Jaws that bite and claws that catch [closed]
Characters: Badou Nails (smokeeasy), Jonathan Crane (ornithophobia), and later Dave Nails (smokeyou_out).
Location: Red-light district, near the Bitch's Brew Bar.
Rating: R(?)
Time: August 6th, evening.
Description: Badou arranged to meet Dave and tell him that they're brothers, not to meet Scarecrow and have to relive the way he lost his brother to begin with.
( Badou wanted to believe he'd done the hardest part just setting up this meeting. )
Location: Red-light district, near the Bitch's Brew Bar.
Rating: R(?)
Time: August 6th, evening.
Description: Badou arranged to meet Dave and tell him that they're brothers, not to meet Scarecrow and have to relive the way he lost his brother to begin with.
( Badou wanted to believe he'd done the hardest part just setting up this meeting. )
While a good amount of people had reacted exactly the way he wanted -- fear and hate, people came to hate what they feared most -- it was mildly troubling how many others still remained unconcerned. Either a plague of apathy had hit the city, or this wave of new arrivals didn't understand exactly what they were dealing with. In either case, it only meant that the Scarecrow still had plenty of work ahead of him.
Exhausted as he was after more than a week of this, he hardly noticed the aches and fatigue as he hunted for someone still stupid enough to be out at night-- in what was normally a shady part of town to begin with. He wasn't concerned about not being to find one, no, there was always someone who either didn't get the memo or ignored it. Lucky for both him and them: they were always the ones that needed a dose of fear the most.
What he hadn't counted on was coming across someone he knew of -- surely someone that he'd shared space with that long would know better but there the man was, distinctive red hair and all. It was then that he realised he never got a name to go with the face and sarcasm; their one time conversation wasn't a particularly fruitful one. Being made fun of certainly wasn't fruitful in his book, anyway.
Noting the oblivious way that the man walked forward heeding nothing but the space in front of him, Scarecrow capitalised on it and moved in. He wanted to speak to this one first though, make him very aware of what was going to happen to him. "Where are you going, in such a hurry?"
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Even before he caught sight of him, though, Badou already felt sure he knew who luck had brought him.
"Of all the side streets by all the bars in all the world, he had to walk into mine." He said it as much for his own benefit as for the man in the burlap hood: he wasn't scared. Or he wasn't scared yet. Or he was scared and just doing a damn good job covering it up. Yeah, he'd be having what was behind door number three.
On reflex--old reflex--his hands went to the back of his belt. The place where his guns would usually have been. Only of course they weren't there now. He didn't have his guns, he was the gun, only he couldn't shoot himself. (Ironic to think that Crane had once stubbed his toe on him as he lay at the foot of the Communal stairs unable to change out of his weapon form.)
All he said now though, soft and under his breath was "Shit." And as he took a cautious retreating step, yes something did flicker in his face: he knew he was in trouble, and he was getting ready to run. "Crane. Nice night for a stroll, huh."
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The reflex action did not go unnoticed, however, and it was with an irritatingly self-satisfied tone that he added, "No one to... Throw you down a set of stairs now, it seems." An advancing step, correcting the space between them. No backing out of this -- he knew exactly what he wanted. "So what will it be now? Fight or flight?"
All signs pointed to flight, but should it happen, he had a feeling the man wouldn't get very far in the maze of back-alleys, especially not at night. And then again, the doctor was just one man who surely couldn't hold his own in a fight... He shrugged, palms out, as if daring Badou to even try.
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He took another step back and did something few in Death City would likely ever see him do voluntarily: he tossed his cigarette away, barely half smoked. It was time to get down to business after all.
"Great options there. I should come over and punch you so you can give me a nice up-close and personal face-full of that gas everyone's been talking about. Think I'll take my chances with distance." Besides, running for it had served him well in the past. It had damn well saved his ass.
He took another step backwards, gauging exactly where they each stood, and then another step, and then bang. He was off like shot, immediately darting to the left and down a narrow side street, surprisingly quick on his feet for a man whose lungs had to be like tar.
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God, this was juvenile. Trying to catch up with Badou, he swore that he was just going to poison the next ones straight off the bat instead of putting up with this stupid game of cat and mouse. He was a scientist, not some B-movie villain reject (and Badou was the farthest thing possible from the blonde, leggy woman in distress.) Awful.
But fortunately enough for him, he'd grown accustomed to navigating the labyrinthine back-alleys at night -- which was unusually practical for him, but he had no complaints about acquiring these particular "street-smarts." As the distance between him and Badou began to grow, and as he began to see just where the streets he was taking them on would end up, Crow split off into another alley to head the man off...
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Badou kept running for another half a block and down another alleyway just for good measure, wanting to make sure he'd put a good safe distance between himself and the maniac in the burlap. But he didn't hear anyone in pursuit, and craning his neck behind him, he didn't see anyone back their either.
So finally he allowed himself to slow down, turning and walking a few steps backwards just in case the guy rounded the corner after him a few blocks back. But he saw nothing.
Panting, Badou bent over to rest his hands on his knees and try to catch his breath. It's okay, he tried to assure himself, he's gone. I lost him. It's good.
He lifted his head to look around--Now where the hell was he?
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There was no rest for neither the weary nor wicked -- as Badou tried to catch his breath a familiar face (or mask) interrupted him, appearing as if from nowhere. No words, if Scarecrow spoke he might not have managed to keep the embarrassingly ragged edge to his voice out of notice (he'd like to blame Crane's til-now rather sedentary lifestyle for that thank you very much, he hadn't made a hobby of sprinting down alleys), so he merely settled for a nonverbal hello... In the form of a dose of poison.
To his credit, he'd become just about fed up with the running in general that he'd contemplated just killing the man -- a thought that had occurred to him just a little too often over the past few days -- but that wouldn't have been quite as satisfying as this would be. An impatient arc of the arm, a cloud of what looked like white powder.
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He lifted his head, turned, and met his assailant face-to-face with enough of a shock that it on its own would have knocked him off balance. He had time for a choked exclamation--almost. Really it was more like having just enough time to gasp a breath before his lungs took in the misty white cloud around him.
There was a split second before the masked burlap face before him dissolved, a split second in which Badou's mind had time to latch onto one word: bad.
And then everything around him seemed to waver, the lines all becoming distorted and warped, and he knew with the certainty that he knew how to breathe that they were coming, knew it even before he knew who "they" were--though his mind wasted no time in filling in that detail by revealing the scene around him.
Scrambling back in a stumbling half-run, Badou managed to zig-zag along the alleyway like a ricocheting pinball, stumbling into the side of a dumpster, then away a little further, all the while looking back over his shoulder towards the burlap mask. But he was not seeing the burlap mask at all, nor was he even seeing the alleyway: it was just a long dimly lit corridor--a factory or a warehouse, a maze of concrete and steel, dimly lit and smelling of rust and worse.
There was a distant grinding of a motor somewhere below, an echoing clunk-clunk, like something was stuck in one of the gears. He was sure there had to be a door, a way out, but he couldn't find it. All he had to do was follow--Follow who? ...Someone--but they weren't here, and he didn't know where they'd gone. (Who? Who is it? He knew he must know... But he couldn't remember.)
He made it barely half way down the alley in his staggering zig-zag flight before he tripped, half over his own feet, half from running into a bin, which he sent spinning with a loud clatter. He fell by the curb, a tangled mess of arms and legs akimbo, struggling to right himself just enough so that he could turn and see what was approaching--what he was certain was closing in on him. Iron black-masked faces, their hinged jaws and metal teeth like the unmuzzled maw of some new hellish breed of dog, with hands to hold weapons like a man's.
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And there we go. He couldn't say that it was any more satisfying catching his test sample after a chase (the hole his heart was pounding through his chest was entirely too distracting to even think about enjoyment at the moment) but he'd done it at least. Messily, but he'd done it.
Attempting to catch his breath, he watched Badou stumble down the alley with no real sense of urgency. No one could remain in control of their faculties for long after a straight lungful of the toxin (almost no one, but he didn't particularly care to include his difficulties with Kuroro in that otherwise-favourable statistic). When the man finally fell he approached, in no real hurry -- this was going to be good, he could tell, the man's elevated heart rate only accelerated an already-fast process -- and before too long, he was looking down on the prone figure. His ragged breathing, amplified and warped by the respirator in his mask, probably sounded more like a monstrous rasp in the haze of delusion.
"Let's try this again," he whispered. What would someone like this be afraid of? Emphysema? Lung cancer? Hopefully this would be worth his effort. "How are you feeling?"
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Forgetting his surroundings, he'd forgotten, too, that he didn't have them anymore, and he couldn't understand how he'd lost them. How could he be without them when he needed them so desperately? But they were gone, and there was this figure approaching him--clearer and crisper than the iron-masked faces, though sometimes appearing to be one of them. It fluctuated, sometimes canid-seeming in its expression, and sometimes slack skinned, with flesh like sackcloth and a twisted ragged mouth, like a slash through the material.
His single eye impossibly wide, Badou raised a hand to ward it away. "No! What the hell are you doing here?! I DIDN'T COME BACK! I STAYED AWAY!! I LEARNED AND I STAYED AWAY!!" The face had flickered back to the iron-black mask, a dozen others like it fanning out behind, all clad in black, all armed--blades, guns. It was the blades that scared him most. His free hand went to his right eye, covered the patch there in a useless gesture of defense. There was a scar straight through his palm, clearly he'd tried the tactic once before; clearly it had done no good.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!! I DIDN'T COME BACK!!" But already the scene was wavering in front of his gaze, growing more and more hazy around the edges. He didn't have the wherewithal to answer the question he was asked, in fact it probably wouldn't be long before his overwhelmed mind slipped out of consciousness altogether.
[[OOC: Nono! I am very glad that you did come back to this. I agree about not leaving loose ends! I do think we should probably try to wrap it up though, just because I know I have a lot on my plate and am trying to finish up old logs so as not to leave them hanging. <3]]
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