I can feel the adrenaline coursing through me as the four of us face off against the lone Cerberus agent. His partner having been killed just moments before by Bell and Aster. All of us are on guard, waiting for his next move. Will he run? Come back with reinforcements? Maybe he'll fall into a rage and we'll finally finish him off.
I can't take my eye's off of him, even though I want to look back. Want to see if Aster's okay. See if Glad is protecting Spur. See if Bell is under control. But I can't. I have to look forward, because I'm the tankiest. I'm the guard, the shield, the one that takes all the blows so that no one else has to get seriously hurt. After all I'm the zombie of the group. The one that started this whole mess with Cerberus and I will do everything to protect my friends.
The silent standoff is finally broken by the agent as he lets out an angry shout, "You guys have really pissed me off now!" He stomps forward while reaching for something in a leather pouch tied to his hip. "Guns may do little to hinder you, but this will surely stone you into place."
The words are too specific to be an accident, so as I hear Glad shout for all of us to get away I realize what exactly the agent is about to pull out of his bag. The training from my Sensei kicks in as I head to protect the one I know needs most protecting, the one I want to protect the most and I slam right into them shouting "Close your eyes!" They do, as I stare down at their blood red skin and white hair for a final time.
~NNN~
One second we're all facing off against the agent, the next all hell breaks loose as I open my eye's and find Nast above me, completely made of stone. "What the.." I say touching Nast's face and feeling the cool hard stone underneath. The other's have noticed my predicament and I hear Larspur let out a blood curdling scream as she realizes what exactly has happened. She starts to chant, summoning something from her book, but I pay little attention to that as I'm trying to find a way to undo whatever happened to Nast.
She can't be dead. She can't be dead! As I search, her now stone body, looking for some kind of pressure point, anything to undo this magic. I find nothing. I'd probably have laid under her for hours looking for anything, but Bell dragged me out from under her, pulling me away as I screamed at him to let me keep looking, that she can't be like that.
Instead he pulls me away from the scene and I see how Larspur is burning the agents body tears streaming down her face, while Glad carefully picks up Nast. Heading back to our hideout. Once we get back, Nast is carefully secured in the basement, Larkspur angrily screams about how she'll find a cure and heads to her library. Glad follows after her, patting me one the back. He said something, but my ears feel like they're filled with water, so I couldn't make out what was said.
What the fuck do I do now? Is there even a point right now? My feet take me to the basement where Nast is secured. My feet give out from under me and I fall to the floor crying. At one point I change back to my human form as I feel my long blond hair against my back. If I close my eyes I can almost pretend it's a surprise hug from Nast. Almost, the only thing that's missing is her laughter. I'm unsure for how long I sat there and cried, but after a while the tears stopped and I was left feeling numb.
"Hey, how are you holding up?" Bell asks walking in, and sitting next to me with a box of tissues and two giant cups of hot chocolate.
"Like shit," I reply. Grabbing the hot drink and trying to enjoy the heat it gives off. "How are you?"
"Not great either, but it's nothing compared to you and Spur." He replies, sighing and dragging a hand through his hair, "She's locked herself in her room. Convinced she can find a cure, even though Glad knows there isn't one and has tried to explain it to her. She refuses to give up though."
"I'm not surprised." I sigh out, "Spur would never let go of Nast that easily, not without a fight." We fall into a sad, yet comfortable silence. The two of us sipping on our drinks and trying to get through our sadness. "How did you guys finish off the bastard?" I ask realizing I had completely missed the end of the fight.
Bell seems to wince here as he speaks, "As soon as Spur realized what happened to Nast she summoned her strongest zombie fighters and they beat him into a bloody pulp. She then got glad to summon his eternal fire which burned his unrecognizable body to a crisp."
Knowing the guy who killed Nast is gone for good and can never come back is a bit lightening, so I can't help but say "Good riddance," once Bell finishes talking. Probably would have thrown in my own fire powers if I hadn't blacked out the way I did. A question pops into my head and I know I shouldn't ask it, but in my grieve filled mind I can't put it away. "Will you miss her?"
I stare at Bell's face when I ask this, noting the puffy eye's and dried tear tracks, he's been grieving too. "I may have only known her for a few months, but ya I'm going to miss her." It's quiet between us again and I feel a tad lighter now for some reason.
Bell stands after a while, grabbing our now empty cups. "Don't let the demons take over." He whispers for some reason also patting my head, I give him a funny look, wondering what this is about. It's completely out of character for the vamp. "Sorry, but I felt it necessary to tell you what Nast always told me. Every once in a while I'd just have a really bad day, when that happened I'd find a place to just sit and let my thoughts out. Somehow Nast always found me and she'd sit with me for a while. We'd never talk, but she'd bring me tea and just keep me company. She'd always part with those words though, giving me a little strength when the bad days hit." He seems embarrassed for telling me this, which isn't surprising, because it's very personal.
So I reciprocate with my own story, "Sometimes my demon overpowers my human side. It happens gradually so a lot of the times I don't notice I'm in my red skin more than my pale one, but Nast always did. Whenever she did she would drag me out for a full out spar somewhere hidden away. We'd fight for hours until we were both exhausted and I'd finally turn back human. I didn't realize what she was doing until the third time and by then I had stoped putting up so much of a fight whenever she dragged me out."
Bell let's out a small chuckle at my story, "How is it, that she was the most air-headed out of us all, but the most observant?" I shake my head, unaware myself but a small smile graces my lips as the vampire leaves. Alone once again.
It's like that for a while again, before I hear someone stumbling down the stairs. It's probably Larkspur, she's the only one of us capable of making that much noise just by walking. Sure enough a few seconds later the petite girl plops down right next to me. She's in worse shape than I am. Eyes blood shot, puffy, thick tear tracks go all the way down her neck. Her nose is stuffy too, so I offer her a tissue from the box that Bell brought earlier.
"Thanks," she says voice a bit hoarse, "here." She hands me a bottle of vodka after taking a swig herself. We're encompassed by a stifling silence as we pass the bottle back and forth drinking while staring at our stone statue friend. After half the bottles been downed Spur drawls out, "Can someone fucking explain to me how the bitch with the smallest likely-hood to die is the one that died first?" She turns to me, "You can see the irony in this fucked up situation right?"
I think about it for a moment before letting out a snort, "Ya, I can. But honestly are you really surprised?" I ask getting a sip of liquid courage and letting the alcohol take over. "Out of all of us she was probably the most reckless."
"Please the bitch was more suicidal than fucking reckless. Wanting to find out what could kill her in this life. The only good thing about this situation is that I'll never have to deal with a Nast induced headache ever again."
"Nast induced headache?" I ask, curious as to how she caused them.
I receive this look from Spur something along the lines of 'get ready for this shit.' "At first they were called brain cringes, that's what I had dubbed them in jr high. Don't ask me how or why, but whenever we would hang out I'd get like three because she would just say the stupidest shit without even thinking about it. 'What do you mean you should use conditioner with long hair?' How the fuck else are you suppose to get out those knots in your fucking hair! My god, it'd be every day with this woman and really I feel like it only got worse once we became adults, cause then the cringes just turned into headaches and every time that happened I wanted to slap the bitch with a rolling pin. I swear to all that is holy Nast, if you don't follow the recipe to a T, then it's not going to come out right! There were so many arguments about how to cook in the kitchen, that I can't even."
"Holy shit, we had those to!" I shout as I fall into my own spiel of our kitchen arguments. We passed the time like that for hours, passing stories about Nast while sipping on vodka. At one point Spur even got more just so we could keep the party going. It was cathartic, what we were doing. Morning a friend that we both knew and got to love, someone that we'll never get to see again.
~AAA~
