4 | Aria
The residence had been silent, from what she could remember. One moment, she'd been flat on the bed, her foot propped up whilst Duke applied her bandages...and the next moment, Hell had broken loose.
In the residence, Duke had become an apprentice for many different fields; one of them being medicine and anatomy. Scientists from the experimental facilities began teaching him about the seemingly infinite pool of genomes that they discovered when humans first began using demons in their studies, after shielding their discovery from the public. Of course, the unethical utilization of demon genes were what created all of the experiments...but Duke decided the humor the scientists anyway, and learn a thing or two knowing that he would never attend any human college otherwise.
All of this, Duke had been explaining to Aria hours before the invasion of their residence. If she thought really hard, she could almost grasp a memory of her partner, Josh, standing in the doorway of her room, checking in on her. Perhaps that part had been a dream.
Opening her eyes now, though, it was coming back to her in bits and pieces.
Months ago, the Meraki had come across a Bender, in the woods, returning from a hunt.
Of course, it was strange to find a Bender all alone in the middle of nowhere. It was strange that the Bender was carrying a cat, and had no recollection of how he had gotten there. It was even stranger though, that he was not a Wind Bender or an Ice Bender. He was a Fire Bender.
Why was this strange? Because Fire Benders are extremely hostile...and this one was not. Josh and herself had immediately been suspicious, she could recall. Billie took him in, anyway, without telling Finnick or any of the other officers. Derek had also been trying to use Edon, to get information on the Torrid. That was an entirely separate story.
Confirming the guards' suspicions, Edon had been playing dumb the entire time. Not only was he a soldier for the fire fleet, but he was evidently of extreme importance. Aria knew nothing more on the subject...but she could now recall the portal he'd opened to bring all of his soldiers to burn down the residence. The Mutt could only hope that everyone made it out alive.
Now, she lay in pain on a lumpy bed that smelled faintly of something sweet that she couldn't place. She was wearing new clothes. Her hair smelled clean, leading her to believe that someone had bathed her: humans, possibly. Around that time, her mind began to catch up with her, and she realized that she hadn't been in her human vessel, when she'd escaped the fire.
When she escaped the fire, she'd been a wolf.
Desperate to sit up, Aria immediately reached for her phone, only to again realize that it was destroyed, and she'd have to start from scratch, again. Sadly, the Meraki were used to starting from scratch.
If humans had found her, and witnessed anything strange, Finnick would end her. Immediately, she sprung up off of the bed, only to fall flat on her face, recalling that her foot was still injured. How had she escaped in her Lycaon vessel with an injury so painful?
Unfortunately, the thump she'd made appeared to rattle the room, and she began to hear voices in the floor below her. As of now, she was in a cramped room with white, cemented walls and a single hanging light fixture. A window beside her bed looked promising enough, yet she knew she wouldn't be able to scale the building with her foot in the state that it was in. Pulling herself up, as the footsteps began to grow closer, she decided that the window was her only option, and immediately went to work on popping it's screen.
Behind her, the door opened, and she reached around for her handgun at last resort, knowing that any human who'd seen her change would be dead soon enough anyway, and paused, realizing that the gun was nowhere in sight...just like her cellphone. She felt like an idiot.
"Those windows are childproof, you know," a calm voice murmured to her from her spot on the floor.
Aria ripped her head around, sizing up the man in front of her, who was leaning cooly against the door. He offered her a hand, which she only accepted after breathing in his scent, deeply. This man was not human, either.
She took his hand...only to flip him over onto the ground in a position that could snap his arm off entirely. Shoving her heel into his adam's apple, she picked up the first weapon she could find, which just so happened to be a pen, under the table.
