Artificial

Chapter 14

It was the night before we took on another job together,
Penny took me to the training room to teach me a new skill,
she calls it soul absorbtion,
if I incase my aura over the person I want to absorb,
then I absorb everything,
their body, their soul,
the whole nine yards,
Penny wanted me to absorb her soul but I was reasonably skeptical about this,
I didn't want to do it wrong and end up accidentally killing her,
she reassured me that she knows what she's doing and that this would help me out greatly when using fire runes or I could merge our elements and make shadow flames. She walks me through the steps nice and slow and next thing I know it's like she gets sucked up by a none existing black hole,
after a few seconds all of Penny's knowledge on creating fire runes and all her abilities came pooring into my mind!

My brain was taking in so much information I think I nearly squandered my memory capacity!
(Sorry, I know you feel rough now but you'll thank me later.)
I was on the floor gripping my head, I legit had to take two hours just to sort through all that information.
(You've had a very sad life.) Penny points out even though she's in my head. "Wait you can see my memories?" (Yep.)
What in the hell?
That aside Penny immediately went into teacher mode and we got started on making fire runes,
sense I have all the information and technical experience as Penny this came as natural as breathing,
next we focused on the what all a fire rune can and cannot do,
for example I can cast a fire rune from my hands and make flame throwers,
fireballs, etcetera, but if I punched someone and put the fire rune on them,
I can't do anything with it unless it's to create a explosion,
finally we concluded with merging my shadow rune with her fire rune to make a shadow flame rune which was a blackish purple fire, it was easier said then actually done, it took me several minutes to make a entierly new rune.

We trained all night by the end of the night I could make a Shadow Flame Golem, I could create a minature Shadow Flame Tornado, I could get a running jump and spiral like a football and coat myself in my Shadow Flames, and finally my new favorite move that I can do,
I call it the Shadow Flame Rasangone, basically I take a fireball and slam it into my enemy and it explodes on contact of target or just in general.
Now then the downside to all of this, until my body is able to do this purely by muscle memory and repotition,
I have to and I can't say this enough, have to absorb Penny's soul into me. (Well that concludes training, let's get some sleep and stay merged until my shift.)

I crash on the living room couch and rest my eyes,
sense I'm not used to all nighters quite yet I fell asleep rather easily,
in my dream I saw a little girl with blonde hair and green eyes like Penny,
she lived a lonely life,
her parents lived in a pent house in New York,
her parents were buisness people from what I can assume,
she had no friends at school as she attended one of those rich schools with snotty pricks that look down on the less wealthy, she was picked on for her parents not spoiling her at every turn,
eventually her parents worked themselves to near death and when they did inevitably die at a young age,
she was left to be groomed by her family's butlers and maids to inherit the buisness but we all know how that song and dance goes, yeah cliche I know,
I know but it is a dream.

The little girl over heard a butler talking with a maid about making the little girls disappear so that they can inherit the family fortune and live on easy street for the rest of their life,
the little girl made it easy for them by leaving behind a letter stating she is running away and that they could have her family's fortune and that she didn't care about it.
She packed up all her clothes in a trash bag then left her pent house,
she traveld around until night time wondering around aimlessly with no goal in mind nor a fallback plan,
it started to rain and storm so she hid under a bridge with a homeless man, unfortunately what she didn't expect was this homeless man to be a pedophile. He started to make moves on her until he eventually pounced on her and when he did a familiar face showed up to kick the pedo out from under the bridge,
it was none other then Brandon himself.

"Did the mean man do anything at all to you?!"
He asked the girl,
she told him what happend and when she did, Brandon summoned a sword to remove the arms and legs of the pedo then break his ribs with kicks.
"It's okay, the bad guy won't be doing anything to you now. What's your name?" The girl was a little bit hesitant but spoke her name.
"P-Penny." Brandon looks at the young Penny's neck and notices the necklace. "You poor thing, you've inherited a demon rather then fortune. If you come with me I will provide you everything you want, a home, a family, a father that will love you unconditionally."

Penny says really to which he nods, she takes his hand and together they go to a hotel. (Wake up, it's time for my shift.) I wake up groggy and Penny releases herself from me she got herself ready and for the whole day I was by myself other then Brandon who had paper work to do in his office.

I chilled in my room until Penny came back then we went to the city of Columbia together flying through the air. "Okay so I'm sure everyone has harped on you enough about all the destruction in Mauldin, I won't harp on you but I do want to say is our job is to pick off stray Exorcist and to monitor the city then report back, it sounds like a fool's errand I know but eventually we will make the cities safer before the great war. In other words we're taking pop shots to weaken the enemy forces."
When she puts it like that I guess I understand.
"Also try not to destroy buildings if you can help it, it's bad enough the government keeps our existence a secret by blaming terrorists with everything,
the last thing we need is the whole world knowing demons exist."
Yeah that would be bad,
I can only imagine the military being trained to spot one then us being hunted down to near extinction.

"Anyway, so let's spread out but keep each other in sight so that we may come to each other's aid if we get shot at." I nod and we spread out,
the shift went smoothly, didn't really see Exorcist but the ones I did see traveld in groups and stuck close together, it was a pain but I lived on,
by the end of my shift we saw some Exorcist chilling in a junk yard with a half demolished brick wall,
I paged Penny to me and we land on that brick wall.

"Hello there! Die there!"
I create a shadow rune and make their own shadows inpale them by giving it a physical form,
Penny picked off the stragglers by exploding their heads with a fire rune she placed on them,
we assumed that was that but we were horribly wrong as I heard a all too familiar voice and felt such sinister aura.
"Well what do we have here. The Phantom Reaper and his side kick, Scarlet Phoenix, ooooooooih killing you both will earn me a pay raise. While money is good and all, killing strong opponents is even better." The Black Exorcist licks his lips in a creepy seductive manner, his creepyness aside, only one of us is walking out of this alive, will it be him or me? Let's find out.