Blood, Air, and Flyboys
Sparring is part of their life. How she fights is his favorite thing about her, he claims.
It has kind of become a normal, for them, for people who are abnormal.
But it wasn't always a spar . Back when they still used lethal attacks he had decided to mark her.
He had beaten her to the ground until she stopped getting up. Then he had pinned her , biting into her wrist as she screamed, her blood flowing down his mouth onto his throat. She had sobbed as his teeth sank deeper into her arm, thrashing beneath him. She moved until she couldn't, until she passed out from the pain.
When she had awoken, she had a very new scar.
Afterwards he had conversationally explained that he wanted to leave a mark on her that would scar, like she had left on him. He touched his neck.
Max had remembered the feeling of his neck snapping beneath her hands.
Eventually they had stopped using lethal attacks against each other.
Eventually they had become sort -of friends. The kind of friends who go to libraries and flash mobs together. Who spar daily.
But sometimes she looked at her wrist and remembered the feeling of teeth and pain, then she looks down at her hands, the ones she had snapped his neck with.
Teeth that draw blood. Hands that steal air.
What a messed up pair they make. And yet, here they are fighting Itex together.
Max wouldn't have once believed it. And yet, here they are.
Ari picks her up again, and flies her into the air.
Then he launches her into the sky and she activates her warp-jump. Her wings are clipped, and while useless for flying, she can still do this!
Ari uses his bulk to knock a bunch of flyboys into her path. They can't track fast moving objects, and Max herself is the fast moving object.
She aims for the bottom of their spines.
Ari launches her again and declares "I wanted to die fighting you. Instead, I think I would be content to die fighting by your side."
She lands, and he pulls her out of the way before she gets hit by a bullet
"You're not allowed to go dying on me yet! Now take me higher, so we can dive bomb them!"
Ari picks her up and flies higher before launching her into the air.
Max laughs.
Like this, she can almost see what Ari means about feeling most alive in a fight.