I had some vague impressions of a new OC and decided to just fumble around and see if it could turn into anything.

Before anybody points out anything, I'm sure there is one 24 hour a day strip club somewhere in the world, and she happens to work there and it totally has NOTHING to do with the fact that it was convenient for the plot… Anyway…

This turned into an original No-Leo story with a different version of Cherry that I'm working on, so I may drop this and never finish it if it interferes with that story. But who knows. I thought I should post it since I kind of liked it.

"Do you usually get in at 4am on a school night?" asked the mysterious voice.

The heavy iron door of the college dorm slammed shut down the hallway as one of the inmates went to the lobby to get their mail. She staggered across the room in the dark and searched for the lamp, flipping the switch. He must have unplugged it.

"I would get in earlier if I didn't work and then study until four, but I'll start going to bed at nine like a good girl," she said and laughed at her hollow wit, exhaustion clouding her brain. Her toes throbbed inside her shoes. "I have to pee. Do I get to see you this time? Oh, do you want to come with me? Since you've been following me everywhere for three days now? You should give me some big tips. I bet you watched every single dance I did tonight, didn't you? Are you just a stalker? Like my biggest fan or something?" The growing worry converted to impatient annoyance as her energy levels sank by the minute.

The shadow warrior sat in the chair in the corner of the room in the dark. The streetlight in the parking lot cast a yellow glow on her bed, missing him by centimeters. Maybe he was nothing but a disembodied voice, smooth and still. "I need you to tell me what you know."

She rolled her eyes into the dark corner and threw her coat on the floor. "Why do you even care so much? I think you're full of shit and just want to come see me after hours and get a private show. Isn't that really it?" She kicked off her heels and one sailed across the cluttered dorm room and bounced off the wall close to his shadowy corner.

The shadow warrior sighed and said, "I need full disclosure. If you want to be able to go on taking your clothes off in front of strangers for money and reading your books about Mayan iconography and whatever else it is you like to do. Or do anything at all. The time is close and you know it."

"You want full disclosure from me?" She laughed and pulled off her top, showing him her exposed breasts, waiting for a reaction. "I think I'm just imagining you so I'm going to pretend you're not here."

But the shadow warrior still breathed silently in the corner and when he spoke his tone didn't deviate from the usual measured beats. "There are some very bad people out there who would do anything to figure out what you know. You doodled it on the back of a placemat while backstage at the strip club. The most intelligent people on the planet can't figure this problem out."

She slowly pulled down her skirt and let it fall to the floor while simultaneously checking her planner for any missed assignments tomorrow. "Well, they're just not trying hard enough then. You're the one sitting in a strange girl's room in the dark in the middle of the night. Maybe you're the bad guy. I don't even know what you look like."

The chair creaked and he may have stood up or shifted his weight, but she still couldn't see him. "I assume that people living in the world would like it to go on so. I took the liberty of adding my number to your phone in case you have a nighttime craving to text me."

"Like impossible physics problems that I solved or naughty pictures?" She entered the name NINJA STALKER into her phone as his contact name.

The shadow shifted and the outline of a muscled arm briefly flashed in the streetlight. "I'm more turned on by long numbers that have the potential to be utilized by evil scientists to create weapons that destroy the universe than girls taking their clothes off in front of me."

She slid her panties down a little on her hips and said, "Do you want me to recite pi and do a sexy dance then?" Her patience broke as she received no answer to her provocation and she said, "Look, I know that Doctor What's-His-Face wanted to know how I solved that, but it's no big deal. I read about it on the back of a newspaper and it said that the problem is unsolvable and I thought it was a misprint because it works out really easily. And I'm tired of Mr. Mysterious sitting in my room at night asking me for the answer. If it's so important that nobody ever know the answer, then why should I give it to anybody, let alone a guy who sits in the dark and won't let me see him at all."

She turned to the dresser and pulled out a nightgown covered in sparkly skulls and gasped as she felt warm breath on the back of her neck. The voice was only a few inches behind her. "I'm right here if you're so concerned with what I look like. Just turn around."

But suddenly she didn't want to know. All of her actions up until this moment crashed into the front of her mind. How had she let herself stand alone in her room in the middle of the night, naked, with no defense and a strange man inches away. And then practically point that killing her solved all his issues. She slowly turned and saw nothing but large brown eyes in a dark and not-quite-human face. A man, but not quite a man and he had some kind of heavy brace on his back, almost like a shell. He didn't wear any clothes but some pads and equipment. "You're young…" she said. His voice sounded older than his face.

She sensed a flutter of movement beyond the young ninja, in her bathroom. She opened her mouth to say, "Look out!" but before she could let out a sound, the flutter of movement had turned into a person dressed from head to toe in black, silently rushing at his back with a sword drawn. He reached over his back and pulled a katana from a holster and without turning to even see his attacker or taking his eyes off her, he swept the sword behind him and flicked it across the attackers throat. "Well, now we're both exposed," he said as the man fell on his knees, holding his throat in vain to collect the spurting blood.

"What did you just do?! Call the police! He's dying!" She pointed at the man lying on her dorm room floor, spilling his blood on a copy of the Dresden Codex that she'd made by printing the panels off Google images and taping them together.

The stranger narrowed his eyes and then turned quickly, his sword still in his hand and cut the man's head cleanly off. "Now he's dead. Obviously, you need to leave now. I apologize about the mess, but that's an elite assassin. He's followed you for a while now."

She stared at the head lying on her gold glitter halter top… Blood… blood everywhere… She'd have to reprint the Dresden Codex again… Everything went black.

The stranger slapped her cheeks and she groaned, brushing them aside. She realized he only had three fingers on that hand. "Hello? No time to faint now. Ninja assassins after you. Dead guy in your dorm. Need to leave. Hello! Put on some clothes."

She pulled out her Bob Dylan t-shirt and polka dotted leggings without putting on any panties or a bra.

The ninja warrior spoke hurriedly into a cell phone as she got dressed with slow nauseous movements, her brain going blank every time she pictured the headless corpse in the middle of the room. "Yeah, I have somebody here and we need to put her somewhere safe. Mike, the lab is not a safe place. I mean, even if he did move all that liquid nitrogen away from the furnace like I told him too. Where's Raph? Tell him that April might be having a house guest. Well, she can destroy the earth with one math problem. No! Don cannot meet her! Just forget it! I'll do it myself." He closed his phone and huffed like an impatient child, then closed his eyes for a second and said, "I'm sorry. My brothers are a little immature. I'll take care of this."

"Take care of what?" She hurriedly packed her textbooks for the next day into a backpack with a large painted cannabis leaf on the back. "I don't need to be taken care of. I have money. Where are you taking me?"

He bit his lip and furrowed his eyebrows, which looked slightly silly for a green ninja warrior who had just chopped off somebody's head. He said, "I'm not sure. But we need to move. I'll think of something on the way."

She couldn't stop staring at the black legs in her peripheral vision, thinking that the unseen half of the body had no head and then shoved a thong and sparkly bra in the backpack in case she somehow made it to work the next day. "Am I supposed to go with you? How do I know you're not the bad guy? I mean, you just decapitated somebody in front of me. And you're green." She tried not to let her voice shake. She would just have to scream for the police as soon as they were in the open. The college campus crawled with police like an ant-hill.

He pulled a rag from the belt on his waist and wiped the blood off his sword. "Are appearances that important? You're coming with me whether you like it or not. Usually I'm not one for force, but this is too important to play games."

"Am I playing games?" she asked, adopting a flirty tone in case she could somehow flirt her way out of the situation. As Vicky often told her at the club when she complained about men with wandering hands, the only ones being exploited here are the ones with the money.

"Anybody who hides by taking their clothes off likes to play games." He slid the window open and an early morning breeze cooled the room. A few students laughed loudly in the parking lot and he leapt aside out of the street light and back into the safe shadow of the far corner. "What's your real name, Cherry?"

"That is my real name. What's your name?" She followed him into the corner so she could see him again. Shouldn't she run away from the weird guy that had just shown up and beheaded a guy in her room? Well, if he hadn't been there, then the Bathroom Assassin would have turned her into one of those sad campus murder stories that you see in the newspaper sometimes. And he probably could catch her as soon as she ran.

"Well, if you're going to manhandle me again, then come here and do it. Can I have a name to add to your contact? It says NINJA STALKER right now." She took a step closer. "I'll make it easy for you." She leaned into him and smiled, trying to signal interest.

His hands worked open and closed a few times uncertainly and his eyes widened like a shy little girl. "I wasn't proposing that as a first option. Just follow me out the window once the coast is clear."

She shook her head. "Not until I get a name for my phone."

"I don't give my name to people who want me to believe their real name is Cherry Pop."

Cherry tried to keep smiling the same plastic sexy smile. Don't think about the headless corpse in the room. She shivered in the cool air, her bare arms covered in goosebumps. "I'll just get a hotel room and wait it out. I guess the C.S.I. guys will figure out that I'm not a professionally trained ninja that can cut a guy's throat cleanly with a katana and attribute it to one of the invisible vigilante guys that they never seem to find. Or maybe I could help them out and give them the phone number he entered into my phone." She held up her purple rhinestone covered phone with his phone number displayed on the screen.

In one moment, he rushed forward and tossed her over his shoulder, then jumped out the window and climbed the dorm building, all the way to the roof and carried her over the rooftops as if he could fly, leaping from fire escape to fire escape with no sound at all. She clung to his neck and tried to dig her fingernails into whatever hard surface covered his back, but couldn't sink them into anything to get any kind of grip and settled for a chokehold around his neck instead.

After fifteen minutes he set her on her feet and said, "Vigilantes don't get caught because they don't let people idly threaten them to make a point or whatever it is you think you're doing. Do you have a death wish or something?"

She fell heavily on her backside, her rainbow colored hair blown in front of her face and hyperventilated.

"Are you going to faint again?" he asked without a hint of concern. Her kidnapper again pulled out his phone and ignored her heavy panicked breathing. He said, "Raph, just stay where you are. I don't need you lumbering around yelling at my informant. This requires finesse, which is why I said you couldn't come with me. Keep helping Don solve that problem and don't let him have any sharp objects." He hung up and said to her, "Are you finished?"

She wobbled to her bare feet and tried to think of something sexy and distracting to say, but she couldn't stop staring at all the city lights on the horizon, surrounding them from every direction. The horizon glowed pink and orange to the east and the shoreline glowed gold in the warm spring light.

He glanced into the sunrise and said, "It matches a few parts of your hair, doesn't it?"

Cherry rolled her eyes. "I hope my kidnapper didn't just try to flirt with me. That would be both lame AND creepy. I'm out of here. Have fun looking at the sunrise, Mr. Vigilante." She walked across the roof towards the maintenance access on the sides of her bare feet, hoping he didn't notice her discomfort.

"I wasn't flirting! And I didn't kidnap… Well, I guess I did. But you're being really uncooperative and it's getting on my nerves!" He rushed around and pulled her towards him by the arm. She waited for him to say something, but he just stared at her.

The longer she looked at him, the less alien he seemed. Sure he was green, but he had huge eyes, like a wide-eyed dog. "How old are you?"

"Why? How old are you?" he asked, still gripping her arm. Then he shook his head as if trying to toss water out of his ears and said, "I mean, it's irrelevant. Just… tell me how you figured it out so I can tell my brother and we can defuse this bomb! Usually people get really cooperative when you throw the phrase 'end of the world' around, but I guess you don't care."

She smiled and laughed in his face. "You're going to explain it to him? It's not like explaining a bad joke or something. I can't just explain how I did it. And why should I? Maybe you're the one trying to arm this thing."

Cherry leaned away from him, hoping he would take a hint and let go of her arm, but he held on a little tighter. "Fine! If you want to be my buddy and stick around, that's fine. Let's go have breakfast. Take me to I.H.O.P." She stopped leaning backwards and he stumbled awkwardly as her weight fell into him again.

He said, "I'm a secret ninja vigilante, remember? I can't go to I.H.O.P." Now he let go of her and crossed his arms. "Am I supposed to babysit you while you think about whether or not you'll let the world blow up? I don't have time for this!" He threw his hands up dramatically and scared a flock of pigeons roosting on a TV antenna.

"I'll treat you. How about that? We can go to my work and eat in my dressing room." She scanned the horizon as if GIRLS XXX could be seen from the sky.

He scoffed and rolled his eyes. "I know you're a math genius or something, but I'd thought you could have calculated that if you had an assassin waiting in your dorm, that he probably went to your work place first and got information there."

Well, he was probably right. "I don't think so. They probably went through my parents. If they're looking for me and track me down to my dorm room number, they probably looked under my real name. And if you're too afraid to go there because there are more assassins waiting, I'm sure that Misty and Brandy can take care of themselves."

He sighed and said, "I thought you said Cherry was your real name. And I suppose it wouldn't hurt to check the place out. I could at least shake the guy down for information. It's hard to interrogate guys with no heads."

She put her arms around his neck, bracing herself for flight. He didn't move and said, "Well, don't worry. I'm sure your friends are okay…" with a slightly high pitched voice as if he chose that moment to suddenly regress back through puberty.

"I'm waiting for you to go jumping the rooftops again, dumbass!" She took the opportunity to rub her chest against his to get a reaction and was surprised when he pushed her gently away.

"Stop that. I'm serious. I don't appreciate it." He crossed his arms and glared. "I'm trying to work here. This is my job. I'm not here for you to give me a lap dance or rub your tits all over me. Okay! We're going to go see if there are any assassins hiding at your work place and then I'm going to take you somewhere safe so that I can try to get these numbers that will save the world so I can give them to my brother so he can come up with some formula to thwart that evil scientist and then I'm going to go home and go to bed. I've been awake for four days now. And nothing you do, no matter how obnoxious, is going to stop me from getting this information, so, CHERRY POP, you can rub me all you like, but it won't make any difference. And I'm really close to just knocking you out and carrying you home to my brother and he can administer some truth serum. So you have one hour to tell me what I need to know, or the plan changes. Now get over here!"

She realized she had taken several steps away from him during his stern lecture and she scoffed and said, "Oh, fuck you! I'm getting a hotel room."

But he grabbed her around the midsection, turned her around to face him, staring death at her and then threw her back over his shoulder. "Which way to your place of work? If you want to help me. That's fine. But you're not leaving until I get this information. I can find this place on my own."

She decided that the next time a ninja bullied her for information that could destroy the planet, she would change her name and hide out somewhere for a while instead of stripping in front of him and antagonizing him. "Whatever… I don't care…" It didn't matter. Just another ride on a train through a bad situation. Just shut up and ride through it and lie still until it was over.

And then he moved to the edge of the building, without bothering to ask her for a location or looking it up on his phone. "I've already been there, watching you, Cherry Pop. I meant to complement you on your routine, but haven't had the chance." He leapt off the building and landed softly on a fire escape across the alley.

She reached for something to grip and nearly sliced off a finger on one of his swords. "Do you have a name?" she asked again.

"Yes." He scaled the building in nearly an instant and ran across the rooftop towards the next alley.

"You're a bastard," she said as she watched sun coming up over the horizon.