Cold-Blooded: A DC Universe Fanfiction (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 33: Gar: Nerima

Okay: Trigger Warnings. Examples of street harassment, inappropriate comments, descriptions of spousal abuse, murder, child death, animal death. This one goes dark places.

"Just a second," Rose said, backing up. "I want to look at some of these stickers, or whatever they are."

Gar jumped down to have another look at the wall. Besides the official sign, there were also dozens of handwritten papers pasted all over it. Although he couldn't read them, they looked to be by more than one hand, because the styles differed widely.

"What do they say?" the youth asked her.

"I can't really tell," she confessed. "If they were machine-printed, I could make out some of them, but," she shrugged. "Maybe they're like, prayers and remembrances for those lost, like memorials at home."

Taking a few steps back, she approached the wall at a run, leapt up and over without touching it, like an Olympic hurdler on the moon, thanks to her serum-enhanced muscles and sinews.

"Hey, no fair," the green furred cat complained, and leapt up after her.

"Huh," Rose said, loosening the hood on her jacket. "It's warmer in here. The wall must act as a windbreak."

"I guess," the lad looked around. Whatever the earthquake had done to this part of the city, it wasn't obvious, not in this bit of it, anyway.

His cat's eyes had no trouble seeing in the dark, but Rose pulled out her cell phone and used the LED on it as a flashlight. "Just looks like a suburb to me," she murmured, "Okay, maybe one that's been abandoned a few years…but why hasn't it been repaired and lived in?"

"Ummm…" a memory stirred in Gar's brain. "Weren't there problems with nuclear plants after that one tsunami a few years ago? If there was a radiation leak, or something—?"

"No, all of that happened a lot further north," Rose shook her head. "And then there would have been the three triangle sign on the wall as a warning. Come on, the house with the lights on was this way."

They set off in the direction of the only habitation that looked as though it might be in use.

"Huh, that's funny," he commented, as he proceeded on four feather-light cat paws.

"What is?" Rose asked.

"The temperature. It's like, twenty degrees warmer over here than it is here," He ran back and forth, zig-zagging and pausing to demonstrate where.

"You're right," Rose said. "That's got to be something other than just the wall blocking the wind."

"Ghostly activity?" he asked. "You're the one who's been ghost hunting."

"I haven't noticed any changes in temperature around the ghosts we've seen. Besides, aren't ghost spots supposed to be colder, not warmer?"

"You'd know more than I would. So—how spooky has it been, running into ghosts?"

"Pretty spooky," Rose admitted, unzipping her jacket a few inches. "The Kuchisake-Onna was really creepy at first—so were some of the others—but once you learn their stories, they're more sad than anything else. Just people who died in a way that they couldn't let go of their anger or desires. None of them were dangerous. That's just as well, because I wouldn't want Yukie to have to write all over me. I like her, but not that much."

"What? What does writing all over you do?" Gar asked, because he'd seen Slade's lady friend doing just that to the assassin a few hours before.

"Makes you invisible to ghosts. It has to be holy texts, though—and you have to get every square inch, even what's hidden under clothes."