Amaranthine

Connecting to Willow was strange. Normally, the link was only active on her part. Even with Cait, it was like she reached out to grab a hand that wasn’t expecting it, even if it gripped tight once held. With Willow, that hand quested out, grabbing hers in turn. It was the difference between the difficulty of trying to communicate with someone who didn’t speak a word of your language, and the ease of someone whose mastery was greater than your own.

The world took on the ethereal glow that followed Willow’s abilities, and Kennedy saw how she was so easily avoiding each of her opponents strikes. At first, she thought the witch was being double teamed by an invisible assailant, then it clicked. The ghostly figure that struck at her was always followed exactly by its physical twin, Willow’s actual opponent, a moment later.

Alright, ghost jedi, I see you, Kennedy thought, with no small amount of new respect for Willow’s abilities. As she watched, Willow danced out of the way of an ethereal lunge, only for her hand to fade, and be put back directly in the path of the physical lunge that followed. It flowed through the man’s body, which continued on its way with all its momentum, but no control, falling to the ground in a heap of dead weight.

Again, Kennedy’s eyes fixed on the orb Willow held, before she realized the witch’s eyes were fixed directly on her. She followed her gaze as it turned back to the soul, letting Kennedy feel her pulsing hunger, the power this animus vitae represented. Then she let Kennedy feel the release, the conquering of that hunger, as the soul was sent to whatever awaited it.

Willow’s eyes flicked back to her, a smirk appearing on her face for only a moment. Her voice spoke directly into Kennedy’s ears, a soft, amused whisper that became her world for a moment; “I’m not a monster, Kennedy.”

Kennedy blushed, both from the words tickling her ears, somehow carrying the feeling of soft breath despite definitely not having actually been spoken, and also from a bit of embarrassment. Willow might not have done enough to earn her trust, not completely, but her mother had. The Director would have never let Willow in the same room as Kennedy if the witch was anything like her father. She would have killed Willow her damn self.

Well, time to try this out then, Kennedy thought, stalking towards the tangle of enemies. Each step was enhanced with Qi’s strength, and Kennedy reached them just as most of them Willow’s was plucking out souls like The Bride plucks eyeballs. A big dude whose skin looked just too… thick clocked Kennedy’s incoming, and launched a haymaker her way.

It was a move entirely without finesse or skill, just like all of these minions had been throwing at her all day. She easily could have just dodged, then broke, severed or otherwise destroyed that outstretched arm in a million different ways, but this seemed like a learning opportunity.

Inside herself, she found Willow’s power, so very close to her own. She’d expected that. It’d become very clear that her mother and the witch were right: Kennedy’s power was a very specific form of Animancy. Feeling Willow’s power within her, she knew the witch could never do what she could. But she could also do so much more.

The man’s… spirit imprint? Threw his punch, so Kennedy’s dodge was even more perfect than normal when his body followed through. She dismissed her staff, extending one clawed hand and reaching out to her assailant, not with her own power, but with Willow’s. The shimmering black scales around her hand became semi-transparent as she tried to bring the hand up and through the man’s arm.

She was surprised when instead of passing through easy as fog, like for Willow, her hand stopped with the sharp slap of flesh on flesh. The man looked at her confused, an emotion Kennedy shared. She did not share the scream of pain he let out when she lost focus though, as half an inch of scales rematerialized inside his arm.

Kennedy ripped the scales out, causing tears to appear in the man’s eyes before his face was consumed with dragon fire. She danced away from the next attack, shooting a glare at Willow.

“The fuck didn’t that work?” she asked as the witch continued her casual fighting style against a man who probably couldn’t have beat her in a fight even if she couldn’t see exactly what he’d do before he did it. Willow couldn’t look away from her opponent, but she certainly didn’t sound stressed when she answered.

“Why didn’t what work, Kennedy?” she asked, waving her hand through her own oppenent’s arm and causing it to fall limp, dead weight against it’s owner.

“That!” Kennedy cried, pointing. “I just tried that but all I did was slap the dude particularly gruesomely.”

“Is that Cait I feel, along this link?” She asked. Kennedy knew the feeling of Cait being very happy that she could stop playing possum for these idiots would be hard to miss for anyone else in her link system.

“Yeah?” Kennedy answered, making sure her intonation told Willow that Kennedy thought it was a dumb question.

“Mmm,” Willow hmmed, the sound of a teacher disappointed a star pupil was failing to grasp something simple. “And we’ve established the defining characteristic of her soul is it’s complete impenetrability, correct?”

Kennedy cursed. The witch had her there. Still, was the ability to yoink souls worth giving up the near-invulnerability Cait granted her? She didn’t think so.

Perhaps a melee wasn’t the best place to practice anyway, Kennedy realized, as two of Cait’s ineffectual abusers peeled off to attack her. It turned out, when fighting more than one opponent, the spirits telegraphing their attacks became a bit of a sensory overload, at least when it was so new.

She easily dodged the first man’s swing, but made the mistake of doding the second’s spirit, then being back in range of his strike when she tried to avoid the first man’s follow up.

Her eyes saw stars for a moment, even through the scales, even through Cait, and she thought she might have been right about not dropping that link. She didn’t think Freeflow’s Character had hit her half that hard during the Camp Dodge assault.

Kennedy’s staff was already back in her hands, weaving through defense forms so firmly beaten into her they required no conscious input. Concious input was always better though, and she could see through the fore-spirit of one of the men that he was about to find an opening.

Instead of landing another blow Kennedy shifted just slightly, bringing her staff down and around to trap his arm between the staff and her scaled hip. A little leverage, and snap!, the man’s tendon’s proved not to be as reinforced as his skin.

He fell back while his companion pressed the assault, buoyed by his earlier success. That was a mistake. Alone, and with his every move laid out like an instruction manual, he was a child in the ring with a master. Two blocks, one jab, and Kennedy flicked vitreous humans and brain bits off the tip of her staff.

His friend fell even faster as Kennedy pursued him, without even both arms working to defend himself. Behind him, Cait was up now, raising Cain in the middle of the group of men who’d thought they had her trounced. She wasn’t quite as lethal as Kennedy or Willow, but her brawling was still something to behold.

The sheer glee with which her girlfriend tanked hits sent a shiver down Kennedy’s spine, and not from fear. She’d seen the grin Cait wore, completely unchanged after the impact of a fist the size of her head, plenty of times. It was just that most of those times hadn’t been during fights. Cait’s booming return blow, completely heedless of retaliation, proved her opponents teeth weren’t nearly so durable. One actually hit Kennedy in the cheek.

Fuckin’ love that barbarian.

Between Kennedy, Cait, and Willow, the rest of the muscleheads fell quickly. Each was dead, broken, or, if they were unlucky enough to have gone up against Willow, perhaps worse.

A sound like titanic stones grinding together in the deepest, darkest parts of the earth stopped Kennedy from admiring just how good Cait looked after the light workout a fight represented for her.

The sound wasn’t immediately recognizable as speech. The human mind simply wasn’t set up to register something that low, that slow, as being capable of carrying the building blocks of language. But as the rumble echoed in the suddenly still building, its meaning clicked in Kennedy’s head.

“Weak.”