THWACK

[Gogo Yubari]

*THWACK*

Six inches of sharpened steel punctured through the side of her skull.

Hot blood ran in rivulets down her cheeks.

Chain slid through limp fingers.
  
[video=youtube] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rrOdcnFbAYhttp://[/video]

Her knees hit the floor.

Her eyes opened. When had she closed them?

She couldn’t move. She was paralysed, stuck fast before a bright white figure. Or, was that right? Was he white, or was he nothing at all? He was talking. He was probably God. She should listen. Damnit, what was he saying? He wasn’t going to repeat himself? Shit. That didn’t seem fair. Didn’t he know she had a headache?

She tried, hard to rewind the last few second in her mind’s eye; a difficult feat, as she could still feel the ache where metal had forcibly scrambled her brains. Go too far back and there’d been sharp agony in her foot, an intake of breath, then, and, then, then she was here.

Okay. Concentrate, Gogo. He’s probably not telling you anything good right now. You did not live a virtuous life.

“You will not be alone in the Omniverse. There are others. Of course, they, too desire Omnilium. Do not fear death. For as long as you interest me, you will be reborn. That’s all you need to know right now. You’ll figure out the rest soon enough. I’ll be watching … and waiting.”

Well. That wasn’t ominous at all.

She opened her eyes. Her lips parted. Her chest heaved. New breath filled her lungs. She stumbled, tripped. She could move again. Trembling fingers raised to the side of her skull, where – she was certain – death had driven straight through skin, flesh and bone to send her down, down, down. Black Mamba was good.  

When she drew her fingers back, they were dirtied, but free of grey matter. The blood flaked away from the side of her skull; a thin crust of death. One which now flaked away between her fingertips as she rubbed them together. Her expression went from comically shocked to contemplative as her eyes drifted over the crumbling scab between her fingertips.

Was that right? Had she died? Was that what had happened?

She tried to hold on to that memory. It threatened to slip away, and she couldn’t keep a grip on that sharp moment of impact. It dulled beneath her attention, sliding out of focus and into an indistinct blur. What Omni had said? That stood out starker. She could remember all of it with stark clarity. Even the bits she had been too dazed to pay attention to.

Everything about the figure was sharp and crisp and defined in her mind. What he had said had the ring of truth to it. Why would he bother to lie? Whilst the exact ending of the fight was increasingly dreamlike, Gogo was certain that she had faced Black Mamba, and she was equally certain that such a fight could only end with one of two possible outcomes. There was no chance that this was some hallucination or coma dream. No. Black Mamba did not leave people in any state to dream. She was a rude awakening.

She wiped the back of her hand across her cheeks. Sticky blood pulled away from her face; tacky, not yet dried, but not free-flowing either.

What was it he had said? That he found her interesting? That was not too surprising, she supposed. She was an entertaining person, so long as your tastes ran towards horror movies.

She allowed the faintest smile to creep onto her features as her eyes lifted from her blood-stained fingertips, and towards the fountain before her. She had always known she was good at what she did, it was pleasing the Divine agreed.

Two brisk steps took Gogo to the fountain, and she dipped her hands into the cool water. It took only a few moments to wash the blood from her face and hair, cleansing away the evidence of her demise, other than a faint sense of tenderness beneath her fingers. 

After cleaning the blood out of her hair, from her face, it was time to think.

It didn’t take her long to go through the basic principles, and their ramifications.

He had said that she could have whatever she wanted if she desired it enough, it would just come naturally. If the sequence of events she thought had happened, had actually happened, she didn’t have long to waste. She needed at least one very important thing, very quickly.

It took several minutes of concentration, but the more she thought on it, the more she found that the strange being was right. She could feel the power within her, and it responded to her desires. Her hand clenched, opened, and then bright white energy pooled in her palm. She’d assumed that there’d be more to it, but in fact, she thought about what she wanted when Black Mamba came calling and in just a few minutes, the heavy chain was wrapped once more about her wrist, and the familiar weight was swinging like a pendulum from her arm.

She cracked her neck, staring at the point where she had materialised.

"Well, Black Mamba?" She said, addressing, seemingly, the world at large. The first words she had spoken since her apparent demise, her voice cool as ice, flat, without even a hint of emotion.

"Round two."