(decay)
-irishais-
Don't breathe. Her spine is flat against the tree, and she is sixteen. Don't breathe. The hunters are out there, and they are good. If she breathes, she's dead.
(The irony is not lost on her).
She hears the crunch of boots on fallen leaves and sticks, snapping like brittle bones under their feet. Two sets, then, not three, like she had thought. She slides her hand very, very slowly down her leg to the sheath strapped there, pulling out her favorite knife. The blade is wickedly sharp, black-coated to prevent the tell-tale glint of a reflection. It makes a faint whine against the heavy duty nylon as it slides out, and she stills. The boots stop.
Everything speeds up at once, and they burst through the tree line, but she is there just a hair's breadth before they are, swinging down from the trunk without so much as a battle cry, her boots slamming into the hunter's chest. He grapples with her, but she has her knife at his throat, one long fluid movement that slides through the fabric bunched there to the soft flesh underneath. He goes still, but she does not wait, whirling like a dervish to the other. He lands a glancing blow on her head, one that results in a brief flash by her eye, but she has her knife in one hand and her gun in the other, and she wastes no time putting the bullet between his eyes.
She crouches, rifling through pockets and pouches with quick-minded precision, drawing out a potion, an elixir. She takes the forty gil she finds, just for a lark.
(Snap.)
Shit. The word slips into her consciousness and bypasses her primal muscle commands on its way out. She moves, but the third hunter, tall, but slighter than the others, the one who has stood silently in a grove three feet away as his companions were dispatched, has a weapon, a big brutish staff that he spins with ease, a battle-confident smirk that seems permanently embedded on his lips. She ducks and dodges, rolling and spinning, but the staff is there, always there, and she avoids it in her ribs, her throat, her spine. He slams it into her wrist, and her hand releases its hold on her knife, dropping the blade from nerveless fingers.
She still has one good hand, and finds her opening, timing it with a fool's recklessness as she slips in and up under the staff. If this doesn't work, she is dead, because his hands are still on either side of her, locking her into this absurd embrace. She has just enough room to slide her gun up, pressing it against his jaw, and the movement is snakebite-quick.
"Bang, bang," she says. "You're dead."
He laughs, and lets go of the staff, backing away with hands up. His chuckling is the most annoying thing in the universe, she thinks, but there are different breeds of it in him, and this one means he appreciates the fight.
"You're good," Seifer tells her, as the emergency lights in the training center come on to normal power, adding a scant layer of illumination to the scene. Nearby, the other hunters pick themselves up, one frowning good-naturedly as he rubs at his neck. There is a thin red line there, she notes absently. Oh well.
The hunter she shot in the head rubs at the chalk-dust "wound" between his eyes. "Do that tomorrow," Instructor Grant says, "and you'll make SeeD for sure."
She nods, salutes him, and accepts his nod of dismissal with grace. Of course she'll do that tomorrow. She'll do whatever it takes. Xu's boots leave light footfalls as she walks out of the TC, and it is only when the doors close behind her that she exhales, one long breath that does nothing to dampen the adrenaline still coursing through her veins.