Chapter 73

[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]

Saturday 8th April 2000

In the lead-up to Kitty’s birthday, a decision was made. Her birthday landed on a Monday, and we broke up for the Easter holidays on Friday – as in school broke up, not the six of us – so it made sense to save the bulk of the celebrations for the following weekend. A Monday wasn’t really a good day for a birthday party, and if we were choosing a weekend, as I argued, it felt weird to have a birthday party before the birthday had happened.

And since we were discussing having two weeks off school, Kendal finally won and she and Bao are staying over at Dakota’s through the break. The idea of Zahid finally burying the red-bladed hatchet with his family once the break was over was also floated, though we didn’t leave that on as much of a solid conclusion as everything else. All these weeks later, he’s still being stubborn… though I think he’s also kind of uneasy at the idea of talking with them about it.

Naturally, we still had some cake on Monday (a small one, saving the big one for the party), and we gave her our presents too. The biggest present for her actually seemed to be the news that we were throwing her a party, as she crumpled her lips and poorly fought back tears after we told her.

Which makes it sound bad, but she made it crystal-clear that she was immensely grateful. The revelation that this would be her first proper birthday party earned her more hugs than she knew what to do with.

School ended on a half day, and so much of the Friday was devoted to Bao and Kendal bringing over some stuff for the two-week stay, and Lucy…

Lucy’s got her heart set on hanging out with us as much as possible now that she’s become a Painter. And I completely get it, since the rest of us hang out most of the time and it makes sense for her to stay in close contact with us in case a monster emerges or Melody tries to pull something. But it’s also really weird to have her trying to join in to an even greater degree than when she was dating Kendal… and that relationship still being in a really weird place wasn’t helping things either.

Zahid was the only one of us prepared to firmly tell her no, and predictably, that wasn’t nearly enough to stop her.

The current sleeping arrangement is Kendal on the floor in Kitty’s room, Bao on the floor in Zahid’s, and Lucy on the sofa.

We spent an hour putting up some birthday decorations after Kitty went to bed (yes, it took an hour, are you surprised?), just to save us the trouble of doing it in the morning.

I’ll spare you all the little details of the Saturday morning, especially as it was pretty much bog-standard fair aside from all seven of us being in the same house from the moment we woke up. And, well… Kitty had only made a couple of friends at school, so it wasn’t like we were expecting a huge shift in atmosphere once the party actually began. We were going to spend some time hanging out indoors, and also go into town for a few hours. Nothing super special, other than the big cake and plenty of nibbles, but a celebration all the same.

Jo and Emma were due at 1pm.

At 12:30pm, the news came on.

“Aaah!” I heard Kendal cry out from the living room – I was in the kitchen with Dakota, Bao and Lucy at the time, and of course we all dropped what we were doing and bolted to her.

“What happened, what is it?” Bao buzzed hurriedly, looking around the room on full alert.

“London!” Kendal uttered, and pointed at the TV screen. Zahid and Kitty both had their eyes fixed on it too.

Footage – live footage – was coming in of the streets of London, filled with panic-stricken people trying desperately to flee in a dozen different directions. Roaming about amongst them, like hyenas, were masked figures, waving around guns and knives and terrorising whoever got close to them. With how busy the streets were and how many masked individuals there appeared to be, even people’s efforts to get away were proving pretty ineffective.

One shot, to another, to another, all the same. So many of what could only be Melody’s followers, each in their own unique mask, causing utter mayhem.

“What do we do…?” Kitty asked the rest of us, tense, fearful.

“Teleport there,” Dakota replied firmly. “And do whatever we can to stop this.”
Her Lokon spear manifested in her hand, and almost in one fell swoop, she blasted on her costume and teleported away.

“Half an hour to save the world…” Bao noted as the rest of us all summoned our weapons at the same time. “Well, not the world, that just sort of came out because it felt right.”

It was only at that point that Dakota suddenly emerged on-screen, standing atop a bench in the middle of the street. The live footage must have only just reached the television screen on its journey from London and through the broadcasting studio. The shot changed half a second after Dakota teleported in, then quickly switched back once whoever was coordinating the broadcast noticed that she’d teleported in.

“One of the Painters has just… appeared from nowhere!” the reporter proclaimed to underline what the screen was showing.

Dakota sprung into action, spinning her spear and unleashing arcs of green that struck the nearest masked figure. The six of us “Painted Up” all the while, so suddenly on edge.

“We should coordinate where we teleport, so we don’t land on top of each other-”
Zahid only got to say that much before Lucy teleported away too.
“Fucking damn it…”

“Let’s take it in turns,” I proposed. “Once Lucy appears, someone else can go.”

“Me next, then,” Bao offered, stepping forward.

Lucy appeared next to Dakota on the bench, and waved at the camera with characteristic enthusiasm.

“I’m going for that canopy!”
Bao teleported away right after telling us that, and so I had to use my own judgement to figure out that he meant the small canopy hanging above the front door of a store. In all fairness, the bench aside, there didn’t seem to be too many safe spots for us to teleport to.

The camera focused in more on Dakota and Lucy, leaving Bao’s destination out of shot. A little alleyway between two stores was now visible in the distance.

“Okay, I’m going in there,” I stated, pointing at the spot to make it clear. Focusing on it as much as possible, I urged myself to be there, and felt my body tingle for a fleeting moment. My eyes blinked on reflex like with a sneeze, and I emerged in the alley, facing the street.

The cacophony hit me much harder in-person, not least of all because of how sudden the transition was from television speakers to raw sound, but certainly because of the palpable atmosphere of terror that enveloped the whole street.

A tall individual (a man, I was sure) with a painted hockey mask prowled past the entrance to the alleyway, and I slashed forward with my sword, launching an arc of blue that hit them and sent them sprawling. That wasn’t enough, of course – we had to debilitate every enemy we could – and so I hurried forward, forming bonds with my sword. He was ready, though, and slashed for me with a large knife as I moved towards him. On instinct, I tried to avoid the blade, giving him a chance to scramble back to his feet.

“You know you look really stupid in that mask, right?” I told him. “The dumb knife doesn’t help. You look like something out of Halloween.”

He lunged for me with the knife: once bitten, twice as shy, I produced a blue shield that his weapon slammed into just like he was trying to stab a wall. His arm buckled from the impact, and as he drew back and yelped, I let the shield follow him, warping around him like a blanket. The bonds returned and acted like straight-jacket straps, securing everything in place.

The man grunted and writhed, but still didn’t speak. I snatched off his mask, unveiling his scowling face.

“I know she’s got into your head, but that’s no excuse for waving a knife around in public,” I scolded him, realising as I said it how much of a dweeb I must have seemed even if my point was fair.

“Watch your back!” Kendal yelled out to me. By the time I turned, another figure was already getting bound in a hundred strands of glowing pink.

Kendal strolled out of the alley, bow still raised.

“Thanks for the cover,” I smiled at her. “Wanna tie these two together?”

“Definitely!” she nodded firmly, taking the mask off of the second assailant. “And let’s get rid of their knives while we’re at it.”

I swung my captive around, and Kendal span hers: we placed them back-to-back and proceeded to wrap them in more blue and pink. A few wraps on their hands with the flat of my sword got them to drop their knives.

“Wanna tag-team or should we split up?” my friend asked me.

On a gut decision…
“Two heads are better than one.”

“Got it, let’s go!”
And with that, she hurtled off, into the crowd. I followed after her, trying to match her pace and doing my best to weave through the ever-shifting masses and the paths opening and closing in amongst them.

The next thing I knew, a bullet struck my shoulder. I roared out in pain, collapsing forward as my momentum collided with shock, and the people around me panicked all the more for the sound of the gunshot.

I had no idea where Kendal was, or if she had stopped to address the sound. I could only hope so – she was fast, but she was a salmon up a stream here as much as I was – as the presence of another of Melody’s followers so close, with a gun, took the entirety of my attention. I needed to get up and confront them.

Heaving myself upright, I turned around and winced past the subsiding sting in an attempt to find the shooter. I didn’t have to look hard: a woman with a roaring tiger mask was striding towards me, gun raised. I wanted to force her back with a wave of Lokonessence, but with so many people around, that would be beyond reckless. I brought up another shield, and then realised it was entirely possible that a bullet could ricochet off of it.

She fired at me right then – rather, she probably pulled the trigger the same moment that I brought up the shield – and I can only assume that Lokonessence responded to the thought that raced through my mind, because the bullet held fast in the shield instead.

With a mere idea in my head, the blue shield followed the bullet’s path back to the gun, wrapping the weapon and her hands until there was nothing but a large bundle at the end of her arms.

“Easy, Tiger,” I grunted as the bullet in my shoulder burst back out with a little spurt of blue blood.

“Shut up, traitor!” she snarled back, moving her arms about in a fruitless effort to free her hands.

I launched more blue at her legs, binding them too and destabilising her, letting her fall to the floor. Only then did I move forwards and take off her mask.

“Nice work, Blue!” one of the people in the crowd remarked, and someone – maybe the same person – patted my back.

“Thanks…!” I smiled back, even though they wouldn’t have seen anything but a blue blur where my face should be.

“There’s another one over here!” a woman’s voice declared. I looked in the rough direction from which the call had come, and saw a pair of arms waving about beyond half a dozen other people. Those people were parting aside, already aware that they were in the way.

I charged my sword, letting a fiery aura encompass it, as the next masked individual was unveiled by the dividing crowd: a ghoul mask, and a large knife, and panicked body language as they realised I was training in on them.

The woman who called out to me – I think it was her – grabbed hold of the figure from behind. A still target, now.

I swung my sword hard, and the wave of blue that crested forwards slammed into the figure, promptly knocking them out and binding them tight at the same time.

The people around cheered. There was still a bustle, still a panic, but there was a momentary sense of triumph in the area around me.

“Try to get to safety!” I advised them all, while looking around for any sign of friend or foe. Kendal popped back up, looking a little surprised.

“We good?” she asked.

“Yeah, sorry, just got shot,” I told her almost too flippantly, heading over to her. “Let’s go!”

“There’s another street that nobody else is at, we should go there!”
She was already leading me in the right direction as she said that.

For the next several minutes, Kendal and I made our way through that street, taking out one masked figure after another. For all of Melody’s smarts, her followers weren’t coordinating themselves or acting in any kind of tactical manner: we rarely had to deal with more than one figure at a time, as they each seemed to be doing their own thing and focusing on their own business.

That said, Melody was pressing at the back of my mind. Was she here too, somewhere? Was she leading this as a chaotic march, or resting at Adam’s country house and letting her followers do the dirty work? She would still be there, after all… when we’d tipped the police off to the secret entrance, they hadn’t been able to find it, presumably for the same reason the house itself was invisible.

And on that note…

Police car sirens began wailing out from this way and that, signalling the arrival of some back-up, though there was no telling exactly where they were or how many officers were arriving.

It took maybe thirty seconds before a group of armed officers marched into the street, and the remaining masked figures began fleeing.

“I honestly thought you were gonna try and take them on!” I shouted out to them as they scarpered. “You tried it on with us!”

Kendal laughed, while firing a few net-arrows at the fleeing enemies, ensnaring them and keeping them secure. Some of them even stopped to try and recover their defeated comrades, but that just left them as sitting ducks for Kendal’s arrows.

I saluted to the officers for reasons I can’t fathom. I just felt like some kind of superhero in that moment. They clearly knew who we were, as none of them turned their guns on us.

“Think the same’s happening in the other streets?” Kendal asked me.

“Probably. Let’s hope that’s it now.”

Famous last words.

“Here they come, thinking they can really stop us.”
Melody’s voice. Through a megaphone.

“Damn iiiit…!” I howled, and immediately began sprinting back to the other street, past the couple-dozen bound underlings that lined the now-otherwise-empty path.

In less than a minute, I was in the other street, civilians still there if only in small numbers, and no immediate sign of Melody…

Until a sickly flowerhead of pure white suddenly became apparent in the middle of the street, its giant petals unfolding to reveal Melody with scythe in one hand and megaphone in the other, skull mask on her face. Too far away to make out what her chest looked like in the aftermath of Lucy’s attack.

“Do you feel safe, normals?” she addressed the ordinary men and women still present. “The police are here to save you, like that makes a difference.”

A haggard voice, pained. I dashed closer.

“Like we’re not everywhere. Not amongst you. Not waiting. Not ready to strike again and again and again until we tear down the world you built. Like the Painters – ha! Like they’re any better. Monsters who think they’re no different to you.”

“Get lost!” someone shouted at her. Her head snapped in their direction, and a moment later, tendrils of white sprung forth from her scythe, grabbing hold of them and raising them up.

Within two seconds, Zahid had sprung forward, his axe slicing cleanly through every single tendril and then generating a red trampoline to break the person’s fall.

“You better watch out, attacking anyone who’s got the right idea,” I could hear him warn her. “You’ll be going for everyone you ever meet.”

“Monsters,” she continued her speech unfettered, “who think they belong in your world. How utterly repugnant they are.”

“Give it a rest, you’re boring everyone.”
Zahid sliced through the base of her flower; she leapt back, out of the construct as it faded, landing down several feet away, and raised the megaphone back to her mask.

“You’d hate them too, if you knew what they were really like,” she insisted with a pained grunt.

I stopped in place, stabbing my sword into the ground and letting blue lines burst forth; in moments, the entire street was criss-crossed with Lokonessence, which, of course, Melody didn’t miss. With surprising ferociousness, she slashed her scythe in my direction, and razor-like rings shot towards me at breakneck speed. I willed some of the blue across the ground to bolt up and catch them, though one remained uninterrupted on its trajectory.

Kitty dove through the air and struck it down with staggering accuracy, tumbling and rolling to the ground and managing to skid to a halt on her feet, her free hand to the ground for support.

“Thanks for the save!”
I focused on Melody again after saying that, and found Bao leaping around her, blocking strikes from her scythe with his tonfa-blades, sparks of yellow and white shooting off from where their weapons met. At this point, I caught sight – glimpses – of the opening in her top, still tinged orange, with bandaging beneath it.

“Swarm her!” Dakota commanded from behind me, and bolted straight past a second later. I looked to Kitty, and we shared affirmative nods, both sprinting forward at the same time (raising my sword out of the ground meant surrendering the blue lines, as they stemmed from the blade itself).

Dakota almost reached Melody, only for shards of white to spring up and block her path. From what I could see, Melody pushed Bao back, as he stumbled a few steps and struggled to stay upright; then, she teleported to behind Dakota, and slashed through her back, driving a blood-curdling scream out of her. My heart pounded.

She turned to Kitty and me, those black lenses still somehow staring right into us, before teleporting right in front of Kitty, catching her by the throat.

“Let go of her!” Zahid absolutely roared at Melody, stampeding over to her, but Kitty teleported out of her grasp and behind her before he could even come close. Crouching at Melody’s legs, she swiped with her Lokon claw, managing to cut both limbs before Melody managed to blink away.

Kitty coughed, spluttered, still reeling from Melody’s chokehold.

Melody teleported in behind Zahid, but he predicted it, turning around to swing for her; she ducked, and swept his legs out from under him with her scythe. I teleported behind her in turn and pushed her forward, letting her tumble over Zahid as he fell to the ground.

“Wait for meeeee!” Lucy sang out from down the street; she teleported right over to us, waving her daggers about eagerly.

Of course, Melody teleported away again as soon as she landed down. She re-emerged further away from us, just in time to be caught in a torrent of green from a recovered Dakota. This time, either she couldn’t teleport away in time or being amidst Lokonessence prevented her from doing so, as she instead got thrown to the ground again, hard.

“Come on, I wanted to fight!” Lucy whined while Kendal joined us, bow once again raised in preparation.

Melody took several seconds rising up from the street, coughing and hacking, her pain showing through now even without seeing her face.
“You realise… it doesn’t matter how many times you come to the rescue? You’ll never stop us. You’ll never win.”
She teleported away with that promise, and after a few tense seconds, the obvious conclusion was that she had left the battlefield.

“Seriously…” my sister whimpered in dismay while I helped Zahid up.

After that, the seven of us quickly helped the police round up all of the restrained lackeys and get them properly apprehended – after all, powering down would only release them from their Lokonessence-generated bindings – before finally teleporting back home.

12:58pm.

“I’m gonna have a quick power-nap…” Bao murmured, dismissing his Painter gear, then the blades, and curling up on the sofa.

“Better make that really quick…” Dakota advised him, slumping into the armchair.

“How’s your back?” I asked her soothingly. The TV was still on – it had been left on all this time, naturally – but playing adverts now.

“Amazing, considering Melody sliced my spine in two…” she joked ever-so-lightly.

“Good,” I smiled. “I got shot in the shoulder.”

Like that really compared…

And right then, a hearty knock at the door.

“I’ll get it…” Kitty spoke while stretching, heading out of the living room.

A few seconds later, Jo’s warm chattering began from beyond the door to the hallway, all “happy birthday plus five days!” and “I always try to be a tiny bit early!” while Emma told her to “chill, girl”.

“Oh crap,” I muttered, “Jo’s going to drive us to exhaustion…”

“Speak for yourself,” Kendal bubbled with a grin. “I think I’ve still got two-thirds of a full tank!”

The whiplash from frenzied battle to cheery birthday celebrations almost stung like the bullet to my shoulder, mainly because of how worn out we all were (Kendal aside), but we actually had a whole lot of fun.

Granted, Emma’s first remark upon entering the living room and ascertaining that nobody else was joining us was “this is gonna be such a weird party,” but by the evening, she was chortling at Bao’s jokes and dancing about with Lucy and Jo. Zahid wound up playing guitar, we played charades and that game where you put sticky notes on your forehead, and ate an obscene amount of cake and ice cream.

And y’know what kept popping into my head?

Melody would hate this.

She would protest that it was all a lie until she was blue in the face.

Here were seven monsters and – as best as I could tell – two totally ordinary girls, having a fun time and celebrating our friend… and oh, the smiles Kitty couldn’t even hope to hide. The laughs! The joy that girl was showing. That was something Melody could never dream of understanding. That was our true victory that day.