Chapter Text
It was silent, with only the crunch accompanying footsteps on scattered debris echoing in the long corridor.
It was pitch black. No lamp or firelight to point the way, worried that its flickering luminance would alert their target to the intruders in their domain.
Klein cursed in his head, using his left hand to steady himself as he hugged the wall as they moved.
One disadvantage of choosing a pathway outside of Sleepless was the lack of night vision in enclosed spaces where natural light could not enter. It was in moments like these that he felt comparatively weak next to his colleagues.
He glanced in front of him, his eyes barely making out the moving form walking further ahead.
Leonard was in his element, practically prowling in the shadows, moving with confidence. It was close to midnight, so his abilities had gained an even bigger boost thanks to the accompanying darkness.
But despite knowing his companion had better senses, it did not ease the worry that someone could sneak up on them. Leonard didn’t have eyes in the back of his head after all. He could only watch their front as he led their two-man team, leaving the poor, defenseless Seer to guard the rear.
It felt like a disaster waiting to happen.
Calm down, Klein scolded himself. You have enhanced danger intuition. Even if Leonard doesn’t detect anything, you should still be able to.
He took a breath, trying to calm his nerves.
But then again, how could one be calm when raiding the lair of a deranged serial killer?
A day ago, the Tingen Nighthawks had been informed of a bizarre and disturbing case.
A woman had appeared, battered, shouting, and crying inside an Awwa County Police station in North Borough. She was a young miss who had recently gone missing the week prior, belonging to a well-known middle-class family of doctors in the area. There had been no suspicious activity or evidence of foul play to suggest she had been taken against her will, leading neighbors to speculate she had left on her own volition. However, the scene she painted in that station spoke otherwise.
She had been dressed in tattered clothes, hair matted and tangled with dried blood. Her arm lay limp beside her, obviously broken, as she held it gingerly. She was malnourished, like she had been starved during the time she was away.
This was obviously a case of abduction, but the atrocities didn’t stop there.
The young miss had claimed she had been kidnapped, held against her will, and trapped in a cage surrounded by other victims in similar states of imprisonment and neglect. Every day, their captor would come into the room, choose a cage, and subject an unfortunate soul to horrifying torture before disposing of them. They lived in fear that the next cage chosen would be their own.
But the officer in charge at the time asked the young miss how so many murders could go unnoticed. With so many victims, there would naturally be a high body count. Some remains should have been discovered by now. But instead of wavering like the officer believed she would, she laughed.
But there had been bodies, she claimed. The officials just hadn’t noticed them.
For who would pay attention to the sudden increase in dead animals among the poor in Tingen?
The report then went on to describe how the girl had been taken from the streets as she walked home one evening. It had been a pleasant day, and she had returned from university and decided to go for a stroll. She hadn’t realized at the time she was being followed until a strange light filled her vision, and suddenly she was wrapped in a large sheet of fabric. She cried and cried, but her voice never came. Her ears filled with deafening trills and chatters as she screamed. It was only when she was tossed into the cage that she realized the head-splitting noise had come from herself.
She had been turned into a bird.
The Nighthawks stopped in front of a large doorway, guns drawn, as Leonard once again took the lead and entered while Klein lingered behind. Once cleared, the Seer cautiously met up with the Midnight Poet, examining their new surroundings.
It was an old storage room, nearly the size of a warehouse.
This must be where they stored their supplies when the factory was still operational, Klein observed. He looked at the walls of old crates, filled with rubble and scrap metal. Melissa would have loved this, he thought.
And yet, with his compromised eyesight, Klein could tell something wasn’t right.
Where are all the cages?
The witness statement that the police had given the Nighthawks had described the lair as being filled with cages of imprisoned animals. So many that some were basically stacked on top of one another. The description reminded Klein of the images he’d seen of illegal animal trafficking.
His heart went out to the victims, who were not only snatched from their ordinary lives but then stuffed inside too-small prisons with nothing but the garbled sounds of their terrified neighbors for company. Klein could not imagine what type of psychological trauma the victims were going through.
So it was natural that his heart fell the deeper they went into the facility, only to find no evidence of habitation.
“Is there an underground here?” Klein whispered, scanning the ground for anything they might have overlooked.
The poet shook his head, then froze upon realizing Klein might not have been able to see it. “If there is, it wasn’t listed in the factory’s blueprints,” he replied steadily. He walked further into the darkness. “No signs of recent activity. This room isn’t it,” he reported tersely. The Seer fell silent.
“Maybe the others have found something?”
“Maybe,” Leonard allowed, noticing a distinct lack of presence. Perhaps their killer had already escaped.
Falling back into silence, Klein pulled out his pendulum, hoping he could find them a lead.
Before entering, Klein had divined the danger level and received a response of ‘considerable danger.’ However, the longer they went without discovering anything, the more he began to doubt his own divination. At this point, the danger might not even be related to the case at hand, but something else entirely. But that did give Klein an idea.
If the danger was related to the killer, then shouldn’t I divine the danger level of each room?
But as he went to speak his inquiry, another thought popped up. A glaring detail that none had considered looking into.
The factory they were in and the police station the victim fled to were not too far apart. But that metric only applied to humans.
How was an injured bird with a broken wing able to travel such a long distance without falling victim to the numerous strays that roamed the streets? A downed bird was basically a free meal no alley cat could ignore. And Klein recalled seeing dozens just on his way to work this morning!
Suddenly, Klein’s spiritual intuition flared, and he broke out into a cold sweat. Dodging to the side, he gasped as his back hit the stack of crates behind him, momentarily stunned by pain. However, the faint gleam of a metal blade arcing through the air, exactly where he had been standing, shocked him back into motion. He could see a pair of manic eyes just behind the knife.
“It’s a trap!” Klein called, just as Leonard yelled his name in alarm.
The poet shot twice, creating distance between his comrade and the killer, when the madman charged directly towards him. Within seconds, Leonard had to decide between long-range and close combat, and with Klein unable to see and move freely in the dark, that decision was easy. He threw his gun in the air, ripped off his coat, and wrapped it around his hand.
“Catch!”
Looking in the direction of the voice, Klein sensed something being thrown his way. When the heavy metal landed in his hands, Klein nearly felt his soul emerge.
Idiot! What if this thing fired while in my hands?!
With one hand wrapped in fabric, Leonard engaged his opponent in an attempt to disarm him. Since the mission obviously involved a power-sealed artifact of some kind, there was a chance their killer was no normal person. In the hands of a Beyonder, even a spoon could be considered a deadly weapon. Therefore, his goal was to take away the serial killer’s knife, lest it have some kind of mystical property.
Diverting the knife only to parry an elbow to the throat, Leonard found the killer to be especially skilled in combat. He tried to grapple for the knife, only for the other to break free. It was only when the knife came dangerously close to his face that he was able to wrap the cloth around the blade and pull it out of the man’s grasp. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he sent both the knife and his coat flying somewhere into the storage room.
With a weapon no longer to worry about, Leonard charged forward for a punch, only for his eyes to widen when the killer caught it in his hand with ease.
The killer was a Beyonder with enhanced strength!
“Thus it blooms–” Leonard began, chanting as he ducked under a kick and responded with his own. He blocked a punch, aimed low with his arm, and got blocked by a knee, pulled back, blocked a hit, and aimed for the face.
They went back and forth, bombarding their opponent with a series of strikes and kicks, not giving an inch. But every time Leonard opened his mouth to chant, a well-timed punch or sweep of a leg interrupted him. Despite the Midnight Poet having more strength, the other’s battle instinct and tenacity had him stuck in a deadlock.
Luckily, he wasn’t alone.
Across the room, Klein watched the fight with wary eyes. He was basically useless, and despite his multiple guns, he hesitated to shoot in case he missed and hit Leonard instead. He listened as the sound of powerful impacts reverberated through the room, underscoring just how powerful both men were. A single blow from either would likely kill him if met head-on. But the Seer refused to sit back and let Leonard fight alone.
Determined, Klein took a shooting stance and aimed the barrel of Leonard’s gun towards the battling men. He watched and waited, analyzing the killer's movements and looking for a break in their attacks for a clear shot. Fortunately, it seemed Leonard realized what he was doing, subtly shifting their positions so he was no longer in the direct line of fire.
There!
A bullet ripped through the killer’s shoulder, making him stagger just as a fist slammed right into his cheek. The force knocked him back, bending him backward as Leonard winced from the recoil.
Under normal circumstances, such a hit would have rendered their foe unconscious. Instead, he widened his legs, forcing himself upright, and faced Leonard with a wide grin. Then Leonard’s vision went red.
The killer had just blinded him with a mouthful of blood.
“Klein!” Leonard yelled in warning just as he sensed his opponent change direction. He rubbed his eyes desperately as he struggled to regain his sight.
Multiple shots rang out as Klein shot at his advancing target. He could only press himself against the crate boxes behind him to ensure no stray bullets hit the poet still struggling in the background. But even as two shots landed on the killer’s arm and leg, they did little to stop him. It was as if he were impervious to pain. Or stubborn enough to ignore it.
He dropped Leonard’s gun the second he heard the empty click and once again pulled his own gun from his vest. But the second wasted in raising his gun was enough for his opponent to appear in front of Klein before he could shoot.
In the killer's hand was a glimmering object, bathed in ominous red energy. Backed into a literal wall, Klein had nowhere else to run as the light grew brighter.
“Klein!!” Leonard screamed, catching a glimpse of red light just as Klein disappeared, gun and trenchcoat dropping to the floor. His pupils constricted, eyes shaking in anger at the scene.
Before he could think, he had already made his way across the room in a flash of speed unique to power-type sequences, legs straining under the pressure of overwhelming strength. What he didn’t realize was that the killer was counting on such an explosive reaction.
Arm raised, prepared to deliver a deadly blow, Leonard’s gaze fell on the black collar with a shining red gemstone embedded in its center as it flashed in front of his face. Another flash of red illuminated the storage room, followed by a sickening crunch.
Silence.
Then laughter.
The insane Criminal looked at the mayhem he had just caused, watching as the dust settled and the dark mass that had just crashed into the doorway slumped to the floor. Lost to his perversions and evil desire bubbling in his heart, he didn’t notice the thundering footsteps heading his way. He had just turned to pick up the trenchcoat on the ground when more bullets flew towards his head.
Reinforcements.
He tsked, annoyed that his fun had been cut short. And after all the trouble he had gone through to lure officers into his nice little hunting ground. When was he ever going to get another chance to capture such tantalizing prey? Beyonders! Official ones at that!
He scowled as he ran towards the back of the room, slipping through the door hidden just behind a stack of barrels.
Seeka and Kenley continued their firing until the man’s figure disappeared behind some barrels. They stepped into the room, ready to chase him, when they recognized, in horror, the items on the ground. If they didn’t recognize the dark coat belonging to their resident Seer, they definitely recognized the twin-tailed coat bundled up on the ground with a knife twisted into it.
The Nighthawks both immediately turned to their Captain, who examined the room for signs of their missing comrades.
“Klein. Leonard,” the Captain called out, waiting for a response.
What he didn’t expect was a low whine to come from beside him.
By his feet, just a meter from the storage room’s entrance, a large, dark mass of fur shifted. It emitted another pitiful whine as it stretched out onto its side. There was a shallow indent on the wall above it.
Upon seeing the creature, Dunn guessed what had happened.
A startled gasp left Kenley’s lips as the trenchcoat in front of him began twitching as well, shaking as something moved beneath it. They all waited with bated breath as a small head finally poked its way free of the fabric.
They were met by a pair of golden eyes that shimmered with reflective light.
“Meow,” Klein meowed, confused.
…
“Mrr?”
…
Golden eyes widened.
“Mrroooow!!!”
And so began the tale of the legendary cat Seer.