Phoenix Skyline — 1:04 AM
I stood on the edge of the rooftop, the city spread below me in soft orange and slate blue, heat shimmering from the pavement like ghosts. The hoodie lay crumpled behind me. The joggers too. I didn't need them. Herja's armor—if you could call it that—was bio-plasmic modesty by technicality.
Black-tiger stripes wrapped in precise geometry across vital and erotic zones. Everything else? Skin. Alien, flawless, and dangerously feminine. A walking contradiction: beautiful, brutal, divine. I flexed. The muscles responded instantly—tension perfect, coordination supernatural. This body was tuned like a predator's violin. The wind coiled through my floating hair, silver plasma strands catching the city's neon like comet tails. No more hiding. No more slouching.
This wasn't cosplay. This was real. She was real. And I needed to know what this body could do. The leap to the next rooftop was thirty feet. I ran and leapt THUMP— off the toes, not the heel. Air whistled past my ears with their enhanced hearing. I landed crouched, ankles taking the shock like rubber springs. No pain. No wobble.
Just impact and absorption. Like falling didn't matter. I snickered, " No fall damage ehh?" I looked ahead. The skyline stretched before me like a training course. HVAC units. Fire escapes. Narrow ledges. Antennae. Rusted billboards with flickering soft-porn ads. I grinned. Then I ran. I was faster than the wind.
I dashed full speed across the building, kicked off a billboard, flipped sideways and rebounded off the vertical face of the side of a fourth story building like a parkour demon. I landed on a flag pole, and used it to vault backward onto a higher ledge. The whole city blurred around me. Not once did I feel off balance. Herja's tail curved mid-air to counter-rotate my center of gravity. My claws retracted and extended exactly when needed.
Every motion flowed. Every surface was fair game. I scaled walls with toe-grip adhesion. I bounded handless across gutters. I swung from service cables like a bio-fanged gymnast on fire. I laughed. For a second, it wasn't horror. It was freedom. Across the city on a rooftop balcony, Felicity Grey watched through her cybernetic eye.
Her good eye narrowed slightly, pupil like a vertical slit. She watched the figure bounding across the Phoenix skyline had her full attention.
Felicity licked her lower lip. Then smiled.
I was panting now—not from exhaustion, but exhilaration. Sweat didn't cling to Herja's skin. It vaporized. She ran cool, heat cycled through internal cryo-vents and demon-pored directly into the air. She was bulletproof and frictionless and absurd. I landed on a steel overpass and scanned the rooftops ahead, catching movement. But not rats. Not stragglers. Thirteen heat signatures. Grouped tightly. Standing in a crescent. One central figure seated in an armchair facing a table of weapon crates. I crouched low on the parapet. Infrared active. I focused. The rooftop below wasn't just occupied. It was a meeting.
Leather coats. Silk suits. Neon-tattooed faces.
All human—for now—but thick with body mod scents, pheromones, aftermarket dermal inks. Each man and woman represented a slice of the underworld pie—arms dealing, neuro-skin trafficking, corpse hacking, and raw beast-part smuggling. I didn't know the names. My jaw clenched. I didn't even realize my claws had unsheathed.
Crack-crack—
Too loud. Heads below turned. A voice snarled: "What the fuck was that?" I backed away from the ledge, crouched low. Too late. A red dot from a scope kissed the back of my neck. Then another. And another. "Up top," someone barked. "We got eyes." I leapt sideways, rolled across gravel, bounded onto the adjacent wall like a jungle cat.
Gunfire erupted behind me! Clack—clack—clack-clack-clack-clack! Bullets pinged off steel. I spun and used a satellite dish for cover. I felt my orgone within flare, stirred by intent. Gunfire shredded the ledge I had been crouched on—tracer rounds lighting the sky, burning a red arc through the Arizona dusk.
"Got movement up top!"
"Thermals are scrambled—what the hell is that thing?!" I didn't run this time. I didn't roll or dodge or vanish into the skyline. I stood. The moonlight shimmered off my bare skin and bio plasmic armor. The stripes glowed—slow, then brighter—as if responding to my pulse. Thirteen pairs of eyes stared up at me.
Guns rose.
"Drop off the ledge now!" a man shouted. "This is private fucking airspace, freak!" I dropped from the ledge. Impact. Chaos. Carnage. I hit the rooftop like a meteor, sending crates and folding chairs flying. Thanks to an orgone energized landing that sent out a kinetic shockwave. Two guards flew backward from sheer force, ribs crunching against the concrete lip. I moved.
Snap!—a backhand sent one man across the rooftop. He folded like origami. Crack-crack—claws ripped through body armor, blood misting the air. A gun fired point-blank into my chest. There was a full body shimmer. Nothing. I turned. The shooter tried to backpedal. Too slow. I grabbed him by the throat, lifted him one-handed, then hurled him over the edge. Screams. Panic. One of the gang captains pulled a flamethrower from a case. "I got the freak! Burn it!"
I grinned. I walked into the blast—Herja's bio armor shimmering gold as the flames coiled around her without even singing her hair. The flames died before touching my skin. "Impossible..." I leapt. The man never screamed. Only the crunch of bones meeting brick as I drove his skull into a wall ten feet away. Three remaining. They tried to run. I let them get six steps. Then pounced—tail lashing one into a vent pipe, a kick folding the second into a steel girder. The last made it to the stairs.
I was on him in a blink. One hand caught the back of his jacket. The other slammed him face-first into the railing. His nose erupted in a spray of blood. He went limp. But not out. "Please—!" he gurgled, red leaking from his lips. "Wh-what are you?" I didn't answer. I didn't have one. Not anymore.
I dragged him away from the stairs, past the others—into the red gloom of a forgotten back room. One lightbulb buzzed overhead, barely alive. The air crackled. The hunger hit. Low in my gut. Hot. Violent. It wasn't mine, not exactly—but it lived inside me now. Herja's inheritance. My curse. "Feed." I crouched over him, breathing fast. The scent of fear—so strong I could taste it. Salt, adrenaline, Orgone.
"Take it."
"No..." he whimpered. "I—I'll talk. I'll tell you everything—"
Too late. I sank my palms into his chest—just above the sternum—Suckers piercing meat and bone in a slow, measured slide. He screamed. Then it happened. I felt the breach point—somewhere between skin and soul. The pull triggered. And orgone poured into me. It wasn't liquid. It wasn't light. It was presence. Life-force drawn raw and wild through nerves, breath, and blood. My spine arched. My eyes rolled back. And then—nothing.
Just dust. The body collapsed beneath me, drained in seconds. The skin withered. The eyes shriveled. Flesh pulled tight around bone like scorched paper. The man was gone. I stumbled back, gasping, staring at my hands. They glowed faintly, pulses of Orgone arcing up my arms like static lightning. I could feel it coursing through my body. Amplifying strength. Speed. Sight.
But my heart?
My heart felt sick. "You just killed someone... for fuel. Ash" And it felt good. "No..." I whispered. "No, no, no... I didn't mean—"
Inside my head, I felt her stir. A whisper. Velvet. Amused. "Told you...you're mine now." The rooftop fell silent. I stood in the blood-washed ruins of a thirteen-family summit, panting, body steaming under the moonlight. Herja was quiet now. Satisfied. But me? I was shaking. Not from guilt. From need.
The blood on my hands didn't disgust me. It exhilarated me. My claws slowly retracted. The glowing faded. My breath slowed. Then I smelled it—
Not blood.
Not gunpowder.
Something warm. Soft. Sweet. Orgone. And someone…watching. Across the street on a rooftop terrace Felicity Grey sat on a rooftop ledge, one leg over the other, sipping her drink with a knowing little smirk. Her heat signature was invisible, Suppressed. She wasn't worried about this mysterious newcomer spotting her. But she could see the beast-girl. The tail. The kill. The bloom of beast-mode power from a crystal-worn virgin.
She didn't know it yet. But the beast-girl had just taken they're first real step into the Vein. And Felicity Grey?
She always noticed early bloomers.