Baltimore, Thursday Evening, Right Before Sunset

[spin_kick_snap]

Things that really plucked Kathy's last nerve: 1) turning around and seeing a giant mountain of luggage behind her at the gym when she was perfectly well-adjusted, thank you, and 2) turning around and seeing a trail of mooks trussed like the Thanksgiving turkey behind her on patrol the night before when she was perfectly capable of handling herself, thank you. Never mind that she hadn't noticed at least three of them on her tail--in fact, that just made it even more annoying You know what made someone feel even more resentful? Knowing that she should be feeling grateful instead. Ugh! Not that she had any idea who this 'mysterious benefactor' was--the brief glimpses she'd caught of him showed that he was too tall to be Eliot and too compact to be Mr. Hardison. Which meant that Eliot had farmed this...this...this baby-sitting job off on someone else, because he couldn't be bothered.

So, yeah. She'd gone to sleep fulminating over that and woke up with a duffel bag at the foot of her bed that said Never going to be good enough and you know what? Kathy was just done. The baggage had only gotten worse throughout the day until Kathy had shoved her gi into a backpack and lit out for Baltimore after lunch. Anything to be away from that stupid island for the rest of the day. And, hey, maybe that would make it a lot ha.rder for her obnoxious shadow to find her, too.

Honestly, could today get any worse?

[For them that know who they are, please! NFB]

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[vdistinctive]

Eliot had spent his own day trying to cram a very, very large number of small handbags and clutches into closets. Along with an army-issue duffel bag marked "father issues" and an extremely heavy teddy-bear backpack he outright refused to look too closely at.

Honestly, the trunk labeled "Kathy" that showed up in his office at the school had practically been a relief.

Even more of a relief, though, was finally getting word from Hardison that the Butcher had made it to town. Thanks to Shelley's intel -- the man had apparently been all over this city -- he now had that narrowed down to a neighborhood. He managed to keep his stalking around like a serial killer to a minimum as he moved through the streets, but people still cleared out of his way as he went. Probably some sort of horrible glint in his eye or something.

But, well. This was one bag he would not regret adding to his pile.

[spin_kick_snap]

"...Oh, no, it's his eyes that scare me! I swear, he just looked right through me! I'm telling you, Helen, he had serial killer eyes."

Kathy was standing at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change, trying not to eavesdrop on the gossiping women behind her. But the phrase 'serial killer eyes' had her head snapping up, looking around to see if she could spot the guy they'd been talking about. In all likelihood, they were probably talking about some poor teen, minding his own damn business, but Kathy wasn't so preoccupied with sulking that she'd forgotten there was an actual serial killer coming to Baltimore with a vendetta against her alter-ego.

Even looking, she might not have spotted him if his cellphone hadn't started ringing at that exact minute. "Dammit, Spencer!" she snapped, trying to glare a hole through Eliot's chest.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot's head jerked in surprise at the sound -- he'd gone a little tunnel vision there, he'd have to watch out for that -- and he glared back even as he answered his phone.

"Yeah, Shelley. I see her. Thanks." He hung up before Shelley could get chatty, glanced over to make sure there wasn't any traffic headed for him, and started across the street towards Kathy, unconcerned with any laws against jaywalking. "Are you freaking kidding me?" he hissed, trying to keep his voice down. The last thing he needed was someone deciding he was harassing an innocent teenage girl.

[spin_kick_snap]

Which, you know, he totally was. She had every right to be here, and she was telling him so with perfect posture and arms folded tightly across her chest.

Go ahead, Spencer. Grab her and try to drag her off and tie her to a chair. She dared you.

Helen and the other women practically fled, with the chatty one stage whispering, "See? I told you so! Serial killer eyes!" while Kathy stood her ground, tapping her foot.

"What do you want?" she demanded once Eliot had joined her on the far sidewalk. "Did my other baby-sitter have to cancel?"

[vdistinctive]

"What part of 'professional killer' wasn't clear to you?" Eliot asked, voice dangerously low. He stepped just past her, scanning up and down the block. "Do you want to die?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"I wasn't aware the Bu--" Kathy stopped herself, eyes scanning the crowd. "--that our friend was in the habit of attacking random Asian high schoolers. Or did you not notice how less-than-colorful I am right now?"

Granted, her gi was in the bag slung over her shoulder, but right now she looked like one of any number of normal girls going about their normal, non-superhero business in the streets of Baltimore.

Didn't she?

[vdistinctive]

"Oh, right, your impenetrable disguise." Eliot rolled his eyes and started down the street again, constantly scanning. Kathy had just made his night several thousand times more difficult. Why couldn't she just let him fix this for her?! "That's definitely fool-proof. What was I thinking."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Probably something along the lines of 'Oh, there's Kathy, let me go remind her that I think she's stupid and irresponsible and that she should give up this cute little hobby of hers and let the grownups handle this'," she said, tone biting. "Sound about right?"

Kathy, the narration is begging you to be less seventeen. Please.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot actually paused at that. "I never said any of those things!"

Well, not in those words, anyway.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Yeah. Right. Sure, you didn't," Kathy said, rolling her eyes. She knew that with every word she was just proving him right, but she just couldn't seem to stop. "You looked at me and you told me that you didn't have any faith in me at all and it doesn't matter what words you used, that's exactly what you meant! The one adult I thought actually believed in me--" She stopped, lips thinning, and swallowed back the rest of her retort. "I am not getting into this with you. I'm sure you have somewhere very important to be and heaven forbid I take up any more of your precious time with my childish antics."

Besides, there was some guy watching them argue and it was getting super-creepy.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot just looked at her, baffled. That was what her huffiness had been about? "Kathy, there is a man trying to --"

"Spencer!" He was a hulking older man, with a good foot on Eliot, and a nasty mass of burn scars on his right cheek. And he was now walking extremely purposefully in their direction.

"Move," Eliot said, turning to face the man and reaching back to push Kathy towards the nearby alley. "Go up. Butcher doesn't use guns, but he's probably not here alone."

"Spencer!" the man shouted, moving faster now. Well, at least he wasn't shouting about killing them in the middle of the street.

[spin_kick_snap]

"That's him?" Kathy asked, trying to get a good look at the man who had caused all this trouble. Not just to gawk, but because she needed to know what the guy after her looked like.

Those burns on the side of his face looked like they had a story to them. As did the way the Butcher had zeroed in on Eliot and the terrible expression on his face. Kathy didn't think the Butcher had even noticed her, never mind figured out who she was. Not when he was busy bellowing Eliot's name and looking like he wanted to play soccer with Eliot's head.

"He's definitely brought some friends along," she told him, craning her head still further. "I'm counting five--no, at least six. I recognize some of them, too." The heaviest of heavy hitters among the mafia here in Baltimore. Banzai had tangled with most of them at least once. Three of them were supposed to be in jail at this very minute.

Looked like Eliot was right about prison not holding the Butcher for very long.

[vdistinctive]

"All the more reason to move," Eliot said again, backing up himself, always keeping his eyes on the Butcher, always keeping himself between him and Kathy. As they reached the mouth of the alley, the Butcher sped up, pulling a cleaver out from under his jacket.

Because what else would a guy called 'the Butcher' carry around for a weapon? Eliot hated fighting cleaver people.

He didn't have another second to spare to make sure Kathy actually started retreating. "This time, I will kill you," the Butcher growled, and raised his cleaver high and charged at Eliot. Eliot danced back just far enough to avoid getting his nose sliced off, grabbed the Butcher by the bicep, and redirected him straight into the wall.

[spin_kick_snap]

No time for subtlety; Kathy had leapt up onto the third level of a fire escape and peeked over the edge, watching the brawl in the alley. She almost cheered when Eliot steered the Butcher into the wall--he hit so hard he practically bounced off of it.

Was--was that it? Could Eliot really have taken him down so quickly? For a split second, Kathy dared to hope...

[vdistinctive]

If that was all it would take, Eliot wouldn't have spent the last week and a half quietly freaking out.

The Butcher rebounded off the wall with barely a more than a few staggering steps. Eliot bounced back, keeping on his toes, and grabbed the nearest usefully shaped object he could find: a plastic trashcan lid.

Not the most useful, but it was handy when the Butcher came at him again, a knife in both hands now, and hacked down at him with his cleaver. Eliot brought the trashcan lid up to parry, and the cleaver nearly split it in two before getting jammed against the thick, curved plastic.

A few of the Butcher's men hung back by the mouth of the alley, hesitating. Unsure if this was a battle the man preferred to fight on his own or not.

[spin_kick_snap]

"This time! This time I will kill you!" the Butcher roared. His declaration was slightly undercut by the fact that his second knife was well and truly stuck in the plastic garbage lid and the frustrated expression he wore as he tried to yank it loose.

Kathy watched on tenterhooks; they were too close for her to intervene in any real, useful way. Even if she were to dig out her rope-darts to fling at the Butcher, there was every chance that Eliot would step into the way of it instead. The best she could do--for now, at least, though if she saw an opening, damn whatever Eliot said, she was taking it--was keep an eye on the bullyboys at the alleymouth. If one of them made a move, she'd be on them in fractions of a second.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot grunted, never having been much one for sparing the breath for mid-fight banter. The Butcher let go of the knife lodged in the trashcan lid and threw a punch at Eliot's head instead, which Eliot immediately blocked, losing his grip on the trashcan lid. The Butcher's other knife came in for another slash at Eliot's face, and he just barely managed to catch it in time, needing both hands to arrest the Butcher's momentum. He twisted the Butcher's wrist, trying to disarm him, but the Butcher moved with the movement, and Eliot had to settle for bringing his foot up and kicking the man away, buying himself a moment of distance and breathing room.

The lackeys at the mouth of the alley apparently took that as their queue; the younger one, only a little older than Kathy, started towards the fight with a knowing smirk.

[spin_kick_snap]

For a moment, Kathy let herself get distracted by watching Eliot fight. It was nothing like their spars or practice sessions. He was faster, yes, but more also far more brutal. Instead of the smooth economy of movement he used to teach her, here, Eliot swung with his full measure of power, holding nothing back, the next punch as grimly inevitable as the tides.

That was how the kid--Vanko, she recognized him--managed to get so close, almost halfway up the alley before she noticed him moving.

"Vanko!" she shouted, vaulting over the edge of the fire escape. "Don't even think about it!"

No, she wasn't in her gi. Or her mask. Nor did she have her weapons out. But that wasn't going to stop Kathy from having Eliot's back.

...Regardless of what he thought about it.

[vdistinctive]

". . . The hell?" Vanko asked, thrown by the lack of costume. He skidded to a stop and reached for his gun.

"Goddammit," Eliot bit out, as he blocked another swing of the Butcher's knife. He'd really kind of thought she'd finally gotten some sense and gotten out of there. He was too far away to disarm Kid Crime before he managed to get a shot off, and for a moment he was convinced he was about to watch Kathy die again.

The Butcher caught him with a fist to his ribs while he was distracted, and Eliot realized he wasn't even going to have time to watch it happen.

He should have tied her to a chair when he had the chance.

[spin_kick_snap]

Oh ye of little faith, Eliot! Kathy had gone up against Vanko before, several times, and while she never liked tangling with guys with guns, she knew how to handle him.

Kathy hit the ground and bounced high up into the air seconds before the bullet buried itself in the asphalt where she'd landed. But seconds were a surprisingly long time when you moved as fast as Kathy did. By the time the shot was fired, she was already pushing off against the far wall and slamming into Vanko from behind.

She could punch nine times per second. Physics made each punch hurt. Eliot's training made each punch count.

Vanko went down after the fifth punch got him in the back of the neck. Surprised shouts went up from the alley. "It's--it's her! Banzai!" "She's a girl?" "Who cares!"

[vdistinctive]

Okay, Eliot couldn't not watch that, as best as he could, anyway. He couldn't help but grin as he caught glimpses of the techniques he'd taught her in the blur of her movements. They'd work on the whole 'disarm, unload, and dechamber' thing when it came to fighting a guy with a gun later. When they weren't both rather a bit busy.

Fortunately, the Butcher was rather distracted by the whole display as well, if for a different reason. "Bonzai?!" he shouted. "Someone kill her already!" Then he grunted as Eliot took advantage of his distraction to drive a couple of his own punches -- quick in their own right, but agonizingly slow in comparison to Kathy's -- to the man's midsection. The Butcher roared and swung with the knife again, and Eliot ran out of attention to spare.

As for the Butcher's other cronies, they had their orders. They maybe weren't super certain right now they'd be able to carry them out, but "someone kill her already" wasn't really open to interpretation. Two of them moved on Kathy at a time, guns drawn.

[spin_kick_snap]

Yeah, even Kathy wasn't fast enough to dodge multiple bullets.

Why was she constantly in these situations in the first place?

"You don't want to do that!" she shouted, staring at the guns they'd pulled. "I'm between you and your boss there. You shoot at me, and you're also shooting at him!" She jumped up again and landed on the shoulders of one of the guys with his gun out. "Or one another! Put your guns down and try to kill me like men! You don't see your boss needing to use a gun to fight somebody! What, are you all sukas?" Yeah, she was probably butchering the pronunciation, but she figured they could guess what she was saying easily enough. "Need a gun to take down one little girl? So sorry about your khui!"

And then she kicked the guy she was standing on in the face. A gout of blood burst from his nose as he roared. She flipped off of him, following it up with a sharp kick to his temple and dashed back over to where Eliot and the Butcher were still fighting. Honestly, staying in front of him was probably her best bet for survival.

[vdistinctive]

Well, except for the part where the Butcher also wanted to kill her. The man hissed with glee when he saw her come near -- and then grunted and cursed when Eliot threw him into the wall again.

"Don't get cocky," Eliot gasped at Kathy as he grabbed one of the approaching lackeys' arms -- they apparently took her taunting to heart -- and yanked the man into the dumpster, throwing an elbow into the back of the man's head to knock it forward into the metal with a sharp *clang* almost as an afterthought. He kicked the man's gun aside, then caught a wild lunge from the enraged Butcher and was dragged back into the thick of his own fight again.

The last remaining lackey circled at distance, gun held low as he looked for a shot.

[spin_kick_snap]

The Butcher was still a better bet than bullets, okay?

"I'm not cocky, I just know you have my back," Kathy said, her eyes on the final guy. There had to be a way to get at him without eating lead...

Kathy found her break when he glanced away to watch the fight behind her, Eliot and the Butcher trading punches that would stagger anyone else. As soon as his eyes left her, Kathy was a blur of motion, bouncing towards him in a pattern that would have confused anybody but Parker.

That didn't stop him from firing anyway, two shots, three, the fourth burying itself in the wall next to the Butcher's burned ear. And then Kathy was pouncing on him, far too close for him to shoot and more than willing to work out her frustrations on his face.

[vdistinctive]

"You idiot!" the Butcher shouted when the bullet buzzed past his ear. Eliot took the opportunity to finally get the knife out of the Butcher's hand, turning it back on the man and driving him back several paces. It killed him to do it, but he had to ignore Kathy's fight if he didn't want the Butcher getting a leg up on him and taking them both out. He caught the man across the ribs, enough to draw blood but not enough to slow him down, and the Butcher managed to catch Eliot's wrist, twisting it around and pointing the knife back at Eliot's throat.

It was a remarkably familiar position to Eliot. As was the cold of the dumpster suddenly behind his back as the Butcher used his greater weight to force Eliot into it. The Butcher got his free hand around Eliot's neck, and he pressed in harder, cutting off his airway and leaning his weight into the hand holding the knife, pressing it closer and closer to Eliot's eye.