Chapter 8
The newcomer sprinted from wall to wall as Olivia did what she could to stop him. "Hey, good looking! How about we dance a little? Surely you need someone of worth on this cold night." The man mocked as he kicked Olivia in the back, sending her towards the kitchen. "Don't you guys sleep at all!?" Olivia said exhaustively. "Nah, I'm too excited to kill you to go to sleep." the man said as he threw an object. Olivia couldn't really make out what it was that the man threw but it definitely wasn't safe to touch. The object was covered in light and wrapped with red and orange electricity. It almost seemed like a lightning rod turning into plasma. She dodged to the left and threw one of her daggers at the assassin. The man sped towards her not even thinking about the dagger that was thrown at him. He grabbed her by the neck and slammed her into the wall, sending electricity through his Gauntlet and into her neck. Grabbing his shoulder, Olivia plunged her dagger into the man's back but he seemed unfazed and only squeezed her neck tighter and tighter. Gasping for air, she continued to stab and stab but the man still didn't relinquish his iron grip on her. He materialized another of the mysterious objects. It turned out that they really were lightning rods but they had been supercharged by the electricity from the assassin's Gauntlet. She thought "Shit, it's happening again. I'm still the same weak, pitiful creature that I am. I'm going to die weak. I'm sorry Dad." Finally, she felt the man's hands slip away. One by one each of the stab wounds ripped open with all matter of blood and tissue.
"Get up, shitface. He's not dead." Alex said as he slowly got off of the wall(he was the one who got thrown). "What? How is he not dead!?" She was surprised to see that the assassin with 7 holes in his chest was still alive and slowly getting back up. "Now because you've pissed me off, I'll kill you right here right now! They can probably figure out how you work by the skeleton!" he screamed as his voice reverberated throughout his body, echoing all around the room. "He burned off his nerve endings, that's why he doesn't feel the pain from the holes in his chest. He really does have 2. No wonder he knocked me down so fast." "2 what? Gauntlets? How is that even possible?" "I'll explain later, but right now we need to kill this unlucky—son of a bitch!" he said before calling out the command words. "I'm feeling lucky today!" Then his hand and forearm were surrounded by yellow topaz, layered like the scales of a dragon. Alex launched himself at the man, hitting him straight in the face…and doing nothing. "I'm sorry but, what the hell are you doing you drunk bastard?" said the assassin, disappointed with how little force there was behind the attack. "Fuck, today is not my day." Alex said begrudgingly before being backhanded to the other side of the room.
Alex continued his barrage of attacks but they didn't seem to be doing much. He moved almost effortlessly, like a boxer reaching the end of his prime. Uppercut, weave, Liver shot, weave, weave, Gut punch, he continued with all of the strength that he could give. "Goddammit! Why can't I hit you, you old piece of shit!?" the assassin screamed in annoyance. As the assassin was distracted, Olivia ran in and sliced at the man's heel, making him drop to his knees. Alex takes the opportunity and comes in with a devastating uppercut but this one was different. When the punch connected, the sound of a bell, like that of someone winning big at the casino, echoed throughout the room and the skull of the enemy. A great flash of gold came from that area of the room in which the assassin was in. "Finally! Now we're getting somewhere!" Alex exclaimed at the attack finally working. The assassin tried to get back up to no avail. He'd been hit in the chin which would have made you tumble but because there was so much force from the explosion the assassin was nearly unconscious. Stumbling around the room trying desperately to get on to his own two feet but he only fell to the ground again and again.
"What the hell did you do to me?" the assassin grunted, as he started to feel nauseous from the blow. "You shouldn't worry about that. You should be worried about what I'm going to do to you!" Olivia roared before launching herself at the assassin. She was stopped by Alex before she could do anything too serious. "Calm down! Let's ask him some questions before we throw him into the gutter." "He hurt Peter, so I will hurt him! Seeing his skeleton isn't enough. I need to see the inside of his brain and make sure that it stays in there so it will never get out and hurt anyone else ever again!" "Oh yeah? It looks like you need to be checked as well. I'm sure that Peter guy will love to see what's in there. Bastard child to a dad who didn't love you and yet you still look for something, anything of love in a world that pissed on you at birth and continues to spit on you as you get older!" yelled the assassin, tempting Olivia to unleash her daggers one more time.
"Bro, shut the fuck up." said Peter as he got up from the floor. He walked toward the assassin, no words were spoken but the assassin knew that something was wrong. Very wrong. Then something began to grow wildly on Peter's arm. It looked like dead vines trying to come back to life, sapping the energy from Peter's arm and turning it into a disturbing shade of gray, like an avocado going bad. He winced at the pain but took a deep breath and continued with his plan. He called out his Gauntlet but not his blade, instead he had his revolver out. Now that he could see it he saw that the custom design on it was of vines and white roses. It reminded him of Guns n'Roses, which was a band his dad used to listen to. His dad was always into the stuff from older times. He unloaded the gun, left only one bullet inside, and put the gun to the forehead of the assassin.
"What's your name?" "Why the hell would I tell you, you cheap addict! Yeah, I can see the growths on your arms. It's getting worse right? Soon you're going to-" before the assassin could finish his cheap remark Peter pulled the trigger. CLICK! But no bullet came out. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! My name I can't give you since I was captured and don't remember who I am! But you can call me Copper since that's what my Gauntlets made out of!" Copper winded and whimpered from fear. "Alright, Copper, how many assassins are after us?" "Seven I think, yeah, seven assassin's! Minus me and Sapphire there should be five left." "What are their abilities?" "I can't tell you that!" CLICK! "No, really, I can't! We were told to never show our abilities with anybody unless we're working on an assignment together!" "Aren't all of you on the same assignment?" "No, when one of us fails or dies, the next one goes and does the assignment." "Well that's a bullshit strategy. Wouldn't it be easier to just send all of you at once?" "No, because they can't risk too many assassins dying on one assignment." "Where can we get more intel and bring down the company?" "I don't know!" CLICK! "Oh! The University is a perfect place to start. Ouroboros has a lab there that will probably have some kind info you can use. They also have-" but before he could finish a bullet pierced through the wall and went directly into his skull.
"Shit! we need to get out of here, now!" yelled Alex. They all quickly left the apartment and for Alex's car that was parked outside. It was a bit old, roughly from 2060 or 70 but it was still in good condition. "Where are we going?" asked Olivia. "We'll go to my place near where the train station is." replied Alex but he paused for a moment and realized that he was wrong. "Wait no we can't go there they know where we all live. We'll go to a motel for the night and go to the university the next day, got it?" "Yeah" both Olivia and Peter replied as they scrambled to get into the backseat of the car. The front passenger seat was covered in beer cans and bottles and old takeout boxes. The whole car was a mess. Peter and Olivia had to practically dig through all of the trash just to sit in the seats. They drove far from the apartment trying to find any motels in the area but there aren't many tourists nowadays so there weren't many motels left. As they drove on, Olivia asked "How is it possible that Copper had two Gauntlets?" "It's possible for a person to have up to 4 but if you go over that number you cease to become human." Alex answered. "How do you know all of this? You say you're helping us but you're hiding something from us. What's going on here?" Peter said. Alex was silent for a while before saying "I worked on the Ouroboros Project that started production of Gauntlets. I'm the reason this is happening." There was no talking after that, just the smell of beer to accompany the silence.
When they got to the motel the silence continued until they went inside. They got two separate rooms since Peter and Olivia didn't want to share a room with Alex. As they were getting settled in, Olivia (after careful consideration) asked "What was Copper talking about?" "What do you mean?" "What did he mean by 'cheap addict'?" Olivia asked but with more caution. Peter hesitated to respond to the question as he knew the answer but was still trying to run from it. Peter's arm reacted to his sense of unrest and started to grow the unyielding veins from before. He turned away from Olivia, trying to hide the wilting stems on his arm. Olivia moved forward and reached out to comfort Peter but he moved away, this time to the bathroom and locking himself in. E.L appeared in the mirror like a phantom. "Hey…you're not doing well are you?" asked E.L as he now just realized what was happening. "No, I'm not doing well right now so please don't make things worse." Peter said in a sarcastic tone as he grabbed a lighter from the cupboard. For some reason there were a lot of candles in the room that they got. There were a variety of different candles from Cherry Blossom Garden to Brimstone. Peter guessed that Alex probably sent all of these candles here to mess with them but didn't really understand in what way.
"Look man, you should probably tell her what's going on." E.L beckoned. "She doesn't need to know about this." Peter replied. "Yeah but it's probably a better idea to tell her since you are staying here together." E.L said before getting a scornful from Peter. "Plus you guys are working together! If something affects your combat, it could make things more difficult during battle. You should tell her so that if it ever happens you have a way of getting out of it." "Oh, yeah!? Do you think a random person is going to be able to stop an addiction that's been going on for 5 years!? Do you think that they can make all of my worries disappear? No! That's not how that works and I don't want to bother anybody else with my problems and make them into even worse people because of me!" At this outburst there was a knock on the door. "Hey, you good in there? You've been in there for 15 minutes. Please hurry up! I actually want to go to sleep now!" said Olivia, now a bit suspicious of what Peter was doing. "Yeah, just give me one second!" Peter replied in a hurried manner. He quickly got back to what he was doing before and lit the vines on his arm. In order to get rid of the vines when they come out you have to burn the vines off. This doesn't mean the vines are gone, they just won't be actively showing. But when they burn they smell just like weed so Peter, after he burned the vines off, lit some of the candles that were there so that Olivia didn't smell the vines.
After they got freshened up and healed their wounds from the fight at the apartment, they met with Alex outside his room. "So, you guys have a plan on what to do?" Alex asked with his door half open. From what Peter and Olivia could see he had already gotten to work on a 6-pack of beer and was watching soccer on the TV. "We're going to the university tomorrow and find that lab and any information that can help us," said Peter. "Oh! So you don't have a plan! You just have a goal. How are you getting into the university? Do you have any idea where the lab is? And when you find it, how are you going to get in? Hm? Any ideas going through your dumbass head?" Alex mocked as he also motioned them to come inside. The inside was much worse than they saw from the outside. It wasn't one 6-pack that he was half way through. He had drunk 3 6-packs and was working on a fourth. The bed was a mess and most of the furniture was in ruins. "Please, sit where you like!" he said.
They tried to sit but most of the room was very much not clean. "The plan is that we go in disguised as people look for a university and then look for a way into the basement level," said Peter. "And why the basement level?" said Alex tiredly. "Because that's the only part of the campus that is closed besides the museum." "Ever think about how maybe the museum is where the lab is?" "We can check both! Me and Peter can go check the basement and you can check the museum!" Olivia interrupted. "No, splitting up is a terrible idea because they can pick us off that way." Alex said. "Plus the museum is too small for a lab and it does open for the public just not today since it's a Sunday." added Peter. She did attempt to give more ideas but most of them weren't actually helpful. Mostly stuff like "Maybe we should try taking some books as well, since the university has the biggest collection of literature in the state." or "Can I slap one of the professors with a slice of pizza?". After going over the plan, Olivia and Peter left and immediately went to sleep in bed after not realizing how tired they were. As Peter slept he began to dream of something he always wanted to escape but never could. But soon he would find a new answer.