C8 Operation Firestarter 5

By N00813

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  Dust cursed.  Stupid!  Her moment of weakness, of honour, had left her with a recovered opponent that looked a lot angrier.

  “Dust, keep up.”

  Rolk’s voice echoed in her ears, accompanied by a clap of thunder as another round whizzed past overhead.

  So now she was letting the team down as well.

  Dust swore, out loud.  The dog shifted his weight to the front – an obvious signal of a charge – and Dust blinked out of her self-scolding session.

  The dog was faster than she expected.  She should have known – he was smaller, younger so not as bulky, but definitely faster than the average diamond dog.  She jinked to the side – but ice seemed to replace her spine as she saw the knife flash upwards out of the corner of her eye.

  She’d forgotten which hand held the knife.  She’d rolled under his knife arm.

  The dog was also inexperienced, and that was her saving grace.  His posture had geared him towards forwards momentum and speed, not upper-body strength.  There wasn’t a lot of force behind the blade – but the weapon was sharp, and Dust’s armour only covered her torso.

  She screamed.  A stripe of burning, searing heat and pain swelled up on her upper forearm, following the blooming red river forming on her skin.

  Blinking the bite of tears threatening to spill over her cheeks back, she glared at the dog, choking back the hiss rising in her throat.

  He looked as surprised as she did.

  “Come on, Dust,” Gilda grumbled, over the earpiece.  “Work for your payout.”

  Dust ignored her teammate.  The dog had whirled around, blood running down his blade in little trails.

  Rolk’s voice, a low mumbling, quickly dispersed into the drums of battle pounding inside her head.

  The dog charged at her again, pushing off the ground with one leg, his blade flashing through the air as his arms swung.  Dust’s wings fluttered, and her eyes widened–

  –and she jerked off the ground, wings smashing against the air.  Cool wind sliced through her fur.  The dog’s blade, a silver slash, missed her hind legs by inches.

  She twisted backwards, executing a textbook planar corkscrew – if the Wonderbolts could see me now – and lined her forearms and knife with his exposed back.

  The dog had realised something was wrong.  His feet kicked up a slew of dust and sand as he slowed down, and looked upwards.

  But he was too late.  Dust was zooming in from behind him.

  She gripped the knife in her left hoof.  On the arm above the appendage, the jury-rigged gauntlet of leather was wrapped around her flesh.  It had felt way too tight when Tricks had rigged it up for her in those few minutes – her complaints had fallen on the unicorn’s deaf ears – but now, she understood why.  It felt like the gauntlet was going to disintegrate or rip away from her skin any moment.

  Only the straps and strings criss-crossing her arm kept the homemade gauntlet from falling to pieces as she rocketed towards the dog, blade pointing outwards.

  Three.  Two.  One.

  Some part of her marvelled at how easily the knife sunk into the dog’s flesh, like a stone parting a sea of meat.  Then the rest of her smashed into the dog’s back.

  Her vision blackened for a moment, before stars of all colours but all intensely bright screamed through the darkness, replacing the cold black with painful light.

  Blinking away in an attempt to clear her vision, she suddenly remembered that she was in the middle of a life-or-death fight – and lashed out blindly.  Her other fore-hoof connected with a solid thump and a yell of pain.

  Dust rose shakily to her hooves, her vision clearing just in time for her to catch a small jet of blood to her neck.  Her blade was still embedded inside the dog.  Given that it was a former kitchen knife, some of the grip had disappeared inside the wound as well, wedging the wound open and displaying the bloody flesh inside.

  Bile rose inside her throat.  The smell of blood mixed with the dirty, unwashed smell of the dog and the scent of her own coppery blood leaking from her own wound.  She held back tears as the sting travelled into her nostrils.

  The dog groaned and moaned as he lay on the ground.  His own knife lay somewhere in the dirt behind the two of them, Dust confirmed with a quick glance.  She was safe for the time being.  She could make that permanent…

  Dust stepped forwards.  As sweat dripped off her foreleg, the fluid mixed with her own blood, her knife-hoof began to shake.  She clenched her teeth, and folded her hoof around the handle until she could see the knuckle whitening.

  The dog screamed in pain as she wrenched the knife out, falling to his knees as blood spurted out of the hole in his back and cascaded down his cloth shirt like a sticky waterfall.  He continued to scream, his forearms shaking as he struggled not to tumble into the dirt.

  Dust looked at him.  He’d ended up in front of her, his spine and neck exposed.  Just one swipe, one thrust of the blade into his filthy grey throat and he would be dead.

  Just one move.

  Dust lifted the blade, the steel glinting as it caught the sunlight.  She looked down at her victim once more, and the knife suddenly felt as heavy as lead.

  His screams had turned into sobs.  His tears pumped out of his eyes at the same rate blood spurted out of the hole in his back.  Lying on his stomach, face pressed into sand that was growing redder and redder with his own blood, he made for a pitiful figure.

  Dust hesitated for just a moment – and the scene seemed to stop in time.  She could see Tricks disappear from her position on the cliff in an imploding ball of light, and then explode somewhere deep in the smog – the smoke billowing out from the camp, stopping just at the edge of her hooves – the sun streaming down through the canopy leaves of a massive tree, in sunbeams that made the blood on her hooves glow.

  Gilda’s grunts and mutterings filled her earpiece, and the effect was lost.  The dog’s arms flashed, quicker than she’d thought – clearly, fighting for his life had made him ignore the pain and his gaping wound.  There was no more time.

  She screamed as she plunged the blade downwards.

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