Heart Against Heart

	Karen leaned back in a defensive stance and took what rest she could. Her chest burned for air, but she kept her breath flowing, rather than let it catch on shallow panting. She would've been drenched in sweat if she hadn't already been drenched in rain, and she kept her wings low, rather than try to hold up the lake soaked into her feathers. Her sword wavered, but she didn't let it droop, lest she create a real opening.
	Her dark counterpart had given in to his transformation, but was showing fatigue too. Wickedly-taloned hands and feet were all planted firmly on the ground, and his wings slumped to either side, a peaked roof to shed fresh rain. His breath was barely hissing through his teeth, but with the long demonic muzzle he let himself sport, that was a lot. His tail moved slowly, more like a snake and less like a cat's tail-lash. In between, his body was neither female nor male, no attempt to assert his humanity there of all places.
	"I won't let you win," she panted, "even if I have to take you with me." She released her deathgrip on her transformation, her ears lengthening and fluffing with feathers and soaking, but beating like wings to contort her face, to help her catch her breath.
	"I don't have to win…" he let out, almost a sigh between panting breaths. "the Light won last century…" He was definitely having more trouble breathing than she was. "next century the Dark won't be starved after a draw." Neither of them had caught their breath, but he came at her again, then blade and talons skittered off each other in another storm.
	She was using her long sword cautiously, her off hand halfway up the blade, busy with parries and little stabs, but no great committed swings. He was moving faster, but he had to get inside her guard to get any venom in. Blade and talons skittered off each other, uselessly, until they both relented.
	Karen leaned back in a defensive stance and took what rest she could. She schooled her breathing, stopped the hectic shallow panting to establish a steady flow of breath. She could feel her transformation slipping, ripples of divine power loosening her chest against her shirt and tightening things below, the bird-scales of angel hands emerging and disappearing in a dance around her knuckles.
	Her dark counterpart extended a hand forwards, not far enough to reach her, and this time it wasn't an attack. In his palm, glowing so unlike anything devillish, was his Devil Heart, the key to activating the diabolical taint threading through his veins… and, if she let her guard down at the wrong time, it was the one thing that could destroy her Angel Heart.
	Karen took two steps back, unsure of this new tactic.
	He activated his Heart. It wasn't pointed at hers, nor anywhere near it, and no beam lanced out to destroy anything. The light from it did pulse, but then scintillated as his Heart vanished from his palm. They could use their Hearts to return to their divine masters, and he had sent his there… without him.
	She glanced down at her own Heart, worn in an amulet around her neck. A beam of destruction from a Devil Heart couldn't take it from the side without going through her flesh and bone first, and so long as her Heart survived, she could regenerate from any injury. Even death.
	He collapsed, human again, waves of rain on the concrete roof driven back and forth by his labored breath.
	She could kill him, but he'd just regenerate around his Heart, safe in his diabolical master's realm. She could try to maim him, cripple him without sending him to his Heart, but he'd done that to her twice, and both times she'd sent her Heart ahead and suicided to catch up to it. He'd just do the same. He was powerless before her, but at the same time invulnerable before her.
	He extended a hand again, empty this time, and managed one word with dignity. "…Truce?"
	Without deciding to, she crumpled to her knees. Her sword clattered from her hand, then vanished in a fresh splatter of rain. She could re-summon it, all she'd have to do is reach up to her Heart and invoke a little of its power, returning it to her from her angelic master's realm. She did reach up to her Heart, she did invoke a little of its power, but only to send it home. A pulse of heavenly light, then glittering as it vanished. Her wings left with it, and most of her ears, and some of her height, and all the rest of her angel-infused form, leaving her human, on her knees, atop a building, downtown.
	In his eyes shone nothing of the devil-tainted warrior his Heart made him.
	She leaned forward, collapsed onto her hands and knees, then adjusted to place her hand in his. For the rest of tonight, they wouldn't be divine warriors, just two humans in a big city. Some day or night, one or both Hearts would be destroyed and the tone of the next century would be decided… but not this night. "Truce."
	He grinned. Not the diabolical cheshire grin she'd seen him use in battle, but a human grin. "C'mon… there's this Thai place… next door…"
	She chuckled, panted, and chuckled again. "If nobody's called the cops… about us."
	He nodded. "If."
	/Us? Where did that come from?/