Chapter 14
The rest of the testing had gone without a hitch, and to her relief, her kidnappers had told Avalyn that she was free to go. She had half a mind to go directly to the police, but they had got Steph to ‘escort’ Avalyn back to her apartment. Going to the police would just complicate things after all, especially when Maria, the Hammer Lady, pointed out that Avalyn herself had potentially committed more crimes than simple kidnapping.
The ride back to the apartment was completely silent. While Avalyn was grateful for not having to pay 30 quid just for a taxi ride, she wasn’t really sure what to say or how to feel about Steph right now. Her best (only) friend near here, who was apparently a superhero, and worst of all, of course, gave her a massive concussion that had ‘blessed’ her with cat ears. She caught Steph staring at her out of the corner of her eye, and she did the thing where she looked out the window pretending that she hadn’t been noticed.
Ye should thank me for the fashion choices, yer welcome.
Avalyn rolled her eyes at Cora’s cheap remark, just as the taxi rolled up as close as it possibly could to her apartment, the road outside still cordoned off from her severe beatdown of Big Concrete. The silent walk upstairs finally made her conscious of the fact that she had to look up at Steph, and the height that the symbiote had robbed from her unfairly.
There was no reason why she couldn’t be tall and a girl, but no.
As Avalyn unlocked the door to her apartment and stepped inside, she flopped directly onto the sofa with a quiet ‘oof’. Turning to her side, she saw that Steph was still standing in the entrance to her apartment. Strangely, she seemed to have gone quite a deep red in the cheeks.
“Are you alright? You don’t look so good.”
Steph nodded her head in response, and took quite a shaky deep breath. “No, I’m fine, it’s just…when you fell down on the sofa, your skirt kinda…” She lifted her hand up in demonstration.
“Oh my god.” Avalyn hid her face in her hands and shook her head. “I fucking flashed you, I’m so sorry. This is all Cora’s fault, this was not my personal decision, these are too short, but she insists that it’s a good look and all that shit.”
“To be fair…it is quite a good look on you but..perhaps you can come to compromise on some fronts.” Steph took a step into the apartment.
“She’s stubborn and I’m stubborn, we’re not going to get any compromises on anything.”
All ya have to do is say please.
“....Please can I have some pants and more coverage for clothes.” Avalyn directed in her mind at Cora.
Nah.
“She refused.” Avalyn deadpanned, gesturing for Steph to come sit on the sofa next to her.
“So, superhero huh? Can’t say I expected that a good few weeks ago, perhaps now maybe some more but still a little unexpected.”
“I guess it’s kind of like finding out my best friend had become a woman with powers of her own. Just like me too in many different ways.” The small smile on Steph’s face slowly fell from it. “I wish I could have at least talked to you though, about…well, gender.”
“You wouldn’t have gotten anything out of me by just talking, again, stubborn, baggage, that whole thing.” Avalyn shrugged. “Perhaps it did take a symbiote slapping me in the face over and over with forcefem for me to actually realise it.”
“It’s hard, and well…forgive me for sounding like some gender detective but I didn’t really get anything from you. I’m sure Tabby would have but…”
“Tabby’s power is so ridiculous. Like imagine actually getting a superpower and the only thing it does is to hunt down closeted trans people with positivity.”
“It helps in its own way.” Steph gave out a small laugh. “It’s different from something more direct like what me and Maria do but, it helps quietly when it does happen. I’m sure Tabby doesn’t really appreciate that though.”
“Mmmm…” Avalyn made the mistake of laying her head down on one of the sofa pillows, and found the ability to stay conscious getting exponentially more difficult. “That wasn’t a very long talk but…I’m very fucking tired…”
“I can imagine.” Steph stood up and walked over to the door of the apartment. Just as she was reaching for the door knob to the apartment, she paused.
“If you actually want to talk about any of this, I’ll be here. It’s not the same but, I’ll be here.”
Hearing that the only response to her kind offer was quiet snoring from the sofa, Steph quietly sighed, leaving the apartment with a not-so-quiet creaking of the un-oiled front door.
—-----------------------------------------------------
Ah shit.
It’s been a while since Cora’s been in this wide dark abyss of a dream world. She knew perfectly what this meant.
‘Who’s there? I know yer fuckin’ here, this is my territory ya know. Stay off it!’
‘This ain’t a very small town, surely it got room for both of us? Plus ain’t nothing I can do about that now, honey.’
From her short time on earth, if there was any accent that made her skin crawl due to how arrogant it sounded to her, god, those westerns are full of smarmy sounding pieces of shit.
‘Honey? HONEY?! Condescendin’ bitch once I find ye I’m gonna-’
‘You’re gonna what exactly? That’s real big headed of ya.’
‘Oh I will do things to ya, just ya wait, unless yer gonna be a coward and hide away.’
‘I wouldn’t hide away even if I wanted to. Besides, this host I have, she’s got some real anger. We ain’t hidin’, that’s for sure. I look forward to our first duel.’
‘Challenge fuckin’ accepted plastic cowboy, we’re gonna hunt ya down and get ya in the-’
—--
“BITCH!”
Avalyn was jolted awake as she was launched onto the floor off of the sofa. Leaping to her feet with a back flip just to look cool, she scanned the apartment for any signs of an attempt to kidnap her again. Nothing there, thankfully. That could really only mean one thing.
“Cora, why did you rudely interrupt me from my dreams?”
We have a little bit of a problem, yer sleep can wait.
“What is more important than sleep? I’m. Tired.” Avalyn sighed, rubbing her eyes.
I made contact with another one of me’s.
“......Why is that a bad thing?”
Because that means it's close enough for it to contact me directly, and also she already said that she’s found a host and that the host is ‘angry’ or whatever. That’s fuckin’ concernin’ considering ye weren’t angry and ye still broke a lot of shit.
“Firstly.” Avalyn pointed her finger at nothing in particular. “You have as much responsibility for that as me. And secondly, I don’t hear or see any destruction. Perhaps you’re just being dramatic.”
I’m NOT being dramatic, rich comin’ from ye by the way.
“I’m ignoring you.” Avalyn walked nonchalantly towards her kitchen and took a pan from in the sink and placed it onto the induction stove.
What the hell do you think you’re doing? STOP IGNORIN’ ME!
“I’m making myself a healthy breakfast. A balanced diet is probably good for maintaining good health.” She jams her finger into the button to turn the stove on.
Ye don’t even know how to cook!
“Ah how hard can it be?” Avalyn turned to the fridge and opened it up, only to find it completely devoid of any edible products.
Ye try cookin’ now sucker. Now why not listen to me, because ye can be in real danger for this!
“Did you forget the powers you gave me?” Avalyn resisted the urge to flex. “I’ll be fine, don’t you worry.”
She turned to the kitchen top and noticed some unopened bread that had definitely expired by this point.
“Can you even microwave bread?”
Yer such a fuckin’ idi-
“Wait.” Avalyn dropped the bread directly on the floor where she stood, and held perfectly still. “Do you hear that?”
Straining her new set of ears, and staying as silently as she possibly could, she thought she could make out a series of quiet sounding pops, or possibly even bangs coming from a particular direction. She couldn’t make out exactly what they were, but they also seemed to come with the sound of glass breaking.
“Something’s happening.”
Ye no kiddin’.
Avalyn ran over to the door and swung it open, unaware that she had now broken the latch on it and also the lock. She quickly ran downstairs and out into the street, her heels clicking as she did so.
“Where is that noise coming from…” She mumbled, turning from side to side.
Try echolocation, that’ll work.
“I’m not a fucking bat.” Avalyn let out a deep sigh as she ran in the general direction of where she thought the sound was coming from.
As the popping/bashing sounds slowly became louder and louder, and it became clearer that they might indeed by gunshots, Avalyn once again mildly considers the life choices that have led her to this point in time.
—-------------------------------
Woodford had generally been a positive beneficiary of the good taste that suddenly erupted in British building design towards the tail end of the 20th century, but there was a part that seemed like it was stuck in a completely different era, for better or worse.
Avalyn didn’t even dare come over here even when she had the body of a much taller guy who looked about as threatening as a stick. Frankly, one of the first things she was told when she got here was to avoid South Woodford, there was no good reason to go there, and along with that came a lot of bad reasons.
She found herself in between some rather old brick buildings, several people she had already seen running past her by the time she got to the source of all the noises and shots.
The building she was looking at didn’t look out of place with its run down, neglected look, but she could tell at least that the ground floor of it had been turned into some sort of sketchy looking pub, by the sign that said ‘Pub’ just above the door. Along with that, she could also see that all the glass in its windows were broken and laying on the street outside, and some smoke seemed to be emerging from within it.
And some shouting, a lot of shouting in fact. A lot of it seemed to be coming from one voice in particular. Avalyn wasn’t very good with accents, but she was certainly familiar with Westerns.
She almost wanted to roll her eyes at the concept of a modern cowgirl shooting up a run-down pub in a shithole.
Taking a deep breath, Avalyn took a step forward towards the pub.
Just as her heel touched the concrete of the street, Avalyn found herself flying over to the side in a dodge that sounds much more epic than it looked. The bullet fired at her struck the wall behind her with a muted thud.
Rolling to her feet, Avalyn found herself cloaked once again in her battle outfit, just about avoiding tripping on her own cloak. Did Cora make it slightly longer?
Longer capes are badarse.
Avalyn ignored Cora, as she sped over to the wall of the building and smashed through it, ignoring the throbbing pain that was rapidly washed away by her abilities. The destruction of the wall kicked up a lot of dust in the air though, making her attempt at an epic entrance rather ruined by the fact that she couldn’t see.
Her cat ears barely made out some steps making her way towards her before Avalyn was struck with a direct strike from below into her jaw area, sending her crashing up through the roof of the ground floor pub, sending her bouncing off the roof of the next floor above and sprawling across the cold concrete floor.
Before Avalyn could get up though, she felt a foot stand down onto her stomach, and her vision was soon filled by the barrel of a gun. A gun that had the familiar glistening pattern that Avalyn had seen on her outfit, except, the glistening was mixed in with flecks of red amidst the black.
She stared past the narrow focus of the barrel, and she only had a few seconds to take in who was holding her at gunpoint. The long blond hair, the red cowboy hat, the patterned mask covering her nose and mouth. And those eyes. Those ice-blue eyes held a quiet fury in them.
Then she spoke.
“Did anyone tell you not to interrupt anyone’s business or are you just an idiot? Give me a good reason I shouldn’t give you a third eye right now, catgirl.”