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A Super Girl
Moon
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2019
I'm the mood to slay some monsters, in the style of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I found a partner, wrote an intro, and got poofed on. Would anyone else like to step in here? Or pitch me another idea along similar lines?
Kaylee Hines was not afraid of the dark. She had a healthy respect for the dark, but she refused to fear it. Instead, in middle school and high school she had taken classes in self-defense, and then aikido. She maintained the good defensive habits she'd been taught, and she carried a whistle and a can of mace, and when she found herself alone outside at night, she kept her hands on both. She knew how to avoid danger, and she knew how to confront danger. She hoped she even knew how to tell when to do which.
When she saw that the block in her path had lost power--neither the streetlights nor any house lights broke the darkness--she considered taking a detour. But the moon was decent and the neighborhood was safe enough and she had her whistle and her mace and her training, and Kaylee Hines was not afraid of the dark.
When she crossed the street and passed beyond the range of the last active streetlight, the darkness was darker than she had expected. The trees blocked more of the moonlight than it had seemed from afar. But Kaylee Hines was not afraid of the dark. Also, Kaylee Hines was a stubborn little... lady. She just preferred to call it "perseverance". Well-behaved women rarely make history, and girls who weren't stubborn didn't make state finals just 14 months after tearing an ACL.
She was halfway across the block of darkness when a pair of large shadows jumped off a tree.
They were black and silent, and they leaped from such close range that Kaylee had time to wield neither her whistle nor her mace. They hit her, one and two: the first blow staggered her; the second toppled her backward onto a grassy lawn. And then the two creatures were atop her. She felt their heat and saw their slobbering jaws.
Only the slobber glistened. The hounds themselves were utterly black, and utterly silent. Kaylee was silent too--even when she screamed.
Then instincts took over.
Ten years of sit-ups and crunches and worse brought Kaylee's legs up fast and hard. Her knees and shins met resistance and she kicked out. The resistance yielded and the weight was off her and she still had momentum to spare, and somehow from a supine position she backflipped to her feet. Adrenaline for the win. She landed ready to fight or flee.
More dogs came at her.
A small part of Kaylee's brain noticed that this whole situation was absurd. Silent attack dogs? But mostly she was too busy to think.
Aikido is not a violent art. Martial, yes, but the goal is to win without violence. The aikidoka seeks to avoid harm to her attacker as well as herself--and even, if possible, to the environment. She learns to strike, but only because the part is integral to the whole. Her primary technique is redirection; her goal is to defend the attacker into a position from which they can no longer attack.
Kaylee dodged, yes, and she deflected, yes. But she did not guide or throw. She punched and kicked. The instincts that were guiding her were not entirely her own.
The hounds did not die. The hounds could not die, because they were not alive. They were made of shadow. But they were shadow somehow given force, and therefore they could be countered by force. When Kaylee struck them, they popped like balloons as their shadow-given-force was forced back to mere shadow. The petite blonde whirlwind in their midst dispatched them from the fray as quickly as they could join it.
But there were always more. Kaylee was fighting the darkness, and there was an endless supply of darkness. Or at least several more hours.
But that one small part of Kaylee's brain--the part that was able to analyze while the rest of her fought--remembered what she had been taught: that the battlefield is always part of the battle. And therefore Kaylee began to move, as best she could, back toward the streetlights.
That was when the master of the hunt knew he had to intervene.
His whip struck from behind her. But Kaylee was always dodging, and if she was not as quick as the whip, she was not too much slower. The whip passed through where she had been, and struck a shadow hound and burst it. And then Kaylee, turning--she was always turning amid this chaotic melee--saw him.
His face was bestial: human in shape but canine in appearance, furred and fanged like his hounds. What little could be seen of his skin was rash-red and wrinkled. His eyes were crimson embers with just specks for pupils. The word "demon" came immediately to Kaylee's mind. No supernatural insight was required; he looked like a demon, because he was one.
He was quite surprised when Kaylee immediately leaped toward him.
Kaylee was surprised too. But Kaylee (somehow) wasn't in charge of a body. The demon was. His surprise cost him. Kaylee's flying kick sent him flying in turn, twenty feet through the air and then ten more skidding across the asphalt into the curb on the far side of the street.
But that wasn't enough to kill a demon. And it had cost enough of Kaylee's attention that she suffered her first real wound from a hound. The gash was slight, and her adrenaline dulled its pain almost to nothing, but it both burned and chilled. It weakened her a little. And she could not afford to be weakened more than a little.
Kaylee went back to focusing on defense, and to her slow progress toward the distant light. And she hoped the demon would stay down a while.
When she saw that the block in her path had lost power--neither the streetlights nor any house lights broke the darkness--she considered taking a detour. But the moon was decent and the neighborhood was safe enough and she had her whistle and her mace and her training, and Kaylee Hines was not afraid of the dark.
When she crossed the street and passed beyond the range of the last active streetlight, the darkness was darker than she had expected. The trees blocked more of the moonlight than it had seemed from afar. But Kaylee Hines was not afraid of the dark. Also, Kaylee Hines was a stubborn little... lady. She just preferred to call it "perseverance". Well-behaved women rarely make history, and girls who weren't stubborn didn't make state finals just 14 months after tearing an ACL.
She was halfway across the block of darkness when a pair of large shadows jumped off a tree.
They were black and silent, and they leaped from such close range that Kaylee had time to wield neither her whistle nor her mace. They hit her, one and two: the first blow staggered her; the second toppled her backward onto a grassy lawn. And then the two creatures were atop her. She felt their heat and saw their slobbering jaws.
Only the slobber glistened. The hounds themselves were utterly black, and utterly silent. Kaylee was silent too--even when she screamed.
Then instincts took over.
Ten years of sit-ups and crunches and worse brought Kaylee's legs up fast and hard. Her knees and shins met resistance and she kicked out. The resistance yielded and the weight was off her and she still had momentum to spare, and somehow from a supine position she backflipped to her feet. Adrenaline for the win. She landed ready to fight or flee.
More dogs came at her.
A small part of Kaylee's brain noticed that this whole situation was absurd. Silent attack dogs? But mostly she was too busy to think.
Aikido is not a violent art. Martial, yes, but the goal is to win without violence. The aikidoka seeks to avoid harm to her attacker as well as herself--and even, if possible, to the environment. She learns to strike, but only because the part is integral to the whole. Her primary technique is redirection; her goal is to defend the attacker into a position from which they can no longer attack.
Kaylee dodged, yes, and she deflected, yes. But she did not guide or throw. She punched and kicked. The instincts that were guiding her were not entirely her own.
The hounds did not die. The hounds could not die, because they were not alive. They were made of shadow. But they were shadow somehow given force, and therefore they could be countered by force. When Kaylee struck them, they popped like balloons as their shadow-given-force was forced back to mere shadow. The petite blonde whirlwind in their midst dispatched them from the fray as quickly as they could join it.
But there were always more. Kaylee was fighting the darkness, and there was an endless supply of darkness. Or at least several more hours.
But that one small part of Kaylee's brain--the part that was able to analyze while the rest of her fought--remembered what she had been taught: that the battlefield is always part of the battle. And therefore Kaylee began to move, as best she could, back toward the streetlights.
That was when the master of the hunt knew he had to intervene.
His whip struck from behind her. But Kaylee was always dodging, and if she was not as quick as the whip, she was not too much slower. The whip passed through where she had been, and struck a shadow hound and burst it. And then Kaylee, turning--she was always turning amid this chaotic melee--saw him.
His face was bestial: human in shape but canine in appearance, furred and fanged like his hounds. What little could be seen of his skin was rash-red and wrinkled. His eyes were crimson embers with just specks for pupils. The word "demon" came immediately to Kaylee's mind. No supernatural insight was required; he looked like a demon, because he was one.
He was quite surprised when Kaylee immediately leaped toward him.
Kaylee was surprised too. But Kaylee (somehow) wasn't in charge of a body. The demon was. His surprise cost him. Kaylee's flying kick sent him flying in turn, twenty feet through the air and then ten more skidding across the asphalt into the curb on the far side of the street.
But that wasn't enough to kill a demon. And it had cost enough of Kaylee's attention that she suffered her first real wound from a hound. The gash was slight, and her adrenaline dulled its pain almost to nothing, but it both burned and chilled. It weakened her a little. And she could not afford to be weakened more than a little.
Kaylee went back to focusing on defense, and to her slow progress toward the distant light. And she hoped the demon would stay down a while.