First chapter
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Chapter 3 (Taken)
Rio dug her crafted claws into the side of the brick
house and pulled herself up. Retracting the claws on her left hand, she reached
up and extended her claws to pull herself up. Doing the same with her right
hand, she climbed up the side of Prime Minister Bea’s house, Leo following.
Thunder rattled the window next to her and
nearly made her jump out of her skin.
Her grip loosened, and her muscles tensed to keep her in
place.
A series of lightning strikes followed the thunder,
illuminating the night sky before a deafening cacophony of thunder shook her
thoughts. Moisture hung in the air and spoke of rain. A chill wind brushed past
her skin and tugged at her waterproof backpack.
“What are you doing?” Leo asked from below.
“S-s-scared.” Her entire body trembled.
“Don’t be. It’s just thunder.”
“But.”
Leo’s hand rested on her calf. “Calm down, little sister.
It’s okay. Just a loud noise. Nothing to worry you about.”
Her heart rate slowed, and her breathing steadied. “Thank
you.”
A shout from below.
“They have guns!” Leo scaled up beside her and flipped
through the window on the third floor.
“Shit.” Rio followed, springing to her feet inside a
small bedroom.
Bunkbeds stuck to the left and right walls, all
mattresses empty save for the bottom one of the left side. A guard in Anpanman
pajamas snored as if sound asleep, and Leo loomed over him, power-forged dagger
in hand.
Rio dashed forward and grabbed Leo by the wrist, stopping
his dagger thrust centimeters from the guard’s heart. “No!”
The man started, and his eyes shot open. “Huh?”
“We can’t resort to killing,” Rio said, muscles straining
to stop the dagger from plunging into the guard’s chest. “We’re not monsters.
We’re different than the Picassos and Fat Asses.”
“Are we?” Leo’s voice spiked. “The longer I’m apart of
this Pack, the less I believe we are.”
“We are. We
are. The two of us.”
The tension pushing the dagger forward slacked, and Leo
took a step back. “You’re right.”
The guard sat up.
Rio squared her feet and slammed her fist into his nose.
His eyes rolled into the back of his bed, and his body went stiff as an
unpracticed dance move.
For good measure, she twisted her hips and elbowed the
guard between the eyes. “Can you find a the staircase from this floor?”
Leo shook his head. “There won’t be an entrance to it on
this floor.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Well, I guess I could find the wall where the entrance
to the staircase should be.”
“Good. Lead on.”
A wheezy chuckle burst from Leo’s mouth. “You must be
really frustrated.”
“Why?”
“Because you only take charge when you’re frustrated or
really pissed off.”
Pissed off because
I can’t get over my fear of thunder. “Ah, I guess you’re right.” Rio
pointed to the door. “Anyway, lead the way.”
“Okay.” Leo cracked open the door and peered outside. “Clear.”
Behind him, she moved into the hallway on her tip toes. We need to get off this floor before the
other guards get here.
Down the hallway. Through a pair of linked rooms. Up
another corridor.
Leo made his way into a tiny pantry and pointed to the
large shelf that covered the entire wall on the right. “This is it, but the
wall is probably power-built.”
“One way to find out.” Extending her claws, she scratched
at the wall.
Starks filled the narrow space, but no damage marred the
wall. A rustic stink filled the air.
She gagged then retracted her claws. “This is why
crafting sucks.”
“Says you.” Leo placed his hand against the wall and
extended his claws. With his skill at crafting and his power-forged gauntlets
to meld the cat spirit to, the claws pierced the power-built stone easily. A
teeth-grinding screech bit into her ears, and he drug his hand towards the
floor. “You only dislike it because you’re not good at it.”
Rio fhuned before drawing her power-forged daggers. “It’s
useless when I have something like this. Besides, it’s better to utilize the
power of the spirit rather than waste it on items.” She reversed her grip on
both daggers and jammed them into the wall. As slow as her brother, she pulled
them towards the floor, dicing the shelves with her cat claws any time they
impeded her progress. She even cleared a few for Leo.
“This way,” Juri said from outside the pantry. “They must
be in here.”
Shit. Out of time.
Reaching out with her mind, Rio swallowed an ant.
Crunchy. Gooey. The residue of black pepper. Ants didn’t
taste as bad as alley cats, but the slimy feeling their spirits left in her
throat made her want to puke.
She socketed the ant in her second slot. The slot between
her breasts that would affect powers in her chest and both arms. “Move.” She
flared her second socket, and the inferno of pleasure stabbed needles of agony across
every centimeter of her flesh. She wanted to howl as the fat toy poodle-sized
ant grew into the size of a moving truck.
A timer appeared in her mind. Five.
As if the power-built wall were made of paper, she
slashed threw it then sheathed her daggers.
Four.
The pantry door swung open, and six guards positioned
themselves to shoot at Rio and Leo. The guards cocked their pistols.
Rio shoved her cat-crafted gauntlets into the stone wall
and lifted it into the air.
The guards gasped.
Three.
She threw with all the power the ant gave her and hoped
none of the guards would die from the weight of the wall. Thin cracks
spiderwebbed across her cat-crafted gauntlets.
Screams. Snap! Crunch. Silence.
Focus! Tears
filled her eyes. Grabbing Leo by the waist, she hoisted him onto her shoulder
and burst trough the hole. She couldn’t think about what had just happened. She
couldn’t … .
Those guards had to be alive. That wall wasn’t so heavy.
It — No! Must focus on getting out of debt. That’s what’s important. But the
guards … . They’re alive. Yep. They have to be.
Taking two steps at a time to avoid thoughts, she
ascended with him in her grasp until her flared spirit dissipated then sat him
down. “Let’s finish this and fly out of here.”
“Still frustrated.” Leo had the nerve to chuckle with a
shit-eating grin decorating his face.
“Shut up.”
“You’re the boss, Nee-chan.”
She should knuckle his forehead. No. She wouldn’t give
him the satisfaction of acknowledging his stupid joke of calling her the older
twin. Older brothers shouldn’t act like that. They should be mature. Kind.
Focused. She should focus. Focus.
On the sixth floor, a wide corridor led to a black-steel
door. No windows. A tall ceiling. A crack ran along the walls at chest level
and made a cross half way between the staircase and the black-steel door.
“Wonderful.” She stomped through the corridor and slammed
her fist against the power-forged door. She screamed as pain danced up her arm
and sang through her bones. The cracks in her right gauntlet expanded and
energy leaked into the air around them. It wouldn’t last much longer, but
without it, she would have broken every bone in her hand.
Like her daggers, the door was crafted with all three
types of power rather than having any single power-user infuse building
materials. It would be impossible to cut through it, and without an ant … .
“Get over here.” She waved at Leo. “Hurry up.”
Dashing across the room, Leo pulls up close to the door
and begins running his fingers across the tiny keyhole in the door. “I can
probably pick this lock.”
“Unlikely. Neither of us is any good at picking locks, and you are by far worse than
me.”
“Am not.”
“Are to.”
“You’re just jealous that I can craft spirits better than
you.”
A bit. “And
what does that have to do with picking locks?” She reached out to his orbed
necklace and ran her fingers across the still glowing orbs.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting us in.” As soon as her fingers touched the orb
with an ant in it, she inhaled, swallowing her brother’s ant spirit into socket
two.
“Hey!”
“You weren’t going to use it anyway.” She flared her
second socket, and a moan of pain and pleasure escaped her lips.
The timer set. Five.
“Start working on the wall.” Rio pointed to where the
cracks came together to form a cross on her left before drawing her daggers. “We
need to prepare an escape route.” She jammed her daggers into the frame around
the door.
Four.
Leo extended his claws and began slicing chunks out of
the wall.
She scored power-built stone around the door and used her
daggers to pry the black-steel free.
Three.
Gripping the door tight, she jerked it out of the wall
and hurled it at the small hole Leo had created.
He yelped as the door ripped through the wall and fell
into the garden below. Night air filled the corridor, and the neon lights of a
seven-eleven reached the hole.
So, this side wasn’t facing the park. Too bad.
Click. Click-click-click.
She turned to find several guards standing inside the
room, guarding a platform.
Computers lined the walls, but the platform drew her
attention. Inside a glass case atop the platform sat the flash drive. It had to
be the one they needed.
“Not good,” she said, falling into her standard one-two
dance pose. “We have some fools to get past.”
Leo gulped. “And hold some off.”
“What are you talking about?” She peered over her
shoulder.
Guards strutted up the stairs and filed out into the
corridor. The guards in the computer room, luckily, holstered their guns and
drew long black batons.
Maybe they didn’t want to risk hitting their friends. Or
they were bad shots.
“Shall we work on our routine?” Rio swallowed a cat into
her fifth socket, ignoring the taste as her speed and reflexes increased.
“Sure.” Leo swaggered forward, arms dangling in front of
him as he socketed a cat into his fifth socket.
She clapped her hands to the left then right, swaying her
hips as she followed him forward.
He sprang forward and extended his claws to slash through
a guard’s fingers then kicked the man in his gut. The guard doubled over and
went still.
“Aim for their weapons.” She twirled around him,
extending her claws in mid-rotation and slicing a pair of clubs into shreds.
The two weaponless guards stumbled backwards, and Leo’s
foot swung wide, catching both on their chins and dropping them. The other
guards yelled before charging them as a group. Clattering footsteps said the
guards in the computer room were also moving forward.
She fell into the dance, moving from one guard to the
next. But just as their numbers seemed to be running thin, more began
clambering up the stairs. Her heart two-stepped on fast forward, and her
breathing became frantic.
“Get the flash drive.” Leo elbowed a short woman in the
neck, and she fell backwards clutching her throat.
“Okay, but try not to hurt them more than necessary.” She
spun, leg extending to take out a pair of guards behind her with a
swift kick to their ribcages.
“Says the woman who crushed six people with a stone wall.”
“They could still be alive.” Rio sidestepped a pair of
guards and jabbed another in the nose. Dropping back into the crab dance, she
kicked a guard in the knee.
Snap! The guard screamed as his leg bent the wrong way at
the knee, and he toppled over. The other guards in the room froze for a long
moment and allowed Leo to make short work of most of them.
She rolled backwards onto her feet as a massive guard
stomped the floor where she had been. Knives of exhaustion stabbed at her ribs,
and the edges of the man’s form became fuzzy. No choice but to move things
along.
The man barreled forward, a club in each hand.
Time to use one of her two special dance moves: the quick
step. Her feet shuffled forward with the cat’s grace and speed. The quick
exchange of lead leg to back leg turned up to down and down to up. Her body
flipped and fell towards the ceiling. Her stomach turned at the jarring speed
of the movement, but using the air above her like a solid dance floor, she
planted her toes and did her best imitation of a pirouette. She turned into a
tornado and struck the hulking man’s face and neck several times.
He slumped to the floor, drool rolling down his chin.
As the momentum of her quick step died, the ground reasserted itself, and she reached out to strike a
guard no older than she was. Just out of reach.
The young guard cowered away from her.
If she extended a claw, she could end him. No. She couldn’t
do that. Closing her fist, she folded herself into a ball and crashed into the
young guard.
He grunted.
She rolled to her feet.
He didn’t move to stand or go after her.
Willing to let him play
dead, she rushed towards the flash drive and stuffed it into her bad. Once
in her possession, she turned to the now silent corridor.
Leo uppercut the last guard, dropping them, and the guard
who had been playing pointed his gun at Leo’s back.
Her eyes bulged. No.
No! NO! NOOOO! She sprinted forward, but each step felt like waddling
through pudding.
Bang! Smoke rose from the gun barrel. Blood and gore
sprayed the floor in front of Leo as her brother fell.
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