“Hello Monty.” The velvet purr broke the night time silence of the warehouse with the shock of a panther's predatory growl.
The master of the Monkey Fist spun around at the unexpected voice behind him.
“How…” he started to ask in disbelief, then without pause barked an order. “Monkey Ninjas… attack!”
Five thousand years of mystic breeding had been dedicated to creating the perfect servitors for the Monkey God and his Voice-on-Earth; Montgomery Fisk once an English lord and now Monkey Fist, master of the Tai Shing Pek Kwar. He spoke with the God's voice and could not be disobeyed. Instantly, hundreds of maddened apes swept out of the shadows and rushed the intruder like a wave of fire, fur and steel.
A thin green beam of coherent light burst from the woman's hands and touched each beast in turn and where it touched there was an explosion of blood, bone and muscle leaving a monkey dead or screaming out its life on the floor.
“Dear god—” Lord Fist clenched his jaw against the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him. “What have you done?”
“You like?” From the shadows a tall figure glided with a hunters easy grace, hands wreathed in green fire. “Five kilojoule pulse laser. The plasma's just a side effect.”
Green fire flared and danced along her arms as she spoke. “Of course, when you dump that much energy into living tissue it super heats the water and…” she put her hands together and drew them apart, spreading her gloved fingers. “Boom!” Her eyes danced with good humor.
Tilting her head to one side, like a curious bird she looked about the cavernous warehouse, stacked high with crates and rusting machinery.
“Oh Amy!” she singsonged. “Come out, come out where ever you are.”
At the mention of his lovers name, Fist slid in front of the intruder, dropping into a Monkey-Fights-Tiger stance.
“Those,” he indicated his dead and dying ninjas with a jerk of his chin, “were merely a test. And I,” cruelly sensuous lips pulled back in a savage grin, revealing heavy yellow teeth. “ I am the master of Tai Shing Pek Kwar!”
Bringing his hand forward in a chopping motion he screamed an order. “God Fist warriors- -attack!” From the shadows of the roof beams fell a murderous gorilline swarm, barking, hooting and shrieking like hell's own madmen. Simultaneously, from the other end of the warehouse a squeaky voice shrilled “Kill her. Kill her for mommie!”
Two twisted horrors lumbered forward hissing and growling , their massive bulk of teeth, claws and tentacles shaking the concrete and steel building.
Green light sparkled, strobe like, and one by one the gorilla warriors died. But for every one that died, two more took their place. And the intruder dared not turn from them to face DNAmy's genetic monsters. Fisk cringed at the death of each of his most faithful warriors, but accepted it as the price of winning. The intruder must die this time. Either beneath the hooves, claws and teeth of Amy's creatures, or if she turned to face the creatures—Fisk's mystic warriors would rip her to pieces.
Between one breath and another Lord Montgomery Fisk's world changed. Green light rippled across the warehouse like an evil aurora borealis and his simian warriors shrieked died like worms in a blowtorch. Without turning the intruder raised her fisted hands above her head and two bolts of emerald lightning blasted basket ball sized tunnels through Amy's monsters.
“And you thought the cat suit was just for show. With it, I can sense bio-electric fields.” The figure explained absently, “so I don't have to see an attack to know it's coming.”
“Bitch!” Fist screamed, almost incoherent with rage and fear. Flicking his wrists he felt the poisoned Monkey-claw daggers slide from their forearm sheaths into his hands. One scratch… that's all he needed to kill her. Just a touch of the flat of the blade even, and she would die writhing in agony. Rolling, tumbling, scuttling across the floor in a chaotic dance impossible to follow Fist lunged at this tormenter, poisoned blades striking at her spine and kidneys in a perfect killing stroke. For a moment he stood triumphant… then a puzzled look stole over his face when she didn't fall.
“Let me give you a hand,” she remarked politely, picking something up from the floor and handing it to him.
So fast! He hadn't even seen her turn to face him. Automatically he reached for what she held out to him— and nothing happened. A cry of horror bubbled from his throat as he realized she was handing him his own severed arms, when her fingers flickered snapping whips of green fire and his trunk fell away from his legs, landing with sodden thumps on the oily concrete floor.
“It slices, it dices…” chanting under her breath she carved Fist into smaller and smaller but still living pieces with flickering strokes of coherent light, “it's perfect for all your household needs.”
“Ah…ah,” She turned from Fist, whose life was sliding from his limbless trunk with a bubbling moan and stalked new prey. “Amy…it's not polite to leave without saying goodby.”
“Oh god, oh god, ohgodohgod,” The plump geneticist stumbled backwards, away from the fire wreathed woman. Her feet tangled in the slippery coils that had been the intestines of one of her creatures and she fell with a moist thud. “Don't hurt me. It wasn't me. I didn't kill her. I wasn't even there—” She babbled in terror as she tried to push herself off the floor, hands and feet skidding in the slime of blood and gore that covered the ground.
“I'm not going to hurt you Amy,” the voice said gently, reaching down and effortlessly plucking the chunky woman off the floor with one hand. “This would have been much simpler if you'd simply sold me what I wanted and not made me…” she paused, her face creased in a sly grin, “work for it.”
“Sell- Sell!” Amy almost shrieked, her fear temporarily overridden by indignation. “You said you wouldn't make us suffer if we gave you what you wanted. You get what you want and we still die!”
“A fair bargain.” The woman nodded in agreement, “You should have taken it.”
She waved a dismissive hand in the direction of Lord Fist, who remarkably still had pink froth bubbling from his lips. A testament to the power of the Tai Shing Pek Kwar. “Oh look, Monty's trying to say good by. Bye Bye.”
She grabbed Amy's hand and waved it up and down. “Say Bye- bye to Monty.”
With a cry Amy wrenched free and fell to her knees, vomiting on the floor.
“I'd like to continue this,” the woman stood over Amy, “but I'm a little pressed for time.”
She consulted a digital readout on the arm of her cat suit. “Your Global Justice watchers should be showing up any minute now.”
At Amy's surprised look the woman grinned. “Didn't know they were using you as bait to catch me, did you. It's not the first time someone's died being bait.”
Her eyes hardened suddenly and Amy realized she still had the ability to be terrified. “Now.” She held out her hand. “Give it to me and I won't hurt you.”
Trembling like a tertiary syphilis patient Amy pointed to a smallish crate, half hidden in the shadow. The other woman turned and glided to the indicated spot, leaving her back naked to attack. Amy remained frozen to the spot, even as her mind screamed at her to do something. Run, fight, something. Terror paralyzed her as surely as if her spine had been broken.
“Thank you.”
Amy started at the soft voice above her. She hadn't even heard the woman return and now it was too late for her to run.
“I know you weren't there, Amy,” the woman had a small package stuffed into her leg pouch. She knelt down and gently took Amy's face in her hands. “I know you didn't kill her.”
She smoothed Amy's sweat matted hair from her eyes and smiled gently. “And I don't care.”
She pulled her finger softly across Amy's throat and her body fell away from her severed neck with a wet plopping sound, like a dead fish falling into the bottom of a metal skiff. “You knew what was going to happen,” she watched confusion turn to fear in the dying woman's eyes as she continued to hold Amy's head by the hair. “You knew what was going to happen, and you didn't warn her.”
Amy's mouth worked silently and bewildered terror filled her dying brain as her body failed to obey her.
“Shhhh…” The woman put a gentle finger against Amy's lips and placed her severed head on her rapidly cooling body. “I told you I wouldn't hurt you.”
She watched Amy's eyes jerk frantically around, like moths in a jar, her dying minutes stretching out into an eternity of waiting for the last moments of life to run out. “And it doesn't hurt a bit, does it?”
Pulling out a small computer the woman made a notation and checked off the last two names on a list. Hitting a function key she pulled up a second list. Much shorter, this one held only three names. They carried most of the blame for her death and she'd saved them for last. Wanting them to wait for it. Like a baby bird who can hear the snake moving through the brush, but can't fly away. To be afraid. To suffer, like she had suffered.
Waiting was over. Now it was time for them to start dying. She pulled up the first name on the list.
Stoppable.
Ron.