酷视

I was too late to stop Fay\'s shout, sensing her distress a mere instant before she actually called out.

Still, Makary wasn\'t the kind of a driver who would panic when put on the spot like that. After a moment of desperate breaking, he quickly countered with the gas, throwing the steering wheel to the side to make up for the car sliding on the somewhat wet road.

"Can you see it?!" Fay quickly corrected with another shout while tugging on my shirt to attract my attention.

And yet, rather than just staring at the terrifying sight outside, I gritted my teeth and took a shallow breath.

"Drive slightly drunk!"

The worst thing we could do was attract their attention. And while the courtesy of the tinted windows kept our faces away from Cassie and her bitchy friend\'s eyes…

Would someone capable of casually wielding an aura many times greater than Madam could harness really be obstructed by something as simple as that?

Still, those tinted windows gave us a tiny bit of leeway. The obvious high class of Makary\'s personal car only added to the premise of a drunk nouveau-riche crashing through the city streets at night.

"Okay…?" Makary, having no clue what we just saw, sensed that it wasn\'t an act. And following my request, he swung the car to the other side, nearly crashing into the nearby sign pole.

"Haaa… haaa… haaa…" The sound of Fay\'s heavy breathing filled the otherwise silent car.

Right, as the child of the forest and someone who lived with the aura her entire life, she had to be much more sensitive to it than me. And with how I felt like throwing out right this very moment after just a single glance at this repulsive, thick, and oily aura of darkness…

I could only imagine how shitty Fay felt.

"It\'s okay," I whispered, leaning over the girl and wrapping my arm around her shoulders, steadying her in her place.

"Do you have any bags here?" I turned my head and called out before the nauseating feeling got to me too.

"Storage in the arm\'s rest, there should be something there," Makary replied, still holding himself back from asking any questions.

From the occasional glances he threw to the rear-view mirror, he actively monitored the situation and ultimately knew better than to try to push us for answers right now.

Prompted by his words, I reached out to pull the armrest out from its socket in the middle of the backseat of Makary\'s car. And after scouring through the storage hidden within, I triumphantly pulled out a simple, plastic bag, before prying it open and preparing it for Fay to use.

"It\'s okay, throw it out if you feel like it," I encouraged the poor girl while using my hand to gently massage the upper part of her back.

"I… I\'m fine…" Fay uttered after a few moments, the colors slowly returning to her face. "Let\'s just get away from them, as soon as possible and as quick as possible…"

The car shot to the side as Makary took the right turn with a wide, much wider than necessary arc.

"Let\'s just get us out of here," I seconded Fay\'s request, finally bringing Makary\'s drunken driving to a stop.

The last thing I wanted, right now, was for the police to stop us so close to where we spotted the two girls.

"Are you sure you don\'t want to check it out any further…?" Makary asked with a sizeable hint of genuine worry in his eyes.

And as amusing as it was to hear him talk like that, like a human rather than the stern leader he was, the perspective of turning back…

"Don\'t you fucking dare," I coughed out, finally starting to rid my mind of the revolting sensation induced by just a single fucking glance at the thicket of dark aura. "Do you remember the numbers I used to describe strength?"

My sudden question caused Makary to pull his eyebrows together and squint his eyes a little bit, something I saw only thanks to the courtesy of the same rear-view window he was using to keep an eye on us.

"Yeah, I do." Makary nodded his head as he slowed down and entered a really narrow street, only to emerge on a massive plaza, one that I had no clue existed smack-dab in the middle of the district.

"A normal human goes up to an average of three points. A professional can reach six while a master, an absolute elite, can reach up to nine. Levels ten and above are pretty much beyond the human realm."

Hearing my recap of what I said just a fewteen minutes ago, Makary simply nodded his head.

"This time I won\'t be speaking with averages… Or at least, not in the sense I did when raising this topic the last time," I started with yet another preamble, something I was growing strangely fond of doing.

"My number should be within the upper teens, just shy of twenty. Fay\'s number…" This time I hesitated for a bit since I wasn\'t sure which of her average attributes should I provide. The one she boasted while in her human form? The stats she enjoyed while in her ascended, kitsune form?

Or maybe the stats I saw appear on her status when we joined in this strange union, locked within the domain of her hair and aura?

"Fay\'s number would be around the middle twenties," I spoke, settling on describing Fay\'s ascended but not promoted form.

"The powerhouses I talked about…" I took a short pause to try to give it an educated guess. "Around sixty, I believe?" I muttered to myself. "Somewhere within of forty through eighty points, I guess. But in their case, those points hardly even matter anymore."

"And?" Makary asked after I turned silent for a short while. "Why are you telling me all of this?"

I took a deep breath to sort my own thoughts.

What was just an after-through, an issue to investigate along the leisure of free time… Now turned into something quite possibly much more important and dire than whatever was going back in Fay\'s world.

"One of the two girls, either my ex or her bitchy friend…"

I pressed my lips into a thin line, struggling to even get the next piece out of my mouth.

And right as Makary drove towards the massive, metal gate to an ancient-style plane\'s hangar and stopped the car, I finally gathered my guts and spoke.

"To my understanding, one of those two boasts a number well past hundred."