Re: (Before Ninja: The Cat)
The strange things here weren't alleys and crime. No, but Svetlana would find plenty of that in the Capital, if she went looking. Here, oddities went bump in the night and wore the faces of harmless scientists. This was a different kind of battlefield.
As for surviving, perhaps there were different kinds. Quiet kinds, that walked with heads down and shuffling gait. Perhaps it was onslaught. Or, perhaps, it was taking life and making the most of it. Cat had been rather not wonderful at that recently. It felt like life was buffeting her around rather like strong winds, and she was working on turning that around. She should spend some more time at the Rex in the Capital. It would remind her about being cutthroat.
But that was neither here nor there, and it would take many more encounters with this woman for Cat to open up that way. This was more than she gave most people. Drink, conversation, advice. It was the past, you see, looking her in the face once more, and she was helpless to throw it out entirely.
"Destiny, I believe, is her name. Perhaps the town will surprise you," she added after that toast. She drank her drink down, and she suspected this sleepy-seeming place would, indeed, surprise the redhaired woman. She wondered if Svetlana knew the Wainrights called this place their base of operations. After all, home? Was Wainrights and the League, and this place had both.
She didn't repeat the toast, though her mossy gaze said she understood it perfectly. She just sipped at her drink, and she tried not to think about the past. Some things, Cat wished, would actually stay buried.