Vines

“Hey, Devianto…” Her footsteps quietly clacked on the wet asphalt, Slowly and rhythmically.

“That was a hell of show you put on yesterday. It was so spectacular, I almost thought it was better than the Darkoris campfires.”

The feminine voice of this youngster rivaled the figure she had and her oddly thinned eyes, overflowed with a sinister dark red glow, beamed through the mixed condensed air. Victor, on the other hand, stood up straight with his often rested eyes enlarged, held his chin up at the perfect horizontal level as if he used a level tool. Clear fluids refracting the suns feint rays dripped down his forehead, some flowed down the smooth curvature of his nose and hanged on the round tip, and some made their way down through his oil-soiled cheeks.

“Hey, Kuroi. How’ve ya been?” He raised his hand up.

It’s so hot.

“I’m here to…” The vague figure pushed away the smog in the air, while maintaining a strict straight course for Victor. Its hands hanged behind the back, creating an aerodynamic body fit enough for a clean dive. A sweet scent mixed in with the odorless smug, and the body of being became more pronounced to Victor the closer she got to him.

“Kill you!”

It seemed Victor was on edge on his encounter with Kuroi, he must had know she would come for that exact part of his body. He responded on time, gaining a stance fit for defense and evasion, his legs wide to hold his ground, shifting his left foot outward to prepare for a quick reaction to what’s coming to him.

She’ll definitely go for my head.

He crossed his hands at his chest, setting his right arm by the other’s shoulder, bent his back and stretched his head far out at his shoulder’s length, exactly where his right wrist was. His opponent made a sharp swing at his head, it being the only part of Victor which was open to attack made her decision justified, although it was an obvious trap. Victor dodged twisting his upper body on his waist, then countered with a low kick which pushed her back.

“You still do this?!” She commented, and sighed.

“You always do that. That coward’s mode of fighting, hiding your body behind your head. Trying to limit my choices of attack so you could focus on defending your head.”

“You seem different today, Kuroi. Why’re...?”

She chuckled, “Ha”.

“We spent several days looking for you, Devianto.”

She’s not allowing me to speak!

“Can we just..?”

“You know, when you left, things started getting better.”

Kuroi assumed an open pose, her hands wide apart to make varying levels of impact. One hand at the mid point, the other at the the front, completely neglecting the need for defense.

Heh, She’s going on full attack now. I know I can’t beat her, but I at-least have to escape with less injury. She’ll catch me if I run, and the walls are too wide apart and too smooth to climb. No dumpsters or vent holes. She trapped me.

She jumped in rushing him as much as she could, jabs and straight punches aimed at different parts of his body outside of her reach, Victor occasionally parried her violent strikes with a direct hand blocks whenever he couldn’t move his body faster.

An opening!

After one of her straight punch was deliberately feinted by Victor, he stretched out his arm, to land a clean hit, putting all his weight into it. The punch blew creases on her skin followed by a simple clack. He found a way to buy time to run. Suddenly folds formed on his coveralls, he felt the cloth pulling him backwards. “Running is all that coward thought you!” She yanked his coveralls back, and Victor delivered a quick jab to get her hands off the back of the coveralls. At the same moment, her bright red lips were stretched to one side of the face and the exhale can be heard coming from her opened mouth.

She’s smirking?

Although his hands managed to wave off her her grip, he was in a spot where his other hand couldn’t reach to defend him. She drove her knuckles into his abdomen before he could block it. The excruciating pain of his disrupted stomach made him cough up fluids, he knelt down gasping for breath. His rest was abruptly discontinued by a hand that pulled him up by his coveralls uppermost snap closures below his collar. She slammed his back against the brittle wall by the side.

The wet feel of blood on Victor’s garment gave him a few seconds to stay awake and listen in. His hearing was blurred, and his vision gradually faded away.

“Tch! As weak as always.”

Kuroi turned away from him and put a flat round object on her nape. She reached into her back pockets, and took out her boxy flat gadget with rounded corners and a screen in the middle. A few clicks later, she started talking to someone on the other side of the line.

“Have you secured Deviant?”

“I have him here with me.”

“Good. Bring him in as soon as you can.”

“Yeah, Whatever, I will.”

“Don’t cause too much damage, we need him alive.”

“Even so, this monster… won’t die if I tried.”