Participants:
| Scene Title | Despicable Duo's First Attack |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Hunting telepaths is messy. |
| Date | July 5, 2009 |
Tucker's Pawn Shop has been closed since the fire, and is going to be closed awhile yet. The fire caused some structural damage that needs to be fixed before he can open shop. There's no codes or anything to comply with, but it's undermined several of his security measures. That means it's not safe for him to be selling big-ticket items when someone could get around the glass or the alarms. In fact, most of his expensive merchandise has been moved somewhere, for safe keeping. It's mostly junk in the shop right now.
The door is open to let out the fumes, but the neon is off and there's a big 'CLOSED' sign in the window. Tuck's sweaty, covered in soot and is piling bits of ruined wall and shelving outside the door. He'll have to pay someone to haul it away. He's fast running out of money.
After an arduous chore of actually getting into Staten, which, thanks to Isis and her ability, did not require a single penny, Diogenes is finally in front of the pawn shop he has already been to. He had handed the phone he has bought - Nokia 3310 that has aged pretty well - to Isis before their arrival to Tuck's shop. And now, he was standing in the doorway, watching the man who was conveniently not behind the glass. "I know you're closed", he suddenly says quite loudly, "But the phone I bought - and gifted to my girlfriend… Well, it sort of doesn't work properly. I'm not coming here for a refund, but… maybe you could take a look at it?"
Girlfriend?! Isis tears the line of her gaze from the cellular phone, dark eyes sending a sharp glare in Diogenes's direction. Peachy lips make to part, quite intent on molding a string of cusses that would make a sailor blush and rip the skinny boy a new one, but… Play along, that's what she'd been told. She huffs and lifts the phone, wiggling it between her forefinger and thumb, notably absent of their usual gloves, and acts as if her displeasure's source was in the broken little piece of old technology. She keeps her lips sealed though, not uttering a peep as she follows in step at Diogenes's side.
Tuck eyes them both and tosses a piece of debris on the pile. He pushes his plastic-rimmed glasses up his face with a glove-clad finger. "As you can see, I'm just a little busy right now. I can't fix it, sport. You paid thirty bucks for it and it's five years old. Try replacing the battery."
He's understandably in a poor mood. His only source of income is currently singed around the edges, and the man who he'd normally borrow money from lost his entire business and has disappeared. Not happy times on Staten, if there ever was such a time.
The young man's eyes were already searching for that particular part of the human anatomy - the spine. From aside, it would appear as if he is eyeing Tuck's midriff, which must have looked somewhat bizarre. On the other hand, it might have made him appear thoughtful and ponderous. "I certainly don't want to push, but I would really appreciate it if you would just give it a glance", he says in an attempt to change the man's mind, taking a few slow steps into the shop, steps that seem to silently ask whether it's okay to actually walk inside. "If not right now, then at least in the coming days. Changing the battery… Well, I don't want to shell out money on a new one if that's not the problem." His tone is rather wary, and he ostensibly tries not to frustrate or irritate Tuck… too much.
Isis glances aside as her 'partner' begins to press the man a bit more. With a deep sigh the little redhead lowers the phone and does the one thing her features are rather good for. God, how she hates it, but still - she pouts. Her lower lip pushed out slightly, chocolate eyes taking on a doe-like quality. "Please?" She steps ahead of Diogenes, certainly a less intrusive form, and holds out the phone towards the shop's keeper.
"Look, buddy. Half my shop is burnt to a crisp. I'll give you your thirty bucks back if you'll get out of my face." Normally, Tuck's more amiable than this. But he doesn't want to sell them anything, and if he can't get his shop back into one piece, then he won't have to worry about repeat customers.
He eyes Isis. It's not the doe-eyes so much as it is the 'please' coming from someone not that far from his son's age. He rolls his eyes dramatically, tugs off the work glove and makes a grab for the phone. "I'm not going to be able to fix it."
The facial expression Diogenes holds turns much darker when Tuck fails to relent, and for a moment Tom thought that he would have to do things the hard way. However, all of a sudden, Isis walks past him with an expression on her visage he did not thought she was capable of pulling off. Oh, sure, he had seen her be cute… unintentionally. He twists his upper lip and lofts a brow, staring at the redhead rather wide-eyed. His focus on the man's spinal cord, therefore, obviously drops. His lips part, and Diogenes wants to add something, but ultimately fails to. Instead, he watches the two, and now his eyes scan Isis's spine, instead.
"Great!" Isis's enthusiasm has no need to be faked, lucky enough for her - she still had little knowledge of just what was going on, and her part of the 'plan' was aimed to be complete. So, the smile brightens her soft features eagerly enough as she reaches out to offer the phone. All it takes is the delicate touch of her middle finger tapping the man's own for the swap to send both psyches reeling. The effect was not unlike a hook yanking mercilessly at one's center, hauling the consciousness out with a gut-wrenching momentum from the navel and slamming it into the opposite body. She'd made no effort to slow or ease the process in her nervousness, obviously. Isis, finding herself in Tuck's body, stumbles back a few uncertain steps, lifting a hand to the man's head with a ugly groan as her vision adjusts to look back on her own rightful body.
Oh god, oh god what the fuck what the hell?! The strange feeling sets him back and causes a delayed reaction. This is what he gets for being a nice guy. He stumbles backwards in girly feet and sticks a hand to the face that belonged to Isis a moment before. He stares at the small hand with the most contorted, bizzare expression. Then he looks at himself. "What the fuck? What the FUCK?!" Isis is going to have sore vocal cords when she gets back to her body. He turns on a small heel, glares at Diogenes, then leans back, and hauls a sudden, rage-filled, unthinking, womanly fist right at his face.
And Isis is in a body with a deep, throbbing ache in his lower back, a headache unrelated to the swap, sweat dribbling down his neck and a stinging cut on his left hand. Tuck is almost forty and has lived a hard life.
Gilbert Tucker is probably one of very few men who would find being a twenty year old woman for any length of time a complete nightmare.
It would certainly be difficult for Diogenes to know when exactly the swap takes place, and the least he wanted is to immobilise Isis prior to her claiming the merchant's body. Instead, he waits for any sign that might indicate that the spawn has taken place. And the moment Isis stumbles away, that's the sign Thomas has been waiting for. Not having let go of his focus on the spine of Tuck's new body, he is able to instantaneously use his ability; he takes away all motion from the man, and leaves him only with the ability to look around, speak and obviously breathe. Vague control of his facial muscles would also be retained. The paralysis itself takes on immediately, and Tuck would drop down to the floor like a sack of potatoes, despite the newly acquired frail frame. The fist connects, but it's on the level of a friendly fist-bump rather than something with the intent to hurt. Diogenes would then simply step over Tuck. "Alright", he tells Isis, "I've been keeping a secret from you. Fortunately, if he wasn't a telepath, you won't know it." He suspected that would be enough to trigger the ability if there was one, provided Isis's endless curiosity.
Isis groans as she checks the injury to be found in the man's palm. "Ugh, this body is not in ideal cond-…" She begins to mumble to herself even as her own familiar voice begins to screech and raise havoc under Tuck's pupeteering and the loud thud assures her rightful body's collapse on the ground. She pauses only when Diogenes advances, lifting her gaze and lofting a brow as he speaks. "You li-…" No he didn't lie. "You tricked me!" she spouts in a gruff voice. Her fear suddenly worries her. She'd nearly killed a man without learning to harness another's powers under such a swap before. She cringes and lifts arms over her face… only to find that nothing's happened. "You asshole!" She punches Diogenes in the chest, which ends up being a little more than unfriendly as she underestimates Tuck's strength. While not battering, it'll leave a good bruise. "Don't you ever do that to me again!" She sighs and storms off in Tuck's form towards the front of the store, nudging closed the door with a foot and peeking through the glass to the street outside.
If Tuck was a telepath, he wouldn't have boobs right now. He would have known what they were up to the moment they walked into the shop. And her certainly wouldn't have reached for the phone knowing what would happen. He's actually quite happy to not feel the body he's in right now. The look he fixes on both of them is one of deep rage. On Isis' face, it approaches Carrie levels.
"The fuck do you want?" The girly voice spits. "Give me my goddamn body back."
And Tuck? Tuck is goddamn strong for a short guy. Very surprisingly so.
"No, I did not tr—" Oh, God. This was the first time in a long while since Diogenes was punched. In fact, the last time he fought it was in childish brawls. He, similarly to Tuck in his new shape, collapses to the floor, although he stumbles backwards some, at first. Once on the floor, he would gasp for breath, batting his eye-lids. "Note… to self… no more psychotic bitches who have childhood issues and turn out paranoid", he murmurs to himself in a strained tone of voice. His eyes would then try to find Isis. "I didn't trick you, you idiot", he flips out, sitting up, clutching his sore chest. "I simply didn't tell you the full details…" Slowly, he rises to his feet. "Just give him his body back, so that he'd stop screaming. But", he turns his attention to Tuck, "If you try to pull something funny, I'll paralyse you and make sure that it stays that way."
"I'm sorry," Isis mumbles on Tuck's more masculine tone as she turns back to look upon her own body after checking the scene outside the brunt storefront. "He tricked me," she adds, as if the man in her feminine figure might not have picked up on that from the quarrel. For a strong team, they sure do have a lot of issues. "Hey!" Tucks voice barks through the room as Isis turns the man's body towards Diogenes, waving a finger at him. "Don't call me an idiot," she warns, the sudden quiet of the tone making the statement quite clear. She begins to grumble as she paces back over and crouches near her body and touches her little arm. She does show some slight concern, though mayhaps its for herself, in this swap. Her skills are lacking, though, and the bumpy but significantly less painful transition could certainly use some work. Ultimately though, the forms are exchanged back to their rightful psyches at which point Isis, in her proper voice, promptly yells "Alright! Let me up!"
The first thing Tuck does when he's himself again and able to move, is get back from Isis and from Diogenes. He rubs his face, his arms, looks down between his legs. Check. Everything's where it should be. He narrows his eyes at both of them. He really wants to go for a gun, but Diogenes' warning stops him.
"Just get the fuck out of my face, both of you. And if I ever see either one of you around here again I'll fucking shoot you." His words are harsh, but the tone is even, flat, deadly serious. There's no sign of the good-natured joviality that usually peppers the pawnie's speech. He spots the cell phone at his feet and gives it a firm kick towards the door. There's the sound of plastic snapping. If it worked before, it probably won't work now.
Diogenes eyes Isis with quite the amount of hate, although it is nowhere near the rage Tuck managed to exhibit on the effeminate visage, surprisingly. Thomas looks more disappointed and, well, obviously in pain, rather than fully enraged. Silently, he stands up. "You fucked me over, I fuck you over. It works as simple as that", he says, staring at Tuck, "And I am not leaving until I hear the blonde's name, or anything that could lead me to her. Trust me, I am going to leave the moment you give me something to go by, and I can drop you to the ground much faster than you can think." The paralysis constraining the redhead's body would only dissipate after an hour. He didn't tell her that - not yet, at least. He hated it when someone spazzes out.
"Let me up! I didn't mean to hit you that hard!" God, she hated this feeling. Being trapped in her own body was a great deal worse than being trapped in someone else's. "I did what you wanted," she mumbles, laboring through the effects of a few deep breaths under the anxiety of a claustrophobia she was beginning to develop being around Diogenes. "Really, I'll get out of here as soon as he let's me," she offers side to Tuck. He really had seemed a decent guy when she'd come to do some shopping in Candy's body some time back. She suddenly smirks though. "Sir? How will you know if it's ever me? I could very well be any one of your customers, no?"
"I don't know her name. She was just a customer who came in with you. She bought some computer parts and left. I don't know her. She hasn't been back. Now get the fuck out." Tuck points towards the door. He's so mad, his face is twitching.
He opens his mouth to say something sympathetic to Isis, but then she just gets a nasty glare. "I was about to say you deserved better than this prick, but clearly you two are a match set."
Diogenes says nothing else to Tuck. He had no means of checking whether what was spoken was the truth, and pressing the matter would coerce Thomas to use his ability again, something he actually was quite reluctant to do; his earlier threat was nothing but a bluff. However, that does not mean he wouldn't use his ability as a safe-guard - he would back away towards the door with slow, but sure steps, his eyes set on Tuck in case the merchant changed his mind. Isis isn't forgotten, though. Well, not entirely, at any rate. Once in the doorway, he would glance at Isis. "You are not what I thought you were. Don't listen to the idiot. You're just a confused little girl who's swayed by strong enough influence." The paralysis is left, and considering that it hasn't dominated her body for long, it would take mere seconds for her to regain full control of herself. Diogenes, in the meantime, would be hurriedly walking away from the pawnshop, rubbing his sore spot and muttering obscenities under his breath.
"I didn't mean anything by it," Isis grumbles to herself, pushing to her feet. "Just curious." Her curiosity did have a way of getting her into trouble, like this entire situation for example, as did her sick sense of humor - the question was funny, in her opinion. She glances towards the door, finding it empty. She glances to Tuck quickly and lifts her hands, revealing them empty as she scoots around him, trying to back herself through the door. "I am sorry," she looks around the shop. This was the last thing the guy had needed. She grunts and turns around, jogging away from the shop in a hurry.
"He's using you, sweetheart. Hope you realize that." There's no kindness in sweetheart. Once she's out the door, it gets slammed firmly and latched. Well. He's had a damn shitty week. Plus his hand hurts and he didn't even get to be the one doing the punching. Isis is lucky she didn't have to spend more time in his body. It sucks to be Gilbert Tucker.