BVLJ #5: The Duke & The Vagrant

***It's gang warfare in the ghetto of Brick Canyon as Duke Cintrano's men try to push the Vagrant's nomads out. What they couldn't predict, though, is that a certain Cat with a size-altering device is on hand to help...***

The Vagrant was operating out of an abandoned theatre when Duke Cintrano’s men caught up to her. His muscle were big, well-dressed in their pastel suits and gold chains, and well-armed with expensive pistols. For the most part, the Vagrant relied more on street dwellers in crumbling clothes who were most effective when sneaking up unnoticed with a knife. People like her.

Three of Cintrano’s bruisers strode into the Vagrant’s office, which overlooked the auditorium from up high, led by Frank Dalton, a slick guy with a pencil moustache and a salmon pink suit. She greeted them dressed in her tired vaudeville get up; big clunking boots, a puffy striped skirt, a jacket with tails and a short top hat that barely contained her huge frizzy hair (dyed sky blue). It was all faded and stained.

Dalton came in smiling but right away pointed out the theatre was full of fire hazards. Shame to see it go up in flames. He suggested that the Vagrant might be better off moving six blocks across town. Well out of Brick Canyon, Cintrano’s territory. The Canyon was one of Orias City’s roughest neighbourhoods, and one of the least patrolled, making it prime stomping grounds for criminals. It was also about a mile square and not under any one gang’s control. The little pocket the Vagrant was currently overseeing comprised a few apartment blocks, storage facilities and a handful of small businesses, all of which paid her a modest tribute. Damned if she was handing that over to Cintrano.

She smiled and said she appreciated the offer. Dalton pressed the point, saying they’d be back in three days and she should be gone. At that point, she laughed at them, a loud, harsh sound. She kept laughing and only got louder, as if they’d told the greatest joke, until Dalton stomped off, angry and irritated. Then the Vagrant rounded up her lieutenants and warned them that trouble was coming.

The first night, her street rats cut two of Cintrano's men’s throats as they left a bar, and she herself firebombed a car outside Cintrano’s restaurant. The following day, two of her men were shot down in a drive-by, and two more homeless people – not part of her gang – were set on fire by the river. That evening, she sent out half a dozen street rats to pour gas through the vents of Cintrano’s main nightclub, but they were routed and all but one were gunned down in the street. They got two of his guys, that was all.

On the third morning, the Vagrant told her lieutenants to pack up. She didn’t want anyone else to die needlessly, not when Cintrano had so many more men and so much more resources. Her own people were nomads anyway; they’d go to ground, find a warehouse in the docks or something, and strike back later.

But while the Vagrant’s people were dissembling their theatre base below, she noticed a shift in the air and realised she suddenly wasn’t alone in the office. She slid a hand to the knife under her jacket as she turned, but found a familiar face watching her. Ali Cat, the master thief, stood in her usual black tights and slim top combo, goggles pushed up into her hair, bleached in a spiky pixie cut. Ali had a great athletic body and a beautiful soft-featured face, with a charming smile, and her clothes were always a bit tatty, like the Vagrant’s. But still, you never quite knew where you stood with the Cat.

“Heard we were jumping ship and came for scraps?” the Vagrant asked.

“Heard you had some trouble and thought I’d lend a helping hand,” Ali Cat replied, with a wink.

The Vagrant grinned, wary but never one to let danger get in the way of fun. She said, “What it’ll cost me?”

“Nothing much, I just want to see you succeed,” Ali said. “More power to the people, I say, and less fealty to the powers that be.”

“Meaning you’ve got a problem with Duke Cintrano yourself?”

“Not so much him. But if you carve out a piece of town where his sort aren’t welcome – Cintrano, the Salamanders, Queen Pin, for example – then that’s to everyone’s benefit, I like to think.”

“Ah, a big power gambit!” The Vagrant gave Ali an even toothier grin. The thief must’ve been in big trouble with one of them, and if she wanted to avoid it by pushing all the gangs back, it was probably Queen Pin, the woman they all looked up to. The Vagrant, of course, didn’t care who she tussled with. That was the whole point of living on the streets. She said, “I’m dying to hear how you want me to mess them up.”

“With the very thing I’m being hunted me for,” Ali said, and drew a gun from the back of her belt.

The Vagrant ogled it, a pistol like none she’d seen before, a mess of different parts with exposed wiring, like a failed science experiment. She asked, “And what’s that do?”

“I’ll show you,” Ali said. “We can win your war and provide ourselves with a bit of entertainment at the same time. When are Cintrano’s boys coming to storm this place?”

“Tonight,” the Vagrant confided.

“Then tonight it is.”

The Vagrant had little to lose: the street rats packed up and made a show of ditching the theatre, until it was just her left. She let it be known that she was still there, though, loitering in her office, leaving the lights, inviting a showdown. It might’ve been a trap on Ali’s behalf, perfectly possible she’d been hired to get the Vagrant off guard, but screw it, they could still have fun with it. The Vagrant readied the office with six hidden guns and her skull-cracking mallet. She was giving that a practice swing when Cintrano’s men loudly entered the theatre.

The Vagrant watched through her office window as four thugs rushed across the theatre floor, guns raised, shouting and checking every nook. Dalton strode between them, leading the operation with stern-faced determination. When they reached the stairs to her office, he shouted, “We’re coming up, Vagrant. Better not try nothing!”

“You’re welcome,” the Vagrant called back in a singsong voice. “You’re invited!”

She giggled girlishly, to unsettle the buttoned-up gangsters, and gave her mallet another test swing. The weapon stood almost as tall as her, with a big cylindrical head that could brain a rhino. Footsteps shuffled around the office door, men getting into position.

“Hands up, we’re coming in!” Dalton shouted, the other side of the door. He kicked the handle and the wood shattered. Two men burst in ahead of him, guns raised, and Dalton ducked in behind. The Vagrant sprang behind her desk, grinning and waving the mallet from one man to another, none quite sure how to respond to the absurd weapon. One threw Dalton a look to ask if it was okay to just shoot her.

“Evening boys,” a silky voice interrupted them, and all eyes went to the corner of the room, where Ali Cat had slunk out of the shadows. She had the strange pistol in her hand. “Or should I say toys.”

Ali pulled the trigger and a burst of light spread through the room. They shouted in surprise. The Vagrant darted back behind the desk as all three men were thrown back towards the wall, but they didn’t reach it – each man got smaller as he flew, contracting in mid-air, until they lost momentum and dropped to the floor. The Vagrant pounced onto the desk to follow their progress and stared with wonder at the perfectly preserved gangsters: not injured, still clothed, but now only four inches tall.

“Oh, I like it!” the Vagrant cried, swinging herself off the desk so her big boots landed close to a tiny thug. He pushed himself up, struggling to stand in the carpet’s weave, and hurriedly backed away from her. Beyond him, the second thug was looking about in disbelief, but Frank Dalton had an expression of rage, his gun raised as if he was still in command.

“What the fuck do you call this?” he shouted, which came out as a squeak. He backed off, aiming at the Vagrant’s head, the height of a tower above him.

“Boss, we heard –” Another thug came running into the room, but froze as he saw Ali Cat and the Vagrant. A final man bumped into him from behind. In their second of surprise, Ali fired her weapon again. They shrieked, knocked back by the light, and tumbled through the air rapidly losing size, before toppling into the corridor carpet together.

“Oh yes, yes!” The Vagrant bounced on her toes, grinning ever broader. “What now? Can I keep them?”

“Do you want to?” Ali asked, with a curled lip of disapproval. Her gaze ran to the two tiny men outside the office, now pushing each other in fear. Ali got a hungry look, enticed by their panic. “You deal with the guys in here. Those two are for me.”

She leapt out of the room, down onto all fours, just by the shrunken men. They shouted and ran. Ali watched for a second before swiping down. One was caught in the back and sent spiralling through the air. She pounced after him, as feline as her name suggested, and disappeared from view as the men screamed. The Vagrant watched with fascination before turning her attention back to Dalton and the other two men. The thugs started running, terrified, but Dalton stayed put, too furious to be afraid.

“Stop running you little shrimps,” the Vagrant said, stepping over Dalton to stomp hard in front of the other men. They stumbled and twisted to run the other way, but she thumped her other boot down to create a great bridge of her legs above them. The men staggered to a standstill just behind Dalton, gazing up at her, and the Vagrant trembled with pleasure at the thought of how magnificent she must look. A giant, unhinged ringmaster of a woman, too powerful to resist. She gave a belly laugh, arms out dramatically at her sides, and the men cringed beneath her.

“Change us back or I’ll put one in your fucking eye!” Dalton yelled.

The Vagrant stuck her tongue out at him, then wagged a finger and said, “Time to learn some respect, I think. Who first? Ibble bibble black cribble –” Her choosing song was interrupted by a long scream from the hallway. It cut off abruptly as Ali dispatched her victim. The sound scared a man in Dalton’s group into dashing to the Vagrant’s right, making her decision for her. “Alright, you it is!”

She nudged him with the toe of her boot, thick soles and hard cap making it taller than him. The man rolled with a huff. she lifted the boot and crouched a little, keeping him in view as she lowered her foot on him. “Bye-bye, little bug, bye-bye.”

The man hurried back on his elbows, but was too afraid to stand or even crawl as she brought the boot down. She felt his tiny body pop under her weight. The Vagrant boomed another laugh, grinding her toe into the carpet to pulverise the shrunken thug. Dalton yelled curses and opened fire, tiny pistol making miniature pops and flashes. The Vagrant raised a hand, though she needn’t have – the bullets pecked at the palm of her fingerless glove, barely piercing it.

“Play nice, Frank!” the Vagrant cried, with exaggerated effect, and reached down for him. He fired off the last few rounds before the gun clicked, then he turned to run, too late. The Vagrant grabbed him and stood as he threw out every dirty word he knew, shoulders and knees thrashing against her fingers. Her eyes bulged as she inspected him: how lively and detailed the man was, in such a minuscule form! She whispered, “I could keep you in a doll’s house. Carry you in a pocket. We could have you dance for pennies on the street.”

“I’m gonna rip out your heart!” he roared, as loud as his tiny lungs allowed.

“Don’t forget that one,” Ali pointed out, returning to the room. The Vagrant noticed the final thug running for his life through the middle of the room. He’d barely got two feet away. She nodded thank you to Ali and scooped up her mallet with her free hand.

For a moment, she watched, as Dalton kept shouting, now cursing his cowardly friend for running. The curses turned to concern as the Vagrant lined up the mallet: “Get out of the way you asshole, she’s gonna –”

Splat! The mallet smashed down on the fleeing man, flattening him under it. The Vagrant brought it up to find barely a smear was left of him. She hopped and laughed again, then tossed the mallet aside and spun around, holding Dalton as he shouted, now with fear.

“You crazy bitch! You psycho!”

“Are you hungry?” Ali asked, suggestively, and the Vagrant noticed then that she was holding another of Dalton’s shrunken men herself, dangling him upside down. Ali lifted him to head height, eyes roaming his twitching body as he reached for her face, speechlessly frightened. She tilted her head back and opened her mouth wide. The Vagrant gasped as Ali dropped the man in – she was actually doing it? Ali met her eyes to share the pleasure, her cheeks bulging with the thug’s struggles, then she swallowed him whole.

“Marvellous!” the Vagrant announced, and Dalton gagged with pain. She was squeezing him hard in her excitement, but who cared?

His voice cracked with terror at last. “Stop! Please, lady, I didn’t mean no –”

The Vagrant chuckled at his change of heart and shoved him into her mouth as keenly as she would a handful of candy floss. She felt him scrabbling about on her tongue, his shouts and pleading muffled through her cheeks. She pushed him up into her palette with her tongue, then rolled him aside to between her teeth and bit down lightly, feeling how easily it would be to crush him. To chomp him in half. But she caught Ali’s eye, the other woman watching in an eager, sultry way, and the Vagrant couldn’t resist mimicking what she’d just seen. She sucked to build up a good wave of saliva around Dalton as he continued to push back, then she bodily swallowed, feeling him slide into her throat and down to her stomach.

The Vagrant rubbed her belly, impossible to stop smiling now, as she felt the tickle of the man trying to swim inside her, trying to get out, brushing against her stomach walls. The struggle quickly died down as Dalton succumbed. That arrogant little bastard who’d led the charge on her seat of power, responsible for the deaths of her street rats, with his rotten tongue – now he was dissolving inside her, reduced to a morsel. If there was anything left of him, she’d have the thrill of shitting it out later.

“I think I love you,” the Vagrant told Ali. She clapped her hands together. “Tell me we’re just getting started. You and your shrink ray are coming with me, aren’t you? Next stop Duke Cintrano himself.”

“I’m open to continuing our partnership,” Ali said.

“Where did you get it?” the Vagrant asked. “Do you have any more? Can I have one of my own? Does it make things big as well as small? Is this what that crazy scientist used to smash up downtown? I want to be big, Cat! Tell me you can make me huge!”

“Not right now,” Ali said. “But I can make your enemies small enough to make you seem massive, at least. Until we have a cat-friendly neighbourhood around here.”

The Vagrant eyed her madly. “Let’s start today. There are so many people I would like to eat.”

***Next time on BIG VILLAINY, LITTLE JUSTICE: Bill Wade, a Citrano lieutenant, finds himself in a compromising position in the aftermath of the Vagrant's onslaught. With police pressing in, alongside hero Lea Extra, Wade is feeling very small indeed... Out July 11th, 2022!***