Adins Presents
"My Four Kings"
Today's Episode: Light My Fire
Endymion's Palace in Elysian, During the Silver Millennium
The young prince sat on a luxuriously carved marble bench wagging his legs and staring dejectedly down at his armored boots. The pre-pubescent monarch was pouting. In a courtyard below an imposing figure with a mane of glittering hair as white as new fallen snow was engaged in a fairly brutal sword drill with a much younger, blonde opponent. Kunzite was, for lack of a better word, pummeling Jadeite into the ground.
"Why are we pouting today, my prince?" asked a voice that was very near, but sounded far away.
Zoisite sat down on the bench next to the prince, not looking at him, but at the two men battling below. Nephrite, who stood near a large pillar and almost completely hidden from sight, let out a hearty chuckle as Jadeite stumbled backward and nearly failed to catch himself.
"Kunzite is beating up Jadeite again." The prince grumbled.
"Technically they're sparring." Zoisite corrected him with a bit of mirth, "Why is this "again" might I ask?"
"Because we pulled a prank on Kunzite." Endymion replied unhappily.
"And you let Jadeite take the fall?" Zoisite mumbled in a disappointed tone.
"No." Endymion answered, "The prank didn't work."
"Ah." Zoisite spoke now understanding the root of the prince's malaise. The prank failed; never mind his best friend below being beaten into a pulp by his superior. In that regard the young prince was a bit too much like Jadeite for his own good.
"What were you trying to do to him, exactly?" Zoisite inquired.
"We balanced a bucket of water on the door to his chambers." Endymion explained, "Kunzite opened the door, but when the bucket tipped over he just dodged out of the way of the water."
"Kunzite's reflexes are more than acute enough to dodge a bucket of falling water." Zoisite told the prince, "I'll bet it was all Jadeite's idea." The prince nodded, "That's his problem. He doesn't look before he leaps. Jadeite should have known that Kunzite would never get caught in a prank like that."
"What?" Endymion asked wide-eyed. His lip quivered for a moment before he asked, "What's that mean?"
"Were you expecting me to chew you out for trying to have a laugh at the Ice King's expense?" Zoisite whispered in the prince's ear with a chuckle, "You just picked the wrong partner."
Endymion's lips curled into twin, nearly devilish points.
"Every great King must know how to be bold and forthright." Zoisite instructed, "But there comes a time when he must also learn to be subtle."
"Subtle?" Endymion puzzled.
"Strategic." Zoisite explained, "Wily and tenacious. You've been learning your swordsmanship from Nephrite, your magic from Jadeite, and your ethics from Kunzite. I will teach you how to use your mind as a weapon; how to think around corners and unravel puzzles."
Zoisite nodded his head toward the courtyard where Kunzite had managed to disarm Jadeite and was now chasing him around the field threatening grievous injury if the younger Shitennou didn't stop running like a coward.
"Successfully pranking Kunzite will be your first test."
Thanks to the Golden Crystal mystically hidden within him Ares had access to all of those lessons Zoisite and his immortal companions imparted on the young prince. With his canine concentration he could move stealthily, hold his body completely motionless, and wait wide-eyed for hours.
Rei took sleeping pills sometimes, especially when she was working on something into the night and had to be up early the next day. She kept the bottle near her bed with some other bottles, mostly allergy medications, but thanks to his less-than-perfect monochrome vision Ares couldn't distinguish one from another by sight and had to rely on the sound of the bottle to determine which was which.
Never rely on just your eyes or just your eyes or your ears. Sharpen every sense. A voice can betray what a glance won't. A smell can reveal a poison that would have gone tasteless.
Zoisite's voice (he remembered it sounding very distant) rang again. Rei was just about to climb into bed when she reached for the bottle that Ares suspected contained the sleeping pills. Luna was still prowling somewhere around the house.
Luna hadn't been quite as talkative since the night Ares first crept down into the basement. He was no fool; the feline was hiding something from him, but neither of them broached the subject. This wasn't something that would be brought into the open. A direct confrontation would only lead to more dead-ends and spin on the tale. Ares decided on a more subtle approach.
He got up, trotted up to Rei's side, and forced his snout into her hand hoping that she would interpret the action as him begging for a treat.
"No, Ares!" Rei snapped at him, "That's not for puppies."
Ares backed away, circled at the foot of her bed, and lay down again contented and relieved. He had nudged the bottle just enough. One of the pills had fallen out and gone unnoticed at is bounced on the carpet and rolled under the bed. Luna heard the commotion and appeared in the room in a split-second and assumed her favored perch on the window ledge. Ares paid no heed to the cat's comings-and-goings and made sure not to draw attention to the misplaced medicine.
Now it was time to wait.
A month passed by like a day and the construction site across the street from the Four Kings Bar and Grill had nearly tripled in size. It appeared that Darien Shield's landmark Project Serenity was going to encompass an entire city block. The noise was unbearable and often lasted late into the night. Construction workers and contractors mercifully began patronizing the establishment, but they were loud, demanding, and usually left the place a wreck when they were done. Very few of the normal customers dared to venture into the construction wasteland.
Andrew was not one of those customers so easily scared away by jackhammers and rivet guns. He paid for his drinks despite the King's insistence that he didn't have to. Andrew certainly wasn't short on cash, but he wasn't waving it in their faces; he knew the restaurant had fallen on hard times and despite the relationship's rocky start Andrew and the Shitennou had become friendly. His space at the bar was unofficially considered the VIP section.
Jadeite and Nephrite lounged against the back of the bar while Andrew drank his beer and occasionally glanced at the soccer game on TV. None of them knew a damn thing or cared a lick about soccer, but the channel had gotten stuck on the TV and Nephrite misplaced the remote. Laziness had set in with the lack of work and no one was about to climb up on a stool to manually change the channel or unplug the TV. Whatever was on was good enough; it was mostly just for background noise anyway.
"Anyone talk to Mamo—" Andrew started to ask and then corrected himself, "I mean Darien lately?"
"No." Jadeite and Nephrite both grunted back grumpily.
"Me neither." Andrew agreed and took another swig of his beer, "I stopped by his apartment the other day and it was cleaned out. One of his neighbors said he'd moved out last month. I don't even know where he's staying."
"Yeah, well there's a lot we didn't know about Mr. Shields." Jadeite grumbled and nodded towards the roaring construction site that was sapping away their livelihood.
"I don't get it. How can you know a guy for so long and know nothing about him?" Andrew wondered aloud, "I knew Mamoru since elementary school. I grew up with him." Andrew smiled fondly, "He was kind of chubby back then and some kids would make fun of him and call him Ma-moo-rou. They'd follow him around mooing like a cow and he just took it in stride."
"Yeah." Jadeite breathed. The Mamoru topic was a sore one; he could do without it today.
"I mean, I'm glad it's not like he turned out to be a serial killer or something like that." Andrew clarified.
Nephrite's eyes went steely in spite of himself. Andrew shrank back into his seat and studied his beer intently. Lita wasn't even in the restaurant today, but just the mention set him on edge. There weren't enough hours in the day with Kunzite missing and though he got to see her around the restaurant (and have casual sex in the cooler) Nephrite felt he wasn't spending enough time with the woman he once so doggedly pursued. They hadn't even spoken about the painful revelation of her youth since the night it was put out in the open, nor had they made any semblance of a plan as to how to go about finding her missing father.
"Anybody hungry?" Jadeite asked trying to break the tension, "I feel like cooking up a burger or something."
"I wouldn't mind a burger." Andy said.
"Get me one." Nephrite ordered, "Rare as shit."
Jadeite nodded and walked towards the kitchen and disappeared around the corner leaving Nephrite, Andy, the background-noise soccer game, and the unending din of construction alone at the bar.
"Where's your lawyer friend these days?" Nephrite asked his sole patron.
"Ami?" Andrew almost laughed, "God only knows. Probably tits-deep in a malpractice case."
"I thought you two were … you know." Nephrite made a circle with two fingers and poked a third in and out of the hole.
"No…" Andrew replied seeming rather embarrassed by Nephrite's infinitely tactful depiction of sex.
"Well that's bullshit." Nephrite commented and helped himself to a glass of beer from his own tap, "What's up her ass if not you?"
"Ami is… um…" Andrew stuttered. Nephrite's crass way of discussing intimate acts was one of those points of friction in their relationship, "She's not very easy to read."
"Girls like her are the easiest to read." Nephrite rebuked him immediately, "She's friendly but distant, she's a bit prude and a little on the shy side and she works too much."
"She's a virgin." Andrew mumbled.
"Dude, that has nothing to do with it." Nephrite expelled his advice, "The dirtiest, trashiest, most worn-out, street-walking hooker still thinks she's a virgin because she hasn't found "The One" yet."
"No, I mean it literally." His patron reiterated.
"Yeah, well that's as may be." Nephrite continued, "That doesn't mean her mind doesn't wander sometimes. I'm sure her fingers do too and whatever fucked-up kinky toys she has hidden in the bottom drawer of—"
"Nephrite, please!" Andrew interrupted him and put his head down on the bar, "Stop!"
"Come on, man!" Nephrite encouraged him, "It's not like you haven't heard this shit before."
"That's not it." Andy corrected him, "It's just... I don't know."
"Just spit it out, dude." Nephrite said and motioned to the empty restaurant, "It's not like anyone is going to hear you."
"I just…" Andrew stammered, "I can't think of Ami like that."
"Why, are you gay?"
"No." He answered firmly, put off by Nephrite's obliviousness, "She's just too good for all that, you know what I mean?" Nephrite's blank stare and silence spoke negative, "I mean she's never talked about it in all the time I've known her. She never dresses provocatively; she never winks or makes lewd comments or anything. She's just… I don't know. Really pure, I guess."
"I guarantee if you got her in the sack you'd find out just how wrong you are." Nephrite told his VIP, "Girls like her, the repressed ones, they're almost always the biggest freaks in bed."
"Yeah, but that's not what I want." Andrew told him and shrank into himself, "No offense, Neph, but I've already had that…"
"Now that's a different kind of freak, Andy." Nephrite told him and eyed him down as though he was planning on beating the living daylights out of him for mentioning Lita, but of course it was only in jest.
"I've always thought of Ami as someone who doesn't even think about sex." Andy explained, "It doesn't seem to concern her and I know when she finally is intimate with someone it'll be that much more special because she's never had a sordid thought in her life."
"You realize that's a complete and utter fantasy, right?" Nephrite asked in all seriousness. Andy just laughed and took a drink of his beer.
"Thinking about her and … like, fucking toys and all that …" Andy shuddered, "It just completely ruins that fantasy."
"So you do fantasize about her?" Nephrite asked for clarification.
"What? No! Well…" Andrew fumbled, "Not like that!"
"Come on, Andy!" Nephrite teased him, "So you get your shit off to the innocent, unskilled, never-been-kissed type. There's nothing wrong with that!"
"It's not that simple, dude." Andrew shrugged, "I don't know. I feel like I don't measure up."
"In your pants?"
"Nephrite, come on!" his favored patron snapped at him, "You brought this topic up. I'm trying to be serious here."
"Well maybe that's the problem, Andy." Nephrite suggested in that mentor-like tone that he sometimes assumed in the strangest circumstances, "You're being too serious about this."
"What do you mean?"
"You're going at Ami the wrong way." Nephrite told him, "Yeah, it's nice and noble that you think she's such an innocent, sweet girl and she's saving herself for marriage or whatever, but honestly… it's probably the complete opposite."
"What, you think she's secretly a prostitute?" Andrew laughed bitterly.
"No." Nephrite replied wryly, "But maybe, sometimes, she'd like to be."
"Huh?" Andy grunted.
"Maybe little miss shy, prim and proper isn't waiting around for Prince Charming to wax all poetic about how beautiful and pure-hearted she is." Nephrite offered, "Maybe she wants to be lusted after. Maybe what she really wants is to be a little dirty sometimes."
Andy's eyebrows had risen several centimeters and he whispered, "You think so?"
"Maybe she fantasizes about you, bro." Nephrite encouraged, "And maybe she doesn't see you as the polite, recently-rich, charity-conscious, hands-to-yourself altar boy that you are." Nephrite clenched his hand into a fist and pointed at Andy, "Maybe her Fantasy Andy is a bit more aggressive; a real player who isn't afraid to get kinky and take care of her darkest desires."
Andy was breathing hard now and Nephrite was sure that under the bar where he couldn't see Andy was having some issues in the confines of his pants. The ex-realtor grabbed his beer of the counter and chugged just to have something else to do. Nephrite laughed heartily and refilled his own mug. He knew that Andy was at heart a good guy, but he deserved a guiding hand once in a while. Nice guys didn't always have to finish last, but then again they didn't always have to be nice either.
Fortunately for Zoisite, who had entered through the back door of the restaurant and hidden behind the dividing wall eavesdropping on the whole conversation being not-so-nice was no problem. Ami had started playing a game with him earlier that day and now there seemed to be some cause to back it up. She wasn't trying to trick Zoisite into believing she knew more about their past lives than she let on. She was completely in the dark about that! She was just…
"Flirting." Zoisite grinned mischievously.
This might actually be fun…
Usagi was having trouble sleeping. It had nothing to do with the ridiculous summer humidity in the city; she had an air conditioner to handle that. It wasn't her allergies keeping her up; she had medication. It wasn't the lingering memory of Mamoru, though she had spent a considerable amount of time pondering the subject. It wasn't even the unpleasant memories of that man Kunzite. Well… actually, it was. It just wasn't her memories of Kunzite that were keeping her awake night after night.
Mina tossed and turned in the room next to her. Usagi heard every creak that her bed made, every thump of her fist, feet, and other assorted body parts against the wall, and every moan of ecstasy that escaped her roommate's lips from her self-inflicted euphoria.
"Kunzite! Yes!" she screamed from the next room. Something heavy hit the wall; probably the back of her head, "Ohgodohgodohgod…."
Usagi smashed a pillow over her face and covered her ears. How long could she possibly keep this up? She'd been at it for at least a half hour… Sure, she knew her flirtatious friend had certain needs to fulfill. They'd talked about it; it wasn't an everyday topic, but it came up every so often. Mina had always been rather respectful of Usagi's privacy in those matters and she herself practiced a measure of restraint. The walls of their shared apartment weren't that thick. But this… this was something else entirely. Mina never nursed a crush this long. She never screamed names like she was living a fantasy; she just, well… got the job done and went to sleep.
Finally after what seemed like an hour Mina had either exhausted herself or reached one hell of a climax because Usagi heard the bed in the next room creak with the weight of a collapsing body that didn't want to rise again. Finally. She closed her eyes, briefly flirting with a jealous thought as to Mina's longevity when she heard something outside her bedroom door. Mina was down for the count, that much was obvious, but Usagi still felt compelled to investigate. She crawled out of bed and padded her way across the room into the hallway. She halted dead in her tracks when she heard it again.
Someone was scratching at the door. It didn't sound like they were trying to pick the lock or even work the knob loose it just sounded like… scratching. Usagi crept slowly along the hallway with her back to the wall. When she reached the kitchen she made a mad, silent dash behind the counter and grabbed one of the larger knives from the sink; better safe than sorry. She moved as quietly as she could and finally put her eye up to the magnifying peep hole in the center of the door, but she couldn't see anything in the dark hallway beyond. She grabbed the latch of the deadbolt and turned it so slowly that it gave off no sound as the bolt slid out and back. The scratching hadn't ceased.
Turn around and go back to bed.
The rational part of her brain had been firing off orders like that since she got out from under her sheets. She placed a hand on the door knob and began ever so slightly to turn it. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. Usagi swallowed hard, and wasting no more time or tension she yanked the door open and leapt backward with the knife held out in front of her.
There was a woman on the floor outside the door leaning up against the jamb. The nails of one of her hands had been worn down so far that she was bleeding from the cuticles. She was wearing an elegant dark gown that had been worn threadbare time and neglect. She looked almost as if she had wandered in from some high school dance or royal banquet, but took every side street and shortcut through the wilderness and seedy back alleys to get there. Her eyes were cast down at the floor, but were wide and red from dryness. Usagi was chilled by the sight of her and reminded of Carrie with her wild-eyed, unstable glare. The strange woman had long black hair that would normally have been rather striking, but was now scraggly and greasy. There was an opal diadem hanging on her forehead; at least I would have been if one of the golden chains holding it hadn't broken. Now it laid limp over one cheek.
"Hello?" Usagi asked worriedly and knelt down next to the woman, "Hey, are you alright?"
The black-haired one-time beauty cocked her head towards Usagi and her glaring, empty eyes suddenly flared with black fire. The woman's pale face flushed red with wild anger and she stopped scratching at midair with her bloody claw of a hand. She reached out with her free hand, sharp nails piercing Usagi's long t-shirt and roughly pulled the pigtailed young woman close to her fanged maw.
"YOU!" she screamed into Usagi's face and, somehow, into her very soul.
She could do little more than cry out helplessly. The creature in front of her did the same, but hers was a counterpoint of uncontrollable rage while Usagi's was a cry of fear.
"YOU!" the woman screamed again and her other hand reached towards the door of Usagi's apartment. Her fingers dug into the drywall and she tore away a piece of the wooden molding around the door which snapped off into a crude, jagged spike.
The black-haired vagrant thrust the makeshift skewer down at her terrified prey, but at the last moment a blinding flash of light seared across her face and blinded her. The woman rose with unnatural grace and speed and, turning down the hallway, was gone in an instant.
Usagi lay there panting in terror for several minutes. She was slow to realize that there was even another presence nearby. When she looked up she was met by the concerned face of Mina as well as their landlord and several other tenants of the apartment building who were awakened by her screams.
"The police are on their way, Usagi." Mina promised her, "The neighbors said they saw a woman running down the hall to the fire escape. Whoever it was, they'll find her."
Usagi only nodded in reply. No police force no matter how large or skilled would find this woman if she didn't want to be found, that much was certain. She felt something aside from terror, loathing, and the imminent reality of her own demise. She felt that she knew that crazed creature. What struck her most was the look of fear in the dark lady's eyes when she released Usagi and ran away. Something had deterred her; something that the insane woman feared more than anything in the world.
Usagi turned and looked towards the end of the hall. She didn't know why she hadn't noticed it earlier. The jagged chunk of molding that nearly sent her to her grave was pinned to the wall between two large radiators.
Sticking out of the piece of the wood and holding it secure to the drywall was, impossibly, a white rose.
Several weeks passed and through observation Ares discovered that Rei's erratic sleeping behavior followed a pattern. He was unsurprised to find that Rei's nocturnal disappearances occurred during the full moon. Ares was patient, as was dictated by Zoisite's lessons. He did not act during the next full moon and waited a whole month to allay any suspicions a certain house cat might have entertained. Ares did not delight in the prospect of deceiving Luna, but she was as stubborn as her master could be. Either of them, now that he thought of it…
Ares felt a pang of sorrow pull at his heart as he lay silent in the night before the next full moon. The thought of Luna's true master called forth images from the shared memories of Endymion and Mamoru. Those visions of the Princess and of carefree Usagi dredged emotions to the surface that had lain dormant since the inception of this new personality. For as much as he shared the memories and experiences of Endymion and Mamoru, Ares was a distinct being. He was, in a way, the person that the Mamoru of this day and age should be: a perfect union of his past lives.
Still, there was no reason to dwell on the unattainable. Ares was not Mamoru, nor was he Endymion. For all his intelligence and resourcefulness he was, unfortunately, just a dog with an overdeveloped, magical brain filled with someone else's memories.
That night, just before Rei got home from work Ares stalked around the kitchen chewing on something: the sleeping pill he had squirreled away from Rei. It was hard work to precisely grind something with primitive muscles and a too-long snout. He concentrated hard so as not to swallow the powdered medication. As he ambled his way through the kitchen Ares stopped, let his tongue loll out of his mouth, and the powdered pill mingled with saliva drooled into Luna's food bowl. With any luck Rei wouldn't notice it when she emptied a can of Fancy Feast for the purple feline and Luna would be none the wiser when she ingested it. Ares only hoped that whatever magical matrices allowed the cat to speak would protect her from a possible overdose of a human's sleep-inducing drug.
"I'm sorry about this, Luna." Ares mumbled to himself. Luna was fast asleep two rooms away basking in the rays of the sun spilling through the living room windows.
When the cat awoke Ares spoke pleasantries, chatted about nothing, and waited by the door for Rei as he always did. The young woman came home, tussled on the floor with her pets for a few minutes, and then got them their dinner. Ares chomped on his tasteless dry kibbles and watched through one eye as Luna literally licked her bowl clean.
Several hours later Ares awoke and looked up at Rei's bed to find it vacant. Somehow he always missed the moment that she got up and left, but he couldn't afford the time to contemplate that. He looked up at Luna's perch on the window, but did not see the cat. His heart leapt in his chest when he gazed down at the floor and saw Luna laying motionless, paws-up on the carpet. He cautiously crept forward with his front paws pulling him along and nudged Luna with his cold nose. A sound like a zipper escaped from Luna's mouth and she rolled onto one side. Her chest rose and fell at an incredibly slow rate, but she didn't stir. Ares let out a sharp, stifled bark to be sure. Luna didn't move.
"Sweet dreams." Ares thought out loud and turned to the bedroom door to begin the annoying task of trying to open it without thumbs.
Twenty minutes later he made his way towards the door leading to the basement and growled angrily at the deadbolt that seemed to mock him. He knew there was no possible way he could undo the lock, but he also knew that door was not the only entrance to the basement. Wasting no time at all he climbed up onto the recliner near one of the windows of the living room which Rei tended to leave open to circulate air. It only took a moment for his paws and snout to tear through the screen and he awkwardly shimmied his canine body out the window and down onto the dew-soaked grass outside Rei's home.
The moon was high in the sky and Ares estimated it to be about 2:00AM; still early enough in the evening to finish his investigation, still late enough at night so that no one would be around to see him breaking in through the basement windows. Those windows were even smaller than the one he had just climbed out of, but they were hinged and made of relatively thin glass. If he couldn't manage to force one open with leverage he calculated that one good head butt would probably shatter them. Thankfully it didn't come down to the more dangerous alternative and after working one of the basement windows with his paw and the top of his head for about five minutes it finally creaked open, inward, and allowed him the precious inches needed to squeeze through.
When Ares dropped into the basement he was relieved to find that he felt no other presence in the room like he did the last time. He carefully stepped across the floor, subconsciously weaving around the pale shafts of moonlight seeping into the basement through the thin windows. He moved past the droning furnace towards the other end of the basement; towards the simple, strange white door that he had seen down here before. Just as before there was a faint glow emanating around the surprisingly well-fit seams of the doorway. The door was once again held shut by a simple chunk of wood on a nail axle. Whatever the light was behind the door, Ares realized it shouldn't have been there. Rei was not careless enough to leave lights on in the house, especially not one in the ill-used basement.
Ares suddenly found himself apprehensive, as though something inside him was tugging him back towards the window and the waiting moonlight. Part of him wanted to look behind the simple door, but part of him wanted to ignore the mystery completely and walk away. Two schools of thought battled for control of Ares' choice, but in the end his inquisitive nature won out. He jumped up, put his front paws on the door and nudged the wooden latch open with his snout. When he dropped back down onto all fours the door slowly began to creak open as more and more light spilled into the room.
"No. Not light." Ares thought to himself, horrified, "Fire."
He realized too late that the door was part of some type of magic spell. While the door was shut nothing could get out and that included sound. When the door was open, however, a terrible, ear-piercing, non-stop cry of endless despair filled the room, the house, and the streets beyond. Ares was pummeled by a howling wind as scorching hot as the sands of a desert. He tried to shield his eyes, but had no hands with which to do it, so he simply stared straight ahead and endured it.
The room beyond the door was screaming with fire. The rough-hewn bricks and cinderblocks that made up the foundations were white-hot, but there was no smoke to accompany the blazing inferno. At the center stood an X-shaped cross of wood. Rei was standing there amidst the conflagration surrounded by the flames. Her arms and legs were tied to the cross. Her eyes were white and her mouth was open, issuing that thundering, endless scream. She was not yet consumed by the flames, but she seemed to be on fire.
"Rei!" Ares barked trying desperately to approach and save her, but the heat emanating from the shrieking, blazing room was unbearable.
Rei's head pitched forward. Her white, empty eyes stared straight at him and bore burning holes into the pit of his soul. The woman tied to this cross was not Rei; it couldn't be. The malevolence he felt beating off of her in wave after scorching wave was far beyond anything the combined memories of Endymion and Mamoru had ever felt in all their long years of battle. She seemed to be struggling; not because of the intensity of the flames, but because of the cross that held her. She was trying to break free! She was trying to attack him!
All of this passed in a moment and Ares was surprised when he heard a second voice bellow from the room, "YOU FOOL!"
A red haze spilled over his vision and a sharp, searing pain shot across his face. He felt the slice of blades across his right eye and howled in pain and fought to stagger away. Blood fell in thick drops onto the concrete floor and his already poor canine eyesight was reduced to half its usefulness. A second swipe near his face was dodged and when Ares fell back into a stream of the moonlight he finally saw his attacker. A shadow grew large against the glow of the inferno and a white creature raced up to him with vicious, sharpened claws bared in his direction. The slim feline looked terrible, as though it hadn't eaten in months. Its fur was ragged and its eyes were sunken into their sockets. Every remaining hair on its body was singed by fire.
"My god!" Ares sputtered, "Artemis?"
"You fool." The haggard cat berated him again and cast a vengeful, worried glance over his shoulder at the room where Rei stood burning, "You may have doomed us all!"