Participants:
Scene Title | Cheap Shot |
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Synopsis | Defenestration, psychopaths, bikes, brains, shootouts, clandestine dealings, a lot of bleeding, and Deckard punches Abby in the face. Not necessarily in that order. |
Date | November 21, 2008 |
East Harlem was and is still referred to as 'Spanish Harlem' or 'El Barrio'; a majority of its population is of Hispanic descent, especially originating from Puerto Rico. It also includes immigrants from around the world. East Harlem is no longer quite the low-income neighborhood it once was, due to the increase in housing prices across the board, but it remains one of the neighborhoods where making ends meet is merely difficult instead of impossible — in an economic sense.
The neighborhood is plagued by other problems. Although mostly unaffected by the explosion, the influx of refugees to East Harlem has compounded the issues present previously. Fresh foods, produce and meats alike, are scarce and expensive. Crimes of all sorts, from theft assault, are frequent; drug trafficking and use is extremely widespread.
Night. Night, in Spanish Harlem. A pretty quiet night, and so the putt putt of the ugly scooter and it's bluet helmeted rider can be heard along the streets easy. Too much coffee and not enough expending energy makes for a twitchy Abby and a need to just ride, ride, ride. So arms tucked in, down the street she goes, keeping within the speed limit, and save for the helmet and stripe of her jacket, she blends in with the night.
Flint Deckard is not an inconspicuous man. There's just something about his gangling state of scruffy indifference to the world that broadcasts his status as a crime statistic. Even with the collar of his overcoat turned up high about his ears and his hands tucked into his pockets, he isn't difficult to pick out in Spanish Harlem. For one thing, it's night time and he is wearing sunglasses. Also, he isn't…Hispanic.
He walks alone, heels dragging and progress just meandering enough to hint at his blood alcohol level as he drags along the sidewalk. There's no telling where he's headed, but it's apparently not to buy drugs. A shady looking guy in a windbreaker tries to motion him over to a non-descript Honda and gets spat at
There are no pizzas to be delivered at the moment, Magnes is off the clock and skating for fun, staying on low rooftop and jumping across wide gaps between buildings. He's unknowingly staying pretty close to Abby's scooter, but isn't thinking about much other than skating and stress relief. No terrorists tonight!
Orange had temporarily been set aside for the night, no tonight he was out on business. The RMZ-450 proving its worth in the first five minutes of the night, as it effortlessly cuts and slices through traffic. He kept back, never closer than a few blocks as he trailed Deckard. Granted, not that Deckard was really that tough of a man to follow even at distance.
Smoothly the RMZ's motor cut silent, and he slipped up onto the sidewalk where he'd finally come to a stop. Watching from the partial cover a row of vans afforded him. Normally, he didnt take quite this level of interest in someone but he was due to give Mr. Deckard what could prove to be a virtually untraceable assault rifle. Now granted there was a transmitter that nobody would find, but these jerk-offs could still make a scene before he had time to destroy them utterly from the face of the earth.
Something had to happen. It was bound to. East Harlem gets no peace at night; not for decades, and not this month. It's the calm before the storm, maybe, or some theatrical contrivance of coincidence that amounts to the same.
For a long while, there's nothing but the sedate scuff of fake hobo shoes from where Deckard's perambulating, the gassy splut-splut-splutter of Abigail's scooter chugging along the road before. A pigeon stirring in its coop, a microwave dinner dinging to finish on the eleventh floor of one of the Projects, steam seeping out of its sliced vent. It's cold out, nearly enough to snow. Don't forget to breathe.
A window shatters. The twelfth story. The bachelor moving toward his microwave stops, starts, spins, stares: sees something plummet down past his window, razor-edged glass glittering like fairy dust around a body that really, really, really can't fly. Limbs flail; gravity and panic squash the air out of lungs before a scream can reach the air and eye-whites ring around the iris, horrified at the sight of the evening sky rushing away. The stranger isn't dead until they hit the asphalt, a yard from the nose of Abby's scooter.
Her front tire goes over one shattered arm before her entire bike goes nose-up. The body once belonged to a Hispanic man, who's now unavailable to claim ownership. Twelve stories above, a white boy pokes his head out of a broken window, incredulous, before a hand snags him by the collar of his suit and hauls him back in.
There's a scream from Abigail as she goes backwards, no belt to keep her tied onto her scooter. Down on her ass, the back of her helmet thwacking against the pavement. instinct makes her roll, in the hopes that her machine won't now come down on her, but it does. Face first though, with the dead hispanic man, only the shield of plexiglass between the two of them. Now it's her whites of her eyes showing and the screams turns automatically into a scream for help and her hand goes to the mans neck. Not even checking for a pulse just screaming out a prayer "OUR FATHER WHO ARE IN HEA.." She's starting the whole refrain to see if there's a spark of life left in the man to save, trying to ignore the pain now in her ass and neck.
Christian lifts his chin immediately, dropping a gloved hand to his throat. "Control, Push EMS to my location. A man has fallen, in fact."he lifts his gaze skyward, as said whiteboy peers out to see his handiwork. Fucking newfie."Push two, theres about to be another accident."he stomps down the shorty kickstand on the swingarm, jerks the keys and smoothly crosses the street immediately. Walking swiftly and calmly towards the entrance of the building, a hand absently reaching up to unfasten his helmet and clip it around the swing of his satchel. Then in a practiced tug, he rolls said satchel around to sit across his chest rather than down his back.
Deckard was interesting you see, and Abigail was adorable in her distress but neither held a candle to Chris's sense of duty. As soon as he's inside, he jerks open his satchel's main zipper and procures from it first an AR-10 lower and the upper for it shortly thereafter. Loaded for bear, fuck yes. He shoves the push pins in place, slaps home a magazine and jerks back the charging handle before shouldering up and cooly heading for the stairs.
Oncoming from some distance on the opposite side of the Hispanic guy's flat thud and splatter, Deckard just…has to pause a moment to take it in. Ok, so. The guy fell out of a window and then a chick on some kind of scooter hit the body, and a guy talking to his hand…just walked by.
The scruffy man sniffs, swallows, and looks up at the apartment. The dim outline of two bodies are distantly visible inside for the second in which they move away from the edge. More imminently worrying is the body. He looks at it. Then at the bike. Then at the woman yelling at God for some help. "Oh, fucking…come on." It should be illegal to have luck this crappy.
Magnes hears much of what happens below, but he's very curious about where the man fell from. He hears the cries for help, but knows he'd be useless and just get in the way, the least he could do is make sure there's no one throwing people out of the window and make sure it was a suicide or something. So, despite all logic and reason, he makes a large leap to the side of the larger project building, beginning to skate up the side of the wall to try and find the broken window.
At the point where motorcycle intersects with body, there are still a few neurons firing, struggling to form the infinitesimal action potentials of life, but the sack of meat that falls across Abby's lap is merely that by the time that it does. Meat. Leaden limbs spill across her knees and the skull lolls, dripping blood and gray viscosity onto her trousers. There's a lot of him missing from the back, and a lot coming out. The parts that remain are, as before, unresponsive. But she tries.
Magnes hears voices. English, details distorted by distance and weather. A brief conversation, terse and perhaps even unhappy, a fractional instant before he reaches the gaping maw where the window had once stood.
A Spartan room meets his eyes, a dining table for one overturned, a chair in the exploded cabinet, clothes strewn, and a strange splattering of frost riming the walls. The next instant, he sees nothing: a weird brume of perfect, pitch blackness flowing past him, through him, before careening down toward the street in graceful acquiescence to gravity. Blink, and you'd miss it: a starless fragment of night is dropping out of Heaven, if that is indeed the place.
Oh god. It's repeated over and over, the prayer stopped. In fact, Abby shuts up, trying not to make any noise now as she digs into the pocket of her jacket, fingers slow to respond and try to grab her phone. Dial 911. Dial 911 dear god there's a dead man on her LAP! The little blue phone is taken out, numbers fumbled through the combination of fat fingering, and looking up towards where the man came possibly flying from. Only to see… dark. time to dial, get the cops, oh sweet Jesus. The buttons successfully pressed finally she bring the phone up to ear only to meet a thunk at it hits her helmet. Over and over abby tries, till her brain clicks in that there's a helmet between her phone and her ear.
It takes about two hundred pounds of force to force a pair of elevator doors open when an elevator doesnt want them to be, which makes this abit of a challenge even for Chris. With a grunt of effort, the big biker pries open the elevator doors and quickly kicks an ashtray between them to keep the doors from closing. Most elevators had safety devices to lock the elevator in place when the wrong door was opened. Not all, but most.
Quickly, with the elevator delt with Chris moves on. Smoothly sweeping into the stairwell to pause, and listen. Should it prove clear he begins a slow steady advance, keeping well clear of the inside of the stairwell to keep anyone above from firing down at him. Rifle sweeping the stairs as he advances upwards.
As blind to darkness as he is to light, Deckard is oblivious to the very real threat inherent in Wu-Long's descent. If he wasn't, he might think twice about hustling over to the tangle of body, brain, bike, and broad to wrap his hand around the arm of the latter. The other hand braces against her side for support when he hefts her out of the mess and onto her feet. The dead guy's arm gets a kick when it proves clingy. "Hhhup. Can't stay here. No parking zone."
Sudden creepy darkness rushing past him is not something he's used to, infact, it scares the hell out of him. Magnes suddenly goes falling from the window just like the other man, yelling and flailing as he spins in circles. "Slow down, slow down, slow down, please slow down!!!" he pleads with some unknown force, but he finally begins to slow when he's a few feet from hitting the ground, then he comes to a complete stop with his hands covering his face. Hovering mere inches from the street, he gradually moves his hands from his eyes. "Huh?" he quietly asks himself, then suddenly hits the ground before even realizing that he was hovering, laying only about ten feet from Abby.
Ahead of Christian, somewhere above, there's a ticking, a scuffle, the sound of a trained but inexpert body moving around the spiraling steps, pulling himself around turns with long, crouched strides. There's a young man coming down. He's wearing a black suit, a white shirt, a black tie: stark piano-key colors, stark piano-key lines. Christian glimpses him before he glimpses Christian, a tiger-tiger flicker through the bars of the railing.
The next instant, a bullet bounces off the wall three feet from his head, the firearm's report reduced to a metallic squeak by the silencer. He's on the seventh floor while the Fed is halfway to the fifth, because he had — perhaps courteously — seen fit to meet Christian halfway. Somewhat less courteously, he's now trying to shoot the lummox of an FCC agent in the head. Squats, peers and shouts, perhaps ill-advisedly: "Don't fucking move!"
And darkness falls. Darkness would appreciate it if you ignored the trite poetry of that phrase. He was really only doing the second half of jumping, simple and straightforward: landing. It hits the asphalt a yard behind the capsized scooter. Stays there for a moment, the skein of abnatural black, tendrils turning, contours rolling like fog against some bubble of glass. Wu-Long gathers himself
Moment over, then he stretches upward, corporealizes, tan skin, crisp shirt, and neat suit folding into view around the shape of an lean Asian man. Black-rimmed eyes crinkle around a smile Deckard's learned to recognize. He says— or instructs, really: "Don't shoot."
Someones dragging her off, preventing her from taking off her helmet so she can talk on the phone even as some tinny voice calls out across the line "911 how may I help you? Hello?" That it could be someone who wants to hurt her doesn't occur to Abby until Deckard's hefting her up. Then the phone is flying towards Deckard's head, still attached in to her hand and trying to push him away from her while screaming, which thankfully is somewhat muffled by her visor but not much. But then she freezes, eyes even wider at Wu-Long, shadows sucking into become corporeal. She just stares at the Asian man and somewhere, in the back of her mind, the word shit shit shit shit is running merrily around her memory. The Asian man.
Christian is making slow but steady progress, he couldnt arrest anyone if he was -dead- before he got there after all and unless this punk could fly he didnt need to rush. Or you know, could turn into like shadow things.
Phone to face, Deckard catches the cell with his brow and recoils accordingly. Left hand flies up to protect the rest of his head, right twists painfully around Abby's arm, trying to get her to hold…fucking…still. The scuffle ends pretty abruptly with the appearance of Wu-Long. Hazy breath caught in his chest, fingers still clawed into Abby's arm, he stares for a second that seems much longer than it actually is. He has a lot of seconds like that, lately.
At the end of this one, he restarts the fight. His left hand clenches into a fist and swings itself full on into Abby's face.
The moment he hears the round hit close, Chris opens up. Now normally an AR-10 fires a .308, with a 20" barrel and the report and flash of that combination are quite impressive. Chris's AR-10, a fine example from Noveske is about 12.5" so the resulting sonic report and flash are truly memorable. Still its a sound you feel more than hear, especially when your on the receiving end. 5, well aimed fully automatic rounds slam home. Hopefully on Chris's attacker, maybe the space behind him. still there's no pause, no diving for cover. A steady advance, as he starts to feel the fucker out. Literally.
Magnes quickly stands, he doesn't recognize Abby with her helmet on, but he sees Deckard grabbing her and a strange man materializing. "What's going on?!" he suddenly asks to anyone who's willing to provide an answer, a bit disoriented from falling twelve stories. Then he spots a body, and stares at Wu-Long again, then Deckard.
"What are you doing?!" he yells, not the bravest person in the world, but the guy who shot at him before is trying to hit a girl. He makes a sudden leap as if he were jumping down, and falls toward Deckard for a tackle, trying to get him away from Abby.
Not even a squeak from the Bible-thumper, so utterly entranced by the 'demon' in front of her that Deckard's fist isn't paid attention to other than at the last moment, the grip of his hand on her arm makes her cry out. But that's abruptly cut off by the landing fist, helmet, visor, face and fist meet and Abby's world goes dark and Deckard suddenly has 120+ pounds of limp female.
Some things smell of death. It's probably a psychologically-rooted reminiscence more than anything to do with olfaction or molecular volatility. Fur is that way. Leather, occasionally, too. Funeral incense, a perfume underneath the perfume; very old rich women; the cold of tombstone. Wu-Long wears it like a cologne. It matches with the knife-creases and even press of his suit. And as such, he looks conspicuously out of place as he watches the scooter blonde, fake hobo, and skater whelp suddenly engage in three-way warfare entirely without him.
Weird day on the job. But then, Deckard would've known normal wasn't going to cut it. Not this time.
It's the sudden roar of gunfire that distracts him. Dulled though it is by thin walls and cheap plaster. Wu-Long's head twitches on its stem, bringing his peripheral vision up against the apartment building he had so recently vacated. He has no way of knowing that his younger comrade took a moment to huddle in the corner of the stairwell, covering his head and swearing under his breath; nor that he finally pulled himself up, in a surprising exercise in courage, held the gun over the railing and started firing haphazardly in Christian's direction, even as he runs back up the stairs. He can, however, guess.
"That's pretty original, lo wai," Wu-Long states. Right wrist and left give a jerk, abrupt, and a .9 appears in his left hand, a thin ceramic blade gleaming in a fluid extension of his other. He pauses in order to give Magnes his moment of shouty buffoonery, his expression pleasantly blank as he does so. Polite, the instant before he points the Browning at the young man's general shape and pulls the trigger. Just once. To Deckard again, then, his voice gone harsh with volume: "Why her?"
Christian slows to a casual stop just beneath his would be attacker, pulling up his neck gaiter and rolling his shoulders some. He brings his carbine firmly into the pocket of his shoulder, and begins a slow cutting of the pie. If this jerkoff was stupid enough to think suppressive fire with an automatic pistol was going to work, he was probably too stupid to try and jerk it back out've the railing in a hurry. Either way, as soon as Chris grabs sight picture he tenses. The Leonidas thunders out a dreadful mechanical tone sufficient to cause fairly serious, life long hearing damage even if he doesnt hit his foe. The resulting muzzle flash is no less blinding than the report is deafening and then of course theres bullets. 110 grains of polymer tipped death, which at first tend to act like your typical FMJ. That is until the polymer tip works as a wedge, to cause a violent bullet expansion sufficient to kill an elk at 307 yards. Ask Chris how he knows, but all of that is just a sales pitch if he doesnt hit home.
Deckard winces. Punching people in the face: it hurts. His hand splays out away from the blow, knuckles radiating dull pain through the back of his hand that spikes before it recedes. Abby's dead weight isn't supported. The instant she goes limp, he lets her hit the pavement. She is wearing a helmet after all. Unfortunately, he's about to get tackled, and he isn't wearing one.
The gun fires, and there is impact. One right after the other. Magnes plows into his back, bringing with him a sensation that makes the older man's stomach turn over before they even hit the ground. Prone, with Magnes on top of him and bits of glass and scooter digging in through his suit under the weight of both of their torsos, Deckard sets to trying to heave himself back onto his feet before anyone can think to apply a fist to his face. "Bitch hit me with her phone."
The bullet grinds against his ribs before he hits Deckard, and he quickly rolls from the man yelling, staring down at his bleeding stomach. "Why am I bleeding?! What's going on?! Aaaaaahhhh!!!" he yells in pain, suddenly falling to his knees and causing the ground to crack under him slightly, then as he's holding his stomach, he falls forward, his body completely heavy like a sack of bowling balls. "I can't move, it hurts…"
Bullet expansion helps. Suddenly, there's a chunk like a shark-bite missing from the stairways and the railing's missing a tooth, rusted bars twanged apart and pointing in arbitrary directions. Christian hears a scuffle, like running but all wrong; he knows he's landed a hit somewhere up there and his mark is bleeding badly. The next few steps are clumsy with noise.
Thump, stagger, plastic buttons rasping on tiled walls as the man drags himself off the staircase, through the doorway, into the hallway of the apartment.
The young man is fucked. He probably even knows he's fucked, but he's intellectually and viscerally incapable of coming to terms with that fact, even when he trips on somebody's shoes in the hallway and falls down in a slithering pile. The stink of his own fear is making him sick. He rolls onto his back and his gun slips and slides around in his bloody hand.
Downstairs and in the middle of the road, Wu-Long is scratching his head with the nozzle of his firearm. He looks between Magnes' writhing limbs, Abby's helmeted body, then Deckard scrambling back up to his feet. The grisly farce is second only to the chaos droning audible in the apartment building above. For whatever reason, this spectacle, more than all the rest of the effulgent red pandemonium he's seen today, strikes him as ridiculous. He feels sated. As if he's met his quota of dead children today. And—
"Has it already been a week, Deckard?" The question comes across weary, if you're listening closely.
In the now vacant stairway Chris sniffles, working a hand up to rub at his brow a little. Climbing the stairs as if he wasnt in a rush, because frankly theres no need. He takes a moment to inspect his handywork, swapping out magazines for one marked with bright orange electrical tape. Then he dips the weapon down a touch, unscrews what would be a scalding hot tip to his weapon's muzzle brake and replaces it with (thank god) a silencer. He also takes the time to tug out his ear plugs, before he's ready to continue the fight. Empty shell casings still tinkling as they slowly roll down the stairs.
Chris stacks at the doorframe, and waits. Listening before he leans around the door frame to peer down the hallway with that now marginally longer carbine, already quite prepared to finish the fight/slaughter right here. He'd need to be careful now though, he didnt want to break the fucker's cell phone.
The sunglasses. Where the fuck did they go? Probably getting bled on under Magnes, who Flint eyes a little warily before his focus swings back around onto Wu-Long. Even under the sick orange wash isolated street lamps paint over the area, his eyes betray him with their intensity. Good thing Amato already tattled.
There is hesitation. There always is from him when things turn to shit unexpectedly and he only had time to work out the first two steps of a ten step escape plan. "The guy inside called someone on his way in. He was talking to himself, so. Probably the feds. Or Xenu." Not quite cringing, it's still pretty clear from his posture that he knows what kind of position he's in. That is, a bad one. Bits of glass cling to his overcoat. Others skitter loose and skate down to the asphalt at his feet. "I need more time."
Magnes just continues groaning, trying to move, but he can't lift himself an inch, only spreading the cracks around more when he squirms. "I need to go to the hospital…" he says faintly as blood begins to seep from under his body.
Wu-Long's eyelids thin his gaze with something lazy like amusement, a smile that doesn't quite reach his mouth. Black eyes meet Flint's preternaturally incandescent stare, a study of contrasts while he studies the conflict. He knows he could murder all three of them before that cantankerous bull who's probably almost finished hamburgering his incompetent partner started back down the stairs, never mind for troops to make it into the constricted bowels of East Harlem from any probable location. The math is easy.
He answers, "Him, too." Juts his jaw at Magnes, who's. You know. Squirting. Then, "Okay."
He dissipates suddenly, flowing away almost as rapidly as he had come. By then, white boy upstairs is just about done bleeding through. He stares at Christian spitefully through hazel eyes and a face that looks just about as young as the FCC agent's other friend. The breast of his jacket begins to twitter, then. Some free MIDI ringtone, electronic and obscenely cheerful, failing entirely to give the moment the proper recognition; exactly the sort of shit that got its owner killed.
Two doors down, a young woman holds her infant close, underneath the bed. After a moment, Christian can hear the beginnings of a howling tantrum, rasping thin, spasms. The voice on the other end will inquire, accented, "Are you dead yet?"
Its a rapid entry, Chris approaches quickly with sights trained. Cellphone! He steps on the bloody fucker's gun hand, and snags free the cellphone as he pins the barrel of his carbine to the youth's throat."You know, you seem to have left some garbage on the eight floor."Chris's voice comes on clean, as cool as an autumn pond. "Do you know the fine for littering in the state of New York?"and with that he snaps the phone shut.
Chris takes another look around, making sure he's alone before he reaches down to short cycle the young man's slide (jamming the pistol). Then, with a jerk of his collar he sits the poor fuck up and quickly walks back towards the staircase. Turning finally to put three rounds in the man's heart, at sufficient range to make the forensics fuzzy. Then he's down the staircase, popping the Noveske apart as he goes.
He'll of course kick the ashtray out of the elevator door, before he's back outside and looking for Deckard.
Deckard doesn't so much as twitch until the something that is Wu-Long becomes nothing. Okay, he said. He shivers, and the tremor takes its time in leaving his hands once he's looked between Abby's unconscious form and Magnes's increasingly bloodless one. "Jesus. Stop squirming." Phone, phone, where's the phone? He stumbles and stoops after it. The line is dead, so he redials. Street name, dead guy, concussion, gunshot wound. The phone is dropped again, and hey. Chris! "About fucking time, asshole. That guy needs help." Magnes is apparently that guy, because Deckard crouches to work at Abby's helmet.
"But it hurts!" Magnes repeats, beginning to sit up until pain suddenly shoots through his ribs again and he crashes to the ground with more street cracking. "I'm gonna die, I'm dying…" He's not exactly dying, but it feels like he is.
Christian has gone from his neck gaiter to his helmet in terms of keeping his face covered, but truly his biggest worry right now is Deckard so when he's called for?"Hey, you need to come with me right now. I'm not a medic, the paramedics are already on their way."he walks directly across the road , waving for Deckard to follow. "Now you can either walk with me or I can arrest you and drag you along with me."
Abby's helmet is hard enough to get off, strap still snapped in place beneath her chin, the faceplate smeared with blood, but it can be worked off. No longer blonde, it's a pleasing shade of red, or would be under normal light. What was an already bruised and injured face is now more, thanks to Deckard and his fist. Abby's hand twitches, maybe an indication that the former blonde is perhaps going to come to consciousness.
"Jesus," muttered again, more to himself, Deckard squints at the damage fractured across Abby's face. Christian's ultimatum is registered on a delay. Registered, and ignored. He pushes back to his feet and tosses the helmet aside, crossing the sidewalk for Magnes instead when it seems clear that Chris isn't interested. "Fuck you."
Magnes manages to roll over on his back, trying to do anything to make the pain stop, which is quite opportune for Deckard when he comes over. His clothes are heavy and flat against him, shirt close to ripping, then his arms just fall to his side when it becomes too painful to touch the wound. "Why wont the blood stop coming out…?" he asks in a pained voice, having never had an injury that bad before.
Christian crosses the street then, and makes a grab for Deckard's collar. Ambulance sirens growing in the distance"You cant help them, now come on asshole. You don't want to do this the hard way with me, I'm not as polite as your -other- friend."Mainly, Felix. Though really he's not about to abduct Deckard.
One familiar voice, then there's another that niggles in the back of her head. Then a stranger ordering the first voice around. Abby for the moment could give a flying rats ass through the haze of pain, and the urge to expel the contents of her stomach and the copper taste in her mouth. A groaned gurgled and Abby's trying to turn onto her side, tears mingling with blood and sobs. She couldn't pry her eyes open to see who they are if she wanted to. She just tries to utter a prayer try and force her healing on herself. Quite unsuccessfully.
"He's going to go into shock. Or bleed to death. Or—" Sirens. Head cocked after a sound he's never actually been relieved to hear before, Deckard is snapped away from that warm fuzzy feeling by the realization that Christian's hand is wound up in his collar. "He may be a really nice guy, but somehow I get the feeling you might be in deep shit if you offed one of his snitches, Sergeant Limpdick." Whiskey accompanies the fog of Deckard's breath, and he tries to shove past the collar grip while still moving in the direction he was told to move. "You'll be okay, Varlane. I have to go jack this guy off. See you."
Christian nearly growls. "I dont want you fucking shanked in county lockup you jackass, and I've shot enough people to know the kids gonna be fine."he releases Deckard, letting him walk ahead. He lifts his glove to his throat, squeezing at the mic again. "I need a taxi at my twenty, just one. Thankyou."he finishes, glancing over his shoulder as he heads out of sight back around the vans. "Good, now we talk and then I cut you loose."
"Pfff. What, like I've never been shanked before?" Nose rankled, Deckard brushes a few resilient pieces of glass and debris off of his coat and walks. Not much else to do, under the circumstances. "What are we going to talk about?"
Christian produces a small slender rectangle, which he offers to Deckard. "first, carry this with you at all times. Second, your going to spend the night in a four star hotel. Thirdly, in the morning I'm going to make sure you have your Tavor. You need to take care of yourself, if you hadn't noticed our mutual friend is a little beat to fuck and I'm a little over protective. You help me, help him and I'll be there to help you."he produces a single business card. "You can talk to our friend, or you can leave a message for me. "Christian Einliter, FCC code enforcement. yes, that's plausible."Any questions?"
The rectangle is taken and turned over once with a mild, "What's this?" The card is examined in a similar fashion in his free hand. Neither is tucked away, and he can't quite keep a skeptical sneer off his face when he rereads the card again. "Is the breakfast complimentary?"
"its a signal scrambler, you wont be able to use cellphones around it. It'll keep people from killing you with bombs."he says quite plainly. "and if you do your part of things, sure I'll see to it you get a proper breakfast for a properly useful gentleman. Now, assuming you do as I say and dont get killed I may have some work for you coming up. Know much about Chinese radios?"
"Is this going to be some kind of racist joke? Because I have a friend that's Chinese." Deckard does not look or sound as if he intends to cooperate, but he doesn't actually say he isn't going to. He does tuck the business card away, at least, cold eyes long since gone dull in their study of the sidewalk ahead while they walk.
Christian stops at his bike, indicating foreword to a Taxi. "No, I need to obtain some. When this current unpleasantness is over with, I'll give you a list. Now why don't you go enjoy a night, have some room service. Our mutual friend is an amazing investigator, and one of the sharpest men I've ever met. I however, do this for a living and he does not. Keep the scrambler close, tomarrow you and our mutual friend can discuss how you want to go about doing this. "he turns, throwing a leg over his bike. "Your taxi is waiting, Mr. Deckard. I hope you have a restful evening."
There is, indeed, a taxi. Deckard eyes it the way he would a giant shark that just tootled along and asked him to hop on, but nods anyway. Oookie dokie. "Whatever you say, Champ." Not exactly reassuring, but with one last glance back at the ambulances, he drags open the taxi door, and in he goes. The scrambler is flicked down onto the floorboard, where it will remain and make life difficult for anyone who tries to make or take personal calls on their way around the city in this particular yellow car.
![]() November 21st: He's A Liar |
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![]() November 21st: Time Is Running Out |