Medica, cura te ipsum!
It wasn't until she was back in her apartment, the door bolted shut and the windows all closed, that she was able to fully relax. Then the pain of her wounds made itself known with a vengeance. With a groan, she headed towards the bathroom, pausing at the coffee table in the living room to click on the TV to a local news channel, and pull a small black pouch out of her waistband. Tossing the pouch and remote control onto the table, she continued on, and started trying to lift the remains of her dark shirt over head head. The gouges in her sides started to open up again, and she gave up with a sigh, feeling all of her thirty-odd years ("It's twenty five, dammit!") very much at that moment. Leaving the bathroom door open so she could listen to the television, she started rummaging around in the medicine cabinet.
"Damned thing's ruined anyway. I liked this one, too." she grumbled under her breath as she started cutting the shirt away with a pair of scissors she pulled out of the cabinet.
Encrusted with both her blood and the still luminescent green hunter's blood that she had rolled through during the fight, the tattered remains of the shirt fell to the floor, accompanied by winces as she peeled some sections away that had stuck to her wounds. Every now and again, she removed small blades from their concealment in the shirt, dropping it into the sink with a tink of steel on ceramic. Once the shirt had been removed, she tossed the scissors onto the back of the sink, then bent over stiffly to remove her pants and shoes, more blades being removed and deposited with the rest. Once she was completely undressed, she straightened up and loosened the cord holding her hair back at the nape of her neck, releasing it to cascade down her back in dark braids.
As she turned the sink on to wash off the blood that caked most of the blades she'd removed from her clothing, she closed the cabinet door and gazed at her reflection, steel blue eyes peered back out from an unremarkable face, framed either side by the hanging braids of hair died a subdued burgundy. She could see damp spots of the green blood trapped in the braids, along with dirt and mud that she must have picked up in the fight. She turned off the sink faucets, letting the water drain away, while her eyes looked down, checking for any unrealized injuries in the mirror, before she looked down at herself to see the extent of the damage the last alien had caused.
The gouges in her sides weren't as bad as they could have been, and although they would leave scars, they would cross over existing ones, of which there were plenty. She sized up the cuts in her skin professionally as she turned on the bathtub, decided that they would probably not need more than bandages, and finished stripping her gore stained clothes off with relief. When the bathtub had a few inches of water lining the bottom, and lowered herself in gingerly, and started to wash the encrusted blood, dirt, grime, and more of the green fluid off.
It took three changes of the water before she finally felt clean, and the scabs that had been trying to form in her wounds had been washed away, leaving thin trickles of her blood seeping into the water to stain it pink each time. Every few minutes she paused as the news anchor would announce the next story, but went back to trying to clean the gore off each time, the story not interesting her. Once she realized she'd reached the point of diminishing returns with her efforts, she climbed out and dried herself off carefully, then reached underneath the sink cabinet and pulled out an assortment of rolled up bandages, dressing pads, and a curved metallic box that she set on the floor beside her, as she lowered herself to sit cross legged on the cool tiles.
She pressed a discolored panel on the side of the box, and it opened out like the petals of a flower, displaying a compact set of dull gun-gray objects that looked disturbingly like medical things, but wrong somehow. Reaching into the box, she unclipped a vial from its mounting, and popped the cap, before pouring some of the blue liquid inside onto a dressing pad. Visibly steeling herself, she pressed the pad against the gouge on one side, and let out a scream of pain.
Eventually, as the pain eased to a dull roar, she slumped back, tears in her eyes. When she removed her hand, the pad remained in place, stuck to the wound, and she repeated the process, her screams lessening with each new application, until all of the wounds were dressed. The outside of the pads was a mixture of blue and red colors, the fluid she had poured onto the dressings and her own blood seeping through. Quickly, she wrapped gauze around her torso over the dressings, pinning each roll tightly, then reached back to the metallic box to withdraw a short tube that fit in the palm of her hand. She pressed one end of the tube against her stomach, and pushed on the other end with her thumb. Her back arched but the only sound she could make was a breathless gasp, and after a few seconds she slumped back down to the tiled floor one final time, withdrawing the tube to reveal a long thick needle that had sprung out of the end into her.
It took her a few minutes to recover from the injection, but the voice of the news anchor announcing "breaking news" broke her out of her exhausted reverie. She quickly she recapped the now near-empty vial of blue liquid, and replaced it and the injection tube back in the metallic box. She closed the petals of the box back up, returning the whole thing to its place under the sink, threw the remains of the dressings into the trash, grabbed her dressing gown from the back of the bathroom door, and tried to rush into the living room as she put it on, managing only a quick hobble instead as her body reminded her that she wasn't exactly in good shape to be moving fast at the moment.
"... are still not releasing details, however a spokesman for the department confirmed that the bodies found did appear to be mutilated in a similar fashion to previous murders in the area over recent months." She stiffly lowered herself into the couch, and watched as the screen switched from the closeup of the news anchor to shots obviously taken earlier in the evening. Men and women wearing windbreakers saying FBI, DEA, ATF, as well as cops from the local police department were coming in and out of a brownstone building. As the camera panned, several ambulances could be seen, their paramedic crews waiting around obviously unnecessary for their usual role. The voice of the reporter took over as the camera tried to find something interesting to focus on.
"According to sources, at least seven bodies were found this evening in this building. All of the dead are rumored to be members of local organized crime, although police are not releasing their identities yet." The camera switched to a close-up shot of a blond reporter, bundled up against the cold weather, as she continued her report, referring to the notebook she held in one hand often. "The previous killings have all followed the same pattern, each of the dead died violently, and at some time after their death their spinal columns were severed at the neck. Police still refuse to speculate as to any connection between these deaths tonight and the prior murders, but it's likely that the same thing has happened here."
A snort from the couch. "Way to go on the 'investigative reporting' there, girl. Pulitzer material for sure!"
The reporter continued on, oblivious to the scornful remark. "This would bring the total number of murders of organized crime figures in the city over the past six months to over fifty, raising concerns amongst the community of a turf war between organizations. Reporting from downtown, I'm Kylie McCullough, Channel 7 News, ..." She clicked off the TV with the remote, and tossed it casually back onto the coffee table. She knew there was no point in watching to see if there would be any news of the other hunt that night, the hunters would, she knew, be very careful to leave no trace behind of those particular deaths. She reached over and picked up the pouch she had left on the table when she got home, and opened it up. Tipping the contents out, she looked at a handful of teeth, four silvery ones, many more white ones, thoughtfully.
"Now why would there be kainde amedha inside the city?" she wondered to herself, idly rolling the teeth in the palm of her hand. "A hunt here would be too much a risk of exposure." After a few moments lost in thought, she snatched her hand closed, stood up and walked over to the bedroom. Inside, she moved towards one wall, pressed against it in two places, and stepped back as a soft click was heard and a hidden door pivoted open. Reaching up into the gloom inside, she pulled on a cord attached to a light, then crouched down to open a drawer, then selected one of the several smaller compartments it was divided into. She dropped the teeth from her hand into the the compartment, pushed the drawer closed, and as she straightened up she allowed her hand to idly stroke the stylized gun-metal gray mask that lay on the shelf above. She looked around the inside of the converted closet at the blades and other weapons hanging there, a curious mix of silvered steel and blades made of the same gray metal as the mask, before shrugging and closing the door, clicking it into place.
Returning to the bathroom to collect the blades from the sink, she went back to the couch, picked a movie channel to watch, and set about drying off the blades with a towel, checking each one for damage and setting them on the coffee table when satisfied with them. A few she placed to one side, mentally noting that she would need to sharpen them again before her next night hunting, all the while thinking about the events tonight and the presence of the hunters, and the aliens. Eventually her blades were dried, and she tried to get comfortable leaning back into the couch, her wounds beginning to itch like fire ants under her skin.
"Nothing I can do about it tonight, it can wait until tomorrow." she mused. "Shit happens."
