"Stay with Leanne," Hank said to Anna. "I'll take Bumbles in and let Rio know what happened."
That proved unnecessary, for Rio already knew. The door to the building flew open as he approached, and she blew right past.
"Where did you go?" she shot back at him without slowing.
Anna stepped aside to keep from being the next person in Rio's way. She headed straight for Leanne, swallowing her up in a hug so enormous the two women nearly fell into the car.
"I'm okay," Leanne said with some fear, her voice muffled by Rio's body. "There was an accident."
"No there wasn't," Anna said, scarcely believing her words. "There was almost an accident. A truck almost hit Leanne, and missed her by an inch."
Leanne freed a hand from Rio's embrace and used it to hold one of Anna's. "Yes. There was almost an accident. But Hank and Anna saved me."
Deep inside the Bentley, Rio kissed Leanne with passion. The tips of Rio's toes barely touched the ground. Leanne's voice cracked when she spoke, now from sadness more than fear.
"I have to go, Wan-chan. I'm going to miss my flight."
Rio and Leanne kissed again. "I know, Nushi. You go."
Rio then glared at Hank before striding away from the group. She walked down the sidewalk with purpose.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
Again, she spoke without slowing. "I have work to do. You were at Milton's. Where's the Ford?"
Hank made noise as if to speak, but Anna beat him to the punch. "I had him get a bigger car. We don't all fit in that little one."
"Leanne has a big car."
"I'm leaving mine at the airport."
Rio growled to herself as she walked away. She spoke loud as the distance between her and the group grew. "You let the bad guys know where we are!"
Anna turned to Hank. "What is always with her and bad guys?"
Hank shrugged. As he and Anna stared at each other, Leanne wrapped them up in strong arms, squishing them to her body. Bumbles bounded after Rio, barking at her feet.
"You guys take care of the mutt," Leanne told Hank and Anna as, with another giant squeeze, she made air escape from their lungs.
"Get away from me!" Rio shouted upon noticing the dog. "Go home!"
"And take care of Bumbles, too," Leanne teased while still squeezing.
In the chill of a wet dawn, few people got in Rio's way as she strode down the street. Those who did stepped aside once they realized how much she loathed them. Loathing them not for who they were, but for who she was not. Normal people living their lives blissfully unaware of Reality's constricting noose. A noose for which Rio—being not only a Reality Maker, but also an Other—was reminded of each day as it grew ever tighter around her neck.
God, how she envied normal people for their ignorant lives.
She walked a circuitous path, throwing up walls at key places to thwart any effort by bad guys to retrace her steps. With Milton now missing for days, and with this most recent attempt on Leanne's life—and on Fuji's life the day before—fear screamed in Rio's heart, trying to make her turn back.
So she used hate to push her feet forward. Almost without realizing it, she found herself at the spot where the boulevard took a gentle curve on its way to Asok's. She paused to absorb a pleasant fact.
This is where Hank created his Realities.
Rio felt them touch her skin. They floated like butterflies on a warm breeze, knocking cold air from her lungs. Gifts of comfort, acts of kindness—so many, and so beautiful.
But these images were ghosts. Only memories now. Hank was long gone from this place, and he no longer handed out butterflies, unwittingly, to strangers on the street. Rio moved forward a bit, to stand in the intersection just before the deli. She looked down the street, side to side, taking in as much of the city as she could.
All the warmth was ripped from her heart. She saw Death stalking the people Hank helped, riding dawn's chill like a whore.
Plotting.
Lurking.
This was the place where Anna first appeared, mesmerizing Hank with her beauty. Reality's noose gripped Rio's neck tight, and she screamed to loosen its hold.
"You'll never find them!" she promised.
She threw up so many walls around Asok's that its owner would be lucky if he remembered he owned the place. Then she left, wearing a thin smile. The deli would soon be abandoned. Her next destination was Milton's. She cut through alleys and empty lots, weaving a path meant to conceal her approach. Breathing like a bull through her nostrils, she used her small size to turn a tight corner and squeeze between two buildings.
She realized her efforts to elude bad guys were for naught. "Konnichiwa, sōpurando girl," Arius Azrial said.
There he was—head bent to the sky, eyes sparking blue lightning—the man who destroyed the ferry at Taveuni, with her and over five dozen innocent lives on board. At his feet lay the sixty-odd dead, like warriors slain in battle. Smoke snaked from their still-warm souls, caressing him like wenches. Standing stock-still and slack-jawed, Rio watched as he waded through the corpses, treading on them when had to.
He smiled as their bones crunched. "What reason might Heaven have for your visit on this gloomy day?"
Rio retreated not one inch. "I've come to kill you. All of you."
"Ho ho! You have? And how?"
Rio waited until Arius came close. "Like this!" she cried.
She feinted a move to his left before grabbing his right wrist with her right hand. Twisting his arm to expose the elbow, she struck the joint with all her might. She intended for it to break, but instead she felt three knuckles jab her between the shoulder blades. Arius hit her with such force that she splatted into a wall.
Rio whirled to face her attacker. "Let's go for a ride," he said, still smiling.
"I don't like cars."
"I know!"
In a fraction of a moment, Rio found herself standing by a car with Arius at her side.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
"That's Milton's car," she said.
"It is! The Aston Martin!"
Rio craned her neck to scowl up at the man. "What are you doing with it?"
"What does anyone do with Milton's cars? I'm borrowing it." His cheery tone vanished. "Get in," he growled. "You're driving."
"I don't drive."
No sooner had those word left her lips then, as thunder cracks from lightning, Rio found herself in the driver's seat, the bad guy sitting beside her. He buckled his seat belt. She found her side of the car had none.
"You gotta quit saying things like that to me," he said.
The Aston Martin came to life and, in another speck of time, Rio found her foot slammed down on the gas. The car roared along the city streets at one hundred miles an hour, then one-ten and one-twenty. Through good fortune and God's grace, they struck nothing and no one. The Angel of Death beside Rio never flinched, enjoying her dismay.
He wore the same outfit he had on when he sunk the ferry. Rio retched on the putrid stench of the leather pauldrons slung over the shoulders of his purple peacoat. She slammed on the brake using both her feet, but it had no effect on the car as it barreled towards a crowded intersection.
"Make it stop!" she hollered, seething in anger.
The car screeched to a halt. Without a seat belt, she struck her head on the windshield.
"Who taught you how to drive?" Arius asked Rio as she rubbed the knot on her head. He plucked the answer from her brain. "Milton," he said, all-knowing. "You mean you never drove a car at all in all those places you lived?"
Rio screamed, too loud. "I don't like cars!"
"Uh-huh," the man replied dryly.
Another thunder clap, and the car was racing again, break-neck down the street. There was no time for Rio to react as she plowed through heavy traffic. A sedan clipped the left rear of the Aston Martin, launching it into the oncoming lane. Rio steered onto the sidewalk, smashing planters and newspaper stands as people dove for cover, until she managed to get the car back on the road.
"Stop it!" Rio screamed. "Stop this car!"
Arius ignored her, speaking casually. "Oh! Do you know what I get to do next? Did you see the guy in that car you just passed?" He slapped her hard on the arm, as a friend might do in jest.
"What?" she hollered, shaking with fear and rage.
"I'm sending him straight to Hell! Watch!"
Ahead of the chaos Rio was causing, a delivery truck unloaded jugs of water destined for office coolers. For no apparent reason, several straps gave way, releasing twenty jugs. Most of them smashed upon impact with the ground, but one held together long enough to bounce off the hood of the Aston Martin. It turned the windshield into a spiderweb of broken safety glass and, as Rio struggled to see, another jug caught under the left front tire of the car being driven by the man Arius had mentioned.
His car was launched onto its side. It came to rest against the delivery truck, until another car ran into it from behind. The corner of the delivery truck's bumper pierced the windshield of the flipped car through the driver's side.
Arius bounced in his seat while looking over his shoulder at the carnage. "Got him!" he squealed with glee. "Got him dead!"
Rio found a way to speak calmly. "Please. Take me instead."
"What?"
"Take my life instead of any other. Don't make me kill anyone."
"I'll take whomever I like!"
A gust of wind tore a store awning from its moorings. It swung crazily as one bracket held, veering into the street. As the last bracket gave way, the awning took out a traffic light and a utility pole before wrapping itself around loose electrical wires.
The tangled mess landed in the intersection Rio was about to cross. With a green light in favor of cross-traffic, a pickup truck approached from her left, and another car from her right. She drove into the awning as the pickup truck veered to avoid her and crashed head-on into the other car.
Sparks flew from the awning as it dragged along the ground. Rio screamed, wordless and at the top of her lungs. Arius answered with a scream of his own, louder and lasting longer. He filled the car with purple sparks, far greater than the meager ones created by the awning being dragged outside. Every time a spark struck Rio, she jerked as if being electro-shocked. When she turned to the man to beg for mercy, every spark in the car flew into her mouth. Her teeth and tonsils glowed.
Rio lurched as if possessed. With what little sense of being she had left, she drove the Aston Martin full speed into the curb. A storm drain ripped off a front tire, cramming it under the car. The car angled up crazily, showing only sky through what was left of the windshield. The car then came to rest against a utility box the size of a refrigerator.
Steam boiled from the radiator as the calamity ended. Rio kicked open her door and fell to the ground. She stumbled around to the other side of the wreck and, with ungodly strength, dragged Arius through the broken window on his door. As she did, his limp body came to life. He took her by the shoulders and lifted her to her toes, shoving her tens of meters into a nearby alley.
"Are you sure you know who you're dealing with, little sōpu sōpu girl?"
He screamed like a thousand banshees while pressing Rio against a wall. She spoke not a word, and shoved the man with all her might, forcing him to wheel around and expose his back. With another mighty shove, she bent him over the lip of a nearby open Dumpster.
Arius turned to face Rio, and she grinned at the filth on his peacoat. Enraged, he picked her up by the neck. Baring a smile of spindly teeth, he began choking the life from her. The tendons in her neck crunched as he squeezed.
"You think your problems will be over if you kill me," he snarled. "The whole world will die by my hand!"
"Hai," Rio croaked as Death approached, so near she could taste it. "You first."
The man's hands went from her throat to her temples. He filled her with his oily rage, the stench blackening her heart. Death roiled in the air like a storm cloud, bringing Rio to tears. In her mind, she begged God's Heaven for some sort of divine intervention.
Hank-sama, please help me. Milton! Aika! Sweet Jesus!
Bellowing inhuman noise, Arius flung Rio in the air. He stepped aside to watch her land, face first on the pavement.
"You and your pansy friends will all meet Death today," he said as he circled her body.
Clarity came to Rio. If she had to die, she would take this man with her. She gripped a cobblestone cemented in the ground, firm and unforgiving. Using her RMing ability, she willed her fingernails into the concrete, commanding the stone to respond.
"Give… it… to… me."
The stone rose several centimeters before Arius grabbed her by the hair to bring her to her feet. Before he could react, she purposefully crumpled to the ground in a heap. The man stumbled as his weight shifted, tripping first over her and then the raised cobblestone.
With a sickening crack, his cheekbone shattered against the steel corner of the open Dumpster. Blood sprayed out his nose and eye, and the man gagged and fell. The back of his head struck the cobblestone, and he lay motionless next to Rio.
She rose to her feet. She screamed, spat and kicked at the man, but he never moved again. Blood oozed from where his head lay. Just to be sure, she stomped on his face several times until she heard bones break. She then puked oily black vomit into a sewer drain before making her way from the alley.
Rio cleaned up at a sink in the redoubt. She removed all her clothes except for her chemise and bra, and donned a pair of long leg cotton panties. She then put on dungarees and a field jacket before loading herself up with as many weapons as she could carry.
She stood outside the redoubt at the spot where she once smoked a bidi while waiting as Hank rescued Bumbles. Using a grenade launcher, she fired a round into the open laundry room window before firing two more grenades, one through the window of her quarters above the sun porch and the other into the Japanese bath next door. She circled the back half of the building, emptying clip after clip from an assault rifle into all the windows.
Casting the rifle aside, Rio entered Milton's mansion. She fired through every doorway, using two handheld Uzi machine guns. When she ran out of clips for those, she cast them aside and dropped hand grenades down the stairwells she passed.
She ran through the transverse hallway that led to the conference lunch room and stood by the blank vending machine. Using two TEC DC-9 pistols, she filled the beast with bullet holes. Red liquid oozed from its wounds, as all the damage she had inflicted on Milton's mansion did the same—the building bled as if alive.
But the vending machine would not die. It sparked and crackled and groaned, until she shoved two grenades in its maw. As she ran for cover, the machine exploded with such force that it blew a hole through the roof, taking out most of the room. Rio performed similar routines on the carriage house and the redoubt before using plastic explosives and a flamethrower to set everything ablaze. Lastly, she again stripped down to her skivvies, feeding her battle gear into the flames.
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Milton's Burning Mansion [https://i1346.photobucket.com/albums/p688/HardeeBurger/Dots-BurningMansionlancer-dies_zps228a1782.gif]
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The estate screamed as it burned. No one came to its rescue—no fire truck, no policeman. Rio sat in the fire until it grew too hot to bear before retreating to a knoll near the portico path. A few short days ago, a Savior approached from this knoll, chasing a cartoon dog her otoko created. Today, she walked away from the ruins using that very same path. Barefoot, bleeding, beaten and bruised, she shivered in her chemise and cotton leggings at a bus stop, waiting to be taken home.
It was going to feel good to have Hank hold her in his arms when she arrived.
After Rio was out of sight, Hank and Anna watched Leanne drive away. Bumbles sat at their feet, looking at Hank expectantly.
"Well," Hank said to Anna. "I guess we go inside."
"Do you have a key to get in?" Anna asked as they approached the apartment building.
"Uh… no," Hank realized. "I don't."
Anna huffed. She dug through her purse while grumbling. "I can see now why I got Leanne in this relationship deal of ours." She found a key Leanne had given her. "Rio's as useless as you."
Before Hank could come up with a retort, Anna's phone blasted a ringtone from her purse.
"Bring Hank-sama to me," Aika said after Anna had answered. "Right now. Dōzo yoroshiku."