[BAT]The Cat Who Trawled the Wreckage[Thuban+Atlas+Tanz]-fin

[Shazari]

Every so often, there came times in a person's life where they asked themselves, how did I get here? Life was strange, and complicated, and generally had a tendency to do the thing which a person would least like it to do at any given time. Or, more precisely speaking, this was the truth as it happened to apply to Charlemagne Boyle.

It was a foggy night, and evening dampness had begun to collect on his bare skin (which there was too much of) and his crisp clothing (which there was too little of). Thuban wrapped the usually-dragging brown cloak around himself for warmth, and to keep some of the mist off.

He had a flashlight and a crowbar both awkwardly gripped in his left hand. He was wearing a skirt -- some kind of toga, of course, but a skirt was nonetheless a skirt in the functional sense, whether you called it a toga or a kilt or a loincloth or whatever else. He was standing on a doormat that said Wipe your paws! in front of the charred remains of a building that had been gutted by fire, nearly taking a passel of cats with it.

And, those being the circumstances, he found himself asking: how did I get here?

His mother was a cat person. If there was a special interest piece in the newspaper about cats, she was sure to have read it. She had cat curio figurines and kitten calendars, and was probably the only university professor of Greek and Latin who had, in her classroom, the kitschy poster with the kitten dangling from a tree on it that said "Hang In There, Baby!" in neon cursive letters.

When she'd read the article about the fire at the animal shelter, and the mysterious "sailor senshi" sighting, she'd latched onto the incident with all her imagination -- and was now convinced of the anti-cat conspiracy being perpetrated by the sailor senshi.

"Well, it's a gang, is what it is, this sailor thing with the young people!" she'd insisted. "And they say, they do say -- they say violent criminals always start with animal abuse. You remember a few months back when there were all those cat murders, back when the sailor stories first started showing up. I'll bet you anything this was an initiation.

"Here's what I think happened," she'd gone on, "I think someone spotted that sailor boy leaving the scene of his crime, and he had to pretend to be saving the kittens so they wouldn't suspect. But it's so flimsy, anyone could see through it. Who I really feel badly for are the kittens. Animal protection laws are so lax."

It wasn't that Thuban remotely believed sailor senshi ran around menacing the cat population of Destiny City, or taking terrorist action against places where cats might congregate. He found himself here, starting to poke exceedingly carefully through the burnt-out remains, because a sailor senshi had been here, and cats had been here too -- Astraea possibly? -- and the fire had been more than a little suspicious as a result. A youma attack? A setup? It was worth checking out, and he was tired of all this passive justice, all this going out on patrol all the damn time like a beat cop, knowing that injustice was taking place somewhere in the city and having to hope that it would happen to take place exactly wherever Thuban was patrolling at the time. He had a duty to do more than patrol ineffectually, right?

So here he was, never having seen a single episode of CSI, sifting through blackened pieces of wood, getting a splinter under his thumbnail. He had seen a CSI billboard once -- but that wasn't very helpful. He searched on, the damp fog making his cloak increasingly heavy.  

[cibarium]

The Destiny City Animal shelter had seen better days, definitely, but still did what it could to continue catering to the needs of the town's population of all creatures large and small in need of good homes. There was a donation drive now to help get the damaged parts of the cat wing rebuilt - a volunteer-run shelter only had so much in the way of funds - and in the meanwhile the space still available had gotten a little cramped, but there was really nothing else that could be done if they wanted to continue sheltering homeless dogs and cats from the soon-to-be-winter air.

This made Sailor Atlas feel kind of bad. Not only for the plight of the poor unloved animals living there, but for the volunteers working at the shelter as well, considering how he was consistently coming back and introducing new residents into the place.

Tonight's guests: a pair of smoke-colored kittens he'd spent an entire two hours carefully and painstakingly coaxing out of a storm drain. He was thanking whatever benevolent powers-that-be that it had only gotten foggy outside and not started raining, or the damp felines huddled up in his arms might not have come out of it alive. Right now he was content to only worry that he wasn't able to do enough to keep them warm, underdressed for the weather as he was. It was a marvel he'd gotten sort of used to being this cold whenever he snuck out of Hillworth in search of... in search of whatever it is senshi were supposed to be looking for when they did this.

For him it usually ended up being helpless animals.

He was fairly preoccupied fussing over the passengers in his arms when he entered through the flimsy gates of the shelter and walked near the wreckage Thuban was investigating - one of them dug a set a playful claws into his gloves, which made him appropriately respond with "Ow, hey...!"  

[Shazari]

Thuban had settled closer to the ground, genuflecting near the first pile of rubble, in order to get a better look. The upside of this was that it had spared his muscles the eventual agony of crouching for an extended period of time. The downside was that when he heard the sudden yelp of a startled voice a few feet behind him, and pivoted to face his possible attacker, it was a mildly awkward affair and his own cloak slowed him down.

Adding to the awkwardness, he didn't have much in the way of actual battle instincts, so he brandished the crowbar before him but he still had the flashlight gripped in the same hand right alongside it -- so it was a little obvious he didn't entirely know what he was doing. He was armed with a crowbashlight.

And his 'attacker' was armed with -- kittens.

Thuban didn't regain his composure right away, but stayed as he was for a few embarrassing minutes, staring at the kitten-toting intruder.

It seemed almost impossible, but he was pretty sure it was the very same sailor senshi from the blurry black-and-white photo in the newspaper. This was surely the only reason he stared, was the absurdly serendipitous timing of it.

The boy with the kittens was tall, unusually so -- but he was rather delicately built, for that, with posture that turned in just so and big, guileless eyes that were usually seen on prey animals. Henna-brown hair made its best effort to hide his face, but to know avail -- one look at this other sailor senshi told Thuban all he needed to know: there was nothing about the young boy that advertised 'hero for justice!,' but there was even less that remotely resembled 'anti-cat terrorist bent on destruction and maiming.'

"It's you," he said, with his usual charm. "From the article. Have you got a cat obsession or something."  

[cibarium]

Those childlike wide eyes were a perfect fit for the classic deer-in-headlights look when the beam of Thuban's crowbashlight suddenly illuminated him. Atlas yelped again -- this time in surprise at the motion of the other senshi -- and stumbled a couple of steps backwards, looking all the world like he thought that Thuban knew what he was doing and was on the offensive.

When no crowbar came wailing in his direction, though, he relaxed just a tiny bit, letting go of the breath he was holding for those few seconds and puzzling over the look of the senshi in front of him. The liberty spikes and toga-skirt and impractically long grey cloak all looked sort of familiar, and he was all but ignoring one of the kittens turning its playfulness towards his neck tie as he tried to piece together exactly where and when it was he'd seen this guy.

At least this way the few minutes of awkward staring was a mutual thing. They both stumbled around looking composed for a while-- with Thuban regaining his first, and the deadpan way he addressed Atlas ensured he wouldn't be done looking out of place for a good while.

One of his hands curled around to scratch at the ears of one of his woefully temporary companions. "Er... n-n-n-no," he said, in his typical passive stutter, "I... I just run into them a l-lot, I g-guess."

He paused.

"...I w-was in an article?"  

[Shazari]

"Does anyone read the damn newspaper anymore?" Thuban muttered to himself. But he aimed the flashlight politely out of Atlas's eyes and got to his feet, looping his cloak in a now-familiar habit over one arm, to keep it from dragging.

Now that he was standing, Thuban could tell that the other boy was a definite few inches taller than he was. This was somehow irritating. But he was part of what Thuban had come here to find, if somewhat more conveniently than he had expected the finding process to go so, all in all, Atlas was satisfactory. Except for the kitten which was trying to strangle him.

Without asking permission (you didn't really need permission to rescue someone, after all, did you?), he crossed over to where the dark, tousle-haired boy was fidgeting and lifted the kitten murderer by the scruff of its neck and removed it from where it had been bent on strangulation by necktie. He bent his arm over his ribcage and settled the kitten there in the crook of his elbow, thus reforming it from its brief life of crime.

They'd had cats when Charlie was young, before his father became allergic. It was no big deal, really.

"It was on the front page of the local section, with your photo," he offered, omitting any segue. "Apparently one of the shelter workers saw you rescue a bunch of cats from the fire, got your picture." My mother thinks you're a future serial killer was also omitted.

"I'm Sailor Thuban." One of his hands was now holding a kitten, a crowbar, and a flashlight. The other was held out to Sailor Atlas.  

[cibarium]

Having his personal space invaded was something Atlas had long since resigned himself to as a part of his everyday life. It happened often. Whether it was his cheerleading captain molesting him or Castor overenthusastically dragging him out to patrol, he had become accustomed to the fact that the universe wasn't going to allot him much more than the room he needed to breathe anytime soon -- and so, when Thuban moved in to take one of the cats away he didn't say or do anything in protest.

He was a little sad to see the kitten go, but was also grateful the encounter had not led to a hearty backslap or some other uncomfortable display of brotherly love.

Atlas still couldn't quite fit where in his memory this other senshi belonged. Before this one he'd only had an extended meeting with three others, only one being male, and he most definitely was not Sailor Castor. Castor was rowdy, and kinda pushy, and ended a lot of sentences with "and s**t." He also had considerably less leg exposure than Thuban -- Atlas was morbidly amazed that his own less-than-modest shorts left more to the imagination than Thuban's skirt-thing did.

"Sailor Atlas," he answered, and then treated Thuban to what was probably the most wishy-washy handshake he had been subject to in his entire life. "It's, uhh... n-nice to m-meet you...?"

The kitten Thuban had taken was now directing its interest towards the tassel cords decorating his own outfit, batting and lunging at them with a resurgence of its youthful playfulness.  

[Orestae]

It was a bad night for Winifred McKinley, an elderly shelter volunteer who had taken up tending to lost and abandoned animals when the boredom of retirement became far too much to bear.

She swallowed hard, and the coppery taste of blood made her wonder just how likely it was that she was going to die tonight. There was no telling how long they'd been at this. To her, it seemed like an eternity. To the purple-haired woman who now sat upon the front desk of the shelter, using the letter opened to pick crusted blood out from under her nails, it likely seemed much, much shorter. Swinging her heels as though she were a bored child, the woman looked up at her after a lengthy period of time. Her expression was emotionless, but the slight narrowing of those cold grey eyes gave the impression that she was growing quite tired of their little game.

But Winifred didn't know the answer to the questions this woman had been asking her. She didn't know who the senshi was who had saved the cats. She didn't know when he would show up or why he did or who took his picture. She didn't know, but no amount of saying that seemed to convince her captor.

Why, why had she decided to stay late, alone, tonight of all nights?

The piece of duct tape that covered Winifred's mouth prevented her from spitting out the blood that leaked from the place where she'd bit down on her own tongue, a unfortunate side-effect of one of those stiletto boots coming into contact with her jaw. She dragged in another long, shuddering breath through flared nostrils, and met the woman's gaze with her own pleading, wide-eyed stare. Please, please just let me go, she thought, as though the strength of her will alone would convince her.

Tanzanite grinned in response.

She slipped off of the desk, and it toook only a couple of strides to close the space between her and her unfortunate victim. Wrong place, wrong time. The shelter worker was tied to a chair only a few feet away, her limbs taped down as securely as her mouth. With the lights shut off to avoid giving away that there were still people inside, only the security lights on the sign outside illuminated the main lobby. It cast a pale orange light upon Tanzanite's pale skin as she placed the tip of the letter opener just beneath the woman's wrinkled face, the point of it pressed against the soft pit at the base of her throat.

“All I want,” she drawled in that monotonous tone of hers, “Is his name. Just a name, and you'll be free to go on living your sad, sorry, pathetic life. Now, I'm going to remove this,” she whispered, digging a nail under one corner of the duct tape, “And you will tell me his name. Think of your family, hm? I'm sure there's someone in this world that needs you other than your darling cats.”

With a hard yank, like pulling off a bandaid, Tanzanite tore the duct tape away. For a moment, Winifred looked up at her, her blue eyes wide. Her face looked not so much like wrinkled skin as it did a ball of cobwebs with eyes set in. Her mouth worked, soundless and afraid, unsure of what to say.

And then, she made the terrible mistake of letting out one shrill, terrified scream. A scream that she hoped, desperately, someone might hear.

It ended quickly, fading away into a soft, gasping gurgle as Tanzanite shoved the letter opened through her windpipe. It slipped through easily with the strength of the Negaverse agent behind it, stopping only when it collided with her spinal column. With a hard yank she ripped it out, and watched as the blood flowed out. It would be a slow death, an agonizing mix of slow bleeding and suffocation without her hands available to cover the hole.

Neither remorse nor regret colored Tanzanite's face as she returned to the desk, lifting herself back onto the surface to watch the woman struggle in her last minutes of life. There was only a flash of disappointment, followed by a faint smile as she snatched a tissue from the brightly colored box on the desk and began to wipe the blood from her hands.  

[Shazari]

Thuban and Atlas both flinched at the scream, which was a pretty natural reaction for just about anyone. The scream had come from inside the building that stood just a few feet away from them, and ended in a sharp yelp and a sudden silence. It was a terrible thing to hear -- the vicious sort of sound that engraved its echo in your eardrums so that you could never forget how it sounded for as long as you lived. Whenever you let your guard down, whenever you turned off your car radio as you pulled in the driveway or flicked off the lights on your way to bed, whenever a hallway was dark or a waiting room was quiet, just you and the clock -- that was when sounds like this scream might come back to you. That was when a scream like this rang out faintly just at the periphery of sound. It was desperate agony.

Still in the midst of their handshake when they heard the noise, Thuban's bare hand clamped down hard, reflexively, on Atlas's gloved one. The kittens flinched too -- in fact, the one on his arm had given a sharp, terrified hiss, dug all its claws briefly down into Thuban's skin, and then leapt away at a dead sprint. "s**t!" he reacted, nearly dropping the flashlight and crowbar -- but it was only a momentary distraction.

In the next moment he was pulling on Atlas's hand, toward the building. If this was Sailor Thuban's duty, fighting for justice, then he could only assume it was Sailor Atlas's as well. That being the case, they were both bound to be headed in the same direction. "Let's go." Releasing the other boy's hand, he pivoted and ran towards the building. It was now disturbingly silent.

He assumed Atlas was right behind him, and hoped the sailor senshi had a braver face he usually put on for situations like this. After all, he had run into a burning building. That had to count for something.  

[cibarium]

Atlas was silent, evenly tense as that single, frantic note draped itself desperately over the air around them. He'd flinched, yes, but never quite rebounded from it, arms shaking and jaws clenched, features drawn taut into sickened, sad horror. He'd heard a fair share of screaming in his young life - really, the rabble that took place at Hillworth meant that he pretty much heard someone scream for some reason or another every day. People were noisy. People were rowdy. It was a fact of life.

But not like this.

Hillworth screams were borne from immaturity, anger, and frustration. This one wasn't.

It was the noise of someone clambering to stay alive.

The kitten in his own arms leapt away and clambered after its sibling, and Sailor Atlas was left to be tugged towards the source of the sound by Thuban - to and into the building in which, he realized, someone might have just died. Because the scream had been so abruptly cut off, hadn't it? And there wasn't the sound of anyone... running, or otherwise still being alive, was there? Thuban was running to what was very possibly the scene of a gruesome death and for some reason Atlas was following. This made the blood rush in his ears more loudly than a burning building ever could.

The only real indication to Thuban that Atlas was following was the discordant noise of harried breathing and his boots hitting the ground. If he looked behind him the face he'd see wouldn't be brave in any sense of the word.  

[Orestae]

Tanzanite was pinching the spaces between her fingers with the tissue as she watched Winifred McKinley flounder hopelessly. Every raggedly drawn breath brought blood flooding into her lungs, and every attempt to scream only sent it gushing back out through the hole in her throat. Her body rocked with futile attempts to free herself from the chair, and Tanzanite watched with a twisted sense of pride as the woman managed to tip the chair over on it's side. Her head connected with the concrete floor with a loud, wet thwack.

And then, Winifred McKinley gave one last, shuddering lurch and become utterly still. The blood from her throat began to pool around her head, seeping out across the cold concrete. Tanzanite watched, sighing her disappointment.

She had done everything right. She'd set the fire, draw out the senshi, and come back to reap the reward. Unfortunately, humans (a group which she no longer considered herself a part of) were unreliable creatures. They were fickle and petty and, while horribly predictable, they had a tendency to know absolutely nothing.

When Atlas and Thuban finally arrived at the door, Tanzanite would be standing beside the desk, still calmly cleaning flecks of blood from her palms. Winifred McKinley, that poor victim of being in the worst place at the worst time, would be lying limp upon the floor, her body still strapped to the overturned chair. There was little room for doubt as to what had happened, especially not when Tanzanite picked up the letter opener that had served as her murder weapon.

With an expression that showed not so much as the faintest sign of compassion or regret, she began slowly wiping the blood from the dull blade.  

[Shazari]

They should have had the advantage.

It was dark. The crowbashlight was now a crowbar and a flashlight again, one in each arm as they raced down the hallway, chasing the flashlight beam until it lit upon the right room. It finally cast its yellow-white beam through a doorway, picking up just the first flick of movement and then -- holy God -- it lit up everything.

They should have had the advantage. An experienced soldier would have. Thuban should've attacked right away, thrown Rust-and-Dust at the apparent murderer and had a go at her with his crowbar. It was fairly straightforward.

Instead, Thuban stopped quietly in the doorframe: two slow, shocked steps and then his feet couldn't carry him further, leaving him mute with the lintel and walls framing him out.

He knew the woman with her hair tied up in a long, dark ponytail. She'd been at the park, trying very hard to draw out senshi and then kill them, using helpless victims as bait. It was low and horrible.

He did not know the dead woman on the floor. And she had not been bait.

She was dead. Her blood still ran out, widening its domain over the floor, but the flashlight's white eye met with no answering recognition when it fell over her. Her life was gone, and now just spilling its epilogue red and shiny on the concrete.

He dropped the flashlight and it rolled a few feet into the room, spinning a pair of brief circles before it stopped. The glow of the flashlight sent their shadows cartwheeling around the room as it spun, a brief and manic dance -- and then the only light to see by.

Thuban braced his free hand against the doorjamb. How did I get here? he thought blankly, all his composure ebbing away with the dead woman. Dead woman, dead woman, he'd never seen a dead body in his life. He'd never done this. His hand quivered unsteadily against the jamb.  

[cibarium]

For the longest time there was nothing but the scraping patter of their footsteps down the corridor, turning corners, running and searching - the building was a small place but the lack of light made it seem almost like an entire separate reality, all of Atlas's focus on the fuzzy circle of space revealed by Thuban's flashlight. Bits of wall and furniture and window frame, and, once, a whiteboard with a list of chores and motivational words scrawled on it, blipped into and out of existence as they passed through silent, empty room after silent, empty room.

There were really only five rooms to look at. Among those there was only one room that, if prompted to recall the the event later, Atlas would remember.

Thuban's flashlight wasn't the most magificent piece of work in the history of artificial lighting. The beam didn't reach very far, and projected little nicks and scratches on the lens onto the walls. The light it produced was a little too yellow and made everything it illuminated look as if it were from some movie made from old cameras and poor-quality film, everything tinted slightly hazily bronze, caught in a washed-out sunset.

For the handful of seconds its light filled the room, however, wobbling momentarily in his grip and making all the shadows weave drunkenly against the walls and floor... for that small moment, that bargain-bin electric torch might as well have been a miniature sun.

It illuminated everything with sickening clarity, and, violent as a kick to the stomach, Atlas had become aware of where he remembered Thuban from, as his polar opposite was casually standing there in the middle of the room. Her mass of dark hair was just barely brushing the floor-- one tiny tip of it lapping at the scarlet pool still creeping out onto the slightly dusty concrete. The blood was starting to stain the heels of her stilettos as Atlas's gaze slowly crawled against its current, toward its source, unable to pull his eyes away even as the flashlight rolled across the floor and its beam played with the hollows and wrinkles of the woman's face. She was limp, unfocused, like a deflated version of the scream they'd heard earlier, and the dim, dusty light settled on obscuring her eyes within the shadows of her cheekbones.

Across the hall, some feet away from the doorway, there was a small thump against the back wall as Atlas stumbled and fell against it, trembling, his features pulled taut into a desperate grimace.  

[Orestae]

Grey irises fell upon Thuban when the spinning flashlight passed over him, and instantly they went wide with recognition. It was him. It was him. The boy at the park. The boy who had so painfully slipped through her fingers. The boy whose skin she still itched to have under her fingernails, who she so desperately wanted to peel back the eyelids of and watch while the light was snuffed from those eyes. Those damn eyes, which she remembered staring at her with condescension as he gave his little speech. Nothing in the world – no amount of power or money or rank – would please Tanzanite more than ripping those eyes from Thuban's skull. Never again would he look at her with superiority or judgment.

Never again would the Senshi of Antiquity look at anything. Not after tonight.

Inside of Tanzanite, something clicked into place. Or perhaps it simply snapped. Whatever switch, whatever small bridge existed between her emotions and her logical thought process ceased to exist the moment the two senshi had entered the room.

To hell with his starseed, she wanted his life.

What luck, what fortune, that the boy with him should be exactly the one she sought. The cat-saving senshi that some called a hero while others damned as a terrorist. It simply reconfirmed her already unwavering notion that the Negaverse was the side supported by whatever deities might be. These senshi, with their misguided notions of justice and love and equality, were nothing more than children trying to save a world that didn't deserve to be saved. A world full of cruelty and anguish and suffering; how dare they fight to prevent her from snuffing out each and every life in it. How dare they think that they were right.

Unfortunately for the duo, Tanzanite was an experienced soldier.

Only a brief moment passed between their entrance and the moment that Tanzanite was bearing down upon them like a hound on the fox. Only as long as it took for her eyes to recover from the sudden flood of light. Those long legs carried her halfway across the small room, a lunge for Thuban carrying her the rest of the way towards the pair. She would save him for last, but she wanted that crowbar. She wanted to make him watch as she slammed it into Atlas' head over and over until she was hitting nothing but a puddle of blood and broken bone on the concrete floor.  

[Shazari]

She had a knife in her hand. No, he noted sluggishly, a letter-opener. Tanzanite raised it in her hand as she came forward in a fury, looking nothing like any emotion he'd ever seen on a human face.

Thuban didn't have the speed or the instincts to parry her strike as she brought down the letter-opener, and he didn't have the room or the skill to dodge it. He had only the basic human instinct to protect his vital organs, and so he brought up his arms to block.

The metal sank into the tough, meaty muscle of his left arm, a bare half-inch under the skin. For a moment he didn't know if he blacked out or not, only a split-second ; then he screamed.

He tried to get away from her, but this was senseless, more simple and desperate human struggle. Thuban flailed, shoving at her hands with the crowbar still clutched in his, scrabbling to get her face away.

She punched him, the hit landing along his eyebrow ridge and smacking his skull briefly back against the wall. He planted his foot against her stomach and pushed. He forgot about anything else but protecting himself from the immediate threat of deadly violence.  

[cibarium]

It was like the park all over again.

Atlas had lost count of the number of nightmares he'd had about that night, and now the scene of one was recreating itself right before his eyes, the stony-eyed woman and her massive hair lunging forward. There was the deceptively soft noise of the letter opener hitting flesh, and Thuban screamed--

"No..."

--and a wild tangle of limbs as Thuban was backed into the wall not two feet away from where Atlas was frozen against it. It was a better resistance than he would have put up, but still frantic and unpolished, rapidly crumbling against Tanzanite's fury and persistence.

He could have done something. Should have done something, but instead he stood there trembling under a Have a Purr-fect Day! motivational poster and witnessing the relentless dismantling of the other senshi's defenses. His fingers unhelpfully curled against the paint, and his jaw was clenched so hard it was starting to make his face sore, not that he was noticing.

Atlas was dreadfully aware through all of this that his attack wouldn't be of any use here: not only would his ally be caught in the middle of it, but with the memory of a wrecked bridge still clear in his mind, he really didn't want to find out what it would do to a building. So he was useless to intervene, with no weapons, no fighting spirit; he had never so much as thrown a punch in his entire life.