Blending In

[grimoireofkenji]

 

“Shou, you’ve really gotta blend in today.”

“Why?”

“You’re to trail and protect our target.”

The very idea of a trailing mission sent the strange girl into a fit of sighs loud enough that she could be heard through the headset her partner, Operator, was speaking through. She brushed her curly dark hair from in front of her face and flopped on the bed in the safehouse she was currently staying at. 

“Hey, weatherman!” Shou spoke into thin air.

“It’s Operator to you. Why am I your weatherman now?” The headset buzzed back, crackling a little. It was so small and tucked so deeply beneath layers of her thick, curly hair, the average person would assume the diminutive agent was talking to herself.

“Because you’re going to tell me the weather. You always do.”

“That’s because it’s relevant.”

“It doesn’t change much.” Shou responded.

“You’re also moody and incorrigible when it rains. It’s more of a warning to myself.” Operator snarked. “The Agency hasn’t forgotten what you did during tropical storm season.”

“Oh, come on!” Shou suddenly rose from the bed, feeling dizzy for a moment from getting up too fast. “I didn’t even start that! I was hungry and the rain was so gloomy and perfect…”

“Look, just don’t kill anyone. Be careful, too.”

“Awh, look who cares about little ol’ Shou~” 

Operator didn’t even bother responding. Shou grabbed a small messenger bag, peered in the cheap and dirty safehouse mirror with her sharp teeth bared, and proceeded out the door. Slamming the cheap wooden affair closed as she passed through.

It was a windy, late summer evening as the dark-haired girl stepped out of the unsuspecting brownstone and onto the streets. Her huge spectacles caught a glint off of the streetlights that were starting to turn on.

“It’s a girl, this time. She’s a teenager, red hair, taller than you, thin and wiry. A model’s build.” Operator spoke. “They live about a block away from the safehouse, and they frequent the marketplace on the next street over.”

 

“I don’t really see why it was necessary to mention they were taller than me.” Shou sounded slightly annoyed as she spoke, which audibly amused Operator, who let out a chuckle.

“It was funny, though.”

“Ugh. I’ll let you know when I spot the target.” She responded. She pulled her oversized windbreaker close as she walked. Shou didn’t take well to breezy days. They reminded her of how far she was from the ocean in her current location, and it made her anxious. If Operator knew of this, he’d probably never let her hear the end of it. Shou continued at a normal pace down the street, shooting an analysts’ glance at everyone they passed by. A single crow landed in a tree nearby and as it did, Shou’s nose wiggled slightly. It was more like a reflex at this point. It usually told her something odd was afoot, but not where, unless she knew what to sniff out.

She disregarded it and kept walking. Block after block, she did her best to make her tracking behaviors look as natural as possible. Her self-proclaimed skill at blending in was “impeccable”, as “nobody ever notices her when she tries.” It was unclear if people didn’t really care or if they truly didn't notice the presence of a pale girl in oversized glasses and a windbreaker shivering in the summertime.

From the crosswalk, Shou could make out an entire block of open market stalls and storefronts. The smells from various restaurants drifted as the breeze carried them to her extremely sensitive nostrils. The sun was slowly moving behind the tall apartment buildings as she followed her nose into the crowded mecca of sounds and smells. 

The dark-haired girl rubbed her nose, annoyed. The overwhelming amount of delicious scents had begun to make saliva drip from her sharp teeth and out of her mouth without her realizing. 

“Wire me twenty bucks, Oppie-san~” Shou said, putting on her best faux-cute voice.

“What the hell for?” Operator responded incredulously.

“I’m hungry.”

“What happened to your stipend for this week?”

“I spent it on a new windbreaker.”

No response. Shou waited for a moment, and a familiar notification sound went off on her smartphone. She strolled into a hotpot restaurant, seemingly satisfied.

Inside, the steam rising from individual tables immediately clouded the petite agent’s oversized glasses. She attempted to peer over them, and tried to isolate the scent from earlier, her pointed nose wiggling as it normally did. The mock oriental design of the inside of the restaurant was garish and looked like a takeout place that hadn’t had an interior upgrade in twenty years.There was dirt in between each of the tacky linoleum floor tiles that would likely never wash out. Shou sighed, and continued following her nose.

“Hello, table for one?” A friendly asian woman who was staring at her phone asked her as soon as she took a step forward.

“Wo shi lai baifang pengyou de.” Shou responded without skipping a beat.

“Ah!” the woman nodded and immediately went back to whatever she was tending to on her phone. Shou moved slowly through the restaurant, still following her nose, gradually closing in on that distinct scent from earlier. She moved from one curtained booth to another, parting each one rudely, and closing it without apology when she realized it wasn’t the one she was looking for.

Finally, she approached the booth furthest from the exit. As she drew closer, she removed her oversized jacket and tied it around her waist, careful not to wrinkle it as she did so.

“Shou, why is it that whenever I lose signal for a moment, you’re getting ready to do something stupid?” Operator said, the earpiece suddenly crackling to life.

“What’s the problem?”

“You’re supposed to monitor and protect the target from afar.”

“Not my style.” Shou replied sharply, parting the curtain and sliding into the booth. As she sat down, she took note of the shocked look on her target’s face. She grabbed an extra pair of chopsticks off the table and grabbed a strip of beef out of the boiling beef bowl, tearing it to bits with her sharp teeth.

“W-who are you!?” A redheaded girl said, completely shaken at Shou’s brash action.

“Add more sriracha to the broth.” Shou replied, completely disregarding the scared girl’s inquiry. Upon closer inspection, she was quite beautiful. Her dazzlingly bright green eyes complimented her perfectly straight red-orange hair, which was tied into a bun. Although she was slouched in her seat, Shou could tell she was quite tall. “You sure know how to screw with my complex, Operator.” She thought to herself. Shou was growing tired of wiping the steam from her glasses, so she removed them completely. Next to the tall girl was a backpack, labelled with her name on it. “Fiona.” Shou mouthed to herself.

“Hello!? I’m asking you a question!” The redhead inquired again, a bit more harshly this time. She adjusted the intensity on the hotpot boiler so it was simmering a bit lower.

“Oh, me? I’m your classmate from school! I saw you head in here and decided to check it out as well.” Shou lied through her razor-sharp teeth, flashing the redhead a dangerous grin.

“Wait, huh?” The girl was suddenly disarmed, although if it was from the shock of being told such a bold-faced lie or that she actually believed said bold-faced lie was hard to tell.

“Yeah, you’re Fio, right?” Shou said, trying to think of something believable on the fly.

“Uh, yeah, but only my friends call me that.” Fiona responded, eyeing Shou with suspicion.

“Right, right. I just figured since I already ate some of your hotpot, we’d be friends.”

“You stole that.”

“Did I? Anyways, I’m… Lindsay. You can call me Lin.” Shou pointed her thumb at her modest chest in declaration. “And at any rate, ya seem lonely. I bet you’re really glad someone as cool as me slid into your booth.”

“Hah, good one.” Fiona chuckled in response, brushing some of her loose, pumpkin-colored hair from in front of her face. The steam rising from the pot was starting to make her sweat. Shou seemed nonplussed. As a matter of fact, she enjoyed the steam, minus the effect it had on her lenses. She laughed at Fiona’s lackluster response, a loud, overpoweringly fake laugh that didn’t make it far out of the booth over the raucous noise of plates and pots clanging and people conversing. It simply sounded fake, though it was how she’d always sounded. 

“You’re a damned idiot. This better pay off, Shou.” Operator’s voice cut through the awkward silence Shou had created. She didn’t respond. She couldn’t.

“You really don’t look like any of my classmates,” Fiona said, still eyeing Shou. “You don’t look like a high-schooler at all, actually.”

“Are you saying I look old?” Shou responded, holding back her impulsive fury with the patience of a saint. I’ll have you know I’m actually t-”

Shou stopped suddenly. Her nose wiggled as she caught wind of a smell. An unfriendly one.

“Hmm? Were you saying something?” Fiona responded, reaching for her chopsticks and grabbing a huge piece of meat.

“Stay quiet for a moment.” Shou said, suddenly becoming quite serious. Her instruction sounded harsh, and it caught the redhead by surprise. The warm look in her eyes was immediately replaced with her normal cold, calculating glare.

Fiona, who for the past five minutes had dealt with nothing but a very jovial girl named Lin, froze up as she heard the words practically hissed from the stranger’s mouth. She strongly considered getting up and running, but as she tensed up her muscles to get up and make a run for it, Shou spoke up again, her sharp nose poking from the corner of the booth, between the edge of the curtain and the divider between booths. “Don’t even think about it.” 

Fiona remained frozen.

“Can you just tell me who you are?”

“Would you believe me if I told you I was your bodyguard?” Shou postured nonchalantly.

“Did my fucking father put you up to this!?” Fiona’s calm visage was contorted into one of outrage.

“Whoa, language, young lady.” Shou responded, her lips curling into a playful smile. 

“Ugh, no. I’m not dealing with this.” Fiona turned off the burner, and grabbed her bag, sliding out of the booth before the ever-vigilant Shou could stop her. She was too busy looking out of the curtain to realize.

Fiona stood up to her full height, and she was easily eight inches taller than the agent she was currently eating with. As she parted the curtains and stepped out, however, She bumped face-to-chest into a large, burly man. In an instant, he placed a heavy hand on her shoulder. 

“N-no! I’m not going back home!” Fiona replied, shoving her heavy-looking backpack into the chest of the man, catching him off guard for a split-second, and she took off through the back of the restaurant, hopping the two-way gate between the front end and the kitchen. Before the large man could react and start pursuing the student, he was stopped in his tracks by a kick to the shin. The sound of the impact rang out throughout the restaurant, which was somehow completely quiet. 

“Rang kehu baituo kunjing!” Shou called out to the woman at the front of the restaurant, who somehow heard her. She started hustling people out of booths.

“I’m not letting you get close to that girl, you know.” She prodded the man on the chest. It felt like poking a metal wall. Not even a little bit of give.

Like a lightning strike, the man’s fist swung towards Shou’s head. She ducked it easily. Slightly shocked by the speed at which he had launched his attack in such close quarters, she quickly moved to his back. She launched a knee at where his spine should have been, only meeting more of the same metal feeling.

“Shou, that’s not a man. I mean, it is a man, but it’s artificial!” Operator’s voice came through crackly on the earpiece. “And it seems he’s f- ith- -the radio -nal”

“What? Speak up, old man.” Shou replied, sliding under the legs of the colossus as he launched another inhumanly fast jab.

“It’s not a downpour, but do you think I can…?”

“With steam? -a chance, but yo-” Operator’s voice was barely audible through the static. Suddenly, Shou was knocked across the restaurant by something that hit like a truck at full speed. The metal man was charging and he crashed through the plastic dividers separating booths as if they were paper.

“Fuck. Operator?” Shou called into her earpiece. No response. The steam rose from several now-abandoned booths and coalesced in the center of the restaurant, now mixed with smoke and dust from destroyed drywall and uprooted lounge furniture. She coughed heavily as she used the wall to guide herself to her feet.

Then Shou did something she didn’t usually do.

She turned tail and jumped through the front window, curling up into a ball to reduce damage. Right as she did so, a loud SLAM echoed through the darkened market street, which by now had illuminated by neon lights and paper lanterns. The colossal foe crashed through where the front door used to be, sending glass and bent metal off it’s hinges and into the street.

Shou started sprinting, her body pushing as hard it could. She wasn’t nearly at her limit, yet, but the situation wasn’t right. Why would this thing focus on her if it was pursuing Fiona?

She could hear it’s large metal footsteps and the cries of the people it was shoving aside, She gritted her teeth as she rounded the corner and began distancing herself further. The petite agent hopped the fence of a tall brownstone and layed down on her back behind it, trying to catch her breath. Her windbreaker, still tied around her waist, began vibrating. Her phone was still intact, somehow.

“I swear to fucking god, this had better be you, Operator.” Shou said, without even looking at who was calling.

“You really shouldn’t be swearing, you brat.” Operator’s cold voice cut through the silence of the line. Shou sighed audibly in relief. She didn’t even know she could feel relief anymore.

“Why’s your heart rate so high? Why do you have rib damage?” Operator said, sounding more like a doting father than her cold and detached liaison.

“Took a hit from that metal dude.” Shou replied, keeping it short. She was still regaining her breath.

“Oh. It’s weird, because you can normally take a hit. Must be a tough dude, huh?” Operator chuckled lightly. 

“Now isn’t the time. Can’t you provide some kind of analysis?” Shou began to yell into the phone. She looked down at her now dirty and dust-covered windbreaker. “Four-hundred fucking dollars…”

“I can tell you where the girl is. She’s safe.” Operator said. “I can send you her location, actually.”

“Okay, please d-” Shou stopped short. Her nose wiggled and she caught a whiff of that sinister scent. The only scent that actually elicited some kind of fear in her. A weird, primal fear that she didn’t have the presence of mind to think about. Flesh she couldn’t pierce. Blood she couldn’t draw. It worried her. The colossus that had nearly broken her ribs stomped across the street, away from her. Sweat dripped from her face and down the sides as she lay motionless on the grassy yard of the brownstone apartment, her curly hair splayed out on the ground.

As her breath slowly returned to her lungs, Shou regained her composure. Slowly but surely, she rose to her feet, taking shallow breaths that slowly returned to normal.

“My back-up plan is still perfectly intact.” She said, untying the jacket from around her waist and putting it back on. 

“Yeah, but your ribcage isn’t. You’d better be careful about how you go about this.”

“Enough talk. It’s time for action!” Shou called out, but not quite loud enough to alert anyone outside of the small yard she was standing in. 

“And, Operator?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t need her coordinates. I’m just going to follow this guy. I have a feeling like he knows where he’s going.” Shou hung up her cracked cellphone and placed it in her baggy windbreaker pocket, hopping back over the fence and beginning down the street after her quarry. 

“Or maybe i’m headed in to get myself killed.” She thought to herself. Self-doubt like this wasn’t common to her. She had always reveled in drawing first blood from a target. Being knocked aside like trash was abnormal to her. But there were a few more solutions.

As she tracked the movements of the metal colossus, she saw more and more of the destruction he left in his wake: bent lightpoles and parking meters, a man on his knees in shock at the missing door on the passenger’s side of his car. Presumably, it had gotten in the metal creatures’ way.

“A. Golem…” Shou said out loud, finally putting two-and-two together.

A Golem. A creature made of blessed metals, with a human soul binding it. Made to defeat paranormal beings.

And if it was chasing Fiona, then-

Shou stopped suddenly. She was less than a hundred feet from the golem. It had ceased chasing the target in the middle of a traffic roundabout that would’ve normally been bustling at this time of night. A few cars sped around, trying to get out of the way. The golem slammed a fist against the arches, seeming to be enraged. And on the ground a few feet away, Shou spotted a horrified Fiona, looking up at her would-be assailant.

“I’m not going back! That’s final!” She yelled, looking up at the metal monster with the fire of defiance in her eyes.

“Or, shit, that’s actual fire!” Shou called out, loudly, catching both Fiona’s and the Golem’s attention. A small flame burst on the arm of the colossus that was reaching out to grab the redhead. It’s arm lurched back quickly, and Fiona looked down at her hands with a shock.

“Another weirdo like me, huh?” The shark-toothed girl said to herself, fixing the sleeves on her jacket. “I can’t really let you…” Shou launched herself toward the golem, sliding over a stationary car that had a fist dent right in the center of the hood. Leaping into the air, she flew towards her target with a flying kick, which hit it right in the solar plexus. 

Or, what would’ve been the solar plexus if this were a human. Regardless, it was pushed back a few inches, and Shou landed gracefully.

“JUST DIE, HUH!?” She struck a cool pose in front of Fiona, who chuckled a little. It warmed Shou’s heart. 

Wait. 

It warmed her heart? That was unusual.

By now, a large group had gathered around the street roundabout the three of them were conflicting in. Shou, not used to the attention, pulled her hood over her head, her curly hair, all messed up from the action, got in the way of her large glasses, and she took a second to adjust it. 

“H-hey, what’s going on here!? What’re you doing with these girls, dude?” A large man crossed the street and approached the golem. 

“Oh, Jesus fucking Christ.” Shou said.

Before the golem could release his reeled-back fist towards the civilian, Shou launched her knee upward, connecting with what would’ve been the golem’s elbow, and changed the direction of the fist. The man, who had realized what was going to happen, was curled into a ball.

“Ow.” Shou said, rubbing her knee gently. Fiona was back on her feet and frozen in place, staring at the petite agent and her pursuer.

“Can you get the fuck out of here? I’ll eat you myself if you stay here and get murdered.” Shou hissed, baring her teeth at the man, who was scrambling to his feet. He whimpered slightly as he reached his full height and ran across the street. The rest of the onlookers maintained their distance. A few pulled out their phones, and for a long moment, Shou wished that Operator had some kind of jammer.

The Golem was slow to readjust for some reason, so it gave Shou a few seconds to analyze the situation. The late summer breeze blew through again, giving her a shiver. 

“Hey, freak,” Shou began, her eyes focused on Fiona. She couldn’t tell, though. “Wanna give me a light?” She laughed.

“I-I don’t know what the hell that was! Was that me? Is it going to kill me? Will I explode?” Fiona looked panicked, waving her hands back and forth in front of her. 

“I’m starting to realize why I was tasked with protecting you.” Shou said. In truth, It was pretty obvious the Agency wanted her for her latent abilities, but she had always thought it was a choice. It was for her, although it wasn’t like she had an alternative.

Then, as if waking up from a slumber, the Golem locked eyes with Shou, who was back to staring at it. It reeled back a punch, and before it could launch, She went low and slammed the bottom of her foot into the ankle joint of the metal monster in an attempt to buckle it. No dice. 

“Alright. Okay. There’s really only one solution.” She jumped back a few feet and reached into her windbreaker. She retrieved a large red cylinder, and ran the bottom of it on the ground. It sparked alive, the top alight with a flame. She raised it above her head. This part wasn’t necessary, but Shou liked it.

Without warning, the starry night sky was filled with gathering clouds, blocking out the tops of the lit up skyscrapers in the distance. 

And then, a drop. And another drop. Several raindrops. Within moments, the area was covered in a downpour of heavy rain. 

Shou tossed the flare aside.

“Five minutes.” She said to herself, cracking her knuckles. Her nails grew outward and jagged. She rolled up her sleeves as the fins that lined her forearm and wrist shot out of her skin like a bone growth, making a squelching sound. She tightened her hood around her head, but unzipped a small opening around the neck. A mist occasionally shot out of the opening, presumably from her gills. 

Fiona looked horrified at the sound, although her vision was fairly hindered by the sudden weather. Onlookers were putting shirts over the heads and phones, and a few prepared people extended umbrellas. 

In a flash, Shou was off. Tossing her glasses off and perfectly behind her, they landed in Fiona’s shocked hands. She looked down to see what was now in her grasp. 

A palm thrust to the center of the golem. No good.

“I’ve gotta find your core, bastard.” Shou said loudly enough to the golem. It didn’t respond. Even with a human’s soul, it didn’t seem to have a human’s emotional capacity. Shou danced on her feet with enough grace to dodge raindrops. When she struck the colossus, the rain parted for a moment. It still didn’t do much to the golem. It charged towards her like a car driving through a rainstorm, the deluge flying off of it like a windshield. She dodged deftly, launching herself onto the golem’s neck, and locking her legs around it, attempting to twist it. It wouldn’t give, and eventually it reached up and threw her off. 

She landed on her butt, adrenaline negating any pain she would’ve felt. She snorted loudly and climbed back onto her feet, running towards the golem and full speed. When she connected with the enemy, she did something she was normally loathe to do.

She bit into it. Right on the head. Her sharp, unnatural teeth sunk into the Golem’s skull. As she did, her saliva began to spread throughout, rusting the consecrated metal of her opponent. It flailed around wildly, more like a human than a robot. Or was it a cyborg? If it could scream, Shou imagined it would. Her acidic secretions quickly mixed with the rainwater and oxidized the golem. It was severely damaged, but it’s functions hadn’t been hindered, mostly. Shou could heart the robotic whirring of it’s internals working overtime in self defense as she broke away, taking one of its eyes in her mouth as she jumped back. Some kind of oil flew out of where it one sat. The golem reached up to grab at where it was.

“Man, I almost feel sorry for you, dude.” Shou said, spitting out the metal eyeball on the rain-slicked concrete.

“Holy fucking shit!” called out an onlooker. 

“Shut up, or i’ll pull out your eyeball too.” Shou looked towards the source of the noise, enraged.

The crowd fell silent. 

“Now, let’s fucking finish this. I’d really like to get my ribs treated.” Shou said, losing patience. 

Fiona didn’t get how Shou could be so smug, considering what they were facing. She also didn’t know who Shou was, or why she was here. All the questions running through her head were quickly replaced with the thought of what had just happened. 

“Lin!? What the hell is going on?” Fiona called out. Shou almost didn’t realize she was talking to her, since she’d long forgotten the fake name she’d provided her mark.

“A-ah, don’t worry about it. Lemme solve this. I’ll tend to you real quick.” Through the downpour, Shou winked mischievously.

Shou took a knee, like a runner preparing to sprint. The golem had prepared to launch itself towards her, Its arms reeled back like it was going to punch. 

But it didn’t. Instead, jets fired up from the palms of its hands, and it began to fly towards Shou. She rolled to the side, and it kept flying. It was about fifty feet from the small agent. The rain pounded the concrete. 

Thirty seconds.

It launched towards her again, and she met it at full speed. To Fio’s eyes, her new friend, or mysterious protector, Lindsay, was swimming through the rain towards the giant who had tried to kill her earlier. 

In an instant, it was over. Shou was behind the golem, and it had begun crumbling. In her hands was the metal monstrosity’s head. She caressed it gently, and whispered to it something that Fiona couldn’t hear through the sounds of the rain. She stood there as the body of the colossus that had nearly killed the two of them was reduced to scrap metal. In truth, Shou’s oxidizing saliva had spread throughout the body of the Golem, and made it extremely easy to destroy the body. She didn’t have to strike the soul core of the consecrated creation, as she could simply stop it from moving. 

Suddenly, the one intact arm fired up it’s jets again, from the ground where the pile where the rest of its body lay. Before Shou could react, it flew towards Fiona with the last bit of energy it had. She covered herself with her arms in fear. She couldn’t move out of the way fast enough.

And then, It stopped, followed by a sickening crunch. Shou had jumped in the way of the projectile, stopping it with her arms, which were braced in front of her for the impact. Blood poured from the wound the flying arm had just created along her protector’s forearm.

The arm, out of juice, fell to the ground uselessly. Blood flowed along the ground, mixing with the rainwater and washing away. Shou gripped her now limp arm with her functioning one, taking a few steps and falling to her knees, looking up at the sky. 

“Ah! Are you alright?” Fiona spoke up, running to where Shou was kneeling, unmoving.

“Ah man, what a weird, heroic gesture, right?” Shou chuckled, her teeth covered in whatever weird oil was coating the parts of the golem. “Man, this shit is gonna hurt real bad in about ten seconds.”

The rain was starting to clear up, too. The drops lessened in intensity, and eventually completely gave way to clear skies.

The fins protruding from Shou’s arms slowly retracted back into her forearms and Shou collapsed completely. Fiona dropped to her knees, grabbing and cradling her savior’s head in her arms. She didn’t know if it was the right thing to do, but It felt natural to her. The crowd had dispersed at this point, with a few snapping photos of the bizarre scene. They were surrounded by damaged or destroyed cars, and a few feet from two injured girls was a pile of scrap metal that had almost killed them. And not even for a second did anyone watching think to step in or help. To be honest, Fiona was used to it. And the barely conscious Shou preferred it. After all, the Agency would send someone in a few moments.

...Right? 

Shou didn’t get to see a few moments into the future, however, as she passed out quickly. The numbing adrenaline from her transformation had faded quickly as the rain dispersed, and the gash along her arm, combined with the pain in her ribcage had become too much for the petite girl.

Fiona sat there, just holding Lin’s head in her lap. She wasn’t even aware of how much time had elapsed, simply wanting to keep the person who had protected her as safe as possible. She wrapped her rain-drenched blouse around Shou’s wound tightly and sat there, cold and uncomfortable in her undershirt. 

“I’m sure you’ve got people, right?” She began, “Well, I hope they get here soon. I’ve no time to care for a dead fish.”