Along the rooftops above Kingsport City, Evelyn Cleary ran - leaping the gap between two smaller skyscrapers. 

Her stomach flipped, a familiar, almost welcome sensation accompanying those brief moments of freefall as she soared over a street hundreds of feet below, before her feet found purchase, catching her balance and springing her back into motion as though with a separate mind. 

Heart strumming in her chest, the steady thud of its pounding in her ears seemed to pace her, moving in time with footsteps that carried her along with inhuman grace and speed despite the slickness of the surfaces as the rain beat down around her. 

She sucked in a breath, eyes peering over the rapidly approaching ledge of the building. 

The sounds of the city below blended into a cacophonous symphony of chaos. Streets full of people still reeling from the events of the past 14 hours, blended emergency vehicles with their blaring sirens, distant claps of thunder, and all of the usual hubbub of life in Kingsport coming together to assault senses that functioned with a feline acuity. 

She chewed the inside of her lip, a nervous tick from long before her powered days, the sounds naturally returning her mind to the cause, and the subsequent news that had all but shattered her world - the very reason she found herself stalking across rooftops now, in desperate need of a release.

In the earliest days, it had all been overwhelming, almost too much for her to function - the constant sound and smell, her once dulled, human senses becoming attuned to the world around her in a way her mind had been unable to prepare for. 

Of course, those were the early days. It had been little over a decade since she’d discovered the amulet responsible for granting her all of the relative abilities of a feline, a bit shorter still since donning the alter ego she’d wear like a second face. Catspaw. 

The years in costume had taught her well enough how to tne out the excess - how to peer through the static to find whatever she sought. 

She heard them. Footsteps - familiar by their gait - accompanied by heartbeats that spoke to sheer panic, moved through an alley three buildings down and to her right. 

She could make it out as though she stood beside them, their clumsy footfalls, driven forth by adrenaline and a primal dread. She could smell it.

There you are. 

It sent a familiar twinge of excitement rolling through her, a reminder of the old days in which she’d been on the other side of the law, and the world had fit into predators and prey. Today, she was a predator.

She wondered almost absently, how much of it was her, and how much of it was the amulet's influence, a question she considered often though she’d long since accepted how little the answer would change.

She caught herself on the cornice of her current building, peering for a moment at the streets below, the figures whizzing about the concrete veins of the city like ants. 

Measuring the distance between the next, perhaps a little over twenty feet over the street and sidewalks below, she squatted then hurdled, carrying herself forward as though diving through the air. She absorbed the weight on her arms, landing on the opposing building in a rolling tumble into a sprint. 

She sailed again for the next rooftop, a shorter distance this time, a one-footed leap over the gap to the next rooftop. 

Catching her balance along its cornice, she darts along the few inches of plaster and concrete, spotting a fire escape at the back of a nearby apartment. She leaps, arms outstretched to either side, legs held back high, allowing gravity to take effect as she momentarily plunges to earth and nearer the fire escape. 

Pulling herself into a forward roll, her feet meet the steel railing, balancing herself, as she moves along its length until reaching its limit. 

She springs off, out into the open air, and with an afterthought, she can feel the familiar buzz, like static at the end of her fingertips, as they adopt their characteristic glow - ending in curled points like claws. 

Evelyn caught herself, driving the projected claws into the brick, using them as leverage as she crawled along its facade. She continued her fevered pursuit motivated by a hypnotic blend of deftness and a rage-driven focus, driving her forth. A lioness on the prowl. 

Her pride had been wounded today, and she knew on this hunt, she wouldn’t be denied.

Evelyn - Catspaw in moments like this, paused - perched upon the edge of a balcony. She watched - her prey visible below despite the distance and darkness, more than plain before eyes possessing literal feline acuity. 

She was hardly 20 feet above but knew they wouldn’t see her. People hardly looked up, especially in the rain. She would use it to her advantage.

It was something she’d been taught by DarkStar - to wear the environment like an extension of herself - advice from the greatest hero in Kingsport City - the beacon of hope in a hopeless place. That had been before…the events that had led her to the hunt she was now engaged in. 

They were halfway through the alleyway, two gasping, stumbling shells of themselves, unaware that they’d been headed off. They moved with the twitchy ungrace of someone under the waning influence of adrenaline, leaving a pit that only fear and utter exhaustion would fill. 

She’d stalked them for only ten minutes or so, chasing them through the streets as a cat might a mouse, but she knew it’d have felt much longer to them. 

Like a waking nightmare of sorts, the kind where the monster was never far away no matter how fast, or how far they ran.

The two men wore similar outfits, the sight of which made her blood boil, and the claws which made the tips of each fingertip buzz curl, extending slightly. 

They were members of the Troupe - the gang led by the dancer - that much made obvious by their garb. Both wore clothing reminiscent of dancers from different eras. 

The one on the right was taller, well-built, and faster with a scar over his right eye that spoke to experience in his chosen career path. He was Italian, it seemed, and his heart strummed with an off sort of beat that spoke to an arrhythmia. He wore something like a stage play rendition of a matador’s costume, complete with a showy red mask that seemed more fit for a masquerade than on a henchman for the city’s most feared villain - had it not been for the countless stains of indiscernible origin she could make out, and the scent of sweat and blood that wafted from his person like a cheap cologne. 

He donned a black Matadors jacket with gold trim, and gray, almost silver tights, with combat boots or something close that clashed with the whole theme. 

The other was a shorter, stocky white guy, and clearly not used to cardio by the way he lagged behind and sucked in breaths like a drowning man. He wore something akin to a tap dancer's outfit, complete with a bowler hat, dress shirt, and suspenders, with shoes that klick-klacked his every step. 

On any other night, it would have rankled her for the ridiculousness of it all. Tonight? It made her blood boil in ways that only shedding someone else’s seemed a salve. 

She waited, silent - stalking, until the first of the two, the faster, was directly below her. She knew they stood little chance of escape, but they would try, and the slower one would listen as she decimated his partner, running but knowing what was coming.

It occurred to her how little her lover would have wanted her to think like this, in fact, preventing it had been the very axis upon which their relationship had formed. 

But where are you now, my love? 

She dropped, letting momentum carry her the twenty or so feet, raising her arm back to expose her elbow like the point of a blade. There is a sickening crack of bone against bone, followed immediately by a silent ‘whuff’ as she lands. 

The first man, the matador, cried out, a shriek of pain and surprise that was almost frightening from a man of his size, as he clutched the sides of his skull with clawing fingers, as though hoping to dig the point of injury out in a moment of shock and pain. After a moment, he tried to gain his bearings and pull off something akin to a fighting stance, eyes still bleary from the first strike, one fist raised while the other still nursed his likely fractured skull. 

Catspaw didn’t allow the luxury, reeling back with claws manifested, and striking.

Despite her every instinct, despite every nerve and muscle and fiber of her being crying out for blood spilled, for vengeance in the only way she could see it, she pulled back, allowing her claws only to dance along the surface of the flesh, piercing the fabric as though nonexistent. 

He yelped, a hand rushing to his chest, returning a watercolor hue of scarlet with fresh blood and rainwater, the other moving shakily for his waist. 

The slower one tried to stop, instead coming to a skid on concrete slick with rain. He slipped, quickly scrambling to his feet, eyes never once leaving her - in them a singular expression as he began to flee in the opposite direction - fear. 

“You fucking punk, you coward!” The taller one calls back to his associate, voice wavering with an intoxicating mix of rage and terror, still fumbling with something at the back of his belt.

Good. She thought. It was what they deserved, any scum who chose to follow that maniac who called himself ‘The Dancer’, knowing what he had intended to do. 

They had likely helped him litter the city with explosives, and only through the intervention of DarkStar, herself, and the rest of his costumed Kingsport associates, had the worst devastation been avoided. And the cost? 

She took a springing leap, soaring above the man, and landing behind him with a quiet thud, sending a spray of rainwater in her wake. 

She was moving before he could hope to collect himself, turning, eyes immediately finding the gun he was attempting to pull. She had it before the man had a chance to secure it, tossing it out of reach.

He turned to face her, reactions already inferior to her own made all the more sluggish due to injury. She spun on the ball of her foot, catching the side of his face with a hooking kick that connected heel with cheekbone. She could hear something break and felt something in him shatter under the impact.

“Arrghhhh, furck-” he half-growled, half-gurgled through a slack, bleeding jaw.

He stumbled back until he’d reached the brick facade of the nearest building, hands back at his skull as though holding it together. Her eyes meet his through the yellow and black-lensed goggles of her costume, teeth bared in a snarl that always felt natural in these moments. His reaction was one she didn’t expect. 

He laughed, a forced, pained expression, laughter all the same. She can feel her blood turn to venom in her veins. She moves in a blur, hand finding his throat as she pressed him against the wall into a strangling choke.

“What the fuck is so funny?” she hissed, underlining the question with a tightening of her grip, prompting a brief, but pointless struggle. He was injured, exhausted, and on his best of days he’d have been no match, and she was fueled by a hurt unlike anything she’d known since her youth, twisting into a familiar rage.

“D - doeshn’t matter -” he slurred, likely concussed and with a jaw that was dislocated at a minimum, grimacing though his forced grin remained, “Doeshn’t m - matter if you kill me. Th - the bossh won, W - WE won, DarkStar - is dead.”

He spat at her as though to make the point - and it took ever ounce of the control Catspaw could muster to rip the throat from his neck in that instant - the rain carrying it down the front of her hooded, yellow and black costume. 

“Kingshport is ours, we c-control it, The Dancer controls it.

She lifted, raising the man until his boots leave the ground, before holding the fingertips of her free hand level from his stomach. 

“Tell me asshole,” she growled and brought herself close enough to be heard over the rain which had grown into a downpour.

At a thought the spirit claws manifest, gouging less than a few centimeters into waiting flesh. He screamed, fighting hard against her grip until he couldn’t any longer, teeth gnashing from the searing pain.

“Do you feel in control?”

 . . .

She caught his accomplice minutes after, his fate only somewhat more benign due to an immediate and cowering surrender. It angered her more than it should’ve - wanting a reason to go all out on him, to make an example as she had with his buddy, but it would have to do. The police would find them tied up in their respective alleys. 

She’d done things the way he’d have wanted, mostly, the way DarkStar would have wanted it avoiding any lethal injury. The thought sent pangs through her chest and reminded of the duty she’d been avoiding confronting in these hours following his loss.

DarkStar was dead. The ‘Dark Guardian’ of Kingsport City was no more. That couldn’t be allowed to remain true. She would speak to his sidekick, to speak to Kid Rocket. 

And she had an idea of where the boy would be. The Neal Manor, her next stop.