Trigger warning: there will be gore. Poorly written, unimaginative gore.

12-year-old Justin Law was happy to be only back-up on this mission. As he leapt and skipped across Parisian rooftops, keeping an eye on their target-arsonist Jean Dark-he looked forward to the opportunity this evening's mission gave him to practice his technique. He even came up with a new phrase he could say as soon as he caught the bad guy!

But mostly, Justin was happy because he would not have to listen to a lot of arguing from Team A. Even though he would put in his earbuds and turn up his volume, it felt like he still could hear every syllable of whiny bickering between those two. Yards away from him on his left, he could spot Jean's location. She had already tossed most dead weight, mostly fireworks, to accelerate her getaway. Looking ahead, he saw he had sufficient length ahead of him on this rooftop to look back to see how far behind his DWMA classmates were. And as he did, his heart sank: those two were still way too far behind to catch up with Jean.

Then, even through the loud earbuds pumping tunes into his brain, Justin still could hear the shot fired from his classmate-and seeing Jean still running ahead, knew the shot missed.

"What are those two arguing about now?" he complained.

"Aim for the head."

"I'm doing it."

Another shot missed.

"Aim for the head!"

"Who's the meister here?!" 18-year-old Ayama Okami yelled at her weapon, Azusa Yumi. Ayama was so busy arguing with her partner that she only just then noticed the edge of the building that she was reaching. They were already three stories up, and she didn't plan on becoming street pizza-or whatever would be the most appropriate comparison while in France. Crepe maybe? Ayama shook her head: forget that-their target had already leapt across the alley to the next rooftop, and she was bickering with Yumi again.

"You got the Thousand-Mile Stare!" Might as well bicker a bit longer; their target wasn't that far away. "Why don't you use your eyes to spot the target so I can get some better aim?!"

"Why are you so agitated tonight?" Azusa voice escaped from the combination crossbow/sniper rifle. Ayama could tell she was trying to keep her voice even; that she could keep her calm more easily than her only pissed her off more.

"Whatever," Ayama complained, as she began to move a few steps back. "Just hang on!"

Ayama then dashed and, before reaching the edge of the rooftop, leapt. At least she had this to look forward to with this mission in Paris: the jumps here were phenomenal. She felt gravity stop for just that brief moment at the apex before she felt her ponytail go up, as if pulled by a string from the heavens, as she made her descent. She landed on the other rooftop, clearing the alley with sufficient clearance. She clutched her weapon horizontal with the ground, then rolled her legs up to her chest to cushion Azusa against the tuck-and-roll she then used to slow her forward propulsion. Once she knew she was rolling back to her feet, Ayama extended out her right leg to let the propulsion stand her upright again, then pushed out her left leg, and continued the spring to follow Ayama.

"You could have stuck that landing better."

"Shut up, Yumi!" Ayama screamed.

"Fire!" Azusa called.

"Not until I can aim!" Ayama said, looking down at her weapon instead of in front of her.

"No! Fire!"

Ayama looked up. "Shit!" she cried. Ahead of her was a trail of lighter fluid, leaked by Jean in her run ahead of the meister, and once finishing the container, had struck a match and left it to follow back towards Ayama's location. Ayama stopped herself in time before the flames got nearer.

"Now we have to put out this fire?!" Ayama screamed.

"Ayama," Azusa said. "The firefighters have been following us as well."

Ayama blinked.

"Remember?"

Ayama blushed and rubbed her neck. "I knew that."

"No, you didn't."

Ayama frowned. She took Azusa into both of her hands and marched to the side of the building. "Hey! Firefighters! I'm gonna drop this smart-ass weapon down to you!"

Ayama could feel the weapon shudder in her hands.

"Don't bother with a trampoline or nothing! Just let the nice, hard concrete break her fall and shatter her into a thousand pieces!"

"Not funny, Ayama!" Azusa screamed.

Ayama allowed herself a small smile. "No point running after Jean now." She turned back to spot where the arsonist now was. "After all, she doesn't know Justin is after him. Why not use your Thousand-Mile Eyes to let me take a gander at how he handles this bitch?"

Azusa groaned. "Fine. Just-just pull me away from the edge of this building, okay?!"

"As you wish," Ayama said with a coy smile. Seeing the firefighters climbing the ladder up to the rooftop to douse the flames, Ayama stepped away from that edge and towards where Jean was heading. Once she got a good spot to view this bout, she shut her eyes. After a moment, she felt something cool touch her chest-actually, her very soul. Knowing that she had achieved a decent Soul Resonance with her stuck-up partner, Ayama opened her eyes. Now her vision had changed dramatically: it felt like she had been dragged a mile forward right to where Jean Dark was running, as if she was right behind her.

"Cool view," Ayama said.

"You're welcome," Azusa answered.

"Now if I could only hear this epic brawl we're about to see."

"Can't you just be satisfied with what I offer you?"

As the firefighters were putting out the small blaze behind her, Ayama, her face glowing orange from the flames, smirked. "Nope."

Jean Dark smiled widely. Let her feet scream from feeling tired from this running. Let her shoulder still feel numb even after she tossed her supplies away to get away from those DWMA punks. None of that mattered because she had completed the job: the evidence for her client's case went up in smoke. That was enough pay to cover her for a long time. And enough other cases went up in smoke, too-that was enough to get her hired for the rest of her life.

"You die now!" she heard, accompanied by a white flash that lit up the night sky.

"The hell was that?" Jean said to herself.

She then noticed something cold, something smooth, sliding along her left arm, with a loud whoosh past her ear, blowing wind across that side of her body.

In that instance, it felt like every synapse in her brain was firing at once, a burning pain coursing through her. It felt like her left arm had caught fire. She looked to her left to find what had happened to her arm.

And she saw it. The arm itself looked fine: no burns, no gouges, no twitching. It was absolutely fine.

Except for the fact that it was lying in her blood, severed at her shoulder.

It was almost comical for Jean, how long it took her to realize what had happened. Jean Dark did not scream. She did not cry. She was too distracted by this absurd sight-her arm had been sliced clean off at her shoulder-and it was lying next to some 12-year-old blonde kid. And his appearance was even more comical: despite being a child, he was towering over her, because he had transformed his torso. There was just empty space where his abdomen and back had been. His arms were gone, replaced with two pillars that rose his shoulders, neck, and head to a great height. At the bottom of this gap where his torso used to be was a sharp metal blade, coated with blood-her blood-along it. And his tiny legs jutting out from what had been the base of this grotesque guillotine/human mash-up.

"Oh, darn," Justin Law chastised himself. "I misaimed." He looked at his target. "Sorry!" he shouted down at his target, due to his distance from her but also the loud music he was still listening to.

Jean recoiled in shock-now starting to feel pain in her arm. This brat? This brat is some weapon who just managed to slice off her fucking arm?!

"I had meant for your execution to be swift! I didn't want you to suffer for long! My most sincerest apologies for my amateur assassin! Please bear with me! I am new at this-"

"The fuck?!"

Now Jean Dark felt the pain, as well as the fury.

"My arm! You sliced off my fuck-"

Now it was Justin's turn to recoil. Shocked at the exclamation, his body glowed, reverting him to his human form-upon which he promptly landed with a thud on his backside. "Ouch," he muttered, rubbing there with his newly returned right arm.

But Justin was back on his feet almost instantly-and then lifted off his feet-as Jean with her remaining arm lifted him by the collar of his black T-shirt and held him over the edge of the roof. "You fucking sliced off my arm!" Jean screamed.

Feeling the weight of even this tiny boy to be too much for her, Jean allowed gravity to do the work for her, letting go of Justin to let him fall to the street. She turned away-not because she did not want to see the child die, but because now she was going to be much slower escaping with one arm. She glanced at her left arm, lying in its blood. "Fuck it," she groaned. She pulled the long bandana off the top of her head, wrapped it repeatedly around the new stump, and held the end of the bandana with her teeth long enough in an attempt to stop the bleeding.

Jean then took her first step down the fire escape at the edge of the roof. She was not going to get far in this condition, but maybe she could get far enough to the safehouse. Once there, her employer would provide the medical attention she needed.

It was a long descent, longer still from depending on one arm to steady her new sense of unbalance. But she got to the street again. She could begin her march forward.

Then she felt her body fall forward. Her chin slammed into the asphalt of the street, knocking her bottom teeth into her top. She cried in pain, struggling to turn off her stomach to get up. She was stopped, however, by that which had tripped her: a ring, like that of a guillotine's collar, clutching her right ankle.

"Hear me, O Lord!"

Jean pushed her remaining arm up to look over her shoulder. It was that kid again! His right arm had been transformed into a collar that was wrapped around her ankle!

"The hell?" she muttered. His loud call actually made her stop struggling to remove his collar from her ankle.

Justin continued: "Make me a servant of thy holy-!"

He stopped because Jean's boot had crashed into his nose.

"Get off!" Jean shouted at the child, repeatedly kicking her foot into his face.

"Make me a servant of-"

She kicked again.

"Make me a serv-"

She kicked again.

"Would you let me finish?!" Justin cried.

One more kick managed to knock the boy off her leg, releasing the collar from her ankle. Justin's tiny body rolled along the sidewalk until it was stopped by a lamppost.

After removing the brat from her, Jean was lying on her side, atop her remaining arm. With one hassle off her back, she now could focus on the pain shooting through where her other arm used to be. "Fuck!' she cried. She turned her body so that her abdomen rested on the street. With her right arm and her left knee, she pushed her body up from the floor.

She slammed her steel-toed boot into Justin's abdomen. The boy grunted. His arms felt like Jell-O; he tried to wrap them around Jean's leg, to keep her occupied just a bit longer, but his grip dissolved with each kick.

"What the hell was all that garbage you were spouting?" she asked, interrupting herself every third or fourth word to kick the child again.

"J-judgment," Justin said after the last of the kicks. She had stopped for a moment, which gave Justin the time he needed to raise his left arm to transform it back into a collar-but he could not: the pain was too much, and his arm fell limp on the sidewalk.

He needed a distraction. He'd have to monologue her a bit more. "Under the authority given to me by our Lord."

Such authority got his hand stamped by Jean's heel, which she proceeded to grind. Justin yelped, then he screamed more loudly.

"Yes," Jean said, her smile sadistic as she continued to dig. "I like that sound." She lifted her shoe and knelt down closer to the boy. It was then she noticed something in his left ear: an earbud, decorated with a skull on it. She had a new idea. "Here," she cooed. "Let me take that one out. I want you to hear your own screams all the more loudly."

As she removed the earbud, Justin heard a loud bang, then felt something a bit wet touch his face, right under his left eye. It was a drop of blood. He looked up to see Jean, now with a very narrow hole through the front of her head. Jean's right hand, which had been holding his left earbud, let go of his headphones, as that hand fell limp, then began to slow. In fact, her entire body glowed until it condensed into a ball of light that, upon fading, left floating in the air a lone human soul.

"There," Azusa said from within her weapon form. "You figured out how to aim."

"Quiet," Ayama ordered in between two of her deep breaths, struggling to calm herself after sprinting all this distance to get close to Jean's spot. "Just be the eyes, not the mouth."

Ayama looked forward to where she saw her classmate. "Justin!" she called. "How you hanging in there?"

"Poorly!" Justin, still lying on the sidewalk, called back. While still lying down, he replaced his earbuds and tugged down on his shirt. There was his MP3 player, duct taped on. He immediately increased the volume, drowning out much of whatever Ayama was saying to him. As she got closer, he hurried to his feet, trying to ignore the pain in the heel-shaped wedge in his left hand as he pressed it down to assist his ascent. Now that he was standing upright, he could successfully read Ayama's lips, catching only her last part:

"That sound good, buddy?"

Justin simply smile and nodded.

Amaya grinned. She could tell he had not listened to one word she just said-but whatever, the kid had his own problems. And she had her next task in front of her, one involving the softly glowing orb that was Jean Dark's soul. Amaya reached out and wrapped her finger around it, as she lowered Azusa off her shoulder, poking her muzzle at the soul.

"Here, have your dinner."

"Stop calling it that," Azusa said from her weapon, as she willed the soul towards her muzzle, where it grew so narrow as if it was sucked like a vacuum.

Having satiated her weapon, which she strapped back around her back, Amaya turned to her classmate. Justin definitely took his beating on this mission: he was holding his hand to his nose, which was bloody from whatever Jean had done to him. Amaya quickly considered that Justin may have broken it-so a hospital would be there next stop. His knees were scuffed, too, but that should heal more easily. He was clutching his left hand, so maybe that would be an injury for the hospital to check out. She studied his eyes: they were a bit red but not teary, and it looked like he was dealing with the pain as well as he could. No point worrying the kid, though-based on the pain he was probably feeling, best to say something to lift up his spirits.

"Great work, kid," she said to Justin. "Nice job distracting Jean by slicing her off at the shoulder!"

Justin pursed his lips and averted his eyes.

"Did I say something wrong?" Amaya asked.

Justin rubbed the back of his head and began to laugh nervously. "I was aiming for her head."

I have no idea who Azusa Yumi's meister was when she was in school-so I made up a character, Amaya Okami.