987 Chapter 987 More Sneakers
Kat could hear Hromdir chuckling on the other side of the door. When he finally got it out of his system he said, “I guess I’ll go deal with that now. You… brush up on your basic training when you wake up please,” Kat heard the shocked gasp, followed by a heavy thud as Hromdir walked out into the hallway, “Sorry about him. He’s clearly forgotten that you’d be able to hear everything. Now, what do you have for me?”
Kat held up the unconscious thief, “What should I do with this guy? He was trying to sneak in and it was comically bad. I saw and heard him coming across the entire backyard. It would’ve been harder to ignore him. Honestly I have no idea how he made it in here. Also was knocking him out the right choice?”
“Yes, yes it was. Bringing him to me was also a rather good decision. Keeping him alive wasn’t a mistake either. Sure, take them out if you need to, but a dead man can’t reveal who his employer is. Though… a final bit of warning… I’d run back to your post now. It’s rather easy to sneak past the guard, if the guard isn’t there,” explained Hromdir.
Kat’s eyes widened as she took of sprinting, making her way to the nearest window throwing it open, wincing as she heard the lock snapping in her rush. Though, she found it was worth it when a moment later she emerged into the courtyard and spotted someone, once again, trying to break their way into Bodeir’s room. Kat rushed towards him as quickly and silently as she could before wrapping him up into another chokehold.
This one seemed better trained, he was whipping his head around right when Kat’s arms were going for him. This meant that his head was at an awkward angle and Kat was blocking his mouth with her underarm instead of her hand but that was fine. What wasn’t fine was the fact he was managing to contest her strength somewhat because of the awkward way she’d needed to grab the guy. He even tried biting into her arm. It didn’t break skin, which gave her the confidence to keep hold of him… but it might just mean he never trained his jaw strength properly. Not like Kat had either…
The assassin, or thief made the most of their leverage, getting what little bits of leeway they could from the fact that while Kat was strong, she was also good for cuddling. That meant there was a number of areas in which the assassin could squeeze just a bit more room in her hold. They fought with everything they had not to stay caught. Even trying to reach down to grab a dagger. Kat managed to stop that one by flicking her tail in the way.
Eventually, the man’s struggles ceased. Kat waited for a solid minute, before slightly relaxing her grip on the man. Seeing as he didn’t react, she let him drop… only to be surprised by a kick straight to the chin. Kat clenched her jaw and took the attack stoically, grabbing the offending appendage and then slamming a knee into the poor man’s family jewels. Still, he was well trained and didn’t scream, even as his muscles spasmed. Kat bound him up and there was significantly less resistance. “Now, I didn’t enjoy that, but I’m trying to do this the polite way and keep you alive. I’m not contracted for that specifically, but it’d be an awful waste of life…
“So here’s the deal. I’m going to loosen my grip, and I’m going to take you inside to visit a friend of mine. Great man, Hromdir. He’ll keep you nice and… probably alive? We’ve already got one other person who was trying to sneak in. I wonder how many I can get by the end of the day?”
Kat felt the man nod, and was glad for it. Still… best to test something new out. Kat put the man down gently, but kept her hand on his collar, then activated her ability turning into water. She didn’t let the strange shift in perception get her, instead she let demonic energy burn in her hand, turning the watery fingers into ice. A small test, and Kat found that she could still control the water, but it was much harder and it was costing her a frankly painful amount of demonic energy. She was losing a percent every two seconds even with her regeneration.
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Still, that was good enough. Kat started to move the man away, holding him with that one frozen hand. It was slow going and it felt like a strange combination of muscle fatigue and a stitch all up her arm… which didn’t properly exist at the moment, making it all the stranger. Still, it was enough. She managed to get the man through the nearby window and into the house. It was a little hard to navigate, but she found Hromdir after just checking a few doors. There was… one slight issue where the man tried to escape, but Kat just flared a bit of demonic fire in front of his face and the man stopped moving instantly. Apparently he knew it was scary shit.
Despite how annoying it was to manage, Kat didn’t regret the choice. Especially when a THIRD ASSASSIN showed up in her range of vision. The question was… how did she take out this one? *Ok I’m missing an arm and still dropping off that other guy. I can’t turn myself back until my hand gets here… or maybe I can try and control some of the water in one of the water features? Would I be able to build my body back with different water? Dammit this why you test shit like this.*
Kat didn’t have long to decide. This person was much better at sneaking, and she didn’t think she’d be able to spot him had she still been using eyes. Too bad for this assassin she had 360 radial vision that could see behind obstacles. They weren’t quite to the house yet, and this one didn’t seem to be going straight for Bodeir’s window. Perhaps they saw the others getting caught?
Whatever the case, Kat decided to start acting. She ‘threw’ her other ‘hand’ over to the water fountain and found that her water stayed notably separate. Wanting to frown at that, but lacking proper facial features at the moment, Kat did the only thing she could think of. Pushing demonic energy into the water. Kat grinned when the whole pool lit up under her control and her range of vision expanded significantly with more water under her control. It was giving her a minor headache, that was made worse by the fact it kept healing, and then coming back. Apparently being able to see half of the block in excruciating detail was a bit much… but did you know that there was six other assassins running around right now? Kat did. Though they were all sneaking into other houses.
With confirmation that this would work though… Kat waited till she could drop the second guy, and as soon as she did, she tried to reform using all the extra water she had. It worked. Perfectly. *YES. FUCKING YES. I JUST NEED ENOUGH WATER IN THE CORRECT SHAPE. The fact that as long as I have enough water in my shape it works, doesn’t matter if I have more. In fact that’s better. Oh this is so much nicer.* Of course, now Kat couldn’t see anyone sneaking around because she was facing the bottom of a water fountain… but that was easily fixed by turning back into water.
Kat watched the sneaker, a woman this time, reach the wall. Kat floated after the burglar who was just about to pull their hand back into a punch to take out the window. They paused mid-motion as Kat got close though, and they turned to find a wall of water approaching them. They didn’t wait to properly process that information. They just bolted. Kat quickly reformed and dashed after them till she got to the property line a second later, where she sped her mind up to think this over.
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*Ok… what do I do here? This gall is obviously the best of the lost so far… but she’s running. I can probably catch her but she isn’t that much slower than me… assuming this is her top speed. The biggest issue is that I don’t know the area well. If she manages to lose me by ducking into the sewers or a building I might never be able to catch up. On top of that… I might not catch her quickly. She’s only a little bit slower, and with my reformation time I’d estimate this to be at least a ten minute chase. I… I don’t know if I should leave this place undefended for that long…*
Kat winced as she noticed her demonic energy was very low as well. Swapping forms, carrying that one guy off with the ice hand, and now burning energy to keep up the speed, both for running and to think? Yeah… not ideal.