"Kaori... Kaori, are you alright?"
Kaori snapped back into existence, the whole of reality coming back to her at once. She looked around, seeing the people around her, ranging from teens to young adults and older couples holding hands as they smiled at one another. The street was filled with shoppers, potential customers gazing longingly at several of the goods inside of large, 12-foot tall windows. Retailers varied from selling expensive wear to suppliers of accessories for niche fanbases of media, with some fronts covering a little of everything between. Her right hand was clenched around a few square shopping bags, heaved down with purchases collected throughout the day. The sun hung slightly over in the sky, and she could safely say it was about the middle of the afternoon, with the late southern summer wind blowing between the cleave of the buildings, grazing her legs as her baby blue skirt danced.
"Huh?" Kaori spoke, turning her head right, eyes locking on the shorter girl standing by her side who was staring right back. The girl gave a pout, almost sulking, with her dainty eyebrows creasing upwards and her head tilted to the side. "Kaori, this is basically the eleventh time you've zonked out on me! Are you sure you're alright?"
Kaori blinked a few times. Her eyes turned to the grey pavement, and she tightened her grip around her purse strap. Lips pursed, her tongue tried to catch up to what her brain wanted to say.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm alright," Kaori finally said before looking up from the sidewalk, then back at her friend, forcing the corners of her lips up. "I'm just kind of relaxed, is all."
Her friend really frowned, hitching her shoulders, giving the mocha brown t-shirt she adorned a more menacing feel, which did little to cancel out her cute, round face. "Come on girl, we can't get beat by any lingering bad mojo now! We've been planning today for two weeks!"
Kaori wearily looked up to the sky and started walking again. "Yeah, I know."
"I mean, we went all the way downtown for this one day. This one day! We can't waste our precious time and hard-earned money after how hard we had to work to get here!" Nariko persuaded, her flats tapping on the ground as she followed Kaori, her skinny jeans reaching down to the top of her bare ankles.
"We didn't really do anything out of the ordinary," Kaori pointed out. "Taking the sky train to go shopping isn't anything amazing."
"Are you kidding me? We spent our sweat and tears to take the train ride that would define our second year! You know, we toiled from the piles of paperwork out school demands us to produce, and we suffer from the idiots that dare to flirt at us just because they can't get any! We deserve this!" Nariko said dramatically.
Kaori gave out a sigh, rolling her eyes, but not before an honest grin formed on her face. Her head swiveled to the left, watching the glittering glass pane as she passed by. The teenaged girl that she saw in the reflection met her squarely, with the bright afternoon sun slightly glaring against the surface. The head on the tiny shoulders had a slightly tanned face with a distinctly Asian nose and mocha eyes with long eyelashes, the black hair on top hanging to her shoulders with a rainbow hair pin keeping the strands out of her face. She checked the white tank top she wore, noting the way it hugged her waist and chest, and peered at the pink purse that swung over her right shoulder. After a moment of thought, her smile fell away, and her gaze lingered on the ground before her as it swung up back to the path. She could tell from her view that Nariko was giving her a worried look again.
"Why don't we get something to eat?" Nariko suggested. "You know, a nice treat. A little snack."
"No thanks," Kaori responded, checking the tiny, glittering watch around her left wrist. "I'm not that hungry."
"Ah, but nothing gives you more happiness than a good treat, perhaps of the chocolate variety." Nariko said, putting a finger up and waving it like a school teacher would to a young child. "There's nothing wrong with something a little sugary once in a while. A little bit of creaminess here, some frosting there, and the next thing you know you've brightened like a Christmas tree in July!"
Kaori watched Nariko throw her arms up in a fanfare of sweet, sweet victory. "I think you want an excuse to by treats. You love your sweets as much as you love stuffed animals." Kaori said.
Nariko raised a single eyebrow. "And you're saying you don't think they're absopositilutely huggable, squeezable, and lovable too?"
Kaori smirked, and her eyes purposefully avoided Nariko's. "Well, I never said that..." Kaori sang, putting one cheeky fingertip at her chin.
Nariko gave a giggle. "I know how much you like those plushies too. Oh! If we're not going to go get a snack, then we should go see if we can get you that dress!"
"What?" Kaori asked. "What dress?"
"You know, that one! The one we saw in Akira's three months ago?" Nariko answered.
"That red one? I dunno. What if someone already bought it?"
Nariko wrapped Kaori around her shoulder. "Never say never, my dear Kaori! There's always a chance that any fashionable piece of clothing is still around. You and I have the eye for that sort of thing, you know. That dress was one-of-a-kind. There's no way anyone else has even thought of buying it."
Kaori smiled a bit. "Well, can you tell how far the shop is from here?" Kaori inquired.
"Umm," Nariko started, reaching into her jeans pocket and pulling out a light-green cell phone. She flipped it open and pressed her white fingernails into the buttons in a well-trained, almost mechanical matter. Her brown eyes shined as they stared down, putting all focus on the tiny screen a dozen inches away. "It shouldn't be too far. I mean, it's about eight blocks away, so that's pretty good."
"Great," Kaori said with a glowing smile. She peered down the street beyond all the shoulders and heads of strangers walking in front of her. "Let's get going then."
-------------------------
Inner City Shibuya was as busy as ever. Men in business suits with red and blue ties, carrying suitcases strutted about in shined leather shoes. Women in thin t-shirts with fluttering, brightly coloured skirts pranced with large purses or bags of groceries, some traveling with children in carriages or back slings. Teenaged boys with night black hair carried themselves with earbuds in their ears, loose-fitting shirts and shorts that barely kissed their kneecaps. Schoolgirls kept in close groups with their friends, chatting and giggling at this and that with long, graceful hair and tasteful, end-of-summer clothing. The body count of the downtown square went into the thousands, with cars in the streets waiting bumper to bumper, sitting idly at multiple stoplights as masses of people strode down crosswalks. The heat became twice as powerful with the extra company. Kaori tried not to exert herself to the point of breaking into a sweat, a patient endeavour that required balance.
Everyone ignored each other purposefully, willingly, accustomed to such large swarms of bodies since they became aware of their own small existence, using the musings of their own lives to distract themselves. Great buildings towered tall over the city, looking over as concrete giants, with grey and white exteriors and tinted windows, holding huge signs that advertised everything from video stores to exercise products, from the local market to the nearest fast food chain, and from everything else Kaori could imagine. She stood in a cluster of other folks at the corner of the sidewalk, people breathing down each other's necks, the sun slowly cooking everyone. The humidity was thick and looming, but Kaori found the slight breeze gliding in from above was pleasant to the skin's touch. She watched as young men and women go by at the other side of the street, some resting underneath leafy trees at one of the many small environmental parks that downtown had to offer. Kaori found the city's liveliness had bought a smile to her lips.
"It shouldn't be too much farther," Nariko mentioned, still on her flip phone. "We go across the street, go right, stay along for the next block and it's just along to the left."
"Right," Kaori acknowledged, her eyes glued to the open hand lit red in the box across the road.
The movement in the air turned to a chill for half a breath, and it swept between Kaori's legs, goosebumps popping up along her skin. She gave a shiver and winced. Looking around, she searched the faces of the strangers around until she rested on Nariko, who didn't divide her attention from her flip phone.
Kaori shivered. "Brr, did you feel that?" she mentioned, her stomach churning.
"Hmm?" Nariko questioned, turning to Kaori, "Feel what?"
"N-Never mind," Kaori said, biting her lip. Her concern was immediately broken as a surge of movement swept by her, threatening to push her from behind if she didn't get a move on. With a hurried step she crossed the curb and followed the painted white lines below her, crossing the street as an uncountable amount of men and women of all ages passed by, cyclists trying to join in on the pedestrian rally, skillfully weaving in and out through the river of bodies.
Kaori kept her head held straight, pointing right where she was headed, making sure that in the very corner of her eye she could still see Nariko. The two progressed over to the sidewalk, and the crowd significantly thinned out to a comparative shell of scattered beings here and there. Cold jumped up Kaori's spine, and suddenly the street got much, much darker. Kaori looked up to see a wave of grey clouds float over the sun's rays, covering everything in shadow. The muted gray continued down the skyline beyond the tall buildings, and it didn't look like the flow was stopping anytime soon.
"Hey, where did those clouds come from?" Nariko asked. Kaori nervously glanced back at her for a moment, not answering, before continuing onward at a faster pace.
The path planned for ahead was playing over and over again in Kaori's head. She became fixated on the thought, and her tightened jaw clenched in rhythm of her footsteps. She blinked a few times, and tried to peer into the darkened window of the high-end clothing store to her direct left. It appeared to be closed, filled with untouched clothes. The two of them gingerly passed by an alleyway with a van waiting to turn onto the stream of traffic. Kaori rubbed her right arm with her other hand, feeling the clamminess that formed there, goosebumps standing at attention.
They got to a busy corner, cars passing by with people patiently waiting for the light to turn. Kaori joined the lineup, and felt her ears slightly flex as a radio broadcast played near her vicinity. She edged her vision to the left and spotted three business men in summer clothes gathered together at a corner coffee shop, listening to a voice that was playing on a tiny portable black radio on top of the wooden table they were seated at.
"...More reports continue of the increasing appearances of monsters all over the world, with the latest attack occurring in Toronto, Canada. Luckily, members of the Super Six, a group of superheroes dubbed such by those who experienced their heroism, arrived at the scene to quell the wanton destruction. But, Canadian officials are wondering what kind of measures they could possibly take to stand better against these unknown invaders. Unfortunately, Orange Wonder and Red Dynamite, the two of the Super Six that saved the day did not stay to comment, and as usual for their appearances, disappeared as quickly as they arrived."
Kaori felt a tapping on her shoulder.
"Let's go, Kaori." Nariko reminded her, Kaori turning her head to see that it was safe to go. She stepped forward once again, biting her inner cheek lightly and not paying attention to where she was going and what she might bump into.
"Jeez," Nariko started to say once they reached the other side. "Some news stations these days. They think they can get more money by making every single event that occurs in the world more dramatic by making it 'dark'. I swear, they're gonna create more chaos than the actual stories they cover."
Kaori bit her lip as Nariko took a lead on her in their expedition. Not a few moments passed before another cool sweeping flash of wind flew between the buildings, leaving Kaori's long black hair suddenly fluttering across her face. She squinted and tried to keep her hair still with one hand, pulling strands behind her ear as she stopped to look behind her shoulder where the wind came from, staring off into the distance, beyond all of the people who didn't give as nearly as much attention as she did to the drop in temperature. Nariko groaned, complaining about the dark clouds above them as she looked at the closed sky.
Kaori's was left breathless examining around her. Everything was tinted in darkness, and the clouds looked to be something deeper than grey. Citizens in the immediate area peered up, confused, wondering where the sudden change in setting came from. Kaori's pupils became pinpricks and she froze on the spot, not willing to move, her legs losing strength quickly as she fought to keep them stable and on the spot.
Hope drained from the center of being. Light leaked from the environment, seeping down until only black shades were left. Clamminess went down the center of her back, while a great fear went up, forcing her in place, her heartbeat steadily increasing. She swallowed hard. A hand was placed on her shoulder.
"Kaori?" Nariko asked, her voice not all that steady. "Are you alright? What's wrong?"
"There's... something..." Kaori stated, her stare locking on to the corner of the block. Voices around her grew as the audio clutter of traffic and footsteps muted. The whisperings of people became clear, speaking about the clouds, how they were suddenly there, and what might have caused them. Nariko frowned, giving Kaori a little shake. The large line up of cars ahead was at a complete stop as the light at the intersection turned red all ways. Drivers leaned out of their windows in befuddlement, some scratching their heads, others turning their attention to the sky above, even more shouting in grumpy aggravation at the broken traffic control in front of them. A cacophony of honking horns arose with a wave of discord that followed soon after.
Then, all matter of speech completely stopped as a beastly roar rang through the air.
Kaori held her breath.
Nothing moved.
Nothing made a sound.
"W-What was that?" Nariko finally said after a few seconds.
Screams started ringing out somewhere in the street to the right, and people started moving again. A symphony of startled footsteps rang in chorus as men and women alike backed away from the shouts of panic slowly. Voices began in the array again, the public muttering to each other what they just heard and what all the loud ruckus was about. There was another inhuman-like call that bounced to and fro from the glass of the tightly packed building windows. A booming crash shook the air and the screams grew louder.
Nariko shook Kaori's shoulder. "Kaori, w-we should get out of here."
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Kaori didn't say anything. She took a few steps back, not taking her eyes off the corner of the block. She could feel Nariko's fingers tighten on her skin, her nails digging as her ears started to sing.
"Kaori? Let's get a move on, come on," Nariko tried to urge her, tugging on her friend less gently. Kaori made a little bit more distance, her eyes as wide as dinner plates, her mouth open in a horror that steadily grew deeper and deeper by the second.
Without warning, a flood of people rushed around the corner towards the two girls, all scrambling, their visages painted with utter terror; a tidal wave of men and women, child and elderly, fighting to get ahead of each other. Those who stuck their necks out of their vehicles had their eyes pop out of their skulls before slapping at their seat belts, yanking the door handle open, and rushing out in a fury, squealing and shouting at something that was heading their way. People spilled out all over the road, the sidewalk too narrow for everyone's access.
Nariko screamed, and Kaori finally kicked into action, turning around and grabbing Nariko's wrist, letting go of her shopping bags in the process.
Kaori's heart couldn't stop banging against her chest as she sprinted forward as best as she could in her light summer footwear, dragging behind a weakened Nariko who was still trying to figure out what was going on. The people in front of the girls' route took hint too, and started to turn tail, men in business wear stretching their stuffy, tight, black suits and pants with mothers picking up their crying kids as they tried their best to get moving as well. Kaori could hear the stampede kicking at her heels and she sped down the pavement, not daring to look back.
"K-Kaori, slow down!" Nariko said, struggling to keep up. Kaori thought she heard shopping bags slapping against each other right behind her, and without wanting to do so, looked behind her shoulders.
"Drop your bags, Nariko!" Kaori ordered, the breaking crowd catching up to them.
"What?" Nariko shouted. "But these were expensive!"
Suddenly the ground shook violently, sending Kaori and Nariko to their knees as they shrieked and lost balance. Kaori scraped her palms when stopping herself, hissing at the burning sensation searing from her skin. She turned them upright to look at them for a second, seeing her own lifelines merge together on red, raw flesh. When she turned to see what happened, her eyelids shot up as fast as her eyebrows and her mouth went ajar.
Standing on top of a crushed supply truck that had been knocked over on its side was some sort of large animal. It resembled an immensely broad jungle cat that stood taller than the truck itself. Its coat was a stark black that blended with the shade of the clouds above, its mane a fiery orange with eyes right below that burned white with enough malice to make Kaori's stomach flip. Its maw bared sharp, glistening teeth, with pointed canines and a strong jaw that looked able to crush marble and stone. The hairs on its head seemed to have a mind of its own as they slightly danced in some invisible wind to a ritual no one could hear. Poising low against the truck, it growled, peering down onto the lesser beings that fled in panic. With one deep breath, it arched its back, pointed its nose to the sky and gave an earth-shattering roar.
Kaori covered her ears and flinched, closing her eyes until the assault on her hearing stopped. Nariko screamed, having taken one look at the abomination to release the tight grip she had on her bags. Kaori got up and pulled Nariko with her in brief haste.
The escaping crown pushed at the two girls' backs, with the girls not wasting time to check if the great lion was in pursuit or not. They kept moving, arms swinging in succession, not letting go of each other's hands. In a timely fashion, they reached the end of the sidewalk and took a sharp left, where the street significantly widened out to a very busy street corner, where people were already up and going, fleeing from the monstrosity that threatened to crush them between its paws.
The volume of the population multiplied exponentially in a matter of seconds, and Kaori and Nariko found it difficult to get anywhere without being sandwiched in the oncoming wave. Their surroundings shook once again and Kaori watched the lion soar through the air right into the side of an office building, crashing through the glass and causing a fraction of the third and fourth floor to crumble under its terrible weight, sending pieces of glass to the helpless denizens below. Kaori let out a squeak and was promptly pushed forward forcefully by others stuck terrified in fear and panic.
They were chased down another street, and thousands of people either fled out of shops or into them, trying to find any kind of save closing from the danger that loomed above. Kaori was being threatened of getting trampled, holding Nariko at an arm's length. The two tried to keep eye contact against the raging tide of people, struggling to keep connected. Kaori was bumped around relentlessly, suffering shoves and hits to her arms and torso from distressed men and women who desperately tried to pass by.
"Nariko!" Kaori called out.
"Kaori!" her friend called back. "Don't let go!"
"I won't!" Kaori answered back. Her sense of direction was thrown high, high up into the air.
Grim desperation and fright was written all over Nariko's face. "Don't let go! Don't—"
"Get out of my way!" a large, muscular man shouted, using his shoulders and superior mass to break through the ranks in his way, running through several people shorter than him as he charged and caused others to fall flat on their face. He cut across Kaori and Nariko's arms, causing a furious scream out of Kaori.
"Noooo!" Nariko shouted, reaching out for Kaori as she slowly got pushed away by the horde.
"Nariko!" Kaori called as she too got swept further and further. Struggling to resist, she tried her best to maneuver against the current. "Nariko, I'll find you!"
"Kaori!" Nariko yelled, her voice getting swallowed by the chaos.
"I'll find you! I'll find you Nariko!" Kaori declared, tears starting to draw from the corners of her eyes, her arm reaching out to her friend.
Kaori couldn't make out what Nariko said as she disappeared from view. She kept her hand reaching out, fingers straight, putting her whole body into a stretch towards where Nariko had gone. Her cheeks drew wet and heated against the scrambling lives around her, her vision blurred to the point of mild blindness. But, she refused to blink away the tears. She pushed against the tidal wave, kicking and shrieking and punching at others who looked with an inaccurate impression of her sanity. Her light body was getting carried away by the masses strong-arming themselves around cars and stoplights. She screeched in frustration.
She felt cast away. Claustrophobia set in, and her head was forced under the others as she attempted to turn her torso the right way forward. The air was stuffy and trapping. Her heart hammered at her chest, the small amount of light from the sky too bright as she struggled to see in the shadows of the heads above her. Her breathing became rapid. She felt like drowning. She stumbled, only finding purchase against a rather tall woman who stopped her from going flat against the concrete and losing herself to the feet of the hoard. The lion gave its calling again and bodies surged, with shrieks of victims reaching her ears from behind, but every time she tried to look at the danger she was unwillingly turned towards the direction of the general public.
And then, she fell forward into an empty space that occupied nothing and cried out. Her open hands were scuffed on impact, and her legs folded after her knees took the brunt of the fall, her feet nowhere underneath her. Dazed, it took a few moments for Kaori to realize that she was out of the trap of traffic for the moment. People trickled out of the street here and there, running down the alley she suddenly found herself in, leaping around her, stumbling and sprinting off away from the threat that loomed nearby. She weakly turned around, her arms and legs shaking as she witnessed the commoners that both ignored her and the escape route she stumbled into while they mindlessly ran with nothing but the monster concerning them. Her breath heavy, she got to her feet, the steady stinging on her hands far away in her mind, and began to sprint down the narrow passage.
The alleyway was clean, with no pieces of garbage to be seen. There were two bicycles locked against bars attached to the back of an establishment that held in place, but Kaori could see where a few bike helmets had been left behind, perhaps forgotten by the thieves who took the opportunity of disarray to steal, or by their owners, who were too much in a hurry to properly abide by safe bicycle riding. The alley was quite long, and Kaori couldn't help but check behind her every few seconds, seeing if harm was still a ways away, her lungs pumping out ragged breaths, legs struggling to keep moving beneath her.
The route opened up to a slimmer street, where no more than two cars could possibly fit between the stores. Her eyes opened wide, and she stared at what was once a gigantic building, now crushed down into a smoking pile of stone and metal. The broken concrete below tipped off the road, and she couldn't take a few more steps forward without stepping into a harsh slope toward the center of the exploded architecture. She made her way discretely around, eyes trained on what once was, wondering if the beast would come back to check on his work, or if there was anybody inside still alive. After a few seconds, her tip-toe turned to a light jog as she went straight for the nearest alley.
Traveling, it occurred to her that she had no idea where she was going, or where she was anymore. Her shoes echoed against pavement on the walls of the buildings around her, ringing loud and snappy, on occasion scraping as Kaori failed to lift her feet properly. She took out her phone for a moment, not stopping, wanting to do as Nariko did with a map, but painfully realized she did not get the same kind of cellular service. Tossing the idea of a GPS away, she dialed Nariko's phone number, hoping that she would pick up on the other end. Her head flashed many other numbers that she could call. She thought of the police, but immediately deduced that they would be no help. Her grandmother was all the way out in the country. She didn't think any of her other friends could do anything, and didn't want to worry them of her distress. The line rang, but as she got to the end of the alleyway, Nariko's voice said to leave a message after the beep, and Kaori hung up the phone.
She sighed, only feeling slightly irritated at the turn of events, and put the phone back in her pocket as she slowed down and took in her new surroundings. There was a courtyard surrounded by buildings outfitted with almost completely abandoned stores and cafes, the red-painted brick ground hosting several stone benches and an active fountain. Nothing was ruined yet. If she didn't know any better, it would seem almost like nothing was wrong. She could hear the not-too-distance screams of the populace travel between the passages of the buildings, bouncing right into her ears along with the sounds and vibrations of crumbling structures. Her mind raced when she looked to and fro, wondering where she would go, where there was to go, and if anywhere would be safe from the rampaging lion.
All of the sudden, there was a deafening roar from behind her as a gust of wind and dust shot past her legs and arms. She shut her eyes and covered her ears, screaming. The earth violently shook, and she was almost sent tumbling into the ground, her shaky legs barely keeping her on her feet. A large shadow passed over before crashing right into the center of the fountain, demolishing it into a pile of gushing water and broken pieces of marble. Opening her eyes, she spotted the giant black lion on its back, quickly jumping to all fours at an impossible speed for its size to shoot a skin-curling glare at something above Kaori.
Unexpectedly, a purple blur landed a few meters in front of Kaori. She saw the back of a teenaged girl's head, her hair going down to her waist in long, black strands as a denim vest around her shoulders with a white and violet skirt cascading down from her hips. Her thin, feminine calves reached down to tall socks that climbed above her shins from a pair of lavender sneakers, each with a clean, pearly-white star on the side. She was glowing mystically in violet light, the ground beneath her slightly compacted due to her landing with her balance solid and her feet shoulder length apart, one arm out, fingers pointed to the monster before her. Her hair was lifted by an invisible wind. A flurry of movement met the corner of Kaori's view, revealing a few stragglers who hoped to hide from danger in their shops now escaping with extreme urgency.
Kaori took a few nervous steps back, unsure where to go. She checked over her shoulder and her breath hitched in her chest. The buildings behind her crumbled inwards, completely covering her previous path in impassable rubble. The nearest exit was to her right and was at least three dozen meters away. There was nothing in the path to take cover behind. She imagined a mad dash to safety would be putting all of her marbles in a clearly torn cotton bag. Her second choice to the left didn't fare any better. She took more tentative steps back until she tripped and fell sitting on top of building remains.
The enchantress in purple glow wasted no time. Wordlessly, she sent a dark ball of amethyst from her palms at the lion. It jumped to the side and came speeding. The girl made a shoving motion, and a sheet of purple energy formed right near the lion before forcefully driving into its side, sending it careening into the bottom of an office building. The lion backed out of the hole it made within seconds, turned its head and gave a venomous look before spewing a lance of black flames from its maw at the girl.
She hastily spreading her arms out with fingers straight and pointing up, thrusting out her chest. A barrier of velvet light encompassed the front of the girl before being enveloped in heat, the shield deflecting the blaze into the nearby buildings. Kaori could barely watch, her body leaning against her seat as she pulled her legs in, cold sweat dripping down her temple. She wanted to scream, being able to feel the boiling heat of the inferno from her distance of twenty feet. The fronts of the stores and cafes melted slightly from the blast. A moment passed, and Kaori opened her eyes after the noise of launched fire ceased to spot the girl still standing, much to Kaori's relief, if not pushed back slightly. But, the girl's eyes went as wide as Kaori's when the Lion leaped right after with the agility of a cougar.
All of the sudden, an azure streak jumped over Kaori and connected with the lion, sending it straight from its destination into a small restaurant, shooting a puff of dirt and dust from the opening in the structure and causing it to collapse a bit from impact.
Kaori stared. There was a young guy standing in front of the purple spell caster, his breath a bit ragged, fists aflame with a clean blue fire. His hair, chestnut brown, was wild, pointing in every single direction unrealistically, long enough to cover his face if it actually followed the laws of gravity. His flaming red sweater covered the blue t-shirt that stretched across his broad shoulders, the front of it bearing a white stitching of a Chinese dragon crawling across the cotton, its jaw open with pure white eyes staring right out of the fabric. The shirt ended right where his belt and maple shorts hung by his waist, long legs supported at the bottom by slightly scuffed and torn white basketball shoes.
He grit his teeth and bore them. His hazel eyes were locked onto target, his sharp eyebrows scowling and creased. Kaori couldn't stop staring at the open flames jumping from his fists, licking upward in cool shades of light blue, eating at the air upward, the energy void of any smoke.
"Come on," the boy taunted. Kaori had figured he had to be at least sixteen. "Keep your eyes on the price, furball. I'm the one you want." he said to the lion.
"Keep your eyes on target yourself," the girl behind him warned, a purple glow enveloping her body again. "Don't get distracted."
"I got it," he simply replied, waiting for the enemy's next move.
It was suddenly quiet. Bits and pieces of the wrecked building's old elements kept crumbling with fifty-year-old stone specks being released into the air after being trapped between the building walls. Kaori couldn't see through the cloud of dust that floated in the restaurant. Several seconds passed. She felt her chest tighten, one side of her mind urging to make a run for it and the other telling her to keep safe with the supernatural people defending her. The boy and girl separated the distance between each other slowly, becoming perpendicular to where the lion was.
Angry white eyes pierced through the darkness of the powder cloud. A split second before she could react, a humongous roar hit Kaori and sent stone pebbles away from the source towards the three of them. They all flinched, the boy using his arm to protect his face and the girl hesitating before throwing a purple shield in front that blocked the miniature projectiles. Kaori covered her ears while they rang at the output from the lion's oversized throat.
The lion jumped out, foaming at its muzzle, its orange mane almost alight with hatred, body surrounded in a visible dark energy. The two heroes lowered their stance, getting ready to engage when the creature shot a large fireball from its maw. The heroes blocked it with a combined shield of blue and purple that deflected upward, and it exploded in the sky in a shower of harmless white sparks. The lion instantly leaped, barely gave enough time to react. The two jumped aside and split their attack.
The lion turned its attention to the girl before she threw a ball of violet energy that struck the lion's face. It reeled up to swing its paw, claws sticking out and shining with malevolence before the boy stuck the end of his shoe right below its ribs with an inflamed strike. He followed with a kick to the stomach, sending the lion tumbling backwards before another ball of energy was launched in its face. It landed on its feet roaring, the aura of scorn it emitted limitless, before spewing forth a barrage of black flames at the ground, enveloping itself in musky smoke, forcing the duo to cautiously back away for a moment.
Kaori started moving from her hiding spot to the right, trying her best not to make any sudden movements as she jogged towards her escape and hopefully to a safe area. Suddenly, the gigantic cat burst from the flames surging towards the spell caster. The girl only had time to widen her eyes before getting hit in the side with the lion's massive paw.
"Katrina!" the boy cried as he watched her soar into a building, crumbling the wall entirely. His eyes met the beast just as it threw a swipe at him. He jumped over the threat but barely blocked the second strike it threw with its other paw. Kaori saw him launch into one of the few remaining, non-damaged buildings and her heart went wild with fear. She began to sprint, throwing her momentum forward, swinging her arms in a frenzy with her legs. The moment she took to look back to see what the lion was doing was the moment she realized it was staring directly at her.
She didn't even blink. It suddenly crossed the distance between her and it, its jaws wide open in an almost gleeful grin, showing off its sharp, large canines with its claws out and pointed right at her, forelegs reaching towards her stature. Her eyes were wide in disbelief while she was caught mid-stride, her life flashing before her eyes.
Her right foot hit the ground and there was a burst of wind from where the Lion was six feet ago. She shrieked, having lost sight of the creature, turning her head over her other shoulder, searching desperately. The Lion was pinned against a small bicycle shop by a blue glowing oval, roaring in rage as it struggled against the unnatural force it was being pinned with. The boy was holding it in place, his hand glowing with the same light as his fire, his entire weight pushing into the shield as his arms shook over the weight. He grit his teeth, his head hanging down in concentration with his feet slowly sliding back. Drops of sweat fell from his forehead.
She reached the alleyway watching him shoot a silent "Run!" through his fear-stricken brown eyes. She turned her head forward and didn't look back.