ic The Narrow Road to the Deep North (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

Spring 2022 

AnimeCon 

Riverside Hilton 

In the relative privacy of the women's bathroom, Neko took a moment to inspect herself and her companions. She was dressed in one of her prize possessions, a brightly-colored red and white kimono that Talya had acquired for her, something that wasn't a Westerner's stage prop or fashion choice but something old enough that it had actually been a working garment. Her hair was behind her back in a neat plait, her ears curled above her head, her tail poking out the kimono's back thanks to some artful modifications to the fabric. (Nobody in the bathroom was looking at her; nobody could see her at all.) On her left shoulder was Merlin, her erstwhile 'manager' having come along for her live debut once it was clear, and on her right was a bright red mechanical insect whose color scheme was a near mirror of her kimono. 

 

"Come on, Red," she whispered, and sure enough the small insect-bot buzzed and hummed and began flying around her head. She smiled at the pretty bug and whispered, "You are so pretty! Everyone will be watching you if I am not careful!" With that, she checked Merlin's phone, nodded in satisfaction as it showed the success of the livestream, then checked with her manager one more time before she turned and exited the women's room. As she exited, she let herself be seen for the first time as she was (Merlin staying discreetly hidden), heading out into the crowd. 

 

"Hiiii!" she declared to her hovering bug-drone, smiling as she twirled a red umbrella over her head that was a costume prop. "Welcome to Catgirl Reacts to...AnimeCon! Make sure to like and subscribe!" She was by no means the only person in a costume, but so far she was the only person whose unusual appearance was natural. The room was crowded with people, more than could have fit into her whole village, all of them with unusual sounds and smells. She wasn't even the only person doing a livestream in the crowd, but she seemed to be attracting attention. Good, good! 

 

"Today I am going to see other catgirls, watch anime, and play video games! Come on!" With a smile for the hovering camera-bot and a girlish wink, she headed into the crowd, her sensitive ears catching the mostly-admiring comments about her appearance. People know Catgirl Reacts! This is actually...working!  

[Gizmo]

Red buzzed a short tut-tut of dismissal at the compliment but flew in a pleased little loop nonetheless. She lifted the three segmented legs on her right side then lowered them one at a time in a countdown before going live with the camera installed behind the black dot at the front centre of her elytra. As Neko spoke she banked gracefully through the air over the heads of the crowd, angling for the most flattering angle and most interesting backgrounds. The Robug had been raring to get to work since Ryder had introduced her to Neko and Red was approaching the convention livestream with all the enthusiasm of a new sheepdog.

 

One of those background shots captured a young man with thick, brick red dreadlocks and wearing a silk suit in an impossibly loud floral pattern and a thick gold necklace under the jacket in place of a shirt. He stood with his back to Neko and her camera, next to a much taller woman with the sleeves of a golden-yellow dress shirt rolled up to prodigious biceps and the buttons only done up to just below her ribcage. The shorter of the two was shaking his head in irritation as he indicated a life-sized cardboard standee of what was clearly himself, topless and wearing an ornate, folded skirt, winking and giving the passing crowds a pair of enthusiastic thumbs up.

 

"Behold and despair, oh Mistress of Slaughter! Such feeble idolatry that should fail to capture the divine truth of my chiselled musculature! My jawline most cutting! Lips so exemplifying the platonic ideal of fullness as to inspire nothing platonic whatsoever!"

 

"Tis inks upon thickened parchment," his companion pointed out, sounding incredibly bored by the conversation and distractedly sniffing the air as Neko passed.

 

"Sculpture may be printed thrice across dimensions by machines, Sekhmet! Or better still, the venue might have commissioned one of those statues made of multitudinous children's blocks!"

[Avenger Assembled]

It was the smell that told Neko first; the smell of a fierce feline, a great beast of a bloody-mawed cat close by. Then she spotted the two strange ones. A quick Internet check by Merlin told Neko who Set and Sekhmet were - but also told her very little. She wrinkled her nose, considered her options, then snapped back into action. She had originally intended to speak to Set as she approached, but gradually her attention was increasingly drawn to Sekhmet as she stalked closer and closer to the pair. 

 

By the time she reached Set and Sekhmet, her tail was lashing behind her and her ears pointed forward, her yellow eyes unblinking as she stared at Sekhmet. This was not one of her people; but on the other hand, it was, in a way she could hardly explain. She settled for greeting them as she would have one of her own people around strangers: 

 

In a low, accented voice she said, all without breaking eyecontact: 

 

"Disconnected, the cat
outside, how she cries
Banked fire 

went out, t'was cold
in retirement" 

 

Her voice rose in a question at the last word before she added with a deep, old-fashioned bow that matched the kimono and red umbrella. "Good day, great one. I am Neko." 

 

[Gizmo]

Sekhmet stood almost impossibly still as Neko made eye contact, matching the girl's preternatural unblinking stare with luminous golden eyes. She listened to the entire poem and greeting before meeting the bow with a deep inclination of her head. "Well met, oh courteous mortal." As she straightened her head seamlessly became that of a tawny furred lioness with a distinct black streak. While a few other convention attendees were startled by the sudden change Neko could smell in the aroma of blood dried in desert heat that neither this nor the human appearance had been illusions. "Know me as Sekhmet of Heliopolis, She Before Whom Evil Trembles and Lady of Slaughter."

 

Sekhmet's shorter companion tilted his head and cocked an eyebrow in theatrical inquisitiveness throughout the exchange. He clicked his tongue and placed his hands on his hips. "And yet you receive deference and respect unbidden!"

 

"I be respectable," Sekhmet countered flatly.

 

He nodded amiably. "True! Whereas I be Set," the gosling introduced himself with a cheerful wink. He produced a smartphone with a flourish and proceeded to operate it one-handed while his attention remained primarily on Neko. "You I know from somewhere, aye?"

[Avenger Assembled]

The mighty woman had not challenged her; had even accepted her into her territory. Good! This wasn't home, where a fight over territory between two strangers was nothing unusual - they might have gotten kicked out the con! Neko blinked and tilted her head to one side, one large ear swiveling and producing a pleased exclamation from another passerby, the two of them seeming to pass for an excellent costumed duo. Sekhmet could smell whatever it was she was listening to, some sort of ape, but curiously her interlocuter was invisible to Set. "Ah yes," she said, smiling a girlish smile at Set that seemed taken straight from the faces of the cartoon catgirls around them. "I am Neko Musume, of...the Catgirl Reacts channel. And this is my camera, Red!" she added as a red insect that on closer inspection revealed itself to be a technological marvel swooped by her head. "This is my first anime convention. My fans said I should go." Her accent was heavy still, though more fluent than it had been when she'd first arrived in this century. Conscious of the growing crowd, she nodded her head at Red, who circled around, glowing slightly. 

 

"Do you mind if I film you?" she asked courteously, addressing Sekhmet as much as Set. "It will be good for my hits." So these were gods! she mused thoughtfully as she took in Set and Sekhmet both, thinking about Merlin's hastily murmured description to her. She had met gods in her service to the Katana, but not gods like this - and she had been raised on the tale of Yurei-Daki and what it meant when mortals trampled in their affairs. But what can they do to me that hasn't happened already? She was already far from home, in a world that was never hers. 

[Gizmo]

Set snapped his fingers in recognition. "Ah ha! An ascendent sun of content creation indeed!" While only moments had passed since Neko had made her more comprehensive introduction her accounts pinged in rapid succession with notifications that Set had subscribed to and followed her channel, tagged her in a social media post telling his followers to be on the lookout for an upcoming collaboration - along with a string of shocked cat emoji - and organized a raffle giveaway on one of this own channels for gifted subscriptions to her videos.

 

That legwork done the phone vanished from his hand again with a small flourish and he gave the girl a genuine, beaming grin. "I would be truly heartbroken should you not, oh robed reviewer! I can send a boilerplate press strategy to your manager, correct links, pronoun etiquette, most efficacious SEO terms, so forth!" Sekhmet sniffed the air again and narrowed her eyes in the direction of Neko's seemingly unoccupied shoulder but said nothing. "And I adore you," the godling added in Red's direction. "I am indeed patron of redheads, obviously and I do believe you count. Have you a scarab sibling, mayhaps? Absolutely too cute!"

 

Returning his attention to Neko, Set rolled his neck as if working out a tight muscle and a pair of feline looking ears sprouted from the top of his head, covered in brick red fur, shorter than her own. "Speaking of cute, what do we think? Shall I add the tail? Might it read a mite appropriative? Tis your gimmick, Neko-chan, tis your call, naturally."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Oh!" Neko stared at Set's transformation with big yellow eyes, hands folded before her and tail twitching. Then she cocked her head, listening to her invisible interlocutor again, then shook her head. "You are most polite," she said diplomatically. "But it is not stealing." She shot a look around the room, eyes flicking to catgirls and boys, wearing the clothes and the ears, in the flesh and on the walls. Though nobody seemed to exactly have her look, nobody else for the moment seemed to have any sort of power. It was her and the gods; and a very large room full of people. "You are just - wearing it. Everyone wears it." 

 

When Red's cameras came back on, Neko lit up like a paper lantern - not in so many words, but with a bubbly, cheery demeanor that was not false necessarily but was not much like the girl who'd been talking seriously to Set at all. "Hiii! And Konichiwa. Welcome back to Catgirl Reacts, where I have just met two amazing individuals!" She turned to Sekhmet first and declared, "Look at this! Sekhmet, the amazing lion kami!" She punched the air for emphasis at that. "Just like a Japanese Komainu!" She turned to Set and said, "And here is Set, the amazing kami of the desert! But he is not sandy at all, he is very kind." She beamed and said, "Oh and I understand we have many new subscribers coming in now! Domo arigato!" 

 

She turned to Set and Sekhmet and said, "You both have many fans on the Internet. How did you get them?" 

[Gizmo]

"Mayhap risking accusations of arrogance... have you seen us?" Set purred with a cheeky wink, expertly sliding into frame beside Neko, feline ears twitching theatrically. For her part Sekhmet stiffened slightly, shifting from one foot to another as she tried the gauge where to stand given the implied but unseen audience. "Nay, I jest. Fortunate are we to have grown a community most active who know the value of welcoming the unexpected and unknown with kindness!"

 

The godling continued discussing the cultivation of that online following in rosy terms, interjecting a few jokes for pacing, a public speaker with practice on a time scale impossible to mortals. That bounty of time did not prevent Sekhmet from growing visibly impatient as he went on, lips curling up around her rows of sharp teeth. "Titles of grandiose rhetoric to prey upon the 'clicks'," she interrupted flatly.

 

"The phrase be 'clickbait' oh gorgeous grump," Set replied cheerfully. He placed a finger to one side of his face as though letting Neko and her audience in on a secret in confidence. "Never claim Set knows not hot to play the game!"

[Avenger Assembled]

Neko listened carefully, her eyes narrow and head tilted slightly, ears pointed forward and hands folded in front of her. It was actually easier to understand Set the more she heard the Egyptian kami talk; even though the subjects were very different, his command of the English language wasn't so different than Owain's. She listened to Sekhmet too, albeit with a faint lowering of her head and attitude of more proper respect. It was certainly true that her videos for the Internet were not exactly respectable work - not the sort of thing her parents would have wanted her to do, had the world kept turning the way it should have. But there were no fields to till here or men like her to marry, and nobody was terribly interested in her hand at soba or spinning. 

 

"It is like - performing in a show," she offered. "You must be very...big if you want big money. Oh, you - " She tilted her head, then nodded. "All right. I have a friend who wants to see you. Please, do not be surprised." 

 

At that moment, something distinctly happened on Neko's right shoulder and a monkey appeared as he had always been there. He wore a service animal's harness and a leash that disappeared somewhere into Neko's kimono but he didn't look like a service animal, especially with the way he was tapping away at an Archetech-brand smartphone that Set recognized as one of the high-end models social media types used. This impression was only heightened when the monkey introduced himself as Merlin, Neko's manager (though this got him a friendly buzz from Red) and thanked Set for the recent social media support. 

[Gizmo]

“Ah!” Set pointed at Merlin in surprise not when the the simian social media manager appeared but when he ‘spoke’. “I understood your meaning!”

 

“Thy make thy command of language known often,” Sekhmet grunted flatly at the shorter godling, taking a reflexive sniff in the capuchin monkey’s direction. She settled her weight on her heels with the contentment of a predator deciding to tolerate a prey animal’s continued presence for the time being.

 

Set nodded and waved a hand in a hurried circle. “Aye, aye. God of foreigners and outsiders, naturally.” He gave Neko a meaningful look but breezed past to the topic that currently had his interest. “But tis not my own prodigious gifts at play! Our concealed capuchin content creator cleverly communicated concept with counter-causal chitchat!” He paused to consider his own alliteration. “Stretching, admittedly. The meticulous Merlin sidestepped language altogether with a terribly tidy bit of spell work. Colour me curious.”

[Avenger Assembled]

Merlin explained to Set that his linguistic abilities came through his alliance (evidently a euphemism) with a certain powerful witch (not Neko herself) who might be available if the Lord of the Desert ever needed the professional services of a magus? He took a moment to exchange contact information for his ally with the godling in case Set or Sekhmet might ever need such an arrangement. 

 

"Merlin is very...savvy with computers," said Neko, making a little circling gesture with her hands as she found the English word. "He helped me start this work. But I should go now so I can film the panel on Asobi ni Iku yo!, it was nice meeting you!" She stepped away from the godlings and got back to filming with the help of her robot friends, cheerfully chattering at them as she narrated what she saw, Merlin shooting Set a distinct 'call me' gesture before he vanished behind the cloud of illusion that seemed to follow Neko everywhere she went. 

 

There certainly was much to see and do at the con, and though Neko and the Egyptians were both stars in their own right, it was easy to get lost among so many cosplayers and content creators. The music was playing and the crowd was big; the organizers had sold quite a few tickets. The putative guest of honor was an elder statesman of anime; Hayashi, who had been active in the industry since the first film he'd helped animate had made it to the screen in 1958! Now an old man, Hayashi was in town for a special screening of his classic movie about the sexy space pirate, recently re-released and remastered for a new audience. 

 

 

[Gizmo]

Set arrived at the panel to which he'd been invited early enough to spend a bit of time taking photos and signing autographs for the attendees waiting in line then head backstage in the small theatre participate in the tech check. He may have been a deity of chaos and the unexpected but he was also a Ra-damned professional. Today that meant sitting in on a live table read for an episode of a comedy web series that reedited and dubbed over a popular anime from the early aughts. The show had a very liberally interpreted ancient Egyptian theme but was mostly about children competing in card game tournaments under increasingly dramatic and unlikely conditions; Set was primarily interested because it was a veritable goldmine of catchphrases and reaction images.

 

For her part Sekhmet had made her disinterest in watching Set perform explicitly clear and said she would find a more palatable way to pass the time, such as staring unblinkingly at a blank wall. The lioness had not volunteered that one of the numerous television shows which she had consumed in its entirety thanks to a bounty of streaming service subscriptions was premiering the first episode of its upcoming season at the conventions and she determined to be in the audience. Certainly being a head or two taller than most of those in the crowds between rooms helped as she strode imperiously toward her goal, other attendees understandably hastening to get out of her way.

[Avenger Assembled]

Neko Musume was out of place and out of time; in a gigantic building, surrounded by a crowd larger than the entire population of her village, all of them dressed bizarrely, almost all of them speaking a foreign language, with only a few occasional hints of home on the screens and the walls, all of them twisted into unfamiliarity. 

 

But Catgirl was in her element! Smiling and wide-eyed, even when the former made her cheeks hurt a little, she moved from strange place to strange place with the dexterity of a cat leaping through a forest, studying strange art, eating strange food, and talking live into her hovering robot buddy. When she had her livestream to Twitch established, she was quite the subject of interest from the crowd, both those who knew her show and those who were interested in her ears, tail, and robot. The former she could direct to the online store where they could buy special films she made for them, the second - well, she knew how to deal with that. 

 

In Merlin's opinion this was a good, well-run con; a safe place as much as such things could be, and she had to agree. 

 

Neko was just looking at some of the ornamental weapons, debating whether or not to buy one for Owain, when there was an interruption. First came a loud, piercing whine across the public address system in the convention center, so loud that Neko gave a pained "Nya!", stepping back and folding her ears flat. Then the big television screen on the far side of the room playing some kind of alien Momotarō shifted to the face of a smirking white woman wearing a feline costume, a leopard-print outfit that clung scandalously to her lithe body as she looked at the screen and said, "Hey nerds! You just got robbed by Faster Pussycat! And you don't even know what I stole, ha-ha! Sorry to interrupt your yiffing!"  

 

There was a great to-do in the crowd, lots of loud voices raised in argument and fear. When the screen went dark and the voice stopped, Neko decided that a pair of small gods was an excellent way to solve this mystery. She overheard fragments of argument "probably just for publicity" "you can't freak out every time you see a costumed freak in this city" "what a jerk but I love her costume" 

 

Automatically narrating as she started that search, she turned to Red and said, "A curious mystery! If you know what Faster Pussycat stole, comment in chat!" Now where were Set and Sekhmet anyway... 

[Gizmo]

"Of course one should announce a successful heist, tis a 'calling card', a staple of the form!" It didn't take long for Neko's sensitive hearing to pick up a familiar raised voice in the hubbub of the crowds. "But if the audience knows not what was stolen, what reason have they to care? Tis about panache not... cheap mystery box engagement!" The streaming teenager caught sight of Sekhmet first, the tall woman scanning the crowd over most of their heads while flatly ignoring the incensed ranting of the animated figure beside her. "And another thing! Who dons a salacious cat burglar motif and randomly tosses in a sex-shaming throwaway line as sendoff? Where be the internal consistency?! Anna would never." Set somehow extended the last word over several extra syllables while Sekhmet spotted Neko and made meaningful eye contact, dragging the offended godling along in her direction.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Ah, Set and Sekhmet!" said Neko, looking considerably more animated than when they had last seen her. The mystery was giving her something to talk about besides all the strange things around her, something real, and her excitement showed on her face. Red was still buzzing around her with the light that meant she was still broadcasting, but Neko was only just remembering to stay 'on' for her show. "We have a great...enigma." She paused and seemed to stare away from all of them, ears pointed at something invisible, eyes gazing off into the middle distance.

 

And when it was done, she smiled like a cat sensing the presence of a tasty fish, and pointed straight up at the ceiling. "The woman, she is here. In one of the rooms." She hesitated, then admitted, "I could not see the number." The crowd of people around them was impressive, but for the moment they were just another couple of cosplayers in the convention center. Convention staff had taken the lead in going around and reassuring everyone that things were okay and that nobody had been hurt by the "cyber-vandal", but who could say how long that would last? Her tail twitched behind her as she looked around, pert nose sniffing the air. "Do you know Faster Pussycat?" 

 

 

[Gizmo]

"A hack!" Set answered immediately, pointing an accusatory finger into the air for emphasis. "Self-aggrandizing, artistically void, appropriative little--"

 

"She seems as though familiar but I have no firsthand knowledge of the apparent thief," Sekhmet spoke over the tirade, putting one hand tipped by sharp, manicured nails to the side of the godling's head and pushing him to the side so she could better address Neko. "Though I remain unclear what offence 'Faster Pussycat' has made her ill manner bears address." Looking down at the girl her golden eyes glowed with an ember of internal flame while her lips parted in a thin, predatory smile. "Tell me what thee have seen, little sister and I will show thee how lionesses hunt."

[Avenger Assembled]

Neko returned the godling's smile with a look that was no less playfully predatory for all that her incisors were just barely larger than the human norm. She wasn't a great lioness of the veldt but she was no toothless kitten either. Of course, she thought, even kittens can have sharp teeth. "I looked up there," she said, pointing to the ceiling, "and she was in a room, talking into a camera." She patted her hovering little camera-bug and added, "It was very - big? Not one of the little - boxes." She demonstrated, holding her hands out in front of her in a square shape. "I can find her again," she added doubtfully, "but she could see this time." 

 

A quick check of the hotel's floor plan revealed it had several suites on its uppermost floor, a quick elevator (or otherwise) trip away for the godlings and the feline, who from her twitching tail was enjoying this chase very much. She kept up a running commentary for her camera as they went, yellow eyes shining with nascent excitement. 

[Gizmo]

"Aye, and an additional cat themed rejoinder," Set added largely to himself, just to feel included. "On the perils of curiosity or the finer points of recovering from a fall, mayhaps." The chaos deity followed a step behind Sekhmet as the taller goddess in turn followed Neko, fingers laced behind his brick red dreadlocks.

 

Once the elevator reached the top floor Sekhmet dropped forward onto all fours, her form rippling on the way so that it was a lioness' claws that tapped softly against the hotel's flooring. Burning golden eyes narrowed as she stalked silently from door to door along the hallway, sniffing the air for anything out of place that might give away their quarry's location.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Nyah," Neko told Red, murmuring for her viewers just loudly enough for them to hear. "<Watch from above, so you don't get smashed.>" Once Red was up at ceiling level, she  watched the goddess go and smiled, sliding neatly out of her shoes and padding along behind her on two legs, tail twitching behind her with the excitement of a cat on the hunt.

 

The search wasn't an easy one; a great many humans had passed through this hallway recently and none of them actually had a good idea of what Faster Pussycat smelled like. But eventually Sekhmet was able to find a door that smelled right, one that smelled faintly of feline and faintly of something that did indeed sound distinctly familiar. 

 

Considering what to do, Neko looked at the door and snapped her fingers. Suddenly, a torrent of crawling things were scuttling down the corridor, waves of yellow and grey spiders, and Neko laughed as they disappeared under the door. "Kekeke!" 

 

Sure enough, there was a feminine shriek - and then a loud hiss before the door came flying open, revealing a figure inside that reminded Neko very much of how Set and Sekhmet looked. Her thick braided hair was tied off with shiny gold, her gold and silver costume marked by hieroglyphics that began "Year 9, Xandikos, day 4 which corresponds to the second month of the Egyptians, Winter, day 18 (under) Pharaoh..." and her eyes marked with kohl. On top of her head curled two light grey ears. She looked at Set, at Sekhmet, and at Neko, seeming to calm down when she realized who she saw. 

"Well well well! Look what the cat dragged in!" 

[Gizmo]

Set clapped his hands in genuine, childlike delight when Neko unleashed her skin-crawling illusion. "Oh, classic! Love the pop of colour, too many default to black-on-black but one needs variation or the definition of the legs gets lost in the writhing mass." In her lioness form Sekhmet shifted from foot to foot and narrowed her eyes at arachnids disappearing under the door, less enthused.

 

She stood back up to humanoid form when Faster Pussycat opened the door so that she could properly glare down her nose at the self-aggrandizing thief. "Thee desired adversarial attention, reprobate," the goddess growled, flexing the fingers of her hands one at a time where they hung at her sides. "What then do thee intend now tis gained?"

 

In the tense atmosphere Set looked between the imposing Sekhmet, enthusiastic Neko and smug Pussycat before giving a harrumph and snapping his fingers, much as their young streamer had done. The godling's form shifted in a heartbeat to a feminine presentation, white linen bordered in blood orange wrapping itself around her chest and sandals lifting slightly with a kitten heel. Lacquered nails lengthened to sharper points to imply claws and a pair of feline ears sprouted atop her head, brick red at the base to match her dreadlocks and fading to black at the tips. After a moment of consideration she added a black ribbon collar with a scarab-shaped bell hanging against her clavicle. "Can-nya-t stand to be left out," she explained sotto voce to Neko, bouncing on her heels enough to produce a little jingle.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Why, this," sneered the speedster, cracking her knuckles before leaping at Sekhmet in a rapid series of blows the leonine goddess only just managed to dodge, a distinct sound of a growling cat moving with her like ambient music as she went for Sekhmet. She might be dressed like a joke but she didn't hit like one; the claw marks she left on the walls as she swiped at Sekhmet dug two knuckles deep.

 

"Is this really the only people who were here?" she spat, claws extended as she held her hands on either side of her face. "Two failed gods and a fetish streamer?" She turned and ran, zipping past the three of them faster than the eye could follow. "Pathetic! I knew I should have taken off once I had it!" she sneered, clinging to the door on the far side of the hallway. 

 

 

[Gizmo]

"Um, excuse you," Set scoffed, casually taking a step to one side to get out of the way of Sekhmet's nimble dodge. "Tis but one failed god and one fetish streamer and both are me. Prolific and multitalented! Sekhmet hangs about mostly to romance dragons and Miss Neko tis a wholesome delight." The godling kept her hands curled in front of her like exaggerated paws while sauntering in a lazy circle so that Faster Pussycat couldn't keep both Sekhmet and herself in view simultaneously. She made no aggressive move but something about the singsong cadence of her voice made her irritatingly difficult to ignore. "Do you not consider yourself a fetish steamer? Imposter syndrome must be a terrible burden for you! Keep up your best efforts and surely you'll one day make it on Only Nyans! Ha, you see what I did there?"

 

The other Heliopolian was considerably more to the point. Sekhmet's right fist erupted in golden flame as she pulled back before driving her fiery knuckles directly into the cat burglar's jaw with enough force to rattle bone. She made a move to grapple and pin Faster Pussycat with her other hand but stopped short and slid back a step instead as she noted that the abrasive thief wasn't as shaken by the blow as expected. Whatever power suffused her made her more resilient than her feckless attitude suggested. The warrior goddess sized up her opponent more carefully. "...why scribe a calendar on they garb?"

 

"Right?! Your theming tis a dreadful mess. I appreciate Tura Satana as much as the next genderfluid sexpot but you wouldn't call the reference topical now would you!"

[Avenger Assembled]

For her part, Neko didn't quite understand the rapid-fire banter that was passing between the three Americans - but she knew enough to know that all of them were being crudely insulted by this woman who bore the mark of feline power. Do Set and Sekhmet count as Americans? Egypt was obviously very far away from the United States but it didn't sound like they had just descended from their heavenly realm in Egypt and flown over here. She turned to Red and flashed an elaborate shrug, then pointed one sharp finger down the corridor. 

 

"That is right!" she called after Faster Pussycat, automatically backing up the two godlings even if she wasn't sure of everything they'd said. "You are done for!" She pointed at the door that Faster Pussycat had just reached and bricks flew up from nowhere to block her, clacking into place at super-speed. The catwoman hissed and turned to face them and Neko frowned, her white brows pushing together. Something isn't right here...