[center][h2]Street Side- The Narrows[/h2]

[i]Wind Wild[/i] 

Kirane

Day 1, Afternoon[/center]

Instructions were ringing in Kirane’s ear and she didn’t have the time to consider where they were coming from or who else knew. Two things were sure. One, her back would be covered once she entered the melee and two, she couldn’t stay there long without getting shocked by whatever Markus was planning. A distant part of her worried what might happen to the nanobots in her system should she receive an electric shock strong enough to mess with their commands while another wondered how good Miriam’s aim was when there was an ally weaving in and out of her range of fire. The field the captain activated made the hairs on her neck stand up-- But they were a team. She had to trust them. Like a dougong. [i]Don’t falter; don’t make them fail.[/i] Time to dance on the razor's edge.

“Roger to both.” She uttered as she went around Miriam’s firewall and reached the Stygian line. The first man was naively thinking he was quicker to aim than she was to attack and he received a quick debilitating gash along his hand that should stall him for a while. “Disconnecting, retreating in ten.” She informed while she evaded the military knife of the second Stygian and turned her communication off. Sure, some of the Stygians would have heard her but she’d make those ten seconds count. She grabbed the arm of her second attacker and ran her stiletto under his armpit. A stab deep enough to damage the tendons but shallow enough to allow her to quickly pull out her dagger and sidestep another attacker.

It was an old strategy she had practiced and executed with Megelis on a few missions in the past. Make yourself the decoy and allow the man to pick out the enemy. When defences were weak, attack was the best defence and having someone to concentrate their efforts on kept the enemy occupied enough for the weaker parties to pull out safely. Kirane wasn’t the best fighter as her stamina and armour were nowhere near impregnable… 

But she had a few good tricks up her sleeve. For one, her light magic could be activated just enough to make her movements look fuzzy and her image to blur. It was a huge disadvantage for anyone trying to stab her accurately but wouldn’t really impact an ally used to predicting her movements. As such, it allowed ranged attacks to still be executed even if Kirane herself was in the line of fire. 

And of course, there was also a little defence in place. Air magic was pushed in a constant stream around her forming a tight invisible wall around her moving body. It did little for strong physical attacks but the torrent was strong enough to deflect bullets which, with some luck, may even hit the enemy. 

Falling easily into the old routine Kirane started wreaking havoc in the enemy ranks. Naturally, the shock at the unnatural and unfamiliar situation made their initial attempts to hurt her clumsy and inefficient. As guns proved useless a few of the Stygians tried to hit her with the magazines only to miss or land a blow to their comrades. As they started realising it wouldn’t work, they switched to punches or drew their knives. They weren’t weak… but they were unprepared for such a suicidal battle strategy. Their armour was something akin to police vests and luckily it didn’t cover their lower abdomen. 

Keeping her stance low, in the first few seconds alone Kirane had managed to slash the guts of four men and women open and stab another three across the legs or hands. She wasn’t bothered about dealing fatal blows, merely land as many as quickly as possible. She worked methodically, trying to keep her trajectory relatively straight and without spinning around to cover her back, putting the trust for her protection in the hands of her teammates. A couple of blows reached her but she received them with her shoulders or arms and they did little more than prevent her from killing another. The air was deafening with shouts and screams and the ground was getting slippery with blood and gut contents of the misfortunate. It messed with her footing and threatened to make her slip…. But regardless, she only had four more seconds left and she would have to pull out. She hoped the time she had given Markus was enough because they hadn’t had the time to discuss it. So far, she was alive and breathing which was a good sign. Another woman fell at her feet, her neck sliced open as she tried to catch the rolling thunder that was Kirane. Her blood gushed out in a spray that splashed over the paladin. Three more seconds…