The Creatures Series

First Night

First NightCreatures of the Night

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##### First Night #####

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The night is at peace, the night is silent, and tonight I run.

I’ve been trying to get away from this giant rock monster that has been hot on my trail all day long, but the creature is getting too fast for me. No matter how many streets I ran through, no matter how many building tops I've jumped on, and no matter how far I’ve gone, it’s still trailing behind me.

Night comes, and I become more desperate in trying to lose it. And it becomes even more desperate, eager to catch and rip me apart.

I understand why it’s being this way, though. I used to hunt down creatures like it. So when it saw me, it saw a chance to finish me off while I was alone, so that I won’t be a threat to it or its kind anymore. Yet, I can’t just give up when some creature is trying to get rid of me. I used to be a fighter; I won’t go down without a fight.

Or at least for today, without running away like a coward. I’m no longer a hunter. I’m just a mortal. I sure still have some power left, but I rarely use it anymore. At least not as much as I used to. Now I just fight when I have to, when there’s nothing else I can do.

I’ve been trying to explain my reasoning to my enemies — that I’m no longer part of the agency — but do they care? No. They’re just out for my blood, like how they’ve already got Minny's.

Minny was the little girl that gave me the reason for quitting the group. I realized that she wouldn’t last very long once she went into the field, so I took her and ran. We tried to make a new life, away from danger and death, but the farther we went, the more danger we got into. We couldn’t escape that life. Things only get worse and worse, until one night when my guard was down, those monsters decided to attack us.

It was too late by the time I realized what was happening. Minny tried to save me from a monster that was about to stab me when I was asleep, but its claws went straight through her body instead, letting poisonous acid spread through her chest.

It all happened so fast, and before I knew it, I was holding onto her body, running towards the nearest exit, closing the elevator doors just in time before any of those monsters had a chance to get inside. I ripped off her dress and put my hand on her chest in a desperate attempt to heal the wound. But I was too damn late. The acid had gotten into her heart. The body that I was holding had already turned to a corpse.

When I pull myself away from the flashback and refocus into the present, I realize that I’ve been jumping from one tree to another, with the same rock monster still trailing close behind. From the corner of my eye, I can see that it is struggling with managing its weight, crashing into the trees that it has been jumping from with crushing impacts in its frenzied attempt to catch up to me. It still manages to handle the obstacles easily enough, despite the speed and distance I’ve managed to put between us these whole time. Which means this is a bad sign for me.

But I’m not really sure dying is that bad anymore, after Minny’s....

Cold and stiff. That is how it felt like when I touched her dead body. Her soul was gone, but her body stayed. The last expression she held on her face when she realized that her time was up... looked so relieved.

A loud crash warns me once more that the moving rock is near. It has been chasing me all over the city, so I guess it has started to feel impatient on going after me.

I focus on the next trees I’ll jump to, and notice the familiar auras just ahead.

Those footsteps.... Those colors.... They’re theirs.

I begin to quicken my pace, suddenly feeling eager of meeting them. It has been such a long time since I last saw them. But if I do that, I would be just leading this monster to them ─

I’m too close to decide to confront the monster, when I realize they're closer than I thought. Too late. They must have noticed my presence as well and decided to approach me. I’m ready to attack, when a single blow of pink dazzling light beats me, overwhelming the rock monster with its intensity until it turns into nothing.

I turn and face six figures that I know so well that I barely acknowledge them anymore.

From the left, Arch, the small, girlish boy that’s even cuter than any other female species that I had ever seen, with golden blonde hair and ice blue eyes, looking so fragile that even I have no idea how deathly dangerous he is now when he was known to be the deadliest one of us. Now, just them. He hasn’t aged a day since I left, two years ago.

At his right, the silent black-haired girl, with a hair so long that it almost touches the ground (or the top of the tree, for now) and dark eyes with intense-sharp stare, is Crease. The tense and alerted look never left her eyes.

Beside her is Shrade, with his green hair and tanned skin, along with the body proportion of a soldier. Standing on his left is his sister, Shara. Her look is the opposite of her brothers´, with her magenta hair grown long enough to tie it up high on the back of her head and eyes darker than the shade of her hair.

Standing to her right is Nono, with his big body that resembles a huge ball. Whether he keeps it that way on purpose, so he can look like his father, or if it is simply a gene in his family, no one really knows.

And last but not least, the most cheerful and carefree member of the group, Banri. His hair resembles the fire and his eyes have the color of magma. He looks taller than the rest.

“Nice to see all of you here. It’s been awhile since we’ve last seen each other.” I greet them formally with a gentle smile, hoping that they’ll see I still care about them, despite the fact that I left them.

“Arsene!” Banri runs to my side so he can hug me, not so tight that I feel like I'm suffocating. “I am so, so, so happy to see you.” he says.

“Thanks,” I mutter.

The rest of them greet me with smiles, except for one ─ Shara. I know exactly why. She and I were best friends and extremely close, ever since we were little. She was the one who is most upset when I told her that I decided to leave with Minny. She promised to never accept me back if I left them. And when I did, her expression instantly turned cold toward me. It's the same distance and coldness that is boring into me from her eyes right now.

The pink light that destroyed the rock monster just now, I’m sure was hers. She’s a light wizard after all, and manipulating it is her specialty. Before I left, she used to be the second strongest wizard in the group. After I left, the position of leader must have fallen onto her hand. I was sad to leave everyone and everything, but I can’t picture anyone better than her to be their leader.

“Shara,” I finally call her name. But I know I’m just trying to reconnection something that’s impossible. Once Shara is mad about something, she will never forget about it. It helps a lot in the battlefield to defeat the enemies, but the same hatred goes for me now.

She’s still frozen in her coldness towards me when she speaks. “It’s been a while indeed. I never thought I would meet you here, out of all places. “But that’s it. No hello. No smile. No warmth. She doesn’t even care why I’m here, or whether I’m alright or not, unlike the others. But they don’t want to upset Shara either, so they don’t say anything about her behavior towards me.

“What are you guys doing in New York city, anyway?” I ask them.

“ Don ’ t answer ─” Shara starts, but Banri cut her off by telling me everything.

“We are here to eliminate a group of a dangerous monsters, which we heard is forming an alliance with some kind of a dangerous plan to conquer the world, or something. You know, the same old stuff. Not that we’re in a hurry or anything. Then, after around our 200th killing, we caught sense of your aura. I was the one who suggested approaching you, but Shara here kept nagging me to stay focused on killing rather than meeting a long lost friend. I tried to obey at first, but when she turned her back on me, I ran like hell. So eventually they had to trail behind me whether they liked it or not,” he explains to me with the funny voice he has, while Shara occasionally grunts when she hears him talking about her so negatively.

Watching them is actually lighting up the heavy mood around us. We all laugh and smile at them. Shara and Banri were never that close friends since they met for the first time, but strangely individually close to me. So they tried as best as they could to tolerate each other’s presence. It’s not a surprise at all that they still have some repulsion towards one to another.

When they've finished arguing, Shara finally turns to the group. “We’re done for tonight. Let’s all go back and get some rest.” she says with a wiser tone in her serious leader mode. And to me, she mutters, “Good night.”

Well, that’s not so bad. At least she said a goodbye to me before she left.

I watched them as one by one their figures start turning to sparks of color from their own and blow with the wind.