8.3
In the temporarily safe basement, Sasha was anxiously staring at Yumi's still-bleeding arm while the injured girl began her interrogation of Echo.
"How old are you?" she asked with her hand held high above her head, per Sasha's insistence.
Echo, who'd taken Jelani's former position in the back corner of the basement, examined Yumi carefully.
"We gave you a ride, so you should tell us," Yumi declared, as if revealing the undisputed truth.
Echo puzzled over this for a moment. She was, in fact, intending to answer the question, but she was encountering unexpected difficulties.
Standing up, she walked to the lighter half of the room where Yumi and Sasha were stationed, and pulled the neck of her shirt down with her left hand.
The skin she'd exposed was lined with black X's, which ran in a column from just below her ear down to her shoulder.
"How many are there?" she asked, leaning her head away and turning so that her tattoos faced Yumi.
The girl counted silently with her finger, starting at the topmost X and going down.
"Seven."
Echo let go of her shirt. "Then I'm thirty-five."
"Wooooahh," Yumi replied in casual surprise. "My guess was twenty-eight."
"My guess was 50," Echo said, dragging her voice even more than usual.
"Is that a joke?" Yumi asked.
"Sort of."
"Why are you here?" was Yumi's next question.
"You should ask yourself that."
"Oh–heeey." Yumi cocked her head to the side. "That's a diss, right?"
Echo turned back towards the dark corner. "Yeah."
Yumi didn't think the diss was warranted.
"But you were paddling in. That's stupid! You were using your hands! Oh, wait, you weren't even helping. And then you sent that poor little boy out on his own a minute ago!"
"We had real paddles at the start," Echo retorted as she walked away. "We made it fine anyway, so it doesn't even matter."
Yumi wasn't satisfied.
"The boat was tiny, too. You were even sitting on his lap! Ohhhh…" she finished with her mouth wide open, having made a sudden realization. "You're one of those types… I won't bully you about it, though, cause I would have had fun doing the same thing, back when I was nine or ten."
Like a bear returning to its slumber, Echo ignored Yumi's prodding comments and disappeared into the shadows.
"But I'll answer you," Yumi continued. "I came 'cause I knew it'd be fun. So what about you? I guess the kayak really excited you, but I think you're here for a different reason… can you tell us?"
"Shaddup," a dark voice said from the shadows.
"No way!" Yumi couldn't believe what she was hearing. "I guess I was wrong… but was the kayak really enough to satisfy you? You must be looking for something more…"
"How old are you?" Echo asked abruptly.
Yumi held out peace signs in both hands. "Twenty-two."
Sasha, who'd been watching the back-and-forth like a tennis match, jolted when Yumi moved her arm from its proper position.
"Yumi, your arm!"
He flinched as she let her arm flop back against the rough, cobwebbed cement wall.
"I'm twenty-two, but I was at your maturity level 13 years ago. Isn't that embarrassing? Could it be…" Yumi's expression clouded over. "You're… still in puberty?"
"Agghhh," Echo groaned and re-emerged. "You aren't mature–you're an idiot, and you'll be dead by tomorrow. On second thought, you might die today."
She walked right up to the two of them and hardened her tone. "Why the hell are you here if you haven't consumed any elements?"
Sasha had again fixated his attention on Yumi's wound, and Echo grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, yanking him back so that his forehead was nearly touching her own.
Her sharp pink eyes scrutinized his innocent blue ones.
"You know how much trouble I'm going to right now?" she hissed in his face. "If only I was cruel enough to kill you. Then I could shut your stupid girlfriend up and wipe that damn expression off your face."
"O-oh," Sasha said, putting his palms up in an effort to quickly clear the misunderstanding so he could continue tending to Yumi. "She's not my girlfriend. We–we just happened to meet a few weeks ago and–"
Echo slapped her free hand over his mouth. "Why would I give a damn about your status? If you can keep your eyes off that idiot, tell me why the hell you're here."
She released him with a shove, and he collided into Yumi as he put his hands back in an effort to stop his fall.
"A-ah! Are you ok?" he exclaimed, checking to make sure she was alright.
Echo placed her hands on either side of her head and drew slow, deep breaths.
She stared at the dust-caked pieces of chipped wood and glass on the ground in front of her, doing everything in her power to focus her emotions on the tiny beetle crawling across the debris.
"Are you all right?" Sasha asked with concern as he watched her breathe heavily.
Echo took a final long, sighing exhale. "I am, but I almost had to take your ass out."
"Can you shut up? He was trying to be all nice, and I know he seems a little weird but–"
BZZZZZZZZT
– – – – –
Jelani took deep breaths of the Portland air, blood-drenched hands hanging limply at his sides.
Like the sound of a breeze rushing between leaves, every one of his exhales was a dry gasp.
"haahh… haahh… haahh… haahh… haahh…"
In the fingers of his left hand, which were still sheathed in the grip of his steel knuckles, he held a pair of smooth, turquoise stones.
He turned and stepped through the mess of mangled carcasses, retracing his footsteps back towards the basement.
Gunshots fired, but their bullets were ineffective.
Every step Jelani took was a laborious ordeal. His feet were heavy, but his mind remained clear, focus hanging on by no more than a thread.
The snarl of a beast came out of the air behind him, aiming straight for the nape of his neck.
He cut it down.
Another step, another breath.
Another step, another breath, another attack.
His eyes never wavered, and he never flinched. Again, he cut it down.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The shots were as loud as they had ever been, but he didn't blink–not once.
"haahh… haahh… haahh…"
There was no destination, no next step to take. He simply moved, his muscles contracting in a perfect, alternating cycle.
The movements required no thought–they were instead programmed, always destined to happen, and always destined to be.
There was only one moment. Only one moment had ever existed, and only one moment ever would.
But as soon as Jelani recognized the entrance to the basement in the outer edge of his peripheral vision, he knew his focus had broken.
In a burst of bounding strides, he covered the distance and leapt feet-first into the jagged, pitch-black opening in the ground.
The soles of his boots collided directly into Echo's shoulders as he sailed downwards, and the two of them fell in a heap on the debris-littered floor.
From beneath the weight of Jelani's body, Echo punched him in the face.
"All you goddamn nuisances," she muttered as she stood up, pulling splinters of wood out of her hair.
Yumi and Sasha were both paralyzed, lying sideways on the ground like toppled toy soldiers, and the exhausted Jelani had no intentions of returning to his feet as he settled into a comfortable position on top of a sharp pile of junk.
Echo pried the elements out of his clenched hand and, before she could give in to the urge to crush them inside her fist, she shook the two statues awake and forced an element down each of their throats.