"You must be the Yoriichi Master Muzan told me to look for." It said and took another bite of the arm. The arm was too slim to be from a man, and the woman on its lap was missing an arm.
My mind screamed at me to run, escape, to bolt out of the building, the slums, and its presence. Instincts told me to keep my guard up at every moment, if I let my guard down for even a fraction of a second I would die. Mind and instinct clashed leaving me unable to move or even breathe.
"No, no, no." My eyes grew dry enough to force me to blink, and at that moment he disappeared. The corpse was left sprawled on the altar with no trace it was ever there. "You have to breathe, You can't die on us... yet." My eyes followed the sound of the voice. It was to my left, one hand pressed on my upper back on the other on my chest. Slowly the pressure increased giving my lungs the scorching feeling of the air left in them rushing out before the pressure eased to let them pull in air.
It felt like my respiratory system had restarted.
The two at the sides of the altar stood up and locked their eyes on me.
"I have to see how strong you are." It walked to the altar, picked up the corpse, ripped out the other arm, and started taking small bites out of it. "You can start."
The vampire on the left hand had the appearance of a young man of average build with pale, gray-tinted skin and very short black hair. He had red, cat-like eyes that he shut when the words were said, as well as another pair of pale-ringed orange eyes on the palms of his hands, a red upward-pointing arrow marked on each of the irises with sclera of glowing dark green color.
He wore a plain olive-green kimono with a brown obi and a dark gray haori, decorated by a strip of green that ran down his arms from his shoulders to his wrists. He also sported white tabi-socks and a pair of brown zōri with black straps, along with an Akoya necklace of large blue pearls.
(Image here)
And the second one was a pale-skinned woman with bright yellow eyes with cat-like slits and white horizontal slats with black hair with orange-colored ends. Her hair was styled as bangs at the front.
She wore a pair of long silver earrings and an orange kimono that matched her hair. She had a black haori on top but took them both off when she got the go-ahead from the vampire on the altar, revealing a small black sarashi that covered her chest and upper abdomen.
"Let's play then," the female vampire smiled and bounced a temmari handball that she brought from behind her back. The ball bounced a few times between her palm and the floor before holding it between her hands and taking a pitcher stance from baseball.
My eyes automatically switched to the see-through world when my body sensed the bloodlust directed at me. I only had a moment to decide who was the biggest threat and who I was fighting first. It was obvious who was the biggest threat but who I was fighting was a bit more difficult.
The man-looking vampire pointed his palms my way but not directly at me. The eyes in his palms blinked, and a moment later the seats started to move back toward the wall behind me. The first seats closest to the altar moved and carried the seats behind them. When they reached the wall and made a pile on the wall his eyes blinked again and moved the pile of seats to block the entrance. By that point, they lost their forms as seats and looked more like just a pile of firewood.
My eyes following the movement of the seats cost me. A bowling ball hit me right below my ribcage thrown by a baseball pitcher who could throw it like it was a baseball, that's how it felt. "Game started when you stepped in, let's have lottsa fun!"
I smashed into the wall behind me, close to the pile of wood blocking the entrance. Pointy pieces of wood littered the pile, concentrating on these heavy ass balls would help me not be skewered by them.
Unlike the platinum blond-haired vampire's gentle push that restarted my breathing, this girl's balls made me lose it again. In the panic brought about by the loss of my eyes kept moving around, unable to focus on one thing or form a plan to fight them.
When my lungs finally pulled in the air I was finally able to notice my sword was missing from my hand. Looking up I saw another ball coming my way. I had no time to keep thinking, using the grip my hands had on the ground I pushed myself to the side. The ball flew to my side and stopped, changed directions, and shot to my side. The bottom half of the ball hit my arm and the other half my ribs before it bounced away.
Finding where my sword had landed to my left, I clearly did not have the chance to jump to pitch it up. My only option was to use my blunt blade, as a sword or a bat against the balls in this case.
"Not dead yet? Let's try with another ball." Another ball appeared in her hand before she started juggling them on both balls. "Here, catch." He threw the balls, one in my direction and the other a little to the left.
Having left my scared sh*tless mode, into a more fight-for-your-life mode I got a handle on my breathing and took the stance of a batter. My sword made the ball look like a sausage between 2 buns regarding the shape the ball took when I swung and scored a hit. I almost screamed 'Homerun!!!' before my eyes caught onto the second one coming for me. Being fully stretched after that hit I could only do, was pull the weapon back to perform a bunt, the ball however stopped just short of it and changed directions to hit me on the leg. Somehow it was still a full-force hit pushing my leg back and, my center of gravity moved and fell.
"You're not very good at this game huh? Well struggle more and let me have more fun." Her eyes almost rolled back in pleasure or something similar.
"Hurry up, I want to finish my meal!" Her companion urged her not to play with her food. "I'm still hungry."
"Stop your winning, you still haven't finished your so get finish it." She answered back in a saucy way.
'I don't have time to think about my next move. The time I have between when she throws the ball and when they are right in front of me.' Now that they started arguing between themselves I got some time. 'I need to get better at reading their muscles to survive the attacks. The problem is that they change directions and the other two vampires. Blondy might or might not interfere and the other guy relies on his arrows I think, the ones shot out of his palm so reading his movements might be useless.' My thoughts were interrupted by the shots of pain coming from my ribs and my leg before both became numb and hard to move.
"Let's continue with the game!" My time to think and form a plan was running out. A hastily made plan formed in my head, 'I admit there are a bunch of wholes in it but that's all I got time to think.' I rushed to grab my sharp blade switching my blunt one to my left hand, and when the leather handle rested firmly in my palm I knew one of those balls was coming my way. I had no time to enjoy the feeling of the handle of the sword, that feeling you get when you have a weapon to defend yourself in a dangerous situation, or maybe it is just me being used to holding this sword.
I retreated closer to the wall, lifted my sword on my right hand to perform another blunt, and swung the one on my left towards the wall. Jumping back before my blunt sword hit the wall I felt the strong punch of something heavy and with a lot of speed hit the weapon on my other hand. Going with the force pushing me back instead of resisting it added to the force and speed my blunt sword hit the wall, weakening it so that my body which was already flying towards it would more smoothly smash through it.
My shoulder broke through the wall fist and the rest of my body made the whole bigger to fit the rest of it. The hit made even more pain flare up in my body, for a moment it was all I could think of before I hit the ground and the taste of iron filled my mouth.
*cough* *cough*
Coughing out the mouthful of blood I stood up and ran towards the entrance. I suddenly heard the sound of a drum being hit and a small bell being shaken less than a second later I felt a force taking me to the side, it was like being hit by a bus on your side and flying off except the hit was missing just the force of being flung somewhere was there.
I did hit the wall at full force making me cough out more blood. Before I landed on the ground I was flung to the opposite side.
"He almost got out of the building because you play with your food so much." By the voice I pictured the monk-looking one did it.
I rushed towards the door, the tinkling or drumming sound registered in my ears again and my body jumped to the side and kept on rushing out. I kept on dodging and the drumming kept well drumming.
Rushing out I did not stop to take cover nor take a breather, just ran.
"You were saying!!!!!!" I heard the women hysterical screaming as if they would be the ones who would die if I got away.
Buildings rushed passed me as I ran, they did not look like the ones that I passed by when I was investigating the smell of blood. I hope that if these homeless people saw me -blood covering my jaw, chest, and chest covered in blood- running like there was no tomorrow they would get the point and run.
The smell of filth that was still registering in my nose over the smell of blood faded as the building started looking more well-kept along with the streets. Rare houses or stores still had a lantern glowing outside to signal they were still open for visits or to sell items.
*BAM* *BAM*
The sounds of heavy balls bouncing and cracking the walls sounded behind me.
"Come back here!! Our game is not over yet!!" That shout at least confirmed the woman was after me.
My plan was to get to the area where Inns and taverns dotted the place. Get some adventurers to fight with me and someone to heal me too... and probably die together.
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Word Count 1909
If there are any grammatical errors let me with a comment on the paragraph.
Thank you guys. I appreciate your reading so far.
I feel like I am missing a little umf in how I write combat. What do you think?