Chapter 22: Penance of scarlet
Words rang in the air and heavy and harsh, nearly stopping time in its tracks. Words of truth and of deception, words that finally broke the spirit of a once proud warrior. Selina listened to them and found that the pain those words struck her with, hurt worse than the fresh wound in her shoulder. Her blood spilling onto the fertile ground beneath her and heavy drops of rain beginning to strike her face and arms. Teardrops began forming on her face as her life flashed every possible murder she may have committed. Her senses racing so fast it was as if, Derik's next lunge took forever and a day. Her thoughts racing as fast as her senses until coming up with the conclusion that she may never be forgiven for the wrongs she had done, but at least she can avenge the lives of those she accidently ended. She reached over and took the giant shuriken into her left hand and swung the weapon across her field of vision, knocking one of Derik's Tonfa blades right out of his hand. A moment of silence as time caught up with her. She simply kept staring at the ground, gritting her teeth and spitting air through them in rage and anger. "Bastard." She finally blurted out. "How dare you play with innocent people's lives?" She then stood up while Derik was stunned from her sudden recovery. Her glare was dark and unrelenting toward him. "You have no soul. I was going to go easy on you and continue using my weaker hand, but you don't deserve my sympathy anymore." Her voice turned dark and something in her eyes had changed. She then quickly brought the shuriken in front of her and darted in toward Derik at faster speeds than he.
Panicking, he reared back and cried out, "Please don't hurt me! I promise that I won't do it again!" Selina never broke her glare but instead continued with her strike saying, "If you think that pitiful whimpering trick will save you, you're dead wrong." She then quickly brought the eight pointed weapon back across her body faster than any of us could blink, cutting open Derik's black clothes and revealing his pale white skin and diminished build. A small horizontal cut ran along the center of his chest and he looked down at it in surprise and fear. Selina then spun around and slashed again with her weapon only this time it was vertical. The strike failed to touch his skin but did nick its tip against the steel mask. Selina's final strike was as follows. She brought the shuriken close to her body and pressed the blade against the back of her forearm to avoid placing any of the blades under her arm. She then thrust the weapon forward and plunged the blade of the star through his heart before he could react.
Again it seemed like time slowed to a mere crawl. Derik's steel mask split where the strike from earlier had damaged it, even the head band had been cut from the blade. The mask then fell to the ground revealing the true face of the assassin. It was thin and long. His eyes had rolled back from the killing blow but they were clearly dark red. With his blood beginning to pour out of his mouth Selina closed the gap in between them and whispered to him, "Don't you ever call me 'Scarlet Star' again." And with that, he tipped backward and she pulled out the shuriken just as Ella threw her shuriken to the ground like she had done with Selina's shuriken and slid down one of the down spouts of the hospital to meet us on the ground. "Sensei!" She called to Selina with worry on her voice. She reached her teacher and began inspecting her wound. "You're hurt." Ella exclaimed. "I'll be alright." Selina tried to calm Ella down by saying. "No way. You're bleeding pretty badly." Ella argued back. Selina stared Ella for a second with a surprised look on her face and finally relaxed and surrendered. "You sure are stubborn." She said with a smile. Her smile quickly faded as her thoughts returned to the possibilities of the innocent lives that she may have ended with her own hands. She may never know just how many and who they were.
Ella had just finished wrapping up Selina's wound when a couple of small explosions burst around a few yards away from us. They appeared to be tiny explosive devices that had detonated and both Selina and Ella recognized where they came from. "It's him again." Ella said through her teeth at the memory of the assassin that blew off her arm. She immediately stood up and placed herself in front of Selina and the explosions, shuriken ready. "Sensei, I wanna get this guy back for taking my arm from me. You protect the others for now. I'll meet you at the canal." Selina simply stared in awe at Ella's determination and confidence. Impatient to get us to safety, Ella then repeated herself with a louder tone of voice to get her sensei's attention. "I'm not going to repeat myself again! Get moving and leave the assassin to me!" She then narrowed her eyes with intensity and said aloud to herself, "I've got a score to settle with this one."
As we made our way to a safe area where we could watch and make sure she stayed in one piece, we heard a cackling voice ask, "I remember you! How's your arm?" His voice echoed even though there was nowhere for it to echo off of. Ella simply stood still as the rain began to drop from the sky, slow at first but quickly intensified. She continued to stand in place with her eyes closed, as if she was listening for something in all of that rain, her clothes getting wetter and wetter from all of the rain pouring down on to her. "Good girl, Ella" I heard Sierra whisper from directly behind me. Suddenly, Ella spun around to her left and launched her four-pointed weapon almost directly behind her. The weapon sailed until it scraped against a window of the hospital second floor and we finally noticed a shadowy silhouette dart out of the room she entered. The weapon then arched back to her until she caught it by the handle in the center with ease. She still had her eyes closed while she tossed the blade once again to the next window, scraping the glass diagonally upward and caught it again when it boomeranged back to her. She continued with this process, scarring each window until her chase reached the windows in front of her. She then waited, silently, silently. Standing as still as she could and not making a single sound, her eyes still closed and her entire body drenched from the rain that continued to beat down harder and harder. The rain, this time, wasn't cold like the last time, but had a strange warmth to it. Even though we still were in England.
She stood perfectly still for around a minute, allowing the rain to beat down in her. Suddenly, her eyes shot open and she jumped away as fast as she could, dodging small explosions as she side stepped and jetted forward and even lunged backward. Nimbly dodging the tiny explosions she escaped most of the harm. Her skin was singed a few times, as some of the explosions were larger than the rest, and she even took some shrapnel from one particular explosion. Nothing life threatening or debilitating, Ella stood back up after each attack and quickly dodged the next explosion. Finally, the explosions stopped and Ella stood in the hospital parking lot panting and out of breath, her eye shifting to random places she thought the assassin may be hiding.
His voice began emanating from all around once again. "You're much more skilled than I thought, little lady. But how long can you continue to dodge by mini-bombs?" He boasted. Ella quickly spun around and threw the shuriken toward the base of the building, scarring the wall on its return trip. Upon retrieving her weapon, she then threw it at another place near the walls of the hospital, scarring it as the weapon passed by. She repeated this process around six more times and during each attempt, his voice shifted positions to another area where a voice shouldn't even emanate from. "He's throwing his voice!" I thought aloud to myself. "I seems like it." Selina replied to me. "An assassin's greatest asset happens to be stealth and shadows. But, when it comes down to the wire and we are revealed, confusion is a powerful ally." "Can't she simply listen for the source?" I asked curiously. "Just as her right eye is blind, her right ear is half deaf. It's very difficult for her to focus on an echo if he is too far away from her. And he's got a good throwing arm." She informed me. My curiosity still not at ease, I asked her another question, "Aside from the man who took Ella's arm, who is this guy. I mean just as the last guy's name was Derik, what is his?" She hesitated for a moment and finally answered, "He was known as the Silver Flame, but his real name is Morton Remson. He specialized in compact explosives to annihilate his targets quickly and cause wide spread panic. He was given the nickname 'Silver' because that was the color of all of his devices."