"The Mary Sue Blues"
By Viridian5
12/14/00

RATING: R.
SUMMARY: A perfect person’s life isn’t all roses.
ARCHIVAL/DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere, as long as you ask me first.
FEEDBACK: can be sent to Viridian5@aol.com
DISCLAIMERS: All concepts from Highlander belong to Rysher and Panzer/Davis. No infringement intended. Suing me would be a waste of time.
NOTES: A little bit of weirdness for the Mary Sue Challenge. It’s not my fault. I swear.

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"The Mary Sue Blues"
By Viridian5
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As Deirdre passed the alley, she felt a vibration travel across her skin and the hairs rise on her neck. Over two millennia of life had sharpened her senses enough that she knew just from the feel of it that eight other immortals waited there in the shadows. For her. And among them stood Santiago, the Roman, her archenemy.

The odds might even be against her for once.

She smiled, then retrieved Claw from the pocket universe most immortals kept their weapons in and unsheathed it. She decided not to bring Shadow over too, because two swords might make the battle too one-sided; she needed some exercise and excitement. Life had been dull and drab lately, gnawing at her....

Only the opalescent sword Claw, transformed over the years into something considerably more than steel through the dying energies of thousands of immortals, gleamed brighter than Deirdre’s lustrous black hair under the streetlights. Even she’d forgotten the reason why she always plaited three thin braids into it. Her pale skin almost glowed, while her piercing emerald eyes, as green as the hills of the village she’d called home two centuries before Christ had died, scanned the shadows for an attack. She’d been unusually tall among her people, though in the modern world her six feet of height no longer seemed so uncommon. While the bodice of her perfectly tailored dark blue leather trench coat clung to her breasts and lean waist, the bottom of it, slit in four places for ease of movement, flowed out in four directions as she walked. Her Docs made no sound against the asphalt.

She’d gone by many names in her lifetime, but in her own mind she used the name that her mother had called her.

The coming storm feeling of the other immortals nearby grew stronger the closer Deirdre came, leaving her to decide whether she should goad them into making a move or continue to enjoy the adrenaline edge of anticipation. Her opponents decided the question for her when two of them lunged at her from out of the shadows.

Then her world narrowed into the steel and the dance. Deirdre dodged, ducked, parried, and thrust, eyes gleaming at the possibility of risk. But these two presented no challenge, and Claw quickly relieved them of their heads. Power boomed and crackled through her in blinding, searing arcs, firing her blood, but five of the others ambushed her as soon as the death lightning ended. Taking advantage of her distraction. She approved.

Santiago still held back, watching, perhaps waiting for the others to wear her down.

Deirdre had been a warrior or soldier most of her life, even though she’d had to glamour herself to look more mannish for much of that time, and quickly gauged the sword strikes, seeing the pattern her opponents had to use to avoid tangling their attacks with their compatriots’. It disappointed her, because she knew now that they would present no challenge as well. At least they hadn’t come at her one on one.

"Boring," she said as her steel-toed Doc spun one man’s head around on its neck.

"Uninspired," she said as her sword ripped out through a hole in another’s back.

"However did you survive this long?" she asked as another’s severed head rolled down Claw’s length. A flick of her wrist tossed the head toward one of her opponents. As the power flared again, she took advantage of their surprise to decapitate them one by one, though in one case she nailed two at the same time.

This time the death storm knocked her down in its intensity, a destructive hurricane of white fire. The entire neighborhood experienced a blackout as the surge overloaded part of the city’s power grid. Deirdre came to lying amidst the broken glass with only Claw’s swirling, writhing light breaking the darkness. The sword vibrated in her grip. Perhaps she should start to use Shadow instead before Claw became too much to handle.

Once the Quickening had felt like the rawest, brightest orgasm of pleasure and pain, an incomparable rush, but familiarity had dulled even that. Once she’d relished the increase in personal power, but now it burned within her too hotly.

Deirdre could see Santiago lying within the pool of Claw’s light. She could finish him now if she liked, ending the life of a man who claimed he’d once served under Constantine.

She considered it.

Deirdre could speak over thirty languages, some of them extinct, and practiced eight kinds of martial arts. Amongst her various aliases she had money enough to buy a continent. Two millennia had given her the knowledge and experience to do anything she wanted, and she’d seen every place on the earth she’d ever wanted to visit. She’d watched the same conflicts arise over the same stupid bones of contention over and over again, to the point that she could often predict what would come next based on the pattern. She’d loved and lost thousands of people.

She’d seen it all. All of it had become ashes to her.

When she’d been far younger, she’d sworn to die only at the hands of a greater warrior. More and more lately, it looked as if the only way she’d ever do that would be if she fell onto one of her own swords.

Deirdre stood, sheathed Claw, and replaced it in the pocket dimension. Then she walked away, leaving Santiago to come to on his own. This wasn’t the first time she’d done this.

She knew what she’d have to do if he died.