The Undoing of Sidekicks | ✓

four

(a/n: dedicated to hugoborren for the support !)

four

MISTRESS always made her first move light and dodgeable, then followed with a stronger punch designed to make her opponent see stars. It was a trick that usually worked, unless you saw it coming. I was in luck.

I twirled to the side, then ducked low to avoid the follow-up. I caught a glimpse of her surprised, angered expression. While she'd looked annoyed, she didn't falter. She raced toward me again, and I stumbled back against the crate in the middle of the truck, then performed a semi-elegant backwards flip over its surface.

My back flew against the other wall of the truck, my breath momentarily lost. I took a second to heave a breath, then pushed off of the wall, meeting her next offensive head-on. My watch was blinking 'DANGERDANGERDANGER' in the corner of my eye, but the com had thankfully stopped beeping incessantly in my ear.

I could focus on slinking out of the way of her next punch, but my dodge managed to introduce my ribs to a painful kick, instead. 

Dodging into an attack? Dodgeception. 

However quippy my thoughts were, I didn't dwell on them for too long as Mistress quickly leaped toward me again. I threw my arms up, my bones singing with the force of her impact as I blocked her. 

Mistress gritted her teeth, fury firing in her eyes. 

"We both know you won't keep this up for long," she panted. However tired and pained I was, I knew she was also suffering the consequences of her energetic attacks. 

"Oh, yeah?" My eyes turned to slits, "Try me, old woman. I might even be nice and visit you at the retirement center after this."

It hadn't been the white flag she was expecting, somehow which showed as she snatched her arms away from my block and flung them to my sides. I ducked low, hand hovering over the ground as I snarled toward her. 

A split second later, I straightened up and had pieces of gravel floating right beneath my open palm. With narrowed eyes I flung my arm out, using my powers to turn them into sharp missiles. My throw added to their momentum, and they burrowed into her suit and sides painfully a heartbeat later. 

Mistress' nostrils flared as a dozen tears in her suit appeared, blood bubbling from beneath the fabric. Her entire ensemble had been dirtied by now. She usually kept her black hair slicked back, face hidden beneath a shifting mask of pale lilac. Her suit was a mix of sheer and opaque fabrics, with weaving purple and black shades. She looked like mist embodied, and it was coincidentally fitting as that was her precise power — mist. 

She used it to her advantage as I directed a punch toward her esophagus, and she shifted to the side in a blur between a misty form and her physical body. She grinned as she re-materialized, then evened the fight out with a swipe of her legs my way. My head struck the ground hard, and when I opened my eyes flecks of dark dotted my vision. 

"Give up, Nymph," Mistress leaned down, grabbed a painful hold of my hair and dunked my head against the ground one more time. The dark spots increased. "You'll never beat me. The student never beats the teacher." 

Oh, yeah? I wanted to respond, to leap up and kick and claw at her until she looked like Freddy Krueger had shredded a kid's Halloween costume, but I struggled to move as the dark spots overwhelmed me, and my limbs become all the more sluggish. 

When I tried speaking, my tongue ended up plastered against the inside of my cheek. My head lolled to the side. Mistress' boots crossed into my blurry field of vision, and she leaned down with a snarl on her face. Her nails were still digging into my head, hair pulling achingly at my scalp.