Miss Zhifeng looked at Andreas's decapitated head without a thread of guilt.
Hm. That is one less option for the journey.
She turned the thought over with the same detachment she might give a misplaced item. I wonder if Naxys will reconsider her sudden decision.
Her thoughts moved from Naxys to what she wanted to eat. Something spicy probably. Miss Zhifeng felt that the air had gotten strange or more as the spirituality of someone makes the air feel odd.
She noticed the blue cat again.
She squinted. Her thoughts, which had been moving with their usual clean precision, became difficult to put together. Like reaching for something on a shelf and finding the shelf had moved slightly to the left.
She rubbed her blood red lips slowly.
Turned to look at Andreas's corpse.
Turned to look at where Anat had been standing.
Neither the corpse nor the witch nor the girl behind the witch were anywhere Miss Zhifeng could see.
Her hand moved before the rest of her finished the thought. A single clean strike at the blue cat, blade crossing the distance with the certainty of something that had never missed.
It passed through it, as though the cat was an illusion
"What are..." Miss Zhifeng did not complete her sentence.
"Dang Zhifeng."
The blue cat's tail curled once. Its deep voice resounded through her head.
"I will forgive you for your impulsiveness." It regarded her with the unhurried patience of something that had been sitting quietly for a very long time and had no opinions about being struck. "But know this. As a faunus goat, very few... beings can tame me." A pause that had weight in it. "Take this as a warning. Even your demigod friends know what manner of man you struck."
Miss Zhifeng's face did something it rarely did.
Her eyes widened. Her expression twisted with a disgust she couldn't quite arrange into composure quickly enough, the specific disgust of someone who has just been spoken to by a cat that called itself a godlike being and is finding the experience difficult to file correctly.
She stared at it.
The cat looked back with the docile stillness of something fully domesticated.
Miss Zhifeng sighed and let her expression settle back into its usual place. Her light smile returned.
She turned and searched her surroundings slowly, stoped and widened her smile by a fraction.
"Right. Andreas is his name." She said dismissively. "I didn't bother to ask what he looked like." She paused. "But I will say, for a faunus goat, perhaps I should become your master.
After all a god killer is far better than the standard you've apparently dropped to..."
The black tendril came from the cat's tail without warning.
Miss Zhifeng was gone before it arrived.
The tendril struck empty ground.
The cat looked at where she had been standing. Its tail curled back slowly.
***
A few streets away. Andreas was panting heavily.
He rubbed his neck with both hands, checking the seam where it had been reattached with the focused attention of someone inspecting recent repair work.
He stood up fully and cracked his neck.
"Anat. Nanna." His voice came out hoarser than he intended. "You should run."
The pain arrived before he finished the sentence.
He looked down.
The tip of a katana protruded from his chest, positioned with surgical precision just past his heart. Each beat pushed against the blade from the inside.
The feeling was specific and enormous and Andreas's face twisted and began to cry and groan.
Anat grabbed Nanna's hand and ran without looking back.
Andreas looked up.
Each heartbeat was its own separate event. He felt his lung press against something that shouldn't be there. He felt a rib register the blade's edge. His expression kept twisting and his eyes filled and he started to scream in agony.
"Tell me." Miss Zhifeng's voice came from directly behind him, with prideful smirk . "Aldric or Andreas, which one are you?" A beat. "What is the name of such an easy..."
Andreas smirked.
It was a small expression. Wet around the edges from the crying. But present.
His hand came up and his fingers closed around the tip of the blade protruding from his chest. He felt the edge open his palm. He didn't adjust his grip.
He turned.
Not away from the blade. Into it. His body rotating slowly and deliberately, letting the katana carve through the resistance of lung tissue, scraping the inner edge of a rib with a sound he felt more than heard. His face did something complicated throughout the process, pain and concentration and something that might have been satisfaction all present simultaneously.
He completed the turn.
Then he hit her.
Not a technique. Not a manipulation of gravity or entropy. Just a punch, delivered by a man with a sword through his chest who had decided the situation called for one.
Her eyes registered this before the rest of her did. She had felt pain from a punch of an ordinary man.
Andreas took the katana from Dang's hand.
She remained still as a statue.
He stood there holding it for a moment with the expression of someone who had just won an argument they hadn't meant to start.
Then the heat arrived.
It filled his chest without warning, the kind of heat that has no interest in being reasonable about it.
Andreas's face registered this development with the specific betrayal of a man whose body has just added a new problem to an existing list of problems.
Huff. Huff.
Smoke began rising from his chest. Thin at first then less thin.
He looked down at it.
Then his back hit the ground and he was holding his chest with both hands and crying in the particular way that has no dignity left in it.
"Ohhhh." A pause occupied entirely by suffering. "Uh. Uh." He curled slightly. "This is not it."
What followed felt like an hour.
Dang's expression twisted once during that time. Just once. Then it returned to its usual place.
When she looked again Andreas was on his feet.
He was walking away. Slowly, leaning against the wall with one shoulder, moving with the careful momentum of something that had committed to a direction and was not going to discuss it. His face was still wet. He wasn't looking back.
Then he felt her gaze.
He stopped.
Turned.
Walked back to the middle of the street with the energy of a defeated child who had decided crying about it was the next available option and had made peace with that.
He stood there.
Facing her.