Free Soul | Natasha Romanoff

Chapter 13: the terror of outer space

Okay. Alright. Let's rewind a bit.

Mad and pissed off?

She surely was.

But hey, not everything is a straight line (get it? Straight...)

So she was scared and shaking to absolute no end. She wanted to drop her sword and to walk off, to run far away from all of this mayhem they had caused. She wanted to let the damned world burn till not even the ashes would remain, condemned by its own fate. It wasn't like she had ever cared about letting the disasters set their fires all across the earth, the cursed earth.

Goddamn aliens! How the fuck does one deal with aliens?

And yet, there she went with all of the might she could possibly muster, fighting against Earth's assailants and killing as many of them with the petite amount of power she held, to protect with a poor broken shield what she just wanted to run away from. Ironical and, even paradoxical one may say, for she was never one to defend but one to fight or flight. It was all against her instincts.

Oh, how dearly she missed a good read with a hot cup of tea in her own little and personal room, far away from anything close to this pitiful reality. Yeah, slashing through some extraterrestrial flesh only to receive gushes of its blood was nowhere near her bucket list. It was gross. So fucking gross. It stuck to her skin and threatened to burn her lungs with its horrendous smell.

Literally, ew.

"Ew."

Hyunjae almost threw up. Screw her enhanced senses for giving her such a fine sense of smell.

Laser beams and explosions, people running away from the roots of their terrors, but she was chasing it— chasing after the danger to annihilate each piece of it. Taking down aliens after aliens, after any alien on her way, there was no possible rest in this battle. And if she dared seeking to even breathe, more than enough innocents would be on the line of life and death.

She couldn't afford to grant herself a single break for their goddamn sake. Her hatred towards the world was tied to her fear of losing the small treasure she had found in the midst of the havoc of her existence. It picked at the wrong strings in her mind, causing a dissonance far greater than the taste of blood and dust on her tongue, but there was just no other way for her.

She could not kill, if not to lose whatever was left of what we call humanity.

"Fuck!"

Hyunjae got thrown harshly into a taxi door after she made a sloppy parry. She didn't even have the time to scold her own negligence, the terrorizing Chitauri had already snarled and jumped at her with violence, baring its fangs like a predator attacking its helpless prey. Its force was greater than anyone she had encountered, as it pushed and pushed to cause even just a mere scratch.

But Hyunjae was relentless and stubborn as a tide crashing on the shore. So she blocked its claws with her sheath before it could have grazed the hair of her skin. She struggled mightily and groaned from the great effort she had to put in, though the rising anxiety had made her eyes glow brighter than they had ever been, brighter than the sum of the stars across the universe.

As bright as the sum of their joined forces.

Thus she kicked, with vehemence, the Chitauri off her trembling body with all the strength she had left in her legs, before plunging her blade through its neck, the weak spot she had found from a sudden and swift glance. The squelching sound and the cries of agony that rang closely to her, almost forced a sob of fear out of her tight throat as she screwed her eyes shut.

She flinched at the sound reverberating itself inside of her mind, like a fierce reminder of the disharmony that was her past, the grip on the handle of her sword faltering for a second. But a deep, a sharp breath, and her shaky fingers took a hold on the handle with strength once more, unwilling to become one of the fallen ones; she snatched out her blade in one clean swing.