Kraven crept up behind Trish, readying the length of rope in his hands to wrap around her neck. He pulled the rope taut and prepared to lunge when suddenly he saw his reflection in the knife she was holding… along with her left eye, which was looking directly at him.
"Spice Girl!" Trish yelled, spinning around and leaping to her feet.
Spice Girl quickly lashed out at the assassin, swinging its fists.
"WANNABE!" it shouted.
Kraven dropped down into the floor again, this time only stopping when just his arms, neck, and head were visible. One of Spice Girl's punches clipped his shoulder, knocking him to the side slightly, but he managed to avoid all the others.
"Nice trick, using the reflection on the knife to see me coming without me noticing," he said, surprisingly confidently. "But it won't work twice!"
"It won't need to," Trish replied. "Because I'll take you down before you get another chance to try and get the drop on me!"
As Kraven pulled himself back out of the floor, Spice Girl shot toward him, swinging its fist down at him, but it was forced to stop short of being able to hit him when several knives flew by in front of it. The floor, the glass panes on the fancy chandelier above, at an angle from the window- they came from all directions. The Stand returned to Trish's side, while Kraven brushed off his pants.
The assassin threw his arms and head back and cackled, his posture and mood seeming to change from smug confidence to manic hysteria almost instantaneously.
"You utter fool!" he laughed. "It's pointless! Try all you want, you'll never reach me! You got a lucky shot with that cheap trick with the knife, but I'm not getting within range of your Stand again, and if you try to come near me I can just block your path with a rain of knives! I'm free to simply wear you down at my leisure!"
He spun around, extending his arms to motion to the whole of the hallway he and Trish stood in.
"Almost every surface in this hallway is my weapon! I can 'summon' my entire arsenal no matter where in the world it is, as long as it's contained within Nero Forte!" he continued.
"Almost"? Trish thought. So there's some kind of restriction on his Stand's ability to 'summon' objects. It must have a limited range!
She began to walk to the left, keeping her head turned to look at Kraven, who was also moving to stay opposite her, until she had her back to one branch of the hallway. Then she bent her knees slightly, crouching down as if to run towards him. Kraven cackled again.
"Sure, come at me yourself!" he said. "It's not going to make a difference, you know!"
"Guess again, stronzo," Trish grinned, her feet sinking into the newly elasticized floor. "That's the exact opposite of what I'm doing!"
She released Spice Girl's ability from the floor below her and quickly unbent her knees at the same time, sending herself flying backward down the hallway.
"You're running away?!" Kraven shouted in surprise. Shit, she's going to go get some of Giorno's other bodyguards!
He started sprinting down the hall after Trish, summoning a knife out of the window to his right at a position a little bit ahead of him and angling it towards her. Spice Girl readied to punch the flat side of the knife, but then Trish remembered something.
Last time I tried to punch one of his knives out of the air, another one came out of it! she recalled. I need to avoid it instead!
She quickly changed the direction of Spice Girl's punch, hitting herself down at the floor instead. The knife flew past where her chest had just been. Just before she hit the ground, she made its surface elastic and then kicked forward, stretching it with her foot. Releasing her Stand's ability again, she gained a new burst of speed and a change in trajectory, angling herself slightly upward.
Kraven continued sprinting down the hall after her, managing to keep up even though she had essentially flung herself from a slingshot. He summoned two more knives from the floor in front of him, launching them at Trish as well.
Trish twisted in midair to avoid the flying knives, but one of them hit her, leaving a gash in her side. Blood splattered out of her wound, but her trajectory wasn't altered.
"I'm not letting you get away!" Kraven shouted.
He summoned a rope out of the floor at his feet. It emerged from right in the middle of his reflection in the shiny tile and flew toward Trish. She brought Spice Girl behind her, and it swung its fist at the rope to knock it away, but it twisted suddenly midair and wrapped around the Stand's arm instead. Kraven grabbed the rope, preparing to pull it towards himself, and a knife peeked out of the floor just ahead of where the rope had emerged, ready to shoot out all the way.
"I've got you now!" he gloated. "You're not going to run for backup on my watch!"
Then Trish looked him directly in the eye, and he realized when he saw the gleam in her eyes that he'd made a mistake.
"I think you're mistaken," Trish said. "I'm the one who's got you! Spice Girl!"
Her Stand punched the rope with its other fist, causing the material to become rubbery and stretchy. She continued flying backward, the newly-added elasticity of the rope causing it to pull back as she went, until she disabled Spice Girl's effect on it.
"You've given me the perfect way to get past any defenses you throw at me!" she yelled as she was suddenly jerked forward by the rope, flying even faster now. "With me at the speed I've built up slingshotting right back at you, I'll be moving too fast for you to react!"
"Shit, shit, shit!" Kraven panicked.
He summoned knives out of the window, floor, and glass ceiling decorations, angling them toward Trish as well as he could manage. Some of them clipped her, and a couple even drew blood, but she flew past all of them as her Stand pulled its arm back to punch again, this time aiming not at the rope, but straight at Kraven's face. The assassin attempted to step to the side, but she was flying towards him too fast for him to get out of the way
"WANNABE!" Spice Girl shouted as it swung its fist forward.
Kraven flew backward, landing on his back on the floor and groaning in pain, but his expression was a malicious grin.
"Gotcha," he said.
As Trish skidded to a halt, she felt a strange, cold feeling in her chest. A large patch on the front of her overcoat was wet and sticky on her skin. She looked down to see the hilt of a knife protruding from her stomach.
"How…" she asked, already slightly woozy from the blood loss from her earlier wounds. "How did you…"
Kraven pulled himself to his feet slowly, wobbling as he stood up. His nose and jaw were broken, and he was clutching his side with one hand, suggesting that his ribs had been bruised as well, but he was still smiling wide.
"You didn't even notice it, did you?" he cackled. "There was already a knife sticking out of the ground, ready to be launched straight into you as soon as I'd pulled you into range. Since it was already halfway summoned, it shot just fast enough to get you after all."
He limped over to Trish, who had dropped to her knees and was clutching her chest wound and breathing heavily. When he got to her, he crouched down, grabbed her hair with his left hand, jerking her head back, and wrapped his right hand around the handle of the knife in her chest.
"You know," he said idly, "if you're stabbed like this, it's a good idea to leave the knife in the wound? That way, it stops the blood from flowing out too fast, so you'll bleed out much more slowly."
He grinned as he tightened his grip on the handle and yanked backward, removing the knife from Trish's wound.
"That chest pain you're no doubt feeling?" he continued. "It isn't just from the stab wound. It's also one of the symptoms of blood loss. You've lost enough that you'll also be feeling woozy and lightheaded. After a few more seconds, your hands and feet will get cold, and your heartbeat will start to become irregular. It'll get even harder to breathe than it already has, and-"
"Shut…" Trish interrupted, her speech a little slurred from the blood loss, "the hell… up…"
"You're really gonna let that be the last thing you ever say?" Kraven said. "Well, I'm not one to judge."
He tossed his head back to cackle, but a knee hit him in the chin and sent him stumbling back. Trish staggered forward, her Stand weakly trailing behind her as gold dust leaked off of its body into the air.
"Stop acting…" she coughed, "like you've won…"
Spice Girl half-ran, half-fell forward, punching Kraven in the spot he'd been clutching before, and he gritted his teeth in pain and fell backward, landing on his butt.
"I'm not…" Trish continued, "dead yet, stronzo…"
The floor stretched downward beneath Kraven, sinking lower and lower. The assassin attempted to step aside, but Trish dove forward, tackling him to the ground, which continued to stretch.
"Are you stupid?!" Kraven asked frantically. "I can see what you're doing here. You're trying to use your Stand's ability to make anything 'elastic' to slam me into the ceiling, knowing that another impact like that will be too much for me. But you're in even worse shape than I am! It'll incapacitate me, sure, but you'll probably die! Think about this!"
"I'll be fine," Trish said. "Giorno's on his way back now… he can… heal me up. And if he's too late… then that's fine too… because I protected his daughter."
She managed to dredge up enough energy to wrap her arms around Kraven's body, pinning him.
"Are you seriously that loyal to Giorno Giovanna?!" Kraven shouted.
"I am…" Trish said. "He's done so much… for me, but that's not the only reason… When I saw his daughter… she looked so alone, even with her Stand by her side… just like me before I found a family… with Giorno, Mista, and everyone else…"
"Get off!" Kraven demanded in a panic. "Get off of me!"
Trish released Spice Girl's ability, snapping the floor back into place and sending herself and the assassin flying upward at high speeds. There was a cracking sound as the two of them hit the ceiling, and then they both fell to the ground. Trish was still breathing, but very shallowly, and Kraven could barely crawl across the floor, as a pool of blood spread beneath them.