Things were going terribly wrong.
Craddling her broken arm on her lap, Lea fought the rise of nausea the grating of broken bones caused each time she moved.
So much for posturing about the heroes being arrogant, how easy it was to fall into the same when all seemed to be going well. This was a small planet with big guns and for a while it looked as if they were going to push the Rikti after a series of won battles.
And yet.. And yet..
Heavy stomps of an armored alien came closer to the bench where Lea was hidding under and she crawled deeper into the dirt, but the steps carried on without stopping.
The raiding had been a violent push, she had heard as much as three different sirens going off at the same time and had headed to Atlas, it being the closest.
It was a scene of disaster. it had started as usual, powers being fired, small talk, but once the tide of Rikti had begun it soon became a tsunami. Being at waist level she couldn't even see what was happening though at a certain point she noticed far less screams and far far less coloured costumes in a sea of dull green and grey.
It was by then she was starting to get overhelmed. Too many at once, too many fists, too many great glowing swords and ionised gun blasts. As much as she took and tried to use far more came until she had reeled back and disappeared under a pile of Rikti whose fists and swords rose and fell tirelessly upon the crumpled small white form.
It was a big blur of pain of which she just barely remembered a spandex wearing hero unleashing a mighty gale of wind that tossed the aliens away like matchsticks. An eye was almost closed shut and when he grinned there was a bloody gap in an otherwise perfect smile. Unshakeable optimism just poured from him and if her ringing ears were able to catch the words his moving lips were forming she was sure they would be inspiring and uplifting. He was healing her and trying to keep the gale going at the same time.. For a few seconds it looked as if it was going to work and then with a spray of red mist his head just disappeared.
His body twitched in the air for an agonizing second before crumpling to the ground and shimmering away under the mediport's activation. She doubted even the great medical facilities could do something for him.
She was having trouble breathing and the red puddle where the hero had fallen were forcing hysterical tears to her eyes whenever she happened to glance its way.
Then, silence... She risked crawling from under the bench and look over. The aliens, all of them, chillingly moving as if a single unit had stopped and looked at the sky before disappearing in their familiar green glow.
They had left, but why? They had won this one.
Lea puffed and huffed as she made her way in a dark stairway, the only light the faint pink glow that she was radiating to guide her steps.
She made an annoyed noise when the corner of her burden scrapped against a wall, something that caused her to sway as she fought to regain her balance. 'Thrice damned thing, I should've asked Kumi for help..'
A few hours back.
Building a place to live in Dark Astoria had it's downsides and this not even mentioning the undead that crawled over every inch of the streets. One of them was that no one home delivered. The closest was Talos and she had been walking from that city with a fridge almost two and a half times her size on her back.
Too heavy to fly with, at least she was capable of lifting it with the ground as leverage. Strength was a relative term when not having something to stand upon. 'Trick is, no finger digged holes.'
Traveling over dark and moody Dark Astoria had not been a problem since she was already well known. A familiar figure and probably one of the few who actually lived in it, Lea treated the undead as a cockroach infestation. Just like cockroaches, Lea's attempt to clear it without recurse to a nuclear bomb didn't actually do much except meaning long baths to clean rotted flesh bits and ichor from her pelt.
"I won't lie to you," said a Death Shaman to a fellow Storm Shaman,"Every single man or woman who has stood their ground, everyone who has fought her has died. But where they have failed, you will succeed."
The Storm Shaman didn't sound particulary reassured by this train of reasoning, "...Why?"
The older shaman looked annoyed at this, "Look, it's the prophecy. Do you want to argue with prophecies?" They both stared at the small white figure as it trudged over the streets with its huge burden on the back. Nudged and reluctant, the younger shaman called his zombies and charged... to only belatedly notice he was charging on his own and the older one was discretly making himself smaller behind a ruined car.
One short and inconsequential fight later the small cat was covered in bits and odds of undead and her fur standing from the lightning that had been summoned.
Still carrying the fridge, Lea poked the groaning man on the ribs with her boot, "When you see a girrrl having trrrouble you offerrr yourrr help, you don't trrry to kill herrr. Frrrankly, I doubt you'll everrr get a date like this."
Present
Fortunatly she had experience in this kind of thing, the fridge had been well padded with cardboxes so despite looking a bit frazzled with scorch marks, claw marks and the corners scratched by bumping into the walls the fridge itself was immaculate.
The small feline dragged it carefuly into place and sighed happily. It was starting to look like a real kitchen.
She could've done without the green coloured oven, true, and instaling the fan on top of it had been a female canine, but the end result was good.
A corner to relax and entertain her friends, a shower in a huge tub which doubled as a jacuzzi with the towel cabinet close to it and the bathroom propper beyond it.
Then the bedroom, which truth be told was where she spent the least of her time.
A very satisfied Lea stood to the tip of her four feet of height and puffed her chest with pride, 'Home, at long last.'
"Of courrrrse, I'll see what I can do. Arrre you surrre...? Yerrr, verrry well." A very short white furred feline held a phone pinned between her shoulder and her ear as to leave her hands free to shuffle the papers she had on the table. Clad only in loose black pants, she was standing with her torso and head bared, black chest armor and a black hankerchief discarded upon said table.
Continuing her conversation in lowered tones, Leandrea shifted the phone to a hand, leaving the table, and padded barefooted upon the wooden floor to the entrance of the bedroom. Keeping her side of the talk to non commital noises, she leant in to peek at the small form feverishly tossing in the darkness. Twilighter was still dealing with her demons and the changes her body was going through.
'Death would be a victory,' the ten year old had said with such fatalism that Leandrea's stomach had turned to a icy ball. She had seen those eyes and had heard those words from the slaves of Shangri-La. But this was not Shang, these were not the same times, no one should say those words and mean them. Certainly not a kitten.
Her mind was drifting and with a start she realised she was no longer paying attention to the phone call. "Listen, I have all the inforrrrmation, I'll call you in an hourrrr, yerrr?" The tiny voice from the phone rose in pitch but she was adamant, "I swearr I'll call you."
The cell phone was flipped close and put into one of the small pouches around her belt, all of it done in a absent minded manner while the small cat looked at the form in the bed. She came closer into the darkness and pulled the blankets to tuck the child in, a reassuring noise offered when even her bare footed approach caused the child's eyelids to flutter open.
Time was ticking but she remained seated at the edge of the bed while looking at the gradually calmer sleeper. Only later, assured that the slumber was deep, did Lea raise and walk back to the kitchen, the table covered in papers that she had unpinned from the corkboard.
A list was being written down with a formula that would be complex if she ever sat down and actually wrote it down. Time needed + profit + expenses + new costumer/repeat costumer + influence of costumer + publicity of the job + discretion + more/less shady + location. Different coloured circles were drawn around each with arrows pointing at jobs that could connect before they were written onto the sheet.
Her days started early and ended late, depending on her schedule. Despite the time she religiously took out to visit the statue in order to network and meet new heroes, her days in the last month had become 15 hour shifts. Food had become a luxury, With her metabolism she could keep going for days without the need to ingest solids, but her stomach was all too human and once empty it would rumble and she'd have severe hunger pangs nevertheless, thus she kept several bars of concentrated food just to trick her body.
The first meal she had cooked for Twi had left the child so wide eyed, eating with such relish after living on whatever she could scrounge on her own that, on the spot, Lea promised herself to be home in time to prepare the meals everyday. That promise had been tarnished more and more lately. Not that the child seemed to mind, she appeared able to subsist solely on cold milk and cereals, and like all children in whatever world she had been, a greasy hamburger with fries from a fast food stand were the epitome of a great meal.
Lea precariously reclined herself until the chair was standing only on its hind legs while she looked at the sheet in her hand, the pen tapping her chin thoughtfuly. The day started at 7 and continued down with a number of contracts squeezed in. She had managed to fit in seven for tomorrow (a glance at the clock made her correct it for 'today') but the number of papers on her table were all possible contracts that she was spurning much to her chagrin. Not to mention it would take some luck to actually be on time to prepare dinner.
A business like hers that depended on word of mouth simply could not keep on refusing costumers even if the profit was lower or the job was dull. Without even getting started on the sob stories that kept on coming. Take the man who needed a bodyguard while he was performing a exorcism on red caps. She had dithered and pushed it back as she was already swamped. In the end, when he had called again, it was Twilighter who had picked the phone and who decided to take the job in the stead of Lea. A pleasant surprise for the cat who found herself with a fat envelope filled with unmarked bank notes for having done no work at all, but an unpleasant surprise to have discovered that the child, in mid process of a lengthy regeneration which hindered her abilities, had done it on her own with broken ribs as a result.
'It's high time to start thinking about hiring.'
Lea tossed in bed, the ice-cream sat in a undigested mass in her stomach and sleep eluded her. From time to time she would raise herself on a elbow and look in the black and white that near darkness brought. Look, at the one peacefully sleeping by her side, drool acumulating on her pillow. On the furthest side was Kumi (Fanservice Girl) and cuddled between both was Twilighter.
A few hours back
A freshly scrubbed Leandrea floated from the skies towards the Galaxy Girl's statue in what was her daily ritual. Going there was easier these days having hired Goldie (Shroedinger), a deliciously cute feline that was a box of surprises, Sara (Shattered Reflections), a good techie who was coming to grips about becoming a woman, and lastly Rosa (RosaThorne), someone whom she didn't knew much about other than having the habit of sneaking to eavesdrop on conversations.
She had no complaints about any of them, and along with the first person she had hired, the tireless Apercu, her days had finnaly found a semblance of normality in which she could find the time for naps and be home to prepare dinner for herself and the kitten (Twilighter).
Greeting those about Lea was pleasantly surprised to find her adopted child already there. From someone sullen and broken she had raised marvelously from the ashes of her previous life, having become cute, inquisitive, helpful and very very dangerous with a sword. Maybe some day even her phobia of robots would fade.
Engaging in light banter and her usual touching habits, Lea was soon with the child hugged close on her lap as both floated in the air. Then, to sour the mood, the piglet (Chrissie Williams) arrived and started questioning the child about her sword.
Let is be said that Leandrea is not a sweet kitten-girl. Very obdurate ((go go Natural Origin tittles that forced me to use Webster to discover what they meant!)), she was capable of holding life long grudges for years with friendships ruined along the way because of it. It had happened with Apercu, though surprisingly, the power suited hero had mended the rift her joke had caused. Left alone it would have festered like a caried tooth, but an apology, a hug, the last more precious because of the green hero's dislike of them, and all had been righted.
This had not been the case with Chrissie. A bad start that had never been mended had left Lea unable to be civil with the woman. Plus the constant use of her mental powers to subvert others for her games or profit and it was only natural that Lea took her approach and questioning with waryness.
"I am not Catz, piglet, if you touch the kitten's mmmind you will deal with mmme," she warned. She had been present when at least for three different occasions when the purpled hatted woman had innocently attacked the rock transforming cat-girl, but very strangely, Catz has never struck back or did anything about those actions. Chrissie shook her head though, and swore that she had no such intentions.
It was thus a surprise, when a few minutes later of asking to speak in private with Twilighter, that Lea found herself being hugged in panic by the fleeing child. It had lasted only for a moment before the child silently broke the hug and floated back, but this time with the feline in tow.
"What happened?" Lea asked, the child's blank face revealing nothing and Chrissie's only with an air of surprise.
"What? Everything's alright. This is a private conversation, can I speak with her for just a minute?"
Behind Lea RosaThorne appeared and listened.
"The child rrran to me in fearrrr and you wish to speak with herrrr alone? I ask again, what happened?"
"I need to speak with her. Just one minute please. Look, ask her, okay?"
Shaking her head RosaThorne advised, "You should give up, she won't accept to leave."
The child nodded carefuly at that, but Lea's dislike of the woman, plus knowing how freely she abused her mental powers pushed her insistance, "Sworrrrrrd! Is everrrything alrrrright with the kitten?"
Adressing the demon blade Twilighter carried brough its deep baritone to the feline's mind, 'As is my bond I must answer, the wench has swayed my keeper's mind'.
At this point Lea just went livid with rage, "I warrrrrned you!" Running angrily with a brawler's punch her fist touched but air as Chrissie stepped back in a blur. "What? What?? She's alright, I've done nothing!" The second punch she didn't dodge, expecting perhaps for Lea to back down and not carry through with her threat. A meaty impact dispelled that notion and the woman stumbled back even if not evidencing pain.
"HOW DARRRRE YOU! You see mmmy size and you think I am a child, you see a cat-girrrrrl and you think I am a toy! I warrrrn you and you think it is a joke! Rrrremove yourrrr hold on the kitten!!" Lea shouted angrily while stepping forth with a raised fist.
"I'm sorry.. Look, please. Stop. I'm sorry." Barely kept in check, Lea stopped the angry stomping and lowered her hand at Chrissie's apologies.
"You're a good person.. I really am sorry..." With a sudden burst of light she jumped on Lea by surprise and did something, something so hard that the small cat stumbled back drunkenly as her body tried to cope with the overloading her mind had just been subjected to.
'Wha..? Warm.. Where..?' Lea came out of her stupor only a few seconds later, the blackness receeding from her vision, a hand dabbing drunkenly at the wetness trickling from her nose and her ears before raising her fingers to her eyes. 'Red..?'
Lea snapped out of it completly just to see Chrissie with her hands on her temples landing psychic blow after psychic blow, though by the look of confusion it was evident the results were not the expected ones, Lea not only not falling under the onslaught, but the mind blows like water hitting a sponge. Or perhaps, like gasoline poured on a fire.
The fight was short lived with rage fueled blows slammed on the woman's body until she colapsed. Albeit not for long. Time and time again she would get up and try again until it became all too obvious that throwing eggs at a wall would have as much chance of breaking the wall as she of overcoming the raging small felinoid. It was at this point she changed tactics and instead feinted to run at Twilighter to slam both energy glowing fists on the child.
Shocked that she would do this, attack a child, *HER* child, Lea's tore at the woman with only a sliver of sanity keeping in check the atavistic impulse to go for the throat with her teeth.
Even so it did not stop there. Lea would have to believe that the woman was immortal, the blows she had taken, the number of times she had been put down, but she would rise, try to feint Lea and over and over attempt to slam her glowing fists on the child.
"I .. I surrender.." she finnaly gasped as she colapsed to her knees. Grabbing her by the hair, Lea stomped back to the Galaxy Girl statue. With a scorn filled , "This belongs to you, yerrrr?", the woman was thrown at Richard's (Shadowe) feet.
"No, she's her own person, I just try to guide her," he replied with a smile. As always he was was the quintessence of studied coolness, and as always he was surrounded by beautiful women. If the ammount of lesbians cut in his happy time it had never been noticed by the feline.
Not mollified in the least, Lea ponctuated her words with vicious kicks to the woman's prone body, "She dug herrr dirrrty fingerrrs in mmy child's mmind ::kick:: She attacked mme ::kick:: She attacked mmmy child ::KICK!::"
"Lea that is *quite enough!*" Richard snapped as other heroes rushed to separate the feline from the already recovered woman.
"EVERRRR SINCE THE BEGINNING! Everrr since! She kept on using herrr powerrrs on otherrrs and you so called herrroes have done nothing! You deal with herrrr, orrr *I* will!"
Turning angrilly to Chrissie currently being surrounded/held by others in different stages of anger/shock/what-the-hell/who-cares, Lea racked her throat and spit a glob or rosy phlegm at the woman's feet, "Attacking a child, you arrrre beneath scum."
Refusing to stay and talk any further, Lea coaxed Twilighter and they left to their home.
Home was a much more pleasant sight after the whole mess. Tight hugs, apologies, deep heart felt thanks offered to Mister Sword, ice cream, and talk of the effect that impervium chains and weights plus the deepest part of the ocean would have on an immortal had the child laughing once more by the end of the nigh. So was Lea, even though it did not reach her eyes.
Now
Still looking at the peacefuly sleeping child, Lea thought to herself, 'They couldn't even hold her down for half an hour before she escaped. At least they did not disapoint me. Expect nothing and you are never disapointed.'
Laying on her back again and crossing her fingers over her upset stomach, Lea eventually managed to drift away amidst dreams of impervium chains and a purple hat floating over the calm surface of the sea.
Lea inspected her armor long after everyone had drifted out of her welcome back party. It had never been intended to be the multipurpose suits of armor some heroes wore, things that protected, enhanced strength, had weaponry and could make coffee with a mean slice of apple pie at the same time. Hers was solely made to prevent pain from being etched over her body.
'Not being invulnerable in this line of work', Lea mused to herself, 'was rather.. troublesome.' The euphemism rolled over as she tried to use a rag to make the armor return to its previous polished self. It was currently sooty in an ingrained way and the pile of dark tattered rags was a testimony of her failed attempts at making it bright once more.
As someone not invulnerable and who could feel pain, being shot, sliced, zapped, burnt, iced and varied inbetweens ended with her criss crossed with caked blood from a number of shallow wounds. She honestly did not know how other metas dealed with it, but her previous life had not prepared her for this.
The white cat's hand hovered over a pile of varied chemical cleaners until it decided on one she had not tried yet. Spraying it on the armor and picking a new rag, she let the automatic motions carry her through while she drifted to the events that lead to last week.
A month ago.
It been a silly thing really. She had been hankering to dance and feeling cabin fever. Without advertising her destination she had flown out of Dark Astoria in her leathers outfit and traveled to the Pocket D where drinks, and animation, were easy to get one's hands upon.
It had been there that she had struck conversation with a blonde giant. He was like a much larger version of Jake Wyatt, smooth talking, good looking, and above all bold. What on earth had he seen in her, reaching his waist in clothes that had to be purpose tailored for her size, well, it was anyone's guess, but in the next half hour he had her floatdancing and both were having quite a bit of grinning fun.
Conversation attracts conversation and origin stories were traded. He was the brick of a super team with a rather generic tale of being dumped into a vat of chemicals by accident and gaining his powers. It would be so cliche but his self-mockery was a source of amusement for both.
He fell silent when she told about herself, the abduction to Shangri-La, the travel to a new world and then finnaly ending up in Paragon. She could have suspected something about his renewed interest in Shang and the slavery existing there, but between the sweet tasting (and deceptively strong) drinks and a huge paw lightly brushing her ears it had completly passed unnoticed.
It *was* a good night, a breath of fresh air, letting out her dance mood and meeting new people. The whole thing could have just passed away and slipped her mind when she was contacted two weeks later.
It turned out that the strong man, Alex, had spoken to his team about the situation. When they had arranged a meeting there was a proposition waiting for the feline: bring them over to Shang. They would stay there, try to topple the governement and free the slaves.
That was a tall order and no ammount of talking had convinced them to give it up. That they were too few, and the governement hundreds. That they were used to super powered people and enslaved them just as well as mundanes. That a fate worse than death would await them if they were caught.
Nothing.
in the end, it was good cash, plenty of it, and they adults. If that's what they wanted then so be it.
She had left her affairs being handled by Sara (Shattered Reflections), said her good byes to everyone and left.
First was reaching the wild portal. Those clung to a single spot seemingly at random. Some were so obvious that they were found, others were in spots that would never be access, such as deep into rock (and good luck to whomever emerged in there). The one that Lea had emerged from would take a day of travel to get there (having took longer than a week for her to walk towards civilization when she first arrived depowered). It was one of those that existed at an exact spot over the ocean, high enough that boats had never been swallowed by it, low enough that planes had never been caught in it.
The next day had been spent hunting it. Good luck finding an invisible opening in the open air, with no idea at which heigh it was. Fortunatly one of the team was a reality manipulator, the portal was not part of this world and as such, like a very crude sonar, he had managed to pinpoint it, at which a thrown rock sweallowed by thin air had proved his success in the location efforts.
The reality manipulator created bubbles around them all, they would serve to protect them against the change the portal brought and that Lea had warned them of. They had entered it and been brought to the alien jungle she remembered well.
It had cost her a large ammount of money, large enough to live in luxury until the end of their life, all she had accumulated plus all she had purposefuly worked for this very thing. Whole mountains had been honeycombed for it.
The location of a wild portal.
Lea breathed in the air while feeling her mind expand. She had been depowered when she arrived in that new world, but here she was at her fullest, her capabilities no longer at a shadow of what they were. She didn't have to test it, she could just feel her connection with her self growing, becoming more sophisticated and deep.
Something shimmered by her side and she looked back abruptly. The team had arrived. And they were having problems of their own. She had been powered and arrived depowered. They were powered... and arrived super powered.
Again it took two days to calm things down. Two, slow, *very* busy days. Lea wasn't so much powerful as versatile, while all seven of the group were, in their individual powers, much more advanced. Trying to catch a superspeedster was as tiring as trying to calm a super strong Alex whose attempts to walk made him jump as if he were on the moon.
The worst one was the reality manipulator. His bubbles had worked, none had been changed, but he was a gibbering wreck that foamed from the mouth and never got up from the spot he had curled into a fetal position when he had emerged. Just to feed and change him was a thing Lea would have ten times passed over, but she was the only one she actually trusted to do it as all the others struggled with the most basic of things.
Walking, that ended with dozen of feet tall jumps.
Breathing, so fast that it caused gales.
Simple attempts to create a spark, that created craters.
The list could go on but yes, it was like learning how to walk.
The meditative efforts she had enforced had slowly payed off at the end of the second day. Though still clumsy in handling their respective powers they were, at least, under control.. all save the manipulator. He was in the same way and Lea offered to bring him back with her. She had spent the last night in front of the campfire while the team talked it over, her armor slowly caressed with a fingertip. The metal from the world where it had come from it was one of the strongest ones, the armor itself was of impervium and titanium alloy.
She had been working at it for a while now, clawtip carefuly dragged over with small chips of the metal plinking off into the distance until they returned, the general consensus being that they were a team and the manipulator would stay with them.
It couldn't be said that the tiny white feline agreed with that, but again, they were adults. As such they had gone to sleep and the next day she brough them to Xanadu and shown them around.
Xanadu, the capital of Shangri-La, a place where if a perversion could not be found, then it was not a perversion worth speaking of. Where extraordinarely advanced alien beings mingled with sword and bow characters, where open and public slavery was just as common as a halpless denizen being pounced and made into a slave from out of the blue. Where acts of sexual depravity mingled with acts of pain elevated to artistry.
This was Xanadu, the glitter of the center fading to the grittyness of the edges and the ever present Cathedral of the Void looming over it all as a ever hungry void.
As a group the team she had brought were all powerful. It was not to say it would keep them safe, but the sheer aura of power pushed away all the lesser predators and while they kept themselves low key, the higher predators would not notice them... for now.
They had spent a day there and had covertly examined the place with Lea showing them the slave processing center and the slave pens where slaves could be bought or rented. Their resolve was as strong as before, stronger, considering the sights they had seen, sights the small cat was jaded out of a repetition of hundreds of similar sights. Or so she wanted to believe, the widening of her nostrils and narrowing of her eyes passing unnoticed.
Now.
Lea examined her armor again, the re-entry had been brutal. She had not wanted to wait further and had left the group to their suicide (so she believed it to be). After getting back to the portal at a delicious mach three speed she had emerged from it completly depowered as the first time.
Different from the first time she prepared a fire, made tea and settled down. A distinct improval of her first time, where it had taken months she did it in one day, attuning herself to this low energy universe. She had flown back to Talos. Or floated back, her flying speed was ridiculous, perhaps fifty miles per hour.
So she had the brilliant plan to use sub-orbital flight instead. It had been touch and go, since she needed to breathe, but sling shoting herself a couple of times had shaved a lot of time, though the last one had her re-entering the atmosphere at such speeds that she could have been mistaken for a meteorite, burning blazing hell and all, something that had pushed her energy absorption to such a strain to keep from burning to a crisp that by the time she had landed she was a violent pink star. It had been heart warming to find her team waiting up with hugs and cake and lots of food.
She would mention to no one how the urge to stay had been great, to no longer subsist on ergs of power, to scrap by at a fraction of what she could in a world so stiffled with prudishness and oxymorons.
She held Twilighter in one arm and Kumi Fanservice girl in the other.
The darker armor reflected her face. It was polished to a sheen but the darker hue refused to subsist.
This was her home now.
In the corner, carefuly scratched into the nearly impregnable metal, now rested a =^_^=
(([censored] on a stick! Never post in a hurry in the morning and then return at night. Now I spotted several things I'd like to change and the maximum edit time has elapsed))
Lea supposed that being a mother had these kinds of hiccups along the way. She was standing on top of 'her' building in Dark Astoria while tugging on a bulky metallic glove.
She looked down to the darkness where the road was only dimly noticable in the dusk that preceded nightfall and wrinkled her nose.
A few days back
“Momma Lea, Momma Lea, I've like got a totally surprising thing to show you!"
Some sort of motherly premonition gripped Lea when those words were heard, the papers she were shuffling freezing as she very carefuly turned her chair..
Her kitten (Twilighter) was a hotbed of drastic upside down life altering changes. First she had been abducted, brutaly experimented upon and turned into a emotionless cyborg with an AI living in her head. Then she had become some sort of super nanite enhanced soldier, then a demonic hybrid with a talking sword, and now...
The tiny feline examined the ecstatic child. She had grown a good few inches, tall enough that Lea only reached her chin despite being the adult between the two. She was still scrawny as children were, the change had not filled her out though she appeared older as Lea's limited ability to tell with humans.
'A training bra is in order.', some small part of her mind whispered unheedful of the other nine tenths running around in circles while waving their metaphorical arms in the air.
She could imagine why the child was so happy. In her cyborg phase she had confided that she would live and die as a ten year old since the machines in her would for ever keep her in that frozen moment in time. Even when she had changed subsequently she had kept the same height and apparent age until now, where in a night two years appeared to have been added.
Lea realised her introspection had lasted too long when the child's smile froze. Lea could tell, from the beggining, how fragile her kitten's happyness was. Once abandoned she always feared it would happen again and it was a tiny stab in the feline's heart when that fear surfaced.
"Do tell, kitten. You do rrrealise I'm the smallest of us all now, rrright?" Fanservice had changed as well, something to do with a gene treatment to allow for addaptive changes to the environement. She had yielded dark powers ever since and also grown several inches both in height and in bust, much to the feline's apreciation. The cat's usual toothy grin did the trick and she found herself with a lap full of child.
Talking smoothed things over. The reason of the unnatural eating and the constant sleeping was revealed, even if the reason of the *why* hadn't been declared. The thing was, the change had exhausted Twi as it was soon revealed.
They talked about it, Lea unwilling to let Twi go out on her own in her debilitated state but on the other hand unwilling to imprision her at home. In the end it was decided that Twi would tag along while the cat worked at the different contracts her job entailed, but as it was realised, anything Lea would take could possible vaporise the child in her current state. It was the kitten who had the idea of Lea lowering her power to match hers, and then in a surge of insight that perplexed Lea considering how she usually acted, that it would hurt her business if people saw a Lea weak and doing the smallest jobs.
Of course that Lea wasn't fooled by the reasoning behind her wearing a disguise. Be it from association with Kumi (Fanservice) or a natural trait for her age, Twi *loved* to disguise herself and find different costumes to wear.
The name had been something else. When asked about it Twi had gone into a lenghty explanation about video-games, classes, support 'toons' and..
"Arrre you quite surrrre? Dee Pee Ess Girrrl?
Present
For those who knew the white cat she was not in her usual threads, be them casual, leather or metal. A woolen cap, dark glasses, a scarf covering the lower half of her face and a form fitting cat suit hugged her body more intimatly than she liked, the form fitting cat suit quite revealing about the dual nature of her gender. But it did serve the idea behind a disguise.
Certainly it would fool anyone, certainly.
The bulky gloves were the same than she wore with her armor, but tweaked so that instead of being powered by the armor being hit, zapped and burnt, she was the battery for them. It took some adjusting to not use her strength and instead wield the flames as weapons, but the first tests had been productive. The gloves were actually quite greedy and it didn't took much theater skills to present herself as weaker than usual as they sucked out energy she could've used to regenerate and protect herself with.
She took another look down. To complete the disguise she jumped instead of flying which was something she was working on. She dropped from the building and felt the rush of air, the ground aproaching at breakneck speed. Just as she was about to hit her mutant powers of absorving energy kicked in and her inertia was sucked in, the fall ending without broken bones. With that same energy she had absorved she increased her strength and jumped.
It was.. fun. Bouncing around like a mad bunny was actually faster than her pityful flying. Except that what she was working upon wasn't the timing behind landing and jumping, not even on *where* to land since a few stealthy flying impulses directed her falls.
After three or four jumps she had to stop on top of a building and yank off her mask as she tried to calm her queasy stomach.
A slightly green Lea clutched a chimney, "Hrrr... Mmmotion sickness."
((For not reason at all, I'm compiling Leandrea's updates as she gets started on her new life in CoH))
"So, how mmmmuch forrr it?"
Leandrea was reigning in her patience as the jeweller took his time awing and humming while poking the small, flat bar of gold he was hunched over. He was the third and by now Lea's expectations were lower and lower, each one before him had started to ask questions and probing the provenience of the gold, to which her (at first truthful, and then progressively vague) answers weren't satisfactory.
The tiny white feline took the time to examine her surroundings. It was certainly a seedier shop than the first two. Dust was gathering on the flat surfaces, the shinnies in display weren't particulary pretty or in good condition and above all, it was cramped, the shop itself crammed between two buildings of a back alley. On her own she would never have found it.
A throat clearing noise from the bent man made her look back, small beads of sweat were pearling his brow and the little cat found herself slightly disgusted from the display and rank smell.
'Hairless apes...'
The thought remained in her head such as her hands firmly in her pockets. She was small in her previous world, though average in her original one, but in this one she was smaller than a young human child and at fifty years old the patronizing tones and 'little one' comments were wearing thin.
Especially as she was so thrice damned powerless. It was a sobering sight to give all she had against a Rikti and see how it withstood her, she who had been able to put down a building with a single well aimed blast. As it was she no longer could fly (a cold grip at the base of her stomach at the loss of that freedom), her strength was average for her size and her speed was baseline. No blasts, no healing others, no resilience.
With a slight shiver the feline tried to focus on what she *could* still do. She could still absorb energy, she could still digest it and use it in a punch, she could still steal the kinetic energy of a physical blow in order to neuter most of it, or absorb an energy blast in order to deflect most of its destructiveness. And she could use that energy to boost her self-healing. But it was all so basic. New world, new rules, it would take some heavy duty meditating to attune herself to the similar-yet-slightly-different laws of physics.
Leaving the pawnkeeper to his own devices (undoubtly trying to work how to swindle her further, Lea thought) the little cat pondered the last two days.
The Rikti had been coming strong and her initial unwillingness to join in the resistance had been suddenly shattered when a small invasion fleet attacked Galaxy City as she was there.
Joining others who were present she found herself recruited in a small team of.. of... At this point the poetic justic would be saying of grim, hard faced fighters. But in truth other than that deliciously hunky wolf the rest were taking it as some sort of fun adventure, something which Lea attributed to the outstanding medical facilities and what the heroes called 'medi-port' which transported them to the hospital if their vital signs reached dangerous levels. It did remove much of the 'hero' in heroing, but it was certainly safer, and prone to allow truly dangerous levels of arrogance. Few seemed to take the invasion seriously.
The two days and nights had blurred by then. Some of the small team left to be replaced by others, but the fighting had been non stop, the raid sirens had been a constant and she was exhausted as much from the fighting as from running from one place to the other while the others flew, or jumped. The absorbed energy from the Rikti blasts only did so much to sustain her stamina with so little food and littler rest stolen between the raids.
Of those frantic days she only remembered glimpses of those who had shared the battles. Psionic Song, who was like a radio station, picking the mental impulses of the Rikti and chillingly addopting their manner of speech while guiding them to the landing spots. Molly, the pink armed-to-the-teeth teen with a seeming endless supply of bullets. Someone truly huge fittingly called Big Lunk, who easily tore through the Rikti she was barely denting with a sword in each huge meaty paw. And of course, the wolf, Loup Garou as a discreet enquiry revealed, who had distincly chilled his warm smile once she had flirted a few times with him.
Rubbing her gritty feeling eyes Lea decided this world was certainly operating on its own set of rules, so far each little flirt had not only been rebuffed but pretty much had her ostracized by whomever had caught her eye.
"So, where did you get this?" Lea was shaken from her exhausted flashback by the reedy voice. There was greed in it, expertly hidden in a bored tone, but he really should stop holding both hands possessively cupped over the gold bar and sweating so visibly for it to be believed.
'Well you see, this is the fourth world I've found myself in and by now I would call myself a veteran. You can't carry much, and there's always a need for lodging and food until getting used to the new culture. Gold is an universal trade commodity and is always valued as long as it's real, natural, neither man made of magicked up. So I bought it and brough it over instead of money that would be toy cash here.'
"Stole it," Lea said instead, having perfectly recognized the type of pawnshop and shopkeeper she was dealing with.
The man's eyes just about shone in happyness.