Chapter 68: No Way Out

"Who are you...."

"Aaaaah!"

Two security guards went flying far to the right and left, knocked away by Casca and Corie before they could even finish speaking. The five continued walking toward the entrance, which was secured by an iron trellis gate. Three other security guards slumped to the floor, their bodies trembling as they watched the five figures walk past them. Once they reached the door,

"Clang!"

Clyde yanked the trellis aside until it opened wide.

"We’re going in," he communicated via telepathy.

"Yeah," Celes, Craig, Casca, and Corie replied telepathically.

Stepping inside, they arrived in a vast, pillared lobby dotted with counter booths. When they reached the reception desk, ding! three elevators behind the desk suddenly opened simultaneously. Dozens of men in black tactical gear and menacing expressions, heavily armed, poured out of the three elevators at once, instantly surrounding the group and training their weapons on them.

Bum... bum.

Roughly seven fully armed GEMA units emerged from behind massive pillars, accompanied by hundreds of drone-mounted rifles hovering above them, painting the intruders with laser target pointers.

"Wow... what a warm welcome," Corie remarked, observing her surroundings via telepathy.

"Yup... do we smash everything, or what’s the plan?" Casca asked, looking around.

"Hmm... round two of the fun is about to begin," Craig said, cracking and folding his knuckles.

"Wait... wait... let’s see how this plays out first. Don’t just attack blindly, right, Clyde?" Celes asked, turning to look at Clyde beside her.

"Yeah... they can’t go anywhere anyway. Just relax," Clyde answered casually.

A bald, half-lion man with a vicious scarred face, dark sunglasses, a suit, and a tie stepped forward, heavily armed like the rest. He pushed down his sunglasses, his darting eyes nervously surveying the five masked beings before him, a bead of sweat forming on his brow.

"Who are you? What is your business here? If you’re here to buy slaves, my apologies—you might want to come back tomorrow, as our gallery is already closed for the day," the half-lion man stated.

Hearing the man’s words, Clyde, Celes, Craig, Casca, and Corie exchanged glances. They didn’t speak, but their glowing red eyes grew even brighter in a sign of rising fury. The five of them widened their stances, as Clyde flared his wings and Celes hovered slightly in the air. Seeing this, the half-lion man shrank back, turning pale as he retreated a step behind the soldiers shielding him.

"Fire... open fire!" the half-lion man shrieked in command.

Rat-trat-tat!

Every single soldier simultaneously opened fire with carbines and a barrage of diverse elemental magic bullets. It wasn’t just the troops firing; dozens of hovering drones joined in, unleashing red laser-like projectiles. The heavy rain of gunfire whipped up a thick cloud of smoke around the group, punctuated by minor explosions marking where the bullets struck their targets. After a prolonged barrage,

"Cease fire... stop!"

All the soldiers stopped shooting. The lobby grew dead silent, shrouded in thick smoke that still hung around the five intruders. The half-lion man stepped forward again, narrowing his eyes as he tried to peer through the haze. As the smoke began to thin, sixteen red glowing eyes pierced through the fog. The lion-man’s face drained of color; he stumbled backward on trembling legs, but before he could even scream the order to fire,

Whoosh!

Corie leaped high into the air, bursting through the ceiling. Looking down, she opened her mouth as a remarkably long, thick toad tongue shot toward five of the soldiers. Before the guards could even cry out, they were snatched up, wrapped, and bound together like five logs tied side by side. Before they could process the shock, the five men were yanked straight toward Corie, who was still airborne.

Then, Corie released her tongue-wrap and spun mid-air, WHACK! slamming her heel down onto all five soldiers’ heads simultaneously, driving them crashing headfirst into the hard floor with their legs sticking straight up in the air. Witnessing Corie’s handiwork, the remaining soldiers’ expressions shifted dramatically as they clearly reevaluated their life choices. But before any of them could react,

Trat-tat-tat!

One soldier spun in place, spraying gunfire downward to riddle the legs of every single comrade around him. Looking terrified, bewildered, and completely out of his mind, the soldier suddenly froze as dizziness overtook him from the rapid spinning. His carbine barrel pointed upward, and he began blasting the hovering drones out of the sky. He glanced sideways at Celes, whose third purple eye and every crystal across her body were blazing with light.

The drones detonated and plummeted to the ground. Then, the soldier swiveled his carbine barrel toward his own thigh.

"D-don’t..."

Trat!

"Aaaaaah!"

The soldier collapsed as his leg was shredded by bullets from his own carbine. Seeing this spectacle, the surviving soldiers bolted for the wide-open exit, but before they could reach the door, a spiked tail blocked their escape.

"Whoaaaaah!"

The tail swept the soldiers back inside, and Yaaaaah! Casca opened her mouth, unleashing a sonic blast that sent the troops rolling on the floor in agony, clutching their bleeding ears. With all the infantry sprawled out and burning drones littering the floor, the seven GEMA units powered up their weapons and stepped forward into firing positions.

Yet before they could take action BLAM!, BLAM! Craig sprinted in a blur around every GEMA, smashing their legs to pieces and destabilizing them until they wobbled on the verge of toppling over. Then, SHIING! Clyde swept his wings, slicing through all the rear movement sensor arrays of the GEMA units simply by flying past them from behind.

The GEMA pilots turned white as ghosts, their hands frozen and trembling on the control grips, while their seats grew soaked with their own urine. The five companions regrouped in the center of the lobby, turning in unison to stare at the trembling, deathly pale half-lion man. The man backed away step by step toward the elevators, then turned and bolted, hammering the call button repeatedly in a frantic bid to summon the car.

Before the doors could slide open "tap, tap," someone tapped his shoulder. Slowly, cautiously, and trembling with dread, he glanced back to find Clyde, Celes, Craig, Casca, and Corie standing right behind him. He immediately pressed himself flat against the elevator doors, sinking to the floor with his hands raised in surrender.

"P-p-please... don’t kill me... I’m just an employee here... my pay isn’t enough for all this," he stammered.

The five of them, still standing with arms crossed in their combat forms, tilted their heads down to gaze at the man, whose pants were now soaked from sheer terror. Clyde crouched down, snatching the smartphone from inside the man’s suit jacket, causing him to flinch. Clyde typed something onto the screen and flashed it to the man:

"SILAS WARD."

"Y-you’re looking for the boss? The boss’s penthouse is at the very top of this building... this elevator takes you straight there... just go right up... please... let me go," the half-lion man whimpered, sweating in terror as his voice shook.

Clyde gave him a thumbs-up and nodded. The man looked slightly relieved, but Clyde’s hand suddenly shot out right in front of his face, fingers cocked in a flicking motion. As the man’s eyes widened, THUD! Clyde flicked him right on the forehead, sending the back of his head crashing hard against the sturdy metal elevator doors before he passed out cold.

Ding.

The elevator doors slid open. Craig kicked the man’s limp body aside so it wouldn’t block the path. Stepping inside, the five pressed the top floor button on the panel, and the elevator doors closed once more.

***

Meanwhile, inside the penthouse office, a plump green-skinned man stared in stunned disbelief at the PC monitor displaying security camera footage. He watched as five otherworldly beings he had never seen before rode the elevator straight up toward him. The cigar slipping from his slack jaw dropped onto the desk, and he shoved his chair back.

"Kyaaaa!"

The man glanced down to find a rabbit-eared woman crouching in front of her, clutching the tattered hem of her nightgown where it had slipped open. She wore no clothes at all save for what appeared to be a slave marker bracelet, and tears streamed down her face.

"Damn it... get out! Out!" the man shrieked hysterically and in panic, grabbing the woman by both ears to yank her roughly to her feet as she winced in pain.

Without a word, the woman turned and bolted for the exit. But before she could reach the door, kyaaaa! she tripped and fell as several Utopian military operatives burst into the room.

"Boss Silas, they wiped out our troops and they’re heading straight up here!" one of the soldiers shouted, his voice trembling.

"Contact headquarters and secure this room! Don’t let them in here, hurry... move!" Silas bellowed in panic.

"On it, boss!" the soldier yelled.

The soldier and his squad bolted out of the office, dragging the naked rabbit-eared woman along with them. Silas slumped back into his chair, planting both elbows on the desk and resting his chin in his hands. His eyes flickered nervously to the PC screen: the five strange entities were still in the elevator, ascending fast.

"Damn it... what kind of monsters are they... damn it, damn it," Silas thought in sheer panic.