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In the interest of staving off imminent self-loathing, can I ask you guys to participate in a sort-of-meme for me briefly?
Namely, drop me some sort of writing prompt! A quote, a color, song lyrics, whatever.
It's going to be original stuff - if you want to see it just note in your comment and I'll reply with whatever I come up with. If you don't ( Read more... )
Namely, drop me some sort of writing prompt! A quote, a color, song lyrics, whatever.
It's going to be original stuff - if you want to see it just note in your comment and I'll reply with whatever I come up with. If you don't ( Read more... )
It’s almost an all-out battle, the two sides about evenly matched. Sterling’s agents and Lady’s, squaring off. But they’re holding their own. If they can make one big push, get Blake to cover them, they can get to the porter location in the alley and out of there with the mission successful. Nicole punches another guy in the face, calculating her strength to just enough to put him out for hours and not break his neck and looks around, searching for Blake in the chaos.
He’s down, on the ground and defenseless against the gun Sterling has to his ribs. It’s hard to see much - Blake’s in camouflage mode, not that’s any use against someone who knows he’s there. Sterling’s not even trying to negotiate for a ceasefire, which doesn’t make sense. He has their leader as a hostage. Sterling leans down, face an inch from Blake’s, and whispers something Nicole can’t hear. A car heads straight for her, Sterling’s men gunning to run her over with someone more substantial than their bodies, and she has to turn her attention to it, putting her hand out to blow up the engine.
She still hears the gun go off twice above the explosion. Blackness rushes over everything, dark and heavy and unmistakably Blake’s doing. It’s thicker, more than she’s ever seen him command at the same time before. She goes by instinct, running for where Blake had been.
“Nightshade!” she yells, and he coughs nearby.
“Move,” he says, and a channel opens up in the darkness, light enough for her to see him dragging himself up, hand over his gut. Sterling’s gone. She picks him up and moves, following the path he’s set her to where Aysu and Marcus have made their way to the alley. Their eyes widen when they see her carrying him, and then Lady is porting them into the cave. Blake’s going white with blood loss by the time she gets him to the operating table.
“Sterling,” Nicole says. Lady’s frown sets even more firmly. Aysu yells for Hunter and starts setting up their equipment.
“The bullets aren’t going to be the biggest problem,” Lady says. “He was forced to play his hand. The overextension of his powers and the bullets at once? That’s what’s not good.” Hunter has appeared out of seemingly nowhere, and he’s scowling down as he pulls on the gloves Aysu threw him.
“How overextended?” he asks.
“Full darkness in a street an hour before sunset,” Lady says. She must have seen it on the CCTV cameras she watches so carefully. Hunter nods and sets to work, Blake coughing up blood as they anaesthize him.
He makes it, eventually. Judging by Lady’s relieved sigh, that hadn’t been guaranteed despite her assurances to the contrary. Hunter’s exhausted and Aysu’s mouth is a thin line slashing across her face, stern and angry. Marcus looks even younger than he actually is, his body starting to shake as it rejects the vision-suppressing drug. He had refused to leave the computer room, though, pacing despite his fever and nausea as they waited.
Lady debriefs them all the next day, and when Nicole gives her report they all turn to look at Blake.
“What did Sterling say to you?” Lady asks, and Blake’s hand touches his side almost reflexively before he answers.
“The usual bad guy spiel,” he says. They all know he’s lying, but even Lady doesn’t press.
Nicole doesn’t ask the question they’re all wondering, mostly because she can see in Blake’s eyes he doesn’t know either. Why, when Sterling had Blake at his mercy, had he taken the gut shot? Why hadn’t he just put a bullet between Blake’s eyes? He’d shown himself to be capable of it before.
It’s worrying. Nicole starts to take notice of things, how in fights Sterling always goes directly for Blake, like a missile on pinpoint track. In Berlin Aysu pins Sterling’s guns to the wall with knives of water and slashes his stomach open, but he vaults over her next attack like it’s nothing and slams Blake into the floor so hard Blake gets a concussion that lasts for days. Aysu gets him then, pins him to the wall like a butterfly with knives she folded out of air.
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