Silence engulfed them as they walked through the winding streets of the West District. Alec didn't say much, his thoughts occupied by the strategy he'd use to develop the Play Space. A few ideas swirled in his mind. They just needed him to get back to the curated space and implement them.
The route they chose was slightly different this time. Tanya mentioned that it was her usual route back home. Her favorite shop hid in the alleyway between two large corporate buildings. It was a coffee shop, and her evenings wouldn't be picture perfect if she didn't drink a mug.
He obliged since he didn't exactly have a choice in the matter. Everything went well for half the journey, but just as they reached halfway towards the shop, Alec's senses tingled. He felt danger coalescing in the air. Instantly, his guard went up, but the way he carried himself didn't change one bit.
"Are you sure this place is safe?" Alec tossed out a question, tensing his shoulders.
"Duh, I've been coming here for four years, nothing's ever happened," Tanya smiled, twirling around for a few seconds before falling back into her stride.
"If you say so," he said.
Tanya stopped. Alec bumped into her. He noted the stiffness of her back and the subtle changes in her physique. Recalling a few moments ago when they visited the Gambling Ring, her aura flipped a switch and changed to something dangerous.
Purple gas congealed around them in a circular motion. Bit by bit, their view of the outside world was impaired. The gigantic skyscrapers, wrought from dreadful chunks of iron and ore found in Rifts, disappeared.
Within moments, aside from the area of about five meters around them, they could see nothing but purple gas.
"What's going on?" Fear slowly crept up in Alec's heart as he witnessed the unexplained occurrence.
Meanwhile, Tanya's breathing evened out before regaining bits of its chaotic nature. Her previously expressionless face slowly contorted into something one would only spot on a crazy person.
Her smile widened until the corners of her lips nearly reached her ears. Her clenched fists loosened, and the knots hamfisted into her joints fell away.
"Stay behind me. Someone is trying... something stupendously dumb," she said.
Alec tried to be calm. Honestly, he did, but the cackle in her voice made that an impossible task. He quaked in his boots, fingers digging into the skin of his thighs as thoughts about his possible demise flooded his mind.
Fear masked his face, freezing any movement he wanted to make, almost as if he stared right into the eyes of Medusa
*Whoosh*
Tanya picked up on the sudden dash, and with practice, her soul was set alight. Strength flowed through her in an instant. Most of all, the all-too-tangible connection she had with the real world solidified. She could feel her power, each ounce of it floating around them.
*Whoosh*
*Whoosh*
*Whoosh*
Tanya realized she had been a little careless. Under normal circumstances, no one should have had the ability to corner them in this manner. A few years of relative safety didn't mean she was one hundred percent safe.
The gas around them was toxic in nature, and its main ability was some form of slow-acting paralysis. If they stayed too long, they would become...
*Thud!*
She turned around and saw that Alec had fallen down, absolutely paralyzed. She derided herself, forgetting that Alec hadn't even officially stepped into the 1st Tier yet. His resistance to the environment was negligible.
Her eyes spotted more than ten shadows flinging themselves through the air within the purple gas, and trying to escape while holding onto Alec would be difficult, even for her.
And she honestly didn't want to leave him to die at their hands. Her sister would be far too angry with her. The "save the people" ideology their parents fed them was much stronger in Lana than in her.
"Fifteen little monkeys dashing through the gas, one fell down and broke his neck," silver glinted in Tanya's blue eyes.
A wave of silver energy pulsed out from her body, shuttling through the air too quickly for the human eye to catch. What followed was a cold, sharp snap of a scream, echoing throughout the atmosphere.
The assassins hiding within the purple gas noticed that one of their own died almost instantly. Instead of dread welling in their hearts at the mystery of the death, their eyes sharpened, and they increased the pressure.
In an instant, five figures dressed in black slipped out of the surrounding gas, blurring towards Tanya. Their speed was faster than anything natural could ever hope to match, eclipsing the striking of lightning or its return stroke.
In a literal blink, their figures were in front of her, each of them holding a silver dagger poisoned with an extremely strong paralytic agent, poised to do the job tens of times faster than the gas.
Tanya remained unperturbed by the motion around her or the incoming strikes. She simply stood there. Unfathomable force erupted from the surroundings, instantly tweaking the trajectory of each assassin, right down to the disruption of their molecules.
In that instant, just as their blades landed on her, a deviation occurred—one so slight that none of them expected it.
"Can't touch my blouse, pathetic," Tanya's voice echoed.
The sound of a knife cleanly slicing through steel armor and piercing flesh haunted the minds of the assassins. Deep grunts followed, and the five assassins each fell down, paralyzed.
The remaining nine still dashing about in the shadows weren't discouraged. They were analyzing each and every one of Tanya's moves.
Little information about Tanya's combat abilities existed, and most of what they had gained previously wasn't enough to gain a concrete understanding of what she could do. Now they did.
"Logic, what do we do next? The target appears to have some form of Force Manipulation ability," one of the assassins said through the comms. "Speculations have been confirmed, but we don't know the extent. The effect of the gas appears to be minimal; it only managed to knock out her accomplice, a weak man."
The man waited for the leader of the operation to give him firm directions. Meanwhile, he signaled to one of his subordinates to increase the pressure on Tanya. The other assassin nodded and clasped his fingers together, causing the gas to slowly congeal into a semi-liquid state..