S1: Chapter 27
y Beautiful Dangerous
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Death whirled around in a hurricane of lighting fast, solid kicks and well-placed punches, knees and elbows that bruised and battered her body beyond recovery. Jessica snapped under a knuckle white fist and caught a knee to the gut. She doubled over and groaned as the feeling of despair crept into her mind.
Her insides burnt uncomfortably, and ribs shoved back angrily, awkwardly inside her. Her back was completely exposed to whatever wrath Sunny, or rather her unconscious mind, could hammer upon her, and sure enough, a jutting elbow dropped down, shoved in such an angry way between her shoulder blades that caused her excruciating pain.
Her face met the floor. Hair, completely drenched by rain, clung waywardly to her cheeks and unceremoniously covered her eyes. Feeling an ill intent behind her, Jessica clawed her way onto her back just as a foot struck the side of her rib.
That was a fracture, no doubt about it. All air exited her lungs as she gasped uncontrollably. With a traumatic grunt, she rolled sideways, away from Sunny, and desperately got onto her feet. She faced her, stance at the ready. A twisting blur. Rise of the knee. Foot extending out. Heel slamming against her chest. Air exploding out of her lungs. Ribs collapsing in. Jessica pushed to the brink of exhaustion—and a second away from death.
Her back slammed against the railing that prevented their impending fall, as Sunny slowly advanced forward. She had pushed Sunny to her absolute limits and accidentally awaken the demon residing inside her. A mistake she'd immediately regretted. Jessica hadn't known that Sunny's undivided feelings were so consumed into the duel that she would let slip her restraint.
A glanced over her shoulder saw to the streets below—sixty stories down and without a break in fall. It would not end well. Sunny could not be reasoned with anymore... The girl's molten chocolate brown eyes glistened deadly crimson, as she languidly closed the distance between them.
With nowhere to go, Jessica grasped onto the cold railing behind her and did the only thing she could do at the moment: she pushed herself over the edges of the building. At the pinnacle of ascension, time played the cruelest trick on her eyes. In that brief, brief split second, she caught a single tear cascade down Sunny's flustered cheek. She would have missed it entirely had she not been drawn unconditionally to it. She remembered back to the old time, where her eyes could always, without fail, tell apart the tears from the raindrop whenever Sunny cried.
And then, accelerating, she jerked hard and swung an arc in the air, feeling the cold morning wind gush through her hair and face and clothing. Both foot in contact, she smashed through the window below the rooftop, rolled over shattered glass to regain balance, stood and turned abruptly.
"!" she cursed, as a foot coming through the previously broken window caught her attention. She turned and sprinted away, knocking over chairs, propelling over tables with stacks of paper and kicking the occasional desktop along the way. Jessica's shoulder slammed into a locket door and turning at the last second, a solid foot collapsed into her chest, exploding her through the now broken and splintered doorway.
Whoever designed the stairwell just outside of the door she was sure to kill, if she lived to see that day, that is. Jessica's foot buckled awkwardly at the top step and dropped down like a ragged-doll. She remembered regaining balance at one point and then lost it again as gravity went to work on her body. Her back met the wall and it shoved spitefully back at her. Back arched from the relentless pain, a dry gasp escaped her lips.
Looking up from the floor, Jessica stared unwavering at the girl standing at the top of the stairs. "S-Sunny..." she managed to breathe out through her teeth.
Step.
"Please stop this and leave..." she adjusted herself into a more poised position, her eyes remaining on Sunny.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
"," Jessica cursed when Sunny did not stop. She unceremoniously pulled herself onto her feet and ducking under a kick, leaped down the steps to the floor below. As the door flew open, a sight that she did not welcome greeted her. A faint breeze swept at her hair from the gapping side of the building. It was under construction and she could tell it from the dull grey cement walls, devoid of any wallpaper; thick cables hanging above her head and steel piping littering the floor in stacked piles.
The floor was, for the most part, solid except for the gaping hole in the center of the room. It was a large hole spawning over half the floor, covered by loose wooden planks laid lazily and unprofessionally across it. Jessica could not tell whether the planks were there for decoration or something else, because no matter how she looked at it, anybody who as much as stepped on it would plummet to their doom. She had to get out of here and pick another spot or else things could end badly. But before she could twist around, an arm wrapped itself around her neck and tightened, choking the life out of her.
Jessica snapped her elbow backwards and the effect was instantaneous. The grip around her neck loosened considerably and she whirled around, guard at the ready and a fist swinging. However, her fist never made it anywhere when a high horizontal kick slashed across her chest diagonally. A novice burn crept through her clothing to her skin and then seared the bones beneath. She stumbled back, arching her back and flailing her arms once her feet met with the bare edge.
Taking a bone crushing, rib bruising shoulder to the gut, their bodies flew over the edge and down into the abyssal pit of darkness. Gravity went to work all over their bodies, and wind nipped and scratched at their skin. Jessica smashed through the wooden planks, pain seared two times as spiteful with the extra weight of Sunny on her. As if it weren’t bad enough, Sunny unconsciousness rode on the momentum and belted her across the face and then ripped through her stomach with a knee.
Jessica could do nothing but fought back, swinging wildly and connecting on the odd occasion when Sunny’s assault stopped. Her back smashed through another set of planks on the second floor down...and then the third...and fourth, until she lost count of how many floors she’d fell through. However, she could feel the momentum slowing as the planks of wood became their break in fall.
At last, the vociferous winds and rippling gales ceased to aggress on their bodies and a wave of quiet too over, saves for two gasping breaths, as their backs met solid, unshaken ground. How many floor or what floor they were on, she did not know. The final impact pilfered all the air out of her lungs and left her deathly pale.
“...!” Jessica rolled onto her side and drew a traumatic groan. She felt like a freight truck had rammed into her back and carried her away for a mile before dumping her in the middle of nowhere. To put it simple...she was in pain—a lot of pain—and if that wasn’t bad enough, a dull throb ran through the back of her head. Someone must’ve drilled a hole through the side of her head...because it sure felt like it.
A flickering blur caught her her attention. “Son of a—” before she could finish her sentence, Jessica rolled to the side, avoiding a crushing foot to the ribs and began clawing her way away from Sunny. If she were to see herself in this state—crawling away like a pathetic baby—she would’ve probably wanted to murder herself. She pushed off with a foot and turned in mid-motion. Her back slammed into the window—thank God that this floor had one—and feeling it crack—probably due to the force emitted—groaned and glanced over her shoulder.
Even after falling through God knows how many floors, they were still impossibly high up. No time for that. To think...was to die. Sunny’s fist shot through the air and ducking underneath it, Jessica stepped behind her. She thought she’d escaped the devastation, but was left flabbergasted as a vicious back-kick caught her in the jaw.
Her head lolled back inanimately. A streak of red slashed across the air and splashed onto the walls and windows and floor. Her bottom set of teeth slammed into the top and her eyes rolled into the back of her head. For a split second, she lost conscious and her eyes transpired deep ocean, sapphire blue. She wasn’t sure what had happened in that brief, brief split second, but when she’d came to again, she felt all colors drain from her face—as if that hadn’t happened already.
She found that her foot had extended out, shoved in such an angry way in between Sunny’s chest that it pained her even more than the younger girl probably felt. She saw Sunny's face scrunch up in pain and couldn’t help but leave her eyes to go wide. She immediately retracted her foot, however, by then it was too late.
Sunny snapped through the glass as it shattered all around their exhausted bodies like splashes of rain. Her eyes were locked onto Sunny’s when the crimson seeped through her pupils and those molten chocolate brown ones she loved returned. Tilting her body forward, thick glass shards scraped and scratched at her face as they exploded past relentlessly.
Jessica darted forward, kicking off the ground as hard as her legs would allow. Her bone must've collapse inside and fractured and splintered into a million pieces, because she reckoned she'd broken an Olympic sprint record. A sharp, pointed burn tug up the side of her legs and then to her thighs as she grounded her lead foot forward to stop momentum from taking over and bring her over the edge. A hard knock to her knee cap that left her knees buckling uncontrollably as she halted with a hand outstretched.
Her deft fingers immediately found Sunny's and their hands intertwined into one. It was always the eyes that held Jessica in a trance. Whenever she'd looked Sunny in the eyes, she would find herself lost in time and wander freely, aimlessly in her lover's molten chocolate brown eyes. Slowly, she felt their weight tipping over the side without restraint. They were falling and there was nothing she could do to stop the powerful motion of gravity from taking over, however, there was one way one of them could live on.
With the last of her ebbing strength, she drew a traumatic grunt, pulled hard with her hand—essentially swinging Sunny in a full one-hundred and eighty degrees—and rotated on the ball of her lead foot. She had set the motions right and slowly began drifting down in Sunny's place, releasing their hands so that Sunny would at least live.
She closed her eyes and let the pull of gravity take her body. She did right. At least...she would live, Jessica kept telling herself. Then, as if God had joked around with her because of her sins, she felt a soft hand hold onto hers dearly. Jessica's eyes jerked opened wide and stared into Sunny's as they began their fall...together.
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