"Lauren, stay back, I'm warning you!" Tori reminded the empusa that she was coming closer.
"Christopher, talk to me." Lauren still remained persistent.
I was about to call off a fight out of bewitchment, Lauren clearly wanted me to influence Tori so she wouldn't use whatever weapon she had against them. A girl's beauty had distracted me so easily that I just wanted to be all what Lauren called me, at that second, I wanted Lauren to be exclusively mine.
"Christoph, don't." Tori gave me her final warning, but this time, she gripped my arm and buried her fingers into my skin, which woke me up. "Now!!"
I knew what she was talking about, and so did black plasma, so I clenched to the knife and charged at Lauren, who quickly dogded my attack. This was my first time fighting an empusa, and they seemed fast from my prospective.
Lauren growled at me and came running towards me, she was indeed a beast, and her goat hoof propelled her faster than I thought they would, but I was not totally doomed, at least, I still had my knife with me. Before Lauren could get anymore closer, I aimed my blade at her forehead, but it ended up hitting her chest, which was also good enough for a bull's eye. However, the empusa became petrified and she faded away in the form of dust.
"Lauren!! You jerk, you killed my sister!!"
"Technically, I didn't kill your sister, you monsters have more than one life." I replied her. That was just the irony, killing these monsters didn't mean I was killing them for a lifetime. When I was 13, I remember I killed a werewolf guy named Zack, and 2-3 months later, I met the wolf again. It was there I learnt that monsters respawn naturally after they've been killed, they were given the grace of immortality.
"Shut up!! Son of Hades, you killed Lauren, and now I'm going to kill the girl!!"
My major concern was supposed to be that my cover just got blown by an empusa, but I had major problems right now, Sandra was about to kill an innocent girl.
"Son of Hades?" Tori asked herself in soliloquy, for some reason, I was glad that truth didn't come out of my mouth.
"Tori, can we please worry about that after we've rescued the girl from being killed by an empusa?"
Sandra went behind the drums, and grabbed the girl that was helplessly sitting, wielded in her own tears. Sandra turned the girl around so that she was directly facing me and Tori, just then, her normal looking fingers grew longer, about two inches taller and five times scarier. She played her claws on the girl's neck, trying to savor the sweet moment of revenge.
"HELP, HELP PLEASE!! SAVE ME!!"
I couldn't help but wonder, what was the young girl seeing instead of an empusa, it seemed like whatever she saw, she couldn't name it. I gave Tori a what-now-? kind of expression, but she seemed as clueless as I was.
We didn't have much time, it was a matter of seconds until Sandra dug those nasty claws into the girl's neck, and there I was, trying my best not to get accused of murder.
"I have a plan," Tori spoke out of the random. "But I'm gonna need you to trust me."
"You're asking me to trust you, but I feel like you're about to do something really bad." I told her exactly how she sounded like.
"A life is at stake here, are you in or not?"
I thought about it for a second, then I realized that a person's life was far more important than my expulsion. "What's the plan?"
Tori looked closely at me, probably trying to determine whether my reaction would be freaked or not. "Just stand back." She said and closed her eyes.
"Are you... Meditating?" I asked but she didn't reply. "Tori, we don't have time for this, we have to--"
Suddenly, the plain blue sky beckoned with loud rumbles of thunder, and at the following second, I saw an arrow of light break through one of the windows as it made a direct hit at Sandra.
The whole room was so overwhelmed with the light, the last thing I saw was when it hit the empusa. But when the light finally disappeared, Sandra was no longer there. I looked over at Tori who was still standing beside me. "Lightning?" I asked, yet that wasn't what was going to come out of my mouth.
Ignoring my question, Tori rushed over to the young girl who was already laying down on the floor, somehow, she had managed to hit the empusa without having to stretch a scar on the young girl's face.
"Hey, are you okay?" Tori asked as she helped the girl up to her feet.
"Yeah... I think I am."
"Alright, I'm glad that everyone's safe but we won't be any longer if any of the teachers waltzed in here." I was right, the band room was in a totally bad shape, one of the windows in which the lightning passed through was now shattered and desensitized, and the speakers were starting to smell funny, like a nasty kind of smoke. We were going to be in so much trouble if the three of us were caught in the act, and it didn't matter how much we explained, I knew no person in his/her right senses would believe that two demonically beautiful empusas started the chaos.
"They said the monster was in here, and I just heard a loud noise coming from the room--sir." I heard someone say opposite the band room's door.
"We have to leave." Tori advised.
"You guys should go, I'll cover for you." The young girl suggested, and it seemed like a good idea, considering the fact that she was an innocent looking person. No one would ever believe that she trashed down the band room.
Tori and I both made our exit out of Tyl'l high through the broken window, and I silently prayed for the safety of my backpack.
.
.
.
"Still trying to assume what would have happened to that girl if we didn't show up to fight off those monsters, I mean... How did you know that the school authorities were never going to budge?" I asked Tori as we both hiked the streets.
"I didn't know, I just thought they wouldn't be strong enough to take their own against the monsters, I never even knew that Lauren and her sister had a hostage."
I glared at her, her bravery was way out of this world, and she selflessly used her all just to defend the young girl, she appeared to have better features of a hero than I did.
"You know, that was a risky game back there, we could have both lost our lives." I told her, frantically.
"Says 'black face' who is a Death Manipulator."
"Death Manipulator? I don't even know what that is."
She frowned at me like I was a dumbass, "You're the son of Hades, the god of the Underworld, so that means you have the ability to control death."
That was another problem I had, I wasn't one of those kids who took after their parent's heredity. When I first met Hades and saw how powerful his aura was, I had that feeling that I was going to have death-related powers, or so, my science teacher taught me about traits.
But at age 17, the only 'Underworld' thing I can do is summon a blade that was actually given to me by my father-- lame.
"I don't-- have any of the Underworld's abilities." I let out the truth.
She chuckled and gave me a expression of doubt.
"I'm serious, I've never even been to the Underworld."
"So wait-- you seriously can't raise bones, not even necromancy?"
I shook my head in disapproval, even if I could raise bones, I've never attempted to. And never in my life have I come across a ghost before, or heard a dead person talking, I mean-- I've seen dead bodies before but I've never heard any of them speak.
"What about you? I saw that lightning you know?" I changed the subject.
"Yeah, you wouldn't believe if I tell you--"
"That your dad is Zeus?" I asked.
She gave a bewildered look. "H.. How did you--"
"He was a minor character in one of the comic books I once read, what was the name again?" I faced the plain sky, trying to remember the name of the book.
"You read comic strips?"
"Yeah, ever since I was 4. Well, not all categories of comics, there are some that are meant to be read by Williams Shakespeare, I mean some people just write it to regress the good authors, why would anyone write a comic about--"
"Shhh!" She placed her hands over my mouth. "Look." She pointed to the floor.
I gazed down at the floor and saw blood in a shape of a wild animal's paw, leading to the woods where the monsters usually came from.
"I think there's a monster around," Tori announced. "We should walk stealthily."
Unfortunately for us, we were the only ones on that street, and if something bad happened to us, (Depending on the kind of monster it was) nobody would even come to our rescue.
My house was the closest from the point where we saw the blood, so Tori decided that she was going to crash there till she was sure that the streets were safe again. So we began trekking quietly, hoping that we didn't become the victims, but as we walked still, we still saw the blood ahead of us, it seemed like whatever monster that passed through here was going to my apartment.
A few moments later, when we got to my apartment, I noticed that the blood stopped exactly at my doorstep.
"Oh no." Tori lamented.
"Mom!"