The sun has long since set as Gorha and I try to track down Bakuda. Thankfully our tracking methods don't rely on light. Gorha, with Owl in charge at the moment, decided that I was moving to slow, so she has been carrying me on her back while she jumps from rooftop to rooftop. All I have managed to find so far are people cowering in their homes. I found some possible ABB members in their homes, some even had guns out, but even they were seemingly just with their families. Even with how large my range is with my bugs, and with Gorha moving faster than I could on foot, we still haven't covered a quarter of what's considered ABB turf yet.
Although because we're going by rooftop now, I get to see something interesting with my own eyes. I see what is probably Velocity zip by a few times. I'm not sure it's him because of how fast he's moving, but I don't know anyone else that moves that fast so I'm making an educated guess. And you know what, it's nice to see that the Protectorate are out trying to catch the bad guys. Turns out it only takes half the city blowing up for them to do their jobs, good on them.
Maybe I'm listening to Owl complain to much about the government. Nah, I got my own beef with them, though Owl's complaints are probably throwing gas on that fire to be honest. Oh well.
Just as I'm about to go down the mental rabbit hole of errant thoughts, I sense someone on a building a couple streets over. I move some other bugs over to get a good look at who they are. By their body shape they seem to be male, and have some sort of bodysuit with knives all over. It's hard to get a lot of detail with how dark it is, but they look to also be carrying grenades. And their mask seems to be a demon mas- shit. It's Oni Lee.
I tap Gorha's shoulder and motion for her to stop, then I dismount.
"What's up, you pick something up?" she asks me.
"Yeah, I found Oni Lee a couple streets over, seems he's scouting out something. He's an ABB cape."
"Sweet, then we kick his ass and make him tell us where Bakuda is. Is he guarding anything, or just hanging out?"
I check the building Oni Lee is standing on and a few of the ones around him, but don't find anything. "No, seems he's just looking around. It might be a little hard to fight him, I guess he's suppose to be a teleporter who likes to suicide bomb his problems. He's got a pretty big body count from what PHO says."
Gorha groans. "I hate teleporters, do you know if Phony Oni is a eyesight teleporter, or an anywhere teleporter?"
"Um, what's the difference?"
"Well an eyesight teleporter needs to see where they want to go to teleport, the other one just goes where they want to go, it's kinda cheating." She shrugs and shakes her head. "The first one we might have a chance against, but the second one, we'd be better off just not fighting him then. I'm just thankful he's not a flyer."
"You don't like flyers?"
She shakes her head. "Nope, hate them almost as much as teleporters. I can't fly so I really can't fight them well."
"What about and teleporting flyer?"
Gorha shudders in disgust. "That's just cheating, and that's coming from the person who is basically unkillable. I'd just rather not fight a teleporter though, so maybe we should move on."
"You don't want to fight someone, oh lord, are you feeling okay?" I jokingly say.
"Ha, normally I would, but you're here so I don't want to take the risk of fighting an opponent who I can't pin down. That and you getting suicide bombed and turned into paste might make me violently sad."
"How violently sad?"
She gives me a so-so motion with her hand. "Somewhere between inconsolable, and murder rampage through the city."
Yeah maybe we should avoid rampages. I haven't even seen her fully transform yet, but if it's more murder-y than normal we should probably steer away from that. "Oof, okay well I guess we should start heading the other way then, anywhere else you think we shou- hold on, he's moving!"
I sense Oni Lee turn and, suddenly he is much closer!
Good news, when he teleports, he takes any bugs on him with him. Bad news, he is now two building away from us, though facing the wrong way. Yeah just keep moving, don't be perceptive, we don't exist.
Of course as soon as I think that, he turns our way. He was scanning the area but as soon as he sees us, he locks on to us. It's weird though, even though he caught us like deer in headlights, he hasn't made any kind of movement. Maybe he can't see us in the dark.
Then suddenly I sense him behind Gorha, and she now has a knife sticking through her chest from behind. I look over and see the Oni a couple buildings over disintegrate, and when I turn back there's a whole lot of Oni Lee in front of me. He slashes his knife across my throat, and thank god for spider silk because the knife doesn't cut through the costume at all. Seeing that he didn't kill me, he then steps back and does a spinning round house kick. That would be pretty cool, if he didn't just kick me in the head and sent me tumbling to the ground. My left mask lens is cracked, and my head is spinning. While I'm down, Oni Lee drops to a knee and plunges his knife straight down towards my face. He gets interrupted by Gorha's foot through his head, but he just turns to dust and Gorha gets her throat slashed as pay back from a new Oni, and he rips out the knife he left in her back.
Gorha swings at the ninja, but he crumbles into dust again, and she gets a throwing knife in the side.
"Fucking teleporters!" She charges at him, and he run to her. They meet and Gorha gets a knife to the guts, while Oni Lee gets dusted again. He's teleporting faster than Gorha can hit him. After a minute she throws off her jacket and her blade arms explode out of her back.
After her change she is moving faster now, but not fast enough to keep up still. Although Oni Lee's knives seem to not be cutting as deep as before as Gorha gets tougher. It's almost like watching what happened to Alabaster, but now Gorha is on the receiving end.
I try to get more bugs on Oni Lee to help but he's moving around to much, accidentally giving my bugs a wild goose chase over the rooftop as I try to catch him.
Gorha though, oh she is starting to get very mad. Her eyes are glowing red with anger and I can hear her growling. She starts alternating between cutting him with her blade arms, and throwing her quills with lethal precision, but none of it is fast enough to get him and she's getting frustrated.
She is also starting to look rather pale, she was white before but now it's a different shade.
They come to blows again, and when Oni gets summarily dusted, he leaves something behind this times. It's round and when Gorha notices it, she goes to kick it away. Before her foot can connect with it, it explodes, sending Gorha flying back, without her legs. She rolls over the top of the roof a little, then catches herself with her hands and blade arms while her legs grow back.
She's breathing heavily, heavily enough to where I can hear it across the rooftop where I am. Her head suddenly whips up and her eyes home in on Oni Lee. I see that there are 6 jagged lines going horizontally over her temple, 3 on each side. They go into her hairline, and aren't healing, they aren't bleeding though.
She takes a deep breathe, and lets loose a piercing screech. "aaaaaAAAAAAARRRRRGGHHHHHHHHHH!" Her screech sounds like her voice at first, but start to go into a higher pitch, up to a point where it almost sounds like there's two screeches happening at the same time, overlapping with one another. She then stands when her legs have fully grown back, and she is taller than she was before, much taller. Normally she's around 5'8ish, but now she is somewhere close to 7 and a half. Her arms and legs are longer, and she's even whiter now then before, and her blade arms have grown larger as well. She is still breathing heavy, and there's murder in her eyes.
Even quicker than before, Gorha lunges at Oni Lee. He crumbles into dust as a clawed hand rips his face off. Then the new Oni Lee slashes at her from behind, but now his knife is only barely cutting into Gorha's flesh. She backhands this one, and as a new one forms behind her, she sweeps a leg out and kicks Oni Lee's feet out from him and slices him in half.
Oni Lee appears across the the roof, he catches himself as the leg that took the sweep buckles. He takes a couple limping steps, but adjusts quickly. I see that his bodysuit is torn and his side is bleeding lightly, almost a scratch really, but that means Gorha is moving fast enough to get Oni Lee off guard now.
While he was recovering I got some more potent bugs on him. I move some wasps to crawl under his mask, while I send some spiders to the wound on his side, black widows for fun, because fuck him.
As soon as he teleports to Gorha again, I have the spiders bite, and keep pumping venom. Fun fact, did you know when spiders bite people they rarely pump any venom, it's just the venom that's already on their fangs that people get. It's just to scare us off. Black widows are dangerous with just their scaring bites, now I'm making them empty their venom glands. Again, fuck Oni Lee. He tried to slash my throat open.
At the same time I have my wasp sting his eye, the eyeball, I got lucky and struck just before his eyelid closed reflexively.
As he grunts in pain and brings a hand up to his one eye, Gorha strikes him with a punch to the shoulder and there's a loud cracking noise as Oni goes reeling. A follow up dusts him.
He appears on a different roof, with his arm hanging limply, the shoulder visibly deformed, and his blood drips from his hand. Then he teleports close to me, and with one working hand he pulls a grenade off his bandoleer, tosses it near me, and teleports again. He teleports almost far enough to be out of my range, and the other him falls to dust on it's own.
I start backing away as quick as I can. Gorha rushes over and picks me up. "Hold on!" And she dives towards the edge of the roof. Then the grenade goes off, and a huge circle of null space darker than black comes into existence and rapidly expands. It leaves a perfect cut into the roof. It moves fast enough to catch Gorha, more than half of Gorha. We hit the pavements below, buffered by Gorha's blade arms so they take most of the impact, but it's still pretty jarring.
As soon as I have my barrings I get up and check on Gorha. "No! No, no Owl are you okay!" Everything from where her heart would be and down is just gone, no gore, no mulched bits. Just gone. I'm cradling what's left of her and I feel tears start to swell and I rock back and forth. I'm panicking, hyperventilating. I feel like I just got my new friend, I can't lose her already.
Before I get to far into thinking of all the horrible things, and breaking down, I feel something lightly smack against my chest a few times. I open my eyes and look down. Gorha, no she's a wreck and lost the bandanna and mask at some point, it's just Owl now and she's smiling. Smiling!? She then puts up one finger, like she's telling me to wait.
Then I look farther down and see that she's regenerating.
She's regenerating! Oh thank god. I hug her close, and shake her back and forth in happiness. I look again and see, lungs? Ew everything is growing back pretty fast, but it's also pretty nasty, ugh. When most of her rib cage is back she takes a deep breathe. "Don't worry Skitty, it'll take more than that to put me down." Then she pats my cheek. I just hug her again.
With my face buried in her hair I mumble. "Let's not fight anymore teleporters, I don't think I could go through something like this again."
"Hehehehe, yeah I fucking hate teleporters." Me and her just laugh for a little bit.
"I didn't know your healing was this broken, I was so worried I lost you." I hug her a little tighter.
As her arms finish growing she reaches up and hugs me back. "I'm sorry for scaring you, during the fight and after. Don't worry though, I don't plan on going anywhere anytime soon."
"Is that as far as you can transform, because if I'm honest, it's pretty scary."
"No, it's not even close."
"You were so tall, and, and your voice was so different." I say weakly.
She rubs my back. "I can get so much taller, and faster, and scarier. I hope you never have to see it. I'm healed up now to."
I shake my head. "Can I just have another minute, I just wanna make sure you're here for good."
"What are you afraid if you let go, I'll disappear?" She gives a little mirthless laugh.
"...yeah." I admit. I just can't face the idea that she was almost gone.
She pulls me into the hug more. "Take your time, it's okay."
After a couple minutes I pull back and start to get up, she does to. Then I turn to her. "Okay, should we keep, ehhhhhh." Owl's back is to me while she looks around. It's just that there's one side effect of her getting vaporized.
Wow, that looks so firm, yet soft. She bends down to pick up her hat. And that's more Owl than I thought I'd ever see.
She turns around, brushes her hat off, and puts it on. "You were saying something." Wow, those look even softer. She must see that I'm kinda focused somewhere else, and she looks down. "Urg, I just got that costume." She snaps her fingers. "Hey, eyes up here."
It startled me, and I look anywhere but her. "Sorry, sorry, wasn't expecting, um, that." Turns out vaporized clothes don't also regenerate. Also I'm pretty sure I'm red enough right now to be radioactive.
"It's fine, but I think we should probably call it a night. It's getting pretty late, and I'm naked. Come on hop on lets go." She crouches down a little to give me another piggyback.
"Um, are you sure?" I say while trying to still not look at her, to much. Man is it hot in this mask or just me.
"Well as long as you watch your hands it's fine, I'm still faster than you so less time outside naked the better."
I finally crumble to her wishes and hop on. "And here I thought you would love being out and naked." I awkwardly joked.
"No silly, skimpy not naked. There's a difference between being flirty and slutty, and just being a slut. I have standards, admittedly not many, but still a few."
We started going, and I rested my head on Owl's shoulder.
With all the excitement of the day, and all the adrenaline that had finally worked it's way out of my system, I feel pretty tired. What a long and shitty day. I guess I could just close my eyes for a second. Yeah that sounds nice. So nice.
"Hey, Tay?" Snnrrk. "Snoring already huh, it's okay trooper I'll get you to safety, hehehe."
AN: Bit short, but I like it. So turns out Owl is like really hard to kill. And we're a little closer to her full transformation, but that will still be a while probably. Also there's lot of capes who counter Owl, it's literally just a game of stay away. It's pretty lucky then that she teamed up with Taylor for long range support.
Also came across a big case of the fuck-its lately so if the chapter kinda sucks, sorry. I ain't got much in the tank lately for some reason. I'm mostly running off road rage and fanfiction, with a splash of physical labor job on the side.
Eh pointless problems no one cares about aside, if you liked it please review, if you didn't tell me. I'd still love to hear what everyone thinks.
-Killa