Vanessas let them go. She watched for a time from where she knelt in the grass. Golden eyes burned into the backs of the fleeing girls, but there was no more rage in those irises- just exhaustion. Fingernails, wrapped in fists, had sliced into palm. The top of her lip -where Khalla punch had made contact- throbbed painfully. When she breathed her abdomen felt very tender. There would be bruises there later, she was sure. But the tears, finally, had stopped. That was all Vanessa cared about. She had suffered worse injuries than these.

She forced herself up on a pair of wobbly knees, and it was a moment before she'd regained enough sense of her surroundings to stand up straight. Vanessa felt very foolish. Her cheeks were flushed in embarrassment, and she glanced around quickly to make sure that nobody had watched her cry. There was, in deed, no one else around. Relief swept through her skinny frame, and Vanessa's posture relaxed.

"I don't think I'm going to tell John Jr about this one," she murmured to herself, winced a little, and gently tested the injured part of her face with her fingers. It hurt to touch. There was blood in her mouth, because she'd bitten her tongue when Khalla had hit her, and Vanessa spit it out with a sigh.

Then she left, and made sure to travel in the opposite direction of the strangers who'd assaulted her.