Boss looked at Canary. "Right..." She said, flicking her gaze around lightly. "Nobody has attacked us in a few minutes. Something is wrong." A pile of dead bodies was behind them whilst they crawled slowly towards the exit.

"That last sentence was wrong, but you may have a decent point." He admitted, also looking around. "Think they gave up?"

They were near the deck of the ship, each of them silently daring the other to be the one to poke their head up first to see what was going on. The smell of fresh spilled blood mingled with the sea salt and other sea odors, and they could hear the distant foot falls of dogs running really really fast. Away from them.

Another thing they heard, just as they looked up was the distant thunder of cannons expending their payload.

"Shit." Boss said eloquently, throwing Canary forward. "Block it."

He was already on top of it, the topaz in his mouth and a large circular barrier deflected the cannon ball. And then he landed on the deck. "Maybe we sh-"

The cannon ball exploded in mid air, rocking the ship, puncturing the balloon on top. Tiny bits of fragmented metal passed through parts of the ship, miraculously leaving the deck mostly intact by virtue of the barrier in the sky blocking it out.

"-ould get off the ship?" He finished, and if his face wasn't already partially white it would've gone whiter. "Damn it." A loud creaking noise came from the underside of the ship.

"Ivan is going to get pissier." She sighed, grabbing Canary and jumping off the side of the ship, hitting the ground rolling. She kept running as the ship fell on its side, once again doing something miraculous as it didn't shatter. It did however grate after them a distant ways making one of the most horrendous grinding noises that Boss had ever known.

Canary winced. "I think we should be more concerned about the ship blasting us."

She dropped him on his hooves and looked around again.

The enemy ship, well within range, started to turn towards port, a propeller slowly spinning to force it closer.

"Of course." She sighed, turning away from it. "I wonder if any other dogs that have islands promised to them have to deal with this sort of thing."

He shrugged again. "I'm sure that you'll get paid."

----

Catastrophe sighed and tapped out a hint of a beat with her right taloned foot, looking worriedly at Ivan. "There's a tiny chance of severe fucking brain damage." She muttered, training her keen eyes on everywhere else, her peripherals dedicated to watching her patient.

He let out a groggy moan, and started coughing, bits of half congealed blood crackling out of his mouth. She sighed.

"Are you ok?" She said, making sure her general roughness slid through on her tone.

He shook his head. "Feel like Ish explosh."

Something hadn't tried to kill her in the last minute. Her combat senses were tingling. Something was wrong.

The door that led to the building below flew off of it's hinges, narrowly missing the two of them. "Figures." She muttered.

"You die now. Alpha reward me good." A beta, and a hulking brute of one stood in the door way, a smear of blood across one ugly scratched up cheek and a giant looking sword that he drug across the ground with a grating noise.

Catastrophe tore open Ivan's satchel and drew his knife.

The dog merely laughed.

----

"Hey. Ivan." There was a voice I hadn't heard in a few days. To be honest, hearing it didn't set me off into a blind uncharacteristic rage like I thought it would. If anything, the rasping arachnid voice put me at a decent bit of ease.

A few drips of off sounding liquid took my mind off of whatever it had been doing. The world was hazy and indistinct like a television with horrible reception and a cracked screen.

"Great." I said without much inflection. "It's you."

A hard to make out blur walked forward beside me, looking a bit like a fancy spider. "I have to say, I was not expecting that much brutalizing out of you. He sounded impressed. An odd bit of pride echoed through my head.

"Yeah?" I said, my eyes starting to hurt. The world was so blurry.

"I'm going to have to ask you to stop using magic for a while." He sounded apologetic, like he actually meant it. "No exploding heads or the like. Or shooting fireballs." He shrugged. "Unless it is absolutely necessary."

I blinked at him, though the difference between the world with my eyes closed and my eyes opened was a matter of logistics. "Why?"

"Since you decided to use your soul as a casting medium, you burnt through quite a bit of it. Burnt soul kinda tastes like avocado dipped in battery acid, if you must know."

"What." I said, realizing I was flat on my back. "How long."

"I'll do my part from keeping a homicidal griffon from influencing you too much, but really, if you end up almost dead like this again I'll give him your body." He didn't seem that sorry at that point. "You'll be without a great deal of your magic for the next month or so. You won't be able to do what you just did for another two to three years." He was back to sounding sorry.

"I hate you." I stated truthfully.

"Same here, but you are starting to amuse me. Here..." He flourished a few arms around and paused. "Here w-"

"What." I said again, looking at his mouth, which hung agape.

"Oops?"

"Ivan." Pain exploded through me, my head feeling like it had literally exploded. The world faded back to the real one in a confusing rush.

"Are you ok?" She sounded worried. Catastrophe was near me.

"Feel like ish explosh." I coughed, my breathing shallow. I was on a roof top and my thoughts felt like jelly.

----

The dagger glowed faintly in the light as if the sun itself decided to vouch for Catastrophe in this fight. In fact, the blade seemed warmer to her clutch as she stared at the dog, who was doing a far better job of staring her down than vice versa.

She put herself between Ivan and the dog. Admittedly, the thought of leaving him to die seemed like a good option but something else was screaming at her that that was a horrible horrible idea. And for once, she listened to it.

She felt her blood start rushing through her veins as a virtual armada of various combat hormones and fear hormones and general speed the fuck up hormones were pumped into her by her body. Her brain slipped into overdrive and something predatory crept into her thoughts, like and errant soul telling her what to do based on aeons of development and history.

Her stance shifted and her wings felt the wind against them as pure freedom. The dog lunged and Catastrophe took off in a whirlwind, easily jumping over the dog and clearing him with a flap of her wings, ending on the other side of him.

In a deliberately infuriating manner her tail whipped in the dogs face. "What's the matter doggy?" She cooed, knowing that certain things drove dogs insane. The dog instantly spun around, a look of pure anger on its face.

"I smash now." It snarled, baring its teeth.

"You need to see a dentist." She calmly replied, adrenaline touching her mind a bit. She had a dagger that she could use pretty well, and he had a sword that looked pretty unwieldy.

However, she was pretty sure that her dagger wasn't going to kill him in one shot. His sword, probably a bit better at a single strike.

She carefully rocked back on her legs, exposing her stomach in a taunt. She beckoned him with a few talons. "Come on."

He charged her again and she jumped to the side easily. It really was amazing what a little training did to help in a fight. The dog gripped his sword and swung it at her and she once again jumped to the side, using her wings to keep her stable.

The sword cut into the tiles, shattering bits off in a rain of porcelain and whatever the else they made building roofs out of. The dog pulled it out of the roof just as easily, dislodging more tiles.

"Bad breath." She weaved just a hair too close and spun in the air, her tail hitting his face again.

She was awarded by a faint pinching feeling as the dog sank his teeth into her prosthetic tail. "Psh." She said, ducking back around herself to slash at his side. In the same motion she whipped the blade into the metal release plate, precisely disengaging the whip like appendage. Her blade barely nicked him, a few tiny drops of blood seeping from the cut.

Actually, it was basically a whip. The dog dropped it in confusion and she snatched her tail off the ground.

"Tail...?" He asked, before she smirked.

"That's right, keep focused on me." Once again, flying away would've been a far better choice. Her balance was pretty much torn to shreds and a jagged chunk of the faux skin was missing, revealing the inner metal and gemstone components that gave it the illusion of flesh. She kept a tight grip at the base of it and puffed out her wings to compensate for her balance a little. She sighed.

"There's one prosthetic I need replaced." She made sure that she was blocking the dog's view of the zebra, carefully making sure to keep herself the most interesting thing around.

She lunged out of the way of the dog as it charged yet again. "Can't you do something else?"

It surprised her at that moment, the dog did. He turned and lunged at the one she was trying to protect.

Her arm moved without thinking and the cord of her tail shattered against the back of the beta, shards of metal and gems exploding out in a spray. She growled and cleared the rest of the distance between the dog and her.

By reflex she jumped back from the blade as it cut through the air in a cleaving ark and her eyes shot wide as one of the worst sounds she could've heard following that.

Snikt.

In a single move she buried her dagger into the dogs neck, knowing full well that she had just failed. She cut through it's internals and severed its spinal cord. The floor was painted red, as was her face and most of her body.

The dog's sword bounced on the ground once before clattering to a stop farther away than Catastrophe was focusing.

The dog's head hit the ground with a wet smack, a bit of blood mixing with the growing pool of a certain someone's.

The beast's body was kicked away to fall off the building, splatting against the ground with spray of blood from his neck.

The knife slipped from her grasp, hitting the building.

She didn't want to look at him, but she looked anyway.

There are some wounds that people shouldn't recover from, her mind mused somewhere above her growing waves of panic.

The one that Ivan had was most certainly of the kind.

There was so much blood.

-----

Canary perked his ears up and looked around. "You hear that?"

Boss looked at him. "Are you talking about the ship firing at us, the tiny voice inside me screaming that I should be panicking or what?"

"I thought I heard the sound of someone screaming."

Boss shrugged. "Might need to get your ears checked later."

-----

Her wing was pressed against his stomach. Her wing was wet with blood. More adrenaline was pumping through than she realized, more than should be. Her heart thumped strong, her face was red from blood.

"Stop... the bleeding." She noted aloud, realizing what she was doing. There was a haze around her vision. Her thoughts tasted vaguely of limes.

Her memories streamed around her in perfect harmony, showing exactly what she had done to the zebra. Days of flirting with him, messing with him, teasing him. It all streamed through at once.

She saw how it helped him and saw how she hurt him.

"If you..." She panted, her strength leaving her.

"Goddamnit Ivan. This is all your fault somehow." She spat, the air thick with atmosphere.

"If you die before I get to sav-" She could feel her faint pricks of honor warming up, like little thorns.

"I will fucking kill you if you die before I save your life." Her vision swam and suddenly she felt the pain that he was in, felt the tearing wound in her stomach felt his stomach be hers.

She pulled back in a terrified burst of panic, the sensation all too familiar and at once alien.

She kept her wing pressed to his side, feeling her strength drain from her as dread set in. Desperate to find something to blame other than herself, she dove into his pouch and pulled out a few gems.

She glared at them and pressed them to his side. "Fucking gems. HEAL HIM." She said frustratedly, her patience fading. The gems, as she had known they wouldn't, didn't do anything. She realized she was crying. A few tears were hitting his fur.

She let them slip, wet with his blood. "D-damn it..." They clattered uselessly against the tiles.

"I failed." She muttered, feeling his heart begin to slow. Hie eyes remained as blue as ever, haunting her, mocking her.

As if to mock her she felt her will seem to slip.

"Damn it Ivan."

"I failed." Her eyes shut and the depth of the sensations she was afflicted with shut her mind down as well.

The coppery tang of blood mixed with the salt from the sea to pollute the smells of the world. For once, she didn't think it was a good thing.

A single tear hit a puddle of blood.