I was wondering if you’d be interested in putting those ninja skills to good use.
Who: Kitty and Blake What: Orc fighting When: Day 1 or 2 Where: Somewhere with Orcs Status: complete Rating: Pg-13
Kitty had been wondering how long it would take for a Dark Portal to open. Ever since Jaina had appeared, she’d been waiting for something Warcraft to happen. She wasn’t as serious a player as she had been years ago, but she still played casually and she knew the lore.
If anything, this was probably just the beginning.
It was, at least, good practice. Some of the orcs were nearly as large as the hulk, but they weren’t near as strong or as tough. Still tough. Still a challenge at times, but Kitty thrived on challenges.
Phasing through a swipe, she hopped onto the Orc’s axe, running up the handle and kneeing her in the face. Then she flipped over and kicked her in the back of the head. “How does it go again? Blood and thunder!”
She didn’t see the lankier orc sneaking up behind her.
The orcs were certainly a force to be reckoned with. Blake had endeavored to stay around Ilia most of the time, mostly since she didn’t quite yet have her fighting abilities from the dreams. And sure, watching Ilia attempt to street fight an orc had been entertaining up until it had tried to squash her, then Blake had intervened. So she’d ensured that Ilia was relatively safe for the time being before she struck out into Orange County herself.
It was easy for her to run circles around the orcs. Gambol Shroud had three different configurations so she could easily use it to take them down. And she did rather enjoy her shadow semblance to help trick the things and divert their attention long enough for her to get killing blows in.
Blake came around and spotted a woman up ahead fighting an orc. And she didn’t seem to see the other orc sneaking up behind her. Shifting Gambol Shroud into the gun configuration, she shot at the orc sneaking up on the other woman.
“Hey, how about you fight someone like a real warrior,” she called out.
“Excuse me?” Kitty said, adjusting a gauntlet on her left wrist. She clenched her fist, causing three claws to come out of the metal wrist bracer. “Hey! I am a warrior!”
The orc looked between them, and laughed. “Pretty girls.”
“I was talking to big, green and ugly, not you!” Blake responded, realizing she should’ve been more specific. Now that she had the attention of said orc, she reconfigured Gambol Shroud back into the double sword configuration.
“How about you come and get me?” She taunted the orc.
“You first,” he growled, lifting what was to him a dagger but Kitty considered it a sword. He flipped it into reverse grip and drew a second from his best. Instead of charging, he started to circle Blake.
Because of course that one would be a rogue, Kitty mused. She turned back to check on the female warrior she’d been fighting a moment ago annnnd she was recovered because of course she was. Kitty rolled her shoulders, and popped the claw in her right arm. “So. Are you that kind of orc?”
The Orc sneered, and charged.
Blake kept her gaze on the orc. So he had two weapons as well, she could work with that. Of course, it probably meant he was more agile than some of the others she’d seen and fought around here. But that was no matter, she had plenty of tricks up her sleeve.
As the orc started to circle her, Blake also started to circle. The blade in her right hand was held in a normal grip, while the one in her left was a reverse grip. She was sizing the orc up, taking her time to plan a move. And after several moments, Blake rushed the orc head on, moving for one of his legs. However, when one of his blades would swing towards her, she used her semblance, leaving a shadow where she was as she darted around the side of him to swipe a blade against his hip.
She then came to a stop behind him, watching him carefully.
It worked, his blade slicing through her shadow form and getting him a nasty gash along his hip for his troubles. He cursed, spinning around. “Nice trick.”
From her perch, legs wrapped around the warrior’s head as she punched her in the face repeatedly, Kitty called out, “His weapons are probably poisoned!”
“Thanks,” Blake commented to the orc. It was a nice trick, even if Blake had at one point disliked her semblance since it basically let her run away, but she’d come to like it. And unlike magic, she could make several shadows in a row without needing to recharge it.
“Good to know! Thanks!” Blake responded. So it was staying out of reach of his blades. Blake was not about to get poisoned if she could help it. So it was keeping on the move, using her shadow semblance to keep herself from being hit and dealing cuts here and there. She leapt around, never staying in one spot for too long. She was trying to get some leverage so that she could deal a death blow.
It was irritating, the Orc having a difficult time figuring out where she’d end up with how fast she was going. He pulled something out of a pouch and flung it in a wide arc. Rough, grating sand, chosen to blind.
Blake didn’t quite catch what the orc was doing until it was too late. She got hit by the arc of sand and it interrupted her attack. At least she knew where she’d been in relation to the orc, so instead of letting herself be completely phased, Blake tumbled away from him, using her semblance as she went, and she changed Gambol Shroud’s configuration to the gun. At least that was something she could do in her sleep now.
Having a good guess as to where the orc was when she landed in a squat, she lifted her gun and pulled the trigger repeatedly as she tried to clear her vision.
The orc jerked back, dark blood sprouting from multiple wounds. He turned, hoping to get help from his comrade, only to see the other human standing over her body, holding her heart in her hand. He spat on the ground, sounding impressed. “You’d make good orcs.”
Then he toppled over.
Kitty tossed the heart aside and shuddered.
Getting the sand out of her eyes, Blake looked at the orc she’d defeated and stood up. “I prefer being faunus, thanks.” She watched him for a few moments after her toppled over to make sure that he didn’t get back up. Satisfied that he wasn’t getting back up, she switched Gambol Shroud back into the sword configuration then looked over at the other woman.
“Nice job.” Blake was wearing the bow in her hair to cover her cat ears. It was more out of habit than anything else. When things got like this, Blake didn’t always try to hide the cat ears. After all, normal civilians tended to be far more concerned with the catastrophe happening than they were about a girl with cat ears that was fighting the bad things.
“Thanks, you’re not half bad.” Kitty held out her hand, the one that wasn’t covered in Orc blood. “I’m Kitty.”
“Thanks, I had good teachers in my dreams.” Even before she’d gotten to Beacon, she’d had good teachers show her how to fight, and she learned how to utilize her semblance. Beacon had helped to refine them a little, at least until the attack on Beacon and everything had gone wrong. She shook Kitty’s hand, finding amusement in the fact the woman’s name was Kitty and she herself was a cat faunus. “I’m Blake.”
“Nice to meet you.” She grinned cockily, then glanced back at the bodies. “Honestly we lucked out with those two. Magic users might be a little harder to deal with. I’m pretty there are some nearby. These guys are smarter than the last time we had orcs.”
She said that so casually, like it was just a thing.
“Yeah, it’s a little harder to dodge spells than weapons. Though I could maybe manage to trick them enough with my semblance to get around it.” Blake glanced at the bodies as well. She didn’t even bat an eyelash at the mention of orcs having been here before. “At least they can be killed.” Some Grimm took a hell of a lot more effort and a lot more people to take down. These orcs seemed to be able to be taken down one-on-one as long as one knew how to fight and could fight smart.
“If they don’t know you’re coming, that’s the best chance you have,” Kitty confirmed. Something howled in the distance, and she glanced behind her. “.... You heard that right?”
Kitty hadn’t even considered the idea of wolves or wolf-riders. But now she was considering it and she didn’t like it. “You know what sounds good? High ground.”
Blake nodded, taking that to heart. At least she could move quickly and silently. She was kind of a rogue in that respect. Though when she heard the howl, her cat ears twitched to attention. “Yeah, I heard that.”
She definitely didn’t like the sound of it. “I agree. High ground would be good.” Blake glanced around, then quickly dashed off, leaping her way to the top of a nearby building.
Kitty ran towards the same building, floating up towards the second floor and then scrambling up the rest of the way. Just in time, as a half dozen wolf-riders rode past. Four of them continued on, but two slowed to a stop. The wolves sniffed, while the riders looked around warily.
Blake watched the four riders move on, then looked back at the two who were lurking around. She glanced at Kitty. “You want the one on the left, and I’ll take the one on the right?” She was trying to decide which configuration of Gambol Shroud to use, but ended up going with the double swords.
“Sounds good to me.” Kitty knelt down when the orcs looked up at them. “On the count of three.”
She leapt off the roof, ”Three!”
Blake also knelt down, then leapt off the roof shortly after Kitty did. She lifted one of her swords and ran it through the orc rather easily, killing it instantly. Blake pulled the blade out of the orc as she then rolled, using her shadow semblance to keep the wolf from actually biting her as she moved clear.
That was actually kind of hot. Kitty landed foot first, backflipping off of the Orc’s face. She kicked off of the wall, and ran her claws into the Orc’s chest.
That still left the two wolves, who immediately turned on the two girls. One snapped at Blake viciously, snarling in a deep reverberating growl.
Blake leapt away from the wolf, utilizing her semblance in the process, letting the wolf snap at a couple of her shadows as she shifted her weapons back into a gun and she shot the wolf in the head a couple times.
Blood obscured the creature’s vision. It howled, stumbling forward blindly and trying to bite at the thing that had hurt it.
Kitty meanwhile was trying to stay ahead of her own wolf. She ran towards Blake, and then the wolf’s jaws snapped shut around her torso. It skidded to a stop, snapping its jaws as it realized its prey had somehow escaped and passed right through it. Kitty lept onto it from behind, jabbing her claw into the back of its head and brain stem.
Wounding the wolf that was coming after her, Blake took the opportunity and leapt over it, placing a couple well-placed bullets into the top of its head. She didn’t quite like killing the animal, but given if she didn’t kill it, it would’ve killed her (or tried to), better to put it down before it caused more problems.
“This is a lot less messy in video games,” Kitty mused. She hopped down from the corpse of her wolf, turning to look at it with some sadness. It didn’t seem right to kill it, but it was kill or be killed. That was too often a thing in her dreams and now her real life. She glanced at Blake. “You okay?”
Straightening up, Blake put Gambol Shroud back into its normal sword configuration and slid it into the sheath on her back. “Yeah, I’m fine. No wounds suffered. How about you?” Fighting was intense out here, but everything else in Orange County, plus fighting Grimm in her dreams, had prepared her for this sort of situation.
“Not even a scratch.” While there were instances where Kitty could end up roughed up, this wasn’t one of them. As long as she paid attention, she could dodge or phase through many attacks. She wondered how Diana was faring, and resolved to find her, “I need to find my girlfriend, but before I go, I was wondering if you’d be interested in putting those ninja skills to good use. Responding to these kind of invasions, helping people get kittens out of trees, punching terrorists in the throat. Girl-scout type stuff.”
She put her hand through the wall like it wasn’t even there, “We’re called the X-men.”
The offer was unexpected, and Blake wasn’t quite certain about it. But as long as she was able to think about it before responding, she could do that. Though she wasn’t really unnerved by Kitty’s hand going through the wall. She’d seen a lot since being here, after all.
Since there was some sharing happening, Blake reached up and undid the bow in her hair and revealed her cat ears. “Perhaps one of the reasons behind my ninja skills is because I’m not human. I’m faunus.” So. There was that.
“As for your offer, can I think about it? Or do you need an answer now?”
“None of us are strictly human either,” Kitty answered, before reassuring her, “You don’t need to answer now,”
She wasn’t at all phased by cat ears. One of Kitty’s best friends was fuzzy and blue, after all. Almost a literal elf. “You can find me on the Valarnet easily enough.”
Blake nodded a bit. “Alright, I’ll give it some thought. Thank you for the offer, though.” It definitely seemed like good work to do, but Blake needed to do some reflecting first. “I assume you know Logan then? Given the not exactly human thing.”
“He’s kind of my mentor,” Kitty explained. Because of course Blake knew Logan, and that made perfect sense. “We share dreams, he’s the one that taught me a lot of my fighting skills.”
“I live with him. He took me in after finding me on a park bench.” Blake had basically been a stray. And with luck, she’d have enough money saved up soon to start looking for an apartment of her own. Not that she didn’t like living with Logan and Ilia, but it had been her goal to have her own place. “He told me about mutants when I told him about my being faunus. Let’s just say mutants and faunus have quite a bit in common.”
“Yeah, that sounds exactly like him,” Kitty replied, laughing. She trailed off and nodded. “I’m not surprised. People don’t like those who are different. Even those of us who can pass.”
Blake nodded a bit. “Yeah, it’s really bad in the world I dream of. Being seen as less than human gets really exhausting after a while.” Of course there were humans that saw faunus as equals, but by and large, there was plenty of hostility and violence between humans and faunus. It was why Blake kept her ears hidden in the dreams when she was at Beacon. She didn’t want to be judged or hated simply because she was faunus. She wanted to be seen for who she actually was.
It felt like they couldn’t catch a break. God knew what Blake had to deal with. Kitty’s dreams were one disaster after another and mutants suffered unfairly. But that wasn’t much different from the waking world. Just with more giant lizards and killer robots. “It really does. You be safe out there, okay?”
There were quite a few conversations they both could have about mutants and faunus and the treatment by humans. But those would definitely need to be for another day. So Blake put the bow back in place, hiding her cat ears for the time being again. “Thanks, and you be careful as well. These guys are a lot smarter than they look.”