Out of the Black - Lee Doty [156]
His parents never had any problems with his educational choices. "Life is education." Mom said twice daily. Their concern had started when he had switched to the Marriage and Family Counseling program in his second year of school and started talking about taking it up as a career. Ping had to admit now that they were right to be concerned. He'd been happy at first, but the stakes for counseling were just too high. Ping preferred the simple things now, problems you could touch- evil you didn't have to talk out into the open.
He just wasn't tough enough for the high stakes game of family counseling, he had to admit it and move on. Now, he preferred to deal with problems he could solve with resolve and geometry.
"Resolve is the commitment to victory. Geometry is the path to it." Ol' Leung was fond of saying. Ping's father had taught him to drink from the deepest well of resolve. Most people fight out of rage, which is the puddle from which all bullies lap. Others fight for hate, which is the baby-pool in which the vengeful splash. But Leung had taught him to fight for the same thing as all good cops: the commitment to serve and protect. "To fight for others is to always win, boyo."
His geometry had always been spot-on- it was a gift.
He advanced on the demons with the sword positioned before him to gauge distance and angled to maintain a minimum distance from each of the defensive positions the creature's more likely attacks would require. He advanced steadily as the demons tried to shoot him with their disabled weapons. When they realized that shooting wasn't their path to victory, they exploded from the elevator in perfect synchronization.
To his right, Anne took the brunt of the attack, weighing in against three attackers. Ping got two. They tried to rush around his blade from both sides at once, forcing him to attack one and be killed by the other... he chose option C. He faded backwards, moving the blade fractionally to lop the left hand off of the demon coming in on his left. The backwards lunge bought him enough time to dodge left and cut the right leg out from under the attacker on his right.
He realigned his geometry and drove his left elbow into the face of the left-handless but unwavering demon. The demon on his right went down with one missing and one horribly wounded leg. The one on his left stumbled back with Ping's elbow still in its face. Ping moved forward to maintain the same close distance with the handless demon as he dropped the tip of his blade downward and came across with his right elbow. The demon's toothy grin diverged somewhat as the jaw broke.
The thing was fast! Without missing the normal hand-chopped-off-double-elbow-to-the-head-broken-jaw beat, it jerked back enough to club at him with the gun in its remaining hand. The demon was faster, but Ping had better geometry. Ping's left elbow was already in position to guard against most attacks coming from that side, so he only had to change the positioning of his arm slightly to deflect the attack. Ping used the opportunity to move back, just enough to reenter sword range. The blade moved through a tight arc, cutting through the demon's neck. He pivoted back to put the blade through the legless demon as it grabbed at him from the floor.
"Nice... moves." Anne said, taking a fist in the face between the words.
Rae had moved into position guarding Alex's motionless form and was engaging two of the demons. Two more of the demons were trying to move around Ping to get to Alex. Feeling a little slighted, Ping moved to intercept them.
Somewhere behind them, someone yelled "Freeze!" in the Law Enforcement Voice. Yeah, right.
Though the demon dodged quite effectively, Ping's first slash was mostly intended to get it to compromise its geometry. His second attack bisected it from right shoulder to left hip.
"When you