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

NPC- Luca Dantonio

[dead_black_eyes]

Bugged-out eyes flick independently back and forth of each other as a young man with green-tinged skin drags on a cigarette and tries to suppress his nerves. He's working tonight, and he has to take it seriously if he wants to remain in good favor with his notorious boss. That being said, it's fairly dangerous, because he'll probably end up on camera. The only real upside is that he won't look like himself; he won't look exactly like who he's trying to look like, either, but that hardly matters. All that's really important is that he comes close enough to fool the prejudiced masses, and given his modifications to look and behave more like an chameleon, it'll be very little trouble.

Stubbing out his cigarette on the nearest brick surface, he pulls his hood down, shifting his appearance to take on the features of the young man he's impersonating. White hair, a missing eye and accompanying eye patch, a blue sweater... and a can of gasoline, and a box of matches. When this hits news stands tomorrow, the small charity clinic will not be the only thing to have burned.

[chalicejoker]

Hajime had wasted no time in responding to Tony's message. The fastest way to get there was aboard his motorcycle, and since the bike transformed when he took the form the Ace of Hearts granted him, he just went with that. He was a little faster that way than when he took the Joker form that he'd been running around calling the Lord of the Bugmen, and really, something smaller and less well known would serve them well in this endeavor.

Tony had an idea of where the guy was, so the hunt was on. Hajime lay in wait in an alley; when he saw the guy, he was going to run him down. Even in a sleeker, armored form, stealth was not his special skill. Hopefully the guy would show himself, or Tony and Shou would drive him out.

Or would quietly patrolling around the area do the same thing? Decisions, decisions...

Afterward- Willow Ridge Boarding Academy

[dead_black_eyes]

The school had come a long way since L had initially purchased and begun work on it. Many had contributed to helping him renovate the old building and whip it into habitable shape, but he had been the one there, every day, working himself to the bone and pouring endless time, effort and energy to the project. Though his stamina for a labor of love was almost preternaturally high, even he had his limits, and following his relatively successful interview with Energy Up earlier that day, he'd returned to the sparse dorm room he'd claimed for himself and collapsed into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Only now, after dark, he was beginning to resurface to a relative state of general alertness. He sat up, rubbing his eyes blearily and putting a pot of coffee on.

If only he'd known how thoroughly he'd soon be woken up, he might have saved himself the trouble.

He stiffened as he heard the roar of a motorcycle. It was closer than most traffic that passed the school. Very close, too close, and it was only getting closer. Hastily pulling on his boots, L made his way downstairs, an ever-growing sense of dread quickening his pace.

After all the excitement's died down - Tony and Richard

[oncedevil]

Tony was resting quietly on a musty old mattress in one of the empty dorm rooms. Clean towels had been laid out in place of sheets, and Tony cleaned up to the best of everyone's abilities without risking waking him and sending him into another fit. Fortunately the sedative, exhaustion, or both had sent him into a deep slumber. Now that things were quieter, with his sentinel in the form of L watching over him, he could sleep more soundly.

While he rested perhaps his new found healing abilities could take over and patch him together a little better.

Later; L and Richard

[dead_black_eyes]

From the second Tony and company had appeared at his door, desperate for a place to crash and lie low, L had been doing a fine job holding things together. He was getting better at compartmentalizing, putting aside the smaller concerns to better deal with the larger ones, but it meant that he tended to wait until the dust settled and he was alone to implode and collapse inward. And now that he wasn't needed anymore, and Richard had arrived, wasn't his work finished? His worrying certainly should have been. While a small amount of guilt chewed at the back of his brain (Tony might not be able to communicate to Richard what happened, how much did Shou tell him, will he need to know more?), he was, for the moment, free to quietly fall apart.

The showers were a communal affair, with heads lining the tiled walls. More development would eventually mean more privacy, but for now, a typical boys' locker room was where anyone living at the school was going to get clean. He removed and neatly folded his blood spattered clothes, keeping a soft, freshly laundered towel nearby as he turned on the water and waited for the room to fill with dense, heavy steam. The familiar sting of Lysol against his bare skin started powerful and irritating and prickled gradually into numb, resigned comfort; this was what he could always rely on to make him feel pure and sterile. White rooms, bleached walls, discomfort he could live with if it killed every trace of slimy mold.

As hot water pelted down on his head and soaked his dark hair, L watched it glide across the floor and disappear into the drain. Even if it was only on a molecular level, it was taking the deadest and dirtiest parts of him with it. Secure in that knowledge, L permitted himself to feel something like peace for the first time since seeing Shou and Hajime carrying Tony's limp body toward him.