Chapter 7: Chapter 7

“Leave him alone, you ugly piece of shit!” The oppressive heat from the creature's body lessened instantly as it reared back from a heavy kick.

A heavy kick from a slim, tiny girl with long black hair and a skin-tight outfit that looked like it was cut from the cloth of the night sky. She stood protectively over Leo, facing down the creature. She raised both middle fingers.

The creature screeched at her and backed up a step. She barked angrily at it, “what!? You wanna try to eat a defenseless Unawakened but the second someone with some real bite shows up you run away?” she spat on the ground, “fucking pussy!”

The creature shrieked something with the same cadence as her shout of ‘fucking pussy!’

With the girl standing over him protectively, Leo finally felt the chill of the pavement through his black work jeans. Keeping his eyes on the girl and the creature, Leo slowly got to his feet and took a step forward to face the creature down alongside the girl. A hand grabbed his upper arm and, surprised, he stumbled back until he backed up into the person who grabbed him. The injury on his back from where the creature had touched him flared with pain and he inhaled sharply. The person who grabbed him but gentle hands on his shoulders and asked, “are you hurt?”

Leo looked up at the man behind him and immediately thought, Sky. He quickly threw that thought away. Sure the man looked a bit like Sky on the surface, he had the same strong, dark eyebrows, Roman nose, and impossibly bright blue eyes. But at second glance they were clearly different. This man was a little bit older with unkempt hair and a vitality in his eyes that was only ever rarely in Sky’s.

Leo must have taken too long to respond to the man because he cursed under his breath and slung Leo’s arm around his shoulder, half-dragging him away.

He dragged Leo around the side of the building where a little girl with dark skin and her hair cut into a short, unnaturally red bob stood partially blocking an older girl from view. When Leo got closer, he saw the girl was wearing a grotesquely over-exaggerated theater mask twisted into a hysterical laughing expression. Another mask of a similar style but with an expression of anger floated a foot in front of her face.

“Gemini! Leo’s hurt, let Ini out to heal him!”

“How did you know my-?” Before he could say the word ‘name’, the sound of laughter loudly interrupted him. It was coming from the girl but didn’t sound like a voice that should be coming from someone her size. It was deep and a little inhuman. The sound of the laughter slowly started to shift. The mask's shape started to warp from hysterical joy to sadness. The laughter clearly changed to sobbing and then stopped abruptly. She turned her face or, more accurately, the mask towards him.

The man shrugged Leo’s arm off his shoulder and said, “she’ll take care of you. I’ll be back when the Fallen Star is dead.”

*

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It’s a coincidence... It’s a coincidence... It’s a coincidence... Sky repeated the mantra to himself over and over again as the car approached Leo’s workplace.

 In the parking lot of the World Star, Jade and Gemini faced off against the Fallen Star. “Hang back and observe,” Sky ordered Luka before hopping out of the idling car.

It was difficult to wear his sword properly while sitting down in a car so he just held it in his hands. He drew it and tossed aside the sheath, running towards the creature.

Before he could join the fray, he watched as Jade jammed his hand through the Fallen Star’s chest. Fallen Stars were semi-transparent and Sky could see Jade’s hand, his fingers curled in a claw-like grip. Jade ripped his hand upward through its chest and head and it dissipated without another noise.

Sky stopped running and lowered his sword.

He glanced around and didn’t see Leo nor anyone else that could be the Leo... But there were only two cars in the parking lot, one of them Leo’s...

It’s not a coincidence.

He couldn’t quite tell if his heart was sinking or swimming.

“Hey puppet!” Jade called out to him and he tore his eyes away from the car he bought for Leo and back to his bastard ‘older brother’. Jade smiled at him insincerely. A bit condescendingly, a bit mocking, a bit negotiating. “We let you have Libra without a fight so why don’t you let us have Leo.”

Sky raised his sword again, lowered himself into a fighting stance, and said, “not a fucking chance,” before launching himself at Jade.