Fate of Pandora - Book II

Orphanage

It was early Sunday morning and Ayame was already waiting in front of the meeting point. The previous night, she and Coalt had decided to find an unpopulated area where Kairi could open the portal again, and the girl remembered there was an abandoned construction site they could use. Their meeting point was somewhere Coalt had already been: the orphanage where Ayame grew up.

She and Kairi stood looking at the house. Ayame sighed heavily. It was weird how that two-story old building was filled with good and bad memories, yet she liked the owner so much that she had kept in contact with her. Most children and teenagers, like Coalt, would leave the place as soon as possible and never look back.

The girl understood their feelings very well – yet, she couldn't help but be extremely grateful for Midori. The old lady had dedicated her life to those children and opened a residence only for them. Whether they were adopted or not, she made sure that everyone had warm beds, home-cooked meals, and basic education – enough for them to grow up and live on their own. But it wasn't easy, especially since Midori was in a constant battle with low funds. In the end, Ayame was the person she was today thanks to the woman's hard work and generosity.

The girl was smiling when a voice called her out of her thoughts.

"Ayame?"

She saw Coalt walking to her. They shared a timid good-morning and the boy stood beside her, noticing that her eyes kept returning to the old building.

"Do you want to say hello to the owner?" Coalt asked her, seeing her distraction.

"Oh, sorry. Not right now. We have something important to do. I'll come here later after we solve all this." She turned her back to the building and pointed in the direction they had to go. "The construction area is somewhere over there."

Once away from the orphanage, Ayame's mind became clearer. However, they didn't find any abandoned building. "I swear it was somewhere around here. Two or three blocks away, or was it more?" Ayame's memory was at fault. She scratched her head while trying to remember.

The black cat walked ahead of them and turned to the left around the next corner. She meowed to them, and Coalt didn't need telepathy to understand that she wanted them to follow her. Kairi took them straight to the unfinished five-story building Ayame had mentioned.

It had been waiting for its completion for a decade or more, and would probably never be used – a sad, blackened concrete structure that barely had its walls finished. The first three stories had walls, or what was left of them, and the last two only had the beams and columns structure.

There was a wall blocking trespassers from entering, but it also blocked from view anything that was going on inside as well. The street was calm, but there were pedestrians passing by to get to the stores across the street, so Kairi pulled a trick to distract anyone from noticing the trio. With a wave of her tail, chaos began in all the stores as their sprinklers turned on and drenched the merchandise and shoppers.

Coalt used the distraction to help Ayame climb the wall and then he jumped it, too.

"Ugh. The parkour guys make it look so easy..." he complained of his aching fingers.

Now that they were inside, the demon cat easily jumped the wall and changed to her true form.

"This place will do. I can open the portal inside the building without calling much attention," the nekomata said, walking into the forgotten building.

The other two looked up at it with some concern – hoping the structure wouldn't fall on their heads – before following the cat.

Kairi was in a hurry, and used her will-o-wisp to open a portal again. The two ring bearers observed the five blue flames forming a pentagram on the ground, then on the ceiling. They watched the vortex that came into focus, keeping an eye out for their friends as Kairi searched. The cat tried to remember how she had found them so easily the first time – she didn't realize that her powers had followed a trail left by Jasmet that, unfortunately, had now gone cold.