The space above the booths was thick with pinkish vapour. The people sitting in there were inhaling from a slender pot in the middle of the table—a hookah—and the imbibers were practically sprawled on their seats. A couple sitting in the back were casually petting each other, but they would not have been visible in the shadows.
In fact, in nearly every booth, two or three people were indulging themselves, though nobody had reached the state of having intercourse in public yet.
She eyed Zak Elliot sharply since he was the one to suggest they take one of the vacant booths on the second floor. A discrete sign next to each one told her that occupying the space came with the expectation of spending at least three hundred Torries for the night, a rather steep price considering her current finances.
Scarlett was smashed silly and she was giggling with every inane comment by the shorter man. Michael had a slightly uncomfortable look on his face, which faded every time he looked at her. Her Mien was in full swing, and it was pushing her to take one, even both of them. Hmmm, no…all three of them…home. Ancestors!
It was the weakness of her Intent and Will, she abruptly realised. To build her incarnation, ten percent was taken from every aspect of her true body, except for her Mien. It was able to connect both bodies as though they were no more than a handspan apart, and it was able to express its fullness in both. For her true body, the deficit was well on its way to recovery so there was minimal deficiencies. For her incarnation, there was no way to make up ninety percent of the shortfall quickly.
So, she had two choices. Either she gave in to her Mien's—and her body's lusts—or she used the opportunity to hone her Will and Intent. Well, she supposed it wasn't really a question since there was only one answer. She would hone her Will and Intent.
Still, she let Zak bring them over to one of the booths. There was the hookah underneath the table, but neither man opted to use it. She thought Zak tried to separate her from Scarlett, but she easily maneuvered both men to sit on the same side. Not that it made much difference, come to think of it, since the booth's seating was a semicircle. She did wind up sitting next to Michael on the inside.
The boys ordered several platters of snacks: roasted peanuts, tortilla chips doused in meat, tomato, and cheese sauces, fried potato strips, and button mushrooms sauteed in garlic and butter. Plus several more drinks.
Yuriko still didn't like bitter drinks, so she got some sweet cocktails, though she also surreptitiously replaced Scarlett's orders with the non-alcoholic versions.
The boys were certainly used to entertaining. Perhaps it was the inebriation, but Yuriko found their annecdotes and tall tales quite funny and she was openly giggling along with Scarlett. She wasn't foolish enough to allow the alcohol to affect her too much, and she frequently purified her blood with a quick application of Radiant energy. It did have the side-effect of making her veins glow briefly, but she kept her bare arms under the table in those cases, and let her hair hide her face.
She might not have succeeded since Michael kept staring at her. However, as time passed on, the clarity of her sense of his emotions grew, confirming that he was completely infatuated. He would have progressed beyond Aspiration already if she let him.
Thankfully, neither boy tried to cop a feel, though she could perceive dozens of young men taking advantage of their partners for the evening. If she didn't see that most of the women were quite willing, she'd have intervened already. However, there was one case where she did intervene. She noticed someone slip somehting into a girl's drink, and when the victim partook, she grew groggy and nearly unresponsive. The man who did that began groping her, and from the lust and glee streaming out of his mind, he was clearly up to no good.
So she used her kinesis to crush his genitals and prevent him from screaming until he passed out from the pain. The little squeal that seeped out was drowned out by the loud music. The man was alone, so the girl remained unmolested, but Yuriko wasn't sure what to do without exposing her powers.
After a couple of minutes, even as she devoted a couple of strands of consciousness to the ongoing conversation, she fished out a pen and notepad from the girl's purse, wrote out a cry for help along with the booth number, then placed it sneakily next to the bartender. The man saw it after a minute, and he sent security over to the booth. The two bouncers found the couple unconscious, but much to her annoyance, they didn't call the police or any other authority figure. But at least they called the onsite first aider who, after examining both, called for an ambulance.
Afterwards, the bouncers grew more than a bit jumpy, and they spread their presence amongst the club goers.
"Well, it's almost midnight," Yuriko announced. "I've a job tomorrow, so thank you for the wonderful evening."
"Leaving so soon?" Zak asked, clearly disappointed, while Michael gave her puppy dog eyes that, because of his stature, made it look all the more adorable.
"Hu-huh, we-we're going?" Scarlett gushed, still smashed silly.
"Yes, little one," Yuriko said patiently, "I'll take the keys and drive. You're in no condition to."
Jenna and Nora had already left with a couple of young men, college students she supposed. They messaged both her and Scarlett's phones that they'd found their own way home, so since they didn't look in distress, Yuriko simply let them leave.
"Uh, we could bring you home?" Michael offered, but his intentions were quite clear.
Yuriko simply smiled, leaned over and pecked him on the cheek. "Perhaps another time."
The young man nearly swooned from it, while Zak looked at her with hope. She chuckled and gave him a hug, but he took advantage and pressed himself close so that her bosom squished against his chest. He also sneakily tried to stroke her bottom, but she pushed him away before he could do so. The silly grin on his face nearly made her want to tease him a bit more, but since she wasn't willing to use him, it would just be cruel.
She helped Scarlett out of the booth, but the petite girl could barely stay on her feet with her knees as stiff as jelly. Yuriko sighed and picked the girl up in a princess carry.
Both men goggled at her.
"Wow, you're stronger than you look." Zak exclaimed.
Yuriko smirked. "Nah, Scar's just light as a feather. And tiny."
"Nah, I'm not!"
"So you're saying you're actually heavy?"
"I'm not tiny!"
"Yeah, you're smol," Yuriko chuckled.
"Why, you!"
Scarlett started flailing around, her arms windmilling and managing to pound against Yuriko's bosom. The smaller girl paused for a moment, her eyes fixated on the bouncy flesh, then she giggled and started flicking her fingers at Yuriko's nipples.
"Hey!" Yuriko protested. She hadn't worn anything other than nipple covers and the cut of her dress really emphasized the bounce.
"Hie hie!"
"This little gremlin…" Yuriko grumbled as she pushed Scarlett's face against her shoulder to smother the fight out of her. She was already moving towards the stairs, with the woman's flailing not really affecting her balance. She saw the boys following behind her, though neither offered to take her burdens. Ah, both were staring at her bottom and hips sway because of her heels. Well, whatever.
She moved quickly across the floor, down two flights of stairs and out the club. Michael and Zark were lost in the crowd that she so easily bypassed, and soon enough, she was entering the parking lot with a now snoring Scarlett.
She's just opened the car's passenger door to deposit her friend when her casual perception sweep caught something that made her flash purify all the alcohol in her blood.
She'd detected daemonfyre in the liqour so she had expected the need to visit the brewery to check, but apparently, the club had already been infiltrated. In an alley that connected to the building's back door, she saw the man who she crushed and his victim being carried out like a sack of potatoes, by a pair of muscle bound men in white suits.
They looked perfectly normal humans, but the moment her Anima brushed against them, she saw their hair suddenly change colour from black to white, their skin darken to grey, and their pupils shift from round to slitted. Then they started to leak daemonfyre.
They felt the brush of her aura as some Radiance was always infused in it. It caused smoke to sizzle from their skin, and they hissed in pain and distres.
Yuriko quickly stuffed Scarlett inside her car, locked her inside, then she rushed towards the kidnappers. While she wouldn't miss the pervert, she couldn't let him be sacrificed either. She was painfully exposed, however, so she grabbed a handkerchief, poked a couple of eyeholes into them, and used it as a domino mask. She also briaded her hair, grabbed a jacket from the car and threw it on. With her second step from the car, she had disguised herself as well as she could, though she was still wearing a skimpy dress and heels. She dumped her purse on the driver's seat, and by the third step, secured the entire car.
The daemon musclemen dumped the victims into a black van, but before they could close the doors and leave, she reached with her Animakinesis and popped the tires.
Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!
It was a testament to how loud the music in the club was that nobody actually noticed the tires bursting. She heard the daemons curse in their language; her ears burned at the hostile tongue. But then, she was there.
Fingers pressed together to mimic a sword.
Swish!
Cut.
Her blade cut through one daemon muscleman's torso, though she didn't go for a fatal blow. He fell back, screaming in pain. His features shifted from his human guise to a more groteque form that somewhat matched the one she killed before, except this one was much bigger as he wasn't freshly summoned.
The other daemon roared and charged her even as his fingers turned into claws longer than his forearm. He struck with a couple of slashes, but Yuriko lducked to avoid the first, used her fingers to deflect the second, and then her heels to break his knee. The pain undid his transformation, but before she could finish them off, another jumped out of the van's driver's seat, pointed a submachine gun at her back and let loose.
The idiot hit his friends when Yuriko dodged, but a couple of bullets deflected off her condensed aura. Ow.
She'd deflected bullets from advanced guns in Dragon Fall City, and she even blocked tank shells in Irvalla. The smaller caliber bullets from the submachine gun shouldn't have hurt, but her incarnation body was much weaker. Her body wasn't tough enough to shed the kinetic force that bled through her Anima, and she staggered back. She could feel bruising along her back and arm, but her skin wasn't punctured. The flattened lead plinked down on the asphalt.
Click. Click. Click.
Magazine empty.
Yuriko growled as she closed in on the gunner and nearly sliced his limbs off. They were hanging by a thread, and the transformed daemon screamed his head off.
A quick check with her perception showed no other victims or gunners inside the van, and she now had to make a choice. Finish off the daemons and have them turn to ashes, or disable them and allow them to be captured by the autorities. She wasn't sure if they were aware of the daemons, and it looked like a better option than cleaning them up.
She quickly lifted the victims out of the van, though she only placed them next to the club's backdoor. She found ropes and handcuffs inside the vehicle and used them to secure the daemons, though she had to club them to stop the screaming. All three were wounded, bleeding profusely, and might not make it out of this alive long enough to get caught. Not really her problem though.
She snatched a phone out of a thug's pocket, dialled the number to call for police, said, "Help, Pegasus Stellar," then dropped the call.
She didn't touch anything and used her kinesis to manipulate everything. Once they were as secure as she could get them, she left to
the sound of police sirens going down the block. It took several minutes and the gunner had already turned to ashes.