Maverick (A G.I. Joe Fanfiction)

Chapter 13: Uncharacteristically

It was late afternoon after my mom had shown me to the infirmary to jam pack my backpack with gauze. Snake was escorting me back to my room when it happened...

"WHERE IS IT?!?"

Snake began to push my behind him but I wasn't about ready to let him try to protect me. Nope, I ducked under his arm and I let the door slam against the wall before stepping into the room, my face a blank mask. In a swirl of long blonde hair, Lisa spun on her heels. In her right hand was something with a solid steel blade and a black leather cord wrapped handle, which met at an elaborate steel and onyx handguard, my katana.

"Well now," I said, getting her attention. "That all depends on what you're looking for, Lisa, now doesn't it?"

With one grand sweeping motion, the sword tip went from pointed to the floor to posed at the off-center of Snake's chest. I reached behind me, into my backpack, and wrapped my hand around something solid and leathery. I was doing my 360 stare into space thing and caught a flicker of motion over Snake's far shoulder just as Lisa warned, "Don't move."

"Put the sword down," I ordered, slapping the blade down with the metal-edged scabbard of my wakazashi. "And Mark, stay away from him or I'll kill the imp still holding my katana."

"As if I would believe that," he challenged, he voice uncharacteristically cold as he went in for a strike.

All four of us become a blur of movement. Snake took hold of Mark's arm, got in behind him, held the arm out by the wrist and shoved Mark down onto the hardwood floor. At the same time, I ripped free my scabbard and locked blades with Lisa, pushing her back before she tripped. The katana came free from her hand as her back hit flat against the flood. I heard my knees creak as I landed straddling her then knocked the sword away from her reaching hand.

"Too bad, I can't hurt you," she smirked.

"Oh, you've hurt me," I retorted, my voice cracking before my wakazashi impaled her through the chest. "It's just a different kind of pain."

I watched the life drain from her eyes before I shifted my weight and stood. As I stepped back from Lisa's lifeless body Mark began to struggle against Snake's hold. A meaningless effort if you asked me.

"You'll break your shoulder if you don't stop," I informed him, more emotion filling my eyes than coloring my voice, as I crouched down beside him and gripped his other shoulder and squeezed. "So I'll make you stop."

At first, his eye became unfocused then his whole body went rigid before going limp against the floor. Once Mark was subdued, the emotions that I'd been holding froze me in place. After tears started rolling down my face, Snake moved away from the door and reached for my shoulders.

"Why?" I whimpered as the wakazashi scabbard and I fell towards the hardwood floor. Though unlike the scabbard, when I dropped Snake caught me and held on as I cried myself into unconsciousness.