The house was on fire and she had blood on her hands.
"How many times are you going to make me ask?"
Cassandra's demeanour was calm, if not relaxed. A further strike to the man's jaw being carried out with such force that a tooth was dislodged. He had nowhere to go, crucified by wrists nailed above head to the telegraph pole behind them. To say he looked broken would be an understatement. Still, though, he refused to give the answer she desired.
"What will it take?" The blonde figure asked, almost rhetorical, such was her manner. Cassandra bringing a hand to his chin, tilting victim's head up to meet his gaze. "Should I extract an eye? How about two? You don't need to see to talk..."
Without receiving more than a lazy stare back, she turned on heel, moving to the roped collection of terrified wife and two children.
"What about her?" She stated, grabbing the mother with a sharp grip of hair. "Would removing her face make you more compliant? Or perhaps your son's genitals... I've done it before, although can't promise it'll be quick. In fact, I rather guarantee it won't be."
It was one of those moments where people didn't know what to do. Someone should have called the fire brigade considering the fact that the house was on fire, but apparently such things didn't happen here. Maybe it was the fear of retribution, that perhaps this woman - this insane woman would turn on them and upset their perfect little versions of suburbia that they did nothing.
Jessica had not meant to get herself involved. In fact, it was nothing more than that morbid curiosity which snatched ahold of all humans at the sight of smoke which had drawn her closer to it, looking at the flames as they licked their way up the house and towards the sky. It was only then that she noticed the woman standing in front of it all and the people that she was apparently holding hostage.
She had to admit that it was an impressive display, the woman's sense of showmanship couldn't be denied and Jessica found herself silently praising her, for what was a very effective method of extracting information. Of course, it did not seem to be working. Jessica listening to the words before feeling the compulsion to step forward.
The terrified woman on the floor's eyes darted to Jessica and for a moment she looked relieved, like she had just seen her saviour. "Nothing scares someone more than the idea of being burned alive," she offered, but then frowned. "What're you doing?"
It might have seemed like a stupid question, although Jessica could not know if these people were innocent or what this strange woman wanted with them.
Head turned and face scowled, keying instantly on the source of the voice, like a wolf guarding a fallen carcass. Interlopers were typically unwise to allow near prisoners. This place was nowhere near as harsh in its conditions as where Cassandra was used to, but old rules still applied.
"Getting questions answered," came the simple reply, blunt and to the point. Moving from the roped bundle of parent and children, Cassandra made sure to place herself as a barrier between the stranger and her hostages. Dressed in some sort of animal hide, the blonde cut quite the unfamiliar look on a late Chicago afternoon. On one forearm could be seen a bracelet of sorts. The metal etched with a form of writing quite foreign to English, even if its owner seemed to speak the language without problem. The same hand flexing, as Cassandra measure this new creature up with an upwards tilt of the head.
"I was reserving flames for the youngest," she stated, blankly. "If it comes to that..."
Jessica tilted her head in a similar way as she eyed up the woman standing in front of her. "What kind of questions?" She asked, "Generally just asking them is a good starting point." She found that actually asking them was a much better idea.
She took stock of what the woman was wearing, feeling an alien kind of kinship with the out-of-place style of her clothing. Jessica had been dressed in a similar kind of way, her clothes jarred sharply with the ones that everyone else wore. She fitted in now. She had made sure of that.
Behind her, at the statement of burning the youngest, the mother breathed out a soft, 'No', trying to protect her children even though she could barely move under the restrictions of the rope. Jessica looked at her, at the woman's children and then at the man on the pole. She felt horrified at what she was seeing, but then, could she really judge, in light of her own past?
"This one refuses... Not that I blame him, considering his employers. They generally do far worse."
Cassandra had spoken the words with a mixture of derrision and fondness; the former for the husband's unwillingness to comply and the latter for the way her fingers slid into his hair. Not that it stopped her from giving a swift knee to the groin, giving him a form of pain which nothing on Earth could better. Give a sharp enough jolt of agony to the testacles and their owner could even black out. He would have doubled over, were it not for what pinned him to the proverbial stake he had been impaled to.
Soon, he was going to lose interest in literally everything. Then likely vomit.
"But if he told me what was needed, then we wouldn't need all this... He could end it. Make it quick. Instead, he's playing for time." A knowing smile. "Like it matters..."
"Who're his employers?" Jessica asked, stepping closer to the tied up family, looking at them and wondering if there was anything she could do. She did have a kind of abject fascination, though, at the way this strange woman was working. It was very similar to her own history, though Jessica had rather less chance of showmanship, she never set things on fire.
Her eyes slid to the man on the pole. "You might want to tell the lady what she wants to know." she told him, obviously not just some random civillian because of the way she was reacting. She had the look of someone who had seen all this before. That had done this before. She was almost unperturbed by the whole thing. "Because you'll break sooner or later." She moved closer to him, looked up at his hands. "I'd say you've got ten more minutes before the damage to your hands means you're never going to use them again. I think you can kiss goodbye to the idea of more children."
She glanced at the woman. "If he tells you, what can you give him aside from a quick death? That's not much incentive to tell you anything."
The visitor was a strange element to factor in. Cassandra had not been banking on possible assistance, even if only in the form of advice. It... Confused matters. Still, it was beneficial and her returning look at Jessica demonstrated as much: Unawareness of quite what to make of her, but intrigued that she was neither trying to put an immediate stop to things and seemed to have knowledge of coercion. But was it being used as a mere distraction or something else?
"His employers..." Debating whether or not to say, Cassandra tapped fingers against her leather skirt, considering matters anew. "They-"
"STACEY, RUN!"
Before Cassandra had chance to elaborate, the youngest member of the family, a pre-teen female, had managed to squirm her way out of the bindings and was scarpering. Cassandra might have been able to salvage matters, but the stranger had introduced an unstable factor into this equation. She was already at the mother and son, securing the rope tight enough to stop further escapes, but every second wasted, was one more the youth would have to escape. Making sure teh the rest did not follow suit was of more importance, but she did not want the one who would give her the most leverage to slip away.
"Stop her!"
Jessica reacted on instinct, moving almost quicker than would be expected of someone like her and she got an arm around the girl's waist, picking her up with relative ease. The girl kicked and struggled, Jessica's shins took one hell of a battering but she had lived through worse and come out the other side unscathed. She would just have some interesting bruises on her legs for a few days.
She held the pre-teen against her chest, muttering into her ear, "Stop struggling. I won't let her hurt you. Just got to do what she says, okay?" Her voice was soothing, almost the 'good cop' to the blonde's 'bad cop' routine. "I'm gonna' take you back over and you're gonna join your brother and your mom." Her arm tightened around the girl's waist, the green sneakers she was wearing nowhere near the floor. She stopped struggling, but she was obviously still very afraid.
Chewing on the inside of her lower lip, she just held the girl, deciding not to let go of her just yet. "You were about to tell me about his employers?" Jessica asked, looking back at the blonde.
Slumped in defeat, the man grunted out either a name or the beginnings of an address. It was hard to tell. Either way, it was enough to give Cassandra a reason to grin almost maniacally and thump the father's skull hard up against that post with a vindictive, "Again. Slowly..." Then, with words repeated in a hoarse whisper, Cassandra stood. A sense of vindication spreading through her, like some carnivorous plant unfurling thorny leaves to catch fresh bloody rainfall.
"His employers," she continued, now for Jessica's benefit, "are very naughty little boys and girls... Ever found yourself lost? Somewhere far from home? I did," she said, matter-of-factly to the one holding captive daughter. "No taxi cab ride back for me... I was fucking ABANDONED!"
Above his head, fractions of an inch from his skull, a dagger had just been viciously stabbed into the wooden pole. From the way in whish she held onto the handle, looking at him with seething anger in her gaze, there was no doubt that the aim had been deliberate. She wanted to inject terror. She was filled with loathing hatred and every reason to unload it onto those perceived as having wronged her.
Jessica found herself in a very odd position now. She could sympathise with this woman's anger; she, too, had found herself very far away from home in a place where she knew no-one and did not understand anything. She looked at the family, kept a reassuring hold of the daughter who had apparently calmed in her arms. She seemed less afraid now in the arms of someone who could have been just as crazed as the blonde than she had done in the ropes, tied to her family.
"That isn't his fault," she finally said. "I know how you feel. I- I'm not where I should be either. I'm lost. Too far away from my home for me to ever get back." She had been confused at first, then a little angry at whatever had happened, and then she had felt afraid. That fear was ebbing now as she found a place, found people that she could work with. People that liked her and treated her like a human instead of a soldier. "But if you want revenge, you have to go to the source. These people are expendable. They're replaceable. They can just find someone else to take their place. The businesses... Their bosses, that's where it's gonna' hurt."
Cassandra might have given some retort of the other alleging they knew how it felt, but then Jessica spoke of being too far away to return home. The blonde might be lacking in compassion, but it did strike a chord of recognition. Eyes narrowed a little, observing her. The wood making a wood cutting sound as she removed the blade. "I doubt you've been as far as me," she stated, matter-of-factly. In a way, Jessica actually had, although there were precious little indicators to that effect. "But if-"
Above the crackle of flames, sirens could be heard steadily rising in volume. Most people were still at work on week day afternoons, but it seemed someone had the presence of mind to have dialled the emergency services. It would have taken a while for them to get this close. Now they were closing in, police and all. Cassandra, though, far from simply retreating, seemed to be readying herself for a confrontation; brow furrowed, head lowering and fists clenching.
"Everyone's a critic," she fumed.
"Oh, you'd be surprised," Jessica retorted smoothly, hand rubbing the pre-teen's arm reassuringly as the knife was pulled from the wood. The girl in her arms made a quiet sound, and Jessica just hushed her. "I'm-" she paused, looking over her shoulder as the sounds of sirens filled the air. "I'm gonna let the girl go, then you and me? We're going somewhere else."
There was a tone in her voice that meant the woman had little choice in the matter. It wasn't one she used often, that stern note even as she looked at the man on the pole. His fingers were twitching, residual spazms in the nerves as the blood poured down his arms. He was incoherent, breathing ragged and eyes rolling. Terror and relief mingling on his face.
"OK?"
A snigger of laughter erupted quietly from the blonde. She found something amusing about Jessica's declaration, like hearing an infant state it was going to take over the stock market. "Oh, we are, are we?" She reorted, the fingers of on hand rhythmically tapping against thumb. "And where, pray tell, are we going to head? Coffee and doughnuts, perhaps?"
Cassandra's attention returned to the man and, although still facing Jessica, the temptation to suddenly end his life in a swift and brutal fashion, was clearly in play.
"Or maybe you're thinking of taking me to church... Have me confess my sins? Perhaps they'd let me do a sermon of my own. Those 'fire and brimstone' speeches really don't do the real thing justice, you know."
Jessica rolled her eyes, squaring her shoulders. "Funny. You know, you're right. Armageddon's so much worse than that. There's a lot more blood involved. Guts, demons, monsters more horrible than you can imagine. It's people turning on one another and you having to kill a superior officer because he was injured in the field and you can't carry him back."
Her shoulders lifted in a shrug. "I was more thinking away from here. I don't think the police'd take too kindly to this whole... Scene." Her other hand waved towards the burning building. "They'll be coming for you anyway. Might as well give them a chase and see if you can't get a head start on getting to his bosses." The air was filled with flashing blue lights as the sirens came closer, police and fire-services approaching rapidly.
"If you stay here, they will shoot you. And then you'll never get your revenge."
That first line of thought got Cassandra's attention more readily than it might have with others. Armageddon? There was something about it, the tone of it, which was recognised as honesty. Recognised as... Similar. Not same, but... Similar. "I don't have to imagine," came her cryptic, if solemn, reply.
Worrying lip in what seemed like a rare moment of truly inner reflect, it was unlikely that forgiveness was on the cards, but the blonde did appear to be thinking of the man in terms of irrelevance, for she was looking away, to the ground, thinking. Her reasoning for all this was justified and yet... Glancing over at Jessica, once more, she regarded her anew. Wondered what quite to make of her. Destiny, if it even existed, was not usually so fortuitous.
"Release the child," Cassandra agreed, seemingly on the cusp of what might approach civility. Posture relaxing just that little bit more, moving as if to tentatively join her.
"Me, neither," Jessica assured softly, truth in her words and eyes, even as she lowered the girl to the floor again. She turned her, hands on her tiny shoulders. "You're going to be OK now," she said quietly. "Just go and sit with your mom and your brother and the police'll take care of you."
The girl did as she was told, too afraid to do anything else even as Jessica straightened up and looked at the blonde, then past her to the man on the pole and his family. Cars started to screech to a halt, the fire service getting there first and Jessica moved towards Cassandra with a sense of urgency. "We have to go. Now. We can talk more when we're away from here." It was an underlying promise to explain. To reassure. And maybe to help, but she didn't know if she could abide by the mutilation of innocent people. She needed to understand more before she knew whether or not the man deserved what had happened to him. Or if his bosses deserved what was coming to them.
The ambulance was the first to arrive, quickly followed by others. As Cassandra began to walk her way, radio traffic could be heard and all seemed well, until horrified accusations were cried out at the parting blonde from her victims. An authoritarian command issued for her to turn around. A call she ignored. Hearing it repeated had no effect, other than a light blue glow starting to surround the gauntlet worn on forearm. A third time was added with a threat to use force and she turned. Turned, but refused to place hands on hand, even as guns were levelled in her direction.
"Tell them they'll regret it..."
Jessica looked at Cassandra for a moment, seeing the faint glow and then she swallowed, looking at the police through her hair. She had ducked her head so they didn't get a good look at her face. She lifted her own hands to show that she wasn't a threat, chewing on her lower lip. "They won't listen to me." she said, looking at the men as they bared their arms, mostly aimed at Cassandra due to what the family was telling them, her hair still providing a curtain to protect her from being seen. "Not now."
She glanced behind them. They weren't surrounded, the pathway and road behind them was clear for now, at least.
"Put your hands on your head!" It was shouted through a megaphone.
"Our only hope is to run." Jessica said, head tilted a little towards Cassandra so that she would hear her.
"No," replied the family's source of torment. That same forearm bent at the elbow, glow intensifying around the metal. Something charging, something building, preparing to be unleashed. "It's really not."
"PUT THE WEAPON DOWN ON THE FLOOR NOW! YOU WILL COMPLY OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE!"
"Try me..."
Unwillingness was met with the brute force of deadly spinning metal. Fingers depressed triggers, rounds transferred from magazine to chamber, ejecting with terrifying speed. Training instructed them to aim for the centre of mass. Without hardened protection, Cassandra's chest would suffer critical damage, as each penetration brought with it a successive rupturing of organs. Bone would chip, if not splinter. Flesh would give way. Expertise in ballistics would be brought in to analyse the impact of each blast through her fragile human frame.
But they never met.
That same electric blue charge jolted forth in an instant, trapping each bullet in a magnetised web, interrupting their journey through the air with an impressively defensive display of mystic energies. For a moment, it was something to be in awe of. Something unable to be matched by technology. The existence of magic might be acknowledged, but seeing it in action was something else, entirely.
"Elemental, my dear Watson," smiled Cassandra, feeling the air around her literally starting to heat, as she somehow brought each trapped bullet towards her. the objects starting to spin round her person, even as the nearby atsmophere began to shift the air into what at first seemed like a haze, then brightened... Red, orange... The spinning firearm projectiles starting to melt, dissolving into long, thin streaks of molten metal. At first, it might have seemed some compulsive display of peace. A message to show that the intent to do harm would be met by transformation.
But as the shielding inferno gathered pace, Cassandra's philosophy was revealed as very much one of vengeance.
Super-heated metal slag was spat out with all the force of a cannon. The sheer speed of it immediately slicing through the police cruiser and carving a lancing path straight through one of the offending Officers. Cassandra's surrounding wall of flame virtually woofing straight after it, in one huge ball of hurricane-like incineration, aimed directly at the law enforcer's partner. The temperature so high, they were flashed down to little more than a charred skeleton. Little more than a scant few pieces of equipment left upon them to signify their job in life.
Would she also now turn on the paramedics and firefighters?
Would she kill the family out of spite, too...?
"What're you doing?!" Jessica shouted above the roar of the flames and the startled shouts of the remaining police officers, cowering behind the doors of their cars like that was going to protect them from Cassandra's wrath. "Just leave - come on, we can... Let's just go."
A part of her did not want to just abandon this woman in this world - presumed to be an other-worlder, just like herself - and burning homes was never a good start in a new place.
The heat made a sweat break out on Jessica's forehead and she had to step back and to the side just to get away from it before she, too, was engulfed in the flames. "Stop it! You're not helping your case!" The only good thing about the element surrounding Cassandra was that Jessica was now effectively hidden from view.
"I'm not here because I'm lost... I'm here because I found my way back home."
When that encircling wall of flame died down, Cassandra looked every bit the angry, scorned goddess those destructive actions might have framed her as. Yet, she was very mortal. A being as composed of flesh and blood as Jessica, herself. For all her defiance, there was something in the words she had just spoken which seemed to trigger odd feelings.
Home.
She had found it and yet... Things had changed. Altered. Become foreign.
For a moment, dwelling on this most uncomfortable of facts, she did look lost. Gaze redirected itself back at Jessica and uncertainty surfaced within the warrior's mind, even as would-be victims continued to scatter in search of cover. Uncertainty soon followed by the ever-constant need to lash out. The flames might have gone, but now it was Jessica at who that gauntlet was raised and aimed at.
She did not trust her. The brunette. The... The creature which had stopped her from acting out her need for violence. Head shook slowly from side to side, in the universal sign for 'no' and Cassandra began stepping slowly back, ready to flee in exactly the opposite direction.
"Things are different." Jessica said, almost pleading the woman not to flee and disappear, possibly to cause more harm than good in her efforts to get revenge for whatever wrong had been done to her, if that was even possible. Jessica knew of no way to get back through the portal. It ached, sometimes, but then she thought about everything she had here, her friends and Tseng and she knew she would not give it up.
That made her a bad soldier, the fact that she was AWOL, but Jessica did not care. Not here in this place which could be considered a form of utopia for her. "You don't have to fight."
She knew it was a losing battle, any tentative trust she had built with the woman gone in an instant. Compared to a magic user, Jessica was little to no threat. She didn't know how to fight them, they had all been killed where she came from, a threat too great to be allowed to survive. She swallowed, her hands still lifted though this time it was to show Cassandra that there was no need to barbeque her.
"It's weird, I know. Fighting's all I know, too." Her own mind was trying to work out how she could get out of this situation. If the woman fled one way, it was better for Jessica to flee in another. She shifted her weight, almost imperceptibly, bracing herself for a blow, perhaps, or for a quick movement of her feet that would have her disappearing away from the authorities. She was just glad they had not got a good look at her.
Something tensed in the blonde's posture. Had she been closer, a repetitive clenching of jaw would be seen. That same glow from before shimmered around the gauntlet, but it was momentary. There was conflict in Cassandra. An emotional fracturing nobody else had properly witnessed, but Jessica just had. The words might not have been listened to, had it not been for the unexpected similarity recognised in what had been said.
"You'll fight," she replied in countering philosophy. "Because you can't afford not to. And neither can I."
Unable to accept the extended hand of pacifism, Cassandra fled. At the first manhole cover, she would enter the sewer and retreat back to lair, preparing to strike at her newly-revealed target.
Those words hit something inside of Jessica and she turned on her heel, doing the same thing Cassandra had and she fled in the opposite direction, mulling the woman's actions and words over in her mind. She heard the squeal of tires on the floor behind her as the ambulance swerved off to get the family to a hospital and the police in vain came after herself and Cassandra, but her feet were fleet enough and she had done enough running in her time that she disappeared over a fence and ran until she could no longer hear the wailing of sirens.
She found herself sagging against a wall, one hand in her hair.
She would fight. The woman had been right about that much. What was Jessica if not a soldier? It was an uncomfortable realisation and she shivered, curling in on herself, as she eased out of the alleyway to head back to the Fairmont.