The roar of the crowd in the stadium above is little more than background noise in the entrance tunnel at the base of the Underdome. Scarlett sharpens her hook, casting a glance around with her good eye at the other competitors. Some of them are straight-faced, in a pre-battle trance; some are muttering incoherently to themselves. Then there's the ones she can't read, hiding their faces behind a mask. Scarlett clicks her tongue. Masks, really? Have a little showmanship! Flash a blood-spattered smile at the camera drones as you stand victorious atop a mound of corpses!
The house music drops as the showrunner introduces the next billed competitor. Scarlett heaves a sigh, adjusting the bandana sitting atop her head. Moxxi's running through the names quickly, and it's still taking forever. Lots of fighters tonight, maybe the most there's ever been. It doesn't particularly surprise her. She's one of the newcomers, after all. How many of them are here for the same reason she is?
Her eyes fall on an absolute behemoth of a man, dressed in ironclad armor, wielding a hefty anchor in each hand. Seems impractical, but she'll give him a wide berth anyway. She's not here to make new enemies.
Her roaming thoughts are put on hold as she catches Moxxi announcing another fighter. "...single-handedly brought down three Crimson Lance assassins..."
Oh! Single-handed, my ass. No surprise she and Deadeye Thomas didn't make it into the story. Still, it brings her some amount of joy that Moxxi said nothing about him being a captain anymore. Why else would he be in one of these competitions? Only fools who lost their fortunes or their minds would bid their life on a cash prize.
Except Scarlett, of course. She has her own noble reasons. The money, well, that's just gravy.
"...the notorious pirate, you know his name! Seven-Finger Nils!"
Scarlett rolls her eye. That name worked so much better two fingers ago. Then again, her father has always been stubbornly resistant to change. Just look how he took it when she mutinied.
An explosive roar of the crowd signals the start of the first round. Scarlett sits on a nearby ammo crate, not sure if she's hoping her father will live through it or not. Some other fool offing him would at least save her the trouble, but then she really wants to see the look of defeat on his scarred face as he draws his last ragged breath.
It's all moot, though. She's seen enough of these type of shows to know the top competitors always make it through the first few rounds. It's more about fooling the crowd into thinking there could be an upset. She always liked watching these more for the spectacle than the barbarity. Not that the latter wasn't fun, too. Though the theatrics of this match, she thinks, rather leave something to be desired. She hasn't heard any particularly interesting stage names yet. Seven-Finger Nils? The Undertaker? The Lawbringer? Black Hand Beatrice? So unimaginative! Where's the personality, the panache? She's rather proud of her own nickname. At least she earned it.
The light above the blast door in front of her strobes, bathing the tunnel in red light. Moxxi's voice booms over the loudspeaker. "She's spread a swath of slaughter from Eunomia to Lemuria, iiiiiit's Scaaaaaaarlett the Hyeeeeeeeena!"
Right, battle plan. First, don't get killed. Second, take the high ground. Third, orchestrate a long-overdue family reunion. Last, don't get killed.
The doors open, smoke pouring in from the machines on the ceiling, and Scarlett steps through to the cheers of the crowd. She only takes a second to soak in the view from the ground. The ring of lights, flashing bright blues, purples, and greens (along with the single pale blue ring of Helios) encircle the top of the stadium above the packed bleachers of bloodthirsty spectators. It looks so different from up in the stands, but she still has a good working memory of the layout.
She uses the cover of the entrance smoke to duck behind a nearby shipping container, which at this point in its life is more rust than metal. The top plateau is her goal, overlooking most of the rest of the gully, but it'll be an uphill battle – literally. A peek around the corner of her cover tells her that a few bandits have taken refuge in the scaffolding that sits in the shadow of Moxxi's tower, in the middle tier of the arena. She sets her sights on a path circling up the earthen tower overlooking the rest of the arena. The dirt on the way up is stained rusty with blood.
Head on a swivel, she ducks out from behind the old container. Keeping low and moving quick, she makes her way along the no man's land, hugging close to the rock wall that reaches up to the plateau above her to her left. She takes out two unsuspecting bandits, tussling with a few skags, with two quick shots from Greed. She pauses, watching the skags sniffing at the air, looking in her direction. The skags lower their heads, and start chewing on the dead bandits. She lets out an amused snort and keeps moving.
Scarlett doubts there's anybody better suited to gladiator combat than she is. Constant vigilance with a healthy dose of paranoia come naturally to her. She learned to watch her back from working at her mother's inn by the bay, long before she ever knew who her father was. She'd dealt with so many drunks, thieves, mercs and perverts working there that finally joining her father's crew was business as usual. With, surprisingly enough, less sexual harassment than what she dealt with at the inn – at least, after she cut off Ace Manley's hand for getting a little too grabby.
Piracy also taught her perhaps the most important lesson she'd ever learned: never be afraid to run away. Hard to count stacks of cash when you're being sucked out of an airlock. She can hear Mum now. You must have learned that one from your father.
Moxxi introduces several more combatants (Scarlett finds herself smirking in approval at whoever calls himself Sandman – not terribly creative, but she finds the spin on the bedtime tale amusing) as several more red-flashing doors open around the arena, each accompanied by its own pouring of smoke. A few round metal shacks sit in front of her, but her focus is singular. She turns left, heading up the earthen ramp.
To her left stands the great scaffolding platform that overlooks the two lower tiers of the arena. A long ramp leads up to its top, some thirty feet above the dirt. A few bruisers stand at the top of the ramp, guarding a pair of bandits with wild, spiked, bleached blonde hair, both of them shouting wildly at each other, both of them with a sniper rifle in their hands. No sign of dear old Dad yet, but getting atop that platform would help her spot him a lot easier. Not to mention, he would only have one way to get at her. She keeps close to the metal supports, out of view of the pair on top, and skirts around its footprint, pausing when she reaches the base of the ramp. Straight ahead of her are several towering remnants of an Atlas ship – escape pods, she thinks. Several dead bodies are strewn about, with several more gladiators camped around, taking cover where they can find it. One of the fighters, hugging tight to the steel of one of the escape pods, pops his head out. Almost immediately, there's the loud crack of a gun, and his head jerks back, blood spraying out in a mist behind him.
She gives a sidelong glance up the ramp. The two jokers up top seem more intent on fighting with each other than taking aim at anyone down here. Scarlett sneaks up behind a man in old armor, patchwork pieces scrapped from old Lance soldiers. All the protection in the world couldn't save him from a shot from Greed at the base of his skull. He goes limp instantly and falls to the ground. Almost too easy. She takes his spot hugging the escape pod, and catches the crazed shouting of one of the more psychotic bandits. "Gonna shove that bayonet up your—"
Scarlett pops out around the corner, gun raised. She takes her finger off the trigger as she looks down her sights at a woman clad in a full-length duster and wide-brimmed hat, both the same shade of unmistakable lavender.
Nisha.
Scarlett lowers her gun to her side. She nearly can't believe it, even though a part of her realizes that for Nisha, a place like this is home.
Blood spurts and stains Nisha's purple sleeve as she pulls her revolver's bayonet out of a limp psycho's chest. The psycho collapses to the ground, her buzzaxe lying forgotten by her twitching hand. Nisha fires a single shot into the side of the bandit's head.
Time seems to slow down as Nisha turns her head, her tangerine eyes locking onto Scarlett's. Greed weighs so heavy in Scarlett's hand that her arm may as well be chained to the ground. Her blood races through her heart and hammers against the arteries in her neck as she stands rooted to the spot. Her mind screams at her to do something, anything: speak out, run for cover, but instead she just stares.
She studies the dead look on Nisha's face, trying to decide if she's daring Scarlett to raise her gun and shoot, or if she already knows Scarlett won't. Then in one fluid motion, Nisha raises her revolver and fires. The crack of the revolver freezes Scarlett's heart in her chest.
The crowd erupts in a raucous cheer.
Something heavy thuds in the dirt behind Scarlett, nudging her right boot. She looks down and sees a shirtless bandit lying on his side, a bullet hole between the eyes of his mask. She looks back up at Nisha, who is storming right at her with long, brisk strides, duster billowing out behind her. She manages to push out a disbelieving whisper, "Nisha—"
Her tone is as flat as her expression. "Not. Now."
Scarlett steps to the side as Nisha brushes past her, a revolver in each hand. She calls out to her again, but Nisha is already running past the escape pods. Scarlett starts to follow her, but a crack from a sniper rifle above sends her back behind the pod, taking Nisha out of her line of sight.
Scarlett would be tempted to believe she was never there, that it was just an illusion, but she caught a whiff of her as she passed by. Her scent, unmistakeable, like sanded wood and the sea. It was real.
One of the bruisers at the top of the scaffolding fires his shotgun down at Scarlett, snapping her out of her trance. With its wide spread, her shield is able to eat what little hits her. "Get your ass gone!" he shouts, and Scarlett is all too happy to oblige.
Nisha. Nisha!? Goddammit. How long had it been? Sometimes that night on Peitho feels like a lifetime ago. Sometimes, when Scarlett closes her eyes at just the right moment in the evening sun, it feels like it was only yesterday. She'd broke herself down, built herself back up, and moved on. There was nothing she could do about what happened, nothing she could change. But deep down, she'd never stopped looking. She looked for her in bottles of rum, she looked for her in the endless stars between the planets, in the endless void between the stars; she looked for her in the lava floes of Hephaestus and the ocean sunsets of Aquator, and she never stopped hoping that someday...
Well, someday, this would happen. It's never like how they write it in old songs, but Scarlett always found them hokey anyway. She's always known she's been weak when it comes to Nisha, but seeing her now drives home just how hopeless it all is. She never was strong enough to keep pushing on without knowing why she left, but she never could bring herself to give up on her, either. And the way her heart lodged in her throat at the sight of her tells her what she's always been afraid of: that she never was strong enough to hate Nisha for leaving her, and that she would take her back in a heartbeat.
Scarlett finds herself nearly at the top of the gully now, crouched just behind the rock outcropping of the plateau. She doesn't remember walking up here. She doesn't even remember why she came here in the first place. She's pretty sure this is where she saw Nisha headed—
And then a familiar male voice, gruff and raspy from years of smoking, reminds her. "Fire in the hole!"
Scarlett grits her teeth. Her father is somewhere up on that plateau. This might be the only chance she gets to have her revenge on him for taking her eye. But she's not sure she can do it, not right now, not after the stab in the heart from seeing Nisha's face again. How can she hope to focus? Can she really risk losing her again?
She sinks down to her knees, torn. She may never get this close to her father again, either. The man who abandoned her mother when he found out she was pregnant, the man who never made an effort to meet his own daughter. She never understood why Mum didn't want her to meet him until it was too late. She spent eighteen years wondering who the hell he was. It was a cruel twist of irony that he turned out to be somebody not worth knowing. Just a miserable, paranoid bastard who took her eye when he tried to kill her.
Well, maybe not paranoid, she supposes. Can't be paranoia if she really is out to kill him.
She pops her head up just for a second, long enough to get a glimpse of what's up there. Her father had his back turned to her, but she'd recognize that bushy orange beard anywhere. He was flanked by two familiar looking figures. One of them worked below deck, mainly guarded the brig. Fink. Creepy bastard with milky eyes, always wore a bandana. The other was the quartermaster, who could knock somebody out with a mean right hook just as easily as with his vile breath. Skag... something. Skagsuck? No. Well, nobody ever called him that to his face, at least. Skagtooth! Skagtooth Snyder. Must be the only two saps who were still loyal to him after he finally ended up losing his ship. The first mutiny is a tragedy, the second one is a farce.
She takes a deep breath, trying her damnedest to push Nisha from her thoughts.
Scarlett springs to her feet, braces her gun arm against the cuff of her hook, and fires. Her shot is true, the bullet driving straight through Skagtooth Snyder's right ear and into his head, dropping him to the ground. Fink and Nils wheel around to see their fellow pirate lying dead in the sand. Scarlett flashes a smile.
"Hello, Father!"
She rushes behind the nearest crates as Nils lets out an angry string of curses, firing ineffectually at her cover. She counts out two blasts from his shotgun, then pops out to counterattack. She doesn't land a single shot as he ducks behind a rock by the edge of the plateau. She takes a quick glance around before ducking down to reload.
An angry shout from Nils answers the question on her mind. "Fink, you coward, get back here!"
Scarlett lets out an amused snort. No wonder that rat bastard ran off at the first sign of trouble. It's a wonder he stayed with him this long. Dad must have some real dirt on him.
"You're all alone, Dad!" Scarlett shouts. She crawls around the side of the stack of crates, looking at the S&S assault rifle on the ground by Snyder's dead body. "Guess you're used to that by now, yeah?"
She waits with bated breath, dimly aware of the music blaring from the speakers above and the ambient gunfire from the lower levels of the gully. Nils lets out a laugh and shouts, "Surprised to see you survived that fall, girl!"
Scarlett focuses her bionic eye, but can't detect his heat signature behind the rock hiding him. "So stubborn I can't even die right! Mum always said I got that from you."
"Don't worry, I'll see that through to the end."
Scarlett catches a glimpse of a grenade lobbed into the air, heading towards her cover. Holstering Greed, she dashes out for the rifle, diving to the ground and grabbing it in her hand. She rolls forward onto one knee as the grenade explodes behind her. On cue, Nils pops out from behind the rock, and Scarlett holds down the trigger, bracing herself against the full-auto kick digging into her elbow. Nils immediately ducks back behind the rock, but she's sure she chipped his shield a few times. She smells blood. There can't be much room for him between that rock and a sheer drop to the lower level of the gully.
She grabs a magazine from the bag on Snyder's hip and reloads, then stalks forward, waiting for the slightest bit of movement from behind the rock.
Moxxi's voice rings musically over the loudspeaker. "Looks like Nils is between a rock and a hard place! Cutthroat combat right here, folks!"
Nils fires blindly around the corner of the rock, and Scarlett has to dodge to the side to avoid his follow-up shots. Her right foot collides with a rock, and she loses her balance, falling flat on her ass. She swears silently and holds her rifle up, aiming at the edge of the rock, waiting for Nils to show his face.
A bright flash from above catches her eye. Just a second later, a yellow streak in the sky grabs her attention, like a plummeting asteroid, growing larger by the second. Her jaw drops, and she rolls over, dropping her rifle, and starts scurrying forward in a blind panic.
The impact of the moonshot reverberates through the stadium like rolling thunder. The best cover nearby is a waist-high wall of sandbags. Scarlett dives to the ground behind them and covers her head. Seconds later, part of the Underdome's walls and bleachers – with a smattering of limbs of its spectators – start raining down into the arena. She chances another quick glance up at the sky. The Eye of Helios flashes again, and another mortar screams down through Pandora's atmosphere, then smashes into the stadium's outer wall. Screams break out from above in what remains of the bleachers, as the crowd parts from the smoldering crater left in the upper deck by the first moonshot.
Scarlett pokes her head over the sandbags, glancing at the rock her father was hiding behind. No sign of him. Down by the path leading down from the plateau, some of the competitors stare transfixed at the sky as Helios unleashes a third mortar strike. She can still hear gunfire coming from the lower levels. Scarlett sighs. Idiots. They surely can't still be expecting a payout?
A man's voice cuts in from the loudspeaker, oozing with affected charm. "Hey, Moxx. Love the whole bloodsport thing, big fan. Then I got to thinkin'... where's the fun if the audience is so removed from the action?"
Scarlett yelps and jumps back as a pair of legs with no torso attached splats into the ground in front of her.
"Heh. Brings a whole new meaning to the term 'spectator sport', right? Anyway. Hope to see ya real soon. Ciao for now!"
A third moonshot fires out of the Eye of Helios, colliding somewhere in the middle of the outer wall of the stadium. Scarlett springs to her feet in a crouch. Staying in here, she's as good as dead, but the only exit this high in the arena is blocked by an eight-foot pile of debris that was blown out of the bleachers. She takes a steadying breath, keeping low to the ground. The bandits over by the hill path seem to have the same idea she does, as the tallest one of the group waves his hand and leads the other two downhill.
She vaults the sandbags, pulling Greed from her holster, and stalks closer to the rock her father had taken cover behind. Her finger resting on the trigger, she pops around it, but the ledge is empty. She looks at the arena down below. A few of the Atlas escape pods have been knocked over by the impact of the moonshot, or by the falling concrete from above. A few fires have broken out by the perimeter.
Scarlett's bionic eye locks onto her father, below her and to her left. Either he was knocked off the ledge when the moonshot hit, or he jumped down, but either way, he clearly isn't interested in sticking around any longer. He fires his shotgun at a few advancing psychos as he makes his way down to the lowest level of the arena. It wouldn't be a pleasant fall, but she could jump down and be on him before he even knew what happened.
Nils unleashes a second blast, blowing a chunk of flesh off of a lumbering psycho's shoulder. A faded memory flashes before Scarlett's eyes, of her father when she was still part of his crew. A man who managed to inspire faith, or at least fear, in some of the vilest souls she'd ever met. Now all that remains of him is a hollow, desperate husk, fighting for his life in a blood arena. He had always told her everybody dies alone. In his case, she'll make sure he was right.
She bites her lip, trying to summon the courage to make the long jump down, when a familiar exasperated scream grabs her ear. "Goddamn skags!" Scarlett glances to her right. Nisha stands some thirty feet from the base of Moxxi's central tower, a revolver in each hand. The group of bandits Scarlett had ignored earlier advances on Nisha from the higher ground, while a pack of five skags comes at her from the lower. The alpha of the group leaps at her just as she fires off a shot. The bullet blasts through its open mouth, spraying blood out of the back of its head, killing it in mid-air. The skag's body collides with her, knocking her onto her back.
Scarlett doesn't so much as offer Nils a second glance as she takes a running start. The bandit leader advances on Nisha as she focuses on taking out the other skags dashing towards her. Scarlett fires two shots at the trailing bandits, striking them center mass. They both go up in flames, dropping their guns, screaming in panic. She plants her foot at the edge of the plateau and leaps as the bandit leader comes to a stop in front of Nisha and lifts his sledgehammer above his head, poised to strike.
Scarlett lands with a grunt behind him, driving the point of her hook down with a sickening crunch through the top of his skull. He crumples to the ground limp, his sledgehammer thumping into the dirt behind him. Scarlett yanks her hook out of his head. Blood drops in ribbons from the pointed tip.
She takes in a deep breath, standing up straight, looking down at Nisha. Nisha's mouth hangs open, her eyes moving from Scarlett's bloodied hook and back up to her face.
Scarlett offers her hand out to Nisha. "You ready?"
Nisha's eyes flick down to Scarlett's hand. She holsters a pistol and grabs it. "Always have been."
Scarlett pulls Nisha to her feet and allows herself a brief glimpse into her eyes, hard and determined. It's always how she pictured it might all end, with Nisha by her side as the world went up in flames. Scarlett takes in a deep breath and nods. It feels right. It feels like fate.
She and Nisha exchange a quick nod, and Nisha draws her other revolver once more. With that, Scarlett brushes past her. "We'll go past those escape pods and jump down to the exit below," she says, glancing back at Nisha, who nods. "Probably lots of mercs trying to get out that way, but it's either try and fight through all of them or hope this whole coliseum doesn't come down on our heads."
Nisha lets out a snort. "Won't be the first time I've been up against impossible odds."
They don't get far before a mortar smashes into the ground where they stood seconds ago. The deafening impact shakes the ground, knocking them both over. Scarlett lands hard on the ground, the side of her head colliding with a rock with a tooth-rattling thud. The ground spins beneath her as the impact point, just above her ear, pounds with a persistent, drilling pain. Scarlett coughs, dimly able to make out an oppressive groaning over the ringing in her ears. Scarlett winces as the groaning crescendos into the harsh squealing of rending metal. She glances to her left as the red tower in the center of the arena starts to topple. Nisha is already back on her feet. Her hand grabs the underside of Scarlett's arm, trying to pull her up, but in still moving forward, she loses her grip. Scarlett pushes herself ahead, trying to scramble to her feet, when the ground shakes again beneath her, and a crushing pain shoots through her right knee. As she screams out, Nisha turns around, grabbing onto Scarlett's wrist. "C'mon, we..." Her eyes go wide. "...oh, shit!"
Scarlett manages to focus through the pain enough to make out the stunned look on Nisha's face. "Is it bad?"
Nisha shakes her head, her mouth still hanging open. "It's not good!"
As Nisha steps over her, Scarlett looks back over her shoulder. A massive crimson steel I-beam, dislodged from the body of the central tower, lays flat over her right knee.
Nisha grabs onto the metal and screams out as she tries to slide it off, but it's too heavy to budge. Scarlett drops her head to the ground. Maybe she had it coming. Her own goddamn pride, her quest for revenge against her father. She turns her head to look up at Nisha, who stares back at her with calculating eyes. Scarlett tries to shake the haze from her head. "Nisha... I'm sorry."
Nisha makes eye contact with her for a second, her lips parted slightly, her brow furrowed down.
"I'm sorry for everything," Scarlett murmurs, gritting her teeth through the pain. If only she'd been the friend Nisha needed her to be. If only she hadn't left Eunomia to join her father's crew. If only she'd shown restraint that night Nisha let herself be vulnerable back on Peitho. If only, if only... "I didn't—"
"Shut up, Red," Nisha growls, leaning over and yanking Scarlett's bandana off her head, tearing her from her catastrophizing.
"What are you—"
Scarlett starts screaming as Nisha stoops to one knee and forces her hand under Scarlett's right thigh. A blinding pain spikes through her leg as her muscle fibers shred against her immobilized knee.
"I'm not leaving you to die like this," Nisha growls. She frantically glances around, then picks up a broken bit of black steel pipe by Scarlett's arm. She ties the ends of the bandana around the pipe, then twists it, cinching the makeshift tourniquet tight around Scarlett's leg.
Oh bloody hell, not again.
Scarlett whimpers, her vision blurring with each twist of the pipe, the fabric squeezing down harder and harder against her mangled leg. She lets out an agonized moan, trying desperately to ignore the fact that Nisha has the hint of a smile playing over her face. "Hnnnnggggg are you sure you know what you're doing?!"
Nisha shoots her a disapproving stare as she ties the ends of the scarf around the pipe, securing it in place. "Should I leave you here and go look for a doctor?"
Scarlett reaches a hand out. "No no!"
"Then quit your bitching. It's me."
That's exactly what worries me. Scarlett has to bite her tongue to stop herself from saying it. Nisha leans over Scarlett and pulls her saber from its scabbard on her hip. Scarlett groans, resenting the indignity of having to lose her leg to her own sword. "Okay, okay!" Her voice cracks, and she raises her hand. "Just, just count to three, yeah? Pl—"
Nisha forces her belt into Scarlett's mouth. "Sure, I'll count. Bite down, Red, this... this ain't gonna feel good."
Scarlett shuts her watering eye, teeth clamped on the leather, resting her forehead on her clenched fist. Her sword will certainly be sharp enough to do the job: she's seen that first-hand. And it'll be over so quickly. Not even a second. She inhales deeply. It'll be okay. Things are looking good.
"One!"
The end of what's left of Scarlett's leg rings out in crimson, ear-splitting agony. Her vision goes bright red against her tightly shut eyelids, and every muscle left in her body tenses up, impossibly tight. Everything below her knee feels like it's engulfed in fire. She digs her hands into the dirt and finds that she's at least able to wriggle forward.
Nisha's knee bears down on the back of her thigh, and Scarlett finds herself grateful for any other discomfort to focus on, a small reassurance that she hasn't been completely consumed by the pain.
"Sorry, Red, it's always worse when you're expecting it! Now hold still."
Scarlett cracks open her eye, and in her periphery, sees Nisha's gloved hand reaching for a bit of sheet metal, sitting in a small pile of flaming wreckage.
Oh, bollocks. The cauterizing. She'd forgotten about that bit. She forces herself not to look back.
The searing hot metal scorches the flesh at the end of her leg, blinding her in a flash of white. Her leg wriggles helplessly under the weight of Nisha's knee, and the unmistakable scent of barbecued meat mixed with the acrid stench of a sun-baked corpse scorches the hair in her nostrils. Maybe the only thing keeping her from blacking out is that she's already lived through one amputation, but much to her dismay, the second one isn't any less painful.
Just as the searing is about to overtake her, the pain starts dying down – a sign of her nerve endings being destroyed. The pressure releases from the back of her thigh, and her vision returns to a faded version of normal. Before she can collect herself, Nisha is already pulling her up, slinging Scarlett's good arm around her shoulders. Scarlett takes in a ragged breath, looking over at Nisha's graven face and determined eyes. "Thanks," Scarlett breathes. "For not leaving me."
"You can thank me when we're outta here, Scarlett." Nisha shoots a sideways glance at Scarlett, a wistful kind of confusion behind her eyes. She slips her arm around Scarlett's waist, wielding a bayoneted revolver in her free hand. With a sharp exhale, she turns her gaze forward to the path leading downhill towards the exit, facing the world crumbling to dust around them.
They both take a slow breath. Scarlett's remaining limbs tingle with adrenaline. The stabbing pain in her phantom right leg has downgraded from 'excruciating' to 'unbearable'. She adjusts her weight on her leg and glances over at Nisha. Sweat clings to Nisha's neck and the hollow of her collarbone. There's a light misting of blood on her jaw, and more splattered on her vest and duster. Scarlett tries not to think of how much of that blood is her own.
Nisha lets out a long breath and looks over at Scarlett, laying her hand on her waist. "C'mon. You ready?"
Scarlett flashes a weak smile at her, and holds tighter to her shoulder. "Always have been."