"What?" he whispered.
Lightning answered him, paralyzing him with unimagined agony, driving him to his knees; leaving him momentarily blind, deaf, and screaming.
She waited. "DID I TELL YOU TO SPEAK?! DO 'YOU' NOT REMEMBER ME?! LOVER?!"
"what?" his mind raced, trying to reason...
A few hundred million volts of electricity, delivered with a surgeons-like precision, ignited his central nervous system... and ended his confusion for him
His body became a tapestry of hell: flesh aflame, eyes incinerated, ear drums burst and bled. He was wrything in agony - volcanus was in bliss. It regenerated him... and strengthened her.
"SAY 'WHAT' AGAIN! PLEASE! I BEG YOU! NO... SAY MY NAME! INSECT!"
All her titles ment so much to her, and her subjects... so many to choose from.
He, visibly trembling, reached tentatively for his watch, his terror filled eyes never leaving hers, not so much as blinking, then... recognition.
one word... gasped in undisguised terror from he who silenced all their voices.
"you."
She grinned, "or... I'd have also accepted..." as she spoke the wind picked up, "CHILD OF HEAVEN!...," a funnel cloud lifted him off the ground, "MISTRESS TO THE RISING SUN!" higher, "PURGER OF THE SEAS AND SKY AND EARTH!" he was swallowed by the storm cloud, "SHE WHO WILLS AND WHISPERS DIVINE WIND!" he was slammed into the ground... pulverized.
STILL... he lived, healed, and got back up. As little as he wanted to.
Before the others not tending to the fallen could reach the pair... it all happened.
He all but bruised his wrist trying to freeze time... nothing.
"All fights are fair from here on." She muttered as she turned to face him, some eighteen feet away.
He laughed... nervously.
She just smiled, and drummed her nails against her hip.
His fingers reached for his throwing blades.
She glanced at his hand, then stared into his eyes, and grinned, "You're a daisy if you do..."she hissed.
He appeared baffled by her words... and almost uttered THAT word again. His fingers shook uncontrollably.
She balled up her fists, her rage building. like storm clouds, lightning danced in her brown eyes. For sixteen hundered years, THEIR eyes pleading for her to save them... haunting her. THEIR cries for mercy... the children... laughed away as they were slaughtered. All HIS doing. She smiled in her eyes, lightning flashed. This time she would keep it up till he would have to be reanimated from smoking ashes.
His fingers touched the edge of a hidden throwing star, "YOU CAN'T KILL ME!" he hissed back.
She noted that he didn't sound too convinced of his own words. She smirked, "Say when."
Jean suddenly dove on Sam seconds before a motorcycle came flying - hurled with impossible force - through the air, and slamed into the Ripper's back, sending both man and machine crashing into the front steps to the manor.
A massive figure strode past the two, dwarfing the prone former legionnaire, and advanced on the fallen Ripper.
"HE'S MINE!" Sam screamed.
A single lightning bolt struck the leaking gas tank, igniting the gas. The bike erupted in a fireball; shrapnel spewed out, eviscerating Caligula's flame engulfed body, but only staggered the new arrival.
The giant turned as Jean stood to defend Sam. The two warriors stared at one another. "You want to die for her? For that THING?"
"One of us will," Jean responded.
The giant grinned.
...
Carter lay on the ground, Lara pressing down on his wound, his parents scrambling to apply first aid.
"MOVE YOUR HAND!" his mother screamed.
Evan nodded.
Lara lifted her palm, expecting a puddle of almost black blood... but found barely any.
"TURN HIM OVER!" his mother demanded.
"I'm quite capable of doing it myself mum," Carter said softly, "I don't think I'm gonna need major..." the back of his shirt was dry.
"He didn't want to kill you? Or did he want to keep me distracted?"Lara sighed.
"Thoughtful," Carter said wincing, "for a psychopath... now... why?"
"Only one way to find out," Lara said, and ran to the house as the Ripper clawed his way through the door as his body healed.
"You should have help!" Carter shouted.
"I do...Instinct," she answered, "Someone else will only help him. You need the ruby, and I imagine sutures. Get Sam to focus on that big fella, keep him and her off of Caligula; give him nothing to feed off. The rest of you keep that giant unfocused, and swinging at air. I'M going home."
She looked at the giant as he laughed at Jean... yet made no move at all. Odd.
A loud moan from the manor drew her back. She followed the trail of blood.