"En Guarde"
By Eoraptor
Anita Hunter, young scion of the Hunter family of Kings Row, blew a breath through her bangs.
"You just made a big mistake, Hero!"
"Says the guy wearing a piece of corpse on his face?" She rolled her eyes and resettled her grip on her blades. A whip of her head cracked her neck and snapped her long blonde ponytail like a buggywhip.
The bald thug wore the defacto uniform of a low-ranking Grave Digger of the Skulls. Denim top and bottom over a grubby wife-beater tank top. His weapon of choice for the evening was an aluminum baseball bat.
And of course, the borrowed bones of a skull which he had dug up and cleaned to make up his mask.
He swung his bat at her with a viciousness that made up for its lack of finesse.
She parried it with her mainz droit easily enough, strength belying her size as she spun away from that blow and whipped her rapier around. With an almost laser-like precision she flicked the keen edge of the blade across the side of his face, severing the strap holding his skull mask in place.
She completed the third arc of the combo by pirouetting on the point of a toe with both of her blades outstretched. The longer rapier caught the idiot's gloved hand, slicing as easily through leather as through live flesh and disarming him of his baseball bat. It also made an almost musical whipping sound as the paired swords spun through the air around her steel laced ballet.
"You know," she spat some long blonde strands of hair out of her face, glaring at the young thug, "At least the Hellions have the decency to actually be demonic behind their masks. You Skulls are nothing more than trotted up street thugs who go around robbing graves for kicks."
The unmasked hoodlum was cradling his wounded hand… he looked around himself at his partners in crime. He couldn't just slink off now.
"Witch!" he charged, swinging wildly with his fist.
The only thing that made contact was blood from his wound spattering wildly around and occasionally onto her formerly pristine white jacket.
"Avertissement!" she cried at the perceived foul of soiling her costume.
Spinning harmlessly out of reach once again, she koshed him on the back of the head with the hilt of her rapier. This sent him plummeting onto the ground, unconscious. A moment later, the city teleportation system beamed him away to the Zig.
"Witch huh? Well, I suppose it's not as original as Combat Barbie, but better than Blades Manticore."
In the amount of time it took Skull number one to vanish into the ether, she had taken down the other three skulls as easily, barely breaking a sweat in the effort. Sighing, she looked up and down the street, from Wentworth's new shop to the Vault Reserve, but saw no other targets.
"Merde," she again spat at the flicks of crimson on her Kevlar jacket. "I hate Skulls. Always playing 'Who's the most emo.' Ugh!"
The millionairess slipped her weapons back in to their scabbards and returned to her parked car. She'd had her 'fun' for the night and there was a board meeting of the Hotel Geneva chain in two hours, just enough time to go back to the mansion, shower, and put on something more befitting boardroom battle than street fighting.
She slipped the four discarded skull masks into evidence baggies and placed them carefully into the back of her town car. DNA testing might reveal who they belonged to and get them reinterred with the rest of their mortal remains. It was a small service that the Hunter Family could do for the city that had given them so much during their hey-days.
Well, that and beating in the heads of the thugs who kept stealing from graveyards and running superdyne all over the city.
AN: City of Heroes, City of Villains, and Going Rogue is (tentatively) property of NCSoft. Thanks to the secret cabal of reverse engineers (SCORE) for keeping the rogue servers running for those of us loyal capes who still play the game. #HoldTorch