The Freaky Ice Demon Chick 3

Chapter Three: Nosebleeds Are Going Around This Time Of Year

Sunny flew.  Not too high right now, well below the rooftops of the tallest skyscrapers in Pound's Field, but high enough to put the scare in Lil' Sophie.  Sunny hadn't flown with a passenger in tow before, and though Sunny was light, she didn't want to risk her power giving out on her because of some stupid restriction she hadn't tripped yet.  That meant no teleporting, either.  Revenge wasn't worth dying over.

Killing, though...

Sophie was screaming.  Still.  Good set of pipes on that girl.  "Shut it," Sunny said, "or I'll freeze you solid and let go."

Sophie fell silent, staring up at her with enormous, teary eyes.  She whimpered, "Lassen Sie... Lassen Sie mich bitte gehen..."

"Don't speak the language," Sunny said.  She alit on the roof of a lightless office building, threw Sophie down.  She rolled to a stop layered in snow from the roof, the ice cage holding tight.  Sophie lay quietly on the roof, her breathing shallow.  Sunny stalked over to her.  The German girl was small normally, but locked away in ice she seemed even more pathetic and tiny.  "Hmph.  Don't spend a lot of time hopeless, do you?"  Sunny knelt beside her.  "Does that hurt?"

"Ja..."  Sophie cringed.  "It's cold.  It's... thorny..."

Sunny ran one armored finger over one of the lances of ice locking around her prey.  Tiny spikes broke against her claw.  "Hmm.  Pretty mean."  She hadn't meant to do that; rather clever on her power's part.  "So.  Didn't even bother to give a dollar to a starving woman on the week 'a Rosemas.  Pardon the pun, but that's cold.  Damn cold."  She stroked Sophie's chin.  "What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Are you... her?"

Sunny smiled, not that Sophie could see.  "Guess it was a little obvious.  Now you know my secret identity.  You're the only other person in all the world who knows who I really am."  She brought her face close to Sophie's, staring her down from behind her mask.  Her whimpers became wet, fearful sobs, her tears steaming in the night air.  "I think you know what that means."  She stood and swung out her left arm.  A heavy-bladed sword burst from her empty hand--a new trick.  Seemed appropriate for the circumstances.  Sunny lowered the heavy, blunt tip to Sophie's neck.  She raised the blade.

It trembled in her grip.

Well, dammit, she thought.  I've killed people before.  Wouldn't make sense to wuss out now.  But she'd buried men in blocks of ice, sent them to sleep they never woke from.  They were armed, they tried to kill her (But didn't you love seeing the looks on their faces when their guns didn't do squat? a cruel, honest voice said in her heart).  Sophie was helpless, crying, afraid for her life.  And blonde.  And blue-eyed.  Dressed in that silly costume, she looked like...

Nostalgia is a manipulative bastard who knows just how to get what he wants out of you.

"Screw it."  She threw aside the sword.  It sank into the snow and disappeared.  "Anyone ever tell you you're too cute by half, kid?"  She sat next to Sophie, folding up her wings for an easier fit.

"I... vielen dank, meine Frau!" cried Sophie.

Sunny chuckled.  It was not becoming of her.  "Oh, you're not out of the woods yet.  You've got miles to go before you sleep.  As the saying goes."  She patted Sophie's head.  "See, the funny thing is, nobody's been able to stop me yet.  And there've been a few people who've tried.  You've heard of me, right?  The Ice Demon?  The Jersey Devil?"

Sophie shook her head so subtly Sunny might have imagined it.

"Guess you're not the type to read the tabloids.  The story goes, I'm some kind of demon, or maybe a ghost who looks like a demon.  Or I'm an alchemist with a penchant for nitrogen.  Wanna know the truth?"  She set Sophie on her feet and thought.  "Ice chain," she said, and a long chain, its links black ice, wove itself between her hands.  She looped it around Sophie and gave it a tug.  She seemed lighter--much lighter, in fact, as though the chain were doing all the heavy lifting.  A nice little spell.  "The truth is, I have no clue what the hell I am, or why I can do this.  All I know is cold.  It empowers me, it enlightens me.  It gives me the power to do whatever the hell I want."

Sunny dragged Sophie to the edge of the roof.  "It's winter.  It's the dead of winter on the longest night of the year.  And nothing can stop me now."

* * *

A rope ladder unspooled from the hole in the ceiling.  "Awright," Miss Y said, trying to crack her neck joints for emphasis and only managing to get a neck cramp, "Agggck agh!  Oh ow.  Owww!  Blagh.  Mr. K, give me some rubbing action."  Mr. K massaged her neck where it was doubled over in reflexive pain.  "Crap, that's not working, it's spreading, ow ow ow!"

"You have to press for cramps," said Mr. Nowhere.  Mr. K nodded and pressed into Miss Y's neck.  In moments she was back in working order.

"There we go.  Now.  You ready?"

"Well, I could be in pants and boots," Jan said.  "I can call Clio, and I'm pretty sure Ted won't mind splitting from Lakewatch to help."

"Are they ready to kill an impossible monster for vengeance and breach of contract?" Miss Y said.

"...breach of contract?" Jan said.  "The monster just broke contract by kidnapping Sophie?"

"Yup."

        "...how?"

        "Funny story, I'll tell you another time."  Miss Y lept at the rope ladder and scrambled up.  Mr. K was shortly behind, carrying the Lash in one hand (and over his eyes, for fear of looking up Miss Y's skirt and drawing her violent ire), then Mr. Nowhere, and Jan held on last.  The rope lifted steadily up--and up--and into a helicopter waiting above the zone.

"Good evening, Miss Y!" said the pilot as Miss Y crawled into the chopper, followed by all the rest.  She snatched the Lash from Mr. K's hand.  "This was rather sudden, but, well, she's always warmed up in case you need her."

"Sexcellent," Miss Y said.  "Now where's that minigun?"

Jan looked around for a seat she could strap into.  Mr. Nowhere seemed to be in his element.  Mr. K huddled near Miss Y, slotting the Lash into what he assumed was a holster for a weapon of some kind.

"Well, m'am," said the pilot, "it seems rather illegal to put miniguns on civilian-owned craft.  I tried to flash my credentials but the man at Mark's Miniguns refused to listen.  If it's any consolation, we got you this!"  The pilot reached around near his seat and pulled out an unpleasant-looking rifle.  He held it out to Miss Y, who grudgingly accepted it.  "Now, where to?"

"Hell if I know.  Look out for something shooting ice 'n crap 'n carrying around Lil' Sophie Stryker."

"Hey," Jan said, clinging tight to a panic bar, "knock on wood and all, but that's assuming the freaky ice demon chick hasn't just killed Sophie.  What if she has?"

Miss Y tried to find a pump action to pump dramatically and settled for pulling back on a pully-backy-thing, which snapped back with a KER-PANG! startlingly loud even above the drone of the rotors.  "I suppose we'll have to kill her ass, then.  You cool with killing her ass?"

"I'm ideologically comfortable with that.  Is there a 'steady' setting on this helicopter or is this as good as it gets?" Jan said.

"You'll get your airlegs soon enough," Mr. Nowhere said, patting her on the back.  That did wonders for her morale.

"To storm the gates of Tomorrow!" Miss Y said, hanging out the helicopter door with the rifle in one hand.  "Driver, to the fiend, wherever we may find her!"

* * *

"--alive?" said Kim, nudging Ted's face.

Ted winced.  "I'm pretty sure I'm alive," he said.  "Although, I would like to mention death would be a welcome reprieve from this headache.  What happened?"

Jamey offered his hand; Ted took it and yanked Jamey off his feet.  Powered frame.  Yeah.  When they were both on their feet Ted got a good look at the Ogopogo of Lightless Depths Lake, dead as it should have been from the start, blasted and crushed and, most gruesomely, folded until it stopped moving.  "Who killed it?" Ted asked.  Kim pointed at the stage, which had been partially destroyed by giant gnashing teeth.  Mayor Edensbough was offering her microphone to a man riding an enormous robot-lookin' robot thing.

"At first," the guy said, "I was going to give it to my mom so it would fold her clothes and work on her car, but it mixed up what was a car and what were clothes.  It folded cars, generally.  But the fun thing is that when I just set it to fold what I told it to fold, well, it goes and folds the Ogopogo of Lightless Depths Lake until it dies.  Its component parts died again, I mean.  So it all worked out!"

"Good for him," Ted said.  "How about we catch up with Clio?  Call it a night?"

"Why Clio?" Kim asked.

"Have you had Le Cygne's coffee?  It is the hot black love of God Himself, and my body has been muchly punished.  Just what happened to me, anyhow?"

"You fought the Ogopogo hand-to-hand.  Idiot."

"I stand by my actions as a good idea at the time."  He started walking to his truck, then tripped and pulled something.  "Aaaahhhowwwww.  Uh, little help please?"

* * *

East Street was rocking hard tonight, because Rothbart and Sigfried International Bank was being robbed of priceless valuables.  Someone might have also been playing rock music, but the truth of that speculation has been lost to the ravages of people being too busy gawking at the robbery to care.

It was more of an attempted robbery, what with all but one of the conspirators now sent to a long winter's nap courtesy of a young Chinese-Korean-Romany woman trained by ghouls in long-forgotten martial arts.  Clio sprung at the wall, planted a foot on the cold brick, turned, jumped again, and brought her heel to the breakable jaw of Loathsome Cambion, the man so repellent his own parents named him Loathsome.  He fell, screaming inarticulately and clutching his broken jaw, and in moments the police burst through the doors and descended upon him with cruel and chafing cuffs.  Clio dusted off her stupid elf costume and meandered out the door.  "Well, that was easy," she said.

"You were dynamite, Clio!" said her boss, whose name she had never bothered learning.  He rushed up the steps and shook her hand, which she had not offered.  "Just what the doctor ordered!"

"Not sure if the doctor would order anything for bank robberies," said Edwina, who clapped along with all the spectators as well as a one-armed woman could.

"Excellent show nonetheless.  I do believe our job here is--"  Clio noticed he was walking away, as if they were done talking, and seized him by the shoulders.

"Mind if we talk about something?" Clio asked.  The cops filed out of the bank, criminals in tow.

"About what, exactly?" her boss said.  He tried to walk along with the cops, but Clio's iron grip refused to relent.

"You said this was going to be food.  Food for a band and people watching the band.  Something like that.  You were very vague about exactly what we were doing, in fact."

"That I was, but--"

"It was a bank robbery.  A bank robbery I, in my infinite wisdom, was supposed to beat up until it stopped.  I called some of my friends to watch the band.  You see them?"  She had invited families of friends, in fact, the Pitons and the Hawthornes and the Adamant Collective.  They came for the band but stayed for the justice.  They waved at the cops as they drove off.

"You see--" her boss said.

"You're giving me a raise and the rest of the week off, because I beat it up and it stopped, guns and all.  You see this?"  She pointed at an ear.  "I'm not wearing the stupid elf ears because a bullet took them off for me.  I submit that as evidence for why you're giving me a paid vacation.  That includes tips.  Demand people give phantom tips to the lady who saved... what was it I saved again?"

Lucid Adamant looked through a brochure and said, "It was the Brilliant Dance you saved!  That thing, right there."  He pointed at the armored car the first group of robbers had attacked; a handful of cops were now escorting movers as they snailed along the salted sidewalks, carrying, suspended on a sheet of mercurially-hardened silk, an achingly beautiful sculpture of spider silk and sheets of colored glass two microns thick.  "One-of-a-kind, never replicated in the annals of human history.  Only petals of the Christ-Rose are estimated to be less priceful.  Heavy stuff.  Metaphorically."

"Look at that crazy thing," Clio said.

"I am," said her boss, "and I'm thinking how wonderful it is that I'm going to give you paid vacation and bonus tips for saving it."

"Also," Clio said, "you knew that a robbery was going to happen tonight at so-and-so hour at so-and-so place and didn't tell the police."

"Oh yeah.  Hoo boy, this was a better idea seven days ago."

"I'm going now," Clio said.  "Where's my box dinner?  I'm hungry."

"It's in the car!  I'll be right back."  He tried to pull away from her.  "Please let me go."

"Oh yeah.  Okay."  She let him go and he scrambled for the car, nearly bumping into the men glacially edging along the sidewalk with the Brilliant Dance.  "This was stupid and violent."  She sat on the steps of the bank, resting her head in her hands.

"But you were spectacular!" said Edwina, who sat next to her.  "I mean, the parts we saw.  And heard.  I didn't know bone could snap that loud without somebody dying."

"Me neither," sighed Clio.  "I guess this evening wasn't a total wash."

Her boss darted back, a box filled with nutrition in hand.  "Here you go!  I'll just be going now."

"You do that," Clio said, taking the box, and he was already gone.  "You guys too, we're basically done here."  Congratulations were exchanged and much leave was taken.  Clio cracked open the box, plucked the disposable chopsticks from the wrapper, and dug in.  "Mm'.  Delicious.  You want some?"  She held out a pinch of stir-fried mushrooms, lemon grass, and cricket.

"I, uh, never had much taste for ghoul cooking."

"This isn't really ghoul cooking.  It's Chinese, except with stuff you can find in a graveyard that isn't dead people.  This is way too fresh and cooked and not-a-dead-person for ghouls."

Edwina winced.  "Yeah... I don't think I'll have to eat for a while."

"You know," Clio said between bites, "you're pretty easy to gross out for a chick who looks like she was thrown in a wheat thresher."

"What can I say, I'm a delicate butterfly."

Overhead, a frost-winged terror cackled and flew away, trailing some poor captive in a chain of glistening ice.

"Hey," said Edwina, "isn't that Lil' Sophie?  And that Jersey Devil ice thing that's been on the internet?"

"Oh, dammit," Clio said.  "I'm gonna be caught up in this somehow, aren't I."

"Hm?"  A helicopter rushed overhead.  "Oh yeah, Jan, that friend of yours.  Sophie's got it out for her, right?  Think it's some kind of publicity stunt by Lil' Sophie?"

"I 'unno.  Could be an ice monster."

A truck screeched to a stop in front of the bank, the noise startling one of the guards, who bumped into one of the men who had the silk sheet by the corner, which led to the Brilliant Dance tipping over and being unmade on the cruel earth below.  The window facing Clio and Edwina rolled down.  Jamey stuck out his head and yelled over the sound of the guard howling in existential angst, "Hey, Clio!  Looks like the city's in trouble!  Wanna help?"

"Do I have to?" said Clio.

"I... well, you don't have to, per se, but... it's almost Rosemas, you know..."

"Fine."  She shut her box lunch and marched up.  "Do you have a coat or something?  This stupid elf costume is cold."

"Don't you have any coffee?" Ted said from inside the truck.

"No.  There's no coffee.  There was a bank robbery."

"Oh.  Sorry to hear!" Ted said.

"You're not the only one," Clio said, hopping in the back of the truck.  "Let's get this stupid thing over with."  The truck sped off after the helicopter and the ice demon.

* * *

Sunny laughed.  "Didn't take long to get interesting, did it?"  She dove into the streets, darting between cars.  Sophie's face was, at times, mere inches from the ground, but she'd finally worn out her throat and lost a good deal of body heat to the winter chill and her icy cage.  Sunny spiraled back up, taunting the helicopter trying to close in behind her.

She led it between buildings, above busy streets packed with Lakewatch tourists, last-minute shoppers, and street-taking civilians.  It would be overly generous to say all eyes were on them; between Pound's Field being a very screwed up little city and the Ogopogo of Lightless Depths Lake plastered all over TV, a freaky ice demon chick was somewhat low on the list of impressive supernatural spectacles for tonight.  Maybe if it had been Rosemas Eve...

It was fun leading them on, but the time had come to face them head-on.  She came to a stop outside a hospital--Lady Josephene, if the signs were to be trusted, an honest-seeming five-story building adorned with Rosemas lights.  Patients and doctors filled the windows when the helicopter arrived.  For a few breaths the chopper and the devil in ice armor stared each other down.

The helicopter bobbed indecisively, then spun, facing her with its broad side.  The rich freak in the dress, the one who'd gone after her with an umbrella, now had a rifle.  Sunny raised her arm over her face, but all five shots were clean misses.  She smirked and answered with her own attack: "Frost spear!"  She hurled an icicle the size of a javelin at the helicopter, impaling it through a sheet of armor on the side.

* * *

An icicle ripped through the helicopter inches away from Jan.  She made a strange little noise in the back of her throat.

"Perhaps this wasn't the best idea?" Mr. Nowhere said; if the icicle had broken through, it would've impaled him through the chest.

"Shut the hell up!" Miss Y said.  "HEY!  FLYBOY!  MORE AMMO!"

"There was just the one magazine," he said.  "We thought you'd have killed whatever it was by now."

"Oh, come on!  First you don't get me a minigun, and now you only get me one whatsit of shots?  This is the worst Rosemas ever!"  She hurled the rifle out the helicopter door, accomplishing nothing.  A frost spear soared by her head, flying right out the other open helicopter door.

"Maybe she's trying to miss?" Jan said.

The next spear lodged itself somewhere higher, near the rotors.  The helicopter lurched, the engine sputtering.  Miss Y plummeted out of the opposite cabin door; Miss Y had insisted both be open for "proper air flow."  Mr. K, hunched near the back, lunged at her, barely grabbing an ankle.  He nearly followed her; he clenched a hand bar, and his shoulder crunched into an unnatural position.  "I've got you!" he screamed through clenched teeth.  "Oh God, it hurts, but I've got you, m'am!"

"Thanks!" Miss Y said.  "If it's not a problem, I'd appreciate being back in the heliAAAAGH!"  The chopper dipped low; Miss Y curled up, a lamp post nearly colliding with her head.  Mr. Nowhere crawled along the floor, leaned out the chopper as it reeled the other direction, and snatched at Miss Y's other foot.

"On three--THREE!" he yelled, and, dislocated shoulder and all, Mr. K helped him pull Miss Y back into the helicopter.  Mr. K swept her into his good arm and held tight.

"LISTEN TO ME, YOU SON OF A WHORE!" the pilot yelled at his machine, "YOU'RE GOING TO LAND AND NOT KILL US AND THAT'S FINAL!"  The copter's frame groaned like a whale stuck with a fatal harpoon.  It bucked, spun, its skids scraping the roof of a passing truck.  He reigned it like a dying horse and planted it on the street.  He cut the power and let the beast slide into a newsstand, thumping to a halt.  "And done!" he said.  He tore off his helmet and discarded it.  It then hit him how abysmally cold it was.  He put his helmet back on.

"We all alive back there?" he said.

"Are we dead?" Jan whimpered.

"I'm not dead," the pilot said.  "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm heck of alive."

"Then I guess I'm alive too," Jan said, right before reintroducing the world to everything she'd eaten and drank from twelve hours ago.

"I'm fine," Mr. Nowhere said.  He was shaking, but his voice was steady.

"Miss Y's safe," Mr. K said.  "Although I think my left shoulder is now partially or wholly out of its socket."

"You see what happens when you don't put a minigun on your helicopter?  Shit like this, that's what happens," Miss Y said, pushing Mr. K out of the way.  She popped the Lash from the compartment Mr. K stashed it in and hopped out of the non-crashed-into-a-news-stand door.  She promptly slipped on the ice and barely caught herself with the leaden tip of her parasol.  "Oh damn!  That was close."

Jan spilled out next, gulping fresh night air and trying to spit the taste out of her mouth.  Mr. Nowhere helped Mr. K and the pilot out.  "Where's our target?" Mr. Nowhere said.

"She's hovering ominously," Jan said.  The ice demon hadn't budged, and watched their movements with emotions impossible to gage, what with the solid mask of ice.  Something clicked in Jan's head.  Now was not the time, but soon.  Lil' Sophie dangled from the frozen chain the demon carried in her right hand, and though she was even more little from the ground, she didn't look too well.  "What do we do now?"

The truck parked near the crashed helicopter.  Clio hopped out of the back, wearing an enormously stupid-looking costume.  "Hey," she said.  "You guys alright?"

"We're just awesome," Jan said.  Miss Y was on her cell phone, calling who-knows-what, while Mr. Nowhere was nursing Mr. K through an attempt to set his dislocated limb back in its place.  "How about you?"

Kim marched into the street, twirling her ray casters like a gunslinger.  Jamey stood behind her, whistling.  Ted crept onto the ice, in much pain.  "Ow.  Oh God," Ted said.  "So, having a pleasant evening, helicopter crashes aside?"

"Could be doing better," Jan said.  "That ice demon thing kidnapped Lil' Sophie, and she's wrecking the joint hard-style."

"Ah.  Any plans on how to stop her?"

"I tried shooting it," Miss Y said, tucking her cell phone back in its pocket.  "But that didn't turn out well.  I think it's safe to say bullets aren't going to hurt her."

"Bullets are for chumps," Kim said.  "Step back and let a real man handle this."  She fired her ray casters at the ice demon.  The glittering beams struck her armored skirt and raised a little steam where they hit.  The demon looked down at Kim, raised an open palm at her, and said something lost to the distance and wind.  Cold fronts don't generally have colors or bright lights or any other indicators, but this one had an audible SNAP.  It knocked Kim on her ass; she dropped both her casters, their fragile neon tubes cracking.

Jamey helped her up.  "That was brilliant, annoying her slightly and all.  Now what do you have?"

"Piss and unbound rage?"  She rubbed at her nose, saw that the nosebleed was in fact drooling down her face in an alarming-looking torrent, muttered "To hell with it" and let it flow.

"Well, you've got--she's attacking, isn't she."

The ice demon cracked her wings, swooped down, and smacked Kim and Jamey with Lil' Sophie like an oversized, well-dressed mace.

"Oh, crap!" Jan said.  The sight was as hilarious as it was emasculating.

"Less thinking, more hurting!" Miss Y said, and, having learned nothing, charged the ice demon chick with her umbrella at the ready.  Mr. Nowhere and Clio were close behind.  The ice demon was in the middle of her fourth swing when Mr. Nowhere swept ahead of the pack and planted a gloved fist just under her rib.  She grunted, flit back, and brought Sophie down on him.  He snatched Lil' Sophie, planted a foot on the ice demon, and with a perfect exertion of effort kicked off, shattering a weak link in the chain.  The ice demon aero-stumbled back, and Miss Y was on her swinging the Lash, Clio flanking her from the back.

The demon batted Clio aside with a wing, took the Lash on the shoulder, and shouted, "Ice blade!"  A heavy, blunt-tipped sword-looking slab of ice appeared in her left hand.  She parried Miss Y's next swing, turning the fight into a clumsy fencing match.  Clio planted a flying kick to the back of the demon's head, right between the curl of her horns, forcing the demon down to earth at last.  She balanced a precarious second before jumping off, stumbling on the icy sidewalk.  Suitably distracted, she took three to the head from Miss Y.  She snatched the Lash with her free hand, ripped it out of Miss Y's grip, and smacked her across the rear with the flat of her sword.

"Yeeeeeoooou cheeky bitch!" Miss Y screeched, swiping the demon's face with finely-manicured nails.  She left fine scratches on the mask of her face.

"Spike!" the demon said, and, lo and behold, a spike of ice burst from the ground, missing Miss Y's soft, crunchy body, but ripping up through layers of skirt.

Miss Y tried to pull away.  The damnably sturdy dress refused to tear any further.  "Freeze," said the demon, and Miss Y was locked in a shell of ice.

"Aw, come on!" Miss Y said.

The demon looked around for Clio and saw her fist connect with her face.  Her non-face, anyhow.

* * *

Mr. K struggled with the bars of ice locking around Lil' Sophie.  Her breathing was shallow and her skin pale; when she tried to wriggle around, they could see angry red marks across her skin.  "Dammit, this isn't coming apart!  Jan, can you get anything heavy from--"

"Ted," Jan said, "can I borrow the power frame?"

Ted jolted.  "My baby?  I mean--of course, but, well..."  The scars were still fresh from when Clio borrowed it during the March of the Crabs.  "Be gentle with her, okay?"

"I promise," Jan said.  "Just walk me through putting it on."

It wasn't too hard to strap on; the trick was needing someone else to buckle in the chest.  Ted fiddled with size adjustments, stripping off ceramic plates where the fit was too tight.  At last he flipped the switch on and the frame thrummed to life.  Jan skipped off the truck bed and nearly tripped on the stilts.

"Why the stilts?" Jan said, sliding along the street.  She nearly stumbled into a searing bolt of frost from the fight.  "Yeeeek!"

"I'll explain later.  Now!"  Ted slid off the bed, whimpering in pain.  "Get her free before she goes hypothermic!"

Jan slid over, trying not to break something.  The frame felt... mighty.  A little dangerous, like she was locked inside an enormous, powerful beast whose slightest muscle contraction could pinch a limb from her body, but its joints were hers, its strange, light footsteps mimicking her own.  Liberating, in its way, if not dizzying.  She sank to her knees.  Mr. Nowhere held up Lil' Sophie.  She glared at Jan.

"So.  It's come to this," Sophie said.

"Love you too, sweetie," Jan said, and grasped a bar of ice in both gauntleted hands.  She pulled.  The ice snapped with the difficulty of breaking a pretzel.  She yanked the ice, but felt Sophie's skin pull with it.  Jan bit her lip and pulled as slowly as she could.  It was maddening having to restrict her movements this much, like trying to thread the world's smallest needle with the world's smallest thread.  No dice.  "We need to get her heated up or I'll rip her skin off.  Take her indoors, heat her up.  I'll check in after we beat the demon."

"Good luck," Mr. Nowhere said, lifting Sophie as delicately as the Brilliant Dance.

"I'll need it," Jan said.  She looked at Ted.

"You'll find fighting is significantly easier in the suit than out," Ted said.  "That said, don't kick.  She's not meant for kicking."

"Alright.  Let's roll!"  She charged at the ice demon.  Long, loping strides were easier, like she had horse legs intalled at the ends of her feet.  It was a little like flying.  In fact, she careened right over the ice demon as she thrust the sword at Clio, who rolled with the thrust like a wave.  She nearly crashed into Kim and Jamey, who were playing dead, and had to steer herself around like a jalopy on a dirt road.  Clio looked like she had the fight in the bag; she was practically groping the demon, trying to crack her shell with rabbit punches, keeping well within the range of her ice sword thingey.  She couldn't even finish calling her attacks.

She stepped back, then hopped into flight.  Clio saw Jan's approach and slid aside.  Jan careened at the demon, grappling her before she could climb too high.  Between her own weight and that of the power frame, she dragged the ice demon chick before she could get higher than a foot off the ground.  Jan scooted up onto the ice demon's chest and raised a gloved fist, ready to test a hypothesis.

Her punch, augmented by the frame, went wide and hard, mashing a hole in the street.  The ice demon planted both her hands on Jan's chestplate.  "Hammer!" she snarled, and a grenade-burst of ice sent Jan flying off.  The ice demon flew back up, hovering above Jan and Clio (and Mr. K, who at the moment was hammering on Miss Y's icy prison).  "You think you've got me running?" the ice demon said.  "You've been hammering away and I've barely even felt it!"

* * *

...besides the throbbing ache on Sunny's nose where the tan one's fist impacted it.

"You've not seen a fraction of my true power!"  Sunny raised her hands and tapped a deep, ink-black well of power inside herself.  She rarely used it; it was too powerful, too overt.  But now was a good time.  "Starfall!"

A light bright as the moon shone above her, and she hurled it at the tan one and the black one beneath her.  The comet erupted with a thunderclap, blowing them both away and sending fragments of ice and asphalt flying.  When the debris settled she saw she'd knocked them yards apart.  The tan one landed in a tree, the black one skid into a bank of trash cans.  Tan one first.  Freaky suit or no, the black one didn't seem half the threat.

She aimed with the sword.  "Cold snap!" she cast.  The tan one was rattled out of the tree; she landed on her feet, shivering and chafed and, like the alchemist guy before her, bleeding torrents from her nose.  There were worse things she could cast in terms of sheer damage, but there was a certain joy in this one.  She cast again: "Cold--"

A garbage can broadsided her, knocking the blade from her hand.  When she recovered, she took another, then a chunk of asphalt.  The black one got her bearings, it seemed, and she was running for her pal--

* * *

Jan scooped up Clio and ran beneath the ice demon.  "Can you fight?" Jan asked.

"I'm pretty sure I--"  Her teeth chattered like a wind-up toy.  "Chchcchchchaaagggh.  Co-o-o-ld."

"We'll get you warm soon e--"  And then came the ice spikes, bursting in bundles in Jan's path.  She crashed into one, backpedaled out of another three, and kept on hopping back 'til they stopped shooting up.  "Can't she let us finish a damn sentence in peace?!"

"You said 'soon.'  You said 'warm soon.'  How soon?"

Jan scanned the demon's movements.  She was fluttering closer to the ground, anxious-seeming.  "Her face is her weak point.  Did you notice?"

"I was kind of busy hurting all of her, not just her face."

"Her face is her weak point.  It's the only place she bothers defending and even Miss Y's bare nails could leave a sc--"  SNAP!  The bolt lanced through Jan's leg.  It felt like being scoured by nitrogen-dipped sandpaper.  "Ahhhahaowww!"  She stumbled, fell on her knee.

The demon drew overhead, her mighty wings beating like a vast clock counting down to the end.

"Clio, I'm going to throw you, and you're going to punch her in the face until she stops fighting back.  Okay?"

"Shut up and throw!" Clio said.  The demon was calling up another comet.

* * *

This would finish them.  No problem.  They'd taken her doll away, and now they were going to pay for it.  They fought back.  They'd forfeited any second chances.  And when she got her toy back, she might just go ahead and break it out of spite.  Not the first time Sunny had done such a thing.

Then the black one threw the tan one at her.  The tan one locked her legs around Sunny's waist and brought a right hook square between her eyes.  She lost the spell, the world suddenly vague and swirling.

And then she really started hitting her.  Her nose felt like it burst, her eyes bruised, the shell covering her face fractured--

With one mighty headbutt, her mask shattered.

* * *

Pain blossomed across Sunny's face like the Christ-Rose, and for the first time in her life she lost control of her flight.  Her wings flapped, worthless.  The power seemed to pump out with her blood.  She fell like a crippled paper airplane, crashing into the street, the tan one riding her down like a snowboard.  She hopped off, leaving Sunny on her back, drowning in pain and spitting hot blood.

"What..."  She covered her face, the talons of her armor horribly cold on her exposed face.  How... no.  This can't be.  Couldn't.  Must be dreaming.  A nightmare.  A worst-case nightmare.  She must be sleeping in the alley outside the ballet.  She must be.

She could feel the shadows cast by the tan and black one.  "I knew it," the black one said.  "Clio, I owe you a great big Rosemas present."

"How about you just get me some tissues and some hard, hot cider?"

"Sounds like a plan.  ...Wait, are those cops?"

"Yeah."

"They just stood here and watched us fight?"

"Tax dollars at work."

"Humf."

No, no, no.  Not cops.  She had to run.  Had to..

* * *

A cop jogged over the impromptu barricade and up to Jan and Clio.  "Good show beating up the thing-what-it-was!  Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to make an arrest."

"Just a quick question," Jan said.  "Will you be charging us for damages?  I can pay 'em if we have to, but it might take a while."

"No, think nothing of it," said the cop.

"You really know we won't?" said Clio.

"I have no clue.  It's out of my hands.  But you know it'd be a complete dick move if they did, right?"  He drew a pair of grim and mighty handcuffs and marched to where the demon lay.  She was covering her face and muttering something low and fast.  The cop snapped the cuffs over her wrists, or rather tried to.  It took a little sliding around and wishful thinking to get them locked over the narrow parts of her wrist, what with the spikey armor and all.

Just as he locked the cuffs into place, the ice demon vanished in a sudden blizzard that caked him in snow.

"...nevermind then," said the cop.  "Case closed!  Conveniently enough you're right in front of a hospital, so just meander on in there.  We're riding home for a long winter's nap."

"But," Jan said, "there's still that helicopter and there's a twenty-foot hole in the road.  And Miss Y over there is still stuck in the ice.  And I don't think Kim and Jamey had quite that many lascerations after the demon beat them with Lil' Sopihe..."

"...nevermind then.  HEY!  Somebody call a tow truck!  Or whatever the hell it is we do for helicopters!"

* * *

Mr. K pried a block of ice from Miss Y's shoulder, freeing an arm.  "If I may ask," he asked, "who is it you were calling earlier?"

Miss Y frowned.  Well, there goes that question.  And she actually answered, "It's... complicated.  Have you ever almost been killed and then, in those brief moments after, suddenly feel the need to betray everything you stand for in the name of some obscure feeling you've never felt before?"

"What kind of feeling?"

"It's..."  She snapped her free hand.  "Well, after I fell out of that helicopter the second time, the time that didn't nearly kill me, I felt...  What do you call it when there's something in the past that you did, and all of a sudden when you think about it you kind of wish you didn't do it?  Is there a word for that?"

"No, m'am."

"Good, because I definitely didn't try to undo it out of some weird appreciation for not getting killed.  That's final."

* * *

Mr. and Mrs. Koyanagi had not budged from their seats at the front desk in the three weeks since Mae, their recently-adopted daughter, failed to show at the orphanage.  They smelled, they were disheveled and wild-eyed, and their patience seemed infinite.

"I suppose," Mr. Koyanagi said, "nobody could fault us if we went insane from grief in a few moments."

"Who could?" Mrs. Koyanagi said.  "I have been betrayed by the system, lost the little girl we both needed to be complete.  Why... maybe we should just burn the world to cinders.  Take it all with us.  Spread the hate."

Mr. Koyanagi clenched his wife's hand.  "I'm afraid we may have no choice.  Come on, then.  We must bring the world to ruin with our--"

A little girl skipped into the orphanage, dirty, disheveled, and still bright as a thousand-watt bulb.  "Hello, everyone!" she said.  "It's me, Mae!  I'm sorry about being late, but I was selling candy to a rich lady but there was a monster in her wishing well and I had to eat the candy because I got hungry after a few days.  But the monster just spat me back up and I came home just like I was supposed to!"  She came to a stop in front of Mr. and Mrs. Koyanagi.  "Hello!  Who are you two?"

In the distance, Rosemas bells rang sweet chimes.

"We're your new mommy and daddy," whispered Mr. Koyanagi.

Mae's eyes widened.  She held out her arms out as far as she could.

"MOMMY DADDY!" she said, and jumped at them, and her new family embraced her, and after three long, horrible, steel-gutted moss-drip-drinking weeks in the belly of the rich lady's well monster, all was right with the world.