Xard was now carrying Kada bridal style per instruction. She didn’t know if it was because Xard was gay, but she didn’t feel the same fluster as when Drim had held her the same way, but that was relieving since she needed all the mental faculties she could muster for this. Xard had backed up a ways from the canyon, and looked to Kada for confirmation, still looking unsure at the idea. She didn’t blame him for his uncertainty; it truly was a crazy idea after all.
Kada nodded, and Xard took off running towards the canyon as fast as he could. Just before he reached the edge, he kicked off hard, leaping high into the air. Now airborne, he slipped his arms down Kada’s body, grabbing onto both of her ankles. He tucked up so that he could put the bottom of Kada’s feet against his own. She opened the thermos she had been keeping ready in her hands, summoned her anchor, pointed it at the monster, crouched, and then kicked off from Xard’s feet, sending her flying right towards it.
This was the best way Kada could think of to get the most velocity without alarming the beehexoth beforehand. As she soared closer, she aimed the sharp end of her anchor right between two hexagons. It hit the slit directly, but there was much less resistance than she was expecting. The next thing she knew, she was enveloped in complete darkness, and then hit with light again before she crashed into the ground.
Kada sat on the ground disoriented. If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought she just went through a black hole. She heard yelling, and looked up to find Xard running along the rim of the canyon. She was glad that he had made it to the other side just fine, but couldn’t make out what he was yelling. His yelling grew more intense, but she still couldn’t understand a single word.
Xard seemed to have gotten fed up and started sliding down the canyon wall towards her. He was still yelling the entire time, but it wasn’t until he was right on top of her that she could finally hear what he was saying. “Move you idiot!” Xard screamed as he tackled Kada, rolling them both a ways away. Kada wondered why he did that, until a large mass of hexagons slammed down in the spot where she just was, denting the ground.
The two of them clambered away to a safe distance. Luckily, the Beehexoth moved quite slowly, so it wasn’t going to catch up soon even if they didn’t go too far. After she caught her breath, Kada turned to Xard and said, “Thanks you really saved me there. I guess I went through it, and was really disoriented after. I honestly had no idea that it was attacking me.”
Xard flicked Kada in the forehead in response, “Well get your head back in it. That thing could crush us in one hit if we’re not careful… Any ideas what we should do now?”
Once Kada was done rubbing away the pain on her forehead, she pulled her anchor chain to bring the anchor close and insisted, “I haven’t given up on aiming between the slits yet. It’s quite possible we just hit the wrong spot, so I’m going to aim more towards the middle this time.” She started spinning the chain to build up speed as she walked slowly towards the monster. She got fairly close, but still out of its range, and let the anchor loose towards it.
Like before, the anchor slipped through the opening with little resistance, but didn’t go all the way through this time. Instead, it got caught in the middle. Kada took that as a good sign that she’d landed it somewhere important. She pulled the chain as hard as she could, but there was no movement. She tugged a few more times, but still it wouldn’t budge, causing her to let out a bit of nervous laughter. The chain suddenly started reeling into the Beehexoth’s body which Kada took as a sign to bail.
She melted the anchor, and pulled the metal goop out of the monster’s body. After she finished reeling it in, she returned to Xard to strategize. The two of them talked for a few minutes about what to do, when Xard suddenly turned pale. He started stuttering his words and pointed behind Kada as a shadow grew across his face. Kada turned around to see the Beehexoth shifting its shape once again.
It had one of its arms raised high. Hexagons from the rest of the body were slowly sliding their way up to that arm, making it grow while the rest of the body shrunk. Over half the hexagons now made up the appendage. Kada was certain that it was going to try to crush them by covering the most area possible. Next to her, Xard let out a sigh, ran his fingers through his hair, and shifted his body a little before announcing, “I guess it’s my turn.”
Xard slowly walked towards the creature, now completely eclipsed in the shadow of the giant fist looming above him. The Beehexoth started driving its arm down towards Xard. It was slow moving, but the force behind it would be like having a wrecking ball dropped on him. Xard raised his left arm up, and as soon as the first hexagon touched, all momentum was gone. It was different than if it had hit a solid object, which would have caused a massive shockwave.
Instead, the energy surged straight into Xard’s hand. His sleeve was shredded into a thousand scattering pieces as the energy passed down his arm. Kada guessed that it was just a bit too much energy at once to control fully, and was amazed that he could handle it at all. Xard stood there shaking for a few seconds after moving out of the way of the fist that then fell to the ground. He finally managed to get himself to bring his right arm up, and plunge it between two hexagons into the giant mass. He dove it in deep, to the point that his chest was pressed right up against one of the hexagons.
Like with his left sleeve, the right one tore into tiny bits as the energy surged up his arm. Kada could hear the energy enter the monster, making a sound like the shockwave that should have happened earlier. Kada guessed he let the energy release in all directions, and with that much force, it would be like a bomb going off. Spurts of blood shot out from between the cracks, followed by hexagons launching in every direction.
There was something about Xard’s Curse that Kada had been wondering about. If something was pressed up against him, and then force was applied, would he be able to absorb it? The answer was a resounding no. The hexagon that was pressed against Xard had just as much force applied as the rest, sending it and him careening backwards. Xard crashed into the canyon wall, and was knocked unconscious.
That damn fool. Did he not even think that was a possibility? Kada questioned. She was just about to run over to him, when she noticed the hexagon still cradled in his arms. This was the first time she could get a clear view of the other side of one. In her mind, she had expected it to be a slug like mass, but instead it was a separate creature entirely. She looked around at other ones that had flown nearby, they were all the same.
They had leathery brown skin, six legs, a tail, and a pointed face. The word hex started racing through her mind again, over and over, causing her to crouch down and claw at her hair again. Finally though, her mind landed on a word: Hexadillo. Hexadillos was the monster that Drim had mentioned before. She felt relieved that she finally knew, but still couldn’t remember what he had said about them.
She walked over to Xard, hoping that she would remember the rest soon. She knelt down to check on him, and picked up the hexadillo off his chest. She gave it a good look and felt sad. They were kind of cute, so she felt bad about having hurt them. The wounds on this one were quite severe, and she wasn’t sure if it was alive or not, so she took a look around. The main formation of them was still intact, and looked like it was trying to form into something else. However, there were many scattered hexadillos that weren’t moving. Kada guessed that Xard’s blast had taken out a fair number of them.
She started thinking about what to do now. She needed to either get Xard to wake up or get him to someplace safe. She didn’t really want to continue now, but they would need to finish off the rest of them; not wanting to leave a job half undone. They seemed quite smart, so it wouldn’t be easy, but with their smaller number, she felt a bit more confident. All of her plans instantly lost priority when she felt a sharp sting in her stomach. She looked down, and saw the hexadillo’s tail sticking in just above her navel.
The creature began wriggling in her arms until it managed to get itself loose, before crawling over towards the main construct. Kada slumped to the ground. She was paralyzed, unable to move her limbs at all, or even call out to Xard. She activated her Curse to check it, and found that it still worked, just slightly melting the ground beneath her. She considered using it to pull both her and Xard underground, but didn’t know how long the paralysis would last, leaving a good possibility that they would both drown first.
Kada could hear a loud rumbling drawing closer to her. She wasn’t facing the direction of the noise, but she shifted her eyes as much as she could, and could get a slight glimpse in her peripherals. The hexadillos had formed a large wall that was rushing towards them. It was terrifying to see, and the fact that she could do nothing about it scared her even more. She did her best to try to call out to Xard to wake him up, but she couldn’t get her mouth to open or her throat to make any noise.
The massive wall of hexagons was now towering over the two of them, making Kada want to cry from helplessness. The top of the wall fell forward, crashing the whole thing down like a tidal wave on top of them. The initial impact was devastating, every inch of Kada’s body screamed in pain from the brutal force, but it wasn't over yet. The wall had broken apart on contact but now the hexadillos were swarming them.
A few of them lifted Kada off the ground, while a few climbed on top of her. They all began pounding and clawing at her with their feet. None of the hits were particularly strong on their own, but they were adding up quickly. It was a never ending flurry of punishment. Every hexadillo was yelling as they attacked, causing a symphony of torturous buzzing. Kada heard a crackling noise from nearby that somehow managed to cut through the rest. It seemed that the assault had woken up Xard. However, he wasn’t fairing much better than she was.
He was doing his best to absorb the energy from the attacks, and use it to blast them away, but each one had such little impact that it wasn’t sending them far. If he did manage to knock a few back, others took their place before he could capitalize on it. Kada watched helplessly as he struggled. The bursts from Xard seemed to be getting weaker and weaker, he was likely running out of energy and will to resist.
She didn’t know how much longer she could hold out herself. The pain now was immeasurable. Some of their claws had broken through her outer layers of skin and were now digging into her flesh. It would only be a matter of time until they reached her organs. She was going to die here. It took a moment, but she had now resigned herself to that fact.
This wasn’t the first time she felt like this, and she hated herself even more because of it. She was too cocky again, just like before, and got herself in way over her head. The past weeks in the For Hires had made her feel comfortable, safe, and powerful. They had done a lot of difficult things, and always come out on top.
It had gotten to the point that she felt she could handle anything, but now she realized she was just hiding behind the strength of the others. It wasn’t on her own merit that she’d gotten this far, and now because of her hubris, she was close to death again. This time she had dragged someone else down with her, and that was the worst of it all. She had convinced Xard to take this job, and now he was going to die too.
Kada had all but given into hopelessness and despair when her finger twitched. The paralysis was beginning to wear off. She wanted to cry again just from that small movement alone, but wasn’t sure if it was worth getting her hopes up or even trying. It almost seemed easier to give up now, it would be over soon. But no, she had to try. There was someone else that was depending on her to do so.
She struggled with all of her might to move her finger down. She still couldn’t radiate her Curse more than about an inch, but if she got close enough to the ground, she could save them. It had to be soon, she could feel herself losing a lot of blood, and her consciousness was starting to fade. She had made progress, and guessed she was about halfway there, but with each second it got harder to press forward, or to even hold onto the ground she covered. No matter what, even if she died, she had to melt the ground.
All of a sudden, it was very bright. Kada let out a sigh in her mind, assuming she had bled out and passed on to the afterlife. She was upset that she hadn’t saved them, but was happy that she had tried at all despite how helpless she felt. She noticed, though, that even though it was the afterlife, the pain sure didn’t stop at all. That was when her eyes focused and she realized she was staring at the same blue sky she had admired earlier that day.
Phon suddenly entered her vision. She was crouched down next to her, with her ribbon wrapped around her eyes. “Oh, you’re not dead… Guess I acted too quickly then,” Phon muttered then made a dissatisfied noise with her lips. Kada heard heavy coughing next to her and slumped her head to the side to get a look. Xard was on the ground next to her, coughing up blood.
His clothes were basically tatters, and he was covered in bruises and still had bleeding gashes across his entire body. She didn’t want to look, but guessed she was basically in the same condition. It still hurt like hell, but she was feeling better. She didn’t know if it was the boosted regeneration, or the fact that she was safe now and surrounded by her friends. She felt a different pain now, though. She had been saved again, and that hurt just as much.
“Oh, looks like Xard’s alive too, neat,” Phon said as she scooted over next to him. “Well, there is still the matter at hand. I believe Drim has something that he wants to say to you both, so I’ll go play with the rowdy little scamps until he’s done.” Drim… Kada hadn’t seen him this whole time. She followed Phon’s movements with her eyes in the hopes that it would lead her to him. It was now that she realized that they were back up on the ridge next to the canyon. Drim had been just a few feet away, staring down into it.
Phon walked up next to him, put her hand on his shoulder for a moment, then vanished. Kada guessed she was now at the bottom occupying the hexadillos. Drim turned around, and walked between the two of them on the ground. He had his hood up, which made Kada feel a little sad, thinking seeing his face might cheer her up a little. At this angle she couldn’t even make out the faint glow of his eyes.
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Drim crouched down, and held out the palm of both hands flat. A yellow flower bloomed above them, was quickly spun into paste, and applied to two thorns; one on each wrist. He then jammed a thorn into each of their necks and mumbled, “Something to ease the pain, as well as keep you awake. If you were to fall asleep now, it could be fatal.” Kada’s mind twisted after hearing that. It wasn’t what he said but the feeling behind it. His voice sounded so emotionless, the words were so hollow in tone.
The next words weren’t, though. “Now then, we need to have a little chat…” the moment after he finished speaking, Drim grabbed both Kada and Xard by their faces, lifted them up, and slammed their heads into a tree behind them. Their skulls were now firmly embedded into the bark. If they hadn’t been Fiends, they would have been killed on impact. Thankfully due to the medicine they were just given, it hurt far less than it should have.
Kada moved her eyes down at Drim while trying to say anything, even though she didn’t really know what she was going to say. However, Drim was holding them by the bottom of their jaws which made that entirely impossible. That swift movement had made his hood fall off, but it was still hard to see his face. He was looking down at the ground so his bangs were covering most of it, and shadowing the rest.
Kada could notice the slight residue left on his cheek. Something she couldn’t possibly mistake since it was permanently etched into her own face. He had been crying. His face jerked up suddenly, and now she could see his eyes clearly for the first time. They weren’t like normal, the irises were burning; burning brighter than she had ever seen them, with such intensity that Kada felt that his gaze was engulfing her entire body in flames, making her blood boil.
His eyes were so fierce that she couldn’t possibly believe that they belonged to a normal human or even a Fiend. She couldn’t guess what those eyes would belong to; a ruler? An angel? A demon? A god? No matter what it was, they were the eyes of someone much greater than herself or anyone she could ever hope to be. Those eyes screamed one thing to her. This person was special, a unique existence that could never be replicated, and there would never be another person like him.
Her mind had slowly been drifting to existential wonderings, but she was ripped back to the present. “Kada! I Told You Before!” Drim roared, the world shaking around them as he did. “I told you! But you went and did it anyways…! Hexadillos are peaceful creatures! They will never attack anyone for any reason unless they are attacked first!”
Kada immediately remembered everything he had told her about them. How they were hive mind creatures that attacked as one unit. How they would always avoid other creatures, even taking great lengths to go around and avoid them. How if they were attacked, they would relentlessly seek out and destroy their attacker, and not stop until they and all of their species that they could sense nearby were completely eradicated.
“You two put yourselves at risk!” Drim yelled as he continued his tirade. “I have no idea what I would have done if you two had died. And it wasn’t just yourselves, everyone nearby, everyone in Constead, and who knows how far, all of their lives are now at risk too. They won’t stop no matter what, so now I have to go kill every single one of them!” Drim let go of their faces, and they both slumped to the ground.
He turned away from them and walked to the edge of the cliff, but turned back once more, and lifted his arm which was pointing his now extended blade in their direction. “Remember this. Those creatures down there, they are not the monsters here today. You two are.” After berating them one last time, Drim jumped into the canyon and out of sight.
Kada wanted to bawl her eyes out. That scolding hurt and she knew she deserved it. That had to wait, though. She needed to see for herself what would happen next. She slowly crawled towards the edge so she could spectate, but before she could reach it, she heard groaning from behind her. “Hey Kada, I want to watch too. I still can’t move though, so would you mind bringing me over,” Xard struggled painfully to get those words out. Kada was just glad that he finally spoke since it meant he was getting better.
She crawled back over to the tree that Xard was still leaning on, and grabbed him by his shirt’s collar which was still just barely intact. As she crawled back to the edge, she drug him along. She wasn’t doing so well on energy herself, so all she could manage was to keep his face from not scraping along the ground. That couldn’t be said for the rest of his body.
As they went along, Xard started to speak in a very sluggish and strained voice, “Know that I don’t blame you for this Kada. I wanted to pull off something big just as much as you, and I was stupid enough to injure myself with my own Curse. Us being in this bad of shape is just as much on me too.” When they got to the cliffside, she rested his chin on the ground, so his eyes were pointing straight down into the canyon. She had tried to be as gentle as possible, but he had let out displeasing noises the whole way.
Now that she could finally stop moving, Kada flopped onto her stomach and propped up her own chin like she’d done Xard’s. As she gazed down, she had been expecting the usual monster slaying she had come accustomed to watching over the past weeks, not the spectacle that was unfolding before her. All the remaining hexadillos were in one solid clump now, with Drim and Phon rapidly teleporting around it.
Phon was using the electric setting on her yo-yo to zap any exposed skin she could see. Likewise, Drim was slashing at any exposed slits with his blades. Between each hit, Phon was teleporting them to another spot around the clump. Drim tended to jump up a bit each time, to attack the higher up areas that Phon couldn’t reach. He would always have to be moved back to the ground but was jumping back up between each movement like it was nothing.
The two of them were entirely in sync, never attacking the same spot. They had also mastered reorienting and refocusing themselves after being teleported; their responses were instant. It was like watching two people in perfect harmony dance around. Phon may hate the name Drazah Duet, but whoever came up with it nailed them perfectly.
Kada still wasn’t sure why they were doing this, but eventually came to realize. They were forcing the hexadillos to form a giant and perfect sphere. After all of them were an equal distance apart, the pair stopped their relentless assault. Drim gave a nod to Phon, and then he vanished entirely. Kada glanced around, wondering where he possibly could have gone. Wait, he’s not inside that thing, is he?!
Her question was answered by the sudden onslaught of a familiar sound: metal tearing through flesh. Before she had joined, she had never seen or heard anything die except for Bosef, and even then she hadn’t been able to see it all the way through. This sound had become familiar to her over the past weeks, and she thought she had gotten used to it, but this time every cut she heard made her wince.
Blood began spitting out from the slits of the sphere. It started out as just a few spurts, but within seconds it was gushing out of every possible opening. Soon, the slashing sounds stopped and there was silence for just a moment. The sphere began to cave in on itself and collapse. The hexadillos fell one by one, the squishing sound of each hitting the ground was driving Kada to the brink of insanity. It was all she could hear as it tugged at her heart.
Now there was just a ring of corpses on the ground which had begun rotting immediately, releasing a ghastly stench. Standing in the middle of it was Drim drenched from head to toe in blood, not a clear spot anywhere on him. He wasn’t looking at the corpses. He didn’t seem to be looking at anything, just staring off into nothing. In that moment his face perfectly encapsulated what the word ‘drim’ meant.
Kada had thought his name to be weird when she heard it, so she had looked it up. The only result she could find was one from a long dead language. Its meaning: ‘the somber feeling you get when you look at the sky on an overcast day’. It was definitely a strange and specific word, that she felt it was cruel of the Drazah’s to name their son. She also hadn’t fully understood what it meant, but she knew now just looking at him.
It was the face of someone who did what had to be done, even though they hated every second of it. In that moment, there was no trace left of the somewhat airy and carefree boy she was used to. She hated herself for having put him in that situation, and didn’t know if she ever could make it up to him, but she would spend her whole life trying. It wasn’t a sense of guilt that made her feel compelled to do so, she simply wanted to do it.
She always wanted to be there with him; wherever he went, whatever he did. No matter what he would demand of her, she always wanted to be by his side from this moment on. Even if he did never look at her with the same feelings she was beginning to admit to herself.
◆◆◆
Back at the apartment, Kada and Xard were sitting silently on the couch. They had let Drim use the shower first for obvious reasons and were waiting for him to finish. Phon was now in the kitchen after having spent a fair amount of time scolding them; mostly about going against the restrictions she had placed and taking on something they didn’t know anything about and couldn’t handle. In the end, she said she would leave it up to Drim to decide what their punishment would be.
After the scolding, and before she left for the kitchen, she had been kind enough to explain things and answer a few of their questions. She explained that after they had finished their job, they had checked Xard and Kada’s location using the GPS in their phones to see how they were doing. Drim had recognized the area and assumed the worst so they rushed over. Drim had carried Phon so she could move them as one piece for the most speed.
They had gotten there after the two of them had already been swarmed, but didn’t act immediately in the hopes that the two of them would be able to get themselves out of the jam on their own. Only when Phon was completely sure that if the fight continued any longer that there would be irreversible damage to their bodies did she save them.
After the fight, Drim and Phon performed a bit of emergency first aid on them, mostly just to stop the bleeding. Phon had offered to take them to a hospital but they had declined. The two of them were still pretty beat up even now, and it hurt to basically exist at the moment, but their wounds had started to heal, and they would be back to normal in a couple of days.
Xard had asked Phon what the dangerous job from before had been, to which she answered smugly, “Bureaucracy!” She then went on to explain it in a bit more detail. In exchange for their uncle’s help, who surprisingly worked for the CP, they needed to go and get their death certificates revoked. Apparently, there were a lot of issues in continuously awarding criminal scores to dead people.
Kada and Xard were sitting in awkward silence, awaiting their fate from Drim after he was done in the bathroom. They had a brief conversation between the two of them, but didn’t feel much needed to be said at this point. Kada was mulling over what the punishment could be. At best, she expected another scolding. At worst, he could demand that they leave or even be so upset that he killed them. She doubted that would be the case, but felt he would have every right in doing so.
The two of them jumped a little when the bathroom door creaked open. Drim walked out, drying his hair with a towel, and had already changed into a new set of clothes. With only a slight moment of hesitation, Kada and Xard leapt from the couch, knelt down on the floor in front of Drim, bowed their heads, and yelled in unison, “We’re very sorry!”
Kada continued, “I know that I failed to listen to you, and we ignored your warnings, and let you down. But we promise that we will always listen to you no matter what from here on.”
Xard said his piece next, “We also forced you into a position where you had to do something you hated just to save us. We never want to be a burden to the two of you ever again.”
The two once again joined in unison and pleaded, “Please! Help us get stronger!”
Drim had been pointed in their direction, but hadn’t been looking at the two of them this entire time. His wet hair and the shadow from the towel had been blocking them from being able to really see his face. He turned away from the two of them and began walking towards his room. “Pack your things,” was all that he said, emotionlessly.
Xard let out a pained gasp like he was about to cry. “Wait, no please, anything but that!” Kada yelled after him.
Even Phon poked her head out of the kitchen and stated, “Hey Drim, don’t you think that’s a bit too harsh?”
Drim turned around, but he didn’t have the upset or angry face Kada was expecting. It seemed back to normal, and a little confused. “Huh?” Drim questioned. “I mean, we’re moving in a few days so it’s best to get the packing done soon. If the two of you want to get stronger, then fine, but it will be hell. Your training will start as soon as we get to our new location. So, spend the next few days resting up and letting your bodies heal.”
Kada let out a large sigh of relief. The somewhat goofy and socially inept Drim she knew was back. After he had gone into his room and closed the door, Kada leaned over to Xard and whispered, “I’m glad he’s back to normal, but the forceful Drim wasn’t so bad.”
“Right though?” Xard responded with a slight chuckle.
“I heard that!” Phon yelled as her toy gavel came flying at them from the kitchen.
Fiends For Hire Text Conversation 5
Date: Bipriber 15th 2077
『Kada: Heyo Keith. Here are some options for my warrant poster. Pick whichever one you want ;) (3 Attached Files)』
『Dorkmeister (Keith): I’m sorry miss, but we can not use nude pictures for a warrant poster, even if all the important bits are covered.』
『Kada: Prude』
『Kada: Fine how bout this one? (Attached File: Kissy Face.pic)』
『Dorkmeister (Keith): I don’t know where you managed to get a human skull. However, you kissing a half melted one would likely traumatize any children who saw it.』
『Kada: Jeez, it’s a fake, relax. What kind of picture would be acceptable then?』
『Dorkmeister (Keith): Just a regular picture would be fine.』
『Kada: Okay, I’ll look through my phone and see what I’ve got』
『Kada: Here you shouldn’t have any problems with this (Attached File: Splish Splash.pic)』
『Dorkmeister (Keith): You really don’t have a concept of what normal is if you think you jumping out of the ground like a dolphin is normal.』
『Dorkmeister (Keith): Well whatever, it will work. It should also give the bounty hunters an idea of what they’re dealing with.』
『Dorkmeister (Keith): I’ll submit it to my superiors.』
『Kada: Thanks Keith. Pleasure doing business with you. I hope we never speak again』
『Dorkmeister (Keith): Likewise, Miss.』