Star Rebellion (20 page)

“How long has he been messing with this stuff?” Darkstar asked.

“Since we got here, maybe ten minutes ago.”

I looked back at his handgun, a tiny bit envious. “Where’d you get that?”

“Storage room to the left, second door.”

I shot out of the room and found the door easy peesy. I let a low whistle leave my lips as I surveyed all the weaponry that was contained in the space.

“Water’s in the Divine,” Fire said as he and Dark came up behind me.

“Hey, Vlad!” I called over my shoulder.

“Hmm?”

“Can any of this hurt a demon? Or is there some fancy shmancy way to kill them?”

“Holy water helps, but any of this would work. Also, daylight is your friend. It’s not impossible for them to go into the sun, but they usually avoid it at all costs.” Vladimir had slipped between the two guys and ran his finger across a few of the hand grenades.

I looked over the wall on my left quickly and found a shelf of bags. I threw one to each of them and took two extra with me. “Load up boys.”

After inspection of the bags, it became apparent that they were designed for this purpose and had specific pockets for each weapon, along with a nice little booklet explaining it all. Least the NOPCW was organized. If these had been in the Rebellion, the most you could hope for was a ‘use with caution’ notice.

I filled up my bag first, then the extra two for Forest and Ice. We had all gone through moderate weapon lessons before we got our field class status, which meant we could all proficiently use almost every weapon that was in the room, though there were a few that I had to explain to the team.

When we got back to the technology room, Icestar was finished with his tinkering. All the wires had been cleaned up, and now there was a TV on a small stand that he was trying to tune with a piece of wiring that was sticking out of the side.

I handed Forest his bag and his face lit up with a malicious grin when he saw the vast amount of guns that he could carry at once now. Remind me never to get on his bad side… he was almost as scary as me when it came to the joy of fighting. I wonder why he had become an ambassador instead of a fighter.

I didn’t dare to interrupt Ice with his attempts at tuning the TV, so I left his bag a few feet behind him and turned back to the rest of the group. “Once he gets the connection through, we’re going to see what the situation is at the Rebellion; hopefully the demons haven’t attacked yet and just surfaced in one of the deserted areas of Calsh. Except for a few rogue establishments that were left after Earth abandoned here, I believe that we and the NOPCW are the only habited areas left. Also, no matter what he says, we’re going back to HQ. Even if he commands us to fortify this location, we’re going. Or says we’ve been exiled.” I tacked on the last part, remembering how everyone in the room had defied Arctic in some way, except Vlad.

“What about the storm? I’ve already been through that, and it wasn’t too fun,” Fire said, his forehead creased in the memory of the acid rain he had told me about. Foreststar nodded in agreement from where he was still stationed at the wall.

“I’ll go check to see if it’s still raining; if it is, then we’re going to have to figure out some way to cover Cerberus.”

I marched out the door without waiting for them to agree with that plan. There was a stunning lack of windows throughout the building, even though I was pretty sure that I was walking along one of the exterior walls. I made my way back up to the front, and after a few dead ends, I found the door that Fire and I had broken into what seemed like forever ago.

I cracked the door open and peered outside. Silver sheets of rain were pouring down at what looked like a deathly speed. “Well fudge,” I muttered as I started to close the door. When there was an inch gap left, a boney hand shot through it and grabbed my throat, lifting me off the ground.

A demon rushed into the room and I faintly heard the door slam close after rebounding off the wall. The demon’s grip on my throat tightened as it brought me even with its eyes, which meant lifting me almost a foot into the air.

“Why hello, pretty little girl,” it rasped out, licking its chops afterwards. The demon had scaly, muddy green skin and bloodshot eyes. At least he was in possession of both of his eyes, even if they were mismatched. A lot of its once sharp teeth were chipped or missing and all of them were rotting, lending partially to the pungent scent that permeated the air around us.

I started getting light headed with the lack of oxygen, and I felt pathetic. I hadn’t even tried fighting back.

Somewhere distant a gunshot was fired, and the demon threw me behind it. I thudded into the wall and dropped to the floor. I felt my knee made a cracking sound on the floor as it took all the weight from falling. I crack a lot it appears.

I rubbed at my neck and started coughing. The air seemed to burn as it traveled to my lungs, and my head started to hurt really badly.

More shots were fired, and bleary eyed, I looked up to see who had come.

Vladimir was kneeling on the ground, firing shots at the demon’s legs as Firestar ran forward with a long knife in each hand. The demon jumped in the air to dodge a bullet and seemed as if it was going to land directly on Fire. Its teeth were bared and its clawed hands were outstretched, but Fire slid underneath it while holding his knives up, barely slicing into the belly of the demon.

Vladimir cast aside his gun and ran forward to join the fray. His left hand seemed to glow as he summoned his hellfire and punched the demon straight in the chest. His hand didn’t really connected with the demon, it more so slid through its chest before coming back out with a handful of mushy stuff that I really didn’t want to know about.

I pushed myself to my feet and staggered over to them. It was taking a while for all my muscles to get the air back that they had been deprived of, even for such a short time.

“Waterstar, are you okay?” Firestar asked as he rushed back at me, both of his knives sheathed on his arms.

“Yea, yea, I’m okay. Just a little winded. I don’t think we’re leaving here anytime soon though; it’s still raining, and I’d bet almost anything that there are more demons out there. They must’ve sniffed out the scent of humanity fairly quickly.”

Vladimir had joined us and shook his head. “Doubt it, they all have really dull senses. It probably was just running around outside and when it heard you open the door it attacked, finally finding some prey.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Either way, there was definitely one out there, who knows where the rest are, and how many have even escaped the Underworld already. Has Ice gotten through to Arctic?”

“Pretty much, that's what we were coming here for. I guess it's good that tall-dark-and-Demon followed me, though I totally could've handled that demon alone!” Firestar said while shaking his head. “Let’s go back; Arctic will need to hear of this, if he hasn’t already. I'm sure the others can figure it out with the gunshots and all.” He slammed the safety bar over the door.

I nodded in agreement and followed the two of them back to the room. Icestar was standing to the side of the TV and Darkstar was talking to Arctic, whose face was projected for us on Ice’s wonderful, last minute video connector, though it was a bit on the static-y side.

“What was the commotion?” Arctic asked. Yup, leave it to Icestar to have extreme sensors for both video and audio, even if the connection on our side was crappy.

Dark turned to us for the answer. “A demon got in, you know about them yet?” I asked.

“Yes, if Fire hadn’t run off without notifying someone, we would’ve told him, but it seems like we can’t undo what has been done, and so far no harm no foul.”

“No harm no foul, eh?” I could feel my temper rising, even though this was kind of mine and Dark’s fault to begin with when we ran off without warning. “We just set loose the entire Underworld upon humanity!”

“And if you had obeyed my orders, that could have been delayed. Now, I told Firestar that you were all exiled,” Arctic gave me a look that made it clear I wasn’t to interrupt, “but I have changed my mind. Right now, we need all the help we can get, and I never was going to fully exile you. Once this is all said and done, however, you can bet you won't be seeing past the Rebellion's walls for a while. You'll be put on cleaning duty and won't have any missions until I deem your punishment fulfilled. Until then, however, we will need you to fight.”

“This battle would have came to us either way. It was just a matter of time before Lucifer decided he wanted to attack humanity, given his past with it and all,” an unfamiliar voice in the background said.

A guy who was about Arctic’s age stepped into view of the camera. He had black hair, almost as dark as Darkstar’s, wore shades, and had tan skin.

“Who’s he?” Fire asked. Newbies and Firestar didn’t mix too well. Exhibit A, Vladimir, because they were definitely best friends now. Hah, right.

“This is a man named Vatican for all intents and purposes. He is the pope of the Catholic Church of the Earth world, one of the leaders that are called to our meetings. He says that he will be able to help us in the Purge.”

“Purge?”

“Yes, that is what we will be calling the banishment of the demons. Vatican has been telling me that it will be impossible for us to completely eradicate them, but making sure they go back to the Underworld and never come out again will work just fine,” the way Arctic said this made it seem like it wasn’t up for discussion, or entirely easy.

“Why is it impossible to kill them all? Doesn’t Earth have bombs and stuff?” Of course, I was still going to discuss it. Why would we even
consider
letting these insert-choice-swear-words live?

Vatican smiled through the TV, as if he thought I was amusing. “There are simply too many of these demons. These bombs would make Calsh even worse than it currently is, along with powering the demons. Destructive forces will hardly make them weaker. You may kill a hundred with one bomb, but the residue left afterwards would make five hundred even more stronger. Demons thrive off of destruction.”

“Then I guess Water isn’t gunna be fighting,” I heard Fire snicker behind me. I spun around and jabbed him in the stomach. He, of course, flipped me off in return.

When I had turned back, Arctic was rolling his eyes. “Is your car still working?”

Icestar nudged his way into view of the screen. “Yes, sir. I had modeled it so that even the acid rain couldn’t hurt it, though I’m not sure if the demons can do anything, if they even had an interest in it.”

“On the second floor of the NOPCW HQ, there should be windows that will let you overlook your entire surroundings; go there and try to do an analysis on your car. If it is in shape, call me back and I’ll send a squad to escort you back, and this time
please
follow them instead of going off on your own adventure!”

We nodded our heads in agreement and right before Ice was about to shut down the connection, Vatican spoke up, “Beware! Demons like to-”

The static had gotten too bad and the image cut out, leaving a buzz in the air.

“Guess we’ll never know what demons like to do,” Forest said as he pushed himself off of the wall.

We did a quick scout of the bottom floor before anything else, though we were jumping at every sound incase some demon had gotten in again. In one of the supply rooms, we found tarps that we could put over ourselves to keep out most of the rain, along with a larger one that could be tacked onto Cerberus.

The stairs were a pain in the butt for me; I hadn’t realized how bad my knee had gotten jacked up until I was forced to climb. After the third time that they had to wait on a landing for me to catch up, Firestar motioned for me to get on his back and carried me up the rest of the stairs. I almost felt bad for him. Almost.

Walking wasn't as much of an issue, though, and I demanded to be let down instead of being babied. The top floor was way different from the bottom, and I couldn’t help but open random doors here and there. It seemed like this was the living quarters for everyone who stayed permanently at HQ. When I opened the door into a room that was pink, frilly, and full of stuffed animals, I joked that it was probably Maegan’s room while nudging Darkstar. The scary part was that I noticed a sign over the bed frame that spelled out Maegan in a bunch of little bows.

“You’re just jealous ‘cause we won’t let you do this to our room,” Dark finally said after a rather perverted comment I made about him and Maegan in the girly room.

“As if,” I scoffed. “When I suggested making it look like an underground nightclub you said no. Why would I want
pink
?”

“You’re just afraid to show your inner girl.”

Before I could make a rebuttal, Darkstar put one of his arms around my shoulder and pulled me into a headlock while giving me a noogie.

“Butt munch!” I screamed while trying to push him away.

Darkstar laughed but soon let me go. As I put my blond and blue hair back in order, we approached one of the windows that faced where Cerberus was parked.

“Who wants to send them to Hell?” Icestar said pessimistically while glaring at the scene below us.

Cerberus was in the middle of what looked like a small pond of acid water. Demons were swarming around the car and in the water that surrounded it, making the thick mud even worse. Looks like acid rain wasn’t bad for them, damn shame that is.