Activation

Wren sighed. She was in trouble.

She picked up the rings and slipped them over her hand. They were huge when she put them on, but they shrank down to fit snugly against her wrist, where they glowed faintly against her skin.

Now, how was she to activate them?

***

“Do you think she will figure it out?” Shorty asked.

“No.”

“Wanna place a bet on that?”

“No.”

“Why not? Afraid you will lose?”

“No.”

Shorty let out a sigh. Talon was no fun.

All the man did was fight. There was never any small talk or banter with him.

Shorty had to wonder how Talon was handling this. Wren acted like a strong breeze would knock her over, yet she was still standing.

If this was any indication of what was to come, Talon was in trouble, and Shorty was here for it.

“Here he comes,” Shorty called out as the Being began his attack.

***

Wren noted that he was even faster, stronger, and bigger than the others before. She was just able to get out of the way before she took some serious damage from him.

She looked down at the bracelets that sat snugly on her wrists. ~How do I activate the weapon?~ She looked up and dropped back down just as the Being took another swipe at her head.

~How in the world did two bracelets become weapons to begin with?~

***

“Well?” Shorty asked Talon.

Talon ignored Shorty and continued to watch as she avoided another attack, escaping to the other end of the room.

She was quick, flexible, intelligent, and determined. None of that would save her.

She was completely inexperienced in the fighting ring.

“She will fail. She does not have the necessary knowledge yet,” he said.

“So like you to assume that. We will see,” Shorty replied.

Shorty sat back to watch. He could only hope that she proved Talon wrong, for both of their sakes.

***

Wren leaned behind the back of a boulder. She was tired, and the superficial wounds she had been accumulating over this battle were beginning to ooze blood and sting from the sweat covering her body.

She looked at the cut on her shoulder. That one was ~not~ superficial and was bleeding freely.

She watched the blood make its way down her arm, darkening her blouse as it went. She grimaced at the pain.

~Well shit. This is ruined.~ She glanced up to see that the Being had finally noticed where she was. ~I liked this shirt too.~

Damn it, she thought. How was she supposed to activate the rings? She needed to figure this out in the next several minutes, or this exercise was over.

She could not keep dodging this Being.

“Come on, activate,” she spoke to her wrists and then let out a laugh.

This was not like the movies or cartoons where they only had to speak, and it worked.

She felt the boulder split apart and tried to roll away but was not fast enough. She felt her body being flung up against the nearby wall.

~That is going to leave a bruise.~ She could feel the bruising and knew that she had received some cuts from the small pieces that had been flung along with her.

~Sure, why not? Let’s add a few more to the pile I have.~ She was going to look like a cheese crater by the time she was out of this room.

~Damn it. Now what?~ She slowly stood up, pain radiating from her back. She winced as she took a deep breath in.

She definitely had a few bruised ribs.

The Being stood there, slowly tilting its head back and forth as if waiting to see what her next move would be. She would have to take a stand.

She could not win, but she could go down fighting.

***

“Seems she has decided to take a stand, with or without weapons,” Shorty commented as he watched the blood trickle down her wrist and start to be absorbed by the bracelet.

“Then again…” He glanced over at Talon, wondering if he was seeing it as well.

Talon’s face was unreadable as he watched the woman before him wince in pain before a look of determination set in the corners of her mouth. She stood tall, facing the Being head-on.

~Why does she have to show such determination? It would be much easier to hate her if she were scared or running in fear. Instead, she has to be strong and courageous. What am I going to do with this?~

***

If Wren had had the opportunity to look, she would have seen that the blood did not flow beyond the bracelet as a normal bracelet would have allowed it to do. But she was too busy trying to survive to notice a small thing like that.

Wren finally took note when the glow from the bracelet distracted her, causing her to almost lose her arm in the process. She watched as it started to take a different shape.

She had never seen anything like it. One second, it was a simple metal bracelet; the next, a double-edged sword that met at a handle in the middle.

It looked like a deformed S, with a blade curved several inches above and below her hand. Its twin formed in her other hand, and she noticed light markings had appeared along the length of the blades.

~Not bad,~ she thought. ~I can work with this. Maybe…~

Her body was once more airborne as the Being made contact. She had been distracted, and the Being got in a shot.

As she landed, she was pretty sure she had cracked the same ribs that had been bruised a moment before. She groaned as the pain radiated through her body, but she finally had weapons and, come hell or high water, she was going to use them before she was taken out.

Now she had to figure out how to use them.

***

“Well, what do you know, she activated them.”

Talon grunted. “Humph. She will never be able to use them.”

He was impressed. Through sheer dumb luck, she had been able to activate them, and they were nice-looking weapons too.

The woman was full of surprises today.

Shorty commented, “It is not over yet.”

***

Wren let the Being come in close and, at the last possible second, put up one blade to block the pole, hoping she was strong enough to hold it at bay. To her surprise, the blade traveled through the pole and took off the hand of the Being, causing her to lose her balance and fall forward.

She twisted so as not to fall on her face and swung her blade around, causing the back part to slice the head right off of the Being as it leaned forward, reaching out to finish her off.

She went down and landed on her butt, the body of the Being falling on top of her. She lay there, stunned for only a moment before quickly climbing out from underneath it and crawling away.

Sitting a fair distance from it, she watched as its black blood spilled on the floor and the Being’s body slowly dissolved before her.

Talon and Shorty just stared. She had done it.

She had killed it. “Remarkable.”

“Luck.”

Wren stared at the body as her weapons once again became bracelets, only this time with the etching still visible, and felt the tears come.

She had never, ever… She could still feel the blade slice off the hand and then the neck. She started to shiver.

She had taken a life, albeit an inhuman life, but it was still a life. She felt a hand on her shoulder and immediately shot a hand out to defend herself, putting up a shield, but it was too late—Talon was touching her, so the shield went around him as well.

***

He had stopped her hand with his own and hauled her up against his strong chest, holding her close, not saying a word.

He did not have to. The look on her face was enough for him to know that she was in pain from what she had done.

He had taken off running the instant that he had seen her drop her head. He had felt her sorrow, and it had cut through him like a knife.

She had never taken a life before. He tried not to remember his first one.

The memory flooded back as he rushed to her side, unconscious of his actions.

^SEVERAL YEARS EARLIER^

~“That’s my boy,” King mouthed with a nod to Talon before disappearing into the sea of roaring fans.~

~Talon looked at the lifeless body at his feet, blood pooling from the busted lip and nose that he had inflicted before landing the blow that had knocked his competitor out. There was no movement coming from the body.~

~Time seemed to slow down as he watched a young boy rush to the body, trying to rouse the man as his body turned pale, the blood slowed, and his muscles froze.~

~Talon had done as he had been asked. “Do not stop until the man is dead,” was the order that King had given, and he obeyed King. King was family, and you protected your family. It was not his problem that this man had insulted King. He was merely handing out his punishment.~

~That was what he had told himself before the match, but now that he watched the life leave the body, for the first time since King had taken him in, he felt disgust at what he had done. When would this end? When would King ask him to kill again? Is this what families did for each other? To each other? This man had also been considered family, yet in a single moment, he was cast out. Would King do this to him one day too?~

~Talon watched as the crowd around him cheered as realization dawned that the man was dead. But that was not what caught Talon’s attention. It was the tears of the young boy, mourning the loss of his family.~

^PRESENT^

“You did quite well,” Shorty said as he came up to them, speaking somberly.

He had never seen anything like that before. It was exciting, yet scary.

Wren pulled away from Talon’s warmth. In that moment, the irrational fear of being touched had not appeared.

In fact, she felt a pang of regret the instant she pulled away, but she was determined not to think too much about it. It was because of the adrenaline. That was all.

She was battered and bruised and needed to see a doctor, but she had survived.

She looked over at the spot where the Being had once been, with the knowledge that she would never get over taking a life but would do it over and over if it meant saving others.