Jaid and Rezin found Nachi and Kada loitering just outside the zoo’s front entrance. The landscape around it had changed significantly and explained why Kada looked exhausted and was floating in a dirt-puddle of her own creation. Dirt spires now surrounded the entire zoo, curving inward. It was like the entire place was caught in a giant mouth. The reason was obvious: to keep the monsters from escaping.
Just past the entrance, there was another dirt wall. Jaid couldn’t see where it ended, but it seemed like it was separating the entire zoo into two sections. “Welcome back,” Nachi greeted them. “If you’re wondering about the wall, Drim took the left half and the other members took the right.”
“By himself?!” Drim was an undeniably skilled hunter, but even that was too much for one person. “Should I go help him?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Kada defended him as she drifted back and forth. “He could probably take on thousands of monsters at once and only call it a light workout.”
“Yes, yes, the boy is very skilled,” Nachi agreed half-heartedly. “He’ll be fine, and if either group happens to let some monsters slip by, we’re here waiting for them. This is the only exit we left, so they’re not escaping. Kada already took care of all the flying monsters that tried to escape too.”
“Yeah, there were a whole bunch of 'em,” Kada confirmed as she stared at the sky. “Tried to take off the moment I made all the dirt move. But I shot one of these electro-static-cloud-orb thingies that Nathym gave me. They all got shocked and went splat back to the ground. Probably still running around, but no way they’re flying up again.”
“Agreed, but there’s still the chance some may try to climb up the walls to escape. So, we have a special job for you, Rezin,” Nachi stared at him deviously. “Could you make it so the surrounding sky is filled with eyes or growls or whatever frightens the instincts of these monsters? Don’t want them even thinking of escaping.”
“Uhh, sure,” Rezin agreed, though didn’t seem entirely convinced. “Since I don’t know where the monsters are, I’ll have to do it to everything nearby. That uhh, that means our people too.”
“Ooo, even better,” Nachi started getting excited. “Nothing like a little extra terror to keep people on their toes. Make it happen.” Rezin closed his eyes and held his hands together, a moment later he wiped them towards the sky. While the level of light didn’t change, the entire world around them went black.
Several rifts formed in the darkness, and giant eyes of every color opened, staring down on the feeble creatures below. The world suddenly felt colder and more eerie around them. It wasn’t something Rezin’s Curse could actually manipulate, but it showed just how strong the illusion was. He sat down while holding the pose, likely needing to keep concentration for it to stay in effect.
A symphony of monster cries rang out from the zoo, Rezin’s trickery clearly having an effect. There was also a single undeniably human scream that sounded a little boyish. “Not the first time Gatrim made that noise,” Nachi sighed, unphased by the nightmare world around her. “Jaid, if you wanna help, I’d go see if you can find him. Seems he’s having some trouble.”
Since she’d rather do something with her time than sit around and make idle conversation, Jaid headed into the right side of the zoo as prompted. She didn’t make it very far, however, stopping only a short distance inside once she was confidently out of sight. This was the first time she’d been alone all day, so she had a report to make.
Most of it could wait, but the news about Eleen Drazah needed to be submitted as soon as possible. Confirming that truth had been one of her ultimate objectives infiltrating this organization in the first place after all. It almost felt like a burden lifted off her shoulders after she pressed ‘Submit’, but there was still plenty left to investigate.
Not a moment later, Jaid heard shots being fired nearby and decided to investigate. Peering into the reptile house, she found Tize easily dispatching the several small scaly monsters. Since he seemed to have it handled, she pressed onward.
It didn’t take her long before she found Itsy and Niloy huddled next to a large lake—surprisingly large for a zoo. It had probably expanded after the zoo was shut down due to flooding and improper upkeep. “So uhh, what are those?” Jaid asked after she greeted the two women, referring to a pile of monsters laying nearby.
“Crocigators,” Itsy answered proudly, the pile obviously her handiwork. “Least monsterousy monsters that have ever monstered.” They weren’t dead, or they’d be degrading, but it was obvious they wouldn’t be moving any time soon with how mangled their bodies were. “Oh look, here comes another one.”
A Crocigator clambered out of the water and started waddling over to the girls. It went to bite Niloy, but Itsy grabbed into its mouth with her bare hands. She ripped out a handful of teeth with each. Then while it was crying in pain, she grabbed its tail and hoisted it high. Like hammering a nail, she slammed the monster into the ground until it was as broken and bloody as the rest, then chucked it onto the pile with the others.
“You got good timing, though, Jaidy Jaid,” Niloy looked delighted to see her. “So, I made the water more dense so like everything’d float to the top, yeah? But I stopped before they breached the surface cus there’s like so much zjik in there. Now that you’re here, though, you can use your sword and go zap! Everything dead!”
Knowing she’d lose any argument against it, Jaid merely complied. She readied her railgun and dipped the tip into the water. Several zaps of lightning at full power shocked the water, and it didn’t take long to see the results. Corpse after corpse started floating to the surface. Most of them were rotting, but there was some standard sea life.
“Think we got them all?” Niloy asked the two others as they stared into the murky water that was now only getting murkier.
“Well, you’re the only one who can answer that,” Jaid pointed out.
“Guess so,” Niloy seemed a little reluctant as more and more decaying monsters plopped out of the water when she started making them rise. It got to the point that there were so many that they were spilling out over the edge and onto the land. It wasn’t all dead monsters, either. There was an upsettingly large amount of skeletons from creatures of all kinds—their victims over the years—a few of them human.
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Another thing rose to the surface: a very alive, very annoyed monster. At the first sign of movement, Niloy quickly altered the water, basically making it as thin as air. Everything that had surfaced suddenly plummeted towards the bottom, taking the monster with it. But it didn’t stay down there for long. The monster slithered out onto the shore of the other side of the lake.
They could now get the full scope, and the thing was damned huge. None of them knew what it was, but Drim would explain to them later that it was a Jeellyfish—a combination of an electric eel and a jellyfish. It certainly looked like an eel, but with a slight pink-tinted see-through body. It also had several tentacles drooping down from the side of its mouth, all of them sparking. The electricity from Jaid’s sword had either done nothing to it or charged it up even more.
Itsy didn’t wait for the monster to act and started chucking mangled Crocigators across the lake at the Jeellyfish. While they certainly impacted, no obvious damage was done. Instead, the Crocigators got caught in its body and immediately started to dissolve. The women couldn’t tell if it was because that had killed the Crocigators, or if that was just how the Jeellyfish’s digestive system worked.
Jaid then got a taste of her own medicine as sparks of electricity were shot out of the monster’s tentacles and sent flying straight at them. Jaid quickly stabbed her sword into the ground and used her clones to grab Itsy and Niloy to pull them away to safety. The large sword thankfully worked as a lightning rod that captured all that weaponized electricity. Since the sword itself was built to handle such a charge, there wasn’t the slightest hint of damage.
They didn’t know if the monster had run out of lightning to shoot or if it had just tired itself out, but it gave up on that tactic before long. The Jeellyfish then started trudging around the shore of the lake at incredible speed. Jaid and Niloy both readied their weapons, but Itsy stepped in front and threw a hand back to stop them. “Dunno if this is stupid, but I’ma do it anyways.”
Itsy then recklessly charged at the beast herself, bolting fast as she could, the ground quaking from each step. The Jeellyfish coiled itself for a strike as the two drew near, but Itsy didn’t stop or change course. Instead, she jumped right at the monster's head, leaving no time for the Jeellyfish to react. Itsy slipped right into its body, smashing through its brain, and burst out the other side.
In that moment, Itsy had become the perfect personification of her moniker: a wrecking ball that could smash through anything. Jaid and Niloy ran to check up on her. She was perfectly fine, but could only be compared to that of a fetus—curled up on the ground and covered in goo. While Niloy was kind enough to hose Itsy off with her water gun, Jaid resumed her search for Gatrim.
He proved more difficult to find than the others, but Jaid still didn’t have a terribly tough time. There was a trail of monster ash to follow that eventually turned into decaying corpses. For someone who had been screaming in the distance, he’d been doing surprisingly well. Another scream rang out, letting Jaid know she was getting close, and she sprinted towards the noise.
When she found Gatrim, she realized he hadn’t been screaming out of danger, but out of frustration. He was completely fine—not a wound on him, but probably exhausted. His opponent was the clear reason: a Cheetrunner. They were a combination of cheetahs and road runners—the fastest land-bound monster known to man.
The beast sprinted around the open field while Gatrim desperately kept chase. Bolt after bolt, Gatrim tried to skewer the monster with his rapier, but the Cheetrunner kept dodging nimbly. She didn’t know how long they’d been at it, but Gatrim looked ragged. Yet his outfit was still in peak perfection, somehow not a speck of dust or a wrinkle anywhere to be found.
On the other hand, his hair told a different story. His golden blond hair that was usually meticulously styled to perfection was now damp and frayed in every direction. After a few more bursts of speed and a few more failed stabs, Gatrim’s legs buckled and he collapsed to the ground.
He’d started using his rapier to balance and pull himself up while Jaid ran over to him. “Stay out of this, Jaid! This is my hunt!,” he roared towards the monster, not taking his eyes off of it. The creature reciprocated. It had stopped running entirely, and was now backing away slowly. Their eyes were locked, and neither would break their gaze. There was a mutual understanding that this chase had their lives on the line.
“You’ve already bested me at my own skill. I won’t let you take this from me too!” his rant continued. “I will overcome this and kill this beast with my own hand.”
It was an impressive resolve, and obvious that he was doing this to prove his worth to himself more than anything. Jaid hated to intrude on their duel, but couldn’t stop herself from offering help to her reluctant companion. “Fine, I won’t kill it,” Jaid agreed as she helped him to her feet. “But at least let me swing the odds in your favor.”
“Whatever,” Gatrim came to terms with it. “I can’t stop whatever you do. But it will be me who ends this.” She let go of Gatrim once he could stand steadily and readied her own sword. The Cheetrunner clearly didn’t expect it when now a second person came at it with a burst of speed, and Jaid nearly ended this in one strike.
The quick monster managed to scramble away, though, and the chase resumed. Jaid dashed again and again after the monster, all around the field. She found it odd that it didn’t try to escape the area, but it probably stuck around to the terrain it knew best. Maybe this field had been its enclosure while the zoo was still open, or maybe even before it had mutated.
Its title as the fastest wasn’t without good reason. Even with her Curse, they were reaching unprecedented speeds. One wrong turn from the monster and it’d undoubtedly splat into paste. While there was no velocity behind her clones spawning, it still required insane mental speed to make sure the next was placed properly. Jaid’s injury would be minimal if she messed up, but it was still a risk.
This made her impression of Gatrim skyrocket. Even the fastest Fiend wouldn’t be able to keep up without a Curse, but Gatrim had been chasing this thing all over, hot on its heels, and all while just being a Lesser. Whatever technique the Foilepe family used, it seemed inhuman. Maybe it was, since the supernatural was becoming increasingly more common. Eventually, it’d just be the natural. Whatever the source, there was likely a reason it was a closely guarded secret.
As Jaid continued her chase, the monster seemed to be losing some steam. This would come to an end soon. She didn’t want to kill it, but could be forced to if Gatrim didn’t take this chance. Or that was what she thought. Jaid accidentally zoomed right past it when the Cheetrunner stopped dead in its tracks. She turned around just in time to see the beast flailing its head wildly before its eyes turned white, just like the Eagliger.
A second later, the monster resumed its mad dash. The speed was just as fast as it had been at its peak, maybe even faster, to the point that it was obvious its muscles couldn’t handle it. All agility and nimbleness had been lost, and the Cheetrunner was now only running in straight lines. Just as it was about to run into something, it’d stop dead, turn and then sprint again.
While the speed was too much for either her or Gatrim to match, this was certainly something they could take advantage of. The Cheetrunner had even left its field and was now running down the streets of the zoo, but that just made its path more predictable. Her and Gatrim shared a knowing nod and both sped after it.
Jaid stayed directly mostly behind the beast for the most part, but would occasionally creep up on one of its sides to try to steer its direction. They did four full laps around the area, but eventually everything lined up perfectly. As Jaid closed in on the monster from behind, Gatrim zoomed out from behind a building.
His timing had been perfect and his aim impeccable. The Cheetrunner stopped dead once more, never to run again. Gatrim’s rapier pierced through its heart, and the monster slumped to the ground a moment later. Jaid immediately regretted helping him. His relentless determination vanished and he was only left with his usual boastful pride, recounting the tale to Jaid immediately as if she hadn’t been there.