He’d expected that much, and shifted his footing, but he hadn’t watched his own footing as much as he’d watched me and mine. There was just enough slip for me to get one foot to skid a short distance, to topple him.

I wasn’t willing to wait for him to get his bearings. I used the spikes on the back of my glove like an ice climber might use an ice pick to get leverage while on a tough climb. Burying them into his leg, possibly getting more armor and padding than I got leg, I was able to spin myself around, so my feet were pointed closer to his face. I’d hoped to get a boot to his jaw, but he twisted away, his back flat on the ground.

He still had the axe. He still had it in roughly an overhead position, and with his back flat on the ground, he was in a position to swing. He brought it down and at me, and I brought my foot out, kicking at the hands, before the axe could come down.

It broke his grip and interrupted the swing before it could reach peak momentum. It didn’t disarm him, though, which meant I didn’t have time.

It was a short, desperate scramble before I could leverage my way forward, bringing my face closer to his, while he grabbed me, trying to keep me in place so he could swing one-handed. I spiked the grabbing hand, threw myself on top of him so my shoulder touched the bicep of his axe-arm and limited the ability to swing, then reached for the neckwarmer, tearing the tubes away with the reversed claws. Tearing them away in a way that destroyed them.

It cost me. He brought the axe down, but with my face being closer to his and the limited swing range, he couldn’t bring the blade down to make contact with me.

He did bring the metal end of the axe down. The butt end had a spike on it, and the end glanced off my mask and caught me at the side of my head. I felt the sharp crack of something hard touching bone without any cushion in between, and then there was blood in my eye.

I didn’t dare breathe. He was strong, bigger, and my only benefit was that I had spikes on my gloves. Even that was matched, because he had bracers with jutting bits at the front that hurt like hell when he jabbed me and hit me with them instead of with his hands.

I’d been going after faces for a reason. If these people existed out there, anywhere in the city, I wanted them to be recognizable. I wanted destroyed jaws, broken noses, and black eyes, if not claw marks or anything else.