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Gennai Of Delphi Prime: man, ur comment made me laugh my head off

08-. The Blood's Faith
Pt. 2

A fairly large crowd of unkempt and unruly looking children and youths had gathered in front of the four story building to watch the results of the gamble, and with each round the boy with the arm in the cast won, the excitement and anticipation grew in the crowd. After seven rounds of consecutive victories, there were already at least half a dozen bettors offering to be the next to play against the white-haired teenager.

The rules of the game were very simple; you bet a single coin or bill of the value you wanted and the boy with white hair had to match the value, then, both bettors had to shake a plastic glass with two dice in it, whoever got the highest number among three different throws got the money bet by the other.

"This shit is fucking fixed!" a boy, the only one who had already played five consecutive turns, shouted on the verge of hysteria, "Give me my money back you fucking cheat!"

"Cheat? Yeah, you're right about that. I'm a cheater, and a good one... but I'm not cheating anyone here," the white-haired boy picked up his glass with his dice before standing up, the hood of his hoodie falling down revealing four large scars that ran diagonally across his face almost from side to side, "I'm not forcing any of you to bet and this isn't rigged! I've lost several times too, remember?! And if anyone still doubts my word I'll be happy to play with the dice you give me!"

"I'll take your word! so here, I'll be next and I want us to use mine." An African-American boy with a shaved head covered by a red cap elbowed his way to the front of the crowd. "Well? Let's play!"

The African American boy pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of one of his pockets, and placed it in the box marked "prize", the other onlookers whispered in amazement, even the whining teenager fell silent and stepped aside.

A crooked smile grew on the albino's pale, battered face, a mischievous grin with impossibly bright white teeth. After taking his place back on the concrete sidewalk he reached into his hoodie pockets with his left hand, the one not covered in a cast, and after much searching, pulled out a medium-sized glass jar filled almost to the brim with coins and small bills; all the day's earnings, and placed it on top of the black boy's bill inside the box.

"All right buddy, you want to shoot first?"

The shaven black teenager gave the first turn to the albino, who gladly accepted the opportunity while the tension grew in the crowd second by second. Suddenly, as the excitement among the crowd reached its limit, a rather tall blonde girl shouted out in excitement.

"I'll bet four dollars that the pale boy wins again!" Time seemed to freeze for a few seconds until another voice, that of a fat, curly-haired boy, exclaimed even more excitedly.

"Done, I'll take the bet! Anyone else want in?"

The last bet of the day began surrounded by an atmosphere of greed and interest even greater than all the previous ones, before the first turns of both gamblers were over, the betting among the spectators was already doubling the same amount of money that was at stake, favoring almost two to one the most recent challenger.

Another thing that also helped add to the interest was that the first two rolls of each had been identical, following almost a movie script, the albino's last roll of the dice was a ten out of twelve.

"A hard result to beat... but I'm sorry my friend," said the black youngster without bothering to look at the result of his own throw, "you lost, you see, my dice were rigged."

"And that's why it was so easy to beat you," Lincoln said to the black teenager before pointing to the five formed between the two dice. "I happen to be the best cheater you'll ever meet, 'friend'."

And without waiting a moment longer, the white-haired young man took both his jar full of coins and the freshly won bill before trotting away from the crowd, not the least bit interested in the bet that the spectators had arranged on their own.

Nikki, completely happy, started collecting the debts... even Sameer was happy that he, apparently, had lost the bet…

Almost an hour later, just when there was no one around to remember their faces, the four boys met again in front of the same building to split their profits: the outcome of the bet between the spectators alone had brought in just over two hundred dollars.

Despite being one of the biggest earning days for the boys in town, neither Nikki nor her protégés were happy with the distribution of money.

"I don't know why you guys keep going on about this, I already gave you back the hundred bill I 'won' from Casey," Lincoln's tiredness was starting to show on his even paler face. "I tell you guys, you can keep all the money from the bet and half of what was in the jar, so we're good."

"No... I don't know what you did but I know you're conning us somehow, no one would happily give up that much money unless they had more up their sleeve I'm sure you're trying to cheat us Loud!"

"He's a scammer, Nikki, he's obviously going to try to cheat you," Ronalda Santiago's voice sounded from behind; surprised, if not scared, the three teenagers and the blonde adult turned on their heels to see the Latina approaching, she looked really annoyed... to say the least. "Lincoln, please, if you're going to fuck with others, at least play fair with your friends..."

"Hi Ronnie, a surprise to see you here, what are you doing in these parts of the city?"

"What are you talking about Nikki, I live here! And now as for your little problem that I want no part of" her gaze and apparently all her anger, with a very well disguised part of disappointment, was focused intently on the albino, "Lincoln, split evenly what you got, scammers always need someone to watch their back and I won't do that, not with this."

"I don't know what you're talking about Ronnie, we've already split evenly everything out," despite smiling confidently and sounding sure of his words, a bead of sweat was beginning to trickle down Lincoln's forehead. "I'm not hiding anything..."

The Latina didn't say more, she just raised her chin and scratched her neck. Everyone was silent, it seemed that with every second Ronalda's accusatory look was deepening.

Letting out a defeated sigh, Lincoln picked up the box marked "bet". Then he stretched out his broken arm and after subtly moving the fingers in plaster cast a shiny silver bracelet seemed to come out of nowhere. He tossed it into the cardboard box. After lifting and tugging a little on the sleeve of the hoodie on the other arm he pulled a black leather wallet, apparently also out of the air and tossed it into the box as well. He pulled a couple of dollar bills from the spring of his shirt, and another five-dollar bill from the bottom of his shoe, a second bracelet from under his T-shirt. Lincoln tossed them all, one by one, into the cardboard box. Then, trying to reconcile himself with his prospective-girlfriend's friends, and being aware that the trio loved magic tricks, he made a little trumpet with both hands and blew loudly, ten half-dollar coins began to fall, apparently, from inside his nose.

Lincoln put the box back on the floor with a gesture like a grieving child. "There you have it, it's all there... let's go back to dividing the profits."

Nikki and hers, who had been watching everything intently, cocked their heads in surprise, even Ronnie's mouth was hanging open.

"How the fuck did you do that! Tell us how!" the three friends exclaimed at the same time.

-o-

The brutes dressed in white nurse's uniforms advanced through the dark street, not changing their blank expression in the slightest at the girl's outburst. Ronnie Anne caught a glimpse of their silhouettes slowly approaching thanks to the precarious street lighting and waited fixed in place in front of them. Suddenly, both mastodons rushed at full speed towards her, one followed by the other, both together, as if they were a human avalanche. Ronnie raised her right hand, her bare arm did not tremble in the icy night air, and from her very palm shot out an intense wave of fire. The orange flare impacted cleanly on the chest of the one in front causing his camisole to burst into flames and the plastic material it was made of to contract boiling against his body, but then, while Ronalda was ecstatic to see that body burning, she realized that the other assassin was approaching her quickly covered by the body of the first one who despite being roasted alive never stopped running in her direction. Ronnie remained motionless with her arm aloft until she was sure she had annihilated the one who had taken the role of human shield, and only then did she jump to the side, moving out of the way, just as the remaining distance between her and her last attacker was reduced to the minimum for maneuvering.

The huge corpse, still retaining most of the momentum of its suicidal run, plummeted to where she had been only moments before as Ronnie pressed herself against the wall of the building in which just minutes before her friends lived. The solid red brick wall broke the gigantic, charred fellow's fall with a sharp, loud thud, but not before inert humanity slammed into the girl side from the momentum of his fall, thus sending Ronnie flying into the asphalt of the lonely street. Her forehead, along with both arms, were almost completely scraped off as she crashed and skidded on the rough asphalt surface.

Anne let out a curse through her clenched teeth as she felt that pain, slight but constant, almost pleasurable, coursing through her. However, her instincts of self-preservation and lust for destruction kicked in at the last moment, and dodging the inert mountain of muscle that was coming to crush her after bouncing off the wall, she ran towards one of the many unlit streetlights that could be seen in the street, hoping that her mysterious attacker, the one that was still alive, would lose track of her in the darkness.

The trick worked and the crazed nurse ran past her without realizing that he was chasing an empty shadow. Ronnie, a little more alert than moments before, returned to the side of the charred body, who, laying face down, had the burned side of its body almost completely covered by the floor.

His back, however, was intact, with no trace of any contact with the fire, so it wasn't too difficult for the Latina to make out a key ring and a credential holder attached to his white pants. With the hand that was less damaged from the fall from Nikki's apartment, the same one that still held the rosary her grandmother had given her, Ronnie removed the credential from the small plastic compartment that held it to the pants stretched to the edge of the thing's capacity «why would an assassin carry an ID with him?» she thought before reading quizzically under her breath.

Name: Ricardo Tapía. Age: 21 years old. Position: Part-time volunteer at the orphanage..."

She stopped reading when she saw that last part.

«Wait... An orphanage volunteer did this? But there's barely a couple of those in this town and only one is big enough to print out IDs of their staff...»

Stunned by the strange revelation, Ronnie stood still halfway down the sidewalk for a moment; the ID picture on the plastic card that was beginning to melt in her hands didn't correspond in the least with the scorched gorilla at her feet, the guy in the picture looked very thin and so emaciated that she could almost swear he reminded her of someone else...

It was then, as she drew out her mental conjectures, that Ronnie saw a stream of blood pouring from the burns on the body of the tug at her feet, along with the red liquid slid another substance...

A bright green, almost fluorescent substance.

She had been confronted before with a very strong madman who was also bleeding a green liquid...

Ronnie was so stunned by her new discovery, she didn't feel the ground vibrate from the stomping of something huge approaching at full speed, and when she finally noticed she was in danger and tried to get out of the way it was too late. The brute disguised as a nurse, and apparently hypnotized just as she was before, had returned and being both so close, Ronnie could do nothing against the onslaught of the madman. The impact of the nurse's massive body against hers knocked the girl's breath out of her –to Anne it felt like an iron battering ram slamming into a flimsy wooden door– before sending her flying through the air. Intimidated by that manifestation of brute strength, Ronnie clung to faith in her gift and tried to throw fire again, but the human puppet's claw closed around her right arm with incredible force, crushing the tendons and forcing her hand open. With nothing to hold it, Rosa's rosary, that ancient family amulet fell to the ground, most of the beads and the cross that crowned the chain fell down a nearby drain, lost forever.

Ronalda howled in pain and helplessness at the loss of the dear memory as she felt the heat of the atmosphere rise around her.

The possessed nurse's eyes were wide open, and a faint crimson glow shone in his pupils, just as it did in her cousin Carl.

However, and unlike that previous confrontation, the brutal blow that would finally finish her off never came, whoever had sent the possessed pair didn't want to annihilate her, they wanted to capture her. She wouldn't allow anyone to play with her! Angrily, Ronalda concentrated all the power she thought she was capable of mustering and projected it at the monster that had her pinned to the ground. Most of the skin on the muscular arms and the liquid in the possessed man's mouth and eyes began to steam and his clothes began to smoke, the man's skin literally boiled on contact with the Latina. The flesh on his knuckles and palm began to literally melt. But the transformed nurse resisted expressionless in his position.

When that hulk raised his right fist with all the power of a sledgehammer, Ronnie understood that the fight would not be long, since with a single blow of that hand everything would be over for her. She would surely recover from the blow but it would probably be too late for her by the time that happened. She wanted to physically resist but her squirming only made him tighten his grip. The pain in her arm made her cry out, but even so, Ronnie could see the inhuman thing's fist move slowly downward, strangely parsimonious, almost as if in slow motion. She concentrated on ending the fight before he had a chance to hit her. The reddened flesh of the assassin's face began to boil along with the skin, separating it from the bone in clouds of steam, revealing the immaculate layers of raw meat that lay deeper, more attached to the skull, but even that wasn't enough to stop the fist that was headed her way.

And maintaining such a high temperature was starting to become difficult too... just like breathing, what was happening was that as the oxygen in the environment was being consumed at a dizzying pace by the flames that engulfed her attacker, less of the precious air could reach her lungs «Chicharrón, sin aire no hay fuego, end this quickly!» she heard a voice inside her mind rush her.

If anyone was controlling this brute, he had to be concentrating all his efforts, all his will to keep it under his control. The nurse's massive fist, now also brimming with fire sores, rose through the clouds of steam and smoke his own body was expelling, preparing to strike. The drool and blood that had failed to evaporate spilled over Anne's chest and face, mitigating a little of her heat and suffocation, almost as a last consideration before her end.

In a final effort, Ronnie managed to get her other hand, her left, between her face and the smoldering mass of flesh that refused to let go. She fired one flare, then another, and another, and because they were so close to each other each wave of fire tore complete chunks of flesh and bone from the mutated nurse's neck and chest.

The huge fist, now without muscles to allow it to move freely, began its descent with murderous force, thanks to simple inertia, towards Ronnie's face. Desperate, the chicane launched one last burst, and a fire with the intensity necessary to melt steel impacted on the fist. Blood, flesh and clothes all over the thorax flew off in every possible direction or simply turned into ash, that last flash of fire had destroyed the body, pulverizing it completely from the waist to the head.

What was left of the assassin, only the legs and part of the hip, collapsed beside Ronnie, who also withered to the floor, muscle cramping and spewing smoke from her clothes and parched skin, knowing that the fight for her life was over.

She was so exhausted that after hugging one of Nikki's "emergency packs", Anne barely noticed when she fell asleep.

-o-

Lucy crawled through the ventilation ducts, forced to wander through the narrow, dark vents of the Loud house by the millennial parasite that lived inside her throat.

The extremely caloric food that that young, haughty and frightening female had forced it to consume a few hours ago was surprisingly useful to accomplish its phase two ahead of schedule: to lay an emergency larva and in the very unlikely event that its plan was thwarted or its body was too badly damaged, to have the opportunity to start over. Man's inventions always made things easier for it.

But where would be a good place to put the little egg? Those hippie chestnuts spent most of their free time in her room, and one of them spent most of her life intoxicated... besides having some nasty little iron things in her mouth, so… absolutely not there. It wasn't a good idea to hide it in that smart girl's quarters either. Its only viable options were the proud athlete's room or the twins'... without thinking too much about it, it headed the slender legs of its host body towards the room that the blonde girls shared. After all, it thought it would be easier to approach the lightning champion in the delicate body and innocent face of a small girl.

Slowly, the Parasite-Lucy advanced down the ventilation duct, the millennia during which it had existed had taught him that there was never any reason to hurry, and even less so when he only had to hide from a bunch of stupid girls and their negligent parents.

The parasite was already halfway to the twins' bedroom, it only had to slide a little further and it would reach the crack that led out into the room full of girlish toys and animals when it felt someone rummaging around in its mind, not the mind of the body he was using as a shell but its own, an invasive and almost intimidating presence settled in its thoughts, it was something completely different from the simple and dull minds of the beings that inhabited this world.

In all its millennia of existence, the parasite had only felt something similar to this; hundreds of years ago, in his failed attempt to invade a planet populated only by telepathic beings... and that time it had had to flee from that red world when was completely overcome by the metamorphic denizens.

Attentive to its surroundings, watching with both the black-haired girl's eyes and its own, the Parasite-Lucy stood still in the shadowy place. Before it could make up its mind to act, a raspy, high-pitched voice flowed into its mind, with the modulation of a frightened child.

«Lu... Lucy, is that you?»

What was that supposed to mean?

Making a little extra effort, the parasite-like-caterpillar isolated itself almost completely from the mind of its host body to prevent detection and acting as close to what it imagined was a normal reaction of a frightened girl, it exclaimed aloud.

"Who said that, was it you, Great-grandmother Marriet?" It never realized he'd gotten the late sorceress's name wrong and apparently; neither did the Martian child.

The trick seemed to work perfectly, for as soon as it said that phrase in Lucy's voice, the presence disappeared from its mind. Making a new calculation of probabilities, the alien worm considered the youngest of the sisters as a new potential target.

Trying to be even more stealthy in its retreat towards the champion's shared room with the little girl, the parasite activated one of Lisa's sensors.

-o-

Ronnie just lay there with her eyes closed for a moment as she was just beginning to lose herself in the waters of that immense river of her visions when she heard the sirens of at least a dozen patrol cars approaching.

Being surrounded by four murdered people, with one dying or freshly dead waiting to be found in the nearby alley, and being covered in the blood of half the corpses in the place, things were not looking good for the Latina. With her brain addled from exhaustion and lack of water, Anne only managed to make out a shiny object attached to a key ring lying between the legs of one of the mutant-nurses.

As quickly as her aching, tired body would allow, Anne grabbed the keys from the floor and, still holding the plastic bag with the belongings of some of her friends dead because of her, limped away towards the few cars parked nearby. It was too freezing a night, too cold to move around the city on foot, even wearing a coat, so she hoped that the car in which the tugs had arrived was one of the handful of vehicles she could see on the block. «A place to rest and protect myself from the cold» recited her mind, almost on the verge of fainting.

She had already tried to open almost every car on the street and was beginning to be able to make out not only the noise but also the approaching siren lights when providence smiled on her at last. The door of an old blue van with the logo of "Bembo", the famous bread baker, carelessly printed on the delivery box opened. Without much hesitation, Ronalda stepped into the warm cab.

Inside, the van looked completely normal, she could see nothing out of the ordinary except that behind the front seats was a metal partition with no windows, but with a small reinforced door connecting the two compartments, almost as if the vehicle had been designed to transport a dangerous prisoner in the back. But her exhaustion did not allow her to think much about that.

On the passenger seat and on the dashboard behind the steering wheel were a couple of bags of fast food already completely cold, but of considerable size. Seeing them lying there her stomach growled, after all, Ronalda hadn't eaten anything since her breakfast on Friday.

Anxious, Ronnie peered inside the package on the passenger seat and the first thing she saw was a double hamburger whose congealed fat had concentrated into a stiff crust on the bottom of the bun and a warm, now gas-depleted cola. Figuring that both abandoned packages contained similar things, she grabbed the pair of takeout bags with one hand and the "emergency package" with the other; locking herself in the back cell moments before the squad cars her friend Nikki had called to "help" her arrived at the building.