[Location: Speares; Westen House] (locked to Michael)
To tell the truth, it was him who started doing all of the preparations for walking into a trap. Not going into this unarmed, Mike, he'd said, and Michael had agreed: they'd passed a petrol station two blocks down that had an open shed. If both of them were right they could've just ambled in and nobody would've cared what they'd taken out, but they fell to form and Mike distracted the petrol attendant while Sam scrounged for weapons. No guns on hand, but you could do a hell of a lot with boxcutters and some wrenches. You just couldn't do what you might do with a Beretta, was all.
So it was wrenches with the tips stuck up into their belts, unseen but uncomfortable, and with a big bucket of trepidation they also boarded what looked to be a tram -- a big shiny gliding thing, not a clattery downtown pile of bolts on a sparking wire, and were asked by a smiling conductor for their destination. They'd puzzled over the line map: the one closest to their dot was marked Metior. "Speares district," he'd said, and stood with Mike amongst a crowd of people in beat-up jackets and plastic purses and scuffed shoes like you'd get on any tram in the history of ever. For some reason, that was the creepy part.
They didn't talk much, didn't feel like talking. The smiling conductor let them off at the stop two streets away from their coordinates, and they walked together underneath the warmth of a thin late-season sun that you'd swear to God was real.
The architecture was messed-up -- you'd get a couple of the old-tile 1914 ticky-tacky houses like you'd found in small-town Pennsylvania, then a flat 1970s rose-coloured adobe place. Then a condo. Then a London brownstone complete with ancient chimney. It was all counterintuitive as hell, disorienting as a police riot dazzler. When they got closer to their flashing dot they started looking around intuitively -- getting off the street as much as they could, checking for surveillance, wound-up toy tense.
And it was Mike who saw it first, but he saw it second. A Miami two-storey with broad doorstep stairs, cream-coloured stucco, big windows, red terracotta tiles. There were leggy ferns planted out front, side-by-side with lilac bushes. He'd helped the lady of the house plant the things himself back when he'd been in the doghouse for blowing up the sunroom -- the sunroom out front that he'd helped build, in the windows the curtains Strickler had sent that were gaudy as gaudy got, the chocolate-coloured front door --
"Jesus, it's your mom's," said Sam. It was a stupid thing to say, but it was the only thing that was coming out his mouth. Then he looked at Mike and Mike's thousand-yard-stare, and said, "Maddie -- "
It was a sprint after that.
[ooc: currently locked to michael westen, but this could be subject to change!]
So it was wrenches with the tips stuck up into their belts, unseen but uncomfortable, and with a big bucket of trepidation they also boarded what looked to be a tram -- a big shiny gliding thing, not a clattery downtown pile of bolts on a sparking wire, and were asked by a smiling conductor for their destination. They'd puzzled over the line map: the one closest to their dot was marked Metior. "Speares district," he'd said, and stood with Mike amongst a crowd of people in beat-up jackets and plastic purses and scuffed shoes like you'd get on any tram in the history of ever. For some reason, that was the creepy part.
They didn't talk much, didn't feel like talking. The smiling conductor let them off at the stop two streets away from their coordinates, and they walked together underneath the warmth of a thin late-season sun that you'd swear to God was real.
The architecture was messed-up -- you'd get a couple of the old-tile 1914 ticky-tacky houses like you'd found in small-town Pennsylvania, then a flat 1970s rose-coloured adobe place. Then a condo. Then a London brownstone complete with ancient chimney. It was all counterintuitive as hell, disorienting as a police riot dazzler. When they got closer to their flashing dot they started looking around intuitively -- getting off the street as much as they could, checking for surveillance, wound-up toy tense.
And it was Mike who saw it first, but he saw it second. A Miami two-storey with broad doorstep stairs, cream-coloured stucco, big windows, red terracotta tiles. There were leggy ferns planted out front, side-by-side with lilac bushes. He'd helped the lady of the house plant the things himself back when he'd been in the doghouse for blowing up the sunroom -- the sunroom out front that he'd helped build, in the windows the curtains Strickler had sent that were gaudy as gaudy got, the chocolate-coloured front door --
"Jesus, it's your mom's," said Sam. It was a stupid thing to say, but it was the only thing that was coming out his mouth. Then he looked at Mike and Mike's thousand-yard-stare, and said, "Maddie -- "
It was a sprint after that.
[ooc: currently locked to michael westen, but this could be subject to change!]