Screams

"Sir!" Called a man in a large office.

"What is it?" Came another man, looking up from his desk of papers and adjusting his glasses.

"I think we've got a hit."

"Oh?"

"Someone reported hearing screams and what sounded like 'snapping bones'. You think..?"

"Yeah. Send a squad to investigate, the mission is not to take more than two hours and if it is a Kokkaku then they are to capture it alive and bring it back. Am I understood?" The chief said.

"Yes, sir, team being called out now." The man said, typing on his keyboard.

*Another report..* the chief thought that himself. *Is it just me.. or are cases of Kokkaku rising? And if they are.. why? It can't be natural.. there is no way. I'm beginning to think.. that Kokkaku is not a nature-born deformity. But there is not any proof..*

Many years ago, during 2087, January 3rd, the first case of a Kokkaku had been discovered. It was not released to the public until the March of the next year.

Supposedly, no one, not even the government, knows where they came from or how they came into existence to begin with. The media theorizes it is a "nature-born deformity and possibly the next stage for man kind" as Kokkaku are indeed much stronger than any normal human. But the chief, Alexander, was beginning to question that fact, and he began to wonder just how they came to be.

He began digging into it a few years ago, and he'd made small progress, but he was almost certain the government was hiding something from them. How could beings like this just.. come to be? And why were their appearances so sporadic? Some years, there would be zero reports of Kokkaku, then, the next year, the reports are flooding in. It made no sense.

Alexander was almost certain there was more to it. He just knew it. And all they needed was to capture as many Kokkaku as possible to figure out just what makes them tick.

****

"I...am.. sorry..." I said weakly.

"Why did you do it?" Yamari asked.

I was shocked, and not sure what to say. Between the trauma I just experienced and the fact that Yamari was more concerned that I had attempted suicide than she was about me being a Kokkaku just stunned me.

"Be..cause.. I'm nothing.." I said, being honest. "This world.. is unkind... and I.. am alone.."

"You aren't alone idiot! Look at me!" Yamari pulled away, forcing me to look at her. In the reflection of her eyes I could see the monster that was me. I didn't understand why she wouldn't run from me, why she wasn't scared.

"You have me, if not anyone else, there is me." Yamari said, "Why would you leave me? You are my best friend! I need you! You should have told me what was wrong! I could've helped!"

"No.. I.." I stopped before I finished my sentence. I wanted to say I wanted us to be more than friends, but I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't bring myself to tell her the truth, that I was in love with her. And so I didn't. "You.. and I.." I said, getting ahold of speech in this strange form, "are from.. two entirely.. separate worlds.."

"So!? I don't care! No one else matters to me more than you, we have always been together, since we were young. I can't lose you... so please.. don't do that again.." Yamari said.

My heart skipped a beat at those words, butterflies soaring about my chest. I couldn't believe I heard her say that... but, my mind told me it didn't mean what I thought it meant. She just meant as friends.. she harbored no other feelings of any kind towards me.. just friends, no, more like siblings. She didn't love me the way I did her, she never would. That's what my mind said, but my heart desperately wanted that to be different.

"Why... aren't you.. scared of me.?" I asked.

"I don't know.." Yamari said, "because it is still.. you. These bones.." she said, "they don't frighten me, rather, they fascinate me. I will say I was surprised but.. Im not scared of you. I could never be scared of you, Onnai."

I backed away from Yamari, wilting down and tucking into myself, my second pair of bone arms wrapping about my body, the talons grasping on to the bone plates over my shoulders.

"But.. what if I hurt you..?" I asked her.

"You won't. You'd never hurt me, I know that." Yamari said. "And that is why I'm not scared."

I sat there, thinking on her words. Maybe she did love me.. how else could she care about a monster like me? I was still having difficulty wrapping my head around the fact that I was a Kokkaku. It just didn't seem real to me.. and it was terrifying.. but at the same time, I understood what Yamari meant, as I too became fascinated with myself and the fact that I was a Kokkaku. Why had it taken me two more years than normal to transform? And how was I a Kokkaku to begin with? Who knows my family before me was a Kokkaku?

"We can't stay here." Yamari said suddenly, looking around. "No doubt someone has called the police after your fit of screams, and so the cops are probably on their way. We need to leave before they get here.. or else.."

"They're gonna take me away..." I said.

"Yeah. Can you move?" Yamari asked.

I unwrapped myself and, slowly, one small motion at a time, got to my feet. I was sore, but for the most part I was fine, though, the new feelings of my body were quite difficult to grasp onto, especially my two extra arms. Strange skin-like webbing held the arms to my back, attached all the way up to the elbows of the arms.

I stood to my feet, then nodded slowly. "I can move."

"Good, we need to leave then. Come on!" Yamari ran around my house, grabbing the largest blanked she could find, as well as a hoodie.

"Put this on!" She said, shoving the hoodie over me. My secondary arms made it difficult, but the talons tore holes through it so that my arms could protrude out the back as I pulled the hoodie over my head. Yamari pulled the hood itself low over my face, then she came around and placed a blanket around my body. "Keep this over you, you can't show any part of you body. Got it?"

"Yes." I nodded, then Yamari led me out the door.