The massive barroom was full of smoke, noise and the smells of cheap barbequed hot wings and sweat. The uninterested flitted about the pool tables and tiny dining areas, while the more rowdy and testosterone-pumped patrons flocked to the thing that dominated the center of everything: The Cage. Stainless steel chain-link, four layers deep and reinforced with solid steel beams, reached almost to the twelve-foot ceiling, another few layers of fencing capping it off. A single, small door was cut into the side, but it was commonly heavily padlocked when fights were going on within…as one was now. Rather, as one soon would.

A woman stood alone within awaiting her next opponent to volunteer for whatever fate may come, be it victory or absolute failure. Looking slightly older than her seventeen years, she was of average height with a physique and appearance that would make nearly any model think twice about their job…and pray that they could find a bodyguard or two. Even in her Glabro form, in human eyes, she was striking. Dressed in a black sport's bra and blue jeans and combat boots, she downed the remainder of her Coke as her one hand propped her up against the chain-link. She crushed the can with one hand as easily as one could crush an eggshell and pitched the small hunk of aluminum in the corner. It landed next to her massive labrys of silver adorned with Greek runes in bronze with a tinny clunk. Her now empty hand flicked the long, tight braid of reddish hair back over her shoulder before shoving itself into her pocket.

"They take too much time," she said lowly to a form near her on the outside of the cage. Her voice was cultured, though not accented. "I think, by this point, they all fear me, but they all seem so eager to see someone get maimed."

"They're only human, Catalyne," the figure replied in kind. The voice, accented from the Garou tongue, came from another woman, quite a bit older than the first with deep chestnut hair cut close to her head and brown eyes to match. She was plainly dressed in a bar employee tee-shirt and faded cut-offs. "Three fights already tonight. Just be grateful they don't truly suspect you to be something more…especially after what happened years ago. I never thought I'd say it, but the Namer knew what it was doing when strobe lights were invented. Not like an eleven-foot, charcoal gray Crinos with a battle-axe is easy to hide anyway…."

"That was far from here, Nika," Catalyne said back over her shoulder. "Rumors can go far, but they can just as easily be forgotten along the way."

"Whatever. I'm just grateful we left that particular fight arena far behind us in Monte Carlo. Though, I cannot say whether or not Miami will be much better."

Catalyne shrugged. "We'll soon find out, I suppose." She nodded in the direction of the door as a man that appeared to be a retired Marine was let inside, his homely face smirking as he cracked his knuckles. The young woman let her eyebrows rise and fall in a quick expression of indifference above her narrowed bluish green eyes. The man was too goddamned cocky; she could tell that already.  That, and the size of his gut revealed just about how long he'd been out of the service.

"You're the renowned 'Rose of Thorns'?" he asked as he tugged his cotton shirt off gracelessly.

"Maybe," was the trite reply, "but I see you've come to find out."

He stepped closer to her so that they were only a foot or two apart. "A woman's place isn't in the arena, girl. Besides, we wouldn't want to scar up that lovely face of yours, now, would we?" He patted her cheek half-mockingly.

It was a good thing that fights in this particular place began the instant the padlock was latched because Catalyne's rage instantly boiled over. Mentally, she warred with her self-control as, outwardly, three quick movements floored the prick of a man. She kneed him solidly in the groin as her right fist hooked up and under, connecting harshly with his jaw just before her left palm shot out, slamming into his sternum, sending him reeling backwards onto the padded cement and skidding into the far corner. His body flipped over his neck and head as he crashed into the chain-link and slumped into a heap, blood slowly oozing from a torn mouth.

"Don't even think about touching me again, pig," she spat after several seconds when he struggled back onto his feet, wiping blood from his broken face. "There's far worse where that came from."

He let out a dry chuckle. "You think that I haven't already been through hell? I've seen battles that lowlifes like yourself can only picture in nightmares."

"A little young for the World Wars, aren't we?" she asked, her expression sweet and innocent looking.

It was his turn to fume. Stalking over, he feinted a punch to her face, which she believed, arching backwards just enough to put herself off-guard for the impact his other fist made to her exposed abdomen. Despite her upbringing amongst the Black Furies and her extensive training under Nika's supervision and teaching, Catalyne buckled over from the force of the blow, coughing a couple times and not really reacting even as an elbow slammed into the back over her neck. She collapsed to the floor and took a swift, hard kick in the ribs. A wave of booing rose up from the crowd gathered.

"I told you it was no place for a girl," the Marine sneered as he began to walk away, thinking he'd won. He was very wrong. Catalyne was good at faking things, too.

Leaping to her knees without the slightest trace of discomfort from what she'd just been through, she spun about on the balls of her one foot with great speed, swinging her one leg around to trip the retreating man while he was unaware. He was too close to the wall and caught himself quickly, turning around to glare at her.

"Bitch!" he shouted as she retreated back to her corner, crouched like a cat waiting to pounce on a rat, her arms out to the walls on either side, her glowering face shadowed. "Fight's over! I won!" He strode toward the door again.

"Like hell you did! Doesn't appear like I'm dead yet." She shoved herself from her position with her strong arms, vaulting up and through the air and landing lightly just a few steps from him. She kicked him roughly in the kidneys and pummeled him to the floor with her unrelenting fists, battling in her own mind yet again to maintain control of her body. Shifting in a place like this was hard to avoid but disastrous all the same. She let up when she heard him begin to whimper.

"Be glad it wasn't armed combat," she snarled as she got to her feet a cheer rising up from the crowd as an announcer proclaimed yet another victory for the 'Rose of Thorns'. "I would have killed you outright with that." She pointed casually to her labrys over her shoulder with her thumb. His dazed eyes rolled over to catch a brief glimpse of the fearsome weapon before closing in unconsciousness. Never had she needed to use that in such an environment…but she kept it close by just for effect. It came in handy for such things.

"It's one AM!" Nika's voice sounded from the speakers lining the walls of the barroom. "Closing time!" Some of the patrons grumbled at that while still others talked and laughed about the brawling they'd seen, now and again mimicking Catalyne's moves with aspiring hands and feet to add to their conversations. The young woman, herself, sat in her corner of the cage casually sipping at yet another Coke until everyone save the employees and a regular or two was gone. Soon, they were gone, too, and she let herself shrink back to her full Homid form and tugged on an oversized tee-shirt that said 'Men are Bastards. ALL of Them.' Settling her labrys on one shoulder, she walked out of her arena and over to the bar.

"I'm off," she said simply to Nika as the Garou wiped off the liquor-stained countertop. "It's another full day tomorrow."

"Don't remind me," Nika replied with a small half-smile as she handed Catalyne a wad of twenties. "Your winnings for the day. A grand total of eight-hundred-forty even." She eyed the other woman's labrys. "Perhaps, tomorrow, I'll bring mine as well, and we can actually put yours to good use with staged combat. Sound good to you?"

Catalyne's slender fingers flexed along the tooled leather handle. "Sounds perfect. I'll be in around three."

"Right. I'll see you then." And without further word, Catalyne left the bar and headed down the brightly lit city boulevard to her townhouse in an upper-middle-class residential zone near the beach. The air was salty and warm even for that hour, but a cool breeze was coming up from the sea. Catalyne tilted her head back a little bit to take it in, inhaling deeply the thick, bittersweet air with a smile on her face.

Leaving the brightly lit boulevards where the bars and nightclubs were situated, she turned northward onto a broad street lined with condos, the orange streetlights casting odd shadows everywhere. She mounted the steps leading to one of them, a large five-story structure with white doors into the apartments on either side of each landing. Three floors up, the leaned her labrys against the pale blue vinyl siding of the condo and fumbled about in her pocket for her keys.

"Well, if it isn't Cat and her big, nasty bat," she heard a familiar voice say behind her as she was unlocking her door. With a grin and a slight shake of her head, she turned around. There, standing just a few feet away, was her roommate, Tanya: a party-going twenty-year-old with the blonde hair and tanned skin stereotypically characteristic of those who spent most of their time soaking up the sun. She wasn't Garou, but Catalyne trusted her nearly as much as she would any Kinfolk, though not entirely.

"Your mom called," Tanya went on as the two made their way into the apartment, the woman tossing her purse and lightweight red vinyl jacket on a plush chair in the living room as Catalyne set her labrys lovingly on a stand in the corner of the dining area. "She wants you to come home or something. Your dad's sick in the hospital. Allegheny General, I think she said."

"Fuck," Catalyne muttered as she threw herself onto the couch and flicked on the wide-screen television. "I'll bet that bastard's drunk himself sick again. You know we never got on…."

"I know, but your mom sounded really worked-up about it. She wants you home."

"No, no, no…this is home," she replied, pointing forcibly at the floor of the apartment. "Pittsburgh's just a place up in Yankville where I was raised for a year or two until Aunt Nika rescued me." Nika was Catalyne's aunt…a single Garou in a family of Kinfolk that was now spread out all over the US…but that didn't mean that the family had really close bonds beyond blood.

"Should I call her back and say you won't be coming, then? Or would you rather do that?"

Catalyne shook her head, muting the late-night movie. She wasn't even paying attention to it, anyway. "I'll go, I suppose. I guess I owe the old man something, at least, for being partially responsible for my existence. If he's going to die on me, I don't want it to really be with us still on bad terms."

"Fabulous," Tanya said with quite a bit of enthusiasm. "I'll help you start packing. She wants you up there tomorrow, by the way. About how long will you be staying?"

The other shrugged. "A week, maybe. I really have no idea."

"I'll play it safe, then. I think enough for two weeks should be plenty…." And, even as she thought aloud, she wandered into Catalyne's bedroom and began rummaging through the dresser drawers and closet.

The girl sighed and rubbed a hand over her face as she gave up on the TV altogether, shutting it off with a click of the remote and a cosmic bleep from the set. Sometimes Tanya was too good of a friend…and it didn't help matters any that she had almost always put family first, even if the family wasn't her own. She reached over for the cordless phone sitting on the coffee table nearby.

"Um…hi. When's the next flight to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania…?"

~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~

Catalyne Mears stepped from the cool, air conditioned air of the Pittsburgh International Airport into the explosive blast of heat and humidity of the parking lot outside. She had only just gotten off the phone with Nika, telling her that she wouldn't be showing up for work for an indefinite period of time. Between her over-caring nuclear family and the possibility of an upcoming funeral—her father had been diagnosed with third-stage pancreatic cancer (funny how she hadn't been informed of the first two stages…)—she wasn't exactly sure when she'd be back at all. Her mother would need someone there for a while, Catalyne's brothers all overseas either in the gay-assed War Against Terrorism or scheduled for random, long-term business trips.

Dragging her bulging, wheeled suitcase behind her, she strode over to one of the airport's many shuttles and boarded once she'd seen her luggage carefully stowed away beneath. It was an hour's ride to the stop near her family's home in Shadyside, and she left her things in the care of their housekeeper, the widowed Mrs. Wanda Davidson. She then hopped a bus to the hospital and found her father's room in the patient directory.

"Fucking eleventh floor," she muttered to herself as she began mounting the steps. The elevators just didn't move fast enough for her. After some minutes, she reached the floor she wanted. 1134…1136…aha! 1138. The door was already open, and she wandered in without so much as a second thought.

"Cat!" her mother exclaimed almost immediately as she rushed over and gathered the girl up in a lung-crushing hug. "I'm glad you made it up, sweetie."

Catalyne grimaced as she patted the woman's back, hearing the tears over the condition of her father rather than seeing them. "It was no trouble," she said lowly and uncertainly as she backed away from the older woman's embrace. "How's Dad?"

"Not good," Sandra Mears said truthfully. Her face was slightly anguished and her voice strained, but in actuality, she wasn't all that close to her husband. Their numerous children—out of eight, Catalyne was the only girl and the youngest—was the only real thing keeping them together. Sandra had always been quite the independent and viewed her spouse more like a friendly, distant cousin than anything else. "The doctors say they'll be surprised if he outlasts the night."

Catalyne looked over at her father's bed. The man simply lay there, tubes protruding from everywhere, his eyes closed, his chest barely moving as he breathed. He was hooked up to a respirator.

"Why all the equipment?"

"He had a stroke on top of a bit of a liver problem…" Sandra said in an almost embarrassed fashion. "The alcohol, you know. If it hadn't been for that, we probably would never have discovered that he had the cancer. You know how stubborn he is about his well-being."

"Figures," Catalyne responded emotionlessly. "I thought as such last night when Tanya told me about your call." She glanced up at the flickering television high up on a shelf across from the bed. Her father had fallen asleep in the middle of a Pirates game. Her oldest brother, Stephen, would have had a fit over that. Wouldn't have made any difference. That team was having a bad year.

"I'm going for a walk," she said after a minute or two of watching the game with the volume turned down nearly as low as it would go. "If Dad wakes up, give him a hug for me or something."

"You have your cell phone on you just in case?"

"Yes, Mom."

"You've enough money to get you dinner?"

"Yes, Mom."

"Your ID? The switchblade in your pocket? Bus fare?"

Catalyne sighed with exasperation. "Yes, Mom. I'll be back later tonight. Don't worry about me, for the love of everything holy. It's not like I don't know how to take care of myself or anything…. My labrys is at the house, too." She rolled her eyes and left, bound and determined to wander the city and purposely try to get herself lost like she used to when she still lived up here…and see if she couldn't find out why her sixth sense was suddenly nagging the living shit out of her.