Adrenaline pounded through her veins, creating a deadly tattoo in her mind. Blood... blood... blood.... She'd been running alongside her brother and commander when it happened. She stopped running momentarily, a confused Arrek shooting a glance at her as she screamed and ran off on her own.
The numbers were overwhelming. Kristy watched in horror as Mike moved too late, the stone slamming into him and dropping him to the ground. She looked around, feeling sure she was watching the fall of another comrade. A vision of Alison appeared fleetingly before her, and she rose as though on springs. Her arm hanging limply by her side, she left her hiding place in one graceful move and dashed forward, anxious to try and protect Mike.
Blood... blood... blood.... She pulled her stiletto from her braid and brandished it against the enemy. His eyes widened as the crazed woman grinned, shooting her fist out to meet his face. He dodged and retaliated with a gut punch. It didn't faze her. His last experience in this worlds-realm was a pair of cold silver-grey eyes, and the sound of laughter.
Her gun was blazing as she ran, bolt after bolt spitting from its mouth. The shots flew wide, her gun arm still numb. Two thugs turned to face her, standing over the body of her fallen colleague. She screamed, trying to instill some of the fear now gripping her guts into their minds.
Blood gushed, spattering on her face as she dashed to her next opponent. She licked the metallic taste from her lips and laughed, then fell upon him.
Blood... blood... blood.... A fist connected with her face moments before her booted foot folded him around itself. A wordless yell, and he was left attempting to pull air into punctured lungs.
One swung at her, and she dived under his trunk-like arm. Her mind flashed on the basic combat training she'd undergone, and she turned the dive into a roll. She felt the gun slip from her fingers as she hit the dirt, the wind knocked from her as her clumsy manoeuvre carried her forward.
Her fingers touched metal, and closed around it. She scrabbled for the trigger as she rose, the unfamiliar weapon feeling alien in her hand. Her thumb brushed across a button, and energy spat from the end of the pipe.
A scream caught the attention of sensitive ears, she looked up to see a familiar looking man crumple to the ground unconscious. She ran forward, her eyes barely registering as a girl missed her shot into the men, dived into a forward roll and came up bearing a lightsabre.
Blood... blood... blood.... Sylvana leaped over a man cut in half by the swing of a yellow-violet blade, tackling a man who was about to shoot the girl. The blade swung around, nicking her thigh, and she kicked the man away before wrestling it from the girl. She handed over her blaster, and stuck the extinguished lightsabre in her pocket before grabbing her laser scalpel from her braid.
Armed with a metal blade in one hand, a laser one in the other, she flew at the attackers, sometimes slashing, most times kicking and fisting. Her head flew back as a kick connected with her jaw, but she didn't acknowledge it.
Pain was overriden by the call for blood. She used the motion to flip her back onto her hands, her feet connecting with a much more sensitive area on her opponent. She flipped back onto her feet and ran at him as he doubled over.
Kristy stood frozen, her mind replaying the last few frantic seconds. She watched as though from a distance as four men carried Mike away from the fight, her terrifying saviour in full flow beside her. The woman lashed out again and again. Kristy found herself staring at her face, expecting to see such fury as she had never encountered. Instead, there was nothing, a serene blankness that sent a zero degree shiver scouring along her spine.
The woman froze, her stiletto buried deep in the chest of the last man near her. All around her, the battle went on, but she stopped. She looked after the escaping kidnappers, and a low, feral growl emerged from her throat. She sprang forward, her lithe frame gliding gracefully over the body of a fallen opponent, and then she was gone.
Kristy was borne to the ground under the weight of a flying tackle, a crimson blaster bolt passing scant inches above her as she hit the ground once more. She flailed wildly at the man on top of her, the holdout blaster in her hand connecting glancingly with his temple. The man rolled off her, and she saw his face. He was eerily similar to the terrifying woman she had just watched decimate five of their opponents, and he had a gleaming Terra Group rank patch affixed to the breast of his jacket.
"Oh, sithspit."
Kristy looked around frantically, and grabbed the young man by his arms, dragging him behind a convenient wall.
Blood... blood... blood.... Kidnappers, the lowest of all scum in existence, were carrying off the unconscious man. A wordless scream echoed through the streets as she fell upon the rearmost of the men, mercilessly slitting his throat before he even knew she was upon him.
The three others dropped the unconscious man to the ground, then attempted to surround the woman.
No dice. She lashed out as the second man pulled a blaster, not reacting as the bolt glanced across her shoulder. His eyes widened as she slammed the laser scalpel between his eyes, pulling it along his skull as he fell while she turned to the final two kidnappers.
"Stealing people warrants your death. Alae'i balan ned i curon."[1] Her voice was cold, emotionless as her silver eyes flashed between the two of them.
They raised their blasters, and she dashed forward, a flurry of limbs, using the laser scalpel to cut through the barrels. She leaped over them to land behind, and she plunged her blades into their backs, piercing their left lungs and stealing from them the ability to breathe.
Blood... blood... blood....
She flipped back over and pulled the lightsabre from her pocket. She flicked it on, diced the two of them, then flicked it off and stuck it back in her pocket as she looked for more opponents.
She dropped into a crouch, her naked blades held out at her side, her whole body tensed to spring forth in attack. Leaning forward, she deactivated her laser scalpel long enough to roll her victims' prisoner onto his back.
His eyes snapped open at the same instant as his hand snapped her head back. She staggered backwards, propelling herself into a backward roll and springing upright, just as her rescuee lashed out and planted a hard sidekick in her chest, throwing her into the wall behind her. She crumpled to the ground, momentarily stunned. Even as she began to rise up again, however, the young man's hand flicked out and snatched the lightsabre from where it poked out of her pocket.
"Mine," he hissed, twirling the handle about him in a sweeping arc that curved elliptically over his head, the handle extending with a snap as it passed through the apex. Stereo snap-hisses filled the alleyway across which their gazes were locked. Sylvana took in the double-bladed lightsabre, the feral snarl on its owner's face, and the crazed glint in his eyes.
And Sylvana charged.
The sheer fury unleashed as the combatants met seemed to echo through the alleyway. Mike hammered wildly with the blades of his lightsabre, always seeming to miss Sylvana by bare millimetres as she weaved and ducked through the attack. She struck too, her stiletto glancing off the handle of the lightsabre, her laser scalpel shearing a lock of her opponent's hair.
They raged back and forth, Mike's brute strength and uncontrolled fury giving him the edge, Sylvana's speed and measured rage taking it back. Sylvana lunged with her scalpel forward, the blade slicing across Mike's shoulder. He hissed, bringing his knee up and jarring her away from him, the blade humming in her hand as his blood seared upon it.
He swung backwards with the lightsabre, burying its blade deep in the dense stone wall of the building behind him. He leapt, pivoting about the weapon's horizontal length like a gymnast on the bar, and snapped his legs straight, planting his feet in her chest and sending her staggering backwards into the wall. In one fluid movement he pulled the lightsabre free of the wall and brought it crashing downwards on where Sylvana was standing.
Except where she had been was no longer where she was. His blade scoured the wall, a deep vertical scar more than seven feet long that would surely have cleaved his opponent in two.
Without pausing for thought, he pivoted on his foot and swung around, the three hundred and sixty degree spin almost balletic and quite beautiful as the luminescent energy blades of his lightsabre glowed brightly in the darkness of the night.
The blade hit, resisted barely as it sliced onwards, at once cutting and cauterising, and finally breaking free once more into the cool evening air where its unchanging hum was the only sound.
Mike stood frozen, aghast at what he had so nearly done.
Scarred deep into the stone by his wild, rage-fueled blows, the roughly hewn image of a cross on the wall before him transfixed him. He saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing until Sylvana landed a sidekick between his shoulder blades and propelled him gasping into the wall face-first. The impact knocked him insensible, and he staggered back, collapsing gracelessly on his back. Sylvana, having dodged Mike's killing blows, was ready with one of her own. She stood poised, her stiletto ready to plunge downward.
Blood.... She snarled as she brought the blade down.
"Sylvana! No!" Arrek's voice called into the alleyway from where he and Kristy watched the combatants wide-eyed.
Mike looked blearily at the woman standing above him, her blade paused mid-strike, as confusion crossed her features. Eyes that had been the embodiment of mercury faded to the warm brown of untouched earth. She dropped her hands to look at the blades in them in confusion, then put them away as she knelt by his side to look over his woundings.
[1]"Behold the power of the crescent-moon"