouldn’t we help him?” Samson whispered to others who were hiding in the back.
“I didn’t bring any weapons with me, I’m afraid” Angel said apologetically.
“Fighting’s really not my thing” April sighed.
“Mine either” Cowboy agreed.
“Or mine” Clarice also agreed.
Everyone turned to Hikki.
“What are you all looking at me for? You all should already know zhat Ee’m entirely worthless in battle” Hikki sighed.
“Well, we should at least do something, cause a distraction or something like that” Samson suggested.
“But.. Samzon.. You might get hurt out zhere… Ee don’t know what ee would do wezout you” Hikki whined a bit.
“Ugh, what is wrong with you?” groaned Clarice. “Samson’s idea is good, we should all just go out there and try to distract her, then I’ll come up from behind and whack her over the head with something”
“Wait, are you sure you want to be the one who does that? You’d have to get pretty close to her.. You might get hurt” Samson was pretty obviously concerned for Clarice.
“It’s alright, I’ll be fine” She smiled.
In the front of the café, Jake was still trying to fend off Spice while making his way out of the café, which to his dismay wasn’t going as planned.
Suddenly, an assortment of random cooking supplies flew out at Spice from behind the counter.
“Ah! Not zhose ones, Zhey were very expensive!” Hikki sobbed a little.
Despite his complaining the stream of cookware continued to be hurled in Spice’s direction.
Annoyed, Spice turned towards the counter.
Clarice noticed her turn, and ran in from behind to hit her with a frying pan over the head.
Spice grabbed Clarice’s arm just as she was about to hit her.
“Clarice!” Samson cried out from behind the counter, he was no longer hiding due to having jumped up when he noticed Clarice was caught.
“Let her go, Spice! Why are you doing this?!” Samson tried to reason with her.
She ignored him and began to twist Clarice’s arm.
Seeing this, Samson became filled with rage and jumped over the counter, running as fast as he possibly could towards Spice.
He butted her in the stomach knocking her over for a moment.
“Clarice!, Now!” Samson yelled.
And Clarice swung the frying pan down at Spice’s head as hard as she could.
Spice was knocked out for the time being.
She lied there still.
“Do you think she’s dead?” Clarice panted, exhausted from what had just occurred.
“I don’t think so and…….. I’m glad” Samson said inspecting her. “ I mean, she’s still Spice.. I don’t know what’s gotten into her though” Samson sighed. “**bleep**, it’s started raining”
“You don’t like ze rain, Sammie?” Hikki asked collecting all his fancy cook ware that had been so carelessly thrown about.
“I don’t really have much against it in general.. I actually kind of like it. My sister tends to get depressed when it rains though.. Maybe I should pick her up from school today, she didn’t bring an umbrella, after all”
**********************
Cast of characters in order of appearance:
Straight Cougar as himself
Cille as Lucille Compton
Spiceweasel as Spice
Elian as himself
Urizane as himself
Blah canbespanish as Landon Blaken
Cille as Future Cille! (Does anyone kind of think she should maybe be DangerCille? )
Scheris as herself
Ryuho as himself
QueenoftheDorks as Clarice Rowe
MasterSamson as Samson Monroe
Cat Lady Mimori as Mimori
Alex Rowe as Clarice’s Brother (Last Exile)
Kohikki as Hikki Follet
Sports Master as Jake Thompson
Anne Monroe – Original character.. We’re allowed to have them, right?
Lazzo as Ozzal
Matrixman as Dr. M. Matrix
Inufan as Leah Nafah
Fool_on_the_Hill as Hill
Trunks378 as Trunks
Kira Izuru as Kira
Boxers as Emiri
mgangel as Angel
LirpaYamEnujYluj as April
CowboyCadenza as Cowboy