Participants:
| Scene Title | Eternally Mercurial Loyalties |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Humanis First finds itself presented with an unexpected ally. |
| Date | December 9, 2010 |
There's few things a pint of Guinness can't solve. For the rest, there's bullets. Today sees the former, more so than the latter, as the case.
With a brick wall to his right side, homicide detective Daniel Walsh sits at his back corner booth within the comfortable confines of Biddy Flannigan's, a pub he's been frequenting for longer than he cares to remember. Hunched forward with a pint of Guinness between his hands, his eyes are focused across the bar and towards the front windows.
Nearby to the paper coaster his glass is seated on, detective Walsh's cell phone rests idle near his gloved hand. A furtive glance to it every now and then suggests that he's expecting a call, just as much as it seems he's expecting a visitor. The former, once again, seems to be the case than the latter when the door to the bar opens with a chime.
Walsh's attention rises to the dark-haired man entering, his leather motorcycle jacket zipped up to his chin and head down, ears reddened from the cold. Raising his pint in greeting, Walsh signals the guest over and then slouches back more relaxedly into his bench seat. The guest winds his way between tables, past the bar and down the aisle of booth seats to come stand beside Walsh's.
"You are the man I spoke to on the phone?" Accented, certainly, he's clearly English Second Language. Walsh offers a motion towards the bench seat across from him wordlessly. His newfound guest glances down at the seat, looks over his shoulder to the bar, then back again before slowly sinking down to sit.
"No," Walsh admits finally once his company's situated. "Tha' was me partner Khalid. He's a good man, bloodhound mentality. Now, Khalid tells me you've foreign military experience, an' some background with mutual acquaintances of Khalid an' I?" Lifting his pint up again, Walsh tips it back, leaving a white foam smudge across his upper lip, quickly licked away.
"Old friends," the guest admits with a furrow of his brows, "old friends. I know their patterns, movements, reactions. We were trained the same, learned the same. We grew apart though," is admitted with a coy cast of a smile. "What I want, isn't ideological. All I want is revenge, and providing that you can afford me that margin of comfort I will lend whatever skills you need to your own ideological campaign."
There's a snorted laugh Walsh admits at the dark-haired man's comment. "Oh," is mixed with a laugh, "brother I can tell you now, what I do ain't hardly ideological, s'about revenge too. Y'see, this is why I feel you'n me can see eye-to-eye on things. While we've both been held up by our short an' curlies by our mutual acquaintances, we've also no love fer' the blood'f them special folk. Khalid tells me you're something of an expert on trackin' down an' killin' their kind?"
The man across from Walsh doesn't agree one way or the other, he just stares vacantly and narrows his eyes. "I am a professional," he corrects, "I am hoping the same can be said for you."
Walsh's nose rankles a touch at that jab, and the Irishman sets down his pint on the coaster. "I'll tell you what, big man. We'll play this game loose'n fast fer now. I have a feelin' our mutual friends'll be comin' to me sooner rather'n later when they realize the gun market's tightened up like an inmate's sphincter on 'is first day behind bars. When that happens, I've got me'self a bit of a plan on how t'handle them… an' that's where you come in, friend."
Unzipping his jacket, Walsh's new hire reveals a sweater that shows the outlines of a kevlar vest worn beneath. It isn't that demonstration he's intending, however, but rather reaching for a photograph pinched between two fingers that is slowly slid across the table towards Walsh. It's wrinkled, seem some abuse, and from a few years ago at the least.
"This is my agenda," he explains, tapping two fingers on the bald-headed man in the photograph. For a moment, and at a distance, Walsh presumes it might be a photograph of Emile Danko. But on actually inspecting it, a faint smile crosses the Irishman's face, followed by a turn of his eyes up to his new best friend.
"Ethan Holden?" is asked with a crack of a smile by Walsh. "I think you'n I are going t'make beautiful music t'gether. So what is it I should be callin' you, 'cause buddy an' pal are gonna' get real old, real soon. I'm a fan'f proper nouns." As Walsh's brows rise questioningly, the man across the table takes the photograph back, tucking it into his jacket."
"Daiyu," he states flatly, "Daiyu Feng."