Nowhere to Run

Dylan fell to her knees once more, having made it several blocks away from where they had been. She was clatching her head in blood-stained fingers, smearing crimson in her hair and on her cheeks. Blood continued to pulse from the wound on her shoulder and onto the ground in scarlet pools.

Her head was pounding as she gasped raggedly for breath and then darkness took over and she fell back into the dust, her head slamming onto the concrete with a sickening crunch and her eyes closing....


Only to open once more in a manner of seconds, a grin totally unlike the normal Dylan spreading across her face.

Kira took a breath and wiped away a bit of blood, leaning against a crumbling building. Why was she running after this girl? She couldn't keep this up for long.... Kira coughed and surged forward weakly. If anything attacked her....Kira shook her head and staggered on, dead-set on finding the girl shat had helped her.

Dylan, or should I say Axe, stood up carefully, that awful sneer still on her face. She brushed away the dust and then looked down at the significantly slower bleeding from the cut on her arm and shrugged it away.

She slowly tested her limbs, as if she hadn't had them before, and then slowly scanned her surroundings.

Kira quietly cursed in Russian. She couldn't keep going. She couldn't. The Russian girl turned and begain the slow, painful walk back to her safehouse, where she knew she could heal enough to keep going without almost collapsing every other step.

Axe's gaze landed on the place where she had fallen where the dust was scuffed and her blood was scattered lightly around it. She kneeled down and followed the trail down the street with her eyes, her curiousity triggered. Her eyes narrowed with concentration and she stood, beginning to floow the tracks and trail of blood back to where she had ran from.

Kira sat down in her supply basement, leaning against one of the shelves. It may not be the most comfortable, but it was the safest room in the house. Kira caught herself worrying about the other girl. Scolding herself, she settled down until she was a little bit more comfortable. Gripping a knife in each hand, she closed her eyes and hoped to get a little rest.

"Care to tell me why you were following me?" Axe said in a light, lilting voice from her perch on one of the shelves. Her katana was balanced in her lap, the silver gleaming brightly in the dim lighting.

She looked down on Kira with a devilish smile gracing her features and a single drop of blood fell from her arm onto the floor.

Kira was on her feet in an instant, and regretted it instantly. The world spun for a moment, and she leaned against the shelves for support. She glared up at the intruder a moment before recognizing her. But something was....different.

"I followed because I did not vant you hurt. Problem?" She gripped her knives tightly under her sleeves.

"Just slightly." Axe jumped nimbly from the shelf and landed with only the slightest sound. "Russian, I presume?" She asked with a wry smiled, only taking her eyes from her examination of the blade in her hands once to glance sideways at the girl.

"I don't know why a stranger such as yourself would care for my well-being when it seems that you can't even care for your own." She smiled again, just slightly, as she swung the blade experimentally. "Alas, it seems as if your wound was well dressed by someone with a practiced hand, other than your own. So, where is this other person might I inquire?" She looked up to meet her gaze with a daring challenge.

Kira's eye narrowed. "Da. Russian. And, I vould think you vould remember fixing something like this." She was silent for a moment. "You are not the girl I know. Who are you?"

Axe, for the first time that day, actually seemed truly confused. "I don't know what you are talking about. My name is Axe and I have never seen one such as yourself in all of my travels." Then her eyes hardened again. "Stop! I refuse to be fooled by your mind games."

"Axe...." Kira murmured. "Vell, Axe, I remember--"The Russian stumbled over the word "--you fixing this. So, tell me again. Who. Are. You?" She let one sleeve slip down to reveal the knife in her hand.

Axe cocked her head to the side and smiled broadly before she placed her left foot securly behind her, planting it into the floor and brandishing the sword in front of her. Her left hand was outstretched for balance, giving the effect that she was a graceful dancer. Aside from the glint of light on steel and the murderous light in her eyes.

Kira let her other sleeve fall back and gripped the knives. She pushed off the shelves, swaying slightly, ready to fight. The only problem was....the Russian was far too weak to put up a fight. She wasn't about to let Axe know that, though.

Axe bowed mockingly and then curled her fingers in the traditional sign of "come and get me."

Kira's face remained blank. "Look, I do not vant to fight, and I do not vant to hurt other humans. Ve should save our strength for the неестественные чудовища outside...." She tried to reason. The Russian was not stupid, she knew that she would be seriously injured, if not killed, in this fight. Reason was the only way out of this....if Axe would listen.

Axe raised an eyebrow and then abruptly straightend, her violet hair swishing around her face. Her golden eyes were narrowed with the likeness of a stalking panther. They were eyes that shouldn't be trusted.

"I don't know who you are, or what you've done. But you interest me like none ever have before. You speak of me like you have met me before, even though I have no memory of your face before you first stepped in this room not 20 minutes ago." She considered her words for a moment before she gripped the pommel of her sword and slid it into the sheathe with a resounding click.

"Alright, We will not fight."

Kira held back a sigh of relief and slipped her sleeves over her hands again, placing the knives back into their proper positions. "I am glad you think that vay." She looked at Axe for a moment, thinking how odd it was that her personality had changed so abruptly.

Personality....

"How is it that I....interest....you?" She raised an eyebrow inquiringly.

"It seems that, as you must be lying, you have a talent for it. You followed me even though it seems that you are too weak to stand properly..." She trailed off. "As I don't understand why I was running in the first place, nor how I came to be running from this very place that you seem to dwell in. I guess that... You may be right as to how you have met me before. Alothough none of it adds up."

Confusion riddled her features as she puzzled over it.

Personality......

Personality......

A solution struck Kira, one that was so obvious she smacked her forehead for not seeing it before. Once again, she regretted her decision, and found herself leaning on the shelves again as she waited for the stars to clear.

Her voice took on a new coldness as she addressed Axe's words. "I can stand just fine on my own, спасибо." Her eye narrowed. "And I am not lying, either. Do you have proof?"

"Proof as to what?" She asked absently, her eyes slightly distant.

"Proof if I lie." Kira felt a bit of irritation rise up in her, which she pushed back down. "You seem....vhat is term....out of it. Vhy?"

Axe blinked and shook her head in an attempt to clear it. She crossed her arms over her chest and sighed deeply. "You have made me wonder about things that I have wondered about myself. You, in fact, seem to believe your story. As of right now I have only my own self to trust for the proof that I need. That I do not recall ever meeting you."

Kira wrapped an arm around herself, holding her other arm close to herself, and leaned her head onto the shelves. "I am sure of my story as well....Ve may both be wrong...?" She suggested quietly, unsure of how Axe would react.

Axe herself was finally away of the throbbing in the back of her skull and the searing pain from the cut on her shoulder. She struggled to keep her discomfort hidden, the only visible sign were her clenched fists.

She focused on the girl once more and pushed the pain away from her mind. "And yet, it seems unlikely that both of us can believe in such lies completely and be wrong. Alas, I had certainly never met you before. And that cannot be a lie as I truly believe it." She tried to sort out the possibilities.

"For now, let's just say that you're right, we're both wrong. Would it not be that one of us must be lying directly to the other, fully aware of the fact?"