"Well, I could try . . ." Takeda said softly, wondering how he even knew how to do it. He just knew.
Takeda made himself visible for Maya to see him, but didn't make her. He slowly paced around the decrepit house with his hand on his chin, thinking. The walls were a little scary to him, so he kept away from them for fear of a piece falling off onto him.
"Well . . . um, when I want to turn visible I . . ." he furrowed his brow as he thought of how to explain it. It was a difficult task. "Well, I guess I just think about turning visible and it happens."
"I think I understand..." Maya felt a little confused but remembering what she had tried earlier that day, she put her hands on her head and screwed up her eyes in concentration. She repeated the word she had just learnt from Takeda in her mind until she began to feel dizzy.
Visible, visible, visible, visible...
She felt a slight shiver pass through her, and opened her eyes expecting to see her real limbs again. She was greeting with nothing. The little girl sat down sulkily and banged a hand against the floor, making a echo that reverberated around the small house.
"It's not fair! Why won't this stupid magic work?"
She gripped her throbbing left hand and glared at it with hateful contempt. In that moment every ounce of pent up frustration and anger at everything that had gone wrong in her short life was suddenly released towards the invisible arm. Maya let out a cry that started as rage and then became joy as the hand slowly materialised in front of her, then grew into a wrist, a whole limb and seconds later her entire being was sat out in front of her.
"Look Takeda, I did it." Maya said in a drained voice. She felt as if all the remaining energy left in her had gone. She slowly looked down at her injured right arm for the first time, and convulsed as she did so. A bloated red lump of skin surrounded an oval of deep puncture wounds, each filled with a dripping pool of yellow pus and blood. She stared at it in horror before falling forward onto her knees and vomiting all over the filthy floorboards.
Lily walked in the center of the group as they moved toward the building. When they reached the door, Lily slowed it down to a snail's pace as the lead hunter tugged it, making him heave on the handle in a futile attempt to get upstairs faster, wasting energy, and more importantly, giving time for Zetta to get out if she was still in the building. As they mounted the stairs, Lily found the young monk again, and gripped his hand tightly, her lower lip quivering. "You don't have to come with us, it's alright if you stay outside" He said, trying to be reassuring. Lily let out a frightened whimper and shook her head slowly. 'Ugh, what fools.' She thought, he didn't like using sexuality to get her way, but in times when it was needed, she'd go as far as it took, though luckily, the job at hand was already done. 'I honestly thought this would be harder, but Jeez this boy is weak-willed. Pops seems to think he has a chance too, and I can nearly feel the other two guys in this little conglomerate staring into the back of my jeans. Thankfully the women seem to be Christian enough that I needn't worry about them.'
She rested her head on the boy's shoulder as they neared Rezetta's floor. A thought hit her, and she remembered the knife she had dropped in the waste bin in the lobby, and brought it up so it was just around the corner from them, ready to strike when they got in through the door. As they approached, Lily focused on the window inside the room, and opened it wide, ready for her plan to take action. The hunters entered the living room and started moving around the edge towards the illusions of hostages, their blessed items directed towards the dog, which was barking like mad, and pulling on the edge of its chain. 'Very nice touch Zetta' Lily thought, stopping the younger man from moving by clenching his arm tightly as they stood just inside the threshold.
The elder hunter reached the illusory hostages, and struck out at the demon-dog, hitting it square on the nose with a gilded crucifix, shattering the entire illusion, and destroying Lily's cover story. Acting quickly while the group were still adjusting to what had happenned, Lily brought various items from the kitchen flying through the air, pelting those nearest the site of the illusions. One was hit in the neck by a knife, another knocked out as a frying pan gave them a solid smack to the back of the head. The remaining five managed to avoid the onslaught and brandished their items as shields. The tide of kitchen equipment ceased as they did so, givng them a moment to breathe. "What was tha-" Began one, before the armchair behind her suddenly rose into the air and came down hard on her head, staying there. The sofa did a similar thing to another two, leaving two more and the one Lily was standing with by the door. "Y-You!" One called, pointing a trembling finger at Lily. She put on a surprised face and began to stammer out a denial as the ceiling light came crashing down onto his head. The final one began to run towards the open window, the only means of escape left, and was unceremoniously launched across the room and out of his chosen escape route. Lily smirked, and removed her arms from around the young one's chest, letting him fall forwards, the knife firmly lodged in his back.
Lily surveyed the room, and with a few quick sweeps of her arms to help her move things correctly, launched the seven bodies remaining in the room out after their comrade, and replaced anything unbroken back in its original place. Some blood had gotten onto the floor from the elder hunter, who had been first to fall, but Lily didn't have time to worry about that. She ran to the back door she assumed Zetta had left through, hurrying along, eager that the other hunters, who were almost certainly coming up now that eight of their buddies had been thrown out of the window, would not catch her. Lily knew Zetta would be hding herself, she pushed on the air telekinetically at regular intervals, feeling for blockages that she couldn't see in a way similar to radar. Eventually she found something and spoke. "Zetta, we need to get out of here."
That is one hell of a wall o' text. Let me break that down a little...
Still kinda imposing, but better.
The kitsune shied away as Maya cried out, but he kept watching curiously. He saw a hand appear in the air, and then more of her. His ears perked up and he smiled, watching her become visible again.
"Good job!" he said enthusiastically, walking over to her. He was genuinely happy for her, all the helplessness she'd suffered through were at an end. And she wouldn't have to rely on him.
Unfortunately her newfound visibility made a whole new problem come to light. The wound on her arm was very serious, and disgustingly infected. Takeda let out an involuntary "ewww" as he saw it, and then again as she retched on the floor.
"That's really bad, Maya." he said, stating the obvious. Kneeling beside her, he put a hand on her back comfortingly. "We should find someone to help you."
Maya nodded tearfully in response to Takeda's question whilst keeping her gaze firmly away from the infected wound. She slowly stood up, putting one hand on the nearest crumbling wall and the other on the kitsune's shoulder to balance herself. Even with this support blackness filled her vision for a moment, and she thought she was about to faint, before the feeling mercifully passed away again. As Maya started to walk, each step felt like a mountain to climb as she struggled to keep herself from falling onto the ground.
"But who would help us?" Maya asked, a note of anxiety audible in her voice.
Rezetta had gotten quite a ways away from the apartment building when she saw the first body fly through the window. Still wrapped in her invisibility illusion, she sidestepped a couple who was walking down the sidewalk and quickly threw another illusion over their eyes so they wouldn't see the body or the other ones that soon came sailing after it. There was no way to extend the illusion to the remaining group of hunters who were at the back of the building, however. She could already see them moving to the front of the building, most likely having heard the thud of several bodies outside.
"I really need to move," Zetta told herself with a sigh. She leaned against a wall, rubbing at her temples while she waited for Lily to show up. When she did, Rezetta let her invisibility illusion blanket Lily as well, and soon the two appeared ghostly to each other once again. "Nice work on those hunters," she said. She cracked a grin and added, "The landlord will have a fit once she finds out what happened."
She set off down the sidewalk, casting the occasional nervous glance backwards as she did. She could just barely hear the shouts of the alarmed hunters who had found their fallen companions. "That was way too close, though. I've been so careful, so how could they have...?" Her voice trailed off as she looked to the sky, lost in thought. Despite how careful she'd been, she'd almost been caught twice today. First it was those spooks in the diner, then a group of some weird, religious demon hunters. And she couldn't forget the terrible 'accident' that had occurred not too long ago.
"I wonder if they're related," she said suddenly. "The... the thing with the explosion and the fires, and those hunters back there. Something weird's going on in this city, but I have no idea what it could mean. Any ideas? Oh, and um, any place in particular we should be running to? Wandering the streets will probably just land us in some more trouble."
I think Quad and RootbeerJello stopped posting a couple of weeks ago because they weren't sure what to do after you stopped posting for Gabriel, but hopefully they will come back with some encouragement. The others haven't posted for over a month though, so it might be worth PMing them to see if they've just forgotten or something but I think they're gone for good.
Edit: It'd probably be best if we carry on this conversation in the group chat so the main page doesn't fill up with OOC's.
"I don't want to see a doctor, last year one stuck a needle in my arm and it really hurt!" Maya shook her head vigorously "And we don't have any money to pay them, or a special card like my mummy had." She kept her gaze firmly away from the wound, silently hoping that it would just disappear without her needing to visit anyone.
At that moment a dented maroon car drove up to the pavement where the two children were walking and stopped. Maya stepped back in alarm as a dark silhouette behind the grimy windows peered out at them, and then slowly opened the door and with a furtive glance got out. She gasped as she recognised the figure as the heavy-coated woman who has approached them in the supermarket the previous night.
"Hello again children, you must have been busy this morning. Why only half a hour ago a contact of mine called me to say he'd seen a little girl vanish on a live program on a local TV channel, I guess neither of you would know anything about that would you?"
@Sporky: I PM'd SamuelT about the "mystery woman" a few days ago, he wants us to control her for now, this is what he said about her and the organisation which she is a part of:
SamuelT said:
The organisation is pretty big, it has contacts globally. It's not omnipresent though, and has severe limitations in the form of equipment and all that. They are acutally little more than a list of emails and phone numbers through which they can be reached.
The Mystery Woman is familiar with all, but known by none. ;D
"Don't worry about the mess, there's just a pool blood on the floor, which, unless they burn the place, shouldn't be that much of an issue. Though I don't think they'll care much about the stain if it's on fire." Lily said. "The site of the explosion was almost certainly where they picked up our trail, and followed us back from there. You're right though, we need to get off the streets and away as fast and far as we can. I know a place that's nowhere near here, on the other side of town which is what we need, we just need to get there."
Takeda shied away as the car pulled out and that woman stepped out. For a moment he was afraid of being stolen away. He'd heard stories from other children about people getting pulled into cars and disappearing.
But then the woman spoke, and he remembered her from the grocery store. How she had given them the wonderful food. If she had wanted to take them away, she probably could have back then. They were invisible at the time.
"Can you help her?" he asked suddenly, ignoring the thing she said about the TV show. "A dog bit Maya and she's really sick."
He glanced over at the infected arm and quickly looked back at the woman. He didn't want to see it, but he felt like he needed to show it to her.
"That's a nasty wound. I'm sure I can find someone to help her. Do you want to get in so we can take you there?" she said, stepping to the side and gesturing to the open car door.
Maya looked at Takeda, she felt unsure about being trapped in a car with a grown-up she barely knew, even if she did appear to be a kind lady. The kitsune seemed to trust the woman however and she felt too tired to walk any further so she dutifully got in. She had never been inside a car before, only a bus, and she was quite impressed by what she found. The inside was considerably cleaner than the outside and despite the odd hole the seats were as comfy as a sofa.
"If you think you're going to vomit please use this, it makes such a terrible mess on the carpet otherwise." The woman passed Maya a paper bag, and then started the car going. She was silent for a moment and then suddenly burst into conversation as if she could no-longer restrain herself.
"It's so nice to have met both of you properly, I'm sorry I haven't introduced myself before, it's probably best for all of us that you don't know my real name but you can call me Rin. I already know your name is Takeda... please don't be alarmed but I'll explain why when we're somewhere safer. And it's so nice that you found a little friend too, what's your name dear?
"M...Maya" the little girl mumbled after a pause; Rin spoke very fast and it was difficult to keep up with all the long words she used.
"That's a pretty name, I'm sorry this is all a bit rushed but no doubt that video clip of you will be going viral online already and this area will become deluged with magic fanatics and devil hunters before you can say cheesecake. Not to scare either of you of course, you're safe now with me. I can't wait to...
She abruptly stopped speaking and from the back seat Maya could see she was staring into the rear mirror with a mixture of annoyance and nervousness.
"Takeda, I know I may be asking a bit much of you, considering we've only just met and everything, but behind us there is a black car containing a number of people who I have a... disagreement with. They must have spotted me on my way here. You wouldn't mind using your powers to cause a... distraction, would you?"
"I wouldn't be surprised if the apartment building did just catch fire, even without the help from those hunters," Rezetta said, stuffing her fists in her pockets with a sigh. "It's just that kind of day. Mm, it's too bad we ditched my van earlier. We could try taking another one of these cars from around here, but I've got no idea how to hot-wire one. Unless you do, or you have some other idea in mind, we could try seeing if somebody left an unlocked car with a key in the ignition around here. I wouldn't give too much hope for that, though."
She paused to look behind them again. They were getting steadily farther away from the building, but she could still just barely see the hunters in the parking lot. They didn't seem to be moving yet; they must not have seen which way Lily left the building in. That was good, at least. "Next time, I'm moving to a city without a church anywhere in sight."
Lily listened to Rezetta speaking as she dug through her pocket "Damn these jeans, they might look good, but Christ almighty is it hard to get something out of the pockets." she muttered. "Good luck with the no churches thing, religions are all over the place, and the worst hunters are the ones that aren't religious, just want to 'rid the world of the menace'" Lily said, louder so Zetta could hear as she turned right down a sidestreet "Aha, got it!" She exclaimed. "Hotwiring cars is risky, and should only be done if there are no other options. Taxis on the other hand..." She said, unlocking her phone and looking through her contacts, finally settling on one.
Code:
"Hallo, Kehssel Kehrs, hew may ay help you?"
The man on the other end of the line said, his thick, Russian accent garbling his sentence to near incomprehensibility.
"Yes, I'd like a taxi please, Pyotr." Lily said, a smile in her voice.
Code:
"For you pretty Leelee, honly ven you let me give you deener."
Pyotr replied jokingly as he always did.
"As always, I'll ask my husband." responded Lily, giving a slight giggle, then the street address, and hanging up. "I'm not married, it just stops him from trying anything." Lily explained to Rezetta. "Don't worry though, I haven't had any reason to lie to you, and hopefully I won't anyway."
"You talk awfully fast . . ." Takeda whispered, partly in awe and partly in confusion. He'd missed most of her spiel up until she said his name. Then his eyes widened in fear and he looked back.
The seats were large and tall and the window tinted dark, making it hard for the young spirit to see out. He finally unbuckled his seat belt and stood up on the seat, looking backwards. Just like she said, there was an average-looking black car behind them.
"There's something wrong with their car." he stated after several seconds. Just as he said it there was a loud, sharp sound from the car behind them, like a firecracker. Then thick, black smoke started to pour out from under it's hood. The car swerved a little, and then slowed to a stop as the driver inside hit the brakes.
In reality, the motor was in the same shape it had been when they left. But between the sound and the smoke, it definitely seemed like there was a problem.
Takeda turned around and flopped down on the seat with a satisfied look on his face. The woman was smiling as well, looking in the mirror again.
"Great work, Takeda. Not what I expected, but definitely effective and believable. Very creative, thank you. But please, don't stand on the seats any more with your muddy shoes on."
At that last point his ears lowered a bit and he looked down at his feet. "I'm sorry, miss. I won't do it again."
"Never mind, it was worth it to teach those scoundrels a lesson. Anyway the expression on your friend's face right now makes me think that I might have to clean out the car soon regardless. You okay dear?"
Maya groaned in response to Rin's question; her stomach felt like it was about to force it's way out of her mouth and so she kept her lips firmly shut, though she gripped the paper bag tightly just in case. She wished she could have seen what Takeda had done to the black car but the unfamiliar bumpiness of the vehicle meant she was stuck huddled in one corner of the back seat only able to snatch glimpses of the city passing by them. The car slowed as they turned into an alleyway and then stopped.
"This is where we'll have to exit, I live in a flat just a short walk from here. I can't bring the car any closer to it as I like to pretend that I have less money than I do, so it's important that the other residents don't find out I can afford a car. It's just so much easier to stay unnoticed that way."
The still mysterious woman stepped gracefully out, before opening a back door and carefully lifting Maya into her arms. The small girl instinctively closed her eyes and nuzzled the warm shoulder with a sigh. Rin looked down and briefly smiled, then glanced at the kitsune still sitting in the car.
"I'm coming!" Takeda said quickly, scrambling across the seat and getting out of the car. He closed the door behind him, quickly remembering to pull his hood up, then ran up to Rin.
"So why do you want to stay unnoticed?" he asked curiously as they walked.
"I'm a person that has very important information." she said solemnly, "Some people would like to get this information, and some would like to get me."
"Oh . . ." he said, still fairly confused. "So are we going to help Maya at your house?"
"Maybe I'll go to an island, then. Someplace far from here, anyhow." Zetta shrugged and looked around nervously as Lily spoke on her phone. They had been walking fairly briskly and the apartment complex was now a ways behind them, but she didn't doubt that the hunters would be coming along soon. Since they had no idea where Lily and Zetta had run off to, they most likely would have split up to comb each direction. Rezetta hoped Lily's taxi would be coming quickly.
"I'm going to have to get rid of our invisibility, otherwise he won't be able to see us," she said after Lily had finished talking. As she let go of the thread of power that kept the illusion in check, she quirked her lips into a smile and said, "Almost wish I had a guy for my own. I always figured it wouldn't be smart, considering who and what I am." She shrugged again and nervously looked down the street in the direction they had come from. "And as for lies... Well, it's not like I have anything to hide at this point. And hey, you've given me no reason not to trust you." She paused, then added, "I hope this taxi of yours gets here fast, by the way."
"That is correct; I would rather not go anywhere so public as a hospital or such. I'd prefer to use one of a couple of doctors who I know will keep their mouth shut for a price."
Even in her fatigued state Maya stirred slightly as she heard the word "doctor" being mentioned; she had hoped that the friendly Rin would be able to provide help without involving anyone else. She tried to listen to the rest of what her carrier was saying to Takeda but she found it impossible to concentrate on the conversation.
"Also, certain individuals among us..." Rin paused and then silently gestured at the child held in her arms "don't appear to have full control over their abilities yet and so as we have seen today would present quite a risk in a busy place. While throughout history there have been countless leaks by our type in this day and age it is paramount that the normal people do not become aware of our existence."
The woman looked around shiftily as if she thought she was being watched at the very moment, then laughed and appeared to relax again.
"Also I wanted somewhere private to speak to you after I've dealt with Maya, I've heard a lot about you but it's all rumour and conjecture so I'd like to hear the details from the kitsune himself!"
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