Episode 3-2: Feather Flight

The window next to me quickly gets covered in claw marks by an invisible force. I can hear the whole car's metal being scraped on by what could only be a massive amount of knives. The windshield is taking the worst of it, I can't even see past all these big scratches littering almost every square inch of it.

"Clyde, now would be fantastic if you could pull something out of thin air and save us."

"Air, that's funny," he says. He's been messing with several wires in the access panel of the steering wheel since we broke in.

Feather Flight still watches from three feet away. His face says he's starting to lose patience. "Den of Lions, rip this car apart!"

The whole car is shaken by a giant push on my side. There's no hole just yet, we're still safe.

"Hey, careful!" I shout, "You almost spilled my coffee!"

I stick my tongue out at him and watch him get angrier. The car's metal whines in agony as the paint is scratched off at several different spots. The engine starts up and the headlights turn on. Clyde throws it in drive and swerves out of the parking space. I wonder how far Den of Lions can reach, hopefully, it's tied to how close his body is.

"Shit, that was close!" Clyde shouts.

"To the hotel! We'll grab our gear and make this a fair fight."

"Wait, do you feel that?"

"...I do."

The car is warming up with the heater already on from the owner's last drive. The air vents spit out hot air directly at our faces. I hastily turn the knob to shut off the vents, but the cuts on my finger tell me I was too slow. More cuts appear on my body, my eyes would've been gone if I hadn't closed them.

Clyde's driving causes us to swerve off the road and crash into a bolted bench. When I look at him to see if he's all right, he's covering his left eye with his hand.

"Agh, that one hurt," he says.

"Clyde, are you okay?"

"My eye. He got it. I can't see. It won't stop bleeding."

"Can you walk?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"We need to go before he catches up."

"Okay, start running for the hotel."

I open my door while Clyde kicks his out with both feet. We make a mad dash in the cold air, our bodies getting covered in new scratches. Some of them are so deep, they don't stop bleeding, soaking our clothes in liters of blood. I'm starting to feel woozy from all the blood loss. I can barely run straight.

The hotel's signs come into view, and my stinging skin cries out in joy. I don't know how far we left Feather Flight, we didn't get anywhere with the car. I can't look back, I'm still getting shredded from the wind I'm hitting just by running. He more than likely can still see us, how else could his power work?

I push the doors open and let Clyde in. I don't even try to explain to the frantic front desk about the state of our bodies. It looks like we were mauled by a feral animal. Clyde presses the elevator button, we get in, and we head to our second floor. The doors open, and I make an immediate left for our room, but stop when I see the jacket.

"Hah!" Feather Flight says. He's bent over wheezing and huffing. "Caught ya!"

"How did you get here?"

"I was…right behind you. Took the stairs, I'm out of shape…" He leans on the wall and holds a hand to his heart. "Sheesh. Look at you two, not even breathless from all that sprinting. Then again, I took the stairs."

Clyde stumbles out and raises his fists. "This hallway seems pretty stiff, I don't feel any wind here."

"You think I'd run all the way up here knowing there'd be less wind? What, did you think I was going to challenge you to a fistfight? That's Kay-Oh's specialty, not mine."

I raise my fists too. "Great, another trick. Let's see it."

"Nothing special." He reaches behind his back and pulls out two colorful Asian fans. He unfurls them and hides his mouth and head in a pose. "Gorgeous, no? Deadly too. I'm practically bringing the wind with me."

As soon as he takes the first swipe with the fan, the walls begin to be coated with claw marks, and the vase sitting on a table is busted to pieces. Clyde and I both run in the opposite direction. There's no chance I'm going back into the wind, I'm already badly injured. The nanobots help with the pain, but there's nothing they can do about blood loss. They keep pumping me full of adrenaline, but it's not helping.

A cut on my elbow makes me run faster. I really thought I outran Feather Flight's wimpy fan, but the wind is tricky to predict. Clyde turns down another hallway, and I follow subconsciously. My body is totally shedding fur, the blood is staining every bit of clothing I'm wearing.

Clyde's hand pulls me by the wrist into an open door. He slams it shut, and it's completely dark. I can't find a light switch.

"Where are we?" I ask.

"I'm pretty sure this is a custodial closet. Got a light?"

My phone screen is coated with dry blood, but the flashlight still works. The room is cramped and cluttered with cleaning supplies. More of Clyde's blood drips from him and lands on the floor. If a puddle starts, Feather Flight is going to notice a stream flowing from behind the door.

"He's going to find us if you keep juicing like a lemon over there."

"I can't help it, I'm leaking like a cartoon character. How are you feeling?"

"Woozy, the shoulder slash really poured it out of me. What do we do now? No where to go, unless you want to try squeezing through the vents."

"Look at the size of me, that'll never work. I don't know, is there anything we can use in here?"

"There's a medkit!"

We both look at our wounds, there are way too many to start effective treatment at the moment. It'll be like plugging one hole in a ship that has several cannon shots through it. We both shake our heads and keep looking.

"Oh my God, Clyde, look! A shop vacuum!"

"Is it a plug-in?"

"Battery powered."

"Grab it!"

We burst through the door and see Feather Flight waiting on the other side. He raises his fans threateningly. "Getting sleepy yet? You guys left a trail of blood on the way here. I'd be drained if I was running on empty like that. Ready for some more leaks?"

Clyde holds his hand behind him, and I hand him the nozzle of the vacuum. "This should clean up your act!" I turn it on behind him, and the nozzle sucks up the air right in front of us. Feather Flight ferociously fans his fans at us, but Den of Lions isn't cutting us. It's working. "Troy, now!"

I jump in front of him and engage in my close-quarters training. One punch connects with his nose, and as he flinches back, I wrap my arm around his and thrust downward to force the fan out of his grasp. A quick turnaround and palm strike to his shoulder causes his weaker arm to drop the other fan instantly. It was only a guess that he was right-handed, but I'm glad I was right.

I keep up the combo, throwing head kicks and attacking his joints until I run out of breath. He blindly throws his own wild hook, but it misses terribly, and I counter with an uppercut to his chin followed by a spinning backfist. This is great, he's not martially trained like Kay-Oh or Clockwork. He can't fight back with just his fists. If we can keep him away from the wind, we can bag this victory much easier than anticipated.

A side kick connects with his stomach, slamming him into the wall and making him bounce back. A reverse roundhouse is strong enough to lift him up and twirl in the air before landing on his ribs. A crack is very audible, even with the vacuum on. He screams and holds his stomach while retreating into a fetal position. I don't stop. I force one of his arms out from under him and stomp on the elbow, inverting it with another loud break. His arm is now bent the wrong way.

"Jesus, Troy, even I wouldn't do that," Clyde comments.

Blood from my own body drips on top of Feather Flight. My breathing is heavy, and through the intensity of my combative string of strikes, I realize now that I've made it even harder to stay standing. I'm dizzy and weak, and my mouth is dry. I look like I was dropped into a blender.

The absents of the vacuum's motor makes me turn around. Clyde looks at the nozzle, then panic sets on his face.

"Out of juice!"

I look back at Feather Flight, a single eye peeks at me while he still cradles himself. He suddenly springs up and clutches my shirt with his good arm. His lips lock with mine, and with the air from his own lungs, he blows hard into my mouth. Den of Lions rips open my gums, nearly severs my tongue, and cuts off my uvula. I fall backward, blood explodes from my mouth like a spit take.

I see the whole vacuum fly over me; Clyde had thrown it at Feather Flight, hitting him in the chest. He runs down the hall, slipping away behind a corner. Clyde bends down and leans over me.

"That's pretty bad. Are the nanobots blocking your pain?"

I don't even answer. My jaw moves and a gurgle escapes my throat. I turn to the side and spit the blood out that was choking me. "Okay, let's call this one quits."

"You don't mean that."

"I don't. This still sucks though."

"I know."

"My clothes are ruined."

"Yup."

"Your clothes are ruined."

"Yup."

"Where did he go?"

"Around the corner."

"Now's a good chance to grab our supplies."

"I'll get them. Stay with Feather Flight so I can keep track of you two."

"Why do I have to chase him?"

"You're smarter than me, you're better at avoiding Den of Lions."

"Did you not just see what he just did to me?"

Clyde darts off in the opposite direction, he didn't even help me up. I lazily follow Feather Flight's trail only to see that he didn't get very far from the corner. He's crying while sliding along the walls holding his ribs and arm.

"Not so fun on the pain side of things, is it?" I ask.

He continues to inch his way down the hall. "It hurts! It hurts so bad!"

I start walking towards him, my steps are heavy, and can't keep in a straight line. "You signed up to be a bad guy, you put yourself here."

"The Key nabbed me from the street and told me to cooperate. I don't know what any of this is, but that weird cube gave me Den of Lions as a reward. They just told me a little history and to watch out for Ispio agents."

"Then I feel sorry for you. They purposefully made you into a target once they found that your blood wasn't the same as The Character's."

"How could you even call us the bad guys? They told me their side of the story, why are you actively hunting down their special teammates? Imagine a reality where crime is—"

"Spare me the plight, I already heard it enough times. Now, let's rock out."

"No, I'd say this symphony is in its last act."

I thought he was just running away from me, but he was really heading towards a second-story window. He uses his good elbow to break the frame, the window falls out, and the violent wind rushes into the building.

"Damn it!"

"Den of Lions!"

The wind is foggy and sharp, and through its foggy figure, a shape starts to take structure. It becomes the faces of several lions with glowing red eyes, and giant paws with bigger claws! Their ghostly manes float wildly and their jaws open to expose fangs thicker than my body.

They reach me, and I watch as one of the heads takes a chomp at me; its whole fang going through the bone of my forearm. Paws dig into my stomach and slash outward, creating giant gashes with no chance of closing without an actual rope to stitch them back. The pain doesn't even register, I just watch in an out-of-body experience several lions rip me to shreds.

That's when I see a metal ball fly over my body and expand in an explosion of metal to make an instant shield. It covers the window, and the lions slowly disappear, leaving my fresh wounds to spurt streams of thick blood and dribble out like a steady IV hose.

My hearing goes away, tinnitus rings through my head as I don't feel the slightest pain. I've died a few times technically, the nanobots like to bring me back to receive more punishment. I think I'm dying right now, this is how I remember it feeling. No hearing, vision is spotty and blurred in my peripherals, and my body feels both weightless and heavy at the same time.

"Troy," Clyde says, his voice muffled and underwater, "you've been bled dry. I can't do anything about the blood you lost, but Nivan's medical serum should close up some of those holes. Hold still."

I don't see it, but I know he's holding one of Nivan's portable medical gels. I feel Clyde lower my jaw and steadily pour in some of the gel. Some of my worse cuts get closed up, the bleeding stops; some cuts remain, but it's better than nothing. I don't have enough blood, I still feel very dizzy, but at least I'm not leaking anymore.

"Can you walk?"

My tongue lazily flaps, threatening to rip from its last thread. "Give me a minute. Where'd he go?"

"He went back down the stairs. I'm surprised he's walking. You really roughed him up. Are you going to do it again?"

"Your turn."

"Unless we wait for the vacuum's battery to charge, we don't have a plan on blocking out his wind."

"We have to think of something. None of his attacks have been lethal, but with all the cuts he keeps giving us, I know his method is bleeding out his targets."

"Yeah, I've been dizzy since the street brawl."

I put my hand up. "Help."

He picks me up and lets me lean on his shoulder. He takes me to the stairs, but there's no way of knowing he actually went down them. If I were him, a broken rib and arm might convince me to retreat. He doesn't have the nanobots to help with the pain, so he might be panicking and running as far as he can.

Down the stairs it is. He's probably going to try to find a hiding place. How are we going to track him?