The White Angel's Prayer

11. The South Gate

The silence was broken by the splattering of water on the ground; loud slaps that seemed to echo throughout the nursery. Lucy stood above it, squeezing the excess water from her puffy jacket, feeling the droplets ooze between the pores of her clothing and wetting her hand.

"Perhaps you should leave this one behind," Bhu'ja said from his seated position. He gestured lazily towards the jacket.

Lucy side-eyed him. "No."

They had warmed up considerably since their stupid adventure into the icy waters. And though Lucy couldn't hear much from outside, Bhu'ja informed her (from his 'superior' hearing) that the gunshots had died down significantly. They were much further away now, and Lucy was ignited with the hope that the Vultures were driving G'kuhto further away from their hiding spot.

The silence, and their thoughts, were suddenly interrupted by the sudden jarring noise of a door slamming shut. Lucy almost jumped out of her skin. Superior hearing, my ass, Lucy thought, but she had half the mind to keep it in her head.

Lucy quickly picked up her bow, abandoning her puffy jacket in the process. She was lucky the string was synthetic, otherwise, she would've been fucked for a long-range weapon. She shrugged her bag back on and pulled an arrow from it. She delicately nocked the arrow onto the string and tried to crane her neck to see past the foliage, the distant but harrowing idea that G'kuhto had found them sent alarm bells to go off in her mind.

There were footsteps. They were feather-like, but Lucy could hear them. She paused to think. Bhu'ja was capable of walking silently, but these footsteps weren't necessarily heavy. Oh, man, she couldn't really tell the difference.

A white blob moved between the foliage that hung low over the footpath before the shape turned into a defined figure of accentuated shoulders, a head, and limbs. Lucy's heart skipped a beat as the Vulture came closer. It was a man, youngish, with a tense expression on his face, and he held a crossbow that had been painted white.

He stopped when he saw Lucy. They regarded each other for a moment. The man wasn't holding the crossbow up, it was kind of just slack, pointing down, but his grip was readily on the handle, ready to pull it up and fire at the slightest movement.

When Lucy looked into his eyes, a sense of defeat washed over her. She fucking hated the Vultures, there weren't enough words in the English dictionary that could verbalise the vile animosity she felt towards them with everything she knew about them. But standing here, coming face-to-face with one alone, it felt too vulnerable; too personal to even consider killing him — he was human, after all.

Alone. Now that Lucy thought about it, the man hadn't looked passed her once, hadn't balked or performed a double take at all. The brunette didn't like this, and when she subtly stepped back, her foot never brushed Bhu'ja's. Curse him.

"Don't fucking move," the man suddenly said as he noticed her movement, and he raised his crossbow, presumably ready to fire. But then, the foliage to Lucy's right rustled for a millisecond before Bhu'ja suddenly popped out, and the man barely had enough time to scream before a pair of dual wrist-blades were shoved through his thoracic cavity like a knife through butter.

The squelching of the metal against warm flesh sent a shudder down Lucy's back. She closed her eyes as she heard the rapid, gurgled breathing of the man before the wrist-blades retracted, and the body slumped to the ground. It was silent for a few seconds, and when Lucy opened her eyes to stare at Bhu'ja, the male rumbled.

"He was going to kill you," he said.

Lucy shook her head. "He was scared."

"You cannot keep justifying this," Bhu'ja said. He stomped forward, and Lucy stared at the growing puddle of crimson red blood, the likes of which splattered on the brilliant green leaves. "You can renounce your desire to kill others, but this does not mean you can put yourself in danger and justify this by saying they are scared."