Hare of Misfortune

Rachel accepted a medical kit from Mateo, waiting for further information on where the creature went; Anthony was returning. ”Is it because I’m a mythickin? Your eyes mixed with white...probably having to do with the Lunar Energy I absorbed...but there was no azure color. Was it my blood?”

Scarlet shook her head, normal, bright-blue eyes returning. ”My mind...blanked; I just wanted to keep drinking—I’m sorry...” she whimpered, shoulders drooping and bloody tears sliding down her cheeks.

”I-I felt a strange thing...like when I changed—all of a sudden, I saw this red-haired goddess. She had elf ears and these scary, fiery eyes—there was this red moon behind her, and the way she looked at me told me to, eh...told me to back off? I think she saved you. I’m sorry...”

”No! Hehe. Scarlet, you’re fine,” Rachel said, not letting her back away since it would only further alienate the girl when she needed comfort. ”You did get rid of the poison?”

She slowly nodded, and Anthony appeared in the doorway.

”Poison, huh? You never catch a break, do you, Rachel? Eh...what’s going on with her?”

Rachel sighed. ”Mythickin troubles. Scarlet did great—most of us would probably be dead without her. Thank you, Scarlet,” she made a point of saying. ”We can worry about everything else later, and...it’s not like we had a knight in shining armor to help us,” she dully responded, shooting a look at Anthony.

”Can’t be talking about me since I don’t have armor, but I guess that’s the point,” he laughed. ”Plus, you can’t expect me to keep up with your speed, girl, c’mon! Be a little reasonable.”

Mateo drew their attention back to the matter at hand. ”Rachel—the frog?”

”More of a toad,” she responded, letting one of the soldiers patch up her arm as Scarlet glared at the floor nearby, trapped inside her own self-doubt. ”It uses five needles and can somehow retrieve them while firing them remotely; it uses daggers, as well, which can be thrown and recalled. It’s faster than me, meaning you’re going to want to use wide-ranged attacks...maybe a flamethrower due to it changing into sand.”

”Dammit!” he snarled. ”Why does it have to be so complicated? You didn’t notice any gaps or weaknesses?”

”Afraid not,” she replied. ”For the wound it got, I’m surprised it’s being this cautious; it’s trying to remain away from people while—wait?! I... What? I think it cut off its own arm?” she said in shock, head shifting to stare at the first level. She heard it rip a piece of a curtain to wrap into a tourniquet; the severed limb dropped to the ground with a dull thud.

Scarlet’s eyes turned red again, and she followed the direction Rachel was facing. ”It did... Why is a red stem coming out of its arm—huh?! Since when could my blood do that?” she asked as Rachel heard the toad become sand and escape to the next room.

”What?” Zoe asked, practically holding her breath. ”You have blood flower powers?”

Scarlet shook her head, hugging herself. ”A rose... It’s growing out of its arm. I think I infected it with something... Do I have seeds inside me—what am I?!”

Rachel reached over to take her hand and snap her out of the loop she was spiraling into as the toad broke the window in the next room, releasing a loud croaking noise.

”Scarlet! Scarlet! It’s okay... I’ll help you understand your powers after this is done. The toad sees you as a threat now and has called the others. They’re going to come for you.”

”That’s...a good thing. I can’t die, so...so...I should set an ambush!” she said, taking in a deep, shuddering breath. ”Right? I’m immune to, like...everything, so... yeah! I can do good. I can stop these monsters.”

Rachel nodded, trying to steer her toward something more positive. ”You don’t have to be alone, though; we’re against really powerful, heh, toad people, so...let’s bring them to the pool.”

”The pool?” Anthony and Mateo asked in unison, but Zoe caught on to her plan.

”The sea dragon mythickin! Yeah! We lure them into a place where all the S-tier changed people are. Scarlet’s our SS-tier. I love it!”

Scarlet blinked. ”I’m the double-S—I feel like I’m totally F-tier?”

”Are you kidding me?” the cat-girl scoffed. ”Look at you—maybe more like triple-S-tier—every heroine in stories usually has some kind of dark power they have to keep in check! Don’t bash the power; you have super blood that auto-protects you! Talk about jealous!”

Her response got a chuckle from Scarlet as the domestic cat continued her pep talk. It had gone beyond the point that Rachel understood when it hit anime and manga, so she got up to talk to Mateo.

”What did you think when it attacked me?”

Mateo and Anthony closed in tighter as some of his men reported that the monsters were converging on their facility.

The officer grunted, working around his jaw. ”It was fast. We couldn’t even respond in the time it went from the hallway to the classroom, and if one of my guys weren’t wearing body armor, he’d be dead; he got hit in the heart, and the plate looks like it was almost pierced.”

”I didn’t even notice he attacked you,” Rachel muttered, rubbing the back of her neck. ”It’s way stronger than the hobgoblin I fought, and the fact it also uses poison is an issue; one nick, and we’re done without Scarlet.”

A low rumble sounded in Anthony’s throat. ”Is it really a good idea to consolidate all of us in one place for them to attack? Do we know if they have explosives or even gas?”

Rachel shook her head. ”It’s our only option; there’s no way any of us survive out in the open if they’re faster than me, and I’m already pushing my body more than I should,” she admitted, rubbing her sore thighs.

It would probably be a good idea to add points to her Toughness Stat since her Feats thought it was important enough to include with Power; it made sense due to recoil.

”Fair enough,” Mateo growled. ”If they’re after Scarlet, then it means we can choose the battlefield, but what makes you think this sea dragon will help you?”

Rachel flashed her teeth. ”Because she’s a ’good sea dragon’ and wants to be seen as a heroine. What better way than to stop the bad guy?”

Mateo and Anthony gave her a look that said they weren’t following.

”In any case, it is an open area that we can exploit, and it has a lot of ventilation places they can use, but with my hearing,” she added, pointing to her twitching ears, ”we’ll know exactly where they’ll attack.”

”Giving them a false sense of security,” Mateo nodded as he released a long exhale. ”Alright, I believe they have a good number of men guarding the area anyway, with equipment. It will do.”

Making the snap decision, and probably more inclined to this strategy due to Scarlet’s insane powers, Mateo called it in. Heading to the pool, Rachel kept an eye on the vespertine reaper as she talked with Zoe, seemingly finding some common nerdy ground.

Her mind spun with the possibilities, and a single name came to the surface as she tracked the toad’s movements through the vents; the alien was keeping at a distance, somehow knowing where they were. The four others were getting close to infiltrating the buildings, creeping like wind through the night.

Cerridwen... The goddess that is probably granting me my Divine Feats; she snapped Scarlet back to her senses after tasting my blood. There’s probably more to it that Scarlet will tell me later, but all of this can’t be a coincidence.

The Scarlet Hand woman said I wasn’t supposed to be here, and I’d ruin everything; were these toads supposed to massacre everyone and make Scarlet turn into a blood fiend or mentally crack under pressure?

She pressed a hand against her chest as they entered the large swimming area. Rachel’s eyes widened as she saw the massive mythickin in the pool, swimming in a lazy circle near the deep end. The men watching her hadn’t exaggerated—she was practically the size of a large tank. The soldiers had already told the girl that they’d be setting up an ambush in the area as they made their way to the facility, and she looked excited.

The girl was nearly as long as the Class 2 boat her dad owned, weaving back and forth through the water like a snake, and Rachel caught a glimpse of sleek but powerful webbed hands and feet on her body.

Her medium-length neck wove with her tail, showing a vertical fin that looked sharp enough to cleave through stone, and her large, aquamarine eyes shone with a glowing inner delight. The sea dragon’s monstrous, sapphire fangs opened to reveal her slick, black tongue, releasing a low rumble that traveled through the water and concrete to Rachel’s legs—possibly identifying movement through the reverberation like toothed whales.

Rachel’s head rose to the ceiling as the sand whipped into a frenzy in the vents. ”It’s coming from the ceiling,” she yelled, accepting a shield one of the soldiers had brought from SWAT’s equipment; they weren’t sure it would defend against the needles, but it was better than nothing.

Guns rose, yet just as the toad materialized out of the haze that left the shaft, Rachel heard a shift in the water current, and she darted back as a wave the size of her waist jumped over the side of the pool; the giant sea dragon shot straight into the air, doing what seemed to be a barani—a front flip with a 180-degree twist—and the one-armed toad dispersed into dust to escape.

The dragon’s dark, azurite plates, ruby spikes, and glowing horn glistened in the light as the world slowed in Rachel’s mind—Rachel had not expected this reaction from the little girl—and the girl’s tail twisted with her momentum, flat end beating the dust cloud and forcing the alien out of its incorporeal form to be batted against the wall.

Zoe and Scarlet cried out in unison with a few of the soldiers as the wave threw them back, soaking them. The vespertine reaper sat on a blood disk that had scooped her up to keep her hovering above the mess.

”You okay?” she asked. ”I think...the toad is dead—definitely dead—watch out for rain.”

”What the—d-did that just happen?” Zoe asked, coughing and sputtering as a second crash from the giant monster falling back into the pool sent more waves and water to soak them. ”Ack—I swallowed some water—stop!”

Rachel forced a laugh upon catching sight of the toad—yellow blood stained the wall from the force of impact—it was most certainly dead. Her gaze was on the little girl as she pulled herself out of the water, or, at least, she had been a little girl when she’d heard her last.

The sea dragon took on a naked, more feminine form after her transformation, scales receding to show skin while still keeping a sort of skin-tight black-plated bra and shorts. Her alabaster skin was smooth and glistening from the liquid falling off her as she casually left the water, and somehow her soaked skin and hair seemed to absorb the moisture, leaving her wholly dry.

She was a little taller than Scarlet, which wasn’t saying much, and the sea dragon’s proportions had increased dramatically from the tiny frame Rachel had heard described by the men to their superior as she showed off an alluring figure.

The most shocking part of the whole event to Rachel was the thumps that reverberated through the concrete and made her ears twitch; the woman may not have looked it, but she retained all the weight of her more monstrous form.

”Hello,” she greeted, wearing a gentle smile and speaking in a monotone voice that lacked the cute emotion she displayed. ”I’m Selvaria, the invincible mythickin leviathan. That was a bad guy, right? I hope it was a bad guy because if not, heh, this will be so awkward.”