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CHAPTER THIRTEEN monkey see, monkey do
⋆*✧･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:
NADINE VIDAL WAS eighteen, and she wasn't afraid of anything. She had a temper like a whip and brutal fists to match it, her chin was always raised high, and she loved her father more than anything. Beau loved her back; even when she came home with split knuckles or a black eye after picking fights with other kids at school, the homophobes that sneered at her sexuality. He'd tend her wounds, wrapping cuts in white bandages and holding up ice to her battered skin. And Nadine thought it would always be like this; picking fights with people that so clearly unmatched her, getting the shit beaten out of her, and running home to her Papa, who'd hold her hand or stroke her hair and tell her that she was a volcano, constantly overflowing with magma.
She was eighteen, and it was dark, and she was walking through the bustling streets when she was cornered in that alleyway. And then the bullet was ricocheting right through her, piercing her flesh and leaving a tidal wave of blood in its wake. She made herself vanish, and she lived, but what woke up in that hospital was not Proud Nadine, picker of fights and defender of the weak, nor was it Seeking Nadine, a weak little girl who desperately yearned for her mother's affection. It was Jaded Nadine, Nadine with an edge, a girl whose fears were buried deep down in the crevices of her own mind. It was a Nadine who snapped, who took her anger out on others, even when they didn't deserve it, who spent years learning how to block an attack and how to properly hit back.
Nadine Vidal had a busted shoulder and a tendency to have nightmares, but she wasn't unmatched anymore. She wasn't something to be underestimated.
Which was what this fucking assassin didn't seem to understand.
Nadine lay there, on the floor, watching the ceiling spin like a top. Her mouth tasted like iron and blood stained her lower lip like lipstick. Her head was home to a colony of bugs clicking their pinchers in her ears and her ears sung like choirs. She ached all over, and she was barely aware of the fact that the blue bear assassin had just lifted Luther Hargreeves up with inhuman strength and hurled him to the floor, brushing off his tuxedo like he did this shit every day. Given her current situation, it would've been completely fair for Nadine Vidal to just stay here, on the floor, her world fuzzy.
Instead, she rose to her feet. Her legs were wobbly and she had to grip onto the wall to do so, but she stood anyway, bile burning at the back of her throat. The masked assassin didn't seem to notice, as he was currently stretching out his legs and cracking his neck, his back to her. Almost immediately, he began to walk out of the room, leaving what he believed to be two unconscious forms behind.
She was about to follow him, but she found herself being captivated by dizziness, the world swooping under her feet, and she shook her head as if she could rid her ears of their waterlog. The bear-masked assassin was gone, but it was possible that he could make his way back here in minutes if he didn't come across Five, who he and his partner, of course, were here for. And if he did, Luther needed to be on his feet.
