An explosion rocked the city again and I wobbled on my already unsteady legs. I didn't know how I had gotten here, but here I was. Who knew how long it had been since I was last properly awake?
In the broken corner of an old apartment gateway that had been blasted by some sort of incendiary device, I crouched in the shadows to hold onto something and catch my breath. It was safe here for the moment and I struggled to remember and figure out what was going on. I had to kick myself. Kick my brain. Try to kick things into working order.
At the back of my mind, I vaguely remembered enemy soldiers storming a building and people ushering me out the back door, telling me to run. The enemy had all been wearing strange electronic gadgets on their faces and hands, allowing them to harness multiple artificial abilities. Our people weren't that strong. They had been mowed down like grass.
As I thought back to try and recollect what had happened to bring me to the middle of this road, the fuzzy memories grew a little clearer. Wait. Road? Why was I standing in the middle of the road now?
"Run, Kim," a woman had shoved me out the back door. "We'll buy you some time. You can't let them capture you. Don't turn around. Don't look back. Just run."
A man had picked me up while I had stood in confusion. Stupid Sarden Fish. He had run with me and then fallen to his knees, pushing me into a hidden doorway. He had been wheezing and coughing blood. There was a bleeding from a wound in his chest.
Still he had smiled at me.
"Kim, I'm gonna stop here for a rest, ok? You keep going. I can't keep up. Can't keep up."
With an effort, he had knocked a certain rhythm on the door and then lain down.
"Kim, you gotta go. Go and be safe. Don't let them find you."
"Sarden?" I had frowned, but an iron arm had wrapped around me from behind.
"Idiots," said Flint's voice. I had recognised his greasy presence, but the greasiness had been checked by the smoke of war. "Kim, you can't stay here. I'll take you to the next place."
He had picked me up and run from building to building, dodging and weaving between the flying bullets. It amazed me how cool the pervert bully had become. He had such great luck and skill, and yet his luck hadn't lasted. A bullet got him in the leg. I had tumbled out of his arms. When he had tried to get up again, a bullet had shot through his head.
Crawling away amidst the rubble, I had been found by Mary Belle and her current partner. Mary Belle had only given me a cold look. As if we were strangers and she didn't know me. They had pushed me into safety within a protected concrete corner, distracting the enemy and running with a decoy in another direction.
Who would have thought that the angelic devil would one day lay her life down for me? It seemed unthinkable. Unbelievable. And yet, it had happened.
Enemy soldiers had run past complaining.
"Damn, those two women were just decoys. We got tricked."
"The blonde was hot. If that idiot hadn't shot her in the head, we could have taken her back to have fun with her. Did you see her body? It was smoking."
"What's wrong with the people in this city? Do they all have a death wish? All the ability users are trying to get themselves killed, shielding all the normal soldiers and civilians behind themselves. We can't even tell they're ability users until the coroner squad checks them. We're supposed to capture them alive."
"You know what sucks even more? All the women with hot bodies actually have skills. They're forcing us to kill them or maim them."
"And no one we capture has high enough clearance to know how anyone's abilities awaken. I don't believe they don't even know how they awakened their own abilities. They must be lying."
"Or hiding something."
"Maybe it's got something to do with that woman we've been told to hunt down and capture alive at all costs."
I made a face as they searched the next building, but didn't notice me in the previous building staying out of sight. What was so great about having abilities? Why was the enemy so desperate to capture ability users? It didn't make sense.
By some dead bodies, I scavenged a few knives and crept through the broken city. Normal civilians screamed when I peered in through their broken doors and windows, pleading for me to go away. I found a pair of enemy soldiers ransacking a house and torturing the teenage girls inside.
A snip and a snap. A slice and a stab.
The skills that Shigure and Apricorn had drilled into me came into handy. The enemy soldiers were dead.
The girls scrambled over to their neighbour's house and the neighbour warily let them in while I stood watch. After a beat, the neighbour threw a leather jacket and a pair of pants at me.
"Your-your-your nightgown's all bloody, torn and see through," a woman stammered and slammed the door shut.
I looked down at myself and tilted my head. I was in a nightgown? Oh. So I was. Oh. Look at the holes. No wonder they said it was see through. It was literally see through. Hmm. New clothes were an excellent idea.
"What size are you?" the door creaked open a crack.
I shrugged.
"Don't know," I said. "Can't remember."
That made the girl at the door roll her eyes.
A pair of underwear, a bra, and a tank top were thrown at me
"These look about your size," she said and shut the door again.
Cleaning myself up a bit using the garden hose, I left my ruined nightgown in the bin and donned the clothes the kind people had given me. It made me feel all new again.
The door opened and shut. There were now a pair of hiking boots and socks outside the door.
"Thank you," I said hoarsely, sitting down to carefully put the socks and shoes on.