Chapter Thirty:
A/N: How does Tessa take to being rescued? Just how you would expect her to: with absolutely no gratitude! This chapter is to show more about her unwillingness to depend on others than anything else, although there is some action.
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Tessa carefully crawled across the ladder, incredibly mindful of the five-metre drop below into the waiting mouths of the decaying cannibals. Her legs were numb from exhaustion, but she continued her shuffle.
Adette and the middle-aged man were waiting at the other end of the ladder. They had gotten Adette across by using the rope to drag her across. It wasn't the most elegant of methods, but they had managed to get her onto the cement roof of the Residence. Amazingly, though, the banging of her head on the ladder's steps didn't wake her up.
"Come on," the man called out, the sound of his voice exciting the Rots below. "You can do it!"
What is he saying? Tessa asked herself. Is he calling me like I'm a dog? The idiot probably thinks of me like a dog. All women are dogs to him. I'll kick his ass if he keeps treating me like that.
The ladder swayed under her weight and she grabbed it to keep from falling, but it didn't do any good. It slipped behind her, falling out of the window of the first building. The man's eyes grew wide and he grabbed for Tessa, but he was too slow and she was too far away.
It scraped between the two buildings, sending sparks into the air. Tessa screamed as she plummeted toward what she believed was death, but the ladder caught on a small ledge of the Residence and crashed into the first story window of the other building. It was suspended in the air at head-level with the Rots, who began reaching up and grabbing at Tessa.
She let go of the ladder and pushed away the hands, but there were too many. One grabbed a hold of her leg and tried to pull her off, but she grabbed the ladder again and kicked the hand, breaking the fingers off. She lifted her left hand and small black jets of ink hit the Rots in the eyes, blinding them. However, it had no effect since they already knew she was there.
"Are you okay?" the man yelled down to Tessa as he peered over the edge of the building.
She didn't answer as she punched a Rot in the face, knocking it back a couple of centimetres. Knowing she was going to die, she slapped the bird-shaped pin on Adette's jacket out of desperation.
The pin glowed in the night, almost like a beacon. It did nothing to scare away the Rots, though. They kept grabbing at Tessa, who continued to punch and kick, desperate to stay alive. She screamed and thrust her right hand into a female Rot's face, burning away large sections of her flesh, revealing bone. The Rot was unaffected, though, as it bit at her hand.
Suddenly the Rots and Tessa were overwhelmed with light and Phoenix was gliding over them. It flapped its wings and blew away several Rots, then spread them and rained fire on several others. Tessa, however, still had to defend herself as her GF fought.
"Grab this!" the man yelled as he threw a rope over the side of the building. It was the same one that they had used to lift Adette out of the sewer, and it swung inches away from her outstretched fingers. Tessa remembered how Rinoa had talked about stunning Johnny, one of the Rots on the train, with a Thundara spell. She hoped the same applied to basic Thunder spells.
Tessa grabbed the ladder with her left hand and waved her right about, hitting Rots with Thunder spells. Momentarily, they stopped moving, but, within seconds, they were grabbing at her again. She used her left hand to drag herself closer to the rope, and then reached out and grabbed it. The rough fibres weren't stable in her sweaty palms, but she went ahead and jerked to show she had it. After letting off a final volley of Thunder spells, she grabbed the rope with her right hand and jerked again to let him know she was ready.
She stood up and kicked at a few heads before being lifted off the ladder. She placed her feet against the concrete of the Residence and tried to walk up the side of building to make it easier for the man lifting her, but his grunts showed he was still having problems.
After a few seconds, a window loomed just over her head. She reached out with her left hand and grabbed the sill, still tightly holding the rope with her right. When she became level with the window, Tessa grabbed at the paneling and pulled herself onto the narrow bit of concrete that was the ledge. She let go of the rope and grabbed the paneling with her right hand.
"Oh my god!" Tessa heard the man scream, and she pictured him looking over the edge to see if she had fallen.
"I'm okay!" Tessa yelled up at him. "There's a window here."
"See if you can get in!" the man yelled back. "I'll meet you there."
"Wait!" Tessa shouted. "Tell me, are the windows reinforced?"
"I don't know," he responded. "Why?"
"Just get down here," she told him. He yelled down that he would, and she pictured him turning away from the of the roof and running to a staircase leading into the building.
Come on, Tessa, she thought. You don't need this man to save you: you can do it yourself.
Tessa let go with her right hand and pulled it back as far as she could without losing her precarious balance. She balled her hand into a fist, and summoned what strength she had left. Her hand wailed through the air and slammed into the glass, shattering it and cutting her hand. She had a bizarre sense of familiarity as she reached the rest of the way through the window and grabbed onto the interior of the pane.
Just a little more, she told herself as she moved her right hand around the window until she felt the lock. She flipped it and got as tight a grip on the window as she could. She lifted her left foot and smashed the bottom half of the window with her booted. The glass crunched as she kicked it out. She shifted her left hand down and grabbed the pane, feeling small bits of glass bite into the palm of her hand. You've got it!
Tessa drew her right hand out of the window and bent over. She reached in through the bottom and raised the window a couple of centimetres before her boots lost their traction and she fell slipped.
She dangled out of the window, her boots scraping against the concrete wall and she struggled to get her footing. Her fingers were still latched onto the window, but they were wracked with the pain of glass in the joints.
Two hands wrapped around her left forearm and pulled. Tessa got her footing and pushed herself up as she was pulled, and, soon, she was back on the windowsill.
The grey-haired man lifted the window open and helped Tessa through. She jerked her arm out of his grip and stumbled, pitching forward and falling onto the floor. Her head struck the side, but not the corner, of a table. She was unconscious before her head crashed onto the rich carpet below.