Disclaimer: Nope, no one that owns Witch Hunter Robin hangs out around here. Not a single one. *sigh*
Kitsune: Puff! You little brat! I’m going to kill you!
Puff: *whips out a knife* No, sister, you aren’t.
Kitsune: *growls and swishes her tail angrily*
Puff: If you’ll please step aside, I’d like to take the popcorn out of the microwave before it gets cold.
Kitsune: *stays put*
Puff: Excuse me. *walks towards Kitsune warily*
Kitsune: No, I’m going to let your popcorn get cold. *laughs*
Puff: *sighs and shakes her head* What happened to you during childhood?
Kitsune: *looks confused*
Puff: It’s fun being both brilliant and overly cheerful at the same time.
Kitsune: What?
Puff: I’m…*gets cut off by dinging in the background*
Kitsune and Puff: Amon! *they run off*
WARNING: This chapter contains violence. Read at your own risk.
Chapter Seventeen: Time’s up
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Sela asked, her voice singsong as she spun around once and began to leisurely stroll towards the shocked hunter. Amon simply stared at his shattered pendant, watching the now-dull green liquid seep into his shirtfront. The cool touch of the Orbo on his skin jolted Amon from his surprise-induced trance, forcing him back into full battle mode.
“No, you aren’t,” Amon snapped, praying that the Orbo contained in his gun would provide the same protection as the pendant. Sela looked momentarily confused before she giggled manically, her raven hair catching on a temporal wind that spun around her body. Amon’s charcoal eyes widened slightly at how her powers increased exponentially, as if she had been holding back throughout the entire battle.
“Let’s play,” Sela said darkly, as she vanished into thin air. Every few seconds, a thin spray of blood would escape Amon’s pale skin and join the pool of crimson around his feet. The hunter calmed himself as well as he could, determined to win the fight or die trying. Slowly, he cleared his mind of all distracting thoughts and forced himself to listen for any changes in the surrounding area when Sela slashed at him.
A slight hiss resounded in Amon’s head a fraction of a second before razor-sharp nails dug into his arm. Instinctively, Amon’s other hand shot to the wound and coiled around the freely bleeding gash. He glanced down at his limb, stunned by the sheer extent of damage inflicted by Sela’s fingernails. Amon quickly transferred his gun to his other hand to prepare for another attack.
“Oh, I hope I didn’t hurt you too badly; I want to be able to play for a while,” Sela cooed amusedly, casually observing the dark hunter. It was obvious he wasn’t well and wouldn’t last long. Amon’s near-black eyes were shifting in and out of focus as he desperately tried to get a clean shot at the witch. His entire body was shaking slightly from the blood loss as he went into shock.
“I’m well enough to kill you,” Amon gasped, his voice barely above a faint whisper as he staggered forward unintentionally. Sela calmly sauntered towards the pallid man, faltering just for a split second before she slammed her elbow into his breastbone and forcefully threw him onto the ground. She stood over Amon as he struggled to stand back up, coughing violently as he did so.
“I’m going to leave you alone for a minute, so don’t run away on me,” Sela ordered, cupping Amon’s cold chin in her hand before she walked off. The hunter collapsed, panting frenetically to catch his breath. Sela returned a few minutes later, a very scared and confused human clasped in her viselike grip. The girl, whom couldn’t have been any older than seventeen, was crying and wailing at the top of lungs.
“I’m going to give you a little preview of what’s going to happen to you,” Sela explained casually, running a finger along the frantic girl’s throat slowly.
“No, please don’t kill me. I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t kill me. I’m going to graduate and go to college. I can’t die!” the girl screamed, tears streaming down her face in rivulets. Sela chuckled lightly at the girl’s pleas, deriving some sort of sick pleasure from it. She began, methodically, to create tiny slits in her victim’s neck, the cuts joining together into one wound.
Amon heard the human’s frightened cries, the high-pitched wailing piercing the fog that clouded his mind. Slowly, he sat up and brushed his sweaty black hair out of his eyes. He snatched his Orbo gun off of the sticky floor and shakily took aim at Sela’s back. His target yelped out of shock and pain; the shards from the capsule wedged themselves in her flesh. Sela spun around, flinging her human victim away in disgust and freezing her in time before she could escape.
“You fool!” Sela roared, her eyes livid with hatred, “I was thinking of letting you live!”
“Why?” Amon questioned weakly, the effects of the momentary burst of adrenaline already ebbing away from him. He had to fight to keep himself sitting up; all he really wanted to do was to collapse back onto the floor and sleep or, more realistically, slip into a coma.
“Because, Amon, you amuse me,” Sela said flatly, blue-green eyes drilling into Amon’s foggy dark gray pair, “The way you so valiantly fight to save those two girls even though you know, at least now you know, that you were dead from the moment you first challenged me. How calm you force yourself to be even though the pain threatens to overwhelm your entire mind at any given second. And, finally, your worthless threats to kill me.”
Amon began to laugh, chuckling lightly before he progressed to a full-blown laugh. His unwounded arm was wrapped protectively around his injured ribs, the gashes on his neck and face exposed as he threw his head back in amusement.
“Why are you laughing?” Sela questioned sharply, her hands on her hips as she stared confusedly at the hunter, “Has the blood loss finally gotten so extreme that it’s impaired your ability to distinguish between what’s funny and what’s not?”
“I’m laughing because of how stupid you sound, Sela,” Amon clarified, pointblank and directly. Sela’s face twitched in annoyance, her eyes widening as the full and insulting brunt of Amon’s words slammed into her like a speeding train. Amon’s dark eyes lit up with glee at the extremity of her reaction, the light only dimming when Sela began to speak.
“I do not sound stupid. I am not the one sitting in my own blood hurling weak insults at the one I should be begging for my life, Amon,” Sela said sharply, crossing her arms defensively and sounding an awful lot like a school girl who had just gotten picked on. Amon, despite his severe loss of blood, managed to fix the witch with a death glare with enough potency to freeze over the entire planet of Venus. Sela, knowing quite well she had the upper hand in the battle, haughtily returned the intense glare with a fierce tenacity.
“I’ll never beg you; it would be like selling my soul to the Devil,” Amon spat back, his lips curling in utter loathing.
“Really, would it?” Sela questioned innocently, her tone of voice out of place amidst the carnage.
“Yes,” Amon responded pithily, wincing when Sela kicked the shards from the shattered Orbo containers onto his open wounds.
“Then let me leave you with a couple of thoughts to focus on while I kill you,” Sela crooned sweetly, “First off, I’m going to slaughter every single one of these humans after I finish you off. Then, I’ll decapitate your dead body and present your head to the boss as a gift along with your two companions. Are you sure you don’t want to plead for your life? Because, then, I might allow you to live and your young and impressionable daughter, not to mention Robin, won’t have to envision your corpse every time they close their eyes.”
“Robin and Javan would rather have seen me dead than to have known that I begged an honor less excuse for a life form to let me live,” Amon retorted, his energy seemingly returned to him slightly. The hunter forced himself to his feet; his shoulders slumped over as he raggedly filled his lungs.
“You’ve chosen your path, I see. I’ll be sure to tell Robin and Javan that you spoke well of them. It will probably be the last memory that the poor little child will ever have of her dead father,” Sela stated plainly, laughing at her sadistic little joke lightly, “I’ll try to make this as painful as possible.”
Sela pulled her disappearing trick once again, speeding the flow of time around her and flitting into a warped state. Amon tried to focus his obsidian orbs, hoping to catch even the slightest glimmer of his opponent when she had to slow to dodge her sisters and the humans frozen in timelessness. The hunter’s keen eyes spotted a flash of movement, but it wasn’t Sela; it was a pair of her sisters collapsing onto the floor. As he watched carefully, another four crumpled on to the tiles like abandoned rag dolls.
Amon felt a sharp pain in his ribs, gasping sharply when Sela’s dagger-like nails embedded themselves into his flesh. Warm blood poured from the wounds, washing over Sela’s hands as she viciously ripped her weapons from his back. The hunter, despite his obviously increasing fatigue, whirled around and fired off a surprise attack. The capsule splintered into shards as it delivered its potent dose of Orbo directly into Sela’s already damaged abdomen, opening the wounds further.
“Nice try, Amon,” Sela purred, gently prodding her injuries with her crimson fingers, “What, is that the third round of Orbo that has had no effect on little old me? I think you should just give up, since your ‘fail-proof’ weapon seems to be failing.” Amon stared at the witch in shock, diverting his eyes for a spilt second when another trio of her sisters fell to the floor to take the total to nine that looked dead.
“What’s wrong with your sisters?” Amon questioned edgily, gesturing with his useful arm at the pile of bodies that formed a misshaped semicircle.
“I don’t know,” Sela responded naively, her eyelashes fluttering over her blue-green eyes in a semblance of virtuousness.
“I think you do,” Amon said coldly, his deep voice reaching an all-time freeze-factor high, “I also think that you’re not going to tell me what you know.”
“Bingo!” Sela yelled, “You deserve a prize for getting the answer so very right, Amon. But you’ll just have to settle for a relatively painful death.” Amon shot her again, this time pressing the barrel of the gun against her wounds as he fired to ensure the Orbo entered her blood stream effectively. Sela inhaled, blinking furiously at his forwardness.
“You know, it’s rude to interrupt a lady when she’s speaking,” Sela commented nonchalantly, her words punctuated by the thuds of two more of her sisters collapsing behind her.
“I just figured out your trick,” Amon stated impassively, ignoring the burning pain that was consuming his entire body like a flame, “You drain your sisters of their own life energy and add it to your own as it’s needed.” Sela smiled, shaking her head slightly.
“You were so close,” Sela began, holding her fingernails apart about a centimeter, “The one place that you were wrong is trusting me when I said they were my sisters. They once were my sisters, until I stole all of their energy and killed them. Now I just use their bodies to hold my surplus power until I need it. It’s quite useful, like having spare batteries always on hand. Don’t look so disgusted.”
Amon glanced from Sela’s blood-streaked face to the gun in his hand and back to her face. He cautiously raised the weapon, leveling directly at his opponent’s face.
“Really, Amon, I think that this tactic needs a bit of refining before you try to implement it in actual combat. I mean, I can see the gun,” Sela teased, watching the black-haired man warily, as his unblinking eyes never left her face.
“The bullet isn’t for you,” Amon said flatly, swinging the gun around and shooting the last of Sela’s sisters square in the forehead. The Orbo splattered, staining her skin a glowing green before she joined the other eleven on the floor.
“I’ll s…still be able to b…beat you,” Sela stuttered, her frightened eyes glowing, “You have more life-threatening wounds than I do.” She tried to enter her field, disappearing for a few seconds before she rematerialized two feet away from where she started. Tears poured down her red-streaked face, her entire body shaking from fear and anger. Amon walked over to her, cursing his wounds. Sela slashed at the hunter, whimpering when he caught her wrists and dragged her over to the wall.
“Release everyone from your field before I kill you,” Amon ordered, violently smashing Sela’s body against the shelves.
“I can give you information. I’m very high up in the chain of command. I can be very useful. You don’t have kill me,” Sela reasoned, her voice high-pitched and worried. Amon slammed her head into a metal pole, dazing the woman.
“Release them,” Amon growled, his hatred for the woman standing before him increasing tenfold.
“All right, but only if you promise not to kill me,” Sela said, desperately trying to regain the upper hand.
“Ok,” Amon responded curtly, releasing his hold on the witch. She calmly pulled in her field, freeing her victims. As the stunned humans regained consciousness, the hunter realized that he had another problem on his hands. He glanced around, pulling the fire alarm switch so the humans would run outside and he could contact Factory to come in and clean up the mess.
As the humans scampered out, screaming ‘fire’ at the top of their lungs, Amon caught Sela sneaking out under the cover of the mayhem. He caught the woman and hauled her back to the site of the battle.
“You promised you wouldn’t kill me,” Sela reminded him outrageously, shaking and crying as she pleaded for her life.
“I lied,” Amon stated dispassionately, firing a round of Orbo directly into one of her temples. He threw her limp body across the floor, collapsing onto the tiles wearily. The last thing Amon saw, before he drifted into unconsciousness, was Robin’s frantic face as she fumbled to get her cell phone to work and stop his wounds from bleeding at the same time.
Author’s Note: People, I don’t know why I try to get your attention. I’d really like to thank my eleven reviewers; I really appreciate the support. Now, as for why I’m upset. I’ve received half the reviews I did last time. Half! Not to mention as I type I have a high fever, feel like throwing up every time I move, my head aches like there is a vise around it, I’m dizzy, and I’m having difficulty keeping my eyes focused. I sometimes wonder if I should cut back posts. {sigh}
To the Reviewers: I’m sorry about how short my responses are; I’m ill if you read above. >_<
Wake-Robin: Did my ending sound good?
Beautiful Witch Hunter Robin: Thank you.
Amon’s Angel of Darkness: No, my lighting isn’t broken and if I told you more it would ruin the rest of a plotline. {smiles} Thank you, for the info.
Aki Tari NAI: Just some general information. How he acts, speaks, ect. I’ve found a few sites and I’m recalling my memories from the episodes. Harry’s? What’s that?
Suki1: You seemed so hyper… Ah, well, have a gallon of soda.
Haruya: Yes, loosing reviewers makes me very sad and upset. {whimpers}
SHAWN
PROVONCHA: Thank you.
Name1:
Once a week, if all goes well.
Chips:
Amon has a heart?! How did that get in there? {Laughs}I’m glad you like my
portrayal.
Sakura
Rain: No, don’t chew on your nails. {Shakes finger} We’ll have to put tape over
‘em! That would be funny.
Jazzywolf(
Jasmine Jackson: Thank you.
A Second Author’s Note: Go read the first one. But, before I forget, I’m supposed to put this link up. (I hope it works…) http://www.golala.com/forums/index.php?mforum=writerzcorner It’s a writing forum. {grins}