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Summary: "She must have smacked her head harder than she thought, because she was not seeing a miniature, purple dragon dive-bombing that demon."

A Girl Needs a Knife

Night in the city was never silent, but sometimes it was quiet.

For one teenager, quiet would be a vast improvement as she slumped to the ground after being thrown against an alley wall. She tried to shake it off before the thing could attack again, but pain from earlier wounds, the weird cold, and now the crash had left her feeling sluggish.

As she tried to roll away from the slashing claws she heard shouting from the mouth of the alley. The demon caught her leg, but she managed to snag the knife she dropped earlier and jammed the blade into its forearm.

It screamed, reared back. Someone grabbed her and she found herself being hauled out of the way. She tried to pull away, wanting to finish off the demon, but her head swam, she hurt everywhere, and she'd started shivering from the cold.

"Relax, Lockheed's got this." A female voice said.

She twisted around and blinked. She must have smacked her head harder than she thought, because she was not seeing a miniature, purple dragon dive-bombing that demon. It even breathed fire. The monster clearly hated it, but just wasn't fast enough to take out the agile flier.

"What the-"

"N'Garai. I found its trail earlier. They're vulnerable to fire and Lockheed's got plenty."

The demon dropped, still twitching, but the little dragon began tearing at the body and continued spouting jets of fire at the exposed flesh.

"Watcher?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind." She turned to look at her rescuer.

The girl-or maybe young woman-appeared a couple years older. Shoulder-length brown hair spilled over a worn, black leather jacket unzipped to reveal a bright green t-shirt. If it weren't for the demon-fighting dragon she would've thought her as the girl-next-door type.

"I'm Kitty."

"Faith."

Kitty reached for a dropped backpack and dug out a first aid kit.

Faith rubbed at her eyes, "There's a dragon. A pint-sized, purple dragon."

"You were attacked by a demon and you're hung up on Lockheed?" Kitty shook her head in amusement. "This is going to sting, but I need to see how bad your wounds are."

"I've had worse."

Kitty nodded as she started cleaning Faith's injuries, "You're lucky you're still in one piece. I've seen those things tear through concrete, shred steel...the first time I ran into one was before Lockheed. I killed it with the afterburners on a jet. Actually, I named him after that jet."

Faith gritted her teeth against the stinging on top of the throbbing. The combination of pain, the cold, and now the waning adrenaline made it increasingly difficult to stay awake.

"Lockheed found me when I was a kid. He followed me home and he's stayed with me since." Kitty looked up, frowned. "Hey, come on, stay with me here."

Faith shook her head to refocus. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"No, you're not." Kitty flashed a knowing look as she continued cleaning the wounds. "Although, these don't look quite as bad as I thought."

"Told ya, 'm fine." Even as she spoke, she could feel herself slipping towards unconsciousness, to the sound of cursing that sounded oddly like Russian.