The Guardian and The Gifted (Sha xLenaara)

[Lenaara]

“Eh. Big one, good beard. Heard he was strong or somethin`.” Cortez scratched his chin.


Lena had an urge to walk into a nearby wall.


The conversation had gotten very dull and slow since Cortez was called into the office. Lucas sat in his chair, leaning back and all, and was picking something from beneath one of his fingernails. It looked disgusting as he tried to chew on the nail but whatever grime was under the damn thing would not get out. So, he opened a drawer and pulled out a pocket knife. Lena had a fleeting thought that the knife had probably been in such places and people that it was most unsanitary to pick your own flesh with it. But Lucas didn’t care. It was him, after all, who ran this unsanitary establishment.


Cortez stood before her, Lucas sat behind her, and Cortez kept fidgeting as he spoke. She asked him to remember any Gifted entering the strip club the past week and Cortez’s replies were most unsatisfactory. Each time he answered he scratched his chin, temples, and nose, let his hands fall on top of his guns as if to check if they were still there, rubbed his head. It seemed that such intense thinking made him uncomfortable.


Well, it made Lena uncomfortable trying to understand what he is saying.


“Amazing. Where did you direct them?” Lena asked, her arms crossed over her chest.


For a moment Cortez had looked down at Lucas, as Lucas was sitting and even while standing he would still be barely reaching Cortez’s waist, and then back at Lena. Lena did not see what Lucas had done but it seemed like he gave his bodyguard some sort of a sign, maybe approval, that he could speak.


“Block 52 factory warehouses. I sent all six there when they paid up,” he scratched at the corner of his eye and then flicked his fingers to get rid of the grime, “ugh.”


From behind the door there was a faint rustling of beads heard and then voices. Cortez reacted first as he looked over his shoulder and let out a deep growl, one of his hands fell on top of his gun but he did not move yet. Lena heard Lucas fidgeting in his seat and open a drawer. Judging by a faint click he had reloaded a gun.


“Customers?” Lena asked calmly.


“Not expectin` any,” Lucas replied and put the gun over his lap, “Cortez?”


When Lena turned around to look at Lucas the man was paler than usual. He was a coward who boasted power that he did not have, so an attack within his own office would be most unpleasant for him. That’s why he kept Cortez outside. The cowardly man even shifted his seat in such a way that he was directly hiding behind Lena for what good it did.


Cortez, on the other hand, looked tense. His muscles budged at his arms and his lip rose in a sneer, also he kept snorting as if trying to get some bad smell out of his nostrils.


For a moment Lena thought of Stain and cursed under her breath. The man was still outside, as he was told, and would not risk going to Lucas’ office without a good reason and to avoid Lena snapping at him again. She hoped he did not die within the fifteen minutes of her not watching over him.


It was not Stain behind the door, she was sure of it, and it was not some local gang or the other trying to claim the place. There would be shooting otherwise.


Unlike Cortez Lena did not reach for her gun but kept standing still, her arms loosely crossed over her chest, but even so she was as tense as the bodyguard was and kept clenching her jaw.


The bodyguard moved towards the door and opened it, his body turned in such a way that if the need arose he would pull out one of his guns and aim.

 

[Sha]

Both the index and middle finger on Stain’s right hand were missing, the skin resembled putty the way it clasped around his missing fingers. On his first day out of the facility he had been shot, stabbed, and ripped his own flesh from his arm. Despite these troubles of his, he not once thought of it as worse than where he had come from. In truth, the pain he had experience today was less than certain experiments conducted at the facility; the grinding of his diamond bones into weapons being his most reviled experience.


The man with the water bottle laughed, “Now just what in the hell is a Gifted doing here?” He asked, showing his missing tooth through his crooked smile.


“Couldn’t tell ya, pal, I just got dragged along,” Stain replied as he began to mold the soft clay of his flesh back onto his hand.


“Oh, is that so? Hear that, Mondo?” He said turning to his friend, “Kid don’t even know why he’s here.” He turned back to Stain while retaining a smile, “We ain’t ya enemies, kid.”


“I always greet my friends by stabbing them in the stomach, too,” Stain said, glancing at his three fingered hand which now had two sharpened, sparkling bones protruding from the skin where his two lost fingers once were.


“Well now,” The man said, his smile fading. His eyebrows rose, “That don’t look natural; even for a Gifted. The facility?”


Stain felt his upper lip curl into a subtle, noticeable snarl.


“Calm down, calm down,” The man said unscrewing the cap to his bottle and placing it in his pocket once more. “I’m Delvin, and like I said before, we ain’t ya enemies. We’re here to help – well, you know, people… like us.”


As he finished speaking the door behind him creaked open and the water shot from the bottle as though it were champagne before forming itself into ice. The shard flew behind him and impaled itself into the wall. A soft moan came from the other side; the deep voice no doubt belonged to Cortez. There was no thud, so either it hadn’t killed him, or the shard of ice was propping him up.


“Fuck it,” Stain muttered before running forward in reckless abandon. Delvin’s tool was still impaled in the doorway under which blood was beginning to seep. Stain still didn’t know what the other one could do; only one way to found out. He hadn’t closed half the distance before a gust of wind lifted him off the floor for only a moment before he landed on his feet.


He was now closer to the two men, but not yet within striking distance. As he moved his legs forward once more the dagger of ice left the door and Cortez’s blood behind, flying towards Stain’s chest. He didn’t stop, nor did he try to move aside as it came rushed towards him. It connected just above his heart, piercing the skin before shattering against the diamond ribcage which lay beneath. The flesh which remained on his hand fell away. The diamond spears which lay beneath sparkled against the dim light of the hallway and pierced through Mondo’s left arm; the man sidestepping in time to cause Stain’s strike to miss his chest.


Before Stain could do anything else, the shards of ice which had fallen in pieces on contact with his chest impaled themselves into his calves and hamstrings, “Ahh, Son of a,” He muttered in anger, collapsing to his knees.

 

[Lenaara]

The shard gleamed at Lena under the soft lights of Lucas’ office with a bloody light. The ice had penetrated the door, which was almost as thick as the heavy duty metal doors of the Guardian’s offices, and then Cortez’s chest. Now the man lay limp against the door, his arms by his sides, with the shard sticking out from his back.


Lena felt a chill.


She knew fully well that it was not Stain, and whoever it was probably had killed Stain already while she was chatting away with Lucas.


Lucas had whimpered behind his desk. The chair moved against the wooden floor and soon Lena heard a heavy thud. She turned around to see Lucas hiding behind the flipped desk, making it a sort of a fortification. It was useless, really, as whoever had killed Cortez would not be stopped by a shabby looking desk.


The door hung open just a bit with Cortez hanging loosely against it. By the time Lena reached the bodyguard the ice had melted away and the man fell against the wooden frame, pinning the door closed with his bodyweight. Pressing her lips together Lena moved the lifeless body aside from the door and reached for her gun. For a moment she stood listening to the sounds outside but could only hear a faint thud.


In case the one with the ice shards decided to shoot the office again Lena stood with her back pressed against the wall to the side of the door. Cortez lay face down, lifeless, beneath her feet, bleeding onto the floor. Now the air in Lucas’ room stunk of cheap incense and a metallic undertone of blood.


With her free hand Lena reached out to her neck and rubbed her finger tips over a small area right beneath her left ear. There was a faint scar in a shape of an inverted triangle, an old scar, barely visible now. It was an old habit, the ridges of the scar gave Lena something of an assurance.


“It may be PTSD,” her shrink told her during one of the weekly sessions, “tell me, does it remind you of something?”


The shrink did not have the access to all of her files so he assumed a lot and guessed the rest.


Lena pushed away from the wall and nudged the door open with the tip of her foot. It did not creak this time and Lena thanked whoever was responsible for this small miracle.


Before her were two men and Stain, pinned to the floor with similar ice shards as the one that killed Cortez. Her gun was raised and aimed at the man with the bottle, as it was surely him who was responsible for the tricks with the ice, and she herself still stood in the doorway. The beaded hallway was not the best place for evasive manoeuvres, perhaps that is why Lucas’ office was in a spot where anyone would be gunned down if attempting to enter his office.


“Step away from him,” Lena said. It would have been wise to gun them both down but Stain was far too close, in fact close enough for either of the two men to kill him before Lena’s bullets reaching them. And, despite Lena not liking the idea whatsoever, Stain was her partner.

 

[Sha]

Blood slowly seeped from the Stain’s wounded legs. The daggers of ice struck through the muscles of his calf and, in doing so, pinned him to the floor. In the end it didn’t matter whether or not he was stuck to the dirt encrusted floorboards of this brothel; if he couldn’t mend the holes in his calves he wouldn’t be able to walk regardless.


An all too familiar voice returned to his ear. His sanity was intact, but the voice sought to tempt him towards releasing his control. He wondered, for a moment, if all Gifted fought back a voice in their head. Though he knew it was just a figment, a part of him created by his curse (as he was told), she felt so real. She felt so independent. Her voice: Calm and soothing as they spoke words of blood and death. Maybe he was just insane, and this was how his mind reconciled; that's what he had always figured, anyway.


“You can see it can’t you, Karl? That look in their eye, it’s like looking into a mirror, don’t you think?”


Stain snarled at the ground and peered up towards his assailants. He heard a thud from behind the door which oozed blood. Not a moment later Lena’s voice echoed from the room beyond. A barrel poked it’s wanting head from the open door. “Step away from him,” She said.


Stain wondered why she did not fire. Was it for his sake?


“No, my poor, dear friend. It’s for hers. If you die, she'll get in all sorts of trouble. I’m so sorry, Karl - but she's not doing it for you. Just kill her and be done with it. Let me kill her.”


Stain clutched his head with his left hand still covered in solid, human flesh. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't have killed Lena, considering his current predicament.


“Just shoot, dammit!” Stain grunted angrily. “Pretty soon you’re gonna have to shoot me anyway,” He now muttered through a sad laugh.

 

[Lenaara]

“Step away from him,” Lena repeated, then her gun clicked as the safety was turned off. The barrel aimed directly at the man with the bottle, right in the middle of his back, just like she was taught.


She ignored Stain’s idiotic request and only gave him a side glance that could have meant anything from Shut the fuck up to You useless fool. Lena herself didn’t know what she expected Stain to do, he was stuck to the floorboards and wouldn’t rip off his own skin to attack the two men before him. No, Stain was far too weak and naïve for that sort of thing, a partner still in training. She should’ve just left him in the office to sort through her paperwork or some such thing. Instead, he was put in harm’s way because she assumed that he was less of a fuck up.


Lena moved from the relative safety of the doorway and began taking a few steps through the hallway towards the three Gifted before her. Her shoulder was brushing against the wall beside her, ready to press against it to dodge an icicle or whatever would be thrown at her. Not that it would matter if it hit her, not the first few hits anyway, she hoped.


“One last warning and I will put a bullet in your head. Step away from my partner,” Lena said and took another step.


In her mind Lena was following protocol – warn, wait, shoot. It was better than shooting first and cleaning up paperwork later, and a possibly dead partner.


Got enough shit on my conscience


Then, her finger pressed against the trigger and loud bang deafened Lena for a mere moment.