It was Ebony Wings.
“Ebony Wings?”
The three former Assassins gaped in surprise at the woman who stood before them. She was dressed in a leather corset with long sleeves, pants with holes near the feet, and shoes that appeared to be armored. In one hand she held a long, silver fleuret, and in the other, a crooked black short sword that glowed green with venom.
Pierce Network had recognized her from her flowing black hair and facial features, seeing as she was an acclaimed actress and all, but what she was doing here, he had no idea.
She brushed her dark hair away from her sparkling green eyes and grinned over her shoulder. “Miss me, little sister?”
“S-Sister?” Mirror Match gasped in disbelief.
“Sister?” Morning Blade repeated.
“Yes, it is I, Ebony Wings!” Ebony proclaimed, turning back to face the three former Assassins. “And this is my sister you’re menacing. So I’m only going to ask you once: drop the weapons and run away. This is bigger than you know.”
“Are you a servant of the queen as well?” Pierce asked her. “The one Mirror Match is always talking about? She’s mentioned a queen on countless occasions, but we’ve never been able to determine who or what she is. For all we know, it could be a figment of her imagination or a ploy used to throw us off track. So… Are you a servant of the queen like she is?”
Ebony Wings rolled her head on her shoulders, her mouth opening and closing with a wet snap. “You fool,” she said eventually. “I am the queen.”
The former Assassins exchanged quick glances, both at Ebony Wings and then at the kneeling Mirror Match. This had been their only chance to kill her, but now that Ebony Wings was here, all three of them suddenly felt as if the odds had shifted.
Pierce took a bold step forward. “I’m not running. Your sister needs to die now and you can’t protect her. She’s caused us all too much trouble in the past and now here she is again, back in our lives. If not for her, I would still be living a good life here, undisturbed.”
Ebony Wings’s smile turned into a frown. “Oh, shut up!” Then over her shoulder, she called, “What exactly did you do to get into this situation?”
Mirror struggled to her feet, collapsing against a pile of cinderblocks with her black dagger in hand. She seemed to still be in shock from Ebony’s arrival.
“Trying to find you, that’s what…” she fell back down to the ground. “A-And you were here… All this time. Ebony Wings… the worst actress out there. I should’ve known it was you.”
“‘Worst actress out there’? I thought I was pretty good; I have a whole shelf of awards,” Ebony’s lips twitched with amusement.
Mirror eyed the former Assassins. “They might believe you, but I see through your acting. You’re terrible, sister… So bad. Ugh…” She turned on her back and placed her hand over a chest wound.
“Don’t strain yourself, sister,” Ebony said, turning back to their opponents. “I’ll handle this.”
Keila and Morning Blade looked at each other uncertainly, but Pierce knew Mirror needed to go. This was their only chance and they weren’t going to give up after coming so close to winning.
“Morning, Keila, on my mark,” he whispered to them, his thumb tapping away on his phone’s screen. “Try to get to Mirror Match. I’ll try to distract Ebony Wings. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve, or more accurately, on my phone. I’ve programmed it to work on a lot of things here, just in case.”
Ebony Wings flourished her fleuret and took a step toward the three former Assassins.
“So, which one of you wants to die first?”
“Now.” Pierce clicked a button, activating a shock trap he had set up earlier.
Ebony Wings wasn’t exactly over it, but the blue electricity spread out far enough to reach her, the current crawling to her leg and jumping up her body. She leapt backward almost unaffected, snarling and glaring daggers at Pierce. Fangs shot out from her gums and she licked them, letting drops of venom patter down onto the ground.
Keila and Morning Blade had already moved, rushing towards the downed Mirror Match with their blades drawn. The latter had her pistol out, taking aim as she closed the distance.
Moving faster than anyone would have believed, Ebony Wings faced the two oncoming threats and lashed out with a kick, connecting with Morning Blade’s gut, immediately following up with a slash at Keila with her fleuret. The Saddle Arabian was forced to block with her knives, bringing her to a halt.
Pierce Network took this chance to whip out his pistol and fire at Mirror Match, doing his best to aim for her head. His bullet was intercepted by Ebony’s black blade. Ebony knocked Keila down with a spinning kick to the head and hissed at Pierce.
“Are you ignoring me?” she growled. “Am I not the greater threat to you? Am I not more worthy of your attention?”
Morning Blade raised her pistol at Ebony Wings, who simply pushed her arm aside so that the shot went wide before slashing her wrist with a flick of her fleuret. Blood sprayed out and Morning cried out in pain, dropping her gun.
“We don’t want you dead,” Pierce scowled at the actress. “We have no quarrel with you, just your sister. She ruined us from within. A clever tactic, one we clearly didn’t see coming. Evil comes in many forms.”
Tapping on his phone, Pierce activated a sonic trap, just beside Mirror Match. To them, it was almost silent, but it was too much for the former Templar agent. She brought her hands up to her ears and covered them, screaming in pain.
Taking this chance, Pierce reloaded his pistol and fired two bullets at her, while he pointed the rest in Ebony’s direction.
Ebony frowned and seemed to fade away, reappearing in front of Mirror Match, stabbing the sonic trap with her black blade. Both bullets struck her instead, one passing through her leg and the other drilling into her chest. A red stain began to grow on Ebony Wings’ front.
And then Ebony Wings did something none of the former Assassins expected. She began to laugh.
“Ha ha ha… Did you seriously think… hee hee… that you’d be able to kill me with that little thing? Ha ha… you don’t have what it takes to kill me,” Abruptly, the laughter stopped, replaced by a low, growling tone as she spat out the bullet. “But I have what it takes to kill you. Want to see?”
“Oh, now you’ve made her mad,” Mirror tittered. To the trio’s dismay, some of her wounds were beginning to close, the smaller cuts healing over. “Go on, sister! Show them what it is to fall foul of the queen!”
Ebony Wings clenched her fists around her weapons, and suddenly both her hands burst into bright green flames burning up to her wrists. Five seconds later, the flames died down, revealing Ebony’s hands to be charcoal black and each finger tipped with a long, sharp talon.
“You, you’re just like her,” Keila said with disgust as she watched the actress’ hands.
“What now, Pierce?” Morning Blade wrapped her wrist in a bandage. “We can’t beat this one. We should go.”
Pierce knew she was right, but then he looked at Mirror Match, who now wore a smug smile across her face. He didn’t like it.
“No. We have to do this. If we fail today, she recovers and there’s no stopping her again.”
The hacker scrolled through his phone. He didn’t have many traps left, but he still had one big trick up his sleeve. All he had to do was lure the woman, or whatever she was, a little bit over to the left, close to the center of the road.
Ebony Wings dashed forward, so fast that she became a blur. Within a heartbeat, she was at Keila, delivering a devastating roundhouse kick to the Saddle Arabian’s head, knocking her down. Morning Blade attacked from behind, but without looking, Ebony raised her left arm, the one holding the black blade, to block. Venom hissed against Morning Blade’s katana as it began to eat away at the metal.
The actress snarled, spinning around and clawing Morning Blade with the hand that held the fleuret, her talons leaving long and deep scratch marks on the former Assassin’s cheek.
Morning dropped her melting weapon and fell back, rolling out of the way, a hand grabbing for her bleeding cheek as she crawled away. Keila tried to get up, but seemed to be having trouble steadying herself. Pierce walked out further on the road, reloading his pistol and firing at the actress.
Ebony Wings zigzagged through his bullets, rushing at him as he moved as fast as his leg could handle. Her long hair streamed out behind like a pennant as she approached, her swords held perpendicular to her body like two wings. Pierce fired one more shot which was deflected by Ebony’s black blade, then his gun clicked empty.
“Foolish humans,” Ebony laughed at him, decreasing her speed. “When will you learn to stop using the same useless weapons against us?”
“Who knows,” Pierce told her as he readied his phone, waiting for the right moment. “We aren’t very good at giving up. You see, giving up just makes a person weak. I’m not weak and neither are the other two.”
Ebony slowed down to a walk, shaking her head. “Do you always talk like this?” she said. “I can see why my sister wants to kill you.”
Pierce waited until she was right above his primed trap, his thumb pressing down on the button as his mouth lifted into a smug grin.
Beneath Ebony Wings, a steam pipe exploded, blasting her with a jet of scalding steam, blanketing the immediate area in smoke.
“Doesn’t matter if your sister wants to kill me,” Pierce said to himself. “We need to kill her, and you won’t be stopping us. With her out of our lives, the world will return to its regular order. No more running, no more hiding, no more Mirror Match.”
And then Ebony Wings sprinted out of the steam, running straight at Pierce and impaling her fleuret through his shoulder hard enough to pin him to the wall. Ebony’s face was split in half; one side was still the actress’s normal face, the other half was a charcoal black guise with an acid green eye and slit pupil. She pressed herself against Pierce, twisting the sword and growling at him with her fanged mouth.
Pierce was about to flip through his phone to find the explosives tab, but Ebony pinned his arm to the side.
“I have just about had it with you,” she said, her voice layered like two women speaking at once. “You annoy me so. You and your little tricks.”
As Pierce writhed like a bug on a pin, Ebony wrestled the phone out of his hand and crushed it in her grip like a soda can.
“Well, that’s that, isn’t it?” Ebony smirked. “You’re out of luck, and for crimes against the queen and her kin,” She raised her black sword, its crooked length glowing green with toxin. “I hereby sentence you to-”
“No!” Keila ran into her, tackling the actress to the ground.
Ebony Wings let go of her fleuret, allowing Pierce to yank it out with a grunt and limp back, reloading his pistol again.
Ebony leapt to her feet, kicking Keila in the head again before returning her attention to Pierce, who had a magazine halfway to his gun. Wasting no time, Ebony slashed out with her black blade, nicking the pistol and knocking his arm aside. A vile green liquid clung to the point where the blade had met the gun, hissing as it began to dissolve the metal.
“That weapon…” Pierce eyed her short sword with disgust and dropped his dissolving gun. “It melts away at anything and the poison keeps its victims alive until their days are up… It does not conform to any such scientific rules.”
“Must you drone on about everything?” the actress bellowed. “You deserve to die.”
Then Morning Blade and Keila returned, one kicking Ebony Wings in the back, while the other stabbed her in the side with a dagger multiple times.
“Go, Pierce!” Keila waved at him with a free hand. “We can’t win this! We have to get out of here!”
Ebony screeched, green flames gusting out from where Keila had stabbed her, the fire clinging to the former Assassin and igniting her clothes. The Saddle Arabian fell back, rolling on the ground to try and put out the flames.
Morning Blade extended her hidden blade, but Ebony Wings caught her arm as it descended, grabbing the hidden blade with her bare hand and snapping it off before stabbing her with it in the side. Morning gasped and stumbled away, only for Ebony Wings to kick her in the gut as she tried to escape, blood spraying out from the wound.
Pierce watched as the others were tossed to the side, struggling to get back on their feet as Ebony Wings turned back to him. Even if he got a whole block away, there was no telling how long he would have before this creature could catch up to him, and he wasn’t going to abandon Keila and Morning Blade. Not this time.
He dug around in his coat pocket, bringing out his foldable baton and a cluster of smoke bombs. Ebony growled deep in her throat, scooping up her fleuret and brandishing both swords at Pierce.
“Come on,” she said, walking toward the hacker, her mismatched eyes gleaming with anticipation. “Let’s see how long you can last.”
Pierce threw the smoke bombs just as Ebony Wings vanished on the spot, disappearing in a dark blur. Thick, white smoke sprang up from the ground, covering the immediate area.
And then Ebony Wings reappeared directly in front of Pierce, stabbing her fleuret into the ground next to her feet and sheathing her black blade. Pierce swung at her with his baton. Ebony opened her mouth wide and caught it with her teeth, biting down hard and snapping the weapon in half. Spitting the remains of the baton out onto the ground, Ebony Wings raised both hands and tore through Pierce’s coat, digging her claws under his ribs and lifting him off the ground.
“Agh!” the hacker grunted and delivered a series of punches to the side of Ebony’s head, but with little effect. He was starting to have trouble breathing and his strength was slowly draining.
“What now, you odious little man?” Ebony sneered, her voice shifting between a single and double speaker. She dug her claws in deeper.
For once, Pierce didn’t see any alternatives. His phone was destroyed, his weapons were gone, and he was all out of smoke bombs. Is this it? Is this where it all ends?
Ebony threw Pierce onto the ground and straddled him, slashing at his chest with her claws again and again, each talon easily ripping through his clothes and the flesh beneath. Blood sprayed up, flecks of it settling across Ebony’s face and front.
The computer teacher could only turn away from his killer, looking to Morning Blade and Keila, who lay over on the pavement, their stamina drained. He willed them to leave, to get out of here. If any of them were to die here today, it would be him. They were still young and had their lives ahead of them.
Then Pierce turned back to Ebony, wincing as another claw cut something within him. “L-Let the girls g-go… It-it’s me… you want… Let th-them leave and go… on their way...” He didn’t have the strength to speak more.
Ebony stopped her onslaught, pausing with one clawed hand in his chest.
“You are in no position to make demands,” she said coldly. She removed her hand from Pierce’s ribs and drew her black blade. “You’ll be the first, though. Now for crimes against the queen and her kin, I hereby-”
Before she could even scratch the surface of Pierce’s skin, she suddenly looked up and around. Only after a few more seconds could Pierce hear it himself. Police sirens. Someone had likely called the police.
Ebony’s slit-pupiled eye twitched, and she leapt off of Pierce, picking up her fleuret and sprinting back to Mirror Match and scooping her up in her arms.
“This isn’t over,” she snarled at them before disappearing with her sister in a dark blur.
Pierce lay there, unable to get up, unable to breathe enough, his lungs partially punctured by Ebony Wings’ claws. The sirens continued to get louder, but he could do nothing to get himself to safety.
Then he felt a pair of hands lift him up from underneath and he was slowly being dragged away, leaving a trail of blood on the floor under him.
“It’s not enough, Keila,” he heard Morning Blade say as his vision began to fade. “They’ll just follow the blood.”
“Well, help me out then. We’re not going to leave him to die like that.”
The last thing Pierce remembered before everything became hazy was himself being lifted up and carried away.