The darkness overwhelmed Serena Calico as she lay dying.
No, this couldn't be happening to her! She wasn't fated to die like this, bleeding to death in an alleyway, the victim of a mugging-gone-wrong. If only she hadn't fought back, she might have made it through the encounter. She'd been blinded with rage, though. When the masked men had asked for her purse, she'd fought them with every iota of her strength. It hadn't been enough, though. One of them had produced a knife, and Serena Calico, for all her desperate will to live, was no match for cold steel.
She could feel the blood trickling down her side as she lay sprawled in the alley. She couldn't move, she could hardly breathe, and she knew that she was dying. She exhaled, and suddenly couldn't inhale. It was over for her. Rain washed the last bitter tears down her face.
An eternity passed in a moment, the passage of time meaning nothing to Serena Calico's cooling body. Warm breath caressed her lips. Was this some final indignity about to be heaped on her limp body? She was past caring.
A cat miaowed, the wail of a forlorn child.
"Open your eyes, Serena", a voice seemed to say to her, although she had no idea where it was coming from.
She heard another miaow, then another, and finally, a whole chorus of cat voices crying out to her. With each cry, it was as if her body was filled with life, her spirit renewed. What was happening to her? Was this death after all?
Serena Calico opened her eyes.
She still lay in the dark and rainy alley, but she was surrounded by furry bodies and bright eyes. Some of the cats were plump and well-fed, while others showed ribs, yet all of them were bedraggled from the rain, and all of them were staring at her.
She felt different somehow. Stronger, perhaps. She raised a hand and flexed it experimentally. It still looked the same. She was still Serena, yet, without a doubt, she was not the same person she'd been.
Suddenly she looked down. Where the gaping knife wound had been, there was now nothing, as if it had been healed instantly, or as if it had never happened. She couldn't have imagined it, though – the fabric of her dress was torn and bloody, yet there was no wound. Was she dreaming? She felt vague and distanced, as if she was looking at everything in a trance.
Serena sprang to her feet with a dexterity that surprised her. She looked around again, but all the cats were gone. She hadn't seen them flee; it was as if they'd just ... vanished.
"We didn't do a proper job on you the first time, eh?" a voice snarled from the darkness.
Panic gripped Serena. This miracle had been worked on her, and now she was about to face the same fate she thought she'd escaped! Three men advanced from the depths of the alley, one holding a gleaming blade. Their features were blurred by the pouring rain, the three of them indistinguishable until one of them spoke again.
"You should have kept your nose out of what didn't concern you. Now you'll pay for it!" the tallest of the men said, his words searing Serena with their savage fury.
As if in a dream, she stepped forward. Her body seemed to move of its own accord, with Serena merely an observer. She watched as she laid the first mugger low, with well-placed kicks. The second fell as quickly as the first. As she approached the one with the knife, he took a defiant swing at her. She heard herself laugh coldly, then dispatched him with the same ease. The knife fell to the ground with a metallic thud, lying uselessly on the tar as the cleansing rain washed it.
She collapsed to the ground, sudden knowledge and understanding washing over her. She was dead. She, Serena Calico, had been killed during a mugging. She'd been left to die, and she had indeed died. She knew that, somehow. Yet somehow she'd come back from the dead. The cats had something to do with it. She was stronger and more agile than she ever considered possible. She understood now. Working as one, the cats had given her life. They'd seen something in her, a thirst for justice and a desire to avenge her own senseless death.
She wondered briefly at her sudden acceptance of the bizarre fact of her death and rebirth. She'd lost her life that very night, and been revived in a ritual so strange that she would have found ludicrous in the pages of a science-fiction novel, and yet it all seemed so right to her. She didn't question what had happened to her. She just knew it. From scientist to superhero in ten minutes – she would have laughed if she hadn't remembered the agony of death.
And what did her would-be killers mean when they said that she'd pay? What was it that hadn't concerned her? As she'd lain dying in the alley, she'd thought that this senseless attack was nothing more than a random mugging. Now she knew that her death was something more.
Serena Calico rose shakily to her feet, the adrenaline of the last few minutes wearing off. She was alive, she was dead, she was everything and she was nothing. She was no longer the Serena Calico everyone had known, and she was filled with new purpose. She had new talents and new skills, and she was going to use them to find out the truth about her death. She'd prowl the rooftops and patrol the streets, with night as her ally and her cat-like powers as her weapon.
Catwoman? No, too passé. There'd been far too many of those. The Feline Avenger? That sounded better. More appropriate, somehow.
She straightened her body and pulled her shoulders back. She'd walk with confidence and face anything with equanimity. She was now the Feline Avenger.
Her lips curled in a smirk.
"Miaow", she said with a hiss.