Chapter Text
It was Alex who fired the first shot. A spiral of red burning energy that knocked Riptide from his feet.
"Alex!" Fern shrieked as the two began to run forward. "I called dibs!"
"He was gonna do the tornado thing!" Alex roared in reply as he took a sharp left.
Fern scoffed, but didn't slow her stride.
Riptide was already getting back to his feet and she wasn't about to let him get too far ahead. Long legs working, the young woman rushed him.
Riptide managed to spin away before she could make contact.
A rush of wind knocked her back, sending her flying backwards through the air. The grey skinned girl grunted. She didn't slow, using her saetae to take her over the thick (scalding hot) metal of the submarine. She flipped off it just as the man was gearing up his speech.
“We are not enemies, you know.”
Landing with ease on her aching feet, Fern rolled her eyes. She could barely breathe in the humidity, but thankfully the mesh Hank had put in her suit left her scutes open to help her regulate her body temperature. She sniffed and thumbed her nose. “Oh, here we fuckin’ go.”
The man cocked his head. His dark, perfectly kept, eyebrows rose. The dress shoes he wore moved smoothly across the sand, as if frictionless, as they circled one another.
Fern's movements were equally graceful. She kept light on her sticky toes, the sand making her saetae itch as she popped up on the balls of her feet, ready to pounce.
Black scales glimmered in the bright sunshine. Not just from the sun, but from the reflection of the ocean. Blinding her opponent, striking him before she could.
She could be beautiful, Riptide thought absently, with the right hand and a bit of growing up. A finger rose, and he offered, “I’ll give you one chance.”
Fern frowned as he shrugged off his jacket. “To apologize?”
“To stand down.”
“Fat fuckin’ chance.”
“Your vulgarity only proves my point.” Riptide tossed his coat to the sand. Expression disturbingly mute, he rolled up his sleeves. “You’re little more than a child.”
Fern’s gaze lingered on the tan skin of his forearm. Her best shot.
“You should be at home, with your mother.”
Her scales flashed. For a moment there was only a shock of sunlight where she stood. The snarl surprised her more than him, but she was smart enough not to take the bait. Barely. The muscles in her calves strained as she forced herself to stay put.
The grin he wore was cocky (or maybe just proud), and the easy, natural roll of his shoulder as he stretched his rotator cuff suggested she was probably fucked, but Fern kept her chin up.
Jaw tight, her gaze flickered over his naked forearms. She could still feel the telltale tingle of adrenaline pulsing under her glands. It felt like pins and needles, like static dancing over her skin, but for the first time, Fern wasn't afraid of it.
Shake your wrists out and brace your ankles, it was all she could do. Franky, it was more than she had actually been trained for.
Fucking Charles and his fucking rope.
“Well come on then, girl.” Riptide's smile was wide, almost charming, as he waved her in. “Show me your teeth.”
She didn’t need to be told twice.
The young woman dropped. A long leg swung at him in an attempt to knock his knees out, but was dodged with ease. She growled. "Stay still!"
"And let you hit me? I don't think-"
Her hand snapped out to grab his.
Riptide blinked, too surprised to do anything but finish his thought, "-So."
He gaped at the sight, her palm firmly against his, her long fingers locking onto him like a vice as something sharp dug into his skin like tiny razors. The brute was almost too dumbfounded to respond.
For a moment.
A sickening crack split the air between them as his fist met with her ribs.
Pain exploded through her. Her teeth cracked as she squealed through them.
Fern was going to pass out.
She had to pass out.
She had never felt anything like it. Her glands began to bleed, gushing out black goo that dripped down her arm, the outside of her thighs...
Fern swore as he threw another punch. Her knee bent and kicked out, sticky toes catching his wrist and forcing it back.
Riptide huffed as she bent, jerking him forward like a ragdoll as her spine bent at an unforgiving angle. A grunt knocked from his throat as she flipped back.
The kick to the gut made him heave, but the twist to his arm nearly blinded him as she swung a leg over his head.
"Agile little bitch!"
Balance, and ego, officially a bit knocked, he moved to do what the Hellfire Club did best.
Cheat.
His wrist twitched. Calloused tan fingers conjuring a sharp swirl of air, Riptide smirked and raised a hand to her.
The girl's flinch of anticipation was pathetic, but the realization of what he was about to do made the dramatics worth it.
“Don’t you dare-”
A tremendous burst of air interrupted her.
He had expected to be let go.
Fern did not let go.
The two slammed into the abandoned submarine. Fern managed to catch herself in a squat that made her shriek. The hot metal burned her saetae, but she kept a firm grip on the sub, and on his hand, as she brought her foot back and booted the man right in his handsome face.
Riptide saw red. A painful *crack* sounded as his jaw went two inches to the left. Blood gushed from his nose down into his teeth, past his chin as he roared with pain.
He was done pulling punches; Shaw's instructions be damned. Riptide didn't give a fuck if they were recruitable, he was going to make the little bitch pay-
"You can't bite me!" Fern shrieked, hitting him, smacking him really, as his teeth tried to break the leather on her suit. Thankfully the meat of her forearm was (mostly) safe. "Fucker!"
The man smirked as she finally lost her grip. His back hit the sand and he rolled, delicately, nonchalantly, to his feet. He jerked his shoulder again, an old boxing injury flaring up as he cracked his neck in a quick one, two twitch of his jaw that made pain split his vision with stars for a moment.
Fern fell to the sand in an easy tumble. She shook her head at his dramatics, at him, as she came at him again. Long strides had her at his side. "You're gonna kill everybody, for what?!"
"For freedom," he replied, as if it was obvious.
He squinted against the shine of her black scales in the unforgiving Cuban sun.
"For a Nazi!" She spat.
Riptide scoffed at her naivety. "They will never-"
The first punch she threw was expected, easily blocked.
Blood continued to gush from his nose, wetting the sand between them as they sidestepped and danced around one another. Riptide licked the red from his perfect white teeth.
"Accept us-" He grunted and swung on her.
His jab was up near her face close, but not fast enough to land.
"So-" Fern ducted, popping down with a bend to her knees before popping up like a whack-a-mole to smack his fist away and knock him off balance. "What?!"
Riptide grunted as she kicked him, quite literally, in the ass. Stumbling, he couldn't keep the shock from his face as he turned it into a spun, an unnatural propellant of wind catching him, twisting him-
His sudden grip on the back on her neck caught them both off guard and the two found themselves floundering in the sand, kicking and punching at one another like a pair of squabbling children before scrambling back to their feet.
Fern huffed. Not so much as a smudge of black goo on him. Fuck. "Who wears a three piece suit in Cuba?!"
"What?" He chuckled and flicked the ache out of his wrists before taunting, "You would rather I wear yellow spandex?"
The kick was blocked, but only because it wasn't a kick. He snarled as she swung a knee into his belly, but that was the least of his troubles.
Sharp teeth lunged forward and caught his cheek. Clawed hands cupped his head and Fern bit down until she felt bone, until he howled and hot copper blood coursed through her teeth, flooding her cheeks and gushing from her mouth-
The laughter surprised her almost as much as the flip.
The wind knocked out of her lungs as she landed flat on her back, but Riptide followed her down. He fell hard on top of her.
Fern grunted, losing her grip, and she snapped forward to bite him again, in the brow, and again, in the temple, and again, on his chin, until-
Until she realised he was letting her, that he was panting down at her like a feral dog, with a sickeningly wide smile, and-
He was waiting for her to finish. The man's chest heaved, white shirt blood soaked; from his broken nose, his fresh bites, but he hadn't broken so much as a sweat. His brown eyes wide and entirely too focused.
"You fight viciously."
The praise caught her off guard.
The man dropped his voice and leaned down, until his forehead, his broken nose, brushed hers.
Fern flinched as hot blood poured over her face. The longer they laid there the more it hurt to breath, the more weight he put on her chest, smothering her. Her glands pulsed as Riptide smirked, and she subtly pressed her hand against the mesh along the outside of her thigh.
The man bore down on her, his fingers tangling in her short locks and twisting until she met his gaze.
Even without pupils, the hate was obvious. Fern was little more than a fantastic shimmer of light against the sand.
He brushed his lips against her cheek, her temple, to press against her ear- "I bet you fuck even better."
Her hand shot between them. The black tar poison smeared across his face, into his cuts and gashes. Into his eyes. His mouth.
The man wretched to his feet, stumbling away from her, clutching his eyes as he howled.
The dull ache in her side throbbed to life again as Fern pulled herself into a sitting position. Her lip curled in a grimace. The taste of blood in her mouth, hers, his, made her nauseous as she watched.
And waited.
Fern had never actually seen what her poison could do before. Every time it had been activated, she had the good sense to run. It was only through the grapevine she had heard about the effects.
The morbid fascination only grew as Riptide swayed.
For the first time in a very long time, he was frightened.
Blind, he thought, gasping. She had blinded him. His world a blur of black and grey, he couldn't even tell if his eyes were open as he began to sputter. Saliva flooded his mouth, drowning out the queer bitter of the black goo, the copper of the blood-
His ankles rolled and his knees hit the ground. Then his stomach, and finally his head bounced off the warm sand. He could vaguely feel his fingertips. Feel the sand getting under his nails. He tried to shake them away, only to find himself unable to move.
Then he began to seize.
Wiping her lips, Fern pulled herself to her feet. Pain made her stumble, but she managed to make her way over to the downed man.
Riptide twitched, blood bubbling against his lips as his face pressed into the grit. Blood from his bites, his broken nose, spotted the sand beneath his cheek.
Guilt knotted her stomach and she reached down to grab his shoulder.
"Oh no you don't," she grumbled, flipping him onto his side. She wasn't about to have his blood on her hands.
He let out a raspy breath, dark eyes squinting against the light. Black streaked h
is tan features, and she almost felt bad for him. Fucking almost.
"Fern!"
Her head whipped up.