She was dumb struck with the riveting symmetry in motion as the tiger rushed towards her. A violet, purple and red spectrum of colors dappled along its smooth, leather-sheen surface.
Fear clinched her gut. Before she could even seize control over her analytic functionality it acted on its own.
It had no time to spare to wait for her to react.
Vaporous fumes grew increasingly volumetric in her throat and lungs. It poured from her nostrils, and left in its flush a chemical burn whose pain pulsed from her tear ducts, and spread out across her face.
The beast was fast; already, it sprung up off of its hind legs, and into mid-flight, as it aimed straight for her.
She feigned a dodge to the left side. And rolled around its attempted swipe.
Even a scintilla of a second's delay in the Modality pushing her response would have cost Tasìa her head.
The tiger was prepared to snap it right off.
The Modality was no longer a mere frame of reference that added physiological biofeedback controls to her meditative state, it was a presence inside her.
The realization made her shudder as she once more seized control over her actions, but in her current predicament, given the enjambed stride of time she worked against, Tasìa had not a free moment to assess that anxiety.
Still she was not free from it and it made her unsteady.
As she kept her eyes focused on the cat she shuddered once more as the entity swelled back up into her awareness.
Amateurish, Tasìa. Breathe in! Control this!
When the Modality spoke again it instantaneously revealed its message in whole.
- This being, it comes from a place whose creatures are like nothing you have ever fought.
- It comes from the Resonance.
By the time the phase beast faced her once more Tasìa calmed herself down enough to become undistracted. She dodged to her right, and bounced off of an alley wall to get further distance from the phase beast.
In a counter-maneuver, enrapt in angry gnashing, it tried to bite down in a swipe where she had slumped her neck down to avoid its attack a mere fraction of a second before.
Tasìa took advantage of the beasts' predictable reaction that left it open to a counter-attack as it leapt out passed her. She delivered a swift stomping kick into the haunch of its left hind leg.
The muscularity beneath the creature's epidermis was something unfathomably dense for a beast that moved so agile. It was a solid mass with no divisible, exploitable weakness in its tendons.
Pain sprung forth from the back of Tasìa's knee where she strained her leg with the all too direct attack.
So damn foolish. I didn't even test it with a swipe or a feigned soft jab. Just a bullshit 'Imma gonna stick a boot up your ass' kind of professional wrestling schtick with that stomp.
Tasìa shook her head.
She would have experienced equal success if she had kicked the alley wall with full force instead of the phase beast.
A feral creature not given to mercy, it gave her not a second more time to reflect on the severity of the pain she now felt.
She caught a glimpse of its next surge.
With barely any time wasted to reposition itself, the tiger slammed to a stop. Its massive shoulders twisted around lunging towards her before it's jaws snapped once more at her face.
She jerked her head out of its range, dodged downward in a squat, raised up her revolver, and unloaded six rounds into the hefted arc at the bottom of the tiger's jaw.
Where the bullets met and flashed in the gleam of white hot phosphorous, its flesh rippled in a prismatic spray of colors that repeated in a sequenced pattern. One that remained consistent with each puncture.
With her sensorium pushed by the Modality, Tasia could see a crystalline structure embedded in the cells of its skin. That was the source of the orgy of colors.
She had little time to register all of this before her vision was consumed in the flash of white phosphorous.
The shrapnel of bullets bent and smashed on contact now flung back at her in a hailström.
A bullet ricocheted against the inside of her wrist, and down the length of her arm. Heat seared from the wound and spewed warm blood where deeper up its violent path it had not cauterized.
Fortunately, it did do so fully where the white phosphorus heat met a major artery.
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Tasìa dropped the revolver.
A second bullet grazed against her neck and shoulder. Luckily enough, the second wound was more superficial than the first one.
"Fuck me to tears," Tasìa screamed.
Why had she not brought a higher caliber gun with her for backup? You could really only expect so much from even a .22 LR. She equipped with the expectation that she was merely skulking around the habitats of other people and not that of wild beasts roaming ferrel in a large metropolis.
From what she had always heard about the city of Asunción, it seemed like a reasonable choice to pack as she did.
Peaceful, prosperous city. Everybody is cooperative. No one wants to fight you.
Always a lie.
Tasìa rested for only as long as time afforded. Though she should have kept up a relentless attack while she had a slight advantage in her superior focused pace, not knowing what to exploit on the tiger gave her pause.
In spite of her apprehension over her new findings, Tasìa breathed in to focus the Modality, once more.
With an exasperated sigh, Tasia jumped up out of a vulnerable position the tiger would certainly exploit once the beast shook off the thumping she had given its jaw.
She rolled out of the tiger's path, leapt to the opposite wall where the garbage bins lined up, and scampered up out of its immediate reach.
The sound that came from the beast as it watched her escape chortled more like laughter than a wild animal's growl.
It was a taunt.
"Oh shit, please don't leave me," Petro screamed.
A tiny voice in her head exclaimed, dude, you are so on your own right now, but it was the tiniest of voices. That cynical side of her was not in the driver's seat at this point.
Though she still considered his attempt to murder Fodor to have been an unjustifiable act, she now understood that it was not a malicious nor spiteful one.
His fear was understandable and it was a fear that she shared. Tasìa also wanted Petro alive. He was being cooperative with his answers to her questions before the beast interrupted.
However, what could she do to save him? Just as she asked this question of herself, the beast noted Petro's presence.
Their little dust-up made both thief and beast forget the spook was still there for that moment they tangled.
The tiger turned around and snapped at Petro's left foot. With a violent toss and shake of its head it ripped the appendage off. Then, showing real spite, it spat the severed foot back out at the man's face.
Petro's scream pierced the air for a thousand yards. If dancers remained on the patio back at La Señora Azul, they definitely heard it.
Tasìa leapt down with a back flip. By the time she reached the ground, the stiletto blade was well-placed in her right hand. Tasìa swept her arm along a side-swiping arc, and made piercing contact inside the beast's left ear.
Before it could even react, she withdrew the blade.
It howled and tried to shove her aside. She rolled away towards where her gun fell before the phase beast could make contact.
Tasìa picked up the revolver, and scampered back up the wall. Below her, as Petro tried crawling away from the beast, it glared at her.
Her continued distraction was the only chance that the spook had to survive long enough to get treatment. She wasn't even sure if it could be killed by conventional means.
Who bullet proofs a tiger and not have to fear for their own lives as a result? What counter-measures did they have to keep it in control.
Tasìa did not let her fears show as she sneered back at the beast with a mocking glare of her own.
"It just fucks with your sense of propriety that I am faster than you doesn't it?"
She asked the beast.
It answered with the roar out of the depths of hell. It's eyes narrowed in threat.
With derisive laughter, she taunted the beast so it would not attempt to go after the much easier prey.
"So, tell me how you really feel about it?"
It was going to attempt to leap, she surmised.
Tasìa shifted all of her weight from her left arm pressed upright against the wall and to her fingers that grasped deep into the brick nooks.
Solidly positioned, She fired four shots into its black eyes; two in each one.
It shook its head in response, but the bullets once more ricocheted off with little effect.
Except, for it's eyes that dappled with fractured light.
That has to mean something.
There was nothing more that she could do to prevent the tiger from leaping onto the bin and using it to reach her with a forward thrust.
She entered slow time, pushed her body up just as the tiger bounded forward. The tips of her toes positioned well bought her a little time.
Tasìa loaded a moon clip into the Magellani revolver.
As she prepared for her counter-move, Tasia studied the contours of its skin for vulnerabilities. She pressed the Modality for the vision to see more minutely into the skin of the phase beast's hide.
There, a grid like pattern formed along the surface with nodal points sprouted where its bone structure was most dense.
Beneath her, the tiger thrusted itself further up the wall. She anticipated the maneuver and pushed herself off the brick plane. While in mid-air, just out of the tiger's reach, her upper body pulled to the left so she could make her two shots.
She shot it dead center along its left shoulder bone. For the second shot, Tasìa aimed for its first rib where the bone mass beneath its flesh was at its thickest.
As she suspected, a twin set of spectral ripples appeared in quick succession. Where the wave patterns met along the beast's flesh, a fissure occurred.
She also suspected she did not have long to exploit this development. Tasìa, once more, dropped the revolver. In exchange, she grabbed the stiletto from her boot.
Now, with no contact left between her and the wall, gravity sent her racing back down. She took advantage of the tiger's attempt to twist around and face her.
For the quadruped, the maneuver placed it in a vulnerable position.
Tasìa slammed her knees into its neck as she arced her arm in a downward motion.
She made contact with the fissure. To her delight, the skin of the beast ripped beneath the blade, letting it sink to the hilt as if the titanium-hard tendons melted to the slice of its edge.
However, she created a bigger problem for herself. She heard the cracking sound of her right knee when she pulled that stunt.
Moments later, she felt the pain as it surged up from her not-so-funny bone. Tasìa could no longer control the knee's movement, and, now, along with the tiger, she was in free fall and about to slam down into the bin below.
It was an odd time for music lyrics to come to mind but they did.
Never say die. Never say die. But this time, kiss our asses goodbye!
The tiger landed on its back with it's vertebrae stretched out in an arch that slammed into the side rail of a trash bin support holder.
Tasìa left leg still functioned reasonably enough. She dug her foot into the tiger's nut sack, and used it to kick off for a relatively safe landing that put her on her ass.
The tiger, screeching like a huge scowling cat, flipped entirely into the trash bin. It knocked loose a support pole which Tasìa had to roll to dodge when it hit the ground.
She looked around the alley. Petro was tying off his belt into a tourniquet for his severed limb. His second severed limb for the evening.
She turned around to face the tiger, and she yelled at it.
"I hope that is all the fight you got in you, you son of a bitch, cause I know that is enough for me."
It responded to her with a dismissive growl.
Nope, it said, give it a few seconds and it would be ready for round two.