[Intermission, Part 1] Hunted

The building did not groan, stray students did not walk, and no birds chirped loud enough to be heard. The air conditioning, recently renovated to run quieter, was also segregated by filters from the biology laboratory for safety concerns. The lab was quiet, save for the nearly inaudible, calm breaths of its sole occupant: Tricia Gorbachev, or Danielle Kislev as the school knew her, pretending to peer into the middle of one wildly elementary lesson on pharmaceutical anti-depressant history. Invisible to all was her internal HUD with its widgets and data scrollers, kept from physically manifesting to avoid blowing her cover. The context of the book was not a complete loss at least: today she really was focusing on anti-depressants, albeit research for an improvement to her current formula, one not yet released to the public but already proven to be "too" effective by her family. Her eyes never left the book, and the solitude of her silence was only interrupted, at first, by the occasional shuffle in her uniform. Calm as she was, even her hands were skin-toned despite the atoms-thick material overlapping her skin.

Five minutes had only barely passed when Tricia felt a sinking in her gut, and the interface windows flipped and resized as her suit calmly reported in a feminine voice only Tricia could hear:

DIMENSIONAL ANOMALY ALERT. JERICHO-PATTERN BARRIER ERECTED, 190 METER RANGE. ORANGE CLASS.

Gorbachev stood abruptly from her desk, and froze as she noticed the trap barrier fortitude level and range, proving well beyond her ability to break free with any small amount of effort or time. A leg of a stool groaned as it moved across linoleum tiles, and she spun to see the new presence in the lab. He was tall, terribly so at nearly two inches over six feet, and had the appearance of a Basque or Frenchman with a petite nose that was almost comically so. More comical, were the situation not so dire, was the out-of-place trappings: a Japanese kimono of a bright sky-blue on white with patterns that suggested roses rising from flames. At his side were two long, red sheathes of polished wood, each topped with a hilt that could not be more set apart from one another: one being a ragged lump of lead barely fit to be consider a handle topped by an oblong, almost melted-looking guard, and the other featuring a golden pommel, a silk-wrapped handle in blue and white, and a manji guard of gold-plated steel. The latter seemed bound with thin silver chains that kept it tightly wrapped and sealed in its sheathe, and the former was toyed with by the sole thumb planted on it. Scanning his features, she noted the ponytail, the hazel eyes, the care-free smile and a noticeable stubble. He was unfamiliar, but she committed him to her and the suit's memory for good measure. "Good afternoon, Miss Gorbachev." He spoke with a mischievous, almost musical tone, and only moved to lean back in a carefree manner. "Can we talk?"

THREAT DETECTED.

To observers, if they could see under her clothes, the spandex she wore as her bra and panties would seem to grow across her skin in large, square chunks. In truth, her second skin's processing power, normally spent make convincing geometries, temperatures and pigments for skin, was being redirected, dropping the illusion in a wave until the mysterious man was confronted with a girl whose face, neck, and even her visible scalp were all made of a black latex that was almost blue under the fluorescent lighting. Slowly this strange woman rose, and he whistled with appreciation. "Whatever you're being offered," Tricia whispered, though it sounded dangerously loud in her ears, "my family will double it for your cooperation."

"Oh?" His head leaned slightly. "But what about his cooperation?"

Never lifting that swiveling thumb off of his crude hilt, he lazily pointed from the hip to Tricia's right. A gurgling noise, a wet burp of something viscous, and Tricia spun about to watch as a second man rose from the ground behind a nearby lab station, naked save for a bleached loincloth that, like the whole of his body, was soaked in blood and viscera. The sanguine portal that swirled at his feet, out of sight from where Tricia stood, suddenly retracted into his ankles and foot pad as he manifested completely, and all the gore that bathed his flesh began to seep into his skin, evaporating as it engorged his emaciated, almost skeletal body into a regular, even fit, build. The man was a hodge-podge of African, Middle-Eastern, and Chinese heritages, making a beautifully soft-faced man that still managed to look menacing with the help of glittering red eyes and a mouth full of bestial fangs. He was equipped with nothing... save a domination collar, the design of which Tricia knew far too well. He raised it to his chest, opened and menacing, as he hissed his word. "Sleep."

EPSILON LEVEL MIND CONTROL ATTEMPT DETECTED. NULLIFIED.

The command from the blood fiend was dripping with mana, and were it not for her suit and experience Tricia might have succumb. She knew Alpha to be the first, lowest level of power, and so this enemy was already worrisome. They would not be willing to negotiate, she hypothesized. She was stuck in a trap barrier until one side or the other perished. They wanted to catch her with that device, no matter its particulars with the black pearls she didn't recognize, but they might be willing to kill her as well. The suit prevented her anger, her indignation, her terror at this imminent threat of all she had ever been warned of as a child, but she could still remember hate. She would always remember hate. The memory of that last hate she felt she had to feel filled her mind, and with it opened the Eye of Gorbachev. It was her shame that she knew but one form of the Eye, but it would prove the one needed today. The black sclera and red iris of that hideous third orb opened on her forehead, and the blood mage's eyes went wide with terror. "S-She resisted?!" She mentally commanded the only drones she brought from home, and all three erupted from her open backpack by the foot of the table, one carrying a green crystal that now shifted to red, the second sporting a miniature gatling gun, and the third what looked like a sort of Tesla coil, complete with arcing static on its bulbous end. The drones flew towards the robed man as Tricia divided her attention, and the gatling gun whirred as it readied to fire **** upon the swordsman.

Hate. A flicker of light, a bead of pure emotion, shined upon its iris that, uncensored, would cut an invisible swath through wherever it laid its gaze. But here, dulled as her suit strangled the emotion and so the power of the Eye, it let only the minimal effect loose upon the lab: a massive stream of silent, gray fire that rolled forward from just before the Eye, bubbling towards the desk the blood mage now ducked behind. The flames slammed into the desk without so much as a hiss, but slowly it consumed that which was real, eating away at the wood, marble, and steel at an even pace. A few more seconds and that poor fortification would have been consumed wholly, moving ever forward with the river of spite flowing from Tricia in an effort to cleanse the wretch in heatless disintegration... but then the first man moved.

He moved, of that Tricia could be sure, but even with her peripheral vision she could not quite define it, much less react in time. The gun drone fired its first shots, but those bullets never found their target; the drones vanished in the same moment, torn to dust. Her vision of the man, and of everything to her left, rippled with the wave of **** that now approached, and Tricia could not so much as turn her head to regard it before it was upon her. Her uniform evaporated as the wave made contact, and all the world became lights. Her body rocketed to her right, slamming into, and then through, the debris of what was the lab room wall, and then through the disintegrating remains of the classroom across the hallway as she remained the only structurally sound thing that the wave touched. Her lithe bulk bounced and spun like this until it was left mostly buried under rubble.

LAMBDA-LEVEL ATTACK DETECTED. WARNING! DEFENSE MATRIX REDUCED TO 34%! UPDATING THREAT LEVEL. PLEASE BE ADVISED: YOU ARE **** IN A COMBAT SITUATION. POTENTIAL CONCUSSION DETECTED. ASSESSING USER CONDITION...

Two spandexed legs poked out from the pile of stones and wood that had come to rest halfway into the second classroom, and standing in the hallway just inches from the results of this attack was the third smuggler turned kidnapper: a dark-skinned woman of petite features, tall stature, and heavy assets. Her whole frame was thick, nearing the point of chubby where it was not made of deeply crimson fire. Flame-retardant magical leathers covered her sex and cradled her left breast, and a woven leather mesh wrapped about her left leg over the black slippers on which she neared the **** Gorbachev. This was all the decency she wore, and such made sense: her hair, her entire right arm, her right breast and a single, wide crack that went from her right ear to her right eye were all made from the same ruby-red hellfire she wielded. She was a Hellbat: an abomination, a cross-section of humanity and the Abyss. She bent close to the wreck, and whistled in appreciation. "This was what we did all that prep to catch? Why the Hell did we even need all of us if Dell could do her in like that?"

The robed man sighed with a smile as he toyed with a set of flasks on the nearest table. "Desden and I flipped a coin to see who could try catching her first... and as always, it's the only kind of duel I ever lose."

"I thought her my prey, even if the Gorbachevs have similar powers over the minds of others," Desden noted bitterly, "but to think she could shrug me off so easily..."

"Don't worry, either of you," Yarrick murmured, finally standing up from his stool, "you can split my cut. Honestly, I was hoping to fight a real Gorbachev... but the way she reacted? She must be defective, if that's even possible for their kind."

THREAT LEVEL REASSESSED. THREE COMBATANTS. BETA, LAMBDA, UNKNOWN. ESTIMATING UNKNOWN: THETA.

Tara's flames dimmed as she approached her superior with a worried furrow on her brow. Her shoulder of flesh neared some of the wall that still stood; even without paying it much mind, the paint there peeled a bit more under the heat of her body. "I'm not about to turn down free money... but if you think the buyers are going to withdraw just because she was kinda shit-"

RESUSCITATION PROGNOSIS: SIGNIFICANT VASCULAR AND CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM TRAUMA. USER REQUIRES AID TO REGAIN CONSCIOUSNESS. RESTORATION PROGRAMS STARTED. DEFENSE MATRIX REBOOTING.

"Buyers will be just fine, even with a piss-poor example of the clan. It's the blood that matters," Desden chuckled, licking his lips and raising his eyebrows rapidly in the way he knew Tara hated. He earned her predictable groan of disgust. "I think I ought to get a taste of it too, just before we go rushing to slap the collar on, you know?"

"Wow, you assholes really did just walk into the Academy." Three heads turned, and regarded the two heads that now joined the scene. They appeared in the hall, inexplicably so given that the fire mage had just walked in from there, and appeared on opposite ends of the hole Yarrick made no less. The man on the left, possibly in his thirties, had a muscular physique barely contained by a black tank top, and hung his hands by the thumbs in the pockets of his drab olive fatigue pants. Stubby remnants of a black head of hair were almost matched by the grubby stubble on his chin. He switched between looking at the three with a hard, steady gaze, and unsheathed his hands to give his knuckles an audible crack. His partner, and the one who spoke up, was quite the departure from his style: a young woman, possibly not yet in her twenties, with pink dye in her curled, shoulder-length hair that almost glowed with its errant strands in the false light of the barrier. She was framed by the bare shoulders of her modified sweater, the latter opening up enough to show the black bra of her cleavage. Tight blue jeans were paired with pink flip-flops, light blue nails flashed as she made exasperated, sarcastic motions, and almond eyes that sparkled with pink dots rolled in a teardrop-shaped face as she regarded them in turn. "After the mess you made, you really thought hanging around here was a good idea?"

Tara never took her eyes off of the pink-haired alt-chick as she spoke. "Uh, gentlemen? Who the fuck is this?"

"Collide," Yarrick sighed. The two new intruders glanced at the samurai-wannabe in the back, who still managed to look amused. "They're barely a coven, and a minor enemy of the Brightons. There have been rumors as well... rumors of their ties to the Auction."

"... S-Shit." Desden alternated between them.

Tara's body brightened as she readied for combat, and her flame arm began to coalesce into something more akin to plasma. "So the mess she's referring to..."

"The point is," the mystery man interrupted, "you've got our attention... in fact, you probably got everyone's attention doing this in the middle of the most contested school in the state."

RESTORATION AT 87%. DEFENSE MATRIX RESTORED to 98%. REBOOT COMPLETE. ATTEMPTING USER RESUSCITATION.

"How unfortunate that you have ours." The robed man stepped off of his stool... and vanished. Both blinked at the place where he surely was standing a moment ago, and didn't think to look behind them until the sound of rubble being cleared echoed in the hall. Both flinched away from the man who now kneeled only a few feet from either, his sheathes pointing upwards as he bent down to lazily toss rocks off of the black-clad body of a petite blonde.

Tara interrupted with a flaring of her hair. "We're in the business of cooking Auction lapdogs, but you might be in luck today. We've got what we want. You don't have to die today, if you just keep your mouth shut long enough for us to get out of your precious Academy."

"Don't be hasty, Tara," Desden whispered with a lick, "the teenager looks tasty, at least... let's be friends, girl."

The punk blinked and winced, her breath catching for a moment before she visibly shook off the psychic attack. "Gah, what the Hell was that?" Desden double-taked between Tara and the second person today to resist his power.

USER RESUSCITATED. TWO NEW UNKNOWN ENTITIES DETECTED. PROBABILITY OF HOSTILITY: 89%. PREDICTION: TWO ADDITIONAL THETA-LEVEL THREATS.

Yarrick went to hoist Tricia up when the male intruder made the first move. Despite the blades at his side, Yarrick was to be the target of a bare-fisted pummeling. Seeing the man's attack, Desden moved in low and fast, his fangs bared as he sought to rip out the throat of the unguarded girl as she recovered from his attempt to dominate her. A ball of flames danced between Tara's defined fingers as she aimed to scorch whoever remained. Yarrick turned with that ever-present smile, a single finger on the warped handle of his blade-

USER CONTROL RESTORED.

THREAT MANAGEMENT: THREATS PRESENT EXCEED CAPABILITIES OF LIMITED CONFIGURATION. THREATS PRESENT DO NOT EXCEED OMEGA REQUIREMENTS.

LIMITERS RELEASED: ALPHA, BETA, GAMMA, DELTA, EPSILON, ZETA, ETA, THETA, IOTA, KAPPA, LAMBDA, MU, NU.

LIMITERS SHALL REMAIN RELEASED UNTIL ALL ENEMIES HAVE BEEN RENDERED SILENT.

Yarrick froze, glanced down at the body... and met the twinkling gaze of a new Eye that grew over the girl's navel. He had no time for a witty response: a bead of light flickered before it. The swordsman vanished again-

Most of the Academy roof exploded outward and upward at an angle, collapsing a full half of it where the remains were not launched into the surrounding false courtyard after bouncing against the barrier walls.