Chapter 11: FIGHT SCENE! FIGHT SCENE! FIGHT SCENE!

"Maybe I should have thought this through first?" Chloe thought, as she plummeted to a messy death. "No — no time. They're better, stronger, faster, and have more blood in them than me. Only chance is to surprise them, be spontaneous. Oh, right. The ground. Best do something about that. Okay, what do we have? Wind, rushing, pigeon, brick, pavement…ah. Fire escape."

She snagged it, swung, and slipped through a small window, shooting torpedo-like past an incontinent old man (1) on a toilet and through the bathroom door. "Oak," she noted. "Good finish, too." She rolled, hopped an ugly couch, grabbed the doorknob, pulled, and —

"!"

— took a pair of ninjas to the face.

"How the blazes did they get here so fast?" she wondered, as she skidded off the kitchen table. "Ninjas. Right. Damn them." Shuriken thudded into the wall. She fired back a desperate volley of cutlery, a dinner plate, and a ham, finally stunning the one on the left with a chair to the head. Splinters flew. Knife raised for the kill, she leapt, and then hesitated. "Did I just throw a ham?"

Mistake. A swing from the one on the right knocked the knife away, and a kick sent her into the stove. Chloe caught the next jab on a pot lid she'd hooked around her broken arm and redirected her opponent into the lamb stew(2). Seeing her first opponent recover out of the corner of her eye, she grabbed the closest thing she could find and swung. The ninja dodged the loaf of French bread easily, but didn't expect the spice rack on the backswing. Neither, for that matter, had Chloe.

The battle raged in the kitchen stadium. Spices soared. Ketchup and soy sauce splattered the walls. A terrible thing dripping carrots, potatoes, and a thick sauce with too much basil in it went down in a hail of steak knives. Chloe swung her blade and scored a slash on her other opponent's brow. The woman nearly floored her with a knee in response. Chloe gasped for breath, winded, and stumbled to the ground. The woman moved in for the kill, and cursed as her eyes unexpectedly filled with blood.

"Yes!" Chloe barrelled into her like an express train from Hell. Thunk. Steel pierced flesh, mail, bone and wall, pinning her opponent. She stunned her with her improvised shield, spun, snatched a weapon from the floor, and stabbed her in the heart. "HA!"

Her foe gasped, twitched, blinked, and, to her surprise and confusion, utterly failed to expire.

Chloe did a double take at her weapon of choice and sighed. "A spoon," she muttered. "Why'd it have to be a spoon?"

The woman shrugged her eyebrows and smashed her in the face.

"Okay, I deserved that," she thought, as she sailed backwards, right into the second ninja. Arms clenched round her throat. She flipped, snagged a ceiling fan with her legs, spun, and tossed her away. The fan came loose in a crash of sparks and masonry onto the kitchen table. Chloe rolled off and jammed the whole mess into her opponent's midsection with a grunt, pinning her against the wall. The one staked to the wall yanked her cloak. Fed up, she clocked her with the lid and rammed the knife further into the wall before skittering out the door to freedom.

"Right," she thought, as she shuffle-limped along, trailing masonry, blood and 11 herbs and spices. "That should hold them for a few seconds or so. Exit, exit, exit. Stairs! Stairs good! Door, open…oh, for heaven's sake —"

Three-hundred-and-three pounds of berserk Chinese assassin smashed the emergency exit, a door, a couch, and Chloe through the exterior wall in a mad, howling, painful bull-rush. Chloe, briefly, cursed whatever gods might be listening before she bounced, painfully, off a passing semi-truck, snatching the edge out of instinct. Street signs and sidewalk whipped by. She gasped. She was slipping.

Strong hands grabbed her wrist and pulled her aboard. She was about to thank them profusely when they suddenly slammed her into the trailer-top. She bounced, rolled, coughed. "What the?"

A great sword hummed through the night air, decapitating a passing street sign. Hu grinned, his cheeks covered in tiny scratches and bloody paw prints. "Now, assassin, we FIGHT! HA!" He struck a dramatic pose as a traffic light clonked off his helm.

Chloe, despite herself, gave him a look. "You just saved me, and now you want to kill me?"

"Gravity shall not claim your life this day, puny one!" he boomed. "Tonight, your soul belongs to the clan of LAI!" He charged, bellowing a battle song.

Thirty rounds of .45-calibre ammo perforated his breastplate as Chloe emptied the Backup Plan into him.

He gurgled red. "Urgh?" he managed, before toppling into the street.

"Idiot," thought Chloe, dropping the gun. The driver, apparently used to having corpses drop off his truck, stopped at a red light. Chloe took a few moments to try and stop her head from spinning. She gave the universe a sarcastic glare. "Okay," she wheezed, "what's next?"

Three trucks-load of Greaser's finest spun to a stop in the middle of the intersection. "Get her!" someone shouted.

Chloe sighed. "I hate you," she said to the universe at large.

Several thousand bullets, a few Molotov cocktails, and a rock perforated, scorched and dented the hapless semi-trailer in a fearsome 38-and-a-half gun salute (3). Chloe hit the deck, slightly concerned with all the flying death. "Surrounded!" she thought, bullets zinging around her. "No cover! Can't run, they'd waste me, can't make the jump to the building with the bad leg…"

"Waste the mutha-trucker!" said a voice. Chloe risked a peek over the cab to see a group of youths levelling several large, bazooka-like objects in her direction.

She managed a good seven steps before the rockets' red glare caught up with her. Bombs burst in the air. A great billowing red-hot cloud of fwhackoom flung her skyward. Stars and streets whirled like a bad special effect before mercifully coming to a sudden, and solid, stop.

She moaned. "Gravel," she tried to say. "Why'd it have to be gravel?" It came out as, "Mluugh."

Ears ringing (bleeding?), she wobbled to her feet. The blurry wreckage of a semi-trailer blazed merrily below her. Men cheered and fired off automatic weapons in a festive manner, sounding somehow close and far away at the same time. "Huh?" she thought. "Whazzall the cheerin' for? Why's my head so blurry?" She did a quick vision test. "One, two, seven fingers…is that right?"

A bullet zinged off the roof's edge. "Hey!" yelled a voice. "She's still alive! Get her!"

Chloe shuffle-hopped off in a random direction, trying to shake her head clear. "Must get away," she muttered. "Must to get home, finish mission. Must stop talking to self."

A mailed fist to her jaw brought her back to reality. She stumbled back. Something lithe and lethal swished past her neck and pinged off brick. She rolled. A second swing bit into the rooftop, spitting stone. She whirled, bringing her arm up. The third blow pierced her shield with a shriek, and stuck. The ninja struggled to free her weapon.

A steel hand latched onto her wrist. "What?" she gasped.

Chloe squeezed, hard. Her mouth tasted of iron and copper. Blood pounded in her ears. She was vaguely aware of the world going blurry and red around the edges. A low, feral, animal growl clawed its way up from her lungs. Just before all rational thought decided to nip off for a tea break, she heard a fearsome, angry, raging thing snarl this hate-filled curse through gritted teeth:

"God…damned…NINJAS!"

Screaming, Chloe launched herself at the purple thing before her. Crack. The world flashed white, and she felt someone's nose break through her skull. She let desperate rage guide her hand to the blade, wrench it free, and stab, stab, stab. Clank, clank, thunk!

The thing cried out. Its partner yelled something long and angry in Cantonese. The rage flung the makeshift shield behind Chloe, bouncing it off an incoming skull. She leapt after it, swinging wildly, hurling deprecations against gangsters, ninjas, and the world in general, but particularly the bits with ninjas in them. Her wild blows sang off armour, sliced flesh. The blade pinged off brick and snapped. Too late, she saw her opponent's hand dart inside her robes, fumble, draw, stab…

The world stopped. The red mist dropped away. The cold night rolled in, bringing with it the sharp-edged clarity of shadows and midnight. Before her, a surprisingly young girl, white skin etched with black, laid on her back, panting. One arm clutched a shoulder, which seemed to be wounded. The other, Chloe noted, seemed to end somewhere in her gut.

She remembered to breathe. It hurt. Her hands shuddered, dropped the broken blade. Her opponent shoved her aside. She was distantly aware of hitting the roof. It looked like the girl was helping that other lady to her feet. Who were they again? Ninjas? She wondered, briefly, why that word seemed to irritate her so much, and why the world seemed to be moving in slow motion.

Her hand drifted down her chest, found something, and pulled. The simple dirk slid out easily, glistening with something dark and warm. "Oh," she thought. "A knife. That explains things."

A voice seemed to be jabbering at her from the back of her head, far, far away. "Strange; this doesn't hurt nearly as much as I thought it would." The blade fell from her hands. "I just feel sort of…numb. Kind of…tingly?" A snatch of her consciousness's babble caught her attention. "Poison? Oh, yes, that's it. It must be a poisoned blade. Probably a neurotoxin. I'll be dead inside a minute."

Wait…dead? Dead! She started to panic. "No, wait! I don't want that! Not now! Not here!" She rolled to her knees. A chill spread through her chest. It was getting hard to breathe.

The girls, supporting each other, watched her dispassionately. She reached for them, knowing it was pointless. This was the end, she knew. She was doomed to die. She had tried, and tried, and tried again, and now, on this lonely roof in a nameless place, she had failed. "Failed?" she thought. "I…I've failed…her?" Panic froze into despair and dropped into the pit of her stomach. "Altena." Light and sound drifted away. "My lady…I'm sorry…"

Darkness.

She blinked. No, wait, not quite. What's that light over there?

"Chloe…"

And who said that?

"Chloe…" It was a soft voice, warm and tender, strong, stern, and full of love.

Altena! Yes! It was she! Dearest teacher, honoured mother, Altena! There she was, before her, clothéd in heavenly raiment! (A distant voice muttered about oxygen deprivation, hallucinations, and the use of the word "clothéd.") She fell to her knees, wept tears of joy, and embraced her. "Altena!"

The lady of light smiled. Soft hands surrounded her. "My dear, dear child."

Chloe wept. "Forgive me, my lady! I, I tried my best, but…"

She stopped. The lady pressed a finger to her lips, and shook her head. "All is not lost, dear Chloe. For there is yet another deus ex machina in store for you."

"Eh?" Far away, a distant voice slapped its forehead.

The lady clasped her wrist. "Remember, Chloe," she said, her eyes and hair aglow with strange lights. "I have given you the Light of Eärendil— "

"Huh?"

"— a light for when all others go dark. Use it, and come home to me!" She released her, and gently pushed her away.

"Wait!" said Chloe. "The Light of What? What's that supposed to mean?"

She gasped. The world was back, and with it, the chill touch of death. Her wrist, strangely enough, felt warm.

In a dream, she got to her feet. The ninjas leapt back, and drew steel. "How?" said the one on the left.

Chloe touched her right gauntlet. There was the fork, of course, she thought. "Did she mean that? No…she must have meant…" She noticed a small bulge next to the fork's sheath. "Oh. I forgot about this." She slid it out.

The crystal tube glittered, filled with a strange liquid.

"An antidote?" said the one on the right.

"Poison?" said the other.

"No matter," said the first. "Let us finish this!"

They charged. Chloe popped the stopper and tipped the vial back. She'd choked most of it down when she realized that it tasted a bit familiar…almost as if it were…

She spewed. Grape juice! "Damn you, Altena!" Blades swung…

…and stopped.

Chloe, mid-way through her systematic execration of all things grape and purplish, risked a look at her oncoming doom.

Small drops of vitamin-enriched violet goodness glistened upon the girls' faces. The one of the left blinked, wiped a cheek with her fingers and tasted them. Her eyes went wide with terror. "Grape…juice," she whispered.

"How?" said her associate. "How did she know our one weakness?"

Chloe blinked. "Uh, what?"

The one on the right grabbed her and drew her eye to eye. "Clever move, blade of the Soldats," hissed the ninja, "but there will be others after us. You will never be safe. You will never escape…our…our…" Suddenly, her hands flew to her throat, out of which escaped a bone-rattling, asthmatic wheeze. Her twin did likewise. The two fell to their knees, gasped, choked, thrashed a bit, and died.

Chloe paused to reflect on these developments. "What in the world…?" Cautiously, she gave the closest twin a little kick to the shin. Nope, nothing. She checked for a pulse. Nada. She lifted their wrists. They were limp as fish. "They're…really dead…" she realized. "But…how?"

"Well," said the voice in her head, apparently consulting a book, "judging from her last words, and her symptoms, it appears that both succumbed to a severe and fatal case of anaphylactic shock."

She blinked. "Allergies?" she whispered. "But that, that's so incredibly….stupid!"

"Yep," said the voice. "And thank you ever so much for wasting our last words on such a ridiculous subject."

"Huh?" Then Chloe realized her heart had stopped. "Oh."

She fell.

Stars.

Wind.

Glass.

(Footnotes)

1. "Well, it's a durn good thing I was here when that happened!" he said.

2. Mr. Rufflepants was a big eater.

3. Safety catch was on.