RATING: R.
SUMMARY: A perfect person’s life isn’t all roses.
ARCHIVAL/DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere, as long as you ask me first.
FEEDBACK: can be sent to Viridian5@aol.com
DISCLAIMERS: All concepts from Highlander belong to Rysher and Panzer/Davis.
No infringement intended. Suing me
would be a waste of time.
NOTES: A little bit of weirdness for the Mary Sue Challenge. It’s not
my fault. I swear.
======================
"The Mary Sue Blues"
By Viridian5
======================
As Deirdre passed the alley, she felt a vibration travel across her
skin and the hairs rise on her neck. Over two
millennia of life had sharpened her senses enough that she knew just
from the feel of it that eight other immortals
waited there in the shadows. For her. And among them stood Santiago,
the Roman, her archenemy.
The odds might even be against her for once.
She smiled, then retrieved Claw from the pocket universe most immortals
kept their weapons in and unsheathed it.
She decided not to bring Shadow over too, because two swords might
make the battle too one-sided; she needed
some exercise and excitement. Life had been dull and drab lately, gnawing
at her....
Only the opalescent sword Claw, transformed over the years into something
considerably more than steel through
the dying energies of thousands of immortals, gleamed brighter than
Deirdre’s lustrous black hair under the
streetlights. Even she’d forgotten the reason why she always plaited
three thin braids into it. Her pale skin almost
glowed, while her piercing emerald eyes, as green as the hills of the
village she’d called home two centuries before
Christ had died, scanned the shadows for an attack. She’d been unusually
tall among her people, though in the
modern world her six feet of height no longer seemed so uncommon. While
the bodice of her perfectly tailored dark
blue leather trench coat clung to her breasts and lean waist, the bottom
of it, slit in four places for ease of
movement, flowed out in four directions as she walked. Her Docs made
no sound against the asphalt.
She’d gone by many names in her lifetime, but in her own mind she used the name that her mother had called her.
The coming storm feeling of the other immortals nearby grew stronger
the closer Deirdre came, leaving her to decide
whether she should goad them into making a move or continue to enjoy
the adrenaline edge of anticipation. Her
opponents decided the question for her when two of them lunged at her
from out of the shadows.
Then her world narrowed into the steel and the dance. Deirdre dodged,
ducked, parried, and thrust, eyes gleaming
at the possibility of risk. But these two presented no challenge, and
Claw quickly relieved them of their heads. Power
boomed and crackled through her in blinding, searing arcs, firing her
blood, but five of the others ambushed her as
soon as the death lightning ended. Taking advantage of her distraction.
She approved.
Santiago still held back, watching, perhaps waiting for the others to wear her down.
Deirdre had been a warrior or soldier most of her life, even though
she’d had to glamour herself to look more
mannish for much of that time, and quickly gauged the sword strikes,
seeing the pattern her opponents had to use
to avoid tangling their attacks with their compatriots’. It disappointed
her, because she knew now that they would
present no challenge as well. At least they hadn’t come at her one
on one.
"Boring," she said as her steel-toed Doc spun one man’s head around on its neck.
"Uninspired," she said as her sword ripped out through a hole in another’s back.
"However did you survive this long?" she asked as another’s severed
head rolled down Claw’s length. A flick of her
wrist tossed the head toward one of her opponents. As the power flared
again, she took advantage of their surprise
to decapitate them one by one, though in one case she nailed two at
the same time.
This time the death storm knocked her down in its intensity, a destructive
hurricane of white fire. The entire
neighborhood experienced a blackout as the surge overloaded part of
the city’s power grid. Deirdre came to lying
amidst the broken glass with only Claw’s swirling, writhing light breaking
the darkness. The sword vibrated in her grip.
Perhaps she should start to use Shadow instead before Claw became too
much to handle.
Once the Quickening had felt like the rawest, brightest orgasm of pleasure
and pain, an incomparable rush, but
familiarity had dulled even that. Once she’d relished the increase
in personal power, but now it burned within her too
hotly.
Deirdre could see Santiago lying within the pool of Claw’s light. She
could finish him now if she liked, ending the life of
a man who claimed he’d once served under Constantine.
She considered it.
Deirdre could speak over thirty languages, some of them extinct, and
practiced eight kinds of martial arts. Amongst
her various aliases she had money enough to buy a continent. Two millennia
had given her the knowledge and
experience to do anything she wanted, and she’d seen every place on
the earth she’d ever wanted to visit. She’d
watched the same conflicts arise over the same stupid bones of contention
over and over again, to the point that
she could often predict what would come next based on the pattern.
She’d loved and lost thousands of people.
She’d seen it all. All of it had become ashes to her.
When she’d been far younger, she’d sworn to die only at the hands of
a greater warrior. More and more lately, it
looked as if the only way she’d ever do that would be if she fell onto
one of her own swords.
Deirdre stood, sheathed Claw, and replaced it in the pocket dimension.
Then she walked away, leaving Santiago to
come to on his own. This wasn’t the first time she’d done this.
She knew what she’d have to do if he died.
**********************THE END***********************