47 || do or die

"War never ends. This is merely the first battle of many, Alison Marnell."

Queens Theater, Black Friday, 2016-

The situation was bad. Even Alison had to admit that. Civilians were unwanted spectators- and a risk that they might get kidnapped, injured, or taken hostage was high. To top it all off, Alison was pretty sure that the whole damn world was watching her right now, through the tiny screens that were live streaming and videoing the event through said civilians.

No pressure- right?

"Let's take this inside." Alison spoke to Absinthe, and cold and hardened gaze falling upon the girl as she continued to speak. Jacking her thumb at the main building, Ali couldn't help but feel nerves at the ongoing battle that was probably going to turn for the worse.

"Fine." Absinthe responded, looking at Alison, who was still close by the cop cars and civilians that were barricaded away from the situation. Walking towards the girl, Absinthe saw that Alison started to creep towards her as well. Seizing the opportunity of Alison being wide open, the woman charged, knocking the speedster through the glass doors of the theater, the force propelling Ali to fall onto the stage inside.

Crashing into a set piece for some play, Alison was sure that she broke something in her left hand from the impact. The hand was throbbing, and it hurt like hell to even try and sit herself back up to fight. Groaning as she stood up again, Ali could hear the frenzied voices on the other side of her comms.

Pressing her right hand- the non injured hand- to her ear, Alison gave her friends a response. "I'm pretty sure that I'm doing okay." She started, a set piece crashing behind her as she continued to speak. "But I'm also pretty sure that I broke a bone in my-"

"Who are you talking to?" Absinthe wondered, walking over to the place where Alison was slowly rising up from. Pushing over the girl, making her fall back down, Absinthe smiled down at her victim. "Is it your cousin? I wonder if I'll find out when I pick that little brain of yours."

Reaching out for Alison's forehead, the woman's coy smile widened into a sickening grin. "I'm surprised you're giving up so soon." Absinthe sighed, clicking her tongue in disappointment as she continued to talk. "I thought you'd put up more of a fight, and not some flashy presentation with nothing to show for it."

Finally making contact with Alison's temple, Absinthe looked confused, the girl not falling under the usual trance that would occur if she had used her powers. A small yet wide signature Breakout smile rose up on Alison's as she watched the woman looked at her hand and at Alison in confusion. "Who said I had even started?" The girl countered, gripping a device in her right hand, one of two parts of a special device that her friends had whipped up less than an hour before.

Still frowning, Absinthe tore her hand away from Alison's temple. "But how? That's-"

"Impossible?" Alison offered, laughing as she spoke. "With a little help of some stolen Stark technology, the perfect frequency to block your powers, as you do use a frequency to force people under your trance-" Ali explained, slightly rambling as she continued on. "And some great friends. With those three things, your fearsome and terrible powers merely become- science."

Pressing the device that was helping her keep Absinthe's powers at bay, Alison slid the remote into the top of her glove, finding a quick place to store the device. Reacting quickly to the surprise that was not very well masked on the woman's face, Alison punched her right on the jaw.

Catching the woman off balance, Ali struck again. The strike made the woman bleed, Alison's punch hitting home right by the woman's lip. A small pool of blood formed at the corner of the lip of the Asgardian's mouth, the woman touching her mouth with a curious look. "You think that a small device and some lucky punches are going to stop me?"

"Not really, no." Alison slid into the natural S.H.I.E.L.D. stance for fighting, her Uncle's words from months ago about proper stance coming back to her. "But do you think that you can stop me?"

"Watch me." Absinthe elbowed Alison straight across the cheek, the angle that Alison was at perfect for the strike. The woman's neutral face formed into one of concentration, not hesitating to try and land in another blow.

Two throws getting landed on the girl within seconds, Alison was thrown off course, stumbling for a second before trying to get back into stance. Alison launched her right hand into a hook at the woman's face, Absinthe merely catching the punch, pushing the girl into the stage curtains.

Falling into the ground, stomach down, Alison gave out a groan as she struggled to get up. Looking up, Alison saw Absinthe looming over her, the woman's aggressive facial expression molding into a smile.

The woman, straddling the girl's vulnerable body, left the woman open for an attack. Hopping up to a push up position in a millisecond, Alison's legs flying from behind her to in front of her to kick Absinthe with a mighty force.

The woman slumped back, giving Alison the perfect amount of time to recover from her awkward position and stand back up, ready for another round. Irritated by the simple and naive abilities of the girl, Absinthe pulled out a dagger, twirling it in her right hand.

"So we're bringing weapons into the battle?" Alison huffed, sighing as her gaze fell upon the dagger in irritation. "Just couldn't help yourself to try and not kill me, now could you?" The girl murmured, attempting to re catch her breath as she got back into stance.

Not giving the girl a response, Absinthe charged towards Alison, slashing the girl's cheek before Ali could even react with her super speedster reflexes. The woman went to attack again, not hesitating to strike again while Alison was still reeling from the last attack.

The dagger sliced into the flesh on the left side of Alison's ribs, the cut opening up her suit's threads, splitting apart a main piece of her suit. Huffing out a breath of annoyance, Alison realized that she had to play good defense against Absinthe in order to get anywhere in this fight.

Watching the woman strike again, the world slowed, the girl looking at Absinthe go into slow-mo in front of her, the move the woman was going to do very obvious. Grabbing the weapon, the world speeded up again, Alison now having hold on the weapon.

Reacting quickly, Absinthe elbowed Alison straight across the face. The power of the hit threw Alison's head towards the right in almost a cartoonish way, knocking out the girl's comms device. The device was the other part of the power blocker, and upon realizing that the device had been knocked out of her ear, Ali slowly started to back up to where the comms device was.

Feeling her power slowly surge back into her bones, Absinthe stalked towards Alison, the echoing of the woman's boots travelling throughout the entire empty theater. Alison, stumbling over a broken set piece and landing on her butt, barely an arm's reach from her comm.

"Trying to go somewhere, are we?" Absinthe questioned, holding the girl back from reaching out and grasping the comm device that would stop the woman once again.

"Away from-" Alison started to speak, turning to meet the woman's gaze. Feeling the device brushing the edge of her fingertips, Alison didn't realize she had made a grave mistake until she saw Absinthe's hand jolting out to touch her face. The world tumbled into black as Alison's body thudded to the ground.

Waking up in a new place with a jolt, Alison was prepared to fight. However, when she woke up within the comforts of her own sheets, the familiar grey walls of her Queens bedroom waking her up, to say that she was confused was putting it mildly.

There was no Boston colonial house like last time, no fake families or fake fantasies. It was just her, in an empty room, at the mercy of whatever Absinthe wanted her to experience. And Alison was pretty sure that whatever Absinthe wanted to do meant nothing good for her.

Throwing off the covers of her bedsheets, Alison's feet carefully fell onto the hardwood tile floor that she was all too accustomed to. Everything felt... out of place, as if little things in the household were warped, not meant to be in places that they were in.

Her outfit was one that the girl was in was all too familiar, a brown and battered leather jacket and a black floral print donning the girl, almost as if the outfit was mocking the girl and what she had become. Looking in the mirror, trying to see if her eyes were deceiving her, Alison pinched the wrinkled edges of the dress, feeling the rough fabric in her hands. It all seemed so unfamiliar.

"Worried about something?" Lexi peeked her head in, looking at the outfit Alison was wearing with a pinched frown. "Oh, the outfit. I told you that it was fine. You know that it's only a party. It's not that big of a deal what you're wearing if people are only going to faintly remember it." She teased, her frown breaking into a smile.

"Wait- which party?" Alison questioned, her mind racing as she realized that this time, she knew that she was in a vision. She knew that it all wasn't real. So why did this feel like something that was right? That this wasn't out of place?

"The party you wanted to go with me to when we were talking at Delights? You know, the one that you were going to come to with me after you were going to take your younger brother to the comic store?" The girl reiterated, confusion laced in her voice.

"Right. Right." Alison brushed a piece of hair out of her face, memories of that night flooding into the girl's brain as she looked into the mirror. "Can I not go? You know, maybe this can be a good chance for me to-"

"Get it all back?" Lexi offered, the tone in her voice not sounding like the one that Alison remembered that she would speak in. "You know, if you come with me to this party, you could get everything in your life back. Have your old life, old friends, go to your first school, with me-"

Alison turned around to face Lexi, confused as to why the girl would even be trying to convince her to do such a thing. "Why would I want that?" She questioned, her face molding into one of perplexment.

"Because! You could stay here with me, have a great relationship with your brother, have a decent relationship with your cousin, Jackie, and never delve into the world of superheroes. You'd never find out about your Uncle, or even be involved with Tony Stark." Lexi added on, placing her hands on her friend's shoulders a little too forcefully.

Trying to escape her friend's embrace, multiple red flags were blaring in Alison's brain. "How do you- how do you even know about those things? I never told you about any of that stuff, because-"

"You left before you could ever tell me, yes." Lexi's tone turned into a cold sneer, one that Alison could recognize as Absinthe's even through the facade of her old best friend. "But I found out." The girl shrugged, giving a hard stone cold glare at Alison. "Now, here are your options. You can either stay here, live out your life here, be happy, and get everything you wanted, or you can die a slow and painful death in front of everyone you hold dear."

"I'm assuming both of these options include some sort of part with my untimely demise, so I'll take the second, Arnora." Alison spat in Lexi's face, breaking the not very well disguised facade that the woman was displaying.

Snarling, Absinthe charged towards Alison, the Lexi-like disguise fading off of her as she charged towards the girl, ready to choke the life out of the girl. "If you want to play this way, that's fine too." The woman smiled venomously, watching Ali slowly gasp for breath. "After all, you don't have your trusty cousin to save you in here."

"No." Alison barely rasped out, feeling the familiar objects laying on top of her dresser coming into contact with her hand. "But I have the home turf advantage." She smiled, grasping a textbook for her chemistry class and striking it across of Absinthe's face.

The impact of the book made the woman loosen her grip on Alison, Ali sputtering for breath as she escaped Absinthe's chokehold, moving away and out of the apartment. Remembering that she had made a contingency plan just in case worse turned to worse, Alison knew exactly where she had to go.

Back to the Queens Theater in the Park.

Taking off faster than she had ever run before, Alison barely had time to catch her breath as she bolted through the streets. Her injuries burning (somehow Absinthe had made them still there in the vision) and legs on the verge of collapsing, Ali kept pressing through it all, the adrenaline keeping her alive.

Opening the doors to the still empty theater, Alison's eyes scanned the terrain, finding the small device that her friends had somehow found a way to implement into the frequency channel that Absinthe's visions were located on. Ali gasped in relief, racing over to latch her hand on the small fob.

All she had to do was press the-

"Going somewhere so soon?" Absinthe asked, the woman bursting through the doors of the theater. "So desperate to return to your reality that you care for so much?" She questioned, a pitiful yet mocking pout forming on her face.

"More like a place where I know I'll be away from you." Alison stated, keeping a steel tight grip on the device in the center of her palm. "Have you realized your one flaw in your grand plan yet, Absinthe? Why I keep winning and you keep- well, losing?"

"Enlighten me." The woman challenged, an amused glint in her eyes coming through her now neutral expression. Absinthe walked down the aisles of steps, growing closer and closer to where Alison stood on stage.

"Because-" Alison held up the fob, waving it in a teasing yet triumphant manner. "I have friends and teammates that I can rely on. And you? You're nothing but a second hand man, a part of an army that you won't ever get to control. That's why you'll never win, Arnora. Because I have people I can trust, and that will care for me and love me. Like you never will be loved."

Growling at what Alison was about to do, Absinthe started to lunge towards the fob, moving as quickly as she could to try and stop what the girl was about to do. However, within seconds, Alison's hand had pressed down on the device, a blinding white light piercing the two's eyes as they were snapped back to reality.

Within seconds, Alison's eyes snapped open, seeing that the world was the exact same as how she had left it. Absinthe was a few feet away, still reeling from being brought out of her own vision. Taking the opportunity of time that had been bought from the surprise snap back to reality, Alison took her comm, pressing it back into her ear.

Absinthe wouldn't be getting the girl again anytime soon.

Standing up from her awkward position, Alison winced as she looked down at her hand, dried blood spotting her left palm. It was a shallow cut, thankfully, but it still stung like hell nonetheless. "You too scared to get up and fight, Arnora?" Alison challenged, the girl beginning to walk towards the woman with the most caution one could ever have.

The woman, still unmoving, gave no response as Alison grew closer. "Giving up so soon?" The girl continued, laughing a little with a signature smile piercing through the bruises beginning to form on Alison's face. "And here I thought that you wouldn't surrender so easily."

Acting upon Alison's gloating, Absinthe sprung up, beginning to attack with an array of punches and attacks to target Alison's weak spots, causing the girl to be caught off guard. "And here I thought that you weren't naive enough to approach your enemy without suspecting that they were down for good." Giving the girl a good kick, Alison flew back into a huge set piece at the back of the stage, wood snapping and crashing from the impact.

Groaning, Alison could feel the throbbing in her left hand (a bone still broken from earlier) increase, something broken in her shoulder bone echoing that same throbbing scream. Dust, sawdust, that is, filling the air around her, Alison coughed as she gathered herself back up, barely even able to heave her body up out of the splintered wood behind her.

Realizing that she wasn't going to get anywhere with just punches, Alison sighed as she pressed into her comm. "Girls, get the device ready for Setting J." She murmured, her words barely able to be heard through the static and crashing things around her.

"Setting J?" Skylar questioned, speaking for the first time throughout the entire battle. "Are you sure that you want to do that? Alison, you know exactly what going into Setting J means-"

"Yeah." Alison interrupted, still holding a battered hand to her comm. "Just do it. Let me know when it's ready, because I need to end this once and for all." She looked over at Absinthe, who was charging once again. "Shit! Gotta go."

Reacting quickly to the woman running towards her with the intent to kill, Alison gripped a piece of wood from the broken set piece in front of her, holding it like a baseball bat. She would be ready for when the Absinthe fastball flew past her- and Alison wanted to make sure that it was a home run.

The woman, finally making it somewhat closer to Alison, was struck with a wood piece before she could even land a blow in. The small piece of wood was helping, albeit in the tiniest way possible. Throwing away the ruined set piece prop, Alison got ready for Absinthe's next counter attack- a hook from her left side. Alison knew she couldn't dodge it unless she used her left hand, so she took the hit, the punch striking the left side of her torso.

Letting out a small groan, the wind knocked out of her, Alison put her fists up, trying to play defense against the heavily offensive woman. Alison blocked punch after punch, but it was getting tiring. Fist after fist came into contact with each other, the constant back and forth exhausting. Finally dropping her defenses a slight bit, Alison was hit by a side kick that hit straight into her legs, which were the only thing keeping her still standing in this fight.

Stumbling to the ground, Alison fell hard on her back, looking up at Absinthe in slight fear. "Skylar, Christa! Getting it online anytime would be great!" She screamed through her comms, wincing at the amount of effort it took for her to yell at them.

Absinthe, thinking that she had a final blow coming, gathered her dagger from the side of the stage, coming up to stare down at Alison. "Have any last words before you die, Miss Marnell?" The woman questioned, her head inclining in slight curiosity at the last words that the girl would ever utter.

"We're online!" Christa hollered through the comms, Skylar sighing in relief behind her. "Repeat, Setting J on the device in your suit is online!"

"Yeah." Alison breathed out, scrambling to grab the device she had tucked away in the suit earlier in the fight. "I'm not the one dying today." Grabbing the device and pressing the side button, Alison threw the blinking device into Absinthe's face, trying to get as far away from the device as she could before-

A blue explosion rocked the theater, everything coming to a close.

<~*~>

ahhh so what did you think?

was this crappy? cause I kinda think it is

whatever I'm hyped off of the Avengers : End Game trailer so this is what you get. life's pretty good/ decent with that, so here's a brand new chapter for you. also, if I could choose any date to have the Breakout movie premiere on, it'd be December 7, 2018 and today is that day so WOOOOOAH

oh well I will go back and fix it later

Y'ALL WE HAVE HIT THE CLIMAX

3 more chapters to go, and with it is some cute stuff and some great falling action!

anyways, I think that about does it for me, so I hope you enjoyed and I'll see you in the next one!

bye

-ash