~8 Days to Halloween~
"I can't wait to show you my Backyard!" Cuppy beamed to Richie and the others. "Hey, Chiki?" he tugged on Chikita's sash. "Is that a good shortcut? To give friends a tour of the place to stretch their mental muscles, trying to influence or fight against simulated threats?"
Chikita hummed. "Look who did their homework. In essence, that's the same struggle Luchesi's victims have come up against - becoming ill-fated characters in someone else's story. He manipulates his dream space against its captives with lethal intent, so they only get the one shot to figure out how to fight back - or die. It's a different story among those who share a bond. The closer, the easier it should be to pick up familiarity by proxy, in theory. More to the point, you could conjure up enemies and obstacles for the others to overcome. Controlling your emotions will allow you to weaponize them. Imagination and willpower are your sword and shield inside the yards."
"As long as we're using cheat sheets," Richie interjected, "Couldn't Cuppy just give me a yard?"
Chikita nodded. "Right he could. But it would be giving you his own yard, relinquishing his power over it. As I said, individual yards aren't boundless, nor can you create one from nothing. Besides, simply being given territory isn't the same as working to learn its subtleties, and thereby learning to challenge another territory holder." she waggled her finger, tutting.
Freyja took a break from scarfing down venison. "You said something about me overdrawing power. What did you mean?"
Chikita visibly calculated the best way to explain it. "Control is everything. The finer your control, the less debt you incur. It's like walking through a park from point A to point B. If you determine the shortest route through exhaustive search, you economize your steps from then on, saving time and energy. You find the best shortcut. The Backyards themselves essentially are shortcuts, weaving together the auras of material worlds separated by time and space. If you know your territory like the back of your hand, can control it and your own dreams freely, it's fairly easy to conjure weapons or powerups on the spot, as well as warp to the entrances and exits pockmarking the real world from within your yard. But no one knows how to deal with a nightmare the first time you have one. Case in point, Richie's alligator."
Richie shuddered. "I fucking hate that guy."
Chikita chuckled. "If you're still struggling to claim a space, or finding difficulty taming it even after its been cleared of rivals, every little stunt you pull is an exhaustive effort that puts a strain on your body and soul. Overthinking it can sink you as well - the tighter you grip a handful of sand, the more grains escape between your fingers. You may accidentally kick yourself out of the yard at inopportune times, leave yourself at the mercy of obstacles of your own creation, or fulfill your own prophecy of failing miserably. That's just a matter of one yard. When you look at many interconnected yards as a maze-like path between worlds, you run greater risks. Nothing in this life is truly free. Equivalent exchange is inescapable. Without the mental fortitude to phase through many yards to cross great gulfs, one must give of themselves - knowledge, abilities, memories -"
Richie twitched.
"- even time off your lifespan. The more one abuses the Backyards, or uses it to evade death like the manticore did, the more they put their soul in a deficit."
Holly adjusted her glasses.
"I'm still not one hundred percent clear on how someone is to master a yard in the first place. You've given generalities, is there anything more concrete?"
Chikita shrugged. "You can only get so specific when describing the ephemeral."
"Fair enough." Holly conceded.
"That said, there are three primary methods I know of." Chikita said, raising a finger count.
"Like I said before, the most tedious, but stable, method is to accrue psychic aptitude, be it by meditation, lucid dreaming, or some manner of spiritual awakening. You find a corridor and take a walk of faith into it, believing you will sculpt it to your needs. You cannot hesitate or doubt yourself. Else, you can take one from another, be it by a gift or trade, inheriting one by the will of a fallen comrade, or usurping control from a rival by right of conquest. Those who inherit or steal a yard tend to enjoy short-lived tenure, unsure how to wield a living domain they didn't have to tame themselves. They become overconfident or draw too much. Overreliance puts the soul in a deficit."
"You keep using that term." Richie said. "What does it mean? What happens when you can't cover the tab?"
Chikita smirked mischievously. "Well, that ties into method number three, the most reckless and self-destructive long term strategy."
Her eyes glinted.
"You simply make a one-sided Faustian contract - you will drain the yard for all its worth, abusing it and forcing compatibility, indulging your own whims and power fantasies with no need of equivalent exchange. When your head is severed from your body, you simply reattach it and cheat death. When the rules you laid out don't work in your favor, you flip the table, and screw over the other players you've trapped inside with you. You have your fun playing god. As you fall farther in debt and begin to degenerate, you may buy yourself more time to drink yourself drunk on artificial power, by taking the lives and energy of others. If you can pluck them from the real world into your twisted spiritual wasteland, you can force the debt on them, indefinitely. You thrive on the highs of soul food. Not unlike the shades."
Richie clutched a fist, shaking - no one needed to tell him which path Luchesi took.
"But never forget. No matter how much power you steal, you will eventually run out - and your own Backyard will come to collect. Perhaps you are merely absorbed into the fabric of that place forever, a subliminal warning like a tickling of your subconscious for whoever may come next to claim the lost territory. Or, a far crueler fate may await you."
Cuppy passed around a jumbo bucket of popcorn, soaking in the suspense.
Chikita went on.
"Dementia. Degeneration. Expulsion. Your body, brain, and soul forget the Backyards exist, but it's like you do more than forget, the concept itself becomes incompatible with you entirely. You can't access it, remember it, or observe it. In the case of someone who was heavily active inside the Backyards as well, to the point they'd sacrificed themselves to it entirely, getting banned is a fate worse than death. You are an empty shell. Forever."
Richie was pale. "Yeah, I think I'll stick with the primary method."
Holly was notified by her beeping cell phone, and snapped it open with clinically-sharp reflexes. "Hold that thought, lesson may be canceled. Ether fog emission in one of the parks, here-" she pointed on her virtual map.
"Where is that?" Chikita asked.
"I'll guide you remotely." Holly equipped Chikita with an earpiece. "I can see through your eyes still, just pick a direction and I'll nudge you on course."
"You can what?" Chikita blinked.
"I bugged your basilisk meal with a tracker my psychometry can link to and through, allowing me to see what you do." Holly confessed bluntly.
Chikita looked horrified. "We're talking about this when I get back."
She slung her katana over her shoulder.
"Will you be ok by yourself?" Richie asked despite himself.
"If you saw my fight with the oni in your dream, then you already know. This is how I make a living." Chikita answered, doing some leg stretches. "I'm more worried about how my sales pitch will go over."
"Remember," Freyja narrowed her eyes, "only go after it if it's blatantly hostile. If you can talk things out, just fall back."
"Affirmative, boss." Chikita confirmed.
With that, she took off sprinting.
-
The ether fog stretched thinner than usual, lingering around the park as a low mist that curled wispy ringlets around the bases of shedding trees. The outskirts were encircled by thicker walls of the otherworldly vapor, slowly closing in. Chikita had perhaps slipped through a narrow window in which sentient beings could phase through the force of sheer creation without incident. Now that she was in the eerie epicenter, a chill seemed to permeate the air, apart from the cryonic sense of cold she drew from. Limp forms atop short spires were shadowed several yards back, and the sharp smell of blood grabbed Chikita by the nostrils. She and a wary Yukihana drew nearer and saw a grisly display - human bodies jammed onto and impaled by pointed fence posts, at a border between the edge of a bank where the ground sloped sharply into a babbling brook, surmounted by an ornate red bridge further downstream. The kills were fresh, some still twitching, as blood trickled down the stakes, dying the black iron red.
Chikita took a guard position, fingers caressing Yukihana's grip.
A flutter of wings at her back drew Chikita's ear. She whirled sharply around and was met with the imposing figure of a tall, scraggly demihuman with a mane of wild unkempt hair and a savage gleam in her eyes. A black line stretched across her face, circling her eyes, not unlike a bandit mask. Her arms shifted from the shoulders down into splayed, razor-edged wings of metallic white feathers, and her legs were raptor-like and scaly, ending in massive feet of steel-like talons. A fan of tail feathers stretched out from the small of her back, bristling irritably.
"You scum!" the feral harpy squaked. "Get away from my prey!"
Without a second given to comply, the she-beast lunged.
Chikita ukemi rolled forward, passing beneath the overgrown bird lady's pointy clutches, drawing her sword as she stood up some eight feet behind the harpy. "You really couldn't, I dunno, put your kills in your stupid nest or something? Keep us pesky landlubbers a comfortable distance away? Then again, you are a bird brain." Chikita chided, grinning behind Yuki's shimmering blade.
I believe that's a shrike. Yukihana analyzed. They tend to impale their prey on thorns and such in the wild to make them easier to rip apart at their leisure. Though, I also feel a cruel pride rolling off of this specimen's human aspect. This isn't just her larder, it's her trophy display.
Chikita grinned, to the harpy's snarling confusion.
Good. Chikita thought. Then she falls within mission parameters.
"Yeah..." a weak voice coughed. A middle aged jogger, his bloodstained headphones tossed aside, hung face down from a post, the spear running through his right side. "Dumb... bird brain..."
Suffering massive bodily trauma and blood loss, the dying man was delirious, and with that delirium came a dissociated snarky streak, even as blood filled a punctured lung.
The harpy rocketed up out of sight, an expanding ring of displaced wind like a rocket takeoff rippling in her wake, forcing Chikita to plunge her blade into the ground and hunker down. A second later, the humanoid bird of prey landed forcefully on her victim's back and shoulders, jamming him further down on the spike. As he groaned, the harpy closed one of her clawed feet around the man's head, squeezing closed like a vice and making his skull crack. Violently twisting, she snapped her prey's neck and silenced his backtalk.
"I better not get a deduction off my pay for that." Chikita grit her teeth.
Your empathy is inspiring. Yuki quipped.
The harpy blurred in place, and the sound of air being cleaved in twain at near-sonic speeds announced that she had swung her wing in an instant. A volley of feathers flew toward Chikita like throwing knives. An ice wall erupted in front of Chikita, and the feathers embedded themselves to the hilt in the thick glacial barrier.
It's nice and cool and humid out, just the way I like it. Chikita grinned.
Unfazed, the harpy stretched her mouth open wide, and her flat, sallow chest heaved. Her throat bulged as something worked its way up. The next instant, a steaming globule of yellow sludge, marbled with shards of bone and strands of matted hair, flew out of the harpy's mouth.
Chikita gasped and held the broad side of Yukihana out, knowing in her gut the acidic spew would burn a hole straight through the ice.
So it did, swiftly melting the wall outward from a steaming round hole in the center, and the regurgitated pellet broke on Yukihana's silvery length.
AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!! the sword screamed into Chikita's mind, such that the assassin squeezed an eye shut in pain. THAT WAS DISGUSTING! CHIKITA, YOU WRETCH, HOW DARE YOU DEGRADE ME IN SUCH A MANNER?!?
" 'S okay Yuki, I'll give you lots of nice slow, sensual sharpenings later to make up for it." Chikita cackled, turning her attention back to the bird hag. "My turn, shitbird." Chikita sucked in a deep breath of air, exhaling a javelin of jagged ice at high velocity, cut in a spiral down the length much like a drill bit to cause more internal bleeding on impact.
This was just a fancy distraction though, as her left hand flash froze a truck-sized glacier out of the river nearby and sent it sliding towards the harpy as well, hoping to blindside her likely attempt at dodging the javelin.
The harpy glared at the spinning projectile and twitched to retaliate. In that moment, Yukihana held his hypothetical breath, sensing something was wrong. He saw the raptor's eyes tilt ever so slightly toward the huge mass of ice barreling toward her.
Her hearing is ridiculous. he realized. Chikita was subtle enough to move such a huge quantity of ice with almost no friction, but the faintest tap may as well be a firework to that creature. This plan is going to fail.
He didn't have time to communicate this to Chikita, as it was all over in an instant.
The frozen sledge rocketed across the field and crushed itself into a low hill, while the drill was blown to flecks of sleet.
Chikita felt something graze her side, a vacuum-like pull literally forcing her around to face the object. She saw the harpy, leaning sharply low to the ground, slide by with her wings folded and her talons digging trenches in the ground.
A split second later, something like a thunderclap engulfed Chikita, and she felt the shockwave steamroll her internal organs as she was tossed thirty feet into the air. The g force alone made her black out, body going limp at the apex of her flight.
Chikita came from a time long before air travel. She had no concept of sonic booms.
Her first learning opportunity wasn't gentle.
-
On Holly's end, the archaeologist gasped, wobbling on her feet as if about to faint. Freyja and Cuppy steadied her.
"You ok?" Freyja asked.
"Yes." Holly found her balance again. "But Chikita is getting creamed by a nasty wakeup call."
"Then why are you smiling?" Richie asked.
"Why are you?" Holly returned fire.
Cuppy oversaw a huge open barrel of wet rice mash and yeast positioned by Richie's barbecue pit, switching places with Cuppet to go on shift stirring the mixture. "She can't get herself killed before she gets to try my Cuppy Cultivation. We had a deal." he nodded as if agreeing with himself.
"Well, it should be, what - days? Weeks? How long does making alcohol take?" Holly asked.
"Depends. If it were moonshine, I could tell you." Freyja shrugged.
"Well, long enough for her to heal from another round of shattered bones, in any case." Holly said.
-
Chikita! Yuki shouted into his master's mind.
The swordswoman's eyes fluttered open on the return trip to the ground.
"Shit!"
She slashed a huge circle stroke under herself, displacing a crescent of freezing wind that cushioned her impact. She tumbled head over heels, hissing. "The fuck was that?!"
The target is soaring faster than sound.
"Meaning?" Chikita asked.
Think of her as a serrated hurricane that can aim.
"Oh goody." Chikita rolled her eyes.
She turned and saw the harpy crest the horizon, drop down from the sky, and then glide toward her again, belly turned downward above the grass and her aerodynamic form creating a wake of dust and severed blades of grass as she flew.
Chikita adopted another iajutsu quickdraw stance, trying to measure her distance and timing. But, she gasped again as the demihuman accelerated exponentially before entering her radius. Another flyby flung Chikita into the air again, and she struggled to retain consciousness, her body feeling like it was made of solid iron. The harpy cut a sharp, acute angle, doubling back to hit Chikita again midair. The assassin slashed a freezing gale to try to hit the harpy moments before impact, only for that last-second acceleration to steal her wind and blow past her again. At least the aim had been thrown askew again, sparing her a devastating direct hit.
All the same, she was tossed by the sonic boom into the boughs of a tree, folding stomach-over a branch painfully. Her fingers went lax and gripped at the last second, holding onto Yukihana. Blood dripped from her mouth and fingers.
I advise you to adopt a different strategy. Yukihana cautioned.
"No." Chikita coughed, turning herself over and sitting on the branch. "No one gets to be faster than me, dammit! I'm going to catch her!"
You're going to be a blue and red smear across the field.
She heard the whistle of wind and whirled, balancing on the branch. The harpy was diving toward her again.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
"That won't work ag-" Chikita started in.
A volley of feathers flew at her, ahead of the harpy.
"Cunt!" Chikita contorted herself awkwardly to weave in between the flying avian daggers. This left her no time to chamber.
The harpy blasted past Chikita again, blowing the tree branch off and crashing Chikita into a deeper pool within the stream. A stream of bubbles trickled up, precipitating Chikita rising out of the pool, standing on a bobbing circle of ice and looking like a wet dog.
She surfaced only to see more feathers raining down on her.
What followed was a deadly game of combination dodgeball-lawn darts as Chikita sprinted and wove in between the fallen arrows that peppered the hills. She pressed her back against a tree trunk and gulped as a volley of feathers thundered into the other side, the tip of one piercing straight through the bark beside her face.
Chikita's attempts to retaliate with a rain of icicles, aiming to pierce the harpy's wings ragged and ground her, fell short, the harpy barrel rolling around the hail.
"Enough of this." Chikita stepped deliberately out into the open and tossed Yukihana aside.
Chikita, what are you doing?! Yukihana panicked.
The woman froze her feet to the ground and spread her arms wide.
"Come get me, shitbird!" she swore up at the harpy.
The harpy's shadow passed over the sun, and she dropped down, steadily accelerating toward Chikita again.
The beast flung another curtain of darts. Chikita crouched low and rapid-fire jet icicles against the feathers, shooting down and canceling out every single one.
"Wide open!" the harpy called, and swung into Mach 1 again.
The bird-woman's wing sledged into Chikita's torso, ripping her from the ground and carrying her skyward as the harpy flew straight up, high above the trees.
"Fool! Now I've got you!" the harpy said shrilly.
Chikita coughed as the wind was knocked out of her, but then smirked as they reached the apex of their flight.
"No. I've caught you." she said.
The water Chikita was coated in began to waft icy vapor. The creaking sound of ice began to rise.
"W-Wait-!" the harpy squaked.
Icicles erupted from Chikita's form, piercing the monster's wings and chest.
The harpy spasmed midair, agonized by the pain of being stabbed and frozen from the inside both hitting her at once. Her cries tapered to a quivering chirp.
"Don't worry, I missed your vitals. I think. I'm not a chicken anatomy expert." Chikita chuckled.
She slid Yukihana's sheath, concealed in her sash, into her palm, and concentrated a flow of freezing energy at its hollow tip. The open end froze internally, filling out the scabbard with an airtight shaft of ice, and a solid macehead of ice formed at the end, creating an improvised bludgeon.
Chikita broke off from the spikes coating her body, leaving them embedded in the harpy, and gripped her ice mallet in both hands. With a final chuckle, she slammed it into the top of the harpy's skull, shattering the ball of ice from the force of the blow. The harpy's eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she plummeted out of the sky.
"Take that, bird."
Chikita's satisfaction was short-lived as she realized she was about two hundred feet in the air.
"Oh fuck me!"
- she followed the harpy.
-
Meanwhile
The harbor was whispering with commotion.
"Whose sailboat is that? I don't recognize it." one of the docked locals said.
"Sailed in this morning, but I didn't get a good look at the guy. He just - jumped into the bay." another man scratched his head.
-
Mason was tossing and turning in his office, shirtless, surrounded by hordes of drained liquor bottles. His work desk was a mess, his overworked computers beeping aggressively at him. The drone didn't penetrate. His exposed abs glistened with sweat, drawing shiny attention to detail of a body perfectly sculpted for hard work, to match his cold and calculating intellect. But the pale clamminess of his skin, and the haunted expression on his passed-out face betrayed his waning health. His mental state was clear, sunglasses or otherwise.
In a dark void of room lit only by outlines of white light where their shadows would have been, Mason stared across at that young boy, his gun trained on him. He saw himself from an outside perspective, a third party observer to his Institute persona within this dream. He felt anxiety knot in his stomach and build, hearing the magnum cock.
Don't do it! he wanted to scream, but no sound came out. The muzzle flash signaled a gush of blood, bursting from the boy's pierced heart. The suited man with the obscuring sunglasses that looked like the black, pitiless eyes of an insect, gave a smug smile, and washed his hands of the farce.
Then, the man was swallowed by the hood of a great cobalt cloak.
You can't hide from yourself, nor me.
...
He woke up panting. His alarm was buzzing.
"Huh?" he looked about, confused.
In the work lounge, he was met by one of the office busy bodies, filling in as a secretary in Mary and Chelsea's absence.
"Sir, a prominent representative of the US Navy Seals is here. He has clearance for the site, though I'm not sure who authorized it." she said.
"And? Surely you don't need me just to show an old seadog around the grand tour of the place." Mason said.
"He says he knows you personally."
Mason adjusted his glasses. "I see. I'll meet him."
-
A broad-shouldered man in an army green raincoat with a concealing hood pulled over his scarred face sat in a lounge chair, his stout legs kicked up on the table. Mason poured them both glasses of whiskey and took his seat across from the Seal.
"I see your office space is as unorganized as ever." the man said in a gruff voice.
"It always seems to accumulate clutter, I admit." Mason agreed. "So, what does the world's strongest soldier want with the Institute?"
The man frowned. "Is that what you're calling yourselves now? A bit bland. Glad I dodged that bullet."
"We could have used your help." Mason said.
"I'm on enough frontiers. Your cloak and dagger methods don't sit well with me. I knew you were sworn to service, but to think you'd go as far as to cap a kid..."
Mason twitched. "We answer to the same government. I heard things didn't go smoothly in the middle east. We both have blood on our hands, so take your accusations somewhere else. We signed up for blood."
"We signed up to help people." the man said. "But, that aside, I came to this city for one reason."
The man took a deep swig of whiskey. "An attack dog for the Corporation slipped into Station Bay right under your nose. I'm investigating the matter."
"Did these orders come from the brass?" Mason raised an eyebrow.
"Negative. Just following an instinct." the man said.
"God, what a mess." Mason sighed. "I've been preoccupied trying to handle local matters, the last thing I needed was another high profile criminal to fill in the empty spot that slasher left."
"This isn't just any henchman. He's one of the CEO's elite three enforcers. Without a doubt, he's targeting someone specific. That's why I'm going to be lodging at Carnival Top for a while, and I could really use your intel." the man said.
"I'm shortstaffed and over budget as is, especially now that someone had the audacity to destroy the focusing array." Mason turned up his lip.
"Doesn't seem to fit the Corp's MO, but it would be viable to make use of the chaos caused by your invaders." the man said.
"I need a private contractor like you, someone to help me hold the line while we iron out the kinks and root out the subversives. You see the red flags, there are more fog leaks every day. This city is under siege, and I can't hold it back forever." Mason said.
"My first priority is to capture my link to the Corporation. While you're dealing with foreign entities, homegrown ones haven't stopped making plans either." the man said.
"So I can't count on your support?" Mason asked after a tense pause.
"Not if I can't count on yours." the man said. "Our relationship is strictly transactional. In all honesty, you're a smug self-righteous prick playing martyr. I don't give favors to murderers." the man left those parting words of scorn as he saw himself out.
"You're a murderer too..." Mason muttered to himself, but he knew it didn't matter. Rubber and glue wasn't going to end the nightmares.
-
The harpy's eyes fluttered open, blurring vision alternating with memories of her craggy perch somewhere in Athens, and of falling out of the nest as a hatchling. She forgot where and when she was, and thought perhaps that she was just now getting up from that childhood tumble. Only, something seemed to be in her way, and she was very cold. She felt a sharp pain as she tried to stand, and the icicles lodged in her wings grated against bone and sinew. She fell back down, and then it came rushing back.
Chikita's shadow fell over the harpy. The demihuman looked up as the cryomancer seemed to tower over her. The entire right side of the woman's face was sheeted solid red with blood.
"Not so fun getting run through, is it?" Chikita said, sliding Yukihana back into his sheath. There was something in her eyes, a sick, child-like glee. The harpy voided her bowels, a white, sticky mess, as she realized what that look meant - this woman had snapped.
"You like to torture your victims?" Chikita drawled, raising her pipe to her lips and leaving it clamped in her teeth, which seemed to resemble fangs. A foot stomped down on the harpy's head, driving her face into the ground, and stayed there, slowly pressing harder and exerting more pressure on the harpy's skull.
"I do too." Chikita gave a manic grin.
The bird squeaked and fluttered her wings like a panicked chicken, to no avail. Her head began creaking as Chikita pressed harder and harder, grinding her subdued prey under her heel.
"Damn... You!" the harpy shrieked, managing to gain traction forcing her taloned legs under her and standing up forcefully all at once, pushing Chikita off.
The harpy pistoned a leg forward to kick and claw downward, vertically down Chikita's stomach, to disembowel her like a cassowary would. Instead, Chikita stepped back and around the leg, drawing Yukihana in an instant and stabbing it into the side of the harpy's knee joint. She cawed in pain as the point lodged itself in the bone and tendon like a hypodermic needle, injecting freezing cold. Marrow and ligaments all froze, and shattered internally as Chikita yanked her katana back out. The leg dangled uselessly, forcing the harpy to hop up and down in agony.
Her wings and remaining leg all followed, systematically gimping her limbs from the inside with surgical precision.
"Isn't it nice and convenient that your bones are hollow?" Chikita hummed.
"Please-!" the harpy quieted as Chikita circled her, closing in on her flank as the bird knelt on crippled knees, matching wings flopped inelegantly at her sides.
"Now use your big bird brain for this one, dear," Chikita mocked, tapping her temple. "Did you ever spare your food because it begged for its life? I mean, clearly not, right?" she gestured to the fence posts riddled with dangling human bodies. "I count at least three children there. Nice and tender, right? And so much easier to pick off from the herd."
Chikita's hand caressed the harpy's face from behind as her sword point stroked slowly and gently down the vertebrae from the base of the skull to the small of the back.
"You lose this fight not as one warrior to another, but as a game animal to an apex predator." Chikita sneered.
Then she jammed Yukihana into the bird's spinal column, and began injecting another flow of cold. The beast's trembling lips turned blue as her spinal cord froze to a thin, brittle line.
Chikita jaggedly yanked her katana from out of the harpy's back, shattering the cord within the otherwise untouched spinal column. Paralyzed, the harpy went limp in Chikita's embrace, unable to move her body below the neck.
Chikita lifted the bird, legs folded over at gruesome angles and sagging to the ground, by her hair and spun her around, face to face. The woman took a deep long look into the harpy's cornered eyes, drinking in her terror.
Instinctively, she aimed her pipe, prepared to suck the harpy and her energizing soul into her own being.
Chikita, remember, Yukihana cautioned, we need her alive.
Slightly disappointed that she was going to have to forgo feeding for some time if she was to make a living off of these bounties, Chikita shrugged and blew smoke in the harpy's face for sheer disrespect value.
Followed by slamming her head into her face, fracturing facial structure bones and gushing blood from the harpy's broken nose and split lip.
The woman looked over and up, deliberately into the far-off, multi-paned eyes of a telescope dragonfly.
Grinning, she winked.
One lucky Institute agent watched as a drop of harpy blood slid down the blue-haired assassin's forehead, rolling down her grinning, winking face. "Christ..." He picked up his phone, paging Mason directly. After a few moments, the director's booted footsteps approached the agent's desk. "The hell?" he said, leaning over the agent's shoulder to look closer at the display.
The dragonfly flew closer to Chikita, a speaker buzzing to life somewhere in the hollowed-out thorax. "I see you've eliminated a potential threat. You have our attention." Mason's voice spoke through the little bug.
Chikita's grin widened. "Good. Meet me at the condemned bridge in the woodlands east of here within one hour, and we'll talk. I understand you have a vacancy on your staff. Come alone. Try any funny business - drones, snipers, ambush formations - and I dispose of your specimen and then you. I'll know."
Then, she blew smoke in the dragonfly's face, freezing it. The tiny ice sculpture fell into her palm, and she crushed it.
-
On the other end, the feed went to static.
"That was $700.00!" Mason's voice broke.
…
"Fuck." Mason breathed.
There's almost no one here I can trust to handle this... his thoughts echoed.
Going by himself wasn't an option either, not until that special project he'd been working on was ready... He glanced around at the various agents in their cubicles, eyes narrowing behind the shades that were concealing dark bags from a few too many sleepless nights.
"Agent Folson, you'll be the fetching party. Armor yourself up discreetly, but don't bring any weapons. Take one of the company trucks and get the dead specimen." he ordered. The agent saluted, standing up from his cubicle and heading for the institute armory, leaving a few moments later with a concealable bulletproof vest layered beneath his suit coat to fetch the nondescript four door pickup stowed in the Institute's parking garage.
The only thing in common with the low profile vehicles the institute employed was that they were old enough to lack inbuilt GPS functionality, not abnormal in the used market of the current year, but vital for ensuring absolute security in the event of a crafty hacker trying to track the Institute's movements. The engine started with a roar, and Folson began the trip towards the bridge, feeling more than a little nervous to be completely unarmed.
-
Chikita sat on top of the slanted roof of the covered bridge, laying on her back across its right slope as if sunbathing. Inside the darkness of the bridge itself, the broken harpy, needlessly secured with ice, twitched and shivered in misery.
They draw near. Yukihana said.
"I know." Chikita smiled knowingly, as if she were privy to an inside joke she was keeping secret.
The armored vehicle found it could go no further down the dirt path leading to the bridge, the road slicked with ice that was bookended on either end by a line of short icicles, like spike strips. The lines of trees on either side of the rustic road were too compact for vehicles to fit through, and the back of the covered bridge itself was blocked.
Whoever this woman was, this wasn't her first tense meeting.
Folson rolled down the window, clearing his throat in preparation to shout. "You can just put it in the back, I don't really wanna get out if I don't need to, or if you don't want me to." he said. Cowardly as it may have sounded, it was the truth. Whatever could take down a harpy and leave it looking like cherry pie filling with a few intermixed feathers was not something he wanted to fuck with.
"Nice try, sweetheart - get your ass over here on foot." Chikita beckoned with a little finger curl. "This isn't a gift out of the goodness of my heart. I'm selling, and if you want my wares, you're entering my shop. Strip before you enter."
At thirty yards, she could tell he was armored beneath his clothes.
The man's expression hardened, irritation trickling into his speech. "I'm not packing heat if that's what you're worried about. But I'm also not gonna walk in here naked so you can kill me easier. The institute is open to a game of mutualism. We're willing to move in good faith, but make it clear we're on even footing." he said, dropping the nervous act. He pulled a banded roll of cash from his suit pocket, tossing it underhand to the swordswoman.
"We both respect the other's boundaries, everyone goes home happy. As little invasiveness as possible will be easier on both of us, I think. I'm gonna open the tailgate." He says, hinging it open so the body would be easier to slide in and fetching a tarp to cover it over with.
"Perhaps I'm not making myself clear." Chikita flipped through the money. "What you're taking home with you back to your little secret police lab isn't just some roadkill carcass with feathers. The feral is alive, though this edition has a few holes in the cover and spinal damage. What's more, she's hominid, and sapient. If you want a chance to grill a subject for info, I've practically giftwrapped a beaked whistleblower for you. But I won't take a deal for a mere pittance. I want 10,000 in your currency, and sole exclusive rights on contracting work. I bring you your bounties, alive where possible, and you give me what it's worth. I know you boys are in dire straights already. Tough titty. You all knew the pitfalls of extralegal work in a capitalist society going in. As far as the world at large, and even the better part of your own government are concerned, you creepers don't even exist."
Chikita grinned malevolently. "Tell me something - if I carve up an unperson - is it murder? I mean, you guys don't publically exist to begin with, after all. Empty suits with big scary credentials, political busy bodies playing monster cleanup. People like me were hunters well before you trust fund babies were weaned off your mother's tit. So, just in case it hasn't sunk in yet - you jump when I say jump. Enter the tunnel and we'll talk. Final offer."
"And a partridge in a pear tree, Jesus..." The man muttered. "You're lucky I get paid like I do." He says, stripping his jacket, shirt and vest off, leaving his chest bare in the cold of night as he approached, a few more rolls of cash in hand.
"We're still human, y'know? I'm not even one of the gun-toting hardasses in the Institute, for all practical purposes I'm a data analyst. I don't call the shots or go...executing unicorns or sentient pigs or whatever. I'll tell the director your demands." He says, following after her.
"Good. Do so post haste, I'd like to hear his voice. Make yourself comfy." Chikita drops down into the tunnel, gesturing to a salvaged computer desk chair. Beside it, the bound harpy twitches, in and out of consciousness. "Here's your pound of flesh. Grill her for info, spin your wheels trying to classify the unknowable, I don't really care which. Play fair with me and I'll be your cleanup crew. Try to screw me,"
Her eyes became dangerous.
"And I'll blow the lid on your secrets sky high like a fucking volcano went off. Look into my eyes - you can decide for yourself if I'm serious or not."
Those eyes were pitiless icy blue flecks that exuded a pressure like Antaractic white out condition storms.
"Noted." The agent says, reaching towards the harpy's ice block prison and sliding it across the floor back and forth a bit, noticing the low friction, which while being convenient for transportation, struck him as odd due to the season. "How'd you get it in this?" He asks curiously pointing to the block and, shaking the frigid water off his hand to don some gloves from his back pocket.
Chikita smirked, and turned up her palm. Icy mist began to waft out of her pores, as chips of ice like snowflakes swirled around her palm and condensed into a spiky icicle. She turned it upside down and stabbed it through the harpy's shoulder. She briefly reemerged from her uneasy unconsciousness long enough to shriek in pain before passing back out.
"I'm an ice woman. Pretty cool, huh? Anyway, I want my payment up front. Seeing as Director Mason sent you alone and unarmed, I'm going to guess he considers you expendable. With that in mind, I want you to fully appreciate that I require little to no provocation to jam one of these up your urethra. So - we understand each other?"
Staring at the mist in awe, a smile pulled at the corners of his lips. That was, indeed, cool. Briefly, he wondered if this was a thing that could be learned, explored, published even. He was in the wrong line of work for that, though. It seemed his overlords were invested in crushing flat all things wondrous and magic. A seed was planted then...
Folson cringed at the thought of that pointy ice carrot going anywhere near his genitals, and he gulped nervously. "Yep, all clear!" He says, handing over the other two rolls of Benjamin's he'd brought with him.
"Thanks, sweety!" Chikita pecked his cheek, leaving a frozen kiss mark there. She picked the harpy up by her hair. "Pack your toothbrush, you're going to a sleepover!" she draped the paralyzed bird over the man's shoulder, spun him around on an ice slick beneath his feet, and spanked him off on his way. "Just to make sure we're seeing eye to eye - I'm the go to girl for your capture missions, got it? These fucks are worth more to you alive than dead. Just in case anyone shows up with a better offer, know in advance that I'll kill them. You see, cause I'm fucking psychotic. I don't care about consequences. So, pass that on to the handsome fascist you hollow tin soldiers fondle the balls of. With love, Chikita Ora."
Confused, aroused, and terrified, the agent packed up his oversized frozen chicken teriyaki takeout under the tarp of his truck bed and sped away from the bridge, bound for the Institute tower once more.
A buzz indicated a signal connecting in Chikita's mind.
WHY THE HELL ARE YOU ANTAGONIZING THE SECRET POLICE?!? Holly shrieked into Chikita's brain.
"Ow! Geez!" Chikita clutched her ear. "You're welcome, you ingrate! Where's my pat on the back?"
Good work, Miss Chikita! Cuppy chirped, to the confusion of both Chikita and Holly.
"What the- how did you jack the line?" Chikita scratched her head.
-
Back home, Richie perked up. "Hey, let's have her pick up a pizza!" - he seemed genuinely excited. The wampus cat coughed an agreement to this sentiment. How exactly it knew what a pizza was was a question for later.
"Ooh! Ooh! What kind?" Cuppy asked.
"I like spicy." Holly said without thinking.
"Meat!" Richie licked his lips, his dragon runes and muscles moaning for protein.
"Garlic! Anchovies!" Cuppy bounced up and down.
Holly grimaced. "Maybe we should get a few pizzas."
When in Rome.
"Hey Frey, what do you want on your pizza?" Richie asked the she-wolf.
"I'm kind of a classic pepperoni girl. Or ground beef." she said, smiling faintly.
"Pineapple?" Richie suggested.
Hellfire filled Freyja's eyes, and the air grew thicker and hotter.
"Uh, ok, ixnay on the pineapple." Richie recoiled, sweating.
-
"Huh?!" Chikita blinked in disbelief. "Now I'm your delivery girl?!"
"You can have some too, if you want." Cuppy said.
Chikita ground her teeth.
What exactly did she sign up for?
-
Richie explained it to her as they opened and arranged the pizza boxes. "So, you offered to become a mercenary for us. But what this guy heard-" - he plopped Cuppy on the table - "was 'we're friends now'."
Chikita stammered. "Wait a minute!"
Freyja shrugged, desensitized. Cuppy didn't ask for your opinion before befriending you.
"Just accept it, can't be helped." she said knowingly.