by Noah Rain
“More than them,” Scarlett said.
Well, that certainly went a way’s toward stamping down my excitement. At least it made it easier to focus on the conversation at hand.
“What? Why?” I asked as dumbly as I seemed to ask Scarlett everything.
“If there’s going to be an execution,” she said, “the Syndicates tend to agree on that sort of thing. You’re not a Guilder, but you’ve outed yourself as a future enemy. You don’t have immunity.” She arched her eyebrows again and uncrossed her arms. She had hiked her zipper up higher than the other night. Guess she had no reason to try out her charm chemicals on a dead man. “You really don’t know anything about the Syndicates, do you?”
“In my defense,” I said, “you’re the second one I’ve ever spoken to, with the first being Vash.”
“How have you lived, what, twenty-five years—”
I held up two peace signs and she rolled her eyes.
“Twenty-two years in Jaxton without running into the Syndicates?”
I swept my hands out to either side and performed an exaggerated twirl, spinning on one sneaker like a top.
“Welcome to my cloister. You can call me a monk, if you like.”
“You really trained that much?” she asked. “You never fell in with a street gang or a feeder crew?”
“Had to protect my precious credit, now didn’t I?”
“You have to build credit in the first place,” Scarlett said. She seemed to grow exasperated with me rather quickly.
“True enough.”
“You never took a job?”
“I was a fighter.”
Scarlett waited for me to say more, as if that didn’t qualify as a job in her eyes. So judgmental.
“You’re hopeless,” she said, blowing a stray red bang out of her eyes. It was the single most amazing thing I’d seen her do yet.
“Then why are you here?” I asked. “Really. I didn’t tell anyone about what I saw at the bridge the other night, if that’s what you’re concerned about. I know your little witch’s brew didn’t work on me. No need to kill me. I’ll keep my secrets—”
“Someone else is going to kill you before we do.”
“Again,” I said, actually starting to get annoyed as I thought about the Shockers. “Why are you here? It would seem Vash and friends killing me works out for you. Ties up a loose end.”
“I don’t care if you tell people you saw Darla fucking a Suit under Jaxton Bridge,” Scarlett said. She meant it. “We have plenty more than tapes on most of those fuckers. That little witch’s brew … which didn’t seem to work much on you,” the fact seemed to bug her, “is more than an aphrodisiac.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, feeling like I was arguing with an ex, and not some random super criminal spy chick I had just met. “Then, really Scarlett. What are you doing here?” She blinked. “You’re telling me the Syndicates are debating whether or not to allow a kill order on me.”
“They’ll give the order. They consider you a Guilder, now, and one they can kill without conseq—”
“You’re Syndicate!” I shouted, a rush of anger bubbling to the fore.
She parted her lips, but I seemed to put her at a genuine loss.
“We operate in Silk—”
“Silk City,” I said. “I know. But you’re Syndicate, Scarlett. You can play at being a fucking hero all you want, but you’re a criminal. A gangster, just like the ones currently conspiring to kill me.”
“A criminal?” Now she was mad. “A gangster? The Suits on the other side of the fucking river are the real criminals, Konnor, or have you had such a spectacular orphaned boxer life that you’ve forgotten that? And let’s not even get into the fact that you were going to drag someone right over to them in exchange for a glorified VIP pass in Silk City. There is no law, anymore. Only what the Suits and Pearls decide.”
“Then that’s the law,” I said, feeling sick as the words left my lips. I sighed. “What does it matter, anyway? I’m a dead man walking. I might as well try to get some licks in before I go. And remember, Scarlett, it’s going to be Synners—good guys, right?—who do the killing tomorrow, or next week, or whenever they get around to it.”
“Tonight.”
“What?”
She had whispered it, but we both knew I’d heard what she said.
“They’re coming for you tonight. Or early morning.”
I swallowed. I could wail on heavy bags all day and night visualizing that very thing, but now it was rendered real.
“So, then,” I said, recovering a bit of my composure, “you came to warn me.”
“Obviously.”
“Then you must really like me.”
She looked surprised and concerned over my juvenile sense of humor, but when I gave her a sheepish smile, I saw the corner of her mouth quivering as she resisted the urge to return it.
“I don’t like you, Konnor,” she said, breaking eye contact as she walked a slow circle around the heavy bag hanging in the center of the room. My old friend. “But I do think you could be useful. I did some research on your when Darla and I got back to base. Dug up some of your old fights.”
“Some detective work,” I said. “They’re not that old.”
“Considering your present circumstances compared to then, I’d say they qualify as old.”
I shrugged. It was a fair point.
“I remember seeing a few of them when you were coming up,” she said. “I’d have thought you were a boxer, but those legs have some pop.” She looked down at my thighs. My upper body was slim and toned—more abs than chest. But my legs were young trees. She walked around me in a semicircle, pacing back and forth, appraising me like I was a stallion, or a pack mule.
“Thought you didn’t watch the Prime League.”
“We all have dreams when we’re young,” Scarlett said, her eyes lingering on my legs … I think. “Some of us just grow up faster than others.” She looked me in the eyes. “Did you really just plan to fight hand-to-hand, and bring in one of the most tech’d out Synners in Jaxton?”
“I almost did just that,” I said. “Or have you seen Vash?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know Vash. I know that he’s dumb. But he’s a good fighter—”
“Okay,” I shrugged. “Okay at best.”
“Comparing them to people like us isn’t quite fair,” Scarlett said. “Most Synners have a background in petty crime, not high-level martial arts. Most of the military goes Guild when their tours spent taking over neighboring countries to earn the Suits even more assets are up.”
“Are you really just going to glide by the fact that you just separated yourself from them?” I asked. “I mean, no offense. You look … sharp. And strong for …” she flashed a dangerous look at me and stopped pacing. “I mean, I’m just saying, I don’t remember you in the League—”
“Is that a challenge?”
I smiled. “Sure.”
Scarlett walked toward me, shouldered me out of the way roughly, and climbed through the ropes of the ring. I watched her do it. Not a bad view at all.
“Hey,” I said. “I know you’re just kidding around, but no boots in the ring, please.”
She was already taking them off, unzipping them. She tossed them out of the ring, where they tumbled into a corner. The dim orange and yellow lights in the rafters painted ribbons on her black suit.
“What are you doing?”
She ignored me, reached down and yanked on a resin hilt that was strapped to her calf. It was a knife. A long one. No sparking end or obvious contraption. Just a blade. She placed that gingerly on the side of the ring, flat down on the canvas, and then stepped back inside the ropes.
She started bouncing up and down, and lanced a quick combo. My jaw nearly hit the floor. Anyone who watched a video or shadowed a class co
uld mime a punch, but it took training to throw one right, and even more training to recognize it.
Scarlett turned her hips just right, and unleashed a jab-cross, corkscrewing the motion just slightly at the end. More importantly, her rechamber was as fast as her strikes, with her hands coming back in, loading up for their next turn like bullets. Her eyes were fierce and focused. She melded into a fighter’s visage almost instantly, and she stayed light on the balls of her bare feet, bouncing just enough to provide spring and not enough to overbalance.
“Okay,” I said. “Alright. Now I understand why you got so uppity when I had the gall to suggest you and the other Vixens fucked your way out of everything.”
Scarlett didn’t stop her combos.
“You coming in here or not?” she asked as she withdrew another jab, her fastest one yet.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, hot shot, are you coming in here so I can fuck you up, or would you rather stand there gawking, and imagining me fucking you up more properly?”
I felt myself blush.
“Your funeral,” I said, stepping into the ropes.
“No,” Scarlett said. “We’re just waiting for yours, remember?”
I hadn’t even stood up straight when her first punch smashed into my nose and sent me reeling from the shock of the impact.
Okay then.
Chapter 4
On the Ropes
Okay, then.
Scarlett’s strike hadn’t been fast or hard enough for me not to recognize exactly what it was—a lead-hand power jab, to be precise—but it had been hard enough to let me feel the blood pooling into the back of my throat before it started a slow trickle out of my nose.
The ropes kept me in, and I leaned back, blinking clarity back into my watering eyes as I wiped the red stuff from my nose. I didn’t straighten fully. Scarlett was still standing in a martial stance—a modified side stance, again, in the interest of precision—and while her eyes had a clever, even playful glint to them, she didn’t quite look like she was done with me yet.
“You’re not left-handed,” I said to her, circling and bouncing on the balls of my feet out of instinct, though I didn’t really have any intention of hitting her.
“No,” she said, as if it should have been obvious.
“You hit me with a jab from Southpaw,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, as if I were an idiot for pointing out something so readily apparent to anyone with a pair of half-trained eyes.
It wasn’t that I was criticizing Scarlett. There was nothing wrong with striking with a dominant lead-hand. In fact, I preferred it myself. It was just that most disciplines taught pupils to lead with their weak hand, and finish, so to speak, with their power hand in back. Without getting into the nitty gritty of kinetic linking and torque, this wasn’t a bad way to teach. It allowed fighters to probe with their weak side and dish out significant power strikes with the rear side.
But, as they say in many walks of life, you only learn the rules so you can break them. I was a master in the ring. I consider myself pretty modest—but then, I guess an egomaniac probably would too—but I have no qualms about claiming that I was damn good at what I did, and I fought with my power hand in front.
The long and short of it is this: if you do what Scarlett just did to me, it either meant you were an absolute novice with some raw athleticism behind you, or you were a hell of a lot better than my chauvinistic eye test would have suggested.
Of course, there was only one way to find out, but the adrenaline had cooled after the first strike and the awkward verbal exchange that followed, and as I found myself squaring up with Scarlett in the ring, I became distinctly aware of my almost full nudity once more.
“Oh come on,” Scarlett sneered, rolling her eyes in a way that had already become familiar to me, even if I had only witnessed it a handful of times over two brief occasions of acquaintance. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid to hit a girl.”
I was, but I knew that in this day and age, it wouldn’t do to admit it openly. It’s not to say that I hadn’t hit women before—in the training room, of course, and then, only against professional fighters—but it still made me feel kind of icky. They were just … well, they were softer, and I had always found it difficult to pull my strikes once they were in motion.
I didn’t answer Scarlett, and she frowned, filling in her own response.
Her eyes flashed dangerously and she came in again. This time, I had my guard up, but this time, she only flashed the lead-hand right as a distraction for her lead leg side kick. The heel of her foot slammed into my gut as I brought my arms up in a cage block, and for a heart-stopping instant, I imagined that she had been wearing her boots, with the hard rubber heel sinking right through my abs and piercing some vital organ.
I fell to my knees, clutching the spot where Scarlett had kicked me, and when the pain subsided, I brought my wrapped hands away, expecting them to be full of blood. There was a deep red welt that would turn black by morning, but I was otherwise unharmed, and when I looked up at the deviously, sadistically-grinning Scarlett, I realized she either didn’t mind if she accidentally killed me, or she had enough body control to inflict significant pain without doling out permanent damage.
The strikes only numbered two, but Scarlett had already given me more to think about than most opponents did over an entire fight, never mind a weird, awkwardly tense impromptu sparring match.
“What’s the matter?” Scarlett taunted, sliding back, still in a martial stance. “If you were expecting me to go easy on you, you’ll be disappointed to know this is my version of, ‘easy.’”
I had to smile at that. It seemed to surprise Scarlett.
I got up and raised my hands in mock surrender, then shrugged. Scarlett frowned in suspicion.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Nothing like that. It’s just … well—“
“Just what?” she prodded.
“It’s just that I didn’t bring my Kevlar,” I said. “As you can see,” I looked down, blushing again at the immodest bulge in my steel gray training underoos, “I didn’t bring much of anything.”
Scarlett looked like she almost placed the next kick right where I had been looking. And she did put a scare in me, darting forward with an old school karate blitz and dipping into a high-velocity spin, but I decided not to bite, and simply stood there like an idiot, hands down by my sides, eyes closed.
I felt the wind of her strike slide through my sweat-stuck hair, and when I opened my eyes and slid them to my left, I saw her foot poised a half inch from my temple. Scarlett held the kick in place, her head up straight as the angle of her kick demonstrated both her own flexibility and the pliability of her black suit. That she held the kick for as long as she did, frozen in space with nary a quiver, demonstrated her core strength.
I raised my eyebrows, and Scarlett matched me, then lowered her kick.
“As I should have said at the beginning,” I said. “I’m perfectly willing to hit a girl. I just want us to be on equal footing first.”
“How noble of you,” Scarlett said. “A world champion fighter, afraid to give a girl the advantage provided by a rubber suit—“
“Kevlar and resin-infused,” I pointed out. “And besides, the world’s pretty small these days.”
It was meant to be a joke, but a dark shadow passed over Scarlett’s otherwise fair features when I said it. The look passed quickly enough, like the threat of a summer storm, and Scarlett was working at the silver zipper under her chin before I had another word out.
By the time she was emerging from her suit like a butterfly from a slick cocoon, I was blinking dumbly and staring slack jawed, unsure how I had convinced her to disrobe. The fact that she seemed to be doing so out of a desire to inflict pain on me rather than something more sensual had the peculiar effect of increasing my excitement rather than
decreasing it.
In any event, I leaned back on the ropes and took in the show for as long as it lasted.
Scarlett removed the skintight black biker combat suit with practiced ease. She peeled the shining material from her shoulders, exposing pale white skin with light brown freckles. The zipper crept down farther, exposing the tops of her breasts. They didn’t quite rival Darla’s in terms of size, but they more than made up for that in shape.
The zipper went down to her naval, and she peeled the suit from her top half, exposing a sculpted form with tasteful musculature and fat in all the right places. She wore a black sports bra that only covered the bottom halves of her breasts and I actually got caught up staring at the skin and sinew sliding over her ribcage as she inhaled and then exhaled as she bent to free her legs.
The story was even more impressive down there. Scarlett stepped out of the black suit, exposing long, powerful thighs and a more rounded, well, ass than I had noticed under the pockets and compartments in the suit. She had a black thong on that I would describe as tactical over functional. Enough to cover something … but not enough to risk getting bunched up under the tight suit.
When I finally mustered the willpower to look up at her face, I expected it to be as crimson as her name. Instead, she only had the slightest patches of blush under her eyes, and after kicking her suit and boots out of the ring, she melted right back into that martial stance.
“Okay, then,” I said.
Scarlett’s next attack was even faster than the first had been. She slid her back foot up to her front and pushed off, launching herself toward me with the blade of her lead foot arched. Now that she was nearly as naked as I was, the wrinkles and reflections of the Kevlar were replaced by the shifting muscles of her legs and core.
I dodged the kick, pivoted, and lanced a jab of my own. My heart nearly skipped a beat as my fist screamed in toward Scarlett’s perfect face, but she raised her lead shoulder as she brought her kicking leg back in and deflected the punch without much effort. Rather than melting backward, Scarlett followed the clever shoulder parry with a ram, planting both feet and driving her shoulder into my chest as I leaned in too far.
