[7] vs. Sebastian

[Sage]

“Ze-!!” Sage began to shout, but a hand clamped down over her mouth. With Ashe’s hand so close to her nose, the girl could easily smell the reek of spilled booze on her. Had she been off drinking while Frankenstein was chasing her sister? While Sage was suffering for the amusement of some nameless bastard with a clipboard?! “No, that’s not it...”

“What?” the pink haired girl inquired.

“What?” Sage echoed, unaware she had been speaking out loud.

“You said something,”

“I... I’m sorry?”

“You were saying something about-!”

“Shh!!” the hybrid sounded at her friend, who had grown louder as the short conversation went on.

“I wasn’t being that loud!” Ashe whispered angrily. Sage wanted to retort, but didn’t. She was angry; the thought of Ashe drinking had aggravated her. Sage, the hypocritical, pill-popping advocate against substance abuse.

“What do we do?” she finally questioned. There wasn’t anything else left to talk about. Not in this situation, anyway. Sage couldn’t keep her eyes off her sister, the caged girl hanging atop a raging fire. She had to do something. Her vision blurred, but she fought it away. “Damn you, Kai!” she whispered.

The name caused her to recollect the promise she made. That nameless, disinterested man, he had asked her if she would murder someone to be released. And she had said she would. She would kill Kai Demolic.

The sheer barbarity of her agreement sent a tremor through her, and she looked at her hands, at once shocked that there was no visible damage from the horrific burning that bizarre gemstone had given her, and disgusted with herself. Dirt under her fingernails, cuts and scrapes on her hands and arms.

She and Ashe looked terrible. Both of them were bruised, and bloody, and covered in dirt and sweat. Their hair disheveled and matted. Sage had lost one of her black bows, and so had one pig tail and one flowing mess of tangled, matted blue. Not that either cared terribly much about how they looked anymore.

“There’s five of them, I think,” Ashe suddenly interrupted, peering over the thick bushes she and Sage were hiding behind.

“Five what?”

“Guards,” Ashe replied. “There might be more, but I can’t see much far from the fire.”

“Oh,” Sage fell silent again for a moment, and then a thought struck her. “With guns?”

“Yeah, looks like,”

“Oh...”

“Look, Sage. I know you were really upset about the last fight we were in but-”

“I understand,” came a grave reply. Neither wanted to address the subject directly, but both already knew what the other meant. Sage withdrew her pistol for what felt like the hundredth time, and turned it over, flicking the lethality selector to ‘non-lethal.’ “I can shoot them without killing them... unless this gun... unless this gun is rigged,” she sighed. It wasn’t unreasonable to assume as much. “...What about you? Will you be okay?”

“Just do it, alright?” Ashe looked over at Sage’s shaky grip on her weapon. “...Or I could. I mean, if you-”

“No... no, I’ve already-” the girl looked over at the teen with an agonized expression. “You haven’t-”

“Okay,” came the reply. Ashe knew what she meant.

Sage leveled her aim at the nearest guard, and took a few deep breaths, which did nothing to stop her shaky breathing. “Please, please, please... don’t die,” she demanded, and then squeezed the trigger. A noticeably dimmer pulse of green light sailed across the black chasm between the bushes and the bonfire, and struck the targeted guard dead in the chest, hurling him onto his back where he lay still.

Immediately, the four others opened fire, their ki machine guns raining bolts of energy upon the girls who scrambled, the ground where they hid pelted with energy blasts. Sage took cover behind a tree and leaned out, taking a trio of shots at another guard, and missing all three times before another salvo of ki blasts forced her back into cover.

Sage wanted to just sink to her knees and disappear, but she knew she couldn’t. Zena would have broken out of that cage by now if she could, and the only thing that separated Ashe and Sage was the gun she carried, and because of that, she had to be the savior this time. She had to stay strong.

Ashe... she projected. I’m... not sure I can...

“Come on, Sage!” the pink haired student shouted over the shriek of splitting wood as the ki blasts continued to hammer away at the tree’s constitution. The girl shrank into the tree, wishing it would wrap its branches around her and hide her away from the situation. “Your sister needs you!” the voice sounded distant and far away, but Sage nodded anyway.

She twisted around the tree and fired another three-shot volley. Only one blast struck, but it hit hard. The energy blast slammed into the face of the nearest guard, and he plunged into the flames beneath Zena, but thankfully, Sage had ducked back into cover before he fell. Unconscious, he could not scream as the flames greedily consumed him.

“They’re coming!!” Ashe shrieked. Sure enough, the darkness of the tree-shrouded jungle was lit up by the crimson energy blasts of the encroaching soldiers. Again, Sage burst out from cover, but this time, three guns were already trained on her. Panicked, the girl squeezed the trigger instead of diving to cover, and managed to fell another of the mercenaries, before a ki blast grazed her leg and toppled her over.

The two remaining soldiers charged at the fallen quarter-saiyan, prepared to finish her off, but Ashe pounced on the one furthest from Sage, and slammed a rock she’d picked up into his head. He stumbled, and the somewhat buzzed girl slammed it into his head again. This time he dropped.

Ashe hurled her rock at the other mercenary, who was now dangerously close to Sage. The rock struck true, hitting him in the small of his back. He yelped in surprise and spun around, to see a pink haired girl holding a ki sub-machine gun pilfered from his comrade. He could hardly blink before a spray of ki bolts pierced his flesh, and hurled him into the underbrush, badly wounded by the deadly ki.

Ashe helped Sage to her feet, and the two carefully crept into the village. “Zena!” the smaller twin excitedly whispered to her sibling. “We did it, Zena! We’re going to get you out!”

Zena sneered in response. She would have made a biting remark, Sage was sure, but in as compromising a position as she was in, it was an unwise choice. The two girls set about to find out exactly how Zena’s cage was suspended. It was obviously a pulley system, but it looked like the crank for it was hidden in one of the huts.

The duo made their way for it, and suddenly Ashe was swept off her feet and carried up into a tree by her ankle. Sage shrieked, and trained her gun at whatever was after the pink haired girl, and then breathed a quick sigh of relief. Ashe was caught in a snare trap, suspended from her ankle.

“I’ll... I’ll get you down, Ashe. I, um, just need to-”

“Take a bath?” came a voice just as full of mirth as it was of malice. A horrid, sickly feeling washed over Sage as she slowly, stiffly turned around, having already thumbed the gun’s lethality setting back over to ‘maximum.’ Somehow she doubted it would be enough.

Sebastian - that’s what they had called him anyway - was standing only fifteen feet away from her, his menacing claws and disturbing mask like three glowing points in an otherwise dark sky. He stood in a relaxed posture, one hand on his hip and the other dangling by the outside of his thigh, his head slightly tilted. Sage couldn’t tell if it was amusement or curiosity that caused him to tilt his head like that. She wished she could break it off for what he’d done to Zena.

“Oh ho! Now, this is too much! Out of the three most useless players in this game, I get the one who’s afraid of her own shadow,” Sebastian taunted with a flamboyant giggle.

“Let me out of this cage and say that!!” Zena thundered.

“Oh, please. You’re too predictable. A one-on-one match with this one?” he gestured to Sage. “Entirely unworthy of my time, but fear is so much more... tantalizing... than misplaced arrogance and determination. Kai might be wasting my time, but he never said I couldn’t have fun with you three.”

Sage stifled a gasp. What does he mean by that?! she silently demanded, eliciting another chuckle from Sebastian. The girl winced; he must have heard that.

“Honestly, it would be more fun with both of you candy-colored harlots, but... well... I suppose I can find other things to do with you,” he frowned behind his mask, picking his fingernails. “I should get paid more for having to... touch you, though,” he shuddered - very briefly, but Sage saw it - at the thought.

Sebastian took a step forward, and Sage took two back, throwing furtive glances around her, teeth clenched and eyes wide with horror. Sebastian giggled again. “Nothing to say?” he threw a look over his shoulder, at the caged blond. “I’m sorry, it appears your sister might be even more predictable than you!”

“If you touch her I swear I’ll-” Zena growled.

“Watch helplessly,” Sebastian cut her off, his voice suddenly cold and dark, all at once devoid of the twisted humor he’d approached the situation with. “Now, you... ugly little runt,” he glared daggers through his mask. “Scream for me.”

With shocking speed, Sebastian closed the gap between he and Sage, kicked off the ground, and planted a heavy foot into her chest, propelling her through the air and onto her back. She hit the ground hard, winded from the blow to her front.

The girl tried to climb to her feet, and yelped as three metal claws slammed into the earth next to her face. Sebastian pulled the deadly weapon from the dirt and leaned in close. “If you want to live you’ll have to do better than that. No more handouts,” he hissed, grasping the girl by her ruined shirt and hurling her back across the center of the tiny native village.

Sage tumbled painfully across the hard-packed dirt, and fought hard to climb to her feet as Sebastian raced after her. She was only on her hands and knees when he was upon her, and he punted her in the stomach, catapulting her into the air, through the wall of one of the huts, where she crashed painfully through the bed within.

Covered in dust and shattered wood, her body screaming in pain, and Sage still fought. She couldn’t win, but Zena deserved that she at least try. And Ashe, she hadn’t forgotten about Ashe. Have to...

The overwhelming urge to sleep overwhelmed her, but she tried hard to shake it off, pushing a board off herself. She put a hand to her head and winced. Blurred vision, too. She tried to ignore the concern that she was suffering from a concussion - she had to fight, or Sebastian would kill her.

Suddenly, the wooden door exploded, consumed in a ki blast, meant more to frighten than to injure. From the smoke leapt Sebastian, his claws raised over his head. Sage had grown tiresome, and now she would die.

Green. That’s all he saw since the instant the runty hybrid pulled the trigger. The blast hit him point-blank, right in the face, and launched him back out the doorway he’d jumped through. His mask was melting, burning his flesh. He scrambled to throw it off, hurling it away angrily. He wasn’t about to let some blue haired whore ruin his perfect visage.

His eyes burned with fury as he pulled himself up to his feet, catching sight of Sage’s tired form, leaning against the ruined doorframe of the equally ruined hut. “Whore,” the word rumbled up out of his throat, his intonation intending it to be the gravest of insults. “You were going to get to die quickly,” his countenance twisted with rage.

“I don’t... want... to die,”

“That’s not what the cameras say!”

“That was... before,” Sage fought to stay conscious as she spoke. “Before Zena was...”

“Oh, is that all you think about?!” Sebastian growled, rushing the girl, who opened fire again. The underground fighting veteran gracefully evaded the blast, and then two others, with the greatest of ease, before slamming his elbow into Sage’s temple, sending her flying through another wall of the same hut she’d already crashed through once before. He leveled his palm at the building, manifesting a sphere of ki in his grasp. The addict would burn.

“AUGH!!” he groaned, the ki fizzling out immediately. Sebastian crashed to his knees, six smouldering burns on his back. Ashe glared at him, upside-down, her stolen weapon leveled at Sebastian. She frowned, the digital ammo counter said the thing had very little life left, but it was better than nothing. Awkwardly aiming the weapon at the rope that suspended her, she fired once, chewing through the rope and crashing painfully onto the earth. Red and Blue, 2-versus-1 against Sebastian. The student just prayed it would be enough.