A/N: Well, after the mother of all writer's block, I'm back! I only own Cassandra.
The sun cracked over the horizon as I woke myself up from the best lie-in I've had in my life. My mom wasn't in the next room playing 'twister' with one of her 'friends' (having sex with one of her customers. The woman never cared that I was in the next room. There were even a few times she had two men over), I wasn't in a pristine sacristy laying on a thin blanket, or in the middle of Central Park (don't ask) or Pennsylvania wilderness (long story), I was in a bed. An incredibly warm bed with blankets laying over my sleep-contorted form.
I heard my door open. "Hey, Psycho, get up. Wait, are you going to flame out on us again?" The Drake kid from the hospital who showed me around campus stood in my doorway, a sleepy grin on his face.
"You know my name's Cassandra, and that usually only happens at night when I don't find holy ground. I was already up." I crawled out of bed in my usual t-shirt and jeans and pulled on my jacket and boots.
"Don't you have any other clothes?"
"Nope. Can't shoplift that easily anymore, plus, there are better things to do with pickpocket money."
"Like what?"
I pulled my flask out of my boot. "Liquor. So why does Purple Hair want us up so early?"
"We're taking a field trip. To America."
"Home sweet home," I muttered.
XXXXX
"It's too early," whined a girl with hot pink hair (Japan sure was weird) and agreeing mutters from around the crowd. I felt like laughing at them, but I thought better of it when Astarte cut them off.
"Oh, stop your whining. You lot got a much nicer wake-up call then I used to back in Gehenna...And a lie-in as well now that I think of it." She gestured for us to all gather round her, so I complied, checking my jacket for those wonderful, lovely painkillers. She continued, "Now, as you know, we're travelling to the American branch of the order today. The original plan was to travel through the Vatican headquarters but apparently some of the citizens there don't like the idea of their beloved Vatican city being invaded by demons...so we're going to the Italian branch and then flying from there. Do you understand?"
Italy. Despite the fact I probably couldn't speak their language worth shit, I've longed to go there for as long as I can remember. Perhaps it was because the only thing my mom would ever tell me about my father (if she knew which lay of the day it was that impregnated her with me) was that he went to Italy to study. I knew it was a ridiculous notion, and that I wouldn't see him there, but there was always a vague hope, though now that I knew the truth I didn't really want to see him.
"Why can't we follow the original plan?" asked a weird-looking girl with… were those horns?
The three looked at each other before the clownish-looking one who set my instincts between run and strangle just by looking at him, explained, "Well, the Vatican city has been a bit...iffy about letting demons pass through it since the...incident eight years ago."
A scoff resounded through the crowd and I saw a woman a few years younger than my mother in the most whorish getup I have ever seen. "Yeah, that was an incident. I mean, only incidents get their own names and murmured about with horror." I looked at her skeptically, wondering what she meant. "I mean, an incident is all you can call the time one of the highest level demons in existence goes nuts and starts destroying everything isn't it?" The angry look on her face was aimed straight at my new teacher, and I couldn't help but look, as well.
"Shura-san, you know we do not talk about that situation," said a man who had a stick shoved so far up his ass that it came out his head.
"You're going to have to explain what happened though. These students have a right to know." The man who spoke was incredibly built with a bleached streak running through his slicked-back hair. I looked at Astarte, wondering what he meant.
"Eight years ago, I was involved in an incident now referred to as dawn of the purple flames." I had to force myself to breathe. I've heard the incident mentioned a few times, and the fear in their voices was unmistakable. I always wondered what kind of beast could affect people, exorcists, so profoundly. "I...I was tortured in order to save Rin and open a gate in what the fool who started it thought would be the only way to save Assiah. I was in so much pain that the barriers I set up to limit my powers collapsed around me and my flames were unleashed. I destroyed everything around me, including the gate. And I killed so many. But my flames also managed to break down a door which meant I could get into the Vatican. I destroyed half of the city and murdered a large number of people before I was brought back under control. They don't want us there because they fear I will lose control again." I didn't blame them. The demoness may have put on a façade of control, but I could tell from experience there was no telling when it would crack.
"Is that the reason you had to go back?" asked the pink-haired one.
"One of them. I had to return because my father was badly injured during the battle to seal the gate. Gehenna needs a ruler and I am the one who must take the throne should my father ever have to step back." She shook her head. "But we need to get going. I don't want to have to spend any longer than necessary in the Vatican. Let's go." She turned on her heel and began walking forward, the two children running after her as that eerie man pulled out a key.
When we were all in the building, Astarte turned to us. "Now, seeing as it's going to be a relatively long flight I have a training task for you all. You all lack focus which is why you can struggle with keeping control of your familiars and your abilities. So, I want you lot to practice maintaining focus. Once we board the plane, each of you will be given a piece of paper with a word written on it. I expect you to meditate and focus only on that word. If anything distracts you, I will know and I will give you extra training when we land. Understand?"
On the plane, I looked at the single foreign character written on the small paper: Pain. Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes, focusing on what that word meant to me.
"You're worthless. You fail almost every single class and you can't do anything right! Why didn't I just abort you before you were born?" my mother's words cut into a fifth-grader me, and it wasn't the first time, and far from the last, that she berated me ruthlessly like that.
A thirteen-year-old me, a kitchen knife slicing into my wrist, and the sweet feeling of my warm red life falling onto the white tile. The pain brought me to amazing highs.
Fire everywhere, in my blood, in my bones, constantly burning me every waking moment. The pain I felt when I killed those people. The pain I felt when they tried to fight back with a gun. There were no internal organs when I walked with the demon, but everything hurt. Blinding pain, every time I slipped up. Hours of it, without reprieve.
The next I was aware of, we were touching down on the tarmac. I'd had just enough of that cursed word and was all too eager to get off. Looking around, I hoped to see a familiar face. One of the priests who had allowed me into their churches for the night, perhaps even Moreau. Looking at the group of exorcists, I was looking for someone tall, dark-skinned, with gold eyes.
"Welcome to America," I heard a woman say. Yeah, I thought sarcastically, real good to be back. We were probably in Washington, D.C., judging by the Washington Monument out in the distance. I wondered off from the group, as Astarte and the woman were talking. Just then, I caught a flash of amber eyes and dark skin, and darted after the person.
"Cassandra, merde, I thought I told you to lay low," Moreau whispered to me. "That did not mean, 'Go be trained by a psychopathic demoness who's been proven to be treacherous.'"
I turned red. "I was! Sunset to sunrise in a church every night, before hitting the road. But then, I saw some police, hid in a cargo container in a ship headed for Japan, drove to the nearest church, learned Japanese, and hit the road again, when she," I jerked my thumb at Astarte, "drove my other side nuts and made me transform during the day, something I've never done before, beat the shit out of me, then put me into her class without asking whether I wanted to be there or not."
He chuckled lowly. "Perhaps I should have warned you about her. She is one crazy fille, is she not?" At nodding, he moved on. "Are you still getting drunk on that cheap crap," he asked jokingly.
"What you call cheap crap, I call an easy way out. The taste doesn't much bother me anymore."
"Then perhaps we could catch up tonight over some champagne?" I'd never been one for the stuff, but hey, beggars can't be choosers. I nodded.
"Cassandra," Astarte called over. I walked to her. "Have you been taking your pills?"
Using my tail to reach into my pocket, (a trick I've learned over the months, though it usually wasn't my pocket it was going into) I pulled out the small, clear orange bottle. "Just two, remember," she ordered. Yeah, right. They were stronger than my usual painkillers, but I was being set on freaking fire 24/7. Kind of hard to use two at a time.
"Who was that priest?" Drake asked when I returned.
"Old friend. He's the one who told me what I am after I killed five thugs in an alley." I lowered my voice. "And one who's not so happy that I'm under the care of a demon proven to be a psychopath."
"She's not a—" at seeing the look I was giving him, he thought better of it. "Okay, maybe at times she can be a little not up to sanity par, but she's not that bad."
Our little conversation was interrupted by a redhead boy with gold eyes greeting me. "Such lovely ladies I have the benefit of working with. My name is Eda if you ever need me, milady." He kissed the back of my hand, and I couldn't keep the laughter in any longer. The demon was ridiculous. Completely and truly laughable.
"Maybe you should work on your flirting with a girl that'll fall for it. But that was quite possibly the nicest come-on I've ever gotten."
My attention was drawn to a jet of flame that emerged from a girl in a straitjacket. Oh, I did not see this ending well. She yelled obscenities, straining against the bindings. Suddenly, purple flames bound her to the ground. She yelled something I couldn't make out due to distance. Normal flame shot towards Astarte, which she easily dodged, but then a malevolent blue glow filled the room. I didn't know what it was; all I knew was I should get away from it.
The only thing I could make out due to the fact that I was the whole way across the room from the new students was, "I'm the son of Satan." With those words, I knew more fear than I had felt in a long time.
A/N: Please review!