My fingers started to hurt halfway up though. It had been a long time since I had done anything like this. Back at Star Rebellion, we were trained in a variety of things, scaling a building included. You never knew what situation you would come across. The calluses on my fingers had grown softer, making it so that this actually became difficult when I used to love doing it for fun.
I would have to remember to start practicing again after all the crazy demon stuff was done and over with.
I pulled myself over the side of the building, swinging down onto the rock covered roof. The rocks clanked together as I set my feet down, and I ducked under the lip of the roof, just in case.
From what I could see, no one else was up here. Smoke still poured from the chimney pipes and I’m sure that I could smell burning food whiffing over from it. There weren’t many places to hide on the roof though, and I would have seen anyone if they had been there.
What the hell was up with a terrorists that wasn’t even able to put up proper snipers?
I slowly made my way over the rocks, wincing every time that my step made them hit each other. I eventually gave up on the silent route and just walked crouched down to the other side of the building, directly above the black SUVs. The sword on my back made this uncomfortable, and I hoped the hilt wasn’t sticking over the edge of the shallow wall.
I stayed in my hidden position for a few moments, trying to see if I could hear anything that they were saying, or even just figure out if they were talking. I hadn’t heard the cars leave, so they had to still be there, but other than that, I wasn’t sure of anything else. You know I would be really happy if I could find out how many men they had, what type of weapons, what their purpose here was. Yea, the last one was kind of important. Maybe they just had some really crappy service here once upon a time.
Eventually, I slowly lifted myself higher off the ground until I could just barely peer over the side of the roof. All of the cars were still in the exact same place they had been earlier, but the men were gone now. Or, the men I could see at least. Without knowing where they were, I wasn’t in a good position to try and do anything else. For all I knew, they were just at the very front of the building where I couldn’t see anything.
My head snapped to the side as I heard a muffled shout. Obviously, I couldn’t see the alley where Darkstar and Erik were, but I believe they were getting captured.
I peered back over the side of the building I was on and saw the terrorists men I had seen early walking back around the corner of the restaurant. One held a gun into Darkstar’s side where the leader had managed to get him earlier while the other guy practically dragged a bruised and beaten Erik. Apparently the Russian had put up a fight. Maybe I should rethink my previous analysis that he was behind the attack. Maybe.
My head was still just barely above the edge of the roof, but it didn’t look like anyone had noticed me yet. I watched as the first guy shoved Erik into the back of one of the cars. I got a good look at how they had the machine guns positioned, which kind of surprised me. I thought that Earth technology still dated back to the early 2000s, but they had a slim-cased area for the ammo, then the nozzle of the gun with an inside rotator. Now that is just classy. I wish the Rebellion would get those it; it would’ve made Soulstar and his team work a lot less when we had made the equipment run earlier.
My mind was frantically searching for a way to rescue Dark and Erik immediately- I even considered using my vision power even though I was still weak from when I used it in the restaurant- but moments before they shoved Darkstar into the car with Erik, I saw my comrade look up at me. I know he saw me too, and Dark barely shook his head.
I wasn’t to do anything. Not yet at least.
I slightly nodded mine in return, and Darkstar let himself be forced into the car.
I didn’t realize it, but I had already slid out throwing knives from a pocket in my cargo shorts. I didn’t bother putting them away yet, and as I watched the cars pull out from the parking lot, my grip tightened on them.
Whatever it took, I would destroy the Russian terrorists.
DARKSTAR
My side ached where the man had shoved the point of his gun into the cut. Something I had learned about this faction of the terrorists was that they were the newly trained. They didn’t believe in mercy and thought everything must be done by force.
Basically, they were complete idiots that would probably be dead within a year.
Another thing I learned is that they had no clue about secrecy, or were arrogant enough to think that Erik and I wouldn’t make it out of here.
We were in the back by ourselves. The terrorists men had tied my hands behind my back and it was uncomfortable sitting this way, but it wasn’t like there was much I could do. All of my knives were in the multitude of pockets in my cargo pants, none of which I could reach without being overly obvious about it.
The guy driving looked over his shoulder and out the back window. I also glanced backwards and saw that a few more cars were now following us, though we had been the last ones out of the parking lot. They must have been the cars that were holding up the emergency vehicles.
“So. You speekah Englizsh, no?” the man in the passenger seat said to me.
I nodded my head, not bothering to dignify him with a verbal response.
“How iz my Englizsh?” he asked with a smirk.
“Crap.”
The guy’s smirk disappeared in a moment and he spat on me. “You are thiz crahp,” he said back to me before turning around to glare moodily out of the window.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Erik weakly smiling. I know Firestar was paranoid about the man, and he had reason to be, but I couldn’t help but feel some respect for him. He had tried to keep the Russian terrorists men off of me after all.
The driver said something in Russian, and right now, I really wish I had Foreststar’s aptitude for languages. I felt like it might be helpful to know what they were saying.
“Are you sure that they are the two?” I jumped in surprise and looked over at Erik. He had leaned closer to me so that they couldn’t hear him.
For a moment, I looked back at the Russian man in surprise until he spoke again, briefly after the man in the passenger seat had replied to the driver. “We didn’t see anyone else. Who else could it be? They are the Stars.”
I nodded my head. Good, I could still find out what they were saying. They knew that Fire and I had something to do with star… though I couldn’t be sure if they knew only our names, or if they were aware of Star Rebellion.
“Fine, but the one who looks Russian wasn’t that good. Not good enough to be the thing on the other side of the restaurant.” Erik didn’t look happy about that translation.
“Maybe he was tired.”
“Maybe.” From the tone of voice the driver had said that in, I didn’t think he was content with believing that Erik was Firestar. I would have to change that.
“Firestar,” I said in a whisper that was loud enough for the men up front to hear.
Erik looked confused for a moment, and the men seemed to freeze up front in their seats.
“Firestar!” I said louder, looking meaningfully at Erik.
“You have a plan?” he muttered back, obviously taking the hint and keeping his voice loud enough to be heard.
“Yes, we need to-” I was saved from having to actually figure out a plan when the guy in the passenger seat slammed his hand on the seat between us.
“No talking!” he shouted.
Erik and I pretended to fall back to our respective sides of the car in shock… or well, I pretended to. I think Erik really was afraid of the sudden movement.
I saw the passenger seat man share a concerned look with the driver. Something in his sentence involved the word Firestar, and I believe he now thought that he had the real Firestar in the car.
Boy would he be upset when he found out otherwise.
I settled myself as comfortably as I could in my seat and
watched the landscape as we drove through the city. It wasn’t that impressive anymore; I get used to what my surroundings look like pretty quickly, and from what I could tell, the demons most certainly had not made it this far north yet. I wondered precisely what Mister Moscow had been getting worked up about.
My eyebrows unconsciously furrowed as I considered the predicament Erik and I were now in. The best thing to happen would be for Firestar to take Mister Moscow to Rome by himself and leave Erik and I to fend for ourselves. Knowing Firestar as well as I did, though, made me think that that would be the last course of action he chose. Fire was obsessed with being seen as the bad-ass hero.
It wasn’t precisely a bad trait to have; he just always felt the need to rescue people. Like when he took Ice, Forest, and Sunstar down into the Underworld to get Waterstar and me.
I just hoped he would be a bit more subtle this time. We didn’t need yet another species ravaging the Earth.
WATERSTAR
I was looking out the window of the helicopter when I realized something.
It was night time.
We had a time limit.
That happened during night time.
“Hey Huang,” I said into the headset. “What time is it?”
I could hear him in the cockpit, and I could kind of see Huang moving around to see the clock in the helicopter.
“Just after seven. I don’t know why the sun has set so early, it is summer.”
I nodded my head to no one in particular. “How long is a flight from Beijing to Rome?”
Huang paused for a moment. “Around nine hours with current technology, I believe, though there is a seven hour time difference.”
Nine minus seven… my brain quickly did the math, but I berated myself for falling behind enough that I actually had to think about what the solution was. “So if we left right now, we would barely get there before the ten o’clock deadline?”
“Yes.”
Well that’s fantastic. I leaned further back against the seat. This wasn’t good, this really wasn’t good. I didn’t have a way to contact Arctic either, to say that I would be late with Mister Beijing. Or to tell him about what happened with the demons and me falling, well more so the fact that my powers were weakened here, but Ice’s weren’t. Icestar was still pretty out of it, though I would have to wake him soon. We were almost back to the military base.
Icestar was startled awake when the helicopter landed, so it saved me from feeling guilty about waking him up at least. He too asked about how our timing was going, and wasn’t that happy that we would be late either.
“The pr- I mean, Mister Beijing will have his personal jet fly everyone there, it would be quicker,” Huang had told us to try and stop the worrying. It hadn’t helped much.
Mister Beijing was actually waiting for us at the military base. We found him standing at the edge of a very high building and staring across the sky. When Icestar and I came up to him, he finally turned away from the horizon. I could faintly see the glow from the fire we had started.
“You, you Calshians are amazing,” Mister Beijing said ecstatically, shaking both of our hands. “You have assisted with eradicating portions of these demon hordes. Already my men are saying that they have decreased to a more manageable number.”
I was caught off guard by all of this. It was a total contrast to how he had been acting previously, and I almost suspected that someone had drugged him or something along those lines. It was kind of creepy.
“Uh, thanks,” I mumbled. I was also a bit alarmed to hear how much we had helped eradicate the demons. I didn’t think it would actually take out that many. It was more or less a last minute idea, and I had hopes that we would get an A for effort, and he would come with us anyway.
When I voiced these thoughts, Huang translated it for one of the military leaders to understand. He nodded at once and started speaking in rapid fire Chinese; Huang even had to ask for clarification before translating it.
“He said that the area where the apartment building had been was one of extreme poverty. There were many citizens homeless there, so it was easy pickings for the demons. Many had traveled there for the convenience of a meal, so many were there to smell your miracle mixture. You can go there and see it for yourself,” Huang eventually managed to say, after a slower speech from the military leader.
Icestar and I shared a look. “We really need to be going soon. We have an appointment to meet, and it really is not something we can be late for,” I said, trying to sound apologetic. I normally was one for destruction and mayhem, but really, I didn’t want to see a poverty stricken area. That just sounded terrible.
After Huang translated it yet again, it seemed like we weren’t going to get off that easy. “No, no, you must see it. It is not out of the way for the airport.”
I took a deep breath and glanced back at Icestar. He shrugged, as if to say there wasn’t anything we could do otherwise. “Alright, seems like we will see this area then.”
The military leader started firing orders off. I really wished I could speak Chinese so that I could understand what was happening. It was like watching an ant hill after a kid had kicked dust into it.
Except on Calsh, you didn’t mess with those ant hills. I have heard that the ones on Earth aren’t quite so severe.
Icestar, Mister Beijing, and yours truly were eventually brought into a car that then also had a five car escort, along with Huang in the helicopter above us. They weren’t taking any chances on us getting killed by demons. It made the supply of weapons I had at my fingertips feel almost useless.
It took longer to drive to the apartment building than fly, and I was starting to get really jittery about timing and all. We really, really could not be late to this. You know, the fate of the world kind of resided on this working.
My mind was distracted from this grim fact, though. If that was possible, we were now facing an even grimmer situation.
I have heard stories about poverty before, and I have seen some of the rural settlements of Calsh where poverty is strong. It isn’t a pretty sight.
But this, this was worse.
“Stop the car.” I barely had those words out before I was opening the door and stumbling out of the vehicle, not even waiting for it to stop. It’s a good thing they had already been driving slowly.
I felt the contents of my stomach leave my body and swallowed back the acidic taste of vomit. That had been pleasant. I felt someone patting my back and whipped around, a hand already reaching into a hip holster.
It was only Icestar, though, and I shrugged weakly at him.
What could cause such a reaction in the fierce and brave Waterstar, you ask? The decay. The rot. The filth. The half eaten bodies.
Yes. Half eaten bodies. You know when your mother tells you to eat all of the food off of your dinner plate? Well, apparently no one has ever taught demons the same morals.
Chunks of flesh were missing from bodies that had been carelessly left everywhere. It made the Mr. John Baker look like a daisy back at the NOPCW. Bones poked out of skin and they were licked clean, while torn open stomachs still displayed remnants of the organs inside.
I’ll spare you the rest of the details, though. But believe me, I could go on about this, and it will probably never leave my mind. I cannot even describe how revolting this was.
I let Icestar lead me back into the car. We both had our hands over our noses. The stench here was terrifying, and on the dead bodies, I could see the layers of filth that lined the dead people’s skin.
Poverty wasn’t taken lightly here. They went full out.
Mister Beijing gave us a look of sympathy before he patted me on the knee. “I know, it is saddening. As the Japanese say, Shou ga nai. Nothing you can do.”
I nodded my head, but avoided looking out the window for the rest of the way. I didn’t need to see this destruction and mayhem.
My stomach was still feeling queasy as we finally made it to the airport. I hadn’t really noticed or
cared whenever the demons had come after our car; the five escorts had done a wonderful job at picking them off. Not quite as good as Soulstar and his team, but pretty efficient. For Earthlings.
I mostly followed the back of Icestar’s shoes through the airport. I wasn’t really in a ‘holy fudge! Shiny new things to see’ mood and didn’t really care what was going on around me. I wasn’t even really aware of the fact that we were finally going to be on our way to Rome after all of this stuff had finally become the past.
I mean, really. Our mission was just to talk to Mister Beijing, be like “Hey, care to go to Rome with us for a few hours? Really? Great, see you at the airport.” We weren’t supposed to douse an apartment building in oil and acid rain. I didn’t wake up going, “I really want to fall out of a fifty story window today!” I doubt Icestar had been looking forward to trying to use up a massive amount of his power all at once.
Right now, I didn’t really understand why people enjoyed traveling. It has all turned out to be a really crappy experience.
And I should be the one who knows about crappy experiences.
“We are here,” Mister Beijing said, suddenly pulling me from my dead-like trance.
I looked up and around where we were. I assumed we were at the back of the airport, because through a wall of windows, I could see the airplanes landing and taking off. Apparently the demon crisis hadn’t stopped the flow of traffic. It had probably increased it, if nothing else.
“We are outside of a jet terminal. It will take us quickly to Rome. We will be there before midnight.”
I never realized just how choppy simple sentences sounded until I met someone who could only speak in simple sentences. It was kind of starting to drive me insane.
“Cool stuff. When can we take off?” I asked as Beijing led us down the connecting pathway that led out to the jet.
“Soon.” The Chinese man hadn’t even turned around to state his reply.
“How soon?”
Star Rebellion Page 28
