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Finally Updating!
I decided to continue this story after all. This chapter’ll be more eventful (AKA less craptastic and less sucky) than the last one! In fact, the last one was so bad that if you hadn’t already read it, I would have told you right now NOT to read Chapter 1 and to just skip over it to this chapter and risk being lost and confused about the characters and whatever’s going on, because it really sucked that bad and you might have benefited from NOT reading it.
End of rant.
Enjoy!
Chapter 2: Spiritual Synthesis
The bell rang. Malcov sprang up and made to rush to the door when a pair of turquoise eyes rooted him to the spot. Turning his head as he picked up his books, he met eyes with Kayde, who was still grinning giddily. Behind him, the pale blue-eyed Freeman stared at Malcov over his friend’s shoulder, mismatched brown locks flowing down to Kayde’s elbows in some places. He was smiling too, though his smile was more of a condescending smirk than anything.
Malcov tore his gaze away and glared at the floor as he trudged out of the classroom, feeling their eyes on his back. What did they want? What were they after? He hated wondering.
Without a moments hesitation he whipped out his flip-phone and dialed The Branch.
“Don’t mind him,” Freeman chided, poking Kayde’s arm, “He probably just finds your being alive and well a shameful atrocity that insinuates some sort of perversion against nature.”
“You really have to stay away from that Thesaurus.” Kayde teased.
“Shut up.”
“There we go, back to normal!” Kayde grinned and patted Freeman on the back.
“We’d better be getting home, I bet Kazu’s already a nervous wreck just at the thought of us maybe being a few minutes late.” Freeman sighed as he led them both out the door.
“He really needs people around, you know, for someone who’s terrified of people.” Kayde commented, then paused and checked himself. “Did that make sense?”
“That made sense because you’re talking about Kazu, someone who never makes sense anyway.” Freeman replied.
“I’m getting confused.” Kayde admitted, scratching his head.
“So am I.” Freeman agreed, “Let’s just focus on getting to our lockers without overloading our brains.”
“Sounds good.”
Kazu suffered from both Anthropophobia and Aphenphosmphobia; he was terrified of people and being touched by them, and was therefore locked up in a room somewhere no one knew about in the building, controlling the weapons and defense systems, the electronic functions, the data updates, and anything else he could take care of without ever leaving his room. Meals were delivered to him by the only person who knew where he was, Kayde, and he would only take the food after the coast was clear. He had his own bathroom so he lived in there quite comfortably, socializing with everyone else though the screens from his little haven.
And if that worked for him, that was fine, because everyone needed their space. Kazu just needed more than most people. He wasn’t the only one with weird needs and habits, that was for sure.
Kazu scratched his head nervously as he checked all the monitors again, eagerly awaiting the usual group to get home. First it would be Kayde and Freeman, and then Wreeta after she’d finished shopping, then Xao-Ping from her reconnaissance mission, then Elise and Lucian would wake up.
Elise and Lucian were handfuls, but unintentionally. It wasn’t their fault that they were vampires. So what if they drank blood rather than water and didn’t sit down with them at dinner? Sure, they slept all day and even at night they weren’t always around, and they tended to be on the anti-social side of the spectrum… But they were still part of The Den.
Then there was Wreeta. She was the only teenage werewolf female they lived with. She was a real sweetie, literally. She had an unhealthy obsession with sweets. She put sugar on everything and had a permanent stash of candy in her room bigger than a whole neighborhood’s Halloween stockpile. And she had to restock it every week, since it never lasted.
Xao-Ping was another oddball. She was the same race as Kazu, but she was pure-blooded. Her hair was naturally streaked in different shades of purple, tied up in two large buns at the top of her head and the rest of her hair falling down from the buns in spirals. She appeared Asian, as Kazu did, and she usually dressed in Chinese dresses and acted completely mature and unimpressed by everything. But her quirk lay with her physical appearance. She was beautiful…beautifully covered in make-up that is. It was over-done to say the least. Bright green eye-shadow, tons of mascara and eye-liner, bright red lipstick and bright pink blush that matched her eyes…she was very insecure.
Kazu leaned back on his computer chair and tapped his foot on his desk in irritation. It was boring before everyone else got home.
There were others that lived in The Den permanently that, like Kazu, rarely left; they were mostly orphaned werewolf and vampire children, and there was one thirty year old female werewolf by the name of Ophelia took care of all of the little ones, as well as her own six year old daughter. But they stayed on the lowest basement floor and they weren't very social either, and the others didn’t see them very often.
The person who supported them financially was a woman in her sixties that they all knew as Mama Bea, or Beatrice if you were addressing her formally. She was a wealthy woman who was shrouded in mystery. Apparently, her son had been a werewolf, but he’d died a long while ago. However it had happened, it had inspired Mama Bea to create The Den and take in the strays she found wandering the streets. Hardly anyone had ever seen her.
The Den itself was nothing short of hideous and condemned-looking on the outside, just a ruddy mess in the middle of Downtown. It resembled a small old two story building that might once have been a small business. But there were six other floors to that building…underground. It was the safest place. No one would even guess there was a trapdoor under the grass in the fenced off backyard, not to mention the security system was impossible to fool, a system that made it soundproof to the outside world and it had automatically closing blinds so that the vampires could wander about without having to worry about open windows or stray sunbeams.
And that was where Freeman and Kayde were at that very moment, on level B2, lounging on the couches and discussing trivial matters of no importance. How could Kazu have been so distracted that he’d missed them coming in? He hooked up his Tele-Cam, a device similar to a Web-Cam, to the screen in question and was immediately tuned in to their conversation and was visible to them through the mini TV. They didn't notice him.
“But WHY does he hate me Freeman?” Kayde whined through the pixels on Kazu's end.
“Will you shut up about that? He’s just a jackass, what else can I say?” Freeman huffed, tossing a throw-pillow unenthusiastically in Kayde’s general direction, missing by a meter. “Him and all those other “Branchies” that work with the government, they’re hired to hate us. It’s got nothing to do with you.”
“I wonder what could have made him hate us so much in the first place…” Kayde thought aloud, twirling one of his curls with his finger.
“Funny that you picked all the same classes that he had by total chance.” Freeman commented, smirking. “The look on his face when you followed him to every single one…he probably thinks we’re stalking him or something!”
“Of course not!” Kayde replied, “That’s silly, why would he think that? That would be totally paranoid!”
After alerting his supervisor about the new situation, he reported directly to The Branch’s headquarters. Unlike The Den, these headquarters were hardly hidden. The building was massive; it had thirty floors in total, the top ten reserved as residences for personnel, like Malcov. The rest was filled with various labs, training facilities, important storage chambers and places that were top secret and that required special clearance.
He flashed his ID card to the usual guard at the door and entered the building, placing his hand on a scanning plate in front of the elevator and waiting for the light to turn green, watching as a piece of the metallic wall slid away to reveal the “up” and “down” buttons. He pushed “up” and waited only a few seconds before a musical “ding!” rang out and the door slid open from one side only, revealing the impeccably clean, metal interior of the empty elevator box.
He stepped in and pressed the green button labeled “Level 28”, watching it shimmer a pretty orange shade as it scanned his fingerprints again, another subtle precaution, then the door slid shut quietly and he felt it began to move.
His superiors had requested he keep a close eye on this... special Werewolf group. It was the most notorious den they’d encountered because it was impossible to find. So far they had photographs and detailed files on about four of their members, two werewolves, a vampire and a direct descendant of species X17. It seemed this group worked mainly on snatching strays off the streets and converting them to their cause. If the conversion failed, the werewolf (or sometimes the vampire) in question was killed.
It was the Branch’s assumption that the group was in fact very small, not a big security risk for the time being. In fact, this rag-tag group was somewhat useful, getting a few extra monstersout ofthe way for free. But the fact that their den had not yet been located, after months of searching, was starting to make the higher-ups nervous. It wasn’t safe to risk to be uninformed about these kinds of organizations, no matter how small they were.
Malcov and his team were to have a meeting tomorrow to discuss their plan of action for their new assignment. Taking out members of the group out in the open was out of the question. Capturing a few members of that particular den wouldn’t be useful either, it might only scare the rest of its members into a different hiding place and make them harder to find. This was a delicate situation.
The elevator dinged its musical tune and stopped, metal door sliding open to reveal a shiny metal hallway. The walls were painted white but the ceiling and floor were reinforced steel. As Malcov stepped out, he recognized a familiar face.
Jaysan waved at him from the end of the hall and waited for Malcov to walk over to him before speaking.
“Tomorrow at four-thirty then?” he asked, setting his computer watch schedule accordingly.
“Yeah. You dyed your hair again Jay?” Malcov asked, noticing that Jaysan’s natural red-brown hair was streaked with the odd strand of hot pink, including a piece of hair tied in a braid near his face, just beside his left eye.
“Don’t make fun, girls think it’s hot.” Jaysan brushed off smugly.
“I didn’t know the metrosexual look was still in fashion.” Malcov replied, noting to himself that he had serious doubts that Jaysan liked girls anyway.
“You never know what’s in fashion, you’re lucky the Branch supplies your clothes and keeps you updated.”
Malcov shrugged and started to walk away down the empty hall.
“I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.” He muttered as he trudged away. It hadn’t been a productive conversation anyway.
“Whatever, you know I’m right!” Jaysan called after him, Malcov just waved.
He’d have to rest up tonight. By tomorrow he’d need to have concocted a plan.
Sorry if there are typos.
I’ll update this soon as long as I get a few reviews so that I know people are actually reading it. I have a very developed plot for this story, I’m just itching to get it all down.
Hope it didn’t suck,
-Chicken Ice Cream-