Suffocating silence...

A moment where everything beyond the present ceases to exist...

The kind of sensory deprivation that precedes the storm of inevitability...

And just like that, as if a switch had been flipped, the once-mild snowstorm began to rage in earnest.

The wind howled through the outdoor parking lot, whistling through the spaces between parked cars, producing an eerie, unsettling tone. The nearby elm trees bordering the parking lot rustled and occasionally whipped to and fro under the wind's spell, the powdery snow resting on their branches violently dislodged and scattered through the air. It almost seemed as if the already barren trees were disintegrating beneath the wind's caress.

Zoé's auburn hair fluttered in the fierce wind, a few loose strands whipping across her cold, unblinking green eyes that glared from beneath her tinted sunglasses. Her flawless posture and frigidly beautiful demeanor added to the deadly allure she exuded—a radiant rose surrounded by a thicket of poisonous thorns, both tempting and yet unapproachable. At that moment, looking at Zoé was like taking a gamble on losing your breath, your heart, and your mind, all at once.

Zoé lifted her hands with measured slowness, her palms spread open and facing outward.

The two hooded men remained as still as statues, but their tense body language hinted at the potential for sudden, explosive movement. Zoé could see their eyes glinting beneath the shadows of their hoods, sharp and predatory. They were waiting, watching, their muscles coiled like springs ready to snap. The distance between them felt charged.

Zoé's movements were slow and deliberate as she removed a glove. The strap buckles made a faint clicking sound as she loosened them, revealing her smooth and delicate alabaster fingers with matte indigo nail polish that matched her lipstick. She tucked the glove into a coat pocket and repeated the process with her other hand, retrieving a black hair tie from a separate pocket to secure her hair as she lowered the hood.

The wind playfully tousled Zoé's silken hair in every direction, briefly making her the dictionary definition of a hot mess. She deftly gathered her locks with both hands and fashioned them into a sleek low ponytail. With her hair tamed, she started unbuttoning her coat, beginning with the top button and slowly making her way down the center of her chest. Each button was undone with a slow, deliberate movement, revealing a black long-sleeved roll-neck top perfectly tucked into a pair of dark-washed, high-waisted stretch jeans that accentuated an hourglass figure.

However, two details stood out from the rest.

The first was the tanned-leather shoulder holster retention strap system on either side of her torso. Under her right arm, there was a double magazine pouch, while under her left arm, the butt of a black polymer handgun frame peeked out around her ample curves.

The second distinct feature was the leather drop leg holster secured tightly to her outer right thigh, with a polished dark wood grain grip visible beneath the thumb break.

The two hooded men exchanged a glance before shifting their focus back to Zoé.

Zoé noted the hooded men's actions but made no sudden moves. Instead, she simply slid out of her coat, held it up in front of her, folded it in half, and draped it over her left forearm. Then, with her other hand, she delicately removed her sunglasses, unveiling a pair of cold, twinkling emerald eyes. She then laid the folded coat onto the snowy asphalt beside her, gently placing the sunglasses on top. As she looked up at the two shadowy figures, she rose to her full height, squaring her shoulders and keeping her hands loose at her sides. With a crack of her neck, she lifted her chin; a look of disdain flickered across her face as she assessed the pair.

"Come on, then," she muttered softly, her eyes flickering warily between the pair. There were no discernible signs, tells, or indications that they were about to attack. Zoé scrutinized her surroundings with narrowed eyes, wondering why the two men hadn't made a move yet. 'What are they waiting for?' she thought, her senses on high alert as she took in the surroundings: the cold wind and powdery snow brushing against her skin, the faint rustling of trees, the creaking of car suspensions, a hint of gasoline mingling with the fresh winter air, and the electric buzz of the overhead landscaping lights...

‘... the light!’ Zoé’s pupils dilated as her undead heart uttered a single, profound beat that thudded against her chest like a hammer. The slumbering vitae in her veins awoke like a roaring river, causing blackened veins that stood out in stark contrast to her skin to spread across her entire body. The world around her seemed to slow down and sink into a pool of molasses, while the whites of her green eyes noticeably darkened.

Zoé's heightened senses caused the snowflakes to appear suspended in the air, each delicate detail standing out in sharp relief. The trees bent and swayed languidly, like seaweed in a gentle current, and the once-howling wind now sounded like a soft, mournful whisper.

Without hesitation, Zoé dashed over five meters in the blink of an eye, appearing in the center of a cone of yellow light cast by an overhead parking lot light. She moved with impossible fluidity and grace, like a formless blur, as if she had no physical body at all. Then, as she turned, she caught sight of countless shadowy tendrils slowly retreating into the darkness. They had been closing in on the spot where she'd stood just a split second before. Her mental grip on her vitae loosened, causing the black veins to disappear beneath her neckline and up her sleeves. Her pupils returned to normal as she smugly turned to the two men, placing the palm of her right hand on the thumb break covering her custom Colt 1911.

"Anything else?" she asked in a challenging and menacingly frigid tone.

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The two men exchanged a glance... Then all hell broke loose.

The man on the right quickly threw out both hands and scrambled for cover behind an SUV. A surge of coruscating, liquid shadows coiled around his forearms like serpents as he manipulated Oblivion energies, the darkness beyond the boundary of her landscaping light shifting and churning in a fit of anger. The air around him seemed to thicken and darken, the very light bending away from the concentrated energy forming at his fingertips. His eyes glowed with a malevolent intensity and the shadows seemed to pulse and breathe, undulating to a silent rhythm.

The man on the left charged towards her at a breakneck speed, causing the asphalt to crack under the force of his acceleration. The sound reverberated through the parking lot but was soon muffled by the howling snowstorm. The air around him seemed to crackle with faint energy, each movement of his body resulting in a blur of speed and power. Even from where Zoé stood, she sensed his approach with the force of a freight train, his every rapid step pounding the ground.

‘Shit. Disrupt the Oblivion wielder. Stall the brawler. Keep them guessing.’ Zoé instantly assessed the situation.

Zoé's muscle memory kicked in as she swiftly released the thumb break on her drop leg holster and drew a suppressed Colt 1911. Without hesitation, she assumed the Weaver firing stance, positioning her right foot back and turning her left side toward the target. She extended her right arm, elbow slightly bent, and cupped her left hand under the right, holding the handgun in a two-handed grip. She smoothly aligned the iron sights onto the distant Shadow and fired an opening series of paced shots as she walked steadily forward toward the edge of the light.

Her breath was steady, her heartbeat a calm metronome to the screaming winds and the visual chaos of the fight. Each step she took was measured, calculated, her eyes never leaving the target. The familiar weight of the Colt in her hands was a comfort, the motions of aiming and firing ingrained in her very muscles. She felt a surge of focus, her world narrowing down to the iron sights and the figure in her crosshairs more than ever. A single, perfect moment.

The snowstorm quickly swallowed the muffled sound of silenced gunfire as two nickel-plated brass jacketed hollow point rounds tore through Shadow's chest. The impacts were immediate and devastating, causing the man to stagger back and drop onto one knee. Beneath his hood, his expression shifted from concentration to shock and his breaths came in ragged gasps, each exhale sending puffs of mist into the cold air. He clutched at his chest, the vitae seeping through his fingers in thick, dark rivulets.

The liquid shadows around his arms flickered and writhed, losing their cohesion as his control wavered. His eyes held a flicker of fear and disbelief. He tried to grab hold of the shadows again, but the darkness slipped through his grasp like fine sand. The tendrils of darkness converging on Zoé from all sides quivered and faltered as their master's focus wavered, their forms distorting and fluctuating, with some even falling apart and dissipating entirely.

Zoé felt the pressure around her ease as the shadows retreated, their threat neutralized for the moment.

But she wasn't nearly done with him. Relying solely on her intuition, she took a calculated risk and barely managed to get off one more shot just before she had to dodge a haymaker that would've easily decapitated her. As she ducked, she observed the results of her third round tearing through Shadow’s right shoulder, expanding to inflict maximum damage, and sending him tumbling onto his back.

‘He'll be down ten seconds at most...’

In the blink of an eye, Runner closed the distance between them and delivered a brutal snap kick to Zoé's right forearm as she brought her handgun up. The bones in her arm fractured, causing her to bite back a scream as her arm was thrown wide and her right side was exposed. Despite the pain, Zoé managed to maintain a death grip on her beloved pistol.

Her vision momentarily blurred from the agony, but Zoé's resolve was unshakable. She gritted her teeth, forcing herself to stay focused. The pain was intense, but she had endured worse. Her mind raced, formulating a plan even as Runner pressed his advantage by following up with a series of blindingly fast open-palmed strikes and vicious elbows to her solar plexus. He managed to land over half a dozen blows and break half as many ribs before Zoé could retaliate. But with Runner inside her guard, and with a broken dominant hand, her only choice for retaliation was to regroup.

But this motherfucker was tough as nails, and he wasn't giving her an ounce of freedom. She parried where she could, using her remaining strength to deflect the worst of the blows. The world narrowed to the flurry of strikes and the desperate need to survive. Her upper body screamed in pain, but her mind remained ice-cold, calculating her next move.

Zoé twisted with the momentum of her arm being thrown aside and stumbled back to gain some distance. Despite the pain shooting up her arm, she managed to clumsily holster her Colt and fall into her balanced fighting stance, knowing that defense was her best option until her arm had enough time to heal.

‘Eight seconds,’ Zoé restarted her estimate for when Shadow would need another dose of lead.

Ducking under a combination of open-palm strikes, Zoé narrowly avoided a back-foot pivot spin kick aimed at her head. She then sidestepped to evade a follow-up snap kick to her midsection and used her left forearm to deflect a wide strike. Quickly reading a wind-up kick from Runner's posture, she delivered a swift kick to his thigh, pushing him back.

The kick landed with a satisfying thud, momentarily breaking Runner's rhythm. Zoé seized the brief reprieve to assess her injuries. Her arm throbbed, and each breath sent shards of pain through her ribs, but her regenerative abilities were already at work, mending the worst of the damage. She couldn't afford to falter; the next few seconds would be critical.

Runner stumbled, momentarily off balance from Zoé's counterattack. However, she didn't pursue the advantage, choosing instead to stand her ground and allow her regenerative abilities to heal her injuries. Zoé sniffed, cracking her neck before straightening up and turning her left shoulder towards Runner, her mending hand held behind her back while her left arm extended outwards. With a condescending smirk, she made a 'come-hither' motion, daring him to try again.

‘Three seconds,’ she kept count.

Runner's face twisted in anger, the condescension in Zoé's gesture igniting a fury within him. His hands clenched into tight fists, the sound of joints cracking filling the air as he tensed up. In a blur of motion, he launched himself forward, propelling into the air with a powerful leap.

Zoé's vitae-enhanced perception allowed her to track Runner's movements until the very last moment. Then, she twisted her body to the side and tucked her left arm to her chest, narrowly avoiding his overhead heel kick. Everything slowed down to a crawl as her eyes darkened, and her vitae coursed through her body. When Runner's torso passed her shoulder height, she unleashed a devastating left elbow strike like a shotgun blast.

The impact was immediate and brutal, Zoé feeling the satisfying crunch of bone beneath her elbow.

Time seemed to catch up in a rush, the world around them snapping back into frenetic motion as Runner's momentum carried him forward with enough force to break even more bones as he struck the parking lot asphalt and tumbled through the snow. The snow around him turned brackish red and black as his vitae spilled out.

“Zero,” Zoé softly muttered, drawing her Colt and spinning toward where she’d downed Shadow.