Fight or Flight

Serenity and The Creator's battle comes to a climax, who will be the winner with Arai and Serenity's contracts on the line?

Serenity's feet hit the floor quietly as she gripped the pole of her scythe with both hands. She then swung it out with all of her force, the weapon growing larger and larger as it vaulted out towards the Creator. He reacted quickly, spinning around and lifting his arms up to his face. Serenity's heart began pumping nearly out of her chest. Alessio had her attacking her friend as if she was trying to kill him. Before she could even finish worrying the blade hit the Creator. He'd jumped back, the only part of him being injured was his face which got a small scratch.

Alessio didn't even get the time to react before the Creator was coming up with a different spell. After a few seconds nothing happened, Serenity jumped back, taking a protective stance in front of Alessio. She slammed her large scythe down, looking around for a possible threat Alessio was missing.

"The spell is long, this is getting dangerous Alessio don't you think I need to go on the offensive?" Serenity asked in a low voice. Alessio didn't respond, he just stuck his hands in his pockets.

"Alessio!" Serenity tried to turn around but Alessio strengthened his hold on her, forcing her to keep the same position. Suddenly the lights in the stadium crackled and Serenity looked up. Meteors began falling from the sky.

The weapon in Serenity's hands disappeared, in her hands appeared twin pistols. She shot at two different flaming rocks simultaneously. A blue pulsing energy left the barrel of the gun, when it hit the rocks they split apart. Smaller pieces of the rock continued to fall down, Alessio moved out of the way of most of the downfall. 

Serenity managed it better than expected, she launched herself into the air, landing on a piece of flaming rock and less than a second later jumping up to a different one and shooting at the one she was on before. She crossed the room multiple times this way, rising higher and higher as Alessio tried to make her follow the Creator.

Without talking she was naturally in sync enough with Alessio to figure out his ideas. Dominant and submissive partners couldn't read each others minds, but there were definitely different levels of natural sync. Of somehow being on the same page intuitively. It was a phenomena that was heavily researched without much progress. Naturally it was attributed to God. In this particular case, Serenity knew that Alessio was trying to get her close to the Creator so that his spell would damage him, forcing him to call it off.

Suddenly Serenity's balance was lost, she fell down straight to the ground. She frantically looked around, to find out how she could have lost her balance. That's when she noticed there were no rocks. She hadn't lost her balance, Cynthia had waited until Serenity had climbed high enough then had the Creator cancel the spell.

She pushed her body into a flip, curling herself forward and letting gravity do the rest of the work. She landed on her feet, the two pistols still in her hands. She didn't see the Creator and quickly spun to the other direction. He was coming at her and fast. 

She quickly shot one arm out and shot at him. Alessio had experience with guns from Ash and Serenity was classically trained in guns but she hadn't used them in at least a year and her aim wasn't the best to begin with. Serenity missed and within a second he was on her. He slammed his palm into her stomach, knocking her back.

She raised her hand up to her mouth to cough and when she looked down it was stained red. She and Alessio locked eyes and she nodded to let him know she was fine to go on. 

She was attacked once again, a palm to the underside of her chin, knocking her up. She flipped her body over to land on her hands but she was too slow. The Creator kicked her wrists and knocked her over on her side. She knew she'd need some distance to have a fighting chance, hand to hand combat was definitely a weak point of hers.

She jumped back again, then let out a large squeal as she found the Creator on top of her. A palm directly to the middle of her chest sent her down to the ground, hard. Again, she coughed up blood. She struggled to keep consciousness, black dots clouding her vision.

She was lifted up by the back of her shirt, her limbs dangling helplessly. She heard Cynthia's voice, "Sorry," the woman gently caressed Serenity's face. "Alessio this should teach you not to challenge me." Cynthia said to Serenity's partner, a certain ferocity clear in her voice.

Serenity fought back to consciousness, Alessio noticed but refrained from controlling her. Serenity shoved Cynthia away from her then without a weapon, ran to her. Despite Cynthia running away and Wesley running towards her Serenity's speed was much faster than theirs. She reached Cynthia and summoned her scythe, wrapping the long, curved blade around Cynthia's tanned neck.

Huffing and fighting for air, Serenity panted out: "You can't count me out that easily. I may not be the strongest, but I have something you don't because I am weaker than you. That something is called determination. I have your partner in a inescapable attack. I win."

Her scythe wobbled as she struggled to stay on two feet. Alessio shouted, "She won. CALL IT!" He was clearly impatient. That was because he and anybody else with eyes could tell if they didn't call it soon they would lose. Serenity couldn't keep going with the sole fuel of raw determination for much longer.

"Alessio a-" That was all Serenity heard from the announcer before she collapsed. When she woke up she was in the school's hospital. She was bandaged up in various places but the school nurse had used healing spells to heal her.

"They're recalculating our ranks right now." Alessio was standing in a corner, his hands in his pockets. Serenity blinked a few times and noticed that the room was quite full. Ash was mindlessly summoning guns, inspecting them then sending them away. When he noticed Serenity was awake he stopped and gave her a smirk.

"Killer, S." Ash winked at her

"AYE SERENAAAAAA!" Jamie clapped as he spoke loudly. The nurse began trying to shush him but Jamie didn't listen, of course he wouldn't. When Jamie started, it was very hard to stop him. "WE WERE UP IN THE STANDS WATCHING YOU GIRL!" He put his hand up to gesture for a high five. Serenity gave him a sharp glare, Jamie slowly put his hand down and shrugged it off.

"The creator was 'bout to beat'ya then you came out of nowhere and were all  like 'I'm getting you with my determination' and then Cynthia-" Jamie started describing her fight to her.

"She was there." Ash rolled his eyes at Jamie.

"Either way, you did very well Serenity." Sarah said gently. They all talked for about an hour until the nurse dismissed her. After that, things calmed down a little. Alessio didn't sign them up for anything for a few weeks, it was just regular school for them. Their rankings came back, Serenity and Alessio skyrocketed up. It made the two minor celebrities for about a week before it all wore off.

     One day, as the crew was laying around playing UNO afterschool Alessio announced, "You guys remember Kassum right?"

Allen's death reverberated through Serenity's body, the sights, sounds smells- all of it came back to her. She swallowed her tears then nodded. Alessio explained they were going back to see him. His church was under federal investigation and was linked to the disappearance of two students from their school.

"Kassum? Who's that, is that the priest guys you went and fought a while ago?" Arai said, gently thumbing through his large book he carried everywhere. He was the newest addition to their group in accordance to Serenity's win.

"Mhm, hey can I use your book?" Ash asked.

"Uh.."

"Trust me, it'll be a great meme."

"Uh..."

"Arai, I've used everybody in this groups weapon's before. Consider it... a rite of passage."

"Uh...."

Ash was telling the truth, but if Arai knew the mishaps that had happened then he wouldn't even consider it. Ash tried to use Serenity's scythe. He swung it, overshot and ended up being sent flying over the court yard. When he landed the scythe got stuck in the freshmen dorm, causing her scythe to be damaged and all the freshmen to flip out. When Ash tried using Jamie's war hammer it was too heavy. Ash picked it up, fell backwards and the hammer landed on Jamie's foot- breaking his big toe. When Ash used Sarah's small healing spellbook (recently though she'd upgraded to using pure healing magic) he ended up infecting a quarter of the student body with a stomach bug.

Without Arai's permission Ash took the large book. He flipped around and then smirked, he chanted something in latin. Before Serenity, Alessio, Sarah or Jamie could run out of the room- all the doors and windows disappeared which left them locked in the room.

"Why are you guys running....?" Arai asked slowly.

"Because when Ash uses other people's weapons somebody gets hurt." Sarah explained in her dainty high pitched way of speaking.

Ash chanted out something else and suddenly the room became a ballpit.

"Why would you even have a spell like this!?" Serenity asked Arai, trying to fight her way to the top of the ball pit. She was at the bottom and could barely breathe.

"Peter thought it would be a good prank." Arai responded.

"Ash cut it out, I can hardly breathe." Alessio demanded.

"That spell doesn't have a reversal mode." Arai explained, "I'd suggest to open the doors and let the balls out but Ash got rid of those."

"And I sort of lost the spell tome, sorry. But I did tell you it'd be a good meme." Ash said casually. Wherever he was in the ballpit Serenity knew he was smirking.

Serenity fought her way through the multi colored balls and found Alessio's dresser. She climbed on top of it and managed to poke her head out of the balls.

"FIND IT!" Serenity screamed.

The group spent the next half-hour looking for the spell tome which had somehow gotten under the bed. Ash reversed the spell and Jamie forced the door open. A sea of balls flooded into the hallways, tripping people and knocking them down.

"Yup. Good meme." Ash nodded, satisfied with his work. Though his satisfaction didn't last for long. They were all given detention for the next week despite protests that only Ash was involved.

After that week the group finally could go on their mission to hunt down Kassum. They'd be gone for about a week, or at least they were cleared to be gone for a week by the administration.

Serenity pulled her large luggage outside, barely able to carry it. The group was getting on a communal bus. A bunch of other teams were investigating Kassum so they'd all share one large bus.

"Serin, what all did you pack?" Jamie walked up to her, carrying only a backpack.

"I packed 12 pairs of uniform pants, 8 uniform skirts, 14 uniform shirts, 2 uniform blazers, 9 pairs of regular pants, 4 regular skirts, 18 regular shirts, 6 pairs of shoes, hygiene stuff, a sleeping bag, a blanket, a pillow, a stuffed animal, a few books to read, all the homework and classwork I'll be missing on this trip and snacks." Serenity explained.

"We're leaving... FOR A WEEK! AND WE HAVE A HOTEL!" Jamie exclaimed, his loudness attracting the rest of their team. Ash, Arai, Sarah and Alessio came over and Serenity had to explain to each one all that she'd packed.

"How many capes?" Alessio asked flatly.

"W-what I don't know what you're talking abou-"

"How. Many?"

"Only 15"

"Only 15?"

"Heh."

The group got on the bus, sitting in seats next to each other near the front. Alessio liked to say there were two types of people, ones who sat at the back of the bus and ones who sat at the front. Serenity always asked about people who sat in the middle but Alessio always changed the subject.

Right as the bus began moving Serenity shouted "WAIT!" The bus driver pressed on the breaks and all eyes turned to her.

"I forgot to pack any socks." Serenity said sheepishly.

"You packed....ALL of that unnecessary crap. And you forgot.... socks." Jamie seethed, only jokingly mad.

"Yes."