All three masked men turned their attention to her.
Bunny cocked his head, eyes narrowing behind the plastic smile of his rabbit mask. He took in her 5'4" height, the short dark hair with wolf bangs framing a small, soft face that looked even more delicate behind those heavy glasses. Her bright violet eyes blinked at them through thick lashes—calm, steady, almost curious.
Pig's broad shoulders lowered a fraction as he tilted his head. He traded a glance with Bunny. A girl with a face like that had no business standing out here. She should've been trembling in the back with the others. Who in their right mind would gamble a face like that?
"Put that away Reggie, you'll only hurt yourself," the girl said calmly.
Reggie staggered back and tightened his grip on the gun, "H-How do you know my name?"
"Because I'm a mind reader, Reggie." She said darkly as she took a step forward. He shuffled back with a shocked gasp, "You should've stayed in the car, it's obvious you're not cut out for the job."
He was shaking now, "Holy shit you do read minds-"
"No she's not, she just overheard us, now stop fucking around and grab her!" Pig groaned, more stressed with dealing with Reggie than a room of people he was holding as hostages.
"Told you we should've left him," He muttered to Bunny.
"Watch him, I'll get the money." Bunny ordered and pulled the shaking bank teller to his feet. He pressed his gun against the man's spine and led him behind the counter.
Meanwhile people on the ground looked up, bewildered by the scene unfolding between the girl and the robbers.
"You gonna listen to them Reggie?" Elle taunted.
"I'm gonna pump you full of holes if you don't get on the ground now!" Reggie screamed, voice cracking a bit.
"And if I don't?"
"Fucks sake Reggie hit her with the gun." Pig groaned.
"Momma said not to hit girls." Reggie cried out, still pointing the semi-automatic rifle at Elle.
"It's not that hard," Pig barked, "Here look."
He grabbed the woman cowering closest to him and slammed the butt of his gun into her abdomen. She grunted in pain and collapsed onto the floor, coughing out thick strings of blood and saliva. The room erupted with horrified gasps and cries.
Reggie whirled around and pointed the rifle at Pig, "Whoa what the hell man! Why would you do that?! You said we weren't gonna hurt anyone!"
"I said we weren't going to kill anyone I never said anything about hurting people." Pig snapped.
"You guys need a room or?" Elle piped.
"Shut up!" They both yelled at her in unison before turning back to each other and exchanging heated glares.
She raised her hands in mock surrender. "I'll just wait for you guys to finish."
"If you didn't have the balls yet why'd you insist on coming?" Pig scolded.
"Because I'm not a kid anymore I can handle it now!" Reggie said defensively.
"Then handle her!"
"I'm not hitting a girl, asshole!"
"Stop being a fucking pussy Reggie!"
"Okay assface, a pussy is responsible for birthing human life so I don't mind being called one so I guess the jokes on you."
"That's it you little-"
"Will you two stop bickering like a married couple and do your fucking jobs?!" A deep voice growled.
Elle, Reggie and Pig turned to see Bunny stepping out with a heavy thick bag slung over his broad shoulder and no male bank teller by his side.
"And the girl's still standing up?" He glared at the two, "Peppa the pig shoot her toes or something."
"It's Inosuke." Pig grumbled and marched over to Elle.
"Fucking cartoons," Bunny muttered, luckily Pig didn't hear.
Pig shoved past Reggie and stepped in front of Elle.
He pressed his barrel to her stomach and narrowed his dark eyes down at her.
"Do you have a death wish or something?" He asked in a gruff voice.
"Actually," Elle took a step forward, digging the barrel deeper into her stomach, "I do."
Pig blinked, the confident glint in his eyes fading for an instant.
Suddenly his ears perked up, catching the distant blaring of sirens.
His gaze hardened. "Aight while Reggie here is a fuckin' fag," Reggie grouched in the corner like a toddler put in a time out, "Make no mistake I'll kill you if I have to."
Elle stared Pig dead in the eyes. "Kill me? You? I've only tried 998 times but give it your best shot."
His eyes widened and his grip on the trigger faltered.
She seemed almost...eager for him to shoot.
It wasn't her surprisingly calm, rigid voice at gunpoint that stunned him; it was her cold lethal eyes. Dark purple orbs that knew war and timeless suffering; his own grandfather who fought in the frontline had such an unfazed calculating gaze. Compared against her almost delicate face, it was a startling contrast. She had the eyes of someone that knew death as if it were an old friend.
Then the sirens blared louder, blocking out a panicked yell. Someone grabbed him and his finger over the trigger accidentally tightened, pumping several shots of bullets straight into Elle' stomach.
It tore through her chest and she flew back on impact. Horrified screams erupted around the room.
Elle slid to a stop by the wall. Thick streams of blood poured out from her bullet wound. A dark red stream gushed out from the gaping wound until she was lying down in a puddle of blood.
Pig stared at her injured body in the floor, eyes wide with shock.
"Make that 999." She grunted.
"Fuck, I'm sorr-"
Pause.
The whole world silenced and everyone froze. Pig stood frozen before her with Bunny behind him jerking his arm back while Reggie had his hands pressed to his head in silent panic. The other hostages stayed cowering in their corner, their faces contorted in frozen terror at the bloody scene they had just witnessed.
"Meow."
Elle inched her head up and saw her very own immortal feline companion. The black cat sat on the counter; licking its paws and watching the scene unfold with an almost bored look in its glowing blue eyes.
It had been there from the start and Elle had spent decades trying to figure out its mysteries but, in the end, it didn't matter, no one else could see it and it didn't talk so really it was pointless. For now, it was just a black cat.
She was a girl who couldn't die, a mysterious cat no one else could see was highly plausible.
The pool of blood seeped back into her open wounds. Elle did not feel a thing.
It was odd because she could feel scratches or if she hit her head, but if she slit her wrist she wouldn't feel it, or if she broke a bone she wouldn't feel it with. She never felt anything while timed stopped like this, it seemed to her that the reality of pain eluded her whenever she was in this weird place.
There was no escaping this place; her own personal hell.
She sighed and got up, watching the bullets fly out of her chest and back into the barrel. The skin on her stomach was already growing back, sealing the wound completely.
Bunny stepped back from Pig in an odd twisting motion until he was at an arms distance pulling his outstretched hand away from his accomplice.
The old man crawled back to where he was thirteen seconds ago, Nora pushed her phone back into her pocket and unrolled her eyes, Reggie ran backwards from the front door and Pig's hand loosened on the trigger.
This all happened in thirteen seconds.
Play.
"-Did you hear me?! I said fucking leave her, Jason, the cops are here." Reggie yelled and grabbed him. He dragged Jason away and shoved him towards the exit.
Bunny grabbed the nearest girl to the exit and pressed his gun towards her spine. He ignored her sobs and yanked her to her feet, taking her as hostage while Reggie tossed a smoke bomb onto the ground, yelling at the rest to go.
Green smoke wafted out of the can in thick fumes.
As the green smoke thickened around the room and the bank lit up with red and blue lights from the police vehicles outside, Reggie darted his eyes around the room searching for something he knew he was missing.
"We got the money let's go!" Bunny roared from the exit.
Reggie growled in frustration and rushed out. The green smoke enveloped the room as the door burst open and armed officers flooded the room.
Although getting robbed by an amateur heist crew wasn't on her schedule, it was an amusing addition to her otherwise mundane day.
She walked out with the rest of the hostages as police officers in bulletproof jackets swarmed the bank.
The immortal girl watched Nora's wide-eyed expression as the girl collapsed into the arms of a tall, broad police officer, her whole body trembling with uncontrollable sobs.
That look of primal fear—the sense of death pressing just beyond the edge of consciousness, clawing at the windows of your soul and casting spiteful shadows across your doorstep—Elle craved it more than she cared to admit.
With a soft sigh, she slipped off her oversized glasses and tucked them into her bag before wandering across the road, her mind elsewhere.
The impact came out of nowhere.
A brutal force slammed into her, knocking the air from her lungs as she hit the asphalt hard. Her vision spun wildly. Heat seared through her limbs, pain pulsing in heavy, staggering waves until it drowned out everything else.
A car.
It had to be a car. She knew that sensation too well—too often.
From the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of white hair. A man stood among the frozen crowd, peculiar and out of place. While everyone else stared in horror or rushed toward her in frantic slow-motion, he simply tilted his head strands of his white haired falling across his jaw, blue eyes regarding the scene before him with an almost bored look in his eyes, before turning away and slipping into the sea of bodies.
Voices erupted around her—shouting, cursing. Her vision blurred into smears of color as a pair of strong arms lifted her from the ground. Someone was apologizing over and over, their voice strained with panic.
The last thing she saw before the world went dark was a pair of light brown eyes, wide with worry.
She wondered why the world didn't Pause as it usually would for the last 100 years.
A smile graced her lips as she felt herself float up.
'Maybe death 1000's the charm.'