Welcome to Gaia! ::

Kat smirked, having glanced back to see the man's fate. Karma was a great thing. Not that Kat had good karma, but it was the kind of thing that was due to happen to the man soon anyways. Perhaps she influenced the chaotic forces of Gaia in a less direct way then she thought she did. Maybe simply being who she was, she manipulated the balances of chaos and destruction.

Or maybe it was pure luck. She rarely gave serious thought to the more mystical aspects of the world. Being able to manipulate fire was enough magic for her, and the true bulk of that power came from her ring.

Still, the thoughts served to pass time, she thought as she rang her next victim's doorbell.

((KATBURGLAR! xd ))

"You? Kill me slowly?" The man laughed rudely. Kat looked at her gun.

"You do raise a point, the magnum has never been one for slow killings. I could just threaten to kill you outright, if you prefer."

"Or I could kill you first." The man said, as he pulled the trigger. The bullet left the gun with barely a whisper, yet it was enough for Kat to pick up as she quickly threw herself to the side. The bullet grazed her left arm, dodging bullets in close quarters was always a bit tricky.

Without hesitation, Kat shot back, hitting the man square between the eyes. He fell backwards, dead, a messy blood stain left on the wall behind him. The girl tsked as she picked herself up off the floor.

"Couldn't have been you then." She said to no one in particular. "Way too easy to kill." Unless there was someone else in the house. Though she'd have assumed they would come at the sounds, she hadn't been particularly quiet.

Well, better safe than sorry, she thought as she walked past the corpse to the stairs. She paused at the bottom step, and looked at the body. He wouldn't need that gun anymore.

Continuing up the stairs with the fancy gun in her other hand, she peeked into all the bedrooms. Nothing. Looks like the man lived alone in his salesman paranoia. She turned to head out the door...

And came face to face with a young boy. She started, looking at the boy, who stared at her silently. The gaze made her feel a bit nervous.

"What?" She growled. "It's not smart to confront someone who just killed your dad." The boy continued to stare at her. He looked about 10. "Shock or something?" She didn't like kids. "Look, it's your dad's fault. If he'd just answered, I wouldn''t have killed him." She edged around and away from the silent child, who just continued to watch her.

"Okay, you're too wierd." Sliding the new and fancy gun into her bra, she pulled out the wallet she'd stolen from the doctor. She removed $200 cash from the wallet, and put it on the ground in the 4 foot gap between her and the boy. "My advice kid, is to stick that in your shoe and get out of here. You might learn something."

With that, she turned around and quickly walked out of the house, locking the door behind her. She didn't turn around until she had left.

"One more person off the list." She said quietly as she headed back to the hotel. It was time to get some sleep before handling the next set of people.

Several days later, and Kat had almost finished the list. Most of the people had seemed innocent, although she'd been following a couple of possible suspects. But for today, Kat was taking a breather.

She was sitting back in a nearby bar, wearing an expensive black jacket and very little else. Holding black umbrella close at hand due to the rain outside, she had no visible weapons on her. A drink was in one hand, but it wasn't alcoholic. She was looking to get some training in, and to get the feel of the city.

So far, she got the impression the city was poor. Lots of money grumbling and complaints about jobs. Unfortunately, it meant the people were a little too poor to afford enough to get as drunk as she would like. Ah well, starting a fight shouldn't be too tough the way she was dressed, a couple of guys had already attempted to hit on her.

Kat stared at the man in disgust.

"Just once, I'd like to be wrong about the world." She said with distaste. A decently dressed man beside her looked up.

"Would you like me to get rid of him for you?" He asked hopefully. He'd offered to buy Kat a drink several times already. The trucker stood up and looked at the man.

"Ya lookin' fer a fight?" He growled, staring past Kat. The younger man got up, about to retort as Kat watched the two bicker amused.

When they started pushing each other though, Kat decided it had gone far enough. The umbrella came up, striking the trucker across the face as she swung it. The trunker fell back as Kat stood up in front of him, her 5'2" frame tiny compared to his own.

A hush fell over the bar as the other patrons cleared a space. The other young man attempted to pull Kat away but she brushed him off.

"Come on big guy." She taunted. "Don't like when your victims put up a fight?" Her umbrella was held up between the two like a sword, though it's only hint as a weapon was the sharply pointed end. There was nothing else special about it as a weapon, though Kat had been practicing enough with the trident to make use of a stabbing weapon.

The trucker lunged at her, ignoring the umbrella. Kat stabbed his chest with the end and jumped out of the way of his lunge. The stab didn't do much damage, but it would hurt. The trucker, realizing he'd missed, turned and lunged again as Kat opened the umbrella and used it almost like a matador at a bullfight.

This worked until the trucker realized he was practically being teased. He lunged at the girl, but despite missing, he managed to stop himself from overshooting the umbrella. Kat took an ineffective stab at him before closing the umbrella quickly and buffeting him around the head. The trucker took a couple steps back, dazed, when the crowd decided to join in and jumped him.

Kat turned away, depressed by the ease of it, when the brawl pulled her in too. That was more like it, she thought, as she dodged and stabbed and slapped. She hit someone with the handle of the umbrella when suddenly someone punched her in the face. Falling to the ground, she avoided a sea of stomping feet and legs before whipping the umbrella and a leg in a circle, sweeping the feet out from everyone around her. As they all fell, she jumped to her feet, then to the rafters above her.

From there, the view was clearer. She spotted the inital trucker, slugging a path through the crowd, and decided to finish him off. She leapt from the rafters to land on his shoulders, holding the umbrella against his neck to strangle him. He thrashed desperately, trying to get her off, but succeeded only in taking down several surrounding people. When he passed out a minute later, atop a pile of bodies, Kat got off of him and looked around. The fighting seemed to have cleared, with her being the last one still standing. Several of the fighters were quietly slinking out the door, nursing bruises and bloody noses.

Kat just looked about at the unconscious bodies, and straightened her jacket. She gingerly touched her face where she'd been punched. That was going to leave a mark. Brushing a strand of hair from her face, she sat back down at the bar.

"Another Coke please." She called to the bartender.

Several hours later, having been lost and on foot, Kat walked into the hotel room herself. Crim had fallen asleep in the chair at the window, so Kat threw a pillow off the couch at him.

"These clothes were white when I left." She growled, looking over her once white outfit. Her pants had suffered the worst, torn and bloody on her left thigh, with the cuffs on the ankles burned and a rip near the waist. A once white blindfold was tied around her thigh. Her shirt was bloody too from a cut on her right upper arm, the arm itself covered in bloody drips. Overall, the wounds weren't as bad as they could have been, but the white clothes were probably destroyed.

Without waiting to see if Crim would wake up and reply, she walked into her bedroom, slightly limping. Making sure to lock the door behind her, she stripped the bloody clothes and walked into the bathroom. She cleaned up the cuts as best she could while taking a shower, wincing a bit at the pain, then bandaged them up when she got out. Then she fell asleep on the bed, the door still locked. It wasn't that she didn't trust Crim, but well, she wasn't stupid.

Sleep was an overstatement, her body as battered as it was, Kat was finding sleep difficult to achieve. This distraction, coupled with sensitive hearing, meant that she heard Crim like he was standing beside her.

"WHATDOYA WANT?" She yelled back, closing her eyes tightly and rolling over annoyed. Rolling over immediately proved to be a bad idea as her arm flared up in pain, so she rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling instead.

"But sleep sounded so nice." She muttered. The sound was unlikely to carry through the wall, but you never know. She sat up in bed, the idea of sleep having failed anyway.

"Sure, I'll be out in a second." She said loudly, hoping it carried. Did she trust Crim? Enough. He had been the one to wuss out first and call off the fight, after all.

She quickly pulled on a jacket and a pair of pants and went out to the common area between the rooms. Where... Crim had left all his weapons. She raised an eyebrow at them. Backstab was in HER nature, even if it wasn't in Crim's... She had no intentions of pulling something, but it did give her a better reason to trust Crim. If he was that stupid, it wasn't like he posed much of a threat.