Nova

The pipe must have taken more damage than I thought... Kneeling to the ground, pistole to my crown, water drips from the ceiling, smacking the floorboards, matching the rhythm of my heart.

It drips, and drips, and drips, going beside the buzzing and flickering lights. - Did she pull the trigger? - My eyes were shut. I anticipated death had hit me.

"Look at that..." My head bolts up, hearing the girl's voice break the silence. "For some suicidal kid, you sure are obedient."

Suicidal? How do she-

"God, I can't believe I apprehended an upcoming rank one hero with something like this, though."

She then places the gun up further, grabbing on my shoulder with her free hand, no longer looking like the woman from earlier when I slightly look at her, but a girl with a less bumptious chest and long black hair, emerald-colored eyes remaining.

"Hey! hey! Tell me, how does it feel? Being on the end of this barrel?"

"Wait, let's calm down for a sec-

The green-eyed girl quickly points the gun away from me to Uncle Keysei, spotting him moving closer.

"If you move again," Over my head, the girl's finger slightly pulls back on the trigger, toying with his life. "I might kill you first."

In the moment she looks up towards Uncle, I jump up from the floor, waving shadows to shroud her vision, hearing a fire shot, when stepping back. - Then, dashing outside my desperate attempt to escape, I decide to attack her off guard. - She puts the barrel of the gun on my forehead. The girl anticipated that I would rush her.

My heart turns shallow by the side of my blanking in terror face. -The gun cocks back, I tremble at the sound, only to witness the gun smoke in between my eyes, and the girl's startle expression. Both caught off guard from me being alive.

"Close call..." Another voice sneaks out near my ear, one that wasn't in the room before, fingers humming purple shadows over my shoulder. "You could've killed the vessel..."

I slowly face the new intruder, sighting a guy, close or even older than the age I am, dress in a huge coat, fragile and pale like a ghost, smiling an empty look, carved out look in his violet eyes. -

That very same person gets a bullet shot through his head, the girl who opposed us not giving him another chance to speak.

"Damn it all," She marches pass me to the one she killed, pointing her gun at the corpse. "If you're here, then Phi must be close by-

In a blink of our eyes, the pale one has his hands fighting around the girl's neck, gripping down on to it, suffocating her.

"Phi? Nah... She's... On another trip..." Her eyes widen as he grew a stronger grip, causing the girl to drop her gun to the floor. "To be honest though, I didn't expect to see you here, Nako... Not again... Not here..."

The girl he called Nako, slants her eyes at him, grabbing hold of both his arms. "I... Can.... Say, the same...! -

Before our very eyes, light, large amount of electricity, bolts through the air, striking the dripping pipe, the couch, and the trash bag. And, in the midst of that attack, trash, including the couches cushion, flutter down to the floor with the image of Ella, locking back her head, gazing back at me.

The girl from earlier, Nako, was no longer in sight. Though... The more I gaze back at the frozen model of her, the more I realize those strange pupils. The same ones the lady I serve tea had, and the exact as the girl named Nako.

The girl who stood before me, was an imposter of Ella, just like the lady from before... When the girl held me down, and switch to herself, that should have given it away from the start. That Nako... A green-eyed devil is a shape shifter.

Soon after I establish the truth behind her powers, that girl, Nako, fell to the floor, with the pink hair boy completely gone., as if the light from the electricity swallowed him up...

"Nako...? Phi? " Uncle looks at the damage done to the break room, trying his best to take in all the events. "What the hell... Is all of this? .... Zenith, do you know these people?"

As he tries wrapping his head around it all, I go to the girl, who switches from Ella to the black hair girl, to an entirely new person. A girl who has light glittering green hair, emerald-colored eyes, and a burnt mark covering half of her face, fleshing to her eyes. If not related, she looks a whole lot... Like Meniko...

I pick her up from off the concrete, hands under legs and neck, easily able to carry her near Keysei.

"I know this might be a stupid idea... I know she just tried to kill us..." I look at Keysei dead in his eyes, hopping my uncle would understand my choice. "But... I need more answers... I need her to be alive."

Uncle first ball his hands up into a fist, redirecting his sight to the wall, however, let go of the vivid frustration, giving me his full thoughts. "She paid us a fortune, then bust into my shop and demolish the break room... I know I said, treat her as a queen including all that extra stuff, but to be honest... I'm lost on what to do right now..."

Uncle Keysei, squats down, hand clamp over each other, seeming like he prayed.

"Take her upstairs..." He lets out a whining voice. Something I thought I would never hear from Uncle. "Then, once she is up... I need you to go."

He looks me directly in the eyes to be sure I got his message clearly.

I... Tears start sart flooding down my face.

"Are you, kicking me out? -

"You have to understand!" Uncle Keysei shoots back up, hand on smacking his chest. "I'm powerless at the sight of a gun! Stuff like creating portals in thin air, the ability to raise yourself from the dead, and shapeshifting, this is far beyond me! I'm human Zennith... I can't protect you. Or myself..."

He couldn't even look me in the eyes when saying all of that. He declares that he can't protect, that he is only human, but I witness him charge straight into a burning building to grab a photo of his wife. So why? Why tell me this?

"Uncle... I can protect us-

"You understand.... If you leave, then you wouldn't have to protect me."

"Uncle! -

Uncle Keysei pulls some of the money given to him from out of his pocket, shoving it to my chest, shaking me and the body I carried.

"Listen kid... I'm not abandoning you. I just like the peace and quiet around here... Take this money to a motel near here."

"Stop, I can just go upstairs-

"When you get there, say that you're my son. The lady at the counter will gobble the lie up, let you stay longer, for hell, under a dollar." His hand clenches the money on my chest, letting it all run dry. "Once you do... Don't come back."

...Don't.... Come back?

Uncle, he spoke those words to me, letting the money flutter to floor to leave out the room before me. Even though it was another body in my arms, I felt rather cold... I... I didn't want to hear them anymore, the cruel words of rejection that repeated in my head. Thinking over and over again, that Uncle Keysei didn't want me to be here in the first place. Considering that what I believed to be time spent well together, was guilty of letting me through his door in the first place...

Don't come back.... Don't come back... Don't come back... Don't come back... Those words loop in my brain, picking up the money, drifting in front of the Motel Keysei mention, in a snap.

Tunnel vision struck me, watching over Nako's body that night, unable to process it all. Everything... The money, this girl, that boy, being kicked out by Uncle, it all felt... Unreal...

I can't help but hope.... That when this girl wakes back up, she'll become my reaper, who ends this endless cycle of pain in my life. If she could just turn into Juna for those last moments, maybe... Just maybe I could go in peace...

I glance over to Nako in the bed from a table chair I laid back in, spotting a brief movement from her. She twists and turns her body, trembling as if she was cold underneath the covers. Then, after securing the covers over her head, she rises up from beneath them, eyes shooting across the room until they hit me.

"Where am I?"

This girl, that I still knew nothing about, spoke so bluntly to me, shutting all my predictions of her behavior once here, out the door.

"A motel... In the Ruby District..."

I stare off to the other side, feeling that if we communicate more, that she'll just be killed or taken. Just like the rest of them...

"Ruby... Motel.... Right, I get it now. Must have black out again." She speaks to herself, reaching for the burnt side of her face. -

Nako transforms back to the black hair girl from before, hopping off of the Motel's bed, swopping me from the chair by the white T-shirt I wore, aiming the gun she pulls out her pocket, under my chin.

"I hate bastards like you..." She goes for the back of my head, jacking it backwards to be sure I stare directly at her, and only her. "Once a girl's on a floor, the first thought is to take her to a room or hotel. Tell me, how was I? Was it worth it?"

"Pfft... you're kidding?" The fear I had for her, somehow choked out as laughter. I just couldn't believe that a situation like "that" devolved after all that happen.

"Oh, so it's funny to you?" Nako... She might be a bit derange.

"I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but it's hard to want to bang a girl I know nothing about... So no, I didn't rape you." I give it to her straight, not budging about the gun she toys with in her hand. "Hey though," I then grab hold of her hand that held the gun, placing it closer to the bottom of my chin. "If you're going to off me, can you do me a favor? Change into this girl..." I dangle a photo of Juna on the phone in my free hand near the floor.

"Crazy..." Nako pulls the trigger, the gun sounds off, even so, I remain alive. Was the gun fake all along? "That stuck up bitch was right... You're just like the rest of us."

The rest of us? - Nako then grabs both sides of my face, hovering over my lap as she stares at me carnivorously.

"You have no reason to live anymore... Drifting between good and evil, becoming something despise by all. A hypocritical hero, a vigilantly."- Her hair turns light brown, draping to her shoulders, having the touch, the smell and the face of Juna. "Someone like you, perfectly fit in Nova."