Next In Line

Chapter 11: What Killed the Kat?

Letting loose a battle cry, Mike Jr. dashed into the fray with a drawn-back fist. Just as he intended, his mother adjusted her stance, raising her staff to block him, but he didn't expect what happened next. Abruptly dropping to the ground, he landed on his back and continued to slide forward with one leg jutting out to the side, but didn't expect Katherine to effortlessly hop over it. She looked down at him with a mocking sneer but still managed to block a dive-kick from Josephine that would've otherwise nailed her in the face. Forced back, her daughter broke her fall with a backflip, sliding backward on her feet as she briefly struggled to maintain her balance. Gritting her teeth, Josephine let out a shout of her own as she rushed back in, at a higher speed than her twin. She swerved around several blows that her mother threw out, attempting to counter with a palm strike that was stopped when Katherine grabbed her wrist, subjecting her to an overhead swing into a bodyslam on the ground. Josephine freed herself by kicking her mother in the shin, somersaulting backward so she could stand back up.

As the two stared each other down, Mike Jr. took the opportunity to slam his fists onto either side of Katherine's head, quickly met with an elbow to the chest in response. Josephine tried to get in some hits while her mother was momentarily distracted, but each one ended up flawlessly parried. Both twins attempted to gang up on their mother, but she kept her cool and fended them both off. Mike Jr. did manage to catch her off guard by coiling his arms around her neck, holding her in place as Josephine dealt some helicopter and butterfly kicks into her face and chest. She was about to follow up with another palm strike but was kneed away. Josephine only stumbled after taking the hit, ducking as Katherine hurled her brother right over her head.

After glancing back to see him slowly rise to a stand, she grit her teeth and charged in again, attempting to focus more on using her agility. Katherine attempted to bat her daughter away with her staff, but she dodged it, along with the next several hits thrown out, via a series of flips, slides, and cartwheels. Darting behind her mother, Josephine leaped towards the wall and kicked off of it, diving onto Katherine's frame and crawling all over her at high speed in a snake-like fashion. But not even her signature technique was able to bring her down, for all Katherine had to do was activate her staff, its tip glowing a lemon creme color as she covered her whole body in electricity for a split second, electrocuting her daughter and causing her to fall off.

Letting out a sinister chortle, Katherine roughly kicked her over towards her son; neither of them were hurt by the beating they took, but the chances of them overpowering her seemed slim to none.

"Hmph... I expected a bigger challenge, given how much your father and I trained you," she gloated. "And speaking of your father, I now hold the key to bringing him back... and making our family whole again!"

"So you want to kill him instead of just letting his life run its course?" Josephine asked, holding herself up on one knee. "If you really loved him, you'd let him go."

"Yeah, isn't Dad, like, your one soft spot? Every bad guy's got one," Mike Jr. added.

"Th-That's nonsense! Your father isn't my soft spot... he's what motivates me to be evil! And I-I just... I need him back with me so we can continue our mission," Katherine replied in a shrinking voice.

The twins looked at each other in skeptical silence for a bit.

"Bull fucking shit!" Mike Jr. blurted out, gathering to his feet as he narrowed his turquoise eyes. "He's not your motivation. He's your damn ball and chain! All our lives, you caved to his every demand and followed him around like a lost puppy! And even after we died, you didn't even stop to miss him!"

"You just carried on and insisted on continuing what he started, while losing sight of what exactly that was," Josephine said, using her brother's sturdy arm for support as she stood up as well. "Face it, Mom. At this point, you're nothing more than a defanged lapdog who's afraid to admit it, and has turned into a comic book villain as a coping mechanism."