A/N- Yes,I'm still alive and kicking, speaking of which…
Thought I'd add in a bit of a warning for this chapter, since I've gone pretty hard on the graphic violence in this one. Nothing much worse then what I've rocked in my previous stories, but just in high concentrations for this chapter. I apologise for nothing though, violence isn't pretty or neat like you see on the silver screen and I have always been dedicated to writing as realistically as possible.
I figure if you are already reading one of my stories you know a bit of what to expect anyway..
Enjoy.
-Grey.
Li kicked out with her leg on the seat, using every once of strength she possessed and causing Amber to jerk sideways away from the pistol. At the same time she lunged forward with the fork and stabbed it as hard as she could into the weapon wielding hand.
The large gunman screamed like a little girl, as the blunt tines of the eating instrument gouged violently through the flesh of his hand and lodged in deep between the metacarpal bones. Whether by reflex, shock or more likely severe nerve damage, his hand sprung open and the clunky revolver fell from his grip. It was followed by a fair quantity of the red stuff, which flowed in a pulsing stream from the impaled hand.
Li had no time to evaluate the damage she had caused with the fork, while she wasn't sure whether it had went all the way through his hand, she thought with grim satisfaction that it couldn't be too far off.
She abruptly cut off the high-pitched screams of agony with a swift knifehand to the ailing man's larynx. It was like she had cut his head off, the keen died in the villain's assaulted throat and he collapsed in a gasping, bleeding mess.
"Fork you," Li growled in pun of the occasion, an event that Paulo would look back on later and laugh about. Much later.
For a single terrifying moment, Li thought she had been shot and that was the cause of the monstrous pain in her flank. She frantically clasped at her side and upon feeling the indent, remembered her still unhealed ribs from Tokyo. Li took the barest part of a moment to embrace the pain that racked her body, having acknowledged her pain she was then able to accept it. Tabling the message of injury from her nervous system, she pushing aside the simple sensation and focussed back on the present.
Without sparing another thought on the probably mortally wounded man, Li turned to find her next opponent.
Hex was already standing when Li overwhelmed the table with her action.
The henchman standing beside him was frozen in shock at his dispatched colleague and was doubled over in an instant when an unbalanced Amber swung backwards and clouted him in the nuts.
This gave the hacker just the opening he needed and without a second's hesitation, he pointed his nearest side fist straight up. He quickly doubled up his grip on that weaker side arm and brutally smashed his elbow down on the back of the bent over foe's neck. His elbow savagely landed right on target; at the base of the skull where the head joins with the spine and it drove the recipient face down, first into the table and finally the pavement.
The assistance of weight, gravity and his second arm, generated extreme amounts of force for the attack. Understandably, there was little surprise in either Hex or Amber when they heard the grisly splitting of bone under the powerful strike.
Given both the location and force of the elbow, Hex concluded in an instant that something important had been severely damaged and the man was in a critical condition, if not dead.
Paulo was stuck behind the table when the fighting started; admittedly he had edged his chair out to gain him some room to move in anticipation of action.
He watched, feeling inadequate while first Li and then Hex with Amber's help, took down their unwelcome guests. As the hacker smashed his man face down into the table with a driving elbow, every item on the surface seemed to jump and Paulo found what was left of his bacon and eggs in his lap.
It was at this point he noticed the change that had come over the advancing reinforcements. The pair that was almost upon Hex hesitated at the treatment of their predecessors and another largely built man from inside the van rallied the enemy side.
"Get them!" He roared at the two already on the street, his face was masked in shadows and his pointed finger directed another three bad guys who climbed from the van.
The formerly formidable pair cut short their statue impersonation and continued their lunge at the group. Hex was busy detangling Amber from her chair and Li had already made a rush at the three closer men who had gotten out of the van. Paulo could see it was up to him.
Amber looked up from the ground just in time to see the rush of two men at her and Hex. Suddenly the lead attackers head snapped back in a gruesome explosion of blood and white ceramic, leftover scrambled egg stained the shoulder of his suit and he dropped to a knee clutching his face.
Paulo's face was the picture of astonishment; he still held his good arm aloft from where he had hurled his plate discus-style at the advancing twosome. Sharp fragments of the flower patterned plate were embedded in the wounded man's face and hairline, made all the more macabre by the streaking of blood and exposed flesh.
Well, that was more effective then I expected, he thought in amazement, reaching for Hex's plate.
Forgetting Amber for a second in favour of taking down the active threats, Hex charged for the uninjured opponent before he could get any closer to the table.
Amber whipped to her feet, appreciative of the reprieve granted by the cutlery and moved to finish off the wounded kneeling man. She ran straight at him and he was at such a height that her forearm caught him under the chin and her momentum did the rest. His chin rolled back over his heels and toppled backwards onto his butt. Amber followed through with the other hand in a shoving palm to his bleeding face, forcing the guy to keep rolling onto his back and coming to a stop only when his head contacted hard with the street.
The unlucky baddie who had taken a plate to the face didn't stir and Amber jumped up from her crouch to help Li with her multiple opponents.
Hex had run straight into a front kick in his haste to stop the second of the advancing pair. His stomach spasmed in revolt from the hit and also probably the omelette he had eaten for breakfast, it felt like a size eleven boot was imprinted right into his guts. Hex gruffly tried to suck in air, while struggling not to fold his body in pain and in doing so lower his head.
The living lesson for fighting; do not bend your back and drop your head, was still lying on the pavement a few metres away, taking his final few breathes.
Resisting the urge to clutch his seizing abdomen, Hex managed to keep both arms held high in front of him, protecting his head against the imminent follow up onslaught. An onslaught that of course had to come, with the sort of morning the team was having.
The suited attacker started with a stiff jab at Hex's head, before following it with a well-drilled jab, hook and cross combo. The first achingly split his eyebrow, but the other two the hacker wore heavily on his blocking arms, jarring them against his head.
Hex's already broken right arm strained in its splint and since it was right beside his ear, he could hear the grinding of bone ends as each blow rained on that arm.
Badly shaken by the punches, like he had just came out of a concrete mixer, he stumbled forward into his opponent and drove his bruised cheek hard against his opponent's chest. From this clinch his head was out of the swinging arch and he could now let his hands drop from the shoulder to seek out their opposite number. His foe did what was natural and pushed back aggressively against the tightly gripping hacker, forcing him back towards the café window.
Hex acutely became aware that his right hand was no longer gripping at his opponent's hip, indeed it would seem his lower right arm was completely unfeeling and unresponsive.
A familiar dread started to creep into him and his spirit faltered in the heat of battle, at the nightmare reality that he was facing. An unmistakeable yelp of pain behind him, sobered Hex up and returned resistance to his limbs, before he was shoved through the window. He crammed the lurking fears into a small corner of his mind and committed once more to the fight.
Hex brought the only working part of his right arm, his flexed bicep, up into the armpit of his enemy. Drawing hard on the crook's right arm with his left, he unbalanced his foe and actually stepped sideways towards the window. Heaving with his right arm, like he was doing the shot put, Hex shunted the other fighter sideways with his thrust.
The large window to the diner shattered in a crystalline hail of glass, as Hex managed to hurl his foe right through the structure, where he collided with a sturdy table inside. Chairs overturned and any remaining customers screamed and fled from the violent trespassers.
Seeing the man inside stir, Hex wearily crossed the threshold to finish the job.
Li was struggling, three opponents at once was a huge stretch even for her.
It helped that they were only going for a capture or knockout, she was decidedly less picky. The first man she encountered got his knee kicked right through to the rear side of his leg, an unfortunate injury that conveniently dropped him right in his friend's way.
Before Li could incapacitate him for good, she was hit from her blindside by one of the fullback physiqued thugs. His tackle caught her low and on the side of her broken ribs, a crushing impact that knocked the air from her lungs and landed her roughly on the concrete, with her attacker on top.
Li's body worked on autopilot and whipped her legs up to wrap around the waist of the man that pinned her. It would have almost been an intimate position, if it weren't for the fact that it was also the basic ground hold known as the guard in both Judo and Jiu-Jitsu. It was actually a place that Li often found herself in when practicing ne-waza or ground fighting in the Dojo.
It was an unusual position that she felt safe in, a place where she could do some real damage.
Not forgetting her ability to strike, Li slapped her large opponent's ear with a cupped hand, rupturing his eardrum from the overpressure and giving him something else to think about for a moment. The man on top yelled in hurt and brought one of his baseball mitt hands up to protect the ringing, ruined ear. Li continued the path of the defending hand until it wrapped across his throat instead, she then shrimped her hips out away from his, to create some space and align her body with the parallel arm. She then hooked her leg that was now at the top, over his head.
Li's body now lay at a right angle to her opponent's body, his captured arm running straight up between her legs and the centre of her body.
Having drilled this technique thousands of times on the tatami, her body already knew what came next. With the arm clamped tight in the crook of her elbow and the hand towards her head, Li sat back sharply, arching her hips towards the sky. The trapped arm hyperextended at the elbow with a sudden clap-like noise, the jarring release of the limb sent shockwaves through her clenched legs.
The wounded man in her grip quickly forgot all about his burst eardrum when his arm jerked back excruciatingly, with an unnatural, new range of motion.
It was then that Li bore the consequences of going to the ground in a multiple attacker situation.
A savage boot caught Li just behind the ear and forcibly disengaged her from her previous opponent. Rolling and grazing along the coarse sidewalk with the power of the kick, she finally came to a thankful rest at the curb. Stunned by the blow, Li tried to collect her scattered senses and fought the growing urge to vomit and sleep. She hoped that if it did happen, it occurred in that order.
Her vision felt slow and blurry, when she finally looked up to find her attacker. It was the third and final man who had slammed her and he was now deliberately stalking over to finish what he started. Retribution, for the three colleagues the girl had already dropped. Li tried to keep her eyes on the advancing threat, but her blinks seemed to grow longer in duration and difficulty, a dark shroud that became harder to see through.
Sound faded out from her ears and in the silent space between blinks, she watched a plate sail past her attacker's face, barely missing him. This gave the man reason for pause and he turned to face the direction the projectile had come from. Out of Li's vision, Paulo gave the distracted thug a rude hand gesture before searching the table for something else to throw.
The change in attention gave Amber the chance she needed, scooping a handful of loose soil from one of the potted plants bordering the café, she charged in.
Her angle of approach meant that she came up on his flank, the noise of her movement alerting him to face her at the last minute. Within a metres distance from her new opponent, Amber raised her arm and flicked her clenched hand sharply at his face. The gritty spray of dirt, blasted into the thug's face, stinging his eye and causing them to reactively shut.
Amber took advantage of his blindness and followed up with a quick jab at his throat. Unfortunately the blinding attack had made him drop his head and the blow glanced off his jaw instead. His fumbling hands caught her wrist and he removed a hand from his tearing eyes to swing sightlessly. Amber ducked the swing and pumped in an open palmed uppercut onto the same spot on the jaw she had just hit. Her blind foe spat blood as his jaws snapped together violently and he snatched her second wrist.
With both her hands tied up, Amber frantically started kicking, going for any target she could reach with a stomping instep. Knees, shins and groin all copped a battering before her opponent started pushing with his considerable mass, driving the girl back towards the road.
In the van behind her, there were flickers of movement inside, as more people became aware of the fighting outside.
The roadside, front door already hung open from where an attacker had departed in a hurry to help his friends. It was this doorway that the struggling pair was blindly heading. The well-built henchman overpowered Amber, forcing her back, straight into the first van beside the open door. She hit with a loud thump, distorting the bodywork between the front and rear doors. The crushing pressure on her arms held her in place against the vehicle and she felt something give in her elbow when they collided.
His body pressed against hers meant that she was unable to back up any further or advance forward.
But I can still go down, Amber realised, ducking as low as she could in the grip that held her. Her sudden drop pulled her handler down and face first into the metal, the crumpling of his nose created an understandable, reciprocal decrease in his grip strength. Amber yanked her hands down as she crouched, slipping them out through the natural openings in the human hand. Her recently broken arm, complained at the extreme movement, but complied.
With a deft side step, she was clear of her opponent and he blindly stumbled towards the cab, clutching for a girl that was no longer there. He stopped when his hands felt the interior hinges of the open front door and he turned around to back out.
That was when Paulo came out of nowhere and dropped a shoulder into the open door that Amber was already moving to slam.
The van door had been fully open at the time of impact and therefore it had the maximum distance it could close on. The unlucky man in the way prevented the door from ever closing completely. Paulo had gotten a run up for the shoulder charge and the fire of adrenaline in his blood fuelled him. Accordingly, when the car door slammed shut under the combined force of both him and Amber, it did so with a huge amount of force, force that was almost immediately transferred into the object blocking the doorway.
That object was human and the first point of contact for the recipient was low, at the top of the pelvis and lower back. The crunching collision slammed him up against the cab, leaving limbs poking out at awkward angles and causing him to look a lot like a spider caught under a shoe. Bone and cartilage crunched and shattered under the impact, there was no air left in his lungs to scream.
It was only an instant of crushing trauma, but extraordinary damage was done by the time Paulo stumbled back from the explosive door slam. The unfortunate man caught in the destructive metal vice, fell weakly to his knees, as his injuries rendered his hips and legs unusable.
Released by the pulverising squeeze, he slumped into the doorway and slowly reached inside the door pocket for a weapon. His red, bloodshot eyes were half closed in pain already, but he bravely retrieved a spare pistol.
Seeing that he was still a threat from the other side of the door, Paulo breathed a quick prayer for his own soul before reacting in the only way he could think. With his good hand he slammed the door a second time, crushing the man's chest and arms. Near his feet Paulo saw the legs shudder from the unforgiving impact and he caught the door as it bounced off the seated man.
He gave one final, merciful slam to finish the job and was slightly sickened by the small spray of blood that caught his boots. The door did not bounce back this time and instead stuck gruesomely into the mangled body that prevented it from closing. A half caved in chest and mutilated torso had deformed to somewhat accommodate the metal door.
Gore and serious injuries never really bothered Paulo too much unless he was the one who had to cause them. Regardless, he had no time to dwell on the messy death; quickly he scanned the area and couldn't see any more enemies.
His focus then returned to his friends; Amber was running over to Li, where she lay with her back against the second van, Hex was emerging from the broken window of the destroyed diner. He cradled his useless right hand and limped towards the others. Blood weaved a trail down from his torn eyebrow and framed one side of his face, contrasting strongly against his permanent white computer tan.
Paulo felt for his own injured limb and his fingers came away wet and crimson. Obviously his efforts had started his gunshot wound bleeding again. Wincing he pushed his little finger hard into the gauze until his single digit was literally plugging the leaking bullet wound.
Ouch, ow, ow, ow, he grimaced with each painful jolting step to meet up with the others.
"Is she alright?" Hex asked grimly, arriving last to their impromptu meeting point where Li sat slumped against the stationary vehicle.
"Li can you hear me?" Amber mumbled in alarm, at her friend's apparent lack of response. She shrugged over to allow Paulo to take the lead when he arrived and knelt beside them.
Carefully he lifted Li's chin off her chest, he was reassured to feel her hot, slow breaths, blow across his face. He frowned at her odour though and eventually noticed the small puddle of vomit he was resting a knee in. With a brief look of disgust he lifted his leg and placed it somewhere drier and less smelly.
Well there goes her smoothie and my new Slacks, he thought inappropriately, fighting his mounting fear with dark humour.
Paulo felt a slow pulse at her wrist, before starting to have an examination of her head.
Hex looked around nervously, at the silent streets and aftermath of their battle, sirens hailed in the distance reminding him of their fugitive status. Remembering one of the biggest components of their falling to pieces plan, he let his right hand swing down flaccidly, while he palpated his jacket to make sure the his phone was still in place.
Amber felt hot tears spilling down her cheeks as she watched Paulo gently slide a hand across her best friend's head.
Li groaned weakly when the young medic's hand found the boggy bruise at the back of her head. Paulo quickly withdrew his hand with a morbid expression, knowing what the abnormality might mean.
"It's not good," He concluded to his friend's, with sadness etched in his deep auburn eyes.
"Guys.." Hex started seriously, as the sirens grew louder, but his voice was drowned out by another sound.
The horrid rasp of metal on metal, as the sliding van door in front of them opened.
Crouched in the threshold of the door was a large shaven-crowned man, concealed in the shadow. His pistol however was not and with unwavering conviction it carved a line across the four friends, before finally settling on one.
Amber.
The deafening thunder of the weapon going off seemed surreal in the backdrop of the quiet streets, only the tones of distant emergency services provided background noise. It was a shot from point-blank range, an impossible target to miss and Amber lurched back into Hex's unbelieving arms with a vivid spray of blood.
The shooter took a step out of the van into the light.
He ignored Paulo and the cradled Li, who rested together against the front door and instead fixed his cold gaze on the shocked, paling girl he had just shot.
In the daylight his face was revealed to be a terrifying mask of barely healed wounds, four long vertical stripes that deformed his appearance. Ominously, they cut straight through the gruesome hollow where his second eye would normally sit.
They almost looked like the wounds of a big cat, but they were not, a human had made these marks. Taking in his scars, Amber disturbingly remembered her own nails carving the lines in his flesh, over a month ago in the first attempt on anyone's life.
He looked different without the blue windbreaker.
"Remember me?" The disfigured villain snarled, glaring at her triumphantly with his single good eye.