Chapter 4: Enosiophobia
Pavul patted his knee and Drake ran over to him. Stepping on his knee, Drake was pushed over the table and toward Lola by Pavul's leg. Lola got on her back then pushed Drake out the window and towards the cyborg using the bottom of her feet. Mid-air, Drake bent both of his legs and stuck them out. 2 spikes emerged from his knees before landing on top of Desmond, the spikes digging into his arms and into the ground as he fell back. Desmond grunted and struggled to lift himself up from being pinned to the ground as Drake straightened his hands, the bones of his fingers stabbing through his gloves to act as claws. Drake began scratching as Desmond's face, skin ripping off to uncover the metal underneath.
Well, no wonder Drake is so important! He's a monster! In a good way of course. He basically stopped me from giving up a good run. Definitely have to thank him after this. If I can stomach his weird bone thing at least.
The bottom of Desmond's feet began to glow with a spark igniting underneath them. Lola and Pavul vault over the broken window and rush towards them. Lola lifts up her leg and axe kicks both of the prosthetics at the same time, resulting in the shins getting crushed and the electrical circuit getting cut off from the legs. See what I mean about this girl's kicks? Absolutely terrifying. Those things were made out of metal and she crushed them like one of those hydraulic press videos.
Desmond bent his arm to point his gun as Drake and fired. As my teammate kept absolutely whaling on the guy, every bullet bounced off his skin, sparks flying off him as they ricocheted.
I waited a bit for everything to die down before deciding to follow them through the window. I lift one left and carefully step over the frame. Alright, cool. Good thing I took that slowly or else- RIIIP.
Turning my head to the sound, my eyes stare at a piece of glass still left on the frame digging into the back side of my shirt. My eye twitches and my blood begins to boil. You're kidding. You're kidding! Did I do something to piss off the entire universe or something? Because I promise you, EVERYTHING is going out of their way to fuck me over!
I bend my right arm up before striking the side of that shitty piece of glass, shattering it instantly. "FUCK!" My voice raises. I could already feel everyone staring at me but do you honestly think I give a shit right now? These things aren't free, dipshits!
My left hand brings my pistol up to the side of my head before I scream. "I swear to fucking god, if I rip this shit next time, I'm actually gonna kill everyone before that jackass tin can has a chance!" Everyone clamors and reaches out to me to stop. I pull the trigger without a second thought. I don't even feel the bullet lodge inside anywhere that would cause the shot to be non-lethal or my body hitting the ground. I die instantly.
Death 4.
Cars continuously zoom past ours as Chrissy drives us to the ramen place. Note to self: use the door if that's an option. Time to go through all that again.
Let's see... what happened again? We got to the restaurant, paid for our food, I warned everyone, Drake hops on top of a grenade than absolutely mauls Desmond, and I... use the door.
It sounds way shorter compared to how I make it to be, but trust me, that 25-something minutes of waiting for the same exact thing to happen is sooo boring. The fact that I'm bad at keeping track of time doesn't help either. The times when I try to keep myself occupied always ends up in me not having the chance to react to stuff. Again, curse you, gacha games. The only option I have is to wait for a certain indicator to signal when I can start doing stuff. This encounter's signal is the third chew of the fourth time Lola takes a mouthful of food which is a dumpling she dips inside her soup... Okay. Yeah, I get it's not the most convenient thing to look out for, but it's so much easier than counting down every second.
Anyways, back to the situation at hand, Desmond lays on the ground with Drake on top of him, his bone spikes still lodged inside the prosthetic arms and stuck in the ground. Lola, Pavul, and I all stand over him with the rest of the group inside coming over to see what happened. Tensing my eyebrows and pursing my lips, I look over at Pavul who seemed to be thinking pretty deeply about something.
"What is purpose of attacking us?" He says, breaking up the silence in the process. The Russian's face tenses up; more than usual at least. He always looks like it's that time of the month for him. That means he's on his period by the way. Y'know. When you start bleeding down there. Man, I should be teaching sex ed instead of this, huh? I'm so good at explaining that kind of stuff.
Desmond kept his mouth shut, a firm frown being the only response he gave to my squad leader.
"Motherf-" I groan out loud before drawing my semi-automatic pistol and pointing it at the guy's head. I was so done with this shit. I thought this was gonna be a nice and quick lunch then I would go back home, but no! If I'm gonna have my day interrupted by someone, I would want to know why they did what they did, y'know? Pulling a gun on that person to get that answer seems like a reasonable enough reaction to me. It might not be to you, but it sure as hell is to me.
"Whoa..." Lola says taking a few steps back from me. Pavul, however, refuses to say anything, pretty much giving me the "go to" for this. "Silence is consent" is honestly a weird ass phrase, and whoever dropped that bar was probably a creep, but it's a staple when it comes to Specialists. Silence usually means to normal people that someone is thinking, but since we're supposed to act and not think, it just sort of served as the go ahead for a lot of things. Of course, we have a bunch of other slang, but maybe I'll dedicate something that to a different time for obvious reasons. If those reasons weren't already obvious, then I have a cyborg at gunpoint. Maybe pay attention next time.
The said cyborg stays quiet for a second before speaking up. "Squad leader's orders." He said in a low and sincere tone.
"See! That wasn't so bad now, was it?" I chirp proudly and spin my gun around my pointer finger before placing it back inside its holster. Now we have information, and we subdued the threat! I'm sure nothing will go wrong! Please don't jinx it. Please don't jinx it. Please don't jinx it.
A man jumps into the scene from out of sight and drop kicks Drake back and off Desmond, sending my colleague several feet away from the rest of us. He digs the bones of his fingers into the ground to stop himself, inch-deep claw marks lining the blacktop as a result. I groan and dip my head back. I fucking jinxed it.
Bringing my head up, I notice a guy around my age with ruffled black hair, pale skin, and sharp eyes. He had on the usual suit and pants that Specialists wear but underneath that was a t-shirt with an image of an anime character on it. Great. It's this guy. I guess Desmond did say he was given orders from his squad leader, but it didn't process with me until now.
Cyrus Li is the leader of Team 1, and is a bad person in general. Well, most Specialists are like, pretty bad(with the exception of me, of course), but this guy is like bad bad. I mean not too bad, but if he's sending his squad members to go attack people now, I guess he's really gone off his rocker this time. But still, as bad as he is, no one can decline his effectiveness at all. His whole thing is that, well, he's a gamer. It's just that he thinks he's in a game. Yeah, that sounds like a recipe for death, but in his case, it helps him a lot more, and it's all a whole load of bullshit in my opinion.
See, as delusional as he is, his body also believes in that little play-pretend world he has for himself. Because of that, he's able to level up after every couple of kills and just become stronger. His whole shabang sounds like such a stretch, but apparently it's real. Real enough for him to think he's hot shit all the time at least, and it really gets on my nerves. Especially since the guy tried to hook up with me first time we met.
"Vivian! My girl! How's it going?" Cyrus says with a shit-eating grin before ducking and weaving through two bullets Pavul shot. Before I could even draw my pistol again, the guy lunged in front of Pavul and threw his fist forward, sinking into my squad leader's gut like butter before pulling out a fistful of said guts. Pavul dropped to the blacktop. Dead.
Lola quickly reacted by using her legs to push herself towards Cyrus and throwing out a roundhouse kick which he frame one parries. He grabs onto Lola's leg and throws her over his shoulder and into a nearby car. A quick cough of blood from her and she's out like a light.
My eye twitches. Another goddamn reset. Gnashing my teeth together, I pull out my pistol and aim directly at Cyrus' head. "Fuckin' psycho!" My voice peaks before pulling the trigger.
Click!
Oh. My dumbass forgot to reload. Before I get the chance to curse, I feel Cryus' right hand grip onto the hair above my forehead while his other hand held my lower jaw. He forced my mouth open, tendons ripping as the skin was pulled off my cheeks, neck, and all the way down to my collarbone. Pulling back his hand, I watch as my jaw filled to the brim with blood fell on the floor with a huge splat. Looks like someone has been playing too much Mortal Kombat.
I fall to my knees then dive headfirst into the ground. Death 5.
Well, not the most pleasant way to die, but hey, I get it. A loser like him wants to do as much as he can while touching a woman for the first time. Oh that hurt by the way. Well, not as much as you would think I guess? The adrenaline numbs a lot of the pain, but you can imagine getting your jaw ripped off would fucking hurt. But yeah, another note: always reload after unloading a clip if possible.
Alright, backtracking again, there's the car ride, getting to the place, ordering the food, super scary cyborg man attacks, boner pins him to the ground, scary gamer attacks. And... that should be it?
Pavul fires two shots before Cyrus attacks. Barely tripping over my own feet, I lunge towards him as well and push him out of the way and... I die. The attack hit me right in the chest instead. Pretty sure he pulled my heart out, but I might've died before that. Death 6. Uh. Okay! No, that's fine, I got all day here.
Backtracking again, there's the car ride, getting to the place, ordering the food, super scary cyborg man attacks, boner pins him to the ground, scary gamer attacks. Yay!
Pavul fires two shots again. "Move, idiot!" I yell at him, allowing him to just barely dodge Cyrus' blow with a quick pivot to the left. Nice! Cyrus quickly follows up with a sweep kick and a stomp to Pavul's head, crushing it instantly. Fuck me, again?! I groan and ready my firearm. Wasn't quick enough by the way! The fucker backhands the gun out of my hand. Like, who does that? After that, he grabs both of my wrists and kicks me in the chest with enough force to cause my arms to come clean off. The rest of me gets sent flying right into Drake, who catches me and instantly puts himself in front of me. As my sight begins to fade, I can barely hear Lola screaming as she gets some kind of limb torn off followed by Drake suddenly getting pushed back by another attack, still trying to get Cyrus away from me. Too bad all that doesn't matter. I feel every drop of blood leak from my body, and I die. Death 7.
Let's try that again. But man, is this getting old.
Backtracking again, there's the car ride, getting to the place, ordering the food, super scary cyborg man attacks, boner pins him to the ground, scary gamer attacks. Yada, yada, yada.
Pavul fires and whatever, Cyrus goes in to attack and all that jazz. Just before his punch hits, I try firing at where Cyrus was going to be. He manages to dive down and roll out of the way. Nice! Well, he's not dead, but at least Pavul is alive. After landing, Cyrus gets up right in front of me and uppercuts my chin, causing my teeth to crush each other and my jaw to send inwards into my head, killing me instantly. This is some actual bullshit! There's no way that fucking happened! Death fucking 8!
Backtracking, again by the way! There's the car ride, getting to the goddamn place, ordering the fucking food, wackass cyborg guy attacks, Drake puts him into missionary, and this bullshit incel joins the fight!
Intercept the attack, he rolls in front of me, dodge the uppercut by stepping back, and get my head blown to pieces by a cross with the other hand! DEATH 9.
Backtrack, yet again! I'm not even going to explain everything happened up until that point!
Intercept the attack, he rolls in front of me, dodge the uppercut by stepping back, pivot to avoid the cross, ready my gun but he slaps my hand to the side before sliding forward and elbowing me in the chest. TAKE A WILD GUESS IF I LIVE OR NOT. Surprise, surprise, I die instantly! Death 10!
Backtrack and all that stuff, whatever!
Intercept the attack, he rolls in front of me, dodge the uppercut by stepping back, pivot to avoid the cross, ready my gun, circle it around Cyrus' arm to aim at his head, and thankfully get bit of support from Pavul by putting him into a head lock! "Fucking finally! Die, bitch!" I begin to pull the trigger but before the gun fires, Cyrus folds forward and throws Pavul off his back and onto me, resulting in me and my leader tumbling onto the floor. You've got to be kidding me! Pavul weighs like 350 lbs! There's no way this guy has enough strength for that. I know for sure, I don't have the muscle to get this absolute unit off of me!
Pavul and I shakily push ourselves onto our feet but are unable to prevent Lola's death. She launches a front kick at Cyrus but ends up getting her leg grappled again. Folding his arm to hold her ankle, he takes his right elbow and strikes her knee, causing the limb to bend 90 degrees in the opposite direction. She lets out a ear-deafening scream before Cyrus throws her over his shoulder and onto the ground, causing her face to indent into the pavement.
We aim our guns at the guy, but before firing, I feel a surge of bullets enter and exit my body. My eyes slowly turn to Desmond on the floor, his hand transformed back into a fully-automatic machine gun. Death 11.
I give up.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone