<span style="color: #FF80FF">“Oh… What happened to your b-”</span>Kira began to ask before their cellphones collectively alerted them that the emergency status was over. Kira sighed with relief as a moment later, her phone chimed again with a text from Sam. A smile made its way to her face as she read his message, and she responded that she would see him later after he was finished work.<br/><br/><br/>///<br/><br/><br/><br/>Mongrel rolled her neck before tucking her chin down behind her hunched left shoulder. Her fighting stance was fairly typical for a Muay-Thai fighter, excluding her additional pair of arms. Her top pair of ripped arms were raised to her cheeks, while the lower arms created a nearly perfect guard of her midsection.<br/>She stood in a bladed stance, facing Garrison at a diagonal angle. Her front foot bounced in a regular rhythm, ready to shift her body’s weight forward and advance with a punch, or flick up into a kick.<br/>Her rapidly swelling jaw ached, and moving it proved even more painful. Garrison had managed to generate so much power even in such a constricted position that even Mongrel was hesitant to feel the full extent of his power at the end of a fully extended punch.<br/>Garrison slowly raised his arms as he adopted a fighting stance, a sly grin playing across his lips. He lunged forward, his incredible speed only matched by Mongrel’s reflexes. Her lead leg whipped up just as Garrison unleashed a sweeping overhand punch. Mongrel’s foot landed squarely on his solar plexus before extending, throwing most of her body weight behind the counter. The push kick threw him back several metres until he skidded to a halt. He was back to his feet and advancing again in an instant, his hands loosely held beneath his chin, leaving his face exposed to potential counterattacks.<br/>Mongrel leaned back as Garrison targeted her chin with a duo of straight punches. Stepping back and planting her rear foot solidly on the ground, Mongrel rotated her whole body into a pair of tight hooks with both of her right arms. Both fists landed, one catching Garrison on the cheekbone while the other dug into his abdominal muscles with a sickening thud. The twin punches sent him flying into the wall, a spiderweb of cracks opening across the brick structure. Garrison sprung back, winging another right hand up towards Mongrel’s head, but this too she slipped and swiftly sent the smaller man hurling into the brick with a sharp counter.<br/>Garrison lunged towards her yet again. This time Mongrel slipped inside of his hook, planted one leg across his and grabbed a hold of him. Letting the momentum of his strike carry him forward, she executed a brutal throw, hurling him over her shoulder and into the ground in one flowing movement.<br/>Debris flew into the air as Garrison smashed into the ground, back first. Mongrel prepared to follow through on the throw and go to the ground to try to outwrestle him again. She prepared to fall on his head, which lay at her feet, but Garrison reached behind, clasping her ankle in a vice grip and yanked with so much force that the hulking woman landed on her back alongside Garrison on the ground, her head whipping back into the floor. Garrison scrambled to his knees, clambering into mount over Mongrel with his legs on either side of her torso.<br/>Mongrel barely had time to react as he threw down punches from the top position. She jerked her head left and right, avoiding his devastating punches. Each one crashed into the floor behind her head and tore up the concrete with loud crunches. The flurry ended when a thunderous punch embedded one of Garrison's fists in the ground, slowing his onslaught just enough for Mongrel to grab onto him and fling him off of her.<br/>They both scrambled to their feet, but Garrison’s lighter frame rose first. As soon as Mongrel rose off her knees, her face was met by a sledgehammer as Garrison pivoted his body through the punch, clipping her over the eye.<br/>She stumbled away from Garrison, her legs seemed to bend like jelly underneath her and she fell to her knees and rose again several times until she found her feet. The world whirled as she looked back to Garrison, who was already after her. She blinked, trying to see through the fog that surrounded her. She shuffled her feet away from Garrison as he approached, but her legs seemed heavy, and she didn’t get far.<br/>Garrison launched himself into a leaping hook, dead set on taking her head off. The punch glided past Mongrel’s temple, who barely managed to turn her head away at the last possible instant. Another punch came winging in from the other side, and before Mongrel could think she slipped aside and avoided it my millimetres.<br/>The brutal barrage continued, vicious punches raining in but somehow none of them made contact. Mongrel’s body moved on its own, her fighting instincts kicking in even while her mind was unable to take notice of the dozen shots that narrowly missed. She rolled under another swinging arm, coming up and crashing against Garrison. The jolt seemed to stir Mongrel from the haze that had taken up in her mind, and with a slight shake of her head, she was back.<br/>She used her two top arms to pull down on Garrison’s neck, robbing him of his stability before slamming alternating knees into his ribs, followed by a flurry of punches from her lower pair of arms, delivering a series of blows to Garrison’s midsection before following up with two uppercuts that landed squarely on his chin.<br/>Garrison ducked and rolled out of her grasp, unleashing a combination of his own. He ripped to the body, two hooks to her left ribs followed by an uppercut to her abs.<br/>The shots drove the breath out of Mongrel, and she grunted with pain as the uppercut drove into her midsection, the upward force enough to almost lift her off her feet. She realised - too late - that those strikes were just to set up another, more devastating attack. Garrison slipped low to his right, avoiding Mongrel’s hands as they sought to tie him up in another clinch. He wound up his right hand, lowering it almost to his hip, before rebounding into a terrifyingly fast uppercut.<br/>Mongrel braced herself just in time, tensing her jaw and leaning into the punch as it arrived to mitigate as much force as possible.<br/>The impact felt like it caved in her face, and when her neck flung back she thought it might have snapped. She flew up and back, smashing into the ceiling. For what seemed like a long time she stuck there, embedded by the force of the blow. Garrison looked up with a satisfied expression, just as she detached and fell back to the floor with a thud.<br/>Garrison circled her crumpled body like a wolf, how to finish his prey. He chuckled, then laughed when he realised she actually thought she could win.<br/><span style="color: #004000">“You dumb bi-”</span>He was cut off her hulking body leapt off the floor and smashed into him, sending him stumbling backwards. She stayed on him, all four arms smashing shots into his head, body, arms or whatever else she could reach. Garrison shelled up, his arms raised to guard high, and back up until his back hit a wall.<br/>Mongrel unleashed upon him, hitting him wherever, whenever she could. Punches, elbows and knees hit whatever he left exposed, or else just wailed against his arms. She did not stop. Her fists were wild, and the ceaseless outpour of violence only increased in speed, her hulking form a blur as she wailed on Garrison.<br/>Garrison slowly lowered his hands, ignoring the fact his face was assaulted by countless punches and slicing elbows. Then he also began throwing.<br/>Mongrel grunted in pain as his punches connected with her body and head, but she did not slow her offence. Garrison, his back against the wall, unloaded his own blindingly fast flurrying of punches, paused, then threw another flurry, and another. Again and again, they exchanged vicious strikes, both completely disregarding defence.<br/>Mongrel refused to step back, despite Garrison opening a dozen cuts over her eyes and on her cheeks. Her body was bruised, and she knew several ribs had already cracked. He leaned into a right elbow strike, splitting open Mongrel’s top lip. Blood gushed from the cut, spraying over both of them, adding to the red stains on Mongrel’s uniform and the rivers of blood that flowed down Garrison’s topless torso as the two fought in a phonebox.<br/>Mongrel reprised by throwing a colossal pair of hooks with her left arms, both landing flush against Garrison's skull, snapping his head around in time to catch a thunderous uppercut which sent it rebounding against the wall behind him. She caught him again as his head flew forward, this time her combination went unanswered and she went to work on his unprotected head. Punch after punch sent it flopping from side to side, and she repeatedly caught it again and again.<br/>BOOM<br/>Mongrel stumbled back, her face on fire and unsure about what had hit her. Garrison grabbed hold of two of her arms, pulling her back towards him before jumping into a second headbutt.<br/>BOOM<br/>The booming thud as their two skulls impacted echoed through the facility. Mongrel’s knees buckled momentarily. She regained her balance just as a punch connected with her jaw, dislocating it again and sending her sprawling to the floor. She got back to her feet just as Garrison unleashed a looping uppercut that landed flush with her face, breaking her nose with a loud crunch.<br/>Mongrel didn’t know where she was anymore, and blindly fell backwards to the floor, the back of her head bouncing on the concrete. Garrison loomed over her and, swatting aside her weak arms, dropped into mount.<br/><span style="color: #004000">“Good try.”</span>Garrison snarled as Mongrel faded out of consciousness. He readied himself to strike the killing blow on his helpless opponent as all of his blood shifted to the right side of his body and threw him down the hallway. Shifting onto his back as he slid he saw a man almost measuring up to his stature levitating a sizable amount of water liberated from pipes broken in his fight with Mongrel. Behind him stood a team of national guard medics on their way to assist Dominic and Casey.<br/><span style="color: #4080FF">“You can surrender now,”</span>Blizzard said, moving his hands and dropping the water floating around him. Garrison felt a sharp pain in his chest and his heart ground to a halt. His blood stopped flowing but his heart was fighting it with all of its strength. That man was stopping his heart somehow by controlling his blood or the water in his blood. He felt his heart begin to tear itself apart and heal in a repetitive cycle and he knew he would have to escape before his energy was sapped by the trauma. He grabbed for his briefcase with his objective inside and leapt away. As he escaped the deadly grip on his heart lessened and he was freed from the drain on his life.<br/>Garrison made his escape through the maze of winding corridors in the facility. Killing several patrols with ease, he emerged into daylight, a sharp contrast to the permanent fluorescence inside. The defensive perimeter surrounding the base was ill-equipped to stop him and, despite their best efforts, he escaped.<br/><br/><br/>***