Roses in Rain
a Weiss Kreuz fanfiction by laila

Part 5 – More Deadly Than the Male

The first thing that the group in the warehouse noticed about the newcomer, as they sprang pantherlike through the shattered window and somersaulted to the floor, landing neatly on the ball of one foot and, brushing a stray lock of hair from their face, gazing coolly and assessing out at their stunned audience, was that they were a woman.

The second thing was that she was stunningly beautiful.

She was tall and slender and seductively curved in all the right places. In the moonlight, her pearly skin seemed to glow snow-white, contrasting sharply with her glossy, thigh-length, raven-black hair with dyed violet tips which she wore pulled back in a high ponytail. A few loose feathery lavender-tipped strands framed her high cheekbones and lovely face, half-hiding dangly silver earrings in the shape of a cross with a shining jewel of palest amethyst, glistening like a single shed tear, in the center of each.

She wore a short black leather jacket, its sleeves, laced on with purple strings which revealed glimpses of her shoulders, pushed up to her elbows, over a deep plum top so dark it looked almost black, with a silver zip and black trim that perfectly flattered her womanly figure and revealed a few inches of her flat, toned midriff. Her brief black leather shorts were held up with a purple belt, showing off long, shapely legs encased in mauve and black over-the-knee stockings and black high-heeled ankle boots. A length of plum ribbon with long, hanging ends that curled and twisted out behind her in the slight breeze had been tied about her slender neck, and in each deceptively delicate, black-gauntleted hand she clutched a short silver sword, the elaborate designs engraved on their blades glowing azure against the darkness.

But it was her eyes that really made her onlookers catch their breaths. The girl's beautiful, hypnotic amethyst occuli, so bright as to almost seem to glow in the dark, were slightly narrowed in determination and blazed with an angry fire that spoke volumes about her strength and inner resolve. Her eyes said that here was no mere fragile beauty; she was a killer, a force to be reckoned with. Here was a woman who was not to be underestimated.

She looked, in that dark, dusty place, like a creature from a delirious daydream, sultry and exotic as someone from another world: she looked beautiful but she didn't look right. Assassins didn't look like that anywhere this side of comic books and casting calls…

Ken detested her on sight. Even Schreient hadn't looked that ridiculous.

Had nobody else realized that the only way she could have made her entrance at such a perfectly dramatic moment was if she had been waiting for it? Why hadn't she stepped in the minute they got into trouble, for Christ's sake—

"Calico!" Omi gasped, perfectly on cue.
"Well, well," The girl purred lazily, in sexy, musical, in-control tones, "looks like you boys could use a bit of help…"

If it hadn't been for the woman kneeling on his back, Ken would have perfectly happily punched her in the face.

Of course she moved sinuously, her motions as elegantly fluid as the creature that was her namesake. Of course she left her opponents stunned, unable to do anything but watch as she sprang upon Kawamata and, pressing one of her knives to his throat, tore his chest apart with the other and kicked his body to the floor with a single elegantly-booted foot. Of course she managed to make the brutal, painful, decidedly messy business that was an assassination look nothing but graceful, even beautiful. Beautiful. She was a lovely, lethal dancer and she left her audience as captivated as they would have been by any prima ballerina.

And it was disgusting. The thing about killing was that it couldn't be prettied up. The thing about killing, the whole point of it was that it was brutal and ugly. To make it look lovely was, to Ken's mind at least, to dangerously miss that point. Jesus Mary and Joseph and he'd thought Aya was bad, just what kind of a person had Kritiker foisted on them this time?

He felt the woman pinning him to the ground tense and pitch forward on top of him, the fan clattering to the floor. Ken shoved her limp, heavy form off him and scrambled to his feet, relieved to see a crossbow bolt buried in the small of her back rather than any obvious signs of knife injuries. Glancing about himself for his teammates he got instead an eyeful of Calico whirling like a ballerina, her butterfly swords flashing in the moonlight as she neatly dispatched one two all three of the men clustered around Youji as if Youji couldn't look after himself or something… Biting back a growl, Ken sprung on one of the warehouse's fast-dwindling bad guy contingent, the claws of his bugnuks slipping back out with an audible click.

At least he never tried to make it look pretty.

When it was all over and the last man, the point of Aya's katana to his throat, fell heavily dead at Calico's elegantly-booted feet (the girl stepping contemptuously away from the corpse as if it were nothing at all, nothing to do with her), the girl turned to survey her new teammates, regarding them coolly from behind violet-tipped bangs. The rest of the team she passed over quickly enough. Bombay, a cautious smile on his face, was looking at her in undisguised curiosity. Balinese was giving her what he must have fondly imagined was a seductive smirk – some chance he had! Siberian…

Siberian was looking at something else. The ground. Ken was too busy nudging one of the shattered corpses littering the warehouse floor with one foot. The body gave a low moan and he jumped back, stepped carefully forward again, giving him another tentative nudge. It could just be air, but…

Not that Calico cared. Her sparkling amethyst orbs settled upon Abyssinian's pale face and lingered there; she gave him a long, intense, assessing stare that had his own eyes, locked on hers, narrowing slightly in anger. She didn't miss, behind the ferocious glare, the sudden sparking of interest in those eyes, though – or his grudging respect. At that, a slow smile spread across the girl's elegantly-curved lips, the color of glossy plums.

She didn't look away; her defiant icy lavender gaze was easily the twin of his. She wondered what that Abyssinian made of meeting a girl who wouldn't be intimidated by his scowl and could glare just as well as he could. She bet he didn't like getting a taste of his own medicine for once—

"Hey," Ken said far too loudly, "this guy's not dead yet!"

Trust him to ruin the mood.

"So," she said coolly, ignoring Ken utterly, her gaze still locked on the pale Abyssinian, "this is the infamous Weiss, is it? I take it you're Abyssinian – or do you prefer Ran Fujimiya?"
Aya started, his lips parting as, in spite of himself, he gasped. His head snapped up and he fixed Calico with a chilling, icy glower, a glower even more unnerving than the standard glare he had been directing at her a moment or so previous. The girl simply smiled wearily at him, as if she were tolerating the antics of an infuriating but much-loved child – or even a pet. "How do you—"
"Know your name?" The girl asked sweetly. "I know a lot that might surprise you boys. I know why you, Abyssinian, have chosen to carry the name Aya. I know why you kill. I know you, Bombay, were raised an assassin and bear the name Omi Tsukiyono because you have no idea who else you should be. Balinese – Youji Kudou – a womanizing flirt heartbroken over his lost love… you see, I know everything about her. And Ken Hidaka, codename Siberian, the scandal-tainted former J-leaguer. And you didn't do it, did you? I'm well aware what passed between you and that false friend of yours…"
"You mention Kase again," Ken said furiously, "and so help me God I'm going to break your fucking jaw."

The others said nothing, Omi glancing apprehensively over at Aya, all angry tension, with one hand resting on the hilt of his katana. Youji stood silent, stunned, his face pale and his eyes distant. Who was this girl? How could she have found out so much about any one of them, still less all of them? It was obvious, too, from the way that she talked that she knew for more about the four of them than she was prepared to share in front of the entire team, she knew things that they had kept even from one another, things she knew to keep a secret in such a public situation… it was unnerving, more, frightening, that any stranger could know so much.

I know who you are too, Ken thought. And I know you're a fucking telepath so don't pretend you didn't get that.
The girl just smiled. Who's going to believe you?

"You see, now, what kind of an agent I am?" The girl said, her voice as calm and casual as ever, setting both gloved hands on her slender hips. "I am codename Calico. I have worked as a Kritiker spy since I was fifteen years old, have been a solo assassin for the last six months and I am Kritiker's only Talent – Class Five, naturally. Though, after all the fuss Persia made about you four, I must say I'm rather disappointed."
Youji quirked one brow in wry vexation. "Were you expecting someone less handsome?"
"Don't overrate yourself, Balinese," Calico retorted, her beautiful face scored with the unmistakable marks of cool contempt. The look in her eyes made Aya start slightly. "Your looks are hardly important to me. I wasn't expecting I'd have to haul all of your asses out the fire before we'd even been introduced. I'd rather assumed that the four of you were at least going to be competent. I guess I was wrong…"

Youji said nothing in reply, his lips slightly parted in preparation for the snappy comeback he couldn't quite seem to find. Omi flushed uncomfortably, once again clutching his crossbow like it were some kind of security blanket. She was right, wasn't she? It was no introduction to the team, that was for sure. He knew he needed to apologize to Calico on behalf of the entire team, but what apology could he ever come up with that would be good enough to excuse something like this? Even Aya looked abashed.

Somewhere in the irrelevant background, Ken raised his head, scowling.

(It vexed him all the more to realize Calico was entirely uninjured save for a cosmetic scrape along the edge of one high cheekbone that only made her look all the more lovely and didn't have a single speck of grime on her. It made Ken, flushed and disheveled and aching like he'd just gone ten rounds with another goddamn tiger, with who knew whose blood smeared over his hands and forearms and spattering his clothing, his face, feel like something the cat had dragged in. Normally this didn't bother him – well, not much anyway, no more than it could have been expected to – but he could hardly help resenting it in the face of Calico's pristine perfection.)

"For Christ's sake, Calico," Ken said resentfully, "you're on a team now! So let's see a bit of goddamn teamwork here!"
"Teamwork?" The girl turned to him, the perfect picture of innocent bemusement. "Why mention my teamwork?"
"Because it doesn't fucking exist, that's why!" Ken snapped. Youji winced. Ouch, he thought, looked like Ken'd let his temper out to play again… "If you're gonna be any goddamn use to us, don't go playing the Badass Solo Agent! We're a team all the time, not just when it suits you!"

Calico's lips pursed. Her lavender optics narrowed, blazing cold fire, as she slowly turned to face Ken. Even in the depths of her fury, her face retained its dizzying beauty. Ken held his ground. He hadn't spent all this time being Death Glared by Aya without picking some things up.

"What's the problem, Siberian?" She asked scornfully. "Or would you rather I called you Ken? You're really not used to playing with the girls, are you? Don't you like the idea of a woman breaking up your little boys' club? You know nothing when it comes to women and fighting. Nothing at all! There's no reason why a woman couldn't make a good killer. After tonight's little display, I'd say that female assassins had far more going for them than you four boys ever could! So don't you dare underestimate me! Don't you ever doubt my will!"
Ken blinked. "What's that got to do with you being crap at teamwork?" And if you hit me again teammate or no teammate I swear you'll die right here with your guts in your hands.
"Ken," Aya said, and his tone was a warning in itself, "watch what you say."
"Why should I?" Ken asked, and he sounded surprised. "She isn't."
Calico smiled infuriatingly, a smile Ken judged to be rather more like a smirk and left him itching to hit it. Preferably not sans bugnuks. "I'm simply calling it as I see it," she said far too placidly. "I'm not going to pretend otherwise just to make you four feel better. I'm the kind of woman who says what she thinks, Siberian. If that bothers you, that's just too bad."

Which is different to what I was doing like how, exactly? Ken wondered. Then he thought, Christ, please tell me I'm never that goddamn irritating. He was pretty damn sure he was never that revoltingly self-satisfied… he caught himself glancing over at Youji, biting his lip slightly, and was almost grateful that the guy was far too busy checking out Calico's generous, milk-white cleavage to have noticed a mere sidelong glance from the token normal guy— ah, Hell, Youji wasn't looking. There was no harm in Ken's letting that glance get a little more lingering…

"Nothing else to say for yourselves?" Calico asked coolly, flipping a stray lock of hair from her face with a single negligent gesture. "Well, while you pretty boys regain the ability to speak, I'll be off home. I don't know about you, but I've got better things to do with my night than waste it hanging round you four and a load of dead guys. Oh, and don't screw up next time. I might not be there to bale you out!"

And, giving her dumbfounded teammates a cheerful little wave over one shoulder, she darted away, springing pantherlike back out of the shattered window. Her ebony locks swirled about her, her pale skin gleamed in the moonlight, and she was swallowed up by the unforgiving blackness.

"Wait!" Aya, unfreezing, shouted after her. "Your name!"
"Forget it, Aya," Youji said, placing a heavy hand on one of the redhead's shoulders, holding him back before he could hurry off after her. "She's gone."
"Good, she gave me the creeps," Ken said, and wasn't even surprised when the others completely ignored him, seemingly far more interested in staring out of the broken window after her – Aya in frustration, Omi in understated curiosity, as if Calico were some intriguing puzzle he wouldn't be able to rest until he'd successfully solved. Youji's expression was one of blatant interest that Ken desperately wished he hadn't seen and left him feeling weirdly twisted up inside. That girl, he thought, had to go…

It took Youji to break the sudden, uneasy silence. "Wow," he said in something that was far too close to awe for Ken's liking. "She's going to be such an asset to the team."
Asset? Just what kind of asset was Youji talking about? "Yeah, sure she is," Ken said in a tone even he had to admit verged on the heavy-handedly sarcastic. "She'll make us ten times more annoying, and fifty times less discreet."
"Be nice, Ken-kun," Omi said reproachfully.
"Look, why do I have to be nice?" Ken asked. "She sure as shit wasn't nice just now and I'm a goddamn assassin!"
Aya wasn't listening to them. He was still staring out of the window, his lips pursed, muscles tensed and his eyes burning with hard-repressed frustration. "Why," he hissed to the empty air, "wouldn't she tell us her name? Why?"
"I'm sure she has her reasons, Aya-kun," Omi said reassuringly. "She probably doesn't trust us yet. We've got to give her time to open out to us."

A nothing of a comment and yet Youji blinked, a frown crossing his face as if he were remembering something bizarre. How, he wondered, did Calico know about her? how could Calico have known she was gone? how did she know that much about any of them, never mind all of them? Kritiker files might well have had it, sure, but they would never have told a field agent that much about a new teammate. They'd barely told him a thing about the rest of Weiss: a dating agency would have told him more! It wasn't relevant. So how did Calico know so much? Why would she even know their birth names when the favor hadn't been returned?

She knew, the detective in him pointed out very clinically, just a bit too much.

"I don't get it," he said, almost as if he were talking to himself. "I just don't get it…"
"What?" Ken said suddenly. "What don't you get?"
"Huh? Oh, uh, nothing. It's nothing. Thinking aloud. Forget it, Kenken."

Didn't sound like nothing from where Ken was standing. He held that thought, filing it away for future consideration. Youji didn't look it most of the time, but he was exceptionally astute and equally observant. If he didn't think something about this added up chances were it didn't. He'd have to remember to bug him about it later. It was Ken's experience that if he were to bug Youji long and hard enough about something Youji would ultimately tell him what it was just to shut him up asking…

"Come on, Aya-kun," Omi said, tearing his gaze away from the broken window and slowly, reluctantly turning back toward the gaping door. "Worry about that later, okay? We'd better get going. Rain-san will be back by now and the last thing we need is her wondering where everyone's gone…"

And Ken stared at him. He stared at Omi for a long time. A very long, very uncomfortable stretch of time. Then he shook his head as if he couldn't believe he was hearing this, and he turned away, sighing dramatically.

"I never thought I'd say this," Ken said absently, to nobody at all, "but Tsukiyono? You're an idiot."

The purr of a motorcycle, soft at first, but growing louder and clearer in the absurd, if incomplete still of the night as it grew closer and closer and finally stopped short. The clink of metal on metal as the keys were tugged from the ignition, the softest whisper of long, long hair tumbling easily from the confines of a crash helmet, and footsteps. Humming. A woman's voice, absently crooning some beautifully mournful American song: You never call me when you're sober, You only want it 'cause it's over… Even here and now, singing a sad song absently to herself, her voice was soft and enchanting and heavy with captivating emotion, granting the lyrics a compelling power few singers could ever have conveyed. Don't cry to me, if you loved me, you would be here with me—

She was home. Smiling wistfully, she walked back to the store, her footsteps light and dainty, her loose curls tumbled by the soft night breeze playing about her, the helmet hanging from one hand, casual as a child carrying a satchel. The subtle warm vanilla scent that was so characteristic of her delicately fragranced the air. Humming, she reached for the door handle.

"Good night?" Ken Hidaka said.

She turned, her loose raven hair coiling about her, a stray hank or two falling across pale cheeks and into startled heliotrope orbs. The crash helmet slipped from her delicate fingers, landing with a heavy thump on the doorstep. Her beautiful features were set in a mask of sheer terror, her eyes wide and shadowed, her pale lips parted in a perfect O of fright.

"Oh!" She cried, both pale hands clutching at her chest. "Don't do that! You frightened me! I… Oh, my God."

She paled, her already wan cheeks growing even more drained of color as he stepped into the light, as she caught sight of him – his blood-spattered skin, his torn, stained clothing, the gauntlets on his hands. Instinctively scenting danger, she backed away, gasping as she felt the wood of the door bang against her back. She couldn't take her frightened eyes off him.

"The blood," She said, gulping. "Where did all the blood come from? Ken."
"Don't play dumb," Ken said quietly – she had never known him so quiet, so eerily calm. "You're pretty good, Rain, but you ain't that wonderful an actress. Where'd you clean up? Safe house? That where you kept the outfit?"
The girl simply stared at him in incomprehension, incomprehension Ken judged to be nothing but well-feigned. "I don't know what you're talking about. Clean up? What's going on? I… I'll tell Aya!" She bit her lip at the look that slipped into Ken's eyes and made itself at home there – exasperation, pure and simple.
"What the Hell do you think's going on, Calico?" Ken threw the codename at her like it was a challenge, unable to suppress a smile at the spark of recognition in the girl's amethyst eyes – no, really not that good an actress. Who was? "Yeah, and I know you're Calico the Mysterious New Teammate of Mystery. And don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about. I saw you rip a guy's chest apart with those cute shiny knives you use. Now drop the sweet little innocent act, it don't suit you any more than it does the rest of us."
"H… how could you know that?" Rain stammered.
"Because I'm not fucking blind, that's how! Come on, Rain! You recognized me in this stuff, didn't you?" Ken asked, gesturing vaguely to his own bloodied clothing and growling in frustration at the girl's answering nod. Somehow, it wasn't what he wanted to hear. "Well, exactly! Changing your clothes and hairdo does not make you a mistress of goddamn disguise! And what in fuck have you done to the others that they can't see this, huh?"

And Rain pulled herself up to her full height, her beautiful eyes sparkling with defiance, her head held high and her jaw set. The fear had gone (that was if, Ken noted, it had ever really been there in the first place), replaced by nothing but steely fortitude and a quiet kind of inner resolve. The lovely young girl was more than willing to rise to Ken's challenge, determined not to be bullied any more. She was not going to be daunted by this unstable young man in his blood-stained clothes. All she felt now was anger at the boy's presumption.

"Why should I have done anything to them?" She asked, her voice low and dangerous. "I've done nothing. Just because you've spotted the truth about me doesn't mean I've done anything to keep the others from realizing it too. They're, you're all my teammates. My friends. The last thing I want is to put you all in… no, no, Ken, you're obviously just the suspicious kind! It's not my fault that you've got a suspicious mind any more than it is my fault your friends – our teammates, Hidaka, don't you care about what's good for this team? – it's not my fault they're willing to trust—"
Trust. "That's the whole goddamn problem!" Ken cried in furious panic. "I'm… it's just… shit, Rain, don't you get it? I should be wanting to trust you and the others should be calling me a fucking moron for it, not the other way round! It doesn't make sense this way! If I can see it they should sure as shit see it too! What are you doing that's made them dumb?"
"I already told you," Rain said eerily calmly, "I'm not doing anything." Believe it, you stubborn bastard, she murmured into his mind. Believe it! "They just want to trust me. You want to trust me, too. I know you do."

You know you do. She whispered it, though her lips didn't move, they only curved up into a gentle, intoxicating smile. She had the kind of smile a guy could get drunk on… Soft, seductive, compelling as siren song she whispered, you want to trust me. And he did, Ken did want to trust her. He'd always wanted to, right? He was just being stupid and stubborn because she was a girl, because Youji thought she was beautiful and he hadn't liked Aya bringing her home with him… he'd never given her a chance. Rain. Poor Rain, he'd done her down. How could a girl like this one, he wondered dazedly, be anything but trustworthy? Someone so young, so hurting and vulnerable, so beautiful—

Yeah, but I don't go for girls like this, something small and petulant said stubbornly.

—beautiful, dammit Ken! She's beautiful! Nobody that beautiful, that damaged, could possibly be wishing you ill. You know, Ken, everyone thinks Rain's an amazing girl. Why don't you? You're just being stubborn. Even Aya thinks she is. Hell, Youji wants her and you know what high standards he's—

High standards, hell. Try anything over eighteen that shows up in a short skirt. He'd fuck a target if she happened to be cute. And (well hi there, Sister Anne. Sister Anne, where've you been all these years?) if everyone jumped off a cliff, Ken Hidaka, would you do it too? Everyone thinks I'm dead. Doesn't mean I've gotta go lie down.

—because she's different. Different. Special. You want to protect her. You want to trust her. She's an amazing girl—

Amazing pain in my ass! She's a treacherous, manipulative, conniving bitch with a hidden agenda a mile wide who's out for what she can get and I know that! Why won't she tell the others she's Calico? Why doesn't she want me to? Why the fuck is she here in the first place? She's not on the level, never has been and whose thoughts are these, these aren't my thoughts, my mind can't just change all by itself and Jesus, she's done this to me and she's done it before hasn't she! Different and special? I don't think like this! Who the fuck does?

"Get out of my head!" Ken shouted. "Get out!"

Rain recoiled, her head jerking upright as if she had been startled out of sleep. Just for a moment, she looked angry. Horribly, totally angry. Just for a moment, she didn't look beautiful at all…

"You're… you're not being fair, Ken. My only crime," Rain said, turning quickly away as if to hide her face and, with it, the look in her eyes (was that moisture in their corners, tears, or just another part of the game?) her voice becoming thick with emotion, "was to try and hide myself. I don't want to bring trouble onto your friends, you… Aya-san… I can't afford for that to happen, I can't lose this now, not after— I'm sorry. I'm talking too much. Ken, I'm begging you – don't tell them. Please, don't tell them. If it gets out I'm here I'll have to… they'll find out, you'll all be in danger, anything could happen!" She twisted her slender fingers together as if she were hoping to tie them into a granny knot, she bit her lip.
"Anything," Ken said flatly, and laughed without humor. "You'd rely on screw-ups to protect you?"

He simply shook his head at the hurt look that flashed across the girl's face (she couldn't believe he could possibly be so unkind as to bring that up – or was it that she couldn't believe he'd failed to be moved by her beautiful anguish?). Shook his head, and realized he was absolutely sick of the sight of her, the sound of her voice, and now that he thought about it he had never much liked warm vanilla either. Where was the appeal in walking about the place smelling like an explosion in a particularly sticky ice-cream parlor? Stepping forward, he thrust Rain away from the door, ignoring her moue of disgust at the smell of blood that clung to him, pushing it open only to pause, one hand resting on the doorknob. There was something he still needed to say.

"I know you're playing with us, Rain," Ken said, and his voice was so paradoxically hushed he barely caught it himself, but he knew Rain would hear every word. "I don't know what you want with my team, but I'm going to find out. And if it's anywhere near as fucked up as I think it is, you're gonna wish you'd never been born."

And slammed the door in the girl's face.

For a moment, Rain said nothing. Did nothing. She simply stared at the closed door, her violet eyes burning with hard-repressed fury, her entire body tensed in preparation for a confrontation that wasn't going to come. It took everything she had not to chase after Ken, punch him hard in the gut and demand an apology for everything he had said to her, the accusations he had made, she knew Aya-san and the others would take her side – but no. Satisfying though that would be, it would only be counterproductive (the slap, that weekend Aya-san had taken them all to buy her clothes, had probably been a mistake). It wouldn't help her cause to do that…

But how dare he treat her like that? How dare he threaten her? Didn't Ken know how fragile she was? How could he not understand what she'd been through, already, in her eighteen short years? Didn't he have any idea what she had already endured, what she'd had to go through to turn her from the helpless, tormented dark-haired little girl who'd mourned her beautiful, gentle mother's untimely death, who'd silently suffered violent abuse, terrible neglect and, ultimately, traumatic betrayal at the cruel hands of her drunken father, into the determined young woman she'd become?

Serenity Raven Kath'rynn Sakura Enigma Hikari Akegata was not a woman to be crossed lightly.

There was too much at stake for her to sit back and let Ken (Ken, for God's sake: what kind of a name was that? Who was a nobody like that boy to threaten a considerable woman like her?) betray her. After tasting freedom, she simply couldn't go back to the way she'd been living before. She couldn't lose this refuge too. She couldn't lose Aya-san…

Well then, Weiss could stand to lose Ken. It would, she thought as she absently reached for the door, be as well if that one were to be discreetly removed from the picture, temporarily or otherwise. The others wouldn't mind – he'd been so infuriating lately – and she was sure Weiss wouldn't miss him. They had her now. They could afford to lose Ken. If he wouldn't be swayed by the charm offensive, there were other campaigns she could mount.

There was, after all, more than one way to kill a kitten.