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 Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 1:39 pm
It was hot outside. Not the bearable kind of hot where the sun is warm and there's a nice breeze, no, this was the kind of hot only the east coast got to experience. The humidity was choking, like trying to breath water, and there were already dozens of little sweat drops leaving trails down Kam's face. If there was one thing a whole head of dreads was not good for, it was keeping cool. For perhaps the only time other than when he was powered up as Gehenna, his dreads had been pulled up in a vain attempt to stay a little cooler.
Normally Kam would have just kept his a** inside and conned Bo into playing a game with him, but one text from Penny was all he needed to get up and venture out into the premature heat wave sweeping over Destiny City. If she hadn't seemed so off, he probably would have been less eager, but the text barely seemed like Penny. She was upset, or concerned.. he didn't even ******** know. The inflection of her words was enough to get him off his a** though, and he was tramping through town with his forehead in such a deep V that he looked like he had a unibrow.
His destroyed, five year old plus iPod was blaring some chaotic song through headphones that were in infinitely better shape compared to the duct taped mp3 player, and he was using the music to block out the world. There wasn't a single person he stopped to answer, there wasn't a hello or a polite gesture that he returned. He was concentrated on getting to Penny's apartment quickly so that he could lay his fears to rest - his imagination and former experiences sometimes led him to the worst possible conclusions. Sometimes to multiple, equally disturbing ones.
When he rounded the corner into Penny's apartment complex, his feet picked up pace despite the heat. It was less than a full minute before he was standing on the beaten welcome mat in front of her door and knocking on it with the back of his knuckles. He reached up and pulled his headphones out of his ears, then concentrated on wrapping them around the iPod while he waited. Then, thinking maybe she might not answer right now if she didn't know who it was, he tacked on a Kam-style greeting.
"Come on, Pen, it's hotter than the devil's balls out here."
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Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 1:41 pm
The night had not been a good one for Penny.
After losing a painful battle to a short-haired Nega with a spear, Penny had been forced to flee down a manhole, plunging into rat s**t and sewage with a belly covered in gashes. She managed to evade the Negaverse Captain, but she was no ninja turtle. She had no idea how to get out of the sewers and ended up wandering around for two hours with a sprained ankle and wrist and a dislocated shoulder before she was able to find a ladder leading above ground. Climbing the ladder had been painful. Lifting the manhole cover off with only one good arm was excruciating. She was so delirious she took a taxi cab in full henshin, only realizing it when the driver had her halfway home. The exhausted girl had no cash on her. When the cabbie stopped at a red light, she dove out of the car and took off at a limping run, too fast for the man to catch.
Her uniform dissolved off of her as she climbed the stairs to her third floor walk-up. By some miracle, probably having to do with the time, Penny got into her apartment without a nosy neighbor stopping her. Her hair was thick with sewage. Her clothes stunk. The cuts that were not still bleeding had crusted over in black chunky patches. Stripping down, she stood in the shower for thirty minutes, washing nothing. With her bad shoulder, there was no way she would be capable of any scrubbing action. Penny just stood there, forehead resting on the cool tile of the shower, until her mind cleared enough for her to compose a single text message to Kam.
She tried to put a shirt on, but it was impossible. The best she could do was shimmy into a tanning band that pulled tightly across her breasts and slide carefully into a pair of running shorts. Penny sat carefully on the hand-me-down sofa in her living room for the thirty minutes it took Kam to get to her apartment. She wasn't sure what she was going to say, but she knew he was the only person she could talk to about any of this.
There was a knock at her door. She opened it, took one look at him, and promptly burst into tears.
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Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 1:43 pm
He reached out with one hand carefully and tried to steer her to sit down by her good shoulder. It was awkward for him, trying to be gentle, because it went against almost every part of his nature. He knew how to take care of unlikely wounds though - he'd done it for years when there hadn't been a doctor or even a medicine man around.
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Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 1:43 pm
Penny didn't allow herself to be moved to sit. She had been sitting already, plagued with thoughts of Painite and that goddamn spear. The stink of sewage still clung to her hair. The wounds in her stomach needed to be cleaned, but worst of all, her shoulder remained dislocated. Every movement was excruciating. Her sprained wrist and ankle were tiny blips of pain compared to her shoulder.
When Kam tried to move her, Penny simply took a step forward and buried her face in his chest. Crying hurt if she sobbed too hard so she tried to breathe deeply, refusing to meet Kam's eyes. "I was, uh huh, walking back from the store with a, uh huh, six pack, and I got attacked by, uh huh, a Nega." There was no childlike pouting in her erratic speech, just an immense pain and sadness -- and touch of fear too, rankling at the edges. "I didn't know what was going on, Kam, and then she was just there and she had this spear and--" Penny shuddered out a sob, grimacing.
"I tried to fight her off, but she was so strong," she said, voice quiet. "And so I threw myself down a manhole and waded through the sewers for two hours to live." Her good hand reached up to grip his bicep. "You need to pop my shoulder back in," she said. Her nails dug into his skin. "You need to do it now because the pain is killing me." Her breathing rattled harshly out of her chest, fingertips shaking. Penny was injured, and she couldn't fix it herself. Going to the hospital would lead to too many questions. No, she needed Kam to do this for her, no matter how hard it might be.
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Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 1:44 pm
Kam went rigid as he suddenly found himself turned into an over sized teddy bear. His arms shot up from his sides and hovered in the air for a moment, before he finally let one fall gently and hold her against him. Penny was rarely very feminine and hardly ever suffered from some of the emotional bullshit he'd dealt with from countless women before in his life, but this was a reaction he recognized even if he never expected it from Penny. She wanted comfort and he could offer it.
"Nega?" Kam still wasn't up to date on all the super villains running rampant in the city. Penny always seemed to know more than he did and he had always been perfectly fine with letting her be the brain of their operation. To think that something he hadn't heard of had hurt her so badly though? That was something that was not okay. He listened to her story with a growing anger - his eyes narrowed and his lips pursed until they were a thin line. The free hand he had left reached up and settled on top of her damp hair, holding her face against his chest so that she wouldn't look up and force him to meet the eyes that matched that tone in her voice.
"You're alive, though." His body was tense and it made his voice strained. He was reckless with his own life and rarely thought about the consequences, but just seeing the state that Penny was in, he knew that he couldn't take the same recklessness from her. Briefly images came back of another time, another smaller figure covered in gashes among a pile of broken glass. A lump rose in his throat that made him bite down and grit his teeth, fighting down that same feeling of being powerless.
"Alright," it was quiet, choked off by his anger, but he wasn't a wuss. Physical trauma didn't make him shy away and if Penny really had a dislocated shoulder, he could speak first hand for how painful it was. He'd told her, in fact, of the time he'd dislocated it in the ******** and had to do it for himself - he had no doubt that was why she was asking him now.
He slowly unwound his arms from around her and pried off the hand that was gripping his bicep. "You need to sit down, I don't want you to pass out." Before she could even protest he was moving her, all but picking her up and sitting her down himself. He steered her to the couch arm instead of the couch, finding that it was probably a better angle. He set one hand on her shoulder, just above her collar bone, to hold her still and then gripped her upper arm with the other. His hand wrapped nearly all the way around her tiny arm, making him aware of just how small she was compared to him.
"Alright, ready?" He drew a deep breath that seemed almost as much for her as it was for him. "One, two - " and he shoved before he ever got to three. There was a distinct, loud pop as her joint slid back into place and he held her, sure that if he moved she might topple over.
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Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 1:44 pm
Penny let out a scream that she didn't even attempt to contain. It was loud and guttural. There was a chance it might have woken her neighbors. The walls of her apartment were not exactly soundproof. Her head went light and fuzzy, and for a second, she thought she might pass out. But fainting would only add more embarrassment to her. Tears fell from her eyes, but she choked back the sobs. She sat like that, hunched forward, for five minutes before she attempted to speak again.
"D-don't worry about the neighbors," she stammered, one hand fumbling in the couch for something. "A large dark-skinned man just showed up at my door, and they know I'm a screamer." There was no laughter. It was an attempt at levity that hit off-mark.
Her hand came out from the couch holding an old blue sling. After she texted Kam, she thought of it. She'd used it once before to fake an injury from a car accident after being too hungover to attend her sister's birthday party two years ago. Gingerly, she looped it over her neck and rested the arm inside of it.
Despite the pain, Penny still looked half-dead. The cuts on her stomach seemed toxic. Many were already pus-filled. A few were black with grime. It was obvious Penny hadn't done anything to clean or heal them. Her lips moved, but her eyes were staring straight ahead, blurred on a spot on the carpet. "It happened so fast," she murmured. "b***h broke my beer and then I fell on it." Her good hand gestured to her stomach. "There's glass still in there. I can feel it when I move." She shuddered at the memory of the pain.
"I didn't see her coming, but I felt it. It was like a cold black hand creeping behind me. I just didn't know what it is was and then..." A tear rolled down her cheek. "She's one of them. She's one of the ones we are supposed to fight, and she almost killed me. I had to wade through s**t to survive." Her chin prickled, and another fat tear trailed down her flushed cheek.
Exhaustion began to hit her. Penny eased back on to the couch, exposing the full horror of the cuts to her stomach. There were two deep gashes made obviously by a metal edge. Her upper thighs and bare arms were cut too. Bruises had just begun to crop up. To put it lightly, Penny looked like she'd been to Hell and back.
Slowly, weakly, Penny raised her wet, red eyes to Kam's. "I feel so useless, Kam," she whispered.
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Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 1:45 pm
He tried to smile at her joke but after he'd just heard a scream rip through the apartment that he knew was all pain, he couldn't find it in him to laugh at her expense. She was bruised and broken and still trying to make him comfortable with what was happening. That said something about her.
"You're not useless, Penny." He was gearing up for a motivational speech, but he was lacking in the inspirational department most days. He felt like a child that didn't know how to do this. "You survived something on your own, you had.. the will to walk all the way through that to get home, right?" He moved to sit down on the couch cushions beside her, his huge body perched on the edge of the seat to try and give her tinier one as much room as possible. At such close range he could see the damage and the infections setting in. He at least knew first aid, he could deal with this even if it was more terrifying to think about doing it to someone else. Most of his knowledge came from taking care of himself.
"We all lose sometimes. When I was in my senior year, this kid punched me and knocked me out with one ******** hit." He shrugged his shoulders and then reached out to set a heavy hand on her uninjured one. "I just passed out there in front of the whole damn school, it was stupid." Yeahp, that was his failed attempt at comfort.
Even if he seemed like he was being awkward about everything, he was still filing away every little thing she said. Penny might not be in any shape to get her revenge, but Kam certainly still was. The first thing he had to do, though, was take care of his partner.
"I'm going to try and clean you up a little, alright?" He shifted then, moving to stand up and.. see if he could find anything even remotely resembling a first aid kit.
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Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 1:45 pm
Penny could do what had to be done. In the past, that meant pulling all-nighters to keep her grades up, or schmoozing broadcasting somebodies to get internships and jobs. Now, it meant something else. She had always fancied herself to be the kind of person who could cut her own arm off if it meant going on to live another day. After her battle with the Nega, Penny felt sure of that fact. She didn't give up. She didn't balk at pain or hardship. She did what had to be done, no matter how terrible or difficult it was to do.
This single thought brought her comfort, even as her body was wracked by another wave of pain. A grimace broke out on her face. She groaned, squeezing her eyes shut. "I took a few stabs before I went down," she said through gritted teeth, trying to talk through the pain. "Such a p***y, Kambo...jojo." The insult was half-hearted, but Penny continued to try, even as the tears fell from her eyes.
When Kam stood to look for cleaning supplies, Penny muttered something else inaudible, her hand going slack at her side. "The one that attacked me," she began again, eyes still shut, "was only a little taller than me. Short hair, looked light brown I think. She had a spear with some feathers or something on it. Her eyes were light. Her uniform was light brown with... some greenish, I think. She talked like a ******** idiot. She had..." Her voice trailed off, only partially done with the description.
After too many hours of consciousness, Penny finally felt safe enough to allow sleep to come. Kam was there; Kam would take care of her. She trusted him in a way she had never trusted anyone before. Half-naked and badly wounded, Penny fell asleep sitting upright on her couch.
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Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 1:51 pm
Kam managed to smile, very faintly, at her half-hearted insult. She was still in pain but that was the Penny he knew.
He paused where he was, half turned from her, when the description started to fall from her lips. Did Penny know he was going to leave her when he was done to go out and track the b***h down? Surely not, she never would have let him go alone. Except.. she was giving him a lot of information. He glanced back at her just in time to see her body go slack and give in to sleep and his question died on his lips.
"I've got this, Pen," he murmured softly under his breath, then made his way to the bathroom he'd been in so many times. The next hour was spent digging through supplies and cleaning her up. When he finally left the apartment, Penny was clean, bandaged and tucked into her bed.
Now he had another job to do.
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