Betrayal of Heart - Defending Her Family

[x-penance.livejournal.com]

Backdated to June 15, during graduation. Yvette tries to protect her mother and gets more than she bargained for in more ways than one. As does Kyle.



"~Please, Mama, I need you to get out of here!~" Yvette was careful not to touch her mother - she'd slipped off her gloves as soon as things had started - but was trying to convey the urgency of things to her shell-shocked parent.

"~I won't leave you, Pendim. It is too dangerous!~" Eva's voice was high-pitched and panicked, the chaotic scene arousing memories of the war, of her father and brother being taken, herself raped... "~You don't know what the Serbs will do to you!~"

"~Mama, they aren't Serbs. Please...~" Frustrated, Yvette began steering her mother towards one of the exits, trying to keep an eye out for danger. "~I'll come with you, but we must hurry!~"

"No leaving the party. I thought we'd been clear about that." The bullets stitched the wall next to them, making them jump back in fear. There was a calculated cruelty to it. The man was model pretty, but from the neck down, looked encased in some kind of armor, like a science-fiction hero. It wasn't even a gun in his hand, but a weapon attached to his forearm, to complete the slightly unreal appearance.

"Now, sweetness, while we finish tussing up Chuck for his ride off into the sunset, you're going to sit on your hands and zip it until we're ready to go. Otherwise, the old lady is going to come down with a sudden case of collateral damage."

Eva shrieked and fell to her knees, covering her head to shield herself from the bullets. Her hand snaked out and grabbed Yvette's graduation gown, making the short girl stumble. "~They've come for us. They've come to finish what they started,~" she babbled in Albanian.

"~Mama!~" Yvette crouched by her mother, torn between trying to comfort her and protecting her from any further trauma. Eva continued to huddle, shaking and weeping, rapidly sinking into total hysteria, and none of Yvette's comforting words were reaching her. "~I won't let them hurt you, I promise.~"
She turned glowing blue eyes onto the Reaver. "There is no need for this. You don't need to hurt the ordinary humans. Please, let them go."

"Seriously? Why yes, we certainly will stop our obviously long planned abduction, covered by the judicious use of hostages as cover, because you pointed out that we don't need to hurt them. I just don't know how we missed that detail until you came around." Pretty Boy gestured with the gun. "And I remember saying to 'zip it', sweetness. Unless you want to be wearing the old lady."

Yvette's eyes narrowed. "That is my mother you are talking about. I will not let you hurt her." She rose from her crouch, using her fingers to shred the graduation gown and release herself from its entangling folds. Underneath she was wearing just her bodysuit - it had been too hot for anything else.

The cloth-and-metal object that clipped Pretty Boy on the back of his head looked suspiciously like a knee brace that had been hastily removed by it's owner and partially damaged in the process. It was rapidly followed by a folding chair being thrown into the wall behind the man, and then Kyle, holding another chair by the leg . "Hi. You're an asshole. If you shoot her mom, I'm basically going to tear your face off." He said, attention clearly on the weapon. One gun, one target. Hopefully an annoyance would distract this guy. And hopefully he didn't have another goddamn gun.

"I swear this is the stupidest fucking school full of kids in existance." Pretty Boy said, rolling his eyes. Without a hesitation, he shot Kyle through the right elbow joint, collapsing his hold on the chair. "The next fucking idiot who stands up to make a goddamn hero speech is going to be responsible for the massacre I will start. I don't care if every innocent in this room eats a bullet, understand? If you do, sit down and keep quiet. I'm not telling anyone again!"

That was definitely the effect he wanted. The guy in the Syfy-tv-movie suit was distracted, no one was shot in the head, -and- he was paying attention to Kyle more than anyone else. He let his legs go out from under him, feigning a collapse and glared at the man. "Fucker. That's my fighting arm! Shit shit shit fuck this -hurts-, you asshole." It did hurt, kind of a whole fucking lot, but that was something Kyle could deal with. "Jesus I better not lose my arm or something, you dick."

The Reaver was focussed on Kyle. Kyle had been shot. Her mother was cowering behind her, hysterical and afraid. Something snapped in Yvette then and she launched herself at the Reaver, slashing at his hamstrings. No heroic speeches - she attacked with a focussed silence that was reflected in the hard mask her face had become.

Pretty Boy wrenched back as her fingers glanced off the armor on his legs, leaving deep gouges. His hands seemed to fold away, and two blades slid out at the end of his arms. "That is fucking it." He swung the blades in a figure eight, forcing Yvette to dance back to avoid getting skewered. "Once I'm done with you, I'm going to kill every person in this hall as a fucking lesson to you bunch of retards!"

Yvette's eyes narrowed, becoming blue slits and she crouched, resting one hand lightly on the floor in front of her. Visibly, her hair, fingers and toes all lengthened and sharpened, leaving deep scars on the wood where they touched. Then without warning she lunged forward, keeping low and aiming this time for his knees. But rather than slashing, which would only impact the surface metal, she stabbed.

Pretty Boy pivoted, getting one leg out of the way as she stabbed into his other knee. Fortunately, since his rebuild, he didn't feel any pain, just his receptors streaming damage reports from the injured part. However, with her fingers deep into his leg, Yvette was momentarily trapped, and the Reaver jabbed down with both blades at her exposed back.

The sound was not unlike nails being dragged down a blackboard, or a fork scraping a ceramic plate - the body suit parted under beneath the blades, but Yvette's dark red skin did not, the blade points making small dimples in the hardened surface. She felt the pressure, however, and yanked her trapped hand out of the Reavers leg sideways, intent on making as much damage as she could while at the same time she jabbed her free hand upwards, towards where his leg joined his torso.

"Hey! Retard!" Kyle had needed a little longer than usual to get back up. The wounded arm was not working right and his knee was still pretty annoyed with him. Avoiding Yvette didn't make this any easier either. The shout was just enough to get the Reaver to glance, only for a moment at him, and then Kyle was lunging for the man, claws out on the good hand and fangs bared, swiping for the Reaver's exposed face.

"Sit down, ratboy." Pretty Boy snarled, punching the blade through Kyle's gut, trying to dislodge him before Yvette could find purchase with her claws. With a twist not unlike filleting a fish, he yanked the blade back, tossing the bleeding, gutted mutant away from him.

The distraction, however, meant Yvette was able to gain more time - with a snarl of her own she jabbed deeper into the joint of leg and torso, before ripping away cybernetics with a snarl of her own. Between that and the knee, his legs were suffering.

He hacked down again, trying to dislodge her as his HUD began to scream damage warnings at him. All of the armor in the world wouldn't help with her fingers in the joint.

Getting gutted a second time hurt and -sucked- just as much as the first time. But this time he wasn't being chased by a 7-foot tall psychopath. No, this time it was fighting a psycho wearing a metal suit and attacking not just Kyle but everyone else as well. He pulled his shirt off, shredding through it with the claws on his good hand to get it off his chest and packed it against the wound, and held it in place - the wounded arm wasn't good for much right now, but it could do that. As he got back to his feet- slowly - Kyle picked up another of the scattered folding chairs "HEY! Dickface!" This was definitely what it felt like to be useless, Kyle thought, even as he flung the chair.

Yvette ducked as the Reaver's blade-hand came down again and the blow struck her hair spikes, cutting off several with another of those painful screeches before gettimg entangled in the rest. The hand that had been tearing apart his knee came up to spear the other hip joint and she ducked her head to shield her face from any more attempts to remove her. She looked not unlike a hedgehog curling up defensively, nothing visible but sharp, pointy bits.

With red warnings clanging in his eyes, Pretty Boy knocked away the chair effortlessly, but found the purchase of Yvette harder to break. With his systems redlining, there were no other options. There was a high pitched whining noise, and suddenly electricity arced out of the cyborg's body. The blast enveloped Yvette and flung her away, and tendrils of energy clawed at Kyle, lighting his hair and remaining clothes on fire. In the centre of the maelstrom, Pretty Boy stood stock still, until after a few seconds it stopped. He was still for a second more, before his emergency power came on line. Limping on shattered joints, Pretty Boy staggered towards the other retreating Reavers. He'd be lucky to hold out another ten minutes before his reserves shut down, and his impressive arsenal had been all but wiped out by the emergency energy radial.

Yvette landed in a shower of splinters as her hair tore up the floor and she lay still for a few minutes, twitching as the electricity continued to arc through her system. Then with a groan she carefully sat up, smoke wisping upwards from her bodysuit which was definitely the worse for wear. The red girl coughed a few times and then looked around for her opponent. Retreating. For a second she considered going after him to finish what she'd started, but then she glanced over and saw Kyle, bleeding and on fire.

"~Mama!~" She looked for her mother and saw her safe and sound, still cowering against the wall. "~Help me, please! Kyle needs the doctor.~"

Eva didn't seem to hear at first, but then Yvette called her again and she looked up.

"~You...~" she stammered, looking at her daughter as if seeing her for the first time. "~You fought him.~"

With a small glow of pride, Yvette nodded, even as she was picking herself up to go help Kyle. "~Yes. I saved you, Mama. Now, please, we need to help Kyle.~"

Eva shook her head. "~You were... I've never seen you like that.~"

"It's my power, Mama. It's what I can do.~" Yvette slipped on a glove and reached out to her parent. "~Please, Mama. Help me.~"

Eva shrank back from the hand, gloved or not. "~The violence. The way you stabbed him...~" She looked up at her daughter again, mouth becoming a thin line. "~You were just like your father.~" And with that, she staggered to her feet and made for the other survivors, sparing only one terrified glance back, as if she expected Yvette to attack her.

Yvette opened her mouth to say something, anything, to rebut her mother's words and then she shut it again, turning away. Kyle needed help and everyone else was busy. And what could she say to that? They could talk later, when things were calmed down.

Kyle had already hit the ground, trying to roll the flames out, and swearing up a storm. He forced himself to sit up once he was sure the flames were out and shook the burned hair out of his face, already getting into a crouch before he realized the fight was over, and then he flopped back down and slumped against the wall. "'m not gonna die or anything."

Normally Yvette would have responded with some sign of relief, perhaps even amusement at the joke. But not this time. "They're leaving," she said instead, voice and manner businesslike. "When things are more calm, I will get Doctor Hank for you." She dropped next to him. "I will stay with you until then."

"Sure but only if you promise to get checked out too. You smell like you ate some of that blast." Kyle said, between coughs. The smell that the fabric that her bodysuit was made of when it melted was distinctive. "Just, uh, if I start going all weird, kick me or something. Last time I got hurt this bad... " He cut himself off, not wanting to explain the voice-in-his-head thing.

"I will not let anything happen to you. Not even from yourself." Yvette looked over to where her mother was being herded out with the other civilians. "This was not quite the, how you say? Rite of passage? that I was expecting."