61 A Love Story

A fist appears in front of my face with the concussive force of his explosion behind it and I twist around, raising my leg in a roundhouse kick that hits nothing but air.

My ribbons all snap into a triple X shape over my back just in time to block the pair of oversized daggers that come crashing down, pushing me to the ground.

I have almost no time to recover and have to use my wings to parry the next blow that comes for my neck.

My wings are the least durable part of me and I feel a spike of pain lance through me as half of one of my wings gets sheered clean off, even as I use the force of the blow to scramble back to my feet.

He disappears again, but this time he appears right in the path of one of my ribbons that wraps around him and pulls him towards my waiting claws.

He disappears again, but I saw it coming and never actually bothered to commit to the attack, allowing me to spin around and parry his blades with me left arms elbow sword, completing the spin by lunching forward with my right, intending to tear into his chest.

However, instead of the sensation of piercing flesh all I feel is fire washing over me as he teleports again, only half a foot to the side and as my strike goes wide, I realise something.

This isn't a fight.

I dodge his counter strike by such a tight margin that I feel it clip my ear and I return with a knee to the stomach.

We aren't fighting.

He twists around my knee and sends an elbow for my face that gets blocked by a ribbon.

We are dancing.

Two more ribbons follow, shattering the ground where he stood, hitting nothing.

This is no tale of violence.

He lunges forward with one blade, swinging the other and I thrust my left hand to meet the first blade, allowing it to pierce through my palm and into my arm while letting me grab it's guard with my claws, even as I duck under the second, sending my ribbons forward in retaliation.

This is a tale of 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦.

He is half a second too slow in releasing his blade and gets clipped by my ribbons before he ca disappear, leaving one weapon behind that I pull out of my arm and snap in half.

We are like lovers.

He appears in front of me again, swinging down with his remaining sword, only to disappear to behind me.

Dancing to a tune that only we can hear.

I spin, but he is already gone, teleporting back to where he first appeared and launching a kick into my side that shatters half my ribs and ruptures one of my lungs.

It's beautiful.

He tries to push the advantage, but he's not the only one who can ignore pain and he quickly has to teleport again in order to avoid my ribbons flailing behind me.

I wish this moment could go on forever.

He appears in front of me and I swing my claws but he catches them both and prepares to kick me in the chest, no doubt hard enough that he would rip my arms clean off.

Is this feeling what love is?

Before his foot can even start to come crashing towards me, dozens of thin tentacles spear out of my stomach towards him, only a couple manage to pierce his foot before he is gone again.

Him, like the sky.

The tentacles come together to form a singular thick trunk that swings out wide, crashing through a building where he was a moment ago.

Always within sight.

He appears above me this time, dropping down with a heavy kick that uses gravity to its advantage.

Yet impossible to grasp.

Six ribbons pierce towards him and hit nothing as he appears crouched in front of me, landing an uppercut to my gut that sends me airborne.

Me, like the sea.

Four rapid teleportations disorient me enough that he lands a clear blow with his remaining blade that cuts one of my arms clean off.

No matter how it is disturbed.

I land on my ribbons, holding myself over the ground as a new arm rapidly grows in place of my old one.

It always returns to how it was.

He appears before me again, but I already saw it coming and he has no time to react before my tail slams into him, sending him crashing through a building, too disoriented from the hit to teleport.

The only signs of our affection.

The building crumbles, unable to handle the extra punishment, just the same as all the other buildings around us.

Are the scars we leave on the earth.

He rises from the rubble and for a moment, our eyes meet and it is as if time stops and the entire world falls away as we spend an eternity lost in each other.

I'm in love.

The moment passes, and he is moving again. But I can feel it in the way he attacks me, the way that he tries to kill me. I can feel that he understands.

We are lovers.

His sword slashes at me and I don't bother to defend, allowing him to land his hit so that I can land my own before he is gone again.

Dancing to a tune no one will ever know.

𝘉𝘦𝘦𝘱! 𝘉𝘦𝘦𝘱!

And then, like waking up from a dream, it is over.

I look down to my side, at one of my pockets that is miraculously still in good condition.

Inside of it, is the phone the Elite gave me to conduct business with them and that tone was to let me know that now is the time to disengage and head back.

It almost makes me cry.

I suddenly find myself feeling lost, just staring at the phone in silence.

It's over. Ruined.

It feels like for the first time in my life, I had a glimpse at something beautiful. Something ephemeral.

Something that I might never feel again.

They say true love only strikes once.

An explosion, a familiar sound that brings me nothing but joy, sounds off next to me but I can't even bring myself to look up.

Into the cage formed around me by my ribbons walks Thirteen.

He doesn't say anything and when I finally look at him, we both remain silent, simply staring into each others eyes.

Then he glances down at my phone and he simply grunts and turns on his heel.

Then he just.. walks away.

Left alone in a cage of my own limbs, I don't know how long I stand there, staring into nothing.

Will I ever feel that again?

Do I even want to? If it will leave me feeling so empty afterwards?

I don't know.

Maybe I never will.

But when I eventually hear the sounds of an engine approaching, I turn to see Clara's car stopped just where the street starts to turn into rubble.

When she gets out of the car to stare in my direction, concern evident on her face, I manage to smile to myself.

If nothing else, at least I have someone I can work out my feelings on. Maybe I'll even find an answer.

In the end, even after an incredibly vigorous night, the answer I came to was rather simple, if disappointing.

I have come to a conclusion that the feelings I experienced that night are likely to be a one time thing, or perhaps just incredibly rare.

It was a moment.

A moment of beauty make no doubt about it, but not something that can be recreated. Not intentionally at least.

Like an aurora.

It's beautiful when it happens, but we have no control over it and once it's over, we can only mourn it's passing, all the while we look back on the memory and celebrate that it exists, even if only in our minds.

But after a couple of days of moping around, I decide that I should just move on.

After all, I want to have fun and enjoy myself. Spending my time complaining about things is counterintuitive to that goal.

With that in mind I decide to take a stroll, wonder around and clear my head a little, maybe even find something interesting to take my attention.

So naturally the first thing I did was visit the empire state building.

I would have gone for the statue of liberty, but thanks to the amount of delusional villains that have either tried to steal or destroy her, it is rather tightly guarded.

Not to mention the fact that anyone trying to mess with the statue will find themselves face to face with a rather annoyed Legend very quickly, seeing as he can move just shy of the speed of light.

Now, while I may be confident in my power, Legend is of a whole different breed and I don't fancy being turned into a disco ball.

I don't know what I really expected though, I've never really been one for appreciating sights like this.

To be honest, the only thing I really thought about while standing all the way up there was how long it would take me to hit the ground if I jumped, and whether or not I would actually die.

In the end, I left the building disappointed.

But I can't deny that the walk allowed me the opportunity to clear my head a little. Enough that as I am making my way back home I manage to catch a faint whiff of a vaguely familiar scent, so light that I wouldn't have noticed it if my head was still full of thoughts.

Deciding to follow the trail hoping to find something entertaining, I come across a strange sight and it takes me a moment to realise where I recognise the scent from.

Lying down in a random alleyway in a mildly deserted area of the city is a young woman, more of a girl really.

But what makes me pause is that she is a cape. Not just that but a 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘳 cape.

It's the little Asian girl from the club a couple weeks ago.

Honestly, she really looks like shit.

Smells like shit too.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that she hasn't stopped partying since I saw her, with how bad she stinks.

Still, she is a cape and that by itself makes her infinitely more interesting than anyone who isn't one, so I decide to not just leave her lying here.

Decision made, I heft her up into a bridal carry, wrinkling my nose slightly as her stink wafts deep into my nose.

My god this girl needs a thorough cleaning.

Ah well, I'm sure Uppercrust won't mind if I bring a guest to his guest flats right?

I mean, they 𝘢𝘳𝘦 guest flats. It's literally their whole purpose to house guests.

Eh, I'm sure it'll be fine.

...

"You cannot just bring random people of the street here!!" Clara shouts at me as I start running the shower, letting it heat up while I strip the girl of her gross clothes.

My own clothes will probably be way too big on her, which sounds like it would be funny, so I'm definitely not getting anything more fitting.

I start humming lightly to myself after I put the girl in the tub and start cleaning her, using liberal amounts of shampoo and conditioner.

Ok, to be honest I just poured a bunch of everything available on her because, and I cannot express this enough, she 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘴.

"Are you even listening to me!?"

I wonder what her power is though? Hopefully it's not something boring, otherwise this whole thing would have been a waste of time.

Well, not a complete waste I guess, since I could just eat her if she's too boring.

Wait, will I get addicted to whatever drugs are in her system if I eat her?

Hmm, maybe I should hold out on that then.

"Uppercrust is 𝘯𝘰𝘵 going to be happy about this! These are supposed to be 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘦 rooms! We can't just let guests stay in places that are known to the PRT!"

Finally deciding that Clara is getting a bit too hysterical, I turn around and quick as a flash I grab her throat and push her against the wall, pressing out bodies together.

She immediately stops talking and starts blushing instead.

"It's fine~ she doesn't even know where we are~" I say say with a roll of my eyes, "and even then, it's rather hypocritical to call these private rooms no?~" I finish, referencing the cameras that this place was covered in when I first got here.

Naturally, I got rid of all of them once Clara and I started.. exploring deeper relations, shall we say.

Unfortunately, there is one thing I forgot to consider with my current course of actions, something that becomes quickly apparent to my enhanced nose.

Ah, fuck it.

I spare the little Asian girl a glance for a second before deciding that she'll be fine there for a while.

I have plenty of time before she wakes up.. probably.

With that thought carrying me, I lean forward and lock my lips with Clara's and pick her up, briefly spending a moment to turn off the shower so the girl doesn't drown as I take us to the bedroom.

I'm sure nothing bad will ever come of my impulsiveness.

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A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

Shoutout to JarOfOz, cuz I would have probably spent another couple of hour procrastinating this chapter if not for them :D

Also, the first half of this chapter left me so emotionally drained that I had to wait till the next day to finish it as I literally spent like, four hours just sitting and staring into space after writing it.

I just love it so damn much and I don't even care if anyone disagrees cuz ur just wrong. Tear felt Love, for the first time in her life. It was a fleeting, ephemeral thing that she will most likely never feel again and it was like eldritch madness.

By that I mean that people misunderstand that type of madness as some kind of insanity, when in reality it is simply comprehension. It's momentary understanding of something so incredibly profound that you will never be able to understand it again and that, more than anything, Burns you from the inside.

Just take a moment to imagine it, something so Beautiful that it stirs your very soul. Something that makes everything make sense, but then it's gone and you're back to how you normally are. You Know for certain that there is a level of understanding that exists out there, but no matter what you do, you will never feel it again.

It is both beautiful and incredibly painful and I love it.

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