Episode 11: Answering the Call

Could we be…

“Take that!” a woman with yellow-orange skin, red and punk-styled hair, and a blue sweatsuit exclaimed as she punched a thug who was armed with a knife in the face.

Answering her call…

“Pussy!” she derided the armed thug behind her who tried to come from behind with a knife, countering with a back kick to his face.

Now…?

“You’re hardly better!” she exclaimed at the armed thug who jumped at her with a knife while she was busy taking care of the other thug, countering him with an uppercut as she propelled herself into the air and smacked him in the jaw. As she and the thug landed on the ground, she looked around and saw that a circle of thugs armed with guns had surrounded her.

“Oh, that is just as cheap as you can get.” she remarked as they prepared to shoot her. “Unfortunately for you…”

“?!” the thugs went as they shot at her, only to see her vanish before their eyes. The next thing they knew, they were all down on the ground, feeling a surging pain in their legs.

“...I can fight low too.” the woman finished, having done a blinding fast duck followed by a blinding fast and powerful sweep kick that went full circle. “Adrian Bruce is known for only complaining about “unfair tactics” for show…haven’t you heard the word on the street?”

Looking at all the weapons that were scattered on the ground from the defeated lowlives, she got out a bag from her pocket and went around collecting them. In the midst of doing this, the Dark Sky members came out of the portal Fluttershy had sent them through, landing outside the alleyway that Adrian was in. Looking at the situation, the Dark Sky members came to the conclusion that now was not a good time to give Adrian the message.

“I...think our timing was bad.” Ghost Rainbow Dash commented, looking at all the beaten up thugs and the weapons Adrian was picking up and putting in the bag.

“You’re telling me,” replied Derpy Hooves, “we missed some great action!”

“Come on…” Dumb-bell said as he and the rest of the gang moved away from the alley. “Let’s talk to her when she’s cooled down a bit…”

“Yeah, so long as she doesn’t see us right now, we’re good…”

“...” Score silently foreshadowed that the team had no idea they were making a terrible mistake, for that standoff Adrian was in…

...was no more than her regular morning workout routine. And while she came out of the alley with the bag over her shoulder, someone who they did have to worry about seeing them happened to be walking down the same road…

*click* *click* *click*

That someone took several pictures of them with their digital camera. Looking at the pictures stored on the camera’s memory, they laughed.

“So that’s the help God has sent them…” she said to herself. “How embarrassing. Honestly, I thought you better than this…”

It was then shown that this person, a woman who had purple skin, purple hair with red and blue streaks in it and a ponytail, was wearing glasses, and was dressed in a blue button-up shirt with a black tie and black pants, was Noimman.

“...my father.”

Adrian was on her way home to the Bruce manor. It was similar to Fluttershy’s mansion, but was not as large. There was no pillar going an unimaginably long way up and the iron gates were silver rather than gold. Security proved to be tighter however, even with the front gate being guarded by a voice recognition/passcode lock rather than two gods. Adrian, despite being a resident of the place, would occasionally have trouble getting in and grow frustrated with the excessive protective measures.

“Man, that’s dirty…” Adrian remarked, hating the voice recognition lock telling her “Access Denied” once again. “Changing the fucking passcode on me again without telling me. Why?! No one actually breaks into this shit besides expert hackers, and even they’re just going to figure it out anyways with the technology we have now! Just look at what Felix does! Why does Dad have to be so goddamn paranoid?!”

“Though I also enjoy criticizing my father…” Noimman said ominously from behind. “I’m afraid this isn’t your old man’s fault. I ordered him to change the password to something much more befitting…”

“Befitting of what?” Adrian replied, bemused. “Actually, don’t answer that, I really don’t give a fuck less. Just give me the new password.”

“So demanding and foulmouthed…” Noimman commented as she shrugged her shoulders. “Way to take advantage of the fact that you don’t have to ask nicely, because I really don’t have a choice but to give it to you.”

“What did you expect?” Adrian retorted. “I don’t like you and I just learned that you inconvenienced me. Worse yet, I’m now going to have to owe you a favor.”

“Yay, motivation!” Noimman exclaimed in a sickly sweet tone of happiness as she pulled a white card out of her shirt pocket. “As a token of thanks for reminding me that I’m only doing this for myself, have this…”

Noimman handed the card she pulled to an annoyed Adrian, who grabbed it with her hand that was free from holding the bag. She read it to see that it said this…

No God is with us

“Pfft, befitting…” Adrian jeered as she actually chuckled. “Our family’s never been religious…”

“Ha ha ha ha ha…” Noimman laughed. “You won’t be snickering when you witness the truth firsthand. The truth that your family has always been Satanic, and that you and your brother are a product of one of the rituals made in honor of the dark lord...”

Adrian kept up a smile to hide the fact that she was trying to restrain herself, putting Noimman’s card in her pocket and crumpling it in her fist. Her hand was in the same pocket where she always carried around a pair of knuckle dusters and a 7-inch pocket knife, and she began gripping those to manage her anger...

“Oh, if only you weren’t Dad’s “friend”...” she thought to herself. “If you weren’t, this would’ve gotten real ugly…”

Adrian imagined putting on her dusters and breaking Noimman’s jaw with a hook to her face, then smashing her head against the iron gate.

“Then I’d have you down on the ground, lapping up your own blood like the bitch you are…” she continued thinking. “...as I’d tell you the truth that you’re about as appealing to everyone as a used tampon…”

*CLANG*

Adrian snapped back to reality upon hearing the gate shut behind Noimman after she entered the courtyard leading to the front doors of the mansion…

“Wha-damn it!” she exclaimed as she pulled the card out of her pants. “Before she went in, I wanted to see if this dumb password she gave me was even…”

Adrian paused when she realized that the card she was holding was in mint condition, even after she had crumpled it up.

“...At least I have a good feeling now that it’ll work…” she said to herself, stunned.

Meanwhile, inside the mansion, Adrian’s brother, Felix Bruce was in the middle of delivering a mock presentation to their parents, Cristo and Krysta Bruce. Felix’s skin was an off-white color and his hair was black and curtained. He wore glasses with blue shades and despite looking like he was dressed to make an impression with his white, collared, button-up shirt and black pants, he actually favored a more casual attire, as shown by his plain white sport shirt that could be clearly seen under his unbuttoned collared shirt that he was wearing like a jacket. And despite his casual choice of clothing, he was not at all confident about this presentation, even though it was only his parents he was doing this for…

“So this is my latest…” he paused, holding up a beaker with a strange purple liquid inside, unsure of what the best word to describe it would be.

“...concoction?” he said in thought, wondering. “No, no, that sounds wrong...um...drug? Woah, hell no, that’s even worse. Um...creation? Gah, but that’s so cliche! I’d say invention, but that’s even more stock and I don’t feel it fits...”

“You...can just say chemical, son.” Cristo finally said with a nervous chuckle. His skin was a blue color, and like Felix, he also had a curtained hairstyle, only with blonde hair, and glasses, only with silver shades instead of blue ones. He wore black leather pants and a black leather jacket over a red shirt.

“Nobody cares about your choice of words,” interjected Krysta, who had tannish brown skin and a punk hairstyle like Adrian’s, only brunette instead of red, and wore a white tank top and jeans, “they only care about how you come off to them.”

As Felix looked at his parents, sitting on the couch in the living room, he only grew more nervous even though he knew they were only trying to comfort him.

“Great…” he said to himself as he let out a defeated sigh. “They don’t want to say it to my face, but they’re finding this just as embarrassing as I am, possibly more. Why did they have me do this? It’s so dumb. Dad’s the only one who’s interested in this shit anyways, why couldn’t I just show it to him in the lab…”

Unbeknownst to him, another scientist had been watching him the entire time...

“Sorry to end your suffering so soon…” Noimman intervened in Felix’s presentation, speaking to him, making her presence known to the Bruces as she entered the living room. “But I’m afraid whatever you are doing right now needs to be put on hold for the time being. There’s a matter I need to discuss with your father right away.”

“Um...it’s no trouble?” Felix nervously replied, smiling and looking over at his parents, futilely hoping for glances of approval on their faces. His expression quickly became blank when he saw they were frowning.

“Calm down…” he told himself in thought. “It’s only because of Noimman, not because of my reaction. It doesn’t matter if they know I never cared about that dumb presentation. Mom always gets pissed at Dad whenever Noimman’s here, so I think I have a good enough diversion here regardless…”

Though not meticulous about his appearance, Felix always found himself fussing over what he might have done to inadvertently annoy others nonstop. As he went to his bedroom upstairs with the beaker in hand, looking to put it away with his chemistry set, Adrian came in with the bag she had gathered the weapons in and looked at her parents and Noimman.

“Uh, Adrian…” Cristo began to say before he was cut off by Adrian.

“Bad timing, I know.” she said nonchalantly as she left the weapon bag on the TV table. “Just check out what I got whenever you get the chance.”

Yes, Adrian’s workout routine was not done in defiance of her parents’ orders. On the contrary, it was done in compliance. Her father wanted to train her to be a mercenary because of her fearsome power, and when he learned of the street fights she would get involved in, he began requesting for her to bring back any weaponry the thugs may have had on them, so he could “put it to good use”, so he claimed. Asking Adrian to loot them of money, he worried might come back to bite him, but confiscating an armed assailant’s weapon could be easily justified for a good cause. Besides, the Bruce family had enough money from their ties to Noimman, who was high up in the government. Despite their wealth, however, Noimman did her best to ensure that their lives were anything but cushy…

“If you need me, I’ll be upstairs…” she continued as she left the living room and went upstairs, getting out her knife and unfolding it when she was well out of their view. “...waiting for the storm to clear…”

Soon, Noimman was having a discussion with Cristo and Krysta in the living room, making herself comfy in the master chair she felt entitled to.

“Glad to have you here, Noimman…” Cristo said with a smile, feigning politeness. “Would you like any refreshments?”

“You know I never care to have refreshments when I come over here.” Noimman replied. “Just watching your reactions to the lovely atmosphere I bring to this place is refreshing enough…”

Noimman’s said that while grinning cheekily at Krysta, who was giving her the evil eye…

“Just tell us what brought you here…” Krysta said through her gritted teeth, not caring in pretending to be happy to see her.

“I’d rather show it…” Noimman replied in a foreboding tone.

She then began humming to herself as she reached into her pants and began fiddling around for a little while before the sound of something being pulled out could be heard. A mist of dark energy began to pour out of her pants, making Cristo and Krysta feel uneasy, but giving Noimman pleasure…

“Ah...I love getting the opportunity to let it all out…” she said in ecstasy as the dark mist materialized into a sheet of paper that she took in hand and held out to Cristo. “Especially from my legs...they haven’t been the same since then…”

“I...hope you recover from whatever happened soon…” an unnerved Cristo replied as he grabbed the paper Noimman gave him. When he and his wife read what was on it, their unease turned to shock. They looked back at Noimman, who had her hand in her pants again. This time, the sound of something being screwed back into place could be heard before she got up.

“I’d tell you to “think it over”,” said Noimman cockily, “but we both know that it’s an offer you can’t refuse. Even the school is only a cover for a place I’m sure you’re both familiar with. I want both of them to come back to the place where everything began…”

Noimman didn’t even say goodbye, or anything after that. She just left, muttering something odd to herself…

“Solve my riddle…solve my riddle where no God is with us lives...see who pulls her strings...then reel in the true evil...”

Krysta clenched her fists and growled. As soon as Noimman was gone, she snatched the paper out of Cristo’s hands and tore it up.

“WHAT THE FUCK?!” Cristo yelled.

“NOT A CHANCE!” Krysta bellowed. “WE ARE NOT SENDING OUR KIDS TO ANY PLACE WHERE THAT CUNT CAN HAVE HER WAY WITH THEM!”

Noimman chuckled evilly to herself as she overheard the two fighting from the courtyard.

“I’d love to stay and listen…” she said. “But I need to keep an eye on those Dark Sky members. Pitiful as they may be, my father is notorious for turning the weak into legends that put the strong to shame. I’ll have Akame fill in for me tomorrow so I can keep busy on that...but that doesn’t mean I won’t stop for a surprise visit at any time...ha ha ha ha ha…”

Adrian and Felix, by contrast, were trying to find ways to deal with their frustration as they overheard their parents fighting. Adrian was under her bed with her knife, carving obscene words into the wooden frame that supported it.

“Fuck, shit, damn, hell, pussy, cock, dick, cunt…” she said, reciting the obscenities. “I think I pretty much got every swear word in the book, discounting the ones that aren’t PC. Wait, why the hell do I care?! I’m going to be in deep shit if they ever find this anyway!”

As for Felix, he was on the computer, wearing headphones as he was listening to punk rock music.

“When you’re listening to punk rock to clear your mind of your problems…” he mused. “...and then you can’t stop thinking about why so many people don’t like punk rock. I hate my brain…”

He then pulled his chemistry set closer to him and took out the liquid he showed his parents earlier.

“Which is why I got into making things like this…” he said before he took a swig of it.

Meanwhile, the tension between Krysta and Cristo downstairs was beginning to subside…

“Honey, you know I don’t like it when we fight…” Cristo tried to calmly reason with her. “I’m not forcing the kids to do something for me. This is about their future, and the family’s future.”

“But what if Noimman kills them?!” Krysta exclaimed. “Tortures them and rapes them to death?! I know you’re not stupid enough to believe that she’ll take it easy on them because they’re your kids. To them, she’s just your boss. How do you think they’re going to take it when they learn just how diabolical she really is?!”

“They need to know the truth.” Cristo replied solemnly. “They need to know where they came from. You know they need to know...but we’re not going to have them die for it. To prove to you that they will not die, I’m going to make one more unbreakable pact...with Noimman’s most hated enemy…”

“.....Not unless I’m in on it too.” Krysta finally said after a long pause, holding out her fist. Cristo answered this gesture by holding out his fist as well and giving hers a bump.

“For the first time,” continued Krysta, “I feel like you’re going to make me truly grateful that I coughed up the red pill that night…”

The next morning, Adrian Bruce and her brother Felix found themselves at “prison work school”. Like all mortals, they did not muse too much over how they ended up there, even as a familiar paper fluttered behind them, blown by the wind. They merely saw this as following the direction of the wind…though before entering the school, they first looked towards the sky and admired all of the blue...even knowing that it would eventually become dark…

Meanwhile, the Dark Sky members were staying in a hotel room and talking amongst themselves after they had gotten out of bed that morning. Dumb-bell yawned, awakening from a less than refreshing sleep in the same bed as Hoops.

“Uh...shit, man…” he mumbled in discontent as he got out of the bed. “God, that had to be the most uncomfortable sleep I’ve ever had.”

“Dare I ask what made it ssoooo unpleasant?” Ghost Rainbow Dash snarked, hovering in the middle of the room, lacking empathy from not needing sleep as a ghost.

“Hoops not knowing that there’s this magical thing called courtesy,” answered Dumb-bell, his tone becoming snide, “and staying on your side of the bed that we were supposed to share.”

“Hey, I heard that!” Hoops exclaimed as he got up. “Don’t start that whiny crap with me, dude. You know that there’s this magical thing called the body’s instinct!”

“I don’t know about you guys,” interjected Derpy Hooves as she and Score got up, “but I slept great with Score last night!”

Dumb-bell and G.R.D. began chuckling to themselves while a slightly concerned Hoops asked…

“Wait, you two didn’t actually try anything, right?”

“...” Score silently denied this allegation.

“I tried something last night.” Derpy admitted. “I was just playing with the TV remote underneath the covers.”

“Bwa ha ha ha ha!” G.R.D. burst out laughing. “Oh, you guys are too entertaining…”

“Come to think of it, how do we know you didn’t try anything last night?” a suspicious Hoops speculated, causing a now nervous G.R.D. to stop laughing. Her eyes dotted around, seeing everyone giving her suspicious glares.

“Hmph!” she exclaimed, crossing her arms, shutting her eyes, and turning her head. “I did nothing you can prove!”

“Whatever…” Dumb-bell retorted, shrugging it off as he went to the bathroom, where everyone in the room could now see traces of ectoplasm stuck in the fur on his backside...along with Hoops’ hoof prints…

“Oh no, bro…” Hoops and Ghost Rainbow Dash said simultaneously as they examined their front hooves and realized ectoplasm was dripping from them…

Even though that was bad enough, they didn’t realize that worse things awaited them…

“Ha ha ha ha ha…” Noimman laughed, standing outside the hotel they were staying at...