“Aaliyah!” Trinity screamed at the top of her lungs as her best, and maybe only friend, collapsed to the ground. Her scream was louder than the hundreds of other screams that filled the air, people spinted for exits of different kinds, as armed men all covered in black masks, and even a few had netrix weapons came sprinting through the front door. Emergency exit alarms began to scream across the entire building. These people being led by a small girl wearing all black and holding a familiar dark red blade. Gunshots began to spread throughout the entire place, and I spun around as more shots filled the air from what was backstage. Two men came out from the back with guns, both of them pointed towards a now sobbing Trinity.
“Get down!” I turned and ducked as Joshua lifted his piano bench up and with one kick sent it flying into the two men knocking them flat on their backs. He then summoned all his strength and flipped the entire piano so it was facing the wall, a makeshift barricade. “Get behind that piano and don’t move,” Joshua ordered us as he came over and picked Aaliyah up. Her face stuck in a state of shock as she seemed too surprised to even register any pain, she was shaking like she'd been stuck in a blizzard.
“Put my friend down!” Trinity snapped.
“Let’s go!” I said, ducking as another spray of bullets came our direction. I grabbed Trinity;s hand ignoring her screams as I watched Joshua taking a running start down this stage and jumped up with ease to the second floor. “He is gonna take her to her momma and get her out of here, we need to get down!” I screamed again as another wave of bullet’s missed our feet, I dragged Trinity closer to me and pressed our backs against this overturned piano. “Aisu what is happening!” I thought as I gripped my gemstone and closed my eyes.
It was just as much of a warzone outside as it was inside. Aisu was standing beside my daddy, as he fought off two armed me. But there were at least 15 more blocking the entrance to the nightclub, they had crashed into cars and made a space for their people to get in but keep the cops out. I heard one of these men scream out. “Find Hezekiah, and kill his bitch ass!” Aisu than responded as she came running towards the building, only to be stopped by a very dangerous looking coyote spirit. “It’s a mix of armed men and some jepei users, they just showed up and crashed into the cars to make way. Your daddy is trying to get in!” I heard a deep growl escape Aisu’s jaws.
“Stay near him and keep him safe, I will come out to you.” I looked over at Trinity who was staring at the blood on her hands in pure shock. “Trinity we have to get back- '' I was cut off as I heard what sounded like a roar and felt a pulse of powerful jepei spread throughout the air. I peaked my head over the piano as men shot at security, and some of Mr. Wallace’s friends had pulled out guns from their pockets and were firing towards these invaders. I found the source of that roar, as I saw a man go flying over the railing upstairs and down into the ground. Mr. Wallace was standing on top of the balcony, his dark black jepei aura spreading off him in the form of projection. A true sight to see, as he let out another bellowing roar. “Get these people out of my club, dead or alive, I don’t care which!” With that being said, he looked my way and looked relieved to see Trinity was okay. His eyes then hardened once more as he screamed out, “Trinity, stand and fight!”
When I turned to look at Trinity. I saw rage starting to fill her face, she tore the bottom of her tight fitting dress and kicked off her heels. Her eyes locked onto one of the men that was standing up, he was the man that I had seen shoot his gun first. He was aiming at Trinity, and Aailyah had taken the bullet for her. So now I was seeing Trinity in an emotion I rarely saw, pure fiery rage.
She let out a roar as she held her hand out, and her netrix weapon began to form in it. My eyes went wide as her weapon looked exactly like the weapon currently being used by the other girl in that black mask. She raced forward, dodging the bullets from one of the men that had just freed himself from the wreckage of that piano bench that Joshua kicked at them. She slammed that blade into the man’s stomach sending a wave of blood out of his back and he spat up a mouthful of blood in the process. Her eyes locked onto the other man who swore and tried to run, but he didn’t get far.
“Trinity…” My shock was interrupted as my right arm started to burn with pain. I looked down and saw a bullet grazed my arm as all hell seemed to break loose. I had no choice but to do what I was once trained to do best.
I was really glad that I listened to my daddy when he told me to wear shorts under this dress just in case. I tore my gown off, tearing off my wire in the process and just stood in a tank top and shorts. I took a deep breath before covering my head with my hands and changing my projection aura into protection. I ran out from behind the piano, and off the stage using the fallen tables as cover and listening to the cracking of glass as I ran towards one of the emergency exits. However, my escape attempt was stopped as someone knocked into me, knocking me off my feet. I rolled behind a table tensing as bullets slammed against the wall, wincing as they slammed into my projection aura. While they couldn’t get through it still hurt like hell, like being shot with a bebe gun.
I looked over to see the girl in the black mask with her blade held over her shoulders and she had a pistol in her hand. She kept shooting it until it ran out of bullets and she just kept staring at me, before beckoning me over with a few fingers. Since I was fighting for my life now, I could really let loose on this girl. After all it would just look like I was trying harder to survive rather than I truly knew what I was doing. I took a deep breath before rolling out of cover. Before letting my bright violet jepei explode from me in the form of projection. Projection brought forth qualities of my animal spirit, such as heightened senses, my muscle tenses as I became stronger. I gripped the edge of this overturned table and flipped it up into the air before kicking my feet against it with a drop kick. As I landed I watched as this girl cut right through the wood with her blade sending two halves of it slamming into the four men that were with her, knocking them to the ground. I ran towards her summoning my own netrix weapon, my beautiful naginata and brought the blade down towards her shoulder. She held her blade up and blocked my attack but the force of my strike was enough to bring her down to one knee.
I heard her grumble under her mask. “I see you actually know a few more moves than before.” She rose back to her feet and one kick to my stomach sending me sliding back and waves of pain rushing through my stomach. I spun around twirling my weapon like a baton as I blocked a wave of bullets thrown my way. A few snuck through and gazed my protection aura carving chunks out of it. I spun around and entered a fierce exchangement of blades as this girl attempted to hit me from behind. She was much faster with this blade than I could have ever imagined. Each strike was amplified with her jepei sending more ripples of pain running through my arms with each hit. “Go away!” She snapped. “Head upstairs and get what we are here for. Kill Hezekiah Wallace before the police get here.”
“Sending your help away already?!” I grunted as I flipped up and onto a nearby round table. I wanted a bit of height for now.
While I couldn’t see it, I could just feel her smirk. She brought her blade to rest on her shoulders once more. “I don’t need soldiers to beat you, a little jepei users that is getting far too deep in all of this.”
I reeled back and through my weapon towards her, she leaned backwards to dodge the attack and in that moment. I leapt off my perch on this table and landed a powerful kick to the side of her head right as she stood back up. She stumbled a way and in that moment I took a tight hold of her wrist and swung it to the left freeing her blade from her hand embedding it deep into the floor below us. She stood tall again and landed a series of punches to my gut, each one cracking my protective shield of jepei. She took hold of my tank top and threw me off her and into a table nearly sending me toppling over it. She was back on me within a moment, throwing a solid combination of punches and jabs.
She without a doubt had training in some form of boxing.
We went at it for a good minute exchanging punches, blocking each other with ease avoiding blows, landing strikes that could not get through the other’s powerful shield of jepei aura. A few times we both held out our hand out to resummon our weapon, but each time we stopped the other from doing it. She eventually caught me right under the chin with a powerful uppercut sending a burst of stars sparring through my vision for a moment. In my moment of weakness she lifted me up by legs and slammed me into the ground making her gasp for all the air that escaped from my lungs. Her blade flew into her hand as she went to stab me in the chest while I was down, until another similar blade came and blocked her attack.
I looked up from my dazed state to see Trinity standing to the left of us. She grabbed this girl by the back of her shirt and threw her off me. “Go,” Trinity said, her tears having left two dark streaks of makeup running down her face. “She is mine.” She grumbled before turning to face the girl.
“Trinity, let me.” I paused my eyes widening with pure fear, as her blade spun around and came to rest against my throat. She had cut through my protection aura with ease and I could feel the sharp tip of that blade on my throat. One more and she would kill me. “T-Trinity…” I whispered out.
“Go,” she repeated darkly. “Unless you want to fight me for the fight to kill her.” She removed her blade before her entire body was coated in a dark red jepei aura. A moment later a large komodo dragon spirit emerged from her gemstone. “I want her poisoned but not killed.”
That spirit animal licked its lips. “Understood.”
As Trinity ran forward to engage this girl in combat. She held up a hand and let out a shout. “Kill the other one, but let me have my fun!” I immediately ran towards the steps hearing the wood splinter and break as more bullet’s slammed against it. So far this once glorious nightclub was a wreckage of bullet holes, and sadly a few dead bodies, the decorations were ruined and litter the floor. Every single statue of that lion and its cub had been shattered. I eventually jumped over the bar and put my hands over my head as it was completely lit up with bullets. I let out a loud scream of both rage and fear as I was starting to wonder if this was gonna be my death.
“No!” I told myself as my hands tightened into fists. “I refuse to die here, or at least not die hiding.” I was a jepei user, and a terrible woman that I came here to take down once said. “We jepei users die fighting for many things, but the most important is to survive.” I placed a protective coating of aura around my elbow and smashed my way through the glass that held more bottles of alcohol and wine. I grabbed about five of them before taking a deep breath and leaping back up onto the bar. That annoying girl had sent four gunmen to attack me, each armed with a pistol and a small uzi type gun. I didn’t give them any time as I threw four of these bottles at them. One hit a man in the head sending him falling to the ground, the others were quicker and held up their arms to block attacks. However that was all I needed, before I leapt off the bar and wrapped my legs around a man’s neck. A simple twist sent him flying up and through a nearby table. I rolled my feet and with the last bottle of wine I had, I swung up catching a man on the chin with it, sending a rain storm of red wine and maybe even a bit of blood splashing down on me. I then finished this by kicking the last man's leg out from under him and slammed my palm into his chest and then one more to his head.
“Y-You little bitch!” I spun around as the man I had previously hit in the head with a bottle at the start of this fight was sitting up in a daze and held out a gun at me.
Yet before he could even fire it his head was knocked sideway and he hit the ground with a loud thud. Someone had thrown a server’s tray at him. “Didn’t anyone tell you not to lower your guard?” I turned to see Katherine walking down the steps that led back upstairs. She looked practically untouched, even her dress was still as beautiful as before. She held an annoyed look as she retrieved the server’s tray and reeled back and threw it with all her might, causing it to slam into a man’s chest and that is where it stayed as he collapsed onto the ground dead. A scared looking couple and their small daughter looked up in shock. “Either get upstairs or get to the emergency exit in the back. We have good people watching that door.” They hesitated for a moment. “Or you can be robbed or die down here, your choice.” That got them moving as they gathered their daughter and ran towards this exit.
“T-Thank you,” I muttered standing up on my feet, a sharp pain flew through my ankle as I must have hurt it during my fight with that other girl. Speaking of that girl, I could feel their blow vibrate through the air, I could see the sparks that flew from their blades with each hit. “A-Are you gonna help, Trinity?”
“No,” Katherine answered, not even turning her head towards the fight. “It is not my fight, so we are gonna stay out of this.”
“We?” I questioned softly.
Katherine looked down at me for a moment. “You have a choice, Cindy, either you help me get the rest of these guests to safety, or you run with your tail between your legs and go home. Either option might have you killed whether being shot outright, thrown in the crossfire inside or outside, or even taken down by one of the four other jepei users in this building. However, one choice is more powerful than the other.”
She was asking me if I was gonna fight or run away like a coward. However, I was gonna run away not again, besides I wanted to show off a tiny bit to her, show her that the daughter she didn’t even recognize had gotten so much more powerful. “Can you keep up with me, Ms. Blackthorn?” I challenged.
A dark bit of laughter escaped her lips. “Spoken like a true jepei user.” She was gone in a flash of dark purple, and I quickly gave chase, forcing the pain away as I did. I had never fought beside Katherine before, never wanted to either. However as we stood side by side, taking down these gunmen that were starting to lose steam. I could see that Katherine was just as powerful as I remembered. As I was just trying to knock them out or at least disarm them, she was breaking through them like their bones were made of weak wood. Each strike was not meant to knock out but to keep them down, she broke arms, snapped legs. She was a monster made to kill, and not that I truly watched her up close. I could see that if I stayed with her, she would turn me into a killer like her. A powerful beast of a woman with no morals about killing, no worries about losing, a member of the dark order.
I would never be like her.
Each person we saved we directed them towards the emergency exit or towards upstairs. There was a storage elevator that led downstairs. That was where Hezekiah was fighting from, and I could hear him even from downstairs. Powerful roars that shook the building, him barking orders to his men. I nearly jumped out of my skin as a man came flying from upstairs and onto the ground. However, things started to turn in our favor, with Katherine being downstairs and with me standing beside her. The gunmen seemed to understand that this was pointless, so they began to run leaving their people alone. Whether they were alive or dead.
“Coward!” I heard Trinity scream.
I ignored Katherine’s arm as I sprinted towards Trinity’s voice. I found the girl kneeling on the ground, one of her arms hung weakly by her side. She had blood spilling down from a cut on her right eye, she was letting out deep and angry breaths. Her blade was resting next to her and I could see that girl in the black mask limping away towards the front door. Part of her outfit was torn open from a long deep slash on her chest. Blood leaked from underneath her mask and was starting to sink into her black outfit. I watched as a female jepei user with light brown skin and shirt curly hair lifted her up and they fled out the door they came from.
“Trinity,” I said, collapsing onto my knees right as she fell to the side and cushioned her fall.
“C-Cindy,” she breathed out. “You’re still here?”
“Where would I go?” I asked running up and down her back in a comforting manner. “They are leaving, we won.”
Trinity only shook her head. “No, we didn’t.” Tears began to spill from her eyes as with her good arm she clutched my tank top. “Aaliyah…” she whimpered.
I pulled her into my arms for a hug only listening to her muffled cries as I also wondered the same thing as Trinity.
Was Aaliyah still alive?
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“Cindy!” I was actually glad to hear. Mr. Perez’s voice, the taller man wasted little time gathering me into his arms for a hug. He was still pretending to be my father but his hug was just as warm as any real dad. “Where were you?”
“Trinity!” Hezekiah’s voice boomed out among the crowd of people that had gathered in this storage room. That was filled with more tables and otehr decorations, the tall man pushed his way through the murmuring crowd, snatching Trinity from Katherine’s grasp and held the sleeping girl close to her chest. “What happened?!” He demanded turning his gaze towards me in anger.
Katherine was the one to speak up. “Don’t get mad at her, Hezekiah, your daughter sent her away while she went toe to toe with the young brat leading this attack on us.” Katherine reached down and set a hand on my shoulder. A gentle touch, but one that still held so much power against me as I tried not to pull away or look scared. “This one was by my side protecting your guests, and saving people. She is very impressive, matter of fact.” Katherine looked down at me for a moment. “I think I owe you an apology Cinzy Perez, I do remember you. A rare student I took so long ago, it is nice to see that you have grown a bit more stronger since than.”
“T-Thank you,” I whispered relieved when she took her hand off my shoulder. “Please,” I said turning towards Hezekiah. “Did you see, Aailiyah, Trinity and I am worried about her. Do you know if she is okay?”
Hezekiah’s gaze softened a bit as he shook his head. “I have no idea, that pianist left with her first, wrapped her in my suit jacket to stop that bleeding, probably at the hospital by now.” Hezekiah turned on his heels and began to walk away. “Katherine make sure these people get out of here safety.”
“As you wish.”
“Myles!” A big guy with a shaved head looked up from where he was kneeling. “Get my car ready, I need to get her to a hospital.” Hezekiah dissapepared behind a corner leaving our group with Katherine.
“Alright, anyone with children will use the elevator first, anyone else can use the stair. The police are okay and all of this is now over.” She declared sitting down a nearby crate and crossing her arms. “I suppose i will see you around, Cindy.”
“Yes ma’am,” I said as I was lead away by Mr. Perez to the elevator, and as I took one last look at Katherine. I couldn’t stop the worry from building into my chest.
Just who did she remember? The fake Cindy Perez?
OR her daughter.
Verona Whisperwind?
ns 15.158.61.54da2
