Cat & Mouse

[heeeyadora]

WHO: Catra, Tony, OTA
WHERE: The Forge, Various Locations in Temba
WHAT: THE NOISE
WHEN: The start of the event
WARNINGS: Violence, Will update as needed.
Note:'First' is for Tony, 'And Then' is for anyone else. Respond it whichever tense/style you prefer and I will match.

FIRST

The noise at first made its way into Catra's dreams, distant, something she wasn't quite aware of as the world twisted around her, dreams becoming nightmares. The noise became more and more apparent, Catra tossing and turning before awaking in a foul mood.

She pressed her ears flat against her head with a sullen frown. What was that??? The source wasn't immediately apparent, but she had a good guess, stalking her way towards the forge. Tony was usually the one responsible for ungodly noises doing whatever it was he did in there.

"Turn it offfff," she growled, letting herself in, tail twitching and swaying in irritation behind her.


AND THEN

Catra ran, sometimes on two legs, sometimes on all fours, trying to escape the noise, trying to stop it. And in her irrational state she concluded anyone and anything in her way must be the source of it. She pounced out of the blue, eyes wild, and claws sharp. Hope you're ready for the chase, little mouse. Catra isn't going to listen to reason right now.

Comments

[heeeyadora]

The growling and panting stopped abruptly, Catra's body going limp. She seemed to be breathing, at least, but given how loud that crack had been (and the amount of blood dribbling down from under her mask), she wasn't going to be getting up any time soon.

[in_extremis]

Tony still held her tightly by the leather wrapped around her head for a beat, until it was clear she had stopped moving and his panicked breathing only worsened. Quickly, he tore the apron away, twisting up on his knees to check the damage, eyes darting and hands in the air with tensely twitching fingers, muttering, "Please don't be dead, please don't be dead..." Spotting the rise and fall of Catra breathing wasn't as much of a relief as Tony hoped. He still had cracked this kid's skull on the ground. "Okay, okay, okay..." he continued to himself, changing gears to glance around the room for the next solution, but he was absolutely not the person to start administering medical care, and, for all he knew, he had already scrambled her brains with that lightsaber test.

Still kneeling by Catra, Tony gave a beckoning wave of his hand at the scaffolding above him, prompting a flurry of activity from disparate pieces spread throughout the workshop that he hadn't yet brought together at once like this. He couldn't just leave Catra bleeding on the floor, though, he had to get to Cal, and a doctor, someone who could help and maybe put her brains back in order, like Jon had done with Billy. "We're going to see Jon, you like Jon, right?" Iron Man said to Catra as the faceplate locked into place, his eyes flickering to life.

[heeeyadora]

Catra, whether dazed, or unconscious, said nothing, though her ears gave a small twitch at the flurry of movement and unfamiliar sounds. She was dimly aware of the noise still, trying to will herself slip into that quiet dark.

[in_extremis]

Any response was a good sign to Tony, so he took that twitch gladly and interpreted, "Yeah, that sounds great, let's make it fast." That was what the Iron Man was supposed to be for, after all, helping people, even if it was just to save them from Tony himself.

Catra hardly weighed anything and would have been easy to scoop up even without the suit, so they were at the door before Tony was accounting for his missing glove in the flight. It didn't matter much, he was going to have to keep hold of Catra somehow anyway, so he muttered a quick apology as he lifted her over his shoulder and hoped that wasn't doing more damage in the process. It was okay, they would be back on the ground in no time. Tony didn't even have the chance to consider what this first flight felt like, bursting up into the air and barrelling toward the city.

[heeeyadora]

Catra groaned, air whipping past her as she blinked groggily, confused by this new vantage point before that noise pushed its way back into her mind. She squirmed, all the warning Tony would get before her claws tore clean through the back of his suit, scrambling to climb up and over, leaping into the air like an angry cat who hasn't thought things through.

Despite the height she seemed to land all right, quickly taking off into a run on all fours.

[in_extremis]

She could squirm all she wanted, Tony thought, she didn't have anywhere to go--until the suit was overwhelming him with what felt like every possible warning as they discovered together that Catra could just rip through it, almost as shocking as the pain up his back that followed shortly after. He grunted in surprise, stumbling slightly in his already precarious control with one repulsor down, and was left whipping clumsily around as Catra easily took her chance to make her escape.

It took him longer to orient himself than it did for her, shocked once again that the fall didn't seem to cause any damage and leaving his strangled, "No!--Catra?" twisting up in confusion when he saw her hit the ground. He was inches behind her by then, but it wasn't quite enough as she bolted. Iron Man hit the ground as well to turn himself around before bursting after her in a cloud of dust and pebbles. "If this is some kind of game, we can play after you tell me what's going on!" he called.

[heeeyadora]

Catra ran at a fairly impressive pace on all fours, certainly faster than a human, though no where near as fast as any of the speedsters Tony might know. She evaded him, like he was the source of the noise, determined not to be caught again, dodging inside one of the first buildings she came across.

[in_extremis]

If Tony had anything to compare the speed to, it was definitely Tigra, but trying to calibrate with that in mind did not make him optimistic about this chase. In the wrong environment, Tigra was impossible to catch up with, too. And a cluster of crumbling buildings was the wrong environment.

Iron Man pulled up short as Catra darted inside, hovering briefly by the entrance as he considered the risk of bringing the whole place down if he tried to fly through. The math wasn't reassuring. Instead, he backed away, climbing and circling the structure slowly, panning through a variety of scans to pick up on any sound she made, body heat, something before she got too far away.

[heeeyadora]

These buildings weren't too different from from the Fright Zone, at least when it came to climbing. Catra leapt and scampered through as though she knew exactly where she was going, leaping from one building to the next, through and window and disappearing again, determined not to be caught.