Bio-Hazard Girl: It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Pulls a Knife

[x-scorpion.livejournal.com]

Doing what it does best, Cammie's smart mouth gets her into trouble. Only this time it's more than she's used to...

It had been raining for days. Because of it, the streets were covered with almost seven inches of water. Which wasn't uncommon at all, here. When it came right down to it, Cammie rathered the rain down here to the snow. Sure, Texas could, and did, occasionally go and dump snow on you. But it never stayed and the temperature was a lot better than anything up north this time of the year. Of all the things she could just shrug off, cold wasn't one of them.

And so, Cammie went south for the winter.

If anything it was easier to ply her trades down here in the winter anyway. People didn't feel compelled to park their cars in garages if it wasn't likely going to snow. And it was a lot easier to jimmy locks, even the newer, fancier ones than people thought. She had a couple liberated stereos with her in her bag as she walked down the sidewalk being pelted with rain.

She might actually part with some of her hard earned money tonight and get a room with a shower instead of the abandoned building she had been holed up in. Nothing like being wet to make one miserable.

The problem with plying a trade, particularly an illegal one, often enough in roughly the same area, is that eventually someone notices. Or several someones, as was the case here - up ahead was a group of your typical 'good ole boys' on the porch of a local bar, smoking. As Cammie passed, one of them glanced at her, then took another look, before poking one of his companions and pointing her way. Words came faintly through the rain: "...stole my wallet last night. I'm positive. Hadn't seen her 'round these parts before and then my wallet went missin'."

Cammie turned around and looked over her shoulder, she didn't recognize the people per say, but Houston was a big city, even when you did only keep to one or two areas. Normally, people were drunk enough that they didn't notice what she did. But she was a horrible gauge of someone's sobriety, never having been really drunk herself.

Given she was already wet and miserable did what came naturally and walked backwards through the water a few steps and simply and eloquently flicked them off. Accuse her of theft? Really. That was rude. She was too good to get caught by the local hicks.

The first man did a double take, almost literally. Obviously not many people actually stood up to him, and with a curse he stepped off the porch and head towards her, his buddies following. There were four or five of them, all grown men with the look of those who spent their adult lives working with their hands. Big, solid and hard-looking.

Cammie didn't care, she lived by the bigger they were the harder they fell. So, she didn't turn tail and run like might have been the better idea. She could use a round or two, and he and his buddies would hit the ground like all big guys hit the ground, only tonight there'd also be some splashing involved.

"What did I do?" she asked lightly.

"I think you know full well what you did, missy," said the first man, the one who'd pointed her out. "The other night, you bumped into me in the street and when I checked next, my wallet was gone. You got anythin' to say about that?"

"Yeah, you should keep a better eye on your stuff," Cammie returned, shifting her bag on her shoulder just a bit. "Can't blame me if you're too dumb to hold on to your wallet."

"Why you..." There was barely a pause, just the man charging forward, swinging a fist at her head in a classic haymaker.

It only took a second to pull of the bandages on her left arm, she was never sure why, but this always worked better when she didn't have them on. There was some stuff her Dad had rambled on about years ago that she couldn't fully remember that had something to do with it. Fact was, it was the way it worked. In the rain and the darkening sky it could be hard to make out her left arm was varying shades of green.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," she said, aiming her own fist at his stomach with a mid-sized dose of toxin leaking through the skin. Enough to one-hit most people, though it varied from person to person once someone started vomiting and writhing in pain it was generally hard for them to keep fighting. "You can't help being stupid."

On cue, the man doubled over, heaving. His buddies took one look and their faces hardened. No little girl could hit someone that hard.

"You're a goddamn mutie!" one of them said. There were metallic clinks as knives and knuckledusters appeared.

"And you're fucking racists," Cammie returned lightly, shrugging her bag off. Oh, this was going to be fun. And she meant that in every sense of the word. She saw the glint of knives and knew she'd have to be careful. Or not. Her blood was just as much of a weapon as her left hand. She sized them up, trying to figure which one would be the most dangerous.

She'd let them come in first. Staying alive was about dodging, weaving and hitting someone on the first chance, "If I were you guys, I'd just forget this. I mean, look what I did to your pal."

"Lucky hit," said the first man's friend, the one that had been directed to Cammie in the first place. From somewhere he'd acquired a length of heavy pipe and he tapped it into his other hand meaningfully. "I'd like to see you take down all of us, mutie scum or not." He glanced around at the other men. "Ain't that right?"

"Damn straight."

"You betcha."

"Mutie's gonna pay."

The first man nodded and grinned a little. "You're gonna pay, bitch." He nodded towards Cammie, a gesture to his friends. "Get her!"

And with that, all of them charged at her at once.

She was fast and smaller than them, so she gave them each a look and got started. She didn't have more than one bad arm, so this was going to be about crowd control. A swing from the pipe barely missed her head as she ducked down and when she stood up, she kicked Pipe Man in the balls. Hard. You didn't have to have super strength to floor a guy with a blow like that.
She duck and wove and got another guy in the stomach, with her elbow, not her hand which might have been a mistake.

"I'm still waiting on the 'paying' thing," she snarked, reaching out like she was going to take the hand of the closest guy, with a dose big enough to take him out of this game. And even the odds a bit.

Around her the casualties were building up, either moaning and retching, or ominously still and silent. But she didn't have eyes in the back of her head and as fast as she was, her opponents gradually circling her and coming at her from both sides. The one in front wasn't a problem, but the knife coming at her from behind was another matter altogether.

The trick to fighting a group of people was to always know where everyone in that group was. But it was also easy, too easy, to lose track of it. Cammie was focused forward, and didn't even catch the flash of the blade before it was too late to dodge completely. She could keep it from being instantly fatal but that was about it. Oddly, she smelled her blood before she felt any pain as she twisted enough to keep the knife from getting her right in the kidney. And just after the smell was the feeling of it running down her side. And then it hurt.

She had managed, just barely, to keep the wound from hitting anything major. That, however, didn't save her from the fact she had just been stabbed, or saved _them_ from that fact either. Her hand went to her side like she couldn't quite believe what had just happened and then selfsame bloodstained hand rose up and twisted around with her, smearing blood across the face of the asshole with the knife. The blood from her side dripping steadily into the water. "Tastes like chicken, don't it?" she gasped, finally admitting to herself that maybe this hadn't been such a great idea.

The man who had stabbed her stared back at her, eyes wide open in shock as her blood began to poison his system. Gasping, he collapsed, lying in a puddle making choked gurgling sounds until he stiffened and then went limp. The last remaining man gave her a look of abject terror before starting to flee, tripping over the body of one of his buddies in his panic.

Cammie didn't have the strength to chase after the last guy, not with a bleeding hole in her side. She fell backwards, landing on her ass in the water, bleeding and breathing heavily. Her vision was split, it hurt so bad. She managed to get up, not thinking clearly enough to bind the wound.

She forgot the idea of getting any sort of room that night, when she finally did make it to her feet and found her bag she stumbled down an alleyway, heading towards the abandoned warehouse that was home for the moment, dripping blood the whole way, despite holding bunched up bandages to her side. She'd stitch herself when she got there.

She cursed. Honestly, a knife? What ever happened to just fist fights? She supposed she should count herself lucky it wasn't a gun. It was going to be a long walk 'home.'