...
The train's rumbles echoed in the underground. They sat together in the last car, alone except for a group of men on the other end. They were talking to each other, not paying attention to her and Saber in the least except for an occasional glance. They, themselves, sat together in the back of the train in silence. Chrysaor was trying to focus it seemed, and she didn't want to interrupt him. Besides that, she was realizing more and more how little she knew. She hadn't let it set in since they seemed to have a way out in the overseer, but as that door closed, at least for the moment, the situation suddenly felt much more claustrophobic.
Lost in the rhythmic jostling of the car and her own anxieties, she jumped slightly when Chrysaor finally spoke up, "Your work."
"Huh? What about it?"
"Do you plan on going tonight?"
"No."
She didn't have to think about it. She had made up her mind the second they left her apartment that afternoon. The job was a prison, sure, but the thing about prison is that it's secure. She could spare a night or two. Besides, if she did die, she wasn't going to have her final days spent in a whorehouse.
"Is there anything else you have to do?"
"No? Aren't we just going back for the night? You said we need to lie low."
"I did, I was just making sure we were on the same page. Besides, I'm sure you have other obligations. We'll get you out of this war, so it'd be good not to neglect any other responsibilities you have."
It was odd hearing him speak so frankly. He wasn't normally this serious. "Don't worry about that. Nobody will miss me at work, and I don't have anything beyond that. So long as I'm back within a week nobody will care."
"Do you have any friends at... work?" She didn't want to know the word which was originally on his tongue.
"No."
"None?"
Her voice raised in defensive reflex, "No? Why does it matter?"
"I just want to be sure you have everything settled... just in case."
Her hands instinctively reached for her upper arms, grabbing them and pulling them close. "You aren't being very reassuring, you know."
"Sorry. It's just good to keep these things in mind... Once someone is gone, you can never say the things they needed to hear."
Her arms pulled tighter, "I know that, already, You don't need to tell me. I'm not a kid." She sighed, "If you must know, I used to have a friend here. But she's gone now. There isn't anyone else, so you don't have to worry."
His eyes lingered on her for a long moment. And another. Her arms pulled tighter still. He was reading her closely, and she wasn't comfortable with that. Eventually he looked away, and out into space. He had been sitting hunched over as he tended to do, but now he sat up straight against the back of the chair. He took a deep sigh.
"I understand."
She looked at the floor.
"What was her name?"
"Rhiannon."
"That's a pretty name."
"Yeah."
She felt her eyes moisten, her breathing became strained, but she wasn't going to let herself break. Not now. Not with this.
He gently jabbed her in the shoulder; when she looked, his familiar smile had returned to him. "You'll see her again."
"No. No I won't."
"Yes you will."
"And how would you know that!?"
Her irritation grew suddenly, and she spoke with more force than she had intended. Embarrassed, she looked away and slumped deeper into her seat.
"Fate's funny like that. The end is never the end."
"Maybe for you."
He sat there for a moment. She could feel his gaze on her, but she refused to meet it.
"Not yet."
'Great. Now I'm the asshole.'
Her demeanor softened, and she finally brought her eyes to his. His face was softer, his eyes more somber. It was a deep sadness within, she would've compared it to the sea if not for their rose hue. A second image came. The sunset from atop the mountain, the pink horizon. A thousand moments passed at once.
He looked away for a moment, "It's actually-"
"-Is he bothering you?"
She had been so focused on Chrysaor she had failed to notice the men on the other side of the car approach them. They were dressed in black jackets and jeans. Ne'er-do-wells if she'd ever seen them, and she had. They had probably been attracted by her minor outburst from before.
She was caught off guard by their sudden interruption, but Chrysaor adapted quickly.
"There's no problem here, we're just talking."
"I waddn't talkin' to you, Rainbow Sparkle." He turned back to her, "Is there a problem?"
"No. Everything's fine."
"Do you wanna bet on that?"
"What?"
"Well..." he shrugged and gestured to the other two men behind him, "It just seems to me like if you were really sure, you wouldn't have a problem putting money on it."
Chrysaor spoke again, "So you're shaking us down?"
One of the other men piped up, "Sounds like he wants to make a bet too!"
They laughed a rambunctious laugh, booze on the air. Monica sat there, shifting back into her seat, unsure of what to do. Chrysaor, on the other hand, now had a fierce expression on his face and looked to their muggers with a cold and impatient glare.
"We aren't the betting kind. But if we were..."
"-Chris..."
"I wouldn't be betting on you."
The man in front made a sudden grab for Chrysaor's collar. But his half-drunken movements were dwarfed by Chrysaor's supernatural swiftness. He shifted out of the way of the grab, grabbing the man by the extended elbow and pulling him forwards into an extending palm that went directly into the bridge of the nose.
"AH, SHIT!"
He stumbled back as Chrysaor stood. When the man removed his hands from his face, anyone could clearly see the nose was broken. It was crooked and displaced, already a disgusting shade of purple as blood streamed from the nostrils and began to slip through the lips as well. He growled back at Chrysaor with the anger of an animal.
Monica couldn't help but yelp in surprise. "What are you doing?!"
He looked back to her, expressionless.
"-Behind you!"
The man with the very broken nose charged Chrysaor like a bull. She had distracted him, he was going to get hurt because of her!
-Or not.
With hardly a glance he sidestepped the charge, turning with the momentum to grab the back of the man's head and shove him into the window of the train car. She and the man both yelled, hers a squeal of surprise and his a cry of true anguish as he collapsed onto the floor of the rumbling train, his face in his hands; a fetal position.
The second man began to run forward, flicking a butterfly knife from his pocket in an instant, but Chrysaor was faster. He leaped forward, planting his knee firmly into the man's stomach. The man doubled over, but Chrysaor gave him no time to rest. As soon as his foot hit the ground he spun backwards, kicking the man across the head with his heel. The man fell to his hands and knees on the ground as his knife flew across the floor to the far side of the car.
The third began to charge, readying a right hook. It was here that Chrysaor manifested his blades. He crossed the blades in front of him, forming a small web from the chains that attached to the hilts. As the man charged, Chrysaor spun around him, holding the blades so that the chains wrapped firmly around the man's neck. Chrysaor stood chest to his back as the thug grabbed at the golden chains in vain, desperately struggling to breathe.
The second man began to right himself. Seeing his friend in a strangle-hold, he shouted, "You bastard!" and charged once more. Chrysaor dissolved the chains around the neck of the third attacker and pushed him forward into the second. The man staggered with his friend in his arms before shoving him to the side, his head crashing unceremoniously into one of the plastic seats before slumping onto the floor.
As this was happening, Chrysaor dissolved his blades and flipped forward across the floor into a handstand, pushing off with both hands so that his strength and momentum sent both of his feet directly into the chin of the second assailant. He crashed to the floor, unconscious, while Chrysaor gracefully turned in the air and landed casually on his feet
Of the three men, one was out cold, and two were delirious on the ground. The entire fight lasted five seconds.
He walked back towards Monica, not looking at her, but surveying the men on the ground. The first of the three attackers was beginning to rise shakily to his knees, a puddle of blood coloring the floor with a vague outline of his face. As Chrysaor passed, he manifested a single blade, bringing the golden hilt down onto the back of the man's head with a swift jab, sending him firmly and quickly from delirium into unconsciousness as he collapsed face-down.
Monica was speechless. What do you say to something like that? Three men had tried to shake them down, and Chrysaor had taken them out within a matter of moments, and far more casually than anyone would reasonably expect. But before her scattered thoughts could even begin to form into anything cohesive, the train began to squeal to a stop. The bodies on the floor rolled with the motion, and even she, in her stupor, had to brace herself to avoid falling over, all the while Chrysaor stood unbothered.
"I guess this will be our stop."
"Wha-" was all she could muster.
As the doors of the train opened to a mostly empty station, he pulled her up from the seat and led her out onto the platform. There were no more than a handful of people in total, and only one man went to the last car. As they passed, Chrysaor planted a firm hand on his shoulder, whispered something inaudible even to her, and pressed forward, while the man followed them with his eyes, mouth agape.
As they emerged into the foggy night, she finally began to collect herself.
"What was that about?"
"What?"
"Why did you fight them?"
"It's not like they left much of a choice. They were going to try and hurt you if we didn't do as they told."
"Yeah, but -for Christ's sake- you didn't have to brutalize them!"
"I didn't. They're all alive."
"And beat to shit!"
"And if they weren't, they'd still be chasing us."
"You don't know that! If you're that strong, you could've easily scared them off."
He shook his head. "Not them. Too drunk. Too violent. Unless I took one of their heads off, they would've kept fighting until they all went down. So they went down. If anything less would've worked, their hands would've been in the air as soon as the face hit the window."
She wanted to argue, but couldn't. They never stood a chance. They got beaten because they refused to admit that. Still... it was difficult to stomach the violence. Watching a movie was different. It was fake. Watching it unfold in real time, to real people, was a lot to handle even for a horror movie buff.
He laughed suddenly, even wistfully. She looked to see a wide, nostalgic smile across his face as he stared into the fog; more than slightly troubling given the subject matter at hand. "My friend- hehe- if he had been here he would've slaughtered them without a second thought, saying something like 'Men who live to hurt others shouldn't live at all'. Hehe- and he would've done it a lot faster too."
She cringed slightly at that, "He sounds like a brutal guy."
"He was. Which is why I don't follow his example. Still, I can't say he was wrong."
Neither could she.
"Can you get us back from here?"
"I'm not sure I've ever been here, honestly." She took out her phone, tucked away in her purse. "-But I can figure it out."
She plugged her address into the navigation app on her phone, and the GPS had a planned route in moments. The unfortunate downside being that it was an hour and a half walk from their current location. They were supposed to ride the subway to the end of the line, and it was going to be an hour's walk even then. Getting off early increased their time exponentially, and as Chrysaor shunned any form of taxi, they were walking. Though in fairness, there weren't going to be many people about at this hour, especially not all the way out in Glyfada.
They made idle chatter to pass the time, and to distract from her incredibly sore legs. They talked about the day, the places they saw, the places they visited. Chrysaor talked about the beauty of the city, and all the things he found fascinating about modernity. He asked her about her life, of which she had little to say, though he did seem entranced when she talked about the city, the system that ran it. The metaphysics of the city and the country at large, the politics and the inner workings; she knew very little beyond what directly affected her, but he didn't mind. She appreciated the distraction as they both danced around the subject of potential zombie attacks in the thick fog. It wasn't until later that she realized how little he talked about himself. In the entire conversation he never spoke of his own life, and gave non-answers even when pressed. She supposed it was her own fault for not noticing, but it was disconcerting nonetheless, though not nearly as much as the events that followed.
At this point in the conversation, she was talking about her favorite movies and TV shows after Chrysaor had expressed curiosity about modern entertainment, but she was interrupted by a sudden dissonance. A strange echo that seemed to reverberate in her ear like no sound she had ever heard, a deep ring like a rippling gong, or the call of a whale.
Sensing an enemy attack, they both went on the defensive, searching their surroundings as best they could through the deep, foggy darkness. Chrysaor manifested his golden swords, taking a wide stance. She stood with her arms to her chest, her legs together.
"What was that?"
"Stay behind me."
As if in sync, both of their eyes locked onto a single point, a single person appearing from the fog in front of them. Her identity was plain to see, which made it all the more shocking.
She looked at a mirror image of herself. Another Monica.
....