Two birds, one stone.

Serge Carlock

Cold, cold usually meant that crime decreased, that the angry, the stupid and the criminal went to ground until warmer days brought them forth like the vermin they were. But in the city of San Francisco it never quite got cold enough for this hibernation process to take place, and in the Tenderloin, the vermin ran the store, in the Tenderloin...it was as if every day was the middle of the summer.

Serge for his part could care less about the criminal element, at least in his day to day operations, if they were not an enemy, or a tool to be used, they were an irrelevance, a nuisance at best, a cooling, rotting vessel at worst. The Brujah made his way through the heart of their realm tonight, patrolling, investigating, searching out those few stray members of the rabble which called this place home. He had a job to do after all, being the whip it was his job to see to the foot soldiers, his job to make sure they toed the line...and on the occasion raged all over it.

He was dressed for the role as well, dressed to mingle with his kind, combat boots, black cargo pants, that menacing and effective vest that the smart realized was armour and the rest simply thought of as a garish fashion statement. The heels of his boots crunched against the sidewalk, as he moved along, looking into alley's watching store fronts. On the prowl, in the city....one of the best ways to spend a night.

Serge Carlock

[Per+Alert]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

Luce

Dex + Stealth

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 5) ( fail )

Luce

Appearance + Performance

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 10) ( fail ) Re-rolls: 1

Luce

He sees her almost immediately; dressed nothing like she was or will be for court, in her golden gown. Wearing, instead, worn old jeans, an oversized hoodie over a t-shirt and a leather blazer, big enough to hide everything feminine about her shape. Nevermind the easy way she seems to disappear into that attire, her hair pulled back, the hood forward to shadow her features.

Serge recognizes the Toreador - who is now sitting casually on the low block wall in front of a burned out tenement building and watching the front entrance of the strip club opposite with a certain sharp and level attention. He can read that, too, somehow in the way the shadows fall across her body, which seems boyish, alert, masculine from this distance.

But which does not fool him.

The strip club has no name. Just a neon woman slowly removing her clothes to announce its presence and purpose, and a bleary-eyed bouncer standing outside the door, counting cash and talking on a cell phone.

And someone else, in the shadows down the alley flanking the building. Serge notices that, too.

Serge Carlock

His efforts, his out and about attitude was paying off, just not in a manner that Serge could have ever imagined. Marie-Helene, or Luce as she was now known appeared before him in anything but her refined Toreador glory, gone was the finery of the rose, replaced with the common threads of the streets, it does not surprise the man however, Serge himself knew all about switching roles, and there were times when he donned a fine suit, just as Marie-Helene now donned clothing to hide what she was.

He took a moment then to analysis the situation, to take in his surroundings, and he notes the bouncer, the club, the tenement, and the unknown element that lurked down the alley..he takes it all in before moving forward, moving towards the woman who was trying to remain incognito...he would do his best to aid her with that.

When he approached he did so quickly, moving with a purpose, his jaw set and his eyes narrow. As he stepped up to her he looked down at her, standing before her like a man about to confront someone who was where they weren't supposed to be.

His tone however is quiet enough for those around them to not hear, to them it would seem he was the quiet type...the type that you feared when at long last he raised his voice.

"Marie-Helene...it has been quite a while." He says warmly enough...for him at least. "What brings you to a place such as this?"

Luce

"You've heard about the graffiti around town?"

There is a brief flicker of - alertness - that runs over her narrow frame like water. Something electric to it; that movement, that gesture. The way her shoulders curve forward and her boyish body bunches, readying itself for movement. Which would be: retreat. She does not fill the space as he does. No one looks at her, this whip-slender, hunger-haunted creature, and crosses the street to avoid her. Not even in this boyish guise.

It cannot last; not when the streetlights hit her familiar features as she glances up at him, but there's something strained about her features. A flicker beyond his muscled shoulder at the entrance. The bouncer and his cash, the figure in the shadows.

"Wanted to take a look myself. Then," a faint lift of her chin across the street. "I saw him. Disappeared down the alley. So I'm waiting to see if he comes back out, or keeps going the other way." A faint flush of her half-smile. " - before I get the hell out of dodge.

"He might've caught onto me, though. That bouncer keeps looking over here."

Serge Carlock

Serge briefly turns to gaze back at the club, the look on his face like he couldn't give a damn as to why the person before him was here, he just wanted her out. The truth of the matter was of course...something else entirely.

Serge swivelled his head back towards them and let his head tilt ever so slightly. "The man in the alley is still there...but that does not explain why you need to run away when all you wanted to do was examine some graffiti left upon these walls."

He examines Luce's face in that piercing, intent way that he always did, Serge was never one to be concerned if another thought he was staring to much. It was part of how he operated after all. "Are either of them a threat in some way?"

Luce

"Is he?" she returns, lifting her little chin in a sharp gesture as if she might somehow see through the blocky immediacy of Serge's large frame, past him across the dark street. It is quiet, here tonight. The distant wash of traffic, the hum of the neon sign overhead. "He has a pale aura. And when he crossed the street and walked past those cars," this she indicates with no more than a flicker of her pale blue eyes. "he cast no reflection.

"The bouncer knew him; they talked for a few minutes, but instead of going inside the club he headed down the alley. No reason for that man to be outside just now, either. It's not like the have a line out of the door."

Indeed, quite as she said the street was empty; deserted except for the four of them. Serge and Luce on the sidewalk, the man lurking in the alley, the bouncer in front of the bar.

Serge Carlock

"Indeed..." Serge said as he looked Luce over for a few moments, considering options, scenarios. "A pale aura, and no reflection...I assume this is an individual you do not recognize from any of the meetings, from anything revolving around our little group of upstanding citizens?" He inquires as he begins to turn around, scarred arms crossing his chest as he regarded the club.

"Perhaps we should investigate." He says plainly. "Unless you would prefer to continue with your previous plan of leaving the area of course."

Serge Carlock

[Manip+Subt]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

Luce

Per + Alertness

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Luce

Per + Alertness

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )

Luce

"I'd prefer to go," she tells him, unabashedly. A little hook of her narrow shoulders beneath that oversized jacket and hoodie, the weight of which seems far too much for her slim frame. There's a supple twist of her mouth then, she's lifting her chin up and outward, pale eyes shining, lovely, in the distressed amber light of the streetlamps.

"I'm not precisely an asset in a fight, Serge. A bit conspicuous in a strip club, too." A neat little shrug. "I can only carry the teenaged boy disguise so far."

Then something stiffens in her face. She braces herself on the retaining wall, one hand back on the frame, the other sliding into the deep kangaroo pocket of the hooded sweatshirt.

She is breathing; she always does. Part of the mask they were. Part of the masquerade. Her voice, when she continues, is breathy but sharp, a careful sort of whisper.

"Someone's coming. Don't look back. Not the bouncer. The one from the alley."

--

Serge maintains the show; that he's trying to chase her off his property, or the sidewalk. That those slump-faced tenements matter. That this kid's presence is unwelcome; and soon enough he hears the sweep of someone else's feet across the street, the crunch of boots on gravel. The sharp inhale of someone taking a deep drag on a cigarette.

"This little shit bothering you, man?" The stranger says to Serge's back, apparently taken in by his display. " - because I can take him off your hands. Harvey thinks he's been casing our place out."

If Serge glances up, now, he'll see an ordinary looking man in ratty jeans and an old t-shirt, black, advertising some Daytona Beach, Florida bar. Half-gloves on his hand, those leather, a cigarette in his mouth. When the stranger says Harvey he gestures back across the street at the bouncer.

"I'd like to know who for. Two birds, one stone man."

Serge Carlock

LUCE
"Is he?" she returns, lifting her little chin in a sharp gesture as if she might somehow see through the blocky immediacy of Serge's large frame, past him across the dark street.† It is quiet, here tonight.† The distant wash of traffic, the hum of the neon sign overhead.† "He has a pale aura.† And when he crossed the street and walked past those cars," this she indicates with no more than a flicker of her pale blue eyes.† "he cast no reflection.†"The bouncer knew him; they talked for a few minutes, but instead of going inside the club he headed down the alley.† No reason for that man to be outside just now, either.† It's not like the have a line out of the door."†Indeed, quite as she said the street was empty; deserted except for the four of them.† Serge and Luce on the sidewalk, the man lurking in the alley, the bouncer in front of the bar.

SERGE CARLOCK
"Indeed..." Serge said as he looked Luce over for a few moments, considering options, scenarios. "A pale aura, and no reflection...I assume this is an individual you do not recognize from any of the meetings, from anything revolving around our little group of upstanding citizens?" He inquires as he begins to turn around, scarred arms crossing his chest as he regarded the club. "Perhaps we should investigate." He says plainly. "Unless you would prefer to continue with your previous plan of leaving the area of course."

SERGE CARLOCK
[Manip+Subt]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

LUCE
Per + Alertness
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

LUCE
Per + Alertness
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )

LUCE
"I'd prefer to go," she tells him, unabashedly.† A little hook of her narrow shoulders beneath that oversized jacket and hoodie, the weight of which seems far too much for her slim frame.† There's a supple twist of her mouth then, she's lifting her chin up and outward, pale eyes shining, lovely, in the distressed amber light of the streetlamps.†"I'm not precisely an asset in a fight, Serge.† A bit conspicuous in a strip club, too."† A neat little shrug.† "I can only carry the teenaged boy disguise so far."†Then something stiffens in her face.† She braces herself on the retaining wall, one hand back on the frame, the other sliding into the deep kangaroo pocket of the hooded sweatshirt.†She is breathing; she always does.† Part of the mask they were.† Part of the masquerade.† Her voice, when she continues, is breathy but sharp, a careful sort of whisper.†"Someone's coming.† Don't look back.† Not the bouncer.† The one from the alley."--†Serge maintains the show; that he's trying to chase her off his property, or the sidewalk.† That those slump-faced tenements matter.† That this kid's presence is unwelcome; and soon enough he hears the sweep of someone else's feet across the street, the crunch of boots on gravel.† The sharp inhale of someone taking a deep drag on a cigarette.†"This little shit bothering you, man?"† The stranger says to Serge's back, apparently taken in by his display.† " - because I can take him off your hands.† Harvey thinks he's been casing our place out."†If Serge glances up, now, he'll see an ordinary looking man in ratty jeans and an old t-shirt, black, advertising some Daytona Beach, Florida bar.† Half-gloves on his hand, those leather, a cigarette in his mouth.† When the stranger says Harvey he gestures back across the street at the bouncer.†"I'd like to know who for.† Two birds, one stone man."

Serge Carlock

Serge does indeed glance to the man, his head swivelling around slowly to take in the man that he certainly did not know, and that Luce did not recognize either, with the Towers assets and active members numbering in not but a dozen it was a very...very safe bet to say that this pale aura'ed individual was not with the Camarilla, and for a few moments Serge sized him up, watchful, like most street thugs would be...at least the ones worth their salt.

"That depends." He says smoothly. "I already got this punk where I want him....what makes you think hes here to anything else but squat on the wrong turf?" He asks grimly as he watches the man, taking in the signs, watching for the que's that this man...was not really a man.

He took a moment to note the shirt and raise a brow at it...but beyond that he waited.

Luce

"I got reasons." Thinly; mouth spreading in the narrow definition of a sneer that reveals a mouthful of broken, ugly teeth. Tobacco stained, the lot of him. He has a thin, pock-marked face and sharp gray-green eyes, sallow in the ugly light from the streetlamp overhead.

He turns his head aslant, arching his narrow shoulders with vertebrae-cracking force. "'N Harvey has others. Best you leave him to me - "

Throws the cigarette down so that it sparks and flares, then gutters on the sidewalk. " - and my fucking friends. You see what I'm saying?"

Behind Serge, Luce has her head down; so far down that her face is no more than a pool of shadow, her tall frame narrow, shoulders hunched forward, her breathing just audible, under the skin of the night sounds.

"See - " the man continues, flexing his hands in the half-gloves, working to look around Serge at the Toreador on the retaining wall. " - he ain't even bothering to deny it, neither."

Serge Carlock

"Really?" Serge says raising a brow as he looked the man in the eyes with curiosity and defiance. The man' cracks his neck in a show of aggression, an action that Serge for his part never understood, yes it loosened up the neck...but it also weakened it. However he doesn't comment on that, not at this moment, instead he turns himself bodily towards the man and asks.

"And just who are your friends?" He says, the words implying that he expects a response, like he had just had another threat step onto his turf, like this guy was just as much trouble as the one behind him...sure he was fighting a two sided war now...but that was fine by him.

Luce

"Seriously man?" The stranger's grinning now. This quick, cocksure grin, the sort that opens up his face. Transforms it from this grim and dour thing into a pastiche of sudden, manic sort of glee. The spark of that glee never entirely animates his eyes, but is otherwise written all over his face.

" - I mean, seriously? That's how you're going to play this. Fucking HARVEY is my friend. And look, I have one, two, three, four - " this, counting off on his blunt fingers, left index finger ticking off each of his right fingers as he opens the half fist in hand one finger at a time.

Across the street, the bouncer at the otherwise dead seeming strip club frowns, shading his eyes against the glare of the streetlights, frowning across the street at them.

"Five, wait, double that, ten fucking more itching to rearrange your ugly fucking face. Except I ain't got time for it. So let me introduce you to my business fucking associate," reaching down underneath the old t-shirt, into the waistband of those ratty jeans like some gangster from a movie, to pull out a Colt .45. "Mr. Colt."

And swings it in an arc toward Serge and Luce, as if he had not yet precisely picked out a favorite target.

"Now get the fuck out. Kid's mine. And I plan to take my motherfucking time with him."

Serge Carlock

The man pulls a gun....a colt .45, a decent weapon, reliable, deadly to be sure. The man played with it, toying it back and forth between one target and the next, either being very sure of what he was doing, or just to damn cocky to realize anything different. The man might have expected fear, a look of concern flashing across Serge's face as his own life was put into jeopardy. He is not rewarded with such however.

Instead Serge's gaze narrows a hair, the blue grey eyes taking on an aspect entirely different from the one he had just worn, perhaps it does not terrify the man with the colt, perhaps he found it amusing, entertaining. But then...he had never seen Serge at work before. Had not seen the innumerable battlefields the man had strode upon and returned from alive and whole...where hundreds, thousands of others had fallen and perished.

He cocked his head slightly to the side as he examines the weapon and then looked up at the man. "Amateur." He says, and as he flushes blood through his system his own weapon, a P99 is drawn from a well hidden seam in his vest and brought steadily to bare upon the man, the trigger pulled in the next instant.

[BP for Celerity get the drop]

[Dex+Firearm called shot head]

Dice: 7 d10 TN9 (2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Serge Carlock

[Init +9]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )

Luce

Mr. Jones +7

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )

Luce

Harvey +6

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )

Luce

Luce +6

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )

Serge Carlock

[Damage]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 6, 6, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )

Luce

Soak!

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 7, 8) ( success x 1 )

Luce

Oh, forgot fortitude

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

Luce

Mr. Jones: Dex + Firearms; -2 wound penalties

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 7) ( fail )

Luce

Harvey: 1a) grabs shotgun; 1b) blam. Dif +2 for distance, -3 for split. 1c) starts running.

Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (2, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )

Luce

Damage: 8-2 for distance

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 7) ( fail )

Luce

Luce - soak!

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 3) ( botch x 1 )

Luce

(soaks cannot be botched!)

Luce

Luce: Dread Gaze on the fucker that shot her. -1 for wound penalties [Also: spending blood. 1 point to stamina, 1 point to celerity]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Luce

It happens in a split second; first the sallow-face stranger pulls a Colt .45 out of the waistband of his sagging jeans and swings it from Serge to 'the kid' and back again, as if he had spent the last three weeks watching Quentin Tarantino movies to ready himself for just this moment. He's a skinny man, starkly white, those half-gloves dark on his rough hands, grinning wildly and fucking angry now. Then Serge draws his own weapon, faster, like some confrontation out of an old western it all comes down to - quick draw.

Behind Serge, Luce is jumping down from the retaining wall - there's no way to maintain the illusion that she is anything but female when her body is in motion, when her head comes up and she swings a stark white face around to stare wide-eyed at the weapons drawn with rapidity of a pair of striking snakes and the sallow man is mid-snear about " - a fucking chick" when the bullet from Serge's weapon hits him squarely in the face, punches through his right eye and out through the back of his head in a spray of brains and sharded bone.

Across the street, Harvey senses movement, grabs his shotgun and levels it at 'the kid' for a wild blast that still punches her in the shoulder, sends the Toreador spinning a staggered step backwards from the force of the blast with a sharp noise of swallowed air. She throws her head back enough that the hood falls away from her pale face and hisses furiously enough that it stops the man in his tracks mid-way across the deserted street.

Serge Carlock

Serge's shot had been true, the bullet punching through the man's brain case, sending vital bits here and there, sprayed in a gruesome arch across the sidewalk and the street itself. But as he expected, the man didn't fall, didn't die in that instant of violence. Because he was already dead...and even with a wide hole through ones brain, one could still live, still fight.

Serge didn't let up, he pulled the trigger twice more in rapid succession, fully intent on not giving this creature the chance to do any real damage.

1a. Shoot Mr. Colt 1b. Shoot Mr. Colt

[Dex+Firearm]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 2

Serge Carlock

[Damage]

Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 7, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Serge Carlock

[Dex+Firearm]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serge Carlock

[Damage]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Luce

Soak 1:

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 7, 9) ( fail )

Luce

Harvey: soak!

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )

Serge Carlock

Damage again]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Luce

Luce

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )

Luce

Harvey

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )

Luce

Luce: extending dread gaze

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )

Serge Carlock

Celerity 1 [Close the gap to harv]

Serge Carlock

[Celerity two! Disarm Harvey]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 5) ( botch x 1 )

Serge Carlock

[Damage]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Serge Carlock

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

Luce

Luce: soak!

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 8, 10) ( success x 1 )

Luce

Harv: run away! -6 dice

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

Serge Carlock

[Dex+Brawl Knock out!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 1 )

Serge Carlock

[Damage +2 auto succ for potence]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5) ( fail )

Luce

Soak!

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Luce

Luce: extending Dread Gaze -2 dice for wound penalties

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Serge Carlock

The battle ended, quickly as they so often did. Mr. Colt, for all his brazen posturing, for all his power and his unliving form was unprepared for what Serge was capable, and willing to do. The first bullet did not finish the man, but the second snuffed out what was left of his soul, and the body fell to the ground, aging at a disturbing rate.

Harvey across the way faired little better, after having drawn the ire of Marie Helene with that first shot, she was quick to drain away his will, destroying what resistence he could offer swiftly and surely. Serge for his part attempted to speed things along, only to...in his haste, accidentally discharge his weapon into Luce...who thankfully, remained standing.

With Harvey now whimpering upon the ground, in a fetal position next to his weapon Serge came to stand over the man, watching him carefully before he looked over to the wounded Luce...he had escaped surprisingly unharmed.

"Are you alright?" He inquired, the saying more mechanical...then showing any distinct concern for the woman.

Luce

She seems to be in shock; arms crossed low over her torso; holes in the hooded sweatshirt she wears, hair loosened from its tight coil, perhaps by the force of the first shotgun blast or the ripping shock of pain from the second. There is little enough blood; their kind do not, as a rule, bleed. No hearts to pump the blood through the body, no arterial spray - but there are dark, faintly damp stains on the gray material at the shoulder, and gut, where the cotton fabric was pushed into the wounds by the bullets' trajectory.

In shock, and still - wide-eyed, fang-bearing, her eyes stained dark with the subsurface flare of the beast - feral and unbound.

"No." She is still breathing; regular as clockwork, though not each breath is sharper, shallow from the pain she struggles to swallow with each breath she takes. Shaking with the effort at repression; or perhaps the residual brush with death. "I need." Gritted teeth, fangs still stark, sharp against her lower lip. "To out of here." Eyes closed as she tries to pull the beast back in; to store it underneath her skin.

Serge Carlock

Serge watched her, watched as she barely managed to hold her beast in check, oh what things would happen if it broke loose, would either he or Harvey be safe? Serge could simply wonder at that as he stepped towards her. "Heal Marie Helene." He says, firmly, but quietly as he put his gun away, the safety clicking on as he picked up the shotgun and the colt.

"If you are this close....then we should get you out of here...if you are able to control yourself. I would say take some of what you will need from him." He said gesturing briefly to the man who lay upon the ground, immobile.

He was practical as always, Marie Helene would need to heal, and this man was an easy meal....if she could keep herself from draining him dry, from sating her beast.

Luce

She gives him a swinging glance, sharply upward, her features starkly lovely, in that oddly alien way. Defined more by the architectural sweep than by ordinary, human standards of beauty. This time, the overt signs of the beast - the fangs, the clawed fingers, the stark strange eyes - on display with the gift are withdrawn. She seems human; nearly human, except for the stark pallor of her features.

"He's foul." This, with a sudden, visceral disgust that distorts her fine little mouth with a sharp, evident loathing. "Il a pissé outre lui-même." Her chin rises, a clear, nearly imperious gesture toward the man collapsed on the street. Voice thin, taut with tension. "It's too public. No. I can handle myself." Mouth flattening, briefly narrow. Voice wrapping low. "I don't want to heal the bullets in unless I have to." Half turning so he can see her back. "Did they come out?"

Serge Carlock

Serge looked back, briefly taking in Harvey as Luce found him to be foul, to be the lowest of the low, and he shrugged. Some people could afford to be picky in that sense. He stepped towards her, wiping a bit of grey matter from his vest like it had been a simple stray hair, or a piece of dirt upon his form as he stepped up and took in her wounds.

"The bullet from my gun...which I apologize for. Has passed through cleanly." He said as he examined her back, looking for signs of any other exit wounds. "The pepper shot however...did not." He said as he let her turn back with a slight grimace forming upon his features.

"Come...I'll get you too my vehicle, where we can remove the shot, and I can then take you wherever it is you would prefer to go." He said cordially, inviting her to step away from this scene of blood and violence, it was always a shame when such stakeouts went horribly awry...but at least Serge had been there to help her with it.

And so...off into the night they walk, leaving poor, delerious Harvey to fend for himself, his nights to come filled with nightmares of the woman with the wicked eyes and handsome face, and of the scarred demon, who moved light lightening, and dealt death like the reaper.

Coffee and donuts. [unfinshed end]

Luce

Tuesday. 3:32 a.m.

Brian's phone rings; the display flashes a San Francisco number. Not a familiar one. Someone, apparently, is skilled at finding every last living pay phone in the city.

Brian Hayes

It took several rings for Brian to answer the last time his cell phone rang at some ungodly hour of the night, but it had been New Year's Eve, and he had been otherwise occupied. When he answered, there was a party blaring in the background. When he answers tonight, there is expectant silence, the pause of a man who has just been dragged from sleep and is not oriented to place or time yet, before he groans and manages to produce speech.

"Agent Hayes," he says, his throat gravelly with several hours' disuse.

Luce

"Agent Hayes," a woman's voice. She cannot be familiar enough that he might know her voice in his ear, attenuated by distance, by a cellular connection and phone lines. There's noise in the intermediate distance, the low throb of a bass. That, however, is mediated by a wall. Echoed voices, the sort that ring off tile. A bar somewhere, near the back. Close to the bathrooms.

"I did not mean to wake you." A sharply drawn breath. Her voice floats away from the mouthpiece of the phone. " - you should give me another number. One you need not answer in the middle of the night."

Brian Hayes

"... Luce?"

She can hear him inhale, deeply, perhaps propelling himself up on an elbow to turn on a bedside lamp, resigning himself to wakefulness.

"No, no, it's fine, my alarm's going off soon anyway." A beat. "Unless you're calling for no reason, then it's not fine. What's..." A pause. He's scrubbing his face, bidding himself wake up. "What's going on?"

Luce

She makes some noise of affirmation in the back of her throat. So the voice is not immediately familiar; who else in San Francisco would call him at this hour. With that voice.

Then a pause; this feels sharp. Poised as she makes some decision. Her breath comes in a rush of static against the mouthpiece. "Someone followed me tonight. I - " her voice thins as she pulls away from the mouthpiece. " - in a bookstore. Acted like he was hitting on me. Insisted on buying my book. But it was more than that.

"I think he's one of them. I gave him a phone number. He called. He wants to meet tomorrow night."

Brian Hayes

"Okay."

If he wants to know what led to the someone hitting on her, what she was doing in a bookstore so late that she is calling him at three o'clock in the morning, what led to this improbable occurrence, well, occurring, the part of him that is incorrigibly a father remains silent.

This is his work cell phone, after all, not his personal cell phone. It sleeps in the bathroom of the hotel room where he is staying while he tries to find an apartment that the requisitions department will not burst a blood vessel attempting to finance. She does not have that number.

"What time?" he asks, and then: "Did you get his name?"

Luce

"Alex. That's all." Her voice is spare; the throb of the beat has changed, from insistent to desultory, but it is still there in the background, the noise pushing itself through the connection. "9:00 p.m., tomorrow. This café in the Mission.

In a moment, her voice resolves, her mouth returns to the receiver. "He paid with cash. Otherwise I would've snagged the receipt. I don't - " That sharp, interstitial interruption of her voice; as if she were holding something back; or forcing herself to move forward.

"I don't think you should get involved." Her voice is lower, then. There's less girl to it. She's clear on that point, all low and in a rush. "But if you want to, I'll be at the ice rink in front of Macy's at Union Square. 7:30.

"I need to go. I need to get out of here." The throbbing bass has stopped; the screech of feedback in the distance replaces it. "I shouldn't've called you. I half-hope you won't be there."

Then the receive clatters onto the box; there's a moment when he can hear the bartender calling LAST CALL. LAST CALL FOR AL CO HOL. before the handset slips home and the line goes dead.

Brian Hayes

"L--"

But she hangs up, and he hears the severance of the connection, and pulls the phone away from his ear to peer at the display to confirm that she has, in fact, hung up. She's gone, and he could go into his call log and retrieve the number of the payphone from which she rang him, and call her back. Brian does not do this. What Brian has is a time, a location, and a 90%-full progress bar in finding Darryl Pennington and his compadres.

He also has a half-missive not to show up.

"Christ," he says, and lays back down to sleep for another fifty-five minutes before his alarm screams to wake him up.

----------

He's there, at Macy's, at 7:27 the next night. This may possibly be the stupidest thing he's done in the last three months, but he is there.

Luce

He will find her sitting on the spine of a park bench, her feet planted on the seat. There's that youthful insouciance to her posture - that bonelessness, as she leans forward, forearms elbows planted on her thighs, a messenger bag tucked beneath her booted feet. The night is bright and cool, the suggestion of the moon lost in the fog that has rolled up from the bay and begun to embrace the streets, creeping on slow feet through the darkening streets. The Christmas crowds are gone; a certain austerity lingers in their wake. The big Macy's seems nearly denuded without its mantle of Christmas lights, and the ice rink will not stay open much longer.

There's a cool, sharper feel to the ear this close to the manufactured ice; the sound of a few skaters cutting their way across the surface, that hiss-hiss of the blades against the ice.

She is dressed in something dark - dark jeans, a dark fitted jacket, military style - over an unzipped hooded sweater, a dark shade of teal, the hood splayed open across her back, and - beneath - a tiered tank in white eyelet lace, which makes. She has a book open on her lap, tucked beneath her body, and is leaning over reading in the low light, though her sharp gaze sweeps upward now and then, watching the other shoppers with a faint spillover of nervous energy evident in the movement of her heel against the worn planks of the bench. Thumpthumpthump. And again, thumpthumpthump.

Brian Hayes

Brian is not a conspicuous presence. Without any effort exerted whatsoever, without making use of cloaking devices or dampening measures, he can move through the populace without drawing attention to himself because he dresses quietly enough, because his handsomeness is a quiet sort that requires extensive study to appreciate.

When he appears tonight, his hair has been trimmed, shorn closer to his scalp than it was a week and a half past. Though he wears the near-forty years of his life in his frame, his face weather but not old, it retains a boyishness that leads to a question as to whether he is even capable of growing stubble, let alone a full beard.

He's never made the attempt. The military, and the government that employs the military, frowns upon unnecessary hair. It is unprofessional. From his black work boots to his jacket, his button-down shirt tucked and belted into a pair of sturdy jeans, he's on the clock but does not scream FED. Murmurs, perhaps, if one stops to read him. Civilians do not wear short, dark trench coats.

Hipsters do. Brian could not possibly be mistaken for a hipster.

That said, they are not in a museum, where his footfalls will echo on the marble floors. This is asphalt, and it mutes the impact of his boots until he is several feet away from her bench.

"You'll strain your eyes," he says, by way of greeting. His hands are in his pockets. His coat is unbuttoned.

Luce

"I won't," she returns, voice rich with the automatic confidence of youth. Brimming with it. As if there could be no question that anything about her, anything of hers, could ever be ruined. Still, she shuts the book with a certain snap, her index finger left inside to hold her place, her, and straightens abruptly, kicking out the bag, to tuck the book inside. Each movement fluid and thoughtless, as her eyes touch his, then drift down over his attire. The short trench, his hands in the pockets.

The light loves her features; smooths over the flared cheekbones, highlights the engaging pallor of her skin. Catches out a half-dozen shades of goldenrod and honey and amber in her hair, pulled back from her face tonight, twisted into a loose little chignon, the sort tied against its own weight.

"I'm sorry I called you so late." Her eyes are clear; her features sober. There's something searching about the look she gives him, both intent and taut. A brief, sharp little half-smile accompanies the apology. "I'm half-sorry I called you at all. I can still blow him off. The odds of him finding me again are - "

A faint, modest little shrug, her narrow shoulders rising and falling like a breath beneath the straight lines of her Napoleonic jacket. " - pretty minute." And higher than anyone thinks.

Brian Hayes

She's sorry she called him so late. Brian gives her a consolatory closed-lipped smile, the dismissal in his eyes. It's in answer to her half-smile, as though he senses the intent to speak further, and he drifts nearer to the bench, keeping his hands in his pockets and his shoulders straight. Holsters have a tendency to force the wearer to keep his posture close enough to perfect to fool a drill instructor. Something about being armed creates confidence, oftentimes false. Confidence alters the way one presents himself to the world.

When Brian looks at her, she has no inclination that he is thinking of anything but what lies immediately ahead. Whatever happened the last time they met, in the time between now and then, is out of his mind. Should she look back, she can see he is focused yet near-preternaturally aware of their surroundings. Though he looks right at her, he does not have the muddled gaze of one who is bewitched.

"Stop apologizing," he says. "If I didn't want you calling me I wouldn't have given you my card." A beat, no time for her to respond, before he continues, "Do you want me here with you, or, ah... should I hang back? We got--"

He checks his watch.

"--ninety minutes before you said he was going to show."

Luce

"Better if he only knows my face," she returns, lifting her chin, holding his gaze. Or rather, holding her own gaze steady on his face as he checks his watch. This quickly, supple little half-smile near the end of it. " - don't you think? I figure it's a fifteen minute - twenty minute drive to the café."

The book slides into her messenger bag, nearly soundlessly, and she twists the strap around and around her right hand, then pulls the weight of it up onto her lap, slipping it shut and securing the straps wrapping it.

"They teach you surveillance FBI school?" Here a grin, not a half-smile, that curls like smoke from her mouth. Never quite reaching her eyes.

Brian Hayes

If Luce had first been introduced to Brian twenty years ago, if she met him again now, the difference in his personality would be staggering. It is no wonder that his marriage is a sham, that the woman to whom he was married has no predilection to or purpose for pretending to have an interest in spending time with him, let alone pretending anymore.

His kids do not find him boring. When they see him, he is on vacation, does not have other obligations that distract him from them. He wears trainers and clothing that suits him rather than, well, suits, will play pickup basketball with his son or drink beers with his daughter.

That isn't the man that his wife knows, and that isn't he man that Luce knows, either. The man Luce is beginning to know is quiet, repressed, purposeful. It's near pathological, how intent upon his work he is.

She asks if they teach surveillance in FBI school, and he snorts, idly rubbing his lower lip with his thumb as though to brush away the beginnings of a smile.

"I was Navy intel before I joined the FBI," he says, as though he is both aware of there being potential for a joke and balking at walking right into it. "Came pre-trained." A beat. "Why?"

Luce

"I have no idea what that means," she tosses back to him, her half-smile lingering at the corners of her mouth, briefly beatific. " - but I think it was a yes."

Untwisting the straps, she lifts her messenger bag over her shoulders, slipping the strap so it bisects her torso from her right shoulder to her left hip. Adjusting the bag against her narrow frame, she slips neatly off the park bench and stands. She's wearing flats, tonight. And ordinary, opaque clothes with enough fabric that they conceal rather than reveal the sharp lines of her lithe frame. Still, the girl is an inch or two taller than he is, even without the heels that usually have her towering-tall.

"I figure. You watch from someplace. Right? When he leaves, we can see where he goes. I mean, it's a public café. I don't think he'd try anything there." Her shoulders are curved forward; there's that bright, nervous air about her again. "I suppose he might try to follow me, too. But he just seemed so arrogant. I - I mean, he didn't seem like the sort who would imagine that he might be found out, you know?"

Brian Hayes

Luce claims to have no idea what Navy intel means, and though Brian stifles an amused snort, he does not elaborate on what it is that translates to in civilian speak. He doesn't tell her that he used to know how to fly a jet, that just before he was shot down he was on a track that would have resulted in a commission and ever-expanding security clearance.

That he was swept up by another organization for which the idea of clearance is a thing of the past he does not mention, either. She has seen his aura, but it means nothing to her. That is just as well.

She figures surveillance has him watching from someplace, and Brian listens, as though her plan is novel to him. When she speaks of the arrogance of the creature who hit on her, that typical flinch of laughter leaves his sinuses, and he nods.

The man had barely reacted when faced with a vicious predator intent upon consuming more meat, yet when it was over, when it settled on him and he had no audience, Brian had let himself be human and retroactively terrified. This is not a world to which he has become acclimated, and that may spell hope for him. If there ever comes a time when he becomes numb to the horror the world is capable of producing, it is entirely possible his acceptance will owe its existence to the irreparable fracture of his sensibilities.

"Let him keep thinking that," he says, then indicates the street with a tilt of his head. "C'mon, I'll give you a lift there." Whether she chooses to stand to follow him or not, the nervous battering of her heels against the bench has stopped. She's standing. He takes the opportunity to ask: "What's your objective, here?"

Here: in luring this arrogant guy out into public, in following him, in calling Brian. Brian wants information on Pennington's whereabouts. That doesn't mean they are on the same page.

Luce

"My objective?" she gives him a sidelong look, faintly incredulous. The glance is matched by her tongue, the shadow of laughter underneath her breath. It is possible that she has never been asked such a question, and there's a substrate curl to her mouth, some living awareness of irony, there, which she breathes out all at a go as she steps into pace beside him.

Long-legged and sure, her gait, particularly when freed of the constraints usually (self)-imposed by her penchant for heels. As they walk, she tips her head back, then reaches up and snags the hood of her sweater, pulling it forward to cover her gleaming hair.

"I'd like to be safe. Here. In the city. I'd like to be able to duck into a bookstore without having one of them follow me. The first one, I could say, maybe he didn't see me. I just have to be careful, lay low a bit. The second - " here she curls her shoulders in a shrug, the movement faint, though not precisely helpless. "I can't say that anymore. You understand?"

Brian Hayes

So they start to walk, and Luce is astounded by the question that comes out of the man's mouth. He does not look the sort to ask things like what her objective is, looks as though he's more inclined to ask after the character of men who are pursuing her in bookstores and what time she believes she will be home upon leaving to meet such a creature. It is difficult to gauge his motivation in asking such a thing.

Perhaps if he had phrased the question in a manner that is not at all appropriate for public consumption, his motivation would be clearer. If he had asked whether she had any interest in keeping this particular individual alive, if he was simply here as a security blanket, it would have been clearer, maybe.

Brian has his hands in his pockets as they begin to walk across the plaza back, presumably, to where he has parked his car. His boots do not clatter against the ground, and the weapon he has concealed beneath his jacket does not jostle in its holster.

The X-5 protector is made entirely of composite material and will not trigger a metal detector. Its ammunition is caseless and made from polycarbonate, making it as invisible as the gun itself. It is fitted with a laser sight, and he has the capable of equipping the revolver with any type of ammunition he decides is suitable for the given situation. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that he could simply stun a target by sending a gas or explosive shell firing near to him, rather than hitting him in the chest or head from a distance with a hollow-point round.

This is what is going through Brian's head when he asks, though as they walk, as Luce speaks, for all the world knows he is simply asking because he has no other earthly notion of how to carry on a conversation.

"Alright," he says, and pulls his car keys from his pocket. A silence then, pregnant, as he gathers his words, but he does eventually say: "I don't know if you're going to get 'safe' anywhere other than the middle of the woods, this day and age, but I can sure try. Tonight, anyway."

Luce

She has no weapons. No weapons at her back; none in her bag. Nothing that will defeat a metal detector, nothing she can use to pick off prey from a distance, or stun them into subservience. Or prick them with a jolt of electricity that might set teeth humming in their sockets. Just this lean frame, tall and narrow. Nearly fragile, and a bag full of - what? books, like as not. Or perhaps shoes - slung across her boyish torso, settled at her hip.

Her eyes are darting; this enlivened awareness of the space, the faces of those slipping by them in the ordinary stream of humanity, snatches of other lives touching theirs, the elements of other conversations, which she takes in with this expansive but liminal sense of space as they walk. The jingle of car keys draw her gaze back to him. Our here on the sidewalk, her eyes are darker, somehow. She meets his gaze. Gives him this quick, darting little grin that just imprints itself on the shape of her eyes.

Maybe that's his reward for I can sure try.

Tonight, anyway has her making some noise in the back of her throat, subvocal and self-aware. Bemused, perhaps, though not at his expense. At the world's.

She circles the car, waits patiently at the passenger's door while he chirps off the alarm, then lifts her bag over her body as she opens the door and ducks inside. That grace again, that certain sense of her body's balance as she fits herself to the seat, tucking the messenger bag beneath her legs.

The silence extends. Until he has fit himself into the driver's seat and the engine hums to life. If the radio comes on, she reaches out. Turns it down to a peripheral hum of white noise, her fingers fine, gentle on the nobs, skin luminous in the dashboard glow.

"Brian." Touching him - so lightly - for emphasis. On the wrist or the thigh; whichever is closest. The touch deepens a moment, until she feels his eyes on her profile. Only then does it lift. "Can we make a deal. You and I?"

Brian Hayes

It is a rental car that he drives, or at least some sort of vehicle that is logged somewhere and for which he is responsible but that he does not own. The license plates are atypical, do not match the other plates of the other drives in the other parts of California; the fact that the word GOVERNMENT is not, in fact, punched into the metal at the center-top of the plate makes no difference. It is a sedan, it is dark gray, and it is so new that it is a wonder it does not reek of chemicals when Brian unlocks the door and opens it to let her inside.

When Luce ducks down to sit, Brian is not watching her form. His eyes, blackened by the darkness same as hers but no less attuned to their surroundings, are on the world around them instead. The door claps shut like a mouth that has decided it has nothing more to say, and he walks around the vehicle to get in, himself.

This is the same car in which they drove on New Year's [Eve] when he picked her up several miles from here, in a shitty part of town when he had been drinking and she had needed a ride. He is married, and they kissed, and yet he has made no mention of it, is not looking at her as though it would be or not be acceptable for the occurrence to repeat itself. He had not looked at her as though he wanted to kiss her that night, either, and yet.

There is no music when the engine turns over. Console lights blink on, and a seatbelt sensor chirps until it is engaged, but nothing comes blaring out of the speakers to greet them. He is reaching up to adjust the rearview mirror--people are shorter at night than they are upon awakening; gravity compresses the spaces between the vertebrae--when her fingers find his clothes, just barely exerting pressure, and Brian looks over flicker-quick, eyebrows raised in silent inquiry.

He takes a breath, registering the touch, and then she wants to make a deal.

After he clears his throat, Brian says, "Depends on the deal."

Luce

It takes her longer than most to note the seatbelt censor; to understand that that annoying little noise is insistent that she pulls the belt home across her body. But she does. And then she touches him, lightly, and then he says, Depends on the deal.

That has another half-smile chasing itself across her fine features, in this way that makes her well-made little mouth go suddenly wide. Flashes - so briefly - little white teeth behind her glossed lips. The hood she has flicked up over the crown of her head casts darker shadows across her face; bisecting the smooth line of her cheekbone, but the console lights still flare, reflect in the liquid darkness of her eyes.

"I won't ask you why you're doing this. Why you think you have to do this. Or how." She is looking away then; out through her passenger's window, staring at the city through the ghost of her own reflection, darker voids at the eyes and mouth in that moon-pale skin. Her voice sounds wistful, or - drawn somehow.

"If you don't ask me how I know what I know." The touch deepens. Not sexual, just human. Some human connection. "Or why. Will you do that for me."

Brian Hayes

One of the surest ways to ensnare the interest of one with the mind of an academic is to present an equation whose solution cannot be attained, to say with certainty that there will never be certainty. She may very well be beginning to believe that Brian has a fire lit inside of him, that for being as regimented and boring as he is there is a purpose to the things that he does, that he is driven forward in pursuit of something even if she cannot, yet, sort out what it is.

They're on similarly uneven ground, then, because he cannot figure out what she is, at all, other than unusual. In certain narratives, this would create a magnetic attraction for him, would have him yearning for her presence and becoming enthralled even without the touch of blood to his lips, but Brian is not infatuated. Even as they sit in the dark, the engine running, his eyes cast across the cabin at her, he is not staring. There is no lust in his gaze.

The way Brian looks at Luce is the way he looks at the printed word, at crafted marble, at something he can understand in a matter of seconds if he obviates other distractions. Even without distractions, though, understanding eludes him.

"And what happens if I ask?"

Johnny

[BRB]

Luce

That has her darkened eyes darting back to him; a moving gesture of her head, which pulls the soft fabric of her sweater taut against the long, curving line of her head and neck. Her eyes are still; her mouth too. Some faint curl to it tastes like regret. Bitter almonds; cigarette ashes.

She smells like cigarettes, like tobacco spiked with spices. Cinnamon or clove. She smells like Chanel No. 5 underneath it, clean and arctic, if he inhales deeply enough.

"Then you hunt them alone." That little smile lingers at the edges of her fine mouth. And she pulls back her hand, slips it across the border that is the console. Wraps the straps of her messenger bag around her fingers. "And I get hunted alone."

She looks like the printed word. Like crafted marble; her loveliness an uneasy thing, shaped rather than made, and not for men's pleasure. Too fine and too stark for ease.

"Which is it?"

Johnny

The ghost of a reflection, marred by a blur of black stepping out from behind a brick wall, on the way to disappearing before it was every really born. Just an idea. Just an intrusion on her perfect image. The bricks make the shadow jagged like tiny steps for the brief moment that it's there. Neons cover it up -- neons drown everything.

Movement outside the vehicle, deliberate movement. It isn't hidden by subterfuge or stealth, just noise, just running shoes on concrete and a long coat flapping. It's those sounds -- the wavering images -- it creates information that isn't even there. His coat is moving along with his hair, it's windy outside.

Suddenly there's a fist rapping against the window beside Luce's head, a heavy fist, the sort of fist she didn't feel when she touched Brian's hand. A face is peering into the car, eyes crystalline blue and searching. His hair is swept to one side by the wind, half of it sticking up, half of it falling down. Clean shaven. He doesn't blink or do much more than look for a few seconds, like he's on the other side of a one-way mirror.

The coat is tan, like he could be a detective. He looks too young to be a detective.

Brian Hayes

"Jesus Christ."

Brian does not flinch, if only owing to the fact that he damn well sees the tall blond man in the tan coat stepping out of the darkness and approaching the car. His figure blots out the jaundiced light from the nearby street lamp, splashes black across the windshield and onto Luce's sculpted face. That is the first time he looks away from her in several seconds, and he sounds as though he is attempting to remember what it is normal men feel when they are interrupted by their clients.

Irritation is what he's going for. A first-year theater student who has forgotten his line could have delivered the annoyance with far more conviction than he does.

"It's okay," he tells her, should she start; a hand on her upper arm is the second tier of calming her, if necessary. With Luce's window facing the sidewalk and traffic flying past Brian, he cannot beckon the young man around to his side of the vehicle.

Rubbing his lower jaw, Brian looks for a moment as though he's considering driving off. He does not.

"Alright," he says, "deal," and then rolls down the window enough to speak with the young man.

"Yes, Jonathan, what can I do for you?"

Luce

"Who is that."

Her reaction is instantaneous. Pulls her immediately and instinctually away from the window, which rattles in its track with the reverberation of Johnny's fist. There's a honed note of alarm in her voice, low and intense. A stark note of betrayal in her voice, whipslender and absolute as the lashing glance she directs at Brian.

Her visage is ghostly through the darkened window, swimming with reflected like. Dark eyes in a pale wash of a face, framed by the dark sweep of a hood whose color is lost in the deep gray shadows. Fine mouth forming a narrow line. She shifts her narrow hips in the seat, away from the glass, the question lost to a sotto voce hiss. His reassurance does nothing for her, and so when the window is rolled down, the 'parole officer' has his hand on the 'girl's' upper arm. Tension bleeding through the layers of her clothing.

There's this sinuous twist to her body in the passenger's seat. Like a mobius strip - the taut sweep of her shoulders turned protectively away from the opening window, her pale face and - in this light - huge, dark, vaguely feral eyes - lilting back, watching Johnny. Staring at him with a compressed suspicion that makes itself felt with every sharp little breath she takes.

Johnny

"Johnny," he corrects Brian, his voice sounds like generic slang, like an Italian Deli in Los Angeles. "Who's the broad?" He asks him, a light brown eyebrow lifting beneath blond hair. The sound of cars passing by creates a crescendo of a hiss, as if in answer to Luce's own reaction. The street fighting back subconsciously.

"This your wife?" He asks -- "Nah, can't be. Way too cute."

A step back from the window and he's no longer hunching, shoulders raised and back straight. Not a detective any more. Now he's a soldier.

His left arm has been hanging by his waist -- it hasn't moved.

"I broke something," he says to Brian.

Brian Hayes

His hand has not left Luce's upper arm, but it is not closed around her limb vice-like and threatening. For being as quiet as he is, everything about his demeanor and appearance suggesting that his worst-case scenario involves accusation of exercising anything other than strict professionalism, he cannot be described as cold. Remote, perhaps, but more akin to an island in the South Pacific than Antarctica.

That hand on her arm has dried tears and stopped bleeding. It can be reassuring, if he lets it. With Johnny appearing outside her window, caging her in, Brian does not realize that, to the other man, he has to look terrified.

He's trapped in a car with a monster. He does not know she is a monster; he has to suspect; subconsciously, he has to expect that when she whips around to look at him again, the betrayal in her eyes will turn him to stone.

Johnny is faced with a feral young woman too gorgeous to be Brian's wife, and his parole officer sitting wide-eyed and hypervigilant behind the wheel.

He mouths Broad? with confusion knit into his eyebrows, and does not look at Johnny's arm until he says he broke something.

"What," he asks, his words nudged by sarcasm, "your phone?" A breath, and his eyes tick to take in the appendage. He sighs the heavy sigh of a man who has spent too much time in the company of small children to vouch for his own sanity. "Alright... fuck's sake, Johnny..."

He's thinking.

Luce

The sparest sort of easing, as Johnny steps back from the window. Enough that she brings her hips below her body again, allows the sinuous curl of her spine back into something close to its native alignment. Her mouth is spare, still and set in her face, made heart-shaped by the sweep of shadows from the cross-bar of the roof and the curve of hood of her dark teal sweater. Pulled back from the crown of her head, enough to reveal more of her fine blond hair, by the recursive whip of movement in reaction to the young - detective, soldier? - man's sudden appearance.

Darkened eyes haunt his face; the search unsparing, tinctured with alarm. Take in the sudden shift of posture; that straightbacked, sharpshouldered stance as familiar to her as the blood in the back of her throat. It does nothing to reassure her.

Her gaze drops to Johnny's left hand, then darts out beyond him. Skipping over the evening's crowds, searching the shadows beyond him.

"Where is he." Her head is canted toward the window, forehead first. The searching gaze is back fixed on the man with the broken hand. Arm. Something foreign to her tone, though perhaps he cannot hear that in her voice, it deepens with the sharp edge of her anxiety. Her mouth barely moves with the words. "What sort of farce is this." Then more sharply upward, back to Johnny in a way that pulls the hood further back from the sweep of her features. "Is he watching, right now - "

Johnny

Brows crease and it's confusion. Eyes on Brian for an answer that he doesn't get any time soon, or at least not soon enough for the soldier, detective, whatever he is. The arm doesn't even lift when he steps back to half pivot and see where Luce is looking, it just hangs there limp by his waist. He doesn't even cradle it. There's no glove on his hand, just flesh. Blood drips from his sleeve to the pavement. It stinks like treachery and redemption.

"What?" Johnny asks, his head turning back to face the two of them through Luce's window. "What's she talking about, Brian?" The older man used Johnny's name, so he knows it's safe to use his. Or at least, that's how the logic works in his brain.

"Is who watching?" This directed at her. Leave Brian out of it. He doesn't know.

Brian Hayes

"It's alright," Brian says again, and he does not use her name. There is nothing where it ought to be, and it leaves a gaping hole; he does not call her 'sweetheart' or 'honey' or 'darling' or anything that might imply a connection between them, doesn't talk to her like a frightened child or a spooked horse, but her anxiety does not make sense.

In the museum, she had thought he followed her. That memory is transparent, the information left lying out for too long to be battered by the elements while he stared at it. At first he had thought she meant the creatures that were popping up like pale, flesh-eating moles across the city. Those seemed to be more of an inconvenience, though, something deadly but manageable. They were not specters.

This 'he,' though, has Brian staring at the back of her head as though he can sort out what the fuck she's talking about without having to ask questions. This 'he' makes her think she is being stalked, and it is not absurd, her paranoia. Brian mutes his appearance and it screams FBI. Johnny shows up dripping dark fluid and speaking like he has been watching too many black and white noir films, knows Brian's name.

She would have to be insane to not believe them to be following her.

Johnny keeps talking, asking questions, and Brian draws another breath.

"You know," he says, "house arrest is an option if you can't follow the terms of your parole. You'd look dashing with a tracking bracelet clamped around your ankle. Maybe I could rig it to explode if you went outside after eight o'clock."

That has to be a joke. Brian is consistent, at least: it's hard to tell if he is joking.

"We'll get someone to look at your arm, alright, just go home and wait for me."

Luce

The creature's nostrils flare; she maintains her distance from Johnny. Stays closer to Brian, the known unknown, not the young man who appears out of the darkness, broken arm dripping blood. Not even the taut-drawn stiffness of pain imprinting itself on his mouth. He's just talking, hand hanging; the blood dripping off it to spatter on the sidewalk at his feet.

She watches him stiffly, the bleeding tension in her body evident in her neck; in the molar-grinding set of her jaw. The stiffness of her shoulders. Still, while they are speaking she's moving, subtly shifting her grip on the straps of her bag, kicking it backwards so it will not tangle with her long legs should she decide to shove open that door, push past Johnny and run.

And she looks like she could run; light as she is, fine as she is, her limbs are long. She looks like she could run for miles, face to the wind, eyes narrowed against the cold bite of the evening air.

"Nevermind," to Johnny, and sharply at that. Brian's reassurance barely registering in her periphery. Just this hint that she's being pulled - faintly - in his direction her only acknowledgment. She is fiddling with the straps with her right hand, nudging her bag back with the heels of her boots, "it doesn't matter." And her, a brief, winging glance toward Brian, her eyes stark in her pale face, mouth thinly set, breathing shallow. Just enough to move her shoulders beneath her jacket. "Maybe I was wrong."

"I'm sorry." Back to Johnny, her eyes dropping to his wrist. Breathing still shallow, through the mouth rather than the nose, and tainted with alarm. "You should go to the hospital."

To Brian. "You should take him to the hospital."

And both. "I should go."

Johnny

Johnny doesn't look hurt -- impassable resistance in his face. It doesn't register and she sees it; she knows it's not there, it's not just being ignored. There's a difference between the two and she sees it. She knows it. What's more is Johnny suspects she knows it because he's looking at her more than he's listening to her. Just staring.

Brian's words though, Brian's words seem to strike him somewhere he hadn't expected because he blinks and peels his gaze off the delicate breeze in the passenger seat to stare long and hard at Brian. He wants him to just go home; he doesn't care. Why should he?

"Fuck you, Brian." Says Johnny. "Fuck your department too -- no, stay." He says to Luce, it's not coupled with a smart remark or smile. Just stay. He turns to the front of the car and walks into the road. There's cars travelling, quickly too, but he doesn't stop walking even for a second. Just slips through the gaps at a steady pace. It's all calculated. The risk ratio is acceptable.

He leaves a crimson gash in his wake.

Brian Hayes

Brian, too, knows that Johnny is not in pain. He knows there is not a compound fracture under the jacket sleeve. He knows that whatever is wrong, he cannot take care of it at the trunk of the car, and he sure as shit isn't going to take him to a hospital.

This has to be a frequent occurrence in his life. With his right hand on Luce's arm, his left on the steering wheel still, his wedding band--it shouts every time it has an audience, shouts not of his love for the woman who put it there but the fact that it's a goddamn lie, that it's for show, because the man has nothing else about him that indicates he is capable of feeling anything for another human being--is occluded.

This is reminiscent of arguments he had with his daughter when she was growing up, before she realized that her asshole of a father was not actually a robot. She could say whatever she wanted to him and he would not react.

The words that come out of Johnny's mouth do not evoke an outward response, but they are the same damn ones his daughter used to throw at him, fuck you Brian, her disrespect as manufactured as his callousness. The young man walks off, leaving blood and anger in his wake, and it isn't unless Luce looks back quickly at him that she can see he looks disgusted.

It's with himself, not with Johnny, but good luck with that distinction.

"Shit," he says, taking his left hand off the wheel and swiping it down his face. His right hand leaves her arm to turn off the engine and undo his seatbelt. He's rushing. "Luce, I am so sorry, I gotta--"

Johnny

[NAH BRIAN JOHNNY IS GONESKIES]

Brian Hayes

[THAT'S WHAT YOU THINK ASSHOLE]

Luce

And that reaction; that sudden Shit from the regimented man's mouth is the first thing that draws her out of the starched, icy immediacy of her paranoia. Her intense awareness of their surroundings, the shadows beyond the kid - the boy - now darting off, weaving through traffic, his blood a trail on the pavement she could follow with her senses shunted and her eyes closed. By instinct, and without thought.

How quickly her eyes change. The pinpricked pupils dilate, softening that sense of dark immediacy to her gaze. Her eyes touch his face; follow the movement of his hand over his features, drop to his right hand as he disengages the seatbelt. There's this pressed smile on her mouth. Not really a smile, wavering rather, but bracing. Meant to push him onward. There are things you have to do.

"Go." - she tells him, with this intensity that matches his rushing haste. This vibrance to it that lives in the space of his self-disgust and his need. The same place that sworn curse came from, but deeper, wider. Wide as the ocean. "I didn't mean - "

- to what is likely lost in Brian's rush. She tucks herself more deeply into the bucket seat, tracking Johnny's weave through the traffic. "There - see?" Even helpfully, as he disentangles himself from the seatbelt. Opens his door and shuts his door. Stays there, sinking into the seat as Brian braves the traffic in Johnny's bloodied wake. Follows his progress through the traffic like a corked bottle bobble on dark swells some moon-laced ocean light.

Then - when he is far enough away that he cannot hear the snick of the passenger's door, pushes it open. Slips out the other side. Nudges it gently closed, and runs the opposite way. Leaving a half-block's worth of footprints from the smear of Johnny's blood through which she tracks, and then nothing. Nothing at all.

Brian Hayes

Luce disembarks from the vehicle, imparting a hug upon the still figure that remains behind the steering wheel with little more than a tensing of musculature at the contact and a wry glance over his shoulder at the pop of the door's latch and the rush of cool night air into the backseat, and Brian cracks the window if only so he can help the rental car to purge its air of the lingering ghosts of clove cigarettes.

It will do no good. The stench, though brief, will linger long after the burgeoning trust the superstitionalist populace has in him has scattered as pellets from a discharged shotgun. With no intent beyond this evening other than to track the difficult-to-track creatures that are suffusing this girl's heart with such fear, tearing flesh from the skeletons of the living and skulking in the shadows like labyrinth-dwelling beasts born from a long-dead mythos, he just sits back and watches the coffee house through the plexiglas.

Truth be told, he cannot remember ever actually smoking a cigarette in his life. He tries, but there are parts of his life that seem flat compared to others. If there was ever a time when he harbored an addiction to anything other than his work, it seems to have been repaired, spackled and repainted, so that it stands out only if one knows where to look. Brian does not know where to look, but he cannot remember when or why he began wearing a nicotine patch.

Like everything else, though, it is a habit.

Without taking his eyes from the scene before him, Brian slithers his cell phone from its holster and rests it on his thigh so he will feel it if it vibrates. The ringer has been silenced. His doors lock with a choking sound, and he waits.

Brian Hayes

[Perc + Alertness DON'T LAUGH]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 5) ( botch x 1 )

sigh

[NIPPLE BOTCH]

Brian Hayes

[I FORGOT HE HAD A BOOSTER HANG ON ROLLING ARETE]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Brian Hayes

[I CAN'T REMEMBER IF THAT IS +SUCCESSES DICE TO ALERTNESS POOL OR WHAT AND MY PDF IS 400 FEET AWAY SHIT]

Brian Hayes

[OKAY ROLLING ANOTHER 2 DICE PLEASE DO NOT FUCK THIS UP BRIAN]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Luce

(Sneak!)

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )

Luce

Toreadors do it better. Dif -2 for heightened senses.

Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (3, 4, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 4 )

Luce

Watching.

The streets are damp tonight, from an earlier shower. The sky is cool and gray above the orange haze of the city's native glow. There's something softened at the corners, the first hint of mist coalescing beneath the streetlights. Given them a certain irridescent corona still somehow dirty with the shedding light. The lights from the coffee house - with its big picture windows and its smokers' patio outside - are big, flaring.

In the day those windows would make a show of the sidewalk, letting someone ensconsced in the corner booth curl up and watch ever businessman, every dealer, every prostitute, every street musician, every hustler and every street kid who might happen by over the edge of a book or the plastic lip of a tablet or laptop. Night, is entirely otherwise. The crowd inside so clear through the picture windows, the light blasting, brilliant. Like some sort of fission, some new source of energy.

He has the street sounds, the back and forth between the smokers huddling together against the cool night air, the wash of rain over tires and tires over asphalt. The low roar of a souped-up engine somewhere close as accompaniement, though the people inside look - like puppets, somehow. Like shadows on some paper stage, without voices to make them whole.

She cuts through the knot at the door, turns back to respond to something someone's said to her; a brief, razor brilliance of a smile cast in shadow by her position. Then she turns, casts a sharp look right down the line of the street, steps aside as a couple pushes the interior doors open. This half-frown, and a moment's consideration has her digging into that chic little clutch for some change.

She slips away from the door, somewhat out of the light, and tosses something into the upturned baseball cap of a homeless man slumped between the coffee shop and the tattoo parlor next door. A man so easily overlooked that Brian had not seen him before. Then slips back to the door, pausing long enough to drop her cigarette to the ground. It flares as it falls, then gutters in the puddle by the front door.

There is this small pause just inside that warm, bright space; then a stranger in that corner booth stands up. He's tall; wearing jeans and a blazer over a t-shirt, with a shock of dark hair long enough that he might have a part-time gig posing for romance-novel covers.

She walks toward him; slipping neatly through the crowded tables, her sequined top scattering diamonds of smoke-blue light all around her as she moves.

Even in her heels, he matches her height. When she's close, he reaches for her as if he meant to hug her. She takes his hands instead, clasping them in her own and holding them away from her body. He extricates, reaches for her cheek and jaw, meets with a moment's sharp, tense resistence -

- before she gives, and he bends to brush a faint kiss along the line of her cheekbone. Then, only then, does he pull out her chair - and, reaching down, brushes that fine little strap that has slipped down her shoulder right back up again, as she takes the seat.

A truck washes past; this running noise, the axles, the friction of the tires against the asphalt. It cuts off his view for a stutterstep moment. When it is past, the pair of them are sitting; a waitress leaning over the table to take their orders.

And the homeless man is gone, though the hat remains.

Brian Hayes

Brian is not a genius. What little he manages to accomplish in the way of feats of mental prowess, he is able to accomplish through sheer force of will, it seems, or advancements in science that provide him advantages that he would not have had had he remained in the civilian populace. To say that he has a slew of common sense and street knowledge would be a goddamned lie. Anyone who is able to do anything with a computer could look up his service record, could find traces of his existence on the Internet and in publications from small town newspapers.

He is not a genius, but his eyes brought the presence of a seemingly homeless man outside the cafe into his cognizance, and a moment after the Mack truck has blown past, the man is not there any longer. Though Brian's eyes were watching the interaction between the willowy Luce and the long-haired 'Alex,' his instinct drags his eyes back to the abandoned cap on the sidewalk.

For reasons he could not explain in front of a jury of his peers, Brian draws an uneasy breath and sits up straighter in the driver's seat. With the seatbelt still drawn tight across his lap, he cannot move as easily. His right hand reaches down to undo the harness.

Brian Hayes

[Perc + Alert + Booster, -1 diff because reasons]

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 5, 7) ( success x 2 )

Luce

There street's chaotic. Some patrons are leaving the café and wandering off in pursuit of slightly more exotic pleasures tonight. Others are just leaving, cutting sharply as they jaywalk across the street. This open band of laughter unbends from the group of smokers at the door, arrives at Brian's cracked window in waves, imperfectly rendered echoes. Strange snippets of conversation.

Inside, Luce and Alex are - flirting. He's heavy handed; that arrogance she mentioned. Sitting too close, reaching for her while she holds herself apart, permitting some of it, pulling back from other assertions with a cool, gleaming sort of smile that says she has dealt with all this before. Not unlike a thousand other awkward first dates starting somewhere in the city.

Then the truck, and the man - gone. The baseball cap left behind. Brian notices this before the knot of kids at the door of the coffee shop. Though one notices quickly, laughing, goes and retrieves the baseball cap. Brian's attention slips from the couple in the shop uneasily, maybe touches on the kid picking up the baseball cap when - there - cutting across the street some twenty feet away, a man in dirty blue coveralls flares briefly too-bright in the sweeping lights of a passing car. He's shaking off something bulky - an old coat? - when the car slams on its breaks.

It nearly hits him. Comes to within a handful of inches of his shins and he turns, washed out features contorting with anger as the couple in the front seat are just beginning to unfreeze from that moment of implacable horror - that awareness that they were this close to killing someone.

His fist contracts. Brian is perhaps the only person looking directly at the plumber (the 'plumber') in just that moment. There's this terrible, sharpened moment where Brian might well be convinced that this stranger is going to slam himself forward into the hood of that car and -

- but no. He masters himself, the plumber, jaw grindingly set and pulls that arm back to himself. The oversized coat is gone, left behind on the pavement. The plumber cuts a diagonal toward the van parked in front of Brian's car.

Brian Hayes

Though he watches, unblinking, Brian does nothing to intervene. This is not the call that he has to answer, is not the reality that concerns him, yet his attention does not remain on Luce interminably because for once, for now, he has faith. What little faith he does have is based on fallacy, perhaps, one of the first of the fallacies being that he can trust a creature he has never met before not to attack the other woman in front of a few dozen people.

It is not until he watches the 'plumber' run out into traffic and nearly punch the hood of an oncoming car that a flickering of Christmas Eve eve comes to him. The presence of several hundred witnesses had not stopped his current target from attacking a teenage boy, from frightening Luce to the point that she did not want the short yet solid federal agent going anywhere near him.

(The notion that his employment is a lie will be shattered in a few weeks when his family name and his title are splashed across the evening news like blood from a severed artery. Tonight, there is still doubt.

Johnny sure as hell didn't help.)

He does not choose to split his attention between the man who is approaching the vehicle directly in front of his own. What he does is watch the other man until he reaches the van, then look back across the street at the coffee house. Should the activity within the warm yet dimly lit cafe be as-was, the 'plumber' is a closer and more immediate danger. He gets Brian's attention.

Luce

The plumber reaches the driver's side of the van; steps on the running board and leans inward, bends over rooting around for something; or tossing something. Brian has a vantage point on the man's legs, the coveralls damp from the wet street and no more.

Then he jumps back down with a solid thunk, now holding one of those blowtorches Brian himself might've used, once. Early in his marriage, fumbling through an instruction booklet on how to unfreeze the pipes, or how to fix solder on the S-joint of the complex of pipes beneath the bathroom vanity.

He slips the torch into place on a brown utility belt he pulls out and begins wrapping around his waist, then slams the driver's door shut with a solid enough thunk that it sends the old van rocking. Circles back to the back doors. Squeezes between Brian's car and the van proper and opens the back doors. It is dark inside, a smear of something on the upholstery near the tailgate that could be oil. Though if the Agent in the rental car behind were to imagine something else, he would not be mistaken.

The plumber shoots a careful look over his shoulder, frowning at the streetscape over the roof of Brian's nondescript sedan. Which is apparently too pedestrian to catch the man's attention, since he narrows eyes on this muscle car parked down the block. There are tools inside. Though they are more of the bludgeoning variety; a sledghammer. An old, rusting shovel. A pair of ladders have been tossed haphazardly into the interior, and Brian can see - if he strains - another pair of plumber's coveralls, stiff with dried blood, too ruined to be of use, tucked admist the detritus inside.

The man picks up a claw-handled hammer, and a large wrench, and slips them into the loops of his workbelt as well. Grabs something else - metallic - and tucks them into a side pocket of his coveralls, then shuts the doors firmly. Looks up, frowning over at the coffee shop, where things continue apace. Where Alex, sitting closer - is briefly pulled away as a waitress returns to their table with all the regalia of real tea, which she procedes to set in front of Luce with a certain ceremony.

Brian Hayes

Without the aid of sensory dampeners, without cloaking devices or true cover of darkness to shield him from onlookers, Brian manages to remain unseen by the man moving about at the back of the van. There is enough of a buffer between their bumpers that the plumber can throw open his back doors and rummage around, but not such that Brian cannot glimpse a disarray that speaks of violence.

That is not oil. None of it is oil. Plumbers do not deal much with artificial lubricants, nor is there any reason why he ought to be wielding a sledgehammer, a shovel. In the driver's seat, Brian slides down lower, as though he can make himself invisible by ducking his shoulders lower than the steering wheel.

Shit. Shit shit shit.

He picks up his cell phone, flipping it open to thumb through his recent calls. The odds of one of them belonging to a dedicated mobile number instead of a pay phone on some corner miles away are slim, yet he finds the one that correlates with the last parlay he'd had with Luce and hits SEND, holding the phone to his ear as he remains hunkered down.

The window is still cracked. If he winds it back up, the motor will make a noise. His voice, likewise, will make noise. Brian waits for an answer to come across the connection, keeping his gaze on the man in front of him; he mouths the sequence of numbers and letters stamped into the license plate to commit it to memory.

Luce

People see what they need to see. The plumber is looking for a biker gang or a mystic; someone that strikes him as having solid threat potential. An ordinary man in an ordinary car on an ordinary street. The plumber frowns down at his reflection is Brian's windshield as the agent flips through his cell phone; circles to the driver's side and taps lightly on the window.

"Hey." There is a bit of a drawl to the man's voice. " - dude in front's got me blocked in. Gotta make a U-turn here in a few. Get the equipment back in the van. You mind backing up a few feet to let me get around ?"

His face a smear in the driver's window. Lingering for just a minute longer, long enough for a yea from Brian before walking toward the driver's side of the van.

--

The phone rings. Rings. Then someone answers, "Harry's Meat Market, what's your beef?" - someone with a New York accent announces into the phone. "Knock it off, Larry!" - from a few feet away, beneath the throbbing bass. "Uh, yeah, anyway. Gumby's! Can I help you?"

Brian Hayes

"Sorry, man, wrong number."

Brian claps his phone closed, silently cursing Luce for her overly judicious caution, and cranks the key in the ignition. The engine turns over, and the console lights awaken; he sits up straight again, already having indicated to the plumber that he would move his damn car, and starts to buckle his belt when the Corolla's sensor chirps at him to do so. It will not stop chirping unless he complies.

The average person will not comply unless it is to cease an annoyance.

It is that dinging reminder that he needs to keep himself safe in the event of a collision that, somehow, has Brian doing the opposite. He checks oncoming traffic, then throws open the driver's side door and steps out of the vehicle. When he approaches the plumber--stopping beyond arm's or hammer's reach--he does so with his hands on his hips, exposing the badge clipped to his hip.

"Yeah, hey, about that equipment..."

Luce

The plumber is standing by the driver's door, waiting. Frowning. Brian climbs out of his Corolla, into the street. The asphalt is damp beneath his feet, and he walks up alongside the van, paint peeling back from its frame here and there. The logo, he'll notice then, in his peripheral vision, with one part of his engaged brain, is spray-painted on and the world plumbing is misspelled as plumping for god's sake.

Miller + Son's Plumping the sign reads.

The man in coveralls is jangling keys, distracted, frowning over at the coffee shop when Brian calls out to him. He turns around, gives Brian this frown that as him flicking a look downwards, stiffening when he sees the badge.

"Shit, dude. I didn't actually mean I was going to do a Uie. I was gonna go around the block - " low and gruff, that drawl. Then, the moment when the mention of equipment registers, a deepening of his frown; another brief glance across the street. " - equipment? There a problem, officer?"

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Brian Hayes

In the dark, it is difficult to make out the department responsible for the badge, whether he is a state trooper or a city police officer or--worse than both of those--a federal agent, yet its matted gleam in the neon luminescence betrays its authenticity. This is not a prop. Bitten down upon, it would threaten to crack an eyetooth.

"I dunno," he says, staying by his own bumper and maintaining that air of authoritative nonchalance. It's a farce. If the guy moves too quickly, he will either have a gun drawn on him or an aging man with the build of a former and successful athlete tackling him to the ground. "Got a bit of a mess in the back of your van, there. Is there a problem?"

Luce

"Jack of all trades, I am." The plumber returns, with the sort of grin that is meant to be winning. Or ingratiating. The sort poor assholes give to cops. Instead, it just comes off looking pained, as if the muscles he was putting into use had not had such use for months. Years. A fucking lifetime. "Fucking economy. Do some landscaping down at the - arborterrarium."

He has his hands up now, framing his body. The incongruous tools - the hammer, the massive wrench, the blowtorch - swing from his workman's belt as he moves. "Listen, I don't want no trouble. Just trying to finish a job. You know how it is."

--

Inside the coffee shop - movement. Another couple comes out into the cool night air, two men arm in arm. The long-haired Alex is now leaning back in the corner booth, alone, toying with the regalia of the tea. The tea ball and strainer, the teapot, the saucer and spoon and - while the girl winds her way back toward the lady's room. Phone in hand. Alex is squinting, trying to see out through the glass, darkened by the glare of the interior lights.

Brian's phone vibrates with a text. Problem? - from an unfamiliar number with a New York City area code.

Brian Hayes

He left his phone on the seat. Its already-muffled rattle is swallowed by the closed car door, by traffic, by the conversation he is having with the plumber. As he is given not one but three bullshit explanations for the blood, Brian's face remains immobile.

"So you don't mind if I take a look, then?" he asks, as though the guy has a choice. If it is mud, or oil, or anything that might have been caused by landscaping, surely he won't protest. If he is either Miller or Son, surely he cannot be a proud man, driving around the city with a misspelled advertisement as he is.

Luce

The plumber looks up, past Brian's shoulder. Across the street. There's that expression. That crushing burden of sudden - deep, abiding, inhuman - anger crushing across his face. Hands fist at the minds side and then deliberately uncurl. One finger at a time.

"I do mind." The plumber grits out. Scowling at the copy. "I got a job. I'll move the fucking van if its in the way - " still finger his keys. "But for the rest, you got a fucking warrant."

After

Luce

There's this strange silence in the aftermath of the sudden burst of violence. The city's ambient hum slowly impresses itself on the shell of quiet. First a siren, distant enough and lonely enough and immediate enough that it can't have been already dispatched. Not even if the mayor's grandmother was frantically dialing 911 in the corner tenement.

"Where are you parked." Luce asks, in that silence, through gritted teeth. She has buttoned up her dark coat to conceal the worst of the damage to her narrow frame, but walks with that slow, centered caution of the wounded in his shadow, refusing to stay behind even if he offers to 'bring the car around.' Maybe she does not trust herself with the man collapsed, wounded, bleeding in the middle of the street. Maybe she is concerned that there are more of them, somewhere close. The calvary come to wreak vengeance since they cannot relieve their comrades.

She says nothing more during the walk; watches with huge, dark, silent eyes as he opens the doors. Levers herself, gingerly, into the passenger's seat with a sharp stream of exhaled air, holding her narrow frame otherwise entirely still. Eyes closed as he takes the driver's side and the city lurches into motion around them. Still and silent as if he stops back in front of the strip club to clean up whatever he can and will before some dispatcher, somewhere, takes pity on the immigrant grandmother in the corner apartment and sends a patrolman to investigate her report of gunfire, an hour or three later.

Serge Carlock

The clean up itself was quick and efficient, anything incriminating had been picked up and dumped in the back of the blacked out black cadillac. Despite her pain, Luce would find herself rather comfortable in the plush leather interior of the older vehicle, and thankfully she would not be bleeding all over that fine interior. She might watch Serge for a few moments through the windows as he works thoroughly and efficiently until he deems it suitable to leave. With that point reached, he steps back into the vehicle and drives.

They leave the local neighbourhood in silence, Serge driving onward towards the edge of the tenderloin itself with a careful and watchful gaze to and fro about the neighbourhood as he drove, carefully watching for signs of pursuit, which thankfully there is none. When they come to a quiet spot on the edge of the Tenderloin, a quiet stretch of industrial sprawl he stops the vehicle and looks at Luce.

"Are you ready to extract the buckshot Marie Helene?" He asks slowly, his gaze falling upon her still form.

Luce

The creature is sitting forward by then, forearms braced on her thighs, her spine defining a convex curve, the sharp delineations of her vertebrae faintly evident, even through the layers of t-shirt and hoodie and jacket. The seatbelt is pulled across her body, distended to its greatest length by the curl of her body, and then only because it was necessary to stop the insistent beeping of the car's demanding electronics.

When they pull to a stop, she sits up as if she were surfacing from some great depths, blinks as she turns in a slow survey of the deserted industrial neighborhood. Her features are largely hidden by the deep hood pulled forward over her golden hair, but she lifts her chin, then, pushing it back as she reaches between them, depressing the latch and allowing the lap belt to reel itself back across her body.

Her pale eyes are dark, brightened by the reflection of the dashboard lights, only just. She shakes her head no and gives him a taut, wan half-smile. More tooth than lip, that - though the teeth are dull and human, thank whatever gods you will. "No." That wan smile quickens, briefly, around the word. "Though there's not much choice, is there. Will you give me a hand." And she holds out her left wrist, so that he can grab the cuff of her jacket and help her peel it off her body, without much help from her presently useless of right arm.

Serge Carlock

Serge nods, taking a moment to look at her clothing, and almost seems of the mind to simply cut it off rather then enforcing any kind of pain inducing situation by its slow and casual removal, the clothing was after all...already ruined. But she seemed insistent on the removal in that way, to peel it from her rather then to cut it off and so he slides over and moves to assist her with the removal.

"I have medical tools in the trunk...if you give me a moment once we have your wound clear. we can use them, instead of our fingers to remove the shot." He suggests as he brings the jacket to the point where he knows any further will hurt.

He looks Luce in the eyes, or at least where he assumed her eyes were at this point and indicated to the jacket. "On three.." He said calmly before starting a slow count.

"one.....two....three." At that point he quickly removed the coat the rest of the way, stripping it from her form as quickly as possible.

Luce

When he seeks her eyes, he finds them. She looks at him with a raw directness, the sort that might pass for trust in their world. Or, more likely - recklessness. Her own gaze is steady through the pain, which she seems intent on swallowing, on holding somewhere in the core of her body.

Until, of course, he makes it to three. She isn't a soldier. Just a monster, and she makes a sharp, clear, strangled noise as she lifts her right arm far enough for Serge to pull the her coat off her body. The process has to be repeated with the cheap cotton hoodie underneath, though this time she asks him to hold the waistband first as she unzips it, before peeling it off. Underneath, she's wearing a thin cotton t-shirt, vaguely pink, with I Eat Vegans in dark fushia lettering. And holds at the shoulder and flank. The latter clean - his stray shot, through and through - the former an ugly scatter of buckshot, blood and bone.

The clothes were the only thing giving her narrow frame bulk. She is a slight, stark thing, hunger haunted and still. And still breathing, as if it mattered.

He has medical tools in the trunk, he tells her. This time, her smile is close-mouthed, tight. It does not reach her eyes, which glitter faintly in the dark, but it lingers at the corners of her mouth.

"You're quite prepared, aren't you." Sharply exhaled at the end. "For every eventuality. I think that would be best. Thank you."

Serge Carlock

"I find it best to be prepared, in particular for damages that might be taken by myself or others." He offers simply as he takes in Luces form, almost surprised by the sheer...lack of her. She was barely there, almost emaciated in her existence, and somehow that was not apparent when she wore dresses or anything more fanciful, it was only here in the stark, harsh reality of their situation that it became apparent.

He unlocked the car doors then and stepped from the vehicle, giving Luce time with her thoughts, and her pain as he moved to the trunk and unlocked it with a heavy thud of metal. It would be several moments before Serge returned with a small, but comprehensive first aid kit. In his hands was the most pertinent piece of equipment, a pair of needle nose medical pilers, specifically designed to remove bullets and bullet fragments.

He slid within the cab of the car once more, closing the door so as to muffle the sound that would surely escape Luces lips soon and set down the kit. "I am certain that you are not prepared for this." He said as he held up the pliers and turned on the cars interior lights so that he could see better.

"But the sooner we accomplish this...the sooner you can heal."

Luce

Jacket and hoodie are discarded in the backseat. The car rocks faintly as Serge climbs out of the driver's side, and again as he gathers his supplies from the trunk. Were he to glance up, he might see her moving, sharply at certain points, turning in the passenger's seat to stare out of the window at the dim corridors of the old industrial neighborhood.

When he returns, switches on the overhead lights, sorting through the medical pliers from the kit in his truck, she has removed the t-shirt as well. Pulled it, half-torn, from the narrow definition of her torso. She has a model's spare frame, not a pin-up's - so there, the lone tapered line of her pale back, the pinpointed definition of her elegant spine, the curl of her ribs, the sharp wings of her scapulae all have the immediate physical elegance of one of the old master's sculptures, as if she had been hewn out of marble rather than born of flesh. Except for the ragged lines of her blood-laced though not bleeding wounds.

She is nude from the waist up, then. Hair coiled at the base of her neck beginning to come undone. Though some instinct toward modesty has her covering her small breasts with her left forearm, abducted across her body. When he climbs back into the front seat, turns on the stark wash of the overhead light, she shoots him a dark, unreadable glance over the curve of her (uninjured) left shoulder. Mouth just open, breathing soft and inhumanly steady.

"I know." She affirms; this sharp little lift of her chin in his direction. Another taut twist of her mouth by way of acknowledgment. "Do you need - " Her eyes drop from his face to the medical pliers; she loses the train of her thought and her eyes and mouth go still. Then, a sweeping glance upward. "I'll try not to scream. Which way should I face?"

Serge Carlock

Perhaps thankfully, when Serge climbs back into the front seat of his car he regards Marie Helene with no more interest then that of someone who doing what was necessary, in this case, prying chunks of metal from a fellow. He did not stare at her body, did not try to sneak a glimpse at her breasts. Though wether this is due to an overt use of willpower is unknowable unless she seeks to divine more from his neutral gaze then he lets on.

She gives him an unknowable look, he raises a brow ever so briefly, meeting her gaze as she continued to breath, Serge for his part, had given up on such pretences, his gaze stark and unmoving, his breathing having fallen still, the only thing remaining was a gentle warmth to his skin, the last remaining vestiges of blood he had pushed to the surface to warm him...just incase.

"Relax your neck as much as possible...and remain looking forward. A natural posture will aid the removal." He says as he brings up the pliers and considers something for a few moments and reaches into the medical pack and pulls out a medical mouth guard...sealed and contained he strips it out of its packaging, offering it to her.

"If you would prefer...if not...we should begin, I apologize...I am not the most...skilled of surgeons." He said as he leaned in close, and put the pliers to the wound of her arm.

Luce

Luce keeps her chin high, this regal posture made taut by her evident pain. The stark flare of tendons in her neck; the clear contraction of her right arm, curled against her body, the patent tension in the long curve of her trapezius, the sharp cut of her clavicle, forward, the ugly, raw scattering of buck shot in her dead flesh.

The overhead light has her pupils contracting, but her usually pale eyes are still darker, somehow - that withheld emotion; the force of will it takes to hold herself still, against the pain. Or perhaps, worse - the vulnerability.

Relax your neck he tells her, and she flicks him a look. Mouth curls - so briefly - wry. "Okay," she says through that, the irony seeping into her tone is so faint, and mostly substrate. Her eyes drop from his as he goes seeking the mouthguard in his medical kit, a lifting look of query a moment later as he offers it to her, confusion evident until he shows her the shape of the mouthguard and she mouths "Oh," without voicing it. Reaching out with her left arm to take it and slip the guard into her mouth.

Whatever resolution she made to follow his directions - relax your neck - disappears with the cold touch of the pliers against her skin. Which is warm enough it feels almost human. She tenses up, unthinkingly, and reaches out to brace her left hand against the arm rest, long fingers curling into the leather. Modesty, it seems, forgotten. The soft swell of her breasts - on an otherwise boyish, narrow frame - rising and falling, just so, with each breath she takes. Perhaps she's simply reassured by his spare efficiency. His refusal to allow his gaze to stray from the work at hand.

He begins to apologize, offers this explanation about his lack of skill. She's quiet, mouth fixed around the guard, but she gives him a sharp shake of her head meant to cut off the explanation. The need for an apology. Or absolve him before it begins.

Serge Carlock

Serge kept his gaze from her small but pert bosom, even as her hand fell to the arm rest, seeking succour from the pain in the grip the sturdy construct would give her. There is a slight downturn of his lips as her body tenses with the cold feel of surgical steel against her warm flesh and he shakes his head ever so slightly, not that it would be easy for anyone to resist, to remain relaxed. Such things were for hero's, warriors, or for those so damaged that pain was a thing of the past.

She shook her head, no longer able to speak, cutting him off and as she does Serge pursed his lips momentarily, the ice grey gaze of his eyes taking in the woman with a moments curiosity, the scar tissue on his left cheek twitching momentarily before he nodded.

"Then let us begin." He said as he took hold of her shoulder with his one free hand...and sank the business end of the pliers into her flesh, beginning the painful task of removing the invasive shards of buck shot.

[Dex+Medicine]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1

Luce

Willpower

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 6) ( fail )

Luce

There's something grotesque about it all, stark and clinical in the deep shadows cast by the overhead light in the front seat. The sounds of the city are cut off, windows closed, doors locked. Just the faint murmur of traffic on some thoroughfare in the middle distance insinuates itself as an ambient hum in the air. He begins the tedious painful work of fishing the buckshot from the mangled wound on her shoulder; she closes her eyes, bracing herself more tightly as the pliers invade the wound.

- and then she begins to shake, this low-level tremor that opens from somewhere in the middle of her spine. Quite against her will. She bites down, hard, on the mouthguard, grinding her teeth together as if she could somehow stop the tremors by contracting every muscle in her body. Then she makes a soft cry that resolves itself into a gasp of pain, sharply indrawn.

They don't stop, the noises, not when her eyes fly open, staring starkly over his shoulder. NOt when she screws them shut again. Not when she wills herself to close her mouth and not open it through the count of ten. She throws her head back, so the crowd of her pale head is braced against the headrest. Each breath comes in sharp little contractions. "I'm sorry - " she manages to gasp out, head back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Blood at the corners of her eyes, welling but not yet falling. "I can't stop. Please keep going."

Willpower again!

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 8) ( success x 1 )