Yurui The Cursed One

Something has clearly changed. I can feel every movement in the room with startling clarity, even the stuff happening far outside my line of sight.

Narun shifts his front foot barely an inch, and somehow I catch it without even having to turn my head his way. Marcus leans forward carefully, pauses, then takes a step back. Somewhere behind me, Maya’s wings draw tighter together, the faint rustle of her feathers is more than enough for me to know exactly what she’s doing.

Oba should be the hardest to keep track of, hidden somewhere behind me, but every faint scrape of his armored plates paints his movements so clearly in my head that I may as well be looking straight at him.

Nobody attacks right away. They inch closer instead, watching me carefully, each of them seemingly waiting for someone else to make the first move.

Then, all at once, they burst forward.

Narun comes at me first, fast enough that the old me probably would have gotten knocked aside without being able to react to him. Now, however, I effortlessly step out of his way while simultaneously catching Marcus across the face with one hand just as he tries to slip past me, while my other arm comes up around Maya’s torso as she drops in from above.

For half a second, it doesn’t even register to me that I’ve stopped both of them, and they take full advantage of the opening by immediately springing back into action. Marcus grabs at my wrist with his dog-like mouth and pulls hard. Maya twists against my arm, wings beating intensely behind her as she tries her best to wrench herself loose, but all their efforts are in vain. I don’t stagger. My grip doesn’t slip. Their desperate struggle barely puts any pressure on me at all.

I look down at Marcus, and it really hits me just how light and fragile he feels in my grip. Maya isn’t much different. I knew I was stronger when transformed, but this feeling was in a completely different ballpark from the strength that I was expecting. Two Blessed are fighting me with everything they have to get free, and here I am, holding onto them like it’s nothing.

For the first time, it occurs to me that I might have been seriously underestimating myself. The whole officer thing suddenly no longer seems to be as ridiculous as I previously thought. I mean, I’m already manhandling Maya, a first officer, while dealing with several other Blessed at the same time.

Marcus makes some muffled, irritated noise into my palm, and for some reason, that’s when it occurs to me just how easy it would be to throw him. There’s no hesitation behind the thought, no question of whether I’m actually strong enough to pull it off. I already know I am. So I tighten my grip and hurl him across the room. Marcus rips out of my grip and flies halfway across the room before slamming into the wall. The impact shudders through the floor, knocking a thin curtain of dust loose from somewhere overhead.

Maya barely lasts a second longer. I turn with her still caught in my grip and hurl her into another reinforced panel hard enough to crack it on impact. A moment later she drops toward the floor.

I look back just in time to catch Narun trying to sneak up behind me.

He goes still the moment he realizes I’ve noticed him, and I can’t help the smile that starts tugging at my mouth. Before he can back off, I grab him and throw him straight at Marcus, who’s only just now starting to get back on his feet. The collision sends both of them tumbling down to the floor.

Perfect. That takes care of those two.

The heat beneath my ribs pulses harder now. It has spread beyond the small point beneath my sternum, filling more of my chest with every beat of my heart. What started as warmth has become something much heavier, almost like a wild, raging fire let loose inside of me, yet surprisingly, it wasn’t painful at all. If anything, it felt rather pleasant. Which did bother me a little, as I had no idea what to make of this strange sensation, it almost felt like something supernatural was stuck inside of me.

Marcus drags himself away from the wall while Maya steadies herself on her feet. Narun wipes at the corner of his mouth with the back of one hand. Oba remains where he is, watching me with the same unreadable expression as before.

I wait for them to come at me again.

They don’t.

A few seconds pass, and to my own surprise, I start getting impatient. Why are they just standing there? The heat spreading through my body has only gotten worse, leaving me restless and wound tight. My eyes move from one of them to the next almost on their own, already picking out who I want to go for first.

Something about it felt wrong, these are my new teammates. More than that, they’re supposed to be part of this whole new beginning I’ve been desperately clinging to. Beating the shit out of them fifty or so minutes after meeting them probably isn’t the best way to start things.

I look at them again.

The heat inside me pulses harder, almost like a second heartbeat, and whatever caution I had starts slipping away with it. I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to hold back just because I’m afraid of accidentally taking things too far.

I want them to come at me again.

Before I even realize what I’m doing, I take a step toward them, a grin slowly spreading across my face.

Oba moves in before I can finish the step. One moment he’s standing there watching me, and the next he’s already crossing the space between us, knife flashing into his hand somewhere along the way. I swing for him before he gets close enough to use it, expecting to catch him the same way I caught the others, but he easily ducks behind the blow. He was surprisingly quick for someone covered in thick armored plates, which threw me off guard momentarily, but I quickly gathered myself and swung again.

My arm flies over his head once more, and before I can bring it back around, something sharp scrapes across the plates covering my side. I look and see the knife making contact with my armored body, good thing the knife doesn’t get through, otherwise I’d be fucked right now. The pressure still bites into my side, unpleasant enough on its own, and Oba immediately follows it by driving his shoulder into me and slipping out of my reach again.

That catches me off guard, cleanly this time. I turn toward him, expecting to find him right there, only to see empty space.

Then something flashes at the edge of my vision.

A knife is already coming for my throat.

I catch Oba’s wrist inches before the blade reaches me and squeeze, expecting him to pull away. Instead, he steps into the grip and drives his armored knee straight into my stomach. The impact knocks the air out of me, and this time I actually feel something give beneath it—the plates across my stomach splitting under the blow.

Fuck. I hadn’t expected him to fight like this.

Looking at him, I figured he’d be the type to rush straight at me and try to overpower me. Instead, he keeps slipping around my reach, flashing that knife just long enough to drag my attention away before hitting me from somewhere else.

And now that I’ve noticed it, the pattern is rather obvious.

The knife itself is nothing more than a distraction, something meant to keep my attention as Oba hits me with the real attack.

Just great.

Figuring that out is one thing, though. Actually stopping him from doing it again is a whole other matter.

The knife comes barreling straight toward my heart, but this time I ignore it. Instead, two more arms tear out from my sides and shoot toward Oba. He realizes what I’m doing almost immediately, but a moment too late to do anything about it.

For the first time since I met him, his expression actually changes.

Only slightly, but to my satisfaction, I catch it.

I grin and yank him toward me. That’s what you get by underestimating me. I’m after all the brain, a tactical genius of my own making, or so I would have liked to say if I had any experience in implementing some of my more ingenious schemes.

To my horror, Oba twists with the motion instead of fighting it, somehow slipping out of my grip before I can get a proper hold. His boot skids across the floor as he puts some distance between us, and I barely have time to appreciate how annoyingly slippery he is before he comes at me again.

Shit, shit, shit. I just blew my chance at a clean win.

So much for being clever. I guess that’s going to be a lesson for the future, not to toot my own horn too hard before I was about to win.

This time he flicks his knife toward my face. I lean away, but I only catch the movement of his other hand too late, and feel a hard punch crack against the side of my jaw. The blow knocks my head sharply to the side, but my neck bends with it and springs back almost immediately, bringing my face right back in front of his. I can’t help the grin that spreads across my face as our eyes meet again.

Oba’s eyes narrow. I doubt he expected me to shrug off a hit like that, especially since that would’ve easily dropped most Blessed on the spot.

He attacks faster after that, knife darting in from one side while his free hand keeps looking for whatever opening he can find. I block one strike with my forearm, another with the back of my hand, then miss the third entirely when he changes direction halfway through and drags the blade across my ribs.

Sparks jump from the black plating, but the blade barely leaves a mark. At this point, I’m starting to get seriously impressed by just how much punishment this armor can take from sharp things. If I wasn’t scared of jinxing myself, I’d almost be willing to declare myself immune to being cut or stabbed altogether.

Oba clicks his tongue in frustration and tries to retreat.

Oh, no you don’t. There are only so many times you can throw the same move against me before it backfires spectacularly against you.

I surge after him before he can get more than a few steps away. He slips around my first attempt to grab him, ducks the second, then plants a foot against my thigh and actually uses me as a platform to kick himself backward. For a second, I was left bewildered and could only stare at him.

Okay, this was getting annoying now. I didn’t take very kindly to being made a fool of in public.

He lands lightly, knife already raised again.

But I don’t give him the chance to take initiative again.

I rush him hard, fast enough that his eyes widen, take the slash across my shoulder without bothering to even try to avoid it, and slam straight into him. Oba manages to stay on his feet, but only barely. His knife arm gets trapped between us, and this time when I grab him around the torso, there’s nowhere for him to slip off to.

He exhales sharply.

“Got you,” I say, a wide grin washing over my face. Fuck, I was starting to enjoy this.

Without further ado, I turn and chuck him at the wall.

I ended up hurling Oba across the room hard enough to send him flying straight into the wall, and smashing through one of the reinforced wall panels several feet above the floor. The impact caves it inward with a heavy crack before he drops through a shower of dust and broken material.

For a few seconds, Oba doesn’t move, and I almost think that might have been enough to keep him down.

Then he shifts inside the broken panel and pushes himself upright, one hand braced against the wall for support. Blood runs from the corner of his mouth, but he only spits onto the floor and wipes the rest away with the back of his hand.

When he looks at me again, there’s a smile on his face. Not the kind I expected, either.

If anything, getting thrown through a wall only seems to have made him more excited to keep going.

The heat inside me surges in response, and I take another step toward him—

The doors slam open hard enough to rattle the frame, the bang echoing through the entire room.

“What the FUCK is going on out here?! Are you retards trying to bring down the whole dam building on me while I sleep ???!!!”

A shrill voice cuts across the room so sharply it makes my ears ring.

I can see the look of horror on my teammates' faces as they turn back to look towards the direction the voice came from.

“Oh shit. Alysa’s here…”

Is the last thing I hear before the room turns dead silent. For several long seconds, the only sound in the room was that of the shrill girl angrily tapping her foot against the floor.

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