Tenpin, Meet Kingpin [Bashira & Kenta]

Bowling balls were not boomerangs; rare was the occassion where anything Bashira had flung hard down an alleyway found its way back to her. This was one of those rare occassions, she realized, as the punk she had just chucked into the shadows was propelled back out with equal and opposite force. For a moment, Bashira squinted her eyes with deep thought, before shining her horn-lights into the alley to illuminate whatever had repelled the goofball back towards her. "What's the matter? Tripped on your own stupid quirk-?"

The sight of the being who emerged from the alley caused her to drop her question and her jaw at the same time. The pot ought not call the kettle black, but she thought to herself that this was the oddest quirk user besides herself that she had thus far encountered. Her first impulse was to ask him something about his being a cat... but that would be foolish even for her. His cigar smoking and his use of full-fledged Japanese made it clear he wasn't some animal. If anything, he was probably living better than she was, if he had the means to buy cigars.

The next attack was not hard to read, but her reaction left something to be desired. Bashira raised her hands with the fingers intertwined, like a tremendous club, and batted away the TV, causing it to crack once midair and shatter hard against the concrete a split second later. "Motherf-" she grunted, knowing that the old man was going to ask her to pay for it now, before a much more important concern replaced that one. Bashira felt her skinny gut punched by the cat creature's fist. While not as over-sized as her own and not clad in stone armor like Chris's had been, it was still plenty to knock the wind out of her, as well as a considerable amount of spit.

The blow to the nose in her fight against Sentinel had been bad, but the strike to the gut was much worse... she had taken a lot of punches there before and she was hard-headed, with a thick skull and big horns. Her abdomen was maybe the most girlish part of her, making it a weak point. She raised her hands, knowing from her impromptu boxing match earlier that a knockout punch to the jaw tended to come pretty quick from these hand to hand types. In the confusion, she barely caught snatches of her opponent's name and title.

Bashira's throat was covered now, but the ogress was still pushed against the wall, her own fists bearing back against her and locking the knuckles just below her nose. Her yellow eyes screwed up in a mixture of anger and flat out confusion. "No friggin way!" she grunted, her voice muffled. "Yer an ex-vigilante?! Yer a hero?!" She had misunderstood the situation, but that mattered little to her right now.

The young vigilante had realized during her earlier exchange with Chris that until she practiced her fist-fighting, Tokyo's many boxers were going to have the edge over her, despite her seeming advantages when it came to throwing hands. As such, she decided to go for what she knew: she raised both hands and clasped onto the wall behind her. Gritting her teeth, she lifted herself up, as though doing a pull-up, only to find herself impeded by the tremendous weight of the man/cat holding her down.

Feeling around with one over-sized hand for some sort of windowsill to finish pulling herself up, she finally got her hand on one... but the pressure applied was so great that the pane broke instantly, spilling a load of miniature potted plants onto both their heads. In the confusion, she attempted to swipe the broken remains of the ceramic panel at her attacker's head. Likely, the force if her powerful arms would mean a lot more than the improvised weapon in this situation.

There was a lot she wanted to ask the Codfather, but she needed a second for them both to breathe before she could wheeze out another question.

((WC 683))

In the average case, Bashira would have been worried she'd killed the recipient of her attack via blunt head trauma, leading to internal hemorrhaging or good ol'-fashioned "having a head that looks all flat like a pancake." In this case, it was immediately apparent that neither effect had been achieved. Whatever the cat's skull was made of, it must be about as strong as her shield-like arms, she supposed.

The lack of injury was hardly important next to the fact that she hadn't managed to get him to relinquish his grip. She brought her arms back down and grabbed at the creature's arms for a moment, before he let her go after all, flinging her much the same way he had the criminal earlier. Due to the difference in her own weight distribution, her arms landed down first, one ending up draped over a trash can, with the other laying flat on the ground. She hated being called a moron, but at the moment, she wasn't even sure how to retort; she didn't even know whether her attacker was a criminal or a hero. Bashira reflected momentarily on how crappy a lifestyle it was that landed her on the bad side of both groups.

She sat back up slowly and rubbed the back of her head with one large hand, then swiped at the back of her ponytail once she realized a greasy banana peel had ended up stuck there. Her long face seemed even longer as she had nothing to do but draw up her lip and listen with a big frown to the whole message her attacker had to offer her. For a while, all she wanted to do was jump in and interrupt the guy, explaining that she'd been going after a crook and that she was in the right- to her, things were really just that simple. As the explanation continued, she felt her own feelings shifting. "Geez, this cat's a few sardines short of a tin," she thought to herself, scratching at her chin and wondering if she ought to step in to console him or just let him keep going.

As she saw him begin punching the wall, she winced, wishing she'd jumped in earlier, not only because he was so distraught, but also, because the business-fronts were going to blame her for the extra damage if he broke anything else. "No, you crazy bastard, I've never seen anything like that! But sheesh, I mean... I know it happens!" she protested, lowering her eyebrows in a look of vexation. "Your logic's busted, uh, Codfather. So maybe vigilantes screw up sometimes and people get killed. The problem with heroes is with all the damn regulation and cameras on them, they can't do crap! While they're screwin' around takin' out some criminal and wavin' to the people, speakin' to the press, shakin' hands with the governor or whatever other stupid stuff, somewhere out there, two or three villains are gonna get away with whatever they like! On the other hand, if a few good vigilantes go after those crooks, they'll get it done without all that! I don't get it, where's the good in leavin' it all to heroes?"

It'd probably be a lot easier for Bashira and everyone involved if she'd accept Kenta's speech from experience, but Bashira had always been difficult to teach. Whether in the class room or in an alley made no difference in that regard. Grunting, she stood back up to her feet. "Like, I get that some really crappy stuff happened when you were a vigilante, Tuxedo Purple. But didn't you rescue people and all that crap too? You were doin' good stuff too, weren't you? What the frig are you doin' now, that's so much better than what you were doin'?" she questioned, furrowing her heavy-set brow. "The hero stuff is some stupid crap if you ask me. All it's doin' is putting restrictions on good guys so they can't help stop bad guys! Bad's bad, any idiot with two eyes can see it. If I have super-strong arms and see some guy stealin' a TV, yer tellin' me I need to leave it to somebody else unless I can read algebraic? It don't make any damn sense!"

The Codfather would have to suffer through a few distributing a few more lessons if he wanted to get his message to sink in.

((WC 733))