Thorsday-4

It startled the shit out of her, of course.

So far as she knew, she was supposed to be alone in her apartment. So what the...

She rolled with the punch, letting her body fall back into the shower stall. Her attacker came in right after her, dressed scalp-to-heel in black. Niki saw only the attacker's eyes.

She's a female, Niki thought. I'm being attacked by another woman, a fucking ninja warrior woman.

Niki heel kicked the inside of the ninja's knee.

"Ow! Fuck!"

Ooo, that voice sounds familiar, Niki thought. Where have I heard that voice before?

Niki grabbed the shower curtain to pull it loose from its rungs. She used it like a blanket to throw over her assailant's body. As the woman struggled to get the curtain off herself, Niki smacked her in the face a couple of times, see how well she could take a punch.

The shower water still ran. It made the tub slippery. Her assailant got the shower curtain off as Niki stepped from the tub onto her bath mat. Niki did what she liked to do best at the gym with the punching bag. She punched her assailant hard and fast and in dozens of different places. Wherever she spotted a vulnerability, bam!

Or at least that was the idea.

In actuality, she landed very few blows. Her opponent dodged well. She was able to ward off most of Niki's thrusts.

Then, a mistake.

The woman in black grabbed Niki's arm to pull Niki towards her, but Niki's arm was still wet and slippery so the grip didn't hold. In the fraction of a second that happened, Niki used her other arm to elbow her attacker in the jaw. The woman's teeth made a cracking sound like dropped ice as they clamped shut.

After that, Niki's punches started to land. One shot to the neck must've really hurt because it caused Niki's attacker to go berserk. She came at Niki like a charging bull, and then both of them were all over the bathroom striking at each other, bouncing off the walls. Niki took a kick to the hip, and Fuck! That! Hurt! She spun and caught the ninja in the jaw a second time with the side of her right fist, and the woman acted like she'd been electrocuted the pain got to her with such a sudden intensity.

Niki looked around for something to smash the woman's skull in with. The thick, porcelain top of the toilet would do nicely. Niki went to grab it, but her assailant wouldn't let her, grabbing Niki's arms and pinning them behind Niki's back. Niki heeled the woman's instep. As the woman reacted to that, Niki elbowed her in the ribs hard enough to crack one.

Now Niki could get ahold of that toilet top. It was fucking heavy. It was hard to lift and hard to swing in that so very steamy and enclosed space.

Then Niki saw a knife.

Niki saw the glint of it in her attacker's right hand. Damn! Now that pissed Niki off. There she was, at home, supposedly alone, in her own shower, and some cowardly ninja-ass comes at her with a blade? Fuck that. No mercy before. Certainly no mercy now.

Niki dropped-pitched the toilet top at her assailant's feet.

Crack!

Abby used her assailant's moment of agony to grab the wrist of the hand that held the knife. The assailant's other hand rose in a defensive motion. Niki dug her fingernails underneath the pinky finger of the hand that held the knife, then twisted the finger until it snapped. The pain from that caused Niki's attacker to lose her grip on the knife. The knife hit the floor and bounced up. Niki grabbed it before it hit the ground a second time. She jammed the knife into the other woman's gut. Blood flooded down the woman's legs to pool at her feet. She stumbled back into a wall, stunned.

Okay, Niki thought. Now to find out who the fuck it is I'm fighting.

She grabbed the mask that completely covered her assailant's skull and pulled it off.

And then she gasped...

...because the woman who'd attacked her was her.

Intense pain twisted the other woman's features, but it was her. Niki looked right into the eye of a second Niki Creole. So fucking strange...

And then something even stranger happened.

The woman took her dying breath...

...then dissolved into silver goo.

The goo collected on the bathroom floor, then dissolved further into a silver mist before disappearing completely.

What the...

Niki still had the woman's knife in her hand. Hell, she was still wet from the shower. She hadn't even dried off yet.

She grabbed a towel.

Every part of her assailant disappeared, her clothes and everything else.

Only a single business card remained. Niki picked it up.

THE JOY OF EGGS it read. COME AND HAVE BREAKFAST WITH US TODAY.

And underneath that was the address of the café.

Okay, I guess I know where I'll be spending the rest of my morning, she thought.

CONTINUE