#CataleyaandKeylo

[calyfornian]

Keylo and Cataleya : It's Dead

"I've been giving a lot more thought, to the whole, humans cohabitating, thing." Cataleya took a soft puff at her nearly needle thin cigar. On the exhale, smoke danced out of full lips onto tan skin, before disappearing at her perfectly upright, pointed nose.

The sun was setting her up to glow beside her brother in all of her 6'6 glory. Bare feet attached to mile long legs in painted on black denim. More than half of her midsection was bare, with a long piece of black fabric tied around her chest, and the long end of one of the strands of the knot hanging down the right side of her body; it might have been a scarf.

"What's been on your mind, sister?" Stout, 6'2 Keylo hopped up from the curb in one fluent motion that required absolutely no effort. His bare, dark skin glistened in sweat as the direct sunlight kissed his skin. Beside his sister, he pulled his full, black, curly hairy into a bunch in his hand, before sliding the band off his wrist and doing a weak job at containing the locks.

"I understood that during the extinction, humans existed together, the strong ones, anyway. Like it would make sense to have your strongest soldiers to-"

"You don't have any cigarettes on you, do you?" Keylo interrupted while dropping four hits of enthia in his right eye.

"Give me a moment," Cataleya was gone from the left side of her brother instantly.

With Keylo on his fifth round of enthia in an hour, he let the instant effect help him to enjoy the other wise boring view of nature reclaiming an abandoned gas station out of a viable quadrant. Vines wrapped around what was left of three pillars holding up the roof by the pumps. A tree, broken entirely through the concrete in the corner of the lot by the half dirt, half cement road. Branches long, and full swaying in the stirring breeze of the afternoon.

It almost had an opportunity to be captivating, if the soft sound of an uneven flutter hadn't made Keylo jump thirty feet north, one hand to the ground, legs bent to leap at a moment's notice.

From sixty yards away, he had spotted what had to be an uncharacteristically small demigon dart into the tree, as to conceal itself. Like maybe the unusual flutter was that of an unusual enemy, maybe one of those damn things near death; hard to say when there had never been one so tiny to emerge from a portal. At least not in his 124 years.

And to see something out of the ordinary, after knowing his ordinary for over a century, especially after his brush with death, he was more than reluctant to investigate what could be a brand new threat; and he wasn't going to climb back into that damn bed again.

No leap to get there, no sprint. His steps were light, and deliberate, bare feet sure not to snap a twig, or brush a pebble. He even stopped breathing, so he knew, from what he could distinguish between the wind rustling the leaves, and the steady drip from what was left of the room of the ruin like gas station, that whatever had darted into that tree, was no longer fluttering. Which could have meant a couple things.

Like maybe, it had been some dying demigon, that existed outside of the six to eight foot height he had been accustomed throughout his life, and throughout history. Or maybe, whatever it was, had spotted him from a mile away. Maybe, whatever the small black, fluttering thing was that had fallen silent, was waiting for the right time, to dart across the space between them, and drive itself through his chest. He stepped lighter, like he might get the jump on it, and picked up a heavy rock for a projectile, if that flying thing was the latter.

He's maybe five yards from the base of the tree, wind tussling lose strands of black hair, when the small black winged thing flies from the bottom of the thicket. Without hesitation, Keylo fires the rock from his hand, clipping one of the wings, and with feeling like he has the jump on it, darts to where it had plummeted back to earth.

Five feet away from him, in some tall grass, was the small black winged beast. It had to be maybe the size of his massive hand. Symmetrical as all hell. Two appendages coming out of the base of the body that were, twig like, with three claws at the ends of them. The bulk of it, compact, tiny, covered in, maybe, hair, but not like any hair he had seen. It was black, sheen, and very uniform, tight, all over it's body, as if each of the black hairs grew out of the base of another firmer hair. The same hair adorned the right wing, and what would have adorned the left, if the stone hadn't torn it off.

A couple steps closer, before leaping back fifteen feet when it started to writhe before him.

"What's that?"

"Fuck," on instinct, Keylo shot around with an open right palm to attack the new entity behind him. Which ended up being a mistake, when his sister's quicker reflexes only had him crashing his hand into an invisible wall, which prompted another, "FUCK!"

"Christ, Keylo, what's wrong with you," Cataleya said with a cigarette between her teeth as a lighter floated up to the end, and ignited it.

"You gave me a fright." Keylo was forcing his palm back into alignment to ensure proper healing.

"I see that. You really went full force there," a long drag before floating the cigarette to Keylo's full lips.

"Yeah, I just, there's this I guess-demigon." He turned his attention back to the shaking black, hairy, beast, the size of his hand, with some kind of, appendage, jutting out of what had to be eyes.

"That ain't a demigon like I've ever seen." Cataleya floated forward passed her brother.

"Wait, Cat. You don't know what it's going to do." Keylo took a stride to stay beside her.

"Calm down, brother, I've got it."  The bird began to levitate off the ground and head towards the two of them until it was right at eye level with the siblings.

"Did it attack you?" Cataleya had it flipped over in the air to examine it all over; always the curious one.

"I think it was readying one. It took flight on what I thought was a stealthy approach." Keylo was positioned slightly to the side of the beast, facing his sister, like he was still waiting for it to overpower his sister after finishing regenerating.

"How long has it been like this," she motioned towards the missing part of the wing, before pulling the cigarette from Keylo's lips and taking a good drag.

The wind kicked up and the ends of their excuse for ponytails thrashed behind their heads.

Keylo took back the cigarette from his sister, "Just a short moment, I barely made contact with it," a long drag, then a relaxed exhale.

"It's not regenerating." Catalaya twirled it in the air again, "feel for yourself. It's pulse is erratic."

She rested the immobilized beast into her brother's hand. And when her mind decided to let go, Keylo could feel the all over the place flutter of the tiny winged beasts heart.

"Either way, I suppose I kill it before it gets the chance; we should probably think about reporting it as well. I can't imagine the council wouldn't want to know about a new threat." Keylo began to tighten his grasp on the small winged beast.

"Give me a break, Keylo," Cataleya snatched the cigarette from her brother's lips to take a drag, "two visits to the council and all of a sudden you report to them."

Keylo didn't respond, focused more on to the incremental increases in pressure from his grip. The fluttering heart beat faltered, then slowed, then picked up immensely, before stopping entirely. When the winged beast heart stopped beating, he opened his palm, to see the mangled corpse, and to let the wind take away the ash of the soon to be disintegrating body.

"It's dead." Cataleya was nearly hovering directly over her brother.

"Yes, it is. I-I don't know why it hasn't started turning to cinders yet. Maybe it really is defective."

Two minutes had passed without the winged beast burning away to nothingness. It didn't even take two minutes for the serpents the size of skyscrapers to disintegrate after death.

"I think something's wrong..." Keylo said it low, eyes only on the nearly indistinguishable blood covered eyes of the small winged beast. And it might have been the enthia, but tears were pooling in his eyes.

"I feel it too." The wind rustled, kicking up the siblings hair once more, before Cataleya used her telekinesis to take it from her brothers hand, and tear it to nothing herself.

Then Keylo was sure, it wasn't the enthia.

[calyfornian]

Keylo and Cataleya : Travelers

"Keylo, come on, we have to go. Cataleya is going to be so annoyed with us if we don't hurry up." I was pulling my thin black t-shirt back over my head.

"Wait just come here for a second." His heavy voice beckoned me from a couple steps away in that warm bed of his.

I couldn't ignore him. I couldn't deny his requests.

When I turned around, like all times, it was like I was seeing for the first time.

He was wrapped about in a maroon comforter, he was only visible from his chest up, but that was almost too much to bare in itself. There were shiny sprinkles of sweat across his full chest and thick neck. Some shorter curly black hairs clung to his forehead in awkward ways thanks to the heat of the moment.

"What is it," I held out my hand by the bed and he received it, followed by a tug that pulled me on the bed beside him where he proceeded to bombard me with kisses.

"Always the smooth one," He whispered in my ear before giving it a lick.

"Your hunger for my body never seems to be satiated." I nuzzled my head into his neck when the kisses slowed.

"Is that a bad thing?" With one hand squeezing my ass, he sent the other to my crotch.

"Only when Leya's been breathing down my neck to show me something," I slid out of bed, "Now come on."

I was two steps away from the bed again, looking through the wreckage of his room for the jeans that I came in.

There was no noise accompanying him nearly flying out of the bed and picking me up and turning me around; maybe some whiplash, but I guess that was the risk a watcher had to take with a soldier when they were involved.

"Keylo."

"Jay." Cradling me like humans did their offspring, he began to slip kisses at my neck again.

That's when Cat appeared at the doorway to his bedroom, her forest green hair held in a tight bun, "Can you guys stop fucking and hurry up, this is important. Brother, put some clothes on. Honestly, the two of you are worse than hatchlings." Then she was gone.

As if she was never there, Keylo found his hands back under my midsection.

"Keylo," I moved my head away from the direction of his.

"I know, I know." He planted another kiss before resting me back on my feet, "Just let me show you something really quick."

"It better be more important than what Cataleya has to show me, or you might find yourself thrown another few miles in another direction." I chuckled to myself.

"Hey, I wasn't even ready for her that time." He defended his strength as he rummaged under his bed. I guess at all points in history, even in our times of near indestructibility, masculinity was something that was so delicate and glass-like.

My black skinny jeans were balled up near the small table by his bedside. I had to step over his massive body that always seemed to take up more space than necessary. The cap I had worn in had probably been consumed by other materials by now.

"Remember how I got called into Central Sector 8D?" He sounded energetic. Like he had just chased down a demigon and decapitated it.

"Yeah I remember, they liked you right?" My memory on the relay of information was weak at best. Cataleya and I had been doing so much enthia at the time that you could have told me I could teleport and I would have believed you.

"More than liked me. Exceptional specimen with fighting instincts decades ahead of my hatching class." There was the fragile manhood again.

"Right, right." I found my cap on the dresser by the door. When I turned back around to nag him to get ready, he was pulling out a black duffle bag from  the depths of his bed.

"Well, while I was in Central, I thought why not do a little exploring," he was zipping open the bag, "They had some really cool stuff for watchers and I got you some."

"What do you mean by 'cool stuff for watchers,' Keylo?" I came beside him and sat cross-legged on the floor.

He pulled out an odd kind of rod. It was maybe as thick as a small tree branch, and a solid blue, with black rings spaced out every three inches from another. No more than maybe a foot long. He then placed the handle in my hand and had me hold it.

"Now point that side away from you, and click the button near your thumb." He instructed me, and I obeyed as I always had.

I wasn't expecting anything spectacular to happen, but then the tip of the rod shot out an extra two feet of light that made the lamp at his bedside table explode. As a reflex for someone who had absolutely no reflexes for explosions, I released the rod. As soon as my thumb was off of the switch, the light disappeared, and it non-threateningly dropped to the ground with a little bounce.

"Badass, yeah?" Keylo picked it up and gently laid it on his bed, "I saw some soldiers-well, I saw some watchers with holders for it that they slung across their backs, but I couldn't snag one for you." Keylo was back to digging through the bag.

"Keylo what exactly is this supposed to help me with-"

"Ah!" He had a handful of small metal spheres, no bigger than four inches around. The metal was shiny, with each having a black circle on them, maybe the size of a finger tip, "Follow me out back."

He stood up, and I did as well. We went down the hall and passed Cataleya's room. We encountered her in the living room.

"Keylo,come on!" She was adjusting her white tank top to meet at the start of her black jeans that looked like they had been painted on.

"Just a second, Cat. Come outside, I have to show you something." He was opening the sliding glass door.

Keylo was out first to the balcony, Cataleya floated through second, and I followed them last.

The sun in its early setting stage made the tan skinned warriors shine and made me think they were so damn indestructible; nothing could weather them.

"Jay," he grabbed my hand and pulled me beside him, "You just push the little black button in, and it'll click, then you throw it where you need to." He clicked the button on the small metallic sphere and tossed it into one of the trees.

The explosion was startling. Even more surprised was how small and contained the explosion was. It had to be maybe five feet around, a perfect sphere, it exploded, then imploded to disappear as if nothing had happened. One of the smaller trees was singed, while one cracked and fell to the ground.

"Cool, huh?" He hugged me with one arm.

The light in his eyes confused me more, "Wait, Keylo, I don't understand. How are these supposed to help me with my visions."

"There not supposed to help you with your visions. These are government issued assault tools. They're so watchers can handle demigons and small serpents in the field. Here, try." He dropped a ball in my hand.

"When you say government issued, you mean you stole them?" I was worried immediately.

"Well they weren't exactly giving them out to non-combative soldiers, no." He ran his hands through his hair to get it out of his face, he also probably sensed how I was going to react.

"Keylo, you know how much trouble you could have gotten into for tak-"

"I know, I know, but I didn't. I got them for you bec-"

"Cool Keylo. You risked so much for a fucking souvenir! You didn't consider the consequences of your actions." I took a step away from him and twirled the thing in between my thumb and index finger.

"Can I explain?" He closed the space between us and slid behind me, putting his head on my shoulder and his arms around my waist, "I got them for you, because I never want a day like in the nature preserve. I never want a day where I'm not there to help you. If this gives you some kind of edge against those things, then its worth the risks." He nuzzled his head against mine and it drove me mad.

"I'm not a fighter, Keylo."

"And hopefully you don't have to be," he kissed me on the cheek, "but a little insurance never hurt either."

"I think its an exceptional idea." Cataleya chimed in. I had almost forgotten she was there, "and you can't deny it, Jay. Sometimes neither of us are going to be there, and even when we are, sometimes you're going to have to solve a problem on your own."

I rolled the marble in my hand, clicked the button, then tossed it over the balcony. The explosion didn't alarm me. The crackling and burning of the trees didn't startle me.

I think I was just feeling inferior.

My visions had been gone for so long. A watcher with no sight. His partner had to give him a manufactured mutation.

[calyfornian]

Keylo and Cataleya : Travelers pt. 4

The light was blinding in the building. My body was aching from the momentum of Cataleya's telekinesis combined with her teleportation. The three of us were a massive weight going at the speed of Cataleya's brilliant mind, she phased us right into a medical agency. We crashed into the waiting room into a couple other soldiers.

She was screaming. She was screaming. There was so much screaming; she never screamed.

"Help me! Help me! Help my brother!" She whipped her body around so quickly, her along with Keylo did a quick flip with no physical help, he was laying about a foot above the ground, like he was to delicate to let hit the floor again.

Keylo's long black curly hair was barely brushing against the floor. He was there in nothing but the black mesh shorts he had slipped on before the trip. The white tank top was gone, he had probably lost it when whatever beast had crashed through the very ground we rested on. I had to blink a bit, do something to adjust my senses to what I somehow managed to forget in the scuffle. His left arm, along with most of his shoulder and some of his chest was just, missing. Blood was sprayed across his chest, and where the wound was there was the shiny metallic looking liquid that Cataleya had applied to him in the field.

He wasn't writhing in pain as he was earlier when she applied it. He was almost completely still except for the maybe centimeter of space that went back and forth from what had to be a now unsteady mind of his sister.

"Why isn't anyone helping me?!" She cocked her head to the side and spotted an employee of the medical facility.

The strands of her green hair began to rise slightly around her head. She lifted her tan arm into the air, and as she brought it to the ground, the worker flew towards us.

When her hand hit the floor, there noses had to be touching: "Help me."

-------------------------------------------------

We were sitting across the floor outside the room where the tall pale-skinned blonde man that Cataleya had yanked towards her in a frenzy was working to save her other half.

The black jeans that looked painted on to her long firm legs were ripped on the left leg. Blood ran down most of her thigh and presumably the rest of her leg. Her tiny white crop top tank top was miraculously in tact enough to cover her chest, not that it mattered. Her feet were bare, like her brother's. Parts of her green hair stuck to her sweaty forehead,  mixed with blood from a wound that I couldn't see.

She had opted to wait on medical attention until her brother had been taken care of. She was fine anyway, I chose the same course.

I kept trying to see the outcome, and it might have been because I couldn't focus because I was too worried about the current situation, but  couldn't see beyond my damn nose.

"I'm sorry." Cataleya's voice, almost a whisper, had broken what had to have been an hour of silence.

"What?" I was caught off guard. I didn't expect either of us to say a thing until we knew Keylo was going to be saved in absolutes so I was especially caught off guard when she gave an apology.

Plus, I might have been distracted playing with the new strands at the bottom of my black t-shirt.

"I'm-I'm. I apologize for my arrogance. I apologize for what happened to my brother and-"

"Cataleya," I rubbed my temples in hopes to jolt a vision, in some hope that I could tread cautiously through this; I didn't see anything.

"If I hadn't been so proud and in a need to show a display of power, we wouldn't be here, Keylo wouldn't be..." She trailed off and pulled her green hair back over her had and put it into a pony tail, it reminded me of how her brother always pulled back his big black curly hair.

"Cataleya! You can't be serious right now." My immediate reaction was energetic, it was powerful. Cataleya had a sense of surprise to my reaction. Hell, it had surprised me too.

"We just got fucking attacked by serpents and demigons, Leya," I took a sharp breath and discovered a pain in my chest, "Don't you dare fucking apologize for those monsters, ever!"

Some where in between getting worked up, I was standing in the center of the hallway, looking down on her.

She was open mouthed and wide eyed, instead of a response, she let loose a couple tears, cocked her head to the side, and floated into a standing position, then glided some space away from me.

With her back to me, she went on, "Jay, I get that I can't apologize for an attack, none of us can ever apologize for these beasts that rain from the sky more common than water," she stopped using her telekinesis to float and grounded her self, "I'm apologizing-"

"Cataleya, I told you that you can't-"

"Don't interrupt me!" She turned on a dime, tears in her eyes and streaming a good way down her face, "I'm apologizing, because if I had had some real grasp on my power, if I had had some real grasp on my limitations, we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be arguing about why I can't say sorry, and we wouldn't be arguing because Keylo wouldn't have lost a quarter of his body to me having my fucking guard down over the excitement of going a few extra miles!" She said it with power, and with tears.

"Cataleya, I should have been able to see what was-"

"No. I could have stopped that. If I hadn't been so high on the thought of my power. If I hadn't been so exhausted on that transmission... I felt the earth start shifting before us. I felt it," She took a quick breath, took a step back, and leaned on the grey wall of the medical agency, "I tried to catch us. I tried to catch us and, I didn't." Her voice dropped its tone at the end, and she slid back down the wall to the seated position.

Thinking of Cataleya thinking of herself as anything but extraordinary was a mixed-

The door behind us clicked and I turned around as fast as I could, the pain in my chest was too scared by Cataleya teleporting right beside us in a split second to have a moment to hurt me.

The pale-skinned man with short blond hair, who maybe stood almost as tall as Cataleya around 6'3 emerged from the room that held too many questions.

"Keylo 839-T sustained heavy damages to his upper torso, causing loss to most of the affected area along with his entire left limb. After a steady flow of Anzenimean and a swarm of Folgent cells, he is stable. Consciousness should be regained in a matter of a day, and regeneration of the body shouldn't take longer than a month."

The pale-skinned man made an abrupt exit after an update that carried the tone of a weather forecast.

[calyfornian]

Keylo and Cataleya : Travelers pt. 3

The moon graced us with its bright presence that night. It made things incredibly visible.

"No, you're not grasping it." I sat down at the edge of the cliff in between Keylo and Cataleya. I had found a kind of flattened hook to attach the light rod to my waistband, so that took some adjusting upon throwing my legs over the cliff. The pouch of tiny explosives wasn't a problem. It was actually a cute accessory; I might use it when it was empty. When my cigarette was lit, I cuffed my black skinny jeans to reveal my ankles, then rolled up the sleeves of my black t-shirt. This trip was turning into something.

"No, I get it," Keylo pulled the cigarette from between my lips and took a good drag, he hit the ash off and it fluttered onto his white cropped tank top and small black shorts that his massive things seemed to hang out of, "They were like, the first soldiers, the humans couldn't really conquer them, so they naturally were viewed as superior, as they were." He stole another drag then passed my cigarette back to me.

"No, no, it wasn't like that, Keylo," I took a drag and tried to gather my thoughts, "They didn't have any ability. They didn't have any physical or mental manifestation that made them superior to the beings around them. The strength they referenced, the right to be superior, it was something they claimed was given to them by a higher being. It was just, I don't know."

"What were they? Rulty?" Cataleya was fiddling around her bright red backpack for cigarettes, when she found them, she placed one in her mouth, lit it, then tossed the bag about a foot away from her, to be a bit away from the mountainside.

"No, Leya, royalty. They were kings and queens. They ruled the land. Think of them as sector commanders, but, but with even more ability." I took a drag then passed it back to Keylo who quickly accepted.

"Honestly, I don't know how you retain all of this. Beside birthing, I couldn't be interested in anything else about the humans. They didn't do much besides kill each other." She took a steady drag and let the smoke dance out of her mouth before inhaling it through her nose.

"That's the thing Cataleya, they were so much more than that. They were definitely odd creatures, living in ways that were counter to their survival, but they also created so much, and their experiences were so intense. Not in the serpents falling out of the sky, but, I don't know. I don't fully understand what some of it means, but they were just, they were a lot more than birthing." I was all worked up from the fascination of humans.

"Well, we'll just have to take your word for it, babe." Keylo planted a kiss on me, and I turned to give him on back. I tasted the smoke in his mouth and on his tongue, and it soothed me.

We smoked in silence for a moment while Keylo rummaged through his small shoulder bag to reveal a larger than life bottle of enthia. He started off quicker than usual, hitting three droplets in each eye before passing me the bottle. I decided to take it slow with one drop in each eye. When it was Cataleya's turn, she did three in each eye, like her brother. They were too much sometimes.

"Christ," Keylo spoke up after lighting two cigarettes in his mouth and passing me one, "The trees at the bottom of this mountain are huge. They'd probably tower over us."

Keylo was under the influence of enthia when he took everything as an ethereal sight of beauty. That, and his eyes red, like fire.

No one responded, instead we all just took another drag.

Then, like all attacks, things happened at once:

The cliff side we were on exploded outward and I can say for myself, I was flung a good chunk away from where what used to be where we were sitting on the mountain side. The feeling in my stomach was new. Eventually I'd recognize it as falling, a feeling I'd grow to hate. My body collided with trees, and I couldn't differentiate between leaves and branches. Then I collided with the ground, and I took a long blink.

When I opened my eyes, everything was still black, like I was caught in that blink. My eyes began to adjust when they saw an orange glow through a thicket of trees that wasn't too far off. I was half way there when the sparks stopped shimmering. That's when I noticed the screaming.

Instinct pushed me towards it. I had never heard Cataleya scream like that. Come to think of it, I had never heard Cataleya scream.

She was hunched over Keylo, well, at least I assumed that how little moonlight was making it through the tops of the trees

When she stopped screaming, there was a ringing in my ear, that muffled most things that night.

Cataleya. She can't hear you. You have to say it out loud. Leya. Say it. Say her name out loud. you can't communicate if you don't say anything. Cataleya. What's wrong with you? Why aren't you moving your mouth? Cataleya! Cataleya! What's going on!? Use your fucking words. Move your fucking mouth. Cataleya! Cataleya! Fuck, why were you screaming? What happened to him. Fuck! Cataleya! What happened!

"Cataleya!" She turned around in a flash and this is what the moonlight gave me.

There were shining lines across her face and where Keylos left shoulder was, along with the arm, there was nothing but empty space, and pooling blood. Keylo's left arm was missing and he wasn't moving. I had never seen him so still.

He wasn't moving.

"Jay! My bag. you have to find my bag, now!" After too long, something clicked.

I could see her bright red backpack, sitting beside a tree as clear as if I were staring right at it. I darted back through the way I came and sprinted for what I assumed was the difference between light and dark. I sprinted, for what I thought meant saving Keylo's life.

When I could sense I was near the bag, I saw what happened next. In about thirty seconds, when I would be reaching the bag, a portal was going to crack open in the sky, and it was going to illuminate the forest better than sunlight. Cataleya and I would take a breath, and I'd grab the bag and sprint back. When I'd reach the final layer of trees I'd have to cross to get to Cataleya and what had to be a still living Keylo, demigons would begin pouring out of their portal, then the visions split into two paths:

The first one, we got out of there, the second one wasn't an option.

I held on to the idea of the first one as I grabbed the back, as the portal ripped open, as I made it to Cataleya while the eight foot tall spiders with wings flew out of their portal.

I tossed her the bag and she ripped it apart with her telekinesis. The cure-alls she had in there flew into her neck and her brothers. Then there was a glass container of some shiny liquid. Like someone had melted down metal and it had managed to stay in liquid form.

She tore the bottle that held it apart with her mind, demigons were closing in.

She splattered it across her brothers massive wound and he immediately inhaled and began writhing in pain. His suffering relieved me; it meant he was alive.

The hoard of demigons had to be about thirty feet away. I tried to trust my visions. I tried to trust Cataleya.

She'd have her energy back in two hundred and twenty-seven seconds.

Two hundred and twenty-seven seconds. That's all we had to last before she could get us back. That's all we needed to survive.

Four minutes, just about. Give her four minutes.

I grabbed a couple of the small metal bombs that Keylo had given me, and I unhooked the energy bar from my waist and let my finger rest on the button. When I held it, with enough room in the forest, it grew to three feet. I clicked the buttons on the explosives and threw them as far west as I could and began a full sprint towards the direction. When the bombs exploded in the sky, they helped the demigon swarm change direction and head in the direction that I was running.

The trees were going to be a huge advantage. The demigons were too clumsy and no where near as agile as they needed to be to maneuver in this area so tight.

When I tried to peak forward, I couldn't see much. There was a lot of grey, it had to be due to the indecisiveness of my mind. Our fates weren't set in stone.

A demigon struck me on the side and sent me flying, losing my grip on the energy rod. I really wasn't a fighter.

Standing up as quick as I could, the creature was on the ground, charging at me as wild as it could.

I tossed an explosive, and relied on my returned visions.

Jump right, the energy sword is behind the rock, get up, slice off its- No, its too fast, you'll lose your life. Grab the energy sword, dive behind a tree. Another explosive. Its stunned, sever the head. Two more are there now, you were just ripped from your torso, you're dead.

Jump right, the energy sword is behind the rock, dive behind the adjacent tree. Pull out three explosives, one for the demigon you're dealing with, two for the ones that are going to ambush you, throw them three seconds apart.

The first one's dead. One of the other two is on fire. Kill the third one. Straight through the torso, then pull up. The energy sword is sharper than Keylo's crimson blade.

Catch a breath. What's next. Cataleya, head back- No, there's too much open space. There's too much open space. They'll pluck you from the ground as you run, you're not quick enough.

In here, you don't have to be quick enough.

Toss another explosive, get the hoards attention, then another.

Funnel them in through the entrance that the first three came in.

Bombard them with those damn things.

No, set off one in the bag, toss the whole lot at them. Where does that leave you?

Three of them were dead and I had attracted the hoard through the opening in the trees. It was all grey again, I couldn't focus.

My original plan was all I had. There was no second call, there was no back up.

I unhooked the waist band from around me, clicked a spherical explosive and dropped it in the bag before throwing the entire thing at the fuzzy arachnids with wings.

The explosion felt like when a portal exploded open next to you. Heat, light, pressure.

I landed on my ass. When I sprung back up, through burning corpses, I could make out demigons convulsing and writhing about.

Through the smoke of the corpses and dying bodies, one flew straight at me and dug its sharp claws into my left arm, with my right hand I activated the energy bar and it drove through the best on its own. I made a sprint through the forest back to Cataleya.

The flutter of wings above the trees terrified me, but not as much as dying away from Keylo and Cataleya did.

A couple demigons crashed through the trees, it was too tight for them to maneuver, it was easy enough to get away.

When I made it back to Cataleya and Keylo, she was sitting cross legged, floating above Keylo's body. Demigons were flying into the invisible shield where they immediately began disintegrating into their usual cinder.

"Cataleya!"

The next part felt like slow motion.

Cataleya fell to her brother's body, with her hand hitting his chest, like magnets, he stuck to her as she flew across the space between us at what had to be record speeds for her.

Their bodies collided with me and the wind was knocked out of me, when the electrifying feeling began stabbing every part of me.

Next thing I knew, we were slamming into other soldiers in a brightly lit medical center and I was hearing Cataleya scream for the second time ever.

[calyfornian]

Keylo and Cataleya : Travelers pt. 2

"Here, take this." His large, dark brown arm was pulling out of the black duffle bag that had contained the weapons-more like contraband from the outter sector. In his hand was a tightly clenched belt with a pouch that came sewn on.

I accepted it, and pulled at the opening that was easily to slid my hands through, and clenched close after I had removed a hand. It was a carrier for the bombs that were supposed to help me with my nonexistent visions.

"And the rod, you can just kind of carry, I guess." He stood up and kicked the black duffle bag back under his bed.

Any other time I would have vacationed on his dark skin, and settled on the peaks of his chest, but the moment was different. There was still an immense inferiority threatening to consume me whole at the thought that Keylo had to go out of his way to steal things that would make me less prone to dying. Well, no, that wasn't the problem. The problem was that I couldn't remember the last time I had a vision. I couldn't remember the last time that I had caught a fucking glimpse of anything. It was that I had one thing to kind of contribute to this existence, and then I didn't.

Somewhere in my scattered thoughts, Keylo had clothed himself in small black mesh shorts, and a short cut off tank top that revealed his nipples if he raised his shoulders a little too much. He probably wasn't opting for shoes, after all, we didn't really need them. Well, soldiers didn't really need them, that is.

"Cataleya!" His voice boomed and jolted me from the abyss I was diving into, "We're ready!" He was gathering his long black curly hair and putting it into this best kind of bun that he could.

Cataleya teleported in between Keylo and I, "You don't need to shout, brother."

She had let her forest green hair out of the knot that she had gathered on her head from a moment ago.

She was matching with her brother, nearly. Except her white tank top covered her midsection, and clung to her body, just like the black skinny jeans that seemed to be painted on to her body. She had opted for no shoes as well, not that you needed them when you floated everywhere. There was bright red backpack slung across both shoulders, it gave a little pop to her. I think the bag belonged to Alysha.

"So what is it that you need to show us, Cataleya." I slipped the energy rod and explosives that Keylo had gifted me on the corner of his bed. They weren't exactly pleasant reminders of the state of my abilities.

"Glad you asked. I was going to be super secretive and just take you guys there, but I'm too excited to tell you anyway," She pushed hair behind her ear, like it had been out of place before. It made me fidget and pull my black t-shirt down over the start of my black jeans.

"I've been working on my teleportation, because it hasn't exactly come easy to me as telekinesis has. I've been trying to go farther, and I've been trying to keep up my stamina, like teleporting over and over again. In that regard, I haven't exactly been holding my breath to be able to perform instant transmissions over and over again, but in distance, well. Yesterday, I was just trying to make it to the collection of lakes north of us, and I don't know what happened, but I made it twenty miles farther than I ever had. I had to ask someone where I was in a town of maybe fifteen people." Her smile was big and from ear to ear, it was a contrast to her tan skin. It reminded me of Keylo, when his mouth nearly took up the entire bottom of his face; his mouth was huge.

"That's impressive sister, what was the overall distance?" A smile crept over Keylo's lips as he met his sister with an encouraging few pats on the shoulder.

"It was nearly fifty miles! I want to take the two of you there! Granted, we'll be there a while, the farther I go the more it seems to take out of me." Cataleya's smile turned to something bashful as she turned to the side and adjusted the perfect hair that didn't need to be touched.

"I don't have anywhere else to be." Keylo said it with such energy as he picked up a small brown, over the shoulder bag. The one he always kept his enthia in. He was excited. Excited in the way he wanted to see Cataleya show off her powers. He always had a thing for people displaying their strength. I guess it was something to really take in. Thinking about that was a silent jab to the fact that my ability had completely disappeared, and I had no strength to show him.

"Where are you right now?" His warm voice pulled me from my own mind once more. He was standing right beside me, Cataleya in front of me with that big smile on her face.

"All right, give me a hand everyone." Cataleya eagerly held out her left hand. I rested my left hand on hers, and Keylo held it from below, "Now, just give me a second."

She closed her eyes, and her nose gave a twitch before a jolt went through me, "Fuck!" I withdraw my hand on instinct.

"Sorry, babe," Cataleya opened her eyes, "I haven't taken anyone else there yet, give me a second."

I put my hand back on hers, then she closed her eyes and went on, "I'm not going to lie, that's probably going to be most of the trip."

"What do you mean-" by the time I was done asking, it felt like needles were stabbing me all over the body. Instinctively, I tried to pulled my hand away from Cataleya, but Keylo grabbed it with his free hand and held me hostage to the storm that his sister was putting off.

The seconds it took her to get us out of there felt like an eternity of anguish.

I blinked, and the electricity was gone, along with the house. We were standing on soft grass in a sun-setting forest. Tall trees surrounded us. Cataleya closed her eyes and began to collapse, Keylo caught her.

"You okay, babe?" Keylo held his sister for half a second before she used her telekinesis to lift herself back up into an upright position. She was floating as usual; she had a knack for flying I guess.

"Yeah, I'm fine, that was something right?" She giggled and covered her tan hand to her mouth as if to hide her teeth.

"What the fuck was up with that?!" I was more annoyed than excited about seeing her ability. Well, I guess I was more afraid than anything. I had never felt power like that.

"Sorry honey, its something about my telekinesis fueling my teleportation. I don't know. I just had to put out a lot of energy and we had to get caught in the crossfire." She floated beside me and nudged my head with hers, "What's up with that? I thought you weren't a fighter?"

I looked down at a clenched fist. The waistband with the explosives pouch and energy rod were in my hand tighter than Keylo held on to me during the transmission.

I didn't know when I had grabbed them, "I don't know, I figured if we weren't coming back anytime soon, I guess I might as well have some practice with this thing." 

From later that evening, to this very day, I want to say it was more than an inkling. It was more than a happy accident. It was my sight. It was the first time I had been able to see something, without seeing it.

"Shall we get a move on?" Keylo squeezed at my butt, "The trees aren't going to chop themselves down." His wide smile shown in that dim shroud of trees, and it was enough to light the way.

[calyfornian]

Keylo and Cataleya : Chain Smokers pt. 4

"CATALEYA, IF YOU DON'T WAKE THE FUCK UP RIGHT NOW!!!!"

Then Keylo sprinted back into view, well, more like power walking for him, and grabbed the demigon right out of the air in a swift jump, and disconnected its head from its body, followed by a gruff,

"I really can't leave you alone, can I?" with that massive fucking smile.

[calyfornian]

Keylo and Cataleya : Chain Smokers

"Cat, just, just try it." Keylo's booming laugh made the perfect smile against his dark skin. He was pulling his hair back into the usual pony tail he fashioned whenever he was ready to take down a beast.

"I really don't think this is that good of an idea, brother." Cataleya pushed the strands of silver hair from her line of sight. It didn't help with the wind picking up and throwing it all back into her face. The wind was the perfectly compliment to her long forest green dress. It billowed and swayed to a tune of nature.

I'm sure the Greeks would of thought her to be some kind of goddess; or was it, was it the Romans? It didn't really matter.

"Cat, trust me." Keylo was halfway down his navy blue short-sleeve button up, "I think I got this." He tossed the shirt in my direction and I caught it easy enough.

I was completing the triangle that we had always found ourselves in formation of.

"Jay, talk sense into him, will you?" Cataleya glided towards me and rested her hand on my left shoulder.

"I don't know, Cataleya," I lit the cigarette that had been sitting in between my lips for longer than I had liked, "I think this man could catch a building if one was coming at him, so I don't think this will be so bad."

"I'm not for it." Cataleya was stern enough in her voice when she reached into her small black purse for a cigarette.

"Well I want it to happen and Jay said he agrees, so you're out-voted, sister, do it." Keylo punched the ground with his right hand. His hand was gone from the wrist down and he was leaning forward and downward, like he would start sprinting at any point.

"Just because Jay's in different doesn't mean he's in support of reckless behavior." Cataleya floated her lighter to her mouth to light the cigarette.

What I watcher might refer to as an unnecessary trick, I just saw it as something to envy.

"Jay goes with whatever I say, so his vote is with mine." Keylo drove his other hand into the ground harder than the first; I felt the ground move beneath me.

My vision hit, and I was compelled to agree with my entire existence in the form of Keylo.

"Cataleya, I think you'll get a kick out of it." I nudged the tan skinned goddess on the shoulder.

"Come on, Cat, quit being such a bitch-."

Cataleya turned back to her brother in a flash, and with a wave of her hand Keylo was ripped from the ground and sent soaring through the sky. If I had blinked, I would have missed his unearthing.

Cataleya started laughter that caught in me immediately.

"I told you that you'd get a kick out of it." I took a drag of my cigarette.

And if I remember it correctly, the light came before the boom, but only by a fraction of a second. The most pressing was the heat, I had never been this close to a portal, hell, I had never been this close to a portal.

Then again, I had never been close to a portal.

Even more so, none of that mattered when my entire body was skidding across the hard grass and  dirt that adorned the retired wildlife preservation we were on.

[calyfornian]

Keylo and Cataleya : Chain Smokers pt. 3

After we're hatched, we have two weeks in a training facility to figure out what we contribute to the earth. We have two weeks to figure out what we can do, that can help put a stop to those things that burst from the sky whenever they wish. We're ranked on ability, usefulness, and raw aptitude.

For the men, it starts off at how much you can lift; I couldn't get passed the first set of weights.

For the men, it proceeds to how fast you could run; I was the slowest in our hatching season.

For the men, eventually they want to know if you can take a hit, so they walk down the line of hatchings, with a blade, running across each of our stomachs; I was the only one who bled.

For the men, if you cant excel at any of these, hell, if you can't even pass any of these things, your placings go different.

They take you apart from the hatchings you were born with, and you get your own room. Then, a slender pale woman in a long white coat enters that tan room they've locked you in, and closes the door behind her. She's the same age as you, since you're all the same age forever, but she smiles and carries herself with a kind of grace that makes you more comfortable than you have been in the last two weeks.

She'll ask you to stand before her, off the grey matt that sits on the floor, then she'll ask you, no, she tells you, to move.

And if you're like me, who didn't lift passed the first set of weights, you won't move, because her telekinesis is too strong, even if she's barely focusing.

Then, the door she entered in opens on its own, and she tells you to escape. You'll get up, sensing the trickery, then bolt for the door. In your peripheral, she doesn't move, so you focus less on her and more on the exit of the door. You make it to the hallway, and as if time itself stopped long enough for her to move outside of it, the pale woman with the blond hair in the long white coat is standing before you. And before you can try pushing passed her, the wind is knocked out of you, and your flying back into the room they had locked you in, and your back is slamming against what you now realized are concrete walls, and its the most pain you've felt in your two weeks at life in this place, even more than the knife that ran across your stomach and spilt your blood on their pristine floors.

Then, like time stopped again, she'll be standing in front of you once more, and without blinking, it takes your mind by force that she was able to appear before you, without moving a muscle.

Then, calmly, with that comforting smile, the pale woman with blond hair in the long white coat will tell you, 'That wasn't so good. You have one more round. I'm going to ask you to move, then I'm going to ask you to run, and if you can't do either, I'm going to discard you.'

And in the two weeks you've existed, its a lot to wrap your mind around, but somewhere, in the pain you're experiencing now, some instinct screams inside you that discard isn't what we want.

Then you'll do your best to stand up, and you'll do your best to focus on moving when she uses her telekinesis, and doing your best to dodge her when she starts teleporting, and on this second round, it can end in only four ways:

First, being the most uncommon, so the easiest to get out of the way. You'll burst into flames as some self defense mechanism. Fire will expel from all directions of your being, and you won't be discarded, because you'll be valuable as the rarest of mutations in the soldier community; Pyrocentric

Second, you'll move, when she asks you to move, and you'll sprint at an incredible rate when she tells you to run. Its some bullshit fight or flight instinct that activates a soldier's true potential. All you needed was a little, motivation.

Third, the same thing will happen as it did in the first round. She'll ask you to move, and you won't be able to. She'll ask you to run, and by the time you make it out the door, you'll be crashing against the wall before you can figure out what went wrong. Then she'll let out some air in a sigh and a rectangle of lights will pop up in front of her, about two feet by three feet, where she'll fire a report, push through authorizations, click the band on her wrist, making the rectangle disappear, then snap your neck, without even touching you.

Fourth, being a damn miracle, it will go somewhat like the third. The pale woman in the long white coat will ask you to move, and you wont move. She'll ask you to run, only to slam you against the wall once more. Only this time, as she's sighing, you'll be compelled to speak. You'll be compelled to preserve your own life, because after she slammed you against the wall the second time, you saw something, and you're worried to say it out loud because it doesn't seem like they'd save something so defective as to have hallucinations, but it seems like it bares saying:

"Wait, don't." You'll say it as a pant, exhausted from getting slammed against the wall twice, and exhausted from the confusing third person mental imagery you just had of this woman in white snapping your neck.

"Don't what?" She'll tilt her head and relax her shoulders.

"Don't discard me. Don't twist my head around like that."  You try to picture it again, and you can't see it anymore, you can barely remember what your head turning all the way around looked like.

"Don't twist your head around? Why on earth would I do that?" Her comfortable smile is back, and it almost makes her porcelain skin seem warm now.

"I-I saw you do it. I saw you twist my head around, then everything went black." My breaths were heavy, and the thought of everything being black again sounded terrifying.

"What do you see now?" She'll kneel down in front of you, and her smile will spread farther across her face.

"What do I see?" You aren't quite sure what she means, but its okay, you're only two weeks old.

"Yes, tell me what's going to happen next?"

And you'll close your eyes, because its kind of instinct, and you'll vision a man in a long blue jacket, with the darkest skin you've seen in the facility, and he'll tell you something that won't make sense, until you're at your lowest,

"You're a watcher. It's the greatest, and worst thing that will ever define you."

[calyfornian]

Keylo and Cataleya : Chain Smokers pt. 2

My body had to have been thrown a good twenty feet. Dragged. Somewhere, the dormant soldier that had resided in me awoke, and sprinted towards the portal.

Passing in front of the bright white, half circle, I felt an immense heat, like the entire thing was on fire. Besides light and heat, it emanated a mild humming, so faint, that if there was anything else about, I probably would have missed it.

As my eyes darted around for Cataleya, there was this sense of awe that began to over take me. I could imagine for soldiers, these portals to an entire new world had to have lost their effect and case of wonderment, but to me, to just a bystander, it was a damn miracle.

With the sun out, and not a cloud in the sky, it was still outshining the sunlight.

Cataleya was blending in with some tall grass on the side of a steep hill, the only thing I actually noticed was the silver in her hair, reflecting the light from the portal. It was a surprise to realize how far away she had been knocked out.

"Leya!" I tried to call out to her as I started a light jog towards her.

The portal continued at its low hum. I held my breath to the hopes that maybe this was going to be one of the duds. Maybe this was going to be one of those false alarms where nothing soars out. Then again, I wasn't much for good luck, especially lately.

Cataleya's forest green dress was more literal after the portal ripped open. As she was thrown across the earth, thorns, dirt, leaves, and twigs decided to adorn it. She was an unconscious mother nature.

"Come on, Cataleya, aren't I supposed to be the fragile one." I laughed nervously, half my attention on waking Cataleya up, the other half on whatever was behind that wall of light waking up.

"Then again," I leaned back and sat on my butt beside her. It was a good time to feel how sore my limbs were, and how my torso felt like it was deteriorating then and there, "Keylo's always supposed to catch me, isn't he?"

I rubbed her chest quickly, just to give her a little shake, when nothing happened immediately, I reached into my blue jeans to retrieve a cigarette. Out of the what had to be seven left, one of them was the least bent at first glance, so I went for that one.

The first drag made my chest feel heavy, like it never had before.

The humming cut short, and I held in the smoke from my last drag in fear for what was to come next; when the humming continued, there was relief from this wall of light that I myself didn't quite understand.

The smoke leaving my body was a bitter sweet release.

Still, the humming felt safe.

"Cataleya, no more sleeping on the job, who's going to rip the head of the skyscraper sized serpent that comes out of that portal? Certainly not I." My next drag was the shortest yet. The heaviness in my chest was turning into an ache.

It felt like the times when I first started having sex with Keylo and he didn't have a good gauge for someone who wasn't a full fledged soldier. Like he squeezed me a little too hard as I was against him. Instead, it wasn't like that fully. When I told him it hurt, he would let up; this just kept going.

"Fuck." It was a quick breath with a puff of smoke on the exhale. My chest turning into being crushed wasn't a deterrent from the cigarette as much as it should have been.

Then the eardrum splitting noise struck like it did that night all that time ago at Spoontonic. It was so intense that I was on the floor, writhing right beside Cataleya's limp body.

When it let up, it took a second for me to find any kind of bearing. There was still a loud noise in my ear, a loud kind of soft siren, if that makes any sense. You'd know if you were near a portal before an attack. My mind was darting off in all directions, like it was trying to have a vision in some way of self preservation, but every other part of my body was failing all ready, so it couldn't just muster up the strength to connect all of the dots It needed to see what it needed to see to self preserve.

"FUCK!" The cigarette that I had lost in the tussle brought me back from the confusion. It burned a good line into my left palm. At least it distracted from the chest for a moment.

The humming of the portal resumed, and for a moment, there was that relief that came before. Only for about a couple short, labored breaths, that's when a demigon popped out in the erratic fashion they liked to.

Just one demigon. Something to laugh at for a soldier. No swarm, no back up, just one gigantic half arachnid, half culicidae, flying in random direction until it spotted something-

"Cataleya, Cataleya wake the fuck up." I punched her as hard as I could in the chest, and it felt like I received the same strike in my chest.

The demigon flew side to side in the fashion they did when they displayed their few attack habits.

"Cataleya! You wake the fuck up right now." I grabbed a chunk of her silver hair and pulled her head up, as if it being closer to my mouth to yell at her would help the situation.

"Leya! You don't get to fucking do this! You don't get to fucking knock out from a portal that just gave me an ache in my chest. You don't get to die on some dumb luck." I was shaking her head, followed by a couple more punches to the chest.

"LEYA! WAKE THE FUCK UP!"

[calyfornian]

Keylo and Cataleya : Nature and Nurture pt. 3

"What happened, love?" Cataleya was cradling me against her. The moonlight forcing its way through the windows and glass sliding door of their living room was enough to illuminate the different glimmering stones that adorned her.

"He, he had sex with Nevaphor." I said it in a choke, as if there wasn't air to support the words trying to escape my body.

"Nevaphor has sex with everyone, love, I know he's annoying but-"

"No, No. He didn't have sex with Nevaphor, he just had sex with him a couple fucking weeks ago. Right when, right when we accepted that it was just us. It was just Keylo and I. No one else." Tears were forcing themselves out of me, not in a violent kind of way, but they were refusing to stop.

"Maybe he just didn't understand, what was it, Mahogany, maybe he-"

"Monogamy." I hated when they didn't get what I said properly. All these things that I learned, all these things that I wanted to share with them, with Keylo, and they couldn't even fucking remember it for longer than five fucking minutes.

"Right, Monogamy, sorry, from the sound of it, maybe it was left in the past for a reason. The humans sounded like odd little creatures, maybe it just doesn't fit for us." Cataleya's hand was rubbing the upper part of my back in a circular motion, but far different from usual, I didn't feel the comfort that came from Cataleya.

"Cataleya. Cataleya," I started to cry harder.

In an attempt to collect myself, I took a step back from her to face her, the physical contact was inciting so much emotion in me. Well, that was probably only contributing to emotions after what had happened five minutes ago.

"Cataleya," I tried to look into her soft eyes, "Cataleya, I know I can't explain this enough, and not even that well, and even if I could, you wouldn't understand," the beginning of the statement forced me to take a sharp breath, " There is nothing else in this existence that I want to be engulfed in more than Keylo. I-I want him to consume me. I want him to fucking consume me." My breaths were harder and standing my ground was a well done joke when I only was crying before Cataleya in some kind of hysterics.

"You want him to consume you?" Cataleya's face was confused, or that's what I gathered in between glances through glossed over eyes.

"Leya, can we please have a cigarette?" I was unbuttoning my tight black dress shirt that was feeling way too damn restricting at the time.  I used it to wipe off my face.

"That sounds like an excellent idea, love." She slipped out of her sky high heels and continued barefoot to the wooden balcony that was their backyard.

When are cigarettes were lit, which felt like too long for my mood, Cataleya went on, "You know, I don't know if my brother wants to 'consume you,' but I can speak to the fact that he holds you so damn high, Jay. He told me," she let smoke fall out of her mouth on one drag only to elegantly inhale it through her nostrils, "he told me when those portals crack the sky open in a blinding kind of light; you're the only thing he can think about, you're the only priority."

"More of a liability than a priority." My response made me chuckle, and I didn't think it was too self deprecating.

"Whatever you say, the point is," her head bobbed upward and her red curls shook with her as she took a drag then shot the smoke into the open air, "What he has to say doesn't feel much different than from what you to say about him, the words might not be there, but I, I feel it, and you now how rare that is."

I was reminded that my protectors, they weren't much to emote. It wasn't something that they had the time to learn on their own. At the most they somewhat understood anger, it was probably the simplest emotion to understand. They didn't have time to sit in the learning annex for hours on end learning about the human brain cycle; they were busy saving the world. They didn't have time to read ancient literature that had the ability to blow a massive invisible hole through you at the loss of love, or the loss of life. I was reminded, yet again, as caring as Cataleya was, as compassionate as Cataleya was; she wasn't any of those things.

[calyfornian]

Keylo and Cataleya : Nature and Nurture pt. 4

My awakening was somewhat cruel when I felt an abrupt plummet.

The landing wasn't too rough, there was some cushioning to it mixed with some warmth. When my eyes adjusted with the sparse moonlight making its way through the window, I could see the familiar color of white colored ceiling and tan walls that I had been accustomed to. I must have been in the bed that I had been accustomed to also, it smelled like him.

The only thing that didn't send a knife through my heart was his absence. Ending up here didn't make much sense either when I told Cataleya I'd be sleeping on the couch tonight.

I was stripped of my clothes, even my underwear and socks were gone and not anywhere to be found in the immediate area.

Opting for an oversized t-shirt from Keylo wasn't the best or the worst. It reminded me of him, which I loved, and it reminded me of him, which I hated. The maroon mesh shorts that barely covered half of his thighs were right beside the bed, me not being as muscular, and still being a few inches taller than him, they made it to my knees. He was just so damn ample.

My head still felt like it was spinning from all the drinks I hadn't had at the celebration. Maybe it was just my sleep cycle being so abruptly interrupted. Maybe it was the reeling from Keylo's nonchalant truth.

Either way, I had to get out of this damned room.

When I exited through the hall and out into the living room, across from me was Keylo, rummaging through the fridge for more alcohol to consume. I only knew that by inferring from the other two empty bottles that weren't out when me and Cataleya got home-got to their house. Keylo and Cataleya's house, not mine. This isn't my home.

My body froze on the sight of him. My mouth didn't even seem to know what to do. When his head emerged from behind the refrigerator door taking violent swigs at a bottle of what had to be rum, his eyes smiled. He took a couple more swigs, then approached me.

"J-jay!" His steps weren't aligned, but I'd be lying if that was the first thing I noticed. He was down to tight black briefs that hugged at his crotch in an appetizing way. Even with just one lamp on in the living room, his body shone like the treasure it was.

He wrapped his arms around me for an embrace, and in his drunken state, the strength he exerted was too much. He was hurting me for the time he held me, but I didn't say anything. I don't know if it's because I couldn't, or if I didn't want to, content with being crushed then and there.

I put way too much merit into this man.

"Sorry, babe, did I wake you up?" His words slurred something fierce as he planted sloppy kisses everywhere but my lips. He was a kind of hurricane drunk now compared to the last time that I had seen him.

I felt my eyes swell with pressure.

"Take-take your shirt off." It wasn't a command, he was all ready pulling it over my head, kissing my right nipple, occasionally taking a nibble.

The pressure in my eyes built. Tears were on their way.

In a swift motion, I think with his foot, he yanked the mesh maroon shorts to the ground, I was naked before him.

Then again, I was always naked before him.

He knelt down, put an arm between my legs and ended up resting his palm against the top part of my butt. Then, he lifted me up on his ascent from the kneeling position. I was about five feet off of the ground when he began giving me oral. I was about five feet off of the ground when silent tears started.

It wasn't long before he gave up on that. It wasn't because I was crying, he didn't notice that. The only thing he noticed was that my member wasn't erecting.

Down from the upright position I was, with my crotch in his face, to an awkward cradle where he continued to bombard me with kisses, and lick at my chest, and at really anywhere else he could think to run his tongue across.

I exhaled a sharp breaths, kind of a yelp, more tears blurred my vision, he took it as a sign of my ecstasy and continued in what I guess I could call a fervent manor.

Then we were on our way to the bedroom, where I was thrown, worse than the plummeting feeling from a few minutes ago. Not that it hurt, I just didn't feel like much.

My tears were full blown now, and I still didn't fully understand why that was the case. Well, I'm sure somewhere I did, but at the time, I couldn't tell. I couldn't justify to myself why it was that I was crying, so for most of it, I was trying to talk myself down from it. Like I shouldn't have been crying in this act, like I didn't deserve it. Like nothing justified me crying with the love of my life performing sexual acts on me right after he had with someone else. Then again, in this time, my feelings weren't really justified, they weren't really-

Keylo flipped me over on to my stomach and licked my ears down to my lower back.

My tears were accompanied by cries that I yelled into the pillow. I cursed that cushion filled fabric when he started eating me out.

At different points, he came back up, pulled me by the back of the head, and jammed his tongue into my mouth. With all the saliva running this way and that, I don't think tears would have been something he could notice, and in his state, I don't think they would have stopped him.

He always asked before he was inside of me. Kind of permission, kind of a heads up; point is, he always asked. Then he was in side of me, in a painful thrust where I wasn't ready for him, where somewhere, even with everything going on, I wasn't expecting him. "Fuck!" was the only thing I could scream through teary eyes, which I'm sure he took as nothing but encouragement.

And I laid there, through the motions, through him grabbing me too hard at times, through him not caring if I was being pleasured at all, and the only thing I could really think about is, "Fuck, this is going to be one of those things that I remember forever."

He finished inside me, and didn't get out of me. There was a whisper of a "Thank you," or I might have imagined that to make the moment not so terrific as it was.

Then I let sleep over take me, it was just too bad that it wasn't fast enough..

[calyfornian]

Keylo and Cataleya : Fallen pt. 4

The front door swung open and made a hard whack against the wall that only made me jump. Cataleya was indestructible, what did she have to be startled for.

She reached her hand over to my shoulder, kissed me on the cheek, then headed to her room while whispering a, "Show time."

Keylo slammed the door behind him, hard enough to let out a "Fuck," when there was the sound of wood cracking behind him. He was unbuttoning his white button-up that was covered in ash and tattered in minor areas. His chest was glistening in sweat. When the sleeves had made it passed his massive forearms, he tossed the shirt to the ground of the living room. The hair band hardly containing his wild, black, curly hair was slid off on to his wrist. The luscious hair fell to each sides of his shoulder. He stepped out of his black skinny jeans the best he could. They were nearly painted on to his thighs. Keylo kicked the jeans to another random section of the floor and headed for the glass sliding doors, passing right by me. Without saying a word,

without even looking at me.

I took a couple steps to the left to see what he was doing on the backyard of Cataleya and his home, and maybe to ogle him a bit in nothing but his underwear.

He was scratching at his head, shaking the hair this way and that to get all the ash of the demigons and serpents out of it. When he seemed satisfied with his work, he slipped off his underwear, balled it in his hand, then headed back through the house. Right passed me, without saying a word, and without even looking at me.

When he was opening the washroom door, I decided I wasn't finished. No, not that I wasn't finished, I just needed to hear something from him.

"Keylo." My voice was even enough, no cracks, no strains.

He proceeded to enter the washroom, hit the light, and start the water.

I followed to the doorway to the washroom, and tried again, this time, no words came out after I saw him.

He was hunched over the sink, with hands clenching either side of the granite that composed it. If I wasn't sure of it, I would think he was nearly ready to squeeze it to dust.

"Keylo." This time it was a whisper, like I had lost my voice again.

He turned from the sink and tilted his head up slightly as to acknowledge me, even though he still hadn't looked at me.

When my mind failed me, and no words came out, he relaxed his grip on the sink, looked away, and took the step into their shower where the scalding water began to strike his skin, then slid the curtain closed.

"Keylo, I'm-I'm sorry." I didn't know what else to say and in the instant, I didn't know what I had to apologize for, if anything.

He puled the curtain open, and if there wasn't water pouring over his head, I might have been able to say he was crying.

"Don't apologize. Please, don't fucking apologize." His voice was flat, there wasn't the fury behind it like there was a short while ago, he sounded wounded.

"I just, I just shouldn't have-"

He waved his hand in front of his face, as to shut me up, looked up at the ceiling, then went on, "I'm going to be selfish, and it isn't something new, but something that I haven't fully bared to you. I can't have you going off like that. I can't have you being alone without Cataleya or I. I can't have you do that." He snorted hard then ran his fingers over his face and hair.

I unbuttoned my dress shirt and tossed it on the ground.

"So just, don't say sorry, don't fucking say it. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you." He wasn't looking at me, like he was talking to the damn tiles below the sprayer.

I unbuttoned my pants, and slid them off a long with my underwear, then pulled off my socks.

The shower was small, but big enough to fit the both of us. I slid in behind him and wrapped my arms around his torso, and rested my head against his left shoulder.

He was taking sharp breaths, and they were too uneven to call it breathing, and if there wasn't water running in all directions, I might have been able to say he was crying.

[calyfornian]

Keylo and Cataleya : Fallen pt. 3

"You okay, honey?" Cataleya was staring at me dead on, and although I believe I was making eye contact, I don't think I really saw her.

When my lips failed to move, she pulled me into her again, and that's when the tears started, "He's right you know, I do only ever have one responsibility and I-"

"Don't do that to yourself Jay, you know your visions are-"

I pushed away from Cataleya, "No! You don't do that, Leya. Don't make fucking excuses for me, not this time. He's right you know. The only thing I have are my fucking visions and I don't even have those. I throw a damn fit and go running down the hill without any thought of consequence, without any thought for what I'm putting myself through, let alone what I'm putting the two of you through."

The last word came out as a hard bite, tears pushed harder out of me.

Cataleya didn't know what to say, and her eyes weren't as caring as they were a few seconds ago. In the moment, I could say they agreed with what I had to say.

"He only reacts like that because he cares immensely about you." Cataleya leaned on their marble kitchen counter top.

"I know that, Ley, but it doesn't change the fact; my mutation, what was supposed to be a wonder of science, a real miracle, its useless most of the time, and when something does kick in, I just know to bring a fucking umbrella with me."

Cataleya had a quick rush of air pass her lips, she had giggled.

"Shut up, Leya." It forced a smile in me, a kind of relief that I desperately needed.

Her smile spread across her tan skin, and she couldn't help but laugh some more, "Its just funny, because last week," the laughter intensified, "last week I asked you what I should wear, and you said dress lite, because it was going to be warm," she was speaking in between hysterias, "and, and it started fucking hailing while I was in a sun dress."

Cataleya's big smile, just like her brother's caught in me, and we laughed until the tears from my inadequacy were replaced with that of joy.

Then we heard the front door swing open, and neither of us were so keen on laughter.

[calyfornian]

Keylo and Cataleya : Nature and Nurture pt. 2

The cool night air was no relief.

Ash was collecting on my long sleeve black button-up. Minutes were feeling unbearably long as my mind shot off in a million different directions reeling from what it had just absorbed.

"Hey." The word was muffled from what used to be the god in the white button-up shirt; from what used to be my world.

My mouth opened, and instead of words, I just took another drag.

"Jay," Keylo was standing in front of me now, with his piercing forest green eyes, encased in red, like they nearly always were, "You in there?" He said it waving a hand in front of my eyes with the massive smile that covered his face that up until five minutes ago, would have made me so damn warm just to see.

"What's wrong with you..." Words finally came out, barely a whisper, not the ones I expected.

"What?" He was reaching into my pocket when I struck his arm and backed away.

"What's wrong with you?" Audible. Aggressive. I dropped my cigarette.

"Nothing's wrong w-with me. What the hell's wrong with you?" He had the confused face on, the one he always fucking had on when responsibility was heading his way; I hated that face.

"I told you, I told you that you were fucking it. That this was it with us, that there was no one else I could share this with and you went and fucked Nevaphor!" My voice choked at the end in a half scream.

"Yeah, it wasn't a big deal, you left the party and I was horny?" Keylo's cute kind of drunk brought out a rage in me. He couldn't even play off naivety after what we had agreed upon.

"It wasn't a big deal? You fucking said it was just us! That you wouldn't share yourself with anyone else! What the fuck is wrong with you?!" I felt tears swelling in my eyes.

"Wow are you crying right now?" Keylo seemed more confused than apologetic. Well, I guess it bares saying that he wasn't apologetic in the slightest, from what I had gathered.

I felt some tears escape and I was angry that they were in front of him, "I can't do this right now."

He yelled my name a couple times as I made my way out of the backyard balcony of the estate back through the crowds of the celebration.

Cataleya wasn't hard to spot. A damn vision of beauty in a sparkling silver dress that clung to her body.

"Leya, I need to get out of here."

Her back was to me, she only turned her head and let out a, "Just a minute, love." Her fire red curls bobbed back to the group she was in.

"Leya."

There must have been something different in my voice because she turned around on a dime. There must have been something different about my appearance too, because she looked worried when she took a look at me.

Without a word, after taking me in, she came in for a hug, then I was crying into her shoulder in the middle of her kitchen. Right, I was crying.

[calyfornian]

Keylo and Cataleya : Fallen pt. 2

I was maybe three puffs into the cigarette when I had to lose it for a full sprint. There wasn't much progress with in the terms of finding help. All the homes at the bottom of the hill were unlived in for some time. My first instinct to call Cataleya was rendered useless when I discovered I had left my phone in the jacket that Keylo had let me wear on our little date.

Maybe half a mile away, a portal cracked open the sky that outshined the sun. I hadn't missed a beat in my full sprint. Three massive serpents came out together and dominated the sky. Their black scales glimmered in the light of the portal, especially the lime green fins on either sides of them.

Each of them were heading in my direction, and knowing they'd find me no matter what, I quit the sprinting, and tried not to focus on my future. A cigarette seemed like the best call opposed to running.

The one to my far right split off from the group and headed towards the city. The one to the left and center just glided towards me. The one in the center sensed me first, it let out the deathly familiar shriek that comes with the big ones.

It was part deafening, everything seemed sort of unreal, and maybe it was. Death was near, now might as well have been the time for hallucinations, even if it didn't exist in our lifetime.

The one in the center began its decent, I might have had thirty seconds until it hit me. The only rational thing to do, which took no thought process, was to take a drag, and start yelling at the top of my lungs as it opened its mouth to reveal its shiny silver teeth.

Then everything happened at once.

The life was knocked out of me, as I flew backwards into the air. Everything slowed down then, Keylo flew into my line of sight with his foot connecting with the side of the massive serpent's head, which guided it into obliterating an old home.

"Cat, get him out of here-"

Another crash, and a portal opened maybe a mile above us.

"Christ," Cataleya whispered to herself.

I landed beside her, a few feet away from the soon to be carnage.

Keylo immediately charge at the serpent ascending from rubble, "Cat!"

Cataleya threw her right hand up and Keylo's crimson sword flew from behind her directly at the beast.

The other one, seeing the signs of life, picked up the pace and headed towards Keylo.

Cataleya took off into the air as to intercept it, when she was between Keylo and it, she froze, and put her hands to both sides of her head. The beasts mouth was massive, it could easily swallow a bus whole, when its mouth was around her, it stopped in its tracks, and began to have its tail end fly upward.

Demigons began to pour out of the portal above us and it made me remember that there still wasn't much hope in running.

When I looked back to Cataleya, or where she should have been, I saw the flesh of the serpent's head explode in all directions, followed by its immediate deterioration.

Yards away, Keylo had severed the head of the other serpent, and was plummeting back to the ground after it began its rapid deterioration.

Cataleya had teleported beside me, and it took maybe 8 seconds for Keylo to sprint to us.

"Cat, get him out of here." Keylo's eyes were darting all around without ever looking a the two of us. Somehow, his button up was still in tact, which left me kind of disappointed I didn't have something to ogle while I was saved.

"Too late." Cataleya flew straight into the swarm. None of them were touching her, she must have been using her telekinesis to form a kind of shield. When she was in dead center and had them going absolutely insane, she spread her arms apart and clapped them together, ripping apart a good portion of the swarm.

The ones that escaped her put Keylo even more on edge. Not that they were a problem for him. He was disconnecting their heads from their bodies the second they were at arms reach.

The swarm was gone as quick as it had come.

"Don't you ever fucking leave my house like that!" Keylo was yelling at me, booming louder than when the portal ripped open.

"Like I was supposed to know a fucking portal was going to rip open back to back!" I was yelling right back at him, I was still on edge from our last interaction.

"'Like I was supposed to know,' Jay, I don't know if you remember, but you're literally supposed to fucking know when shit like this is supposed to happen. its the only damn job you have and you can't even seem to get that right!" Keylo's veins were prominent on his neck, and I almost was terrified.

"I'm, I'm sorry-" My voice was a stark contrast to the screaming it was when I last spoke, barely a whisper.

Cataleya teleported between us with her back to me, placed a hand on my shoulder, whispered something to her brother, then her and I were standing in her living room.

[calyfornian]

Keylo and Cataleya : Wilderness

We were under a tree in the central part of the wilderness preserve. My body was in the straddling position with him beneath me, relaxing on the grass. We were both smoking cigarettes.

He opted to leave the shirt at home today which was something I was never exactly opposed to. He was in maroon shorts that were made out of a mesh fabric. They barely covered half of his massive thighs. His feet where in low top casual black shoes, Vans maybe.

One hand against his abs, the other clutching my cigarette.

Beside being captivated in his hard brown body as I usually was, I was stuck on staring from the neck up.

His face looked nearly angelic. The right amount of light was filtering through the leaves of the tree we were beside. It made him glow.

His wild black hair was sprawled in all directions from his crown. It looked comfortable enough to sleep on.

His eyes. Those fucking eyes. Their green made the grass seem pale in comparison.

"What's the plan, love." With his free hand, he reached up and rubbed my chest and then down to my stomach before resting his hand near my left hip.

"I'm finding myself more than content here. The weather is absolutely divine. I don't want to do a thing but lay here." I left my cigarette to the side and leaned in for a kiss which I was graced with immediately before coming back up to the seated position on him.

"This was a good call, coming out here. I feel like I never think to come out to the wilderness." He planted the cigarette in between his full lips and took a heavy drag before removing it and exhaling a train of smoke.

"I like it out here. Its quiet," A portal ripped open far away in the sky.

Keylo, in a swift and precise motion, moved me to the side and sprung up in an instant. When I looked up from the seated position, his hair was still bouncing from the leap upward.

"Someone else will get it." From where I was seated beside him, it was easy enough to start rubbing his crotch, and its not like I wasn't going to do it two and a half seconds ago to begin with.

"You're right, plus, this seems more fun than a full sprint. That has to be a couple miles out." He leaned down beside me and pulled me into him.

"You're always running off, maybe that's why you never have time to appreciate the foliage." I nuzzled my face into the warm skin that covered his right pectoral muscle, followed by a quick lick across his nipple.

"We're surrounded by greenery, its not like I'm missing out on anything." He reached into the breast pocket of my powder blue shirt and pulled out my cigarettes then proceeded to stick one in between his teeth, then pulled the lighter out of my tight, black denim jeans.

He pulled me onto his right thigh and took a couple slides back until he was leaning against the large trunk, and I was leaning against him.

After lighting his cigarette he stuffed the lighter back into my pocket, and wrapped his free arm around most of my torso.

It reminded me that I had lost my stick of nicotine somewhere in the rapid tussle. Reaching into my pocket seemed like too much work though. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the enthia. Probably the enthia.

I had this habit of trying to keep up with Keylo in the few areas that were physically possible for me. I had tapped out somewhere between the fourth drops in a few hours. Everything was bordering on surreal. Like, the wind that was blowing through the trees was especially nice. The sun that was shining down on my god chiseled out of gold was especially illuminating. Things were just enhanced. Everything was just enhanced.

"We really should do this more often." Keylo echoed the thought that was trapped in my head somewhere.

"I agree. Just stop keeping me locked up in your house all the time whenever you go off to save the quadrant." I turned to the side so I could be laying on him in a way that would be fit for a nap.

His laugh was deep and each rumble comforted me, "I don't lock you up, you just never leave."

He ran his hand down my back and I furrowed myself against him some more.

"I wouldn't want to leave. I don't think I ever want to leave you. I enjoy your company immensely. More so than I ever have with anyone else in my existence to date and I don't quite understand it to this day." I rolled back around so my back was against his chest and my head was nuzzled between his head and his shoulder in his neck, then reached in and got a cigarette burning between my lips.

"You know, Jay, I can't understand you when you're speaking into me." I could see his smoke exhale above me into the open air.

It made me laugh, then take a drag, "I don't want to be with anyone else at any point in the day, well, maybe besides Cataleya. You're just, you're just it. You're all I want to be around at any given moment and I was saying, I was saying that its weird, because I don't understand that."

My next drag didn't help me understand it any further, but Keylo running his hand down my torso seemed to soothe me.

"What do you mean that I'm 'it.'" Keylo didn't understand, not that he should when I didn't either.

"What do I mean by you're it... I guess, I don't know. You're all I find myself thinking about lately, even in between my studies and trying to focus entirely on my sight, which I'd be lying if I said it didn't usually take me to you." My next drag was nice, him running his hand back up my chest was better.

"Do you watch me a lot?" I could hear the smile in his voice, something about my constant focus on him was a positive.

"You've been engrained into my vision Keylo. A rock doesn't fall without it correlating to you."

"That makes me glad. That's kind of how I am when a portal opens, you're kind of the top priority, ya know, you being so dainty and everything." His hand was rubbing my head now.

"I don't know if I should thank you or let the feeling of inferiority take over."

"Don't feel inferior, I like having a higher purpose than just killing those things." He said it into my ear, soft and warm.

The wind rustled up once more, and I found myself staring up, caught in the rustling of the leaves and my protector's hair.