This story is part of the DC Mayhem continuity. Formerly a part of DC Genesis, but seceded into Mayhem.
Rated: T+
Continued from: http://www.comicvine.com/myvine/ravager4/dc-mayhem-deathstroke-ravager-5/87-85755/
---
“<This way!>*” one of the guards shouted. He raced around the corner of the fortress corridor, leading his team along with him. Along the way, they passed the bodies of other fallen guards, lying motionless in pools of blood on the cold, stone floor. “<She was heading towards the East wall!>”
(*Translated from Standard Tibetan)
The guards, consisting mostly of Tibetan natives dressed in old fashioned armor and carrying spears, burst through the doorway leading into the stronghold's eastern wing. There, they ran by several more bloodied bodies, most of which were either dead or about to be.
“<Where could she be going?>” a guard asked, trying not to look at the fallen men surrounding them. “<She can't be escaping this way, it only leads farther into the mountains.>”
“<I don't know,>” another answered, pushing through a second set of doors. “<Maybe she's- hhrrck!>”
The man's words suddenly ceased, as a blade whipped out from the dark shadows, slicing through his neck. A second later, a figure burst from her hiding place and ran through the men, ducking and weaving around their pathetic attempts to subdue her. Sidestepping, she thrust one of her blades, piercing through the chest of one man while spinning her second weapon around behind her and cleaving another's head from his shoulders. Within moments, all six men lay dead at her feet.
“I'm not trying to escape, idiots,” Rose muttered, slipping back into the shadows. A moment later, she took off in a dead sprint. “Not yet.”
Leaping through one of the open, stone cut windows nearby, she landed softly outside atop the fortress' eastern wall. A swirl of cold air and snow hit her like a blade, piercing through the fibers of her armor, but she ignored it, pressing on. A little chill wasn't going to stop her, no this time. No, this time she'd have her revenge.
Blinking a few whipping snowflakes out of her eyes, Rose quickened her pace as another group of guards approached from the opposite direction. Lifting one of her swords, she threw the blade with inhuman precision, driving it home through the gut of the nearest man. When she finally reached the opposition, she slid low beneath a spear strike and cut upwards with her second blade, slicing cleanly through another guard's armor. On her way by, she ripped the thrown sword out of the man's body and spun wildly, both blades held close until the last moment, when she cut wide with them. The four men that had been converging on her from all sides went down instantly, bright crimson spraying from their wounds.
Rose wasted no time, immediately continuing along the top of the wall. She could already see her destination in the distance: a separate temple tower rising high above her on a mountain peak. He thought he was safe up there? Oh no... he wasn't safe. Not in the least. She was coming for him, and she would gut him like the pig he was.
She reached the end of the wall, coming face to face with a sheer cliff side in front of her. Sheathing her blades, Rose leaped upward, grabbing tightly to a handhold and climbing. She stumbled momentarily before driving her foot into another hold and pushing up. Within minutes, she made it a hundred feet up the cliff face, never slowing, never slipping. Her instincts and physical prowess compelled her along the right path, never missing a handhold.
Fifteen minutes after she began her climb, her hand latched onto the ledge above her. She pulled herself up slightly until her eyes peered over the snowy precipice, carefully scanning the area. Almost instantly, a spear point lowered itself in front of her gaze. Glaring coldly, she slowly looked up to see several guards already waiting for her.
“<Surrender immediately!>” one of them commanded. “<Or we will throw you from the ledge!>”
In retrospect, the stairs might have been the better route to take...
Snaking a knowing smirk across her face, Rose lashed her hand forward and gripped the spear shaft. With a firm tug, she yanked the man off balance, causing him to stumble forward and teeter there on the edge for a brief moment. The two other men moved quickly to catch him, but by that time Rose launched herself up and over. She landed nimbly on her feet, immediately sweeping her leg to the side, catching the three guard's in the ankles. With horrified screams, they plummeted over the cliff side and disappeared into the swirling snow beyond.
Straightening herself back to her feet, Rose took in a deep breath and pressed forward, already drawing her swords once again. It felt astoundingly good to have three feet of sharpened steel in either hand again. She hadn't realized how much she missed it until just now.
“Now then...” she muttered, racing towards the steps of the temple tower. “Where was I?”
---
“What the hell is going on?!” Jackal shouted, racing through the corridor. He struggled to pull on his armored suit and mask as he turned the corner, having only awoken a few minutes ago. It was the middle of the night, after all.
Several guards ran by him, one of them looking back. “<The prisoner has escaped!>”
“What?” Jackal muttered, eyes narrowing. “Speak English, you idiot! I don't speak native!”
“Prisoner escape!” the man replied, his English broken.
Jackal grumbled, smacking his forehead. “Oh you gotta be kidding me. How the hell did that happen?”
But he didn't receive an answer. Instead, the guards ran on ahead, bursting through the exit of the temple, into the swirling blizzard beyond. The doors closed behind them, and by the time Jackal approached, he heard cries of pain and horror. His hand paused momentarily, as he reached for the handle in front of him. Bringing his other arm behind him, he drew his sword and then finally pulled the doors open.
“Son of a b*tch,” he said, squinting his eyes.
The snow was really starting to come down now, bringing with it a near white out. Clicking a button on the side of his helmet, he switched the eye lenses over to thermal and scanned the area. The still warm bodies of the guards lay nearby, motionless in the snow, but no sign of their attacker... not yet.
“Jackal!” a voice screamed over the howling wind.
The man spun around suddenly, eyes going wide as he leaped backwards to defend two sweeping sword strikes. Though he blocked one of the blades, the second cut cleanly through his armor and spilled warm blood down his arm. Before he could make a counter attack, a boot planted itself against his chest and pushed hard, sending him stumbling backwards.
“Murderer!” Rose cried, lunging at him again. She attacked with a ferocity that she had very rarely ever shown, practically lost in bloodlust. “Rapist!”
Jackal turned his body in desperation, spinning out of the way of a sword thrust. He managed only to move directly into the path of the second blade, cold steel ripping through the meat of his thigh. “Gaaah! Fuuu-!”
His words cut off when the hilt of Rose's blade battered against the faceplate of his mask. He staggered momentarily, trying to maintain his balance. That proved impossible when Rose followed up with a spinning roundhouse kick to the back of the head that dropped him face first into the snow.
“You took everything from me,” Rose stated, pure ire fueling her voice. “My mother... my innocence... my whole life.”
“Wait a minute now,” Jackal uttered, pushing himself up to his hands and knees. “Let's talk about th-”
Rose silenced him with a stomp between the shoulder blades, forcing him back to the ground. “Don't you dare get up!”
“Nngh...” he said, barely holding himself up on his elbows now. He wore rather durable armor, and yet he still felt this girl's blows, as though he were fighting naked. She hit like a freaking truck.
“I want to know why,” Rose said, swallowing a numb lump knotted in her throat. If the cold air hadn't frozen her tears before they could fall down her cheeks, she'd be wiping her face dry right now, too. “Why did you do it? Why did you ruin my life?!”
Finally, Jackal made it back to his knees, kneeling upright. Rose seemed to allow it for now, eye narrowing as the man looked up at her. “Was... just business. Honest. I... I got the order. They sent me to... to do it.”
“They?” Rose questioned. “You mean the Syndicate?”
The man slowly nodded, remaining quiet.
“WHY?!” she screamed. “What the hell did I do to deserve it?! What did I do?!”
Jackal shook his head. “No... not you. Him.”
Rose's eye gradually widened in understanding. “Slade. My... father. He...”
“That's right,” Jackal said, chuckling softly under his breath. “It was all to get to him. You were just... the means to the end.”
Her jaw clenched tightly, as she imbibed the information. As if her father selling her out as a prisoner here for the past two years hadn't been bad enough... the entire reason that she had been tormented, that her mother was dead, her entire life ruined... it was all because Deathstroke was her father. Suddenly, a surging anger, an anger she hadn't felt in a long time, burned through her body. Over the past couple of years, the hatred she'd built up for her father had gradually diminished. Now, however... now, that hatred was back tenfold.
“B**tard...” she uttered, taking a step backwards and lowering her swords. Her attention seemingly wandered, lost in thought.
Jackal hesitated momentarily, gaze shifting to his left, where his sword lay just a foot away. He looked back briefly to the distracted Rose, hand twitching slightly, and then made his move. Grabbing his sword tightly around the handle, he lunged up from his spot on the ground and thrust it at the girl's chest. His attack, however, struck only air as Rose spun out of the way.
“Wha-” he started, eyes going wide.
In one fluid motion, Rose whirled around the man's backside and cut her swords across her body like scissors. The sharpened edges cleaved through Jackal's neck, dislodging his head from his shoulders and spraying out a fountain of crimson from the remaining stump.
Slowly lowering her bloodied blades, Rose watched the headless body teeter there for a split second before crumpling to the snow. “That was for my mother, you son of a b*tch.”
Sheathing her blades, Rose turned and began a dead sprint through the blizzard. With that bit of business taken care of, she had a fortress to escape from. The only question was, how? She didn't know much of the stronghold's layout, or the surrounding area. She'd be liable to get lost in the mountains and freeze to death before she made it to civilization. And that wasn't even the biggest question on her mind.
Who let me out of my room? Who gave me the armor, the swords... who's on my side here?
Rose returned inside the main part of the fortress, relieved to be out of the cold for the moment. She had to come up with a plan, some way to get out of here without getting herself killed in the frozen wilderness. It didn't matter who tried to stop her, she'd already proven she could cut her way through anyone who got in her way.
As she ran through the long, empty corridor, however, ice crystals abruptly coated the walls and the floor. At first, it looked like a simple, light frost, but within moments it was snowing. Inside. That could mean only one thing...
“Killer Frost,” she muttered, glaring at the woman at the end of the hall.
The icy blue woman grinned widely, holding a single hand forward. “Well, well, if it isn't my little plaything. Out for a midnight stroll, are we?”
“Out of my way, Frost. I'm not f**king around right now.”
“Oh I know,” she said. A swirl of cold and ice erupted from her palm, shooting forward in a wide, sweeping wave. “That's what makes it so fun!”
Rose acted quickly, leaping to the side and planting her feet against the wall next to her. Pushing off, she catapulted herself over the icy wave, landing nimbly on the other side and taking off in a sprint at the woman.
“You think you can torture me for two years and get off Scott-free?” Rose asked, sliding beneath another blast of ice. She popped back to her feet and leaped through the air, drawing her blades. “Think again!"
Killer Frost slid backwards on a path of ice, evading the attack and grinning. “Now this is what I've missed... go on, give me everything you got. I love it when you fight back.”
The remaining heat in the surrounding corridor suddenly disappeared at a rapid rate, temperature dropping like a rock. Rose shivered, body beginning to shudder as ice crystals formed over her armor. Her hair froze, lips chapped and split, and fingers became so numb that she could barely keep hold of her swords.
“Aww, what's the matter?” Killer Frost asked, strolling forward with a finger raised. “A little chilly?"
When another frozen wave burst from the woman's hand, Rose forced her body to move, jumping to the side and tumbling through a side door into the room beyond. The warmth within soothed her near frozen body somewhat, returning a little feeling to her extremities. Wasting no time, she kicked the door closed behind her and kept moving.
“Oh Roooosey,” Killer Frost called, pushing the door open and glancing around carefully.
It was dark in here, the only light coming from a couple torches along the far wall. The room itself was nothing more than a small dining room that the guards used for dinner. No windows, no other exits, a few pillars rising up near the center, and large tapestries hanging from the high ceiling.
The woman grinned, moving forward slowly across the floor. As she went, she began siphoning the heat in the room, frosting over every surface in the place. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Still nothing.
“Come on, you're not seriously going to hide from like this, are you?” she asked, pouting with mock disappointment. “I was so looking forward to playing with you again.”
Again, silence.
Killer Frost moved towards the far wall, idly glancing at a tapestry to her left. “Don't be a poor-”
“Hey Frost-” Rose said, her voice abrupty splitting the air.
The icy woman looked up sharply, just in time to catch sight of Rose letting go of the tapestry next to her and lunging down through the air. She attempted to bring her hands up in time to freeze the girl in mid jump, but she never got the chance. Rose led her attack with one of her swords pointed forward like a spear, piercing through Killer Frost's chest cleanly up to the hilt.
“-shut up.”
Killer Frost gurgled slightly as blood built up in her throat. When the blade withdrew from her chest, she collapsed to the floor, twitching slightly in desperation.
“Later, b*tch,” Rose said, giving the woman a mocking salute before sprinting from the room.
“N... no...” Frost uttered, feeling the life slipping from her body. Weakly, she pressed her palm to the gaping wound in her chest and let out a subzero blast of air, instantly freezing the injury shut. “Not... over... Rosey.”
---
Rose sheathed her sword, now only walking through the fortress corridors. Her body still didn't want to move correctly, not yet having recovered from Killer Frost's work. At least now she had an opportunity to think, to plan how she was going to escape. Now she could-
“AAAHHHH!” she shrieked, agony exploding through her skull. She instantly dropped to the floor, clutching her head and whimpering with excoriating pain.
“Now, now,” a sickeningly mocking voice chided. “What do you think you're doing, hmm?”
Barely able to open her eye, she glanced upward, just managing to take notice of the man standing in front of her, a man with an oversized, transparent head. If she wasn't in so much freaking pain, she'd probably be a little creeped out by that. She made a desperate attempt to get up and attack, but agony in her skull only burst to new extremes, eliciting another inhuman screech from her throat.
“You've made quite a mess of things,” Psimon stated, shaking his head. “But I'm afraid that ends now. Back to your room, now.”
Rose abruptly lurched back to her feet, as if gripped by some kind of invisible force. She winced, her eye only half open as she began to float through the air towards him. “Wh... who are... you?”
“Who am I?” Psimon chuckled, smiling. “Why, I'm- nnff.”
As Psimon crumbled to the ground unconscious, the psychic hold on Rose's body suddenly disappeared. The pain in her skull, too, vanished completely, allowing relief to flood her body. She took several moments to kneel there and recover, breathing in deeply, until finally looking up to see who had saved her.
“Shiva?” she uttered, blinking several times. Standing before her was Lady Shiva, flanked by a pair of men dressed in full tactical commando gear and armed with assault rifles.
“So, little dove,” the assassin stated, eyes narrowing, “you've finally attempted to escape.”
“I...” Rose paused a moment, returning to her feet. “Why are you standing in my way? You're the one who was preparing me for this, training me, making me stronger.”
Lady Shiva breathed calmly. “While that is true, I never said I wouldn't attempt to stop you when the time came.”
“Then why attack brain dude over there?” Rose glanced down at the unconscious Psimon. “Why not let him take me?”
“Because if you are going to be stopped,” she explained, “it will be in a fair fight.”
Rose glared, lifting her hands into a fighting position. “Three on one, seems like a fair fight to me.”
Shiva glanced back and forth between the commandos next to her. “Yes, well... you're armed. I am not.”
“I don't want to fight you, Shiva.” Rose shifted her stance slightly, inching forward. The commandos raised their weapons in response, pointing the guns at her chest.
Lady Shiva turned her own body, now in a prepared fighting stance. “Then be like a bird, little dove.”
---
Another team of commandos moved through a corridor, rifles at the ready. They stayed in formation, never letting their guard down no matter how quiet it got. With how the prisoner had already torn through the stronghold, there was no telling what could happen.
“Where is she now?” one of them asked. “Do we have a position?”
“Last I heard, Lady Shiva took a team to take her down,” another answered.
The man uttered a cool breath, as they pushed through a set of doors. “Oh, well then nothing to worry about. Right?” His question was met with silence. “Guys?”
Turning his head, he looked forward, where the others were staring. Their target stood there, holding a bloodied and beaten Lady Shiva by the shirt collar. The pair of commandos that had been accompanying her lay dead nearby, each with a sword jutting through his chest. Rose looked up quickly at their arrival, dropping Shiva to the ground and ripping the blades from the men's bodies.
“Oh sh*t!” one of the commandos shouted, taking aim. “Open fire!”
By the time the air lit up with hot lead, Rose had already made it to one of the stone cut windows along the wall. She leaped through the open space, plummeting twenty feet down the wall into a snowbank below.
“Double back to the east steps!” a commando shouted, leading the team back down the corridor. “Don't let her get away!”
---
“Where is it, where is it?” Rose muttered, rounding the corner of the courtyard wall. She counted off the passageways along the west wall as she went. “One... two... three... there!”
Sprinting through the fourth passage, she clambered down a winding set of steps, through a long hallway at the bottom, and finally into a large garage, equipped with mechanical equipment and a small fleet of vehicles that looked like snowmobiles, but were much larger, with built in storage containers in the rear. At the far end of the garage was open space, leading out onto a snowy mountain trail beyond.
“One... two... three,” she said quietly, selecting the third one from the left, in the front row. The keys were already in the ignition. “Alright, time to get the hell out of-”
Ratatatat!
Bullets fired, ricocheting sharply off the various transport vehicles. Rose ducked low as she hopped onto the back of her snowmobile, revving the engine and gunning the machine forward. Just as she made it through the open exit, however, racing into the blizzard beyond, a pair of bullets ripped through her armor, piercing the back of her left shoulder.
“Son of a mother-!” she shrieked, as her left arm suddenly went half dead.
She could barely grip the handlebars now, which made controlling the beast of a vehicle incredibly difficult while trying to navigate through the dark in the middle of a snowstorm. The headlights did very little to clear the way for her, but as long as she kept to the trail, she should be okay. In theory. Then, she heard the bullets again, felt a third dig into the meat of her ass.
“Are you f**cking serious?!” she cried to herself, lurching forward on her seat. Glancing back over her shoulder, she spotted the lights of several other snowmobiles in hot pursuit. “Come on, come on!”
Fortunately, the pursuit didn't last very long. Within moments, the men chasing her veered off the path, lost in the snowstorm and more than likely crashing off a cliff or something. Whatever, as long as they didn't catch her. It was time she got the hell out of here.
---
Roughly an hour later, Rose slowed the snowmobile. By now, the snowstorm had subsided, with only a few light flurries still falling. In the distance, she could make out a few bright lights coming from the windows of small wooden homes.
“Well... there's the town,” she muttered, easing the vehicle along.
When she finally reached the edge of the small collection of buildings, she hopped off the seat and stumbled, barely maintaining her balance. Her left arm didn't want to move right now, and every step she took sent a sharp pain shooting through her right ass cheek. First chance she got, she was going to have to get those bullets removed. Doing it herself would be... interesting. Maybe with a mirror and some tweezers. Maybe...
For now, though, she had something else to take care of. Moving around to the rear of the snowmobile, she unlatched the lid on the large storage compartment and flipped it open.
“How you doing back there?” she asked, gazing inside.
Almost instantly, a small figure leaped out of the compartment and pulled Rose into a tight hug.
“Nggaah,” Rose uttered, as a sharp pain flared through her shoulder. “Good to see you, too, Cassandra. Now come on, let's find the inn.”
---
About an hour ago...
“Then be like a bird, little dove.”
Rose's eye went wide at the statement. Be like a bird... it was a very simple, even nonsensical statement, at least to anyone else. But Shiva had mentioned it before, several times, in fact. She had never told Rose what the phrase meant, only to remember it, and that its importance would reveal itself when the time was right.
“Be like a bird...” she repeated, quietly. “...and fly free.”
In a lightning quick motion, Rose drew both her swords and whipped them through the air. Before the commandos had a chance to react, they went down in a heap, each with a blade sticking through their chests.
Once both men lay on the floor dead, Shiva relaxed, breathing outwardly and lowering her guard. “Very good, little dove.”
“It was you, wasn't it?” Rose asked. “You let me out of the room. You left the armor, the swords... you wanted me to escape.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“But why now?”
“Because I finally believe you are ready.”
Rose narrowed her gaze, confused. “Ready for what?”
Stepping forward, Lady Shiva placed a hand on the girl's shoulder. “Would you like to know the reason I decided to train you?”
“Well... yeah.”
“I saw something in you,” the woman explained. “Something great, something... unexplainable. I knew you could be the one.”
“The one to what?”
“To protect my daughter,” she replied.
Rose lifted an eyebrow. “To... what now?”
“Cassandra has no future here.” Bowing her head, Lady Shiva uttered a deep sigh and shook her head. “These people will use her as a weapon, and that's all she'll ever be. I cannot flee with her or they will hunt me down and they will kill us both. So, I want you to take her. I want you to flee from here, I want you to never let her out of your care, and I want you to keep her safe. For her sake, not just mine.”
“But... but what makes you think I can do that?” Rose asked, expression softening. “You said yourself, if you left The Syndicate, they'd hunt you down and kill you. And I'm... well, not you.”
Lady Shiva smiled slightly. “You might as well be, and you will only get stronger. But more than that, by staging your escape and allowing them to believe you kidnapped Cassandra, they will put me in charge of finding you.”
Rose raised her eyebrows in understanding. “And you'll intentionally mislead the search.”
“Precisely.”
“But how do I get out of here?” she asked. “How do I find Cassandra, how do I-”
“It's all taken care of,” Shiva explained. “Go to the main courtyard and take the fourth passage along the west wall. At the end of the corridor beyond, you'll find a garage with several snow transport vehicles. Cassandra is already hidden within the storage compartment of the third one in the front row, along with blankets, some money, and a first aid kit if you need it. Follow the trail beyond to the bottom of the mountain and continue straight west until you make it to a small town. Rest at the inn for the night, and in the morning find a way to the nearest major city. I don't care where you go from there, just please... protect my daughter.”
Rose went quiet a moment, making sure she had the information correct. Then, she nodded and turned to leave. “I promise you, I won't let anything happen to her.”
“Before you leave,” Shiva said, stepping forward. “There is something we must do. You must beat me.”
“Uh... excuse me?”
“To make it believable, it must look as though you defeated me and got away.”
Bowing her head slightly, Rose uttered a cool breath. “Right...”
Lady Shiva smile, dropping to one knee and lifting her chin forward. “Make it look real.”
A short few minutes later, the doors at the end of the corridor burst open. Rose turned her gaze to see another team of commandos entering, caught in apparent shock. Dropping the bloodied Shiva to the ground, she ran forward to grab her blades and then lunged out the nearby window as bullets filled the air.
When the commandos doubled back through the hallway, Lady Shiva slowly pushed herself back to her hands and knees. Wiping a line of blood from her mouth, she looked up to the window that Rose had jumped out of and smiled a very small smile. “Fly free, little dove.”
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