Cindy Hayweather was strangely calm as she stalked down the sidewalk near the City Hall of Leawood, Kansas. Her erstwhile leader had been killed nearby just a few days ago, though there was no overt sign of it left now. Not even a shred of bumblebee police tape left to mark her passing, she had been tossed into the same mass grave as the rest of their ilk.
This was all her fault, in a way. She had been the only one capable of training Overland Park in the first place, had been the only one in a position to reckon with the enormity of the strength that now stood perched to hunt them all down. Should have shattered her gem right at the start. The muscles in her wrists and hands reflexively clenched, steel cordons that wound themselves tighter in grim anticipation.
Well, ruminating was pointless now. It was time for action, something she understood well enough. She abandoned the sidewalk in favor of the asphalt, heat haze obscured and dissipating with the first smacks of rain onto the blacktop.
The instant she stepped out onto the busy street, cars declared their annoyance at the interruption. First a single lazy horn, then two, then all of them in a discordant harmony. She settled squarely on the cracked and faded yellow of the median in front of the City Hall, right where the former Kaycee Kay’s body had lain. The only part of her which moved thereafter was the violet flounce of her dress stirring in the summer breeze.
Voices joined the fracas, all permutations and cadences of “What’re you thinking, dumbass?” and “Get the fuck out of the road!”
Lenexa didn’t hear them, or at least pretended not to, which only served to whip them into a still greater frenzy. A scowl etched the lines of her face, but all her attention was reserved for something else.
That something else landed on the hood of a black Dodge Charger a few cars away, effortlessly crumpling the engine block, destroying the car so effectively that it failed even to squeal in alarm before it died. The owner of the car in question ejected himself from the wreckage, panting and wheezing as he flailed his walrus mass to the sidewalk and beyond. Other cars which had been rendered unable to pass decided they no longer gave a solitary shit for the rules of the road, and a mad rush ensued back around and onto the sidewalks to avoid being struck by another ballistic missile.
The first missile, however, resolved itself in the form of a teenage girl, this one in an audacious red dress. She was covered with puffs of fabric all over so her shoulders and legs seemed like grotesque, angry clouds threatening to escape the confines of her body. Her hair was also tied up in two large puffs, dyed merely pink instead of red. Her midriff was exposed, flaunting a large ruby piercing her tanned navel.
“YO BITCH,” this girl shouted at Lenexa. “YOU LOOKIN’ FOR ME?”
The object of her focus now revealed, Bitch stayed silent. She stared down the long barrel of her ire at this walking affront to modesty, the breeze playing with her long straight hair.
“Aw, don’t act all stoic you fuckin’ asshole,” Overland Park laughed as she stepped lightly off of the steaming junk. “You’ve come this far, what the fuck are you waiting for?” That false smile twisted into a painful grimace, a mask unfit to hide the rage bubbling underneath.
Though no muscle in her face or body moved, Lenexa’s glare somehow intensified.
“You’re really cruel, you know that?” the red girl huffed dramatically, clacking her gaudy shoes to a sharp halt about 20 feet away. “I should have known you were helpin’ the Missouri girls this whole time,” she spit a globule which hid itself among the raindrops. “I’ll be sure to bury you along with them. Sound nice enough to you?”
The breeze finally died, and Lenexa’s dress fell still.
“Shut the hell up.”
For the merest instant the former Overland Park’s face betrayed irritation, but in that same instant a purple sledgehammer rocketed towards her. Her only way out was up, which left her vulnerable: Lenexa screamed into the sky at a thousand miles an hour, and the clash of the two magical girls reverberated through the well-to-do suburb like a cannonade.
Neither of these beings carried weapons. They fought with their bodies, which served just fine as their instruments of war. Their fists and elbows and knees ground against each other with enough strength to pulverize concrete. Every meeting of their limbs let loose a blasting that flattened the treetops below, bones impossibly refusing to shatter as blow after blow fell upon each other like typhoons crashing against a cliffside.
Gravity pulled them back to the ground, branches cracking and nearby window panes shattering with the force of every solid hit. As soon as her foot touched asphalt, Overland Park hurtled straight into and through City Hall. Lenexa was less than a yard behind, they were red and purple comets and with their inevitable collision the municipal building exploded in a dust cloud of splinters and glass shards and broken bricks.
The clatter of a ruined public work subsided around Lenexa. She refused the urge to cough and clear her lungs of the dust of civic duty.
It was a solid hit with Overland Park out of sight… until the red girl came screaming back, the air between the two magical girls boiling with her speed. Lenexa bared her teeth, raised her arm just in time to catch a strike that would have liquified her skull, suddenly forced on the defensive. Overland Park rained endlessly with fists and arms so quick that Lenexa could not help but lose ground. They dashed forward and backward among the wreckage, back toward the street, their feet gouging the bricks, rending the grassy soil in huge chunks and strips, ripping up concrete and asphalt with every titan step.
Before she realized it, Lenexa’s back was up against a brick wall and her momentum halted. Her former student’s hand held her face in a vice grip, her other hand reared back to deliver the killing blow–-
-–and Lenexa managed to wriggle her head out of the way, becoming a blur as she retreated from another dust plume rising into the air. A defunct T-Mobile store was wiped off of the map, reduced to smithereens.
Peering through dust-laden eyes, Lenexa managed to glimpse Olathe just on the other side of the street, back towards the ruin of city hall.
What in the everloving shit was she doing here? She had her bow out, a simple wooden thing with flanged tips. Her mouth was open in a round little “o” like she couldn’t believe she had just done something incredibly stupid.
That something proved to be very stupid: the reason Overland Park had let go of Lenexa’s face was, apparently, an arrow directly to the back of the head. A successful hit, with absolutely no effect except to cause the target to stare at her.
And stare. The moisture of the rain at her feet boiling away and turning to vapor.
Lenexa saw it coming a split second late. There was one edge that the student held without restriction over her teacher: a pure, concentrated sunbeam that lanced out of her furious eyes and severed Olathe clean in half, toppling down on herself in the torn grass. The smell of burning flesh joined the dust and smoke, and Lenexa realized she was screaming.
Another laser cut her left arm off at the shoulder, her screams intensifying as bright pain was added to shame.
Cindy couldn’t tell if one second passed or a minute, but the next thing she registered was the red dress filling her vision, blocking the fresh corpse of her compatriot.
“You should’ve known not to cross me. Better than anyone, you should’ve known.”
Slackjawed, she felt her face forcibly tugged up to stare into the face of hatred.
“I’ve had enough. I’ll never let anyone fuck me over again. You should’ve known .”
“We-–” the wind was forced out of her, a fist like solid rock appearing in her diaphragm. Every muscle in her body had been doused with cold water, a strange sort of shock that wasn’t even painful anymore.
“Too late for that. I don’t wanna FUCKIN' hear it anyway.”
Struck again, and again. The fist merely tenderized at first and then pulverized, obliterating, atomizing her torso. Cindy felt strangely light as everything below the shoulders fell away, an abused mannequin shedding its lower half. The rain of blows had stopped, and everything felt farther away now. She was watching it unfold from underwater.
The last thing her glassy eyes registered was her gem, an amethyst necklace that was ripped away from what was left of her neck. She couldn’t even feel the chain break, was only dimly cognizant as she watched the precious stone of her soul enter her student’s mouth.
Crunch.
Overland Park spit out the last bits of Lenexa onto the pavement, wiping little bits of gemstone from her tongue on her dress, regretting it as she tasted blood. She couldn’t tell it apart from the hue of her dress, decided she didn’t care enough, and settled for swallowing fragments instead.
They tumbled around in her throat and caught on the sphincter leading to her stomach, stones cascading down a long well. She could feel grit in the back of her mouth, crowding around her teeth. Just one more thing to hate, more fury atop the rest.
No cars had come to interrupt her so far, though she was sure that someone or other from law enforcement was on their way. She was startled by a ringing, some generic default ditty that issued from somewhere near the legs she had disposed of.
Somewhat mollified for now, she patted the carnage down and came back up with Lenexa’s phone. There was a lock on, because of course, but hitting the home button brought a smidgen of the new text up on screen anyway.
Just enough to see the words “Kaycee” and “meeting.” That was really all she needed.
Overland Park let the device clatter to the ground and stepped on it, shattering it into a million fucking pieces. Part of her felt tired and raw, worn down after all the excitement already, but “meeting” probably meant everyone on the other side of the state line too.
In for a penny, in for a pound. Most of her was still frothing, red hot. She used that, pushed off and away from the ground as easily as walking, leaving Kansas behind.
Chapter End Notes
"... He just showed up. He has no idea what he's getting himself into."
"He'll find out soon enough."
The structure of the fight scene is cribbed directly from Dragon Ball Z, up to a certain point. I've repeatedly gone on tirades about the visual structure and quality of the series from the start of Dragon Ball up through the end of the Frieza saga. No further though; I believe people can safely stop there and miss nothing of real substance.
This is one of the earliest things I wrote for the story, although the context of it has changed a lot during editing.