Hendrix pulled his guitar to his front, hitting a pinch harmonic as a sharp, pointed mass of soundwaves charged towards The Deputy.
Sev shot back, floating in the middle of the air, awaiting Hendrix's next move.
The rebel lifted himself up with his guitar strings.
"We're getting serious now-" Sev's remark was interrupted.
"Fuck you!" Hendrix screamed, pulling himself up to the Deputy's level by the strings jutting out of his back.
A barrage of soundwaves began as Hendrix strummed his guitar, every hit conjuring a different shape.
Sev lost his grin as he focused on the upcoming attacks.
The Deputy zoomed through the sky, trying to find an opening for a counterattack.
Hendrix paused to aim the pickup of his guitar, Sev's eyes widening as he seized the opportunity.
Whoosh
Sev flicked his left hand as a windshot flew towards the boy.
"Agh!" Hendrix felt the shot collide with his shoulder, knocking him off his balance as he began to spin midair.
By this point, it was instinctual. One of Hendrix's strings reeled back towards their owner before shooting at the rock ceiling above him, digging itself into the stone.
Sev continued to send windshots, but the more he sent, the better Hendrix got at dodging them.
The strings acted like extra limbs, only needing a quick glance for Hendrix to know where to move them.
Sev knew he was safer at long-range. He backed up from his opponent as he shot both of his knives towards the boy.
Hendrix gritted his teeth and squinted his eyes to focus on the incoming blades.
The rebel let out two power chords in quick succession.
Ping. Ping
Both of the knives reflected off of the masses of sound. The curved blades tumbled to the floor.
Sev tried to recover them with shots of wind, but Hendrix didn't let him focus, sending soundwave after soundwave towards him.
The Deputy was forced to stay defensive, using what little openings he could find to send windshots between the boy's attacks.
"Goddammit. Any other kid would've been feeling the symptoms of low Spirit by now." Sev thought. "What the hell is he?"
"You know this is all for nothing, right?" Sev said, his last attempt at recovering control over the kid's psychological state. "That Tripp girl's already dead, and everyone else you know'll get hunted down by the Officer eventually."
The boy halted.
Sev continued. "Chase, Taro, Alex. I looked through their files… They have no chance against us."
Hendrix paused as images flashed through his head.
His friends laughing, Alex and Bloom praising him after a successful training session, Vida across the table at that sushi restaurant.
"He's right… Kill him… Kill him now…" That voice returned.
Hendrix looked up at the tunnel leading to the top of the cave, little glimmers of light from the outside world leaking into the cavern.
Sev grinned, sending a windshot towards the boy with one hand while shooting the knives back up to him with the flick of his other hand.
Bam
Hendrix's head whipped back as the windshot collided with his face, his pink hair flipping backwards violently.
For a second, it looked as though Hendrix had gone unconscious. His limbs hung low, his right hand barely holding the guitar pick between his fingers.
Sev took a deep breath out. He let his muscles relax, shaking his arms and legs as he floated midair.
The Deputy stopped when he noticed the boy move from the corner of his eye. He shot back while he gripped his knives.
Sev's eyes widened as the rebel lifted his head.
Hendrix's left eye was bloodshot, his broken nose leaking blood down onto his split lip, the injury only centimeters away from ripping his lip ring out of its hole.
But that wasn't the part that surprised the Deputy.
As Hendrix lifted his head, his vibrant, pink hair started to change color.
Starting from the roots, the boy's head of hair turned a pitch black, only stopping at the ends of the hair.
When Sev looked closely, he could see black smoke rising from the boy's hair.
"This kid has that much Spirit…?" Sev thought. "I knew that once your Spirit levels were high enough, it would change the color of your hair to the color of your Spirit, but I've only seen that in Officers and Advisors."
Any confidence Sev had garnered up until this point had melted off of his face as he froze in shock.
Without even looking at the Deputy, Hendrix strummed a barre chord, sending a staircase shaped mass towards Sev.
The Deputy, still frozen in shock, snapped out of his daze too late.
He attempted to dodge, but the mass of soundwaves moved entirely too fast.
"Ugh!" Sev grunted as the mass rammed his right shoulder, pushing it back in a way that shouldn't be humanly possible.
Sev fell towards the stone ground below the two combatants, slowing his fall with his own wind currents.
Hendrix gritted his teeth at the sight, swinging back with the strings digging into the stone ceiling above him before shooting himself at the Deputy.
Boom
The boy collided with the Deputy, both of them crashing into the rough, cold rock below.
Both of them tumbled a few feet from each other, both looking up at the other at the same time.
Sev reached for one of his knives that had slipped from his grasp, the blade beginning to float as he flicked his hand towards himself.
"Agh!" Sev exclaimed. His limbs were stuck in place as Hendrix's steel strings wrapped themselves around all four of his appendages.
The boy held his right arm with his left, his right arm hanging just as limp as his opponent's dislocated shoulder. He had crashed into the floor with reckless abandon, so he knew he was lucky to walk away with nothing but a broken arm.
He had slowly spun his guitar back onto his back as the instrument rested between the strings' places of origin.
Sev was raised into the air, the steel strings holding his limbs out on all four sides of him.
The Deputy began to take a deep breath in, attempting to charge up a counterattack-
"No." Hendrix muttered as one of his strings wrapped itself around the bottom half of the Deputy's head, covering his mouth in a mask of steel.
Hendrix looked up, his expression confusing the Deputy as it showed equal parts horrified and horrifying.
The strings began to pull at Sev's limbs as he screamed out in agony, his every word being muffled by the steel wrapped around his mouth.
Crunch
Sev's right arm snapped further from his body. A few more moments of agonized screaming and the arm ripped from his body, the Deputy writhing in pain as tears streamed down his cheeks and onto the steel string.
The string covering his mouth loosened its grip as Sev gasped for air.
"Fucking hell!" Sev sobbed as his shoulder spilled blood down the side of his body and onto the floor.
The string holding the Deputy's severed arm dropped it with a wet thud, a pool of blood surrounding the limp limb.
The little relief Sev had from the loosened string was short lived, the steel serpent slithering around the Deputy's neck as it tightened its grip on his throat.
Sev began to choke, letting out small gurgles as Hendrix watched on, motionless.
The Deputy shook each of his three limbs, wind shooting from his left hand as he tried everything he could think of.
After a few more moments of struggling, Sev went limp.
Hendrix let go of the Deputy's limbs while still using one string to hang him from his neck to make sure he was dead.
The boy let the Deputy down, resting him against a rock wall to the side of the laboratory door.
Hendrix rested against the wall across from Sev, his eyes fixated on the dead body.
A few moments of motionless silence passed before-
"GET UP!" Hendrix screamed, tears streaming down his eyes. "I'm not done with you!"
The dead body stared into nothingness, tendons and ripped muscles hanging from the Deputy's shoulder as Hendrix began to sob.
An hour later, in the laboratory hallway:
"And that's when Alex found me." Hendrix muttered, looking down at the tiling in both shame and horror as his now pitch black hair covered his eyes.
Chase went silent, looking down the hallway they were walking before finally responding. "It was gonna happen either way, Hendrix."
Hendrix looked up at his friend, awaiting an explanation.
"They came here wanting to kill us. I was just lucky someone came and stopped the fight." Chase shrugged. "Me and that Deputy girl were both scared for our lives, and I was winning. There was a good chance one of us wouldn't have made it out."
Hendrix looked forward as he mulled over Chase's words.
"Chase is… Right. We shouldn't kill if it's not necessary, but… It's necessary a lot of the time." Alex sighed. "This is the worst part of conflict. Both sides are willing to die for their lifestyle."
The three of them went silent, the clacking of their boots echoing off the white tile walls.
They eventually made their way to a door, Alex opening it with no hesitation as Chase pointed his pistols into the open doorway.
"Taro!" Alex ran over to the teen, who still laid on the floor, a bloodied mess.