By: tatufreak
Chapter five – Battle
http://img13.photobucket.com/albums/...hapterfive.jpg
Time slowed.
Lena was heavily conscious of her slow breathing, of the rip of the bullet through her skin. In a funny way, she was also distinctly aware of a sense of reason. It couldn’t have been the girl who had shot her – she was still sitting demurely in front of her. Who was it then? And how did her highly trained senses overlook them?
As she watched the slowed bullet spiral through her arm and out the other side, Lena cracked a faint, ironic smile. She’d been shot. She was
never shot. They’d pay for this.
Acting before the pain reached her, the blonde whipped her gun out of her purse with her unhurt left arm and brought it round so that her wrist was pressing down on her bicep shot-wound. With this pressure she briefly stemmed the instant bleeding, while at the same time getting herself ready for her shot. As she turned her head to target the enemy, she was shocked to find not one but two attackers. They were suited men, with uniform buzz-cuts and heavy muscles. Lena took in no more than this, because with two single shots she had killed both of them.
“Bastards! Who are they?” she hissed, but as she turned around all thought of her assailants was banished from her mind, probably due to the fact that the black-haired girl had disappeared into thin air. Lena was left standing on the single beam stretching out six storeys above the street below, utterly confused and alone.
A movement caught her eye beneath her, giving her an idea of how the girl had disappeared. She’d swung herself down onto a rickety scaffold platform three floors below, somehow surviving the long drop and managing to get the hard jump perfectly aimed.
“You set me up! Now
you’re gonna pay, just the same way they did!” Lena sprinted back inside the doorway, knowing that attempting the jump with one seriously injured arm was stupid and unrealistic. The moment she got inside shots rang out through the building, confusing her. She threw herself behind a pile of rubble and winced as her arm took the impact. She still had her left wrist pressed against the wound to stem the bleeding, so she’d have to fire over her shoulder – tricky, but by no means impossible.
How many are there? Six? And one upstairs…Yes. First target, the one on the beam near the window. The instantaneous thought flashed through her mind as Lena levelled her weapon and shot at him. She was precise, but it still took two shots to hit him. Then she turned herself around and shot furiously at the other visible attackers, before the terrible moment when she knew she had to reload.
Lena stared at her gun in absolute horror, realising that with her one incapacited arm, reloading was almost impossible. If only she could reach her prepared cartridge in time…
Strong arms gripped her back as a hand snaked around her neck. One of the men knocked her gun out of her hand while the other twisted her left arm painfully behind her back.
“Got her!” he grunted, and the other men made their way towards the girl, smiles on their hard faces.
“Little tiger,” Lena heard, and her eyes ignited with twin sparks of fire.
“Put up quite a fight,” another attacker said, and the fourth nodded. “Shame about Tony, though.”
Suddenly their chatter ceased as the fifth and final member of the squad approached them. Lena guessed correctly that he was the team leader. He had the same suit and haircut, but his hair was greying slightly and his eyes were a dull shade of blue.
“Hold her,” he said brusquely, and the squad members responded by crouching by Lena, pushing her to the floor. She struggled briefly, but realised it was of no use. Four enormous men were too much even for her, there was no doubt that she was trapped. The team leader stood at her feet. He stared down at her without a trace of regret or humanity, and Lena shivered as she sensed the cruelty present in the man’s heart. He withdrew a silver gun from its holster, the blonde was unable to see the make or type. It was simply her last view at a gun, the anonymous weapon with which the young Assassin was to be so crudely executed.
The team leader stared down at her, his pale eyes radiating contempt. Levelling the gun at her horizontal head, his lips parted in a final cruel smile.
In the air far above, birds scattered in surprise as below them a loud shot rang out.
Lena’s eyes flickered open; she was only vaguely aware of what happened next.
On her left one of the men began to spiral backwards slowly, his flailing arms flying behind him and smacking against the body of his fellow soldier. His head was thrown back by the impact of the shot, and as the other three crouching men stared at him in horror, three more shots rang out with deadly accuracy, accompanied by the faint and unexplained sound of glass shattering up above. The four men collapsed to the ground as the squad leader stared at a figure moving above Lena’s head.
What happened to the guy upstairs?
A dark shadow appeared outside the seventh storey window, viewed through a large hole in the ceiling above. It became a muscled shape flying through the air, propelled by a spectacular flip. The heavy man slammed down onto a platform just outside, and a smaller figure was thrown through the air by his momentum. It was holding the man’s neck by the tie, and Yulia Volkova’s slender figure could be recognised by the school uniform and fluttering skirt. She flipped neatly over the man’s head and dropped down below him, still hanging onto the man’s tie. From this she was suspended above the exterior beam of the sixth storey for just a moment, choking the man above her, silhouetted vibrantly against the sunset-crimson sky outside. When she was certain he was dead, she dropped and rolled along the beam, emerging from the doorway. Walking confidently towards Lena, she paused just above her head.
The blonde fought unconsciousness from shock, blood loss and low blood sugar levels. She was growing faint, her vision was fading and growing darker. With a last effort she twisted her head to see the figure standing just above her.
In the last moment she took in the figure of a young student, achingly fragile and slender. Her one arm rested by her side while the other was outstretched, aiming an unfamiliar gun straight at the squadron leader’s heart. With her last bolts of sense, Lena found herself awed by the young Yulia’s perfect accuracy and gun control. She couldn’t be younger than eighteen; no one with that sort of training could possibly be younger than the Assassin herself. She was standing straight and fearlessly, a brave pure figure of retribution. Her eyes were filled with sadness, but also a faint look of inevitability.
At Lena’s feet the squadron leader was standing motionless, his gun resting at his side and his pale eyes locked onto those of the young student. A faint smile remained frozen onto his thin lips, and very slowly he inclined his head in a nod of twisted respect.
Lena had no more strength left in her fragile body. She finally slipped from consciousness, but just before the world faded into complete darkness, up above her…desperately far away…she heard a single shot - and then the quiet sound of a man falling to the ground at her feet.
She knew nothing more.