Zodiac Girls

The Mystery

As Rain tried to take in her current situation, she heard a scream at a distance, and turned to the source. From the small gap between the leaves, Rain could see two figures down below. One was a cloaked man wearing a very familiar mask, and the other was a just as familiar hooded figure wearing a rabbit mask. Rain could've sworn the latter was also holding a knife in her hand, and next she knew, the hooded figure rushed away in a blur, and constantly struck the cloaked figure, cutting him mercilessly with their knife, and causing blood to spill everywhere.

Rain was horrified with what she was seeing, having flashbacks of the night she attempted to leave the academy. And like back then, when the hooded figure cut that female pursuer's arm off, the orangette vomited upon seeing something so gruesome occur before her once more, trying hard not to fall off the tree she was hiding in in the process.

'What... What the heck...?' she thought. 'Why... Why is that girl torturing him...?' Rain recalled the answer to that question from that night, but she did not want to believe nor accept it. How could she ever? No matter what the reason, no matter how other people saw her, no matter how dangerous the secret she held was, Rain was no killer. Likewise, she refuse to see anyone die before her, especially from a horrifying death.

As much as she wanted to help, however, with her leg as it was, Rain knew she could not do much to stop the hooded girl, even if she wanted to. For one thing, she had to get the bullet out of her leg first if she wanted to stop her. There was only one way she could do that, as much as she despised it with all her being, in more ways than one.

******

Find the girl. Shoot to kill. Return to base. Those were the three simple things he was tasked to do, three things that were quite easy for him, one of the organization’s best snipers.

Finding the girl was the easy part, since two other members of the organization had reported her whereabouts. Said pair were supposed to bring her back, but when the organization contacted them the next day, they had received no response from either. It did not take long for the higher ups to conclude that something must’ve happened to them, something that their target must’ve done.

Deciding that she had become too dangerous to take in at this point, they hired him- Phorbos Dasoodo- to kill her. Since the two member’s last whereabouts was at this academy, Phorbos decided to stop by here to see if their target had remained in this area. Lo and behold, she truly did remain here, which made the job somewhat easy for him.

'Somewhat' easy.

Phorbos did not know what lucky star she was born under, but just as he had deliver a headshot to the target, she avoided the shot, and a small kitten took her place instead. The sniper hastily reloaded his weapon, watching as the target started hiding behind a shed. He sighed at the hopeless action, and turned on the X-Ray mode of his goggles. His target once again in sight, he aimed at her head and fired. Rather than hitting his target, however, it seemed his bullet had struck something hanging in the warehouse, causing its trajectory to change slightly, and instead just narrowly miss its target, who then ran straight for the woods.

‘I need to talk to them about the X-Ray Vision on these goggles later,’ he thought, taking aim at his target once more. Rather… taking aim at where she will be, as well as prepared a bullet in case if she managed to avoid his shot once more.

As he had calculated, when he took his shot, instead of shooting the girl, who tripped on a tree root and fell, he struck the ground where she would be. The sniper quickly reloaded and aimed for the recovering girl’s leg. Before she took a step forward, he fired his shot, and incapacitated her.

The target now unable to move, the sniper reloaded another bullet in his g*n, and took aim.

“Don’t worry, monster. This will be quick,” he whispered.

However, the moment he fired his weapon, the girl suddenly disappeared in a blur, and the bullet instead struck the ground she once lied on.

“What?!” he gasped, surprised at what just occurred. How did the girl disappear? It couldn’t be an illusion, not with the puddle of blood on the ground. He knew for sure she was right there, so how?

As if to answer the question in some way, Phorbos saw something blurry for a brief moment, before he was suddenly struck in the face, and got knocked down from the tree he was on. The sniper slowly got back up, and found himself staring face to face with a hooded figure wearing a rabbit mask, holding a knife in hand.

“You know, you people from that damned place are too persistent for your own good,” she spoke.

Next the sniper knew, Rabbit disappeared from his sight, and he felt searing pain in his right arm. “Argh! s**t!” Phorbos let out a very painful scream and held his heavily bleeding arm.

“Persistent bastards like you, from that organization that threatens our lives, deserves more than an easy death,” the masked girl’s voice echoed around the woods.

Before Phorbos could even attempt to raise his sniper rifle up with his uninjured hand, a familiar blur rushed past him from behind, and left a large gash on that arm, rendering him disabled, as he let out another painful scream. “Gaaahhh! Damn it!” The t*****e did not stop here, as the blur returned to deliver more and more cuts onto the sniper, as well as some ‘light’ jabs here and there, causing him to bleed profusely.

Several minutes of slashing t*****e later, Phorbos was knocked down, away from his weapon. As he attempted to get back up, the blur stood before him. What’s more is that she was pointing his own g*n right at his face.

“Quite poetic, wouldn’t you say? A sniper getting downed by his own g*n at pointblank.”

“Heheh… Even if you kill me, there will be others coming,” he warned with a chuckle. “We know that friend of yours is here… And had you not disabled my arms, SAZS would’ve known about you as well.”

“Nor will they ever,” Rabbit stated. “As much as I hate to use that girl as bait for you people, your days will be numbered with each person you send here. SAZS is not the type of organization that gets innocent bystanders involved, after all. Otherwise, you would’ve already had her in your custody.”

“Be that as it may, you are foolish if you think our organization consists of a handful of people. Unlike you monsters, there are a whole lot more of us in our group. Not even you can stop them alone if they send better fighters here! You may have won this round, but don’t think you’ve won the war, rabbit! You monsters will go extinct. We of SAZS will make sure it happens!”

It was silent then and there. Phorbos grinned, thinking he had his soon-to-be killer shaken with the news. There were people better than him, after all, and some who are quite special at that. Even a speedster like this girl before him will have trouble against an army.

“Then it’s a good thing I’m not alone,” she spoke, causing him to freeze in confusion. Before Phorbos knew it, the rabbit masked girl fired the g*n, causing the bullet inside to fly between his eyes, and straight through his head. With the deed done, the sniper lied on the ground, dead.

Rabbit let out a breath she had held, as she dropped the g*n down. With a heavy stomp, she broke the weapon in two, unable to be used again.

‘If what he said is true, though… For all we know, his death could be more than enough of a sign for SAZS to know about there being more of us here,‘ she thought. ‘Taking that into consideration… I need to speak to the leader about this.’

The sound of a twig getting snapped in two reached her ears, and the masked girl turned to see Rain there, she with wide eyes and shaken by what had occurred here. More than that, bullet wound on her leg seemed worse than before. Not only was it bleeding somewhat, but it seemed somewhat bigger than before. Rabbit's eyes then caught sight of something else, as she looked over to Rain's hand, and noticed blood on her pointer and middle fingers, realizing what the girl had done.

"Wh-... What...?" Rain breathed out.

It did not take long for the masked figure to realize she had been here to see the end of her conversation with the sniper.

"Do forgive me. But it was for your own good, Freshie," she simply said.

"In what way...? What way was any of that for my own good?!" Rain demanded.

"You don't have to understand if you can't. Just know that I am your ally."

"I don't want to be an ally to a murderer. Much less one who uses me as bait!"

That made Rabbit flinch, now realizing Rain had been here for the whole conversation with the late sniper. Before any of them knew it, something struck Rain on the head from behind, knocking her out.

"Don't you think that was a little rough on the Freshie?" the rabbit masked girl simply questioned.

"It's not like she was willing to hear you out in the first place," came an older female voice, as emerging out from the shadows was another hooded person, this one tall, wearing a red hoodie and tanned sweats, complete with a bull mask.

"Even so..." Rabbit trailed off there, not knowing what else to say. She was concerned for the now unconscious teen, but at the same time, she knew the mission, and what was right for her. However, she was conflicted as to whether or not this really was the right thing to do.

The bull masked woman noticed the gesture and approached her, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I know how you feel. Believe me, it's hard to keep this a secret from her, too. But sometimes, the best thing for people is the hardest thing to do. We just have to endure it, especially when she finds out the truth of her past, and us."

Rabbit could only halfheartedly nod in agreement at those words. She didn't like this decision one bit. She would much rather flat out tell the Freshie the truth of everything, especially about herself. However, as things were now, especially concerning how she had lived all these years, there was no way Rain would accept it all that easily if the truth was just shoved right into her. Other than that, Rabbit had bigger things to worry about, things concerning their group.

"Contact the others for an emergency meeting tonight," she told her companion. "Got dangerous news."