Nice.
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
Thanks...I normally don't "do" dark for superhero stuff (even though horror is what I write best), but it works for Huntress Bast. Just gotta come up with the next parts...
GREAT bio! And GREAT writing as well. Love the descriptive style.
-KC-
Broken.
There was no other word to describe the body in the alleyway. It lay on the concrete as if it'd been dropped there, like a marionette with cut strings. Discarded and crumpled, one would be hard-pressed to recognize it as human, to recognize it as anything other than another pile of refuse like those it lay near. Closer inspection would reveal recognizeable bits: a hand here, a foot there, and a face somewhere within the matted nest of blood-caked hair that mostly covered the frozen, horrified rictus locked upon it.
Mostly.
Silently, a pair of golden eyes peered at the misshapen mass from the garbage. They'd been watching this body for some time, since before it became this way, back when it was still a woman, alive and whole. They'd watched her on the street, watched the rough hands grab her and drag her back here, watched as she was destroyed, one atrocity at a time, and discarded amongst the refuse. They didn't register pity or rage now, just as they didn't register concern or fear at the woman's unheeded ending.
Another looked through them, though, and it was this being who raged, her fury at the monster-masked assailants matched only by her rage at herself. Protector of the innocent, of women and children, she mocked wordlessly. I'm a failure, too bound by the Unwritten Laws and blinded by my petty vendettas to see one of my most dilligent, loyal servants until her light was snuffed out. Osiris, what world is this that has arisen in our absence?"
She stalked her abstract chamber, heedless of the three or four dimensions it spanned, her tail swishing angrilly behind her, her talons flexing and retracting as she paced through the woman's life, watching her existance unspool like a scroll.
Justine Grey, a social worker in Atlas Park...smart, strong, a former police officer who was discharged for severely beating a suspect in a domestic abuse case. He'd sued, of course, and she'd lost...lost her job, her money, her home, her lover, but somehow she'd continued. Landed on her feet, she'd joke with her new co-workers, just like a cat. She worked with the abused...women, men, children...physical, emotional, sexual...no matter the victim, no matter the crime, she would stand by them, bend rules and regulations to see as many of them landing on their feet as possible...and, when woeking within the system wasn't enough, she'd leave it behind. This woman's "claws" were well-stained with the blood of her "clients'" tormentors, her ears filled with the pleading and curses of those she'd break just as she was ultimately broken.
The goddess who watched this life of violence and redemption unspool of course approved.
When the Grey woman broke her own rules, though, is when the tightly-wound web of her life began to fray...first rule? Don't fall in love with the victims...but the frail young woman reminded her so much of her own first love. She crossed lines she was not meant to cross, took the chipped china-doll of a girl into her home, her arms, her heart, trusting in her love and her fury to protect them both from the outside, from the hurt...but how to protect from the traitor inside? How to predict the horror her new lover felt when she learned of the deadly measures she'd gone to on her behalf? How to keep the phone from falling into her broken chinadoll hands, to keep her wavering voice from pleading with what she felt was the lesser evil, to keep the web of the Grey woman's victims from tightening around her as she walked home that night, secure in her love's loyalty and her own strength, tightening until all light was extinguished from her eyes like a candle in a hurricane wind.
The goddess knew what she had to do...she had to risk the Unwritten Laws. This broken woman had once been her most stalwart servant without even realizing it, and the goddess had failed her. Still, she was not without resources...such as the one who watched the Grey woman's last moments.
An unspoken word of approval from this silent watcher was all that was needed, an oath of loyalty to one her ancestors had worshipped alongside the humans, and the watcher propelled herself from the shadows. Padded feet carried her silently to the broken woman, small teeth tore at cold, dead flesh, tracing the symbol of Life Eternal upon what, in life, had housed the heart of a warrior.
The goddess observed through the watcher's eyes; once the mark had been made, she took a piece of herself and snapped it off. Painful, yes, but nothing compared to what she'd seen. She bade the watcher to lay upon the seeping ankh of dead flesh, to touch skin to fur, and, with another unspoken thanks to her loyal follower, the goddess drove the piece of her own divinity through both bodies, living and dead, human and cat, sewing them together like a needle sewing fabric.
The Huntress' birth cry keened though the darkness. Lungs newly restored gasped at the cold, fetid air in the alleyway, fingers once given over to rigor mortis flexed convulsively as blood surged through restored veins. She lurched over, screaming as her entire body seemed to catch fire from within, life-restoring fluids pushing sluggishly through veins clogged with cold, clotted blood.
The pain of her death paled in comparison to the pain of her rebirth, but even this proved fleeting as, gasping, her throat raw and her voice hoarse, she began to regain her senses, her sanity...Sanity? Nothing sane could come from what she'd experienced, so coldly, clinically, she severed that part of her mind and memories, discarding it as easily as she did the torn and stained garments that hung on her lean, muscular frame.
She stood, seeing herself at last in the dirty glass of a darkened alleyway window; she was no longer human, she noted silently, the long, sinuous tail curling about her haunches was proof enough of that. She ran her hands, now padded on the palms and tipped with retracting claws, over her new body, feeling the short, golden, suede-like fur that covered every inch except the pale ankh-shaped scar on her chest. She allowed herself an almost girlish giggle at the sight of her face...she now bore catlike markings, even a black nose and round, tufted ears like a lioness. She ruffled the short, straight brown fuzz that covered her head, knocking loose the last blood-caked strands of her formerly long, black, curly hair; nothing remained of her former body except the general shape and musculature, like someone had used it as a framework to craft this new form onto, much like her new mind was now formed from pieces of her old lives.
"Osiris, I feel so...strange," she spoke out loud, then covered her mouth with a laugh at her voice, still husky from screaming. How long had it been since she'd worn mortal flesh? She knew that this modern world would not approve of her current nakedness, but an errant memory from her human life provided the answer...an old Halloween costume, back at the house. Cleopatra, or some such nonsense...as well as her hunting bow, an expensive compound model she'd used several times on her "side job."
It was kitten's play to make her way to her former home; from the ruckus her new eyes and ears picked up, it seemed like her assailants had retired here after finishing with her to continue their celebrations with her traitorous lover. Indeed, as she made her way inside through the bedroom window, it seemed like they were taking care to keep her china doll from breaking as she had, but not by very much.
There weren't enough arrows for all of them, but she still made sure she saved one to put though her betraying and betrayed lover's heart. The Huntress owed the girl death, but at least she made it a quick one.
By the time she had showered and dressed in her new "uniform," her former assailants were begging her for the same courtesy. "No," was all she said as she slipped into the darkness. Moments later, the arcane flame she summoned ignited the natural gas she'd left filling the house from the now-broken oven. The news reported the following morning that the fireball could be seen from Galaxy City...the Huntress was dissappointed.
She was hoping it'd be bigger.