The Altercation Amendment [Solo]

[Claire Buíocán]

[Kuchinashi, Menagerie - Twenty-Three Years Ago]

Claire sat down in a chair across from a large man in a well-appointed suit. His eyes narrowed and his lion's tail flicked back and forth in annoyance until he noticed the silk braid wrapped around her right arm.

"So, it's you," the man growled, clear annoyance lingering in his voice. "My people have assured me that speaking to you is preferable to crushing you under my foot, but won't explain why. So I suggest that you start talking."

She scares Matteo. Nothing scares Matteo. What the hell kind of brat is this girl?

"I'm not here to talk to you," Claire told him. "I'm here so we can both put a face to a name. I'm not going to come after you unless you come after me first," she added with a shrug before she stood up and left the restaurant without so much as a backward glance.

[Claire Buíocán]

[Kuo Kuana, Menagerie - Twenty-Two Years Ago]

"... I surrender." The man's voice was nearly inaudible through the mouthful of sand, but his thoughts were loud and clear.

Demonspawn. How did she manage to take out three whole squads by herself? They had guns, grenades, and even a land mine, not to mention home turf. How did she survive? She's a monster.

Claire smiled. "Good. As I said when last we met, you are free to join my Family if you clean up your act, but never again will you soil the sands of Menagerie with your filth." She spat on the sand mere inches from his head and left him bleeding on the beach as waves washed the sands clean of the evidence from their battle.

[Claire Buíocán]

[Celerita, Vacuo - Fifteen Years Ago]

That's it, brat. Just a little closer...

Claire resisted the urge to sigh or shake her head in annoyance. The lion Faunus whom she'd deposed from his position as crime boss of Kuchinashi seven years ago had apparently hired a bunch of goons, followed her to Vacuo, and set up a trap for her, all in an effort to get revenge for her having had the audacity to - get this - stop him from selling his fellow Faunus into what amounted to slavery to an Atlas-based Dust company.

It was ridiculous. Did he seriously think that she hadn't gained even more combat experience in the seven years since she took down the first death squad he'd sent after her? She honestly wasn't sure how many of the squads she'd faced in the years since had been sent by him - she'd made many enemies in the criminal underworld across three Kingdoms since then, after all.

Deciding to just get it over with, she stepped onto the clearly disturbed patch of sand and waited to see what would happen. Almost immediately, the sand was blasted upward by an explosion of Dust, and Claire was thrown into the air. Looking down, she saw an intricate sigil made of Combustion Dust light up as the lion whose name she hadn't bothered to remember (a mistake she'd never make again) and no fewer than thirty armed goons charged out from behind an outcropping, weapons and Semblances preparing to blast her to pieces.

Claire only smirked as her weapon's silk cord unraveled from around her arm.

[Claire Buíocán]

That's it, brat. Just a little closer... Thomas Russo grit his teeth as his tail lashed in anticipation. He'd been planning this little party for that little devil for nearly five years, and it was almost time.

Everything he'd managed to find out about the girl suggested that there was no way she'd be fooled by something like this, but Tommy knew better. She was just a girl - no way she was smarter than him.

Sure enough, she stepped on the trap, and was immediately blasted into the air by the Combustion Dust array. Tommy snarled in triumph and charged out to finish the job, his hirelings following him with greed in their eyes. His mistake last time had been his insistence on finishing her himself. This time, he'd brought a small army, and all he cared about was that the girl's head would roll.

A shroud of mist appeared around the girl, and one of the mercenaries fired a blast of fire into it to disperse the cloud. When his vision cleared, the girl was nowhere to be seen.

"Spread out! Tommy yelled. "Whoever brings me her head gets paid double!" he added, and the eyes of his hired army lit up with greed.

A muffled yelp sounded from behind him, and Tommy spun around to see one of his men splayed out in the sand as a white cord disappeared into the sand kicked up by all the men rushing to spread out to cover more ground.

Another yelp came from another direction as another man fell, this time with a knife sticking out of his eye. Tommy whirled, eyes darting in all directions. "Show yourself, you little shit!" he spat.

Another man cried out in pain, this time missing an arm. Tommy barely managed to catch a glimpse of a scythe retreating into the sand cloud before the sound of a fierce melee came from yet another direction.

One by one, his hired help was dispatched with dispassionate ease by a girl who couldn't be older than nineteen. Only once the cloud of sand kicked up by the battle finally settled did he manage to lay eyes on his quarry.

She was breathing heavily, her face covered in blood and sweat, hair sticking to her forehead in glistening strands, mouth stretched wide in a manic grin, her eyes focusing on him and his two remaining goons with deadly intent. Her weapon swung around her in wide, unpredictable circles, and Tommy finally realized what it was: a rope dart with myriad interchangeable heads.

His two remaining mercenaries dove in opposite directions as the meteor hammer swung in a wide overhead arc to slam down toward Tommy with groundshaking force. One immediately fired a volley of Dust-infused arrows at her with his bow while the other leapt high into the air, her massive battleaxe lighting up with the telltale glow of Ice Dust.

Tommy swung his shield above his head with enough force to break bones, easily deflecting the metal sphere as he took a deep breath, infusing his Breath of Thunder into his lungs.

The meteor hammer changed trajectory with impossible precision as it swung around to attack Tommy again, the girl dodging the arrows with uncanny precision. He deflected the strike again as he charged forward, letting out a bolt of lightning from his mouth as he breathed out.

His eyes widened in horror as the girl's smile widened even further as his attack surged toward her and rather than try to dodge his lighting, she moved toward it. Did she have some kind of electricty-channeling Semblance? That couldn't be: every piece of intelligence suggested that she had some kind of communication or truth-telling power.

Yet his lightning bolt was redirected with a simple palm strike to shoot upward, where it slammed into the axe-wielding woman's chest and burned a hole straight through her torso. She fell to the ground with a wet THWUMP as Tommy reached his target and swung his sword in a mighty arc.

His only remaining hireling had managed to maneuver himself to be behind the girl, and he slowly drew back the string of his bow as he charged up some kind of Semblance-infused attack. Understanding the implicit need for him to keep the girl distracted, Tommy launched a dizzying flurry of attacks at the object of his revenge, each one containing enough power to crack bones and shatter rock. Yet each attack was either dodged, deflected, or counteracted by the massive momentum contained in the meteor hammer that danced around her with unnerving precision.

"You've lost, little girl," Tommy taunted. "You might have bested my men, but you'll never get the better of me." The arrow looked ready, and the mercenary dropped to one knee as he took careful aim.

"Tell me, you old fool," the girl said loudly enough for the archer to hear her, smile turning from manic to triumphant as the mercenary behind her released his arrow. "What do you think my Semblance does?"

Tommy's eyes widened in sudden realization as the arrow passed straight through her to hit him square between the eyes. A burning sensation began to slowly spread through his body, and he found himself unable to move as the girl disappeared in a flash of motes of pitch-black Aura before reappearing right behind the archer, the scythe in her hand slashing across his throat, spraying dark blood over a wide area to paint the sand red as she slowly walked back over to Tommy.

"I'm not a brat," she said cheerily as she detached the meteor hammer from the cord, hanging it from her belt as she slowly wound the white silk cord back around her arm the same way it had been when he'd first seen her. "I'm not a demonspawn, I'm not a monster, and I'm not a little girl." Tommy's mind raced as he desperately tried to move, but he couldn't. The burning sensation caused by the archer's ultimate attack had spread to his hands and feet, and he knew that he didn't have much time left. There was nothing left for him but despair as his vision turned black. The last thing he heard was the girl's voice, which had lost its playful tone and turned cold and hard.

"I'm a myth," she hissed in his ear. "And myths are very hard to kill."