"Fair enough. I do prefer men with a solid principle and you haven't disappoint. At least, not yet," the woman replied and calmly stepped forward. Out of the blue, she unbuttoned her suit and took it off, nonchalantly discarding it on top of a growling Hayley's bloody body. Shifting around to look at what was about to be a battle, she noticed that her strapless top had a low back cut, unusually low for a strapless top. She also appeared to be unusually calm as she opened her arms, as if waiting for something to come down from the sky.

Then came the sight that made her tense jaw slack.

Light began to surround her body as if the sun's ray was pooling around her. Clumps of bright light gathered around her back and manifested into a pair of white, angelic wings, large enough to carry her effortlessly, that seemed to grow out of her own body like a part of herself. Her bright green eyes shifted into a glimmering pair of blue orbs, her auburn hair gained a white streak from the roots down her braid, white glowing markings sparsely covered her skin and what looked like a ring of light floated just behind her back like a halo. "You're not the only one blessed with power beyond human comprehension, Signore Isaac. I have the heavens on my side!" she said to him, now ready to fight with him on equal ground.

Isaac only looks at the woman, surprised at the revelation of her power, but not enough to show it. "If you think that's supposed to scare me," he says quietly, his voice echoing eerily behind his carbon mask, "you're sadly mistaken." Looking past the woman to Hayley, he says, "Just hold on. I'll help you as soon as I can." I've fought tougher enemies than this woman, he wants to say, but, without the memory to back it up, he keeps it to himself. You can take her, Vincent says. She's basically a living flashlight! The only thing she'd be good for is if the sun suddenly went out. Isaac, however, knows not to underestimate her. Experimentally, he stomps his foot on the ground and summons a spike of iron, more to test the woman's defenses rather than to harm her.

Not daunted by Isaac's opening act, the woman simply flew up just high enough to completely avoid the spikes while looking unimpressed. Seeing that he had finally started the assault, she opened up her hand and called forth a spherical, glowing mass. With a swift swipe of her hand, said glowing mass dispersed into several light arrows, hard enough to be a solid object and sharp enough to act like a bullet at the speed they were moving at. "Isaac, watch out!" Hayley coarsely shouted out, now forced to watch as a helpless spectator.

Isaac, dive forward! Vincent automatically yells. Following his counterpart's instruction with ease that can only come from a lifetime, however much he doesn't remember, of working together, Isaac dives forward, narrowly dodging the arrows. What was that about her being a flashlight? he asks Vincent. Doesn't matter, comes the reply. What matters is the fact that she can fly and we can't! How are we supposed to get her down? Isaac thinks for a moment before looking at one of the discarded guns. I might have an idea, he says. Slamming his fist onto the ground, he creates a thick cloud of carbon, obscuring him from the woman's sight as he dives for one of the weapons, grabbing blindly until he manages to find one, which just happened to be the woman's shotgun. Working fast, he recreates the barrel, dives out of the cloud, takes aim, and fires, the buckshot spreading more the farther it travels, making it difficult to avoid it all.

The woman had only a split second to react after she heard to gunshot. With no time to dodge, she went for the other option of defending against the attack. A shield of light flashed in front of her, barely in time to stop the buckshot. With the woman unhurt, the shield promptly disappeared and she retaliated by throwing a ball of light, her equivalent of a flashbang, towards the cloud of carbon. The explosion created a shockwave and dispersed the cloud, but he couldn't tell what it did to Isaac due to her obscured view the moment the light sphere exploded upon contact with the ground.

His ears ringing from the sound, but his vision intact, thanks to the carbon cloud absorbing most of the flash, Isaac looks back up at Arlia. We're gonna have to get in close to finish this, he realizes. Then, reluctantly, he adds, Vincent...it's your turn. You're better at that than I am. Suddenly, a wide grin splits Isaac's face as he says in an all-too-familiar voice, "I'd be more than happy to help out." Stomping the ground, he creates another smokescreen, larger than the last one, and quickly rushes forward until he's more or less directly underneath the woman. Before he tries to get close, however, he summons a hail of iron shards from deeper into the cloud, planning on using them as a feint to draw the woman's attention further away from where he was.

"It's useless, Signore Isaac! I can illuminate this entire street if I want to!" The woman fired another spherical flashbang to disperse the cloud, but before she could send in one more, she was forced into the defensive when a hail of iron shards came at breakneck speed. With her shield up, she flew around and dodged them, easily making a quick work out of the hail of iron shrapnel, but upon doing so, she lost her sight on her enemy under the smokescreen, giving Vincent a clear advantage.

"Perfect," Vincent whispers from inside of the cloud as the woman flies past him. A pillar of carbon suddenly erupts from the ground underneath his feet, propelling him into the air right behind the woman, black claws of carbon affixed to each of his fingers. "Gotcha!" he cries in delight as he swings his arms downward, aiming for the base of the woman's wings, having decided to ground her the painful way.

Smiling calmly, the auburn-haired woman swiftly turned around, a mark of skill and heightened awareness, and countered with a flashbang sphere to the face and a shield of light to deflect the razor sharp claws, backing away without further ado to keep their distance. Although she didn't show it, she considered herself fortunate for her precise timing and her enemy's lack of subtlety, knowing that a split second late and she'd be a wingless slab of meat. "Thank you for calling your attack. You are too kind," she said teasingly as Vincent, without wings of his own, was left to the mercy of the harsh mistress, gravity.

Something else seemed to have taken her attention the moment Vincent no longer posed her harm, however, and she hovered in the air with one finger pressed against her ear for a brief moment, as if she was listening to something. "... Capito. Io tornare subito," she replied out of nowhere and turned to Vincent and Hayley, smiling triumphantly and saying, "Looks like you both get to live for another day. As for you, signore, I would like to stay and chat with you over a cup of Cappuccino, but I seem to have other things to attend to. Still, I will be keeping you close in my mind and I can't wait to make you mine for real." Spreading her wings wide, she giggled and departed with a playful "Ciao!".

Vincent blindly swings his claws in wide arcs, hoping to get a lucky hit even though Arlia was up in the air and already retreating, yelling, "Get back here you...you..." As vulgar as he may be, he still finds himself unable to curse at a woman, leaving him to growl in frustration as he continues swinging his arms, only to stop as Isaac forces command. Taking a few moments to blink the blurry images away, he turns around and races toward Hayley as Vincent continues ranting in his head. Crouching next to her, he cradles the injured blonde in his arms, urgently asking, "Hayley, are you alright?!"

Groaning in pain and from loss of blood, Hayley weakly looked up at Isaac, visibly relieved to see him despite what she had said, and replied with a hoarse voice, "I'm still breathing... so I'm still alive, just not in one piece..." Looking at her bleeding arm and thigh, she gritted her teeth and told him, "That bitch and her dogs got a good hit or two on me... I think the bullets are lodged inside... along with a few other things..."

Isaac nods, having expected as much. Pulling carbon from the ground, he creates a small, cylindrical object soft enough press down on without hurting oneself. Offering it to Hayley, he says, "Here, put this between your teeth so you don't bite your tongue. What I'm about to do is gonna hurt--a lot." You sure you wanna do that? Vincent asks. We don't have anything to treat her with. Isaac replies, I know. But, it's better than the bullets damaging her muscles and nerves every time she moves!

It didn't take her long to put two and two together and nodded without complaints. She secretly wondered why she bothered letting him do what she thought he would do instead of trying to shoo him away, only to realize that he would do it anyway whether she wanted to or not. In a moment of clarity and trust, Hayley grabbed onto the soft carbon and held it between her teeth, bracing for the incoming pain. The moment Isaac started working on the bullets, Hayley bit into the soft carbon cylinder as hard as she could, a muffled scream of pain coming out of her mouth. It made her wish that the auburn-haired woman had killed her instead before Isaac could find her, but her survival instinct forced her to pull through, to hold on despite the excruciating pain.

Reluctantly, not wanting to cause the woman anymore pain than he already did, Isaac begins pulling the bullets out of her wounds, holding onto her hand as he does so. After what seemed like an eternity, he managed to get all of the buckshot from the woman's shotgun and the bullet out of his friend. Working quickly, Isaac then pulls his shirt off, rips it up, and uses the strips to bandage Hayley's wounds the best he could before pulling his overcoat on. Then, he rises to his feet and drapes Hayley's arm over his shoulders before saying, "Alright, now, let's get you to a hospital, alright?"

"N-No... Isaac... don't," Hayley coughed and panted, trying to catch her breath after the pain of the bullet and buckshot removal disoriented her. "I don't have... enough... to pay for the massive bills I'm going to get... That, and I hate hospitals. P-Please... Anywhere but that..." The woman was too weak to resist or struggle, but she was clearly reluctant to seek help, given her nature and the infamy to her name.

Isaac thinks for a split second, then says, "Alright. I'll take you to your place, then. I'm sure you might have something there that can help." Sticking to the shadows and alleyways, so as to not draw attention to themselves, it takes Isaac half an hour to get Hayley to her apartment building. Once in front of her door, panting slightly, he holds onto the doorknob and, just like he did a month ago, uses his power to unlock the door before stepping inside. Locking it behind him, he takes Hayley to her room and lays her down on the bed, saying, "Stay here, I'm gonna find something to help you, okay?" That said, he quickly leaves the room and heads for the bathroom, hoping she kept a first-aid kit handy.

As she laid helplessly on her bed, Hayley lamented on what happened to her and Isaac. This entire mess wouldn't have happened had I not let Isaac in on that fight... Wish I'd kept my mouth shut, she thought, still somewhat disoriented from her run and the pain of her injuries. She knew that going to the hospital would be a sound choice, but once all was said and done, she would most likely be saddled with a hefty bill, given the extent of her injuries, and records of her civilian life had been less than stellar, especially her criminal record. Sighing quietly, she weakly turned her head around and shouted, "First-aid kit's under the sink!"

"Got it!" Isaac calls back, looking under the sink to find the white box marked with a red cross, indicating the first-aid. Grabbing it, he walks back into Hayley's room and sits down, already digging through the various medical supplies. Disinfect the wounds...he finds himself thinking. Once that's done, suture the wounds, but be sure not to pierce the flesh too deeply, or else you'll do more harm than good, especially if you don't have any painkillers on hand...

It was that moment he realized that he wasn't thinking in his voice, but the soft, gentle voice of...a woman. What the hell?! he hears Vincent shout. I don't know, Isaac replies, shaking his head as he pulls out the bottle of antiseptic, a needle, and some medical thread. But we can't afford to try to figure it out, now, not when she needs help...Pulling a pair of scissors from the kit, he cuts open the cloth he used to bind Hayley's wounds to find each one was surrounded in reddened skin.

Inflamed flesh is one of the first signs of infection, the woman's voice continues as Isaac gives Hayley another carbon cylinder to bite down on. [/i]If it isn't treated quickly, then it could evolve into gangrene.[/i] Shaking his head once more to clear it, Isaac seals the mouth of the bottle with a wad of gauze before tipping the entire thing upside down. Once it was thoroughly saturated, he looks at Hayley and whispers, "Sorry," before pressing the gauze against the wound in her shoulder.

Hayley hissed and gladly bit into the carbon pillow he gave her, feeling a searing pain spreading from her shoulder. However, she knew that she was screwed if Isaac didn't tend to her wound quickly, so she toughened herself up to the pain and let him do his job. Given what she had seen over the years, the sight of her own flesh was anything but nauseating, but she still disliked it nonetheless. To lessen the risk of gagging, she closed her eyes and turned away, letting him do what he needed to do.

Once he was finished tending to Hayley's shoulder, he almost hesitates before removing her shirt. Making sure not to focus on anything other than her wound for too long, he quickly bandages her torso and shoulder before getting to work on her leg. Seeing all of the wounds dappling her leg, he thinks, To think, if that woman shot her from any closer, I'd be treating a stump...Quickly, following the woman's voice in his head, feeling as if it sounded oddly familiar, he treats Hayley's buckshot wound and wraps it up. Panting from the stress of it, he looks down at Hayley and says, "There...I'm done. Sorry I, uh...had to undress you..." Blushing furiously, he rises to his feet and says, "I'm gonna go get you some water. I'll be back."