Cleo's Game

21. Refresh

Pitch leapt up to the sky towards the hovering Tranquility, who had been carefully eyeing him the whole time. She leaned back, weaving and dodging his wild swipes and evading him from a distance. His manic movements were fueled by both fury and the uneasiness that grew each minute that the fight, which he thought would already be over, continued. Knowing that being chased around wasn't helping anything, Tranquility went back to the ground, and more importantly, back to Mince. The two had regrouped, as had the soldiers, with the singular but significant difference from the beginning of the battle being that there were two less of each of them.

"Distract the grunts," Mince audibly ordered Tranquility. She took a moment to think about what he was asking, before visibly becoming content with her solution and starting her run towards the crowd. They must all be used to her trick of flying above them by now, but she seemed sure of herself. Mince shadowed her, wishing that he knew what she was planning to do. Once she got close enough to the soldiers, she quite predictably flew above them. Was she flying, though? Or was it just a jump?

Instead of maintaining her aerial position, she dropped down naturally on the other side of them. None of them had taken their eyes off of Mince, meaning that not much of a distraction happened at all. "Perfect." She wrapped the inside of her knee around the neck of a soldier at the back of the crowd, landing with a gruesome crack. Mince's face lit up as he was finally clued up on Tranquility's plan, seeing as it had already proved successful.

Their attention was pried off of the lethally close-by Mince, and they even went as far as to turn their backs. Holding a sharp manifestation of wind in his hand, he slashed across the backs of their vulnerable legs, slicing through muscle and immobilising them in the most ice-cold, efficient manner. Three fully grown men dropped to the ground, having lost their ability to stand. The number of soldiers had been sliced in half once again... but at what cost?

Cleo started coughing wildly while lying on the ground. Her eyes were still shut, and all she could see was red static. She used her limp arms to sit back up, working against the immense dizziness that she felt. Everything felt completely stiff. Tranquility let out a yell that pried Cleo's eyes right open. She felt lucid, as if she had just been thrown into ice-cold water and had her brain jumpstarted. Looking down, she noticed the gaping wound in her chest. "What?" she thought. "How... am I alive?"

Tranquility's plan to distract the soldiers did work; however, it involved her getting very close. Too close to make a retreat, in fact. She was trapped as a result of her own successful attack and is now at the enemies' mercy. Cleo promptly jumped to her feet, shaking off the sluggishness she was feeling. Mince couldn't believe his eyes, seeing the girl that he had already counted out standing upright with a fierce expression on her face.

Cleo bolted towards Tranquility with surprising speed, taking the enemies by surprise. She slammed the palm of her hand into one of the soldiers that dared to do Pitch's dirty work in restraining Tranquility, and sent him flying into a back wall. This gesture had thoroughly caught the attention of Pitch, who had only moments ago sliced into Cleo's flesh and killed her in cold blood. "I must have pierced your heart. Why do you continue to stand?" Pitch asked in an incredibly unsettling tone while standing tall above Cleo.

There was no way that Cleo's life was going to end in this vile chamber on her first mission. There was no way she would ever allow it. "Because I want to leave." Cleo coldly replied. While Cleo was facing off with Pitch, the heavily armoured soldier thought it to be the perfect moment to land a surprise blow.

His metal gauntlet slammed into the centre of Cleo's back with the force of a man severely doubting his own safety. Her eyes widened as she jolted forward a bit, giving Pitch a sinister grin, however, that grin was wiped off before he could even say a word. The soldier looked at his iron gauntlet, and was horrified to notice that it had caved in on itself. It flattened itself against her back, with the dent severely mangling the structure of the glove and trapping his own hand inside. Not only did she stay upright, but she didn't even notice what had happened.

"Mince, Tranquility, keep them off my back while I handle the bat," Cleo ordered, in a voice much deeper than before, as if even her voice were scarred. "You think this will be that simple? You think that-" Cleo interrupted Pitch by sending a shard of ice flying towards his head, which he had to swiftly duck to avoid. He exhaled from his nose, accepting the current circumstances. He stepped to the left and to the right before leaving the ground and becoming a blur. He orbited Cleo so fast that it was like a ring around her, his flight easily reaching supersonic velocity.

He was impossible to keep track of in this state, both stealthy and completely visible. Turning his momentum into force, he stuck a leg out, slamming into Cleo's stomach. When she got her hands on his leg, he wondered if leaving the safety of Mach speed was worth it. As much as he tried to struggle and claw out of her grip, he couldn't find a target and was being dangled upside down as Cleo exerted every inch of strength she could. She was a cheetah that had gotten its claws onto an antelope, knowing that if the prey escaped, it would starve.

Pitch leads an entire operation to secure the enemy's closest outpost, a job that would be unthinkable to give to anyone who hadn't earned the title. Swinging him into a wall with force that would shatter a human man, only for him to be able to stand afterwards, the realisation set in for Cleo that the fight was still not over. Perhaps she doesn't even know what the end looks like yet.