Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Throwing the Dice
Irys was, by all means, one of the luckiest people that she knew of.
A talented singer, basically a celebrity; one with an abundance of close friends by her side. Not to mention the fancy university she just got accepted into! All while her next album is set to be released! She had all that she wanted in the world, truly.
…
So why?
Why is she being chased through alleys now?
Why is she leaving a blood trail on the backstreets she usually avoids so much?
“C’mon missy get back here!” The men behind her continued their chase.
“I keep telling you, you have the-“ she started yelling back, interrupting herself with a string of curses unbefitting of her, as she almost hit a trash can
“- You have the wrong person!” She finished her cry. Of course, like before, they didn’t even act like they thought about what she said.
They had this exchange repeated for the last couple minutes now to be fair, and frankly, Irys was getting tired of saying the same thing over and over.
So, all she could do was pray for her luck to lead her somewhere, as she blindly turned corners.
Crashing into a wall made her change the ending of her prayers.
“…Well, anywhere but this dead end.” She thought instead.
Her legs gave out, as she turned around to face her chasers.
A couple seconds of holding her wounds, they arrived.
Three men, wearing black suits, almost stereotypical in how much they looked like debt collectors.
“Do tell me, since when did debt collecting involve shooting me on sight?” Irys jabbed between wheezes.
That’s how this whole ordeal started. As she was just walking home from the studio, she noticed that these people started following her. However, as soon as she turned into a narrower, more elaborate route, she felt a bullet graze her. She would swear that some even hit her, not that she knew what being shot feels like…
The man on the front laughed at her comment, most likely finding this situation amusing.
“Missy, missy…” He walked up, the scar across his face as if reflecting the dim lights of the street. “Debts? Who do ya think we are, some charity?” The two others behind him snorted on his joke.
“Yer a celebrity missy, and they tend to have good~” pausing a bit, the man eyed Irys from top to bottom “...money.” he finished.
“S-so what, you’re saying you’re here to mug me? Not too sure how that would work with me b-bleeding out” She had to keep talking, even if she was stuttering, and honestly, really, really scared.
“That’s just yer luck missy, quite a bad one if I had to say” At least the man found it amusing enough to keep answering her.
“Never have I seen Jimmy hit a running target before, much less twice.”
“Hey boss that was uncalled for-” One of the men behind him cried out.
Irys had to agree on that though. The luck that she usually had wasn’t on her side today.
That doesn’t mean she will go down without a fight though.
As their leader turned back, the trio begun discussing something that she couldn’t quite make out, but it was hopefully enough of a distraction. It was now or never.
She gritted her teeth as she pushed through every feeling she had right now, and stood up, but she couldn’t end it there.
She glanced up at the wall that was currently holding her hostage, and the little accessories on top. From the looks of it, it looked like some sort of garden on the other side, or at least that’s what she hoped.
“Ah fuck it.” Irys declared quietly, solely for herself, as she braced herself for the pain and she jumped up, grabbing the top of the wall.
“HEY DA FUCK YA THINK YER DOIN MISSY?!” Seems like they noticed her, but she was already on top of the wall, looking back at the three men.
Though, she can’t help but think she forgot about something…
Oh right
The guns.
Two gunshots rang out and echoed in the alleyway, followed by a string of foreign curses from the shooter.
Irys shrieked as she fell down on the other side with an awkward thud, recoiled from the hit, her shoulder now having one more hole than what she was comfortable with.
She quickly looked around, panting, panicking. This wasn’t a garden, so her landing sucked quite a bit. Instead, she found herself in something akin to a storage unit, or at least that’s what she categorized it, by the number of boxes around her.
“Please, please, anything…” She frantically crawled, her legs now fully without any strength.
She heard the men on the other side yelling and trying to follow her already.
She bumped into a box, and her heart skipped a beat as it almost fell on her, narrowly avoiding her head, landing sideways and opening.
The box housed a single pair of dice, one red with white dots, and the other being the inverse, and the pair, by all means, just rolled in front of her.
“There ya are missy!” One of the men, the one presumably called Jimmy has landed on this side, already aiming at her.
By the looks of his smile, it seems like he didn’t plan on missing this time.
In other words, Irys wasn’t meant to leave this place alive.
As a last-ditch effort, she grabbed the pair of dice and threw it at the man, praying that maybe his aim will get derailed just enough.
As the dice drew a beautiful arc across the distance between them, it was as if she could hear a low chuckle from them.
It was so…mesmerizing…
She got snapped out of her short trance as the dice hit the man right in his eyes, the dice quickly falling down on the street afterwards
They cracked.
And more.
As if it was an egg for a newborn chick.
The lights flickered in the alleyway, and suddenly everything slowed down. Or was it speeding up? Irys couldn’t tell. The whole world was stretching and shrinking, as if she took drugs, and then it all went to dark for a second with a loud crack akin to glass shattering.
“Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinally free~” A girl stretched, now floating upside down before her, revealing their ratlike ears on the top of her head, and more so, the sharp, triangular teeth in her mouth, much like the spikes on her broken collar.
She turned around mid-air, and as if time just resumed, everything returned to normal.
“Huh, wha-, HEY” The ma…Jimmy yelled out in surprise. “Who are ya?! Fuck off!” He told the floating girl nervously, basically shouting.
His two comrades leapt over the wall to find this situation, quickly assessing it, pulling out their guns and pointing it at Irys and the girl in front of her.
Irys felt a chill down her spine, as the girl turned her neck.
And it turned more.
And more.
And more.
It turned almost 180 degrees when she finally spoke up, and while Irys couldn’t see the expression she was making, she could feel it.
She was pissed.
“I’ve been freed after eons, and you tell me to…’fuck…off’?”
“D-Didn’t ya hear what we s-said? G-Go away!” Even the gangsters sounded unsure now.
The girl raised her arm, slowly, steadily.
Irys couldn’t hear the shouting of the trio anymore; she was fully following the movement of the girls every being. Her wounds didn’t seem to bother her as long as she was focusing on her.
She snapped.
For a split second, as if nothing were to happen.
Then, as if the sound were to echo, but much, much, louder, almost deafening, it repeated without the girl moving an inch.
The next thing Irys registered was the men’s fate. The shrieks of horror as they slowly turned and compressed, more and more until what was left of them…was a rat. and blocks of cheese. If she hadn’t witnessed their creation, Irys wouldn’t think twice about them.
The girl in front of her snapped her head back at her “So, where were we?”
“H-hi?” Irys stuttered.
“No, no, we’re already past that” the girl shook her head. “Cheesed to meet ya and all that. Let’s see… introductions? Yeah, let’s do that!” as if she was just conversing with herself, she murmured, even letting her cheeks rest on her hand as if she was in a quiz show.
With another snap of the girl’s fingers, she appeared behind Irys. “Hakos Baelz! But call me Bae! And let me tell you sweetie” She let out a toothy grin as Irys could feel something faintly similar to blushing come up. “You ain’t looking too good~”
All of a sudden as if the pain were to overflow, she felt everything at once again.
“He-help me then” Irys hissed, gritting her teeth from the reappearing pain, her vision flickering “From wh-what I’m gathering, I-I freed you!”
“Yeah, and I paid you back by killing those three idiots” Bae chuckled. Once again, Irys could feel a shiver running down her spine.
“Then what d-do you want?” She wheezed. Her consciousness was reaching its limit.
“Well Irys, I want-” As her consciousness faded out, she felt the rat girl shake her hand
“Your fame.~”
Irys might have made a mistake throwing the dice.