Lexa finished wrapping the last of the bandages on a wounded civilian and stood up, wiping her brow as she approached Masato. "All done with the emergency care, Mr. Masato," she reported, her voice steady but tired. "The medical team is tracking close; based on their GPS, they should be rolling up in about five minutes."
Masato didn't look up immediately, his eyes scanning the horizon of jagged concrete and twisted metal. He looked like he was trying to solve a puzzle that didn't have all its pieces.
"Preciate it, Lexa," Masato said, his voice dropping into that easy, brotherly drawl. "But man, don't it feel a little spooky to you? Shinsei's way too quiet for a place that just got hammered a few minutes ago. I mean, it's like the air just went dead."
He kicked at a piece of rubble, his brow furrowed as he looked down the desolate street. "You think our guy actually hauled tail to a different part of town, or is he just layin' low? Somethin' feels off, bro. Attacks like that don't usually just... stop."
"I… honestly can't tell ya, Lexa," Masato muttered, his gaze drifting over the broken skyline. "If I had the answers, we wouldn't be standin' here guessin'."
Lexa looked away, her eyes scanning the empty, dust-choked streets. "I haven't been able to spot a single thing since we touched down. It's like everyone—and everything—just vanished."
Masato gave a slow, grim nod. "Shinsei took a hell of a hit, that's for sure. But the rest of Aoshima is dead silent. No alarms, no calls, nothin'." He started to move further into the wreckage when his phone suddenly vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and flipped it open.
"Medea? What's the word? You find our guy?" He asked, leaning against a half-crumbled wall while Lexa stood close behind, trying to catch whatever she could of the conversation.
Suddenly, a violent shiver raced down Lexa's spine—the kind of cold that feels like a needle to the heart. At the exact same moment, Medea's voice crackled through the speaker.
"An attack underground? How do you even—" But the line went dead, replaced by the hollow hiss of static.
"Mr. Masato! Behind us!" Lexa screamed.
Masato didn't hesitate. He dropped the phone and spun on his heel, his hand already reaching for a weapon as he locked eyes with a figure standing in the shadows.
"Medea…" the man echoed, his voice a low, gravelly drawl that sent a fresh wave of dread through the air. It was him—the real Damon.
"That name sure does ring a bell," Damon said, a slow, jagged grin spreading across his face. He tapped a finger against his temple as if trying to jar a memory loose. "Fact is, it's stuck in the back o' my head like a damn splinter."
"Not sure I follow you, pal," Masato said, his voice dropping into a low, steady rumble. He shifted his weight, his muscles tensing as he quietly primed himself for the fight he knew was coming.
Damon rested a thick, muscular hand on his hip, his lips curling back to reveal a row of yellowed teeth in a jagged grin. "Yeah... it's comin' back to me now. Medea." He let out a sharp, appreciative whistle. "That baddie's got herself quite the history, don't she?" His eyes narrowed, the mock-admiration vanishing into something much colder. "Now, you gonna be a good ol' boy and hand over her location, or am I gonna have to punch it outta ya?"
Masato didn't flinch, keeping his eyes locked onto the threat with a grim, focused intensity. "I can't exactly deny she's a baddie, bro," he replied, his tone chillingly calm. "But I'm afraid I ain't got a lick of information for a guy like you."
"Is that so? Well, if you'd had that bitch messin' with your insides and usin' you like some damn lab rat, I reckon you'd think twice 'bout hidin' her," Damon spat, his voice rising with a jagged, ugly intensity.
"She's got a heap o' explainin' to do, right after I give her a good old-fashioned taste o' my fist. She's gotta pay for what she did to me. That woman's dyin' by my hand, and that's a promise. Now, you best hurry the hell up and talk, or you're fixin' to join her in the dirt."
The air around Damon began to vibrate with a violent heat. Lexa glanced at Masato, her eyes wide, trying to gauge if he was ready for the explosion that was coming.
"Sorry, pal," Masato said, reaching up to adjust his shades with a cool, practiced flick of his wrist. "But we got ourselves a bit of a situation here. You tore through Shinsei like you owned the damn place, and you didn't give a lick of thought to the folks livin' here. That makes you top priority on my list."
Masato pulled a set of heavy knuckles from his pocket and slid them over his right fist, the metal clicking into place. He took one last pull from his cigarette, spat it onto the cracked pavement, and ground it out slowly beneath the heel of his boot. "And I ain't in the habit of let's guys like you walk away."
Lexa kept her movements small, her thumb pressing a quick command on her smartphone before anyone could notice. Then, with a sudden, fluid motion, she swung her hand forward. A jagged stream of blood erupted from the center of her palm, instantly hardening and shaping itself into a crimson katana. She snapped the blade to her side with a sharp, aggressive hiss, her eyes locked on Damon.
"Easy there, Lexa," Masato teased, though his voice lacked any real humor. "Don't go poking the bear before we're even in the cage." He slammed his fist into his open palm one more time, his casual swagger replaced by a cold, combat-ready focus.
"Wooo, now that is spicy," Damon drawled, a dark glint in his eyes. "Your tricks are gettin' real amusing to look at, I'll give ya that." He took one heavy, deliberate step forward, then another, before suddenly slamming his boot down with bone-breaking force.
The street didn't just crack—it exploded. A violent tremor ripped through the concrete, sending a jagged wave of stone and pressure surging toward them. Masato and Lexa reacted instantly, diving in opposite directions just as the rupture hammered into the building behind them, turning the brickwork into a cloud of dust and shrapnel. They rolled back to their feet, unscathed but feeling the raw power of the shockwave vibrating in their chests.
The second Lexa's boots hit the pavement, she didn't waste a heartbeat. She dug her heels in, skidding just long enough to find her center before lunging forward into a high-velocity sprint.
She gripped her katana with both hands, dragging the tip behind her. As she ran, a thick trail of blood bled from the steel, swirling and spiraling around the blade like a living slipstream. She closed the gap in a blur of motion, her face twisted in a look of pure, focused aggression. With a sharp hiss, she unleashed a violent horizontal slash, the manipulated blood tearing through the air in a massive, sweeping arc that threatened to cleave Damon in two.
Damon's grin only widened. He was a man who lived for the friction of a head-on collision. He hopped back just an inch, his hand blurring as he whipped a heavy machete from his hip.
"You got a real beast hidin' in those eyes, honey!" he barked, letting out a jagged laugh.
Instead of a standard parry, he released the handle. The machete spun in the air like a high-speed saw blade, hovering in a localized pocket of kinetic pressure. Lexa's blood-slicked steel slammed into it with a deafening clang, the phantom spin of the machete holding her back just long enough to kill her momentum.
Damon used the impact to glide backward, letting the force of her blow send his machete whistling through the air toward him. He timed it perfectly, his palm snapping shut around the handle at the apex of its flight. The instant he caught it, the sudden transfer of momentum hit like a physical weight; the air around him buckled, and the concrete beneath his boots gave way, shattering into a spiderweb of deep, jagged craters.
Damon relished the friction, a jagged laugh tearing from his throat. "Haha! Guess there are some folks with actual talent left in this city, huh? This is a real treat!"
He didn't give her a second to breathe. Leaning back like a coiled spring, he snapped his torso forward and exploded into a blur of motion. He covered the distance in a heartbeat, his machete already whistling through the air on a collision course with Lexa's neck.
Lexa's eyes widened, but her focus didn't flicker. She pivoted, bringing her blood-hardened katana up to intercept. The blades met with a bone-jarring *shriek* of metal on metal. For a tense, vibrating moment, they were locked in a stalemate, boots grinding into the asphalt as they poured every ounce of strength into the struggle.
"Heh. Plenty of skill, girl... but you ain't got the muscle," Damon growled. With a sudden, violent surge from his shoulder, he threw his entire weight into a shove. The raw power was too much; Lexa was sent reeling back, her boots skidding across the debris. Before she could even find her footing, Damon flicked his wrist, sending his machete spinning toward her like a lethal propeller.
Lexa's instincts kicked in. She dropped into a low crouch, the spinning blade missing her by a fraction of an inch—she could actually feel the wind of its passage tugging at her hair.
But she'd bitten the bait.
In the time it took her to duck, Damon had already vanished from her sightline. He reappeared like a ghost in the air directly behind her, his hand snapping shut around the handle of his returning machete. Hovering just off the ground, he looked down at her with a predator's shadow.
"Terrifying, aren't I?" Damon muttered, a dark, jagged pride in his voice. He didn't wait for an answer, his grin widening as he brought the machete around in a brutal, sweeping arc meant to finish it.
Lexa was pinned, but she wasn't done. Digging her heels into the grit, she lunged forward, staying low to the ground while blindly swinging her katana behind her to buy a split second. As she scrambled away, she willed her energy into the air, manifesting a thick, jagged wall of blood that hardened instantly into a solid, obsidian-like barrier.
It didn't matter. Damon's machete bit into the construct and sheared through it like it was nothing more than warm butter. The wall shattered, the magic holding it together failing as it liquified, raining down onto the pavement in heavy, dark droplets.
The distraction served its purpose, though. By the time Damon's boots hit the blood-slicked ground, his blade resting loosely at his hip, Lexa had already scrambled back, putting a desperate distance between them.
She stood there, chest heaving, the air burning in her lungs. Her hands were trembling—just a fine, involuntary shudder—as the cold reality of how close she'd come to death settled in. Her heart was a frantic hammer against her ribs, and for a moment, the sounds of the city faded behind the deafening thrum of her own pulse. She needed a second—just one second—to stop the world from spinning and find her edge again.
To be continued...