At gun and my loaned sword at the ready, I walked the two black-clad men standing back down the inside of the building with all the elegance that my paranoid ass could muster, which was near zero. I was frequently jumpy, but having a good reason to at least make my jumpiness explainable.
We got down the short stint to the stairs. The rest of the doors were actually behind us down the hall, though why that was the case was beyond me. There had only been the three, but from the stairs was the sound of many more footsteps beneath us.
And there were two familiar voices coming from down the stairs as we came back down.
“You have wasted your time, Kinslayer. Though I can see you still hound this building like the mongrel you are,” said the terror girl.
“Silence, you foul-mouthed mongoloid, before I cut that treacherous tongue from your mouth with a hot knife,” said Blackbird.
We got to the central landing of the stairs with the three, and Blackbird shouted, “Ah, wonderful, some competent-” before cutting off as I stepped around the turn behind his wounded grunts.
“Good to see you again, Fed boy. When is the wedding?” I drawled, the joke helping me to steel my nerves.
I pushed the three down in front of me, shifting my cigarette in my mouth.
I could see his face as he started from slightly annoyed and mostly deadpan to a cold and deadly anger, the kind you could only see in the eyes.
The girl, too, seemed to be oriented toward me. It was far more evident on her face. She might have been military, but she clearly didn’t care for that face they did, the one that made them look a little constipated.
She had a pair of manacles on her wrists, but despite being a prisoner, she clearly had a whole lot of freedom to act on her own.
“What are the three of you doing,” Blackbird seethed.
“She shot-” he started.
“I fucking heard that, mong! Why is she still alive?” he shouted.
He was so angry, but he was also… How to put it. Impotent? It was like I was watching a kid shout and throw a fit.
The man was clearly not the most stable individual. Taking that into account, I reoriented the cigarette in my mouth and acted as wisely as I could given the situation.
“Listen, Blackbird. If we're going to start using insult, I have you beat; you gangly slant-eyed slack-jawed glow-in-the-dark government spook. Hows about we both get out of this machine that turns federal agents into fucking corpses before we decide to do something stupid, like trip an alarm?” I told him as flippantly as possible. The side peace opened her mouth, and I levelled my gun at her with a quick, “You don’t get to talk here.”
“My men will come running at a moment's notice,” Blackbird told me, not letting my words rattle him.
“I’m walking out that door, Blackbird… Whether you like it or not… And don’t give me that you’re surrounded by nonsense, either. I know you didn’t bring enough men,” I told him, pacing down to be on equal footing.
I turned my ear as the cold eyes of a killer took me in. They were glacial, terrible, unstoppable forces like the glaciers of my father's native land. I listened to the men running roughshod over the side rooms, and a foot count gave me a rough six or so men in two teams. Better in here than out there.
The paper felt hot in the line of my pants as he, seemingly unbothered but clearly probing for detail on the situation, said, “I wonder over who you are, a foreigner. A spy? You don’t act it, but I have a good enough reason to treat you like we treat rats.”
I gave him nothing on me, but I did give him something.
“Perhaps a rat I am, but I’m free range. And a good rat knows when to scurry. Listen, I’m trying not to ruffle feathers here, Blackbird… But if you stop me from leaving this powder keg, I’ll have to reconsider not shooting you, and that would be bad for the both of us.”
I said it in the most unconfrontational way I could manage with a man who clearly wanted to draw a weapon on me that I could, and it was, as far as I could get it, without dipping a toe into my persona. The persona was less confrontational, but it also wanted to do three things at once, and I didn’t have the social capital to cover those.
“Oh? Such a good rat. You’re practically trained. It’s unfortunate that your place seems to be trapped and killed like your verminous kin,” he said.
I could see in the line of his body that he wasn’t going to move. He was winding himself up inside, holding his body ready to move as his muscles tensed.
He could get close enough fast enough that focusing on my gun would be a bad move. So instead, I said, “If we go fighting, she might just go stab you in the back. There's a lot a pair of cuffs can be used for,” and while I said it, I holstered my gun, stomping out my cig, the foe wood deforming slightly at the heat beneath my foot.
“She hates you about as much as me, and she has self-preservation. There are better ways to kill me than surrounded by my men; perhaps she can even find a way to get away with it one day,” he said, placing his hand on her shoulder.
It was more clever than I had given him credit for, in total honesty. By putting that thought in her head, she was more likely to attack me than he.
“Whatever you say, Blackbird. I imagine living with you must be the most soul-crushing role in existence. When you inevitably wear her down, I’ll expect an invitation to your wedding.” My mouth said.
Thank you, little demon. That seemed to help pull her back to a more neutral position.
“My hands might be tied, but if you don’t take your hand off my shoulder, you will lose it,” she told him coldly.
And just like that, I had levelled the playing field. I moved my sword to my right hand and fell into a duelling stance. It would have to be quick, but I had a few tricks that could make it quick. If he powered up his blade, I could flash us all again, but he was aware of that. Something he wasn’t aware of was just how hard I thought I could hit him, however.
The second I pulled my warform online, I could get power pushed directly into my attacks. I had ripped a piece of rebar out of concrete, and even if I could only get so much of that out without transforming, that would still be one hell of a wound, and if he somehow blocked, it would still be a hell of a wound.
The real trick was getting him wounded because I didn’t care about fighting; I was only fighting because I needed to pass through his reach and do so in a way where he couldn’t call for aid loud enough that anyone outside could hear it and get ready to gun me down the second I was free and clear.
It would only take ten to fifteen seconds to be out among the sprawling side streets and find my way back to safety.
He pulled out his blade, the short length familiar in its shape as he held it.
I had weapon length over him while his blade was unpowered, but he had a longer arm and that made it slightly more complicated.
Blackbird understood what me raising my blade meant, and he mirrored me.
“I will not lie. This goes beyond duty… I am going to enjoy this,” he said.
My blade was slightly awkward, but I let out a quick fake strike to test him. Last we had fought, I was on the defensive, not on a relatively equal playing field, and that meant I didn’t get a chance to test his metal.
One palm coming out as a distraction to mirror my own, he stepped in… And I altered the strike midway through, adding force by torquing my body. He realized it a moment before it would have hit him and quickly hopped back.
He had footwork. That kind of footwork wasn’t as common in a straight-up fight; instead, it was a sign that he was more used to fighting in the context of a duel or a spar.
We were two very different animals, but it came down to two things. Blackbird was a hoity-toity noble shit deep down, constantly surrounded by henchmen. His life had been led by a committee; his job was to boss around a bunch of underlings and then fight, not the other way around, and it showed.
My dad, bless him, had trained me to fight and fight like the stunted little goblin I was, and not just against one opponent. It was with a blade that was far more choice than the one I held now, but you didn’t train with a sword that could cut through anything anyway. I was trained to fight like my life was on the line and also fight like my own weapon would just as easily cut me.
It made you very aware of how you moved. He was practiced, but he was practiced on moving and attacking. Not fighting.
Playing into the strength of the blade, my strike landed, and while the strike wasn’t enough to cut deep, the blade drawing back let me score a very shallow cut. Blackbird didn’t like that; he had an ego and thought that made him hot shit.
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The whole encounter had him draw back slightly toward his cuffed companion, and that let me take one step toward the side without leaving myself open.
But while I was analyzing him, he was analyzing me right back. He stepped back up into striking distance, his hand still held out like he was going to catch the blade mid-air.
“Clever ploy,” he said, clearly not feeling his own words.
“Maybe for you,” I told him, “Perhaps you need to get your head checked.”
We quickly traded. I used my longer blade to try and score a hit on him, and he used his long arms to try and trade for my forearm before we both stepped back to avoid getting cut.
“You know, I expected you to whip out that power glove of yours and make that knife more than a paperweight,” I told him.
“Haste makes waste, round eye,” he said.
Translation: it's not charged. Bonus points, he brought a knife to a sword fight, the absolute moron.
“Oh? A shame. I suppose it’s a common enough problem for guys,” I told him before stepping in on him and bringing the blade in for a very obvious strike.
I was expecting him to either give up ground and let me circle or step in and fall for my ploy. The issue was that there were more than two answers.
Blackbird stepped in, and his hand, quick as could be, parried it.
With his hand.
It nearly impressed me enough to drop my jaw, but I managed to stop it.
His palm struck the blade from the side at the weak tip, turning the blade far enough that it robbed it of all of the power, forcing me to pull it back, and when I did, he stepped forward menacing me with his blade.
For most people, that was a bad thing. But while a long blade was weakest perpendicular at the tip, a sort blade was weakest below the blade. It was hard to parry a knife, but if you grab the wrist, the blade might as well not exist.
Both of us had a hand free; I couldn’t parry a strike like some kung-fu master, but I could grab a wrist just fine without it.
The blade halted as I griped Blackbird's wrist and pushed it so the blade didn’t point toward me. Blackbird fought back; he was bigger, and he had grown up under gravity, he unlike many, he had muscle mass to spare.
He started to press the knife back toward me, fighting back against me; the closer he got to the center of mass, the stronger he was.
He smirked.
I headbutted him, and then, as he went reading, I laid a cut on his leg, which got him to snarl and step back.
We circled again, and I grew closer to the door, about halfway there. I didn’t know for sure whether or not he knew but I could see an intensity in his eyes regardless and knew he was about to step it up.
I firmed up as his foot moved, and he powered up his blade, a cascade of vapour condensing from the air.
I had been wrong. His talk hadn’t meant ‘I have no power,’ it meant, ‘I didn’t want to use it.’ Probably
“Lilly,” I murmured quietly, “What happens if I power my blade and my blade meets his?”
“The blade is gaseous… It would just pass through. Both blades would just continue going as if they weren’t there. The vapour is strong enough to cut through cloth and skin, but not metal, I don’t think,” Lilly told me.
“Talking to yourself again?” He asked, “This song and dance is already tired out.”
“Your fucking honour is tired out. Either shut your mouth and fuck off or square up,” I told him.
“With pleasure,” he said, and then quieter, “you honourless cur.”
He moved, his blade coming up along his center, the muscles in his arm winding to slash as he took a half step toward me.
“Lilly, if you can do something to stop him from cutting me in half, I would appreciate it,” I told her and then prepared to trade, winding the muscles in my legs and core, the blade coming out to mirror him.
I tried to guess at how he would take this, but god alone knew and I was not him. I could do only one thing… Fly by the seat of my pants and pray this wasn’t where my luck turned sour.
We stood there, staring one another down grimly for the longest second I had experienced with a mortal man… And then we both snapped forward.
He sprung forward, forcing himself forward with a comparable speed typically reserved for me when I fought others, only now he was doing it against me. As he did so, a surge of power echoed both down to my blade and into my skin as Lilly did her best to stop him from causing me catastrophic harm. I could feel her doing something warming just shy of transformation cascading through much of my chest, coming out as a slight glow beneath my clothes.
I prayed she wasn’t just going to drop me into warform, but I trusted her and kept focused on the real threat, launching my own strike against him. I lunged to his left, going for a debilitating wound, something that would take him out of the fight.
Our blades scythed toward one another, him going straight for a killing blow, blade aimed to care me chest to gut, the tip of the blade finding its mark just beneath my collarbone as my blade made for his hip. He moved toward my left and I moved right, passing one another, blades finishing their strokes.
My strike slashed into Blackbird's thigh, just below the joint. It had just missed the bone. But a clean strike had cut upwards of an inch deep, and as he finished passing me, he fell forward with little in the way of grace.
I wasn’t much better; I got cut across the torso. The blade passed straight through my clothes and split my skin down the length of his strike, the vapour chewing down the bone. Where the bone was open, the blade pressed through, the nigh liquid nature of the blade pressing around bends and into my vulnerable meat beneath.
Luckily, I had more bone than I should have.
As I finished the strike, and registered my entire chest, nerves oddly silent for a moment before looking at it got them realizing I indeed was hurt and need to be aware of it.
But I wasn’t as hurt as I should have been. I had bony growths similar to the skin of my warform, patching holes in my ribcage and extending down to my belly.
A little spun up and not really caring, I murmured, “Thank you, Lilly,” I told her.
“A patch job at best. You have significant damage to both skin and muscle and slightly less significant damage to the internals. Take a stim,” she told me.
I nodded, and then, because I wasn’t free and clear, I snapped back to reality.
The door was closed; there was nothing between me and my freedom but a few mooks and a whole lot of pain.
Stumbling one step toward my freedom I managed to not drop my sword as I raised it intimidatingly at the only one in the room still capable of stoping me.
“I’m going to need you to stay out of my way,” I told her.
The patient and rather shocked woman stared at me, ribs exposed to her in front of me. She opened her mouth… Then, she closed it, her words never leaving, her head absolutely empty of rebuttal.
“You never had a chance,” I told her, doing my best to project absolute uncaring resolve, “Now I recommend the two of you get ready to leave.”
I started moving, the pain nearly enough to make my everything hurt, but I managed to pass off the snarl of pain as a snarl of contempt, the slow movement a slinking predatory gait.
It was one hell of a stunt, but I got it well enough, or so I figured.
“Don’t turn your back on me,” Blackbird, always wanting to have the last word, seethed.
“Then get up and stop me, dumbass. You’ve had your duel; now you listen. I’m not going to possibly explode sitting here listening to you act like a child. Whatever you’re looking for is gone. All their documents went up in smoke. I’m not giving you anything, and the walls are full of plastic explosives; I’m leaving. There is no honour in dying like a rat in a trap.” I told Blackbird. “I would recommend you and your pet work together to get out in… Thirty or so seconds.”
“And your proof?” he asked, arms wide in a gesture of disbelief as I stopped next to the wall and turned to face him.
His leg wound was bleeding like a mother fucker, the leg twitching. I must have hit a nerve because he had a hard time even lying down on his side.
I looked at him, looked to the wall, and then ever so gently stuck my newly freed blade between the wall panels until I felt it reach something beneath before prying it open. The panels were superficial, their bindings mostly friction, and so the blade pulled them free without bending the steel of the now bloodied blade.
Beneath the wall was the same off-grey putty.
“Is that enough for you, smart ass?” I asked him, “That looks like explosives to you? Because I know my way around explosive putty, given that I prefer the certainty of steel, and that’s not for small arms.”
The two of them looked toward it, drawing their eyes from me with a slowness, as if the moment they stopped looking straight at me, I would disappear. Their faces drew a picture-perfect ‘what the fuck,’ face in unison as if they were a pair of very distant twins sharing their brains telepathically.
“That’s the right face,” I said, “Now… I’ll be off. I would recommend you stop your men before they set off a trap and kill you all.”
I turned to leave and took steps in time with my heartbeat; I made three smooth strides through the door before, behind me, Blackbird shouted, “Everyone out! You! Help me to my feet, you-”
I left him behind out into the rows of buildings outside. The men outside were not ready to shoot me, and so instead, they scrambled at the sound of shouting like a bunch of bobbleheads, and I got out into the night scot-free.
“Thanks… Lilly. You save my guts in there,” I told her.
“Don’t do that again!” Lilly said tersely, “You traded blows with an artifact blade for no reason. You got into a dick-measuring contest! Take your stim!”
“All right, all right! I’ll take my stim. Jezz woman. I needed to satisfy him; otherwise, he would just keep coming. As it is, he’ll be bedbound for a time, even with a miracle treatment,” I told her.
She was right, at least a little.
I reached into the pocket box and got a stim, the east applicator a pinprick as I made my way into an alleyway and collapsed, all my grit spent.
I wheezed as my ass hit the grungey ground of the alleyway and counted my lucky stars that I probably didn’t leave a trail.
“I’m… I’m going to need you to call Pinky,” I told her.
“You can call me yourself, you know,” Pinky chimed from above me.
I wanted to shout, but my entire chest screeched as I moved to do it, and the shout came out in a “Uagh.” Quickly followed by a, “Damn it, woman. Will you not sneak up on me like that?”
“Nah,” she said, coming into view as I looked up.
Pinky was leaning forward on her deathtrap; I hadn’t even realized she was there.
“How long have you been watching me?” I asked, focusing on my breathing as blood wept from my front and down my pants.
“Like… Four minutes? I got here as fast as I could… Guess you did something dumb, huh?” Pinky said, staring down at me with absolute cheer despite my wounds.
There was Pinky. There is always an upside, even if you can’t see it.
“Blackbird almost stumbled on a monster in that house’s basement,” I told her.
“A monster? Jeeze. I suppose I can go back in and-” Pinky started, only for me to scrabble to stop her.
“No, Augh. No, the building is-” I told her, only for the relatively quiet dark of the lunar night to be ripped asunder and a whomp of hot air and an unhuman shriek so loud half the district would hear it.
The explosion sent hot air cascading out through the streets in a wave of force that made the siding rattle even at the distance I had made it.
“That,” I told her after the jarring thump of the explosion settled, and my organs decided they were, in fact, still inside me.
Pinky looked in the direction I had come from and then, with a back-and-forth head nod, said, “Well… I suppose that should finish it off. All’s well that ends well, I suppose… Well, let's get you moved. You look like you could use a bed… And pain killers… And a nice warm meal… Er… A warm meal right after your gut is properly healed.”
I did not interject in reasoned words but a “Mmhm” of agreement, eyes closing before I reached down the waistline of my pants and found the sheaf of papers.
Then, realizing where it had been situated, my eyes cracked open in a sudden ferocity that could not be understood by the average man. I pulled out the ruined papers and stared down at my work.
“I hope Blackbird got left behind in that fucking deathtrap.”
He hadn't been, though a minute later, as Pinky flew us away, we did get to see him and his group around the demolished building. The monster had tried to burrow out, it must have tripped something, because its freshly smashed body and a half destroyed building was collapsed on top of it.
It was hard to tell at this height who was who, because there were a whole lot of people down on the ground, but honestly, I bet where ever he was, he wasn't enjoying himself.
I was honestly suppressed that it hadn't turned into a crater.
At least it would fall to nothing soon, the boys on the ground might end up slightly demented, but that threat was done.
Now... Where had it come from?