BETRAYAL
"We can proceed with the second part of the plan!" It was easy to say, only now Shen felt the weight of those words. Never felt like that when it was the people of GongMing! That meant being a city lord?
Good thing it wasn't your case, because he was getting paranoid and keeping thinking that not everyone would come out alive!
The reckoning came! And the humans would pay! Shen had not forgotten what he found and doubted destroyed! Once the plan was implemented, it would have been their end in the event of failure! He was sure. And part of him couldn't stop hating humans with a desire for revenge that grew more and more! To hell with the Master's wisdom! If only he knew, he'd probably change his mind. Shen was curious to see his reaction, but he knew it was not the time to confess something like that at all, and he wondered if he would ever do it...
They split up and the peacock was immediately joined by Shu, Mei, Xu and Hua his most loyal and great friends. That is why they would direct the attack on the east side, led by Shen. As he returned to the head of a small army, the peacock felt like nothing had changed in those years. Adrenaline and excitement went up to the roof and that was exactly what happened to him when he brought Zhan and his pack hunting bandits! Only these were worse than all of them! Even the evil Gang! Only then did the peacock realize that after years... he had rethinked that excrement! Better! It was nothing, so thinking about it would coincide with a waste of time.
They reached the point where, days before, with the favor of the night, they had moved and hidden all the ammo. Besides that there was what was left of dust stocks, previously provided by Rose, which would have been right to carry them in order to use them instead of wasting them there.
The door was well guarded, but fortunately, the rest was protected only by bars, barbed wire on top, for many yards before any tower on the lookout. Their previous escape attempt should not have alarmed them much about the safety of the wall, since they fled the castle. I think it would have been a mistake to turn to them!
A prolonged sound, very similar to the warning signals used by humans, but unique in its kind, spread throughout the reserve.
Shen and the others knew the meaning of all this: Adam and Teo managed to set it off, the guards were distracted and Rose and Sam would soon arrive.
Lok together with Long and Jian with Wu flew in opposite directions headed to the nearest towers where Sam on the one hand and Rose on the other, would neutralize the guards and awaited their arrival for any updates.
Sam never felt so nervous in his life! It was something hard to explain! Sure at school when you go there, not having studied a damn thing, but with the hope that luck will bring the professor not to fish your number, you pee yourself, but it's a whole other thing!
He was walking a very long, long hallway built inside the walls to not force anyone who had to walk him to the top of the building. To interrupt this tunnel, there were stairs that led to the lookout towers, far apart.
He knew exactly what stairs to take and struggled not to run because of the agitation. If all went well, they would have scored the shot of the century!
On another level compared to the robbery of Valerio Viccei who... Yes, around 1980 ... he broke into Knightbridge's security depot, stealing 198 million dollars!
Or the 1970s when men dug a tunnel that connected sewers to a vault in Nice, stealing about 50 million francs.
No! No, no, no! The value of Derek's collection... didn't know how much it was worth! But certainly much more than any figure! Perhaps even greater at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai than his father had told him, the cost of the construction had never been said... because of the huge expense... Maybe...
Well, he, a 15-year-old boy would have robbed the Collector of his... Collection! The boy had to stop abruptly and turn back, only realizing that he had exceeded his goal.
Once reached, he began to climb all those stairs trying to maintain a normal gait to avoid getting out even before starting with the hard part of the plan!
As soon as he was at the top it took him five good minutes to catch his breath, but once he did he decided to act. "Good morning, the birds are very agitated and I'm looking for them, if you see them, isn't that you could warn me?" He asked as kindly as possible to one of the three guards inside the tower. "Shoot you snitty!" One of the two people in front of each other, engaged in a poker game, answered him. Sense of duty at the highest level, in short!
Sam recoiled, but the idea of his future glories prompted him to insist, "Derek sends me! It is my job to check that everything is..." "What have you got there?" He asked for a guard to stop him abruptly. The boy looked down and saw the envelope in his right hand, which contained the package of candy, specially prepared by Rose for the occasion.
"A thought for disturbing you during your turn to..." "All right!" said the biggest of the two, "If we see one of the birds, we'll warn you! Now go!" He answered by ripping the envelope out of Sam's hands.
He didn't make him repeat and ran to the stairs, but not to go down all of them, just the ones that were enough not to be seen or heard. Two deaf rounds passed, one behind each other, gave him the green light and went back inside the small tower to look satisfied with the two men asleep on the ground because of the mighty sleeping sleeping pill put by his friend. A very useful secret ingredient!
Two? Weren't there... three?
"You damn brat!" A pissed voice made him freeze on the spot, "I'll teach you how to play tricks!" Says the angry man trying to grab him by the arm.
Sam barely avoided the grip and hid behind a chair, but the man was already on top of him! He was grabbed by the neck of the shirt and pulled up like a feather light and at that moment regretted his desire for fame.
"I will hurt you very much." Said the guard with such a cold voice that it would bring back the winter immediately, "But tell the Collector that it was me and you will regret it."
The man was too busy freezing him with the look that he did not notice the hands of the boy, who freed from the deadly grip, had pointed the table next to them grasping a large telescope. Sam hit that monster with all his might that must be so many since he managed to knock him down with one shot! He fell to the ground and felt relieved that he had managed to get by.
He got down on his knees in a chair and just before checking if one of the birds was actually coming, his eye fell on the uniform worn by both guards sedated with sleeping pills.
Lok flew over the walls, careful not to cross the barbed wire below, remaining inside. I know that this would have triggered the alarm since humans were able to perceive even if a single feather had crossed the borders... alerting them ahead of time!
Shortly before reaching his goal, he veered sharply and perched on a branch with Long after seeing a guard in the tower. Sam and Rose hadn't arrived yet!
But they were both surprised when they saw the guard greet them with one hand and with a nod incite them to go to her. Then, suddenly, the guard lost several centimeters in height and the two birds realized that it was Sam who had probably got down on his knees in a chair, perhaps to delude other sentinels passed just before...
Once inside that small tower room they saw three men lying on the ground, sleeping soundly. "You made us take a shot!" He complained about Long.
"Sorry, but prudence is never too much!" said Sam was wearing a jacket and helmet that were too big for him to look like one of the guards. It didn't take a genius to realize that the two birds were annoyed by his genius.
"Prudence? What a prudence you were looking out the window as if you were in your own home!" Lok accused him of "I've been waiting for you!" The boy justified only hearing a few lines of protest.
"Stop it! Try to stick to the plan and make sure no one comes from the other towers. If we can isolate this gate, we'd have a big head start! I'll go warn Shen that everything is going according to plan." Said Long before he took off. "I wonder if they remember that I do not understand a damn thing!" Poor Sam asked himself mentally.
The sparrow went into the thick vegetation and in a short time reached the point where everyone else was hiding. Jian had already returned, that could have meant that the time to act had finally come!
"We shall proceed!" Said Shen and Shu's howl started the world.
Genji, Dishi and other small animals started fireworks aimed at the towers at the edges of the big gate while some archers aimed at the few guards walking above the walls near the latter.
The fires were simultaneously fired with the fall of wounded guards on earth.
As expected, the glass of the tower was slightly damaged, but that was enough to confuse humans. Mei led his state-of-the-art group to attack and had to stop his advance as soon as the guards, who were inside the towers, opened fire. Some acute whistles made her look back and saw Shen and the others were trying to cover them, trying not to get hit by the deadly human weapons.
The cat hid behind a big log, put there with other big items like rocks and other logs, just for the occasion. Some were injured before and this blocked her for a moment that seemed to be interminable.
For whatever reason one fights, war would never lose its brutality. Full of hate and treason, resulting from idiotic things like power and revenge.
The first one made the collector slave, while the second one blinded them. Considering that lives would be wasted, but inebriated by a sense of justice, Mei realized that he was fighting for a fair cause, but following the wrong ideas!
But for the time being, you shouldn't have cared! His job was to fight with his friends because he was certain about one thing: two goals go with two goals, one is to give them, and the other is to take them.
It didn't matter if they were fighting for their freedom, perhaps, because pursuing a goal could prove to be motivating, but that would not make that fight better and everyone who would inevitably follow after.
As always, the Master was right, "War is a punishment for him who inflicts it as well as for him who suffers it."
Xu was there in a short time. "There is one right before us!" The Panther informed her. Mei, regained her lucidity in less time than he expected and took one of Shen's most dangerous and destructive fireworks, and she threw it at the same time. The second distracted the guard enough to make the cat hit a mark, leading the human on the ground after having had it slipped on the side, for several meters.
Guo was the first to get to the top of the walls, with his two hooked swords in defensive position, he captured inside the towers to see if there was any cowards holed up. He hit him, or rather the human did it, and he was making the weapons he was carrying with him completely ineffective. But if man had won, on the one hand, there was no strange presence behind his shoulders and Lim trapped him with a strong blow to the head of his raided bat.
On the other side, Mei wasn't so cautious and entered the tower like a hurricane just to lower at the last moment, a blow that otherwise deadly blow. The momentum was such that she found himself crawling into the ground so fast that she crashed into the armed human, and he crashed into the wall violently and sent it to the dream world.
"It was too easy!" Mei remembered as soon as she realized that all the other guards had been rendered harmless and Ning, helped by Pei, was opening the heavy door. "I do not agree with that at all!" protested poor Guo as Shu swamped his wound, facing the opposite tower.
Shen looked around horrified and full of rage. In the past he had participated in some small, but still challenging and dangerous battles. But this was different from how he had expected it! Before long, a small number of humans had managed to injure many of them. Master or not Master they had to kill! Only by decreasing the enemy's numbers would they really have a chance!
The problem at the power plant had caused quite a stir and their signal had only increased it.
Now the poor Teo and Adam stood before the great Collector trembling like chicks. "It's true that you're just kids, but it's my duty to ask you, do you work for her?" asked in a glacial voice.
"It was an accident!" whispered Adam that he suddenly felt extremely stupid for getting involved. His parents would never let him get away with it, and at the very least he'd be locked in his room for a year! Maybe in time to celebrate your birthday with a big party, but now was not the time to think about it!
"W-we didn't know... W-we didn't think that microphone would work! The power is not there!" stammered Theo, unable to stop shaking like a leaf. His father would never take him with him to Greece after this genius! It was strong to think that we were acting in a group, too bad he had only been concerned about the consequences once the damage was done, when it was impossible to repair the mistake!
"In recent months you have done nothing but increase my enemies by telling them lies! That I sell children to make what it takes to get my blimp flying, that I kill anyone who doesn't support my wishes! Yet she was the one who..." Derek took a deep breath. He had to stay calm! If she really damaged the hydroelectric power plant and sent those brats to distract him, she couldn't let the information gathered in those months! On the other hand, if the kids were really in the dark about everything, he could compromise himself with the press! It was known that anyone who came out of the castle was attacked by hopeful reporters to take off their career.
In this case, as underage, they were nagging families and it was better if the children only told about afternoons with their great friend Rose and not her very rare collection!
"Go play and forget my words! I worry about my daughter, that's all!" cut Derek short and then saw those two brats splash out of the room.
It's been almost a year since he talked to his daughter.
At first he refused to believe every suspect that he had gone into his mind, but as time went by and as evidence increased, he had to reclaim!
Carmela was very smart and she had taken the curtains out just before he could collect enough evidence to charge her.
She killed her consort, even though she had just taken away a problem. And if Rose wasn't her biological daughter, he would have gotten rid of it as soon as possible so that he could finally have an heir worthy of his name!
The former secretary! The liar! The traitor!
She had corrupted some, indeed many, of her men to such an extent that by now their loyalty had changed completely. Many had followed her outside the castle and even more, they believed the fairy-slings about him going around!
But the thing that tormented him the most was the thought of being used!
Carmela had taken advantage of her popularity and long journeys to import products illegally from the world of anthropomorphic animals! An uncontrolled, clandestine trade, risking bringing unknown and deadly diseases into their world...
And all this under his nose!
He could have denounced her, but he knew that he had unknowingly meddled in this bad business and was equally guilty.
He had made sure that if she was poured, he would follow her!
Clever, ruthless and stubborn! He had to admit that he admired her!
Carmela was aware that sooner or later she would discover her and soon a war would break out and it was Derek's intention not to lose her! Her goal was not yet clear to him, but he would protect what he had created with so much effort, and he would take revenge... even at the cost of living!
Something was wrong! While most of them had gone deep into the woods, Shen and the small group selected for the rearguard had stopped at the edge of the forest to prevent some retaliation from humans, but for now the bipeds had not shown themselves!
If Piao and the others had attacked the west side, the humans had inevitably been alerted! Why wait? Why didn't they act right away? That Derek had prepared for an eventuality like this exactly as happened during their first escape attempt?
A huge explosion scared the crap out of all the cats in the world, plus Shen, Syauan, Shu, Hua, and a few others who chose to stay by the peacock.
"The others have gone that way." Mei said with obvious distress, indicating where, probably, a disaster had happened.
"Move!" screamed Shen starting to run. Ning and the others should have met the wolves by now, but they could be slaughtered by humans because the canides knew no enemy and what he was capable of!
They came into a wide clearing and saw that the rest of them had been in the middle of a war between humans!
The gunmen were aiming at their own kind, ignoring the animals trying to hide and help those of them had been wounded.
They were everywhere! Both explosions and human beings! It wasn't a fight, it was a slaughterhouse!
"Take cover! To the mountain!" yelled Shen before he paupulated as hard as possible. They shouldn't have panicked! It was lucky that humans were so busy killing each other because they would give them the chance to escape unharmed!
The relief lasted a little. Some inventions, called "machines" reached the peacock and others who were standing by his side. Mei and Shu grew up, while Hua wisely decided to fly out.
A mechanism, placed at the top of the vehicle, started a big network that Shen and the others barely dodged. "Carmela wants them! Live or dead! Get a move on!" screamed one of the humans. It was the last thing he said before a feather knife stuck into his chest and put an end to his miserable life.
Xu was surprised. He thought it would take Shen longer to decide to be serious. I mean, if humans wanted to kill them, there was no other way out. They too had to attack with their intention to eliminate them!
There was a brief moment of surprise from both sides, human and not, and once they were passed, the real fight began!
Shen hid behind a big bush. Things were going to get worse and worse! That human! It was all his fault!
But on the one hand it was comforting to know that Derek had two problems instead of one. That would have benefited them!
A dying human had made it clear that Derek and Carmela had declared war.
Shen and the others were surprised by the secretary who apparently wanted to destroy both his rival and them! The peacock had made the bigger and slower animals split into small groups, with the order to attack only if necessary, while he and others had taken care of humans to allow as many as they could, to escape. He still had to wait for the return of those who attacked the west side of the walls!
"Shen!" Mei stopped by him for the race that was just made. "Look for Hua! Or anyone with wings! I want a full report of the situation!" Said the peacock.
"You are injured!" I'll see you only then notice the dark spot of blood that had formed on Shen's belly and he was tampering with a wing.
"This is not the time..." "To die! I would say no!" She said she couldn't mask the concern in her voice.
Shen had a big sigh. They just had to reach the caves! Once inside it would have been easy to break the entrance by separate them from humans. Bo would have taken them away from danger and someplace safe!
"Boys!" A voice turned them around and saw Meng landing next to him.
"How did it go?" asked Shen concerned "What?" He asked the rapid: "What the hell can he ask you? Use your head, chicken brain!" Mei screamed whose patience had run out of their lives because of the situation they were in.
"Ah...right!" You run Meng by throwing a dirty look at the cat, even if you had to admit that you were right. "There is good there! We have landed a lot of guards, and I believe that some of them died while we fled the building, but I will tell you this later!" He said. "Good! Now we will find the whole human army on our tail!" Mei complained well that humans don't forgive easily.
"Ning and most of them have entered a cave! Bo's with them! But we are cut off!" Said the vulture trying to catch breath.
"What does that mean?" Mei asked for a fool.
"Most of Derek's humans are still near what remains of the west wall of the reserve, whereas those who were here were killed and her allies have barred us from the road!" Meng explained the situation by failing to hide his terror at all.
The posts on the bases of the walls had done their work, but they had not stopped the unexpected enemies, namely Carmela's men!
"We are 22 counting all cats and Hua, Syauan, Huo, Shu and you!" Mei's voice-over.
A grief grunt was followed by Xu's appearance from behind a bush. The cat was limping visibly, clear sign that the wound that was being put to him was quite serious. "I swear they will pay you! They will suffer a hundred times what I am suffering now." Xu complained about a big rock.
"I agree!" Guo said approaching the group "Many were injured! It is absurd that we cannot use their weapons, or am I the only one who thinks so?" asked the cat furious even though nothing had been done. "Ask Shen." she answered in tone Mei knowing that the peacock was right: they didn't know that kind of weapons and it would be reckless and dangerous to try them just to have a slightly advantage, risking their lives unnecessarily, because they had weapons!
Mei's claim was sufficient to stop the protests, the observation that Meng was about to make and a rather inappropriate argument. Those who were here decided to wait for everyone to join the group so that they could assess the situation well and react accordingly.
Hello everyone! I hope you had a Happy Easter!
I apologize for the delay, but without the university the days go even faster and also, with the study I could not find a moment to publish!
It has begun! I have twists and lots of action in mind!
I hope something decent comes out in the end! Tell me what you think and what you expect!
Suggestions and comments I look forward to them so you can continue writing and publishing!
See you soon,
X-98