Chapter 4

A Cold-Blooded Girl, A Monster, An Over-Enthusiastic Maniac, and A Loner

Taeyeon flinched as a flock of birds burst through the thick canopy above, revealing for a split second the bright sun outside. These birds wouldn’t have left their nests if not for a disturbance.

Nodding towards Flare and Ice, Taeyeon said, “Let’s go.”

The trio approached the location where the birds had been frightened into flight. Even before arriving, Taeyeon could hear the clang of steel on steel. As she peeked out of a shrub, she saw Tiffany engaged in a bloody fight with a heavily armored girl.

Flare and Ice moved to help Tiffany, but Taeyeon stopped them, saying, “It’s her battle. I think her pride would be very wounded if we tried to interfere.”

Watching quietly, Taeyeon marveled at Tiffany’s skill with her sword. It seemed as light as a feather in her hand, and she manipulated it easily, parrying all of the enemy’s strikes without a second thought. However, an arrow came twanging out of the foliage of a tree. Tiffany sliced the arrow out of the air. The distraction allowed the enemy girl to score a rare hit on Tiffany, slicing strategically through the sinew of her ankle.

Taeyeon heard Tiffany curse as her ankle gave out. Using the sword as a crutch, Tiffany stood up, and eyed her opponent warily.

“Two on one isn’t fair,” she muttered quietly.

“Come on,” said Taeyeon, “We should go deal with that sneaky under-handed archer. He’s probably the other person remaining on their team. Ice, you stay here and watch Tiffany. If she looks like she’s going to lose, then don’t hesitate to interfere. Her life is more important than her pride.”

With that, Taeyeon and Flare snuck around the clearing to the place where the arrow had come from. High up in a tall oak tree, they spotted a lone archer in a mottled green and black camouflage cloak. The cloak was so effective that Taeyeon initially thought he was part of the tree, and only realized otherwise when he moved to draw and nock an arrow.

“I’ll deal with him,” said Flare. Taeyeon watched in awe as she grabbed the tree by its trunk and uprooted it, lifting the entire thing with ease.

The archer looked down, and cursed. As Flare was about to drop the tree, he quickly leaped to another tree.
“, sorry,” cursed Flare.

“Don’t worry, we’ll just tail him. This kind of chasing is my specialty anyways,” responded Taeyeon.

Taeyeon leapt through the trees swiftly, feeling small branches whip at her body. She paid them no attention, and continued following the dark shadow ahead of her. Following a little ways behind was Flare. It seemed like Flare had great endurance and strength, but lacked in speed and agility.

Taeyeon heard a gasp, and then a scream from the archer. She stopped on a large, flat branch just in time to see the archer being carried away by his cloak in the beak of a large black bird, about the size of a small house. The archer had two options: be airlifted to the nest of the bird, and likely eaten, or detach his cloak and hope that he wouldn’t die on his way down.

The archer chose the second option, leaving the cloak hanging limply in the bird’s beak. Luck, however, was not on his side. As he plummeted to the forest floor, he ended up getting hit in the stomach by a thorny tree branch. Taeyeon rubbed her eyes. She had sworn that a few seconds ago, it was about two feet to the left of where the archer had been falling.

The bird, seemingly disinterested now that his prey had already been killed, let go of the cloak and flew away. The cloak fluttered morosely down onto the archer’s limp body. Taeyeon walked forward slowly, Flare trailing with uncertainty.

The two women saw no signs of life. Yet, without a word, Taeyeon unsheathed her knife and stabbed the man five times in the chest. Then, she proceeded to behead him.

“What did you do that for?!” exclaimed Flare.

“This is an elimination contest. We have no time to waste ‘nice’. It was just extra insurance to make sure that he was dead and stayed dead,” replied Taeyeon without batting an eyelash.

“So? You didn’t have to kill him like you were slaughtering cattle or something,” said Flare, her fists clenched in anger.

“What’s the difference,” asked Taeyeon nonchalantly.

Flare looked at Taeyeon, seeing her in a new light. “I thought you were different. I thought I had finally met a leader with bravery both on the inside and out. Seems like I was wrong,” she said as she turned and jumped away, not waiting for Taeyeon to follow.

Taeyeon followed Flare’s receding back with her eyes for a couple seconds

What’s her problem? I’m not wrong.

Picking up the slightly tattered cloak, though, Taeyeon was bothered for the first time in many years. As she turned it over in her blood-spattered hands, she mulled over Flare’s words.

What did she mean when she talked about having bravery on both the inside and outside?

Having a lead on Taeyeon, Flare was first to arrive back at Tiffany’s battlescene. Unsurprisingly, the battle was finished. Tiffany and Ice stood a ways apart, seemingly ignoring each other. Flare could tell by one look at Ice’s tense face that something was very wrong. Ice almost seemed deathly scared. On the mottled forest floor by Tiffany, there was the corpse of the enemy separated from its head. The corpse was almost falling apart itself, with severe lacerations covering its body and arms. Tiffany was standing about a foot away from it.

Flare shivered. The state of the corpse reminded her of Taeyeon’s own butchering of the archer. Almost retching as she was a bug worming its way into the corpse to feed, Flare went to join Ice.

Taeyeon arrived a couple of minutes later. Caught up in her own thoughts, she failed to notice the tense atmosphere between the three. Ice and Flare stood on one side of the clearing, and Tiffany on the other next to the body. Taeyeon walked over to Tiffany.

“You’re sure she’s dead?” she asked.

“Quite sure.”

“Good.”

Shuffling her feet a bit and kicking at some nearby leaves, Tiffany said, “We should go then. You guys go ahead, I think I dropped something around here. I think we have to report to the same entrance that we came in from, and then we’ll be declared the winners.”

The three nodded, and walked out, each bearing various sorts of injuries. The last to leave was Ice. He turned his head slightly as he left, watching as Tiffany used the dead fallen leaves to cover another dried pool of blood different from the corpse’s that she had been standing on, hiding. Tiffany, however, saw him out of the corner of her eyes.

Ice froze as he heard her addressing him in a cold voice.

“And remember, if you tell anyone, I can guarantee that you and everyone that you love will be dead. This is our secret, understand?”

Ice nodded quietly, hand trembling a little in fear. Under his breath, he muttered, “You’re a monster. A freak.”

“That am I,” chuckled Tiffany, standing up and dusting off her hands, “Which is why you should be all the more afraid.”

As Ice swiftly scampered after Flare and Taeyeon, Tiffany held her shaking hands behind her back. She let the withheld tears pool in her eyes for a couple of seconds, but then quickly wiped them away. Now, Ice knew her secret. She should have killed him when he was still shocked- but she couldn’t. Maybe it was the slight camaraderie Tiffany felt with him. Both of them were loners, outcasts of society. Furthermore, she had dreaded Taeyeon and Flare’s reactions if she had killed ice, and they had found out.

Sighing in misery and anxiety, Tiffany sprinted after the three. After straightening herself out and completely eradicating any trace of tears on her face, she resumed the cold, distant, and intimidating look that other people thought was her trademark. It was all just a shell that she could hide in

Why am I such a coward?

~

Robin groaned in frustration. He desperately needed skilled assassins to protect the Flash headquarters. And yet, assassins were harder and harder to come by these days. For some blasted reason, the governor had turned the search for his personal guard into a slaughterfest. Practically all of the city’s unemployed assassins, skilled enough to get a personal recommendation, and enticed by the prospect of good pay and prestige, had tried out for the guard. Yet only one team of four had made it through