Chapter 1~!
-Kazumi's POV-
Hah; you thought this was going to be some namby-pamby story about some more winged freaks told in its entirety by the hero, didn't you? Well, I've got some bad news for you: as long as I'm still around, there isn't going to be a hero to tell the tale. Before the freak jumps in and begins his story, I'll start off with my side of it. This is usually how stories start off, yes? My partner and I aren't exactly avid readers.
Once upon a time, I was an Eraser at The School. I did exactly what the higher-ups made me to do: eliminate all of the mistakes they made. My partner-Kin-and myself were unstoppable because we were an unstoppable breed of wolf: I was a full-body, while Kin was only 25%. She had the claws, fangs, ears, and tail while I could morph into a huge canine. Yep; we were judge, jury, and executioner, with a lot of odd jobs on the side, one of them being guard dogs.
As a guard, it was my job to hunt down the miscreants that the lab had made and kill them. It was a simple task, yet it was all but mundane. The crap that the scientists pulled out of their hats was unbelievable. Bird kids and wolves were the norm, but when I got lucky, I found tigers and porcupines and other mixes that could dent me up in combat. Picking spikes out of your arms was never so worth it. As fun as the job was, the most infuriating day was when my little sister and her cronies escaped.
It started out as a calm day; there were no escape attempts as well as nothing to hunt. Mutants that gathered the bravado to try to make it out of the cage were quite funny. As I walked up to the cages, this one girl caught my eye. Attached to her cage was a little description:
ID No: 00666
Species: Avian Hybrid 99.995% avian .005% human
Abilities: Sharpened eyesight; sharp talons; sonic screech
Forms: human/harpy
"You're quite the interesting one." I told her under my breath. In my line of work, it wasn't my job to be their friends; rather, it was to keep them alive until otherwise specified by the whitecoats.
"So?" I heard her say. A quiet one, she was, barely spoke above a whisper. Actually, I've heard people call her that; it was a fitting name for a freak.
"It makes my job all the better." I opened my mouth to reveal canine fangs, almost too big for my mouth. I sported them proudly because I was a proud girl.
"Leave her alone, Kazumi. Don't you have anything better to do?" The sound of her voice made me all but roll my eyes. Aria, an avian like the girl except only at the two percent mark. She and I go back, far back, and she never let me forget it. My sister's former best friend at the lab was a crooked little bitch.
I responded with a grin. Easy prey was, well, too easy. "Why, yes. I hear there are too many of you freaks. You know what that means." I said, aiming an imaginary gun at her. But gunshot wasn't the only thing that I would do. I was going to have fun; and when I have fun, people find themselves dead.
Aria rolled her eyes. "Sure." She said. Aria had been a much different girl before she hit 7. Her mood became dark, probably because now, I'm her gatekeeper. I'm the hunter; in hide and seek, I sparred with her, and it was all but pretty.
My transceiver in my ear buzzed, making me wince. The static and my ears mixed about as well as water and oil. An order filed through, which meant it was time for me to make an exit. I smirked at Aria. "Enjoy your last hours here." I said, and walked out silently. Well, maybe not if you counted kicking a couple cages silent.
It had been hours since my little chat with the freaks, and I was awaiting the final order. All we needed was the OK to go in there and finish them off. This took hours. Scientists were usually very thorough, and it drove me off the walls as usual.
I turned to my right, where my partner Kin was. "I need a good workout." She said. Her teeth were wolfed out and jagged to the point where a strand of hair could be split in half. I wondered how they fit the teeth into our mouths. There's ingenuity for you, folks.
I couldn't help but smile. Kin and I had been working together for god knows how long, and though we've had our rough patches, we were sisters almost as much as we were partners. "They didn't say anything about not torturing them." I nodded over to the door with anticipation.
As far as teams went, we weren't the standard, run-of-mill Erasers; I'd mentioned that in the beginning. Besides DNA, we were aesthetically opposite. My partner sported shoulder long, gray hair while I had black, long hair that always stayed in a tight braid. She was short, I was tall; she was albino, I was dark. There's diversity for you.
My train of thought was interrupted as a girl exited through the lab door. She was unusual, as far as, well, anyone went. She had pink hair and oddly colored eyes.
The girl reached up and felt the X hairpin she was wearing then looked down at her clothing; she wore a white button-down shirt with black sleeves with assorted symbols on them, a pink skirt, black stockings, and black Mary Jane shoes. She seemed out of place wearing all that. She sighed as she tugged down on her shirt.
She looked from Kin to me upon looking up from her skirt. "Hello?" She said. Her voice was one that sounded artificial; programmed into a robot. The other thing I hadn't realized was that the girl had no shadow. It was as if she wasn't there; just a face in the room.
I took a step up to the girl and offered a smile, but I knew that it would probably be wasted. She knew I knew that I was very weirded out by just her presence. "Hello... Need help finding something?" Okay, if this was an Eraser, I wouldn't have been this nice. I was spiteful in most times. Most of the time, also, I wasn't in this form, so go figure that most except for Kin always see me snarling.
Kin wasn't so fast on coming closer. I could always peek into her head, but the thought never occurred to me; Kin was more level-headed than me, so she would be expected to do so. "Are you lost? I don't think you're supposed to be this far back in the building..." She said, going along with my friendly approach tactics
The girl scanned us with purple eyes, using our pupils as windows to our souls, if wolves did have souls. Her head tilted so that her straight hair hung at a forty-five degree angle. "Then what are you two doing back here?" This time she actually sounded curious; she looked the part, too. She placed her right index finger against her lips and tapped them twice. Strange girl, but seeing how the fish hybrid in sector five had fizzled out, she looked somewhat normal. Her gaze shifted from scanning us to looking towards the end of the hallway then the other direction. "People work down there, so you two should not go there." Another thing I noticed came to form: Her ears. They were like a bat's or an elf's; whichever you would prefer.
"Yes, people work here. We work here. But you, you look like you should be somewhere else." Kin said. She noticed the girl's ears sticking out from under her hair. 'Geez, these wackjobs will even experiment on their own kids…' She thought.
'Maybe she's part bat...?' My voice filtered in through Kin's conscious. That was something else we differed in: I could read minds, even controlling them when needed; but what was the fun in that?
'If she were you'd think they'd have her locked up...' Kin thought back. Her diaphragm rose (I do not look there often, I assure you) as she took in the pink-haired girl's scent. Nothing but pure homo-sapien filtered through her nose.
Obviously the girl was not fond of us. She looked down the hall and then back, before turning to leave us to our lonesome.
I nodded a bit. 'Same here…'I thought. At that same moment, the wireless transceiver buzzed in my ear, and my eyebrows rose. Today was turning out to be interesting after all. "Seriously?" I asked. I pushed through the doors without accounting for Kin's wants, looking at the cage. A laugh escaped my lips as I looked down at the little thing in the cage. "Well, well, surprised to see you here, Tomoyo." I got a glare from the girl in the cage and swore I heard her growl. "I thought you were dead. It's been a while." I said. This would be a good day, I could feel it. My sister had finally returned to me.
