cutting_edgex23 | What the hammer? What the chain?

She's passing by close enough to feel X enter. It's a small disturbance, just enough to get Elle to look up, and over.

What does next is base instinct. It doesn't consciously click in her mind at once, but she doesn't need the red in her eyes to know how someone looks when they mean to kill.

(And she can easily recognize it in X.)

By the time she's really turned to X, bright blue sparks have already begun to flash over her hands.

X registers motion all around her. That's easy. Even if anyone had sense enough to draw weapons now, none of them would be relevant.

Injury itself is not relevant.

All there is here is death.

Death, and a blue spark --

(Stimulus.)

X turns her head, springing into motion without thought --

(Response.)

Headed straight for Elle.

Edited 2013-06-03 03:30 (UTC)

Not if you are marked-

Elle throws one bright white arc of electricity back toward X, and runs, weaving the emptiest path she possibly can toward the back door.

But not willing to only hope X will stay interested in her, she reaches back with her left hand, and makes a fist. It's enough to snag on X's claws and force her along, if she doesn't try too hard to get away.

X-23 ducks under the bolt of electricity, dropping into a roll that lets her regain her feet quickly.

She whirls toward a nearby patron, someone who has just been served by the waitrats.

Before she can do much there is a sharp tug against her claws -- hands and feet both -- and she stumbles.

Fractionally.

Her nostrils flare, catching the scent of her prey's passage toward the back door.

Her quarry is fast.

X is faster.

And if she is following the tug at her hands and feet, so much the better.

She will be able to stop it. Soon.

Edited 2013-06-03 03:51 (UTC)

She knows she can't outrun X. Especially when she's half-dragging her. But Elle doesn't slow down as she slams into the backdoor and runs out onto the grass.

She doesn't stop, but glances over her shoulder to make sure X has made it through the door.

Then Elle exhales, and releases her. She follows this almost immediately with another arc that flashes across the lawn toward X.

X-23 flings herself out after Elle, attempting a last-second twist to avoid the second arc of lightning.

This time she does not succeed.

She drops to the ground, ears ringing and eyes half-blinded.

But her sense of smell is still intact. And after a moment, extremities tingling, she stands and darts forward again.

All it will need is one swipe of claws . . .

Elle tries to use the other woman's time on the ground to dart toward the lake shore. It's the only thing she can think of, to stop the scent, or at least maybe help her incapacitate X.

But X rises from the ground so quickly that her head start is narrow, and she can tell she won't make it to into the water before being caught.

Knowing she doesn't have time to aim, Elle turns back, and raises her hands.

About a foot from her body, anything metal will hit an invisible wall. As long as Elle can hold onto it, anyway.

Edited 2013-06-03 04:28 (UTC)

X rebounds from the invisible wall, dropping back onto one knee.

She braces her hand against the ground, eyes narrowing as she looks for a way around it. Pacing.

It has an end somewhere.

Everything does.

(The scar on her left hand is not burning.)

A moment later she's running for a nearby rock, leaping up onto it and using it as a springboard to get over the barrier.

If that is possible.

Elle raises her arms, but the force of X's attack is enough to make her stumble backward.

It's not really a wall, just shield that, with enough strength, can be pushed aside. But despite this, Elle regains her footing and still keeps it up, even as her skin begins to spark all over.

X slashes at the shield once, twice --

Testing to see if it can be broken.

Testing to see if momentum helps.

(Testing because slashing at the air is safer than slashing at Elle.)

It will only take one slip.

There's a blur in the air, bright and shining -- and then a man, golden and crimson and silver, dropping out of the sky and striding towards them.

Thor's frowning.

(Many things about what's going on are attention-getting. But the electricity, first and foremost; even from the mountains, he felt that.)

"X? Is something amiss?"

X doesn't spar like that. He knows.

And he doesn't know Elle very well -- they met once, and briefly, and most of what he knows is that she has control over her electricity that's fine enough to charge tiny power cells -- but desperation is written all over her fighting right now.

Elle doesn't have the energy to answer or explain. She finally falters, dropping the magnetic barrier.

But as she does, she shoves herself aside, out of X's path. Her momentum is great enough that she actually does fall now, but she still lifts her right hand again, another surge of electricity crackling over it.

The last time she saw Thor, he could only talk about lightning. Which might be why she calls out, "X, don't -"

X half-stumbles again, turning to fix her red eyes on Elle for barely half a moment.

Elle.

Then she turns and launches herself at Thor, starting the first in a series of swipes with all six of her claws.

It would be enough to rend a normal human male limb from limb. Or at least make a mess of his innards.

X doesn't spar like that.

Thor's frown deepens, even as he ducks and blocks, flinging X sideways (and away from Elle).

"X -- what are you doing?"

But her eyes are blood-red, not just Jötun-red but the entire eye, and there's nothing but empty vicious fury on her face, nothing but bloodlust in her fighting. This is past battle-rage into berserking.

Thor has a good idea of how dangerous that kind of thing can be.

X rebounds, launching herself straight back at him, and Thor grabs her again,

(Brother, I will not fight you--)

but X twists and eels in his grip, and Thor's eyes widen as she stabs deep into his arm.

With an inarticulate roar, he flings her away, summoning Mjölnir to his hand and setting himself.

"X!" he shouts, even as he circles, eyes on X, back to Elle. "It is I, Thor. Come back to yourself, my friend!"

Edited 2013-06-03 05:27 (UTC)

Elle pulls herself up, though her movements are unsteady, and once X jumps to Thor, she doesn't look at them until she hears him yell.

As fast as she'd been before, she feels frozen now. Every moment she has time to think seems to make her move more slowly.

"She can't -"

(But she'd looked back at her.)

X doesn't answer, and not only because she smashed against a tree trunk when Thor tossed her away.

She passes right by Elle on her journey back toward Thor.

Not that it takes that long, really.

X does not even look at her friend as she passes by.

(She doesn't. You can't kill what you don't see.)

X nearly gets in another slice, but not quite; Mjölnir bats her aside first, hard enough to leave a splintery dent in the tree trunk she hits this time. Thor moves in a wary circling, his eyes on X, hammer at the ready.

"It is a warrior's madness she's lost in?"

He didn't know X even did that. It's not what you'd normally associate with her personality.

But people are full of surprises. And everyone can be driven to the edge, with enough rage or pain.

But Elle watches her.

And then, she takes a step toward Thor.

Her voice wavers very slightly. "Someone else did it to her."

Help X wants to say.

Somewhere.

But she can't.

Her head turns when Elle speaks, however, burning red eyes fixing on her for a long, long moment.

Then X wrenches her gaze away, diving back at Thor again, claws outstretched and ready to shed blood.

It is all she can do.

At Elle's words, Thor's face sets in anger of his own.

It's not directed at anyone here.

"Then fear not," he rumbles, eyes narrowed.

With the smallest slice of a fierce smile, "We can tire each other out."

And then X is diving at him, and Thor is leaping to meet her, hammer cocked back, and black stormclouds swirl into being overhead.

There will be no rain. But the next time X gets a claw in him, lightning will strike both of them -- a great deal of it.

It's in the aftermath of the lightning strike that X makes any noise at all.

"Elle."

She stumbles back from Thor, eyes burning red, claws coated in blood.

But she moves away.

"Please."

It would be easier if she were sure what she was asking for.

Elle can't hesitate, or linger back. Maybe she should, but she just can't make herself do it. Her steps are finally steady again when she runs up to them, and steps between X and Thor.

But the only thing she can say, the only thing she can think in this moment is -

"You know me."

Thor holds back.

(But he's ready to move.)

"X," he says, a low rumble. The air smells of ions and burned flesh. "Return to yourself."

Blood traces thin ribbons down both arms, soaks a small patch into his undershirt where she got in a skidding slice along the ribs. If Thor's even noticed the wounds, it doesn't show.

She's trying.

She is trying so hard.

And Elle is right there.

"Elle," she says again, only a little more strongly.

Her hands fall to her sides, though her claws are still out.

She takes one shaky step forward.

Another.

Then she sags against Elle, just this side of boneless, burning red eyes closing as she does so.

And it's then --

Only then --

That X begins to cry.

Edited 2013-06-04 04:46 (UTC)

When X's weight leans against her, Elle shifts one arm behind her back, the other over her shoulder, so her hand touches X's hair.

Her grip is tight, partly because the moment feels unreal. The few minutes between seeing X at the door and feeling her now are too much for her to take in. She knows what happened, but it hasn't sunk in.

Again, when she speaks, it's the first thing in her mind -

"It's not like before."

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