Blessed by Night

104  Alex Heller vs. Director Joanne!

"Fucking prick." Joanne growled under her teeth when she saw that Alex was clearly trying to take this city off the map rather than let himself be taken in.

The single tornado he created suddenly split into four, and started ripping through buildings, sending cars flying, and tearing up the road. The dark angels who had been firing upon him relentlessly before, were suddenly being swept up by the fierce winds and flung about as if they were rag dolls. "Men, evacuate if you can! Leave the subjugation to me!"

Joanne ordered her men to get clear just as Alex picked himself up from the molten wreckage of the vehicle. The man blessed by Ouranos saw the man who were fleeing away from the scene and shook his head in denial. "Where are you going, apes?"

Bang! n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Bang!

Bang!

Enormous bolts of lightning suddenly dropped down from the sky out of nowhere, frying the men who were trying to escape and sending them tumbling towards the ground. "Monster!!"

Johanne flew through the air and unleashed a shower of blows at Alex's body. His skin was tough and durable, but Joanne seemed to be getting through his defenses without much difficulty. "Bastard! Son of a bitch! Motherfucker! I'll haul you in if it costs me everything!!" She roared. Her emotions had begun to bubble, and memories of all of the physical and mental abuse she suffered at the hands of this man began to play back, fueling her rage. Alex was trying and failing to avoid her onslaught, and he would call down more bolts of lightening with the hope of striking her, but Joanne danced out of the way every time. But finally, she made a mistake. Joanne threw a sidekick with her right leg, but that was exactly what Alex seemed to be waiting for. Catching her leg with his arm, he smiled as if he'd just gotten the checkmate. "What good is all of that speed if you're just going to be fucking predictable?"

Raising his arm, he brought his elbow down directly onto Joanne's knee, shattering it with minuscule effort. The screams of the director were absolutely heartbreaking to hear, but Alex seemed to not only find them enjoyable, but arousing. "Gods, I've missed those whimpers. Let me hear more." Alex punched Joanne hard in the side and cracked two of her ribs easily. The force of his punches sent her flying out of his grasp, and she crashed headfirst into a cement wall.

Booom!!

As soon as the dust cleared, Alex was standing over her once again with his bare foot on her face. "This is where you belong, bitch. Underneath me. Don't ever forget-"

"Shut the fuck up!!"

Suddenly, Joanne began to release a golden light from her body and she grabbed Alex by his foot and twisted it hard, breaking it.

In the brief moment she created for herself, Joanne was able to roll out from underneath him and released a blast of golden energy from her palm that briefly disoriented Alex. With one leg ruined and her breathing off balance, she had to be more careful about how she continued the fight from here on out. Alex was dangerous in every sense of the word, and he hadn't even gotten serious so far. She had to pull out all the stops if she was going to live to see another day. 'Fuck taking you in, I'll just kill you!' The glow surrounding Joanne became brighter and brighter until she was blinding to look at. The light surrounding her suddenly dimmed, and she was revealed to have gone through a bit of an outfit change. Her body was adorned in heavenly white and gold armor the likes of which were only worn by the highest ranking members of the white city. The symbol of the cross was embedded within her chest, and each of her hands wielded white nunchucks that were inscribed with heavenly runes. An additional pair of large snowy white wings seemed to have formed from her back, and they allowed her to hover easily in the air without a sound. Alex finally blinked the sunspots out of his eyes and he saw Joanne in a way that he had never seen her before. It annoyed him to no end. "When I told you to change, I meant-"

BANG!

As soon as the insulting words left his lips, Joanne appeared in front of him and struck him hard across the jaw with her nunchucks. A blunt weapon moving at a speed of 0.005 seconds was worse than a shot from a cannonball, and Joanne easily decimated his lower jaw, reducing it to meaty chunks. Alex couldn't even process what happened. One second he was speaking normally, the next he couldn't. But he had very little time to investigate before he suddenly felt a terrible cracking pain in his back, and his body was flung into the air. 'What...?' For some reason, he could no longer feel his legs, and it was crystal clear to him that Joanne had broken his spine with one blow from those annoying little weapons. Faster than his eyes could follow, she bashed in both of his arms with ridiculous expertise and left them mangled and crooked. When his body finally hit the ground, his head was the only past of his body that he could still move, but Joanne stomped on his skull with extreme prejudice and ground his face into the damaged pavement. "You disgusting piece of garbage. I should send you to hell after all of the things that you have put me through!"

Raising her weapon above her head, she prepared to end the life of the man who had caused her such indescribable grief and misery. "Die."

Before her weapons connected, an unthinkable amount of dread and terror filled her body, and she flew backwards on pure instinct. BOOOOMMM!!!

A pillar of cobalt blue energy shot out of the body of Alex and pierced the black sky overhead. Suddenly, Joanne's body was overcome with a terrible burden, and she felt as if the weight of the world had been forced onto her shoulders. Her body and everything else around her was crushed down into the ground. Joanne struggled with all of her might, but all she succeeded in doing was lifting her head off the pavement. Alex had somehow fully recovered from Joanne's brutal string of attacks, and not only were his limbs straightened back out, but his jaw had fully healed as well.

His body now had a slight grey tint to it, and embedded in his chest was a glowing blue symbol of a hand with the eye in the center of it, surrounded by white wings. "Playtime's over, bitch." Alex growled. With every step that the blessed took towards her, Joanne's panic became more and more intense.

She didn't want to die like this. She didn't want to die at the hands of somebody like him!

If she couldn't defeat him with her own hands then she would never recover the dignity that was so cruelly taken from her.

She still had so many mistakes that she wanted to atone for, and so many people that she wanted to apologize to. Joanne continued to struggle and tried to push herself up from the ground, much to the hilarity of Alex. "You should have just accepted your inferiority and walked away when you had the... chance?"

Alex tilted his head in confusion, but Joanne didn't really understand why. All of the sudden her body sank into the ground beneath her, and before she knew it she was somewhere else entirely. Looking up, she found herself in the arms of a young man looking at her with sympathetic orange eyes. She was suddenly reminded of a promise that was made to her a few days ago, that she hadn't even bothered to remember. And now that she was seeing this young man again, her surprise was immeasurable. "Sorry bout this, director. Probably should have come a little sooner."

He could see that her body was in terrible condition, and her leg was still bent at a ridiculous angle. He wanted to let Joanne handle this on her own if she could, since she understood exactly what she was fighting for, but it didn't matter in the end. If he had waited even a few more seconds, she would have died.

"H-How did you-"

"YOU!!"

Joanne and Malachi looked down from atop the ruined building they were on and found Alex Heller staring back at them from the street making a furious expression. "Hold that thought for now, Director." Malachi placed Joanne down on the most comfortable pile of rubble he could find and stood up while stretching his body. "You can't beat him, kid. Just get us both out of here so that we can see another day." She muttered.

"...Nah, I'm cool."

Dark shadows began to crawl up Malachi's body right before her very eyes, and encased him in armor that seemed to be made from the boundlessness of the night itself. "Hey Shear? Time to wake up girl, there's an enemy."

'Ene...my...? Ene...my...!' There was suddenly a burst of pure white light from Mal's forehead, and his contracted beast shot out like a bullet towards the strange glowing man on the ground.