"Wen Ying --"

"Crap, crap," she breathes, and drops the head, and uses both hands to gently but swiftly lower Lan Zhan to the ground, and get her sword up in time to parry the first blow from Wen Xu. 

He swings at her twice more in quick succession, heavy blows with full force swings. 

She blocks the blows, gritting her teeth. 

Lan Zhan sits up and produces her guqin over her lap as fast as she can, aiming quick chord strike at Wen Xu's legs and another up at his shoulders. 

He leaps up to avoid the first attack, but the second knocks him off course and he has to spin away through the air to recover himself, snarling. "Fuck, A-Ying get your fucking whore out of the way --"

"Don't you fucking talk that way about my wife," she hisses, slashing for his hamstrings. 

He flips up over her head and attacks from the other side. "Your what?"

"Like I'd trust any of you assholes with the information that I was married!" she snaps. "Even before you burned her home. Do you have any idea what an enormous bag of rotting offal you and your father and brother are?" 

"Fuck you! Ungrateful - brat - " Lots of sword swinging, slash slash slash, and then a mid-air kick aimed for Wen Ying's chest. 

Which does not land, fuck you. She sends him flying off down the road again.

That's really annoying. He throws out both arms; dark iron chains shoot from each sleeve. One wraps around Lan Zhan's torso and, with the rest of its momentum, slams her against the stone wall out of his fucking way.

The other goes straight for Wen Ying's throat.

She screams in rage when Lan Zhan suffers Yet More Impact damage. Her sword glare is narrow, focused and brilliant, the chains slicing in half as the links throw themselves against the edge of it.

UGH. Okay then she can have two more chains just for her this time, and Wen Xu dives towards her right after them.

"You do not get to touch her ever again," she hisses, destroying the other two chains and parrying his sword. 

He bares his teeth, feints to one side and then swings his sword around from a new angle. If he has to be disadvantaged in this fight by emotion over his father's death, she certainly deserves to be disadvantaged as well. "It's a little late, A-Ying --" jab "-- do you know, we took bets on who could make her cry, first --"

"Fascinating. Tell me all about who you made these bets with and who won, it'll be very useful when I'm trying your accomplices later on," she says coldly. Block. Parry, deflect--

"You aren't going to be trying anyone. I'm gonna put your head on a spike outside my palace --" She's moving defensively, Wen Xu takes that as a good sign. He tries slicing at her neck.

She sidesteps smoothly, fluidly converting the motion into her own whirling strike. 

"Oh, please. Even if you do manage to kill me here, you're no Wen Ruohan. You can't keep the Wen Sect safe from all the gratuitous enemies you've helped him make. And you can't disavow him. I've been making friends and doing damage control. I can keep our people safe, by cutting out the rot like you. Your father was a madman and your brother a fool. There's only so far you can push someone before they hate you more than they fear you, and even if I hadn't put him down now, someone was going to manage it eventually. The only question was how much damage you guys were going to do on your way out. Even if I die here, it'll be that much less blood and death between here and your fall than if I hadn't acted at all, that many fewer innocent lives lost." 

Okay but consider: he doesn't give a fuck about any of that.

He dodges, but not quickly enough -- he yelps furiously as her sword slices across his shoulder.

She bets she knows something he does care about, though. 

"I've already done two-thirds of the work, by headcount, after all," she taunts. "At least they both died as they lived: Wen Ruohan fucking with forces he should've left alone, and Wen Chao whining like the little bitch he was." 

He stumbles. "You--"

She cuts a slashing red line across his chest. 

"I tried to convince him not to make me kill him, but he just wouldn't listen to reason," she tsks. "There was only so much damage I could let him do. And he never did have the brains not to smash everything he ever stumbled into, hm? You'd think he didn't have a big brother to teach him better." 

OW, FUCKER --

He staggers backward and lunges again, shouting in fury. 

"Seriously, if he meant so much to you you'd think you would have taught him...anything...ever..." She skips lightly out of the way.