Just Twix Things <3

The air smelled strongly of the smog created by the industrial buildings as she sat outside the city, the cracked and poorly maintained brick beneath her as she stared up at a sky full of black clouds. One leg dangled over the edge of the wall she sat on, the other with its foot level with where she sat, knee bent up as she rested an arm upon it, the hand of her other arm holding it by the elbow. In truth, she knew not why she was there; The air quality was horrible, the crime rate of the city was stupendously high, the city was in shambles thanks to a lack of care by the residents. In truth, there was nothing positive going for Kerning City.

She couldn't explain why she remained in that dump of a city, she simply did. She could have moved anywhere she wanted, any city on any continent, and yet there she remained. With a long sigh, she finally stood, adjusting her grip on her bracer as she stood, a soft grumble short to follow about a 'unisex bracer' and how they were really just men's bracers in disguise. Standing tall, she gave an over-exaggerated stretch, the woman arching her back as her hands reached for the sky, the hem of her t-shirt threatening to move above the waist of her jeans. Relaxing her form after her long stretch, the woman pulled a shuriken from one of her side pouches, another grumble along the lines of 'Why do I even use these stupid things' short to follow.

Playing with the sharpened piece of metal within her covered hand, she stared out at the expanse of the run-down city that she resided in, a long, heaving sigh escaping her lips and a frown to boot as she shook her head. She really needed to find a change of scenery. Something new, something fresh.. ..something that didn't make her feel like she was breathing from an exhaust pipe. Kerning really wasn't easy on her lungs, after all.

Hopping down from the brick wall with a nimbleness that easily showed she was a free runner of sorts, the grace in her landing and just how fast she went from her crouched position to one that had her up and moving. The star she had removed earlier had been hidden within that bracer-clad hand, her left, to be exact, while her right hand remained near her side, always ready to move for the small dagger she kept hidden beneath her shirt, craftily hooked into the belt where she hung her star pouches. Kerning was not a safe city, as any could tell simply by the look of the city, not to mention the way the general population moved about. IF your mesos were able to be seen, they were able to be stolen, and would be stolen, was the general rule those who lived in the city followed, and this woman was no particular exception.

She was cautious about her belongings, and she was always readily equipped with enough self-defense equipment to take down a bear, but that had become the normal for her. That was her every day. Had she killed anyone in the city? Not yet, but she had probably sent quite a few to Dr. Faymus, not to mention to Dr. Naora as well. She wasn't a killer at heart, but she knew how to injure someone enough to deter them from their devious acts. This was a city where only the fast, the strong, and the smart, survived. A city where a dishonest living was forced upon those who were dishonest.

She wouldn't lie to herself, this woman by no means lived by any honest means. She did dirty jobs for people who didn't want the dirt on their hands; Poaching, theft, burglary, things of that sort. You name it, she would do it, so long as she didn't have to harm another human being in the process. That was her one rule, she would not harm another, unless in terms of self-defense, and even then, more often than not she would choose to escape rather than injure another. Truth be told, that was the one thing she couldn't stand.

Her childhood had been full of violence, both wrought by her and brought upon her. She had been abused when she was young, when she couldn't steal enough to make her share. Beaten until bloody, and expected to do better the next day. It was nothing new in the streets of Kerning, you could see child thieves beaten on every corner if you looked hard enough. That had simply become the standard. Kerning was the city of outcasts, and outcasts were given no royal treatment. As she progressed through her teens and the like, the woman had found it no longer suitable to be under someone's thumb, and she had put up a fight in her infinite fountain of teenage intelligence, though as expected, it landed her a busted lip,a black eye, and suddenly without a bed to sleep in.

She didn't care anymore, since she was finally free, and as much as she would like to have said her life was all sunshine and roses after that, it was far from it. Every day was a struggle, she tried begging, she tried working an honest job, she even resorted to prostitution at one point, though the latter of which was something she wasn't in for very long. Eventually, she found that the only way to survive wasn't a pretty one. She had began to resort to violence.

At first, she had been too weak to really fend for herself, though having a weapon certainly helped her cause shortly after, and once she was armed, suddenly people were easy to topple. Murder was a common theme in Kerning, if anyone had ever dared to publish a paper, the News section would probably wind up being a Daily body count. With that in mind, she found little remorse in killing another for what they had dishonestly taken from another. As her teenage days of murder and robbery continued on, she grew stronger, she trained herself to be fit, to run the streets of Kerning without issue, without opposition. She didn't have any type of gang or anything, though her face became known enough that she wasn't about to be opposed by a single person.

Eventually, however, the days of bloodshed had come to an end. Late into her twenties, the woman had found herself someone honest. An honest man to spend her evenings with, a man who, despite her reputation, could see past those bloodied hands and enjoy her for who she was inside, even if her mind had become sick and twisted with crime. He had seen the innocent little girl who had been forced into a life of crime. As time progressed, she would spend more than just her evenings with him. Soon enough it had been her lunches, her dinners, her mornings her noons, she would spend as much time as she could with the man that she had come to love and cherish, and much to her dismay, people started noticing.

It wasn't much longer before someone had discovered that this woman's weakness, the woman who would slit a throat just for an extra bag of mesos to squander on whatever she wanted, had been such a simple man, and so they had taken him for ransom. Of course, she had willingly paid what they wanted, she just wanted her lover back, the man that reminded her she was human, but this wasn't enough for the kidnappers. They wanted to see her writhe, they wanted to see her suffer, and they would get just that, as she was soon forced to watch him die before her eyes.

Forced into a chair to sit down and watch as her lover was disemboweled before her, innards spilling onto the floor before her very eyes, her ears ringing with his blood-curling cries of anguish, she watched. Unable to look away from the horrendous sight of this man dying before her, and unable to do anything about it. Satisfied that she had been broken, her weeping sobs coming once she had watched him take his last breath, they dumped her back into the streets, believing that she would no longer be a problem for them.

However, they had not known the wrath she would hold in her heart. They had no idea that this woman, this Queen of the Streets, would in fact, be far from broken. She had spent weeks watching the men who had ruined her shot at redemption. Ruined the only thing that left her feeling human in this inhumane world that she had come to live in. When she finally felt prepared enough, she took it upon herself to exact her revenge, and only then, only in the midst of the last night, when she had watched a man's wife scream and sob before her as she replicated the exact thing that had been done to her lover, did she realize just how much of a monster she had become.

Leaving the crime lord to die within his wailing wife's arms, she disappeared into the night, not to be heard from again under that same name. No longer did the Queen of the Streets wreck havoc about the slums of Kerning, taking what she desired and spilling blood where she desired. She had simply vanished from existence, leaving behind not a trace of who she was, or where she was.

Years later, however, she had returned, beneath a new name, and with enough security that nobody knew who she was. Now, she was simply a body for hire. She did not care what the job entailed, so long as her single rule was not broken. No longer would she tear apart a family just for her own personal game. The weight upon her heart, seeing that soon-to-be widow grieve for her mortally wounded husband just as she had for her lover had been too much of a reality check for her. So for now, she simply lived. She did what she did, took what she must, and she lived on.


( Thoughts? Idk. I just got bored. I don't have any plans on exposing her name just yet, but, I'm sure people can guess. x) )