Limbo City, Friday Afternoon

[spin_kick_snap]

Today's therapy appointment had spent awhile talking about Kathy's anxiety triggers (shocking no one, she had A Lot) and had left her wound up. So wound up, in fact, that rather than throwing herself into the first taxi she could find and riding white-knuckled to the guys' place, she'd actually braved both the cold and her fears of Limbo City to walk home. Not to explore or to try to get more comfortable, but just to try to work some of that extra jittering energy off.

Which of course meant that she was so far in her head that she didn't realize that she'd taken a wrong turn into a bad neighborhood until it was far too late. All the signs were there; she should have recognized them immediately from her time as Banzai - though with the addition of a lot more deep gouges in the buildings and concrete.

It was the sound of trash cans falling over as she passed an alleyway that got her head out of the clouds, and the almost-feline howl had her anxiety taking a backseat to the adrenaline getting dumped in her blood. She reached behind her to her backpack of weaponry she carried with her whenever she visited Limbo City, keeping her eyes locked dim confines of the alley. Maybe it was just a harmless old alleycat?

A pair of lambent eyes opened in the darkness, easily at height with her chest and each one roughly the size of her fist. Okay, not an alleycat then. One of those animalistic demons Dante called Rages. She was pretty sure that he classified them further, but the taxonomy didn't immediately come to her.

The Rage did, dashing out between the buildings at a speed that she'd have to sprint to match.

A snap of her wrist and her telescoping baton extended. The Rage pounced at her and she pivoted to the side, away from those grasping claws and slammed the baton upwards with full force. Something in its face cracked and the thing yowled in pain and fury. The baton wasn't going to kill the creature, but Kathy was loathe to take out her gun and shoot it; this was the middle of the city and a stray bullet could hit someone. Her Thundaga materia was still attached to her bokken, which was tucked away in her bag and all of her knives required her to get a lot closer than she really wanted to get.

Fuck, of all the times to miss Banzai's rope darts. Maybe she'd have to get a new set - a real set, not made from repurposed gymnastics equipment.

The fight was ugly and brutal, with Kathy basically bludgeoning the Rage with her metal baton, aiming for thinner bones and joints to try to take it down even if she couldn't take it out - or at least convince it that there was better prey elsewhere until she could get a minute to call Dante and have him deal with it. A lucky strike had the tip of her baton smashing into the Rage's eye and it howled; a noise loud and shrill enough to make Kathy's ears ring.

And, right before the heavy weight hit her back and knocked her to the ground, that was when she remembered that Rages usually belonged to a mated pair and where one was, another would surely follow.

The pavement shredded her jeans and the palms of her hands and her head bounced off a rock hard enough that stars burst behind her eyes. The Rage of top of her was even bigger than its mate; she could feel the heavy weight of it on her back, the claws pricking through her jacket and into her skin, smell the rancid tang of old meat on its breath. Her hand inched towards her shoulder, all concerns about shooting gone for the moment now that survival was on the line, and she swore she heard malice in the low growl the demon loosed in her ear.

And then the weight was gone, shouldered off of her by a blur of gray and brown and white. Snaps and snarls added to the yowling cacophony; dazed, it took Kathy a minute to make sense of what she was seeing. A large dog, filthy and matted with ribs showing, had flung itself into the Rage and had managed to wrap its powerful jaws around the demon's throat. The Rage was hissing and clawing at the dog, but there must have been terrier in the mix somewhere, because the mutt refused to budge, shaking the Rage like a rat to try to snap its neck. Ignoring her own wounds, Kathy pulled herself back up to her feet and dashed over to help. She didn't trust her aim enough to not hit the dog, so she went for a knife.

Together, they finished the second Rage off, the first one fleeing back into the depths of the alley. Kathy had no intentions of following and, from the looks of it, neither did the dog. She turned to it, noting he still had a tattered collar on, though he looked like it'd been on its own for awhile. "You okay, boy?" she asked, cautiously holding her hand out for it to sniff. The dog whined and limped forward, its back paw drawn up and a bloody hole in the skin, but still licked her hand.

That was good enough for Kathy. "C'mon, boy," she said, and scooped him up in her arms. He was heavy and almost as big as she was, and he stank, like trash and dirt and blood, but he'd come to her rescue. She wasn't going to leave him behind. "Let's get you home."

[Mostly establishy, but open for phone calls and/or the guys whose house is about to get a surprise guest!]

Comments

[not_every_mage]

"We might need to take him to a vet," Anders mused. "I can deal with a lot, but fleas aren't on the list."

He ran his hands along the dog's flanks, feeling the jut of its ribs but few obvious problems until he got to the wound. The dog whimpered a bit but calmed quickly at the touch. "Stay still," he said, and tentatively tried to heal the gash the demons had left on the dog.

The healing ... didn't feel different, anyhow?

[spin_kick_snap]

"I'm disappointed elfroot isn't also a flea cureall," Kathy told him, letting herself sink to the floor with a small groan. Her whole body hurt - muscle soreness, not actual injury. "But he's got one of those flea collars on him, see? It's beat up like his other collar and I think maybe it's too tight for him, cause all the fur's been rubbed away there. So hopefully he doesn't have many blood-sucking passengers on him if any."

And they had flea and tick shampoos and pills with their pet stuff that Kathy had every intention of borrowing to use on the hero dog while he stayed with them.

"Oooh, look, I think he's doing better now. He's putting more weight on his back leg."

[not_every_mage]

"Ghoul's Beard is, but I've never figured out how to grow that here," Anders told her, and let his eyes flutter open as he felt the last surge of healing energy flow into the dog. "I think -- "

Whatever he thought, it was being interrupted by solid thump from the hero-dog's tail, and a series of joyful yips.

"I think it worked!" Anders said, over the din.

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy leaned over and wrapped her arms around him. Reaching was painful, but he was worth it. "You're a hero, too," she told him, before offering a kiss.

[not_every_mage]

Anders shrugged even as he accepted the hug. "I just wish I'd been with you, instead of cleaning up the damage afterwards."

[spin_kick_snap]

"My fault," Kathy said immediately. "Normally I don't walk around LC at all. But after my meeting, my brain was just full, so I needed the exercise. I didn't really think - or, rather, I thought too much and didn't pay enough attention."

[not_every_mage]

"What were you thinking about?" Anders wondered, stepping back to get a better look at her. "... sit down somewhere. It'll make the healing go easier. And I know it's not my fault, but I still feel bad that it happened."

The dog nosed at their legs; Anders reached down to give it an absent-minded scratch.

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy let go of him to go back to slumping against the wall, unwilling to move further. "This is good, right?" she asked.

Please let it be fine. Moving, ugh.

"I had another appointment with my therapist today," she said. "I don't know if I mentioned her to you? Being a kid and then the holiday interfered with that."

[not_every_mage]

"Perfect," Anders said, hand briefly resting on her arm as he prepared to heal her. "And I think you mentioned you were thinking about it, but I didn't know you started it. Do you like her?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"I do," Kathy said, slowly. "She's got this way of listening that just makes me feel like I could tell her everything. And she's not judgey. The only time she gets annoyed is when I get down on myself about stuff. She says no one is allowed to shame her patients and that includes her patients."

She leaned down to pet the dog, who licked her fingers and gave a deep, contented woof from his chest. "And she was here during everything with Mundus, so she doesn't bat an eye when I talk about zombies."

[not_every_mage]

"You needed that," Anders said, closing his eyes to let the healing energy flow through him. "Can't imagine someone who didn't believe you would do much good."

[spin_kick_snap]

"How do you explain half the shit that's wrong with me if you take zombies away?" Kathy said, a sigh in her words as Anders' healing poured through her. "We were talking about a lot of my anxiety triggers and what happens when they're tripped. She's gonna have a preliminary diagnosis for me next week."

[not_every_mage]

"What happens after you get the diagnosis?" Anders wondered, frowning. "And ... hmm. Do your ribs feel all right?"

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy took a deep breath, expanding her ribs out as far as they'd go and nodded. "Feel fine," she assured him. "And...not much. She might subscribe some anti-anxiety pills if she thinks it'll help, but the diagnosis is more for me than for her. She thinks it'll help me have someone with authority say, 'This is what's wrong with you, this is how we'll fix it.'"

Unlike Kathy's current reeling from 'everything is wrong with me, I am hopeless' to 'nothing is wrong with me, I just can't handle a normal life.'