"Dammit," Charybdis cursed to herself. "Of all the people, Hydra, you had to choose the little, untainted, innocent girl."
The wind lashed in her face like the claws of a howling beast as it streaked by her, spewing cold and stinging water on her scowling face. Her dark indigo hair was plastered all over her fancy lab coat. It was usually trim and proper, but now it was damp and rumpled. She peered over the balcony, leaning against the small wall that prevented her from falling over the edge of the skyscaper rooftop.
Beside her, a giant mechanical engine roared incessantly into the night sky. Only a few meters above her was the very top of the hemispherical barrier that Wyvern – known to the public as Minerya Palisade – upheld with her magic. The mana captured by the helmet strapped to her head was shot through a tube up through the very top of the PSEF headquarters. Charybdis turned away from the bright white light that pulsed from the center of the rooftop, squinting through her high-definition binoculars at the road below.
Several hundred floors below, the city of Lachlan was still bustling – Charybdis could pick out, past the relentlessly guarded doors to her organization's base, several cafes and stores lining the street. She could see happy couples dipping in and out of restaurants, the tables set up by the narrow and congested roadway, the magical lights that floated alongside them to guide their way, but no traces of the runaway lykan.
"She could have escaped to an entirely different city-state by now," Charybdis muttered to herself, though Redd had never been taught how to use the underground subway system that linked the city-states underneath the toxic radiation-filled Badlands.
"I need a closer look," the dragon doctor mouthed, taking a quick sip of comforting warm coffee from her levitating mug before setting it down behind the ledge. Raindrops smashed into it like a miniature meteor shower, diluting it.
She took a deep breath, and jumped.
Charybdis fell freely as the city street rushed rapidly up to meet her. She activated a mechanism on the side of her binoculars and an invisible material rushed to cloak her figure, hiding her from view. No doubt the image of a freefalling Charybdis from outside the office window would have startled more than a few of her coworkers.
Then, gracefully and calmly, as if she had done so a million times before, Charybdis' momentum began to slow, incrementally decreasing to a hover. As a telekinetic, she could manipulate her own body to hover in the air. It was much faster than walking. She readied her binoculars again, beginning to float in a circle around her headquarters.
Eventually she passed by the dark alleyway behind the PSEF building, where the luxury lots entangled with winding sidewalks and private gardens of the upper class of Lachlan. There was a large dumpster in a small enclave underneath the building, hidden from sight from windows. Every building in its vicinity had its back turned on this one small area of the city, and it was where Charybdis would never think to look.
She hovered over it, above the buildings, forgetting to look down as she missed the small black silhouette hiding behind the dumpster looking up at her. She folded her arms and gazed at the horizon, wondering where Redd could be as the wind assaulted her invisible form.
And thus, she failed to sense the blood-covered beast flying straight towards her backside.
Charybdis let out a forcible gasp as she felt claws latch onto her shoulder, plunging into the vulnerable tissue beneath her lab coat. Her binoculars, focused on the far away, immediately snapped back into normal view range as soon as it registered the impact. Charybdis felt hot breath on her neck, the promise of sharp teeth not far behind. She panicked as her invisibility cloak malfunctioned with a series of concerning shocks and glitches. It dissipated into black particles that faded into the stormy night.
"Was it me you were looking for?" Redd snarled into Charybdis' left ear, her voice light and playful but full of murderous intent.
Charybdis gasped as she felt the point of a blade slide against her neck. A sharp fragment of glass.
Charybdis froze in shock as she realized that Redd had leapt the distance of a hundred-story building in half a second, without sound, latching onto her invisible body without hesitation.
"H-how?" She managed to choke out. She felt Redd's laughter on her neck, but didn't hear it over the wind.
"Wolf senses. Your body may have been invisible, but the rain that bounced off of your body wasn't. And your smell… your dirty, filthy smell… reeking of humans."
Charybdis wriggled and squirmed in midair, desperately trying to shake off the frenzied wolf girl. She felt her wolflike claws latch onto the tissue deep under her skin. No human would have such claws – it was a trait that Redd gained whenever she transformed into a werewolf.
Panic flashed through Charybdis' mind as she thought she saw a monster gasp and point at her outside the PSEF headquarter building. She turned away, thrashing wildly, but Redd hung on tight, using the momentum to dig her claws even further within Charybdis' shoulders, which elicited a grunt from the dragon doctor.
Charybdis' eyes glowed a furious icy blue as she channeled her telepathic abilities to try and force Redd off of her. She grunted through the pain, struggling to shake her off. She could feel Redd's teeth baring, hungry for blood. They inched ever closer to her neck, and Redd let loose a guttural howl right in Charybdis ears as she found that she could not reach her neck – her body was being peeled away by Charybdis' invisible force. The rain pounded down on them both, indiscriminate, and the sharp flash of lighting and the boom of thunder echoing throughout the grey sky startled them both.
In an instant, Redd lost her grip on Charybdis. She scrabbled desperately, but Charybdis' lab coat was slick with rain and Redd's claws slid right off. She gasped as her hair whipped in front of her, fleeing from the ground below. She plummeted several stories down as Charybdis sunk slowly, clutching her bloodied shoulders in agony. The back of her coat began to turn a muddied crimson as it mixed with the moisture in her clothes. Her small, useless dragon wings fluttered helplessly, battered about by the storm.
The countless rectangular lights of the office windows streaked by Redd as she fell towards the dimly lit street. They flew past her like shooting stars, blurring and disorienting her vision. The rain pushed her downwards as she felt her grey ash-colored skin mesh into the tumultuous backdrop. All senses of perception left her, raindrops blinding her. Instinctively, she felt the ground rush up to meet her underneath, and with a desperate attempt to survive, she flipped herself over against the will of gravity and stretched out her bandaged claws to catch herself.
The pavement in between the PSEF headquarters and the solemn black high-rises of the rich cracked upon impact, but Redd was left unscathed, her mana flowing in and out of her, strengthening her bones and shielding her from damage. Her fists plunged into the concrete below as she tore the metal exterior of the dumpster and the solid rock of the ground below like it was butter, her claws cutting through the dirt mercilessly. The impact crater collapsed in on itself as Redd immediately pulled herself to her feet and squatted down to lunge away.
In an instant, a giant plume of light streaked down in erratic motions, slicing through the very air, splitting each raindrop into two. It smote the crater where Redd had been just a second ago, and the giant lightning bolt's electricity pumped into the cracked pavement, using the cracks as channels as it electrified the very surface of the earth.
Redd smashed into the wall of the high-rise across the street. Her claws hooked into the metal wall on its side, and Redd clung like a spider upon its surface. If Redd had not perfected her supersonic pounces, she would have had enough energy to recklessly smash through the entire building, ripping it from its foundations. She looked upwards towards the source of the lightning bolt.
Charybdis was floating with her arms outstretched above her, her fangs bared in draconic anger. She lowered them in disappointment as she realized her strike had not reached its target. She began to descend, her eyes sparking with electricity, her anger rapidly dissipating into worry.
The thunder that exploded from the impact area suddenly burst forth, an invisible tidal wave of sound that pinned Redd against the wall. She heard creaking and groaning from deep within the wall. All around her, the lights of the skyscrapers that enclosed her flickered and died, leaving her clothed in shadow. The buildings swayed on their foundations in awe of Charybdis' electrical magic.
"We shouldn't fight here, Redd," Charybdis shouted, her voice amplified by her magic. It cut through the storm's rage, dwarfing its power.
"Why is that?" Redd shouted back, her voice searing Charybdis' ears even from afar. "You scared that your mistakes will be revealed? Your toys in danger? Does this jeopardize your plans?"
"You haven't told anyone, have you?" Charybdis asked frantically, eliciting a spiteful laugh from Redd that the wind intensified. Her laugh was like a saw grating wood.
"Oh no, I'll do more than that. Much more than that!" Redd shook her head and moisture flew from the tips. She stared at Charybdis with an insane grin, her hair dripping down her face. The tears that fell from her cheeks masqueraded as rain.
"You won't have them for long, Charybdis. You'll never be able to catch them."
"Redd, this is petty," Charybdis said persuasively, extending her arms out as she floated down to where Redd was angrily clinging to the wall. Redd's fingers flexed inside of the punctured metal.
"Petty?" Redd spat. "YOU leave me out here, alone, and expel me from my home for ONE mistake. I thought you cared about me. But you were selfish and greedy. You let your obsession with humans take you over. Now you've become just like one yourself. You abandoned me!" The building shook with Redd's wrath and resounding shout.
Charybdis sighed remorsefully. She was now only a few meters away from the snarling wolf girl, who drew herself back defensively as she approached.
"I'm truly sorry. What I did was rash and unwarranted. But I've calmed down, you see, and I can see clearly that it was wrong to punish you that severely for what you did. I'm ready to welcome you back, everyone is. Come home, Redd. I don't want to fight you like this."
Redd looked her straight in the eye. Charybdis smiled gently and hopefully, but her stomach plummeted as Redd's fierce expression did not change. What scared Charybdis the most was that inside Redd's rainswept eyes, behind the obvious anger and betrayal, Charybdis could see a deep ocean of fear. Redd was afraid… of her. After all these years.
���Come home? Come home so that you can use me again? So I can become another one of your toys? Another one of your puppets? No thank you. I think I've realized now what you really thought about me. You never cared about me at all. You only care about those humans and the freakish fetish you have for them."
"No, no, Redd, that's not true," Charybdis said, her composure weakening. She tried to convince herself desperately that the liquid streaking down her cheeks was just rain and nothing else. "No, Redd, I care about you, I really do! I want you back, I miss you."
"You taught me to kill, you know. Ever since I joined, you taught me… the only way to solve a problem is to kill it. It's all I know how to do. And now you're a problem, Charybdis," tears were flowing down Redd's face, her breathing ragged. Her feet scrabbled on the slippery edge of the building, her tired claws barely holding up her weight.
"It wasn't me who taught you that, that was Hydra," Charybdis protested.
"Does it matter?" Redd shouted. "You were there! You were complicit. You were a bystander! All you did was sit back and watch it happen! You mean to tell me you disagreed? Then why didn't you stop it? Why? Charybdis, tell me… Tell me!"
Upon hearing these words, Charybdis' gut dropped. Doubt began to worm itself into her chest as she froze in shock. A bystander. She was always a bystander. Even during the human genocide… all Charybdis ever did was watch. There were so many wrongs in this society that Charybdis had witnessed firsthand. And yet, she'd made no move to prevent it. She'd taken Redd under her wing… but only pretended to care for her. In reality, Charybdis was just as selfish and cowardly as Redd said. And the truth of it shook Charybdis' identity to the core. Just when she'd thought she'd be able to do something to save the humans… she had failed. Yet again. Guilt paralyzed her. She stammered, unable to breathe. But no words came out. Charybdis the All-Knowing… didn't know what to say.
"You were right. Who was I kidding," Redd choked. "I made myself out to be some sort of adult. But you were right. You always were. I'm just…"
"I'm just a little girl."