Ninja Star

Look At What Cat Dragged In

AN: I'm going to start by sincerely apologizing. This is the worst I've ever been about not posting a chapter. My life started spiraling and I lost track of time. I lost touch with something that made me really happy: writing. So here's a long awaited chapter. Thank you all so much for staying so loyal! I really appreciate it!

Star hesitantly looked through a crack in the wall only to be greeted by a view of her arch-nemesis and lackeys.

They were a group of three: Cat, Wilt, and Jin. "I thought I saw a group of pretty boys come down this way." The woman standing in front said, looking directly at Tamaki. "What would bring you here?" She pulled a knife from her sleeve and grabbed Tamaki's chin. She forced it upwards and pressed the knife to his throat. He made a sort of strangled gasping noise.

Star vaulted over the wall she'd been hiding behind and landed on top of the dumpster. She lunged over Tamaki and kicked the woman in the shoulder, causing her to stumble back but not drop the knife. The two men behind her had Haruhi and Kaoru in strangle holds while fending off Honey and Mori.

"Long time, no see, eh Cat?" Star said through gritted teeth as she lunged away from her stabbing knife. Cat's wavy ginger hair blew back in the wind revealing her greasy face and the scar on the left side of her face from the tip of her eyebrow down to her chin. Her onyx eyes were blazing.

Star looked past Cat over to Jin, the man holding Haruhi. Haruhi was coughing and spluttering due to him cutting off her air supply in the hold he had her in. Mori saw this and pulled back his arm to land a punch on him. "No! He'll be too fast for you!" Star screamed but she was too busy fighting Cat away from Tamaki and Kyoya to help him.

Before Mori could land his shot, Jin had thrown Haruhi into the wall behind him. Her head crashed into it with a sickening crack.

Jin grabbed Mori's arm and twisted it back. The tallest host screamed out in pain as his arm was twisted out of socket. Two punches later, Mori was on the ground leaning against the wall with a bloody nose, dislocated shoulder, and only enough strength to hope that Star would be able to do what she did best and get them out of the situation they were in.

While Jin was fighting Mori, Wilt was fending off Honey. The stark contrast of the tiny assailant Honey, to the six-foot giant that was Wilt, would have been amusing to Star at any other time. Due to her current situation, it was significantly less so. She watched as Wilt kicked at Honey, who moved effortlessly out of the way. He grabbed Wilt's leg as he kicked up and flipped him to the ground, giving Kaoru time to escape and run to the aid of his twin.

Hikaru was using the commotion to slip his fellow hosts through the hole behind the dumpster and up the stairs to Star's apartment where he assumed they would be safe.

The first to go in was Kyoya. The only damage he had suffered was a twisted ankle from slipping up the staircase in haste. Hikaru had instructed him to wait at the top of the sixth flight.

The next was Tamaki. After his traumatizing run-in with Cat, he was quickly ushered into the building. Kaoru ran to Haruhi, who had begun to come around again, and slung her arm over his shoulder. He lead her into the building as well.

"Cat! We're loosin' 'em!" Jin shouted in his raspy voice. He rushed to the hole in the wall, but the moment he made it trough to the other side, he was greeted with a steel pipe to the head. He slumped to the ground with a thud.

Hikaru stepped through the hole, blood on the corner of his mouth and his amber eyes wild. He brandished the pipe over his head and cracked in down on Wilt's back. Granted, it didn't do more than knock the wind out of the man, it gave Honey a chance to run to his cousin's aid; but not before Cat made a slice at him with her blade.

Honey stumbled whimpering to his cousin's side, tears in his eyes; the mixture of pain below his ear where the cut was and the pain of seeing his strong cousin so broken was almost too much for him. When Cat made another step towards him, Star rushed in between them.

"Let them go!" She screamed. "This is not their battle anymore. They don't have anything for you, this is between you and me now." Star set her feet and assumed a fighting stance. Her ego was skyrocketing with confidence, rising in her voice as she spoke, and with the beating of her anxious heart.

Hikaru helped Honey support Mori and helped him through the wall, stepping around Jin's unconscious body. All the while, Cat never took her eyes off of Star.

"Wilt, get Jin. Take him back to the house. This is my chance to teach our little galactic wonder a new lesson. Maybe I can carve a new shape into that pretty porcelain skin of yours?" Cat gave Star a sickening grin, showing all of her yellowed teeth.

The two women waited for Wilt to leave the alley, the body of Jin slung over his shoulder. The two of them were alone, bringing a bout of déjà vu to Star's mind.

Star made the naïve mistake of watching Wilt walk sneak away and in a split second, she found she was pinned against the brick wall, completely immobilized. She glared at Cat hard. "Are you happy now? You have me, what are you going to do with me?"

"The same thing I've wanted to do since that wretch Ivy moved back into my territory." Cat hissed. "I don't want much; just to send her a message that'll hit close to home," and with that she wiped her knife on her sleeve and proceeded to cut open Star's namesake scar.

Star's eyes began to water from the pain. She screamed in anguish every time Cat cut deeper. She could feel her own hot blood pouring out onto her cheek and down her neck. Star began panting with dizziness. The blood she was loosing at a rapid pace dripped to a puddle on the ground at her feet. Her eyes rolled back in her head as the world went dark and she slumped to the ground.

Hikaru was halfway up the last flight of stairs with Honey and Mori, when the three of them heard the scream of agony coming from the alleyway. Hikaru's eyes widened in fear and his heartbeat quickened to a mile a minute. He struggled between leaving his friend on the stairs, and leaving Star in the alley.

"Go get her," Mori said. He turned to Hikaru with pain in his eyes, "I can make it the rest of the way." Hikaru lingered for a moment before bounding down the stairs three at a time.

The sight of Star was almost enough to make him wretch. The side of her face where her scar was had been completely bathed in blood but Cat was nowhere to be seen.

He lifted Star off of the ground and carried her, wedding style, up the stairs. He nudged her apartment door open, walked past the hosts who were half-heartedly tending their wounds, and laid Star on her bed.

The Host Club gawked in horror at Star's mutilated face. Her eyelids fluttered rapidly. Suddenly she jumped up from the bed. Her head swam and she fell to the floor.

"What did you do that for?" Hikaru asked, with a wet dishrag in hand. He gently rubbed it on her cheek, taking care to pull away every time she winced.

"You don't have to do this," Star pushed his hand down, "I'm a big girl and I can handle myself."

"It didn't seem like it."

"Well it wouldn't to the hero, now would it?" She rolled her eyes and walked into the bathroom. She pulled the mirror towards her to reveal a cabinet built into the wall. She pulled a little box of butterfly-bandages and a bottle of generic antiseptic cream from the cabinet. Hikaru and the other hosts watched uncomfortably as Star applied the cream and little bandages to hold her wound closed.

She then brought both items over to Honey. She was well aware of the gazes of the hosts, especially Mori's glare trained on her as she worked.

She carefully turned Honey's head to get a better look at the cut below his ear. She dabbed a little antiseptic on her finger. As she rubbed it tenderly over the cut, she spoke, "It won't take too long to heal and it shouldn't scar. It'll itch a little in the next few days, but should start to feel better soon."

Honey nodded and whimpered, "thanks". Star resisted the urge to kiss his forehead as if he were her very own little brother. She walked across the room to the chair by the kitchen table where Mori was sitting. "Lay down, I'm going to fix your arm."

"He needs to go to a doctor for that, it's surely been dislocated." Kyoya said from behind his glasses. He was standing, leaned against the refrigerator. In the fray, Star realized, he seemed to have lost his notebook.

"You need to have that ankle of yours elevated and on ice. Believe me, as you learn to take hits, you learn to recover. I can relocate a limb; I can stitch up a wound; whatever needs to be done. I'm not saying you shouldn't go see doctors, all I'm saying is that I can fix it here and now."

Star shooed Kyoya away from the fridge where she opened the top door, and gathered some ice from the freezer. She wrapped some of the frozen water in a dishtowel and handed it to Kyoya, "You need to sit where Mori-senpai is and put your leg up on the table, Kyoya; you need to lay flat on the bed, Mori-senpai."

She waited for the boys with her hands on her hips until they complied. She was in full-fledged mother mode. She handed another dishtowel to Mori, "Here, bite down on this."

Mori raised an eyebrow in question but did as he was told. As he bit down on the dishrag, Star grabbed the wrist of his dislocated arm. She put her foot against the side of the bed for leverage and pulled his arm in an arch motion, never letting the amount of pressure waver.

There was a small popping sound are the joint reset. Mori sat up and tested out his arm. His shoulder was sore but manageable. Star made another ice pack and handed it to him.

Another forty-five minutes of that night was spent with Star checking and double-checking all of her guests over. After making sure they were all as comfortable and fixed-up as she could manage, she bounced up onto the kitchen counter. She fixed hard stares at the hosts, especially Tamaki and Kyoya.

"So tell me, which one of you had the beautiful idea of dropping me a visit?"

All of the hosts instinctively looked to Kyoya.

"No surprise there," Star remarked, "I still don't understand why you hate me so much. Are you really so bigoted that you genuinely can't allow commoners into your pristine little learning institution."

Kyoya just stared. Star pressed on, "I don't think you understand what it's like to hear the sounds of the freeway at night. Having a toothache that will not go away, no matter how often you brush your teeth. You've never had to make your meals last, or steal food because you couldn't scrounge up enough money to buy it. It's even worse when the food you can afford is off-brand and tasteless..." She waited once more for Kyoya to say something but he stayed silent. All of the hosts did.

Have it your way! I can't seem to pass up a learning opportunity.

"This apartment has one room. That one room has one heater and one air conditioner. I'm lucky I even have power, because I didn't always. I have to pray that I don't have a growth spurt because I don't know where I'd get new clothes!

"I had to walk into Ouran with the dirty looks of people like you boring holes into my back. People were genuinely surprised to find that I didn't have some hick accent; that I wasn't actually dumb. Sure I may not have the handwriting to match but I still have a teenager's vocabulary! Finally, for the first time in my life, I found people my age who at least pretend to give a damn about me. If you're willing to take that away… Then all I can say is, I hope you find a nice seat in hell!"

Star turned to Hikaru, "Now, if we're all done here, I need you all to leave. The sun's already gone down, it sounds like its about to rain, you all need medical attention, and I have work to do," she turned Hikaru by the shoulders and pushed him towards the door.

She beamed a sarcastic smile and waved a little wave as the hosts filed out, dumbfounded looks adorning their faces. She slammed and locked the door behind them, leaning against it and sliding to the floor. She rested her head on her knees and moaned.

That boy and his friends turned out to be way more that I bargained for.

AN: Thanks again for sticking around for me, I really love you guys and I hope you liked this chapter. You may or may not have realized that I didn't end this chapter with a terrible cliff-hanger! Yay! I usually only do that because I'm afraid that if I don't, no one will bother to come back and read the next chapter... Anywho, I know this may not be my best work because I wrote it in little chunks, but I really tried hard , so I hope you enjoyed! R&R, F&F, PM me! ~ Yuki-mu