A Battle of Physicals
Bernie's movements had changed so completely from a moment ago that I felt a flicker of real interest as I raised the M16.
She wasn't charging in a straight line the way she had when she'd been looking down on me. The black-haired woman came on in a rush, covering every angle as she closed, and I took a slow step back, settling the rifle on her.
Tat-tat-tat!
If this was going to be a fight of pure physicals, I was certain I would win.
I could admit that Bernie's mechanics were excellent. From the way she fought to the way she shot, everything she did leaned on raw physical talent—the kind of play that would have left an ordinary person unable to function at all. The fact that she'd climbed this far meant that, talent alone, she might be on my level. Maybe even above it.
The problem was how she used that talent. She had none of the fundamentals. She trusted her physicals and nothing else, and so she couldn't even shoot properly. Close-quarters knowledge was almost nonexistent as well.
That didn't make her easy.
I'd taken the first round because she'd been careless. She was learning now; she wouldn't fall for the same thing twice. The loss had clearly stung—there was a vicious light in her eyes. I wouldn't seize the advantage as cheaply as before. It didn't matter what she showed me.
I was going to win anyway.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
Bernie answered the suppressing fire from my M16 with fire of her own. The guns themselves weren't even close. Burst and semi-auto were all the M16 could manage, and at this range that worked against me. She seemed to know it. She refused to give me space, clinging to the gap the way a leech clings to skin.
I'd taken the sprint trait and I still couldn't open the distance. She'd taken the same one, by the look of it.
Tat-tat-tat!
My shooting was better than hers, and I still couldn't land a clean hit. She closed with mechanical movement, using every scrap of cover like a shield.
Whp!
The instant I went exposed to reload, she surged in. The muzzle was already locked on me. A thin, ugly smile touched her mouth, as if pulling the trigger were all that remained.
I put everything I had into the knife at my hip and threw it at her.
The blade cut the air with a clear, ringing hiss, and Bernie's muzzle jerked under the impact.
CLANG!!
Tat-tat-tat-tat!
The thrown knife knocked her aim off true. The burst she'd meant for me chewed up nothing but dirt. I saw the opening and closed on her at once.
I'd wanted to settle it with guns. That wasn't going to happen, so I changed the plan. My rifle was empty; I hadn't finished the reload. She'd dumped most of her magazine in that last spray anyway. If we went to melee, the odds sat with me. And a firearm, at times, made a surprisingly honest club.
I swung the stock hard at her head. Bernie lived on physicals; she wasn't about to eat an attack that obvious. She twisted her torso and slipped it as if it weighed nothing, then turned with the motion into a counter. A karambit had appeared in her hand.
I stepped back from the blade coming for my throat. At the same time I went for her wrist, trying to strip the weapon—only she passed it to her other hand as if she'd expected exactly that, and came right back at me.
She clearly had no real knowledge of close combat. You could see it in the simplest of her movements. That she could still fight like this meant her instincts were choosing the best option on their own.
The thought pulled a laugh out of me before I could stop it.
Laughter, in the middle of a fight this vicious. I really was a combat junkie down to the bone.
Exhilaration.
Joy.
That was what I was feeling.
The longer our weapons met, the more she adapted to my technique—and I to hers. The empty gaps she'd shown in the first round were gone. She might as well have been a different person. Users like this were reason enough, all by themselves, to climb the upper tiers.
I gave ground to slip a strike aimed at a vital point. Bernie shot forward as if she had no intention of letting me go, a blur of speed. I was already moving backward. Even if I wrenched myself aside, a clean dodge was off the table. So what options did I have left?
A fight was a contest over advantage. Whoever took more from the next exchange flipped the board. I didn't have many choices. A perfect evade was impossible. A guard was impossible too.
What remained… was only the attack.
In the middle of throwing strike after strike, Bernie glanced at Unknown and startled despite herself.
…She's smiling?
Unknown was smiling while Bernie's blade was hunting her life. Bernie nearly stopped her swing. The sight hit that hard. She herself was cold with sweat under the relentless, killing pressure of those attacks—one small mistake and she was dead, like walking a wire over a drop. So how could the other woman laugh in a situation like this?
She thought she'd found an opening and went for it, and got shut down again and again. In raw physicals, she was sure she had the edge.
Then Unknown threw herself backward to escape an attack. Now.
Bernie drove in without hesitation, settling into a thrusting stance. The gap she'd read was real; she carved Unknown's side and thigh. Not fatal—but wounds that could stack into a loss.
Landing even one strike put steel in her. She cut fiercely for Unknown's left, already mapping the dodge she expected. Strangely, Unknown didn't move.
Swish—
The knife split the air toward Unknown's left, a line she shouldn't have been able to cover with that freshly opened flank. Unknown knocked Bernie's wrist aside as if it were the most natural thing in the world and turned the blade's path. The impact was harder than Bernie had braced for; she nearly lost the knife.
"…Tsk."
She clicked her tongue and eased back a half step. Unknown answered almost every attack. Anything even slightly sloppy came back as a counter vicious enough to kill. In all the players she'd fought climbing to Diamond, not one had fought like this. It felt like standing in front of a wall she would never get over.
"I didn't want to use this if I could help it."
She muttered it under her breath and drew a flashbang from inside her vest. Honestly, Bernie hated things like grenades and flashbangs. Winning with gear instead of skill had always felt like cheating.
If this kept up, though, she was actually going to lose. Losing to a newbie who'd barely started the game—and one running gear far worse than hers—was something her pride would not allow. Even if this was a cheap move, it was still a strategy. Winning with it wouldn't mean she'd lost.
Whoooosh—
Wind moved across the quiet plain. For a sliver of a second her hair blew across her vision, and Bernie flung the flashbang upward.
A bloom of white light swallowed the field. It was bright enough to force anyone's eyes shut. Unknown didn't so much as blink.
On the line between life and death, closing your eyes was walking toward the grave. Her body kept screaming at her to shut them. The moment weapons met at this range, she locked that body down and refused to lose a single thing from her sight. That was the first rule of a fight.
She drove straight at Bernie, who had her eyes closed against the flash. Unknown's knife was already in her hand—the same one she'd thrown earlier. She'd marked where it had fallen in the middle of the brawl.
Bernie couldn't read the field with her vision gone, but something in her gut flinched, and she slashed on instinct.
Unknown was already close enough to touch her.
It's over, she thought—
CLANG!!
Bernie knocked it aside.
She had read, on instinct, the dagger coming for a vital point, and beaten it away.
Is that even possible? Unknown wondered, and felt the smile at the corner of her mouth deepen all the same.