He tapped his cane on the rooftop, debating if he should just call it a night, power down and go get drunk again. The drinking helped - sometimes. Other times it left him curled up in the bathroom in the fetal position sobbing over the pains of his past. He hoped tonight would be more of the former and less of the later…
All those thoughts went to the wayside when he sensed the Negaverse presence nearby. Stronger than him - by a fair margin - but not so much so that he felt compelled to run. So instead he stood his ground, his head on a swivel as he tried to see where the origin of the power was coming from.
---
The source of the order aura was a male standing on the rooftop looking more like someone going to a party than standing guard over the city from the ‘bad guys’. Just because they moved in the night and took more drastic measures did not make them the ‘villains’. After all, history was written by the victors.
Captain Stibnite’s heels clicked on the roof top as she landed across from the male. Under her hood, her eyes were shaded but her face was clearly blank as she rose up in height. Jerking her head back, Stib’s hood dropped letting her hair fan around her face and shoulders. He was a large man but clearly size didn’t matter in this case.
It was all about skill.
Raising her hand up, Stibnite summoned her wrist bow and smiled at the knight. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you.”
---
“Well, beautiful, it would rob us both of a wonderful opportunity to talk,” Phrygia said, giving the shorter woman a wink as she appeared and then proceeded to turn a… wrist bow on him. He was doing his best to cover how suddenly flat footed his way. This was the first time he’d run into an officer who had a weapon that could put holes in him at range. That was new.
“All this fighting going on, doesn’t it get tiring?” He asked, mostly rhetorically. “We could put our energy to better… more productive endeavors. Make love, not war, you know?”
Oh sure, he’d been born a few decades too late for the free love movement, but that didn’t mean that Phrygia wasn’t going to give it the old college try. Sometimes it worked - if only to get a laugh out of the officer.
---
Her eyes became flat lines as he spoke. Lines of true annoyance at such an even suggestion. Well, if that was the case and he was a ‘lover’ and not a fighter…
Stibnite took a step and disappeared.
When she reappeared, the point of her weapon was a the small of his back. “Or I can happy just take yours for our purposes. You seem to have oh so much to spare.”
---
Well that answered that particular question. The sudden disappearance, and then reappearance of the woman behind him, gave Phrygia a moment of pause, especially with the pointy bit of the weapon pressed against the small of his back. He was quite fond of his spine.
“Well that’s a neat trick,” He chuckled weakly, making a show of lifting his arms up, cane and all, into the air so she could see them. “I really wish your side would let people in on this whole flitting all over reality trick.”
He had to think of something - and fast - or he was going to be in for a world of hurt, or worse.
Tilting his head back as if he was trying to get a better look at her, he let the hat slip off the top of his head, letting it fall to land on the woman’s face, then he pushed his body into a hard spin, bringing the cane down to hopefully push her arm out of line with his body so she wouldn’t fill him with holes.
Well, hopefully not fill him with holes. It was a calculated risk - but Phrygia had always been bad at math.
---
The death glare was Stibnite’s only visual response to his words before she suddenly found her vision covered by fabric. It was a shock that made her lose her drop her focus and pull back a step before her prey spun out of her hands.
For a half a breath, Stibnite was trying to process what had just happened. Her mind raced quickly to put together the change in the field of play. He had moved just slightly and put her at a disadvantage….because he was TALLER than her. That part truly irked the woman as her right hand rose up and yanked the fabric from her face. If Stibnite had worn a death glare before, this one was pure murder.
As the hat flittered out of her hand, Stibnite raised her left and fired a single, needle like shot from her wrist straight for the man’s upper thigh.
---
He thanked his lucky stars that the searing pain was shooting into his thigh and not his spine. He could only imagine how bad that would have been. His strangled hiss of pain - air blown through his clenched teeth - was the only sound he made as he hobbled away from the woman, leaning his weight on the decorative cane to keep it off his burning thigh.
“Ow!” He yelled loudly, limping and hopping away from her. “What the hell?” He inquired. “You actually shot me! Who shoots people!”
Panic started to set in, and not at the nearby discotech either. It was all Phrygia could do to hop and limp away, let alone fight back.
—
Steel clicked on the roof as her stride quicked to close the distance between them. All the while, Stibnite’s eyes never left their position on his face. It was a brisk walk that became a run before being twisted into the momentum that was a leg kick to his left hip. She was using the force behind her to smash into him adding to her own strength.
“The kind that hunts.”
---
He’d been hoping to get a few feet further than he had gotten when the weight slammed into his hip. He tried to brace, but his injured leg wasn’t up to the strain, and her full weight against his hip made him fall backward with a clumsy thud.
Her reply would have been comical on a normal day - but right then it was just pain and more pain. He rolled as he landed, trying to get toward the nearby fire escape.
If he could just get to the ground floor… he might be able to give her the slip and escape. He was in no condition to jump with whatever it was she had shot into his thigh. But he could probably manage a decent hobble.
—
Following his rather week attempt to get away from her, she had slowed after the kick. It was clear to her that this man was yet again, all show and now force. He had nothing to offer her. Nothing worth fighting for.
“Worthless.” She offered in a single breath before quickly crossing over and kicking his cane. “You are not worth my time or energy.”
Without another word, Stibnite jumped from the roof and disappeared before hitting the ground.
---
He supposed - under any other circumstances - he should feel insulted by her remark. However, all he was feeling in that moment as she vanished from sight was the rush of relief of being able to walk away from the fight. He’d been caught off-guard, and she’d immediately gone for the kill.
He would not make that mistake again.
Hissing, he forced himself upright, scrambling for his cane as he made his way down the fire escape with slow, pained motions. His leg had started to go numb, but he figured it might do to get himself home and assess the damage… See if he needed to see a doctor or if he’d be able to remove the needle himself - he wasn’t sure how deep it had gone into his leg, and he wasn’t really sure he wanted to find out.
---
Torvil
