"So let me get this straight." It was weird hanging out with someone, it hadn't happened in years and now she just wouldn't leave me alone.
"You haven't had a boyfriend." There was something strange with gaining powers, questions like these just didn't phase me anymore, I had stared death in the eyes too many times to let something like this fluster me. But still, this girl had priorities that I didn't, but for the sake of our burgeoning friendship, I was trying to be a bit more honest and open between us.
I calmly shifted my view from the busy streets below us to look at the superpowered blond relaxing next to me. "No, I haven't had a boyfriend, no first kiss, no nothing. I haven't had friends in a year and a bit, not since middle school." When it came to Winslow, it was a bit of a sore topic to talk about and hiding from that wouldn't make it any better. 'Be brave.' I could hear my mother's voice egging me on.
She tilted her head to the side, her wide eyes staring at me. "No friends either, geez, no wonder you're stiff." Her gaze shifted back to the blue morning sky.
"I guess I am kinda stiff, not that you pointing it out helps or anything." The sky was clear, the smattering of clouds arriving from the bay doing nothing to stop the great weather from being enjoyed.
"But that's what friends do. If I don't point out your flaws, then no one is going to and wouldn't that be a shame? Living your life without a care for the world, not knowing that you can be a better person if you just listened to your friends." Her words were aimed at me, and not at me at the same time. A half wishful face pointed at the bay before us as we sat on the Halloway building.
"I guess; having someone to point out your flaws is better than walking blindly." The first plane of the day was leaving white contrails in the sky, airfreight from New York to Boston, happy to ignore the city below.
"Well, that's what good friends are for. Like I said, you're stiff and can loosen up a bit with talking, carrying a conversation from one side is tiring." A small laugh escaped her, playful and youthful. It didn't stand the test of time as we kept watch over the city from the tallest building in downtown.
"I used to be a chatterbox." Her head lazily drifted to me, her legs swishing back and forth over the ledge of the building.
"I had a friend, more like a sister. She turned on me in high school." It was painful talking about the past.
"She's the reason I have these powers in the first place." The wind ruffled my hair, my suite stored away in other-space. I kept going despite the flip my stomach did as my mind replayed the horrible day. So much fire.
Her hand grasped mine, the comforting squeeze keeping my mind straight as I talked past the stumbling block.
"She made me a pariah at Winslow, nobody wanted to be my friend, not with her slandering my name." I released the breath I was keeping.
"Taylor," her hair floated in the wind, a stray piece of her power keeping it in the air with ethereal grace. "You've got better friends now."
"Thanks." Baggage always clamoured to be drawn out into conversation, talking past it helped, I could circle around at a later date.
"Now I know it's sudden, but you should come hang out with me, like right now." She didn't leave room to argue, seeing as she walked off the ledge, her floating legs imitating a floor as she stood/floated before me, her hand outstretched, beckoning me to come along with her.
Seeing as Saturday didn't have anything going on for me, I was still suspended from school and I honestly didn't want to go back at all, not even home to dad. I took her offered hand and the promise of a distraction.
A flash of fire and smoke had the red plate covering me, Kushala's wind gently letting me descend from the thirty-odd stories of the building we had taken refuge on. We tracked down to an alley and made our way to the boardwalk in casual clothes.
We arrived at an ice cream bar close to the Ferris wheel, a gaggle of teens waiting at the door, three boys and a young girl turned towards us as we moved closer. Vicky skipped ahead into the arms of the oldest boy there, the other two appeared just a year younger than him, leaving them probably just a year older than me. The young girl was a lanky preteen with golden blond hair, her bottlecap green eyes were sharp as they looked at me and my frozen body.
Social settings… I had developed a phobia of sorts from the bullying, too many unknown faces made me uncharacterizable nervous and anxious, the boy wrapped up by the golden heroine immediately spotted my nervous demeanour.
"Hey! Taylor right. Vicky has said so many good things about you, won't you come join us for ice cream and milkshake, my treat." I swallowed my anxiety, I had to open up, staying locked up as a person would only make life more difficult.
'There's nothing wrong here, they aren't here to hurt you. They don't know you.' I repeated the words as I forced my foot to take another step.
The eyes of the four tracked me as I slowly walked over to them, they didn't say anything until I stood right in front of them. I grit my teeth and fought through the last bit of anxiety in front of me.
"Hi, I'm Taylor." A simple introduction, the words left me and I could feel the anxiety evaporate as the situation proceeded as normally as it could. Anxiety never made it easy, it was a paper tiger that shouted at you until faced with concrete reality and then disappeared without a trace.
"Dennis." The green-eyed boy extended his hand, his shake was firm but gentle.
"Chris." The other brown-haired teen introduced.
"Dean." The boy with the blond super around his arms introduced himself.
I waited for the kid to introduce herself, her eyes still peering at me, phantom anger behind them. Whatever she was looking for, she didn't find it in me. Her arms crossed and she looked away.
"This is Missy, she is Chris' sister. Dennis and Chris are my friends and we made an outing for the day. Vicky decided to join us and she dragged you along." Dean in his rich boy presentation led the group into the building, a single booth was already occupied by the brown hair of Vicky's sister, Amy.
"And Amy just came because she could." Dean added.
We seated ourselves, I sat closest to the door and the couple seated themselves across from me in the corner. Chris and Dennis decided to accompany me on the bench and Missy filled in next to Amy who kept her spot next to her sister
The conversation of the three boys picked up where it had left off, something about sports that I couldn't quite follow and even less add something to the discussion, the awkwardness was apparent as I sat across the two girls. Amy was busy reading something on her phone, content to ignore us as she kept herself busy. Missy, on the other hand, was staring me down, her eyes keenly observing me and my small nervous shifts over the bench, if she wasn't watching me then she was watching the door as people came and went from the small popular ice-cream bar.
"Cream soda," I sputtered out as the waitress waited for me to order, a soft kick to my leg from Amy grabbing my attention and diverting it to the waitress. "a medium cream soda milkshake please."
Maybe this wouldn't turn out too bad if I just kept calm and the conversation simple. I tried listening in on what the three boys were talking about, but the conversation and the topic at hand still illuded me. Instead, I saw the eyes of the three girls often peeking at me when they thought I wasn't looking. The three didn't seem to want to talk about anything to me but they were instead judging me and my posture to see how nervous I was with the situation.
"So," The blond preteen cut the conversation around the table into tatters, the three boy's snappy quips and retorts falling apart at her words.
"How long have you known Vicky?" A casual question, one that I didn't answer quickly enough as the blond barbie answered for me.
"Oh, only a week or so. Taylor has a kind heart and not enough friends to share it with." I wouldn't describe myself as having a kind personality.
Her sister interjected, "Kind? More like a nervous heart. She's almost sweating just sitting there."
"Taylor, no need to be nervous, we're all friends here." Dean's smooth voice cut through the tense air strung by the unkind words of the younger Dallon, his reassurance doing little to calm my re-ignited nerves, the previous anxiety I had squashed came back like a slinking tiger in the night, paper tiger or not.
Small doubts and what-ifs accrued swiftly enough, what-ifs of unlikely scenarios bombarding my mind as I sheepishly looked at the faces of the group surrounding me. I wasn't ready for so many new people at a time. More what-ifs made their way into my mind, each with even more improbable scenarios of increasing ill veracity, I couldn't handle the screaming of them in my mind. A year of intense mental torture from three girls scarring my mind with scenarios of ill will that these people will bring forth as soon as I turn my back.
"Where are you going?" Vicky called out from behind me as I almost sprinted to the door with long strides.
Inhale, exhale, pause for ten. Inhale, exhale, pause for ten. Soft manicured fingers gripped my shoulder roughly, spinning me around to face the dolled up face of Victoria Dallon.
Her words caught in her throat, the sight of my wild eyes telling her that it wasn't nothing that had bothered me.
We stood there for a few seconds as she thought through the list of stuff that had just occurred, too many people too suddenly. Her mouth closed and a thin sad smile made its way onto her face.
"I'm sorry Taylor, I shouldn't have done this." I agreed with a jerky nod. I couldn't get words out, my heart beating so fast it was like the first time I fought a monster.
Her soft hand dropped to her side, clenched and unclenched. "I'm such an idiot, here I am, thinking that I have a new friend that I can get to hang out with my friends. And I'm such an idiot for thinking everything was going to be fine with you." her hands clenched again, the slow relaxation of her hands carrying the conversation with their pauses.
"Can you forgive me? I'll make it up to you." Inhale, exhale, pause for ten.
"I can, I'm sorry for not sticking through. I want to make friends but, but I… I can't sit and act as if I'm not almost having a panic attack." I half-turned away from the girl, my eyes catching a wave crashing against the beach and knocking over a small sandcastle left forgotten.
"I'll see you around okay, I'll call you later." My hands were cold from the wind of the pier and found warmth in the pockets of my jacket as I turned and walked away from my blond friend.
"Stay safe Taylor!" She called out from behind me. I dodged into an alleyway when no one was looking and soared into the sky after a minute, the cool breeze flowing through the slits of my faceplate washing away the doubts and fears of the last minute. I'd have to find a way to ignore these fake emotions that tried to control me.
[/]
"Hey."
"Hey." Brian turned around to say as I stepped through the door, it wasn't normal for the black teen to be at the hideout, but he was the first person I saw after coming back from the boardwalk. To make matters worse, I hadn't actually had a conversation past a couple of words with the black teen since I started living alongside the rest of his team.
He scrounged through the cupboard and retrieved his can of instant coffee, I was sure that he could afford better stuff but he never drank from the nice blends Lisa usually drank from. His distance from the team he was supposed to be leading was clear from the small things like that. He didn't sleep here either.
I brewed my own cup of tea and warmed my cold fingers on it as I nursed it slowly.
"I'm sorry for mucking up the plan." I finally said after waiting in the uncomfortable tense silence. His shoulders tensed and he gently sat the cup and spoon down. He turned slowly to face me, his shoulders relaxing as he calmly levelled his eyes with mine.
"Plans fall apart. It's not your fault." He finally said with a soft tone, carefully choosing his words to not offend me. It was wholly different from the previous iteration of 'not killing capes'. He saw my quirked eyebrow and decided to elaborate.
"I didn't know that he almost killed you, it was dark and I saw blood, I assumed it was his. A bit dumb in hindsight as it simply kept dripping out from your suit." He stirred his coffee with slow swishes from his hand, almost spilling the black blend with the inefficient mixing method.
"And let me guess. Lisa told you straight what happened?" I knew the girl had a soft spot for me, I didn't know why but I was thankful for that.
"Yeah," he finally drawled out slowly, "made it clear that shit does happen, and I need to accept that." His shoulders dropped upon speaking the words, I felt that he might be judging himself too harshly.
"Brian. You're seventeen, you haven't been a team leader for years and you need to accept that. Nobody starts off good, we'll get through the rough spots slowly. I guess we started the wrong foot, we never actually introduced ourselves." My red plate armour fizzled into white smoke that disappeared without going anywhere as I jutted my hand out to him.
"Taylor, I'm a big dork and the newest badest cape in the bay." He smiled at my bravado.
"Brian, misfit and bad boy." His hand was quite larger than mine, his grip was strong but not crushing.
"Well, mister team leader, care to join me in eating a bucket of ice cream after I ran from a perfectly good milkshake with none other than Victoria Dallon." His brow quirked up but he moved to the freezer to grab the strawberry tub.
"You're going to have to give some details to that one, a story like that often needs to be told to new company."
We relaxed onto the new sofa, the old one rotted in a dumpster a mile away and talked about nothing for the rest of the day. I liked him, he was funny.
[/]
"We're going now!" I almost shouted through the phone at Vicky. She was trying to stall me but I was having none of it, I needed to go now. A sudden hunger in my soul had reared its ugly head and demanded me to sate it. It was totally out of the norm, I had killed the ice monster a few days ago, I shouldn't be having a lick of hunger for at least another forty-eight hours.
'Fine! I'll be at the building in fifteen.' She clicked the line shut. I simply cruised upwards on soft wind, waiting for the blond to arrive. I had promised to take her on another hunt, but this felt a bit different than the previous ones, I didn't know how, I only hoped that she didn't need to risk herself again.
[-]
Blood dripped in soft rivulets down the red plated gauntlet, the ruby red contrasted against the thick dark blood of my vitae, my blood mixed with the dark almost black red of the monster and glimmered with the midday sun. The blood dripped leisurely onto the ground as I took a deep breath in and out to regain some stamina from my recent spat, some of the mixed-blood had quite viscously splattered on the ground around us as we took turns to pummel one another.
A second long breath softened the pounding in my ears as I shifted my burning arm to face against the hulking beast before me. Four legs as wide as my torso, each capped with a vicious set of claws of onyx. The legs coiled with tense muscles beneath them, the skin broken by hundreds of bone spikes that hardened in mere minutes. Each spine was filled with a toxin that slowly infused my system from the wound in my shoulder.
Blue iris, with red centres, glared at me with unveiled hate, several long gashes followed from just above the eyes on the brow to the two thick horns. A stiff neck with more spikes sat in front of two large wings that were covered in the same black spines. A singular tail swished back and forth like a cat's tail that was angry at me being near it.
White knuckles gripped the handle of my shield as I took another hammering paw on my left as the monster sprung back into action with his brazen attempts to kill me. I retaliated with the lance and the almost-dull tip with a powerful thrust to the head of the beast. A dozen or so spiked needles broke off and flew to scatter across the ground as the monster flinched away before I could impale its eye; it continued its motion with a smooth jump to create space for the two of us and roared back at me.
Pain met me as I inflicted even more of it on the beast, my lance tip broke several white spikes before sinking into the flesh just above a rib, spearing the lung of the monster after a single long leap sent me crashing into its side while it was stuck screaming its lungs out at me. The three long spikes impaled in my left shoulder flared up in pain as I took cover behind my shield and leapt back several feet to clear the monster's immediate retaliation.
I hoped to dodge the swiping paw but a long claw grabbed hold of my shield and almost tore my arm off, I used the leverage of the beast to spin with the attack and drove the lance straight back at the monster. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to score a direct hit to the eye as the monster still had its wits about it and nimbly evade the strike completely.
We stood and stared at each other for another set of slow pounding breaths as we came to the same conclusion: we couldn't kill one another with half attacks, we had to be reckless to kill. Or at least that's what the monster was thinking, I had a few more aces to use in the fight, one of them was hiding behind the treeline for me to give a signal.
[-]
Vicky was floating just beyond the visible field of the fight behind a thick tree and waited for an opportune moment to strike at the beast while its focus was on Taylor. And Taylor tried to keep the monster's focus on her as she stepped forward slowly to re-engage the monster with phantom-steel and other hunted abilities.
Ozone filled the air and Vicky covered her eyes to not be blinded by the scrawny teenager's hunted power. The Kirin mega bolt descended from the heavens and impacted the back of the monster before it could figure out what was happening, Taylor didn't hesitate to abuse her opening and lunged forward with a stab of her lance, the razor-sharp tip diving in between ribs before pulling out with a squelching burst of almost-black blood.
Another thrust slams into the stiff nail-covered flesh and with it several nails ding off the hide and scatter around the floor but her lance doesn't pierce the hide a second time, instead of cutting flesh and bone as the tip gouges out a long strip of rib from the monster.
"Come on you fat piece of shit. DIE!" The demand of the girl's scream is accompanied by fire from her form and the wash of red and blue chars the flesh and boils the bone spikes on its back and flank before the beast again nimbly jumps away from her.
[-]
The lance's tip had dulled considerably since the fight had started and I needed a moment to sharpen it and maybe scarf down a potion before the poison from the needles in my shoulder got to me. The intense burn of the three spike's venomous payload had spread down my arm and was numbing the hand enough that I couldn't feel anything. On the other side, the venom had started affecting my heart and breathing, complicating the fight as it kept fighting against the enhanced regeneration I had acquired from Kirin.
But Nergigante wasn't going to offer me the chance to recover, not with the frenzy the beast attacked with. The same frenzy that kept Vicky from doing anything to help me, the claws, wings, and spikes would pierce right through her if her shield was broken from a previous attack. I still needed a moment to recover so I had to shout out to the girl floating behind a tree.
"Bomb!" I yelled, hoping that she'd get the message and blind the monster for a few seconds. She was smart enough to get my meaning without any further prodding and zipped past a few trees to impact the monster with her armoured boots, the strike landing straight against the two massive horns and sending the beast stumbling a few feet. Her arm flicked out with superhuman speed and launched the blueish bottle straight at the head, the glass shattered against the snout of the beast and the flash triggered. The little bug that could be seen swishing inside it melting as electricity coursed through it, rupturing illuminating sacs in a flash of golden light, stunning and dazing the monster for precious seconds.
I was already done with the red liquid and had pulled two of the three spikes from my pauldron when the flashbomb went off. I tore out the last spike, my arm numb from the poison, the blood loss was being fixed by the potion running through me. I plunked my hand into the pocket and had the whetstone jump into my hand without thought.
One sweep, Nergigante regained its focus. A second sweep, the tip reforged itself, a hoarse scream came from the beast as rage-filled its eyes. A third sweep, the sun glistened off the tip and the monster threw itself towards us.
A final sweep of the stone over the lance's tip and it sparkled to my eyes, begging to be broken against the monster again. Nergigante was close enough that I simply swivelled on one foot, the tip of the lance singing through the air as it travelled to meet the face of the monster, the same monster that was as nimble as a cat while weighing a few tons. But its cattish reflexes didn't save it this time and the tip struck true into the face of the monster, it didn't pierce the eye as I had hoped but the snout was a good consolation prize. My lance was impaled maybe half a foot or so into the beast, half a foot that was more than enough leverage for the beast to pull it from my grip as it thrashed against the impaling object.
Blood erupted like a geyser out from its nose, drenching me in the dark ichor of a beast on its last legs. It kept thrashing and I had to jump away to not let the monster hit me with my weapon.
With a mighty paw the monster broke the lance into and extracted the tip from its nose, the blood kept pouring out of it as it reared up and pounced on me. Its entire weight fell onto my shield as I was crushed beneath Nergigante.
"Taylor!" I could faintly hear Vicky shout from beyond the mass of the monster on top of me, the beast didn't budge an inch as I felt its heart slow down above me. It was dying, but it wasn't intent on just letting itself die without taking me with it.
It stood up, its blood-covered mouth gripping my right arm and flinging me aside, large rents in my armour had blood gushing out of it and covering the earth in dark rain as I withheld my scream, the potion of earlier working overtime to keep me from going into shock and dying.
Nergigante stalked forward, the monster stepping slowly and almost falling with every step to reach me. I let my shield go, cupped my hand and summoned the red glare of the crimson comet to me; it balled in my fist, a harsh red glare filling the battlefield as I summoned another string of power to allow me to survive.
"I will die hunter! But you will die with me!" I was stunned and my lapse of thought sent the jet of red energy screaming into Nergigante, who took it with almost no effort. The red lightning washed over his form and ozone filled my lungs as it took a final stumbling step towards me, reared up, and lept.
A few tons of monster was mere inches away from crashing into me. I summoned wind and crimson energy to my feet to get me out. It wouldn't be enough.
Steel boots crashed into the face of the monster, several spikes launching themselves off in aggressive retaliation, one plinked off the shield of Vicky as another sheared through her thigh and impaled itself several inches deep into her. She screamed and landed next to me, writhing in pain as the poison activated in the quills and rushed into her system.
"A gallant save. But she will die instead of you."
"You talk!" I shouted back to the monster.
"A hunter that can understand me, so, things have been set into motion… so long. Hunter." Its eyes dulled and I hastened over to the monster to absorb his power into me.
"Killer of mountains, monstrous king of the banquet, return to me so that we may become one." No motes of light floated off his body, instead, the flesh of the monster started steaming and dissolving into the ground, the bones were left bare in seconds and started to crumble into dust as I stood over the beast. No new powers came to me.
I turned back to Vicky, the girl was moaning and clutching her leg, she had only had the injury for maybe thirty seconds, but I had to act fast to save her from dying. I dismissed my armour, it dissolved into white smoke slower than I wanted it to. Blood leapt from my shoulder and forearm as I stumbled to get close to the whimpering blond.
A flash of red covered me in my red armour again, it was pristine with no holes where I was losing blood at a slower and slower rate. I retrieved the small phial of red and tore off the stopper. I placed a hand behind her head and forced her up a bit, I pressed the rim of the phial to her lips and she gladly opened her mouth to swallow down the contents in a split second. Mere moments passed as relief flooded through her.
I gripped the protruding spike of bone in her leg and pulled, her vitae came with it in a small spurt. Nothing was ever clean when hunting monsters.
"Taylor." She gasped out, "Taylor, it's cold." She had started to shiver; the poison must have affected her more than it had affected me.
"Shh, Vicky. You're going to be okay. You'll feel better in just a moment." As I said it, her shiver started to subside and her eyes closed in relief, her breathing returned to normal from the short gasps she had been under for a minute.
I let her rest against the ground and sat on the soil next to her, blood covered the ground in sticky darkness and unfortunately, most of what we were standing on was covered with the remnants of Nergigante's blood. I simply didn't care. I took a long slow breath to calm my nerves.
Fifteen minutes later, Vicky sat up with a frown of discomfort. She rubbed at the spot where the bone had impaled itself, the Kevlar pants were shredded and a decent hole indicated where her injury was, the scar beneath the blood would remain for the rest of her life, an ugly thing on her thigh.
"You okay?" I asked as I put a soft unarmoured hand on her shoulder. She looked back at me with tired eyes and softly nodded her head.
"Come on." I pulled her up. She hobbled on the leg but let herself float a few seconds later.
"Let's get you home." I floated just ahead of her with soft wispy wind and we slowly moved our way back to the Dallon household where we both floated through her window and crashed together in her bed without a word, sleep taking us, tangled limbs and all.