Pierce stood in the center of the street, his eyes darting left and right as he watched the tracker on his phone, linked to his van earlier.
Something bounced out of the darkness overhead. It was a tiny device with a blinking red light and an even tinier speaker.
“I thought it might be you. No one else would make it so hard for me to get their number.”
Pierce took a close look around the roofs and swiped at his phone, bringing another screen out. His other hand extended his foldable baton, the steel glinting in a street lamp as the sun disappeared, leaving the moon to cast its glow over the city streets.
“Hmm. I see three… no, five of you tonight. Stepping it up at last, are you?”
“Come on out, Mirror Match,” Pierce called out. She could see all of them, meaning their ambush plan was already a failed attempt. He had to change things up. Pierce began walking to a fire hydrant. “Let’s end this once and for all.”
“Hm. Suddenly so brief and to the point. If you were like this all the time, I wouldn’t feel nearly as excited about finishing this tonight.”
“Come down, Mirror. No one else should die tonight.” Pierce moved his finger to a red button on his screen and waited.
There was a pause.
“As you wish.”
A cluster of smoke bombs were flung down from a chimney, exploding all around the Assassins’ general area and flooding them with thick, white smog. The toxicity gauge in Pierce’s phone beeped red, indicating some kind of harmful chemical in the bombs.
“Masks!” Pierce shouted into his earpiece. He unslung his own and swiftly attached it over his face. It took a while for his breathing to adjust, but after a few moments, he stood calmly in the middle of the smokey zone.
“Well I’ll be,” the tiny speaker said. “Finally the Assassins show some signs of learning from their mistakes. Such a shame too; I made those myself. Tonight was supposed to be a field test.”
“Do you have visual on her?” Pierce whispered to the others.
“Not yet… Wait, there!” High Noon shouted on the radio. “Just in front of you, rooftop.”
A black shape, like an oversized crow, was darting from cover to cover, the only thing giving it away a green glow that outlined a crooked dagger blade. The pinging got louder, more intense.
Suddenly, the hydrant that Pierce was standing next to exploded open and showered him with water, the liquid drenching him and all his equipment. There was the sound of spent casings hitting the floor.
Through the veil of water, Mirror Match dropped down in front of him, at the other end of the street. The Templar’s face was set in an amused, but firm expression that bespoke no mercy. In one hand she held her suppressed pistol, and in the other, her black dagger.
“Now that I’ve taken care of your phone, please tell everyone to stand down and I will only execute you. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
“We’re not letting you die, Pierce,” Spectral said. “Assassins, let’s get her!”
The other Assassins began scaling down the roofs, though High Noon made sure Windy didn’t before heading down himself.
Pierce saw his chance and headed away from the water. Mirror was standing in an expanding pool around her feet, just next to one of his primed circuit boxes, and Mirror didn’t know his phone was waterproofed.
Perfect.
Pierce tapped a button and watched as the circuit box exploded in a shower of sparks before sending a current down to the water around the ex-Assassin.
Mirror’s eyes widened a split second before the electrical pulse hit. Thousands of volts of it jolted from the water up into her body, making her jerk around and causing all the remaining bullets in her gun to explode. Only the hand that held onto her dagger remained unaffected, though after the short five seconds that the circuit box had to give were over, Mirror Match was left kneeling in the water, smoke rising off her entire form.
“Is she… Dead?” Silent Frame raised her pistol and kept it pointed at Mirror Match.
“Nobody move,” Pierce instructed. “Wait.”
From the throat of Mirror Match came a damp gurgling sound, a sound that rose in decibel and pitch until it was almost a screech. It took a few moments for the Assassins to realize she was laughing.
“Heehee… ha ha ha…” Mirror staggered to her feet. The gun lay on the ground, the receiver warped and twisted from the explosions. She reached up to the side of her head and took out the ruined headpiece that she had been using to talk to them. “Funny guy.”
Silent fired her pistol at the Templar, who blurred aside to dodge, though not fast enough to avoid one clipping her shoulder. Spectral Rim unsheathed her daggers while High Noon drew his revolver and lasso.
Pierce, Noon, and Silent fired more bullets at Mirror, forcing her to dodge more, though she began closing the distance on them.
It was exactly what Pierce wanted. With another tap, he blew the steam pipe on his left, just under a building’s shelter, blasting a jet of hot steam into Mirror and all around her, blanketing the area once again.
Out of the mist, Silent Frame saw Mirror lunge at Spectral Rim, her fangs in full view and ready to bite. Then High Noon’s lasso tightened around the Templar’s leg and she fell short, jaws snapping shut inches away from Spectral’s upper arm. Spectral took her chance and delivered a kick to Mirror’s head, knocking her on her side.
Mirror swiped at her leg with her dagger and cut the rope, following through on the strike and missing Spectral by a hair with the toxic point. Tiny drops of green pattered onto the Assassin’s robes and began to eat their way through, forcing the Assassin to deposit her coat on the ground before it could eat into her arm.
With the steam still clearing, Pierce aimed and fired in the Templar’s direction, but hit nothing. He caught sight of Mirror lurking behind a wall and jabbing herself in the thigh with a syringe filled with green liquid, noting how its administration seemed to restore her vigor and spirit. Now there was something he hadn’t accounted for. Her fingertips seemed to have grown claws as well, short but sharp looking.
“I’m impressed!” Mirror called, the agent disappearing into the darkness. “Were you waiting for me all this time? Luring me in by making me overconfident with the easy kills before? If so, then congratulations, it worked.”
“Stay close…” Pierce told the other three Assassins as they backed towards each other. “I’ve still got a few more tricks up my sleeve. It ends here today. That Templar is going to wish she never betrayed us. She thinks they’re the winning side? We’re going to break that illusion.”
The Appleloosan Assassin watched his surroundings carefully, holding tightly to his revolver, waiting for the Templar to show her face.
Noon couldn’t believe it. With how things were going, they might actually stand a chance against Mirror. He took one quick glance up at the roof, making sure Windy Sails was still there, safe away from harm.
Good, he smiled. She was still there. He couldn’t let her get hurt. He had tried to tell her how he felt about her earlier, but he just couldn’t get it out.
Mirror lurched out from behind, dashing straight for Pierce, her claws raised, ready to tear out the hacker’s face. High Noon was the first to see her, firing his revolver in her direction. Although none of his bullets hit their intended target, it was enough to catch the Templar agent’s attention. That was good. The bad news was now Mirror was loping toward him, fangs and claws outstretched, and his gun was empty.
Silent Frame came to the rescue, tackling Mirror Match to the ground and thrusting at her neck with her hidden blade. Had Mirror not put her hand in the way, the weapon would have struck home.
Mirror bared her fanged teeth at Silent Frame in a ghastly grin. “Now this is a fight!” Curling one leg in front of herself, she lashed out, the kick launching the Assassin into a streetlamp hard enough to break the glass.
Spectral spun back and slashed at Mirror, catching her once across the chest and another on her left thigh as High Noon began reloading his revolver.
The cowboy kept two combat knives behind his back, but he preferred his guns. It was also better to keep his enemies further away.
Mirror backed off and stuck both her hands into her coat, her right emerging with another syringe and jabbing it into her thigh, and her left coming back out encased in some kind of leather glove. The Templar agent huffed as the numerous wounds on her body rapidly ceased to bleed and closed over, leaving black marks where they had been.
Pierce had gone over to help Silent Frame up while Noon and Spectral continued their assault, the female Assassin slashing at the Templar while High Noon took careful shots at her. Both of them were slowly pushing her back towards another of Pierce’s traps.
“Back up!” Pierce called to his teammates as he readied his phone while supporting Silent with his other arm.
High Noon and Spectral Rim dodged back and shielded their faces as Pierce blew another circuit box. Mirror Match was still wet from the fire hydrant, and the resultant outburst of electricity drove her back, her body convulsing but still refusing to let go of her dagger. Her dedication was admirable, if ultimately more than a little off-putting.
“Why won’t you just fall?” Spectral shouted to the woman as she began recovering from the second shock attack.
Mirror fumbled into her robes for a third syringe, which slipped from her clawed and smoldering fingers.
“Why not? I’ll tell you,” she jabbed the needle into her leg and stood up straight. “Because my queen needs me alive more than you want me dead.” Mirror drew handful of small spheres from her belt. “That’s why, no matter how many times you cut me, burn me, kill me, I’ll keep coming back until I win.”
The ex-Assassin tossed her little spheres at Spectral Rim’s feet. They exploded into clouds of greyish vapor that drifted around her like a thin fog, but otherwise didn’t seem to do anything other than make her look around questioningly, protected behind her gas mask.
“Was that supposed to do something, Mirror?”
To which Mirror Match answered in a perfect imitation of a cultured Canterlotian accent, “Yes. This.”
Mirror blurred across the short expanse of distance up to the edge of the grey vapor and clicked the fingers on her left, gloved hand. Pierce caught sight of what looked like tiny stones on the bottom of the fingertips and then the sparks flew, setting the smoke alight like a torch dipped in gasoline with a roar. The Assassin’s reaction was immediate, her weapons falling from her hands as she ran away, screaming and windmilling her arms as the flames licked at her body.
“Thank you, Beatrix...” Mirror snatched up Spectral’s knives and threw them at High Noon.
“Woah, nelly!” Noon grunted as he jumped for the side, avoiding both the knives and the fire.
Spectral Rim dived at the water around the hydrant, rolling around in the puddles until the fire was out. She did not look good: the gas mask had been melted by the intense temperature and her clothes and skin were charred, but to everyone’s relief she got back up and took up a fighting stance.
High Noon smiled to her and shot at Mirror again as he pulled out a throwing knife. The Templar dodged his first two bullets as he threw the knife, which thudded into Mirror’s right forearm. It didn’t even slow her down as she weaved in and out of the remaining bullets and toppled the cowboy with a flying kick that knocked the breath out of him.
Noon fell back against the pavement, his revolver spinning away. He felt a pair of hands grab onto him and haul him up but he stared in surprise as he realized it was his apprentice.
“Windy!” he gasped as he pushed her to the side, further away from Mirror. “What are you doing? I told you to stay up there!”
For the first time since they met, the blonde Assassin flashed him a frown. “No, Noon. I’m n-not staying up there while I watch you get hurt!”
“Oh, so sweet,” Mirror laughed as she approached them. She grabbed the knife in her arm and yanked it out before letting it clatter to the floor. “You two don’t have to get hurt, you know? Just give me Pierce and you can all be on your way.”
The cowboy pushed Windy behind him and whipped out a combat knife and his hidden revolver. “No chance, Mirror.”
“Always the tastiest who fight back the hardest…” Mirror muttered resignedly, her hand going into her robe once more. “Must be a human thing.”
Human thing? High Noon didn’t really know what his friend’s ex-girlfriend was anymore, but he wasn’t going to let her harm Pierce or Windy.
“Yes!” Mirror crowed at High Noon. “Love them more! Your love only makes me stronger.”
“What?” High Noon raised a confused eyebrow. What did she mean by that? He fired off two shots from his hidden revolver and he began pushing Windy in front of him, the two heading back towards Pierce and the others.
Mirror blurred to his side, running ahead until she was between High Noon and the rest of his team.
“Lovely! The gang really is all back together again! I’ve got just the thing to celebrate!”
The Templar drew out a silver sphere with etched lines on it, roughly the size of a tennis ball. Cocking her arm back and ignoring the gunshots of the other Assassins, Mirror tossed the orb above head height.
An ominous click sounded as the ball’s silver outer shell flew off in segments, uncovering an interior that bristled with more needles than a hedgehog, each one connected to a vial of milky, opaque concoction.
“Get down!” High Noon threw himself over Windy just as each of the darts rocketed out in all directions, embedding themselves into the street, the van, the Assassins, and even Mirror herself. He felt two stick into his elbow and chest and before he knew it, all the strength trickled from his body, rendering the cowboy unable to move anything but his face and throat. It was just like what the reports said about Mirror’s bites, only this was a bomb instead.
“It worked!” Out of the corner of his eye, High Noon saw Mirror plucking three darts from her person, completely unharmed and unaffected. “That little device cost me so much to make, but I think after tonight, it was time well spent.”
“Windy, you alright?” High Noon checked, unable to see his apprentice. “Were you hit?”
“I-I’m fine…” she whispered from under him. “Thank you, Noon. You protected me…”
He could see the other Assassins from his position. Silent Frame and Pierce Network were unhurt but Spectral Rim lay near the van, unmoving, a few darts sticking out of her back.
Silent Frame raised her gun. “What did you do-”
“Oh, shut up!” Mirror shot her with a dart from her phantom blade and she slumped to the floor. “Stay silent, Silent.” She slowly stalked towards the hacker, a long grin forming on her face. “Just you and me now, Pierce; let’s see what other tricks you’ve got.”
Pierce reloaded a new magazine into his pistol and held it over one arm, using it as a support while also holding his phone. Mirror simply slapped the firearm out of his hands. She tutted disapprovingly.
“That’s not a very original trick, Pierce.”
“I still have this…” Pierce ducked behind his van as he hit another button on his phone to trigger a set of C4 he had hid earlier, just along the pavement. He pulled Silent and Spectral along just in time as the first wad of plastique detonated. The blast singed the ends of his coat but he got away from the rest of it as a heatwave blazed past him, forcing him to keep his hood and cap lower. He hadn’t set enough to blow the whole street up, but the destruction was still sizeable.
High Noon could feel the heat from the other side of the street, but at least he and Windy were untouched. He doubted Pierce had accounted for the others and himself. That was a really dangerous trick.
“You two okay?” Pierce asked the female Assassins, checking on their faces and any exposed skin. “Sorry. I should have made sure you were out of the area before that. That was foolish of me. You could’ve died all because of me. But it doesn’t matter now. I think we got her. Stay here, I’ll check it out. Right. Silly of me to ask you to stay when you can’t move at the moment.”
Pierce got up and looked past his van’s back doors, slowly sliding himself against the metal vehicle until he arrived back at the blast zone. Smoke was still pouring out to the sky, and the noise would have attracted more than half the city. They didn’t have long before the law showed up.
There was a tap on his shoulder.
“Now that’s much more innovative. Let me show you one of mine.”
Pierce’s phone was torn from his grasp as Mirror Match’s form phased past him, an empty syringe dropping in her wake. The Templar agent had snatched up High Noon’s revolver and she threw the phone into the air to shoot it, putting a round right in the center of the screen.
Noon watched Pierce go down on his knees and scrape up the remains of his handheld device; he looked almost sad. If this were any other time, High Noon would have started laughing at how close the man was to his technology than other people, but this wasn’t one of those times. This was still a life or death situation, especially for him.
“What have you done…?” he looked back up at Mirror Match. Most of her robes had somehow survived the blast, though a portion of it was still on fire. Mirror seemed to be a patchwork of a monster herself. Large chunks of her skin had turned black, including parts of her face and neck. A shard of the pavement was sticking out of her left eye, but it didn’t seem to have affected her aim.
“I am soooooo tempted to kill you slowly,” she said in a guttural growl. Her fingers found the concrete sliver and peeled it out. “Recovering from all this is going to be a pain.”
Pierce patted away at his pockets, looking for something he could use against her. She had destroyed his most prized object, his weapon that connected all his traps together, and the traps seemed to have been the only thing effective against the witch tonight.
The only thing he could find was his baton. Pierce sighed and pulled it out, extending it with a flick. “What are you, Mirror Match? You’re no human. You can’t be. You survived electric shocks, steam pipes, even my C4. And you remain almost whole. I’ve never faced anything like you in my whole career as a vigilante or as an Assassin. It takes a lot to kill someone… something like you. I’ll figure it out, Mirror. Just you wait. I’ll find a way to finish you.”
High Noon struggled to get up. He had to go help Pierce. Mirror was going to do what she had planned to do since that one night all those years ago. He strained himself, although he couldn’t really feel anything. He willed himself to get up, but his body just continued to lie there, unresponsive, though he noticed a few of his fingers twitching.
Come on… Just a little more… You can do this, Noon.
Mirror Match snarled and thumbed back the hammer of High Noon’s gun. “Your prattling is going to kill me if I have to listen to you ramble on for much longer. Don’t you ever stop talking?”
“I’ll stop talking when I’m dead.” Pierce moved into a half-crouch and readied himself. “I might still have a few tricks up my sleeve.”
“Just get out, Pierce!” Noon shouted over to the hacker. “Just go! Save yourself!” The cowboy noticed his elbow move by an inch as he continued to struggle.
“You want to cross blades with me?” Mirror laughed and spat out a globule of blood. “Have it your way, but make it quick. The police will be here shortly, and I will live!” The Templar agent stuck the revolver in her coat and drew her black dagger.
“Don’t do it, Pierce!” Noon warned the man again. “She’s too strong! You’ve gotta just get out of here!”
“He was already dead,” Mirror assured High Noon. “I’m just here to deliver the news. Now, have at you, Pierce Network! The reaper has come for your soul.”
Pierce swung his baton at the woman, smashing the light metal against her at a fast pace, giving her no room to counter him just yet.
High Noon watched the battle, still unable to do anything but to try and get up. A drop of sizzling poison fell near his face as Templar and Assassin clashed weapons. Pierce and Mirror pushed against one another, then Mirror used her free hand to draw the gun from her coat and shot it at his foot.
Pierce said nothing as he hobbled back, blood slowly flowing out from the hole at the bottom of his shoe. He took one look at his baton and tossed it away, noticing the venom already eating away at his weapon, slowly disintegrating it. Mirror chased him around his van twice before Pierce produced a fountain pen from the vehicle’s open window and threw it point-first into her good eye.
“You wretched little pest!” The Templar agent grabbed at the pen and tossed it aside. Her head swung to and fro, sniffing and flicking her tongue at the air before locking her unseeing gaze on Pierce’s rough location. “I don’t need to see you to kill you, Pierce. Justice is, after all, blind.”
High Noon wanted to go help the man but he could still barely move. The other two Assassins by the van seemed to be doing the same, but to no avail. “Gah. Windy, could you help me up?” The cowboy waited, but there was no response nor did anyone help him. “Windy?”
In the meantime, Pierce was backed into a corner. With his foot in this condition and aggravated by the laps he’d run around the van, he could feel the wound sapping his strength. Mirror’s dagger swiped left and right, preventing him from escaping with terrifying accuracy for someone who was blinded.
Abruptly, Pierce saw Mirror’s nostrils flare and she whipped around, grabbing hold of an arm-mounted blade that had been whistling at her back. High Noon blinked a few times before struggling harder to recover from his state of paralysis.
Mirror sniffed a couple more times before frowning.
“Windy Sails. Are you so eager to get involved? I already said I was just here for Pierce.”
“Y-you shouldn’t d-do this, Mirror…” Windy stuttered as she feebly tried to force her arm out of Mirror’s.
“Windy! No!” High Noon shouted over. “Don’t do it!”
“Windy, get out of there!” Spectral added in from beside the van.
Mirror lowered her bleeding face to Windy’s level, her fangs clicking against her lower teeth. “Now, Windy. Listen to your friends. Back off and you can walk away from this unharmed. No need to throw your life away for this piece of filth.”
The apprentice merely shook her head. “E-even if h-he is a piece of fi-filth, he’s doing w-what he can for the b-better of this world. I-I can’t let you kill him…”
“No one thinks of themselves as a villain, Windy,” Mirror muttered slowly. “I think, I know, I am doing the right thing here. You probably do too. The question is, are you willing to die for it? Because I am.”
“Windy, don’t do this!” High Noon continued to break his paralysis, finally able to feel his toes. Just a little more! You’ve got to save Windy!
Windy looked up and frowned at the Templar. “Y-yes. I am.”
At that moment, the attention of all was caught by the sound of an engine starting. Pierce’s van. The Assassin had sneaked away while Mirror and Windy had been talking and now he floored the accelerator, opening the window as he did.
“Catch me if you can, Templar.”
Mirror dropped Windy’s arm and ran towards the van as it began picking up speed. She slashed at the back door with her black dagger, but fell on her face as Windy grabbed ahold of one of her legs. She turned her head and hissed menacingly at Windy, the Assassin flinching at the sight of the Templar’s bleeding eye sockets. The left one was already back, its tattered eyelid unable to cover its burning stare completely.
The white van continued down and disappeared around the next street corner with a screech of rubber on asphalt.
Mirror Match slowly got up, her one eye now gleaming green and catlike. She licked her lips and spun to look at Windy Sails.
“You’ve cost me my prey, girl.” Her voice was even and calm.
Mirror Match walked one step at a time at the young Assassin. Her black dagger spun around her clawed fingers, many of which were chipped. The sizzling point of the weapon rested an inch from Windy’s nose.
“You said you were willing to die for your cause just now…”
“No, Mirror! No!” High Noon had regained the use of an arm, slowly dragging himself across the street towards the others. The gravel cut into his skin as he slid across it, but he didn’t care. All that mattered right now was Windy. “Don’t do it, Mirror. Please! Leave Windy alone!”
Mirror glanced aside at High Noon before shrugging. The dagger vanished, spinning into an unseen sheath. “This isn’t meant for you anyway. I don’t plan to execute anyone but Pierce, and I will get him, even if it takes me the rest of my very long life.”
Mirror began to stroll away from the scene, nonchalantly driving another syringe of green liquid into her thigh as she went. High Noon sighed in relief.
“However, you did inconvenience me quite a bit tonight and I’ll need to rest quite a while to recover from… all this,” Mirror’s voice carried over. “So…”
There was a single shot, the bullet tearing through the back of Mirror’s coat under her arm. Then another.
Windy Sails’ eyes traveled downward, widening at the growing dark stain on her front.
Mirror carelessly tossed High Noon’s revolver over her shoulder. “The rest of you take note. This blood is on your hands; if you’d just allowed me to take what was rightfully mine, none of this would have happened.”
Mirror didn’t see Windy sink down onto her knees and pitch over to the side, nor did she pay attention to the Assassins whose cries of shock and outrage would have woken an entire city block. Mirror Match reached the spot where her motorcycle was parked and sped away from the scene just as the sirens became audible.