Thanks once more to all reviewers; replies are where they should be and sorry it took a while for me to update the story.

Chapter 39: Someone should pay (part one)

I charged at them before I knew what I was doing.

As I think I've already mentioned, I'd already had so many people try to kill me in far too short a space of time that it wasn't even funny any more. Granted it wasn't that funny to begin with but; ah you know what I mean. For all that had happened to me in the last day and a bit, I wanted someone to pay.

I drew both of my arm-mounted swords and charged at the closer of the albino aggressors. I lunged at his face with the sword on my right arm. What happened next was unexpected.

The head seemed to vanish; it was replaced by a shimmering green outline that my sword passed through without doing any apparent damage. With nothing to stop my sword in motion, I then proceeded to, rather embarrassingly, fall through the rest of the twin's body, (which was also now a collection of shimmering green lines), and find myself as an undignified heap on the pavement.

I hurriedly pushed myself back up and turned to face my opponent. He was still in his ghostly form. All of his teeth were visible, and they were arranged in a contemptuous grin.

My first instinct was to charge at the creature again. I decided against this however. Casting a quick glance around I noticed that Morpheus and another human, Niobe I think, were busy with the second twin, everyone else was watching or waiting for a good time to attack.

As I went to remove my coat so as to allow myself more flexibility, I remembered something.

I pulled the coat back over my shoulders, reached into a pocket, and extracted the severed head of the Merovingian. This was an awkward task seeing as the blood had dried and caused the head to stick to the inside of the pocket, eventually I succeeded however and displayed the frozen fearful facial expression of the deceased cranium in my hands to my opponent, hoping to make him angry, he was far more likely to fuck something up if that happened.

He didn't seem to care.

His grin broadened and after a few seconds he returned to his previous form. The look on his face was now easier to recognise as smug and the desire to put a sword through his teeth increased.

The next thing I knew, he drew a blade of some description from his jacket pocket. I never got a good look, his hand moved unnervingly quickly. One moment he was reaching into his pocket. The next I find myself being pushed back two steps and find a sharp knife in between the Merovingian's eyes. The program's aim was unnervingly good.

The next knife found itself in my shoulder.

It was a fair few seconds before I actually realised what had happened. Initially it was all I could do to hiss in pain, unwilling to degrade myself any further by screaming. Despite the enhancements I had made to my skin, the knife had buried itself completely in my arm. Only the handle was visible, the end closest to me stained with blood.

I retracted the sword on my undamaged arm and yanked the knife from me. I couldn't help but groan at the pain this time. Blood began to gush from the wound. Some flew gracefully to the floor; the rest moved slowly down my coat.

He waited patiently, arms folded and still grinning as the parted flesh around the wound closed after a few moments. The pain vanished in this instant.

"We would have expected better from you."

My gaze switched instinctively to the other fight, no one seemed to be gaining an upper hand, the whole thing was a repetitive collection of blows, blocks, dodges and low kicks.

I was pleasantly surprised though to find Eric moving towards my opponent with a pipe in his hands. In spite of everything that was happening, I couldn't help but wonder where he'd found it.

Fortunately, the program was distracted by Wanderer and didn't notice my approach; this was helpful as it meant he couldn't avoid the swift blow to the head I gave him.

If he was human, his skull would have been smashed to pieces. Unfortunately, all that happened was that he fell to the floor. There wasn't even any blood.

A momentary expression of anger crossed his face. I pushed the pipe to the floor, hoping to ram it into his stomach, unfortunately, his stomach reverted to his ghostly form and the pipe passed effortlessly through his and collided with the pavement, creating a loud metallic 'twang' in the process.

He shifted his body so that the pipe was no longer in his shimmering gut. He then solidified himself and took both of my legs out with a low kick. If I'd had more time in the construct before the sentinels tore the logos to pieces, I might have been able to utilise bizarre mental powers to slow my fall. Instead, I simply fell backwards and bashed my head against the hard concrete. I didn't pass out and nothing gave way, but it was still painful.

I didn't have time to dwell on this however as I soon found the enemy back on his feet and standing above me with a blade of some description in his hand. It looked more like a tuning fork. Anyway, I pushed back the pain and subsequent nausea that accompanied it as best as I could and tried to get out of the way.

What happened next was almost funny.

He wasn't ready for me; that in turn led to him remaining in his solid form whilst I advanced towards him. Initially I had been moving slowly, carefully keeping myself out of his line of sight, when I saw Eric on the floor however, I realised that I didn't have time to waste.

I slashed sideways with one arm mounted sword and created a slit that passed through the Twin's ribcage. It was a deep cut, although I'd hoped to take the spine out. Initially I didn't think that this mattered as the screams and blood that came from him seemed to imply that his untimely death was just around the metaphorical corner.

Then, with the nonchalance of someone scratching an itchy arm, he reverted to his ghostly form for a few seconds. Lines of fluorescent green seemed to weave in and around the wound. The next thing I knew, he was standing before me, undamaged, un-bloodied and grinning once more.

I could have laughed. This was getting ridiculous. Then again, with all the self-preservation edits I'd used that sentiment probably seems somewhat hypocritical.

Hawk and Manticore were now advancing over to where Eric and me were standing. (Truth be told he was still trying to pull himself off of the floor, that hit to the head must have been disorientating).

To my left, I noticed Niobe on the floor, with a knife in her gut, slowly bleeding to death.

To be continued

Right, now for replies:

Tai Wilson: I hope your writing ways went well. I've come to the conclusion that being inspired to write is not enough; you need to be separated from any shiny things that can distract you. That's part of the reason it took me so long to update. I wish you well and thanks for reviewing.

LiMiYa: Computer problems are now a charred memory of a migraine. I'm still finding it hard to be inspired to write anything though which is annoying. Oh well, thanks for reviewing. Just out of interest, what happened to the story you told me you were writing?

P.S. I know that with Smith's turning, a few things in the story aren't going to make sense, particularly the sentinel attack on the logos and the fact that everyone wasn't killed instantly when that happened. All will be explained. Fear not.