Not Quite Oz

fight scene

The girl took off into the alley, and Crow Man was a fraction of a second too late in reaching out to grab her by the backpack and pulling her back to him. Her speed caught him by surprise, and he cursed himself in Russian for underestimating her. More so, he hated that she seemed to have sensed something he had not. He had seen her tense, and had recognized the look in her eyes.

She was frightened.

But she didn't run from something; she had run toward it. It was so achingly familiar, the frustration he had felt at her actions, and he found himself frozen when, instead of a small girl with dark tangled curls, he saw a small boy with boney arms and blond hair.

Steve, a voice in the back of his head supplied, and he shook it away, realizing the girl had disappeared around the corner.

He cursed himself again for the distraction - how stupid, how dangerous - and darted into the alley after her.

*

Ximena wasn't exactly known for completely thinking out her actions, and this time was no different. She had only felt fear that wasn't hers, fear that belonged to someone who had been, in their own paranoid way, kind to her, and she wasn't gonna stand around and let their fear paralyze her.

She had already let that happen plenty after the attack on New York.

The fear grew the closer she got to Helen and Marty's fire escape, and she had to pull back within herself to keep it from overwhelming her. There was anger as well, underlying the fear, and separate from those, that malicious glee she had spent her entire time on her own trying to avoid. She heard spanish cursing, a raspy feminine voice trying to shout to be left alone, and she heard mean, drunken laughter.

She turned the corner, and only took a split second to unpack the scene in front of her. Three men, shoving and tugging at Marty, hitting him and laughing, as another pushed Helen away. Ximena felt her eyes burn, and she didn't think before barreling into a knot of bodies pressed against the wall.

"Leave 'em alone!" she shouted, shoving at the closest body that obviously wasn't Helen or Marty; it wore too nice of clothes, and not enough layers. The laughter was cut off by a sharp cry, and the person she had shoved crashed into someone else, another stranger. They crashed into the ground several feet away. Next to her, Marty stumbled away into the wall, nearly falling over.

"Nena!"

Ximena ignored how Helen called out to her, and she turned to face the two left standing. As it were, her appearance seemed to have sobered them up a bit, and she refused to believe she had made a mistake even as they whirled on her.

I'm stronger than them, I'm stronger than them, I'm stronger than them, even if they're bigger than me, she told herself as the man holding Helen shoved her away.

"Hey, what the hell was that?!" Ximena's head snapped to the side to see the men she had shoved away picking themselves up, expressions dark when they saw her, and she swallowed hard.

I'm stronger than them.

No, Ximena was not known to think these things through. She knew she could handle any bad man that came after her. She was less sure about bad men. Plural.

In her distraction, she forgot to pay attention to the men in front of her, let out a yelp of surprise and pain when a hand gripped her left backpack strap and yanked her forward. The strap dug into her shoulder, and pain shot through it and down her arm. She stumbled forward, and grabbing at the arm holding her to right herself, but found herself pulled up to her toes, and a red, angry face leering over her.