The troll's hand rose and she, looking down on a serial killer, jumped. The man's hands rose to block. A block? From an attack? At her height?
Laughable.
Her feet slammed through his guard and her pumas jackhammered his face, water washed through them like a crowd around a pole. Splashing them both was a clever suicide attack, credit where credit was due.
Fuck it.
Up first, she dove at him.
Special delivery… a pair of knees to his face.
It should have been enough to break his neck, but no. She was a seventeen-year-old girl, him a super powered murderer… with a weak chin.
He retreated a step but wobbled and flailed.
She stepped to him. He swung that right cross he was clearly very proud of, but the momentum was sapped by a lack of foundation. She blocked and a series of jabs smothered him like a ninety-year-old in the throes of an asthma attack as his teenage wife fetched a pillow.
Her knuckles and eventually her whole hand hurt, the pain accumulating behind a solid wall of adrenaline. But was she winning? Did the wind 'win' against a mountain?
Grab attempt?
Slap to the wrist.
Palm to the chin.
Another right cross?
Naya stepped into the punch, taking it to the shoulder, his arm only a quarter extended. She delivered an elbow to a chin which was already a bloody mess. Her hands were no better.
The world turned green, troll fingers blocking her.
"Drake! Drake no!" Naya screamed.
"You're killing him!" He yelled back.
"I know! Now move! Please!"
The air changed. A tingling electricity, tickling her skin.
Panic Naya Panic!! Voices screamed in her head, people who'd been strapped in were fumbling on their seat belts to get to the unmanned panic station.
She climbed the troll's armour at the wrist to see the man waving at the air. He turned. They locked eyes, fury burning between them. He walked backwards never blinking before disappearing. The tingling faded and the beast collapsed.
She followed suit.
The world shut up.
Naya's chest rose and dropped with laboured, haggard, breathes. It wasn't air coming from her lungs, it was whatever tissue that made her throat, evaporating. What adrenaline stocks had been there were gone.
She needed to pull herself together. Immediately.
Instead, entire departments were packed up, others on strike.
A neigh lifted her gaze. The unicorn was draped in crimson. Wet 'Horse' smothered her nostrils, solid enough for a knife and fork. It filled her brain. The black head gave a shockingly human 'head point', aiming at a pool of white mist on the triceratops's back. It was surreal how much red ooze was ejecting from the beast. She had to get up, but it wasn't going to happen.
The horn of the unicorn lifted her by her bag, dropping her right into the mist. A world of information passed through her mind, painting her vision white before crimson pain tainted it.
The creature shivered, trembled and sunk into the earth before it burst into a pool of tainted white.
It had changed, becoming a wholly new kind of two headed horse before it vanished into her reactor. Like the universe, it expanded. The walls shuddered, paint chipped as new wiring formed, tiles were added, more buttons, more chairs, more staff! It was incredible.
Naya blinked.
She was back on the park, looking at crushed trees and uneven earth. She should have been drowning, she was in the river, but the landscape had changed enough to leave her on a rise between two monster footsteps that kept her wet but breathing.
Her muscle and bone felt like it'd been put together by smashing square pegs into round holes.
Drake's schlopping steps drew close until his hand pulled her out. He put an arm around her and she shoved him off.
"No Drake!" She screamed, "What did you fucking do!"
"I stopped you from killing. You almost killed a person-"
"What I did, was try save our lives." She demanded.
"How'd you know?"
"Because he-"
She stopped.
What were they even arguing about? A man had just tried to murder her. What was there to 'understand'? Naya wanted to slap herself back to reality. How in the hell was she the one being stared at in self-righteous anger?
He was so small, chest puffed up.
"Naya?"
"Sorry, zoned out. Drake, I don't know how but, on some level, he knows you."
"Why do you say that?"
"Do you shave?" She continued.
"Sometimes." Drake said shrugging.
"Yeah, I bet it's more than sometimes," She said, arms crossed in a way that suggested an accusatory finger was being pointed. "You and your 'boy' have one thing in common. You don't look like high school kids. He wasn't guessing, he knew because he's seen you enough times to remember your face!"
"That's all?"
"No, but it was enough for me to ask. And since he was going to kill us, he didn't mind telling the truth. Now tell me Drake, what does it mean if someone with that much of an ego, is beaten by a girl? One younger than him."
"I get it, you can stop, I swear, you two."
"So now you get it?" Naya said, ignoring the 'two', comment.
"Yes. Are you yelling because you're trying to scare me?"
Naya gaped.
That was… actually… a good point. What the hell was she doing?
"I'm yelling… because I'm yelling, okay Drake. I'm not yelling at you. I'm just, you know… yelling just YELLING. YELLING!!"
Drake smiled. "Yelling!"
"I'm yelling, yelling!"
The sun started to rise; the world woke. People appeared as though from nowhere. The troll shrunk and disappeared into him, disintegrating and tumbling into his chest as though vacuumed.
The horse's front legs bounced up and down, left to right and it shrunk and jumped and disintegrated, horn-first right into Naya's chest, the impact slamming her flat so hard she skid.
The laughing neigh was there.
Drake couldn't help but laugh.
She laughed too.
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