Ratchet mentally scratched her head. She was sure it had just itched. In a similar manner, she scratched her nose, when it presented the discomfort afforded by itching, also mentally. This wouldn't have surprised her, had she been merely free from inhumane restraint, as she most obviously was not.
Ratchet mentally scratched her head again. It perplexed her, but she seemed to have gained some intermittent superhuman abilities. Whether or not these would prove useful, she couldn't say.
Her nearest, and least pleasant captor continued to glower at her, clearly expecting her to say something.
"I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque," Ratchet said hopefully.
Suddenly, the man with the green facial hair grabbed her by the neck and lifted her, bonds and chair, off the ground. Ratchet immediately tried to retch, but her efforts were hampered by the simple fact that she wasn't in the slightest pain. She shot a perplexed look at her irate captor and crashed noisily to the floor.
Ratchet was suddenly aware that, instead of being in a sitting position, she was spread-eagled on the floor, fragments of rope, chains, chair, and duct tape attached to her legs and arms at unpleasantly random intervals. She jumped to her feet clumsily, and wobbled on her half-asleep legs. Her arms were oddly more capable.
Ratchet's arms flailed crazily. In any martial arts tournament, it might end up lauded as a fantastic tactic, provided your nails were well-clipped, but Ratchet had only the meager goal of regaining her long-lost balance. She would have failed miserably, had her captors removed themselves from the immediate area. Unfortunately for them, instead, Ratchet's long and razor-sharp fingernails sliced cloth and flesh like they'd been made for the job, and Ratchet did, in fact, regain balance.
Her assailants fell to the floor, several of them unconscious, for whatever reason. Others clutched possibly fatal wounds and moaned in an annoying way. Ratchet's first instinct was to bolt from the room and find a bathroom. She'd never used nail-polish before, and so wouldn't know that her fingernails would pass off nicely now as some of the best red fingernails in town.
Instinctively, Ratchet didn't lick the blood off her nails. Later she'd suspect she just didn't think of it, but, in reality, instinct distinctly took control, if only passively.
By this time, Ratchet really was the fastest runner in the neighborhood, for the simple fact that she was no longer in her neighborhood. Ratchet thought smugly, "I'm probably not in any neighborhood."
She found it very difficult to run, now that she so thoroughly could. Eventually, Ratchet became indifferent, and then annoyed that she could run so fast. It didn't help much to try to walk, either. She seemed to have replaced walking and running, respectively, with hopping and, well, it was probably something along the lines of scramming. All she knew, though, was that her shoes had burned right off somewhere between Tokyo and Vermont.
It was roughly an hour later when she sat on a park bench, tired, confused, annoyed, but definitely clean. It was raining.
!Noah!
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