The Mercenary

The crowd around us made a wide circle because they expected a huge fight. This girl was the roaring lioness while we were the gladiators fighting for our lives. 

“Kids, this might be a bad time to tell you this but I don’t know how to fight.” 

“Seriously?” Adrian asked “Mind blast her. Knock this ninja chick out.” 

“I’m trying!” 

“I won’t let you creeps mess with my head,” Natalie shrieked. “Die!” 

Natalie transformed her mallet into a defensive shield. She aggressively charged at us with her shield in front of her and her sword cutting the air behind her. Eric got in front of me and Adrian prepared to blast his dark matter beam from his hand. 

The dark energy plasma surged towards Natalie but her shield blocked it. 

Instantly, the beam split into five different branches and wreaked havoc on the campus, sending students scrambling. 

The more power he tried to blast at Natalie, the slower she charged toward us. 

I had to get closer to her, because I couldn’t enter her head from this distance. 

“Me seats commando el pela?” Adrian said in Spanish “I mean, I can hold her off long enough for you to do your brain drain thing.” 

“Are you sure?” Eric said. 

“Yeah, my quartz is indestructible. Let her go,” Adrian said. 

But before he could activate the plan, Natalie deflected Eric’s beam back to him using her shield. 

Luckily, Eric and everyone behind him moved so the beam blasted the right side of the school, leaving a crater in the wall. 

Before any of us could investigate the damage, Natalie barreled toward us, transforming her shield into six small throwing stars with three blades on each one. As the stars flew toward us, Adrian coated her arms in ruby quartz, blocking three of them. Eric blasted the fourth one, but the last two zoomed toward me. 

“Maddie, no!” Eric said, reaching out his hand. In that moment, the flying stars halted in midair, inches away from my face. It had a white, shining light above. Eric’s left hand had the same eerie aura surrounding it. 

He had discovered a new power. 

“What the hell?” Natalie said in shock. She raced toward us but Adrian stepped in, blocking the attack. Natalie swung her sword effortlessly toward Adrian’s body. Although Adrian’s quartz protected her arms, Natalie managed to make precise cuts on Adrian’s legs. 

“Ah! You bitch,” Adrian screamed before she released a crimson beam from her hands aimed at Natalie. But Natalie back-flipped, missing the destructive light beam, which hit part of the train. A cluster of ruby quartz descended onto the train. 

“Girls, this is dangerous,” Eric said. He relaxed his grip on the stars and collapsed. “We can’t keep risking the lives of these 

students. Let’s find a better place to end this.” 

“Tell that to the crazy ninja chick trying to kill us,” Adrian added, as she was tending to her cuts. 

“Adrian,” I told her. “We don’t want to turn this place into a war zone.” 

“Hmm. War zone?” Adrian asked. “That would be an awesome nickname for this girl if she wasn’t all Assassin’s Creed on us.” 

“Enough talk,” Natalie said. 

She turned her attention to me, lunging forward with a mashette in one hand and a katana in the other. 

Adrian tried to knock her out and swung a few punches at her, but Natalie avoided each blow. Then she kicked her in the stomach and elbowed her in the back of the neck. 

“Oof,” Adrian said, curling up on her knees, clutching her stomach and squinting her eyes. She told us in Spanish that she couldn’t move. “No pied mover.” 

“Adrian,” Eric shouted, “That’s enough.” He tried to blast her with his energy beam but she kept flipping out of the way. 

“Almost there,” I said. I felt my powers breaking through the mental blocks inside Natalie’s thoughts. 

“Stop!” Natalie shouted as I tried to enter her mind while running towards us. “You little bitch. Stay out of my head.” She jumped six feet in the air and turned her blades into a loaded machine gun, firing several shots at me. 

“Look out!” Eric said. He used telekinesis to create a force field to protect us. “Can’t keep this up! Too much pressure. I can’t   focus.”

While Eric struggled to maintain the force field, Natalie fell. She changed her gun into a mallet and slammed it into his force field. When the force shield crumbled into pieces, Eric lost focus. The shock wave from the mallet hitting Eric’s force field shattered nearly every window on the front of the school. 

Natalie kicked Eric’s left shoulder, dislocating it, followed by a few quick jabs to his stomach. She finished him off with a sweep kick that sent him falling hard on the pavement. 

“Eric!” I screamed out of concern and fear. 

“You’re next.” Natalie turned to me. Her glare froze my blood. She came toward me, swinging a katana. I managed to read enough of her mind to master her fight style and predict her moves. Why is it I could only master this when I was arm’s length from her? 

Natalie created a mallet and managed to strike me hard enough to push me back. She knocked me to the pavement with a roundhouse kick and pounced on me, grabbing me by the neck. She converted her mallet to a dagger. 

“I’ll cut your pretty little eyes out,” she said without a trace of sympathy. At this point, I was close enough to get deeper in her mind and shut her down. 

“No, you won’t!” I shouted. My eyes glowed green when I accessed her mind. 

“Ahhhhhh!” Natalie hollered. 

She dropped her dagger, lapsing into unconsciousness. I picked up the picture frame she dropped when Adrian crashed into her. The glass was cracked but I saw a picture of an Asian couple holding a baby in their arms. The cloak the man was wearing looked like the one Natalie wore before the fight. Were these her parents?

BOOOOOOM! 

After I had asked that question, two men crashed down out of the sky, rushing to Natalie’s side. Their faces were concealed because of dust from the impact of the crater.