Part five

Rynk had scoured through the city of Semretechs for the suitcase. It was nowhere to be found. Not one contact she had knew anything about it. Except perhaps the person she got it from.

When Rynk had first stumbled upon the syringes, she had been in Nekai. Nekai was a particularly thick-headed country. It had made its fame sa pamamagitan ng being the first and probably only country on Mobocan do evolve from the Dark Legion. It had its faults, one of which being prejudice against any and all non-echidnas, but it was a good enough country, as calling it a fair one would not be true. It ran on ideals of supposed purity, and was self-employed, with little to no outside connection. At one point it had one trading system with Mercia, but it was short-lived.

Two-years prior, information had leaked through the criminal-underworld about a supposed gang-member named “Demon-Steel”. This gang-member had supposedly metal-bones that while not indestructible, were extremely strong, and could connect to electrical-currents with little pain to the rest of the body.

Two years ago…

A short thirteen-year-old Rynk chased what appeared to be an every-day man, who really wasn’t one. The man was an echidna. He looked dressed like a business-man, but his cunning-escape showed otherwise. He was skilled, and very flexible. It was not for his skills that Rynk was chasing him however. It was because he had stolen from her gang.

Instead of her purple-skirt attire, Rynk was wearing a grey t-shirt, shorts, slightly-torn gloves, sandals, and one earring. All were quite dirty. Her hair was shorter at the back, but longer at the front, making it almost completely cover her left eye. She never seemed to care.

Young-Rynk, or DEMON-STEEL as her gang “Heavy-Metal” called her, had now chased the man through his office, down a stairwell, out a building, through an alley, across a high-way, under a water-bridge, and into another alley where she had cornered him.

They were both extremely worn out, but neither of them was about to give up. The man had no gun, and Rynk could not fail her mission. “Adam Mantom sent me to kill you,” Rynk sinabi in an accent that was not Persian, but Scottish, “but with what I just saw, you might have skills enough to change my mind.”

The man couldn’t help but chuckle to himself. He was a fit thirty-nine-year-old man, with power, and lawyers. Rynk was a fit, but scraggily, thirteen-year-old damsel, with an attitude, and “friends” that would try to kill her if she messed up simple missions.

“Something funny?” She growled as she got closer to the man and extended her claws to their full length, which was five-inches at the time.

“Hilarious.” The man straightened himself up and fixed his tie. “You have metal-bones, do you not?”

“I might, I might not.” Rynk said.

The man pulled out a black rock and held it close to Rynk’s head. She sliced at his arm in surprise, but her claws missed and felt themselves being pulled to the rock where they stayed. It was a high-powered magnet. The man put the rock back in his pocket and sinabi “I did not truly steal anything, young lynx. Your territory is not being used for construction, as the sign I placed suggested. I simply needed to lure you out.”

“You couldn’t just arrange a meeting?”

The man smirked. “You would not say yes.” Then something hit Rynk in the back. The sensation soon after was incredibly strong. Rynk’s entire back-side felt as if it were on fire… and it was. But she couldn’t stop it. She was tired. Somehow the man had drugged her.

“Demon-Steel” collapsed on the ground face-first. The apoy on her back extinguished, and an orange-echidna, in a cloaking-suit hopped off from the pader behind her. The two glanced over for a moment to confirm their suspicions. She did in fact have metal-bones. Her skin was waving around like gills, tormented sa pamamagitan ng the pain. Eventually they reconnected and slowly repaired themselves.

“Quickly.” The first instructed. The Pyro-Echidna took out a blue-metallic-pole then stuck it into Rynk’s backside, and began to charge electrical currents through it. The repairs to the skin were slowly now but she was not harmed barely at all from the currents.

“This is her. I have no doubt.” The first echidna sinabi in an accent that was not Suptretan (Scottish, American), but instead Nekaiin (Russian). “Is the transport prepared?”

“Yes. Verily.” The other replied. A flying ship de-cloaked in front of them. They carried the unconscious lynx onto it then disappeared from sight. They did not care who was watching. Who would believe that an echidna with changing accents was attacked sa pamamagitan ng a metal-boned lynx who has strange skin, then got overpowered sa pamamagitan ng a pyro-kinetic echidna, and dragged onto an invisible plane?

She had awoken in a metal-chamber with spiked-cords hanging from the tuktok and the bottom. She tried to break out but was extremely dizzy for some reason and couldn’t. A few minutos later the cords sprang to life and stuck through her hands and feet, before surging her with electricity. It hurt. It wasn’t unbearable, but it hurt. In short Rynk became a living battery for the terrorists for about a week’s time.

They were about to place her in a giant energy-cannon that they meant to destroy a town with, but through pretending to be unconscious, and absorbing as much electricity as she could, Rynk was able to short-circuit the weapon and cause it to explode.

There weren’t that many people, and Rynk was exploding with energy. It was very easy to eliminate them. After the first round of enemies were finished, Rynk made her way into the main hull of the terrorist base and began to destroy everything with her sharp claws and left-over electrical-energy.

She went from room to room destroying everything, with a strangely small amount of people to fight. Along the way she noticed six syringes held in metal containers. She touched one of the metals and instantly recognized what was inside it; Chaos Energy, or something partly Chaos Energy.

She threw the syringes into a suitcase that she found around the base, then continued on to another room. She met with much resistance when she got to the armory.

Almost instantly she was hit with energy-blasts and bullets. Her metal-bones helped some, but not enough. It took a segundo to burn through her skin, and she had only a few left. So she took out one syringe and threw it to the ground. A giant explosion caught everyone. It destroyed the base, its soldiers, and Rynk.

She was laying almost dead on the ground of what was once a green overseeing cliff-side, but was now a dirty-crater. The syringes had been buried under wreckage but were intact. The only thing she could remember was a man running off with her syringes.

Rynk had woken up two months later in a hospital once again. It had happened many times. She was alright it would seem. The Doctors saw nothing wrong with her, and did not address the metal-bones aside from telling her that they saved her life. The first thing she sinabi to them however changed quite a bit.

“Thank you.” She sinabi weakly. It was not what she sinabi that was strange but how it sounded. Rynk’s Scottish accent was now Persian. But how?

“The explosion that you were in must have messed with your vocal cords.” The doctors had said. Rynk was not particularly fond of this new voice, but shrugged it off. There were other things on her mind, like what she was going to do to the person who estola her Chaos-Goop.

A buwan later she was out of the hospital. The gang she was in had forgotten her, and she cared not. She did not like it in the first place. She went back to the site of the crash, that was swarming with feds, and found out one name from them. “Carl Idolza” had apparently dropped his phone in the effort to escape with the syringes, and was nowhere to be found. She did not bother with checking his house, and he had probably changed his name, so a normal paghahanap would be most stressing, but Rynk had an idea that no one else did to find this person.

End-Ga (En Gae) Enterprises was what Rynk considered the Anti-Melcro company. It made good defense-devices, plant-health fluids, robot-police, and much madami things that benefited quite a bit of Supreta. Sadly this company did not like Rynk because of a certain thievery on her part; a thievery she was about to repeat.

End-Ga had multiple amounts of Chaos Emeralds, though Rynk only required one. She got back to Semretechs and began to climb the side of the company’s sky-scraper till she got to a small air-vent that she had once used to steal the Esmeralda on a different occasion, though this one was a little madami pure-intended.

Slowly she crawled through the thin tunnel. It would have been pitch black, but there was a quality Rynk’s eyes, and sometimes her stripes had; they could glow. This made it easier, but still she did not completely remember the ways she took to find the Esmeralda the first time.

Eventually she came to a part of the vent that went upward. Rynk tried to climb up it normally, but slipped and fell. Then she remembered something. “IDIOT! I can stick to metal!” She placed the back of her palms on the metal walls and zoomed up and across the vent like a train on tracks.

It was Rynk’s metal Buto and electrical-currents that were now fused with her that made her be able to use magnetic-abilities. However with the speed she was now going, there was not only a small shriek, but sparks arising. She would not be able to run across that much longer.

Finally Rynk stopped with a apoy behind her that quickly died out. Her hands were burned through, once again revealing her metal bones. She would have to crawl now while her hands repaired.

Another ten minutos later, Rynk began to see a light that did not come from her, and not from a light bulb in one of the rooms below her. It was green, but there was no air vent near it. It was glowing through the side of the wall.

“Great.” She groaned. “How am I supposed to get through there?” In a different situation, Rynk would simply use her claws, but they were not that sharp and her hands were still healing. She looked down at her options, then all of the sudden a small piece of red-goop-like energy ran across the metal and melted through.

Rynk glanced to her feet and saw that a small amount of the goop was sticking to her the whole time. She turned to the pader again. It was almost big enough to slip through now, but not quite enough.

Rynk placed both hands on the hole and pulled. It strained and hurt, but after a while she got a slightly larger hole. She first stuck her head through. The sharp metal scraped her cheeks and forehead, causing her to bleed, but she swallowed the pain and pushed more.

After her head made it through the rest of her was much madami easy due to her underfed-body. She silently landed on the ground below sa pamamagitan ng using a special sound-wave technique she figured out a while back. It was quite easily her most helpful ability.

As expected the chaos Esmeralda was there; encapsulated in a metal-casing inside metal-containment. It stood in the middle of the room, with wires going through the capsule. Obviously the Esmeralda was powering the building. There was however a small change; someone else was already stealing it.

It was a suited-up thief that looked like he could be in Splinter Cell. He had two mga baril in his hand, and had just overridden the security-code. This gave Rynk an idea. Slowly she crept behind him, then cut the palms of his hands open. When he turned, and screamed quite unmanly-like, she gave him a good manuntok to the face. He dropped the mga baril and collapsed unconscious.

Rynk’s calling card was to carve a small half-moon on the cheek of whoever was stupid enough to attack her. So after she carved her victim, she walked up to the emerald, and without moving it, held it tightly. She used this to paghahanap for wherever there was Chaos Energy fused with a somewhat-solid substance. She found the location.

Quickly Rynk darted away from the Esmeralda then picked up the thief and began to wave her hand at the camera that was supposed to be watching them. Three guards ran inside and aimed their weapons at her head.

Rynk looked at them with an un-amused face. “Oh yeah. Let’s attack the person that stopped the thief.” Rynk knew she was in trouble. Powers or not, they could probably take her out right there, so playing the hero card was one of her only options left.

The guards were hostile, but not murderers. They took her sa pamamagitan ng the arms, and led her to the front doors, and kept her outside while they called the police. Rynk did not like this idea. The police were not the last thing she wanted to deal with, but with her record she did not want to get involved with them.

The lynx waited till both Company-guards were turned and used her claws to saw off the cuffs that held her. It made a very unpleasant screeching sound that forced Rynk to cringe and bite her teeth, but it ended after about ten seconds. She did not want to ilipat her claws any time soon.

Rynk spun the cuffs a bit in her hands, then flung them over the guard’s heads, making a large thud behind them, which further distracted their attention. From there Rynk dashed up the side of the building, then jumped onto a nearby rooftop. It was not a pleasant experience to land so hard on cement.

The guards were now running in all directions, looking for Rynk. She quickly hid herself under a tarp that was over a large box, left out sa pamamagitan ng the building’s owners. *Sploosh* She did not expect this box to be a miniature poor with water still inside of it, and dead bugs all around.

Rynk had to hold her breath to not force herself out of her hiding spot, due to the disgusting smell. She waited for almost an oras before coming out again. When she did, she was almost as bad-smelling as the pool.

The guards and police were searching the area still, but not on her side of the vicinity, which gave Rynk about ten minutos of escape time. She gritted her teeth at the stench that clung to her and her wet clothes, to say nothing of the cold, and literally parkoured from building to building.

She had only made about five jumps before the nakaraan injury in her legs stopped her. When she landed for the sixth time she heard a small crack. “EAH!!” she squealed. Her legs were not broken, but that did not mean she was well. Seeing how she had metal bones, her Buto would not crack. If anything they would bend or wobble. The contact caused her Buto to wobble so much, that they tore her insides through her entire body, sending a shock of pain through every part of her. She would have to remain still for at least five madami hours.

Rynk could still ilipat her head slightly, so she used it to survey her surroundings. Her very large ears picked up a party downstairs. No doubt someone would come up to the balcony and notice her. The injured lynx attempted to scoot into a shadowy corner nearby, but her wrecked-insides denied this attempt.

Rynk was not a prissy-person. She wasn’t exactly a tom-boy, but she was tough. So obviously she tried again. Stubbornly, and uselessly. The shock of pain came again. It nauseated her, but she dare not throw up, or she would find herself face front in whatever came out.

Finally she gave up after four tries. Her eyes were red with tears as she slowly curled up to stay warm. “Wonderful escape plan.” She muttered to herself. All Rynk could think about before falling asleep was how pathetic her escape attempt was, and how she would get out of this mess.

When she awoke she was laying on a sopa in the downstairs-area. Rynk had woken up in so many strange places that she almost considered foster-care, but she would never consider having it in Semretches.

The lynx did not ilipat from her spot, and kept her eye-lids at a minimum opening-level, as to still appear asleep. Then she began to survey. She sniffed the air slightly. Her clothes were still a bit smelly, but dry. She moved her arm slightly. Her wounds were still healing, but she could ilipat slowly now. She opened her eyes a bit madami now. The room was silent aside from the noise outside of it. It was lit lowly, with a pool-table, and other games set up in it, and a few other couches around. She was alone for now. Good.

A dark-violet female cat slowly opened the door to check on Rynk. Rynk tried to pretend to be asleep again, but the girl was smarter than that. “Allo.” She greeted in a British accent.

Rynk knew she couldn’t fake anymore. “Hi…” She sinabi weakly as she straightened up into a sitting position.

“Took one too many I’m assuming?” The girl asked. Once Rynk got a good look, she could tell that the girl was older than she sa pamamagitan ng about three years or more. A college student probably. Which would mean that this was a wild-party at some random-person’s house.

Rynk never had alcohol, well never a large amount, but saying no wouldn’t help her. “Er… yeah.” She answered. “Who are you?”

The girl seemed a bit surprised sa pamamagitan ng Rynk’s accent, but answered the question. “Zoey. You?”

“Uh…” Deep think time. Spin the wheel of walang tiyak na layunin names! And the winner is… “Collins.” Rynk did not even know how she came across that name, or where she heard it, or even if it was a female name. The expression on Zoey’s face confirmed just how strange it was.

“Interesting… name.” She said. “You seem a little young for this kind of party.”

Rynk pulled on a bored-looking face and shrugged. “Don’t have much else ta do in this city.”

“Well who did you come with? Are you a friend of Chris?”

“Uh… no. I uh… g-got invited randomly.”

“Oh. Well then… er…” Zoey paused for a moment, trying to figure out what to say susunod in this conversation, “where’d you get the outfit?”

“Oh this?” Rynk looked at her attire. It was almost as clean as her body odor was fragrant. In other words, it wasn’t in the best of shape. Rynk couldn’t help but look embarrassed when she looked back up at Zoey. “It was… a gift. Not that it originally looked like this or anything.”

Zoey simply shrugged. “Doesn’t look too bad to me. Well anyway, do you want to come back to the party or…”

Rynk quickly answered “Not like this. No offense. I think I’ll just leave for now.”

“Alright. I could drive you tahanan if you’d like.”

“Th-that’s alright. I’ll um… d-drive myself?”

“You can’t drive, can you?” Zoey smirked slightly.

“… No.” Rynk sighed.

“Well then why not have someone drive you? I got nothing better ta do.”

Rynk weighed her options. Zoey could make for good cover while trying to escape the police, and possibly had a change in clothing that Rynk could wear to seem less noticeable, or so she assumed from the telebisyon shows she had watched before. In other words, she was assuming that mga kaibigan randomly shared clothing all the time between each other, which was not incorrect for many people, but not usually when you’ve just met someone.

“Alright.” Rynk answered finally. She slowly got off the couch.

“I’ll get my keys. You can run ahead to the car. It’s the mapapalitan with the grey line in the middle.”

“Thanks.” Rynk and her brief ally walked out of the room. Rynk was a bit nervous about going outside with the possibility of the cops still being around, probably going from door to door, so she slowly opened the door, and scanned her surroundings. No one was in sight. Good.

The car was easy to notice, even though it was night. Rynk sunk down against it in a sitting position, as to make it easier for her body to heal. A short while later, Zoey walked out of the house, and they drove off.

Zoey was about to ask where they were supposed to go when Rynk ducked her head all of the sudden. “Uh… Collins… you okay?”

Rynk realized instantly that this seemed strange, and quickly straightened up. “Y-yeah. I’m fine.” She sinabi in a very unreassuringly reply. The reason she had ducked her head was because of the fact that there was a police vehicle driving directly past them. If the hood was down she would had been spotted instantly.

“Look…” Zoey began, “I know I’m prying a bit, but is something bothering you? Boyfriend or something?”

“… Yeah.” Rynk lied.

“It’s not a boyfriend, is it?” Zoey guessed.

Rynk sighed. “No. It’s a something else.”

“Well would you like to talk about it?”

“Probably not… it wouldn’t be ligtas for you to know.”

Zoey chuckled lightly. “Why? Are you some sort of secret agent or something?”

“No… though there are times I wish I was.” Rynk tried to think of something to change the subject. “Y-you wanted to know where to drop me off, right?”

“… Sure. Where to…” Zoey knew something was up, but the depressed-expression on Rynk’s face kept her from going further.

Eventually, since Rynk did not have a real home, they stopped at a Street-sign. “Thanks.” Rynk sinabi as she got out.

“Hey!” Zoey called out as she rolled down the windows a bit. “If you need to talk or something, you could come over to the College Campus. I’ve got a house on campus that’s never empty.”

“Sure. Nice meeting you.” Rynk waved and, even though she knew she shouldn’t, Zoey drove off.

The purple-cat knew that something was wrong with Rynk; the name, the location, the way she talked. She thought about going back to walk her to her house to make sure she got there safely, but choose to keep going back to the house instead.

Zoey was almost to the party when she saw a police car in front of it. She got out of her car and snuck behind a palumpong to listen in.

“Have you seen this girl?” The officer asked. Zoey could tell it was an officer. Same stand-up professional voice.

“… Wait a minute… “ Chris pondered as he looked at the litrato handed to him, “y-yeah. She was at the party. Passed out or something. We set her down in the game-room, but I think Zoey took her home.”

“And where can we find Zoey?”

“Is she in trouble? You think she’s a terrorist er something?”

“No. Your friend is probably clean, but the longer she is near this person, the longer she is in danger.”

“What did the girl do?”

“She is a hostile vigilante, who has committed thievery, trade of drugs, destruction of property, and murder. If she comes back, make sure to contact us.”

“Well I don’t know her nam- wait, back here?! Won’t she kill me er something?!”

“We don’t know. That is why it is important to keep in contact. If Rynk does come back, try to act as calm as possible. You might be her new target.”

It hit Zoey very quickly and very hard. Rynk. She had heard some stories about Rynk. How she carved moons on people after assassinating them, and that she apparently had metal bones. But she never could guess that Rynk was that young, or that… innocent-looking. How could that fifteen-year-old lynx, with bruises and tattered clothes be all of those things.

Zoey snuck back to her car and drove back to where she left “Collins” as fast as she could. If she hurried, she might be able to call out to her. No doubt those large ears could hear anyone. When she got there however, she was shocked.

There was a mobian lying dead on the ground, with a moon carved into his arm. He wore a bandana, and had a kutsilyo in hand. There was a piece, a small one, of purple cloth lying susunod to him. Rynk had killed him, probably when he attacked her. But where was Rynk now?