Rika didn't know how to react.
At first she shuddered, shivering. She wanted to cry. She wanted to feel remorse at all of this. Rika just shook.
Arn was dead.
Rika shook his body, trying to see if there was any reaction. Nothing. Nothing at all.
Arn was dead. Why did she keep repeating that in her head? Rika tried to blot it out of her mind.
* * * * *
The day before, Rika had been smirking. It had been the end of her shift, and the Demon had managed to get all her shipping quota done.
"Headin' out wormtail?"
Rika waved a hand at Yaime, her dispatcher. Yaime was an Angel, but Rika didn't buy into the racial derisiveness that Demons and Angels in other parts of Noah bought into. Rika's business needed a good head for numbers, and Rika knew that wasn't her. So she had Yaime, whose psychic gifts let the Angel tap into unfathomable depths of number-crunching powers.
Oh course, that also meant that Yaime was hot. Unbelieveably handsome. All Angels were like that, unearthly beauty and all.
"Arn is taking me out tonight."
"Really? That Zuru on a work night?" Yaime shot her a concerned look. If Rika didn't know better, she'd have guessed some sort of jealous in Yaime's tone. But she knew better.
Yaime didn't like girls, Rika knew that much.
"Don't worry!" Rika couldn't help to keep smirking. "Its going to be an early night for us. I think Arn has something planned, I'm not sure."
Yaime shook his head. "Ok, just don't go blowing your powers off if you get pissed at him ok?"
Rika blushed. "Hey! I've got enough of a handle on it, you know?"
"Alright, if you say so. I guess I plan on you coming by later-"
"Hey!"
Yaime just shook his head as Rika left the office.
* * * * *
Rika couldn't see anything. Her eyes just kept running red with tears. She tried to focus on her biokinesis, to try and to force her tear ducts to shift away.
Nope. Didn't work.
"Why... you big stupid lug. Why?" Rika was mad at Arn for daring to die on her. She hated herself, because it had been her favorite hover bike that exploded and killed him. Rika was pissed at the all the aches and pains the fall had called her. And she really was kicking herself for not using her powers when she knew it could help.
"I could've saved myself, you ass." Rika told Arn's corpse. "I just needed a moment to..."
More tears got in the way of her sight. Rika tried to rub the saltwater out of her tears. She couldn't stop shaking, she was so angry at everything. She wanted to scream, but she couldn't stop crying.
"And now I'm stuck down here with no way to get back- yabai it, I don't want to do it." Rika shook her head, trying to close her eyes and think. "Yeah, I can use my..."
Rika sniffed and started to cough. She hacked. She smelled smoke. Rika blinked and tried to look around her, but her eyes stung, smoke was all around her. The trees and plants Arn and her were surrounded by had caught fire.
Rika stood up slowly, her wounds still healing. She felt her left leg go limp. It was dislocated, she thought, then she noticed a shin bone poking out of her left jean.
"I really liked this jeans too." Rika limped away, trying to get away from the growing wildfire behind her. "And everything keeps getting even better, yabai it."
Rika managed to turn off her tear ducts, the only way she knew how to get herself to stop balling her eyes out. She had to make her tear ducts reabsorb into her flesh, causing the river of tears coming out of her to stop. Her eyes itched, but now she could see.
Still limping, Rika tried to focus on trying to take care of the fractured bone in her left shin. She also tried to keep ahead of the fire. The fire seemed to grow more and more into a inferno. Rika kept moving, despite it all, trying to get away from the fire.
She looked around, trying to find some vestige of civilization. The Blue Dome used to be parks, but had grown into a feral jungle of plants and animals long ago mutated by the Kaiju-gems into all sorts of monstrosities. Rika knew she was near a Weaveway tube, but she'd never been stuck in this part of the Blue Dome before.
"I got to try and stay near the Weaveway," Rika panted to herself, "or I won't be able to find a way back."
Fwoom!
Rika's eyes darted to the source of the sound, a dart of flame shooting downward from the sky. More flames licked nearby trees, turning them into more kindling for the fire around her.
"You have got to be kidding me. That was a plant?" Rika shook her head as she spotted the trio of angels floating down from the Weaveway toward her. "Fucking Angels."
They had to be Angels, not only because of the fire they wrought at her. It also how handsome and pretty the three of them were. And all three of them wore suits, halos of fiery light around their heads.
"And cocky Angels too. Great. They've probably been leading me around too." Rika nearly tripped over a root in her commentary to herself. She tried to think of a way immediately out this situation. And the thought came to her, to use her own innate ability. "Really? Now?"
Then she heard a booming voice high above her.
"Demon! Give us the package and we'll let you keep your life!"
"Great. What package-" Rika remembered the package, and looked down. The same package she'd been trying to delivery was in the crook of her left arm. Her left arm didn't move, it just held tight to the package like her life depended on it.
"Oh. That package."
No comments:
Post a Comment