Episode Six : Cats
Soundtrack: Barenakedladies' "It's All Been Done" (Yumi. Ulrich. It's perfect.)
Free pudding inspired by Order of the Stick, an excellent comic anyone who plays Dungeons and Dragons should read.
Taidine
Chapter Two: Callback
Out past the school in the other direction, a puddle of well-manicured trees attempted to isolate the Kadic campus from the outside world. This part of the school was more popular in warmer weather. Due to today's chill, pattering rain, only one student was slouching through the garden, a brown-haired boy with an even grimmer expression then usual.
Ulrich wasn't happy. Dances were always bad news, and this one was no exception. He didn't want to go with Sissi. The girl was loud and annoying, and she talked too much. She was probably a lousy dancer, too. But if Yumi was going with William – what could possibly have driven Yumi to go with William? Does she hate me that much? She and Ulrich were fellow warriors! William was just a jock who looked good in black. Ulrich had saved Yumi's life, more than once!
Maybe she was tired of being the damsel in distress?
That was ridiculous. Yumi had saved Ulrich's life, too. Thick eyebrows drawn down, the boy kicked a pile of damp leaves. Nothing made sense. He should go talk to her.
With this determined thought, Ulrich looked up, located the school gates as a landmark, and strode purposefully towards them. He had scarcely taken two steps before he was struck by the unshakable sensation of being watched.
A pair of glassy yellow eyes glinted in the sparse undergrowth.
Ulrich pivoted three-sixty on one foot, seeking his unseen observer. There was no noise to be heard above the patter of the rain, but there was a flicker of movement, a twitch in the leaves. The boy caught it, oriented himself on it, and began to back away slowly. There had been wolves in these woods before.
The tense silence was suddenly, jarringly split by the loud, electronic jangle of Ulrich's cell-phone ring. Then everything happened at once.
The undergrowth erupted with a large, tawny, tuft-eared feline, hurtling towards Ulrich – all muscle and teeth and outstretched claw. Ulrich threw himself backwards, falling into a clumsy roll to avoid the pounce, and ducked behind a tree. The phone rang again, but he was already on his feet, accelerating into the woods with breakneck speed. The phone rang a third time. The feline took a moment to steady itself and set off in pursuit.
A stand of trees loomed ahead, five trunks clustered close together like tall figures huddled around a campfire. Ulrich dove into the center of the cluster and flipped his phone open, just in time to stifle the final ring. "Hello?" He whispered.
"Ulrich," said Jeremie's voice, a little breathless, "We need you at the Factory!"
A head with twitching, tufted ears poked out into the path Ulrich had been following. "Jeremie," Ulrich whispered, "hang up, then call me back." The feline's ears swiveled in his direction. Without waiting for Jeremie's reply, Ulrich flipped his cell shut and flung it as far as he could away from himself.
As it landed, the great cat turned its head towards that small sound. Ulrich held his breath, waiting.
The cell phone rang.
With a growl, the feline plunged off towards the noise, leaving a ripple of greenery in its wake. Ulrich gave it until the count of five, slowly, before abandoning his hiding place for a mad dash towards the school gates. This was clearly an attack by XANA; Yumi would need his help.
And he could ask her about William, too.
- - - -
Jeremie hauled back the hatch covering the sewer entrance. "XANA must have possessed the cats. Does anyone know the species at the exhibit?"
He didn't expect a response. "Two lions, a Spanish lynx, and a house cat," replied a shrill voice.
Jeremie dropped the manhole cover. "No…"
Aelita lowered herself into the hole. Odd glanced back over his shoulder and corrected, in a resigned tone, "Yes."
Sissi, flanked by her usual cronies, was standing casually against a tree along the outer edge of the clearing. Her hair was damp from the rain, and a day-glow orange poncho hung around her shoulders to shelter her clothes. "Saw you three running somewhere and I thought I'd invite myself along," she squeaked, examining her fingernails.
Jeremie began climbing down the ladder with a sour glance and a head-jerk at Odd that was supposed to say 'get rid of her.' Odd only caught the tail end of the gesture and interpreted it as 'deal with her' – a subtly different concept that set a few rusty wheels spinning in his head. Yumi and Ulrich would probably take a while to get here…
"Sissi, just go back to school," he began, "You have no idea what you're getting into."
Her look said 'I know perfectly well what I'm getting into, thank you very much,' which was of course impossible, so Odd charged on. "You should go back to school. This might be dangerous. I mean, we have to meet up with Ulrich and…"
That was enough. "Hmph," Sissi interjected, nose in the air. After a moment, she glanced backwards at her two cronies. "Hear that, you two? You should get back to the school. It might be dangerous."
"Uh… Sissi…" Herve protested, but she silenced him with a hand flip and headed for the hatch.
Odd let her get about halfway down the ladder before lowering himself in, and he managed to hold back his triumphant grin until he had dragged the cover shut, shrouding the tube in darkness.
- - - -
Yumi pelted along the well-manicured street that cut through her neighborhood. A neat row of houses gave way to trees as she hit a park; almost there, now. Her face was set in a pale, grim mask, lips tight and slender brows nearly meeting between her eyes. Black hair streamed behind her in a solid sheet, slightly damp from the rain, but drying now that it had slacked off. Her feet beat on the ground asynchronously, an irregular counterpoint to her quick, gasping breath, and her arms swung in rhythm to her pumping legs. The school gates, tall and wrought iron, loomed ahead, hanging invitingly open. Really almost there, now.
She cut left, breezing through the gap between the gates. On school ground now, and starting to run out of wind, she let her pace drop to an easy lope, focused straight ahead.
Her peripheral vision caught a flicker of motion. She wasted a second whipping her head around and had no time to duck when a figure came flying out of the bushes, ramming into her shoulder and sending them both tumbling to the ground. Yumi twisted and managed to end up pinning her attacker, who grinned up at her ruefully. "Hey, Yumi," Ulrich gasped, spots of color blooming in his cheeks.
Yumi grimaced at her own blush. "Ulrich, what are you-"
"Move!" The boy shouted, shoving his friend to one side. Yumi rolled with him. A furred, tawny creature landed on the patch of ground she had just vacated. She lashed out with one foot; it should have connected, but the feline twisted away with inhuman speed, grabbing her ankle in its jaws.
Ulrich bounded to his feet, snatching a long, straight stick from the ground. Wielding it two-handed, he brought it down on the feline's head. Growling, it released Yumi's ankle. A damp patch of blood and slaver spread across one pant-leg, but nothing was broken; the indefatigable Yumi launched another frenzied attack while the tuft-eared animal was distracted. Under this dual onslaught, in fell back, wary. Ulrich grabbed Yumi's arm, and the two took off.
The trees opened, revealing the school green. A long, low cafeteria beckoned to the right, but the two white tents set up outside of it still had crowds of students under them, drawn by human nature to the scene of the disaster. Three smashed display cases could be glimpsed through the mob. "We have to get them inside," Ulrich growled. Yumi nodded, and the pair plunged into the crowd.
"Dangerous animals loose!" Ulrich shouted, "Move to the cafeteria!"
The crowd perked up, but didn't stir. Ulrich elbowed his way between two teachers, shouting. "Wait," Yumi interrupted, "this isn't going to work. What would Odd do?"
At the edge of the woods, a pair of golden eyes glinted in the greenery. For a bare second, they flickered, pupils replaced by a weird symbol of concentric circles. Then a tawny, tuft-eared shape slipped from between the trees, yawning deliberately to show off long, ivory teeth.
Ulrich thought over Yumi's admonishment for a second, then bellowed: "Free pudding in the cafeteria!"
To his vast astonishment, the crowd began to move – but it wasn't the siren call of pudding that drove them. Someone had spotted the feline, which suddenly bounded forward towards the agitated crowd, tipping them over the edge into chaos.
"Cafeteria! Get to the cafeteria!" Ulrich shouted after them. The crowd obeyed, finally, flowing towards the windowed building with the tawny animal nipping at their heels. Yumi and Ulrich fell back, chaperoning the crowd; the feline was almost helpful with its menacing motions around the edge of the crowd.
"Does that cat seem to…" Ulrich began.
"It's herding us," Yumi replied flatly. For a second, the feline cut between her and the crowd, but they had reached the cafeteria now. She leapt up, narrowly evading a snap of shining teeth, to land on the other side. In a single synchronized motion, she and Ulrich slammed the doors of the cafeteria shut.
"Why would it want us in the cafeteria?" Ulrich demanded.
Yumi shrugged and began to walk the perimeter of the room. Ulrich followed, looking stormy and concerned. The mob of students spread out like molecules of a gas transferred to a larger container, automatically filling the available space. They were still agitated, but at least not panicking.
The door to the kitchen was hanging ajar. Curious, the warriors vaulted over the serving counter and edged in.
Past the kitchen was a storage room, boxes full of meals that hardly deserved the name stacked in irregular piles against the walls. It was silent – not the silence of emptiness, but the silence of someone not making a sound.
Or something.
"Shut the door!" Yumi shouted. A pair of blunt, tawny shapes bounded out from behind a precarious stack of boxes. The larger had a golden brown mane, while the smaller was sleek and lithe: these Ulrich could identify. They were lions, and not the friendly, anthropomorphized Disney sort.
He didn't think. There were people out there in danger. With a spin and a kick, he slammed the storage-room door, leaving himself and Yumi on the wrong side of it. Yumi leapt for the precarious pile of boxes, touching down lightly before springing to a more stable stack against the wall. The vacated column wavered, then tipped, showering cookies and less definable foodstuffs painfully on the head of the larger feline. Ulrich took his chance to run past the beasts and scrabble up towards Yumi's perch. She grabbed his hand and hauled him up.
Left on the floor, the lions growled up at them menacingly.
"Now what?" asked Ulrich glumly. He hated heights.