Nix took a step toward me. A current of electricity traveled up her right arm. The look on her face was a mixture of disappointment and cold resolve. I backed away, not believing this was actually happening.
"You're joking, right?"
I gave an uneasy chuckle as she followed me. The look on her face didn't change. She was serious.
"No, Stormy, I have to do this. You are too dangerous to leave alive."
She ran forward and threw a roundhouse kick at my ribs. I threw myself backward, narrowly avoiding her foot. I landed on my butt in the mulch between two swings.
'Kill her, make it slow and painful.'
My inner monster enticed me with images of her flesh melting away from her bones. A small part of me was delighted by the image. The rest of me knew that I could never do that to her. I just needed to understand what was going on so I could hopefully talk her down.
"Nix, you're not making any sense. How am I dangerous when you had to carry me to my room after I passed out?"
I hoped that would get me some sympathy. It didn't. She raised her right hand and fired a beam of blue electricity at my head. I moved my head slightly to the right, and the attack missed over my left shoulder.
"You don't get it Stormy. The fact that you saw Typhon himself in your dream means you have the potential to be one of the most powerful monsters this world has ever seen."
She continued walking toward me. I scrambled to my feet using a metal pole for support in the loose chips of wood. I heard what she said, but it still didn't explain anything to me, other than she was afraid of Typhon. I really wished I knew more about him now. I raised my hands in surrender as she approached.
"Okay, I get that he is powerful, but why does that make me dangerous? You're way stronger than me."
She threw an electrified right hook at my face. I ducked under it. I wanted to be impressed with my evasion skills, but her left knee smashed into my forehead. I crumpled to the mulch covered ground. The thick leather seat of a swing smacked off the side of my head on my way down. I landed flat on my back, staring directly up at the clear night sky. The stars looked close enough to touch and there wasn't a cloud in sight. I'd never seen the sky that way. It felt off.
'Get up and kill her. She's no match for me.'
The thought coiled around my brain and caused a wave of bloodlust to course through me. I resisted the urge to get up, though. Nix didn't really want me dead. Something about the look in her eyes let me know that was true. When the urge to splash acid all over her passed, I stood back up. Pain throbbed in my head and neck.
"Tell me there isn't a voice inside of you right now tempting you to kill me."
She stepped in front of me, arcs of electricity shot up her arms. She was ready to attack again. I had to convince her before she landed a harder blow and did some real damage to me.
"There is a voice begging me to kill you. I'm not listening to it, though."
She shook her head from side to side.
"I knew you were in his bloodline. I thought you were a gorgon, or maybe Cerberus. Even Echidna would be more acceptable than Typhon himself. Do you know he almost killed Zeus?"
That caught me off-guard. For a monster to almost kill Zeus, it would have to be extremely powerful. I remembered the enormous tornado in my dream. It really did feel like it could do anything it wanted. Was I truly in the presence of a creature powerful enough to end the world? And that same power was supposedly inside of me somewhere? If I truly had the blood of a monster that powerful, Nix's fear was justified. It was just misplaced this time. I didn't want to kill and destroy. I just wanted to be left alone. That's the thing I've never gotten, peace.
"I'm not like Typhon. I don't like hurting people."
She lunged at me again. This time, she threw a flurry of electrified attacks. Right hook, left hook, right roundhouse.
"Come on wind power."
I jumped backward and hoped my wind barrier would turn on. When the wood chips all around my feet blew away, I knew it was working. So I just had to concentrate on the power I wanted to use and I could make it happen.
'Good, now use the acid to turn her into a lumpy soup.'
I ignored the thought, even though I felt the power bubbling in my stomach. Nix came at me again with another series of attacks. This time I hovered out of the way of her attacks.
"You think I'll go easier on you if you just run away?"
She tried to sound as if she was trying her hardest. I knew she wasn't. I would've died the moment this fight started if she really wanted to kill me.
"You're holding back too. If you just stop, we can talk about this."
I stopped moving and absentmindedly grabbed the chain-link fence that ran beside the playground to separate it from the baseball field beside it. In a split second, Nix's eyes shot from my hand to the fence and back at my face. Before I could react, she reached out and grabbed the fence with both hands. The entire fence radiated with her power in milliseconds. I didn't have time to pull away before her electricity started singing into the flesh on my hand. I thought the only thing that could keep me from being cooked, electricity.
My own electricity shot out and moved over and around hers till it made contact with her skin. She began shaking and convulsing as the attack overpowered her. I snatched my hand away the second I realized I was electrocuting her. It was too late. The damage was done. She sank to the ground, twitching as the electricity short circuited her nervous system. I ran over to her and cradled her in my arms. She was so hot.
"Hey, I didn't mean to do that. It was a knee-jerk reaction."
Her head was limp, but she was breathing. As long as that remained true, there was a chance that she would be okay. I hoped so anyway. She was strikeblooded. Shouldn't that make her immune to electricity? I brushed a strand of hair out of her face.
"I'm sorry. Please be okay."
Her eyes popped open suddenly, and she grabbed my right arm at the wrist.
"Next time, make sure you finish the job."
I felt her thumb press into my wrist and then a pain worse than anything I had ever felt before hit me. It started beneath her finger and then vibrated throughout my entire body. I was frozen in place as whatever the attack was consumed me whole. My eyes welled up and my vision doubled. I had to fight just to keep my eyes from rolling back. When I heard the steady hum inside my skull, I realized she was electrocuting me back. I screamed out as the pain traced down my spine and erupted in all of my nerve endings.
She let me go at that point and I fell over. I was stiff as a board, paralyzed.
"Stormy, Stormy, Stormy, never risk your own safety by showing your enemy that kind of mercy."
She picked me up and silently threw me over her shoulder like a light sack. All I could do was let her carry me back to my house. She climbed back into my room window and laid me back in my bed. My body trembled as I locked my eyes on hers, wishing I could do or say something. I forced out a slow grunt that made drool ooze down my face.
"Okay, so let's call this your second trial. The results aren't finalized yet, but you're leaning toward passing."
She took a small vial of yellow liquid out of her pocket and poured it into my mouth. I automatically swallowed when the warm liquid hit the back of my throat. It tasted like Pepto Bismol. She wiped the drool and excess liquid from my chin with her thumb.
"That will fix you up. I'll see you at school on Monday. We'll see how true that stuff about you not being like Typhon really is."
She gently tapped me on the cheek with her left hand before leaving through the window.