Everything would shine wherever she would go, but looking at her now you'd never tell.

[whateverthemess]

Behind the Empress theater stands Murphy, still wingclad. There are three people on the ground in front of her, hands tied behind their backs.

It's a regular game of glare ping-pong.

She draws Fidelacchius slowly, letting the whisper of the blade hang in the silence of the alley

Comments

[painhumbles]

"Yeeeeah, it was kinda over the top, especially with the sword and the wings and all, but A+ for effort."

Hi, Murphy. Guess who's standing right behind you, leaning against a wall and looking as smug as the day is long.

The first two guesses don't count.

[whateverthemess]

"You would know." She turns around and crosses her arms in the same movement. Somehow, she is utterly unsurprised to see him. "Made any assholes run over their own puppies today? On second thought, I really don't want to know."

Murphy leans against the Empress's rear door. She fingers the hilt of her sword, frowning slightly. "Sometimes a glowing weapon drives the lesson home better than a punch to the face." She doesn't like using the sword that way, but it's true.

[painhumbles]

The Trickster's expression goes mock-horrified. "That's terrible. I happen to like dogs." Pause, coupled with a slight considering headtilt. "Now if the puppy sprouts fangs and takes a bite out of said asshole's jugular vein, maaaybe that could've been one of mine. Why? You hear anything?" He backs off the wall and waves a hand vaguely and practically scoffs, "The whole city's insane. I don't know what's mine and what's normal."

He plants himself against the wall across from Murphy and shrugs. "Well yeah, because punching is so last season. Glad you're getting with the program." Can you smell the sarcasm, Murphy? Can you taste it?

[whateverthemess]

"I've heard lots of things the past few days." She pushes away from the wall and paces, gathering a thundercloud of momentum. "I've heard of wanderers disappearing, groups like that one--" she jerks her chin in the direction of the vanished thugs "--attacking known wanderer hangouts without seriously injuring anyone, instead apparently focusing on dragging them off."

She takes a deep breath, stopping and crossing her arms again. "Though you probably don't give half a shit about any of that anyway."

[whateverthemess]

Buckingham Crater is eerie after dark. The businesses are closed, the office buildings across the street emptied out, and the cold keeps all but vandals and the homeless inside. A few candles flicker around the crater's edge, lone points of light sending patches of orange glimmering in the spaces between streetlamps.

Murphy stands in the dark, arms hugged against herself. Even impervious to the chill as she's been over the past week, January nights in the midwest are freezing. Snow drifts down in thin spirals, the flakes melting against her bare hands and face.

"Come on," she murmurs. She closes her eyes and listens to the silence. It's been almost an hour and a half since she came here, apparently to pay her respects. "Come on."

[lovemeipromise]

Word travels fast in these circles. The new and improved CLF is a functional entity and for all that it's made its name again by showing its face, the public displays of violence are out. No one cries over a few missing freaks and it's easier to forget about them when they just vanish as opposed to turning up mangled to be made an example of

[whateverthemess]

Something cold twists at the base of Murphy's spine. Well. This is already going wrong. Michael is here, and his victims are still out of reach.

"Have you." Her chin lifts. She turns, her face lacking anything other than mild interest. It was a mistake, standing within the ring of lights surrounding the former fountain. Even if she doesn't have them shining in her eyes, it still cuts off her line of sight, turning the park into shifting patterns of darkness.

She's pretty sure she hears movement out there now, the occasional soft crunch on the snow.

Fuck.

Michael's wings are impressive, and would probably be intimidating if she weren't used to the fantastic and its general desire to eat her face off. This kid is nothing when put next to Nicodemus, to Tessa or Rosanna, to any number of creatures she's faced down over the years.

"So. About those people you've been kidnapping." Her tone is that of someone commenting on Michael snagging the last bottle of shampoo at the grocery store.

[lovemeipromise]

Michael shifts perceptibly, but it's barely anything more than him putting his weight on another foot, his head tilted out somewhere to the side, like he's watching for undue movement.

"The Chicago Liberation Front was a weak, spineless group. Their ideas were sound, but their execution was theatrical, ridiculous, too keen on seeking attention. Very few people notice when these freaks who don't belong here anyway vanish." He looks back at her. "Except for you, but they are your demons, aren't they?"

He's mad, wholly and truly, but he's so earnest about it that it just makes the madness worse. "I have to kill them," he says, and that's all the answer she's ever going to get to that statement.