From That Moment You'll Be Out of Place And Underdressed

[hunted_you]

Characters Artemis, Rikku, Schuldig
Rating PG-13
Summary When a seemingly routine business transaction goes awry, young Master Fowl is not only relieved to escape with his life and limbs, but is relieved of one of his most prized possessions.
Location A particularly seedy neighborhood, populated by dumpsters, mostly.
Date/Time October 10th, late

Comments

[schuld]

Well, that had certainly made his night more exciting.

Schuldig was grinning broadly - and ferally - as he moved, not unhurriedly; his adrenaline was still running high, and Artemis could generally be trusted to get himself in trouble if not closely watched. Tonight, at least, he couldn't be blamed for; normally any deals they made where Schwarz and Artemis both felt confident in exposing the young heir himself were so secure as to be practically sedate. (The fact that their dealer had been idiot enough to fill himself to the eyeballs with drugs before attempting to do business was just proof that idiots could camouflage themselves well.) But an Artemis left running alone through the slums was an Artemis who'd be stripped naked or dead (who was he kidding - stripped naked and dead) within hours. Schuldig honestly didn't know how a kid who'd grown up in far worse circumstances than a rich man's son had any right to claim either hadn't learned any basic street survival skills, or had forgotten them all so quickly. Clearly he spoiled the boy.

In any case, the danger was well past - while a few of the dealers had moved to protect their leader, despite his clear insanity, they'd been mopped up quickly. The remaining intelligent men were being treated to Farfarello's demonstration - performed with the help of the soon-to-be-ex-leader - on the terrible, screaming, highly graphic dangers of stupidity, which meant it was time to fetch Arty back.

The one problem was that when Schuldig flipped open his phone, he found himself looking at signals he shouldn't be getting. Arty's phone and Cube were in separate places. Clearly something had managed to happen to Arty already...Schuldig had gotten complacent with his estimates of how long Arty could last without bodyguards, it seemed.

He allowed himself to pause briefly; he needed to decide which signal to pursue first. If Arty had been stripped of both Cube and his phone, by different individuals, then it hardly mattered - and, if they'd hurt or killed Arty, Schuldig would hunt them to the ends of the earth, tracking devices or not. If one or the other was Arty...well, if he was being smart, then the stationary dot - the phone - was Arty waiting for him somewhere safe. If Arty was being stupid, then the moving dot - Cube - coming closer was the boy looking for him, maybe upset over whatever incident had lost him the phone.

After a moment longer, Schuldig began moving again, keeping the phone open to track the moving dot. Whether or not it was Arty, it was closer, and if it kept moving while he checked on the stationary signal he'd just have that much more trouble catching it later.

As he got closer to the signal - which didn't take long; he'd taken to the roofs almost immediately, one of his many peculiar talents, and that cut off a lot of winding ways - that wolfish grin began to return. Judging by the territory, there was no way Cube's holder was Arty. Not even Arty at his self-endangering height would be risking these dark back alleys. So a thief, if they were lucky; if they were a murderer, too, then they'd already used up their life's allotment of luck and Schuldig was the universe's designated embodiment of that fact. By the time he'd caught up, he was able to drop down, almost silently, only a few yards behind the thief - a young girl, he noted, with a slight quirk of an eyebrow; maybe she'd threatened to kiss Arty until he'd handed Cube over in self-defense.

Not waiting to see if she'd picked up on the faint sound of his landing(if she was a submarket regular, she ought to be well-tuned to her surroundings), he darted forward, dropping his phone back into his pocket with one hand - and pulling something else out in the same motion - while the other latched onto the girl's shoulder with claw-like fingers and spun her roughly enough to stagger her back towards a wall. "Hey there," he purred, closing the distance even as he lifted the gun in his other hand; he didn't point it at her, yet, but he made sure it was very visible next to his shoulder. "Were you having a nice night?" The 'until now' hardly needed to be spoken.