Cora watched impassively, her unpredictable Reactimax implant activating as the barricade was turned to flying debris under Hawk’s charge. The knife that had been in Chain-Head’s hand was already flying towards the woman, but honestly, it looked ridiculous. You wouldn’t throw a knife at a freight train.
Time snapped back to its accustomed pace the same instant that knife lodged itself, surprisingly shallowly, into Hawk’s shoulder. The giantess acknowledged its presence with a grunt, but that was all, as she barreled past the guy who’d thrown it, straight into the stocky man behind him.
Now Hawk screamed. Rage and pain and fury burst from her throat as she bowled the man over, riding him to the ground. She raised one massive fist, wrapped in what looked like a length of rebar she’d bent herself.
That fist fell with meteoric impact, pushing the man’s hands, raised futilely in defense, all the way through his face and to the ground. Blood and brain pooled around her fist, quickly soaking into the dust of the street.
Well, someone had to get things started, Cora noted, and dashed forwards, hand white-knuckled around the shortsword Iain had handed her back at the house.
A flash of steel in front of her face, and one of Kyra’s karambits sparked off a new knife Chain-head had conjured from somewhere. One of his cronies wasn’t so lucky, the wickedly curved blade sprouting from his forehead like a death-metal unicorn.
That girl was fast. She wasn’t far behind her knife, wielding its twin and yet another of an apparently endless supply in a duel with Chain-head.
One look at that clash was enough to tell Cora she wanted no part in it. She would wade a little more shallowly into her first brush with up-close murder, thank you very much.
Fortunately, a target was easy to establish.
Hawk laughed, rebar-wrapped hand dripping with gore as two Links slashed at her crossed forearms. They bled, but more concerningly, they sparked, and Hawk seemed less than worried about the slash wounds she was taking. Her laughter stopped in an instant, shifting her arms just enough to send the next strike sliding off of her guard, then darting in to deliver an uppercut that might have straight up killed its recipient.
It was, obviously, an intimidating display. That was illustrated very nicely by the man who stood slackjawed watching the brutal ballet Hawk put on.
There was so much inside Cora telling her not to slide her sword into an unsuspecting man’s neck. It simply wasn’t something movie stars did, certainly not in public where it might make the tabloids.
A muzzle flash, deep crimson, flecked with brain and bone against a pristine white wall. Ears ringing from the shot.
Cora didn’t need Cadey to kill someone. That memory was her own.
She thrust the sword forward, a move she’d practiced a thousand times in kata, and a few times on the silver screen. For the first time, that move sent the tip of the sword into another living being.
The man let out a surprised ‘glk!’ and began to try and turn to stare at her. He looked offended, more than anything, when all he managed to do was slice his throat open more broadly. He fell to his knees, tip of the blade sliding from his neck and letting out a spray of blood that fizzled to ash against Cora’s forcefield.
She watched him die, watched the light leave his eyes. With a wound like that, it was quick. Quicker than she would have thought, honestly.
An impact on the back of her head, followed by an electric snap and the smell of ozone, reminded her this had never been a 1 v 1 fight.
She felt like, shield or no, her head should be ringing from that hit. Instead, she was fine. Cora whirled, coming face to face with a very surprised thug wielding a club he suddenly seemed much less proud of. Cora growled, bringing her own weapon around to knock his out of the way, planning on ending this duel before it had even started.
Would’ve worked too, if motion in her peripheral hadn’t triggered her Reactimax.
Another guy, with brass knuckles that looked a lot less makeshift than Hawk’s, but also less impressive, loomed on her right. He lunged towards her, coming in under her weapon, and swinging a fist up towards her ribs.
Cora tensed the wiry muscles in Linnea’s thigh, kicking herself back from her assault on the first man. It wasn’t quite enough to get her out of the path of the brawler, but it meant his blow was glancing.
It also didn’t hurt.
Cora had taken plenty of hits in her life. Stunts gone wrong, sparring accidents, bog-standard abuse; they always hurt, even the ones that barely landed.
Right. Thanks again, Cadey, Cora grinned to herself.
That was going to be a tough thing to internalize though, and she still danced out of the way of the brawler’s follow up strike.
His friend with the club was wise enough to press the advantage, but not wise enough to do it well. Seeing that second punch go wide, he stepped in, trying to bring his club around to crash against Cora’s cheek.
That would’ve been a great idea, if it hadn’t carried his left foot straight into the path of his friend’s right, causing them both to stumble.
Cora easily stepped out of the way of his falling club, circling to the right, and taking advantage of the brawler’s broken stance to slide the sword between his ribs.
The man died with a sound like a sigh, as the other Link let out a horrified scream of realization. That scream cut off into a gurgle as Cora replaced his windpipe with steel, then let him slide off the sword and onto the ground.
Well, not exactly a Jane Thick level fight scene, but whatever gets the job done.
This time, she didn’t lose track of the fact she was in a fight, immediately scanning the area to update herself on her friend’s conditions.
She needn’t have worried.
Hawk had been released from her berserk rage, and stood, dripping gore and grinning at Cora. The shallow wounds all over her arms bled, but not much, already appearing to be healing. It certainly didn’t seem to concern her. She let those ragged rebar knuckles slide off her hands to her belt, beginning to clap in mock appreciation.
Iain leaned lazily on his longsword, still buried in one of the three bodies that surrounded him. He nodded to Cora, wiggling his hand in the universal signal for ‘so-so’.
Kyra had apparently had the worst of it, but still looked untouched, just tired. She breathed heavily, doubled over above the ravaged corpse of Chain-head. She saw Cora looking, and stood up with visible effort, but put on as impassive of a face as she could.
“Well? What are you staring at me for, bitch?” Kyra hissed, “get harvesting!”
She punctuated the command with a karambit thrown into the back of Chain-head’s skull. Kyra followed it down, beginning the grim process of shelling a man like a lobster.
Cora sighed, and got to it herself.
It was weird how quickly this had begun to seem like a chore, rather than a horror show. Grim though it may have been, after a half hour of work, during which the Bazaar had begun to come to life again, the gang had another 5 adrenobytes from the goons and pulled what Iain thought was some kind of regeneration gland out of Chain-head.
“Fat lot o’ fookin’ good it did him,” he laughed, winking at Kyra, “ye cannae regenerate a brainstem!”
“He should’ve been faster,” Kyra shrugged, locking eyes with Cora. “No-one ever is.”
“Aye, fair enough,” Iain chuckled, as if the comment had been directed at him, instead of a threat for Cora. “Should fetch a pretty penny, I’d wager. Ain’t nothin’ to hold a candle to the Lady’s Nanostitch, but people like not havin’ t’ worry overmuch bout silly things like bullet wounds, provided they survive gettin’ ‘em. Come now, let’s see how Jonah reacts to such eager repeat customers.”
As Iain led them inside, Cora waited for the reaction. Her body’s reaction, to just being in a life or death struggle. The tears, the shaking hands, her brain shutting down. None of it came.
Makes sense, none of it came for Cadey, she thought. She had an inkling that wasn’t exactly how the system worked, but it was the easiest way for her to wrap her head around it. Don’t know if it’s the [Will] or [End] keeping me sane. That panic attack earlier aside, I should be a fucking wreck.
LOOOOOOTS ‘O DIFFERENT KINDS OF DURABLE!
I WOULDA TOLD YOU IF I THOUGHT IT WAS A BAD CHOICE
Really? Cause your guidance seems… inconsistent at best.
FOR SOMEONE WHO ISN’T SUPPOSED TO BE GETTING ANY GUIDANCE, YOU DON’T SOUND VERY GRATEFUL
I… fuck. I guess thank you for the help.
YOU’RE VERY WELCOME CORA!
ON THAT NOTE, PLEASE REMEMBER YOU ARE [Unbreakable] AS WELL! THAT MAY BE INTERACTING POSITIVELY WITH THE INTERESTING WAY YOUR {Method Actor} SKILL HAS BEEN MANIFESTING!
“Ah!” Jonah’s voice, which never really dropped below a shout, drew Cora’s attention back to reality. Judging by the relieved look on Tinny and Berg’s faces next to him, they’d been subjected to a little too much of that voice while their escort was ‘busy’. “My friends here told me you’d been lucky enough to run into another shipment of goods outside my humble store!”
“Yer tin-can ass woulda said that whichever group walked through that door, Jonah,” Iain laughed, laying his bloody bag of bits down on the counter in front of Jonah. “Now, let’s see whatch’ye make of all this.