Mission 7 - A Chance Meeting

[oncedevil]

Who: Anthony Sparado, Hajime Aikawa, Chinen Shou, and NPC mcfirestarter
What: Cleaning up some loose ends.
Where: Downtown Locke, couple of areas likely
When: December 1st, late afternoon/evening
Warnings: Violence, death, probably profanity.

Text: [The hurriedly typed address of a small bookstore somewhere downtown.]

Got a bite. It's show time, hope you're hungry.


Action: After the sting at Espresso Yourself things had fallen quiet again. By now quiet was worrying, instead of signalling peace and a break from madness Tony had come to associate the quiet with an impending shitstorm. With luck, and a good bit of skill, maybe he'd be able to cut this one off before things got unbearably messy. That was the plan, anyway.

Shou's contacts had given Tony a lead or two, and that coupled with his own ever increasing hunter's instincts he'd finally tracked down his quarry: The modified human that had been made to look like him.

After shooting a quick text to the both of them (he couldn't give them more time as much as he would have liked to) he began to move in. Storm clouds rumbled ominously overhead, briefly distracting Tony. Something about all of this was weirdly familiar, and unsettling. He adjusted the sword on his shoulder, shoved aside the anticipation causing a funny knot in his gut, and began to move in. Now he knew he spotted the guy around there somewhere. He couldn't have gotten too far, could he?

Comments

we all have those weeks

[ursoreckless]

Yup, it should be a point of pride because they were not normal people and if they can't hold Tony down, what will? But then the sedative started working and Shou was able to let up until the teen was out and he was able to sit back and assess his scratches and bite marks and hope like hell that whatever Tony was would not be affected by vampire blood, because that would just be bad. Pushing his hair out of his face, Shou took of the remains of his shirt and made a face.

"Y'know, this was a limited edition print," he said, and then used the tatters to wipe the blood off of his arms and face.

[dead_black_eyes]

"I got the vein," L said in answer to Hajime as he steadily pressed the plunger down, gritting his teeth, willing his hands to remain perfectly steady given the delicacy of the work. "So... a few seconds, we're in the clear... "

Not entirely in the clear yet, though. As he withdrew the needle, Tony's arm sailed out of nowhere, and he saw stars as Tony clocked him hard in the face. The force of it snapped his head sideways, and it would leave a bruise, but he shook it off, retaining his hold and pressing a clean cotton swab against the pinprick as Tony slipped out of consciousness.

He sat back, pale and shaky but ultimately glad that whatever had happened had been some kind of success.

"You're a mess..." he said quietly, addressing Shou. "I can... there are showers. Actually, Tony could probably stand to be cleaned up, too."

[chalicejoker]

Hajime released Tony from that hold now that the other guy was no longer thrashing around. "I could take Tony," he volunteered. It seemed like the right thing to do, considering that he wasn't quite as messy as the others. "You guys worry about yourselves."

[oncedevil]

Tony wasn't completely out, but he certainly wasn't present. Whatever boosted his healing was also trying to fight the sedative, but he was too warn and weakened to win that battle. As such he just sort of lay there, eye half-lidded and glazed while his sluggish mind tried to make some sort of sense of everything.

It was really too difficult though. Colors and figures swam, words melted into a mumble of foreign sounds. He wanted to fight still, but nothing responded how it was supposed to. He just made a kind of pathetic little confused noise at everything happening. But at least he wasn't being squished anymore.

It was still scary, maybe scarier that he couldn't move under his own power now. What had they done to him?

[ursoreckless]

"I think trying to put him into a real shower would get him worked up again," Shou said, looking down at Tony. Being held while water was poured over him? That was to close to a kind of torture that his mind tossed up with a casual feeling that there were a lot worse things that his gangster other knew about.

"Let's get Tony to a real room with a bed and sponge off the worse of it. Try to treat him like he's in a hospital or something otherwise he might think he's been captured and get weird as the drug wears off."

Warm lights, a soft bed, stuff that wouldn't bring to mind a jail cell. Shou has had enough bad mornings in his past to know just how weird the mind was when it came to putting weird facts together. There was one morning where he had thought he had been kidnapped by a traveling side show in order to recreate Venus Rising From The Sea.

"I'll clean off once he's settled."

[dead_black_eyes]

L waited for Tony's body to completely relax; he realized he been holding his breath and let it out in a shallow sigh.

"I like Shou's idea," he contributed softly. "He should really be comfortable, and if there's anything we can do to make him feel safe, we'd better do that. The rooms are upstairs... number 14 has a mattress, it's old and kind of moth-eaten but it'll probably do for this. There aren't sheets, but you'll find clean towels in the linen closet you can cover it with."

He stood, the flesh over his cheekbone already starting to swell as he rolled the syringe carefully between his palms. "I'll go get some warm water. So... I'll meet all of you upstairs?"

[chalicejoker]

Hajime's experiences with drugs begin and end with the time he was all doped up post-wisdom-teeth surgery and spent the ride home rambling on and on about the Street Sharks, and so he'd failed to realize Tony might still be conscious on some level. He'd defer to the others' judgement. He does, however, gently pick Tony up. "At least let me get him. I'll bring him wherever you guys tell me to." And he starts towards the stairs.

[ursoreckless]

"Follow me."

Shou stood up and led the way, trying not to hurry even though a part of him wanted to rush up the stairs and get Tony on a bed as fast as he could. He knew that a head wound had scrambled his brains and sudden movements would only make the resulting headache worse, but he also just wanted this to be over with already. Things had gotten worse then they were suppose to and he felt like part of it was his fault. He was fast enough and had some particular abilities; he could have just tracked Tony down instead of waited for trouble to find them. He didn't and that weighed him down.

[dead_black_eyes]

With Shou and Hajime taking care of the heavy lifting, L parted ways with them after a stiff nod, gathering supplies as he went. If there was one thing that was plentiful in this old building, it was cleaning supplies. A bucket here, a few cloths from a closet there, and within five minutes he was upstairs at the agreed-upon meeting place with warm water, cleaning sponges and everything else they'd need to get Tony a little bit cleaner.

"The two of you are welcome to stay," he says softly, starting to soak one of the sponges, "but if it hasn't been done yet, Richard needs to be contacted. And then... if no further medical attention is needed, I think he can probably take it from there."