Participants:
| Scene Title | Teflon Substitute |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Luke kills again, but this time he has a witness. |
| Date | March 12, 2010 |
Fzzt
Bzzt
A single street light flickers irregularly, pale blue light shines purple on the edges between the dark lines of brick walls forming the mouth of an alley leading out onto a snow-decked street. Curfew passed hours ago, and heavy snow falls in thick and dense flakes down on Greenwich Village, strobing lights from disrupted electricity adding a haunting quality to the precipitation.
Thorugh the mouth of that alleyway, distant sounds of choking and screaming are strangled by the buzzing snap of a blown power transformer atop a telephone pole. Christmas lights strung across a clothesline between the alley pop one by one, tiny eruptions of electricity crackling over the filiments when they do. The plastic coating on the wires melts, sags like hot cheese, and drips down to the bare and wet pavement where snow once was.
One hand out, blue radiation glowing from his hand, a young man stands bathed in the irridescent glow of microwave energy emitting from his outstretched palm. Writhing on the ground, a man in a sleek and dark suit curls up and in on himelf, arms wrapped around his midsection and lips parted, chapped and bloodied. His eyes burst inside the sockets, flesh so tender is sags off the bone, it smells like a barbecue.
Smoke wafps up from crisping hair, his clothing ignites into a puff of flames, fillings spark and spitter in his teeth and the watch on his wrist crackles and snaps as gold plating sloughs off like a thin coat of frosting.
For all the scents of melting flesh and boiling blood that clings into the air, there is a unique taste on the wind that not every predator in the world can sense. It is something rare, something unusual, the duality of layered consciousnesses, one mind's emotions layered atop another like thin slices of cheese atop one another.
Confusion and wrath stacked on over the other, until the last sputtering spark of microwave radiation spills forth from Luke Campbell's hands, leaving him exhausted and trembling. When he exhales a breath, wrath leaves him like a light-switch turned off, one layer of consciousness and emotion disappearing as fast as a teleporter, leaving horror, and fear dawning more fully as for the third time now, Luke Campbell awakens to molten flesh, smoke, and death.
Once again, Luke comes to his senses in a strange place, with… another dead person at his feet. He turns pale, lifting trembling hands palms upwards as he stares at them with… almost loathing. "Why? WHY?" he hisses out, then clenches his hands into fists. He looks at the corpse and swallows, then forcibly turns away to scope out his surroundings. NOW where is he? All he needs is for someone to come into the alley to look.
Unless there was already someone watching.
She could feel the first wave as easily as a cold winter breeze; the terror itself was like a golden beacon through the foggy pane of snowfall. The literal smell came only secondary, as she made her way closer to the mouth of the alley to find a silent space around the corner, entirely unseen yet just out of sight. The lights pop, electricity crackles, and the scent of cooked flesh on the heels of this is altogether familiar.
Huruma stays there, out of sight, listening intently with the field of her sixth sense absorbing every change by both the victim as he dies, and the attacker as he watches that victim die. What she does glean from the latter is strange, when it took such plain wrath to do whatever he has done to make the byways sizzle and the dead man fall apart like a slab of well cooked meat. That is all that he is, in the end. A wad of meat bound in polyester.
When Huruma finally moves into focus at the mouth of the alley, it is after Luke's paranoia takes hold. A fitting appearance. Her silouette cuts a striking figure against what light evolves through snowflakes behind her, fur coat belted and its large hood perched atop her skull. The various colors of long brown tufts have been grizzled by the snow, and with the collar and the hood- for a moment she seems like some sort of lemon sphinx ready to inquire about whether its riddle has been solved. One leather glove lifts to Huruma's lips, plucking a lit snub from her teeth and flinging it gracefully into the snowbank.
"Now what, boy?" Her voice shivers through the brick, low and smoldering as her eyes fix onto Luke.
Luke freezes as soon as he sees someone watching, and then he decides to try something. The snowbank right next to Huruma is targeted, and the snow melts, then boils into steam and he attempts to run past her. You didn't see anything! Of course, there just happens to be a rock or chunk of pavement that got pulled up and he naturally trips over it with a crash right past her. Well that's certain to make an impression on her.
It's almost like she expected it to happen- the sidestep away from the steaming mountain of snow, the pause to watch him dart through the cloud, the arm crossing over her stomach, opposite limb folded up so that her long fingers draw against the underside of her chin. The woman stands there in silence as Luke goes down onto the ground, pale eyes entranced with him, or so it appears. Huruma's rounded lips tighten in consideration, a faint noise of air forcibly escaping her lungs through both nostrils. He gets an excellent view of her tall boots.
"D'you plan on finishing that…?"
Luke shoves himself to his feet after that excellent view of her footwear. Hey, that's a familiar voice! Where did he hear that before…? Having not recognized her due to being silhouetted at the time and wearing a hood, he turns to face Huruma warily. "Finish….? Oh, it's… uh… hello again." a quick dart at the corpse and he swallows. "I…" yeah, try and explain this one away. Yeah, he's pretty terrified right now.
"Are you, or aren't you?" Huruma insists, either speaking about the actual frying business, or what he is planning to do with his great bloody mess over there. It is hard to tell, really. She can practically smell the panic wafting off of him, to boot. "You reek of fear." She stays still, looming there, layered in snow.
"I'm not afraid of..! Yes, I'm done. I didn't do anything." yeah, maybe, just maybe, she'll believe him and think it was some kind of hallucination. Right. Luke takes a step away. "Did you, uh… see?" might as well make sure. "Don't tell anyone, if… you know what's good for you." he's trying to sound really tough, as if that'd work.
"Stop talking b'fore you'urt yourself." Huruma's lip curls up slightly, and she turns to walk closer to the middle of the alley, where Luke has left his victim. Accidental or not, she is not particularly concerned with why he did it. All that she sees at this point is someone having done her dirty work. When Huruma gets close enough, she bends at the waist, curving down to take the dead man by the cuff of his finely tailored pantleg and yank the body away from where it has no doubt begun to stick.
Concrete is not teflon, after all.
"Wh… what are you doing?" Luke asks her sharply when she goes over and starts dragging the body away. "Hey, uh, aren't you bothered at all by the fact that… that guy's dead?" Luke is certainly bothered by it, but that might just be because he's the one who broiled the guy. "He got a wallet?" he asks after a moment of thought. Might as well take what he can, after all, if it hasn't been ruined and Huruma doesn't seem averse to touching the corpse anyway.
"I am not. I doubt he is bothered either, as he is dead. Waste not, want not." The body makes a weird ripping noise as polyester suitcoat comes scraping off under him, leaving behind a torn wad of skin where he had been broiled into the pavement. Huruma squints over at Luke for a few extra moments, before she bends again to pry at a couple of pockets. He did do the work, the least she can do is look.
Pants pockets reveal nothing, back and side all empty. Peeling open his jacket, the first thing Huruma finds is an empty holster where a gun should be under his arm, it's the first of many bad signs about this whole thing. Fishing thorugh his interior pockets, there is a leather bill fold found, black and shiny and baked from the heat. When Huruma pulls it out, there's a molten and warped plastic card halfway hanging out. The snap and crack of leather comes as she manages to pry it open, revealing that it's not a wallet at all, but an identification folio.
The plastic card inside is mostly illegible in terms of the name and most of the other printed writing, but Huruma can make out the seal and emblem that covers much of both sides of the bubbled and warped card. The implications are unfortunately for Luke:
Department of Homeland Security.
There's also five dollars folded behind the badge, like a consolation prize.
Luke moves forward despite his distaste in the corpse, and he gets enough of a look at the card to gulp. "Ah…" wait a minute. That's probably one of the guys who locked him away! "Hmmph. Well I can't say he deserved that but he had it coming." pause. "Or… she." he forces himself to look at the corpse, trying to decide gender despite everything. The five bucks are glowered at. "Seriously, dude, what the fuck. Five dollars?" sigh.
Having to take her time, Huruma crouches to rifle through his pockets, fingers long and careful, fluttering about like black spiders in the dim light. She pries away the billfold like an archaeologist, holding it into a sliver of streetlight just above her forehead before cracking it open and wrenching plastic from leather. Her eyes light up for a second, mouth forming the words. "Mmmm. Looks like you'ave cooked a g-man, m'dear."
She stands again, holding out the fiver between two fingers for him. She notably keeps the rest.
Luke takes the bill and shoves it in his pocket. "So, uh… what are you going to… do with him? Not that I care, really." he's still terrified, but not as much as he was earlier when he first saw Huruma. "Someone could come by any minute."
"I'm going t'finish what you started. Wit'a nice lemon glaze." Huruma's answer is simple, and perhaps in a way, humorous, but she says it so seriously. Her hand wraps around the leather folio, and she opens the breast of her coat to slip it inside. That finished, she stoops again to grab onto the man's leg and proceed to drag him off. "You are unfamiliar with what t'do. I am not."
Luke stares. "You're…. going to EAT him?" he's shocked, to say the least, and audibly gulps. "Well, uh… enjoy your meal." he tells her as nonchalantly as he can muster, pretending like it doesn't bother him at all while at the same time he edges towards the entrance of the alley. "Guess that's one way to get rid of the body." he mutters. Maybe he should call her up if this ever happens again?
Huruma glances back at him like his reaction is looked right through, eyes smoldering once again. The pantleg in her hand has the body in an awkward bend as she drags it along. "Next time, choose your target more wisely. D'no'rely on others t'clean your mess. But always do, or else they will find you." It took the Company years upon years upon years to even follow her pinpoints, and even longer to catch her. Why? She cleaned her messes. It does pay off.
"Ah… right then." maybe Luke can see if he can microwave things to ashes. That'd certainly help matters. But regardless, he flees the scene of his crime and leaves Huruma to enjoy her… meal. Ugh, why does this keep happening. He doesn't want to do this stuff to people!