They meet on the borders of the city of monsters and the city of men, the dark tangled places where fetish seekers seek out fur and scales, where enterprising mutants sell vials of their own blood to humans seeking cures, where people stare out at the haze of light from a New York that's no longer theirs.  
Jenny shrugs off her hooded sweatshirt and leans against the wall, cold stone pressing against her bare legs. She can hear the distant hum of a passing train rumbling up through the brick, through her skull, like hands rushing along her bones.  
Her nose twitches slightly--one of the advantages of her new body, or disadvantages depending on what she's smelling. In the beginning she was overwhelmed after walking by a dumpster, but her brothers have taught her how to filter out the scents enough that she knows who's sneaking up behind her, although it helps that Karai isn't trying to hide.  
"So, you come crawling back," she says, not bothering to disguise the rough edges in her voice. It would defeat the point to give Karai a warm welcome.  
"How long would you have waited?" Karai asks easily. "A whole city of freaks and you're still so desperate. Bare and wretched on the street like the animal you are."  
Jenny bites her lip. It's true, even though she hates when Karai says it. A whole city of freaks and none of them can give her what Karai can; not Sheena, not her brothers, not anyone.  
The first woman she ever loved died in her arms. Jenny watched the person responsible bleed out and then kissed her cold lips. In the end, shit like this just feels inevitable. She was a monster before she stopped looking like a person, and if Karai is the only one who can admit that, so be it.  
"And you're still here," she growls. "You know, you're lucky I don't charge by the hour."  
They don't bother with bowing--Karai just swings a sword at her head and Jenny just barely dodges, claws blurring up into a defensive position. A proper announcement or bowing would also defeat the purpose of things, especially considering how this shit always ends.  
Strike, dodge, parry, a haphazard blend of elegant ninjitsu and rough-edged street fighting. Jenny knows damn well where Karai got her start, after all, and here Karai doesn't have to pretend as much as she usually does.  
They're not trying to kill each other, of course, not with the fragile peace between the warring sides in the balance. But they know how to come really close, if not as close as Karai has brought Jenny before, and she's long stopped wondering why such things make her feel alive.  
Karai is so beautiful when she fights. So beautiful all the time, in all the special, stupid ways Jenny isn't supposed to care about anymore, but it's not that simple, she never has been, and looking at the almost loving way the streetlights paint Karai's body, makes her want to hiss and rage, so she does.  
Steel streaks against steel, hard enough that Jenny expects to see sparks hit the street. The sharp point hovers, frozen an inch from her abdomen, and the nonexistent scar aches. She grits her teeth, heart shuddering with memory even as excitement hums in her blood.  
"You're getting sloppy, Jennika," Karai murmurs, face an inch from your own. "Degenerating. Soon there won't be any sport at all." She huffs. "I don't know why I bother coming."  
Jenny shows her teeth. "Because you're a fucking freak, just like me." She kicks Karai in the chest, trying to avoid the sudden bolt of nausea that she still sometimes at the sight of her own two-toed feet. Karai staggers backward, wheezing, and Jenny lunges.  
Karai rallies, of course. She's a warrior trained and forged, she's descended from goddesses and warriors, she'd wielded an unholy sword long after it would drive most people crazy, and soon she's driving Jenny back again and again towards the unforgiving wall.  
But Jennika isn't giving her an inch, and she's so much stronger than she was before her transformation. It's the only time she feels truly at peace with her body now; when she's dragging it out on a dark, burning edge like this, pushing it to its limits and battering it with steel.  
"Not so easy when you can't catch someone off guard, huh?" she spits.  
"Maybe I'm just surprised you finally stopped stumbling into obvious traps," Karai growls, and Jenny bares her teeth, snapping her head forward with the move Leo taught her, a side effect of their newly formed skulls.  
Karai's learned from past mistakes, of course, and manages to duck back far enough to avoid getting knocked clean out. But she can't quite entirely avoid the blow and Jenny knocks her off balance, catching the sword between her claws and twisting it out of Karai's hands.  
She has to let go of her own claws to pull it off, but that's all right--she slams the other one through the cloth right above Karai's shoulder, just enough to smell blood as she slams the other woman against the wall. Jenny doesn't stop herself, crashing full into Karai's chest as their lips smash together.  
They kiss hard enough to bruise, shoving back and forth in an avoid obvious fight for dominance, for Karai pulls away to spit in her face. "Beast," she snarls.  
"And you fucking love it," Jenny shoots back. She shoves a rough hand in Karai's pants, running her hand over hair that no longer exists on her own body. Karai's pussy is already warm and damp when she finds it, because apparently someone is still happy to see her.  
Karai lets out a half-choked moan, reaching up to grab Jenny by the mask tails and yank her into another kiss. She yanks so hard that Jenny wonders if she'll tear, wonders if she'll have to walk back home with her mask torn like that, and the prospect of such shame only fuels the heat of her belly.  
She gives Karai a few quick rubs, smirking as the other girl shudders in her arms. "Lookit that. Gettin' turned on by my big freak fingers." Her voice is taken on a harsher accent now, the part of her early life she tried so hard to cut out, once upon a time, she doesn't try anymore.  
Karai drags a hand down Jenny's shell, pausing to roughly fondle her ass before scraping her nails along Jenny's sensitive tail. She pushes her hand up into Jenny's cunt--Jenny had had to let Karai pin her the first time, just so she could explore enough to find the fucking thing.  
Pleasure cuts Jenny like a knife and she retaliates by sinking her teeth into Karai's lips, her chin, her cheek, her neck. Maybe she'll tear out sharp, angry chunks of flesh like the animals she's supposed to be, let everyone know just what kind of creatures she spreads her legs for after hours.  
They grind as they fingerfuck each other, hips snapping together hard enough that Jenny's pretty sure she's leaving bruises. Not that she gives a shit about what marks she leaves on Karai's skin, if only to wonder whether she'll touch herself as she looks at the marks in the morning.  
Jenny rubs her scaly, battered edges up against Karai's muscled, but still far-too-smooth smooth skin, smoother than anything Jenny's ever felt in Mutant Town. Karai gives a little taunting wiggle, laughing into Jenny's mouth as her fingers flex tauntingly. Jenny sobs with desire and frustration, slamming against Karai hard enough it rattles them both.  
She snaps her hand and her hip like she's trying to fuck herself back into the body she doesn't have anymore, or maybe trying to fuck the memories of that body out of her for good. It's hard to tell right now, with the vicious way they twist together, with the painful snap of teeth against teeth, against skin and flesh.  
Karai wraps her legs around Jenny's waist and it's so easy to lift her now, so easy to fucking dominate. The fact that Karai's letting her just gives it all the crueler edges she needs to move as hard and fast as she can, to burn herself like a moth dying a happy on a lightbulb.  
Jenny disengages the claw pinning Karai to reach up and yank Karai's hair instead, gathering a long, dark tangle into her hands. This time, she kisses her long enough that she can feel Karai start to take short, desperate breaths through her nose, bereft of a turtle's lung capacity.  
A sting on her side--a knife? How cute. Jenny roughly yanks her hand out of Karai's pants and seizes her hand, knowing full well that Karai's letting her do it. Karai decides to drop her knife like a good girl and Jenny rewards her by letting go to shove her fingers brutally back in, savoring Karai's frantic gasps as much as she savors the blood dripping down her own side.  
They're both damp with more than just blood, to be honest, and it isn't long before the humping takes a frantic term. Jenny grits her teeth, pushing as hard as she can, willing herself not to come first, to not break like that.  
But Karai's hands are more dexterous than hers now, it's just a fucking fact of life, and she gets fingers in the right to place to open, spreading inside Jenny like a flower's petals or a snake's jaws. Jenny feels herself start to shake and that must be what sends Karai over the edge, her smaller body caught up in Jenny's vibrations before they can even gloat.  
Jenny comes roaring through the bloody lips of the woman who stabbed her and ruined her life, fucking Karai the whole way through and letting herself get fucked just as viciously back. There are tears in her eyes, but she’s shaking to pieces and her scales feel like they're laced with a resurrecting fire, and she can convince herself that everything's all right.  
They fuck each other through and then they have to collapse, slithering down to filthy concrete in a stinking, battered tangle. Jenny's nostrils flare with the scent of blood and sex, and for a second she can't remember which is supposed to turn her on.  
"Fuck," Karai gasps, her last pretensions gone. She sags into Jenny's arms, the only weakness she'll show, glazed eyes fluttering as she tries to gather herself. "Fucking hell."  
Jenny just grunts; an animalistic noise, but Karai doesn't taunt her. They've scorched each other enough tonight.  
It doesn't take them long to gather themselves, not much longer than the aftermath of a particularly hard fight. They help each other stand and then break apart like they've been burned, staring at each other through distrustful eyes.  
"See you around, freak," Karai says easily, turning her back on her.  
"Fuck off," Jenny calls, voice shaking a little as she wriggles back into her clothes. She wills her fingers to stop shaking as she tugs a bandage out of her pocket (brought along for just such occasions) and she puts it to her already half-closed side. She’ll say that she fell if anyone notices.  
What she wants to say is: Thank you for undoing me when no one else would.  
What she wants to say is: I could have loved you, once.  
What she wants to say is: Fuck off, really and truly. I never want to see you again.  
But she knows that's just bullshit. She'll come when Karai calls, and Karai will come when she calls, and they'll keep fucking and fucking each other up until...who knows. Maybe Natsu will convince Karai to stop screwing the enemy, maybe one of Jenny's family will figure it out and make her explain herself. Jenny's suddenly way too tired to plan for any of that shit.  
She turns her back on the city that will never truly be hers again and sets out for home, where her people are waiting. Perhaps there's a trace of dawn forming in the distance, but she doesn't notice it.