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Chapter Twenty Eight
Burn
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“Rook?”
Tone turned around. The tallest member of the Wild Masks had disappeared, leaving Tone standing in the restroom doorway holding Skinsuke’s phone in his hand. Tapping at it for a moment, he stole across the room and pushed the unconscious Shinsuke’s finger into the screen to unlock it.
Tonight. Drunk. Wait for his signal.
The phone creaked in his grip as the pressure he applied gradually increased. After a long and extremely aggressive sigh, he set the phone down next to its sleeping owner, looking despondently at the fellow passed out on the hotel bed.
“Tone!” Rook suddenly burst back in through the window, dodging at the last moment to avoid the incoming Hawk, who barreled past him and scraped up the wall as he went. “We’ve got company!”
“Could’ve guessed.” Tone growled, his stance growing more aggressive as he flexed the powers of his mask. The hawk-like mask began to creak and wobble, as if it would suddenly split down the middle, but its owner interrupted the process by flying into Tone, slamming his forearm against the Wild Mask’s throat.
The pressure was gone a second after, as Rook stood in Hawk’s place as Hawk collided with yet another wall. Tone sputtered and gasped for a moment at his crushed throat, which before Rook’s frightened eyes suddenly uncrushed itself, allowing its owner to gulp down huge mouthfuls of air in relief.
“You think you can do that same trick with Ren’s car?” Rook quipped, but his glowing eyes indicated the mandatory jab instigated by Wild did not compensate for how concerned he was. Hawk had pulled himself out of the wall by the time the pair turned their attention back towards the room, and with very quick timing Rook swapped Hawk with himself and Tone, Hawk with himself and the television, Tone with himself and the television, used the television to catch itself around Hawk’s wrist as he punched a hole through it, and suddenly fly forward, catching Hawk and the television and shooting through the open window with a considerable amount of force.
Tone mopped his brow with his sleeve for just long enough to ignore the milky-white arm that gripped him by the back of his collar and threw him across the room, smashing him into what remained of the dresser. “I get it, you don’t want to be stuck with the cleaning bill…” Tone began, losing all attempts at good humor at the sight of Shinsuke floating above the bed, glancing down at him with huge, glassy eyes.
“Uh oh.”
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“You come this way often?”
“Adorable.” Hawk grinned, swooping after Rook as he zigzagged through the air around the building. “I don’t know why you think this will stop me, but I can promise you it won’t. We’re not going to be playing around tonight.”
“That’s great to hear,” Rook implied a smirk as he slowed just enough for Hawk to catch up. “Give me a second, will you?”
Hawk swung a heavy fist at him, but it collided with a security camera. All around the building Rook darted, swapping places with every security camera he could see and finally flying up to the top of the hotel, gently landing on the powdery gravel which lined the roof.
“Corey, this is Rook.” He mumbled into the radio. “Corey, we need to go dark. Tone, you need to call Kohaku and ask her to-”
“Negative.” Corey replied. “We’re going to want all eyes on us for this one. Race, get out on the street and intercept the man in the red suit, keep him busy for three minutes. Rook, you need to get Hawk away from here. Take him to Oroshimachi station and keep him away as long as possible.”
“Great.” Rook grumbled, pocketing the radio with a sigh. “Seems I’m stuck with the most popular guy on the block. Hawk is everybody’s friend; next could be you.”
“If that’s a reference, I don’t get it.” Hawk grinned, floating up over the rooftop. “I thought you people didn’t have friends.”
“It’s a Miyubi reference, you uncultured dust bunny.” Rook crossed his arms and glaring upward at the ascending figure. “I wouldn’t expect someone with your lack of taste to know about the only VR experience of talking to Jeff Goldblum and watching a family partake in heavily-scripted drama.”
“True, true.” Hawk flashed his almost glowing white teeth in reply. “Sadly, my knowledge is comprised of mostly useless things, like how to overhear a conversation without being noticed, and that the Oroshimachi station is a fairly busy one, with lots of people there at all times.”
“Dangit.” Rook flew off the rooftop after the rapidly disappearing silhouette of Hawk. “Dangit dangit dangit.”
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“Always with the giant fish, never enough of the giant fish.” Odgu growled, darting backwards to avoid more rubble cast by the massive koi. “At least this one’s slow. Listen idiot,” Ren ducked backwards to avoid the samurai helmet lobbed at him by Odgu as the master of the Pangolins continued to speak, “I didn’t skewer the last terrifying monster you tried to kill me with fast enough, but don’t worry, I’ll make sure this one doesn’t butcher hundreds of people.”
“Four will be enough.” He snarled, unsheathing the katana at his side and diving towards the massive fish. At the first connection of steel and fish filet, the koi roared, twisting itself about in a lightning-like motion and slapping the buzzing Odgu through the glass wall and out of the building with a surprising amount of force. It was clear, however, from the beating he had endured from Chubasco, that it was hardly enough to put him down.
“…Race, how we doing?” Ren spoke into the radio after an uncomfortably long pause. “No, I didn’t summon the giant fish, in case you were wondering.”
“Parking lot. Now.” Race hurriedly replied, the channel going dead a moment after. Darting towards the doors, Ren skidded to a stop and changed course, turning from the undercover Koi Blood members who were escorting the last of the ground floor civilians out of the building and towards the formerly elegant couch which Tone was using as a quite crumpled bed.
“Trying to decide if my shoulder is dislocated or not, is what I’m doing.” Tone muttered into the cushion, hearing the sound of Ren’s footsteps approaching. “Also bleeding a lot, so this suit is pretty much ruined.”
“Anything more than the usual?” Ren sighed, trying to mask the blatant dread in his voice. Tone issued a series of laughing snorts in reply, not bothering to look up at his boss as he did so. Odgu suddenly rocketed back through the open window, holding back for a moment as the monstrous koi swung about at blinding speed and cut through the air in front of him.
“Get going. I’ll handle this.” Tone growled, still face down on the couch. Ren turned and bolted for the exit, skidding dramatically in order to avoid colliding with a grey-hoodied youth scooting inside in the most suspicious manner possible.
Ren did a double take and turned around the moment after. “You.”
Pakka slowly lowered his hood, not bothering to face the leader of the Wild Masks as he did so. “I was told not to come. Odgu wanted me to stay behind, even to defy mister Makuei just to keep me safe.”
There was an open box of toothpicks in his hand. Several of them stood on end as he glared at Ren out of the corner of his eye. No further detail was required to understand his intent; Ren’s eyes were staring past him anyway, focused on the calm and casual form of Oisim Makuei, still at the bar, watching his every move.
Ren’s action of immediately falling backwards to avoid the first few toothpicks that flew past his face was only just enough to avoid the beginning barrage, but the motion he was in left him open to the next. One skidded off his kneecap, just missing its target of sliding underneath it. The next collided with a rib, sticking into his side and refusing to fall out.
Two more dug into the muscle of his thigh, wedged quite deeply inside. All of this occurred before Ren hit the ground, and when he did it was mostly with a sharp hiss, his muscles tightening heavily as he tried to fight the urge to rip the toothpicks out.
“I have to go kill a fish.” Pakka turned away, closing the box of toothpicks. “When it’s dead, you had better be gone. Maybe Usul will kill you, maybe not. But if I see you again, you’re history.”
With that, Pakka slowly trudged further inside, breaking into a sprint as the massive koi smashed its deformed body against one of the steel supports, smashing through the statue and buckling the metal underneath, with Odgu right in the middle. With great restraint Ren slowly pulled out the three toothpicks that had managed to stick in his body, staggering to his feet and feeling his bleeding leg.
“Please, oh please tell me this Usul guy is going to be easier.” He groaned as he turned and ran out the door, his leg screaming at him to stop all the way. There was silence from the parking lot, and as he rounded a large van he immediately ducked back behind it and slid to the ground.
“Don’t peek.” An unfamiliar voice muttered, belonging to the red-suited individual with the black skull-shaped mask. One hand held the long artificial entrails typically coiled up inside Race’s stomach cavity, the owner of this mechanical marvel lying on the ground, too nervous to retaliate. The other hand held a gun.
“I’m told I’m an expert shot.” The skull mask tipped, allowing light to shimmer off the individual’s dark pupils. “Your associate has a mask of being faster than others, but I have a mask of being better.”
The hammer of the handgun was drawn back by a slow and careful movement of his thumb. “Care to test my definition?”
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