I Am the Kraken (part 2)

Here is the highly anticipated (lol) part 2 of I Am the Kraken. Part 1 is here. I know exactly where this is going, so lack of story isn't the reason for the delay in posting. It's just the problem of exactly how to get the story out that bothers me.
As soon as I get my broken old laptop back from my computer-savvy friend, I'll have a plethora of short stories to attack your brains with, so look forward to that :)

Fios-Rente-Narve-Kassa made a point of returning to the Meadow of his home realm only when it was absolutely necessary. The uneasy glances from his kin caused him constant frustration, and he much preferred the easy company of Emma, living in the Earth realm. The others were afraid of him, and they rarely made the slightest attempt to hide it. Upon his arrival, the unicorns of the Meadow had been spread thinly across the lush green grass, and now they huddled together in groups, mindspeaking in whispers about him and his sudden appearance. It was not unusual, and in the years since he had stopped living among them, they had ceased hiding their whispered thoughts from him, only causing further frustration. Most unicorn's coats gleamed with an unearthly white, and their auras glowed with happiness and contentment, but Fios-Rente-Narve-Kassa had a grey coat and a black mane, and from when he was a foal, it was always said that his aura emitted a restlessness and frustration. He was to be feared and rejected - the Dark One who inexplicably lived in the flawed human world when their own realm was so perfect. Fios looked up into their perfect sun: the bright orb that never slept. It gave a pleasant amount of light and warmth, and unlike the harsh Earth sun, it didn't hurt the eyes if you stared up into it. Back on Earth, the sun would sometimes be covered with clouds, and even then its rays were still enough to burn uncovered skin. In the evening it would switch off, hide beneath the horizon. Emma told him that when her part of the world was in darkness, the sun would be shining on another section of the Earth, so it wasn't so different from the constant sunshine of the Meadow, but Fios appreciated the dark. He and Emma preferred to be a part of the world the humans called night.

     Thinking of Emma made Fios paw at the grass anxiously. She was the reason he had returned, as it was easier to hear a call from the Meadow than from Emma's house. The foggy atmosphere of the Earth clogged up his senses, and while he could usually hear her summons, he couldn't take the chance of missing her this time. He had sensed she was in danger. Something had changed in his human's life, but he knew better than to dive into the fray. Though she was in trouble, he would have to wait for the right moment to intervene, so would wait until she called him. But waiting wasn't something he did well. He tossed his mane, pacing backwards and forwards as he tried to distract his thoughts once more, but Emma was not an easy person to expel from his mind. Ever since the young girl had come into his life, he'd wanted to protect that fragile human, and she had protected him. They were a part of one another, and he couldn't bear the thought of another human harming her. The second that call came, he would gladly vanish from the presence of his own kind to be at her side.

Fios hadn't known where he would end up. He'd charged into the human realm too quickly to sense the surrounds. He materialised in the human world in a corridor, Emma's thoughts of him broadcasting clearly once more. Two men were holding onto each of her arms, and Fios didn't even hesitate as he lowered his horn to aim for the heart of the big one. He died instantly as he was impaled, and Fios reached out with his hind legs to kick the smaller man into the wall. Emma cringed at the thump, but went immediately to her friend, pulling a handkerchief from her pocket to wipe the blood from his horn. The man against the wall groaned and struggled to stand. Emma approached his prone form and placed a foot on his chest, slamming him back into the space between the wall and the carpet. She knelt to remove the pistol from the holster of the semi-conscious man and hit him across the face with it.

     "Don't you know who I am?" she growled at him.

     The man squinted, looking past her to where Fios stood. Emma hit him again, causing blood to drip down to his eyes from a cut on his forehead. She stood and kicked him from his place propped up against the wall so that he was lying on the floor.

     "I am the Kraken," she hissed, rolling him over onto his stomach with her foot.

     Fios sent out a question about the statement, and Emma shrugged, stuffing the pistol into the belt of her jeans before jumping up onto his back.

     "I need a flashy name to scare them. Do you think you can make your stab wound there look like a shotgun hole?"

     Fios concentrated his magic, pointing his horn towards the dead man. "Done."

     Emma put her arms around his neck and leaned forward. "Thanks for coming to get me, Frank," she sent to his mind.

     "You always feel the need your feelings into words when I am already aware of your gratitude," he said with a smile.

     "Yeah, well put it down to my humanity like we usually do." She pointed to the window and Fios trotted over to kick it in. The glass fell onto the carpet as if it had been smashed from the outside. He moved to the next window to smash it outwards. As they were five floors up, it would look as though Emma's rescuer had used a helicopter to save her. It would be sure to confuse and terrify whoever thought it would be a good idea to kidnap his human.

The contingency plan that Emma's father had put in place fit with Emma's plans perfectly. At first she had been frustrated when a lawyer turned up at her house - she had never told him where she lived, but was it any surprise that the mob boss had needed to find out every detail of her life? When he had presented her with details to accounts with more money than she knew he had, she was less upset at his intrusion. What use were lawyers, if they couldn't find a way to sidestep pesky inheritance and estate laws? He had joked with her, sipping coffee from a tea cup because Emma had never seen any point in owning mugs when she didn't drink the foul concoction herself.

     While the matter of distributing his legal estate was going on, Emma had bought a failing factory to use as her base of operations for the Kraken. She'd reached out to a few old friends from work and convinced them that she was now working for him, using those she knew for a fact were loyal to get the word out that they should join her. The loyalties of those in her father's business were shaky, she'd always known that, so she chose those she contacted carefully, and those she appeared to even more so. Within a week, she had a staff of a receptionist, two bodyguards and a runner, with the addition of a business manager her father's lawyer had recommended to keep the factory running as a factory as well as some people left on the inside to recruit from Jareel's business. They were understandably curious about the Kraken, but they didn't take much convincing to follow his rules when Emma explained he was going to help her reclaim her father's business and create a partnership between them.

The Kraken was ruthlessly efficient at getting his name out into the city. He managed to attract half the cops to his side of the conflict, and even pulled off a few successful hits on some of Jareel's leading men. It became more of a certainty than a rumour that Emma had joined with him. Emma had a few sources on the inside of his operation to confirm that the Kraken was certainly making Jareel nervous. One of the informants was the boss's personal runner, a young man named Trent. He sought her out, explaining to one of her people that he was once loyal to her father, but couldn't accept Jareel's coup like he was meant to. Suspicious of him, Emma would give him duties through a middle-man. She didn't want to reveal herself and have this guy come out as a triple-crosser. He was useful though, and slowly proving himself. It had been a few weeks since her father's death, and Jareel was having a party to congratulate himself. Trent had mentioned that Jareel expected her to go and try something, so had set up a trap. Emma's plans didn't involve gatecrashing a party, but upon hearing this news, she decided she couldn't miss it.

     Upon finding that her stuck up nemesis's idea of a celebratory party was to throw an olden days-style ball, Emma was less enthusiastic about attending. Nevertheless, she found herself sitting in the chair of a blabbermouth stylist, insisting that even though she said she'd wanted to look as different from her normal self as possible, she didn't want to dye her hair. Dressing up was already far out of her comfort zone, and Emma wasn't about to do something semi-permanent just to spy on Jareel. When it was done and she finally had the courage to look into the mirror, she was impressed with how well the stylist had done. Her face framed by golden curls, rather than her usual straight-but-messy style, made a huge difference to her appearance. The face staring at her from her reflection was still her own, but a perfect disguise, especially when combined with her look of surprise instead of her usual scowl. It wouldn't take as much of Frank's magic as she had thought to be sure that no one would recognise her.

You know, I broke my own writing trends (I can't really call them rules, because they're not) doing this. I usually make at least three drafts of what I write before showing it to anyone else. This is a first draft, so when telling me how horribly-constructed this is, just give some gentle nudges in the not-crappy-writing direction. I'll probably re write this later to take the first draft edge off. I'll definitely re write this if I contradict myself in the next part of this story. So until next time, faithful readers...