tigerundercover

As much as Raven hated walking away and leaving Kathy -- what was left of Kathy -- behind, she had to trust her to the Mighty Dragon. He'd promised to take her to the Observatory, where she couldn't hurt anyone while they figured out how to fix her, and Raven wasn't strong enough in her bird form yet to keep up with him and see Kathy off herself.

Besides, there were other people who needed to know what happened. Sarah deserved to know why her big sister wasn't going to come home again anytime soon. And even Mr. and Mrs. Li didn't deserve to have to wonder.

She made it across to Koreatown without much incident, only stopping twice to save a few of the idiots who were still out and about on the streets. Kathy would be mad if she didn't, and it was nice to take some of her anger and frustration out on the exes. And yeah, she was a hypocrite. Because she still thought Kathy could be saved, but she wasn't giving these exes the same chance.

She didn't care.

She scaled the fire escape to get to the window she and Kathy used when they snuck in and out, and paused when she got the window open. It didn't quite sound -- right in there. She bulked back up into her anti-ex armor as she slipped across the bedroom towards the door.

The hell was that noise?

The Li Apartment	The noise came again, a stealthy, whimpering sound: the sound of someone desperately trying to stay hidden, but in too much pain to be quiet. Not coming from Kathy's room, but elsewhere, audible through the apartment's thin walls. There was another noise, too. Wetter, harder to place.
Raven	Yeah, that was a bad combination of noises. Raven picked up her pace as best she could -- the anti-ex tank armor really was cumbersome. She might as well be a turtle. And when she cracked the door open that was just what she did. Shrink down into a small, hard to spot, very well armored turtle, and peeked through the crack to see what she was up against.
Mrs. Li	There, in the hallway and covered in blood, was Kathy's mom. She was huddled against the wall opposite Sarah's door, whimpering quietly. Behind her, was a trail of yet more blood from where she'd dragged herself along. It didn't extend far--she was simply in no condition to move much. The bites on her face and hands were worrying, but hardly the worst of her injures. Whatever ex had gotten to her hadn't bothered killing her before it started trying to eat. Blood bubbled from the hole in her side and her trembling hands couldn't staunch it.
Raven	"Ohhh, Mrs. Li." That probably wasn't super intelligible through a turtle mouth. Raven crept forward a few inches further to see who she was trying to get away from. She could take care of the ex, then try to get her to Regenerator. Or put her out of her misery.
This is fine.	It would have been nice if those weird, wet sucking sounds Raven had heard earlier had been coming from Mrs. Li. But as Raven rounded the corner into the living room, she saw exactly where they were coming from. Mr. Li was hunkered over on the floor, making the gulping, slurping noises she'd been hearing. Red was splashed liberally everywhere, coating his hands, the ground, the heavy table at his side. His back was turned to Raven, blocking much of her view, but extending beyond his bulk was a pair of slim legs, clad in pink tennis shoes.
Raven	Even given everything she'd already seen in LA and in the years she'd been in Fandom -- and the years she spent on the street before moving in with Charles as a child -- seeing her best friend's father blood soaked and monstrous made Raven freeze a moment. Knowing who those shoes likely belonged to didn't help at all. Then the shock gave way into a raging fury. She'd just watched her best friend die for no reason. She was cut off from everyone else she loved by Portalocity's quarantine and three thousand miles of dystopian, zombie-filled nightmare landscape. All she and Kathy had been trying to do was help and it seemed like the multiverse just wanted to punish them both for it. As Raven's rage grew, so did her body. The tortoise shell gave way to thick, bony blue plates tipped in spikes, the tortoise feet grew long fingers tipped in claws. In the span of a few seconds she went from about six inches long tip to tail to twice as many feet, long and sinewy and bristling with sharp and heavy edges. She only had one head -- five pairs of eyes would just be distracting, right now -- but her dragon form had never been more vicious. Cecil would have been proud. Raven towered over what was Mr. Li and roared her frustration loud enough to shake even that heavy, sharp edged table.
This is all fine.	The thing that had once been Kathy's father turned around and snapped at Raven, staring at her form with dull gray eyes. Blood and worse fell from its mouth at it clacked its teeth at her. From her new vantage point, Raven caught sight of the one saving grace of the whole situation. It was Sarah lying prone beneath the shadow of the ex, eyes wide with shock, staring lifelessly at the ceiling. But blood was leaking from the side of her head as well as the hole in her abdomen where the ex had been feasting a moment ago. The table again. That damned heavy table with its bloody corner. Sarah had been running from the monster her father had become and tripped, cracking her skull on the table. By the time the ex had lumbered over to her, she was already gone. And wouldn't be getting up again.
Raven	And after the swipe Raven sent at Mr. Li, with a claw-tipped fist the size of his head, neither would he. It wasn't quite sharp or heavy enough to just take his whole head off, but that wouldn't have been as satisfying as crunching it like a walnut against the table anyway. Several times. When his body stopped even looking like it might potentially twitch, when he was reduced to as much an inanimate thing as his youngest now was, Raven howled into the ceiling again, her rage gone as impotent and directionless as it'd been on her way over. She shrank back down to her natural size and shape, blood and brain still dripping from her fingers, and dropped to her knees next to Sarah. "Kathy's dead, too," she said. "I'm so sorry. If there's -- if you see her, tell I said it. She knows, but tell her anyway." A noise from Mrs. Li caught Raven's attention, and she stood, slowly making her way over to where the woman still lay, slowly creeping along at the end of the blood trail
Mrs. Li	Mrs. Li was looking in frightened awe at Raven, more terrified now than she'd been by the sight of her husband devouring the remains of their daughter. "What...are...you?" she gasped out in a voice tight with pain. "...Monster." She tried to drag herself away faster, to get somewhere she could lock the door in the face of the horrors she'd seen today.
Raven	No one had reacted to Raven that way in years. Oddly enough, it didn't hurt anymore. Maybe she finally had found enough support and acceptance that the word didn't penetrate the way it used to. Or maybe she was just so fucked up by everything that had happened since last night that she didn't have enough left in her to care. She put her foot on Mrs. Li's back at the base of her neck, not even having to press down hard to hold her in place, and bent double at the waist, unconsciously shifting her bones and organs around enough to make putting her head next to Mrs. Li's effortless. "You never deserved either of them." She straightened again and pressed down harder with her foot until she could feel the individual ridges of Mrs. Li's spine in her arch. She twisted it hard to snap the woman's neck. If this were a movie, it would have worked, too. Instead Mrs. Li made a strangled mewling noise and flailed at the carpet.
Mystique	Raven's frustration came boiling back up, and she considered stomping on the woman a few more times before she remembered that, despite everything, Kathy had loved her. She stepped off and took Mrs. Li's head in her hands instead. "It's over now." It took a few blows with the floor before Raven was sure Mrs. Li wasn't going to get back up. But at least the woman was unconscious after the first one. That done, Raven stood again, wiping her hands against her hips in an extremely futile gesture, and looked around the small apartment. There were deep gouges in the walls where her dragon shape had pressed against them, and blood streaked almost every surface. She couldn't leave Kathy's family here to rot. Sarah, at least, deserved more than that. It took a little searching, but Raven finally found the Lis' liquor cabinet. She pulled out a few bottles, and after sniffing them, determined they were high enough proof. She poured them out one after the other over Sarah, wishing she knew an appropriate prayer to say, then found a box of matches in the kitchen to light it all with. She found another bottle, dusty and fancy and clearly prized, and took a swig from it before she dropped the match into the spilled liquor. It burned an eerie, lovely blue before it caught the curtains and started to spread. Raven was out the window, bottle of 100 year wine still in her fist, and halfway down the block before the fire hit the gas line and the apartment blew. It occurred to her -- very belatedly -- to wonder if the Lis had been the last hold-outs in the building. She wondered what it said about her that she couldn't bring herself to care if they weren't.