Philip walked out of the restaurant with a slim young lady, who was obviously an employee there. She had blonde hair, sharp cat eyes and amazingly rounded lips. Whenever people saw her gait, they weren’t surprised because she had those cat eyes that reflected her every behavior. Her gown was seemingly above her knee and it fitted her hips perfectly. Philip had always noticed that she was the center of attraction in the workplace, everytime she wore those seductive clothes. He didn’t know if she was sleeping with her boss as she did with some of the men she met. But what he did know was that her boss was very fond of her and he was perfectly okay with her parading the restaurant, knowing full well that the male customers would be pleased to enjoy staring at her. That wasn’t his issue at the moment. They had been friends for a long time, and lived different lives, so he didn’t really care about what she did with her body and time.
“It’s been two weeks, Philip. What have you been up to?” Elena asked, folding her arms.
“Don’t look at me like that, Elena,” he said, puffing out vapor from e-vape.
“Why shouldn’t I?” she asked, with a frown. “You didn’t call me for a whole two weeks!”
“Don’t expect me to start apologizing to you for something that I had no control over,” Philip sighed.
“Is that all you can say to me?”
“Alright, fine. I’m sorry.”
“That’s not enough,” she said, turning her face away. Her hands rested on her hips and Philip immediately knew what the next thing was.
“Okay…. Okay. I will take you out of dinner,” he frowned. “Are you happy, now?”
She smiled and turned to look at Philip, “Yes that’s fine. So what have you been up to?”
“Work…and home.”
“That’s all? Don’t lie to me, Browne. You look worried.”
Philip sighed and withdrew the vape from his mouth, “Would you risk your life just to protect someone who you don’t know?”
“No,” she replied. Just when Philip thought that he had gotten the answer to his question, she added to her words, “Because I don’t know how to kill in order to protect but you can.”
“That’s not in my blood, Elena. I couldn’t protect my father from the Mutant Hunters….”
“Your father wanted to die by their hands, so that you could live.”
Philip tucked his hands in his pocket and focused on her eyes, “You seriously believe that my father would give up his life for mine? After all the things you watched him do to me?”
“I know that he did wrong things to you, but he did all those things to make you the person that you are today.”
“He taught me how to kill, just like a lion kills a prey for food,” Philip sighed, “I didn’t beg to become a killer, Elena. He created one out of me.”
“Then don’t just kill to satisfy a temporary urge. Kill to protect someone who needs to be protected,” she said, placing her hands on both of his shoulders.
“It violates all of the principles that he taught me.”
“He is dead, Philip. Think for yourself and move on with your life.”
That was the exact thing that he couldn’t do. Move on with his life and forget all that his father had embedded in him. The ring he was wearing had a carved skeleton on its face. It was a ring passed down to many generations of violent Mutant Assassins and when his father gave it to him, he began to feel an overwhelming rush of Mutant energy and magic in his body. Philip watched his father soak the ring in a cup of his own blood, before fixing it on the middle finger of his left hand. Nobody needed to warn Philip before he knew that the ring contained an ancient magic that connected him to his powerful ancestors, including his father. That was the main reason why his father’s teachings never left him and violating them was like physically opposing his father, which he had never tried to do before. He hated the word ‘moving on’ because it wasn’t that simple for him to do and he was extremely jealous of the people who valued that word.
“I’ll see you later, Elena…for dinner. I have some things to settle,” he said and Elena nodded with a seductive smile, before walking back into the restaurant.
Before Philip could take a first step towards his car, he felt a loud buzz coming from his phone, which was inside his pocket. Wondering who was calling him, he took it out of his pocket and picked the call.
“Yes,” he said first.
“It’s David Hayes, I am sure that you can remember me,”
“I do, Mr. David,” Philip said and started walking toward his car, “What do you want?”
“I would like us to meet,” David said.
“I already told you…”
“You might change your mind after you hear what I have to say.”
Philip stopped walking for a moment and looked up to the sky. Greene City was becoming the hunting ground for his species and it was none other than humans who were the hunters. He didn’t have many human friends because he didn’t trust any one of them including Elena. So he wondered how he could protect a person, whose species he didn’t trust.
“Tomorrow by 5pm,” Philip finally said before cutting the call. His mind was going back and forth on the reason why he shouldn’t accept the offer, but he couldn’t put aside the fact that someone was in danger of being killed and his innocent daughter would be left alone or killed along with her father. Settling everything in his mind, he got into his car and drove off with two meetings in mind.