All six armed guards defeated, the child is in one piece, and my outfit didn't get a drop of blood on it. This could barely even be considered a warmup. But now that the inconveniences are dealt with, I need to find where Victoria charged off to so we can kill-
A body glides past the debris-littered doorway, and the sounds of screams and the roar of some kind of animal interrupt my thoughts of what's next.
"She's crazy!" Someone screams as another body is launched down the hallway.
The entire floor has a soft rumble to it, then the rumble gradually grows in power, then my body begins involuntarily bouncing with each thump. A living earthquake with the speed of a hurricane is coming our way. Perfect timing.
Arriving at the doorway, Vilma standing at her beast-like stature steaming barbaric bloodlust from her nose. Her pupils are whited out, explaining why she's attacking everything around her indiscriminately. The dress I had gotten her is hanging by a few threads, the fabric punched through by the bullets she was eating. But the knot I tied her hair in is still holding perfectly.
What has it been, a year since I've seen her this violent?
She looks at me with rabid eyes, mindlessly shaking the earth on a path to devour me.
But her monstrous form doesn't scare me in the least, I know how to sate her. "Vilma, wake up. Melanie needs you."
Those six words trick the bull into planting her heels outside the room and her eyes snap back in place. "Melanie needs me?!"
Works every time. "No, I lied to wake you up." Her ballooned smile deflates. "Now that you're awake, what the hell were you thinking!? Did your last brain cell fall out of your head when Bianca insulted Mel? You beg me to come along with you under such short notice carrying a child into this shitstorm, and when I say yes you tune all my orders out! I've worked too hard and been through too much for you to ignore me like this! You wouldn't do this to Mel so don't you dare think I'll allow it! Who do I look like to you so that you think that's ok!?"
She sits there quietly, twiddling her thumbs and keeping her eyes on the bloody carpet. I know I'm being hard on her, but she needs this. She needs to understand the chain of command here. No matter how close we get, nobody disrespects me like this.
"I'm... sorry." Not the tears. "I really wanted this to go well... and I thought Miss Melanie would praise me more if I told her I beat all her guards before getting Bianca. I just want her to like me, but I don't want you to hate me. I know I'm a stupid dumb idiot and I should have listened to you..."
That's the most self-aware I've heard her … ever. She's been an infuriating little pest today, but at least she's learning. "Then don't ever do that again. I expect the same respect you give Mel. Scratch that, I expect even more because I don't abhor you as she does."
"Miss Melanie doesn't abhor me! Abhor is a bad thing right?"
"Believe whatever you want, now get in here you big dumbas-" A volley of rapid gunfire streams from the right-side hall bouncing off Vilma like they're made of foam.
"What'd you say!? I can't hear you over the bullets!" Unsurprisingly, she looks unbothered by the lead clashing with her skin. The metal pieces crumple like paper mache on impact.
"Who's shooting at you!" I scream, not being able to look down the hall without getting my head blown off.
"Some guys came from the elevator down the hall." She casually said whilst taking a bullet to the forehead. They're relentless, prepared to challenge certain death for their employer. That, or nobody warned them about us beforehand.
"I know you're immune, but you should move before your dress is completely dismantled!"
"What are you talking about, my dress is-" Her face drops to her tattered clothes, causing her nose to flare up. The splayed and fluttering threads control her eyes, mesmerizing them to follow. She watches, unresponsive to me calling her name and frozen by the condition of the dress. Her hand kneads her face, smudging her eyes and melting them into the carpet. Her teeth clench together while her eyes melt faster and faster, some of the runoff even dripping in her mouth.
"Aaaaaauugghh!!!" Her explosive wail erases the sounds of gunfire, forces my skin and blood to tremble under the volume of it, and nearly blows my eardrums out! I press my palms against my ears in a desperate effort to not go deaf! I'd bet the noise is piercing through every floor of the tower! The whole of my body is panicking in disarray while my head is splitting into tiny pieces!
I consider reaching for my sword, seeing it as the only option to get her attention. But after nearly thirty seconds of having my brain rattled over a meaningless dress, she regresses into the fetal position, sobbing hysterically into her knees.
"Vilma!" Her defenseless state invites the guards who have most likely recovered from the disarming shriek to take potshots at her.
Except they aren't as useless as they were before. The bullets are chipping her armored skin and I can see spots of crimson opening along her backside. Is so upset she can't focus on her Antique for a second? Even when she's getting shot! I'm the one who paid for it, I should be crying!
"Vilma get up!" She ignores me and the likely pain she's feeling along her back, too wrapped in her sadness. "You shit-brained idiot! You're going to let yourself die over a replaceable-" Yelling at her isn't going to get her up. Even having to think this makes my blood boil, but what would Mel do? What would her go-to solution be?
"Vilma, stop whining we can fix it! We'll find something for you to see Mel in!"
"Really?" No, I'm blatantly lying to you, but it'll get you to stop crying.
"Yes, so get your ass off the ground and let's get this done!"
"Yeah!" She bounces to her feet and the renewed vigor shields her from the bullets like before. "Let's kill them all!"
"Hell no."
"What, come on!"
"Beating on them is pointless! We can ignore them and reach our goal all the same!"
"Whyyyy!" She whines, letting her arms droop to the side. "I miss hanging out Arthur. Can't we just beat all the guards together, then go to Bianca!?"
"We don't have time; she could get away."
"She's not going anywhere! You said the only elevator to her room is in this hallway!"
I did say that, but Bianca could easily have another way out of her lofty viewing room. The smart decision would be to get back to the viewing room before she can get down. That's what I should do- but expecting Bianca to have the foresight to make an alternative exit in her gaudy tower would be severely overestimating her intelligence.
"I don't want to make you mad at me, so if you say we have to go I'll go."
I look back to the closed room where the boy and the men are still taking cover in. "I'm stepping out for a second! Stay inside so you don't get hurt!" I scream through the door. Then, I unsheathe King's Edge and grab Vilma's attention. "Let's make it quick! No more than a minute so we can get him to his parents!"
"Yes!" I don't know what it was, but her excitement fans my flames, makes my hands tremble, my breathing get faster and the flickering battle high I had developed turns into a ravenous fire. "And one more thing!"
"What?"
"The one to take out the least guards has to watch the kid when we go back up to Bianca."
Vilma hops up and down with the same excitement brewing inside, doesn't bother waiting for me, and stomps down the hallway after the guards. I follow her outside into a hallway riddled with bodies in the strangest of places. Heads are stuck in walls, arms and legs twisted into pretzels, some with dents caved into their skulls. It's probably the least violent I've seen her be.
At the other end of the hallway, Vilma is speeding towards a group of maybe sixteen guards all desperately trying to put Vilma down before she pulverizes them too. At this rate, she'll win without me earning a single point. I should at least put in a little effort so Vilma doesn't think she's better than me.
So, I hurl my King's Edge through the air over Vilma's head and sink it into the floor in the middle of all the guards. The sword's path yanks me enough to catch up with Vilma, equalizing the race for the most takedowns. Now caught in the air without my sword, and my body not being as bulletproof as Vilma, I make the tactical decision to grab onto the back of her dress, using her hard head to protect myself.
The firing line is torn down by the living bowling ball I'm riding, my face turned away from the shrapnel flying off her chest and we bowl a strike in the center of the pins. I scoop my sword trapped in the ground and stand back to back with Vilma, surrounded by security that looks petrified despite their numbers advantage. I look back to Vilma, seeing a grinning mountain on my side, and feel the limitless edge in my hands.
An itchy trigger finger shoots the starting gun, and we go to work. I disappear into a streak of black gold, flashing into one guard's face and thrusting a hole in his chest. Meanwhile, Vilma's drawing the panic of every guard around us. She's barbaric, swinging the unconscious body of one guard around like a club.
I don't know why, but seeing her bang her head against a problem invites some weird part of me to bang my head with her. It's not smart, nor as calculated as I typically am, but the subjugation of someone who thought they could kill you feels refreshing. Unlimited respect and compliance from everyone gets stale, no matter how good it tastes. I need fools like these in my life who don't know who I am so I can relish the feeling of when people give me my due respect.
I might be going overboard with the amount of slicing. Guards who are undoubtedly dead or maimed with my first decisive strike are diced with a combination of six or seven slashes. King's Edge dances through their flesh so often and so easily, that I often mistook it for air. And the air I do cleave, like most things, only serves my benefit, bringing the few shooters out of my reach into my sphere of influence. About a three-foot radius around me became a zone of continuous black streaks and red droplets.
It's effortless. The longer we fight, the less I dodge and the faster my strikes become. The only thing I have to worry about is ducking Vilma's occasional wayward strike that she'd accidentally throw my way. I'd yell at her to watch where she's aiming if our other attacks weren't mixing like we have one mind. Despite me undoubtedly being the only one using their brain. Every bullet that might hit me is impeded by some part of her gargantuan body, and every bullet I notice on its way to hit her I slice into insignificance.
Finally, Vilma piledrives the last guard's head into the ground, capping off the fight. But fight might be too generous of a word, they rolled over so easily it was more like a massacre. The entire squadron was wiped in less than forty seconds and if I wasn't dodging Vilma's stray arm swings, we might have been able to do it in thirty. Bianca sent them against us without warning, they can take it up with her in hell when she meets up with them.
Vilma, who had blood splattered all over her stringy dress was trying her best to count the bodies and figure out who dispatched with what. But knowing her, she'll probably miscount and give herself the win on accident.
"Vilma don't hurt yourself. I've got it." one, two, three... "I count seven who look bludgeoned and thirteen with lacerations and stab wounds." To no one's surprise, I won.
"Seriously!?"
"You're on babysitting duty."
"Can't we do a recou..." She stepped after me, then falls to her knees. Her face looks a lighter shade of brown than normal, and her eyes have a certain glossiness painted over them.
"What are you doing?" I extended a hand to help her off the stained floor.
"I'm... just light-headed. Miss Melanie says my Antique can slow the blood flow to my brain if I use it too much." Her palms grab my lifeline, and I struggled to lift her dead weight off the ground.
"Then control yourself next time. We still need to visit Bianca."
"You got it, Arthur!"