Chapter Text
Kipo
Wolf paced the small room of her apartment. Her hands were clenched into fists and a permanent frown covered her forehead. She’d been at it ever since the encounter with the strange boy, and Kipo doubted the younger girl would stop anytime soon. Kipo sat upright on the sofa, too afraid to relax and accidentally become the victim of Wolf’s misplaced anger.
“I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna kill him!” she muttered, a rare but familiar glow in her eyes. Kipo mainly noticed it when they were in danger, but now, the reason came purely from revenge.
She winced. After weeks of knowing her best friend, she was still unsure whether she meant her threats or not. What she did know was that she did not want to be held responsible for someone losing their life. If only Benson was here. He’d help me get through to her.
Wolf lifted one of her devil sticks, and with a yell, she threw it against the opposite wall. It bounced off of it and landed by Kipo’s feet. She stared at its pattern and took a deep breath. I guess I’ll just have to do it myself.
Kipo opened her mouth and regretted it as soon as she spoke the first word. “I’m sure he wouldn’t have destroyed it if you—”
“So you’re on his side!?” Wolf retorted immediately.
Shit. Retreat, retreat. “No, of course not,” Kipo promised. “I’m just saying that maybe we judged him too quickly.”
“We judged too quickly? He accused us of stealing his stuff!”
Kipo couldn’t deny the truth no matter how much she wanted to. “Okay, that’s true… But we did intrude in his home!”
“The hell we didn’t.” Wolf turned her back on Kipo to stare out of the window in the same direction of the parking garage.
We don’t have time for this, Kipo wanted to say, but she knew she’d become Wolf’s next victim if she did. Still, they only had a week until Scarlemagne’s coronation, and she had a lot to get done before that. All they had to do was get out of Deathstalker Territory and find her parents burrow. It couldn’t be that hard, right? Right? Why did that boy have to show up right now!?
Without looking at her friend, Wolf sighed and crossed her arms across her chest. “I’m going back there.”
Kipo almost believed she’d hallucinated her words. “What?”
Wolf met her fearful gaze. “He can’t just get away with killing Stalky! And cornering us. He’s a danger, Kipo.”
“But—”
“He probably would’ve gone after us too if we did the same thing to him.”
Kipo snapped her lips shut. The determination in Wolf’s voice was impossible to go unnoticed. She knew that there was no point in arguing when the feral girl set her mind on something. All she could do was hope that the Deathstalkers would set them astray. Preferably in the direction of her parents’ burrow.
“Fine,” she sighed eventually. “I’ll go with you, but we need to come up with a plan first. He has a bow and we have… Nothing.”
“We have the jaguar,” Wolf countered.
Am I actually hallucinating!? “No, you know I can’t!” Kipo argued. “I can’t control it yet!”
She recalled when they ate at Brunchington Beach. The way her friends had looked at her as she ravaged a bowl of pasta with her claws. The look of terror.
“You’re obviously not gonna use it,” Wolf said, rolling her eyes like Kipo was stupid. “We’re just gonna scare him a bit. You know, so he’ll go down quickly.”
“And if I fail? If I transform?” Kipo didn’t even want to imagine it. The Chevré sisters made sure to warn her about how dangerous the jaguar could become.
Wolf shrugged. “Then we’ll have a nice human soup for dinner.”
“Wolf!”
The girl held her hands up in defeat. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. It’s not gonna happen. I’ll be there with you and make sure he doesn’t come at you. And if you feel yourself losing control, we’ll get out of there.”
Tears burned in Kipo's eyes. Doubt had already settled in her chest. Could she really do this? “Promise?”
“I promise,” Wolf assured. “There’s a place really close to here. It’s got weapons we can use. I doubt those fighting sticks will do any harm.” She eyed the one she’d thrown and picked it up. She twirled it between her fingers before returning it to its place with the others. “And we’re going to need something else to fight with just in case.”
When she approached the window to climb outside, Kipo followed. She wrapped her pink arms around herself, shivering despite the heat in the Las Vistas night. Wolf better know what she’s doing, she thought to herself, climbing after the younger girl down the ladder.
The silence of the neighborhood was daunting after the previous events in the parking garage. The Deathstalkers were nowhere to be seen, and Kipo could only hope they’d gone to sleep. Still, she couldn't rid the feeling of being followed. She was too afraid to transform her ears to listen for the boy or said stalkers, but she made sure to stay close to Wolf just in case. They passed apartments with overgrown vegetation, some with cracks in the walls from the constant pressure of growth. Wolf didn't even look at them, seemingly confident in the direction she was taking them. Yet the anxiety continued to grow inside Kipo's mind.
“Are you sure that we should do this? I mean, he might leave us alone?” Kipo asked.
Wolf sighed. “We already talked about this, Kipo. If we don't get rid of him, there's no way to make sure we're safe.”
She did have a point. Kipo knew she had a point. Finding her parents’ burrow took first priority, but they couldn't focus on it with some boy at their heels.
“You're not gonna… Hurt him, though, right?” Kipo spoke again, flinching at the sound of a twig breaking somewhere in the distance.
“Not if I don't have to,” Wolf responded. The lack of a clear answer left Kipo shuddering.
Wanting to switch the subject, Kipo asked a different question. “Are we there yet?”
“Yeah, it's just over there.” The smaller girl pointed across the road, where a large sign stood out in the midst of apartments.
Kipo squinted her eyes, tilting her head at the letters she could make out. Restaurant? Some letters had flaked off in the last 200 years, but the point came across either way.
“Why a restaurant?” Kipo asked, tilting her head to the side. “I thought you said we were grabbing weapons?”
Wolf confirmed her question with a nod. “You’ll see,” was all she said.
With nothing else to go on, Kipo followed her friend inside the restaurant. Tables were covered with red tablecloths. Some had tumbled to the floor in heaps of wood, no doubt from the mutes’ constant fights. There were portraits on the walls, featuring people that were no longer alive. Kipo eyed the portraits as she passed them. What if the world could look like this again? But without getting rid of either mutes or humans? The thought was something she had wished for since she was little, and as far as she knew, her dad and her friends did the same. It was why stopping Scarlemagne was more important than ever. It was also why frustration grew from within as Wolf walked into another part of the restaurant through a swinging door, which led into the kitchen.
“They should be here somewhere,” Wolf mumbled underneath her breath. She pulled open white cabinets and storage closets, until she finally exclaimed a “Yes!”
Kipo rushed to her side, eyes landing on a box filled with kitchen knives.
“A knife!?” Kipo hissed, afraid that she’d start yelling if she spoke any louder. “You can’t be serious!”
Wolf raised an eyebrow. “You said we had to protect ourselves.”
“Still, why would you grab a knife of all things!?”
Wolf paused in her tracks, stroking the knife with her fingers. “All he has to do is do as we say,” she countered, slipping the weapon covered by a sheath into her jeans-pocket.
Kipo’s breath caught in her throat. “And what if he doesn’t? You said you weren't going to hurt him!”
Wolf’s expression was unreadable, much to Kipo’s dismay. They stared into each other’s eyes for what felt like forever. Then, Wolf sighed and lowered her head in defeat.
“I'm not. But going into a fight without protection is just stupid. He’s already got the upper hand, and we can’t let him know that.”
Kipo smiled in relief. Wolf couldn’t help but copy her.
“I’d never hurt someone, Kipo. Not like that. I just want to keep you safe.”
Kipo placed her hand on the younger girl’s shoulder. “I know. I want you to be safe too. But I think going into this with a knife is going to send the wrong message. Let’s only pull them out if there’s genuinely no other way.”
Wolf nodded. “Agreed.”
Kipo chose not to grab a knife, hoping that her paws would be enough to scare the boy off. And if not, she knew that Wolf would be there to protect her every step of the way.