Women screamed as...something bat-like...dropped through the newly created opening and then came the sounds of fighting as the shape began to tear through the brothel guards and some of the more dangerous customers alike.
Ranma's long black hair fell down in front of her face as she stumbled onto her backside at seeing the apparently supernatural force arrive. And for the moment she didn't question that it was supernatural. She'd seen too much in her young life to think that demons did not exist.
"W..wh..what are you?!" a thug asked as he was plastered against a wall by the shape, still indistinct in the darkness.
Ranma swallowed and let herself slip out of her human guise and saw with eyes not quite human, or even feline.
A great darkness hung about the...creature before her. Its aura expanding beyond its body and appearing, indeed as a rough, developing bat. Something to come, perhaps, something great.
But at its center was a man. A man of drive, anger and caring. And Ranma calmed down as the man answered the thug's question.
"Justice," the man said harshly before tossing the thug away.
A moment later his eyes crossed her, sitting where she had fallen, and the aura and man tensed for conflict. He knew she was a fighter then, but how?
Another feeling worked its way through her mind in that moment.
Gratitude.
This human demon was treating her as a threat, respecting her. In a fashion of respect she understood and hadn't faced since long before her father sold her into slavery. And there was a heat rising in her stomach and her face. An emotion that she'd felt occasionally as a child, before the curse and one she'd not felt since being sold by her father.
She was aroused.
And behind him, in the darkness, someone was drawing a gun.
"Behind you," she snapped.
The figure moved just as the bullets came up, missing him by centimeters. The fight was on again.
Ranma covered her head with her face as bullets struck the wall behind her and she traced the motions of the fighter across the room. The fighting style, composed of more schools than even she'd trained with in her previous life, was seeming familiar when a new fact occured to her.
There was an open road between her and the exit. In just a brief sprint, she could leave this prison that she'd lived in since the plane landed. Yet, something held her back.
That little voice telling her she wasn't ready, that she needed more time.
The voice of the wild animal caged so long that it feared the outside.
She looked back at the fight still going but drawing to a close and realized her time was short. And realized, as well, that her own fight was coming to a critical point.
She cautiously stood up, nails turned claws scratching against the wall behind her as she leaned against it. Her heart beat wildly in her chest, she felt her human guise slip off completely as her tail swished out from under her dress.
She swallowed nervously. The guards were busy, she could pass the distance between here and the open exit faster than most people could comprehend. Yet, still she hesitated.
The sound of sirens again warned her that her time was shortening and she took a few hesitant and stealthy steps toward the exit.
It was like a flood gate as those few steps turned into a rush and in a blink she was out of the building. She didn't stop until she was blocks away.
She took several deep breaths and leaned against a wall, recovering and breathing in the cool night air. She let her body shift back to completely human and then she realized what had happened.
She'd escaped. She was free.
She was in the middle of Gotham City in a slinky chinese dress, but she was alive and outside. She giggled a moment, and, as with the steps before, that giggle grew into a torrent of laughter.
Then she was slammed into the wall in front of her. Her long black hair was roughly grabbed and her head was pulled back as a blade was placed against her throat.
"What do you find so funny, Orchid?" the voice of her employer roughly demanded. "I saw you warn that freak in the costume. You're going to wish you hadn't when I'm through with you."
"My name's not Orchid," Ranma hissed defiantly. In response she had her head slammed into the wall in front of her.
"Got a twist on, don't you girl?" the pimp snapped. "Missing your medicine? Well don't matter now, does it?"
The blade snapped across her throat and Ranma felt herself growing weaker as her life's blood flowed out and she slumped forward, only remaining standing by virtue of the thug pressing her into the wall. After a couple of seconds he dropped her insensate body to the ground and started to walk off.
He hadn't gone more than a few steps when the body behind him went through a seizure. He turned about at the sound and then shrugged, having seen bodies do similar things before. He was already looking away again when the "body" stood up and rubbed at her throat.
He didn't make it out of the alley. Ranma was behind him and throwing him back in a flash.
"Orchid!" the man gasped, looking at her, shrouded in shadows as she stalked forward.
"I told you, my name's not Orchid," Ranma said, casually. The lower half of her face was lit up by a streetlamp as it smiled in a superior manner.
"I...I killed you!" he repeated, standing up and pulling his knife back out.
This time it was Ranma's employer that was slammed against a wall as cat-like eyes moved in close to his and a fanged mouth opened in speech as clawed hands reared back.
"Didn't you ever hear that cats have nine lives?" Ranma asked sweetly.
****
When Ranma, again completely human, left the alley she was covered in more blood than just her own, and the body she left wasn't standing up again.
She knew, however, that she wouldn't get far covered in blood on the streets. And, going back to her old life she came upon a solution.
Less than a hour later, the remains of Orchid the whore were left in a bloody mess in the restaurant of a closed department store, and a reborn Ranma walked into the night, with a fair amount of cash.
Ranma twirled in her new, dark-silk dress and smiled, enjoying her freedom. Still, she was owed six years of pain and rape, and she knew the addresses of some of the people that held the bill. And what better way to start that repayment by letting them fund her life for a while.
She smiled and thought of the batman. He was easily more skilled than she was, but maybe, without the drugs, without the imprisonment. Maybe Ranma would have been at his level by now. In any case, she owed him her freedom and her life in that regard. With that man, she might just be willing to go to bed.
And her mind remembered the one word he'd spoken that she'd heard.
"If justice is a Batman," she said lightly with a smile. "Let vengeance be a Catwoman."
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(Posted Fri, 15 Aug 2003 14:02)
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