“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Helena said with a smile. “Let’s start in a seated position, legs out.”
Helena came around to Ozella’s side, giving her room to stretch her legs out.
“Like this?”
“Exactly. Now let’s see just how flexible you are,” Helena said. She instructed Ozella to bend forward, to try to use her fingers to touch the tips of her toes. Sure enough, she was able to do so with relative ease.
“See? Most people can’t even do that,” Helena said.
“But I’ll never be flexible like you. I’ll never be able to do all those flips and twists and stuff,” Ozella said.
“That’s fine; that’s not your role in our group. But I still think you’re the strongest, I wasn’t just flattering you for no reason. Especially now that you have upgraded your ability to help us.”
“That’s an interesting way to put it,” Ozella said, still stretched forward.
For the next thirty minutes, Helena taught Ozella some stretches that she could do to loosen up in the morning. As they were finishing, they heard a knock at the front door of the guesthouse.
Helena, in her bra and pajama pants, quickly put the top on before heading down the stairs and opening the door. She was informed by a man in a white tux that they would be having breakfast with Juniper soon and should get dressed, and that clothing had already been arranged for them and placed in the living room area of the guesthouse.
“Thanks,” Helena told the man as he turned, making his way back to the mansion proper. She brought the clothing up to Ozella, who took one look at it and shook her head.
“What?” Helena asked. “Is it not schoolgirl-y enough for you?”
Ozella grinned. “You know me too well. I will just wear my uniform without the mask. I don’t think people will know who I am.”
Helena considered this for a moment. “I think it would be better if you just wore the clothing that they have provided for you, more polite.”
“Fine, I’ll wear it,” Ozella said, not putting up much of a fight. “But just because you suggested it.”
Helena handed Ozella the outfit, a form-fitting cashmere dress with long sleeves and an intricate design along the side seams.
“I’ve never worn anything like this before,” Ozella said as she looked it over.
“There’s a first time for everything, right?”
“I suppose so.”
Ozella took her top off and stepped out of her sleep pants. Now in a bra and a pair of boy shorts, Ozella started to go about putting on the tight dress.
“You should probably wear the underwear they gave us too. It’s clean, packaged, and your panty line will show if you wear the boy shorts,” Helena told her, pointing at the rest of the clothing. “You should probably wear the thong.”
“Okay.”
Helena turned away this time to allow Ozella to switch out undies. She also began getting into her own outfit, which consisted of a chic, fashionable dress. She could tell by the way the fabric felt, and the quality of the stitching, that it was a custom piece.
Once she was finished, she turned to Ozella to see her in her tight cashmere dress, looking out of place as ever as she picked at the thong for a moment.
“Sorry,” Ozella whispered, her cheeks going red.
“You’ll get used to it.”
“Is something wrong?” Ozella asked as she pushed her bangs out of her face.
“No, you look great.” Helena slipped into her ballet flats and Ozella her shoes.
While the shoes didn’t quite go with Ozella’s dress, they didn’t look too bad, and besides, they weren’t really going for high fashion here. Once Ozella was ready, she folded her uniform and put it in her red backpack, asking Helena for hers as well.
After taking a short walk through the Hydrozes’ winter garden, Helena and Ozella joined Juniper in the main home, where they found a full breakfast spread, everything from salmon to pastries. The woman with light caramel skin and auburn hair smiled up at them.
“I’m glad you two could join me,” Juniper said, “and I have good news about your friends.”
“What’s that?” Helena asked as she sat down, Ozella taking the seat next to her. “And thank you for inviting us to breakfast.”
Ozella elbowed Helena, looking at her in a way that Helena couldn’t quite interpret. The statkeeper glanced back to Juniper, raised an eyebrow, and looked back to Helena, elbowing her again.
“Cut it out,” Helena said under her breath. “Like I was saying, thanks for having us.”
“My pleasure. And regarding your friends, I have used my father’s connections to enlist the help of the Southern Alliance police in finding them.”
“How do you know what they will look like?” Helena asked Juniper.
“You said yourself that one had tiger ears, and half of her face was that of a tiger. I’m pretty sure that will give her away relatively easily. The cops will be discreet about it, of course, and once they find your friends, they will bring them here. It shouldn’t be long now…” Juniper bit her lip for a moment. “Likely the next two to eight hours. That is how long it has taken before.”
“Good,” Helena said, “and thank you.”
“It was no trouble, really,” Juniper said as three hot bowls of oatmeal were delivered to the table. “My favorite. Please, will you have some?”
“With pleasure,” Ozella said, swallowing hard.
Helena couldn’t interpret the look on Ozella’s face, but she was sure she would hear about it at some point. For now, they needed to maintain decorum, and enjoy their breakfast.
***
“So we’re starting in a market?” Sam asked, looking around at the expansive outdoor shopping area, where more and more people were starting their day with a little retail therapy. Last he could recall, they’d taken a teleporter to Argoze and yeah, here they were.
Weird.
“That’s right,” said Zoe, a pained expression on her face. “What better place to look for Helena and Ozella than a market?”
“Are they that big of shoppers?”
“No idea; we’re not that close.”
“Ha! I guess not,” Sam said as they circled around a fountain with a sculpture in its center of a man riding a bear. There was warm water boiling out of the bear’s mouth, steam hissing off the surface of the pool surrounding the fountain. “Damn, this is a sweet fountain. Nice bear.”
“It’s a bearwolf,” Zoe said, biting her lip for a moment.
“Bearwolf?”
“They have them down here. Grizzly fuckers, really.”
“Is something wrong?” Sam placed a hand on Zoe’s shoulder.
“I’m fine,” she said, pulling her shoulder away from him. “Come on, we need to look for clues.”
“And how do you suppose we do that?” Sam asked as they advanced toward the exit of the market. The booths here were mostly selling rune art, a few of the more eager shop owners calling out to Sam and Zoe, telling them that their art was guaranteed to bring good fortune.
“Is that really how that works?” Sam asked Zoe as they passed a man beckoning them into his shop.
For once, Sam was having a little sinus difficulty, so he couldn’t get as good of a sniff in the man’s direction as he would have liked.
“It really is,” said Zoe. “I don’t know much about the Southern Alliance rune schools, but my grandma did talk about them from time to time.”
“Four schools, right?” Sam asked, remembering what he’d read in a comic book.
“Yep. The School of Ring, School of Heart, School of Whisper and School of Script.”
“Ah, that’s right. I once read a comic about a guy who fought his way to the top of the School of Ring.”
Zoe snorted. “Fat chance.”
“It was a comic, fantasy. You know, what we call stuff that people read for entertainment that isn’t necessarily real.”
“I was never much into fantasy,” Zoe said as they
neared a couple of Southern Alliance police officers.
“Are you kidding? Your career is built on fantasy. What else would Tiger Lily be if not fantasy? All cosplay is fantasy.”
“Aware.”
“And you as Tiger Lily have done other things, right? Dressed as comic characters or whatever is required for your shoot?”
“I have. And your point?”
Sam’s nostrils flared as he looked at Zoe, something coming to him in that instant that he didn’t like.
“We fucked?” he asked with a gasp.
Zoe started laughing. “Yeah right, Sam. In your wildest dreams.”
“But…”
“Your nose is playing tricks on you.”
“Maybe it is,” he said, rubbing his fist against his nostrils.
“Besides, Helena would be soooooo pissed if we did something like that. And she already doesn’t trust me.”
Sam shook his head. It was impossible; he knew it wasn’t true, but he couldn’t deny what his nose had just told him. He blamed the notion on his sinuses in that moment—something was off, it couldn’t have been true.
“Ma’am,” a police officer said to Zoe as he approached her from the side. He placed his hand on her arm…
And that was all it took.
Zoe brought her fist into his stomach, the policeman doubling over in pain.
“Hey!” his partner shouted, raising his wrist guard, but he was too late, Zoe cleared the distance between them and swept him off his feet.
“Shit…” Sam said, momentarily hesitating.
The urge to assist Zoe came to him, but he also was wary of finding out what a Southern Alliance jail looked like from the inside. So rather than knock the first officer down, so Zoe could finish taking on the second, Sam ran toward his ex, scooping her into his arms as if she were his bride and hightailing it toward the crowd back at the market.
It was a bold move, one that resulted in Zoe raking a clawed hand along his back during their initial contact.
“Dammit, Zoe!” he shouted as he continued to run.
“What the fuck are you doing!?” Zoe screamed as Sam charged into the crowd, pain surging up his spine from Zoe’s claws.
“I should be asking you the same thing!”
After they were clear of the fuzz, Sam set her down and grabbed her hand. “Come on. We’ve got to get the hell out of here!”
Unfortunately, the crowd had started to part, a few people pointing at them. They spotted a police exemplar rising over the crowd, energy crackling around the man’s eyes.
Sam jerked Zoe’s hand forward, and the next step he took was the strangest he’d ever taken in his life.
A sinking feeling in his stomach told Sam he was falling, but instead of falling downward he was falling sideways.
The crowd filtered away, and monstrous beasts gnashed their teeth at him.
Before Sam could cry out in terror, before he could shit his pants, he was being shoved onto the pavement and cuffed. Zoe was next to him, fear writ large on her face as she was cuffed by a woman with glowing symbols on her arms.
“You two are coming with me,” the woman said, her face leonine, Sam’s mind still reeling from what he’d just witnessed moments ago.
It only took half a whiff as the woman stood him up, congested Sam instantly knowing that she was from one of those rune schools that Zoe had told him about.
The School of Heart, apparently, which was why there were runes glowing beneath her skin.
“That was crazy,” Sam told the woman as she led him away. More Southern Alliance police were on the perimeter now, blocking the crowd from gawking.
“You liked that?” the female officer asked, elbowing Sam in the back.
“Hey!”
“Watch it!” Zoe roared at the lady, kicking her feet out. The tiger girl was also being led by a police officer now, the same one that she’d punched in the gut. He wasn’t happy either, the man shoving her forward every chance he got.
“What are we being arrested for?” Sam asked, wincing at two pains now, the first being the claw marks Zoe had delivered to his back, the second being the elbow that the female cop had gifted him.
“Keep quiet and come along,” the female officer said as she led them to an office tucked behind a bodega. Once they were inside, she pushed Sam into a seat, and Zoe was forcibly pushed into the seat next to him.
The tiger girl tried to kick at the male officer, but he got away this time, going for his wrist guard and aiming it at her.
“Do it, you fucking coward,” said Zoe, a smile coming across her face. Her arms morphed, the cuffs snapping off, Zoe shrieking as she tackled the man.
“Enough!” the female officer said just as another cop appeared with Sam’s bag that contained their exemplar uniforms. “We’re trying to help you. Your friend sent us!”
“Friend?” Zoe asked, just about to gouge the police officer’s eyes out. “Helena Knight sent you?”
“Yes,” the female officer said, “and we were trying to tell you this, but you attacked us! Let him go, dammit.”
Zoe’s tail lowered as she got off the male officer, offering him an unmorphed hand, which he definitely didn’t take.
“Suit yourself,” she said, rejoining Sam. “And sorry,” Zoe told the female officer, offering her a shrug.
“God, these Centralians…”
“We’re really sorry…” Sam assured the female cop.
A teleporter appeared, this one a woman wearing blue leggings and a gray dress.
“These them?” she asked as symbols began to swirl around her.
“Yes. Get them out of my sight, and if I ever see you two again, especially you…” The female officer glared at Zoe. “Let’s just hope that doesn’t happen.”
Chapter Thirty-Two: Reunited and It Feels So Good
(Now it’s time to kick some vampire ass!)
Ozella Rose didn’t know how to tell Helena what she saw when she looked at Juniper. She couldn’t send her a mental message, and Juniper hadn’t left their company since joining them for breakfast.
The three sat in a room off the kitchen. Maybe it was a nook. Ozella didn’t know; her house had never had a space like this. But architectural preferences of the rich and famous were far from her mind as she triple-checked what she was seeing when she looked at Juniper.
Name: Juniper Hydroze
Status: Non-Exemplar
Power: Script Rune
Strength: Runic Magic
Weakness: N/A
Additional Skill: Portal Summoning, Soft Resurrection, Offensive Runes
Power Rating: 4
Recharge: N/A
Juniper smiled, something flashing behind her eyes. “Good news. The police have spotted your two friends and are trying to apprehend them now. They should be here shortly. Also, since we have a moment, I believe there is something else we should discuss.”
“Yes, there is,” Ozella said, biting her lip for a moment.
Juniper turned to Ozella, a curious look now on her face. “Did you have something you wanted to say?”
“You first,” Ozella said, suddenly feeling nervous. She knew what she saw, but she wanted to see if Juniper was going to admit it or not.
“Very well then, I will cut right to the chase. Last night you used a superpower on me,” Juniper told Helena.
“I did?” Helena asked, the color draining from her face.
“No sense in playing like you don’t know what you have done, I’ve already verified what happened by revisiting the scene.”
“She’s a rune user,” Ozella blurted out. “Script Runes. I saw it, I mean, I know it from her stats.”
“How do you know that?” Juniper asked, her voice wavering. “Are you a telepath?”
“Nope…”
“Wait, did you say you used a rune last night?” asked Helena.
“I painted a note in time as soon as I saw your eyes start to spin,” Juniper told Helena. “Once everything was said and done,
I returned to the scene and revisited what I had recorded. Since when did you have a superpower?”
“I…” Helena looked to Ozella.
“We are an exemplar team, an unregistered one, in Centralia,” Ozella said. “We didn’t originally have powers, well, Sam did, and you will meet him soon. Both of us, and Zoe, whom you’ll also meet, gained powers through a chemical explosion.”
“A chemical explosion?”
Ozella nodded. “There’s this guy, Dr. Hamza, and he made a serum that activates a non-exemplar’s dormant power. Our powers were activated.”
“And what would those powers be, aside from hypnosis?”
“One of mine is to collect information from someone just by looking for it. The other is, a bit stranger.”
“Go on…”
“Actually, you can’t see my power. Not unless you are part of my inner circle. But if you must know, Dinah, a blue ghost woman who follows me around, is standing next to you right now,” Ozella said, smiling over at Juniper. “On my command, she can make you feel more pain than you have ever felt in your life. She can also heal you.”
Juniper looked left and right.
“Trust me, you can’t see her, but she’s there.”
“So you are a healer of sorts?”
“She is. I can also turn her tangible. Power-up, on,” and with those words, Dinah’s form solidified. Juniper glanced from the nude woman to Helena. After settling her nerves, she stood and offered Dinah a short bow.
“Nice to meet you,” said Juniper. Dinah stared at her curiously for a moment before Ozella banished her.
“She’s useful,” Helena said, “and definitely works as a surprise in a battle.”
“And do you have a power-up?” Juniper asked.
“Yes, I’m able to create a mass hallucination.”
“Fascinating.”
“But let’s get back to you,” Helena said. “You never told me that you went to a rune school.”
Juniper shrugged. “It’s not something that one volunteers down here. Runes allow non-exemplars to have powers similar to exemplars, but the schools don’t usually take non-exemplars, oddly enough. Their student bodies usually consist of exemplars, who are enhancing their own powers, or wealthy Southerners. As you know, I fit into the latter category.”
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