“... isn’t that right, Stargazer?”
Snapping back to reality, a young lady who looked no older than her mid twenties with long black hair going down to about her waist adjusted her tie and looked down from the midnight sky, clear as could be to give a deadpan look to her partner as she leaned against their black, down-low car nonchalantly.
“I take that as you didn’t catch a word. That codename fits you. We’re moving out, apparently there’s a Corrupted beast a couple kilometers out nearer the outskirts. Hop in.” His words were brief and to the point, like he was corralling a child into doing a chore and taking no nonsense.
With a sigh the young lady complies, ceasing leaning on the car and opening the door, quickly getting inside and slamming the door. Despite her partner taking the news in stride, this clearly caused some distress in the lady as her partner immediately started the car without it making a sound and sped off.
After about ten minutes the car screeches to a halt in front of a destroyed apartment building, the brakes being much louder than the engine itself. Both parties knowing what was up, the driver and passenger doors quickly open up as the occupants step out. Said occupants were very well dressed, wearing suits and ties like the old world Secret Service, sunglasses and a little cyan pin with a diamond shape in the middle, a vertical line beneath it and two diagonal lines to the bottom left and right of it.
“Comms rune check.” The man plainly said, holding two fingers up to his ear as a small glowing triangle and a circle surrounding it, just touching the tips appeared out of thin air that slowly turned repeatedly, staying in place as he lowered his hand back down to his side. “Stargazer copy?”
With the woman doing the same gesture to summon the triangle she heard him loud and clear as if he was speaking right into her ear despite being on the other side of the car facing away from her. “Copy, Watchtower.”
“Good. I’m going to get into position and try to get a good sightline, you’re free to enter the building on my mark. The occupants and neighbors have been cleared out of the area, but try not to cause too much collateral like last time.”
As he spoke, Watchtower was walking to a building across the street. Upon reaching it he held out his hands, blue glowing runes appearing on them as he began climbing the flat concrete wall as if it were nothing more than a ladder.
Knowing her role well as the meat shield of the duo, Stargazer walks confidently up to the door, holding a sword in her right hand. It had six glowing runes on the side of it, indicating 6 active enchantments on it out of the 7 runes on the blade. Scratch that, 7 active. Damn collateral…
Exhibiting little caution in the face of the kind of danger she was facing, Stargazer kicks down the already barely held together door. Immediately the smell of death assails her nose as she winces and looks around, snapping her fingers together as an orb of light appears above her hand and illuminates the room. Two dead, their mangled corpses strewn about the living room in several bloody pieces. Stargazer’s face grimaces in disgust, not having been warned about this.
Just as she wanted, the kicking down of a door was enough to alert the target to her presence and bring it to her to save the trouble of looking for it. Unfortunately, there was a moment of distraction as Stargazer looks around at the gore and part of the ceiling collapses, a very large wolf-like beast that was completely black with large purple veins all over the body and about six feet tall falling through with the rubble and going straight for Stargazer’s throat with its massive claws.
An extremely loud booming noise is heard from outside as a massive perfectly circular hole is put in the wall and a large white beam goes between the beast and Stargazer as the beast’s arm is taken clean off with viscous black liquid coming out of the wound and splattering on the lady. Her attention was quickly regained as all of this happened in about a second, and with her sword she cuts the other arm off of the beast and roundhouse kicks it in the ribs, knocking it down to the floor.
“What the fuck was that?” Watchtower asks, clearly commenting on Stargazer so easily getting ambushed.
Not bothering to respond to her partner, she simply beheads the monster with a quick horizontal slice across the neck as it howls out, likely calling out to something. Or worse, someone.
Stargazer steps outside, trying to wipe the liquid off of herself and her blade as she nods up to Watchtower’s perch, signaling him to come down as she speaks for him to hear through the comms rune. “Misclassified, that was a type three, not a type two. If our intel was good I would have been properly prepared. That thing mauled two people. They didn’t say anything about that.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“You ever heard of flexibility? Don’t just prepare for exactly what you hear. Assume the regulars are stupid, never take the intel as gospel. If they could classify they’d be the ones fighting.” Clearly not appreciating Stargazer’s attitude, he makes sure to scold her for such an excuse.
“And you aren’t getting into my car like that, covered in ichor.”
“Whatever…”
Disgruntled, Stargazer takes off her suit and wipes her blade on it, then it disappears in her hands as she gets in the car.
“You don’t think that there’s a whole infestation do you? Not this close to the city, at least.” Stargazer said with concern oozing in her voice.
“Can’t rule out the possibility. We got a long night of work ahead of us, kid.”
Not but twenty minutes pass.
“Two more reports have come in. One is reported as a type four, so we’re disregarding the other report to focus on this. Told you we’d have a long night.” Watchtower said, speaking in a rather monotone and business-like voice.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Two? We should be going into lockdown right now, what the fuck is going on? What could be so important we’re just disregarding this?” Stargazer raised her voice, taking off her sunglasses and looking over at Watchtower. His eyes remained squarely on the road, not physically reacting to her in the slightest.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree. When we get back to HQ I’m sure they’d love to get another earful from you. It doesn’t matter what’s going on, we do our jobs and admin does th-”
Watchtower stops talking, entirely focusing on something else all at once.
Completely ignoring Stargazer and any protests she is presently making, he immediately swerves to take a turn onto a road he was just about to pass, knocking her all around in the process since she didn’t have her seatbelt on.
Knowing that something must be up for him to shift to such a stone cold attitude all of a sudden, Stargazer grabs her sword and holds it close. If Watchtower goes silent, shit gets serious. That’s how things have tended to go so far with their fairly young partnership.
“Level four’s moving. Considering the last beast was misclassified this one probably is too so be ready, we’re not getting time for setup.” Swerving urgently around another corner, Watchtower seemed completely in the zone. He basically completely tuned out Stargazer and was just listening to dispatch and focusing on the road.
As they turned the next corner, Stargazer quickly put her sunglasses back on despite it being the dead of night. They were immediately met with a crash as a car was thrown into the pair’s own. Fortunately for the much squishier beings, they knew when to bail in an instant in just about any situation, and had both jumped out of the car at supernatural speeds to avoid being crushed.
Immediately getting up from off the ground, Stargazer looked up to see a downright monster towering over her, easily two times her height at 5’6”. It looked like some kind of wolf, similar to the last beast but bigger and had weird lanky limbs, almost looking malnourished if they were even capable of that and being covered in what looked like some kind of spikes protruding all over it. Looking over she saw Watchtower getting up as well and knew she had to provide a distraction for him to make a getaway. Not wasting a second she deactivated one of the runes on her sword, going down to six out of seven active and running at the monster.
Predictably the beast swiped at her with its massive claws and she ducked under them, swinging her sword upward to try and hurt its hand as best as she could. Fortunately she was able to take one of its fingers off, although ichor splattered all over her. Not letting this minor inconvenience deter her and pushing her advantage with its arm overextended, she jumps up as runes on the bottom of her shoes glow blue and activate, letting her jump on thin air as she swings upward and tries to cleave the arm clean off. Unfortunately the sword gets stuck in the beast’s arm and instead of the awesome flip she imagined doing, she holds onto the sword and rolls right over its arm, now holding onto her sword behind her and dangling.
Just as the beast was about to grab Stargazer with its other arm and make mince meat out of her, a beam of light goes straight through it right at the shoulder and blows it off, the beast howling in pain and using its remaining arm to hold the wound. Stargazer was thankful she put her glasses back on and didn’t get blinded by the radiant beam. Using the precious moments she was bought, she grabs her sword and methodically wedges it out of the beast’s arm, ichor splattering all over as the beast continues to howl in pain. The noise was horrific to Stargazer, she’d never heard one of these things actually acknowledge pain. Did they always feel it?
There’s precious little time to dwell on the fact as another anomaly of the creature presents itself: the ichor splattered all over the place suddenly takes the form of spikes all over the street everywhere it had been scattered, the beast piercing itself and Stargazer from every single angle faster than she could say “Bob’s your uncle.” She lets out a sharp gasp and looks down, her blood soaking through her white button down shirt at an incredible rate. As her eyes start to close she looks down at her sword still somehow clutched firmly in her limp arm. Two more runes deactivate without her even giving them a thought, as if it wasn’t even being controlled by her. But that was impossible. Only she was able to disengage the enchantments that were on this thing. The last thing Stargazer sees before falling into sweet unconsciousness and finally able to let go of the mortal anguish she felt was another beam of light, completely severing her hand…
As the young ox has to be brought under the yoke, and as the young horse has to be accustomed to the bridle and bit, so the young person must learn the practical and valuable lessons of submission and endurance.