RE: The Fearsome Encounter (GBS3G8) [Round 3: Ark of Hope]
03-03-2014, 03:45 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-03-2014, 03:45 PM by MalkyTop.)
Cepra lurched under the weight of Saturday's body once more. Being temporarily frozen had a way of not exactly preparing your muscles for certain tasks, such as moving a body. Not that Cepra had muscles, but you get the idea.
She was no longer in an alleyway, about to dump a body in a dark place where nobody would find it or care even if they did. She was also no longer surrounded by birds, which was not exactly ideal. They hadn't gotten around to actually telling her about Saturday's coin or anything.
Ah, well. Really, the most pressing matter on her mind was how she was once again trapped in a cramped space.
All of her legs were folded at odd angles in order to fit in the narrow box she was in and, considering that at least two of her arms were occupied with a body that was starting to smell like the dumpster she was about to put it in, all she could do was brace two elbows on the walls around her and start pressing against them. One of them seemed to give, and so she juggled herself and the compliant Saturday around until she had most of her appendages facing what she guessed was the door. And as she kicked it off its hinges and tumbled out like a graceless ocean of limbs and dead bodies, she had the sobering thought that this might be her future for a long, long time.
But this wasn't the best moment to think about the future. In her experience, lying on the floor with a dead body wasn't the best of time to do anything besides get as far away from the dead body as possible. Still, she did promise all those flying whatchits that she'd help them deal with all the messy details that killing a man entailed and she lived by the principle of Keep Your Deals. That's how you get recommended. That's also how you get backstabbed, sometimes, but Cepra also lived by the principle of Don't Be a Goddamn Moron. True, she was stupid about plenty of things, but she wasn't stupid about things like surviving 'til the next day. She wouldn't be in this business if she was.
The thing she had just busted out of like a cocoon was a rather large locker, not that Cepra knew what a locker was. She did know what a hiding place was, though, and proceeded to prop the ex-Saturday inside her recent, uncomfortable home. She took a moment to admire the work done on him, the way his stomach looked like an explosion just ending and his face looked like one just beginning. She wished she could keep it from decaying, but unfortunately, poison needed some sort of life fluids pumping around to work. With some of her other hands, she carefully set the door back the way it was before, placing what remained of the hinges back into what remained of the corresponding holes.
The result was...a battered mess. She really hadn't been kind at all to that door. But it was good enough, really, nobody was in here at the moment for whatever reason. So now it was just time to slip out and continue that conversation from before, something about 'alliance,' which Cepra was rather certain translated to 'job,' a word that never failed to intrigue her.
The hallway outside was narrow and, somewhat distressingly, bright. There weren't a lot of shadows to hide herself in, nor a lot of space even if there were. The ceiling was much too low to feasibly hope that she could just crawl up there and have the people passing below not see her. You didn't even need two eyes to have the peripheral vision required to spot her immediately.
At least she should be able to hear anybody coming, but by extension that probably meant that anybody could hear her leaving. This was a recipe for a lot of bodies.
But the longer she tiptoed around, the more the place seemed deserted. At the very least, everybody seemed to be milling about somewhere else. Which was convenient. It's very time-consuming trying to tiptoe around with four legs.
As Cepra relaxed into her more natural state of derisively dismissing the ability of her surroundings to harm her, she couldn't help but let her mind wander back to thoughts of deals and the future.
That short conversation with the strangely erudite birds combined with the Apprentice's level of sheer condescension mixed with an unhealthy dose of blatant incompetence was starting to remind her of her principles regarding deals in general. And regarding deals that weren't even made in the first place.
She had never liked this whole whatever-this-is in the first place. It stunk of self-important clients already planning ways to kill you as though nobody had thought of that angle before. But this was even worse because at least those clients knew to at least give the pretense of following the unspoken rules of hiring mercenaries. And that was no. Fucking. Freebies.
And even if you somehow managed to rope a merc into doing a freebie through stupid freaky magic shit so they couldn't even back out, you don't. Fucking. Complain. That they didn't do it. What the fuck did you expect when you don't fucking pay?
You don't make mercs play some sort of stupid game just for the chance to do your oh-so-special job. Mercenaries are freelancers. You just find one that's seasoned and alive and then pay them and hope you'd never see them again. You don't make some big show out of it, and even if you do, at least command respect.
Cepra didn't know how she ever tolerated the situation before. Well, the whole “teleported out of her home world and faced with foreign and sometimes interesting beings and situations” probably had something to do with it. Mostly the fact that she couldn't even go to a bar and shoot the shit with merc acquaintances, or even attract any clients, not when people didn't even know her here, leaving her not many options besides playing along and pretending that she had a choice in the matter so that she didn't fly into a rage like she was doing now.
The wall didn't buckle under her fist, which was about as frustrating as the hollow echo that resulted down the halls. The noise would likely attract someone, but y'know, it would really be nice to rend something as yielding as flesh right about now.
Un/fortunately, the noise attracted two birds who weren't at all familiar but immediately recognizable as part of the people she was supposed to be allies with, at least in the near future, maybe, hopefully. “Oh good, that was you,” said one through a beak that seemed oddly unaligned. It looked like it would be hard to talk through. Mostly, it just added clacks within her sentences.
The other one, small, darty, bright blue, cackled. “Ex'lent! We found ya!”
Cepra sighed and buried her aggression for later. “You're pretty excited. This alliance talk really that important to you?”
“Naw,” the bluebird replied, hovering nearby as though uncertain whether social protocol prevented him from politely landing on one of Cepra's horns. “'S jus' I thought we'd be flyin' ages tryin'a find ya! But then ya went ahead and jus' drew 'ttention t' yerself like a – ”
“What he means is,” the other one cut in, clacking her beak harshly, “we're glad t' meet'cha, hun.”
“I wasn't 'bout t' say anythin' awful,” the bluebird shot back. “Anyways, we'll be yer illustr'us nego'shators, continuin' conversations and such. Names're Blackjack and Hookers.”
Hookers nodded rather modestly for someone of her moniker. “If ya don't mind sittin' a spell, we can get down t' business, hash out what we were doin' 'fore, yanno?”
As she opted to simply lean against a wall, Cepra couldn't help but ask, “'Hookers?' Why plural?”
“I mean, th' joke wouldn' work with jus' 'Hooker,' yanno?”
Cepra had no behavioral equivalent of blinking blankly, and so had to force all of that energy into the word instead. “'Joke?'”
“Yanno,” Blackjack chimed in between the beats of his wings, “'blackjack and hookers?' So's we're 'Blackjack' and 'Hookers.'”
“What the hell do clubs have to do with hookers?”
“No no no,” Blackjack said in a manner that seemed to imply that it was her fault she wasn't getting it. “Blackjack. Like th' card game?”
Cepra tried to make her confused silence as polite as possible.
“Gamblin'?” he tried again, his voice a hopeful lilt.
Behind her goggles, Cepra's eyes lit up. “Oh! Like craps?”
The silence afterward was less confused and polite, more tense with choking anger. As in, Blackjack quite suddenly (and, Cepra couldn't help but add, most ineffectively) tried to strangle her.
She was no longer in an alleyway, about to dump a body in a dark place where nobody would find it or care even if they did. She was also no longer surrounded by birds, which was not exactly ideal. They hadn't gotten around to actually telling her about Saturday's coin or anything.
Ah, well. Really, the most pressing matter on her mind was how she was once again trapped in a cramped space.
All of her legs were folded at odd angles in order to fit in the narrow box she was in and, considering that at least two of her arms were occupied with a body that was starting to smell like the dumpster she was about to put it in, all she could do was brace two elbows on the walls around her and start pressing against them. One of them seemed to give, and so she juggled herself and the compliant Saturday around until she had most of her appendages facing what she guessed was the door. And as she kicked it off its hinges and tumbled out like a graceless ocean of limbs and dead bodies, she had the sobering thought that this might be her future for a long, long time.
But this wasn't the best moment to think about the future. In her experience, lying on the floor with a dead body wasn't the best of time to do anything besides get as far away from the dead body as possible. Still, she did promise all those flying whatchits that she'd help them deal with all the messy details that killing a man entailed and she lived by the principle of Keep Your Deals. That's how you get recommended. That's also how you get backstabbed, sometimes, but Cepra also lived by the principle of Don't Be a Goddamn Moron. True, she was stupid about plenty of things, but she wasn't stupid about things like surviving 'til the next day. She wouldn't be in this business if she was.
The thing she had just busted out of like a cocoon was a rather large locker, not that Cepra knew what a locker was. She did know what a hiding place was, though, and proceeded to prop the ex-Saturday inside her recent, uncomfortable home. She took a moment to admire the work done on him, the way his stomach looked like an explosion just ending and his face looked like one just beginning. She wished she could keep it from decaying, but unfortunately, poison needed some sort of life fluids pumping around to work. With some of her other hands, she carefully set the door back the way it was before, placing what remained of the hinges back into what remained of the corresponding holes.
The result was...a battered mess. She really hadn't been kind at all to that door. But it was good enough, really, nobody was in here at the moment for whatever reason. So now it was just time to slip out and continue that conversation from before, something about 'alliance,' which Cepra was rather certain translated to 'job,' a word that never failed to intrigue her.
The hallway outside was narrow and, somewhat distressingly, bright. There weren't a lot of shadows to hide herself in, nor a lot of space even if there were. The ceiling was much too low to feasibly hope that she could just crawl up there and have the people passing below not see her. You didn't even need two eyes to have the peripheral vision required to spot her immediately.
At least she should be able to hear anybody coming, but by extension that probably meant that anybody could hear her leaving. This was a recipe for a lot of bodies.
But the longer she tiptoed around, the more the place seemed deserted. At the very least, everybody seemed to be milling about somewhere else. Which was convenient. It's very time-consuming trying to tiptoe around with four legs.
As Cepra relaxed into her more natural state of derisively dismissing the ability of her surroundings to harm her, she couldn't help but let her mind wander back to thoughts of deals and the future.
That short conversation with the strangely erudite birds combined with the Apprentice's level of sheer condescension mixed with an unhealthy dose of blatant incompetence was starting to remind her of her principles regarding deals in general. And regarding deals that weren't even made in the first place.
She had never liked this whole whatever-this-is in the first place. It stunk of self-important clients already planning ways to kill you as though nobody had thought of that angle before. But this was even worse because at least those clients knew to at least give the pretense of following the unspoken rules of hiring mercenaries. And that was no. Fucking. Freebies.
And even if you somehow managed to rope a merc into doing a freebie through stupid freaky magic shit so they couldn't even back out, you don't. Fucking. Complain. That they didn't do it. What the fuck did you expect when you don't fucking pay?
You don't make mercs play some sort of stupid game just for the chance to do your oh-so-special job. Mercenaries are freelancers. You just find one that's seasoned and alive and then pay them and hope you'd never see them again. You don't make some big show out of it, and even if you do, at least command respect.
Cepra didn't know how she ever tolerated the situation before. Well, the whole “teleported out of her home world and faced with foreign and sometimes interesting beings and situations” probably had something to do with it. Mostly the fact that she couldn't even go to a bar and shoot the shit with merc acquaintances, or even attract any clients, not when people didn't even know her here, leaving her not many options besides playing along and pretending that she had a choice in the matter so that she didn't fly into a rage like she was doing now.
The wall didn't buckle under her fist, which was about as frustrating as the hollow echo that resulted down the halls. The noise would likely attract someone, but y'know, it would really be nice to rend something as yielding as flesh right about now.
Un/fortunately, the noise attracted two birds who weren't at all familiar but immediately recognizable as part of the people she was supposed to be allies with, at least in the near future, maybe, hopefully. “Oh good, that was you,” said one through a beak that seemed oddly unaligned. It looked like it would be hard to talk through. Mostly, it just added clacks within her sentences.
The other one, small, darty, bright blue, cackled. “Ex'lent! We found ya!”
Cepra sighed and buried her aggression for later. “You're pretty excited. This alliance talk really that important to you?”
“Naw,” the bluebird replied, hovering nearby as though uncertain whether social protocol prevented him from politely landing on one of Cepra's horns. “'S jus' I thought we'd be flyin' ages tryin'a find ya! But then ya went ahead and jus' drew 'ttention t' yerself like a – ”
“What he means is,” the other one cut in, clacking her beak harshly, “we're glad t' meet'cha, hun.”
“I wasn't 'bout t' say anythin' awful,” the bluebird shot back. “Anyways, we'll be yer illustr'us nego'shators, continuin' conversations and such. Names're Blackjack and Hookers.”
Hookers nodded rather modestly for someone of her moniker. “If ya don't mind sittin' a spell, we can get down t' business, hash out what we were doin' 'fore, yanno?”
As she opted to simply lean against a wall, Cepra couldn't help but ask, “'Hookers?' Why plural?”
“I mean, th' joke wouldn' work with jus' 'Hooker,' yanno?”
Cepra had no behavioral equivalent of blinking blankly, and so had to force all of that energy into the word instead. “'Joke?'”
“Yanno,” Blackjack chimed in between the beats of his wings, “'blackjack and hookers?' So's we're 'Blackjack' and 'Hookers.'”
“What the hell do clubs have to do with hookers?”
“No no no,” Blackjack said in a manner that seemed to imply that it was her fault she wasn't getting it. “Blackjack. Like th' card game?”
Cepra tried to make her confused silence as polite as possible.
“Gamblin'?” he tried again, his voice a hopeful lilt.
Behind her goggles, Cepra's eyes lit up. “Oh! Like craps?”
The silence afterward was less confused and polite, more tense with choking anger. As in, Blackjack quite suddenly (and, Cepra couldn't help but add, most ineffectively) tried to strangle her.