Chapter 37
Amy had recomposed herself and set off after the others. Walking through the streets brought back memories, mostly good ones. There was the old candy store… and the toy store was right over there… it must have been, what, ten years now? She stopped. Ten years. Ten long years. Now it came back. The attack was on the 18th September. Ten years ago in a week. She tightened her grip on her weapons. She struck out with her hammer at the first thing she saw. She opened her eyes to see the head of the hammer lodged in a fallen lamppost. She pulled it out and continued on. Save that kind of force for the enemy, she thought.
She rounded a corner to the edge of the park. The park had survived mostly intact. The sun shone in the blue sky over the swings, one of which Rouge was sitting on. They must have been quite well-built to survive a battleship attack and ten years of neglect. Cream used to play on those swings all the time… she shook herself off before she got too sentimental. I'm on a mission, Dammit, she thought.
"Nice of you to show up," Espio called from the tree, snidely.
"Nice of you to wait for me." She called back equally snidely.
"So what's the plan?" Rouge asked, kicking the ground lightly. Amy thought.
"We should probably find signs of life, so, like, where things have been disturb…" She stopped. She wheeled around. Suddenly she swung herself back and swung her sword up in the air in front of her. Metal clanged on metal as she hit a flying dagger out of the air. She hit the ground on her back, but quickly got up again. She looked over at where it had come from. There was a masked individual sitting on a grassy knoll. He ducked back away. Amy ran towards him. Rouge jumped off the swing and pulled out her whip. She saved the gun for later. Espio acrobatically jumped through the air towards him. But where was Blade?
As she vaulted over the brow, she was met by four long swords. She stopped for a second, before dropping to the ground and rolling away. She flung her sword towards one of them. He deflected it away with his own sword. Hmm. These ones might be a challenge. She rushed back to them with her hammer raised. The sheer force of the hammer was enough to smash one face in. As she pulled out, the blood spurted onto her face. There wasn't anything particularly unusual about that, but this time, for some reason, it felt good. Rouge had paused at the brow of the hill, watching the carnage. Amy could handle herself, and she didn't want to tire herself out. Amy ducked and rolled under the legs of the second masked person. She stuck the back of the hammer into his stomach and kicked him away. He fell onto it, driving it deeper into his gut. Amy pulled out the quarterstaff as she jumped up.
She narrowly avoided the swing of a sword, and on the rebound thrust one end of it into the owners' torso. He stumbled back, winded. She continued jabbing a few times, before swinging the staff around and knocking his legs out from under him. As he fell, she caught his sword. She stabbed him in the back of the neck. She dropped the staff to engage the last one with just the sword. She attacked only to be met with a block. Her opponent struck back, again, only to be met with a block. They duelled for several minutes before Amy made a small mistake – the masked individual managed land a strike to her left shoulder, only partially blocked. As he drew the sword away, Amy groaned as it left a cut. With renewed anger, she rolled aside and got a slice into his neck. The clothing was stripped away and the blade severed his jugular. Amy seemed fixated by this. When the body was about to fall, she grabbed it, to continue staring at the bleeding neck. She dropped her sword. To everyone's shock, including her own, she sank her teeth into the neck and began to drink the spurting blood.
She dropped onto the hillside, now oblivious to the world around her. She was completely absorbed by what she was now doing. She had tasted blood before – fighting with melee weapons is a messy business – but never like this. No matter how much she got, it wasn't enough. There was this strange new feeling she was having, a pleasurable one, almost sexual in nature. She licked every last drop she could out of the wound, before getting up to inspect her work. The carcass was paler now, and the wound had stopped bleeding, both most likely because of lack of blood pressure. She was breathing heavily – she was so excited. When she looked up, she saw the expressions of pure horror on the other's faces. Rouge, still looking at her, pawed at her own mouth, as if to say that Amy had something there. Amy put her hand up to her mouth. She noticed that it was hanging open, such was the extent to which she was caught up in the heat of the moment. Her face was dripping with blood, but also…
"Those weren't there before…" She felt around her front teeth. She ran her fingers up and down these two new features; sharp, smooth, and ever so slightly tingly. She had fangs. Big ones. "What the hell?" She began to check herself for anything else unusual. Nothing visible. She went to jump up on to the knoll again, but cleared the height in one bound. Then she noticed – she felt phenomenal. She sprinted to the swings. She hadn't run at that speed for years. She jumped up to the top of them and leapt to the nearby tree in a single leap. She swung from the branches, anything in an attempt to find the limits of her newfound power. She swung away, involuntarily. Her arms suddenly began to ache. While in mid-air, she felt her mouth again. The fangs had disappeared. Then it hit her – or rather, she hit it. The ground. She landed face first on the dusty ground a few metres from the tree, and went unconscious almost immediately.