hellboys cat

Disclaimer: The usual I don’t own them, though they might own me….
Thanks to the few brave souls who have read my work and, thanks even more for likeing it.
Also quoted in the following is a small portion of Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare act 3 scene 2
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I woke up some time later when the Breakfast wagon crew knocked on the door. I fell out of bed cussed, grabbed Reds shirt and pulled it over my head, hissing at the back pain it caused. I pulled on a pair of pants from the floor and let Red find for himself. I opened the door to a vat of oatmeal, bacon, ‘pamcakes’ and a pot of black coffee.

“Tuck in kids” Clay winked, “ Hope you got enough sleep.”

Most of the guys gave us a hard time about out sleeping habits, all in good fun of course, it was usually a part of the morning banter between all of us. I took a cup of coffee as Clay pushed the cart in to the room.

“Why,” I asked innocently, “Did we keep every one awake with our hot pink monkey sex?”

Red choked on whatever he had put in his mouth and Clay had to hit him on the back till he could breath again. Clay laughed the entire time too. Red just stuffed a pamcake in his mouth and glared at me. I just sipped my coffee and smiled sweetly.

I sighed “ Any way I will be in the med lab ‘A’ if you need me, and no we can’t wrestle again till I don’t hurt.” This said, off to the med lab I went.

Dr. Evens tisked and checked for new damage. Luckily there was none and he reapplied the burning adhesive. Damn and I had hoped it would be easier the second time around. I drank my coffee willing one burn to over power the other.

“Now” Evens said, shaking a finger at me, “No rough housing for 3 days or else..”

I was tempted to be a pain in the ass, but decided that it was still too early. Did I even mention that I am not a morning person? So now I have 3 days to lay low, maybe I should make some new ammo, or take a hot bath (and get Red to join me.) Yep, still thinking bad thoughts and I have a feeling that I will continue to think such things till I am told not too by the object of my distraction. I laid on the table and let my imagination run amuck and wreak havoc on my poor little thoughts.

“Mmm, breakfast,” I whispered to myself, nothing like the thought of food to bring back fun memories. Of course it would be more fun if I didn’t have to lay on this cold table. Oh well….

Red was devouring his breakfast with a very single minded aggression. Clay just pored himself a cup of coffee and looked pointedly at the silent agitated Hellboy.
“Wanna’ talk about it?”

“Nothin’ to talk about,” Red devoured another hand full of bacon and stood up. “I’m gonna check on her, her back was bleedin’ again.”

Clay nodded and let him by. Something was defiantly up, all of the agents had theories on what was going on between Cat and Red. Some of the theories were pretty PG stuff, but most of the ideas floating around were X rated. Now Clay had his own ideas about Red and Cat which mostly had to do with two very complex young people trying to belong somewhere. He thought they found that place with each other. Words like relationship and stable didn’t play any part in the equation, but need and friendship did. Hopefully they both figured out that they really did need each other soon. Too bad Cat is as bad as Hellboy when it comes to feelings and stuff, she asked for help less than he did but maybe that was just a girl macho thing.

Red stalked in to the med lab listening to Cats soft voice. Her head was pillowed on her arms and her eyes were closed.
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men--
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.”

Her voice rose and fell in pitch. Red just stood in the door and listened, it was beautiful the way her face changed with the words. Her face showed emotion like he had never seen. She stopped speaking and sighed. Red walked in to the room and sat down. Cat cracked open one eye and smiled up at him.

“Did ya’ like it?” she asked

Red nodded “ Yeah, what was it?”

Cat shut her eyes still grinning “ Shakespeare, from his play Julius Caesar. Caesar gets murdered by Brutus and when Mark Antony finds out he gives this speech to the people in such a way as to enrage them.”

Red nodded, “ Sounds like fun.”

“ Maybe I’ll read you some of his stuff some time,” Cat said still in a soft voice.

“I think I’d like that,” Red grinned and touched her hair. “ You’ll have to wash it again, the blood is matting it.”

“Maybe I should just cut the damn stuff off, its getting to be more trouble than it is worth.” Cat grumbled.

Red might have added something, but the alarm went off. Cat looked at him and smiled a bit. “ Looks like you get to go play Red, get a bastard for me will ya?”

Red nodded and headed for the door.

“Hey Red.”

He turned back to look at her.

“ Don’t get killed alright? Umm…. Come back to me” she whispered

Red stood in the door for a moment longer and finally nodded. “ For you.”


I nodded back and watched him go and hating for him to go alone. He’s too cocky for his own good and needs someone to watch his back, cause he won’t. Now that I am left to my own devices for the day as long as I take it easy I end up making more ammo for myself and Red. The kind of catch all shot that he likes; Holy water, silver shavings garlic, clover leaf, ash bark.. The works. After making enough rounds to take on a small army of creatures I ended up in the library with Abe going over Shakespeare. As usual we got in to a good natured debate on which were the better works; Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, Titus, As you Like it, Much Ado about Nothing and of course Julius Caesar. As we bantered I wondered aloud what might interest Red more the comedies or the tragedies.
Abe threw in his two cents worth and said probably a comical tragedy or a tragical comedy. I had to ask if there really was such a thing or if he was just making up words to make me think harder. I never really found out that one, so one more round goes to Abe.

The less I thought about Red the better, if I did think about him it was to worry if he would be alright with out me, I really hate being out of the action. Three days grace is not what I need right now. So instead of throwing a fit like I really feel like doing I stay very still and try to create a false calm. Waiting, just waiting till I can do something. And as it ended up I am needed. No one knows the Underground better than me. So for the good of Human Kind I went.

The story was that Red and his crew were ambushed by ghouls. Nasty buggers really, every one was still alive, but some of the nasty’s got away and {lucky me} Red needs my help to track them down.

The doc, gauzed my back heavily and I still had a feeling that I was going to be seeing him again before the night was over. So after I suited up in to my full battle regalia, back in to the dark I went. The FEAR takes hold quick as it always does and once again I am a creature of the dark. I met up with Red at a pre designated spot but neither of us said a word. We were hunting. Through the water, through the refuse I followed the stench and leavings of not quite dead things. It looked like the pack was a large one and now I was happy that I had made all the extra ammo, cause we were going to need it.

I was double fisting my guns and Red had out the Samaritan, and it’s a good thing we did. The tunnel we had been following opened up in to a low room and we were being waited for…Between the two of us we managed to take out six of them before they hit us. Now Ghouls aren’t zombies and they aren’t Vamp’s and they certainly don’t qualify as human. Perhaps this group never was human to begin with. Oh, I forgot to mention that the bastards are really strong and have no response to pain sort of like a crack addict.

In such close range the general idea is to keep pulling the trigger until it clicks on empty and you hope to what ever god that the thing that you were shooting in to stops moving. Sometimes this just doesn’t work.. One ghoul was attacking my back, but my shoulder holster kept it from getting a good grip as long as I kept twisting. The one attacking my arm had no such problems though, as it bit deeply into my arm I shoved a knife under its jaw up into its brain. And I don’t care who you are, a blade threw the skull is going to keep you busy for a while.

Red was settling for ripping there heads off and it wasn’t a pretty sight, but you have to get rid of the head or it keeps coming after you. When the majority of the creatures were not moving very fast Red made sure none of them would be getting up again. Where there had been some odd 13 ghouls to begin with, now their were just lots of pieces that occasionally twitched. I picked up my guns from the ground and took stock of everything. Red was pretty bloody with slashes on his arm and belly. Yep it is time to pay the nice Dr. another visit. And my arm was really starting to hurt but since I know that the disinfectant will burn like hell I am not too worried about it. Seeing that there was nothing left for me to do and nothing left for Red to tear apart messily I started walking back out the way we came.

Red caught up with me. “ Hey Kid, you alright” he asked putting a weary arm around my shoulders.

I nodded, “ Yeah, just keep hoping that one day I can forget the Dark.” I snorted at myself.

“I should be used to it by now though.” I smiled, “ Sad huh.”

Red smiled at me a bit, “It just makes ya hu… nahh, its not sad.”

I think he was going to say that it made me human or maybe that it made me normal, but he knew better. I personally didn’t think I was either. Red had been born out of hells fire, lava, heat and light. I was his opposite born out of cold, stagnate dampness and dark. Most of the time I think Red is more human than me. He had a purpose in life, to protect humanity. What my purpose in life is, well maybe I will find out some day.

We met the clean up crew when we were about half way back to the surface and seeing that we didn’t need immediate medical assistance the crew radioed back to the rest of the group and we were able to take our sweet time wandering back out. The Clean up crew was supposed to incinerate what was left of the bodies, but I know that the rats will take care of most of the mess before any one can get their with a torch.

Back with the surface crew Red took over and gave a short debriefing of what happened how many critters there had been, blah, blah, blah. Me, I went and sat in the truck. A short time later, Red joined me and we were on our way back to headquarters. As soon as the truck started moving both of us started stripping out of our gear, Red took off what was left of his coat and shirt. I started removing weaponry from my body. The shoulder holster came first. I took off my belt slipping it from the loops securing the holster to my back then pulled it from my shoulders. The knives would take much longer to remove, Red just watched me, he was used to this show by now. The upper arm sheaths with throwing knives came first while the wrist sheaths with silver stilettos stayed on. I actually built permanent sheaths in to my pants, I designed them my self. So I could carry 7 knives on each upper leg, not to mention the long boot knives. When playing with nasty’s, you can never have too much of a good thing, (hey it has kept me alive for this long.)

Red grasped my braid and ran his hands along it removing 3 slender spikes I kept there just in case. He really does know me well, when it comes to fighting I wont hesitate to use my guns, but the knives have always been my security blanket, so to speak. Then I checked Red’s cuts, mostly to make sure that they weren’t bad and that he wasn’t just being macho. It had happened before, hell I do it on occasion. Red gently took my arm and peeled back the sleeve to inspect the bite I had taken. The blood flowed freely keeping the wound clean, it looked pretty messy and I would bet even money that I would be sporting a fun circular scar in the next month or so. At least the beastie didn’t manage to take a chunk of meat with it. Red took some gauze and pressed it hard against the bite, making the blood stop. I flinched just a bit and leaned against him. By the time we got back to HQ I just wanted to go to sleep. The Doc on call just patched us up and checked my back. Amazingly I hadn’t opened up the wounds again and the looked like they might actually heal now.

After a very short debriefing, they let us go, Red headed off to his room and I went to mine. I managed to take a quick and scalding shower to scrape off all the blood that had accumulated on my skin over the day. For a minute the water around my feet was red, but soon the thin rivulets of the dark color married the water and turned an unassuming pink before circling the drain. I watched this phenomenon for a moment before washing my hair. I wasn’t as sore as I merited but then again, I couldn’t complain. I dried off, braided my hair and put on a shirt and pajama pants. Flopping down on my bed I fully intended to sleep, but as soon as I shut my eyes, the dark pressed in on me. My eyes shot open and I shivered, the monsters were waiting for me tonight. Stupid Kitty, should have known.
Crawling out of my bed which held no comfort now, I wandered down the halls to the only place I could find peace. Reds room.