Standing in front of him was a tall, broad-shouldered woman, her ginger hair cascading past her collarbones in a fiery mess that caught the morning light. Reina ran her fingers through her hair as she broke apart the flying cabinet with long thin knives that were lodged between her fingers. "Let's make this quick, I have some kids waiting for me back home."
Hiding behind the broken cabinet was Dora, the moment Reina sliced through the steel, he pounced on her, launching her into the building behind her.
The impact sent concrete dust blooming into the air. Broken rebar screeched as chunks of ceiling collapsed.
From inside the rubble came Reina's irritated groan.
"Ah fuck, my head is killin my ass."
She sat up, rubbing her temples as if she'd merely overslept. White concrete powder clung to her hoodie and cheeks. Reina glanced at her now empty hands.
"I lost my shit. Well isn't that a problem? I don't even know where I dropped the knives and I forgot my goddamn rifle."
She slipped her hands into her pockets and walked down what was left of the building's staircase, coming out of the entrance with a bag of Doritos in her hands that she stole from the apartment's vending machine.
Dora blinked at her, speechless.
"I thought you were a long range damage dealer, that's some endurance you have there, old lady. I was planning to blow your entire head off, that gnoggin of yours must be made of steel."
"O-o-old lady!? I'm only in my late thirties!"
"That's the only thing you're worried about?" He murmured.
She flicked her wrist and a pistol popped into existence from a shimmer of light. Gunfire ripped through the air—clean, controlled bursts into his torso.
The rounds punched holes the size of coins through Dora's body. He looked down, unimpressed, blood running from neat symmetrical exit wounds.
"What are you even trying to achieve with that?"
"I figured that you would be sprawling across the ground begging for mercy, y'know? A normal reaction to being shot in the goddamn head, but I guess you're a rather eccentric type of prey." Reina licked along the steel barrel of the gun and threw it aside.
She grabbed a large piece of fallen rubble, the size of a large boulder and chucked it towards him.
She grabbed a fallen slab of concrete nearly the size of a refrigerator and hurled it at him with one arm.
Dora's fingernails extended into glossy, obsidian blades and he shredded the boulder in a storm of glittering fragments, but he didn't realize that the fragments had changed direction mid-air.
Hundreds of stone shards tore into him, a swarm of guided bullets lodging into muscle, throat, cheek, ribs.
He dropped to the floor, vomiting blood from his mouth, his throat felt like it was being burned with the hottest flames of hell. "Shit!! I made a mistake! Your ability… It makes sure that anyth…anything that you shoot, hits your target, I didn't think it would work on something like this!"
"Stop yapping already, I wanna go see my kids." Reina held him by his hair and flung him into a shopfront window. Glass exploded into his face, embedding itself like glitter into his healing skin.
Panting, Dora crawled out, barely standing. His wounds stitched closed beneath steaming flesh as he spat a tooth into his palm. With his other hand, he hauled up a sedan like it was an empty suitcase and hurled it straight at her face.
Reina yawned, flicking the flying car with a wave of her hand. Then she flinched. "Owww, that hurt. I'm going to get a rash because of you."
"Fuck off!" Dora grabbed a long steel street lamp, snapping it from the ground as electricity crackled through the road.
Then he fired it, the lamp howled like a missile. Reina caught it inches from her face, before the sharp steel edge had hit her skin, the wind from its velocity blasted her hair back, strands whipping behind her like orange streamers.
Her grip tightened, her handprints were imprinted straight onto the steel due to her raw strength, She whipped the entire pole back towards him, the sound cracked like thunder as the storefront windows shattered into shards from the sheer shockwave of the throw.
The pole punched a hole clean through his abdomen, driving him backwards and pinning him against a parked sedan like a gross kebab, he was gasping for air as blood slithered down the cold metal shaft, pooling down onto the asphalt.
"D-damn it."
"Oops, I didn't mean to do that, let's just say that you were the one who destroyed that random person's car, I don't want to deal with any more fines."
Reina scooped up a handful of chunks of broken pavement from when she was thrown into a building. "Let's put you down now shall we?"
She hurled them at him with casual precision, the stones slammed into Dora's skull, one, two, three. Each impact created a dent in his skull. His head snapped back, eyes watering.
Reina blurred, her feet skimming across the ground as if she were flying across the asphalt road. She closed the distance in a split second, her fists driving into his ribs, pushing his body further down into the pole, each strike filled with the sickening percussion of bone meeting bone,
She launched a spinningheel kick that cracked into his skull, the impact launching him like a ragdoll straight through the tinted glass of an office building, the window imploded in a shower of dangerously sharp glass shards.
The employees scrambled, the desks were overturned, coffee was splashed onto the clean white surface of the tables as the room erupted into chaos. People ran toward exits, their cries drowned beneath the thump of Dora's own heartbeat pounding inside his skull.
Dora pushed himself up from a broken conference table, his leg impaled by one of the steel legs, blood drooled from the corner of his bottom lip as sweat streamed into his eyes. His body warped and twitched as his body desperately tried to keep itself running.
"I didn't realize that you wanted to kill me that much," he coughed, stumbling as his legs re-aligned. "What kind of grudge do you hold against me?"
Reina stepped through the shattered window frame, one hand in her pocket, her expression was mild, almost bored. "Grudge? Why would I hold a grudge to someone far weaker than me?" She brushed dust off her hoodie. "I'm simply just doing my job, I am a hero of justice after all."
"Government dog," Dora spat, wiping blood off his teeth. "You think you're a hero!?"
Reina's eyes narrowed, then suddenly lifted her head up, her tone brightened with irritating cheer. She jabbed her thumb at herself. "No matter how I look at you, you're a villain, look how many police men you've killed. The one who combats the villain is crowned the hero."
"They weren't doing shit anyways."
"That doesn't excuse it." Reina said with a smile too polite for the situation. Her gaze flicked to the gathering crowd outside, phones recording, whispers spreading like wildfire.
"A villain like you should be taken down."
"Well it seems like I'm not winning this."
Dora twisted his neck until it cracked. His jaw clenched. His eyes darted to an adjacent stairwell.
"Well, it seems like I'm not winning this."
He vaulted over a cubicle partition, sprinting through a side corridor. He smashed through the emergency exit with his hands, reappearing in the open street, then dove through the shattered doors of the police station across the plaza.
Reina sighed. "Why don't you just make this easy for me."
She hopped down from the broken window ledge, landing with enough force to send a ripple of dust across the pavement. Civilians scattered as she advanced.
Inside the station, Dora skidded to the weapons locker, quickly yanking it open, and stole two compact submachine guns. He spun toward the entrance just as Reina walked through, hands in her pockets as if entering a convenience store.
Gunfire erupted, short violent bursts. Muzzle flashes strobed the dim interior, bullets screaming toward her in tight, angry streams.
Reina flicked her wrist.
"Vigil Hexa."
Transparent hexagons snapped into being right in front of her, the hexagons moved to where the bullets were supposed to hit, disappearing and sending the bullets off course. The bullets bent mid-trajectory, curving like obedient birds as they looped around and tore into the filing cabinets behind her, shredding paperwork into confetti.
Dora cursed and dove behind the main reception desk.
Reina rolled her shoulders, cracking her neck. "Are we really doing this in a police station? I'm blaming all this on you."