Chapter 10

"Wow! The sky looks amazing!" Ronnie gasped as she held out her arms and spun around, her head tilted back so she could view the Aurora Borealis and the few dozen stars visible beyond it.

She and a dozen of Tia's students had come up here to do a 'shoot' – funny word, because that's what they'd be doing – shooting each other. 'Up here' was the roof of the once abandoned and now refurbished Palazzo Lombardia, a medium-sized skyscraper in downtown Milan. It had been purchased by Artistic Suicides to house its personnel. In addition, there were several large plazas where the 'Suicides' could record their deaths – plazas that were currently being redesigned to mimic various wilderness scenes. The best thing about the Palazzo Lombardia was that there was access to outside during the daytime – outside where no police would disturb their activities, as the thinly spread gendarmes only kept watch on exits near inhabited areas.

"Wow is right," Tia smirked as she watched her aunt. (Step-aunt?) "Makes me want to put one right in her belly." She looked around the roof, noticing various large square coverings likely intended to keep dust, dirt and rain out of air conditioning units and generators that made the building livable. In addition, several dozen large, potted trees (fake ones) were variously placed to make the block-wide roof seem more ... amiable.

The elevator dinged and the door opened. Misty, along with three more students (to explain here – a student was a girl who'd been killed and revived with Witch-fire and applicants were girls who hadn't had their deaths recorded yet) exited the elevator.

"Hey, lots of people," Misty murmured, partly to herself. Several, 'Heys' and 'Hellos' came back to her. It was a quiet night with no breeze and sound carried easily.

"Great! Target's here!" someone said, and Misty looked out to see Tara, not dressed in her Vampire Princess garb which usually consisted of a daring leather bustier which tightly compressed her torso and came up to just beneath her breasts (which her fans adored, as she changed costumes several times every episode). Tara, like everyone else on the roof, was naked.

"This is my shoot?" Misty asked, already suspecting when she'd been asked to come up here from her new quarters fifteen stories down. What she didn't understand was twofold; 'Why assign me quarters if they're going to kill me?' and 'If girls come here to die, why are there so many of them still alive?'

Ronnie, who had interviewed her a week earlier, stepped forward. "Hi. Yes. This is your shoot. We're going to have a battle."

"With bows and arrows?" Misty asked, pretty sure she already knew the answer to that – at least a certain part of her anatomy already knew, and it was getting pretty slick down there.

"Uh-huh, so you prob'ly want to strip down so you won't ruin your clothes," Ronnie grinned at her.

"So, we're having a battle?" Misty asked as she shimmied out of her panties, mostly to make conversation. She was feeling a bit nervous, but her excitement was keeping her nervousness damped down. She glanced around at the other girls who were unashamedly watching her undress. "We gonna choose sides?"

"We've already chosen sides," Ronnie informed her, then opened up a large case containing many bows, already strung and (she presumed) an equal number of quivers, all jammed full of arrows. Ronnie pulled a bow out and handed it to her, then gave her a quiver full of arrows. She began handing weapons out to the other girls, some who quickly slipped their quivers over their shoulders like they'd done this before. One even notched an arrow, easily holding the two, arrow and bow, in one hand as she waited for the others.

'Better watch out for her ... Hope she's on my side!' Misty decided.

Finally, all the girls were holding bows, quivers slung over their shoulders, the straps separating the girls' breasts.

"Whose side am I on?" Misty asked, since no one seemed to be giving any directions to the girls regarding what to do next.

Ronnie grinned. "Run," she said.

"Fuck me!" Misty yelped in surprise as the other girls – all of them –

were taking aim at her! She dodged to one side as an arrow whizzed by, her heart racing as she glanced around for an escape route. She ducked behind a large steel ventilator cover and squealed as several more arrows whipped by, just missing her bountiful head of blond hair, a couple bouncing off the steel with a loud clang.

Not in direct sight of anyone at the moment, she took off, racing across the roof to get some distance between herself and her pursuers. She knew they'd spotted her when arrows began to bounce off the roof nearby. The roof was mostly tar and some kind of soft, sparkly surface that gave her feet good traction, but it wasn't something she'd want beneath her if she fell.

Ducking to one side and hiding behind one of those potted trees, she peered back to see several girls, skin pale and grey in the moonlight as they approached. They weren't running; there was a finite space for Misty to flee into, but stepped forward deliberately, stealthily, their bows pulled back as they swept the area around her, looking like a team of naked Swat Girls, a rival program that aired at the same time as Vampire Princess, except for the naked part. The Swat Girls still got shot up a lot, bleeding for viewer ratings almost as eagerly as the cast of Vampire Princess.

Misty reached over her shoulder and pulled an arrow out of her quiver. She'd never done this before and was annoyed that the arrowhead wanted to pull other shafts out with it. She managed, though, and squinted down at the feathered end to find the little slot that the bowstring should fit into. Carefully extending her arm, she pulled back and cut loose with an arrow, which disappeared into the darkness the instant she let go of it.

She almost let out a yelp of glee as she heard a "Yow! Fuck!" and one of the girls stumbled and fell to her knees. 'Damn! I got one!' she thought, trembling with excitement as she reached back and yanked out another arrow. In her rush, though, several arrows spilled out and made enough of a noise for the other girls to hear.

"She's over there!" someone yelled, and Misty quickly stood up and released another arrow at the group coming toward her. She was surprised and excited as another girl proclaimed her demise and dropped to her knees on the hard tarmac. Then she turned to flee as several arrows swished by, telling her she'd been spotted.

Planning to circle around behind the group and attack from the rear, Misty ducked behind another metal equipment covering and suddenly noticed a ladder going up. Quickly slipping her bow around her shoulder, she scampered up, intending to get a good look at her 'battlefield'. There were some girls on the far side of the roof, silhouetted against the pale buildings beyond. Some girls were over by the potted plant she'd been hiding behind a moment earlier. She looked around some more, trying to come up with a plan to defeat a dozen armed girls (ten, now) with less than ten arrows in her quiver.

She nearly fell, doubling over as something bit into her side. She yelped as her arms struck against a shaft sticking out of her, then ducked, far too late, as she'd already been hit. 'How the fuck am I going to get down the ladder, now?' she thought as she staggered over to where she'd climbed up.

As she stuck her head over the side to look down, an arrow whipped by, catching her hair as it disappeared into the air above her. "Damn! Missed!" she heard as she ducked back so as not to be shot at again by the girl at the bottom of the ladder.

'I'm trapped!' she realized as she scampered around to check the other sides of the big metal box. She wondered why there would be a ladder to come up here if there wasn't anything to do or to fix once whoever had used the ladder got up here.