Q and Yoyo

Ace fell backward. "Ugh," he thought. His best shot had completely failed. The bomb was definitely low quality. If he had more gun powder or even a better control valve that whole bomb would of worked better. What he really needed was some shrapnel material, too. And if he could of found.

The scream of the beast reminded him he was in the middle of something. "Well, what now?"

Rei stared at the creature as it screamed. It was the same scream as before, but it did nothing other than just scream. It sounded like a record that was skipping, playing the same few notes over and over again. "Well, that's new."

Ace stared at the flaming shadow for a minute. "That doesn't really seem?" Ace asked without finishing his sentence. He got up and saw Rei not too far away. The field was starting to catch fire but the monster wasn't really moving since where it had been esploded.

Rei vaguely noted that the rest of the field was slowly catching fire, but was more focused on the monster. Something about the way it was acting was unnatural, even for a monster that seemed to have spawned from hell itself.

Ace was being cautious. Whatever this thing was, it was powerful. He knew that since it had pounded him several times.

The screaming was starting to irritate him as it didn't sound right.

"Shut up!" Rei shouted, annoyed by the strange screaming. She shot lightning at it yet again, using the knife to direct her aim at it. The lightning hit it square in the back. Its screaming ceased and was replaced by the slowly dying echo of thunder.

"Did ya get it?" Ace asked as he stared at it. "Um. So yeah um..."

It seemed pretty dead. He wasn't completely sure, though. "Um, let's just leave it alone?"

Rei stared at the burning pillar of blackness between her and Ace. It certainly seemed to be dead, but she felt that something continued to be wrong about the situation.

"I don't like this..."

Ace wasn't sure how long it had been there but he realized there was a person behind Rei. "Yo!" Ace shouted at the guy. "Rei! It's! That's! The guy from before!"

He looked for his gun. Shoot. He had lost it.

Rei turned quickly to face the new foe. She spun the knife in her hand to grip it with a reverse hold and aimed to stab the man. He caught her arm and held her. She tried to pull away but his grip was incredibly strong.

Ace ran towards the two of them and shouted at the man to let her go. He wasn't too far away but he also knew he wasn't very good in a fight without a gun. "Who are you?" Ace yelled trying to distract the man so that Rei could get away.

Rei tugged at her arm, trying to free it. She even began to kick at the man, but he would not move. Finally, she activated one of the transmutation circles on her arm and created a small sphere of lightning around her arm, but the man still did not move. She stopped struggling, then, and stared at him in shock.

Ace ran up to the man but after watching Rei's transmutation circle fail he was out of ideas. "So, who are you?" Ace asked again in a bit of shock.

The man looked between the two of them but still hadn't moved. He reached out his hand and flicked his wrist. Ace felt himself hurtling into the ground from the attack.

"Hey!" Rei shouted, resuming her struggling. "That was so not fair!"

She remembered the knife in her left hand and, grabbing it with her right, attempted to stab the man with it. The knife shattered just before reaching his skin, leaving her nothing but the handle.

"Well, crap."

Ace stood back up just in time to see Rei's dagger shatter. "Well, you don't see that everyday," Ace said.

"We surrender! I completely surrender, at least. Don't kill us. Not really something we go for," Ace said as he put his arms in the air.

Rei rolled her eyes at Ace, then noticed that she was no longer on the ground and Ace was getting closer quite quickly. She slammed into Ace hard, hearing a cracking noise and feeling a pain shooting up her side. She landed at some point, though she was unsure when, and rolled onto her back. "Ugh..."

Ace was dizzy from the flying girl boulder that had just hit him in the face. He was beginning to think that he shouldn't of come to this town, even.

Ace looked up and saw the man was still standing where he was before. Not too far away Rei was laying down. Ace jumped to his feet and reached his hand out to Rei. "Hurry, let's run for it."

Rei grabbed his hand and climbed to her feet. Her side hurt a lot, but she figured that running with a broken rib or two was probably going to be a lot better than dying.

Ace pushed Rei ahead of himself and turned around to keep an eye on the man. He wasn't going to let a girl go down first on his watch. The man hadn't moved after the two of them and he wondered if running away might work out. He didn't really care, he wanted to be far away from there either way. The field fire that had started earlier had grown into an inferno. It left an eerie and haunting feel behind them.

Rei ran, her mind completely muddled and confusion overwhelming her. Why hadn't her lightning worked on him? And her dagger had just shattered! Not to mention his strength; it took a lot to throw a full-grown woman like that.

She shook her head, daring to look back at the scene. The man stood in the midst of the flames. She felt sorry to the people behind. They had set their field on fire and, she wondered, set loose some sort of superhuman.

Ace ran behind Rei and kept looking back. Soon the flames were becoming smaller and smaller on the horizon. Darkness was surrounding the two of them but Ace had already planned for that and turned on the flashlight he had found in the field.

She could no longer hear the fire crackling behind them, so she knew they had run quite some distance. Finally, Rei stumbled to a halt and dropped to her knees. Her side was absolutely killing her. "We need to stop," she panted, hugging herself and rocking slightly. "Just... Stop, please. For a little bit."

Ace stopped and looked around. He didn't really feel like stopping until they made it as far away from whatever that incident was, but he could tell Rei was in pain. He was in pain, but his body was so numb from fear that he wasn't really thinking about it.

"What... What was that thing?" Rei stammered. She was catching her breath, but that somehow made her feel even worse. She tucked into a tighter ball, wondering how a broken rib could hurt so much. "It was... a monster..."

Ace had never seen Rei like that. She almost always had her cool about her. "I don't know," Ace asked. "Which thing? The cloaked monster or the unmoving man who baseball pitched you into me?"

Ace was starting to ache from the attacks. He was also realizing just how tired he really was. He had been wandering in the wilderness for a while.