“I am, but my grandparents are from here. Mom too.”
“Your family is from the Southern Alliance, huh?”
“Look, I’m not asking for much, but my teammate needs to rest, and I need to get some sleep as well. We will be out of your hair tomorrow, so just for the night. And if you don’t believe that I’m an exemplar…” Zoe bit her lip for a moment. “Power-up, off.”
The transformation took place, her human ears melting into her skull as her tiger ears appeared, the right side of her face changing shape and form, her tail growing out of the back of the uniform, Zoe adjusting her tights in time to make sure her tail went through its proper hole.
The old woman nodded, impressed. “You said you were, or your family was, from the South. Do you know which parts?”
“Hazryn, no, Ovnaze. Sorry, my grandfather was from Hazryn, my grandmother from Ovnaze.”
“Your grandfather was from Hazryn? I went to grade school there. What was his name?”
“Paak Ramone.”
“Paak Ramone… Paak Ramone.” The woman gasped. “I know exactly who that is! He was a friend of my older brother, but he left when I was young, maybe four, five. Yes, he had dark hair like you, dark eyes too, a little beady, like yours.”
“You knew my grandfather?”
“You didn’t?”
Zoe wasn’t in the mood to get into her life story, so she tried to sum it up as best she could in a few sentences. “I was raised mostly by my grandmother. She came to Centralia as a refugee with my mother, but my mother got into some bad businesses and, well, she was killed. I never met my grandfather. All I know is that he was the reason my grandmother was granted refugee status in Centralia. That’s all I can tell you about that, sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” the old woman said, bringing her hand to Zoe’s arm. “I’m sorry for being so suspicious. You never can know in this country. Look, you and your friend can stay the night, there’s no one here but me. My son went to Argoze to sell some produce. So you two can stay in his room. I changed his sheets. Unless you want your friend there to sleep on the couch. I totally understand that.”
Zoe looked over her shoulder at Sam. “That’s okay, he can stay in the room with me.”
***
“Come on!” Helena shouted to Ozella as they started to run on top of the railcar.
“But what about Sam!?”
“They… We…” Helena stopped dead in her tracks, shaking her head for a moment, looking back at the trees where Sam and Zoe had jumped. “I don’t know. Maybe we should jump too…”
“You two are coming with me,” one of William Bottorf’s clones said, who had just arrived on their railcar. He swung at Helena with his baton, the combat dancer immediately connecting her fist with his face as she dodged his attack.
With a swift kick, she sent the clone flying over the side of the train, a creaking sound meeting her ears as Mister Fist and Mia continued to fight in the cabin below.
“It’s going to break,” Ozella said.
“Yeah, and when it does…” Helena glanced around. “Let’s get to the other railcar.”
They moved to the end of the railcar, judging the distance between it and the next one. There was all sorts of activity around them, in front and in back, and there was no way this was going to work out unless…
“Ozella, put your hands over your eyes. Trust me.”
“Okay!” Ozella said, cupping both palms over her face.
Helena grabbed Ozella’s other hand and squeezed it firmly. She saw more of William’s clones coming toward her, Donovan in the distance engaging another member of Team Saint, Plume the fire user overhead, more action on a different railcar as the wolfman continued to go at it with the big grey vampire.
Helena only had one shot at this, so she went for it, something that should have been impossible.
“Power-up, on, invisible!” she said. The clone stopped in front of Helena and Ozella, confused for a moment before turning in a different direction.
The fight was still going on behind her even as the railcar made terrible noises, sounding like it was going to separate soon.
But that didn’t matter, not with Helena’s plan.
And she wished that she had thought a little more about what she was doing before she called on her power, but now was too late for that, now was time to wait it out.
Donovan shot off into the air and landed just a few feet away from Helena and Ozella, the mohawked man glancing around for a moment and pointing at someone behind him.
“You’re out of your jurisdiction!” he screamed at Mister Fist. “And unless you want to start a war with the South, it’s time to leave. Now, motherfucker!”
Mist ballooned out of the railcar, Mister Fist’s form taking shape on top of the railcar. Donovan took an imposing step toward it.
“We have exemplar teams to work with down here,” Mister Fist said, gritting his teeth. “It won’t be long until…”
“They know not to fuck with us,” Donovan spit. “Now go. Get the hell out of my country.”
“Come as close as you can to me,” Helena whispered once she was behind Ozella, still holding on to her arm.
“I can’t see you,” Ozella whispered back, her palm still across her eyes, the shy statkeeper totally overcome by the hallucination Helena had cast.
Helena didn’t know if she needed to touch Ozella to make it work on both of them, but she didn’t want to remove her hand to find out.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’re going to sit down as quietly as possible, and pray that no one steps over here.”
“Okay,” Ozella whispered while Donovan continued to talk shit to Mister Fist.
“Just trust me,” Helena said as she started to get down to her knees, still holding on to Ozella’s waist. Naturally, Ozella’s legs folded before hers, Helena rearranging herself so that she sort of cradled Ozella in her arms. “I’m sorry for the closeness of this.”
“It’s okay,” Ozella whispered.
Helena still couldn’t believe it had worked, that her power-up was that powerful.
The hallucination that she had conjured made anyone in her vicinity unable to see her, at least that was what she’d meant by saying “invisible.”
There was no way it should have worked, yet here Helena and Ozella were, not four feet away from Donovan, the mohawked assburglar loosening up his hands as he watched the two exemplar teams start to move away.
They had done it; the bad guys had won. Team Saint and Mister Fist were on the move.
There was a large enough hole in the top of the railcar for one of the vampire children, the more brazen one, to peek out.
The big grey vampire landed just a foot away from the two. With a grizzled snort, he walked over to the hole and hopped in, barely able to fit.
And it was only seconds later that the man with blades for arms jumped from one railcar to the next, stepping around the hole in the roof and catching up with Donovan.
“Well?” he asked Donovan.
“Those four kids got away,” Donovan said. “I don’t know how, but they’re somewhere in the Goamone area.”
The man shrugged as his blades began to morph back into chiseled muscle. He was tall, his arms covered in scars, the bottom half of his face still covered by a bandana. “Well, they won’t last long there. They will either die wandering in the woods, or get picked up by Southern Alliance police. If they get picked up, of course, we’ll know about it.”
“Exactly,” Donovan said. “Come, let’s get to the front of the train and enjoy the rest of this trip.”
The man with bladed arms laughed. “Enjoy? What’s there to enjoy about this, Don?”
“The money we’ll get once we deliver the cargo.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Turn up the Feels
(Well, well, well.)
Sam fluttered his eyes open. Everything was blurry, he was in a room he didn’t recognize, a room that smelled like…
The details
came to Sam in that instant: the fact that Zoe was in the bed with him, sleeping with the tiger side of her face pressed against his chest, his arm wrapped around her body.
“Shit…” he whispered, more pieces coming together regarding what had happened.
It was Mia’s wing.
Her wing had knocked him off the train, and Zoe had jumped out for him. He remembered that much, he remembered walking along the train track, trying to catch up to Helena and Ozella.
But then his memories blurred together.
And where were they?
Trying to send a mental message did not work.
He knew this was what would happen once they crossed the border, so they were likely in the Southern Alliance.
Sam wished in that moment that they had prepared for it. Sam couldn’t know for certain, but he was pretty sure that Zoe’s weapons dealer buddy, Clean Dave, or whatever, probably had some tech that allowed for mental messaging in foreign countries.
Again, an amateur mistake.
Vigilante Justice was defined by its mistakes as much as it was by its triumphs, which was why the group was now separated, Sam with Zoe, Helena with Ozella…
And who knew where they were, who knew how long they’d be apart.
Zoe stirred, noticing that Sam was awake.
He became keenly aware that she was topless, her breasts grazing against his body as she removed her head from his chest. “Sam?” she asked, moving just a bit closer to him.
“Zoe?”
One of her legs came around his body so that she now straddled him, her hands settling over his shoulders.
Her back was arched, her nipples erect, Sam still trying to make sense of all this but at the same time, not knowing exactly what was happening.
He lifted his hands to Zoe’s waist, and from there slid them down until they were on her ass, his fingers feeling the base of her tail.
He had been with Zoe before, obviously, but it was still strange to him to find a tail attached to her lower half.
So he kept touching it for a moment.
He didn’t know what a concussion was supposed to be like, but his brain definitely felt shaken, like someone had put it in a tumbler and had a go at it.
“My tail,” Zoe whispered, still peering down at Sam.
“Yeah, I can see that,” he told her. “I mean, I can feel it.”
“The lady that owns this place happens to know my grandfather, can you imagine that?”
“This place?”
“Use your nose. It belongs to an old lady who seriously knew my grandfather when he was a boy. What are the odds?”
“Yeah,” Sam said, but his sniffer was giving him all sorts of data at the moment, including a sizeable whiff of the pheromones in the air.
“Sam?” Zoe asked, moving a bit closer to him as his eyes started to shut.
“Sorry…”
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
Sam looked back up at Zoe, something at the back of his brain screaming for him to stay awake for this.
“I think I hit my head.”
“You did, and you need to rest.”
“Why are you naked?” Sam asked.
“You know I like to sleep naked,” Zoe told him, her ears flitting back.
Sam smiled.
That was one of the things he liked about her when they first started dating. He had never been with a woman before that slept naked.
He still remembered the first time he’d slept over at Zoe’s apartment, Sam on the couch because he wasn’t sure of where the relationship was going, Zoe simply walking out of the bathroom completely naked and taking him to her bedroom.
And braining his fucks out from that point forward.
Zoe started gyrating her hips.
It was subtle at first, but it was enough for Sam to start to get an erection. Well, he already had a half-chub before, but with the sexy tiger girl on top of him grinding, it wasn’t long until his proof of manhood was full on pulsating.
“I’m sorry,” Zoe said. Sam could feel through his boxers that she was getting wetter and wetter.
“For what?” Sam asked.
“For…”
“For what?”
“For causing trouble, then and now. Especially now.”
With that Zoe slipped her hand into Sam’s boxers and pulled his member out, holding it for a moment as she rubbed the head of his penis against the lips of her vagina.
“Shit…” Sam whispered as he slipped inside Zoe, his ex parking it for a moment, just letting him fill her, both of them finally back together again.
“No…” Sam started to say, but Zoe had already picked up her pace, her chest heaving up and down as she expertly worked his cock.
Damn if she didn’t still have it, not that she could’ve ever lost it, but Zoe was like a wave rocking up and down, moving all the way up the tip and right back down the shaft, half-concussed Sam not having to do shit aside from listen to the bed squeak.
The smell of sex met his nostrils, Sam briefly wondered if he shouldn’t switch his power out, but taste could be troublesome, as could feel…
No, sense of touch could be awesome.
“Power-up, on, feel,” Sam said deliriously, and as soon as the words escaped his mouth, it was like a thousand nerve endings had been grafted onto his dick.
Sam gripped the mattress as best he could, his head rolling back, the feeling of sheer ecstasy rolling over him, swirling in his gut and exiting through an intense orgasm that left him shaking, Sam completely finishing his load inside Zoe’s snatch, writhing for a moment as she kept going.
“You finished?” she asked, a little breathless now.
“Sorry… Power-up, off,” Sam whimpered.
“So that’s what you were saying,” Zoe mumbled, and he couldn’t quite tell if she was glaring at him or not, but he did notice her body language as she slipped off him, cupping her hand around her lady parts.
“Where you going?”
“I’ve got to get this out of me now,” she said. “Shit. The bathroom is across the hall. I hope the woman isn’t awake.”
“Do you have… A towel or something?”
“Of course I don’t have a fucking towel. We were just supposed to sleep in here, not…”
“Sorry…” Sam said, exhaling audibly.
Zoe cleared her throat. “Not your fault, actually it’s kind of my fault. Doesn’t matter now, I’m going out there.”
Zoe waddled into the hallway, her tail bouncing as she tried to prevent Sam’s seed from falling onto the floor.
“Dammit… ” Sam whispered, the ceiling pulsating for a moment, his head still pounding.
Zoe returned about ten minutes later, crouching down once she closed the door and making sure she didn’t drip anything onto the floor. Sure, she could have turned the light on, but it was clear that all of this happening in the darkness was better for both of them.
The tiger got back into bed with Sam, not cuddling up to him this time.
“What took you so long?”
“I had to finish myself off,” she told him with a huff. “I haven’t had sex… Well, since you. And that was a little faster than I would have liked. So I finish myself off. After cleaning, of course. Got a problem with that?”
“No…” Sam said. “We shouldn’t have done that.”
“Well, at least it is out of the way now; it was bound to happen at some point,” said Zoe. “Now get some rest. We need to get to the capital tomorrow, to Argoze, and there may be people looking for us.”
“Let’s hope not.”
She nodded in agreement as she got comfortable. “Damn tail makes it hard to sleep on my back. Anyway, whatever we do, we will have to keep a low profile. And wearing exemplar uniforms won’t be the greatest way to do that. Maybe we can borrow some of this guy’s clothing until we get to town…”
“We don’t have any of their currency,” Sam said, now staring up at the ceiling, the edges of his vision starting to blur.<
br />
“I’m sure I can get us something.”
“What a night,” Sam said, his voice now a whisper.
“Tell me about it.”
***
Ozella Rose just had to trust that Helena knew what she was doing.
The train was moving, and they were still on the rooftop. Helena instructed her to lie down flat. Once Ozella was in position, Helena moved in next to her, whispering the words, “power-up, off.”
“I can’t believe you made them hallucinate that you were invisible,” Ozella said, turning to Helena, hearing the train traveling along the tracks below. It was a percussive sound, something that reminded Ozella of her childhood home, which wasn’t far away from the trolley station.
“I can’t believe it worked,” Helena said. “I didn’t know if it would work, but apparently…”
“I wish I had my notebook,” Ozella started to say. “I mean, I have it, but it’s hard to write lying down. Actually, I’m surprised they let me keep it when they caged us. They took away all your weapons.”
“They did. Maybe they just thought it was part of your outfit.”
Ozella shrugged. “Who knows…”
“We’re going to stay like this until we get to wherever they’re going, which I am assuming is Argoze. Once we get there, I will activate the power again and we’ll escape. We should be able to figure out the city relatively quickly. I have an old friend there; it shouldn’t take us long to get hooked up.”
“What about Sam and Zoe?” Ozella asked.
Helena chose her next words carefully. “I have faith that they will meet up with us. My guess is that they will be staying somewhere around where they were deposited tonight, and then they’ll teleport to the city. They may have actually teleported to the capital by now. But it will be a little difficult to find them once they do. I don’t know. We can leave some signs around, things for Sam to see or something. We’ll figure it out.”
“I’ll think of something,” Ozella said. “It’s too bad we can’t just mental message them.”
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