Steel

I never thought it would end this way.  Being beheaded next to the girl of my dreams.  Life is odd in that respect.  You hope for one thing to happen, and then life decides to give it to you differently.  I hear the air whistle as the katana swings near my head and I remember how it all started.

�-� �-� �-�

It was a normal morning.  I walked into my speech class like usual and looked over at my table to see if she was there.

She was.  I could only see the back of her head, but she looked beautiful nonetheless.  She had long fiery red hair that was pulled back into a pony tail.  I was always the last one to get to class.  My last class was across the school, so I practically have to run to get here on time.

I walked over to my table and sat down across from her.  She glanced up from her book and smiled at me.  "Hi Jasmine," I said. 

"Hey, Christopher.  Are you ready to give your speech?" She asked.

“Not at all," I responded.

She nodded and slid her jaw string bag from the table.  She had that bag with her all the time, but I never saw her pull anything from it.  Maybe it was her make up or something.

“Alright class, let’s get started,” Mrs. Hummel said.  “Who wants to go first?”

Everyone in the class looked around nervously.  We were all wondering who the next victim.  I slid down in my seat, hoping that she wouldn’t notice me.  Jasmine saw me and chuckled a little.  I turned a deep shade of red.

 “Ah, Christopher.  You can present today,” Mrs. Hummel told the class.  D****t. Must have been my red face.

I got out of my seat and pulled my notecard from my pocket.  I walked to the front of the room and stood behind the podium.  I truly believe that I have a phobia about public speaking.  I get so nervous to give a speech.  Luckily I don’t vomit from my nerves.  Or at least I haven’t yet. I was still surprised that I was passing this class with the amount of fillers I use in one speech.

I looked out to the audience and saw everyone watching me.  That was what made my nervousness even worse.  I glanced at Jasmine half expecting her to give me a cold stare as well as the rest of the class.  She gave me a smile and a thumbs up.  Seeing her do that for me made me turn red again but it also gave me a surge of confidence.  I opened my mouth to give my speech, and was interrupted by the door opening.

Mrs. Hummel turned and looked at the door in surprise.  I guess she wasn’t expecting someone to show up.  A nicely dressed man walked into the room.  He had a very confident stance and he didn’t say anything when he walked into the room. 

“Can I help you?” Mrs. Hummel asked.  The man still didn’t speak.  He pulled out a very sleek black pistol and pointed it at Mrs. Hummel.  She gasped and took a step back.  Without hesitating the man pulled the trigger.  There was a loud crack and Mrs. Hummel was on the ground.  The kids who were unfortunate enough to be sitting behind her were now covered in her blood.

All at once, every student stood up and ran for the door blindly.  Some of them were blinded because Mrs. Hummel’s blood was in their eyes.  For some reason the man let the students rush past him.  Jasmine and I were the only ones left in the room.  The man slowly walked closer to Jasmine.  He stopped several feet in front of her and pointed the pistol to the center of her forehead.  I wanted to shout, run, or do something, but I was frozen behind the podium.  Jasmine didn’t look scared at all.  In fact she was slowly reaching for her bag on the ground.  I glanced back at the man to see if he noticed.  He didn’t.

I saw the man pull the trigger and I heard the loud gun fire.  I looked at Jasmine and I expected to see her lifeless body on the floor.  But I didn’t see that.  She was crouched on the floor with something that looked like a bamboo stick in her hand.  The man was now very angry that he missed.  He fired once more, but Jasmine dodged it.  Before the man could fire again she yanked on the top of her stick and out slide a blade!  She jumped up and flicked her wrist near the man’s throat.  She landed gracefully on a table and the man’s head slid off.  It rolled on the floor while the man’s body fell.  A pool of blood formed around the man’s neck.

That’s when I lost it.  I gasped a little and leaned against the wall behind me.  I slid down to the floor and I wrapped my hands around my knees.  I would have started to rock back and forth like a crazy person if Jasmine didn’t jump off of the table to walk over to me.  Her katana was still out and it left a trail of blood as she walked.  She stopped next to me and squatted so that we were at eye level. 

“You okay?” she asked. 

“NO! I’m not okay! Why the hell would I be okay?!” I scream.  I jumped up from sitting on the ground and started pacing.  Jasmine walked out in front of me and stopped me in my tracks.  She put her hands on my face and stared at me.  If I wasn’t so freaked out I would have been very happy that she was touching me.

“Christopher, you need to calm down,” she told me in a confidant voice, “We need to leave.  There are more men here who are probably wondering where he is.”  She pointed to the headless man on the floor with her bloody katana.

“How am I supposed to calm down?” I countered, “You just cut a man’s head off without remorse!” 

“What was I supposed to do?  Had I not killed him he would have blown your head off!”

She made a good point, but I was still wondering how she was able to kill a person and be okay with it.  So I decided to ask her about it.

“How are you able to kill someone so easily?”

She stared at me for a little while.  She sighed and wiped her blade off on her pants.  Now her black jeans had a crimson stripe on one leg.  It was hard to notice, but I could see the shine of wet blood.  She grabbed her sheath from the ground and slowly slid her sword into it.  She looked around for her bag and saw it on the ground next to the man’s head.  She calmly walked over to her bag and kicked the head out of the way.  She bent over and grabbed her bag from the ground and put her katana in it.  Then she placed the bag on her shoulders and walked over to me.

“I am able to kill people easily because that’s what I have been trained to do.”

“Trained?  By who?” I asked.

“By an agency called Teens Defending the Nation or TDN for short.  We are a group of teenage assassins that defend the United States from threats that its people could not wrap their minds against their plans.”

I was left speechless.  What could I say to that?

Jasmine shook her head like she knew that I could never understand.

“Look. I realize that this is a lot to take in, but we have to keep moving.  Men will be coming here soon.  We don’t want to be here when that happens.”

I was facing the back of the room, so I noticed the amount of men that were heading towards this room.  My eyes widen in fear.  How was Jasmine supposed to fight off that many guys with only one katana?

Jasmine saw my expression and she raised an eyebrow in confusion. 

“What?” she asked.

I pointed to the back of the room without speaking.  She turned around just as the men came rushing into the room.  They were all armed with katanas.  Some of them had two.

Jasmine ripped her bag off of her back and pulled out two katanas!  She pulled her swords out their sheaths and threw them at me.  “Hold those!” she yelled.  Just as I caught her sheaths, Jasmine started to cut the men to pieces.

The first man that approached her she sliced his head off.  His head rolled on the floor just like the last man.  Then another man came at her from her side and she sliced his arm and stabbed him through his chest.  He screamed and fell to the floor.  His arm however, was still attached to his body, but just barely.  The next man that came up to her decided to bring his two friends.  They formed a line in front of her.  I was afraid that three men were going to be too much for her, until I saw her smirk.  She sliced the men on her left and right across the stomach and sliced the center man diagonally across his chest.  All three men fell at the same time.

There were no more men coming into the room, lucky for us.  Jasmine lowered her katanas and turned to face me. 

“Could you pull out that piece of cloth from my bag?” she asked.  She looked so odd, to be standing over five dead bodies.  She was like an angel that was in charge of killing people.  She was really good at her job, but it looked so wrong.

Her purple hoodie and black jeans were stained with blood and gore from her battle.  The toes of her brown combat boots were soaked in blood, as was the floor around her.  Her face was dirty with blood and sweat.  But none of the blood on her clothes or her face was her own.  It was all from the men she just slaughtered.  In fact, she wasn’t hurt at all.  She went up against six grown men, and beat all of them without a scratch.

“Uh, yeah.  Sure.”  I set her sheaths down on the table next to me and reached inside her bag.  I felt around for a cloth and found one.  When I pulled it out, a sheathed dagger came out with it.  I handed the cloth to Jasmine and looked at the dagger. 

“Oh yeah,” Jasmine said, “I forgot I had that dagger in my bag.”

“What else do you have in this bag?”  I rummaged through her bag to see what else was in it.  I couldn’t tell though, because everything was wrapped in a thick cloth.

Jasmine started to clean the blood and flesh from her katanas.  “I have some ninja stars, another dagger, and some stun pellets.”

I looked up at her in question and raised an eyebrow.  She was still cleaning her blades, so she didn’t notice that was looking at her. 

“Stun pellets?  What are stun pellets?” I asked.

She finished cleaning her katanas so she wiped the blood and sweat from her face before tossing her bloody cloth at me.  I caught it and tossed it in her bag. 

“Stun pellets are little pellets that I throw at the ground and they explode with a bright flash that stuns my enemy.”  Jasmine walked around the table I was standing behind and stood right in front of me.  I felt my cheeks flare up as she leaned forward, to reach around me to grab her katana sheaths.  She placed her sheaths into her bag and turned to leave.

    “Come on.  We should get going,” Jasmine said.  With that she jogged out of the room, careful to gracefully leap over the bodies.

Once she left the room, I let out a huge sigh.  I didn’t realize that I was holding my breath until I let it out.  I leaned against the table to catch my breath.  In the midst of a war, with whom we still don’t know, I still get nervous when she gets closer.  When she leaned towards me, I thought, I hoped that she would kiss me.  But she was only after her sheaths.

As I gazed at the carnage of the battle, I couldn’t help but think that I shouldn’t be getting into all of this.  This wasn’t my world.  But when I looked at a man who died trying to hold his intestines in, I realized that this has become my world because there is someone out there who is trying to kill Jasmine.  And I will do anything to protect her, even if she is better at protecting herself than me.  Then I glanced down at the dagger on the table.  Should I take it?  It is Jasmine’s, but she either left it here, or she forgot about it.  I grabbed it and stuffed it into my pocket.  Now I have something to at least to protect myself with.

“Christopher! Let’s go!” Jasmine shouted from outside of the room.

I ran from the room being very careful to jump over the bodies littering the floor and not slip on the blood.  Jasmine was standing casually just outside of the door with her katanas drawn.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Now,” Jasmine responded, “we try to get out of the school without being caught or killed.”

“Sounds easy enough.”

“Yeah, it sounds easy but the school is crawling with foot soldiers.”

“Do you know who the leader of the foot soldiers is?”

“No, but I think I have a pretty good idea.”

She leaned around the corner to look up the stairs if there were any men.  She looked at me and jerked her head towards the stairs and she sprinted up them with me at her heels.  We stopped at the first landing so that Jasmine could check for more foot soldiers.  We slowly edged around the corner and walked up the second flight of stairs.  Once we were one step from the top she looked around the corner and snapped back around.  She looked at me and held up two fingers.  I nodded and decided to wait on the stairs for her.

She took a few deep breaths and bolted around the corner.  I was so tempted to look around the corner and watch her, but I stayed back.  I heard a loud thump as one man fell to the floor.  A few seconds later, I heard another thump.  I edged my way to the corner and looked around to see Jasmine standing over the two men.  They were even bigger than the last men she killed, only that they were both missing their heads.  I walked around the corner and jogged over to her.

“Wow,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said with a smile.

We both ran to the wall and edged our way towards the next corner.  Once we got there Jasmine turned to look at me and said in a whisper “We are going to sprint to the doors at the end of this hallway and run for the forest at the edge of the parking lot.  If we are lucky there will only be a couple of the foot soldiers and not the leader.”

I nodded in agreement.

Jasmine looked around the corner and nodded her head.  We both whipped around the corner and sprinted for the doors.  We got to the doors with no trouble and ran outside.  Once we hit the asphalt of the parking lot Jasmine stopped dead in her tracks.  I stopped a few feet in front of her and hissed “What are you doing?”

“Something’s not right,” she responded in a whisper.

“Does it matter?  Let’s just get out of here.”

The moment I said it, my arms were bound behind me by a large man.  I tried to turn to see who my captor was but I was hit by a katana hilt over my head.  I fell to the ground in a heap.  Before my vision faded to black, I saw Jasmine being surrounded by dozens of men.

�-� �-� �-�

When I came to I was on my knees with my hands cuffed behind my back.  I slowly raised my head and realized that I was still in the parking lot, but I was surrounded by dozens of foot soldiers.  Just as I was about to worry where Jasmine was I was tackled to the ground.

Jasmine’s voice was whispering in my ear. 

“Oh my goodness! Christopher, are you okay?!  Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine.  My head hurts a little, though.”

I was now fully aware of her hands that were wrapped around my neck.  Her hands were cuffed too, but they weren’t behind her back.  Just as I was about to ask her what happened and pair of black dress shoes came into my line of vision.

“Aw.  Love birds.  It makes me sick,” said the new person.

I slowly raised my head to look at this new person.  I noticed a pistol was holstered to his belt.  I had to raise my head quite a ways just to see this person’s head.  Once I saw their face, it was the face of an older man.  And by older I mean in his fifties.

“That’s Grey.  He’s leader of the Black Serpents; a group that is TDN’s biggest threat,” Jasmine whispered into my ear.

“No doubt your girlfriend has told you all about us but I will tell you anyway.” Grey told me in a bored voice.  “We are the Black Serpent.  A group that is dedicated to taking over the world in one way or another.  It’s a lofty goal, but we will get there.”

I raised my eyebrow in confusion.  Take over the world?  Who does this guy think he is?  “Take over the world?  Are you crazy?”  I asked.

Grey’s eyes blazed in anger.  I guess he doesn’t like being called crazy.  “I. Am.  Not.  Crazy!”  He then hit me across the face with the butt of his pistol.

“Christopher!” Jasmine shouted.  She hugged me tighter as I pulled myself up.  I felt her shaking against me and I glanced down at her.  She was crying and muttering I’m sorry about a thousand times.  Now I felt really bad.  She was the kickass assassin who could kill ten men without trying and she was crying because I was hit across the face.

“Ah, jeez.  Get her out of here!” Grey shouted.

Jasmine was pulled from the ground and tossed to the side.  She didn’t fight it either.  She just let herself get tossed.  She landed in a heap opposite from the gracefulness she showed earlier.  That’s when I realized that she had given up.  She wasn’t trying to get out of this.

I whipped my head to face Grey.  He was looking at Jasmine with a smirk.  Okay.  That’s it.  I’m gonna kill him.

Grey turned his head and faced me.  He raised his pistol to point it at me so that I was staring down the barrel of it.

“I am sorry, but I am going to have to kill you and your girlfriend.” Grey said.

“No you’re not,” I said in the coldest voice I could muster.

Grey shrugged his shoulders.  I stared down the barrel of his pistol and tried very hard not to shake in terror or to look away.  Right when I was sure he was going to pull the trigger, I heard a thump.  Grey and I looked over to my left to see Jasmine standing over the body of her guard with a bloody katana in her hands.

There was a pause before the chaos.  Everyone stared at her, surprised that she had a weapon.  Then several men barreled down on her, but she sliced anyone who came near to pieces.  There was another pause before more men were upon her when she pulled a katana from one of the bodies on the ground.  She ran over to me and in one quick flick of her wrist, my cuffs were broken.

She then shoved one of her katanas at me and ran off to fight more men.  I wasn’t quite sure what to do with a katana but I had no time to think about it.  A man came up to me (he’d rather fight the weakest link than the master) and swung his katana in a high arc above his head.  At this point I wasn’t even thinking, I plunged my katana into his chest.  I yanked it out and the man fell to the ground.  I looked around and noticed that there were no more men left save for Grey.  They were all piled around Jasmine.

I was happy and disappointed at the same time.  I was hoping to kill some more guys, but I probably wouldn’t have been able to.

Jasmine walked over to me and stood at my left.  We both turned to face Grey who was a deep shade of red.  Jasmine lifted her katana to point it at Grey and said “Hello.  My name is Jasmine Wolfe.  You killed my teacher.  Prepare to die.”

I couldn’t help but snort with laughter.  Only Jasmine would say a quote from a movie to threaten someone.

Grey on the other hand didn’t understand what she was saying.  So he decided to answer her threat in the only way he knew how--with gunfire.  I was so sure that we were done for when Jasmine was slowly moving forward, slicing the bullets in half before they could get more than an arms length from her.  She was then so close to Grey that he only stopped firing, to stand in shock as Jasmine’s katana blade was sticking out of his back.

Jasmine slowly slid her blade from Grey’s chest and let him fall to the ground dead.  She stood over him for a minute, panting.  I walked over to her and stood on her right.

I was the first to break the silence.  “Are we done here?”

Jasmine looked at me then around us.  Once she looked back at me she had a small smile on her lips.  “Yeah.  I think we’re done here.”

So we both walked away from the bloody scene and started to walk to the front of the school.

“Now what?” Jasmine asked.

“We could always go to my house.  Get something to eat,” I suggested.

“Sounds good.”

The sun had just begun to set when Jasmine surprised me yet again by grabbing my hand and lacing her fingers with mine.  And just like all happy endings, we walked off into the sunset.

Reviews

[ValyrieKiennan]

Not half bad. You want to stay away from colloquial, common language like "girl of my dreams". Its uninteresting and overused. Use this piece to be creative and unique in your descriptions! This will allow your piece to move from moderately entertaining to memorable.