Heyyy. Guess what? I've had this story line kickin around in my puny mind for a while, so I decided to post it. who cares if it don't have all the pretty fonts, I'll fix it at school. Oh, and I need a guy's name. It hasta be cool, but not like Joe or Bob or nuthin. so, I guess that means, if you have any ideas, review and tells me. Trust me, I'm all ears. As usual, and corrections, flames *blah, blah, blah* feel free to e-mail/review. NOW on with the show!
~*
Rya*~
**Re-edited
12/16/03, Fixin formats and such. Warning: extreme
violence in this chapter.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Prologue
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Walking down the street.
That's what I'd been doing when Alex found me and said Kara had been attacked.
He told me that she had been beaten and knifed, that he couldn't stop the
bleeding. "Hurry." He told me. I never ran so fast in my life. I must have started
up around Seventy-second street and made it all the way to Twelfth in a mere
half an hour. That's about, oh, three miles. If there were any streets, I
crossed without even looking, ignoring all the honking cars.
I practically galloped up the rusting fire escape steps, alone because Alex hadn't been able to keep up. I opened the rotting door so fast I tore it off its hinges. And there was Kara, laying in a pool of crimson blood, the puddle still visibly spreading. I knelt down in her blood, staring into brown eyes slowing losing their focus in this world. Her normally lightly tan skin was now closer in coloration to the pure white of untainted snow as it fell from the sky.
She was muttering to herself, saying something about her home, that she wanted to go home. And rings. She kept saying "The ring, the ring will save her." Obviously gone delusional from loss of blood. I'd seen it before, just not in anyone as close to me as Kara was. Even my brother Alex wasn't that close to me. No one was. "Take my ring, Dri, keep it." Kara suddenly came out of her imaginary world. And then she began convulsing, her body shaking so hard she rolled over and I could clearly see the stab wounds. Too many for anyone, even a surgeon, to kiss it and make it all better now. Frankly, I was surprised she'd managed to live this long. Most people don't live long after being stabbed fourteen times in the back. But Kara lived through rape, beating, and fourteen stab wounds for at least two hours. Just to tell me to take her ring. She died, not even two minutes later.
I took her ring from her right hand.
It was too big for my long fingers, so I put it on a chain I nicked from a
street vendor a couple days later. Alex and I had to bury her, right next to
the tree she was forever sitting in. She said it was shaped like one from her
home. I would generally roll my eyes and set out to take some prissy snot's
purse. I wish I hadn't done that. Instead, I should have asked what her family
was like, or why she was on the streets like me and Alex.
That's what I kept doing,
making a living by thieving. Until Hans and his foreign cronies declared a gang
war in the slums, that is. No one was safe, not even me and Alex. Fights and
blood were seen day and night. Even the bravest cops dared not come into the
block that had been given the name Fighter's Land. Corny, but the name fit us
perfectly. One night after I'd nearly been caught in the apartment I'd decided
to raid, yet another huge battle began. Alex had gone out, so I was left in our
apartment with only the rats and cockroaches for company.
Our place was pretty nice,
considering it was once a condemned apartment building. Ha. Like anyone dared
to tear it down. Last time an inspector came to look at this place, he'd been
knifed. It wasn't my fault he was standing where I'd been aiming. Alex said I
should be more careful not too attract so much attention, but I merely shrugged
off his advice. Then the people in the city started calling who ever was the
mysterious thief who defended an old and decrepit building Shadow Cat. Har, har, har.
Like I'm some X-woman. Yeah, right. That was seven years ago, when I was only
ten. Alex had just turned thirteen, but we both new I was the one who looked
out for us.
I got a job, walking some
guy's dog. Of course, he thought I was some innocent little girl trying to earn
money to buy a doll. I have never felt any want for a doll, much less owned on.
Oh, well. I certainly looked the little girl part back then. Big green eyes
that were rimmed with lashes everyone insisted on informing me were "very
long". I even wore a dress I'd stolen, and put ribbons in my hair. But as soon
as I picked up the dog I'd go a block and take the dress off, the ribbons would
come out. Then I was a little girl in shorts and a plain blue shirt. No one
knew I carried a knife, even then, and was the reason many people's wallets
were no longer where they had put them when they got home. The little girl act
was the perfect cover for a thief.
That's how I first met Kara.
She was two years older than me but looked to be the opposite. And she had a
very pretty knife that I thought I'd nick. Didn't know that she knew how to use
that thing like it was another part of her. Now I have a very pretty scar on
the top of my shoulder where she sliced the skin. She thought she'd teach me a
lesson, but actually I just became her friend. Don't ask me how. I just did. We
stayed best friends until the day she died. She even lived with me and Alex,
and later those two became involved. She was pregnant with his kid when she was
murdered.
That night I was originally
talking about? The one with the big fight? That's when Han's decided to try a
number on me. He and his boys stormed our empty building, searching for me. I
guess they thought I was pretty, and wanted to get me in bed with them. Hmmph. Like I'd touch Hans or any of his gang with a ten
foot pole. Instead, they had to settle for a knife in the thigh, or one in the
arm. One guy, whose brains apparently were on vacation even got free
castration. Well, now he knows what "Hell NO!" means. I wasn't aiming to kill
them, yet, just hurt them enough to make 'em go away.
Didn't work. Hans and two others cornered me. One was bleeding from a gash
across his chest and Hans would in time have a new scar on his ugly face.
They grabbed my arms and Hans
hissed like a viper. "Gotcha, little bitch. Now I'll do you like I did your
friend last month."
Naturally, I got pissed. So, in the middle of my screaming at him as he groped my chest and started slobbering over my neck, I brought my knee up right into his very un-impressing manhood. He went white and his eyes started to water as small whining noises came from his throat. That second of surprise was all I needed to yank myself free from the grasp of the other two. I rammed my elbow into the guy on my right as hard as I could and simultaneously punched the other in the temple. Both went down, one unconscious and the other with a cracked rib or two.
I started running and my hand closed around the ring Kara gave me. I ran right through three others and down the stairs into the night before I collided with Alex, running to the rescue. We both fell, and the sound of bullets being fired ripped into the air. Alex jerked when one punched into his chest before he became as still as the nonliving pavement beneath him. Alex too had gone from my life.
My world shattered and I slowly stood. I took no notice of the tears on my face, but shouted into the air for Hans to kill me. I'd lost all wish to live. My fingers were running themselves around the ring as tears began treading their way down my face A silhouette became visible in the still lit room I had just fled from. One arm was raised, holding a small gun. The ache of my broken heart was worse than the thought of death. The figure with the gun fired, I felt pain like no other in my stomach and in surprise my finger slipped into Kara's ring just before I passed out.
**There we goes, re-edited.