Death Angel

Chapter 26: Sticky Situation

As chair of Hunter Robotics, I have faced several  trying situations before. At a time when most sixteen year old girls were struggling with such problems like who they should bring as a date to the school dance, or worrying about their score on the latest math test, I was fighting in the real world. I wasn’t facing up to a bully who wanted to take my lunch money, or to peer pressure, or the endless high school gossip. True, much of that went on around me I was sure, but I was too preoccupied with the real world to pay any heed to such paltry concerns.

No, as a young girl of sixteen, my concerns were more about the stock value of the company that I was helming and the fact that I was facing off against adults three times my age. People who were wiser, smarter, and far more ruthless than I was. Needless to say, I had to grow up in a hurry. 

The alarming situation had not been lost on me. The fact that Death and I faced what was perhaps the most challenging battle during our time together was lost on neither of us. Either opponent could have thrown us in for a loop on their own. My father was the biggest concern of course, but I had seen enough of Rina Tanaka in action to know that she was going to be a handful.

Both of them worried me, of course, but nowhere near as much as losing control over the Nether Void and the catastrophic outcome that would ensue if such a thing were to occur.

“D,” I began.

“Say no more cherie,” he said, “I fully recognize the quandary we are in. We have to make sure the people in the building are safe.”

“Any ideas?” I asked.

“Not at the moment, but I’m sure something will come to you or me during this battle.”

“D,” I said turning to Death with as serious a look as I could muster. “You know I can’t maintain my void for more than ten minutes. How long can you hold out?”

“All things constant? I can hold out for days.”

“And what about when facing off against our current adversaries?”

“Then, cherie, all bets are off.”

I sighed. “That’s what I thought. What about a reverse Nether Void?”

“That wouldn’t make much sense, cherie,” said Death. “Not unless you want to reveal, to the entire  building, what you and I are about.”

I didn’t get a chance to respond. 

Rina moved rapidly toward me, her dark blade flashing in the sunlight, moving in several places at once. Her speed was terrifying, making her lone katana appear to be hundreds of dancing scimitars, the cold steel flickering in the light of the sun, at once graceful, alluring, and equally deadly. 

The last time I faced Rina, her technique had been impressive. But the nanosuit had altered her already perfect form, making it far more unpredictable. To make matters worse, Rina was now several orders of magnitude faster. The sword was unrelenting in its attack, the blade striking in a thousand different directions. 

Far more impressive however, was the fact that a human being was able to move in the presence of a Nether Void. Remarkably, the nanomachines were eroding the powerful and debilitating field that Death and I had cast over the building, completely nullifying its effects.

Still, it wasn’t as though I couldn’t keep up. My experience with the Class D’s combined with the power that I had gained from making my scythe stronger and my added edge with the Van Dyke magic ensured that I was equally as unpredictable as either of our opponents.

I parried the attack as well as I could under the circumstances. At the very least, my eyes were able to see the individual movements of Rina’s blade; I could see the deadly edge as it approached and I could anticipate the angle of her strikes. She leapt up, catapulting herself above me before diving straight down.