Reborn
Chapter III
Sex And Violence
The girl had been huddled up in a ball, crying, when Zhu stumbled out of the room, satisfied for the moment. He contemplated taking her back to his place, to keep her with the rest of his "collection". Of course, she'd have to stop that crying business. The crying drove him crazy. He'd beat it out of her, Zhu decided, fingering the heavy chain coiled at his side.
As he meandered down the alley that he had found himself in, the wolf took a swig from the flask of ale around his neck, barely aware to his surroundings, and most certainly unaware of the one shadowing him, flitting from one dark corner to the other, silent as a spectre.
Tigress watched the drunk wander, cold and calculating, as painful memories of guilt and pain flickered in her mind's eye.
Tigress sat, hands bound, desperately trying to block out the pained screams of her friend. She struggled against her bonds, but to no avail. She could only look on in impotent rage as the wolf tortured her best friend.
Tigress felt the claws of the crow did into her shoulder, puncturing flesh, and withdrew from herself from her memories, and returned her attention to where it needed to be. On the sadist.
Watching Zhu lean up against the brick wall of the alley, and feeling the crow become restless on her shoulder, Tigress stepped out of the shadows, taking slow, measured steps towards the wolf, resisting the urge to tackle him and tear him apart like a raging monster. Instead, she whistled a tune from her childhood, one that, while it had once been a source of happiness and comfort, carried bitterness and cruelty and a promise of pain in it's notes now.
Zhu turned, looking for the source of the chilling music. Slowly coming nearer, he saw a woman, a tiger, the right side of her face seemingly painted monochrome, garbed in dark blue robes. The cold, emotionless look in her eye chilled him to the very bone. Too scared to speak but too drunk to keep his mouth shut, he stared for a moment and then said to her, "Who the fuck are you supposed to be?"
Tigress lunged, shoving him up against the wall, growling out, "Murderer!"
"Murderer?" Zhu responded. "I didn't murder anybody. I don't even know who the fuck you are."
"I want you to tell me a story," Tigress whispered, tracing his jugular vein with a claw. "A woman, a snake, in a prison, two years ago."
"Are you out of your fucking mind?"
"Listen to me!" Tigress spat, gripping his throat. "I'm sure you'll remember. You killed her, late summer."
"Yeah, yeah, I think I get you," Zhu said, eyeing her, frightened. "Some bitch, whatev-"
"Her name was Viper!" Tigress hissed. "You beat her. You raped her."
"Yeah...Viper..." Zhu said, as if it were all coming back to him. "I shagged her, and she loved it!"
Tigress flinched, faltering for that one crucial moment. Zhu's closed fist connected with her temple, sending her rolling across the ground. Zhu, leering, removed the flail from his belt.
"Now," he said, swinging the chain lazily. "I'm gonna have to teach you a lesson."
Tigress grunted, pushing herself back up, saying, "I don't need no education."
Zhu circled her warily. Without warning, he swung, aiming high.
Tigress dropped into a crouch, dodging the chain, before standing back up, grinning contemptuously at Zhu. "You're going to have to try a little harder."
The wolf growled, raising the chain above his head and bringing it down, in the hopes of caving her skull in.
Tigress, still giving the wolf a patronizing glare, twisted sideways, and watched calmly as the weapon swung just past her nose. "Swing and a miss!"
Zhu bared his teeth, and swung low, trying to knock the obnoxious tiger's feet out from under her.
Tigress jumped into the air, over the chain as it swung by, driving her fist into the wolf's muzzle, savoring the crunch of cartilage beneath her knuckles as Zhu went reeling. "C'mon, you can do better than that! Or maybe you're just used to opponents that can't fight back?"
Zhu let out a bloodcurdling shriek as he felt his nose collapse inward and his teeth fracture. He swung blindly, desperately hoping to hit her, only for Tigress catch the flail in her hand, and tear it from his.
"I was expecting a-" Tigress started before she doubled over in empathic pain, overwhelmed by the sudden rush of images and sensations emanating from the wolf's weapon. Visions of blood, pain, and fear flashed before her eyes and tore through her psyche, her body paralyzed by the sensory overload of hundreds of lives, living out their last moments in suffering.
She fell to the ground, still gripping the chain in a vice-like grip, and coiled up into a ball, helpless before the visions. After a moment, they began to recede, and Tigress, thoroughly shaken, moved to return to a standing position, only to receive a hardened boot to her abdomen, sending her sprawling once more.
"Looksth like the bootsth on the othah foot, eh?" Zhu said through shattered teeth, landing another kick in the disoriented revenant's side. "Sthtupid bitch."
The crow, recognizing its revenant's plight, dove from the roof of the building where it observed, and attacked the wolf, clawing at Zhu's face.
Zhu, startled by the sudden appearance of the creature, tried to beat the bird off, but his effort was in vain.
Tigress, still sifting through snippets of memories that were not hers, and feelings that were not hers, regained focus long enough to become aware of the situation the crow had gotten itself into.
"Hands off my bird," she growled, swinging her leg out, and taking Zhu's out from under him."Do you have any idea what I had to go through to get that thing?"
Zhu went down like a sack of bricks, his head rebounding off of the cobbled ground of the alley in a most satisfying fashion.
Tigress threw herself on top of him, gripping his throat, claws extended. "I have something to show you. But first..."
She took a pouch from Zhu's belt, and emptied it into her hands, and gripped the bits of jewelry and cloth tightly, struggling to avoid being consumed by the rush of memories and sensations. When she had garnered all she could from the baubles, she casually dropped the jewelry on Zhu, piece by piece.
"Each of these," she said, her face passive, but her eyes wrathful. "was a life. One that you destroyed. Think about that, Zhu. Just think about that."
She took her hands, and pressed them against the sides of the wolf's face, driving her thumbs into his eyes until they began to bleed. "I have something for you. Consider it a...return to sender."
Zhu's cries of pain now turned into fullblown screams of agony and terror as he relived the final moments of each of his victims, all at once.
"All their pain," Tigress cooed, the way one would to comfort a crying infant. "all at once. All for you."
When Zhu had seen all that Tigress had to show him, she withdrew, leaving the wolf to curl up into a ball as she retrieved the chain, that now lay abandoned on the ground.
"P-please, just let me go," Zhu said, all options but pleading now gone from him. "I'll never touch another woman asht long as I live, I swear! Just...Just get away from me."
Tigress, smiling wickedly, gripped him by the jaw, and lifted him up to gaze into his bloody, destroyed eyes.
"But I'm not done yet," she whispered coyly, echoing what she had seemingly heard a thousand times over, before she let him drop, sobbing like a newborn, to the ground once more.
"Now," Tigress said, swinging chain. "I'm gonna have to teach you a lesson."
The crow looked on from the roof as Zhu started to beg once more, pleading for his life, for mercy, for a second chance. But his words fell on deaf ears, and his fear would not soften the hardened heart of his pursecutor.
One down, five to go.
Author's note: Did I beat it into your head hard enough that Zhu was (emphasis on was) a bad guy? And an evil, evil rapist? Not saying rape's not a special kind of evil, but I really drove it home, I think.
I'd like to thank Pink Floyd, for the "I don't need no education" line, and Brandon Lee for the opening interactions of Zhu and Tigress. Rest in peace, sir. You done good.
...
I make a lot of references, don't I?