I began my trek to the Townsquare long after Tim and Chrystal had made their exit after issuing me one final kick to the ribs. Once I regained my breath and rubbed out my bruises for the most part, in reality, I only seemed to be making them worse, I stood and stumbled out the door, keeping a tight hold on my thoracic area as if that would keep my ribs together.
I unwillingly dragged my feet behind me and shuffled to the middle of town. A thick crowd had already formed and my "parents" had surely been swallowed into the abyss by now, leaving me to my own devices, Aka, wander around until I had a good view of whatever happened to be going on today.
I immersed myself in the ocean of people and swam through it, shoving past people ignorant to my curt "excuse me" and eventually making it to an open area with an amazingly clear view of what was happening.
...What the fuck?
I sucked in a breath, watching as a fragile woman was muscled onto her hands and knees, brittle bones shuttering at the impact. A shaggy man urgently removed her dirty, wet underwear for what must've been the thousandth time today. The poor soul could do nothing but accept the brutal rape from this disgustingly hairy, greasy old man who obviously didn't give a shit as to who saw his dick.
When he finished with the lady, the King sauntered into view, and my head snapped to the gnarled older man with a beard that happened to brush his knees.
"Any other takers?" I could hardly make out his grin beneath all that facial hair.
I panned my eyes around the circle and picked up on a few other men of all shapes and sizes zipping up their pants and sinking back into the sea of people, mesmerized by the sight of their one and only King.
Some people even brought their children.
An odd feeling began to bubble up in the pit of my stomach, one I couldn't place but it was much more prominent than anything I'd felt in a while. It wrapped it's slimy, clawed hand around my stomach and squeezed until the urge to throw up overtook my senses.
Once everyone had finished with the sniveling woman, the King stepped up to her, bending down to gleefully snarl into her bloodshot eyes. He gripped her already tattered scalp and shook her around as if for good measure. The action seemed to curl my hand into a fist for me then left it to tremble at my side.
The unnamed woman struggled as tears leaked from her eyes, she thrashed around pushing off her toothpick legs only to be yanked back down to earth by the thinning hair on her head. The King yanked the woman's face up to his and blood-stained tufts of white hair cascaded to the ground like dirty snowflakes. He pressed his face up to the sobbing woman's and opened his mouth, licking her all the way from her chin to her eyeball. He continued until she had a dripping road of saliva mapping out a path on her face. A dry chuckle erupted throughout the crowd as the woman's sobs grew louder. My nails tore through my palm. My fist was tight, however, I was ignorant to the blood slowly beginning to pool beneath me.
The King finally halted in his disgraceful antics, dragging her to a post instead. He let her fall to the floor and motioned for a soldier to join him, this soldier being one of the many we call "Specialists". I'd like to think that the only thing they specialize in is murdering people, innocent and disturbed alike.
The soldier yanked the poor woman up and strung her to the post. He made sure to tie the ropes tight enough to slice right through her tiny wrists, the rest of her child-like body wiggling from side to side in futile resistance.
The soldier took a few oddly graceful steps away from the struggling lady and allowed his hands to fall to his sides, opening his palms up to the heavens, then engulfing them in a radiant flame, he extended one arm towards the beaten female who had begun to scream.
Flame devoured everything in sight before I managed to process what had just happened.
I whipped around, thoroughly disgusted, and sick. I fell through those surrounding me and attempted to crash through the tightly wound wall of people. The crowd sucked me in but wouldn't let me out, it's almost as if they're begging me to stay and watch.
I'm overwhelmed.
I crashed onto the ground and guarded my head with my arms as if someone was going to hit me, I trembled and that seemed to shake the tears right back into my eyes. As humiliating as it was I couldn't seem to find the strength or courage to stand up again and continued to tremble on the spot.
"What the hell?" a voice dripping in utter disgust washed over me and I resisted looking up for fear of being struck.
A slight murmur began to ripple throughout the crowd and, to my relief, I felt people stepping away from me. I begged myself to take this opportunity to run for it but what kept me rooted in my spot was their eyes. Their slimy glares bore through me and shattered any shred of confidence I thought I had.
The surrounding people quickly lost interest in the shaking girl cowering on the ground and I took the opportunity to slither out of the loosened crowd. My feet seemed to move on their own and I stumbled through the mass of bodies, tripping and crashing into the occasional onlooker who would meet my watery eyes with a look flooding with contempt, and I would continue running, washing my face with fresh tears.
Breaking through that suffocating crowd and falling into an open area filled me with relief so thick I floated on it. Eventually, I picked myself up and wandered over to a large, green-leafed oak tree with branches thick and low enough to allow someone to climb them. I took my foot and arm holds and monkey'd my way up the tree. My limbs screamed at me to stop and rest but my brain threw the protests on the back burner, continuing up the tree until I had reached a branch that had seemed to fuse with the one next to it, presenting me with a perfect place to sit. I hauled myself up and rested my sore back on the bark. A screen of green shrouded my vision of the town square but cloaked my presence. I sighed a painful breath of relief as I allowed my tattered muscles a temporary break.
I must have fallen asleep because the next time I opened my eyes my heart just about stopped, as a pair of slender, golden eyes met my bloodshot hazel ones. The new, icy gaze froze me for a millisecond before fear took the reins and launched my body off the branch I had taken refuge on. As my skull met the ground, my vision fizzled and died out and I passed out for the second time today.
As I began to come to, I could hear an almost distant set of voices rallying an argument back and forth.
"...pissed." a female voice snapped.
I strained my ears as if that would allow me to catch the words thrown out into the open before that one, but I only managed to latch onto something spoken in a much different, much timider, voice.
"I-I know….I'm sorry….I didn't know she'd fall."
A growl like none I'd ever heard ripped through the female's throat and I could almost taste the anxiety that washed over the timid presence responding to her.
"Take responsibility for what you did. You let her fall, if she's dead it's your fault.
A pause more suffocating than the act of drowning weighed down the air around us and stapled my eyelids closed, fear of an altercation choking out any noises I could have possibly made in that situation. Terror just about lulled me back to sleep since waking up seemed to be a petrifying, yet avoidable, event.
I could just die here and never face my fear. That sounds like the most pleasant option I've been presented with so far, however, the sudden rupture of a voice shattered my train of thought and any hope of staying asleep since my body betrayed me and flinched in response.
The words, "Yes Toya." Slapped the two's gazes in my direction. My eyes twitched and my hands began to shiver.
I felt a shadow pass over the air in front of my unguarded body and the unpleasant sensation of something sharp prodding my face rustled another flinch from my body.
"Hey," The girl snapped, "You alive?"
I remained quiet and I caught wind of a sigh as she began pushing whatever pointy object she had on her deeper into my cheek. As soon as it began to hurt I tensed.
"I can see you moving, girl" and the shadow lengthened and grew until I felt none of the beating sun on my face anymore.
Her words, this time, managed to jolt my eyes open and I scanned up the shadow, until I came to face a muscular, sun-kissed girl sporting a spiked, yet flowy, ponytail coupled with an odd set of bangs framing her face with its length at the sides. Her unruly fly-aways being restrained by a frayed brown bandana that sat just behind her bangs. That head of glowing, fire-red hair was well accented by the sparkling golden-yellow eyes I had met earlier today, and a tiny scar gracing the left side of her face where her cheek met her chin. She seemed to grow into the heavens the longer I looked at her, the midday sun beating down on the two of us gave her a glow like none I had ever laid eyes on, it was as if her ora was flooding from her body and blinding me all at once. I strained to respond to the moviestar smile she flashed my way with a pathetic half grimace, after all, I was starstruck.
This girl was flawless.
I took sudden notice of the midnight-black wand snuggled neatly in her slender fingers. It was such a smooth transition and hold that it was almost as if she was born with the wand in her hand. There are only a few people I've seen that feel as if they slid into their type like a glove, a glove so snug that no other could ever begin to dream of slipping into it. After another glance I managed to catch sight of a haphazardly carved wing accented with a devil horn hugging the curve on the hilt of her wand. As I squinted at the marking, the girl took sight of the string stemming from my straining eyes and followed the path to the carving gracing her wand. She seemed to grin and effortlessly allowed her tool to slip to the side revealing the rest of the design, gentle fingers remaining firm on the rest of the toolt.
Before I could utter a word the sunny girl began to speak, "I'm sure you're wondering who we are and why I was stalking you in your sleep." she laughed something gorgeous but I couldn't manage to squeak a chuckle in response, I simply stayed quiet until her churchbell giggle faded with the breeze.
"Well, my name is Toya and this coward here is Hinata." she threw her thumb back behind her as it just now registered that I had seen no face to match the second voice.
I watched the girl just about shove a small boy out from his temporary refuge behind her and the second he took the sun's given spotlight his presence was almost laughably underwhelming. He possessed smooth, dark brown hair which just barely grazed his shoulders and shadowed the right side of his pale face. I just scarcely made out ocean-blue eyes almost completely hidden by his curtain of hair. My eyes were almost immediately drawn to the sizable wings, sprouting from his shoulder blades which happened to be whiter than heaven itself. He met my eyes for a ghost of a second, fear recognising fear as if gazing into a mirror before stringing his gaze back to the soft grass below us, sinking into the shadow of his sun, as the moon would.
It was almost as if my brain refused to retain the image of wing-boy as my eyes wandered back to the glowing goddess, my attention forced away from the phantom of a boy and shocked back to Toya simply by the sound of her voice.
"Oh don't mind him, he's always like this." a bright, cheery tone taking the stage "Constantly acting like a big bitch." As close as they seemed, one could ever so slightly sense a hint of malice when referring to him. The boy shrank back, gulping down the humiliation and cowardice streaming off of him.
"Regardless of that, it's a pleasure to meet ya!" a charismatic grin was tossed right to me as she stuck her hand out to me. I hesitated and glanced at her buttery eyes, wondering if she would pull my ragged arm and strike me like everyone else. When I was met with no physical harm I mustered up enough courage to utter my name.
"Tenma...my name…..pleasure." I whimpered, as a dog would and my gaze continued to phase from her hand to her intimidatingly blinding eyes.
Toya did not falter as she allowed her hand to almost float in my direction, the serenity of the situation calming my frayed nerves to a point where I could grip the tips of her fingers in my own and give them a fragile shake before letting my hand slide to my side again.
Her hand immediately took refuge on her hip as she giggled at me. "So...your parents actually named you 'demon'?" she questioned jokingly, unconsciously ripping a flinch from my body.
No answer this time, I only nodded in time to the wall rupturing stares weighing on my beaten body, pinning me in my seated position on the ground.
"So are you just going to sit there, or...?" Toya remarked and the patronizing tone of voice rippled a fresh wave of goosebumps over my skin, however, I did stumble to my feet as a newborn would and swayed a bit when I came face to face with the angel.
She flashed me another blinding grin and began to talk, for real this time. "So long story short, Hina and I saw you stumbling around like an idiot at that execution thing earlier today, and figured that since you were the only one that showed any type of disdain for the situation at hand, you might just be perfect for our group," she noted, voice dripping in a peculiar superiority.
"W-what group?" I managed to choke after what felt like an eternity of struggle.
Toya's sunny expression twisted into one I had never seen before. It was a combination of seemingly animalistic hunger and deep-set, well-masked rage that whipped through her eyes like a tornado. I faltered in my thought process as the threatening atmosphere from before washed over me like a wave. Startled, I contemplated running, but before I could make a move she spoke.
"We're a resistance group called Heaven's Demon, and it's funny cause now we got an actual demon on our side!" Toya chuckled and I paused.
"W-wait...I never.....I never said...." I pounded my voice into a spirit of a thought as the words I meant to say failed to leave my mouth.
Well....if they're a resistance group that must mean they don't agree with the society we live in, just like me. Maybe they'll protect me.
Maybe I can make a friend.
I almost drooled at the infatuating thought of actually having someone to support me, and given the fact that she was beyond beautiful was only a bonus. Without thinking I muttered the only word that formulated in my mind:
"O...okay."