The Rebirth

Her parents really were going to kill her.
It was still light out, so they couldn’t really complain about her being “alone in the dark” and that it was “dangerous”. They also couldn’t really complain about her being “defenseless” because- not trying to sound cheeky, but- if there was something Elena was not, it was defenseless/helpless.
However, they could be mad about her phone dying.
“Why?” she could hear her mum blabbing in Spanish when she got home. “Everyone else can’t get their children off their phones. I can’t get my child on! Why? We need to know where you are!”
Why? Because, for some reason, Elena seemed to pick up a ton of more monsters with her phone on than with her phone off. Maybe it was just a superstitious coincidence, but she always went around town with her phone untouched and not in use.
Oh, yes. Right. They could also be mad at the fact that she was supposed to be home a couple of hours ago. More than that, actually, she remembered guiltily, trudging the grey streets of London to a bus stop. She was supposed to go home to help her mom set up for some book club with other mothers.
Her mom was really quite excited about it, too. Ah. Ah, well…
She took this time to try to distract herself by looking around. London was so
much prettier in the summer. Now that she could see through the “Mist”, or whatever Oakley and Naida called it, she started remembering things from her past she had buried before. She remembered hating the gray gloom of the clouds, the same shadow of the streets. The colours were really was much lighter, nicer, calmer, mellower in the spring/summer. It reminded her of soft stone, highlighted by streaks of sun. Splashes of red and blues screamed out against the soft greys. There was a sort of beauty to London.
The city was, of course, crazy as usual. But ever since her meditating… she could find a calm in that. The chaos was consistent. There was always a buzz. There’s a sort of security in that flow.
And any disturbance to that flow was recognized immediately.
Like now.
Her head raised and craned itself near the direction of the muffled, shocked silence and the hair-raising screams. In the distance, she could see the faint flash of… wings.
She groaned. Out loud. She put her hands to her temples and rubbed.
Blast. Blast, blast, blast. Bloody monsters, coming in- as usual- at the worst time, no respect for my personal schedule, no idea how irritating-
She took a deep breath and held. One, two, three. Just like the Buddhists in that odd little Buddhist temple told her. Hold, three, exhale, three, hold, six, exhale six, hold, three, exhale, three, blank, blank, blank, drift in and out, in and out…
Peace warmed her bones. She prayed to God and Buddha in thanks.
Elena was much calmer now. Not only that, she was ready for action. She got up smoothly, starting to run towards the winged thing, kissing away any free time she had for the rest of the month goodbye.
Her parents really were going to freak.
***
Daniel couldn’t help but watch, feeling only a little bitter.
They had just got engaged. They had just got engaged.
But, of course, the Fates had proven- once again- that they were really in for this relationship.
Them coming didn’t just spark Nico’s obsession into a rampaging wildfire… They reminded Daniel of a promise he’d made Nico make, four years ago…
The reminder couldn’t be a coincidence. Not when Fate is involved.
Nico proved to be a wreck, so far. In other circumstances it’d be maybe a little funny to see the dark angel groaning dramatically over the sofa, his raven hair almost scraping the floor, papers and notes everywhere. (Because, you know, that’s how thirty-year-olds are supposed to act.)
Daniel didn’t want to add anything else to that heap of misery, but…
But…
He wasn’t being harsh. It wasn’t because the wedding was coming up. He knew this was right.
Nico needed to let go.
And soon.
Daniel held his breath and tentatively walked up to his fiancé.
***
Oh my god I am so done I am such a moron why am I always such a bloody moron-
Her knife.
It was gone.
Thrown to the other side of the monster.
But she needed it now.
It roared, and she cringed. She knew what it was. She knew all the Egyptian monsters, of course, but this one was especially famous.
A Sphinx.
A baby one, apparently, but a sphinx nonetheless.
She cursed, inwardly. She tried to remember any information about the Sphinx that she couldn’t tell already from just looking at it- lion body, creepily human face, and wings.
Elena just barely snapped into focus as the thing tried to swat her across the chest, managing to roll away in the last second. She cursed herself again. Elena was way too smart for this. She normally had plans, had ideas, ready to spring to action, even without knife in hand. And she definitely never let monsters get close enough to her to swat her unless it was on purpose.
Get your head in there, Rodriguez.
She rolled away again. This time, the monster didn’t get anywhere near her. She relaxed, just slightly.
Okay. Okay. She could handle this. It’s just a baby, right? So it doesn’t know any better? That's an advantage.
Time to protect your city.
That line came up almost every time she fought a monster now, and it always struck her as kind of funny and odd. Because Elena hadn’t gone into this at twelve years old expecting to hold the weight of a whole city on her shoulders.
Because at first, she didn’t need to. She quickly came to understand that most monsters didn’t seem interested in her, for some reason. Not really at all. Some of them attacked when she concentrated too hard on them, or got too scared of them, but mostly everything kind of stayed out of her way. And she only killed them if they attacked her.
Those first few months, she’d ran to the river. Naida would always help her defeat the thing. The river started getting a little sickening from the bloody monsters, though, and Elena forced herself to only run when she absolutely absolutely needed help.
Which was still a lot, that first year, but one to two self-defense classes a day (especially if you trained by yourself as hard as Elena did) pays off.
Tremendously.
When Elena killed her first monster on her own, after the overwhelming fear and disgust wore off, there was an immeasurable amount of peace within her.
She could defend herself.
And she began to stop caring if monsters noticed her or not.
This definitely seemed to increase the attacks.
About every two weeks, she’d have to defend herself. Because there were a LOT of monsters in London. There were many strange things in London just in general. So many strange people, from so many different places, different cultures- it truly is a center of complete whimsical chaos.
And then they attacked one of her friends.
That was probably the quickest, cleanest kill she’d ever made. A quick stab in the back and the beastly bear disintegrated. And her friends seemed to think she was God’s gift to Earth- “My god, you just smashed it, Elena! Just a small- boop! I’m going completely bonkers- is that why you wanted to take karate so badly?”
But they didn’t realize.
Elena had saved them from the mess, yeah. But she was the one who got them into it. The monster attacked because of her, because she was with them. And one day, she won’t be able to defend them all at once.
So she cut off her family, her friends, all her “mortal ones”, as Naida and Oakley would call them.
And she began to realize that there were other families, other friends in the city getting hurt by monsters. Every single time she let one of them go, someone else could get hurt. And while they might not affect Elena personally, some other Elena out there, some other person, would.
So how can she let all the monsters go, now that she knew that?
So Elena works. She works and works and works to keep the city safe, as much as she possibly can. Sometimes, the monsters have their own heroes from their same culture to fight, and Elena would watch from the side, sometimes jump in to help, instead of barging in. But the ones that roamed free…
They’d better watch out.
Like this one here.
Fire, Elena decided. A small smile played softly on her face. An ebony curl dangled down in front of her eyes. Her cheeks shone. No knife, and my regular weapons don’t normally work, so… fire.
She had matches in her bag. She had a lot of things in her bag. But she needed a way to- she dodged another claw from the sphinx- to sort the matches out without interruption. And she needed some sort of … oil, she guessed. Maybe some wood…
No more thinking. Just go.
Elena sprinted down the street.
She could smell the wind flying under her nose, hear the decreasing volume of the shouts around her- “Hey!” “What is that?!”
As she ran, she started thinking. Elena’d have to steal. She really did hate stealing. Ah, well. She could pay the store back later. And a couple of bucks lost is better than a couple of lives lost.
Elena gritted her teeth. Her hair was being terribly annoying, bouncing into her face and whipping her eyes. Good, she thought. Channel your rage as energy. Keep moving.
Power through, she chanted to herself. power through power through power through
A pressure started to pound at her head, but she shook it off, continuing to run even faster. She heard a roar, placed the movement, and careened to the left. Something smashed onto the ground next to her.
Painful, heart-throbbing fear slithered through her skin, pricking her throat, filling her lungs. She choked, using this fear to take a breath and jump onto the baby-lion-bird’s back.
In that split second in the air, she was sure- I am going to die.
But her mind refocused to find its body already in action- one hand was already latching on to the steely feather fluff of the sphinx’s wings, somehow the oil bottles managed to already be uncapped, and she was pouring the liquid all over the lion haunches, the bird limbs…
When she got to the head, she did something very, very stupid.
Elena hesitated.
It was just a baby. The baby head was kind of freaky, being so massive and all, but it was still a baby, wailing and pudgy and red-faced. Her hand holding the oil, about to pour some in its eyes, hovered.
And she paused.
You never pause in battle.
A leap into the air, a bat of the wings, and that smallest hesitation slammed Elena into the ground, from twenty-five feet up in the air. Something definitely shattered in her arm, and she inhaled so roughly that the air felt solid, scraping the roof of her mouth. Her vision blurred into slow, black, pulsating pools.
A baby, yes, she thought, feeling blind as the fire shot up to her shoulder. She heard the thing wail and crash again. But not… helpless.
Yeah, of course she was angry. Her arm was broken. Pain hurts. And right now, she had a lot of it, just because some monster had to rampage her city.
But.
But, Elena wasn’t trained to dwell on feelings. Feelings are so unreliable, changing from one moment to the next. Don't get her wrong- feelings were fine, in certain circumstances.
This was not one of them.
Elena took a shaky breath in and forced the rage and the pain to the back of her mind.
What is the monster's goal?
What does it want?
What is it feeling?
She heard a roar. How long had she been on the ground? Seconds? A minute?
She groaned a gurgle of frustration and tried to stand up, almost blanking out into the darkness that swam in front of her. Sharp razor blades scratched and sliced the muscles in her shoulder. She didn't know how soldiers did it- breaking a bone in battle hurts, and it hurts badly.
But you had to push through it. There was worse to come, worse that could happen, it could always be worse-
For example: the monster slammed into her again, and whatever bones left in her shoulder splintered. She couldn't breathe without feeling the pieces of glass lodged in her skin blend and move around. By now, it took some serious strength to control her rage, and she used every inch of will power she had not to slam the thing into a million burning, fiery, pieces.
"Are you just scared?" she conversationally asked the infant beast trying to kill her, "Where's your monster mother?"
Elena couldn't keep the intense gasps of fresh, bleeding hurt out of her voice. Her breathing and talking was ragged and slow, although she danced around the thing as nimbly as she could with a shattered shoulder. The fragments seemed to cut deeper and deeper into her flesh with every step, and she tried to get herself through it, digging harder and dancing faster.
"Are you scared?" she tried again in Latin, forcing back the tears.
The thing wailed in response. Elena sighed. Rather, she heaved.
She should just kill it.
She really, really should just kill it.
But as she looked at the baby head, and heard its wails and its tears, she sighed, hating herself. Lord, she was going to go through so much trouble to let the thing that's trying to kill her live.
Elena screamed as she charged, one silver tear slipping out into the wind.
And she grabbed a wing- a flapping, fast, already in motion wing- and held on with one hand for her life as she and the monster started to soar up.
"Bloody-" she screamed, lost in the whirling air. The people slowly shrinking on the ground were definitely panicking now, if they hadn't before. Elena would be panicking herself, if she hadn't been a self-defense trained Buddhist for four years now.
She let out another bloody scream as she held on the wing with her other arm, flopping around in the air, feeling as though fire was continuously stabbing her shoulder. The monster was tilting in the air, not able to fly with her on, trying to scratch her off. Big, luminescent, sky blue eyes cried at her, tears streaming down its pudgy cheeks as it continued to claw. She dodged, waiting for another flap... one more... one more...
There. With one, desperate, flutter, the sphinx raised its wing high above its head, allowing Elena to drop onto (and almost fall off) its back. She immediately scrambled to secure herself, grabbing onto feathers, skin, neck- all of them as thick and hard as metal and slippery from all the oil she'd rubbed on the monster in the first place.
It's great how she managed to foil her own plans.
Somehow, she found a way to hang on, and she desperately tried to find a scratching point on its neck. It was a monster, but it was part lion, which is part cat, so maybe, just maybe, it will....
No, no it will not. The back reared in the air, spinning around and sailing straight towards the ground before extending the wings and flying upwards. He (she?) did not like that "affectionate rub"...
Okay. So. Maybe lions didn't like to be scratched. Elena didn't know anything about birds. But she did know something about babies-
Babies slept. Or they needed sleep. A lot. Which seemed obvious, but that's normally not what comes to mind when battling a large baby beast. And- surprisingly- a good amount of them liked massages before they go to sleep. Soft pats on the head. So maybe, if Elena, she didn't know, sang, or something, and gave the sphinx some massage-
So she tried. Desperately. She sang as quietly, as carefully as she could through her soft tears and trying to hold on to a moving, flying animal. She sang in Latin, she sang in Spanish, she sang in English. She kept singing. And she kept softly patting his head, smoothing out the baby golden lion hair forming on the top.
The longest five minutes of her life passed. It continued to soar and swoop and try to buck her off, she continued to sing and pat and smooth. Her eyebrows scrunched together. Her hair hung down in a long, curly raven wave along her cheek.
Finally, finally, after five or six minutes, it began to slow.
And it began to stop fighting so hard.
Slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, it drifted down, extended its wings further, began to decrease its wailing. She tried again on the lion haunches, and found it more willing to let her scratch its neck and smooth out the knots in its muscles. And she continued to sing. Soft singing, masking her hidden fiery pain as beautifully as possible.
It descended to a nicely chosen spot- right on top of a fire hydrant and a stop sign. Even fully landed on ground again, Elena continued singing, to stay safe, to keep it steady, keep it sleepy. She could feel it drifting. She could feel it sway. She was so close- if she could just get it to sleep, maybe stay with it for the night or maybe manage to find a way to put it on a leash, maybe take it to Naida or Oakley-
A gleaming silver knife sliced through the air and planted itself into its wing.
Her gleaming silver knife.
Before Elena could figure out how that happened, how that was possible, the monster wailed, and Elena screamed again, grabbing on tighter. It began to cry, in betrayal, rage, pain, and attempted to flap up again, until realizing that it couldn't fly. Blood spilled down the side of its feathers.
It began to run. Elena grabbed onto the knife and hoisted it up with her bad arm, almost losing her balance and just managing to regain herself when
she saw him.
Running after, wild mess of a hair, same outfit as four years ago, it couldn't be-
She fell.
She was so surprised, that she fell.
Even with her surviving a near half-hour in the air battling and lulling a sphinx to sleep, she was caught off-guard and actually fell face-first all because of
him.
Knife in hand, the boy's face in her mind, her shoulder bashed, a girl's voice that wasn't hers crying out in surprise, she blacked out.
***
At one point, Elena’s mind tried to stir, but it was just
"- tayk hurr, Banjee? She... hellp...-"
dancing red dancing blue
"...hellp... tha mishon... waite..."
stars
"...ware?... ware?"
pain pounding pounding pain
"how se.... hohwse.."
black dark
girl's voice
boy's voice
it's the boy
it's him
****
Everything w
as coming down on him. Every promise, every luxury of time he had, gone in a couple of weeks... deadlines coming fast... there's no negotiations on life and death...
"This is it, Nico."
"..."
"This is such a bad time, I know, but it’s always a bad time, and it’s always going to be a bad time, except for right now. I feel like this has to happen. There’s… something weird and ominous in the air- can't you feel it? Something has to happen, and soon, and I'm not just saying this because this is the time most convenient for me or anything, you have to understand, Nico- I just-"
"Are you-"
"I've given you time. Four years is a long time. Technically, it's been longer even than that, huh? Sixteen years you’ve been searching for her? I honestly feel... I've given you time. I've upheld my promise. Soon... I'm so sorry, Nico, soon you'll have to uphold yours."
"..."
"Nico? Do you, uh, understand?"
"I understand. Of course I do. I... understand."
Daniel wasn't sure that he did.

*******

Notes

sorry if it's kind of long, guys