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She hadn’t expected her second life to end that way.
Truth be told, she hadn’t fostered any theories on that front, at all. But if she had – as a mental exercise – she’d have guessed that the curtain would rattle down on a stage much like the first. A roofscape, its brash New York edges honed by the fitful electric lights of the small hours. Gasping her last, a gladiator bested in the night arena, to the near hiss of street cats, and the distant hoot of a belated taxicab. Tin pan requiem.
Not being doorstepped by a dozen assholes in SWAT gear, after she’d just returned from grocery shopping. Then – how? – there were a dozen more, in the lounge, at her back, between her and her sai. One went down with a tin of tuna where his right eye had been; three to her fists and feet, before the first had hit the ground. More took their place. The room heaved and stank, with sweat and polymers and blood. More, and more, and somehow fucking more. They were too many, even for her.
A baton jabbed her back. There was a flash. Her whole body folded, while at the same time staying still.
And then, here.
***
The first few days were rough, if “days” were even legal tender in these parts. The place of her arrival was in a forest. Elektra had been many things – daughter, disciple, assassin, guardian of The Treasure. But a dedicated woodswoman? No. She could hide out sylvanly, for a time; one of her professions had sometimes demanded it. Much beyond that, and she began to flail. Ten martial arts in childhood hadn’t left time to be a Girl Scout.
She regretted throwing that tin of tuna.
Only when hunger was gnawing at her belly did she venture far enough from where she had arrived to discover that the geography of this place made no sense. Where the forest failed was an open plain. It looked like the nursery floor for an infant god of war. Tanks, battleships, and other, stranger, turreted things lay there, forsaken.
Also, a diner. Which, somehow, still had a working fridge. Elektra piled a plate, and curled up on a bench where she could watch the entrance to devour its load. Shadows alone moved across the rusting behemoths beyond the door. The dry throats of all those cannons stayed silent.
Not just a dump, she thought suddenly. A weapons dump. A realm where someone banished engines of destruction: dreadnoughts, tanks.
Her.
The diner was not easily reconciled with that analysis. It was hard to see exactly what damage a budget eatery could do to affront someone with the juice to make all this. But there again, who really knew? All that separates tinned tuna from a weapon is intent.
In the days that followed, she discovered that several outlets had somehow sinned like that. Elektra flitted from one to the next, and to the next. A solitary gourmand, in the restaurants at the end of the universe.
***
For a long time, she thought herself the only living inmate of this place. Then came the day when she knew a presence at her back. Elektra turned, and saw a stranger. A powerfully built man, no longer young, with shades, and a sword.
They contemplated each other for a long moment. Elektra’s sai were unsheathed, but she did not move. (In this strange attic of a world, she had eventually been able to replace her favourite weapons, and her combat garb. The cosmic hitlist had apparently included a lot of people who liked tight leather.)
“You smell of the grave,” the stranger said, at last. “But not like one of them.”
“What can I say?” Elektra held his gaze. “Chanel’s latest line is edgy.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Elektra Natchios.” She remembered saying that once to Murdock, in a playground, long ago, just after she’d kicked his flirty ass. She’d been so young, then, so cocky. Hadn’t loved; hadn’t even died. It sounded thin and hollow, now. “You?”
“Blade.”
“That a name, or a description?”
He snorted. “There’s a difference?”
“Hmm.” Elektra lowered her hands. “I think we’ll get along just fine.”
***
Together, they explored the world, and began to learn something of its rules. They met others. This didn’t always help.
“What did you find?” Blade asked, when she returned to their retreat, one evening, after a solo scouting mission.
“I… don’t know.” She prowled back and forth, in the small, cluttered room, fighting the urge to wipe, to clean, to count. She hadn’t needed to enumerate this much since the days of the paid hits, when she had lost the Way. “Where’s the bourbon?”
Blade had been contemplating a half-empty tube of liquid. He replaced that in his belt; reached into a drawer; and tossed her the contents.
“Thanks.” She took a slug of whiskey, and closed her eyes. “I met someone, at the far end of the Greyhound graveyard. He should… he should have been a man that I once knew. Same costume.” That splash of hectic red against the grey, as if the coaches had learnt how to bleed. “Same powers; he heard my heart, when I approached. Same name; he started, when I called out.” She downed another gulp. “But not him. Up close, he didn’t even look like him. And this man didn’t know me.”
“Some asshole’s rattling your cage.”
“I don’t think so.” She set down the bottle; restrained herself from wiping it. “When we talked… so much of his story spoke to me. Heightened senses from an accident when he was a kid. He took down the crime boss who destroyed my father. But this guy said he broke the Kingpin with the help of a scientist on the run, who went green and impossibly strong when he got mad.”
“That’s a prime cut of crazy.”
“Is it? Maybe he and I… maybe we just don’t come from the same place.” Elektra remembered. Blade had been clear, if terse, on his own rôle in the world, and how he had come to be. But Stick, who knew all the darkling places of the Earth with the sureness of the man who didn’t look, had never said that there was such a thing as vampires. “Maybe you and I don’t, either.”
“Not just prime – porterhouse.”
“Perhaps.” She drew a sai; flipped it; and weighed it in her hand. “Or perhaps these belonged to another me – a me who died.” The sai flashed back into its sheath. “Elektra’s good at that.”
***
Time and fresh encounters bore her out. Elektra met wanderers, telling other histories of the Earth, where heroes were not comets, but constellations. She met old people as new ones, elsewise inflected. Beyond the Greyhound graveyard stretched a demesne where everybody was the same Norse god – deity fractured in a hall of mirrors.
She never saw that Matt Murdock again, or any other (Hell is full; and all the Devils aren’t here). When she returned to where they had met, amidst the grey coaches, all she found was his belt, hanging from a fender. Scuttlebutt amongst the wanderers was that he had cracked; warred on the power that ruled this place; and paid the price. (Or maybe not. The oldest of the one-man pantheon beyond the ’buses was a master of illusion; when bored, he sometimes counterfeited exquisite deaths to troll the Queen.) Elektra wore the belt back to the retreat.
“Were there others?”
She looked up, startled. Blade didn’t often talk unprompted. But he had been twitchy, lately. Restless. “Huh?”
“Beside the other him.” Blade nodded at the belt. “Any one you miss?”
“My sensei – serene asshole though he was. But mostly… Mark, and Abby. She was a tiny ball of attitude when I… when I left. She’d be a woman grown, now. You?”
“Another Abigail. Not the same one. Attitude to spare, but she ain’t tiny. Built like you.”
“I wish I’d met her.”
“You’d have fought; she’d have lost, but, man,” Blade bared his teeth, “Abigail would have made you bleed. And owned your ninja ass at archery.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And a wise-ass punk called Hannibal King. I relish never having to hear that fool talk again.” Blade was quiet, for a while. “The other man who wore that belt… after your sensei brought you back, did that guy ever look for you?”
“No.”
“Blind asshole.”
Elektra started. “I never told you Murdock couldn’t see.”
“Wasn’t referring to the motherfucker’s eyes.”
***
The girl arrived suddenly. There wasn’t really any other way.
Elektra was foraging, in the wreck of the nearest Helicarrier. The mission removed her from the retreat. She could put off thinking about what Blade had asked her to do.
One moment, there was only wind blowing through the ruptured corridors, unshielded. Then, there was screamed Spanish in Elektra’s ears, and claws at her throat.
The girl was a maelstrom of a fighter. So angry. But rage just gets you killed. Many learn that lesson; very few learn from it. Elektra was of that happy band.
Elektra let her mind walk the ways of Kimagure. She found the eye of the storm, and punched.
The girl staggered. Elektra was impressed; the headshot should have laid her out. Still, the moment of weakness left her open to a takedown. Elektra brought her to the ground.
“Listen to me,” she said, in the girl’s ear. The waif writhed and strained, with jack-shit to show for that. Insanely strong for her size, but her size wasn’t much. “I’m Elektra Natchios. I don’t know what that means anymore; maybe I never did. I don’t even know whether you understand what I’m saying. But combat’s a language we both speak, so I need you to focus on what I am here and now: your superior. Stop trying to kill me, or I will fucking break you, young lady. Clear?”
The girl stilled; gave one slow nod.
“Good.” Elektra released her grip. “There’s a place not far from here, with food and water. I’ll take you there. Don’t stab me to death en route. It isn’t fun.”
***
They were at the entrance of the retreat before Elektra remembered why she had been so keen to get away from it. She gestured at the girl to stay put, and went in.
Blade was standing at the far end of the room, back to the door. He did not turn as Elektra entered.
“So, Natchios,” he said, “you gonna do this thing for me?”
Elektra steeled herself. “No.”
“It’s the only play.”
“We tried another.”
“And that one time nearly killed you, even when I could still hold back.” She could see the sweat gleam on the back of that strong neck. “I’m worse now.”
Elektra bit her lip. All of the strengths; none of the weaknesses. So many creeds like that, in this forsaken place – you could almost hear them jostling on the breeze. Like most of them, Blade’s was a lie. He shared one weakness with his former prey – the biggest.
The thirst.
Even with the strictest rationing, the serum he took to keep it at bay had eventually run out. Chem labs, apparently, didn’t piss the Authorities off as much as diners. Over Blade’s protests, Elektra had let him drink from her. She had almost died; and, for too long after, the ordeal had taken its toll on her speed, her strength. Elektra had nothing to offer beside those, and the scant gifts that fell to a half-assed follower of Kimagure, against a world where someone junked their gods and monsters.
“You can drink my blood again,” she said. “I can take it, one more time.”
“No.” he said. “You gotta put me down like the rabid dog I am. We both know that won’t be a problem, Natchios. You’re a weapon; it’s what you do.”
“We’re not weapons,” she said. “That was a lie we told to flatter ourselves. We aren’t dangerous; we’re superfluous. You’ve heard what the wanderers say about our old world, our old worlds. It isn’t even a tale told by an idiot. It’s a yarn slurred out by a drunk, who can’t keep straight who he needs to work the plot. We weren’t weapons, Eric. We were ammo. And now we’re casings.”
“Maybe you’re right.” He straightened his back. “But fancy talk just puts off what you gotta do.”
“I know.” Elektra hefted her sai. “Goodby…”
A roundhouse kick to the head from behind cut short her valediction.
***
Elektra recovered in a blink; that wasn’t quick enough. The girl had already sprinted past her, to the far end of the room. Her claws were sheathed. Her neck was bare. Blade was on her faster than a thought. Twenty terrible seconds before Elektra could tear him loose.
“What the fuck did I just do?” he rasped. Elektra stood over the huddled girl, a sai in each hand. Blade’s voice was steady; the thirst had been sated. “Who is she?” He stared at the recumbent stranger. “What is she?”
Elektra risked a look down, and took a breath. Blood everywhere; from lack of practice, Blade was a messy eater. The skin of the girl’s throat was smooth, unmarred. She stared up at them with big grave eyes.
“I’m Laura,” she said.
Elektra found her voice, and knelt beside her. “Why… why did you do that?”
The girl – Laura – shrugged. “He,” she pointed at Blade, “was hurting. You told me how to help him, so I did. A man who’s dead now taught me that.” Her gaze settled again on Elektra. “You defeated me.”
“Yeah – I did.”
“Could he defeat me, too?”
“Haven’t seen you cooking with gas, kid,” said Blade. “But if Elektra can take you, I surely can.”
“Good.” The girl nodded, as if satisfied. “Make me more than you two are.”
She walked to a sofa; flopped over most of it; and, heedless of its likely antiquity, ate a Twinkie.
***
“Not gonna lie,” Blade said, a few days later. They were sitting outside the retreat, watching Laura practise a kick Elektra had shown her. “Didn’t see this coming.”
“Do you know how Laura did… what she did?”
“The mad hobo Osborn talks about something he calls a ‘regenerative healing factor’. I guess that’s it.”
“At least it solves the problem of the thirst.”
“Maybe not just that problem.”
She glared. “We can’t be her folks, Blade. ‘Make me more than you two are’ is not a mantra for parenthood.”
“I’ve never heard a better.” Blade rolled his shoulders. “You and me… we’ve been jogging on the spot too long. The young blood over there…” Laura fell over in the dirt, and swore. “… she can shake us up.”
“Maybe. But she won’t bring any change. In the end, Laura’s just like us. A stoic killer, who never got her ending.”
“Then we garage our lethal silences together,” Blade watched as Laura, flushed with triumph, aced the kick, “and wait for some motherfucker who knows how to use their words to bring us one.”
FINIS