The girl's grip latched onto Kitty's neck and refused to let go despite her struggles. Every time she tried to stand up, she will be raked off balance or in one way or another put back to the ground in a sitting position.
She even tried to stab the girl with a dagger that she took out from her storage ring but the girl used a technique of some sort to grapple the dagger from her hand and toss it away then apply more pressure to her neck.
The girl agonized, her face was bloodied and she was suffering from untold injuries. If she by a mistake make her grip slip from Kitty's neck, it'll be her inevitable death, if someone didn't save her.
It was a kill-or-be-killed situation here and she wasn't going to be a victim of the latter. So she used all her strength to subdue kitty, disregarding the pain in her body.
Kitty's eyes rolled to the back of her head, straining, she gasped for breath but nothing came in. All air had been restricted but she was still alive, she won't die that easily but the feeling of being choked was excruciating enough.
Even though the girl was getting frustrated, she didn't give up choking.
Kitty strained and her struggles gradually got weaker, she didn't give up struggling though. But then, she remembered Conan's words.
He told them to always find any means to survive if they found something bigger than they could handle. He didn't want any of them to die before him.
There's always a way when there's no way, all you have to do is to find it. And in this case, there are many ways, with one being to reveal her full strength and the girl will no doubt do the same.
So kitty strained her voice to speak "G-go s-save... Yourr M-mother!"Her voice was husky and low due to lack of breath but the girl heard her.
"What?"In confusion, the girl frowned, asking for repetition from kitty, while loosening her grip a little.
"Your mother is about to die in the hands of my sister benitte," Kitty said, her voice now raspy.
Kitty was then met with silence, her grip lingered on her neck for a few moments before vanishing. She slumped to the ground and curled into a ball as she convulsed and coughed for air.
She coughed out blood and caressed her neck and sooner than she expected, she had recovered from the suffocation. The pain in her ribs and left eye side however will take a while to heal.
She looked around and found the girl no more, but in her place, she found a dark-golden medallion with a left-eye patched skull etched in its surface, the teeth of the skull made up of different blades and axe heads.
On the other side of the medallion was an address, which she didn't know, but she knew it was an address from the names written on it.
She recognized what the medallion was and laughed wickedly "a rendezvous? You think I'll forget the humiliation on my immortal self so easily?"
But then she calmed and thought 'even when we were in the citadel, we never had this type of experience, yet we call ourselves immortals? We were just babies.'
Kitty's blue eyes glinted in satisfaction, the fight was not only humiliating but also beneficial and thrilling. There had been things she hadn't discovered yet by using her powers and Conan won't tell unless they discovered it.
Saying experience is the best teacher, she finally understood. Since things one learns from experience will always be part of one's memory—in other words, part of one's self
And she discovered things on this night. Things that'll benefit her control over her pure spiritual energy. How she even knew the girl's name or how she had a mother wasn't that hard.
While they were choking themselves against the pillars, she sent a tiny wisp of spiritual energy into the girl's mind and thus she knew the basic things about her.
Kitty sighed and sat on the floor for a while, cradling her broken ribs. The sensation of pain was a rare thing in the citadel.
"...Benitte, we'll meet again, and I'll kill you then."
Looking on the bright side, she grinned. She had sent the girl to help her mother who was currently fighting Zoe. How she knew that was because she perceived the sound of clashes from backstage.
"I hope she's okay Hehe..."She said and laughed, reveling in the feeling of having her revenge albeit in a petty way, but still revenge.
...
Few moments prior...
Zoe was busy looking around for kitty when she stumbled on a mature woman with an appealing figure, adorned in a black flay gown and smiley mask.
She recognized who it was instantly and stopped in her tracks. She looked around and saw the curtains from which the woman exited, she deduced that she was behind the stage.
"What do we have here..."The woman's brown eyes peered through the eyeholes on the mask and looked at Zoe's figure, which appeared to be a stray to her.
"I'm looking for my sister..."Unbothered by her gaze or in fact, the heist that was commencing she asked the woman "...have you seen her?"
The woman tilted her head in response, she asked "What sister—"She trailed off because it was at that moment a boisterous laughter rung out from the stage.
Zoe knew it was kitty who laughed so she hurried towards the stage but the woman wasn't ready to let her go.
She raised her hands towards Zoe's chest and practically groped her to stop her because of how hurried Zoe was "Hey, stop right there. Who are you to move about as you want? Huh?"
"I'm Zoe, and... I'm somebody's daughter..."Zoe tilted her head and cluelessly replied. She tried to move past the woman but was stopped again.
"Okay... Ah, I'm Bianca but I can't allow you to pass to the stage, you must be trying to steal something we haven't stolen yet. For all I know, you might be here for snatch and grab."She shamelessly claimed and earned a glare from Zoe. Zoe was now getting utterly frustrated.
"Let Me Pass..."Zoe said, emphasizing every word she spoke. Her angered tone not bypassing the senses of the woman.
"No..."The woman defiantly spoke, her brown eyes could be seen from the eyehole hardening, she was also getting frustrated "...stay back or I'll harm you—ow!"
Zoe head-butted the woman, who as a result of the strength of the headbutt wobbled backward. Dizzied from the impact.
"You were saying?"Zoe asked, her blank tone like a provocative whisper to the woman's ears.
The woman grunted and took off her mask out of anger, revealing her beautiful and mature apparel and as a result of Zoe's head-butt, her nose had started bleeding.
She rubbed her nose and gruntled. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then her clothes started shifting, forming a cloak over a tight body suit, with sheaths and portable crossbows strapped all over
She drew out a crossbow at lightning speed and aimed at Zoe. The crossbow was of silver luster and was portable enough to facilitate its use on one hand. It had intricate mechanisms that differentiate it from a regular crossbow.
One look and Zoe knew it was a relic. Without hesitation, Zoe brought her cane which whipped loudly to declare its presence.
The woman scoffed and channeled her spiritual energy into the crossbow, making a fusillade of fire-attributed energy beams shoot out toward Zoe.
Such was foreign to Zoe but she wasn't defenseless. She channeled her spiritual energy into her cane.
The patterns on the cane shifted and glowed blue. The cane enlarged and turned into a staff, which she swung to deflect the beams that were being shot at her, changing their course towards the walls and curtains of the backstage, boring holes in them and setting them on fire.
Zoe closed in on the woman who was firing the fire Beams at her, she spun her cane rapidly in response and deflected the beams off their course toward her until the woman stopped firing.
She kept the crossbow back to the side of her waist and removed another one from the other side and aimed and fired beams with slow successions but with higher zaps at Zoe. Her movements were fast and fluid, oozing skillfulness...
The beam hit Zoe's cane and flung it away from her hand. The cane got impaled to the wall and oscillated before stopping.
Multiple beams were fired at Zoe but at a slow rate but each beam carried a strong zap with them. She was forced to evade, sidestep and dodge and soon she reached the end of her rope.
She sidestepped to evade a beam coming at her and at the same time created a stone spike and hurled it towards the woman who in turn was caught off guard and instinctively used the crossbow to block the incoming spike.
The impact knocked the crossbow off the woman's hand and she quickly drew out her daggers from their sheath and hurled them towards Zoe, who in turn dodged and hurled stone spikes of her own.
But the bolts of the woman weren't infinite and she ran out after a couple of throws. Seeing this Zoe caught in on this and continued to bombard her with stone spikes she created from her spiritual energy and it seemed infinite which frustrated Bianca so much.
Bianca maneuvered fluidly and evaded the spikes as she inched closer to Zoe. Zoe seeing this stopped her rain of spikes and just created two and closed in on the woman with the spikes raised and killing intent reflecting in her amber eyes.
"Okay, I'm done playing."
The woman guided against the stone spikes which were in Zoe's hand and gruntled from the pressure exerted on her. Zoe's normal strength was too high for her to bare but she managed with gritted teeth.
With an unknown technique that worked like magic, she took the spikes away from Zoe's grip, but Zoe was fast to ignore her surprise and took the chance to thrust a jab into the woman's stomach while she was still open.
Bianca gasped audibly. Air got knocked out of the woman's lungs and her body slid a few meters away as a result of the impact.
Zoe stood prevalently, the air around her thickening due to the smugness she emitted. She used her Shredding Punch on biance and to her, she was too weak to survive it.
But then, her pupils constricted on seeing the woman rise from the ground with a smile on her face. The smile however wasn't because she found being punched so hard interesting or pleasant, but because she was in terrible pain, but masked it with a smile.