Wizards and Worms: Emma

Wizards and Worms: Emma

All characters are 18 or older.

Emma jumped from the rooftop and spread her wings into the skies. From her many eyes, the city was beautiful in the darkness. With another flap, she soared higher into the skies above the dotted lights of the cityscape below. Her silvery snake tail trailed along, past her hooves. On her left arm was the clawed talon covered in scales, like a medical gauntlet made of burnt black metal. Her right arm was covered in bright red fur, nearly bronze in color, and ended in a pawed hand. Her hair was the wild mane of a lion, golden in its pride. Ears of the wild cat replaced her human ones while in this form, and the paired horn of a goat and dragon crowned her head.

The cold air of the sky breezed past her leotard. Just a simple black piece of fabric, after learning that drawing upon the power of the amulet didn’t take account of her clothing. She still missed the pair of shoes destroyed by the sudden appearance of hooves splitting the material in twain. A black domino mask was the only other piece of clothing she wore. Her face was still that of Emma Barnes, even if so much of the rest of her body was altered when using the amulet. The piece of magic or tinker tech jewelry was nestled safety underneath her leotard.

Below on the ground, she spotted a hint of red and green. The Azn Bad Boys. The gang that took so much from her. Made her think she was weak. There were four of them, three men, one woman. The group was loitering around the entrance of a warehouse. With a flicker of her tongue, Emma could taste the smell of warm bodies and sex in the building. A mixture of drugs and sweat and blood filled her noses. It was a brothel, likely filled with unwilling sex slaves.

A lion’s rage-filled heart beat within her. ‘Goat of the thunderous mountain’ she mentally spoke her spell’s incantation, as electricity crackled around her right hand, the fur instantly standing up. A bolt of white lightning streaked down below, one of the men’s bodies seized up and spasmed upon the ground when it struck him. His gun began firing wildly as the muscles locked and squeezed from the current flowing through him. The Korean’s pretty boy cut haircut raised into an awkward afro.

“<Cape attack, they got Jung-hoon, alert Oni-Lee>” said the woman in a language that Emma didn’t know. She was surprisingly the tallest of the bunch, with short-cropped black hair, and tattoos of a tiger circled the muscles of her arms.  Emma only made out the name Oni Lee.

The shortest of the group ran, he was young-looking, probably even younger than Emma herself, yet already caught up in the pan-Asian gang run by Lung. ‘Flames of the forging dragon’ mentally chanted Emma. Streams of a gushing fire released from her left arm towards the boy. The gang member spotted the attack and slid downward avoiding the brunt of the heat. His hair seared and faced blotched red, he kept running away further towards the alleyway and ducked out of sight. The heat of his body was still moving and jumped over the fence.

Before giving chase, the sting of bullets pounded her body as the two members started shooting her flying form. None could break through the hide of a dragon, but even the pistols they carried felt like needles stabbing into her flesh. Lighting cracked again as the woman joined the first spasming body of the ground.

The heat of a body appeared and vanished in the range of her senses. Oni Lee was here already. Behind her, the serial suicide bomber appeared, the demon masked man now within touching range. On instinct, Emma wrapped her wings around her, as the explosions of grenades strapped to the body detonated. Emma crashed down onto the street, gasping in pain. The asphalt dug up where her hooves plowed the ground. Her body unbroken, protected by the immense defenses of the four beasts that powered her.

She tumbled out of the way as Oni Lee appeared again, blasting a cone of deadly flames as the clone then crumbled into ash. With her eyes, and those of the goat and dragon heads adorning her arms, like pauldrons, she scanned the perimeter. A body of heat appeared in front of her, but she was prepared this time. Ramming her horns upward, she snagged the chin of Oni-Lee locking it underneath his mask. A trickle of blood ran down his face. Her victory was short-lived as more grenades detonated blasted her backward. The body dissolved into ash, but the demon mask tumbled across the ground beside Emma’s form.  Pulling through the pain, she leaped upon the mask, her trophy. A black piece of fabric burned and torn landed next to it. Her domino mask. Emma realized if she got up, her face would be visible. A grenade was thrown from the rooftop, but another clone didn’t appear. Emma hissed in pain as the force wracked across her wings.

The sirens started and were getting closer. The hail of grenades stopped, and the heat signature of Oni Lee vanished.  She wasn’t going to end up a collared dog, like Sophia, stuck in the Wards program. Grabbing the bloody Oni Lee mask, she placed it on her face, and flew into the sky, watching the PRT troops spread out. Maybe they would deal with the brothel. It wasn’t her problem. The weak should deal with the problems of the weak, and she wasn’t weak anymore.

Emma snuck into her bedroom, flying into the unlocked and open window, and pulled off the amulet. The strength and changes to her body vanished. Mostly. In the bathroom, Emma started the routine of coating the rash on her left arm with cream and then waxing the hair that kept growing back on her right arm and legs. Dying her hair back to the red color, instead of the mixed golden blonde and reds it was currently. She wrapped a bandage around the flaking skin on her back. She would deal with the heat in her loins afterward as reward for a job well done.

Taking the mask of Oni Lee she gently wrapped it into a towel and shoved it under her bed. A trophy to prove she wasn’t weak anymore. It was worth more than the modeling gigs she had to cancel over the last month.