Chapter 4 - "Nansi Kuwes"
Nansi Kuwes crawled from atop her Ducati Scrambler, letting out a deep huff as she did so. Smoothing down her loose-fitting hoodie, Nansi looked about from beneath the gray hood over her head. No one was outside, which wasn't a surprise. The neighborhood where Nansi lived, in Gotham's Chinatown, wasn't necessarily a friendly place. The neighbors didn't wave and have idle chit-chat, and Nansi wasn't necessarily perturbed by it.
Better no talk than bad talk.
At nineteen, Nansi was already on her own. She had ran away from her parents' house in Maine when she sixteen, due to problems unavoidable—not her fault, nor her parents'. Just a little bit of coincidence, a lot of bad luck.
Nansi ambled towards her apartment door, fiddling with her key as she pushed it into the lock and twisted the door open. Pushing it aside, she walked in, toting a plastic bag of groceries with her. As she pushed the door back shut, she locked it and moved to the kitchen counter. She flicked on the light and dropped the bag on the counter, emptying it out.
As she removed the nice, juicy, thick-cut steak from the bag, Nansi's mouth literally began to water. She had had steak many times before, and when scanning the aisles for something to eat, this had jumped out at her. Nansi rummaged through the rest of the bag and withdrew some spices; she always loved to try and shake up the flavor of her meal whenever possible. It was a bit of a pastime with her—try as many different foods as possible, and let the good ones stick with you.
Nansi quickly went about the arrangements to prepare the steak for cooking, and once she got the stove to heat, she turned away and put aside the other things she had bought at the store. A carton of milk, some eggs, and some bacon—her breakfast for the next few days. Maybe lunch or dinner, if they jumped out at her for one of those meals.
Nansi tossed the empty bag into the nearby trashcan, and she let out a refreshed breath of air. Food was cooking, everything else was put in its place—and she was in the privacy of her own apartment. Reaching up, Nansi withdrew the hood back from her head, revealing the dark brown hair she kept in a messy pixie cut . . . and something else.
Two dark brown coyote ears wide set upon her head, their light brown tips peeking through her locks of hair. Nansi ruffled her air and caught sight of herself in the cracked mirror on the kitchen wall. Taking in her high cheekbones and thick eyelashes, Nansi sheepishly smiled and scratched at the back of her head. She was attractive, even by human standards. If you overlooked the canine aspects, that is.
The ears were the primary reason behind Nansi's decision to wear a hoodie most of the time, as she didn't want to frighten people off with such an inhuman appearance. Aside from the ears, there was nothing noticeable to differentiate her from a regular teenage girl. On the outside, at least. Within, Nansi was developed with the senses of a coyote, a characteristic she had possessed since she was thirteen. A year later she began to adopt a more coyote-like appearance, with the ears and a thin layer of dark brown fuzz-like fur that coated her body. This was often able to be hidden from public eye, however, beneath Nansi's clothes.
The steak began to smell, the soothing aroma filling Nansi's nostrils. She licked her lips, revealing two rows of pointed teeth. When she did open her mouth to strangers, they often assumed the points were a result of some defect that altered the appearance of the teeth. If they only knew it wasn't just her teeth that were different. . . .
Nansi reached over to the steak and flicked off the stove, moving the pan to a place where it could cool. Not too cool, mind you; she liked her food warm. Nansi reached over the old, beat-up radio on the kitchen counter and flicked it on. Static buzzed before the feminine voice of a news reporter filled the air.
"Vicki Vale here, with Channel Five News. We are live at City Hall, where Mayor Hamilton Hill has just finished delivering an address speaking on the rash of crime that has affected Gotham in recent days. The mayor said that Gotham police is hard at work to distill any growing threats from the major crime families, but in an unusual move he refused to name any potential threats to the public, causing even greater uproar in a time when the people are fed up with noncommittal answers.
"Even more puzzling than the mayor's refusal to name suspects, however, is the disappearance of the vigilante known as the Batman. Today marks a week to the day after the masked hero of Gotham made his last appearance to take down a mobster. We have reached out to both the mayor's office and the GCPD, to no avail. Until we have any more news concerning either of these critical topics in Gotham City, stay tuned to Channel Five News for the latest in the city. This has been—"
Nansi turned away, her interest dwindling as the news broadcast ended. She had turned on the radio in hopes of hearing any news about the Batman's disappearance; he was sort of an idol to her, standing up to fight crime in a city where it got away unpunished a great amount of the time, as evidenced by the mayor's lack of a quick response to the growing chaos in the city's seedy underworld.
As she tipped the seasoning container in the air, Nansi salted the steak with the spicy-smelling flavoring as she sucked the aroma through her nose. She almost drooled at the soothing smell the meat elicited, but she didn't dare. She'd be able to eat it soon enough.
It had been a little under a year since Batman had first begun to appear in Gotham. Nansi had been a resident in the city for only a month or two when he first started to clean up crime. Sure, Gotham was in worse shape now than it was then, but there were a lot of people whose doors that could be laid at—such as Mayor Hill's, Nansi thought with disgust.
She despised the man. Yeah, he gave his speeches to try and soothe public nerves, but she didn't buy his goody-two-shoes attitude, not one bit. If he really meant it, why hadn't he done anything concrete? The whole crime family incident was a clear indicator of that. Everyone knew Carmine Falcone was the prime suspect, Nansi deduced. So why wouldn't Hill just declare Falcone a public threat and send all the forces GCPD could muster and take him down?
"Probably 'cuz all of the GCPD is corrupt," Nansi said to herself with a snort. She wasn't too far off from the truth; a good chunk of the Gotham police force was either bought off by one of the crime families, or simply looked out for themselves, taking the job for its benefits and refusing to step in harm's way.
There were a few good cops though, Nansi would admit that much. The commissioner, James Gordon, was proof enough of that. Nansi had run into him once before, when she helped a mother and her young daughter when they were nearly the victims of a robber. Nansi had been speeding home on her Scrambler when she saw the glint of a firearm in one of the Chinatown alleys.
Stowing her bike in a shady street, Nansi had went back and saw a scruffy-looking guy holding the woman and her little girl at gunpoint. Acting before thinking, really, Nansi had leapt out and, with lightning-fast reflexes, swatted out with a hand and clawed the man's gun into the shadows.
Thinking back to the moment, Nansi glanced down to the weapons in question. Rather than fingernails, small claws came from her fingertips. They looked closer to nails than claws, yes, but they were thinner and more pointed and sharp, like claws. Nansi had drawn blood and used her other clawed hand to scratch the man's face. Before he knew what had happened, she had grabbed him by the arm and threw him on his face. Somehow, when she had adopted the coyote senses and appearance, Nansi had also gained some superhuman abilities, among them enhanced speed and strength. In addition, she possesses great eyesight and tracking abilities, which help boost her whenever she goes into anthro-coyote, where she adopts an almost fully canine appearance and becomes a nearly unstoppable force, tearing through flesh and cloth with her enhanced claws and jaws.
Nansi, thinking of her strong teeth, rubbed her jaw tenderly. She had never really had the heart to attack someone with her teeth; it made her feel almost animal to do so. Despite her quirks, like the canine appearance and senses, Nansi really, deep down inside, wanted to be a regular person. Not some mutated canine creature, but a regular, teenage girl. Since she had run away from home, she hadn't had the regular things a teenager should experience. All her friends and family were still back home. The only close friend she kept in touch with was Jackie Sapiel, a girl with sandy blonde curls who had been Nansi's friend since preschool. She was the in-between for Nansi and her family and other friends, the ones she had stuck with for her early years.
She didn't have the heart to contact them all personally, just Jackie. As her best friend, Jackie watched her back—and she wasn't at all fazed, seemingly, by the coyote appearance and senses.
As Nansi devoured her steak without much more than a few breaths of fresh air, she licked the grease and gristle off her fingertips and let out a satisfied moan. "That was delicious, if I do say so myself," she said to herself as she put the dishes away.
Nansi threw off her hoodie and tugged her shirt up, and looked at herself in the mirror. Almost every inch of her body was covered in the brown fur that formed a thin layer of fuzz over her body. Staring in utter silence, Nansi examined herself closely. The body no one had seen outside of her and her family. Who could blame her? Why would she want anyone to know that beneath her clothes was fur?
Nansi undressed and went to her bedroom, slipping on a pair of shorts and buttoning up a red plaid dress shirt, so it would cover all the fur well enough. As she curled up on her couch and reached for the TV remote, her phone buzzed. Curious at who might be texting her, she bent over and grabbed the phone, peering at the notification. She thought it might've been Jackie, relaying some news. They spoke a couple times a week, maybe every other day.
But it wasn't Jackie.
The message was from . . . the GCPD?
Eyes narrowed as Nansi opened the text and read it. The message seemed unreal—could it really be meant for her?
Nansi read it fully, and then reread. Then she reread it again. She almost read it a fourth time when she rubbed her temples. Could this really be happening?
The message was from the GCPD all right, Commissioner Gordon himself. He introduced himself and explained that he remembered her from their run-in the night she had helped the mother and her daughter. He also admitted to doing some checking up on her after the mother mentioned that she had moved with so fast of reflexes. He said that he didn't have any concrete details, but by way of reasoning, he said that he knew she was special, and that night had proved it.
Nansi breathed softly, still overwhelmed by the message. And then she reread the part that intrigued her the most.
"Through funding provided by several key Gotham investors, the federal government has authorized an initiative to fight the crime families of Gotham and try to make the city a safer place in the Batman's absence. If you are interested, please let me know. If you are, we will be meeting tomorrow night at seven p.m. to discuss the details. Come to GCPD headquarters if you are interested and inform the desk of who you are, and you will be directed to a place where you can learn more about the initiative."
Below, in a separate paragraph, was a P.S. with a note that had caught Nansi's eye.
"Listen, kid; I know that whatever you've got, it's something special. Something that can be used to stop the stuff that's going on in Gotham. Now, I won't say your quite the Batman's level—I don't know if anyone is—but you've got a similar style. Trust me on that."
Thoughts screamed through Nansi's mind. If I take this job and help stop the crime families, then I'll prove that I'm not a monster. I'd be a . . . a hero. The thought caused a flicker of a smile to appear on Nansi's mouth. Without a second thought, she typed in her response.
"I'll be there tomorrow at seven." Without wasting a moment, she quickly tapped "send."
A/N: Here's chapter 4, the introduction to Nansi Kuwes. A more power-centric character, Nansi possesses a few superhuman abilities all-her own that can be quite an asset to the Titan Movement. What'd you guys think of the new chapter and character? Leave your thoughts in the reviews, and let me know how you like the story thus far! The next chapter will be released soon. Thanks for reading!