Black Cat: Velvet Vindicator by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Black-Cat-Velvet-Vindicator-1211024451

Black Cat: Velvet Vindicator ANIMATION

Gilded Carrion

The rain on the warehouse roof was a timpani roll for the dead. Felicia Hardy, a shadow in obsidian latex, clung to a rusted iron beam forty feet above a concrete floor stained with forgotten chemical spills. Below, Marcus Vane moved through a pool of jaundiced light, a man who wore his mercenary career like a well-tailored but threadbare suit. He wasn’t the mark; he was the obstacle. The prize was a small, lead-lined case on a workbench beside him, supposedly containing a triboelectric polymer that could generate power from shadow. To Felicia, the Black Cat, it was simply the next shiny thing, a challenge wrapped in enigma.

But the air tasted wrong. It wasn’t just the acid-tinged rain or the moldering cardboard. It was a coppery sweetness, like old pennies and spoiled milk, lurking beneath. Vane was checking his weapons, but they were like nothing she’d seen. A pistol with a barrel like clustered insect eyes; a gauntlet on his left arm that pulsed with a slow, venous light.

“Lovely evening for a break-in,” Vane said, his voice a dry rasp. He didn’t look up. “The acoustics in here are superb. I heard you sigh when you saw the case. A little disappointed? Were you expecting diamonds?”

Felicia dropped, landing silently behind him, a grin playing on her lips. “Diamonds are so transactional. I prefer curiosities. And you, Mr. Vane, are a curious guard dog. Your toys look… intimate.”

He turned. His face was sharp, handsome in a carved-ivory way, but his eyes were the flat grey of a spent bullet. “They’re not toys. They’re extensions. Symbiotes.” He raised the gauntlet. The pulsing quickened, throbbing in time with the vein in his temple. “They respond to desire. Right now, they desire to know what you are.”

“A cat burglar with excellent taste,” she purred, circling him, her own form a study in liquid shadow. “You could just let me take the case. Avoid the mess. I hear bio-weapons are hell to get out of latex.”

“It’s not a bio-weapon,” he corrected, almost lovingly. “It’s a dialogue. A conversation between flesh and refined intention. This,” he gestured with the ocular pistol, “doesn’t fire bullets. It fires understanding. A glimpse of the underlying architecture.”

“Architecture of what?”

“Of you.” He fired.

There was no report, only a wet, whispering puff. A gelatinous pellet, glowing with faint bioluminescence, streaked toward her. Felicia’s preternatural agility saved her; she contorted backwards, the missile splattering against a steel drum. Where it hit, the metal didn’t corrode. It bloomed. Tendrils of metallic flesh, sprouting wire-like hairs and weeping a silvery sap, grew in a rapid, cancerous bouquet. A low moan, like stressed metal, emanated from it.

Terror, cold and sharp, pierced her professional poise. This wasn’t combat; it was violation.

“What is that?” she breathed, her cleverness momentarily stunned.

“A revelation,” Vane said, advancing. “Matter has a latent potential, a memory of being part of something greater, more… malleable. My tools simply remind it. And they can remind your flesh, too. Imagine your delightful nervous system deciding to explore independent concepts. Your bones developing artistic aspirations.”

Seduction had always been one of Felicia’s tools, a weapon of distraction and control. She let a genuine shiver show, stepping back, allowing her eyes to widen. “That sounds… exquisitely personal. And here I thought we were just having a professional disagreement.”

He paused, the gauntlet’s glow washing over his fascinated face. “It is personal. You’re a masterpiece of evolved chance, Felicia. All that grace, that luck… it’s a perfect canvas. Most people are dull clay. You’re Carrara marble. I don’t want to destroy you. I want to… appreciate you. Fully.”

The horror deepened, twisting with a grotesque allure. He wasn’t just a mercenary; he was a collector, an aesthete of atrocity. Her fear was the medium, her body the proposed exhibit.

“Appreciation usually involves champagne, not… whatever that is,” she said, nodding to the weeping metal bloom.

“Champagne is for celebrating finished works. We are in the studio.” He fired twice more.

Felicia became a vortex of motion, a negative space against the spreading corruption. One pellet grazed her thigh. Not pain, but a sudden, terrifying awareness spread from the point of contact. She could feel individual muscle fibers twitching in d
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