Kodachi was not the fool her brother. She knew there was something going on here that she didn't understand. There was more to this meeting than just another Neriman martial arts battle.
Still, she held on to the bravado, refusing to be marked as prey or weak. At least until she could break away and review the situation further.
"I see the Faithless dogs of Hellsing have sent thee, demon," Anderson said, brandishing the bayonet that Kodachi had first taken for a short sword. "Good, it is well-past the time that you should have been dealt with."
"I've told you before, Father Anderson," Alucard said, smiling broadly. "I have nothing to fear from a dog like you."
"I'm afraid both of you gaijin will have to move on," Kodachi said. "The Black Rose does not accept you being here and disturbing her peaceful domain."
"We'll make this quick, girl," Alucard said, smirking.
"Get thee behind me Satan!" Anderson yelled, throwing out a small flight of blessed bayonets at both Kodachi and Alucard.
The blessed knives failed to find their targets as both Alucard and Kodachi leaped out of the way.
The gymnast was fairly well confident of making a good show of herself as she grabbed one of the knives with her ribbon and sent it flying back toward the white-garbed blonde man, expecting to jump aside as most of her opponents did.
Then sound of gunfire was a rude awakening for the aristocratic teenager. As was the fountain of blood that sprung up from the viciously smirking Anderson. The white-garbed gaijin collapsed momentarily to the ground amongst that blood in front of Kodachi's horrified eyes.
"What did you do?" Kodachi demanded as she landed near the body. "You killed him!"
"Don't be so sure girl," Alucard said, already leaping down towards ground level.
Kodachi bately heard the motion behind her before it was too late. Dodging aside she felt the burn of a deep cut slash across her side. Clutching the bleeding wound, and thankful that it was so small, Kodachi gaped as the blonde man started to pull himself back together.
Alucard charged in at the priest and a slash of steel severed the vampire's hand, which flew away, connected by a flimsy seeming band of black...something that eventually pulled the hand back to the body.
"M..monsters!" Kodachi stuttered fearfully as she brought her whip to bear. Then she remembered her samurai heritage and firmed her chin defiantly. "I...I can't let you roam free on these streets!"
She slashed out, only a bit hopelessly, at the two creatures before her, and leaped past aiming for the roof of a nearby building. Behind her, she lashed out with her own projectiles, scattering the scene with poisoned flower petals and a pair of clubs.
Kodachi was by far the most agile and acrobatic of Neriman's martial artists, even Ranma was a distant second in terms of pure acrobatic and gymnastic skill. It was due to this that she was able to alter her trajectory as the red-coated...thing used what appeared to be great strength to jump over and past her.
She impacted the wall, bending her knees to collect the kinetic energy instead of simply letting it dissipate away. A brief glance about her showed that her flower petals had little effect. Her gymnast clubs were just coming close to impact now, however.
"I shall not fear the terror of night!" Anderson shouted, laughing as the clubs just missed him and smashed into the ground. A flurry of bayonets had already been launched at the nimble gymnast.
A pair of fireballs lit up the night sky a moment later, but Kodachi knew better than to expect that was the end of the priest as she rebounded off the wall to catch a perch on top of a light pole.
Even if she didn't consider the blonde man-thing's regenerative capabilities, her clubs were not designed to kill. The fire was a weak and flashy addition that burned too swiftly to do more than singe eyebrows. All that remained was concussive force, and that wasn't likely to do more than stun her enemy.
She needed more deadly weapons to put a stop to these monsters, she determined as she watched the crazed priest's body fly wildly across the street from the impact of her explosions.
Thankfully, her enemies had provided her with some. It was a simple matter to snag one of the bayonets out of the terrain and carry it to her free hand. Simple, but time-consuming, and she was lucky that the first bullets did little more than graze across her skull.
Mind rattled from the impact, Kodachi fell to instinct to dodge the rest of the volley, using simple flips to pull herself out of the line of fire and force the red-cloaked gun-using monster to move out of whatever position he was in. There was plenty for her to use in the construction site she'd just pulled them toward, after all.
"I was originally more interested in that dog of a priest, girl," Alucard declared in a fit of terrifying psychotic glee. "But since you insist."
Twisting about a small pile of crates, Kodachi dodged around behind the red-cloaked vampire as he landed on top of her cover. A flick of her wrist sent the ribbon flying for a lever on a nearby crane and then pulled.
Alucard arched an eyebrow as he turned about to bring Kodachi back into his vision, and then the wrecking ball slammed into the vampire, sending him flying away from the girl, towards where she had seen the priest landing.
Kodachi didn't have time to catch her breath, already she needed to dodge another volley of bayonets, even as the "priest" behind them turned about to move on Alucard's prone form.
Rising up into the air after a few short hops, Kodachi felt the apex of her jump coming close and looked below to see the two monsters in hand-to-hand confrontation. She could leave while they fought each other, but there was no way that she would allow such monstrous killers on her streets.
She prepared herself to meet her ancestors for the stupidity she was about to perform.
The ribbon lashed out again, catching the arm of the priest as he lunged forward mightly, not yet aware that he had gained a bit of a fetter. Marvelling at the sheer power behind her newly acquired momentum, Kodachi aimed her flight perfectly.
The teenaged gymnast landed more solidly than she could ever remember doing before launching forward at an almost completely horizontal angle. Her procured bayonet slashed through the unaware priest's back and out through his ribs before slicing deep into and through the throat of the red-cloaked gun-user.
Kodachi herself bounded off the wall behind Alucard and back into the air, her momentum almost gone as she virtually hovered in the air above the two titans, hoping they were vanquished.
As Alucard's head refused to fall off his shoulders, but merely grew a new neck, and Anderson's wound was already closing, Kodachi whimpered meekly.
The Black Rose lashed out with her ribbon, desperate to acquire some more momentum, but a flying bayonet sliced through the ribbon, and now Kodachi was truly vulnerable, with no momentum available to change direction until gravity caught up with her.
The bullets and knives seemed to come in slow motion, just as slow as her own attempts at throwing her weight into a flip seemed to be. Then came the impacts and her carefully controlled leap turned into a ragdoll toss straight for the wire-wrapped fence surrounding the construction site.
Her mind caught the pole that was rising up to meet her, and then flashed back to her brush with that senshi earlier in the day.
She couldn't be a demon.
Not if she was about to die a samurai.
Closing her eyes, Kodachi calmed herself, emptying her mind for perhaps the first time in her life, and waited.
The fence pole slammed into Kodachi's chest and speared straight through, pushing out a mess of internal tissue out the now gaping hole in the back, but Kodachi made no sound at the terrible pain.
She merely waited to be freed of this existence.
It was several seconds before she realized that the pain was fading, but her senses were not. She could still hear the battle raging around her. The sounds of grinding metal, gunfire and the voices of her opponents came to her ears. The smell of blood and gunsmoke filled her nostrils.
She carefully opened her eyes and looked down to see the pole impaled through her chest and how she was hanging limply against it. Instinctively reaching for the item, she flinched as she saw her arms wrapped in some sort of vines with a small host of thorns growing out of them.
Gasping, she planted her feet and pushed herself up off the pole, landing lightly in front of a store with a huge mirror on display in front.
Kodachi gawked at what she saw.
In her chest, where her heart should have been, a gaping hole was all that there was. Yet she could feel no pain from the injury, only a memory of pain that had been. Green vines grew out of her shoulders and wrapped about her throat and arms like some gruesome mockery of a fashion show. Similar vines grew from the base of her spine and wrapped about her legs. Blood dripped out of the corner of her mouth and from her horrifically reddened eyes like tears.
As she gaped, the vines pulled away from her arms instinctively and snapped back, growing thin sub-branches outward, with a fine, semi-transparent membrane between them until a pair of thorny wings flapped and took her instinctively away from the visage before her.
Without further thought, the wings stopped flapping, bringing Kodachi firmly to the ground with a reactive grunt. Almost immediately, the vines were again wrapping about her arms.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" she shrieked loudly, sending a chill through the bodies of every being that hard the sound.
Even Anderson and Alucard froze momentarily as the empowered scream washed over them, but only for a moment. They both looked toward the small form of the teenaged girl and just felt that something had changed before the girl turned to face them and reveal the wound in her chest.
"What have you done to me, monsters?!" she shrieked wildly.
Anderson grimaced and charged forward, ignoring Alucard for the moment so that he could remove this complication before the fight turned against him.
With an instinctive flinch, Kodachi's arm flew up and a flash of dark energy flew from her out toward Anderson, striking him in the chest and sending massive pain through his nervous system.
Alucard marvelled as a hole blasted through the regenerator's chest, removing the space that had once been his heart, and caught a glimpse as the priest's eyes filled with blood in mirror to the girl standing before him.
"Such an interesting island this place is," he chuckled, bringing Kodachi's attention to him.
"What did you fiends do to me?" she demanded angrily lashing out again.
Alucard watched as a wave of dark, thorny vines reached out toward him. Smirking he idly hopped away, realizing that the girl had just reactively spent all her power into this one attack, but was surprised as the energy tendrils bent in their path to wrap around him and encase him in their form.
Anderson clutched in disbelief at the unhealing hole in his chest and gasped for breath even as the demon-girl, obviously distraught, seemed to forget him and Alucard both. Her mind was obviously clouded by the almighty God for the protection of His servant, and perhaps the devil for the protection of his. In any case, vile, membranous things unwrapped themselves from her arms and flapped, carrying her up into the dark sky to spread whatever terror she would be bound to bring.
Pain and confusion wracked Anderson, as did revulsion and shame, radiating out from the gaping hole in his chest and flaming through his now bloody eyes. He glanced at the bond Alucard for a moment, but decided that now was not the time to risk dealing with the vampire. He had to deal with whatever the demon had done to him first. He stumbled away and hurried for his operational base, gasping and shuddering in ungainly manner.
It didn't take much longer for Alucard to tear out of Kodachi's darkbonds and emerge, smiling into the night. He smiled at the fading fragments of darkness around him and immediately noted that Anderson had vanished.
Thinking upon the girl and her cleverness in facing them before and her power now, Alucard smiled. She would be an interesting fight as well, especially when she grew more powerful.
His only regret this night was that he had not encountered these new vampires. He only hoped that Seras had had similar bad luck. He wanted to be able to get at least a bit of a spar in with the boy before they had their interview with Sir Integra.
****
Anderson finally felt the pain and confusing mass of emotions fade away about a minute or more after he'd first been struck. Obviously, it was some curse of the demon, to force her own injuries onto another for a brief time. He'd have to be careful with that next time.
****
Kodachi soared through the night in random, unthinking directions, trying to understand just what had happened to her. Eventually, she came to an abandoned warehouse and smashed through a skylight.
The shattering glass cut horrid rents in her body, but they healed almost as fast as they were made. Even the fragile seeming wings repaired holes in a meer blink of an eye. Setting down on a beam in the ceiling of the building. The vines about her legs unwrapped from her and latched solidly to the beam, anchoring her position securely and instinctively.
Huddling up into herself, Kodachi tried to calm down and convince herself it was all a dream.
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(Posted Sat, 10 Feb 2007 23:42)
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