Callenge#7 - Nocturne

[tangent]

Title: Nocturne
Description: Buffy does leather and 'tude in an alternative future.
Rating: Pg13?
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.


The door flew open with a violent bang, allowing the wind and rain of the raging storm to spill inside. A figure emerged out of this maelstrom, forcing the door closed behind him, shutting out the wild elements and bringing a hush to the roadhouse as the normally rowdy residents took a second to examine the newcomer.

He was an imposing figure, unkempt and hairy; his face a mass of scars and welts with eyes that glowed with an untempered malice. He wasn’t particularly big for a demon but the creatures that frequented this particular bar knew him as ‘Grel the Bastard’ and the epithet was well earned because Grel was the type of demon that even other demons avoided. Grel was a stone hearted killer that would sell anyone into an early grave. In a world where bloodshed and chaos were the norm Grel was a demon to fear.

And Grel was not alone. Behind him cowered a small female figure, shivering from the cold and the rain and the obvious terror that had her in its grasp. She looked around the room with wide eyes, taking in the collection of horns, scales, claws and tails that adorned its residents and the hungry eyes that stared at her. With a whimper she tried to hide behind Grels legs, trying to find refuge from the horror that surrounded her. She was rewarded for her shyness by Grel tugging hard on the chain that was fastened through her shackles, sending her sprawling on the dirty floor; pain and humiliation burning through her as the coarse laughter of the gathered demons ripped through the air.

“Alright scum, listen up, and listen good.” Grel growled “I caught this human. It took time, it took effort. So she’s mine, ‘kay? Anyone so much as looks at her wrong I’ll rip their eyes out and feed’em to’em. Now, we all clear? Anyone here got a problem.”

“Yeah” said a voice from the bar “I’ve got a problem.”

The voice belonged to small slim figure dressed in all in black. Scuffed boots sat below a pair of equally scuffed leather trousers held up by a studded belt. Her top was cropped to the midriff showing bare skin underneath. What caught the attention though, what had caught everyone’s attention and had ensured that a young girl that most the patrons would love to get their hands on had been left well alone was the weapon. It hung across her back, secured by a single leather strap; long handled with a curved, crimson blade at one end and a sharpened wooden point at the other. It looked graceful, it looked expertly balanced. Most of all it looked dangerous.

The girl raised her glass and drained it before slowly turning towards Grel and fixing him with a steely gaze. “And now, so have you.”

The sense of anticipation in the bar was palpable as the two figures stood facing each other their eyes locked together in a way that spoke of deadly intentions.

“That right?” Grel growled his voice low. “’You gonna take me on then girly? You think you got what it takes to take me down?” He gave her a long appraising look, his gaze travelling all the way down and all the way back up again “You know, I kinda think I might enjoy you trying.”

The girl’s only answer was to reach behind her and remove the weapon from its strapping, the blade coming free with an almost visceral metallic swish.

Grel raised a lazy eyebrow “Ahh, you’ve gone and got yourself an axe. Ain’t that just the sweetest thing? Know what though? Maybe you’re not the only one to be carrying, Maybe I got me a blade off my own.” He reached behind him and produced something that looked like a cross between a machete and a hunting knife. It had a blade that was maybe two feet long, serrated barbs and notched hooks bristling from it “Well looky here.” He said with mock surprise “looks like I do.”

Again the demons taunts were met by a stony silence; the girl’s expression as cold and distant as a winter’s moon.

“Not the talkative type, huh darlin’? Well I guess we’ll just give the small talk a miss on this occasion and get straight on to the part where I kill you.” He dropped the chain holding his captive to one side glancing down at her with contemptuous eyes. “You, stay right there. Make me come for you and I’ll hurt you in ways you never even dreamed of.” He turned his attention back to his adversary. “You ‘bout ready to die now girly?”

The girl extended her weapon in front of her. Challenge emanating from every pore of her body.

“Bring it.”

That was enough for Grel. With a ferocious growl he leapt forward swinging his blade through the air in wild sweeping arcs as he closed in on his opponent. In stark contrast the girl maintained her air of impassivity, not blinking in the face of the uncontained fury; simply swaying out of the reach of the razor sharp edge with easy grace and a minimum of effort. Then as Grel’s muscles began to tire and the attack started to lose its momentum, she struck. It was a simple sudden move; a dodge, a whirl and a single swipe of her weapon was all that was needed to send Grel’s head flying through the air and his body crashing heavily to the ground.

As the reverberations of the impact died away the silence it left behind was filled with a numb sense of shock .The girl inspected her weapon casually wiping the blade clean with her finger and thumb. Moving over to where the dead demons captive sat she crouched down beside her.

“You okay?” She asked

The girl just looked up at her with confused, awe filled eyes.

“You have a name”

This time the girl seemed to recognise that she was being spoken to

“Sh-Shellie.” She quavered. “My name’s Shellie.”

“Good. Now let’s get you out of these chains.” She stood once more and hefted the long handled weapon, pausing slightly before bringing it down hard. Sparks flew as it made contact, severing the chain close to the shackles. “Now go.” She ordered, indicating the door with a jerk of her head “Get out of here.”

Shellie got to her feet and looked over the others shoulder where the volume of the voices was rising and the demons expressions were quickly turning from stunned disbelief to violent anger. “What about you.” She said to the sound of the first few chairs moving back. “What are you going to do?”

The girl gave Shellie a cold, blank look devoid of any emotion; a look that would stay with her forever.

“I’m going to kill them all.” She said.

[tangent]

As the bike sped down the road, its single light piercing the storm clad night Shellie held on tight and wished she was somewhere else. The night had been one long journey into hell for her, a journey filled with horror, with twisted creatures she couldn’t name, with blood and destruction and with the frantic headlong run into the rain as she fled Grels cruel attentions.

Now though it was all over, now she was being carried to safety by a slim young woman on a bike, leaving the burning wreck of the roadhouse bar a distant dying ember; just a twisted memorial of the night’s terror. So why did she still feel so scared? Why did this woman who felt so slight, so fragile in her grip fill her with so much dread?

Shellie knew full well though that the girl’s stature was more than deceptive. She had seen how easily she had disposed of Grel and then as she closed the bars door behind her she had given into the temptation to take just one final look back. That look had revealed exactly what the diminutive blonde figure she clung to so tightly was capable of.

Grel may well have been a bastard but he was one of these demons own and they weren’t about to leave his death unanswered. After their initial stunned reaction they had made for the sole girl en masse, howls of fury mixing with ages old battle cries as they closed on her, sending tables and chairs flying across the room in their wake

The girl had answered the charge in much the same way she had faced Grel’s challenge. With calm detachment she had simply moved into the teeming throng, allowing them to overtake her as she dodged and weaved between them dealing out death as she went. The thing that had amazed Shellie the most though was how this dark clad warrior moved.

She danced through the frenzied crowd like a ghost; always keeping attackers at an arms length, never allowing herself to be pinned into a corner. She moved with a speed and a grace Shellie could only dream of; always just out of reach of the grasping claws, always able to parry the deadly thrusts. And as she span and weaved through the mass of seething hatred she dealt out her own lethal brand of violence. The weapon she had dispatched Grel with singing through the air, severing limbs and sinking deep into flesh as it went.

The other thing, the thing that grew more and more apparent as her foes fell was how silent her movements were. The demons war cries and agonised screams punctuated the air but the black clad figure moved in an eerie silence. An aura of stillness seemed to envelop her movements and as the last demon fell beneath her blade and she completed her deadly ballet that hush filled the entire room, broken only by the groans of the dying and the soft tinkling fall of broken glass.

Shellie had run at that point, the sight of so much blood and death just too much for her fragile mind. She had run out, away from the road house into the rain soaked night without any heed to direction or destination. She had covered the wet ground as quickly as she could, every muscle straining, the air burning in her lungs.

It wasn’t fast enough though and within minutes she had heard the bike's engines behind her, coming closer with each passing second. When it had eventually overtaken her, cutting off her escape, Shellie had been almost been relieved that it was over; that whatever fate this spectre of death had in store for her would end this nightmare.

The thought seemed almost funny now, for as she sped through the night behind the silent black clad figure she was still so unsure of her fate. The girl had rescued her, sure; but for what purpose? Could it be that she had some darker fate in store for her? Could she have saved her for a reason?

The questions running through Shellie’s mind were interrupted as the lights of a filling station came zooming into view and the bike slowed to a more sedate pace and began to veer off towards the small building.

“You’re getting off here” The blonde girl said shortly.

“Here?” Shellie asked “Where’s here? I mean this is just the middle of nowhere.”

The girl shrugged “It’s not a demon bar though.”

“But… How do I get home? I mean I don’t know where the hell I am, my car is burning by the side of whatever godforsaken back road that, that… thing abandoned it on. I don’t even have my cell with me. I mean what do I do?”

The girl brought the bike to a stop and killed the engine, dismounting lightly. She turned and gave Shellie a cool look.

“Not my problem.” She said “I’m going to get something to eat. Don’t be here when I get back.” Wheeling away she started to move towards the squat building.

It was all too much for Shellie. She had been hunted, beaten and humiliated by things she would never have guessed existed; witnessed more death and destruction in one night to fill a lifetime or more, and the one person who had got her through all this alive was going to abandon her to her fate once more.

Well not if Shellie had any say in the matter. She jumped clumsily from the bike and rushed towards the back of the small girl dressed in black, making contact just as she reached the building, forcing her against the wall with more strength than she thought she possessed. The girl half turned as Shellie hit her and as they struck the wall Shellie found herself staring straight into those blank, ice chip eyes.

“You’re not leaving me!” She almost screamed “You can’t do that! Not when there might be more of those things out there. Do you hear me? You can’t do that to me!”

The girl in black remained a picture of implacable coolness throughout this verbal onslaught. When it was over and Shellie stood panting, her fury spent she raised a single eyebrow.

“Finished?”

Shellie rubbed her eyes, embarrassment at her outburst suddenly replacing her anger

“Yeah. Look I’m sor…”

The words were cut short as with amazing speed Shellie found their positions reversed and her own back being forced hard into the unyielding wall.

“Okay, listen up.” The blonde girl said “This is how it is. You’re alive, you’re free and that’s down to me: but you are not my responsibility. You’re scared, I get that. You want to get back to your nice safe little life and pretend none of this ever happened and I get that too; but I’m not heading anywhere near nice or safe anytime soon. Where I’m going there’s only more danger, more evil. Where I’m going I go alone. ”

The harsh words were spoken in a calm even tone, but the heat of her breath against Shellie’s cheek and the way the girl’s chest rose and fell as it crushed against her told another story. There was fire there, burning beneath the icy surface.

“But, what will I do?” She asked in a small voice.

“You’ll manage” the girl said pushing herself away from Shellie “Stay here you’ve got a chance. Come with me and you’ll die.”

“But you saved me. You can protect me.”

The girl laughed a bitter sound with no humour in it at all.

“Oh, yeah, protection; I know all about that. Let me tell you about my protection. I used to have friends. I used to have a thousand sisters, family and people just as good as family and they all walked into the fire, walked into danger, again and again: for me. And we pulled through, we always pulled through, we won fight after fight and beat back things that make that bar look like a playroom but it was never enough. It was never over.” She turned away and raised her head letting the rain hit her face. “In the end they followed me into one last fight, one fight too many and because of that, because of me, they died.

Shellie could only stare at this small girl and marvel at the weight of the grief and anger that she must carry with her.

“So now I travel alone.” She continued turning back to Shellie “And I’ll kill as many of those bastards as I can until my time is up. I’ll make the whole of demonkind pay for what they did to the people I loved, make them pay for not finishing me at the same time. I’ll wipe them out, all of them. I’m going to rid this whole damn world of demons if I can; one town at a time, one bar at a time. I'll do whatever it takes."

Silence followed, the words still hanging heavily in the rain sodden air. It was Shellie that spoke next.

“I’m sorry I didn’t know” she said.

“Whatever.” The other replied with a tired sigh “Look I’m going to give the food a miss and hit the road. Go inside, ask the man to use the phone. You’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, I... I guess.” Shellie watched as the blonde girl walked back over to her bike “There’s on last thing I need to know though.” She said “What are you? I mean… who are you? You saved my life and I don’t even know your name.”

The girl mounted the bike and switched on the engine before turning back to Shellie.

“My name’s Buffy” She said “I used to be the slayer.”

And then she was gone.