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

[albhedscavenger]

Rikku didn't really like being in this part of the slums. It was mostly drug deals that happened here, and to be perfectly honest Zydrate made the teen uncomfortable; being a slum creature, she'd seen her fair share of drug-addled persons huddled on the streets, unable to afford even basic housing due to their addiction. Not pretty.

Still, this part of town was worth skulking around in precisely because of the drug trade. The rich seemed to be just as addicted to Zydrate as the poor, and in desperate times they would venture slumward to get their next fix. If she hit the neighborhood on the right day, it was a pickpocketing goldmine

[hunted_you]

Colliding with the other party was like being punched right across the face: he wasn't expecting it at all, and it hurt. He'd been tearing in one direction, and suddenly he was spiraling towards the alley wall. Physics were almost never on his side. Stumbling slightly, he looked up at the stranger he'd run into.

It was a younger girl, and looking a little irate that Artemis had run right into her. Still, an irate stranger didn't outrank being shot. True to her assumptions, he didn't respond or apologize. Artemis just continued to run in the direction he'd been going in previously--the opposite direction the stranger had run in.

A few minutes later, Artemis found himself crouched in the sewer, just under the manhole he'd used to get down there in the first place. Yes, his job was the most glamorous thing in the world, he decided, as he watched a dead rat float by in the drain.

This was the last time he trusted a drug ring leader that actually used his wares. Disgruntled now that his life wasn't in immediate danger, he pulled

[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

[albhedscavenger]

Poor Rikku didn't have a chance. She heard the landing behind her but wasn't really given enough time to actually react to it; the girl had barely pulled her knife when the assailant grabbed her shoulder from behind and spun her around. After stumbling back a bit from the force of the spin, Rikku took a defensive stance and held her knife up, ready to stand her ground and fight the attacker off.

Then she saw the gun. That was an issue. Generally, knives tended to lose in gun fights. Slowly, Rikku lowered the knife a little (but not completely) as he approached her and took a few steps backward to keep her distance from him, a strategy that quickly backfired when she ended up hitting the wall. She looked around briefly at her surroundings and realized that the man effectively had her trapped--the alley was narrow and his advance made it so she'd have a difficult time dodging around him, especially since he had the advantage of size. Not to mention that, if he was anything like the other people who frequented the slums, the man

[hunted_you]

Once his initial relief at Schuldig's being alive had passed, he looked back at the phone. He frowned and refreshed the marker. Either his eyes were going, or Schuldig was moving away from him. Was he running as well? But why? Had the fight gone so poorly that Schuldig had to distract the drug ring from where Artemis had hidden himself?

This required a bit more power than his phone had. Certainly he'd done a few adjustments to the phone, but if he needed to mount a formidable offense, he would need a supercomputer. Besides... his reception was terrible in the sewer.

Artemis reached into his inner blazer pocket, momentarily stunned to find nothing. He checked his other pockets in desperation, even the pockets Cube couldn't possibly fit in.

"Hey, watch it!"The realization hit him like the warm stench had when he'd dropped down the manhole in the first place: shocking and wholly unpleasant. Artemis returned to his phone and overlayed both Cube and Schuldig's trackers