Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Slayer Mine ❯ A Slayer's Work... ( Chapter 1 )

She had been running. Her breath felt like fire in her lungs, her chest burned. But not as much as the tears lingering, threatening, ever-present behind her eyes aching to fall…aching to course down her cheeks in childlike fashion and shame her more than she was feeling as she ran. She forced herself onward. She could not stop. She must not stop. She had to run until everything was normal again. Until she could go home again.

But she could never go home.

She felt the wind at her face, shoving her hair back and whipping the long strands into her face. She could not go home. She had been running away from home for three years. She could never go back. Never. She would rather die. Shew would rather die a hundred deaths each more horrible than the last than return to…that…place.

She could not continue. Gasping, feeling herself that much more the weakling because of it, she pulled to a stop on someone's front lawn, gulping in huge lungfuls of air while the fire in her chest and throat slowly died down. She leaned over, hands on her knees, looking at the ground and seeing nothing.

The tears had begun to fall, silently, trailing their routes down her cheeks and off the tip of nose to disapear somewhere within the tangle of half-dead autumn grass beneath her feet. She had not been entirely sure, now that she'd stopped, exactly what it was she had been running from.

She should not have been running in the first place. She was the Slayer. She was soppose to…slay. Not run. She felt all mixed up. She'd felt mixed up since she'd walked away from the only home she'd ever known. All her days seemed a dull mixture of the one before, the night blending in with all the others, each as unremarkable as the next; Run, fight, Slay, Run, Eat, Sleep. An endless circle that seemed to lead her nowhere.

A snarling behind her and to both sides brought her swiftly out of her reverie. She gasped as she stood up, blinking the teary haze from her dark brown eyes. She could sense them…the pain in her gut always told her when they were near. She reached into the backpack slung over her back and pulled out a sharpened wooden stake. One of several she carried everywhere she went. She may try to run away from what she was. But, it never worked. Not for long. They always came for her…drawn to her like a moth to a flame. And she needed to be prepared at all times.

Almost too fast to see, they ambushed her. Five waif-thin monsters whose strength and swiftness belied their delicate appearance. She knew that looks could be deceiving as she spun about, leaped, kicked, caught the first one in the jaw, sent it sprawing. She knew it would a mere moment before it was on it's feet again, scrambling after her. She did not pause to give it leave. She raised the stake, tossed it in the air, spun about and kicked, her heel hitting the stake in just the right position and it slammed into the chest of the monster, who was dust in less than a heartbeat, littering the street.

"Okay! Who's next?!" She cried, her body tensed, ready for action, couched into a fighting stance. She knew they would not cease to come for her. Vampires had thick skulls, in more ways than one. A fallen comrade did not jar their minds to think; "Hey, she really kicked his ass…maybe we'd better back off…" No, they came as though driven by a force outside themselves and perhaps that was what it was, she would not have argued had someone voiced the thought aloud to her.

She met the next one with a series of leaps and punches that worked to stun the vamp and confuse it with the blur of her motion more than it actually hurt it. She used his momentary lose of consentration to make it's last moments very pointy and quite dusty. The others she took care of in much the same manner, sighing when her stake had penetrated the last vampire's chest and the skeleton lingered for a moment on her weapon before puffing into so much ash and carried away by the breeze.

She fell to her knees in the street, embracing herself and sobbing. It hadn't aways been this way. She knew. There was a time when she could fight and slay without thought of anything save her work…her duty. She did not understand why she felt such…emptiness inside. She did not understand why should be feeling anything but pride at a job well done.

Her heart felt like a cold stone in her chest. Had not it been beating beneath her fingers she would have thought herself dead. Like those she had just lain waist to. Somehow, though the thought was almost too horrid to bear, she almost wished she were. There had to more to life than this…hadn't there? More to life than running from one squat to the next, digging through dumpsters to survive, killing whatever vamp or demon to come seeking her…Hadn't there?

She shrugged, her shoulders drooped, all her energy gone now. She was without a family or a Watcher and she was too ashamed to seek out friendship among her peers...those of the street her own age or a bit older. She kept herself mostly, certain that no one would want to give her the time of day, for all that she was saving their lives almost every single night she was around. Had they known…but she curbed that thought before it could start. What mattered if they ever knew or not. It would make no difference even if they did.

She shoved her dark hair over her shoulders and continued walking. She was returning to the place she'd found last night to sleep at. An crevice on a roof between two old buildings, enclosed enough to provide some protection and the overhanging eaves allowed the weather to be kept at bay. She liked it most of all because it was high above the world and she could look down and not feel like such a worthless failure.

She swiped her tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her ratty sweater and wished with all her being that things were different. Maybe in a perfect world it could have been. She snorted a half laugh, half sob. Yeah, and maybe I'll be swept off my feet by my knight in shining armor and taken to a castle in the sky! The sarcasm in her tone inside her head was as biting as the chill night air.