Turning Big Cat.
Transformation: superior (rank 2)
“Alright. So by Thursday night the local bad guys had heard that even though their usual hero was out of town, there was someone else in town taking down the supers. After I cat'd up-”
“Is that really what you're gonna stick with? Cat'd up? That's just awful.”
“Then come up with something better for it.”
Nala thought for a moment. “How about just saying you turned big cat?”
“Yeah, that's way better. I'll start using that. So, that night, I hear a guy trying to break midtown, and I look down to see this massive guy with a horn. Like a Wildebeest.” Nala just stared blankly as Leo continued. “He was just wrecking the place, so I hopped off my rooftop and landed what I thought would be a pretty powerful shot, but it hardly fazed the guy. He just turned, looked at me, and said 'That was a big mistake Cat-man.' Can you believe that, Cat-man.” Nala just kept staring. Unbelievable, was her only thought. “So Wildebeest charges me, and I can tell this is a pretty one-dimensional guy. I was thinking of a way to take him out, and since we were on the same block I blacked out the night before, it was gonna take a while. I dodge a charge by the big guy, and this huge mechanical arm whizzes by my head, close miss. Some squid-man was taking shots at me. I started thinking this was a setup, which was a suspicion confirmed when a third guy tried to blast me with some sound waves. Let's call him Dr. Boom.”
At this point Nala was reaching for the bottle of spirits. “You're killing me. Do you realize you're killing me?”
“Sorry, it's just what I was calling them during the fight. None of them were shouting their names out. Really out of villain character, usually they're just dying to let you know who they are. Meanwhile, I got these three jerks calling me Cat-man, which is more than a little upsetting.”
“I wonder how those jerks would have felt about your names for them.”
“These are probably the nicest names I came up with for them.”
“So, three villains all at once? Not too shabby babe.” Nala was having a hard time hiding how impressed she was.
“It started with three.” Nala's eyes widened. Leo saw it, but he would pretend he didn't. He knew how much her pride meant to her. “Another three of 'em joined in. Let's call the dude with the acid tail the Stinger, the flying dude with the beak for a nose Albatross,” Nala rolled her eyes, “and the guy with all the electricity, let's call him...” Nala was dying with anticipation. It actually looked like Leo was about to use the right name. He finally spat it out “...let's call him Shocker.”
“You're doing this on purpose!” Nala couldn't hold it in. “You have to be doing this on purpose. There's no way you did that on accident.”
“Did what?”
“Oh, nevermind,” she sighed. It was honestly hopeless. She poured herself out another drink.
“Well, now there are six of these guys. Some kind of, sadistic six or something.” Sadistic six, Nala thought she might actually die.
“Albatross was the first one I took out. Jumped up and smacked him right out of the air. Makes sense that my easiest take down of the whole week was on the bird. Let 'em know while I was taking him out that they should be calling the man kicking their butts Leo. Anyway, five baddies left. With the only one who can keep me on the street down, I took the opportunity to separate my opponents, or at least get the four smaller guys away from the Wildebeest. I was thinking I could pretty easily pick them off and then get the big guy.”
“And how wrong were you?” Nala knew Leo's tone, and she knew that the one he was speaking in meant he had screwed up.
“Very. Squid-man, stinger, shocker, and Dr. Boom,” for a moment Nala thought he had named one of the villains correctly, “follow me up to the roof. I was too busy dodging sound waves, electricity, and acid to land many shots of my own. I did finally manage to bust the tank on stinger's back, and the acid burned right through his tail. Kicked him onto the adjacent building, and had him singled out just long enough to finish him. Even better, the roof I went to had one of those weird water towers on it. Cut one of its supports out, and drenched the shocker. Almost took Dr. Boom with him, but I guess he wasn't affected.”
Roar!
Sonics: superior (rank 2)
Leo took a second to away from the story to grab a drink from the fridge. “Oh come on,” Nala called after him, “you can't stop now.”
“My throats just a little scratchy. Can you guess why?”
“Did you actually use the roar? I love the roar!”
“I did. Dr. Boom unleashed a full out blast. He was tired of screwing around, and so was I. A good roar sent his attack back at him, pushing him through the wall of the building we had just come from. A second shot sent squid-man and the wildebeest flying. The squid caught himself with one of his tentacles, but the big guy just plummeted to the street below. Not that it affected him. The squid's ears were ringing, and he was regaining his composure when I ran down one of his arms and landed a big right hook to his jaw. That was it for him.”
“Wow, five down. Means we shift focus to Wildebeest.” Nala had enough drinks in her for that name to be okay.
“The big guy had only really shown one weakness, he had a hard time making tight turns. I lured him onto a construction site, and let him think he had a good charge on me. He comes running in, and straight onto a huge pit of wet cement. Acted like a tar pit, again taking care of one of my troubles.”
The timer went off as Leo finished that sentence. “Good timing,” Nala said, “dinner's about to come out of the oven. Was the sadistic six the last of the bad guys you took on?”
“I wish,” he replied, sitting down at the table. “Friday night comes, last night I'm patrolling in the local's place, and I end up getting into it with this huge, slimy, black and white dude, who had this long, gross, snake like tongue. And since my mind was on snakes, I decided to call him Venom.” Nala almost dropped the dish at this. Venom, she thought, out of all the villains he fights, the only right name he gets is the one he pulls out of his ass. “You alright honey?”
“I'm fine. So Venom, is it?”
“Yeah, I'm sure it's not his real name, but it seemed fitting.” Nala just let it sit. Trying to convince him he was right would probably just come off as her mocking him, and Leo would just call him slime-man. “He was waiting for me in the same spot I had gotten into it with, well, everyone else this week. Huh, that part of town is really gonna look like hell. Anyway, Venom comes at me, and this guy is big, fast, strong as all hell, and shoots this weird black goo all over the place. He was the only guy I fought all week who really had me worried. My claws weren't getting the job done, just kept slicing through him and he just kept reforming, none the worse. Our fight ended up in a thrift shop, and to buy myself some time I roared at the roof, bringing it down on his head. For the first time, I saw a look of pain on his oddly proportioned face. My first thought was that he hadn't been able to brace for the roof, but I'm sure you know that's wrong.”
“Of course, Venom's a symbiote. It was the roar that got him.” Nala burst with the information.
“Thanks for ruining the suspense. I figured that out after a few failed attempts at surprising him. Once I realized that it was the roar that hurt him, I took the fight to a church. Blasted the guy into the organ, and the vibration from the pipes shook the slime right off of him.”
“And what did you do with the symbiote?”
“Well, you'll notice I didn't bring back that tupperware I brought with me. Local guy was pretty amused when I handed him a plastic container filled with symbiote and ravioli.”
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