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There was nothing cool about rooftop chases.

They were never flashy or cinematic, more often slow and cumbersome than anything. Now, the addition of a late-night summer shower made such method of pursuit even more unwise. Liesha wiped rainwater from her eyes for the fifth time in the last dozen paces. Good grief. Above the fifty-foot mark, did droplets just get bigger?

She had flung herself up three rickety old emergency stars, and was now prowling the top level of the Murphy Building, looking for Slicer, the little snot. Those inner-city vampires either had a dangerous thing for adrenaline, or were just extraordinarily stupid.

She was willing to bet on that last one.

Her wand was out, clenched between white knuckles. Slicer was wounded from their last encounter, which was when he had decided taking to the roofs was a better idea than fighting it out below. He'd be better off taking a plunge from these heights then coming in with her.

There was precious little light up there, and far too many places for a lone agent to be ambushed. Liesha had enough. She spun on her heel, found all the dimmed service lights around her and raised her wand --

-- what was once a sickly orange suddenly turned clear white, and brightened. Liesha increased the feed of electricity at the stair door, and the flash lit up the rooftop.

She saw a dark figure dart for the edge of the roof, florescent light chasing at its heels.

This time when she raised and lowered her wand, there was no flash. There was no comical burst of red or any other tell-tale signs of 'magic'. The spell flew with the sound of wings across the length of the roof. If it hit home, only Liesha could tell.

Slicer had jumped, and Liesha plunged after him. The bulbs around them burned out; the witch tampering with their circuity hadn't been very careful. In darkness and in rain, Liesha made her final leap -- over the edge of the Murphy Building, into the unknown.

If rooftop chases were ill-advisable then jumping from one was never a good idea.

Liesha could never get over the feeling of flinging herself from good solid concrete, out into the unknown. Rain rushed up at her as she fell, and so did the ground. The wind surged, blew, raged -- not enough to slow her, not even close. She wasn't thinking clearly. She closed her eyes for --

Her shins snapped from impact, and her right arm folded in on itself as she smacked against the concrete. White pain streaked through her body; Liesha collapsed fully, realizing dimly how narrowly her descent had been stayed by a hulking dumpster. Her wand had clattered out of her hand, but instead of shrieking she gave a low groan.

She lurched up, sopping wet, covered in rainwater and the lovely addition of her own blood. The bones had already started to mend. Liesha bent, reclaimed her wand, and by the time she took one -- two staggering steps, the wounds had healed themselves, and her blood whisked away down to the city sewers.

Slicer was in a heap, not too far away. His muscle system was slowly shutting down thanks to her jinx, and he tried to crawl. Liesha strode to him with purpose, grabbed a handful of his obnoxiously and intentionally green hair, and jerked it back. He looked pale, wet, scared, and slightly confused as to how she was still alive.

"That .." Liesha huffed a bedraggled and bloodstained strand of blonde out of her face. ".. HURT."

He shouldn't have been immobile this fast, though. Liesha examined the body, chewing on the inside of her lip. There was a cut on the inside of the vampire's leg, severing the tendon. Slicer must have caught a shard of something on his way down. Liesha glanced up, against the rain.

She glanced back down at the vampire. "Bad night to test the laws of physics, huh?"