Tory and I walked out of the control room and into the lobby of the recording studio, where Darius and his squad were acting a fool with loud banter around a group of four girls.
One of those girls…was all too familiar.
“Jasmine?”
She looked and gave me a wink. Darius heard me acknowledge her presence. “Hol’ up,” he shouted, causing everyone to stop talking. He then approached me and Tory. “Y’all know her?”
Put on the spot, I nodded with hesitation. Darius then stepped to the other dudes in the room.
“Y’all bringin’ high school girls in the set now? What’s wrong with y’all?”
The guys shook their heads in defense and voiced their innocence, with one of them saying, “Nah, we ain’t know nothin’. She came on to us talkin’ ‘bout she 17.”
Darius shoved the dude. “That’s still too young, stupid ass.” He then turned to Jasmine and pointed to the exit door. “You gotta go.”
Jasmine sucked her teeth as the other females in the room gave her dirty looks. She responded with a flick of her hair using her middle finger and walked out with a smirk. An arrogant, unusual smirk.
Maybe I was wrong, but this was not the Jasmine I knew. Yeah, she had always been confident since middle school, but never conceited. And she damn sure was never the type to put herself out there like some groupie with ratchet tendencies.
“Z, we gotta see what’s up with her,” Tory said beside me. “She out here wildin’ while CJ in the hospital.”
“You right. Let’s follow her.”
Outside, we spotted Jasmine walking by the community college across the street from the studio. We stayed out of her sight by trailing behind, using whatever was around us to remain hidden. Things were going smoothly as she turned the corner to reach the back of the building, which has a campus-like structure with benches and a view of the Hudson River.
But, as one would expect, something went wrong.
I ended up knocking over a trash can trying to hide behind it, causing Jasmine to stop in her tracks at the sound of it falling. Out of nowhere, her body did an unnatural one-eighty twist, with her eyes now zeroed in on the two of us.
“If you wanted my attention, all you had to do was ask,” she said in a flirty tone with a quick lick of her lips.
“Oh, she freaky-freaky,” Tory whispered next to me, smiling. “But nah, somethin’ really wrong with her.”
“I heard that,” she hissed, just before positioning her hands and feet in a fighting stance. An immense flow of dark aura radiated from her body—almost like she was a Shadow.
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Thrown off by her actions, me and Tory looked at each other with perplexed expressions. By the time we turned our heads back to face her, she was already inches away from us wearing a devilish grin.
“What the—”
A sudden fist to the gut knocked the wind out of Tory before he could express his bewilderment. Not even I could react as my feet left the ground from Jasmine’s leg sweep, and although I was staggered from the sudden fall, I could’ve sworn I saw her flip backwards to create the sudden separation we now had.
Jasmine had taken karate classes and did gymnastics, but damn this was unexpected. Did she have to use those skills on us? Either way, she was clearly possessed by something and needed to chill.
It was up to me and Tory to cool her down.
“Aight, it’s on,” he coughed out, trying to catch his breath. “I ain’t never hit a girl, but shorty right here is a demon. We gotta exorcise her, bro.”
“This is nuts, but yeah. Hold it down while I sync my cell to the headphones.”
Tory confronted Jasmine as I ripped through the headphone packaging. He waited for her to throw a jab first before trying to counter with his own strike that ended up missing. I could tell he was still hesitant to hit her, but as the fight between the two went on, he became angrier from her blows and swung more aggressively.
Regardless though, Jasmine was too good.
“Damn.” He backed away after a palm strike to the chest. “How is she hittin’ so hard, bro? Am I gonna have to get serious?”
“You mean your video game powers? Yeah, if you know how to use’em. She’s obviously not playin’ fair, but don’t kill her.”
He smirked, turning his red hat to the back. “Got’cha. I don’t know how to activate most of’em, but I been workin’ on it all night.”
Tory stepped up to Jasmine for round two, only this time, he was the first to throw a punch. It was faster and steadier than his previous jabs, and he even began to incorporate kicks into his arsenal as the two matched each other’s moves perfectly. If I hadn’t known what was going on, I’d think the two were doing choreography for a movie or TV show.
They were that precise.
Despite keeping up with Tory, Jasmine was caught off guard when he tried to deliver a fiery uppercut that missed her chin by an inch. She didn’t back down after the dodge and grabbed Tory’s leg as he attempted a spinning kick. With unbelievable strength, she tossed him to the side, his back smacking full force against a railing. He cried out in pain just as my cell synced to my headphones.
“My turn.”
The demonic grin resurfaced on Jasmine’s face when I confronted her. We clashed fiercely with my body maneuvering in motion with the beat of the song playing. Tory soon joined in on the session, but somehow, she was able to fend off the two of us and knock our bodies to the ground with ease. It became more and more apparent that we weren’t winning this fight, but Tory disagreed.
“She can’t keep me down,” he said, struggling to his feet with shaky legs. “I’m right back up like a fightin’ game combo. Let’s go.”
Regardless of his enthusiasm, we were in trouble, and his weak puns weren’t gonna get us out of it. Thankfully, a swarm of buzzing college students came out of the building and grabbed our attention away from the battle, though it seemed we were the main attraction because most of them stopped and stared at our face-off.
Their soft whispers revealed the hard truth: they knew exactly who we were. As I had guessed, others beside Darius saw the video of us fighting Miguel and his crew. We could only hope they believed the video to be fake, but either way, I wasn’t about to give them more evidence.
“Tory, we gotta chill,” I mumbled. “Fall back and let Jasmine go.”
We backed away from Jasmine, who got the hint and joyfully skipped away from the scene in eerily fashion. Everything about this confrontation was bizarre and distracting from our primary goal, but we weren’t going to it slide knowing how dangerous she was.
It was time to pay CJ a visit.