Chapter 13

When I don't train for one day, I know it. When I don't train for two days, the girls know it. That should be the worst of it, but with the weather as bad as it had been the past week, covering the roads in ice and snow that would have torn my kneecaps out if I slipped, I hadn't trained for a long time, and when I don't train for even three days, everyone knows it. It was a lesson I had learned from Jascha Heifetz. He wasn't even a martial artist, instead being a Russian-American violinist, but he was right. Forget three days; after a week, I wasn't even able to run my usual 5k without wanting to collapse.

About halfway through my usual path through the backstreets, I could feel my lungs burning like I was drowning in fire and did what I could to get to a cafe I knew of nearby fell face first onto one of their couches. I was panting and sweating like a proud whore in a confessional chamber, staining my track suit. I probably made a funny sight. Or creepy. Most likely creepy since the girl I landed next to didn't even look up from her computer before she moved to the table on the other side of the room. Quite frankly, I didn't really care one way or the other because I was slowly, slowly dying. Maybe if I went jogging with Centorea, or anyone else for that matter, I might not have looked like a freak at the moment.

"Casa-chan?" I heard a light hearted voice say.

I wasn't paying too much attention to her. I was lucky I could even hear her given that I was starting to pass out due to the fatigue and lack of oxygen.

"Casa-chan! Wake up!" it whined again, starting to sound like a small child.

I could hear her more clearly at this point given how incessantly she was trying to get my attention, so I decided to ignore her.

"Casa-chan!" she screamed.

"What?!" I yelled and looked up, most of my breath coming back enough for me to challenge her. She was an ogre, standing over ten feet tall and with a single black horn protruding from her head, wearing a yellow sundress that gave quite a nice contrast to her deeply tanned skin and bleached hair. She was looking at me with an annoyed expression, puffing her cheeks out and her arms crossed.

"Ugh, you're so mean, Casa-chan!" she grumbled. I sighed heavily and sat back up, leaning back lazily into the couch.

"Good to see you too, Tionishia," I greeted.

"I told you to call me Tio!" she cried, acting like a small child who wasn't getting their way and making me grin evilly.

"Stop calling me Casanova," I shot her.

Another familiar face, a zombie named Zombina with green and gold mismatched eyes, shaggy red hair, and stitches all over her exposed skin came up to us with an evil grin surpassing my own. Every time I see her, I tense up. The clearly infected stitches and implied gore that was implied from her presence didn't bug me at all. It was really the fact that underneath her military jeans and red bomber jacket was a dozen fully loaded firearms, semi automatic or otherwise, as well as hundreds of rounds of ammo. OK, to be fair, guns weren't the issue either. In fact, the more guns around me, the safer I feel. It was the fact she was very willing to use them. On anyone. Me in particular.

According to her, though, she doesn't hate me. I think she just finds shooting at my head whenever I'm nearby funny.

"Stop trying to sleep with every liminal nearby and maybe we won't Lady's Man," she teased.

"Aw c'mon! I don't jump at every liminal nearby," I started. Another friendly face, a mono-eye named Mono wearing a grey, wool poncho and a sun hat that didn't match to hide her one, single eye sidled into the seat next to me shyly.

"Please don't," she whispered.

"After all…" I continued, then on my other side a girl I didn't recognize with black hair and unnaturally blue eyes wrapped herself around my arm.

"You'd better stop, Sexy," she told me. I really had no idea who she was. However, after giving it a second of thought and seeing how she treated me way too friendly for someone I didn't know, as well as who she was associating with, I knew she was Doppel. She was a doppelganger who regularly associated with these other three because they all worked for the ICEP, and given her species, she had a supernatural ability to shapeshift.

Mono the mono-eye, Zombina the zombie, and Doppel the doppelganger… I didn't make those up. They're really that stereotypical and unoriginal.

"Alright, sure. Fine. I'll stop," I relented, still smiling and not breaking eye contact with Zombina.

"No, go on. Don't start something you won't finish," zombie girl challenged. Her stitches curled upwards as she gave me the dirtiest of looks, challenging me and threatening me in the same expression.

"Well, given that I'm an obnoxious nunce, how can I refuse?" I said coyly, slipping my way out of Mono's and Doppel's arms with my cheeky grin only getting wider, "As I was saying, I think it's obvious that I don't make a move on every liminal that comes my way. Did you forget I have standards now? I haven't made a move on you, after all."

I don't react well to being shot at. Normally, if a liminal attacks a human, it would create an international incident considering that's one of the biggest rules the Interspecies Exchange Bill still has in place even three years after its founding, but there are some exceptions. For example, I could sleep with any liminal I wanted since I was a "test case" for romantic relationships. At the same time, that gave me the priority to fight a liminal girl if I ever needed to, which at the same time, it made the reverse true and allowed myself to be assaulted by liminals with only a minor assault charge.

As for the group of girls I mistakenly ran into that morning, they were the monster law enforcement for the ICEP. Each and everyone of these girls, while still being monsters, had gotten permission from various international governments to carry weapons and attack people in the name of the law if they ever deemed it necessary. Adding my status and theirs together… I'd like to think I take getting shot at pretty well. Maybe not spectacularly, but hey. I wasn't the crazy zombie who started shooting up a coffee house because I was told I was undesirable.

If nothing else, I knew running away was always a valid self defense option. Granted, self defense implied that you had some chance of surviving an encounter that puts you endanger, but the only reason I was still alive when I sprinted down the nearby alley was because Zombina didn't really want to kill me. If she wanted to put a bullet in my back, she really could have. She doesn't miss.

"Ha! You've gotten better!" I heard a cocky laughter. Looking on the wall I was running next to, I saw Zombina running alongside me with a catlike balance, her toothy grin flashing in my face. I slid to a stop, and she did the same, pivoting to a sitting position and crossing her legs as she propped her gun on her shoulder.

"At what?! The Matrix?!" I yelled.

"What? It was funny?!" she defended, snickering.

"Shooting up a cafe is fun to you?!" I screamed, throwing my hands out.

"Yes!"

I blinked at her. She said that so confidently, grinning like a pure angel that didn't see anything wrong with that action.

"OK, frankly, I can see it," I admitted, "But you're an edgelord."

"What? And you're not?" she shot back. I winked at her and threw out a few finger guns before the other three girls caught up with us.

"Zombina-chan, what is wrong with you!" Tio panicked.

"Zombina, there are cops everywhere!" Mono followed, kneeling over and out of breath.

"I thought it was funny," Doppel countered, appearing next to her teammate on the wall in her original form, "And besides, they probably needed a break anyway and could get some danishes there. So what?"

I took a second to appreciate her completely black skin, black eyes, and that long white hair of hers that twisted around her body like smoke before pulling away from her petite, naked form to answer.

"Yeah, who cares about setting good examples as government agents or wasting precious legal resources that could be focused elsewhere? Or, I don't know, maybe the political message this is going to send with all the shootings happening around the US right now or how Smith is going to react to this?" I mentioned passively.

Everyone completely shut up and stared at me in dumbfounded awe.

"Maybe I didn't think this through," Zombina agreed.

"No kidding!" I praised, "Funny? Yes. Smart? Well, I've never thought you were Einstein."

"Why do you hate me?" she whimpered, a defeated smile still crossing her lips.

"Hmm," I mumbled and looked over my shoulder where I could see police lights and hear sirens off in the distance, "Wow, you know what? I can't really tell. What were you guys doing at that cafe anyway?"

"We had some time before work," Doppel told me.

"I never got my danish," Tio whined. I reached up on my toes and patted her head like a loving big brother.

"I'll get you a danish this weekend," I said, then got overly excited, "Are we still on for clothes shopping Friday?"

"Yes! Of course, Casa-chan!" she cheered then pulled me into a hug that should have snapped my neck. It hurt, but I didn't care. Her dress was low cut and her hug buried my face into the bare skin of her J-cups, so I was in way too much pleasure to really care until Zombina pulled me away.

"Tio, stop suffocating him!" she commanded.

OK, that? That ticked me off. Under normal circumstances, I would have just yelled at the person, but this time, just because I knew the much stronger and durable liminal could take it, I looped my arm under hers and flipped her over my shoulder, slamming her into the ground.

"Ah, what the heck, man?! What was that for?!" she spat.

"Uh, Bina?" Tio said with a blank expression, pointing at the ground. Different limbs and body parts of hers were scattered around the ground.

"How- how did- WHAT?!" she demanded. Doppel bent down from her perch and laughed at us.

"Dang, Sexy, I didn't know you were so strong! Normally, it takes hits a lot harder than that to cut her up like that," she applauded me. Mono was catching my eye- pun very much intended -every few seconds while she busied herself with picking up and reattaching her teammate's body parts. I couldn't pay too much attention to her, though, since Tio picked me up and began examining me.

"I was actually the last person to do it," she said curiously, "I know you work out, but I'm pretty sure I could still out lift you."

"Um, I guess?" I sputtered, "I'm pretty sure you can too, but have you guys never practiced judo before? Those throws can seriously hurt at higher levels. I've even seen people get knocked out in seconds on street fight videos after they get thrown."

"Oh, don't get me wrong, we know," Doppel continued, Mono nodding along, "Throws and takedowns are basic training for Monster's New Law all across the globe, but believe me, no human we know throws that hard. Maybe professional's do, but I don't think anyone outside of the UFC can do it."

"Aren't you supposed to go pro next year or something?" Zombina asked.

"Yeah, I was supposed to, but I think I might take another year given that I've been slacking off due to… obvious reasons," I said, not wanting to admit that the girls were hurting my training regimine.

Shrugging her shoulders when everything was back where it needed to be, Zombina flashed me another crooked grin, but then her eyes twisted in surprise. Looking closely, I saw her pupils narrow like a cat stalking its prey. The way her body tensed up like she was about to start a fight was so palpable it put me on edge and I had to take a step away from her before I ended up doing the same, only to bump into Mono standing behind me. When I turned to apologize, I saw that her hat was off and her one eye focused down the scope of a rifle she pulled out of nowhere.

What was going on? I looked up to Tio and Doppel for confirmation, but they looked just as bad as the other two and surrounded me, facing outwards like they were protecting precious cargo. Tio got into a fighting stance, Zombina pulled out a second submachine gun and pointed them down the alley, and Doppel stood behind me, probably masking me in her hair as a smoke screen. If it was only one of them, I could understand that. They were all paranoid since each of them were law enforcement and had to keep their eyes out for any potential threat at all times, making them undoubtedly paranoid at times, but since each of them were teaming up like there was a threat in the immediate area… I wasn't safe. I knew these girls well enough to know that I was in serious danger at the moment. If they were worried about the police finding them, they wouldn't have gotten ready for a battle, and if it were a human, a species that had a very unique scent to liminals so they would know it was them, they wouldn't use their weapons for such a weak opponent. There was a dangerous liminal nearby.

"Guys? What's going on?" I whispered, crouching low with my hands up, ready to dodge, block, or run away should any of those options become necessary.

"Doppel," Zombina ordered.

"On it," she affirmed, and before I knew it, was airborne.

Looking up, I saw that Doppel had shifted into a giant eagle and dug her talons around my arms to lift me in the air, but looking down, I could see a swarm of ravens circling around the other girls while they tried to shoot and bat them away. Next thing I knew, Doppel twisted and broke my line of sight from them. I found myself airborne and falling fast to the ground, so at first I thought I was hit by something, but right before I hit the ground, a large panther appeared beneath me and began sprinting in the direction of my house. It was obvious that Doppel caught me since liminals don't appear this animalistic and regular panthers aren't this large, so I didn't question it.

She jumped over cars and fences and ran fast enough to qualify for the Daytona 500, so I trouble holding on. At that speed, I couldn't even speak so I couldn't ask her what was after us. The more I thought about it, though, the more I ended up debating whether whatever was fighting the other MON Squad members was after them because they were pawns of human politics, or if it was after me because I was human. While the former seems more likely, it would take either a really powerful terrorist group or a really stupid girl to pick a fight with Monsters New Law. Fighting was their job. The only liminals I could see consciously going up against them, confident enough that they could win would have to be a serious group of dangerous liminal radicals, and while those groups did exist, they weren't exactly a common occurrence. While a monster going after me individually didn't seem likely either, I just couldn't see one or even a group going after the others instead.

I decided that I was their target. Whether it was one confident monster or a terrorist group bent on kidnapping, it made more sense in my mind for them to come after me instead of MON. Thing is, given my usual behavior, you'd think that I would have jumped off of Doppel's back and ran in the opposite direction so I'd become more of a priority and make sure the other girls didn't get hurt, but that wasn't the case for this scenario. I wasn't an idiot. Right now, even if they were the ones fighting and I was just a burden, I knew that the MON Squad were better prepared for this than I was. If I got off Doppel's back or tried to fight myself, I would just get in the way and make things worse.

I didn't notice when spears made of bone hit the ground all around us, and neither did Doppel. Before I could even question what had happened, panther Doppel lost her footing and was knocked over, sending me flying several feet forward, and believe me, judo throws hurt. I know that from experience. Fortunately, that same experience meant that I knew how to fall, and I managed to find some kind of leverage midair to roll and lessen the impact, landing on my knees.

I heard laughter and looked up. Sitting on one of the street lights in my development was a young girl, maybe about thirteen years old, sporting a gothic lolita dress with enough emo makeup to rival Blood on the Dance Floor. She didn't say anything when I got up. She clearly didn't want to talk. With that same ojou-sama laugh echoing across the winter air, she reared her hand back, making another bone lance appear in her palms and threw it at me as fast as she could which I was lucky enough to get out of the way. Then, she fired off another, and another, and another. I managed to stay on my feet long enough to get out of the way each time, but then she had had enough of this ranged combat. I kept backing up. If she wasn't hitting me at that first distance, creating more was just going to make her aim worse, so she dashed forward. Way too fast for me to react, she appeared in front of me with a smile crazy enough to rival Jeffrey Dahmer.

"Hello!" she mewled in a scratchy voice.

Suddenly, I was knocked off my feet several feet away, but it wasn't like I got hit by something. I had gotten hit enough to know when someone meant me harm. This was more like I was pushed out of the way, and when I was able to process what hit me, I saw Doppel, in a flash of white smoke circling around the girl and hitting her at all angles while black wings sprouted from the goth's back to try to compensate her blind spots. Then, Doppel's face appeared in the smoke, glaring at me.

"Go! Get to your girls! They'll protect you!"

"Like hell," I whispered to myself, then got up and sprinted towards the park.

There was an old sewage pipe there that I could hide out in and keep my back covered with, so hopefully I could use that to my advantage when whoever was after me found me and give myself a fighting chance. I wasn't about to get the others involved in this. Letting the MON Squad fight for me was one thing, but there was no threat too dangerous that would make me let the girls fight on my behalf.

Apparently, a third gothic liminal had the same idea. The time I reached the pipe in question, there was another girl standing in front of my intended safehouse poised and ready to go. Her hair was long and white, same color as Doppel's but much thicker. Her skin was as pale as a corpse's, and her eyes looked tired as if she hadn't slept in over a week, but then I saw she was wearing dark armor over every inch of her body, a purple cloak wrapped around her neck and covering her mouth. She was holding a stylized scythe behind her back that looked like it was built more for decoration than combat or gardening. The weird thing was that her hand was up to her face like she was posing for Shonen Jump.

"There are great powers far beyond the understanding of your mortal coil," she said in a low voice, "And they desire tribute. By the strings of fate, they have demanded you as a sacrifice, and thus, your life is forfeit."

She turned to me, a dangerous look in her eyes. It was clear to me that she was with whoever was chasing me, and I was previously ready to fight anyone that came my way, but now? I couldn't help dropping my guard. She was… Odd. I knew hitmen aren't exactly the most socially adept individuals, but this girl screamed awkward to me. I was so distracted by her attitude, I couldn't pick up a single dangerous thing about her, and maybe I was just caught so off guard by this dork that I almost lost the will to fight entirely.

Almost.

"You're… interesting," I claimed, "Quite the chuuni, aint'cha?" I don't think she was expecting that because her eyes contorted in embarrassment, and if that cloak wasn't in the way, I would have thought she was blushing.

"I am not," she mumbled, "I am death incarnate! A dullahan of the Irish Wastes!"

"The Irish Wastes," I repeated, an amused smirk crossing my lips, "The wastelands of Ireland. A land in Ireland with a lack of life and vegetation. The Irish wastelands. Do I understand you correctly?"

The dullahan curled in on herself, her knees shaking. She began sniffling and looked like she was about to cry, and for a second, I started to feel bad for picking on her, but then I kicked that thought out of my mind. Off the top of my head, I remembered dullahans were death gods. They essentially functioned as the Celtic equivalent of the Japanese shinigami, but I couldn't remember anything about their physiology, and that put me at a pretty significant disadvantage. If I couldn't remember what made them unique, I couldn't figure out her weaknesses or racial abilities.

"Stop being mean!" she mewled.

"If I understand you correctly, you're trying to kill me," I growled before returning to my stance, "Kindness went out the window a long time ago."

The dullahan finally remembered what we were doing and returned to her previously demure facade. Her dead eyes honed in on me. Twirling her scythe behind her back once again, she narrowed her eyes and held her hand out to me, cinching her fingers in the traditional kung fu "bring it on" gesture, only adding to her chuuni persona.

I didn't even hesitate. I charged her and went straight for her weapon arm so I could disarm her, knowing full well that was how she was going to come at me. I saw her swing and sidestepped inside her guard. I wasn't expecting her ability to control the distance.

By rotating her blade and switching her grip, she got me right across my shoulder, slicing open my tracksuit and sending blood trailing down, and I hate to say it, but I panicked. I did the one thing you're never supposed to do during a fight and went blind. The minute I lost sight of myself and tried to back away, she was in complete control and ran back at me, using her longer reach to come at me, and I was lucky to dodge her first two strikes. I knew they were trying to kill me. The minute this fight started, I knew the dullahan would be going for my throat. Only now did I realize what that meant.

My instincts took over, true to my training, and my mind went blank to let my body act on its own, activating some sort of survival drive that had been ingrained in me since I was a novice. Without thinking, I moved forward again. I sidestepped another slash and was behind the blade of her weapon, so I grabbed the shaft of her scythe and spun, switching my grip so I could land a side kick directly into her face.

Her head coming off was a bigger surprise than the flesh wound in my arm. I wasn't prepared for this. I reacted in time for her body coming at me on its own and grabbed her arm to throw her around me, but I needed to run. I was handling this well, but I was out of my league.

I turned on my heel and sprinted back to the main road. I wasn't going to head back to my house and endanger the girls, and I figured that the MON Squad were still fighting so I wasn't going to head back to where they were. All I did was run until I realized that I should go to the police. No matter who was attacking me, human or monster, they'd protect me. Eventually, they'd contact the ICEP and Smith would believe what happened given her team's testimony.

Unfortunately, I wasn't as fast as the dullahan. In the time it took me to get back to the road, she had put her head back on her shoulders and cut me off. I was in luck. She tried staring me down before attacking me, so she didn't see me going for her legs and I got her off her feet. She face planted into the concrete, her head staying on, and I went for her legs. She turned over and slashed me across my chest. It was another flesh wound, but I wasn't about to worry myself with it since she was getting back up and twirling her scythe at short range again. Switching to long range, she spun and tried to get at my neck. I blocked it. The shaft hit my arm with a thick crack, not breaking any bones, but the base of the blade cut into my fist.

She switched to short range again, trying to get at me at close range. However, I had already closed the distance and grabbed the hand that held most of the control on her weapon. My face was inches from hers. I saw the fear in her eyes before I struck.

"Back off!" I yelled, and for a split second, even in the middle of a fight, I thought I heard thunder strike, the doors of the houses next to me rattling on their hinges.

My fist connected with her stomach and I sent her flying backwards off her feet. She flew down the street parallel to the ground. She stopped ten feet away but only when her back hit a streetlamp, denting the thing ninety degrees. It clearly hurt her. She gripped her stomach and I could see blood coming from the stump where her head met her neck. She was coughing.

"So, this is what happens…" she muttered to herself, but before she could finish that, I was already on her, punching her head off once again.

I had thought that blinding her would give me some advantage, but it seemed like the opposite was true, like her body could sense the living. She pulled her scythe into short range again. She dug it under my arm and around my back before twisting it and ripping every tendon in my right shoulder apart. I never screamed so loud in my life. As sharp as the pain was, it wasn't as bad as I might have thought. The shock from the wound was much worse. My scream was laced with fear just as much as it came from agony, and I dropped to my knees.

"What's going on?" someone said. I looked over and saw a mammalian liminal with a dog puppet step out of her house watching us.

"That smell… Oh, my Lord. That smell!" I heard another one say, and saw a purple serpent sniffing the air a few yards away.

"Is this because of you?" said a raptor harpy that ran up and perched on a fence next to us.

"What do you think you're doing?!" this one was a mosquito girl that looked like she hadn't bathed in a month.

"What in the world?" that one was a frog examining and even licking the bent lamp post.

The dullahan started to look overwhelmed and tried to put on her chuuni persona to scare them all off, but more and more demihumans were coming to check out the scene. I didn't see my girls, at least not yet. I didn't see a single human either, so whatever was happening sent only the monsters into a frenzy. Should I run away? I didn't know how to react.

"Dude! We need to go!" a man's voice yelled in my ear over the chaos, his arms wrapping around me.

I couldn't quite see his face over everything. I thought I recognized his voice, but it started coming like a low echo. I tried blinking away the daze from my eyes, but it didn't help. I looked at my body. There was just… so much blood…

So much… I'm sorry, Miia.