From the ashes of DC Mayhem comes something...SENSATIONAL!
Rated M
If you missed last issue, catch up here
One Life Down, Eight to Go (Part 2)
The Gotham skyline at night was the only thing about the city that had ever been beautiful. Everything else about it was rotten to it’s very core, and that was the reason Kitrina finally felt like she could breathe easy despite all the smog. It had taken her a couple of hours to finally piece together a functioning uniform from that Halloween costume she once had. Nearly every rhinestone and hint of pink was gone and replaced with extra pockets, some of Selina’s black boots, and her diamond tipped razor gloves. The gloves had needed a little work, but luckily they shared the same boot size. Gloves and boots weren’t the only thing she had picked up from the safe house.
Though Selina kept her most up to date infrared goggles to herself, she had a couple obsolete ones. She had found an old dusty model at the safe house, and though it didn’t have all the bells and whistles like heart rate monitors, residual heat signatures, or x-ray vision, it still came in handy for when she needed to see in the dark, and for where she was going Kitrina didn’t need all those fancy gizmos anyway.
Kitrina stepped out on the edge of the roof over looking a series of apartment complexes and general stores. She took a deep breath, and pulled the cat eared cap over her head. The air up here seemed so much fresher. She had almost forgotten what it had felt like, but would it be like it had before? She had to travel twenty-seven blocks to get her destination, and in order to avoid detection she could only use rooftops and alleyways, just as she had been taught, but it had been nearly a year since she had made this kind of run. She felt very unsure of herself, and a voice in her head told her to turn back.
“No!” She thought to herself, “Someone tried to kill you tonight.” That very thought made her blood boil as the anger rose up inside her. Had she not been through enough? It wasn’t enough that she had lost her whole family, or that she had nearly died alone and frozen on the bottom of the Gotham river. She couldn’t even have a normal life! It was so unfair.
Kitrina grit her teeth and clenched her fists. Tonight someone had tried to kill her, kept echoing in her mind over and over until finally it stopped, and she said, “Someone tried to kill me tonight. Well, they should have tried harder.”
There was nothing left to lose, and time seemed to slow down to a crawl as Kitrina threw herself from the rooftop. If anyone had been looking up they would have seen a girl falling like a rock, but to Kitrina it was much different. Like a cat, she would always land on her feet. She saw the framing of the fire escape as it came closer and closer. Then like it was nothing she grabbed the bottom bar of the fire escape and scampered up the side of the building, leaping around from ledge to ledge with barely any effort, and before she knew it she was on the roof of the adjacent building. She could finally breath again, and when she did she grinned from ear to ear.
“I had forgotten, how much I loved that.” She muttered, and look down at the roof she had just left which lay at least forty metres below. There wasn’t much time left in the night, and she still had a long way to go before she reached O’Neil’s Back Alley Irish Pub. While she had been peicing together her uniform she had remembered being followed by Willie O’Neil, one of her grandfather’s old hit men. She had noticed him following her one day, and out of curiosity had followed him back to an old bar in Old Gotham. It was her first lead on what had happened tonight, and she just knew that O’Neil knew something. He may had even been the guy who pulled it off. Either way she would find out soon enough.
She looked off in the direction she was heading, and her eyes planned out the quickest route there. Judging from the looks of things for what she could currently see it was going to be tough. There were several things that could go wrong. She could fall, break her neck, impale herself, or god forbid even get hit by a car when she had to move down to cross the street. She moved her head from side to side stretching her neck which made an audible pop as she did so.
“This is going to be fun.” She purred before darting off across the roof tops as fast as her legs could carry her.
O’Neil’s Irish Pub - 3:42 AM
Bottles shattered against the wall, and left over beer sprayed everywhere as William “Two-Times” O’Neil ducked down behind the counter. The two drunks near the door were laughing loudly, one of them was bent over clutching his knees. Two-Times stood up from behind the counter red in the face, and his glasses hung lopsided off his ears.
“Get the hell out of here ya bastards!” Two-Times irish accent echoed as he straightened his glasses, “And don’t come back.”
“Like we would come back to this shit bar.” The one who had threw the bottle yelled as he pushed open the door, and walked out; the other not far behind him.
“Who would want to come to this dump. Place be better off if it burnt down.” Two Times heard one of them say as the door closed shut. He could feel his hands shaking. How dare they talk to him like that. Did they not know who he was!? He was Wille O’Neil, and nobody talked to him like that. Two-Times grabbed the pump-action twelve gauge from under the counter, and put a shell in the chamber. They couldn’t have gotten far. Creeps like that needed to be taught a lesson.
He was half the distance to the door when he stopped, and he looked down at the shotgun in his hands. His arms were still shaking, and he could barely see straight. His blood pressure was up. He took a deep breath, and turned around. When he made it to the bar he set the gun down on the counter, reached over the bar for a glass, and then filled it with water from the tap.
“You need to slow it down old man,” Two-Times muttered to himself, “That’s not you anymore. Calm down, and take your medicine.”
He took a sip, and reached in his pocket to pull out a bottle of pills when suddenly everything went dark. Two-Times sprung from his seat looking around helplessly in the dark. He felt a cold chill, because In Gotham City when things got dark either you were about to visit the pearly gates, or even worse there were bats about. He was frozen, and did his best to try and slow his thoughts, but impulse hit him and he reached for the gun, only to find that it wasn’t there.
“Hello Willie,” A voice purred,
“Who’s there! What do you want?” Two-Times stammered, as he futility tried to search from where the voice came from.
“It’s been a long time, but I had hoped you would have recognized my voice. Here’s a hint, I know you used to work for Carmine Falcone. You were one of his hit men.”
“What’s that have to do with anything? That’s not my life any more. I’m clean now!”
“Oh please. We both know that getting out of that life, isn’t an option for people like us. Is it Two-Times, that’s what they used to call you right? Two-Times O’Neil. They used to say you double cross your mother if it meant a quick buck.”
“Shut up! Leave me alone. I’m done with this you hear! I told you that’s not my life any more.”
“Liar!” the voice hissed, “Someone blew up an apartment on the East Side earlier tonight.I want to know who?”
“Wha...I don’t know what you’re talking about!.”
“Perhaps you don’t get it?” The voice hissed, and suddenly Willie felt something wrap around his neck, and yank upward. He coughed and hacked, struggling to breathe as his feet dangled just above the floor. “Who attacked that apartment!?” The voice shouted at him.
“I swear.” Two times coughed, “I don’t know anything about an apartment.”
“You’re lying!” A bright light shined in Two Times face, and when his eyes adjusted he saw a picture of out on the street, “That was taken outside the apartment two days ago. Why were you there!? Answer me!”
“You’ve got the wrong idea.” Willie gurgled as he clawed at his neck trying to free himself from whatever was holding him.
“Really? You were there Willie. You’ve been following the girl that lives at that apartment for the past two weeks, and tonight someone tried to kill her her, and you want to tell me that I have the wrong idea!? Now you fat sack of shit, tell me why you were following her!”
“To say I’m sorry!” Two Times cried out, and suddenly whatever had been holding his neck let go, and he slammed into the floor. The air was knocked from his lungs, and everything hurt. He coughed and gagged, until finally he could breathe again, but he hurt so much he could barely move.
“You want to run that by me again?” The voice hissed from the darkness.
“I thought I saw Carmine’s granddaughter, Little Kit, over there, and I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” The voice growled, and Two Times felt something sharp grip his face, “Explain and you better make this good.”
“Okay, Okay” Two Times cried tears starting to stream down the old man’s face, “Years ago, before The Roman died, I was part of Mickey Sullivan’s gang. Me and the boys, all of us had testified that we blew up Harvey Dent’s house with him in it. It was a plan to keep the cops off of Mr. Falcone. The cops didn’t have a case, so we were let go. The night we were released somebody shot up the place the boys and I were at. Everyone else died, but I lived. I was shot up bad, but the bullets had missed most of the vital points. Mr. Falcone saw to it that I was well taken care of at the hospital. He paid for all the medical bills, and he even visited. When Mr. Falcone died things fell apart, I fell apart, but I never forgot what Mr. Falcone did for me. The other day when I thought I saw his granddaughter walking around East Side, I hung around trying to find her, and I found that apartment. I was trying to work up the courage to speak to her. I just wanted to tell her that I’m sorry about what happened to her granddad, and to her family. That her family did so much for me, and that I owed them my life. All I wanted was to just say sorry. That’s all I swear.”
“Touching.” The voice hissed, and from the pitch black, Two Times heard something land and hit the floor. He was scared to move, and he was fairly certain he had already pissed all over himself. His eyes were open, but when he saw what he thought was a pair of huge glowing red eyes move down to his level, he closed them, and began to pray that the nightmare would end.
“You’re not the one I want.” The voice sighed, and that was when Two Times picked up on the feminine tone. He opened his eyes to see the room was suddenly lit back up, and there was no one in sight. The door was wide open, and the cool night air was blowing in through the door. The gun had been moved over to the far side of the room, and there was a thin wire wrapped around his neck. He sat up, and looked down and just like he thought his pants were soaked. His heart pounded furiously, and his head hurt. He rubbed his head then straightened his glasses and when he did he noticed something that wasn’t supposed to be there. It looked like some kind of hair. He grabbed a hold of it ,and pulled it away.
When he looked at it, he noticed that it was red, and that was when a curious thought struck him. Willie froze, mulling the thought over and over in his mind, until finally he shook his head, and tossed the hair away. He was just thinking crazy now, but he lived in Gotham City and crazier had happened here.
“Nah,” He groaned, “You’ve been in Gotham too long old man. Face it, you’ve finally gone senile.”
O’Neil’s Irish Pub, The Roof - 4:05 AM
Kitrina felt rotten as she yanked the hood and goggles from her head. She had just beat up and frightened an old man under the suspicion that he may had tried to kill her. What had she been thinking. The man looked like he could barely walk, and was a scrambled egg away from cardiac arrest. What a waste of time.
Then she had to listen to that sob story about him wanting to apologize to her. Apologize for what? Apologize that her whole entire family were nothing but psychos? That they left her with nothing? That they tried to kill her more than once? In more ways than one she was glad that they were gone. The only two people she truly missed were her grandfather, and her cousin Ana, but they were dead now, and her last tears were shed over her family after she murdered her uncle. Her family was just one of Gotham’s bad memories, so why did people have to keep bringing them up?
Kitrina looked down at the street below when she heard a door shut, and saw Willie leaving his store in a bit of a hurry. After what she had put him through, she couldn’t blame him, and the way he hobbled down the street made her smile a little, but not long enough, because the reality of her situation weighed heavily on her shoulders. Someone had tried to kill her tonight, and she was no closer to finding out who that person was. She closed her eyes and laid back on the roof racking her brain for any clue as to who might want her dead (probably half of Gotham), and who knew where she was (Selina, and a couple of cats, one with a broken tail that hung awkwardly like it had been slammed in a car door).
“Oh my god, I have no freaking idea where to start!” Kitrina groaned, “Why does crazy stuff keep happening to me!”
“Perhaps that’s because you’re dressed as a cat, and you’re lying spread out on a roof. It draws attention.” A woman spoke, and when Kitrina opened her eyes she looked up into the face of what appeared to be some kind of cat lady. Kitrina sprung from her resting place, and somersaulted away from the cat lady, only to find herself at the tip of a katana held just inches from her face.
“Not so fast, kitty cat.” said the woman whose face was hidden by a porcelain cat mask. The cat lady twisted the blade to where it lay just under Kitrina’s chin, the tip resting on her neck. The cat lady licked her lips and grinned, “You’re not getting away from me that easily, Kitrina Falcone.”
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