Ava’s cross counter ran along the man’s arm, catching him hard in the jaw with a crack and sending some blood spurting out the corner of his mouth. For his part, a spike shot out of his own arm into Ava’s, impaling it and sending pain through the whole right side of her body. He smirked, having seemingly gotten her on the ropes.
“If you have a Code,” Ava said, gritting her teeth through the pain, “then how come Sam didn’t see you coming?”
“That’s just because I’m better at this than you kids are,” the man said, using the spike as leverage to throw Ava to the ground and driving his knee into her chest, knocking the wind out of her and making her gasp for air.
As if to carry on the theme, rather than using his Code of Flesh Blade to finish the job quickly, he reached for her throat and wrapped his hands around, squeezing. Ava tried to push him off, wheezing.
Holy shit, fucking help, she thought to Soo-jin, who was standing in the front door mystified.
What the hell do you want me to do!? Last time I tried helping, I made a Tetsuo, and I’m pretty damn sure you don’t want that in your living room! Soo-jin thought through Ava, an indignant look on her face.
Then, an idea occurred to Ava. One she’d already used before, in a similar situation, granted, but she’d never felt any shame about going back to the same well twice, and felt no need to start now. She leaned her head, neck and chest forwards, pushing with an amount of force that surprised the former bodyguard and caught him off balance, and sank her teeth into his forearm as hard as she could, ripping through flesh. That arm loosened, and spitting the bloody chunk of meat directly into his face loosened the other, as he stood there, clutching the bleeding hole in his wrist.
“Fuck,” he grunted. “You fucking bitch!”
Ava didn’t want to use her Code; with all the blood, they were already making a hell of a mess of her home, and she didn’t want to add property damage or sprayed organs on top of that. In addition, her right arm sent waves of agony through her body every time she lifted it; she wasn’t even entirely sure if her Code would work with her left arm, and the other was useless for anything more than hanging limply by her side at the moment.
“Guess we’re even, now,” Ava said, circling around to get into the kitchen for a weapon. The man chuckled. “What the fuck is your name, even, anyways?” she asked.
“Guess that’s only fair,” he said. “Blade Master.”
“Not very creative, huh?” Ava asked, grabbing a large chef’s knife and flipping it into a reverse grip, before crouching down and breaking into a charge. This needed to be the killing blow, or she was done. No half measures, no superficial cuts; she needed the knife to go straight into his heart, throat or brain.
Everything seemed to go in slow motion for her as the adrenaline shot up. Before he could react, Ava was able to circle around him, hold the knife to his throat, and stab him through the side of the neck, tearing outwards as he made a horrible gurgling noise and fell to the ground.
Ava breathed a sigh of relief, and then felt searing pain shoot through her abdomen; on his way down, Blade Master had used his Code to send a spike of flesh-metal directly through Ava’s stomach, impaling her to the wall.
“Fuck me,” she groaned. “God damn it.”
He twitched and let out his final gurgling attempt at a breath, and the spike vanished, but the hole in Ava’s abdomen did not, and blood poured out of it. The last thing she saw, before everything went black, was Soo-jin rushing to her side; she could hear Lydia rushing in through the door as well.
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When Ava woke up, she was in a hospital bed, with bandages on her arm and stomach and an IV in her good arm. Sam was by her side, holding her hand; Soo-jin was nowhere to be found, but a gift basket with a card written in Korean, that Ava assumed was from her, was on the side table. In a chair, near the door, sat Lydia.
“Well, I’m not handcuffed to the bed,” she said. “That’s good news.” Sam burst out laughing at this.
“Yeah, don’t worry, we covered for you,” he said. “Cops are treating it like a robbery gone wrong. Their guess for the holes in you is that he had a gun they didn’t find.” Lydia looked up, too.
“Mija, you’re awake?” she asked. “Thank God.”
“Jesus, how long was I out for that y’all were that worried?” Ava asked.
Sam did some quick mental math.
“Uh… the fight happened on Monday evening, and it’s Saturday morning, so about four and a half days,” he said.
Ava blinked.
“Jesus fuck,” she said. “No wonder Soo-jin’s not here, I missed her flight back.”
“Yeah, she was here pretty much the whole time,” Sam said. “She pretty much only left to get you that gift basket, and to go home. Even when you weren’t even in the room, and they had you in surgery, she was still in here. She slept in the damn chair instead of going back to your place. She was really hoping she was gonna see you wake up.”
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“Shit,” Ava said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to do it in time.” Sam gestured at the gift basket.
“She left you her contact info,” he said. “She said you can use Google Translate on the card and you’ll get the gist. Or, I guess thought it might be more accurate?” Ava smiled, looking at the gift basket, then had a quick moment of realization.
“Wait, Soo-jin didn’t have money,” Ava said. “Who paid for the gift basket?”
“Don’t worry, I got it,” Sam said. “By the way, she also told me what you called me to that guy.” Ava blushed.
“Yeah, uh, I…” she stammered.
“It’s okay. I had a lot of fun with our little date. I feel like you did, too. If you’re down to keep going out, I’m good with it too,” he said. Ava smiled.
“I don’t think I can get up right now, so come here,” she said. He did, and she pulled him down and kissed him, then leaned into his ear. “Dude, this fucking sucks ass compared to the kind of healthcare we were getting. You know anyone else with a doctor Code?” she whispered.
“I can put some feelers out,” Sam whispered. “I actually got that Wolf Rogan guy from the tournament’s number on the boat back, plus we know Soo-jin, so we’re a little more looped in than we were before. But it might be a couple days, so get used to hospital Jell-O in the meantime.” Ava groaned with annoyance.
“Fuck,” she groaned. “I miss getting to just sleep it off and Wolverine this shit because someone put their Jesus hands on me.”
“Yeah, I miss Scott, too,” Sam said. “By the way, if you’re in pain, hit that button and you get morphine,” he added, gesturing at the button on the left side of the hospital bed. Ava immediately mashed it four times in quick succession, and then sank into the bed.
“Thank you,” she slurred. “Boyfriend.” Sam blushed and grinned like an idiot, and then Ava leaned her head back and started snoring.
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The next few days went by uneventfully; Ava laid there in her hospital bed, occasionally dosing herself with morphine, watching various terrible daytime television shows, and messing around on her laptop, which her mother had helpfully brought from the apartment.
She ended up doing a fair bit of retail therapy; she had initially given her mother the black card to grocery shop with, but as soon as she got it back, she immediately started looking for a laptop that could actually play some games (and, ideally, cure the boredom that was starting to set in). After a few minutes of searching on Newegg, she settled on a seventeen-inch MSI laptop with an Intel Core i9 processor, a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080TI video card, thirty-two gigabytes of RAM, and a huge solid-state drive that cost about four thousand dollars; the fastest shipping to her apartment complex, one day, cost another thirty. She also ordered a couple of Gunpla model kits- a High Grade Char’s Zaku II, and a Qubeley in the same scale- and a pair of Bandai-branded “entry nippers” to cut the plastic sprues with; she had nothing but time, and needed to come up with hobbies.
As the items came in, Lydia brought them to the hospital, and the boredom started to fade. It helped that Sam came by, every day after school, ostensibly to drop off her homework, but in reality to pretty much do it for her and just spend time cuddling. He kept her updated on his search for a Code-wielding healer; as it turned out, Wolf knew someone, and he was willing to call in a favor to get it done, but he needed the flight paid for. Sam covered it, and about four days later (and well ahead of schedule for her expected recovery time), Ava had a new visitor, a middle-aged man in a leather jacket with short brown hair and unkempt stubble.
“This the guy?” Ava asked, as Sam stood there proudly, with his hand on the man’s shoulder.
“Yep,” Sam said. The man extended his hand to Ava to shake it.
“Dr. Nick Leonidas,” he said. “So you’re the champion, huh?”
“The one and only,” Ava said. “Can we get this over with?”
Dr. Leonidas shrugged, and held his hands above Ava’s stomach. A glow began to form between his hands and her body, as if he was manipulating some sort of energy, and the wound began to repair itself, as if by magic. He did the same over her arm, and the hole in it mended itself, as well.
She began taking out her IV, but then had second thoughts and hit the morphine button one last time for the road before doing so.
“Well, I feel fucking great,” she said. “What do I owe you, doc?”
“You kidding me? You’re the champ,” he said. “The amount of attention I’m gonna get from telling other parasite hosts I treated you is gonna pay for my time and then some. And I kinda owe it to you for not killing Wolf, anyhow, he’s a good friend and a good guy.”
“Shit, thanks, then,” Ava said, patting herself off and looking at Sam. “Hey, you got my clothes, by any chance?”
He held up one of the bags from Hot Topic, another bag from Levi’s, and another bag from Victoria’s Secret, all from their shopping trip.
“This got you covered? Didn’t wanna poke around in your closet, so I figured this was the safe way to do it,” Sam said. Ava smiled.
“God, I’m glad I just went ahead and rolled with it when I found out you had a thing for me,” she said. “You’re a fucking gem.” Sam blushed. “That said, though, both of you, get out so I can change my clothes in peace.”
Sam looked at Dr. Leonidas and shrugged, and the two stepped out and waited and made small talk, returning when Ava called out. When they re-entered the room, she was wearing an Iron Maiden T-shirt, a pair of tight-fitting straight-leg jeans, and her Chuck Taylors.
“You feeling okay? My whole reiki thing work out alright on you?” Dr. Leonidas asked. “That’s what your boyfriend here tells me my whole deal is. Smart guy, you’ve got.”
“Oh, yeah, I feel fucking amazing,” Ava said. “Better than ever.”
“Good to hear,” he confirmed. “Just, fair warning, though. You know how I gave you free services because you’re the champ? You’re gonna get a lot of positive attention like that from the good guys, like me and your boyfriend Sam and whatnot, but you’re also gonna attract some pretty serious negative attention, especially since you don’t have some big mega-corporation backing you. There’s gonna be people seeing that you’re the strongest, and deciding that they could totally kick your ass, or that they need to either get you on their side or kick your ass, or you know the drill,” he added, going on for a bit as Ava listened.
“So basically, we’re in Goku times now, and I’m gonna be having villains pop up out of nowhere who wanna come fight the strong person?” Ava asked, slurring a tiny bit.
“I… that’s actually not the worst way of putting it, I guess? Damn, you’re a little young to know Dragon Ball Z. Sam told me your mom’s pretty cool, and I buy it now,” Dr. Leonidas said. “Just… don’t think of it like you’re the main character in an anime, okay? The stakes are high. If you fuck up, you might die, like you nearly did when Blade Master came after you, and there’s no Dragon Balls to wish you back to life.”
Ava rolled her eyes. So far, she’d fucked up quite a bit, and was not dead. However, she knew, deep in her heart, that there was a truth to Dr. Leonidas’ statement as he walked out of the hospital room, leaving only her and Sam to gather their things; she needed to watch her back closely, because she had a massive target painted on it.