But eventually, I got a response: Meet me in Central Park in thirty minutes. Bitch.
“Easy enough, bitch,” I said as I slipped my Vans on, officially welcoming the Huntresses to New York City.
The two appeared at the same time, both in their battle gear. Aya’s armor was now black, dragon skulls fashioned onto her shoulder pad. She wore her hat as usual, her hair braided into a side ponytail and tucked under it.
Lady C. was in her Metican Warrior get-up, armor covering her chest and a metallic skirt, at least it kind of looked metallic. I reached out and touched it, and Lady C. playfully slapped my hand away.
“Watch it, Chase…”
“When did you guys get new armor?” I asked.
“We went shopping; you were supposed to go shopping with us,” Aya said as she took an intimidating step toward me. “But you were too busy playing with trolls, at least that’s what a little birdy told me.”
“I see. Well, congrats, you got really nice-looking armor.”
“My eyes are up here, Chase,” the Thulean growled.
“I was checking out your armor,” I started to tell her.
“Please. Just admit it. You have a thing for green flesh. I understand. Many people in Tritania consider Thuleans to be incredibly beautiful, and there are many… How should I say this? Fetishes.”
“I think your skin is great,” Lady C. said. “Its color too. You could moisturize more, though, Lady Aya, but that’s just me being critical, so please don’t take it the wrong way.”
“Do you see the nonsense I deal with on a daily basis?” the Thulean warrior asked me. “Anyway, you have called us here, interrupting our shopping, so this better be for a good reason.”
“We got invited to a brawl in Central Park.”
“Again? Isn’t there another park we can fight in?”
“There are plenty of parks in New York, but it’s the largest, and there’s more space to kind of get away from the crowds.”
“And who will our opponent be?” Aya asked.
“Keegan, the girl we’ve fought before.”
“The little woman is a sadist,” Aya said as she unsheathed her giant blade, and looked at it for a moment making sure…
Well, I didn’t really know what she was trying to do.
I was by no means a sword expert, maybe an axe expert, but only since that word sometimes meant a type of guitar, not the actual weapon.
“I can’t remember what Hunters Keegan has,” I said. “Anyone remember?”
“A cyclops and a fairy, both level five,” said Lady C. “What kind of brawl is it, anyway? Just Hunters, or is she bringing mythcrea into the mix?”
I checked the message again, noticing that I’d skipped a detail. “One mythcrea, so three-on-three.”
“You have an impeccable memory, Lady Cassandra. Not a great taste in men, but a good brain,” Aya said, turning to the door after she had sheathed her blade. “And by the way, this hotel room... First time I’m seeing it, but by the looks of it, it seems like someone knows how to waste money.”
“I’m splurging just a little,” I told her. “I never get to do things like this.”
“Fair enough,” Aya said. “Will you open the door? Or should I walk through it?”
“Right, let’s go,” I told her as I stepped around her, Aya playfully chomping her teeth in my direction.
“Careful with those things…”
I opened the door and stepped aside like a gentleman, letting the two walk in front of me.
“I don’t trust you behind us,” said Aya, looking over her shoulder. “Front and center.”
“He won’t watch us walk,” Lady C. shot back. “Chase is a gentleman.”
“Ha! Now there’s something you don’t hear every day,” Aya said as we stopped in front of the elevator. Rather than taking it down to the ground floor, we took it up to the rooftop, where there was a black UberLyft, the doors opening as soon as we approached the aeros.
It was a gray day out, the rising sun from earlier tucked behind a fluffy cloud signaling rain would come soon. I got in, Aya sitting next to me and Lady C. sitting next to her.
“No big vehicle this time?” the Thulean asked. “I thought you were splurging. Maybe you will be better with your money than I originally thought.”
“Welcome, Chase Knowles,” the vehicle said in a stilted, metallic voice. “Please confirm that you would like to go to Central Park.”
“That’s right.”
“Once your seatbelt is fastened, the vehicle will begin its ascent.”
I snapped the belt buckle shut and wrapped my hand around the oh-shit bar as the vehicle lifted. I was used to this feeling, but every now and then, it took me by surprise. And I wasn’t used to rising off a building this tall, so it took just a second or two to get my bearings.
“So many people, so many people,” Aya said as she looked out the window. “Who would want to live in a city this big? There must be other places in your world that are nicer than this.”
“Actually…” An idea came to me. Yes, that would be a great thing to do, something fun, different. “We will see other places in the future, I promise.”
“Pinky promise?” she asked, lifting her green finger at me.
“Of course,” I said as I locked fingers with her, or at least it looked like I was doing that.
I knew that if I deactivated the Monster Hunt app, I would simply be doing this in the air, as if I were communicating with a ghost. And I was sure there was a camera watching me now, all these vehicles chock-full of surveillance equipment. It probably looked a little strange, but I was sure the people or humandroids that reviewed these feeds were used to it.
“And what are we doing after we beat this Keegan girl?” the Metican warrior asked.
“Such confidence, Lady Cassandra. I like it! It suits you so well.”
“Thanks, Lady Aya.”
“We don’t know if we will beat her yet,” I reminded them. “We shouldn’t get cocky now. I’m guessing if she’s trying to meet up with us, she probably has a pretty killer attack plan. She doesn’t seem like the type that wants to lose.”
“Does anybody want to lose?” Aya asked me.
It was weird to see her sitting in the vehicle, especially with the fact that the bottom portion of her sword was half-submerged in the backseat, a definite glitch.
“I guess you’re right,” and as I continue talking with them, I again thought of what the video feed would look like: a man with dark hair and glasses talking like there were two people in the backseat with him.
“But to answer your question,” I said, after giving them my little spiel about staying humble, “I have plans for after. For you and me,” I told Lady C.
A pained expression took shape on Aya’s face. “What? I can’t come?”
“Not this time, Aya, but don’t be offended or anything. We will be meeting up later.”
“Yay! I’m so excited!”
“Pfft! Like I want to come with you two anyway,” Aya said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Whatever. Let’s take our time with this Keegan girl, Lady Cassandra. I feel like hacking away at something…”
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I’d always wondered what it would be like to live around Central Park, and ever since I was a child, the old buildings that framed the large swath of green had always caught my eye.
They didn’t make buildings like this anymore. Modern buildings were made of glass and steel shaped in unnatural ways. Beautiful, sure, but there was something eternally hollow about them.
We circled around the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on our way toward the Alexander Hamilton Monument, which was host to a live performance of Hamilton last summer (and every summer since I was born).
Once we rounded the statue, I caught sight of Keegan, her hands in the front pocket of her hoodie.
As I approached my opponent, her two Level Five Hunters took shape, a cyclops and a fairy, just as Lady C. had remembered.
<
br /> The cyclops wore armor that made him look twice as bulky and buff as he normally would have been. The fairy seemed a little larger than last time I saw her, her hair in two pigtails, pixie dust glittering in the air all around her.
“Keegan,” I said.
“Chase,” said the girl, who was definitely under fourteen.
“How would you like us to beat the little girl this time?” Aya asked.
The faerie hissed. “The only one who’s going to be beaten today will be…” She looked around, realizing she didn’t really have a very good comeback. “You!”
“Oh please,” Aya said with a roll of her eyes. “You will be the first one I take down, like a little buzzing ant. No make that the second. I’ll kill the one-eyed bedwetter first.”
“Take it easy,” I told her.
“Chase, you’re doing a terrible job at intimidating our opponents…”
“Sometimes the best form of intimidation is through action,” Lady C. said in her cheerful voice as she drew both her swords, crossing them over one another and striking a sick pose.
“Ooo, I’m so scared,” the fairy said, doing a swirl in the air. “Fuck Meticans, and fuck Unigaea!”
“Listen, stinkerbell,” Aya started to say, “once Lady Cassandra here kills you, I will feed your body to our goblin. And don’t you say shit about Unigaea! That world is better than any shithole you’ve ever visited, you twinkling little twat!”
“What the hell did you just call me!?”
“Sorry about them,” I started to tell the young girl, who was now giving me a dirty look. “Shouldn’t you, um, be in school or something?”
“Why do you always ask me if I should be in school?” she asked, her voice growing shrill.
“I don’t know; I don’t really know what else to ask someone your age.”
“I have thoughts, and a personality; I’m also a hunter of rare mythcrea which is how I caught this…”
Whether I wanted it to or not, the battle began as soon as a large dragon landed on the swath of earth not far from the statue. It was clear Keegan had already scouted out the area, choosing a spot with little or no tree coverage, as the dragon was ginormous, easily the size of a city bus.
“Chase, now it’s your turn to pick something,” Aya said, brandishing her sword. “Choose wisely; that’s a big dragon!”
My list of combat mythcrea appeared before me and I scrolled through them…
Rose
Altsoba
Fujin
Spew Gorge
Ophelia
Magnus
Sun Wukong
Rambi
Brigantia
I settled on Rambi, the mythological rhino that was originally known as a Karkadann, because of his size. The beast took shape, snorting, veins bulging along his neck as he stomped his feet, kicking up dust.
Even though there was no dust…
Sometimes I had to remember that this was all fake, that none of this was actually happening. Keegan and I were simply standing there staring out at an empty void.
“Here we go!” Aya said, hopping onto Rambi’s back, taking off toward the Dragon with her sword drawn and screaming in Thulean, “Aye! Aye! Aye!”
Lady C. launched into action as well, pulling her blades back, lightning striking her swords as she smacked them together, the bolt of electricity instantly taking out the fairy.
“Brutas! Kill her!” Keegan shouted to the cyclops.
I leapt out of the way just as Lady C. and the cyclops met, the cyclops trying to beat her down with his big club.
The Metican first caught his attack with both blades, then stepped aside, bringing her right foot up and kicking him in the side of his knee, the cyclops spilling over while Lady C. pivoted, trying to swipe her blade across his back.
The cyclops rolled out of the way just in time, pressed up to his feet, shook his head out, blinked, and charged her again, this time his boots leaving indents in the gravel.
I glanced to Keegan to see her nodding excitedly.
This was apparently some type of special move, and as I continued backing up, I noticed a wave of force start to pool behind the cyclops’ shoulders as he charged forward.
Suddenly he was gone, Lady C. bristling, looking around quickly, her hair whipping as she turned, only to be slammed in the back by the cyclops. He took her to the ground, bashing his club against the back of her head.
“Fuck,” I whispered, punching my hand to my open fist.
The cyclops looked up at me and licked his lips as he stood, Lady C.’s lifeless body lying on the ground.
He kicked her once to make sure she was dead, then turned to the main fight.
“Looks like we are even,” Keegan said as she stepped to my side, both of us watching the cyclops charge over toward Aya and the dragon.
Rambi had already tried to skewer the dragon, only to fail once the dragon swiped at the mythological beast, forcing Aya to jump off, run by his side for a moment and hop back on. They circled around, trying to get a better location to attack when the cyclops entered the equation.
As if it were her duty, which it sort of was, Aya immediately changed her attention from the dragon to the cyclops, dismounting and charging at the one-eyed bastard with her sword overhead.
While Lady C. had speed, Aya had strength, and her first attack nearly brought the cyclops to his knees.
He managed to hold his club between both hands, preventing her from slicing him in half, but in doing so he also cut the hell out of his right hand, crying out in pain as he pushed her away.
Aya was relentless, but she was also solely focused on killing the cyclops, not at all aware that there was a barbed tail coming in her direction. The dragon’s tail smacked Aya’s side, sending her barreling through the air.
Aya hit the ground rolling, her buster sword tossed off to the side.
She stood, nursing one leg, wiping blood from her mouth as she drew two daggers.
She gave the cyclops a bloodstained grin as she lifted both weapons, charging in his direction.
The dragon slammed his body into Rambi, sending the mythological creature backward, where he got in Aya and the cyclops’ trajectory. And rather than go around his opponent, the cyclops simply brought his weapon back and clubbed Rambi in the face.
The rhino stumbled for a moment, only to be lit aflame by the dragon, who had apparently been saving his fire attack for the right moment. Rambi was out for the count.
“This is going really good,” Keegan said, a wicked smile on her face as she rubbed her hands together.
“You can do it!” I called Aya. I whistled. “Come on!”
“Quiet,” Keegan hissed, “you will draw attention. I can’t believe I have to tell you that!”
“Yeah,” I said, wanting to pace but also trying to keep my cool. I looked around; luckily, no one had heard me. “Sorry.”
Seeing that both her teammates were down and that her weapon was off in a bush somewhere, Aya started to backpedal, luring the cyclops away from the dragon.
I had seen her fight enough times to know what she was thinking.
She would kill the cyclops and then go after the big guy, which made sense, if not for the fact that the cyclops was starting to charge at her again, the same move he had pulled on Lady C.
“Aya!” I started to call out, bringing my hand over my mouth as the cyclops disappeared in a flash, reappeared behind her, and smacked the holy shit out of the Thulean with his club.
Aya fell forward and tried to lift herself up, giving the cyclops the perfect opportunity to finish the job.
“I beat you,” Keegan said, still watching the fight, even though it was now over. Her dragon had started to disappear, and her cyclops was already making his way back over to her, Aya flung over his shoulder, his hand planted squarely on her ass.
“That is a little much,” I started to say as Aya faded away.
Keegan smirked. “Someone’s a sore loser. You have beaten me twice, now i
t’s my turn.”
“I guess I had it coming…”
“Sure, if you say so,” she said with a snicker.
“You know, we never made a wager at the beginning of the brawl,” I told her. “Was that something that you were intending to do?”
“No,” she said, turning to me. “I was just looking to beat you.”
“Brutal little…” Aya started to say, freshly respawning behind me. Lady C. was there as well, but she hadn’t said anything yet.
“Don’t make us beat you again,” Keegan said with a snicker.
“You are pretty crazy for a fourteen-year-old…”
“I’m sixteen,” she told me.
“Really? Because I thought you were fourteen.”
“Why does everyone think I’m so young?” she asked, running her hand through her short hair, which had multicolored streaks in it. Her Hunters were now behind her, maddoggin’ Aya and Lady C. “Anyway, I have to go to school.”
“Wait, I thought you said school was out?”
“What are you? Some type of stalker? Next time I want to brawl, I will let you know.” And with that, she turned away, only looking back once she reached the main thoroughfare. I received an iNet message from her almost instantly.
KeeKee: Hey! I’m part of a rare monster club, btw. Thought you should know.
Me: A what?
KeeKee: We get together and talk about rare monsters and where to find them. You should come. I’ll message you the address.
Me: Thanks?
KeeKee: You’re welcome? BYE.
Keegan flashed me a peace sign, and I’d started flashing it back to her when she dropped a finger and flipped the bird at me instead.
“Next time, we kill her,” Aya growled. “I’m serious. Let’s challenge her in the Proxima Galaxy so we can do this correctly. Such a cheap move. This running cyclops.”
“He killed you in the same way he killed me,” Lady C. pointed out.
“This is not up for discussion, Lady Cassandra!” Aya said as she turned away, her arms crossed over her chest.
“It’s fine. She’s just a little rough around the edges. She also told me about a rare monster club or something. So there’s that. Maybe she’s not so bad after all.”
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