[oWOD] The Vampire and The Time Mage: Now, Then, and Forever - [COMPLETE]

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026 - Clubbing
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    • 026 - Clubbing

    The club is a hell of a sight, Fresno night life neither of the two Agent's specialities. A long line of varying levels of attractive waits out front while two bouncers hold it all together. Belltower, now Eight, sighs.

    He's wearing suede black slip on's with buckles, his ankles showing as thin but loose slacks with a pull string waistband looped. A large black undershirt, that's buttoned up about halfway to show much of his chest rests beneath an open dark rouge business coat. His smokes are packed away, but one is emptied and wrapped in a zig-zag to create what looks to be a spliff behind his ear. On one hand is a silver bracelet, while a large watch is on the other. Minimal amounts of make-up are used to slightly accentuate Eight's features, emboldening the strong jawline and cheekbones, exactly as one trying to appear more masculine would attempt.

    "Yeah, you look ready to play now." Katherine had said at the time. "Just treat people… Like slightly better than dirt, and you'll be better than eighty percent of the men and women there."

    "Uhuh." He's got a mildly annoyed look on his face, "Feel like a piece of meat." Eight grumbles.

    "Really? This is what you normally wear with a bit of color and loosened a tad." Moxxi (with an I) said back, before remembering she was the tough protector, and puts on a very stern look.

    He gives a look at Moxxi, "Really. I don't remember leaving my shirt unbuttoned." Starting to march towards the back of the line, showing a real unfamiliarity with how this works.

    This worked with Eleanora, but… She shrugged, "Go to walk past the bouncer, don't even look at him unless he puts his hand in front of you." Katherine whispers, walking close behind.

    Sighing, he settles, placing a look of disconnected observation on his face, dulling his eyes ever so slightly as he marches right past the bouncer. On the other hand, the bouncer stares at Moxxi, frowning at her appearance before Eight says, "She's mine." Gesturing vaguely behind himself, trying to be cool, or seeing something she didn't.

    Christ, he has no idea what he just said. She didn't stop keeping firm a stare wasn't a no, and she was a… Actually, she was a trained killer now that she thought about it. She sighed quietly to herself as she got in, wondering what the hell must have been in the water in the aughts. Moxxi was wearing a full professional blue business suit, with mirrored shades. Matching slacks over dress shoes with grip pads. She still didn't like not having a trench coat, but admitted no-one else there had one.

    Pulsing EDM takes a short break as the DJ moves to a new track, though the dance floor isn't the only attraction, this place is very profitable judging from its size. Eight's a little nervous, looking around and trying to find his way in the new place of entertainment. Eventually just moving towards a booth. Without a reservation.

    Moxxi hadn't even got past paying the cover charge, plus tip before seeing that and tried to power walk casually. Though she realized that as security, she could be a little cranky. She quickly snaps her finger at him, and points towards her heel with a fierce look that penetrates through her shades.

    Looking confused but acquiescing, he gets close, "What'd I do?" Eight keeps cover, but still tries to figure it out.

    "I know you're used to your assistant handling all of this, but on spur of the moment trips like this we don't have reservations." Then on a quieter note, "We also don't say 'She's Mine' unless we're trying to seem like a republican or a future school shooter." That one came out as a hiss.

    "Oh. That's. Different." Eight's hiding something very apologetic, playing a character well enough, "How much does a booth cost? I don't want to be just…around." He slips a black card out, offering it to Moxxi.

    She looks at him, realizing he's serious, taking a bit of a breath, "Literally, all of the cash in yours, and my wallet, on top of a table charge and bottle charge. The first one is to bribe a host to get yelled at for 'accidentally' double booking a booth."

    "Hmm." He sighs, "Fine, here's my personal card, it has four hundred on it." He slips a blue card out. "Booth's necessary, in the open means unimportant still, right?"

    "Yes, but I'm going to just use personal wealth for this, because you're about a digit off on well pretty much everything. Bribes are also still done in cash." Then she thought about it, could you do a bribe through Venmo? You'd have to be friends then right? CashApp maybe, when would people just pick an app for illicit deals already.

    Very quickly, she moved to an ATM, and typed in the agency pin so that her card wouldn't get munched for pulling out five grand in twenties. Then stopping, thinking about how many twenties that would be. pinching her eyes letting the pressure build up for just a second. Then doing two thousand, quickly pocketing it before walking to the bar looking haggard trying to amplify it just a bit as she sat on a stool.

    She puts a twenty under her hand in front of her letting go of it when the bartender notices it and approaches, letting him slide it off the counter. "What can I do for you?"

    She points at Eight, "See that little douchebag? I've got to watch him all night and it's his first time in a club. He didn't… Plan this well." She takes the stack of a thousand dollars and places it in front of the bartender. "Can you make sure we get a booth, plus a good time? And put everything else on the tab on this card," handing over a debit card that is tied to a temporary virtual card with her bank. She sighs quietly, and then says, "And four bottles of Grey Goose." Pointing at a two hundred dollar bottle of liquor.

    The tender moves, commenting, "Seems to already have company." As a woman about an inch taller than him with tan skin and tribal tattoos in white on her arms is practically leaning over Eight as he visibly tries not to hurt her.

    The Bartender intonates that the booth Eight had chosen would be fine, and Moxxi very quickly left, knowing her card would be at the counter or sent to the booth anyways. Moxxi moves over to watch Eight, very much in eye-line of both of them, luckily towering over most of the crowd there.

    "Hey pip-squeak." The woman chuckles, brushing a finger on his arm, "You here alone?" She grins, eyes wide and body toned with muscle and a few scars covered up by the tattoos. Eight stares at her with something like distaste, trying to choose his words carefully.

    "Admit your nervous." Katherine says loudly in a faux whisper to Eight, leaning more into a nanny kind of security role making apologetic eye contact with the other woman and an uneasy forced grin.

    "And who are you are…?" The woman asks, eyes glinting oddly in the dim light,. She leans back into Eight's booth, letting the sleeveless top pull to her body, lifting up to show tattoos on her toned abdomen.

    "Moxxi," She says, "I'm just here to make sure he gets home Okay." Blunt, to the point. Trying to seem ill socialized and dangerous. As if the potential violence is why she was hired.

    She loses all interest in him immediately, refocusing on Moxxi. "Hey, Moxxi. Name's Zayn, you more free than him?" She leans onto the table with a smile, waiting for a response.

    "Sorry, it's a work night," Moxxi says trying to spot who'd be watching Zayn in case things got ugly. Then again, she might be dangerous enough to not need it, though still, someone must have eyes on her. Its not hard to spot them as they snap their fingers loudly, making Zayn twitch towards them. A shorter woman, looking older and with an eyepatch, giving a curt gesture for Zayn to come here annoyedly.

    "Shit, looks like it's a work night for me too. You want my number?" Zayn quickly asks, smirking.

    Moxxi hands her a business card, "The work number is just my phone."

    Snatching it, she pounces out of the booth, rushing over to her beckoning…boss? While Eight sighs, Belltower slipping out, "I nearly killed her." He sits down at the booth.

    "Yeah, I realized it was a danger thing and not just threaten-flirting which I'm starting to think is not a thing really." Moxxi says quietly.

    "It wasn't flirting?" Eight's confused, frowning.

    "I think she was trying to rob you." Moxxi replied.

    "Huh." He keeps frowning, "I was freaking out because she touched me, I stopped thinking after that. This…might not have been the best idea."

    Mox nods gesturing to the booth, "Yeah, I was saying we switch roles for a reason. I'm not touch averse, and this is a touchy atmosphere. Where as you can at least look ready to kill which stops most of the touching. Get in the booth. I'm going to walk a little bit away. As if I'm giving you the illusion of privacy."

    "Alright." He sits, staring out at the crowd, "I'm still trying to place a feeling I'm getting, need a couple minutes to do that." Eight whispers as Moxxi leans on the side of the booth to give him time to manage himself.

    The club is back in motion as music returns, bottles of vodka and a card being taken to the booth. The two women are joined by three men, all of them with the same white tattoos as Eight talks through the booth wall. "I'm ninety eight percent sure they're my feeling, which means that clusterfuck might have been a backlash from figuring that out."

    "I really just want to open fire now." Katherine admitted, "Seems so much easier."

    "We can't. Too many people around. Rule one, remember." Belltower cautions.

    "Wanting to do something isn't the same as doing something. Like, I want to lick batteries, but I don't anymore." Moxxi says quietly.

    "Wasn't convincing you." Eight quietly states. "They'll be here awhile, think we can place their car? Or cars, or motorcycles."

    "I could try more procedural work, but that seems to be pretty angry at us right now." Moxxie admitted with a grimace, before slapping the side of the booth quickly with a startled jerk. "Let's go smoke, spiders are back."

    "Yeah, let's." He stands up, moving to an exit, any exit to light up cigarette past, basking in the tendrils and fumes of his chemical smoke again.

    Katherine lights up her psych and mild, and realized that they looked like a couple of college aged stoners posing. She tried her best not to dwell on it. Though it probably needed to be said, "We look… One of us should have stayed old I think. That might have been the funny feeling?" She points at him then herself. "I'm at a bit of a loss. We're two college aged people throwing massive wads of cash around, you're awkward, I'm aggressive. What the hell does that look like?"

    It hits her, "Drug dealers. You sitting alone, me being angry and approaching, you blowing off women who aren't interested in talking about dating." The blue smoke pulling away at spiders and whispers that skirt the edges of her vision occasionally.

    "I don-well." He stops, looking at his cigarettes, "Guess I could use a couple as cover, it's more or less a downer." Belltower's mind races, eyes sharpening from the panic of before to something comfortable, planning his next step. "Drug dealers, the tattoo'd people won't approach after, gives me time to observe, pick up traces. Confirm if they're involved and get a handle on the club."

    "I could shoot in their general direction without hitting anyone." Katherine offers, giving Belltower two thumbs up, "It'd be really easy."

    He smiles, shaking his head, "Low key, remember. Its why we don't have the IX-5's." He finishes his cigarette before standing back up. "You try and see if anyone will talk to you. I'll be doing my best Sherlock Holmes impression while pretending to be a drug dealer."

    "I love our job." Katherine says snickering at his pained expression, "Yeah I'm cute I'm sure I can get someone's attention."

    Back inside the club, Eight returns to his booth, eyes flickering across the entire place as he starts to replicate body language of someone looking to offer something perfectly, its like he just changed suddenly. She stares at Eight for a minute, with a respectful nod. Then she decides to do her best at… Fuck. What do women do to get laid? All she's ever done was cry at them and cut herself. That… Well it might still work but Katherine realized she might want to leave that for Plan… C

    Walking through the club she finds the entire thing tiring she had to admit. Especially once the cigarette had taken away the rising paranoia and anxiety. There just wasn't anything here for her. Though, she guessed that meant there wasn't really a way to fuck that up. She sees a guy at five ten hanging around the people they're supposed to be tailing. Something in her mind clicked over a bit, and she decided to off on a whim watching him as he moved from the table. Tracing his path through the crowd. She starts the hunt.

    As the man comes to a stop, Katherine slams her hand on the wall next to him, staring downwards with a big smile, "Hi," she says quietly in a whisper as he startles. She hadn't meant to scare him. Why did she scare him. "I'm not scary I swear." Well now you sound like a serial killer.

    The man couldn't be older than twenty two, at best, and he seemed to be trembling. He was trying to say something but he started to stutter. "He—he-he-Hello." His voice was very squeaky and high in register.

    She leans in a little bit, noticing the man placing himself flat against the wall behind him. "You busy for the next thirty minutes?" Then she looks him up and down, "Probably fifteen in your case."

    "No- well ye-ye- no… But…" This man is skinny having a lanky build, that seems like it was woven from taffy that had half the necessary body mass.

    She leans in closer into his ear, "Use your words, I don't speak bottom." Then tries not to giggle as he gets a nosebleed, and starts to faint. Very quickly she scoops him up, and grabs some napkins. Taking the man outside and plugging his nose, before rifling through his pockets for wallet and phone. She looks up at people smoking, "The fuck you looking at?" The crowd dispersing almost immediately.

    She finds a business card that her gut says to snatch, and then, she puts an extra hundred dollars in his wallet. "Sorry bud." She says quietly. Very quickly forwarding most of his texts to a burner e-mail on the off-chance there was something there. Then leaving him unconscious in the alley.



    The club clarifies in Belltower's eyes. His senses sharpen to intake a thousand scents, sights and sounds, trying to look past pulsing music and vibrating lights and to the targets. Details about their leader coming together.

    Tattoo's, luminescent, not UV. Dirt on boots, recently in rural area. Colour suggests nearby. His mind races, bouncing from fact to fact. Woman leader, eyepatch hiding most of what looks like claw marks from above, two inches long, half an inch wide, eight years old–Regenerator possibly, may be only a year or two.

    Someone comes up, he maintains a disconnected small talk, they walk away with a cigarette and he keeps two hundred dollars. Jacob watches as they speak to one another, pushing and prodding in a casual violence. Rough social dynamics, hierarchy maintained partially by violence.

    More details, something better, usable now. Belltower's eyes scan around them, moving up and down each person carefully in between glances elsewhere to break focus. Something, something. They're drinking heavily, one glass, two, three, four, five, no signs of inebriation. Powerful metabolisms.

    Finally, something comes free, on Zayn. Bloodstain on left shoulder cloth. Sleeves cut off due to soaking, timeline matches for attack. Just need a way to get them to move. Eight glances down at his phone, texting idly to Moxxi.

    Got positive ID, working on moving them plan. We want the leader AL.

    I robbed a guy, gave him a hundred dollars because it was a bad lead. 👍 👍

    I see. Going to infiltrate.

    Belltower puts his phone away, standing up from the booth and walking towards the group with a vague look of distaste that he manages to morph into a look of distaste at everything instead of just specifically them. The two women look him up and down as he nears and speaks, "Hey, you two seem like you want blues for tonight. Am I right?"

    The one with an eyepatch grins, "Sure, and your company." This makes a frown slip onto Eight's face, "Dunno if I'm looking for that." He warns, offering a cigarette instead.

    "How much?" Their leader asks, pulling out cash with the very edges stained. Eight raises up two fingers, getting six hundred in hundred dollar bills from her. "Should be enough for three, he." She points at one of the men, this one with a groomed beard, "Isn't a "partier". But I think you'll wanna stay, we're getting outta here soon enough, and trust me, it'll get a lot more fun if you hang around."

    "That so?" He looks around, both in faux consideration and trying to find Katherine in the crowd. Not spotting her, he continues to delay. "What's the fun exactly?" He moves to the bar, but doesn't commit to a nearby seat yet. The leader laughs again, "Carla, what's your name."

    Katherine stomps out a smoke and opens the door, rifling through the scraps of paper, business cards, and receipts she had lifted from the small man. None of it useful, she had thought that was what her gut was telling her, when she looked up she saw Eight had successfully managed to infiltrate, so she decided to stay in the eye line and wait for a signal.

    "Eight." The response makes Carla give him a glinting stare, "Really?" She asks sarcastically, taking another drink of straight whiskey like its water. "Okay Eight. The fun's gonna be you and me, and maybe Zayn over there breaking open our drug cabinet, shooting some guns, and then breaking a bed. Or two. Or three. Depends how tough you are." She's grinning, teeth almost sharp.

    Katherine points at her side arm and gives Eight a tilt of her head. Everything on her face says, Hey, I can wing her.

    A single wave of his hand says No, "Huh, you aren't wrong, that does sound fun. Where at?" He digs for information, still nervous, adding to the show of a dealer getting wrapped up in something.

    Carla smirks, thinking she's caught him, "Little executive suite in town. Fun spot, lots of accessories. You wanna go now?" He looks around at the club, and then down to the money he's made. Buying time to think, "Mind if I just follow along? Got my own car I don't wanna leave here." A good excuse.

    Carla rolls her eye, "Sure, you can bring daddy's car. Just don't wreck it." Moving back to the bar and taking the whole bottle to down in one go, throat gulping with effort until its all gone. She throws money on the bar, about twice as much as it all cost and then snaps her fingers, getting her crew to follow her out.

    Belltower texts quickly. And sees a text from Katherine


    I shoot them in the parking lot????

    I'm gonna get talked into their car.

    Oh Ok!

    Follow in the V.

    If you want me to open fire give a signal. ill know it when i see it.

    Rgr following in the v

    He nods to the phone, and then steps off, asking, "How far is it? I've only got twelve miles of gas in the tank." The question makes Zayn laugh, grabbing his shoulder roughly, nearly getting her arm snapped as he stiffens and controls himself.

    "Don't worry about it, just ride with us, we'll get you back 'fore sunrise." She promises, squeezing him. Belltower puts a false smirk on his face, "Fuck it, lets go to the second location." Bringing smirks to both women.

    They drag him along outside, going to a series of motorcycles and hopping on. Carla taps the back of hers, "Come on, you're with me." Making Jacob slip onto the bike, holding onto the back of it instead of her waist, making her eyebrow raise. But she doesn't question it further, starting the loud engine and twisting out of the lot

    ppl don't ride the bitch seat like that. get up on it.

    I don't want to freak out.

    I respect u sticking to ur values. srry, texting and drivving.

    Katherine follows at a distance, not that they're looking for a tail. Getting through unfamiliar streets for nearly thirty minutes until they arrive at a fancy, far too expensive for Carla and crew looking hotel, sliding off the bikes and chuckling their way inside.

    Belltower texts.

    Try and get in, can reimburse purchases with operations budget.

    its not about the money, dont worry. im in it for the game.

    gonna be a minute, hit something. hoping a curb.

    Belltower stares at the phone, before refocusing and moving up the entrance stairs and into an elevator as they ignore the clerk who seems to recognize them. Carla waves the men off, "Fuck off, you aren't invited." As her, Zayn and Eight pile into an elevator. Another text.

    Males separated, take them out, they aren't important.

    🤩🤩🍑💦

    Not paying attention to the response, Belltower's watching the elevator doors close with nerves evident. As the elevator rises up. Six rapid shots ring out loudly, sounding like small artillery shells going off and making everyone in the elevator tense. As a hand moves to Belltower's shoulder, something snaps. Zayn has her arm grabbed, twisted and then shattered in a split second twist.

    Before Carla can realize anything, her right knee is roughly kicked out from underneath her. Fur starts to sprout on both women, but Belltower's barely reactive to that, every ounce of human slipping free as his eyes dull out and start intaking data instead of the world. Zayn is pushed against a wall, her head forced against it twice in resounding impacts as consciousness fades, stopping whatever transformation was taking place.

    Carla rushes, skin splitting as she fills the elevator, growing two feet in seconds and making the machine groan with extra weight. A primeval monster of fur and fang and claw. A snout slavering with saliva and teeth two inches long. Her claws swipe as Belltower ducks and slips past, moving to climb on her back, fast and precise.

    A button gets pressed in the panic, the elevator starts going down instead of up. Belltower clasps a forearm around Carla's wolfen neck, pressing against dense muscle with leverage, angle and strength alike. The metal walls are torn into by claws that sink into it with ease.

    Belltower is smashed into a wall, giving a groan as eight hundred pounds of monster shove him hard and force his grip to loosen. He replans fast, dropping off its back and sliding underneath, barely slipping past another claw that dents the door in. Two floors left.

    A sparking wire is released from the roof, drawing his eyes to it. Carla roars, a loud sound that echoes in the elevator repetitively and makes one of his ears bleed. Still, he jumps up and tugs the wire down just as the shapeshifter bites towards him. The wire is forced into its mouth, electric shock transferring with a smell of cooked meat and a muscular freeze as they can't shift against the charge immediately

    The elevator doors open just as he rips the wire out, an eerie sense of twisted probability in the air when the full output of the city grid stops flowing through it. There's an unconscious woman and, somehow, a still breathing fur and claw behemoth. A clerk stares terrified at the bloody scene on the ground floor.

    The first man had been tagged before he could shift, the arm entirely disconnected, showing glistening wet bones, and heart tissue that had been trying to pump for some time now. The head was completely missing, and a ragged chunky splatter of pomegranate jelly had been sprayed across the lobby floor. His intestines and pieces of vertebrate scattered amongst the chunky preserves. The other Katherine had dumped her shells out on and had just finished reloading when the Elevator dinged. She stood in a small pile of viscera, her blue sports coat now splattered with red, tiny pink flecks addorning the white ombre.

    The man underneath her had simply lost the top half of himself. The three rounds that hit him seeming to have macerated his body into a vibrant wet pulp. An eye half crushed sits in the distance staring at the ceiling while the gaping mass spews out the last of it's vital fluids. The giant handgun in Katherine's hand was bigger than Belltower's fore-arm, and while he had noticed it during her weapon checks, he hadn't realized that she had just been carrying it with her. The Pfeifer Zeliska was a behemoth to behlod, and the giant chunks of masonry that were removed after the bullet ripped through it's targets left little room to debate it's destructive power.

    And now she pointed it at Carla, "Hey were these friends of yours?" Katherine's grinning ear to ear, covered in blood. "Because I can help you meet them again."

    "We are going to have a chat about appropriate use of force." Belltower hisses, sweat soaked and bruised all along his forearms, chest and jaw. Deep purple starting to slip in.

    "What, no humans got hurt." Then she looks at the clerk, "Well physically, that guys going to need therapy I think."

    He goes to a pocket, pulls out an autoinjector and, before the clerk can do anything, stabs him in the neck with it. After a second, Belltower growls, "This was a gang shootout, there were four shooters using illegal weapons, all male. One of them had an accent, you decide what." Before letting him fall into the seat.

    "English." Katherine said, not realizing that Belltower was most likely not talking to her. "English sounds right."

    Belltower moves, seeing the large monster start to shrink into a naked woman. "Grab Zayn, I'll get Carla, load them into the SUV." He says on instinct.

    "We took the sedan." She raises an eyebrow.

    "Then the backseat. I think I hit my fucking head." Jacob snarls, a measure of aggression slipping out.

    "I'll sit in the back with them and keep them company!" Katherine says smiling, "Now ladies, I've reloaded, and this pile of chunks that was your kin has shown what happens when you test my patience!" Her voice sounded asif she was telling them where the emergency exits on an airliner were. "If you just follow me, then we may never have to find out what happens when I lose it!"

    Belltower lifts the leader, her eyes blearily open from the sheer injury she took. Moving outside into the night, quickly stuffing her into the Sedan while Katherine does similar, if with more ease. He gets into the driver's seat and finally lights a cigarette for himself, breathing out smoke and calming.

    "I saved half a pack of my home made ones for you if you run out as well," Katherine said gently pressing the Pfeifer against Zayn's skull, "It's weird they don't put safeties on most revolvers. Isn't that dangerous? Once you cock the hammer back, hell or high water someone's gonna have a bad day."

    Starting the drive as a cut on his lip starts to bleed, he answers, "Hammer is the safety. Legally anyways." The adrenaline is deepening his voice.

    "Why'd they kick the shit out of you?" Katherine asks looking at him, taking earplugs out of her ears with a free hand, yanking on a blue plastic cord that kept them connected.

    "Well." He glowers, "Someone shot a bullet the size of my hand while someone was grabbing me." Belltower takes a puff to calm, "And I broke Zayn's arm in seventeen places. Carla didn't appreciate that."

    "And I'm the one who needs a chat about appropriate use of force?" Katherine giggles, before realizing how awful this might be. "I'm sorry, this stuff gets me really worked up. It's so much fun."

    "Yeah, you aren't tired of it yet." Jacob grumbles, moving to an alley and turning the engine off as police cars scream by. "Just rote now." The Director whispers, listening for the end of siren whines nearby, tapping a finger rhythmically on the steering wheel.

    "Have you considered… A bit more of a defensive fighting style?" Katherine asks looking at him, "The thing with Christine, wait, no… Cruchov. Chr— Whatever, you never really moved backwards. I watch the tapes a lot you kind of just go."

    "Aggression wins fights." Jacob states, "Nothing gets solved by retreating unless you're buying time or can't win."

    "So do we interrogate them with like… Buzzsaws? Or… Eleanora does this thing that haunts me where she like…" Katherine turns a little pale as she tries to put words to it. "She… Does violence on the soul."

    "We'll be using a chemical interrogation method with sensory deprivation and perceived long-term isolation." Belltower quirks an eyebrow, "Torture's inefficient, there's better ways. We have a drug, Quicktime, it's made to accelerate your perception of time by about sixty…times." He smirks at the repetition, easily amused currently, "I'm gonna dose them both and leave them for six hours."

    "Lame. Though, I guess it's not really fun torturing people if they're not into it as well." Katherine admits with a sigh, before looking at Zayn, "I think I might take that number now though."

    Zayn's eyes are very hazy, the concussion forced on her by Belltower far from mild. She mumbles a barely coherent rattle of numbers.

    "You're right, I would look good in a pink tie Zayn. I didn't realize you were so perceptive." Katherine replied, prompting the woman to try and say more. "No, no I don't think I'd have made employee of the month yet. There's still so much more to the month!" She stops as Zayn stares at her and blinks. "Good point, we'll just see what's in the cards."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • 027 - Interrogation
  • Threadmarks

    • 027 - Interrogation

    Belltower's in a dress shirt and slacks, sleeves rolled up to his elbows as he leans over a table, focusing on vials and checking for impurities in the deep purple substance by eye. In another two rooms in this odd, suburban house that, for some reason, has rooms with no windows made of concrete on the inside. He watches them for a second longer before sighing and lighting another cigarette.

    "In the future, try to be a little quieter with your takedowns. I was gonna squeeze them for intel in the suite." He speaks, much calmer.

    Katherine raises an eyebrow, "I thought squeezing was why you broke their arm." Then quickly follows it up with, "I was following an instinct, but I think… I don't think I can actually tell instinct from just like… Noise."

    Jacob frowns, "I broke their arm because of a gunshot and that. Just be more careful, this isn't a disciplinary action." He takes two vials and makes his way to the rooms, forcing the captives to drink with manipulations of the jaw and throat. A second after its all done, he shuts off the lights, turns on white noise generators and shuts the doors.

    "I'm glad, I've never been written up in my life, or missed a day of school. I do not actually know how I'd handle an official reprimand. My gut says lots of crying." She puts the giant hand cannon down. "I misunderstood what regenerator meant as well I think, I assumed I had to make them chunky pulp to get them to go down, like we needed to with the last one."

    "They still need their brains." Belltower moves to a fridge, pulling out a TV dinner, and then a second one. A microwave starts chiming as it warms them. "You did well in the engagement though, they didn't have a chance to shift shape. They don't really start healing fast until they're huge." The microwave chirps in completion, he slides the food over to Katherine while digging into his.

    "Oh thank you!" She says as she sits down to eat, "You're not going to believe it but I threw a handful of cat treats in front of them which grabbed their attention then opened fire when they looked away."

    "It's…actually not as bad as some other thing I've heard about. Knew a Belltower like…twice my age. She threw a dress at a target, dunno why, but it apparently distracted them for so long she assembled a whole gun and shot them with it." He chuckles, "She was this short persian chick, looked thirty something at ninety something."

    "I wonder what kind of Belltower I'm going to be," Katherine muses as she takes out her phone, writing down numbers. Logging the bullets expended, then going through all her guns again. Swearing angrily that her Sig had jammed again without her touching it. "This thing's haunted." She said looking at the gun like a rotting piece of fruit.

    "Hopefully you won't be." Jacob shakes his head, "Like I said, NWO isn't a career path for you. Too many people you care about."

    "Oh do only NWO get to be Directors of things?" She asked looking to him, "I'll just be equally cool at something else. They'll write books about me."

    "Directors of field Constructs usually, yeah. You can get a cushy job in a Comptroller position, run a continent or something." He's nearly done with the meal.

    "Management seems boring, I just want really cool titles and badges. Certificates, and maybe bric-a-brac." She's already hoovered down her meal and is gnawing on a protein bar. Taking a small packet of protein supplement out of her self-sewn pockets.

    "I'd suggest the Shock Corp." Belltower chuckles, "But you'd go crazy with how often they're away from home. Union hammer, they get tanks and walkers and all sorts of past the bleeding edge hardware that can take out a building."

    "I could ride a gundam." She squeaks with glee as she moves to a cupboard in the kitchen grabbing the glass, mixing her protein supplement into protein shake with water. "I kind of really like this though, just going out and quietly murking things before I go back home to my loving family."

    Belltower shrugs, "Everyone's got their passions. Used to have more fun with it. But it's all kinda…boring now. Not even counting the loops I think I'm in quadruple digit bodies." He casually admits, brewing coffee in a machine.

    "I feel like I'm good at this, but I have no memories of killing people. My record doesn't have any discharges on file. As far as I know looking into the LAPD I'm a homicide detective who never solved a case, or shot anyone." She says quietly, more to herself, "Thinking body counts I mean. That just doesn't sit right, but I'm at… Three. Seven, forgot the police on the last loop. Eight."

    "If we're counting loops, that number gets real stupid. I killed the same hundred people a bunch of times." He sips at the fresh black coffee."

    "Then yeah, three. I think. That doesn't seem right though." She finishes her protein shake, before finally deciding to just drink water, having an appetite again was exhausting and boring.

    "If you want, I can recommend an exploratory psychosurgery, see if there's recoverable memories. Your medical covers that I think." He considers, scarring on his forearms sticking out from the bruises of getting knocked into a wall.

    She looks at them for just a second, but has always made great pains not to stare at things no matter how interesting. "I'll talk to Sophia about it, but I think I'm at a point where if someone gets anywhere near my brain pan, they'll be removed from theirs."

    "I'd be the one doing it." He chuckles, "Psychology is my wheelhouse. It's not actual surgery, just chemical exposure, some hypnotism and a lot of applied psych." Considering how to phrase it, "Think of it as a very scientific dream journey."

    "Eesh." Katherine said, thinking of her occasional visions. "I do not like having visions or dreams. They're all… A waste of time. I have only so much before this whole thing goes to shit. Like of course, god I hope it doesn't, but I don't want to waste waking hours…. I guess they're sleeping hours. Still." She looks at him, "I'm always worried I'm going to say or do something that's going to make people around me snap like a bear trap. You probably offered that psychosurgery thing to be nice, but all I can think about is how consenting to a mind-thing could lead to an easier scramble."

    "Huh, you think like I do." Jacob says mostly to himself. "Then I'll just see about getting you a bigger dosage of these." He points to his cigarettes, "You've been ripping through them."

    She laughs, "No I haven't I…" She reaches into her pocket, and realizes that she was one cigarillo off her count. Meaning she was losing track of how many she was smoking. Then she returns to her spreadsheet, trying to figure out how that happened, when she saw it written down clear as day. She pulled it from inside her wallet slightly sticking out of both ends, with a deep sigh of relief. Everything was fine, she hadn't lost count. She had placed it aside in case the Director needed it. "Maybe you're right."

    The Director pulls a pack out from a pocket, fresh and unopened, tossing it Katherine's way. "I keep a sixty day supply." His voice is still very light for how terse he is, sitting against a kitchen counter.

    "How did you know I was saving one for you?" She said suddenly as the pack landed in front of her. "I swear to god are you psychic?" She breathes a deep sigh of relief as she took one. The pack was much better than homemade.

    "No, failed out of that course." He chuckles dryly, "Hyper-perceptive though, you've got enough leavings on your fingers that I'd guess you've smoked eight in the last six hours. Last one you dragged a little too deep on, so there's barely visible reddening from the heat on your thumb and forefinger."

    She looks at him, shocked, "You noticed all that?" Taking a drag with a smile, watching a spider almost fade away from the top of her palm.

    "Half my anxiety is trying to see everything. The other half is succeeding." Belltower jokes dryly, "It's useful, like I said, Sherlock Holmes shit. I ID'd those two by blood specks on Zayn's shirt that matched our timeline."

    "That's so sick." Katherine said looking at him, "Is it something you trained, or like a procedural thing?"

    "Bit of both. They think it's just unconscious procedures from the anxiety, like how you were tilting odds without thinking about it. I want to know everything, so, I do." He throws a cigarette butt into a trashcan, "It's got its disadvantages, hyper-perception means if I stop smoking, I'm gonna be whining into a pillow from the bruises."

    "Mood," Katherine agreed, "Not having phantom noises and weird shadows constantly is vastly preferable. Though I hope I don't get as good at controlling my surroundings as you are at seeing things. Or else I'll never know if anyone is doing things because they want too, or because I subtly tilted twenty coin flips in my favor thirty years ago."

    "You aren't." Belltower assures Katherine, "You're still a drunk with a baseball bat. I don't think you could reach forward a year, much less twenty." Its not said with heat, just repeating what he's stated before. "I think the longest I ever shifted the odds was a year, four months and three days. And then I got my throat slit for it."

    "We were in that loop for… Hundreds of years." Katherine said quietly, "Is that not shifting… Hundreds of years?"

    "No, it's the same six hours, over and over. A question of muscle, not precision at that scale." He answers, looking for something in either the room or Katherine, its unsure past the mirrorshades. "The backlash already hit, it's never something that saves up, it's a rebound immediately as it happens."

    "But… nothing happened. Does it sometimes just hurt… Random people?! People…" Then she winces, it hitting her. "It's across the entire timeline. It'll snap out at someone you know, even if you don't know them yet. Fuck." She very quickly pulls out a second cigarette, this one nearly inhaled entirely in one drag.

    "Thank me later." He dryly laughs, taking another sip of coffee. Looking into the black of the drink to distract himself.

    "Christ." She says, then finally, "Fuck." She has been swearing much more lately than normal. "So… I get trapped in a time loop create a perfect scenario, and the backlash is, you're tortured for a hundred and fifty years, but it only happens because the result of that torture is us meeting and me respecting you."

    "You'll find the universe isn't cold or uncaring. It's a cruel bastard." He's staring out the window at the stars, "Full of vicious hate at the apes living in it."

    She inhales the last of the cigarette, "That's… I'm not going to sleep easy for a very long time about that. Christ."

    "You want sleeping pills? Ours carve out dreams too, make me clock out in minutes." He offers, shrugging, "Otherwise I stay up for five days at a time."

    "What I have now works well enough," She says after a moment. "I think I might try to get a lot more precise with time stuff though, I hadn't realized how fucked what I was screwing with was. I've been just throwing it around for jokes and fun."

    "You want to order Doordash or something? I know you've got nutrition goals." Belltower switches to a topic less serious, "And I'm craving chocolate, thinking about it." He tilts his head, smirking as he says it.

    She looks at him, and tries not to think too much on paradoxes, the purposeful, the coincidental, or any of it. "Yeah, you ever had chocolate dipped thai chiles?"

    "The only words that made sense there were chocolate and dipped." He laughs as Katherine gets her phone out.

    Finally she just has to say the thought. "You're not me teaching me from the future right? I don't like… Go through some heavy life choices and then come back to create a loop where I teach myself to be better in some way?"

    Belltower stares, "No. I'm not you from the future." He's very dry.

    "Because I don't know why I'd cut three inches, and twenty pounds. I think you might actually have a lower deadcarry weight than I do." She says looking at him, "Unless maybe… I figure some shit out in a hundred years?" Now studying his face, slowly raising her phone trying to nonchalantly snap a photo.

    He's still staring, "I'm not you from the future."

    "But… Could you tell me if you were?" Katherine takes her glasses off now squinting at the man. Trying to figure the probabilities out it was… Improbable, but was it impossible.

    "This is the oddest question I've ever received." Belltower admits, "I was born in Kentucky for christs sake."

    "I mean… You can say you're born anywhere… But I guess I have no reason to doubt you. If you're lying it'd be for my benefit. Unless this is a revenge scheme because I turn into a monster later in life." Still studying him, "Did you know I'm less paranoid now than before the loop?"

    "...Really." He's now staring very concerned at Katherine, "Because this is…impressive."

    She nods, "Yeah, here… This one is from when I was twenty five. It's starred for Remember, things seem real at the time." Looking back to him, "It's a grounding thing. If you believe something absurd, and read something else that was absurd it helps you go 'oh maybe I'm not thinking logically.'" She explains.

    "Everyone in the agency has been replaced to perform an extended experiment on me. Everything they say is slightly off. If I participate in the birthday party this evening, they will kidnap me to be experimented on. They know that my gene line is the only thing possible for saving humanity. I pray I do not have to kill for the sake of humanity." She finishes looking up at him, "June Fifth, Twenty seventeen."

    "You know, when I have those sorts of thoughts, they put me in a padded room for a week." Belltower continues staring.

    She looks back at her phone… "I wrote agency. The LAPD isn't an agency. Neither would the homicide division be one." She takes another drag on her cigarette, before just putting her phone away for now, not sure when she lit the new one. "Did you have those thoughts when you were me, or when you were you?"

    He sips at his coffee. "There's a crucial difference between us that I think torpedoes this whole plan." Belltower's voice is even, and somewhat amused.

    "What's that?" Katherine asked, staring at him… Or maybe the he she will be?

    He rolls his eyes, almost laughing, "I like men, agent."

    "Oh thank god." She said, finally putting the thoughts to bed, "Ok, then there's just no way."

    "Besides the fact, of course, that I look nothing like you, have no similar features at all physically and mentally I am wholly different. But no, it's because I'm bi that you think we're not the same." He sighs, deeply.

    "Yeah, mostly. I think I'd do pretty much all that other stuff you mentioned to help and or fuck with me. It's good to know yourself, Director Belltower." Katherine says with overwhelming relief.

    He sips at his coffee, letting the situation roll off him, "You are unbelievably odd." Belltower grumbles, "And I need to drop some octaves soon, or I'm going to lose it."

    "I'm keeping this look I think, if only because Giant twenty two year old paired with a fourty year old twunklet makes me giggle." Katherine says as the cigarette finally truly starts to wick away the last of the anxiety.

    "A what?" Belltower demands answers.

    Six hours later, Belltower is reconsidering his relationship with humanity as a whole, still staring at a complex array that empirically proves his…twunklet status. "What the fuck does this even mean, you've said words, and they're supposed to have meaning, but they don't."

    "Oh bullshit." Katherine says frustrated. "Xena, the warrior princess. That's a Herbo. Luke Skywalker, that's a himbim You know this. You grew up with these. Then you've got like your blonde stereotypes, those are bimbos, and Buzz Lightyear, that's a himbo. That's the first and second dimension of the array pretty to hunk, male to female. It's three dimensional. This exists perpendicular to a bear to twink profile. You just add -let to any male presenting person under five eleven."

    "I'm average height." He complains, pointing at the images of short men.

    "Yes, mid is an insult now." She explains calmly, trying to keep the frustration out of her voice. The conversation having gone on for hours now. "average is actually worse than being just ugly or pretty. Ugly is at least engaging."

    "I-" He sputter, "What is today?" Jacob hisses out, sighing after, "I feel like I have no idea how people work anymore."

    "Honestly… Very poorly." Katherine says with a sad nod. "Do you still want me to answer the question about the Robin Hood disney cartoon, that's a… That's a very long talk that goes some places. I don't know if we can get into m-preg today."

    "Putting a pin in that." Belltower gets up and turns off the white noise generators with a press of a key on a laptop. "We've got two targets to squeeze for intel. Who do you want? Zayn or Carla?"

    "I feel like Zayn's going to sexually harass you, but she weirds me out in a way where I get very gun twitchy. I think it's just a protective instinct though." She very quickly adds, "Because you're my co-worker and teach me shit, not because… Nevermind I'll just take Zayn."

    Belltower nods, moving into the room with Carla, turning the light on and receiving a scream in response before the door shuts.

    "Eesh." Katherine said as he walked in, before turning the door to Zayn's room, receiving an equally blood curdling shriek, "Jesus christ calm down." She says annoyed, "You're fine, you're fine it's been six hours."

    The woman is cuffed to a table, eyes bloodshot, shivering in the light with scratch marks on every nearby surface, still having nails by dint of regeneration alone.

    "I brought you some water!" Katherine said cheerily, "How you holding up champ?"

    "W-what the fuck d-did you do t-to me, B-binder!" Zayn grows, shaking like a leaf while looking at the water.

    She very gently raises the cup to the cuffed woman's lips, "I injected you with a medicine that makes time go slower. You experienced three hundred and sixty hours in only six! That's about… Well, twelve days I think?" She stops before she can sip touching her chin, "Oh wait no fifteen," Then looking at her "Oh shit sorry." This time letting her drink.

    The cup is gone in barely a few seconds, greedily drained by someone parched. Then Zayn has a realization, "T-tell me that w-water wasn't dosed." The grain of screaming is heavy in her voice, two weeks of isolation and torment having cracked any fight left in her.

    "No, I'd just jab you with a needle. I don't need to dose you. The hard part's over, we can just talk now." Katherine's being her normally warm and cheerful self. "I just need you to confirm your network of contacts. That's all!"

    "I've got req-" Zayn coughs, sputtering blood onto the desk from a raw throat. "Shit." She groans.

    "I've got a gallon jug, do you want more water?" Katherine says sweetly, conveying concern.

    "No, I've g-got requests." She shivers, "H-how do I make it o-out of this? Alive." Zayn asks, concerned about her life, though a frown can't be seen past the pained twist in her face from whatever torments she faced alone here.

    "As far as I know, we don't kill unless strictly necessary. Stuff like this makes killing very unnecessary. If no-one in your network is alive to chase you, and you don't go obliterating cubicles full of people anymore, then… I don't see why I'd have to hunt you really." Katherine nodded, "Everyone else is going to be dead in fourty-eight hours anyways, we just want confirmation that this won't happen again."

    The shapeshifter stiffens at that thought, "I…don't think I can give you anything." It's a very scared statement, she's nervous even admitting it.

    "Okay, because you don't have it, or because… Look, I'm reasonable. Tell me why, I really need something to tell my boss so he doesn't come back in with the needle." She leans forward appreciatively.

    "They're…" Zayn looks around the room, tattoo's flickering in the light, a yellow pupil dilating like a wild animal's. "Family. I can't just…"

    "Oh. Would they come to get you?" Katherine said, the smile gentle, "That's a confirmation in itself I suppose."

    "C-can I get something to e-eat?" She asks quietly, not able to make eye contact.

    "Of course, but really quick, is there anything reflective that I need to be worried about? I'm not wearing my glasses, my eyes don't really reflect light, and everything in here is matte. Is there any reason I'd need to be concerned?"

    There's a click of something metallic in her mouth as her jaw stiffens, barely noticeable. She doesn't comment on it, but it sounds a lot like a tongue piercing.

    "Ok," Katherine says, taking out the giant hand cannon, seemingly out of hammer space. "I'm not going to shoot you, they're not going to leap out of a mirror staring into this. I'd like it, as a sign of good faith, for you to take the piercing out."

    Zayn stares at the gun with a wide-eyed expression. "O-okay, I g-got it." Her uncuffed hand reaches up to her mouth as she slips a ball piercing out of her tongue, reflective metal shiny in the light. It clacks against the metal table.

    Very quickly, Katherine puts the barrel of the cannon over it, before pulling it away sliding it into a piece of cloth. "Do you still want something to eat, or… Did that," Katherine said gesturing to the covered piercing, "Solve the problem."

    "I-I'd still like to e-eat, ma'am." Zayn looks at the table, shivering.

    "Wonderful," Katherine says, standing up and opening a tiny folded up tablecloth in cheap plastic. "Let me set the plate then, we got pizza. Do you like cheese, pepperoni, or ultimate. I like Ultimate, but it's like, how many pieces of pizza with olives can you eat in a day?"

    "Wh-whatever, just, hungry." The shapeshifter stiffens as she says that, a hunger pang rattling her. "Meat's b-best."

    "No worries," Katherine said, getting up leaving the room to grab an entire pizza box, and a gallon of water that was set aside already. Turning back into the room with her dominant hand still on the cannon. She opens the door with her foot and a violent kick, cannon at the ready as she does so.

    Zayn flinches at the kick, clenching her jaw and staring up at Katherine.

    "Sorry, hands are full." Katherine said apologetically, "And I'm paranoid about the mirror thing." She places the box of pizza, the gallon of water, and a small container of mix-in lemonade, and a glass, "I didn't know whether you'd be thirsty thirsty, or just like need water but sweets better thirsty. The Pizza's for you as well! Whole box, delivered a few minutes ago. That's the cool thing about time magic everything just kind of shows up when it should." Then she moves over, and gently uncuffs her other hand walking away slowly but confidently back to her seat.

    Zayn grabs a pizza slice, her teeth a row of sharpened fangs, taking a bite, and then another, apparently starving as she moves through half the pizza in minutes, stopping out of too much food moreso than a lack of hunger. She breathes out, "I s-still feel like you're gonna kill me."

    "So the thing is, I do not need you alive." Katherine said very bluntly. "I don't want to spend two hours cleaning this room, or three hours having you dig a hole in the desert. I don't think you're ever going to put yourself in a situation where this will happen to you again! Maybe I have more faith in you than you do." Another big smile, "I'm just looking for confirmation so that when we clean house I don't have to come back without my temperance."

    She flinches at the mention of 'clean house', getting quiet and staring at the table again, a flicker of a tear in one yellow eye forming.

    Katherine casually inspects her finger nails, waiting quietly. She wants to point out the entire swathes of people that were brutally torn apart, or her boss that was going to be victimized, but knew that anger had a time and place. So she did something worse, she smiled, and she waited.

    "O-okay. They'll c-come for Carla, not me." Zayn says quietly under the straining light of the concrete room, "P-probably an hour or two till they c-catch our scents, f-follow through the P-penumbra." She looks at where her piercing once was.

    "Ok, I'm going to confirm with my boss, and I intend to let you go. If you show up to die with them that is very much your choice." She says smiling, as she walks over, and knocks on the other door with Director Belltower still in investigation.

    Through the door can be heard crying and a very soft, supportive voice, barely audible as to what its saying, but the tone alone says much. The knocks don't receive a response for a few minutes until Katherine hears a quiet "Come in."

    She opens, the door quizzically, "Should we talk in here Director?"

    Belltower is across the table from an openly weeping shapeshifter, holding a cup of water to her while she recovers, nodding. "We've just been talking. Their social situation's interesting." He comments. "They're in a cult. Sort of."

    "They're also going to be here in an hour." Katherine said, "For Carla apparently, following the scent through the Penumbra."

    "Hmm, okay." He stands up, pulling a sidearm and pointing it at Carla, considering his decision for just a second.

    "I implied I might let the other one go, but I didn't really make any promises about this one."

    A gunshot rings out as Carla slightly rises to pay attention at Katherine's words. She falls forwards, bullet through and through her head, embedded in the wall behind. "I was gonna kill both of them. After they crack, all they've got waiting is a revenge killing." Belltower holsters his weapon, "Their society isn't one for informants."

    "I offered to let her die fighting with her people, it means it's her choice." Katherine said with a shrug, "But it's business, I'm not very attached either way. I'm assuming you'll do the same to me once the loop breaks."

    "You're paranoia's acting up again." Belltower says, moving outside the interrogation room.

    Katherine lights a smoke, "Probably," Before stepping into the other interrogation room, and blowing Zayn's head off with the hand cannon.

    "This is where we take off, gotta hit their main location, set up an ambush with the ATF guys." Jacob pulls his suit jacket on, starting to button it shut. "You can bring the Barret."

    "Hell yeah." She says, skipping out of the blood soaked room with a slice of pizza in her mouth. Then picking up a blood stained cup, "Do you want any lemonade?"

    "Copper and iron aren't my favourite flavours, no." Belltower smirks.

    She looks at him, "It doesn't remind you of kissing?" Then she realized something, "Only vampires mouths taste like that?" It was a question, "I've had three partners, and the first one got hit by a bus before we did much."

    "That's…huh." He blinks, "Yeah, normally you don't get a taste of blood. If they're good, you'll usually taste gum." He's putting together a gun from a briefcase.

    "I wonder if my relationship with blood and intimacy has desensitized me to some things." She said, taking a sip out of the glass, before going, "Blech, bone shard." Pulling a sliver off her tongue with a slight gag. Then getting her things together to go as well.

    "You know." He stands up with the assembled submachine-gun, "Sometimes you do things, or say things, usually both, that make me a little worried for your long term mental health." A magazine pops in, silvery shells inside.

    "I'll invite you to board game night then, you the girls, and I can get matching T-shirts that read 'Trainwreck Watchers Anonymous' or something." She laughs, sadly, "It's why I'm pretty sure I don't get a happy ending. I'm going to have fun now, and worry about long term mental health when it becomes a problem."

    Stepping out the door, Belltower quips, "Welcome to the Union, that's standard practice." Before opening up the driver's side of the sedan and starting the engine.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • 028 - The Raid
  • Threadmarks

    • 028 - The Raid

    As they get onto the freeway, Katherine is bouncing between checking everything, excitedly chattering, and planning her day, before finally landing on a longer lasting conversation topic."Ok, but seriously how did you make that lady cry?!" She's drilling holes into Belltower with her eyes, "You got her like all… gushy in the time it took me to get mine pizza and water."

    "I'm an interrogator, she hadn't had non-violent social contact in years. I just said she was pretty after some talking and she froze." He admits.

    Katherine frowned, "I thought you said it'd be unprofessional to be physically intimate while on the job. If I'd known that was an option I wouldn't have sprung for the pizza."

    "I…it's an interrogation, do what you have to do?" Belltower seems confused, "We don't really have a human rights charter."

    "So… You'll kiss a werewolf, but you won't pretend to date a co-worker?" Katherine says, "You've got fucked up priorities man."

    "I don't even know where to begin approaching what you just said." Jacob chuckles, shaking his head as the engine rumbles. "Its different situations. Interrogation is a controlled environment, nothing's going to happen that I don't control. A cover's dynamic, that's got my hackles up immediately."

    "So what happens when I become a better time… Thingy." She says looking at Belltower, "Do you get promoted for creating a word class agent, and I get a new partner-boss? Boss-partner-mentor. Friend-work-acquaintance-trauma-bonded-guy. Or a girl, though that'll make professionalism harder."

    "God I hope I never have to enter cover as a woman with you." Belltower sighs.

    Katherine's eyes light at that, "Is that a thing that might happen?" She hisses like an excited tea kettle. "You're already pretty."

    He twitches at that, "I'm going to regret even mentioning that aren't I."

    "Yes. It's going to be my first, and most emphatic suggestion for every cover suggestion that comes up. If only because you seem willing to the idea." She says looking him up and down, "So… What do they do to you?"

    "Its about nine hours under, well, its not a knife at that point–" Belltower starts to explain.

    "Did you get me that access to that panopticon thing we were talking about the other day." She cuts him off immediately, as she pulls up a tiktok filter and points it Belltower's face.

    Oh wow he really does look good with long hair.

    Belltower grumbles, "You've got VIGIL access. Yes. Why."

    Belltower woman cover nude hentai rule34 gender swap. She types into the system quickly.

    A photograph dated eight years ago pops up of a black haired woman in a one-piece swimsuit in Spain, smiling at a camera with a man on her arm, multi-coloured eyes the only sign of who it is.

    "Jesus christ." She whispered to herself.

    "You immediately–" Belltower would be rubbing his temples if he wasn't driving.

    "Yes, I… What did you think I… I literally told you I couldn't be trusted with it. I tell you exactly who I am." Katherine says, trying to see more photos before realizing, "Oh… If I look up nudes that's a massive invasion of privacy. You're lucky I respect you."

    "And thus, the brain functioned." Belltower gripes, staring at the road. "Just so you know, the other way around exists too. I just won't use it against you because I'm in a position of authority."

    "I refuse to believe you haven't." Katherine said with an eye roll. "Though, fair I guess. Same reason I turned down Sophia when she offered to let me take a peek. She's wildly unprofessional, but really hot."

    "Yeah, you…don't want to know what came out of her mouth when I came out of the ReCon-pod." Belltower grumbles.

    "You, I thought." She said looking at him. "Are you two not a thing?"

    He has a deep frown on his face, "No. God no. Her?" Belltower looks like he just smelled something vile. "Not even a little."

    "So I could get surgery to become a heterochromatic male." She says again, shifting from topic to topic.

    "You'll have to deal with Sophia as often as I do, but yes, that's an option." Jacob takes an exit, moving onto another chunk of freeway soon after.

    "So… You coul— I'm desperately trying to let that one go, I know. It's nuts from a logic standpoint, but I think it's going into delusion territory, if it didn't start there." She says immediately taking out a cigarette before lighting it and puffing on it.

    "Understanding that I'm putting my mind at great risk, letting go of what?" Belltower's morbidly curious, in the same way a mouse is curious about a trap.

    "I could be you from the past. Instead of you being me from the future."

    "This still runs into the problem of you eventually liking men." Belltower shoots back.

    Another deep puff as she watches him like a hawk. "Fair." Raising an eyebrow at him typing quietly behind her phone into VIGIL Director Belltower Sexuality

    There's a loading icon on her phone for a few seconds as clearances are checked, before a very redacted personnel file displays, and on it is listed 'Demisexual'. Along with an age of fourty, height of five-ten, weight of one-hundred and seventy nine pounds and a few other minor details.

    She switches to google, tumblr reddit /r/gay /r/bisexual /r/demisexual /r/pansexual what is the difference between demi pan and bi "thank you" "good answer".

    As she reads off different posts and sites, she looks at Belltower unaware of her own Hmmm… Hrrrmmm…? Noises.

    "I'm feeling objectified somehow." Belltower eventually complains, "Why is that."

    "I looked up your personnel file, and it sent me down a google hole." She admits immediately, "Mostly psycho-analyzing you with all the skill and tact of an internet shut-in."

    Jacob rolls his eyes behind the glasses "You could also just ask, I'm not shy about most things."

    "Ok, you say Bi, file says Demi. Demi implies a lack of sexual attraction a lot (but not all) the time. There's more but it's hair splitting. So if I live long enough, long enough that sex got boring, killing got boring, everything got boring. The only thing that'd never get boring for me at least would be people." She looks at him, then back to internet posts then back to him. "Hmm…"

    "This feels like hubris at this point. Somehow I lied to the Union about my age? They have me down as fourty, not five-thousand."

    "True, but time travel is a thing. Time loops are a thing…" She studies him, "What I want to know, is why I'd lie about it. Unless on one of the loops when it comes out the wrong way it becomes insufferable, because I think I'm the only one who could love me as much as myself."

    "That…Do you just like…say things?" Belltower asks for desperate clarification, "Just…randomly as soon as they come to you?"

    "Well… Yeah? Why wouldn't I?" Katherine said looking at him, "I spend time with you who's a shrink and actively interested in seeing me succeed at this job, or with Estelle or Eleanora, who think I can do no wrong, love to see me happy, and are enthused by the spontaneity of them. I'm constantly encouraged to speak my mind."

    The Director nods, "When you put it like that, it's…yeah, makes sense." He does sigh afterwards, "You know, before LA, I used to work in the European office, we were so different there, had policies and didn't really interact outside of work." He lights a cigarette, puffing at it, "Just an interesting work culture difference I guess."

    "Was it fun? At least? Or was that discouraged?" She watched him, flicking from the woman's photo, to the one in the file, back and forth as he talked.

    "Uh, yeah, I was a rich American in Europe. That's like, fun one-oh-one." Belltower shrugs.

    "Eleanora and Estelle gave me the opinion that Europe is a hell state being ruined by the British, and constantly at war with itself." She said, "So like I could see it being fun."

    "I….think you're talking to vampires too much, last war in Europe was like, ten years ago? And it was pretty regional." Belltower chuckles.

    "Okay, when was the last war in America?" She says looking at him, "You're saying regional like Europe doesn't fit entirely in the state of Texas."

    Belltower thinks, before answering, "Are we counting a whole continent? Cause if so, Mexico's been in a war for awhile now. Civil war to be fair, but they are mortaring each other."

    "Really?" She says looking at him, before switching to tiktok civil war mexico mortar. "Oh. Oh." She said shocked, "There's a civil war in Mexico!" Looking at Belltower, "Look!" She shows him a video of someone being plastered by a mortar.

    "I…know, I've been there. My bosses probably were also there. The CIA probably started it." Belltower's smirking bemused at the video, keeping his attention mostly on the road. "Canada also had a thing, but that was more of a riot than a war."

    "I guess we did have an attempted mutiny as well." She admits, "Though that was mostly people with diabetes getting out of breath going up stairs."

    Getting onto a dirt road, he nods again, "It's, yeah, unlikely that'll happen. If the Secret Service doesn't nab them, vampires will. If they don't, well, we'll send some ninety year old Persian Belltower that's won gunfights with platoons over."

    "Just send me, I can peg a boomer at five hundred yards I'm sure."

    "Soft touch, not, uh. An LMG on cyclic." Belltower sighs, staring forwards at the dirt road, trying to stay on it.

    "When I said to Candi, the HR rep…" Katherine pauses trailing off for just a second trying to collect how she was going to phrase this, switching tactics into a new sentence. "You watched my interview where I very specifically said 'I really really don't know if I can do political soft stuff. I kind of just need a direction and a gun."

    "Yeah, alright." He pulls the car to a stop at a road barricade marked ATF, men in body armour on both sides of it, "Lets go kill some werewolves." Belltower gets out of the car, flashing a badge to the agents.

    "Holy shit this is a mk22" She whispers to herself, "They only just made a few of these…" She very quickly climbs onto the roof of the car, laying low on it. Mounting the gun's bipod on the sedan's roof staring down the sight. She presses the side of her ear, "You gave me a sniper rifle, I'm assuming you want me out here."

    "We're with Homeland, here as local experts, we know how this cult rolls." Belltower speaks confidently, smoothing rolling into authority as he flicks the wallet shut and puts it in his jacket pocket as he ignores Katherine, "Lets get everything into position, run the assault soon, they've been tipped off."

    She giggled as she looked through the scope of a million dollar weapon's system that took a hundred times that to develop. Glee filling her voice as she switches through various computerized systems. Watching the screen go from blue and green, to black and white, to all dark with heat signatures, to some kind of… Doppler. All the while wind, and angle, and speed, and even projected drop as a fully digital camera adjusts to show her exactly where her bullet will land. Just looking through the scope, being aware of all the variables makes her powers feel invigorated. She would become Death in a moment. A reaper of souls. Then she kicked her legs behind herself in enjoyment trying to calm down, pulling a cigarette out puffing on it with… Oh, with mania. Right. This is going to feel great.

    The officers begin to surround a large central point, dug into a cavern, its almost like a large cottage, but with a deep inset into the natural feature. Vehicles marked with ATF are surrounding it while dozens of agents point rifles, night vision goggles glinting green in the moonlight. Belltower's on a radio, crackling commands.

    Katherine touches her radio very quickly on a private line in his ear, "Hey, Belltower, go with the third wave, this feeling isn't like the other's. Omega Uniquely bad."

    "I'm not gonna go in at all, if we can swing it." He answers, "Keep an eye on thermal,"

    "I think you're standing on land mines." She says searching her gut. "Back or forward, don't stand where you are standing."

    Belltower looks down, trying to spot something, taking steps carefully to the right and backwards, "Not landmines, but something's now making me nervous, and it's not you." He growls, trying to look around more, "Might be EDE, shit, you don't know what that means. Look it up real quick."

    "I have targets over the cave, not ATF, do I open fire?" The she stops with a swear, pulling free her phone to search it on VIGIL.

    Extradimensional Entity
    Referring to anomalous entities typically used by Deviant influences or actors to perform feats regarded as impossible. See specific articles for known varieties.

    "Fuck it, I'm opening fire." She says "Call it so I'm not freaking people out." She lines up the shot's, takes a deep breath, listens to the pounding of her heart like a staccato. At least it'd be easy to get between beats, then pressed play on music. Taking a tip from Estelle.

    I know what's gonna happen
    I'll try to go to bed
    With fear of failure flapping like a fruit bat in my head

    A gunshot rings out, the target shifting with the impact, spinning to the ground in a crumple, string cut by the hypersonic passage of a heavy calibre round. Then another bang, another target down, pushed straight back and down by a centre of mass shot. The rest start to shift, skin peeling under thermal as they grow and break into a bestial sprint, some diving into puddles and sinking away while others merely rush the ATF.

    I'll sleep for half an hour
    The clock will ring at six
    I'll wake up in the shower with a stomach full of bricks
    So I won't have any breakfast

    Belltower is on the radio, barking commands to the ATF, organizing dozens of Sleepers with a keen eye and powerful confidence, getting them moving like honed operators immediately. The sight of the monsters is answered by terrified screaming in addition to the rattle of automatic fire that rips into them, spilling blood and creating brutal injuries that do not heal.

    Maybe just a little tea
    Like when you have to go and get a colonoscopy
    Which incidentally isn't half as disconcerting or upsetting
    As going for a part you know there is no way that you're getting

    Katherine takes a deep breath as she starts to flow with the music, still firing but no longer directly at things, but at feelings, at thoughts and sounds. Watching bullets spark and move not bidden by her, but simply allowing time to tell her where it wants the bullets. No longer trying to force fate, but helping fate do what it wills.

    But anyway I'm heading
    Downtown for the audition
    Where everything I'm dreading will be coming to fruition

    There's roars of pain now, far far past where the ATF could be, and each roar is followed by one of Katherine's shots. Shots that couldn't possibly be known and yet th eddies of time ripple out calling to her gun, as if she's no longer taking part in the battle, but completely dissociated as it happens around her. A voice, much like hers whispers that it's time to stop.

    And here's what's gonna happen
    I'll walk in weak with hunger
    And there's a dozen girls who look like me but ten years younger

    She reaches for her side arm as something in the darkness approaches from behind. It looks like the exploded remains of Zayn, and yet that seems impossible. Whatever it is or was dies to the Nitro Express rounds just like anything else made by God or Man. Six rounds into the night, more pained yells. The Sig, She goes to fire it. Sure enough, it explodes in her hand tearing off her middle finger. Not my trigger finger, lucky me.

    And here's what happens
    I'll walk into the room
    The gross fluorescent lighting is inviting as a tomb
    And everybody smiles

    The shards of metal spray from her hand, and she realizes that there's a crumpled body beneath her, something's head too near the explosion that took her finger. She only has her chest holster piece now. She's checked, triple checked, and quadruple checked. This one fires true. Seventeen, Sixteen, Fifteen. Katherine counts, firing into empty space, but hearing pained yelps and screams taking a quick step back as the Sedan starts to sink into the mud.

    They'll say "It's good to see ya"
    But all I see is judges
    And they'll all look like Scalia

    Fourteen, thirteen, twelve. More yells, more ripples and holes in time and space. There was a priest last time, that's what Belltower said. She hadn't used her powers, she had already faced backlash. This might kill her but she hears men in the distance screaming and dying. So she whispers in a calm breath. "This bullet…" She can finally see the entities, they're not people, or maybe they were at some point. Now they're screaming fleshwarps that resemble Cronenberg monstrosities.

    And I'm clever, and I'm fun to have around
    But I'm starting to unravel
    In my head I hear the gavel

    That's too precise,     "One of these bullets…" She says, eleven shots, eleven chances. Her eyes flitting for tiny ripples in the time stream, surely time in it's cruelty wanted more game. Not a do-over when there was still so much left to take. "One of them ends this."

    Guilty!
    They're gonna throw the book at me 'cause I'm
    Guilty!
    Of coming in and wasting all their time
    Guilty!
    Of almost every other showbiz crime

    Eleven, ten, nine, eight. Nothing, hands reaching out now, claws and teeth of things that seemed incapable of mobility let alone thought reached out at her. Seven, six, five, four. Shots ring out, still nothing. More claws, more teeth and talons. She can see her insides quickly become outsides. Three, two…

    One

    That one does something, the bullet seemingly whizzing and bouncing off of something before striking the half sunken Sedan and a piece of explosives no-one knew about in the trunk, causing a massive explosion that radiates metal through her and the creatures around her. Tearing pieces of herself off with it, but the explosion doesn't just lash at her. In fact it must lash at her in order for time to break. It was in fact the backlash that powered this.

    Not young enough!
    Not thin enough!
    Not pretty enough!
    Not good enough!

    The Mk22 sniper rifle abandoned on the car fires as it sails through the air.

    Something in the distance screams, the car ceases to be, the flesh warps cease to be. The sky changes from a ruddy maroon back to a dull smoggy purple light polluted brown.

    We hereby sentence you to a lifetime of
    Waiting tables and debilitating self-loathing

    It's funny. She loves it when the timing is perfect. And her vision fades to black.



    View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CexqYQcprr8
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Book 1: Paradise - End
  • Threadmarks
    • As fetid ocean waters rise under the Santa Monica pier, the sound of joy and laughter echoes out from the distant festivities. There's a blocked off part of the street, an animal attack tarped over and covered by uniformed officers idly mumbling conversations in flickering lamplight.

    Watching from afar, someone with broad shoulders and a large coat pretends not to watch. She has a cigarette between her lips, her eyes are empty and sallow. Large dark circles making them puffy and the red cracks betray months without rest. Her hair is thrown into a tight auburn bun, and the smell of tobacco permeates every part of her being. She ashes it with mis-matched fingernails, covered in chipped emerald nail polish. Her trench coat has stains of something dark, and the very edges are frayed from years of use. Her phone is out, with a professional lens attached to slyly take photos.

    The corpse is barely visible under the cover, looking like an industrial accident. It's just one of a dozen distractions that keep everyone's attention tightly wound to the life around them rather than anything more worrying. A diner calls to travelers in the night, Surfside, a place that looks like it should have closed down decades ago, but somehow clings to life.

    Click, the near-silent photograph as the officers don't even bother to care to notice is saved, blood spattered pier recorded on the device. A buzz pulses in the background of the sight, like a speaker set to infrasound. Finally, an ambulance arrives, more clicks, more photographs. The body is moved, slipping out from under the tarp to show the vomit-inducing horror of ruined flesh, shattered bone and deep organ-spilling furrows that happened across its frame.

    Katherine pulls out her gun, shooting both police officers, and the EMT without thinking, dropping them all within less than thirty seconds. Then in perfect french says, "Éléanora, mon amour, ma brise, il est temps de commencer notre vie ensemble. Tu ne me connais pas encore, mais ton cœur me reconnaît toujours, ma douce." Eleanora my love, my breeze, it is time to start our lives together. You do not know me yet, but your heart always recognizes me my sweet.

    "Je suis un éveillé du temps, piégé dans une bulle. Chaque fois que je meurs, je me réveille pour un autre ensemble incroyable de siècles avec une femme que j'aime éternellement." I am a time awakened trapped in a bubble, every time I die I wake up for another amazing set of centuries with a woman I love eternal. A small bit of confidence, "Je deviens meilleur dans l'art de séduire, n'est-ce pas?" I'm getting better at the flirting, no?

    "Je pense que oui, mon futur amour." I think you are, my future love. Eleanora smirks at the woman in front of her, a bit of hunger evident in her eyes.

    "They are not dead, I shot them in the legs and arms, mostly unconscious from blood loss, my love." With a wink she says, "My luck is getting better too it seems."

    Eleanora moves to the dying men, drinking them deeply and letting the black drift from her eyes, significantly less covered in blood and viscera than usual. "How do we usually do this?" She asks, curiously looking at Katherine with a keen interest.

    "Je te ramène chez toi, parfois nous nous câlinons, parfois nous faisons l'amour avec une intensité folle. C'est la première fois que tout se passe parfaitement." I drive you home, sometimes we cuddle, sometimes we have insanely violent sex. This is the first time everything has gone perfect. Katherine says, gently reaching out her hand, "The world is your oyster my love, seize the pearl how you wish."

    Eleanora grins, grabbing Katherine's hand and tugging her along, "Do you-Oh, qu'est-ce que je fais, tu peux parler français." What am I doing, you can speak French.

    "I am Katherine, Katerine, and occasionally, votre soleil." She says smiling, gently letting herself be tugged into an embrace.

    "Puis-je vous appeler mon soleil?" Can I call you my sun? Eleanora continues grinning, finding this exchange delightful. "Aves-vous un voiture?" Do you have a car? She adds suddenly, curious.

    "Je suis ton soleil, mais je suis aussi ton animal, ta chose, ton épée à manier comme bon te semble, mon amour. Oui, j'ai une voiture." I am your sun, but I am also your pet, your thing, your sword to wield as you please my love. Yes I have a car. Katherine says with a laugh, holding Eleanora's hand and going into a light jog knowing the woman can definitely keep up. "Though I warn you, it's a piece of shit. I was not doing so well at this time. Not until I had seventy thousand nights with you, and then many more after I lost count." She keeps running faster as Eleanora picks up the pace, trying to goad her into a full sprint to the car.

    Eleanora follows, and then, with a wry smirk, picks up and bolts with Katherine, barely whispering, "Hold your breath." A quarter second before. A big smile, as Katherine complies, fully trusting, nestling deep into Eleanora's hands. Letting the warmth and love and joy in this moment spill out onto her.

    A flickering flash of city passes by as distance is eaten up by a long, experienced and practiced stride, air whistling past in almost-shrieks of speed, its thirty seconds before, in a sudden stop that has no whiplash or force to it, Katherine is looking at Eleanora's home, and Eleanora is gently stroking Katherine's arm, a slow blackening of her eyes, "L'avons-nous fait?" Have we done that? She's smirking past the hunger.

    "No, never, the fact that there's always a surprise makes me so happy. You've been humoring me with my shitty car. I appreciate it." She hugs her tight, going for a deep personal kiss before pulling back before they connect, "Pardonne-moi, mon amour, je ne me comporte pas comme une dame respectable." Forgive me my love, I am not acting like a respectable lady.

    Eleanora tilts her head, "Ma Katerina. Je ne rejetterai jamais un baiser de toi." My Katherine, I would never reject a kiss from you. "You are much too beautiful." She finishes in English, starting to rise up on her toes.

    "Well… I do work out quite a bit," Katherine says with a smile, leaning in close to give her a deep kiss lifting her slightly, pushing to pin her against her own door, but not too hard or aggressive, merely giving the push so she knows it's there if she wishes. The kiss goes on for very long. To the point where Katherine feels light headed and her vision begins to fade. She finally pulls back, "I always forget I need air." Katherine says, gasping with a laugh.

    "Ah, I think I'm falling for you." Eleanora grins as she's pinned to the door, reaching down to open the door but it opens before she touches it, as Katherine waves a hand.

    With a sly grin Katherine says, "Ah it looks like the door was only half latched, what are the odds." Winking at her as Eleanora wraps her legs around Katherine's waist, light and easy to hold.

    "Hmm, take me to my bed?" She asks, tilting her head.

    "My apologies, mon amour. A man is in much trouble. I must make a single call to try and help." She very quickly dials a phone number to reach The Union. The phone rings twice, and is picked up by… Fuck she can't remember one of the oil women. "Hi, you don't know me yet, Time Procedural stuff. Agent Belltower is going to be the only person that survives the Washington Fiasco. He kills the priest in…" It's been about ten minutes, and Belltower said on the helicopter… "I think about seven to fifteen minutes. It'll be safe then, please don't leave him dehydrated eating his dead comrades food waiting for you all to get off your sorry asses and save him. Also, hugs and kisses can't wait to start at the office."

    She waits to hear confirmation that she was heard. "Agent, did you hear me?"

    "I…uh. Did" The woman on the other end is confused, "We'll forward that to the Seattle office, thanks for the help, future employee?"

    "Fuck, that's right. Sorry. I work in Los Angeles, we get transferred… Never mind, go save him. We don't actually know each other that well, I'm kind of standoffish and bitchy. I'm working on it." She swears pinching the bridge of her nose.

    "O-kay then." The woman on the other extends the noise. "Like I said, we'll handle it. Are you a Katherine Doukas?" They are clicking on something on the other end.

    "That's the one actually! Wait, do I have my resources?" She asks suddenly, "Can I just buy a chopper and fly to Washington?"

    "We haven't got a usable account on record, but, uhm, we can fly you out, it says here you're part of our QRF?" She asks, curious.

    "I think so? Is that… I work personally with the Director to murder people. Well monsters. Monsters who resemble people. I'm a lot better with guns than words." She admits fully. "Belltower gets promoted to Director, I'll buy him a cake. But for the love of god get rid of any hashbrowns."

    "I'm gonna get that flight scheduled, Agent Doukas, sounds like…future Director Belltower needs you. He isn't responding on radio." Another rattling tap of keys, harsher and quicker this time.

    "No, he's currently on a rampage." She says, quietly, "I'm go— I don't have a car. I'll get there."

    Eleanora seems interested, "Is this a love of yours?"

    "No, I only love two women, and they both live here, you and your partner Estelle." Then she stops, waiting, "Future… That happens next week sorry. I only like women, everytime I die, Belltower is thrown into hell, he has thirty minutes to kill a priest. His friends die everytime I won't get there in time to save him, but I can at least make sure he's not rotting for multiple days. It takes them nearly a week to find him and get him out."

    "Then go, ma Katerina. I will be here when you return." Eleanora is smiling, "It will give me time to freshen up."

    Katherine grabs a set of car keys off the hook by the door but then stops, "Oh my god, that's so shitty to do to a new person though…" Wincing, "I know it's not my car, may I?"

    "It's just an automobil, mon amour." Eleanora watches for any reaction to the words, curious. "Just don't crash it."

    A few tears, "You're always so good to me. I love you so much, I'll be back, and if I'm not you won't even miss me. There's only one timeline." They're streaming down her face. "I'm making the right choice, but I love you so much it hurts. Still put your kindred in concrete for ten years. They're shitheads." Then she runs out of the door, sliding into the car, and peels out with practiced ease to the Helipad.

    The helicopter is waiting for her, a different one, more…civilian in character. Katherine quickly gets in, coat shifting and flaring in the rotorwash revealing an IX-5. She cracks her neck and hops in, telling the pilot "We're saving a life, or at least a part of it."

    The rush to Washington is still arduous. Though a transfer to a V-TOL on a later leg helps quite a bit as the second pilot speeds to a location she had only heard description of. Missiles creating a small rain of shrapnel as they approach. "If this has speakers, play Unfortunate Son, it'll be so bad ass."

    A compound is ablaze, multiple buildings burning down as a carpet of corpses litters it. Blood so thick on the ground that its staining it red. Munitions and rifles and pistols laying around while billowing smoke rises and trees nearby catch ablaze, the damp Washington trees alighting.

    She looks out for Agent Belltower as they hover, most of the fight seemingly over. She pulls out her phone, the timing right for… Him to be finished, though she realized he may be languishing with his frustrations, it'll be too dark to see the buttons on the phone though so she can't text.

    Its not, however, hard to see him. He's dragging a screaming man behind him, drenched in blood and viscera. The man is in pastor's clothes, being pulled along by the knife in his shoulder. Belltower throws him in front of him.

    Katherine takes the shot, a single one in the head. Splattering it in front of Belltower. Before whistling for his attention. "I have your cigarettes!"

    Jacob looks up, shading his eyes from the floodlights of the VTOL, before slumping to a knee, exhausted. Katherine rappels down a fast-rope cord . Hitting the ground with a heavy thud, sprinting over with a pack of blue cigarettes, one already lit and placed in his mouth. Then she jams him with a hypo. "Hey, it's Okay," She says quietly, "This time won't be so rough."

    "Thanks." He growls, a cut on his cheek streaming blood down, mixing in with the mass of viscera that isn't his, body armour and tac gear ripped, torn and stained alike.

    She takes a bit of styptic powder saying, "This might sting, depending on how you feel right now." Before very quickly cleaning and bandaging the wound. Patting him on the shoulder, stepping away so that the VTOL can land, and he is placed on board with herself. She doesn't say anything. Just places the pack of cigarettes in his hand, and takes a deep breath.

    "I'm really fucking tired of this, Katherine." Belltower stares at the burning compound as turbine thrust lifts the black airframe from the ground, leaving the incinerated mess behind as a large plane can be seen in the distance, nearing silently.

    She nods, just listening, "I'll get better, I got swarmed on the car. I'm sorry." She doesn't touch him, doesn't even get overly close. Just letting him have his cigarettes and his time. "My instinct was to hug you. Sorry. You probably." This was not letting him have his time. Her mouth opens to say more, but her brain finally wins out and shuts it down.

    "Yeah." Belltower's non-committal, just staring out at the world, dripping with blood not his own. Smelling of copper and gunsmoke and violence.

    Oh, god do not kiss him. She takes a deep breath, I don't even like men. It's the blood. God I love gunpowder and copper and violence. Just be normal. A tingle, an instinct, a real instinct. "So, Disney's Robin Hood, the one with the hot fox started a thing on the internet."

    He keeps staring at the forest as Katherine speaks, not ignoring her, but not engaging either.

    "Basically a bunch of people's sexual awakening was either this fox." She pulls out her phone, "Or this bat, but she came out later," Showing him a picture of Rouge the bat, not really waiting to see if he was paying attention. "There were these people who believed they were… Well, there were Elfkin, and then when other people started getting really hornt up about animals, they got called otherkin, and kinning is this thing where you believe your favorite cartoon character lives in your head."

    She says, "But I digress, so when thinking of the Hunk to Pretty, Smart to Stupid and twink to bear axis, which is basically the vector array for third dimensional attractiveness, there's basically this kind of weird sub space, that exists on the axis but in the extremes of each corner. Where the ideals of that are exemplified in the Cartoon Characters. Which is where Furries come in. Which are not necessarily people who want to fuck anthromorphic animals, but they do pay for about four fifths of all online commissions, and ninety percent of that is porn or people that are themselves as animals." She watches Belltower for a reaction, but her instinct is telling her to keep going. She's distracting him from this and bringing him to better times. Fun helicopter rides, stupid conversations and frozen dinners.

    "How do people function." He eventually asks, sighing out as the smell of copper and blood mixes with smoke. His gloves come off, fingers bruised and bloody underneath the soaked kevlar.

    "Well there's been a lot of advances in virtual reality and teledildonics." She says, to him smiling, "So these people can get a sexy models of themselves, and a blowjob machine or like… They're like reverse strapons kind of? They hook up over the internet. The whole 'I want to be a sexy animal or anime girl thing' ends up just being a real possibility or close enough I guess." Then pulling her phone out with a small giggle, "Sleepers figured out how to make ears controlled with your mind, subconsciously as if you were the animal. AND this weird predator vision." Showing him two tiktoks she saved on the way over here. That probably wasn't what he meant, but… God she got him. He wasn't fucking… Out there.

    "Oh, fuck I almost forgot, I have my trench coat." She says warmly, pulling out a stanley thermos where her long arm would normally be. "I brought you coffee, and chocolate." Two small boxes of chocolate, both boutique but one is very much gourmet American chocolate with the unique vomit flavor that American's adore, and then a gourmet quality chocolate that tastes normal to the rest of the world.

    Belltower reaches over, taking a chocolate and popping it into his mouth, briefly showing bloody teeth. Washing it down with a gulp of coffee, he breathes deeply before closing his eyes and leaning back against the interior of the aircraft. "Thanks. Again."

    "You're… Important to me." She says, looking at him, "It was the least I could do." There was more, but it felt… Her instincts told her to wrap that up for later. "You know, the good news is, I'm twice as strong as I was when we first faced Christine."

    "Christos. He won't be there. He changes route every time, gets feelings too." The longest sentence out of him so far, there's something deeply visceral in his eyes, like he's still angry, still wants to hurt and maim and kill. It's overpowering the numb, giving him something more like life, revenant forged as it is.

    "If you're still down for violence, I'm still pretty upset at Jared Ox." She says at the anger, hoping to point it somewhere, "If you're not, there's breakfast at my place, and if you want me to hang out at the office that's a choice too." None of those options were 'Fuck off Katherine,' a very purposeful choice.

    "Sure, I'll kill a cop." He growls, voice rumbling out from his chest as a pool of blood's formed from the drips off his uniform, black cloth with no identifying marks save for a velcro tab saying BELLTOWER on his left chest. "Might take awhile. I'm good with a knife." Belltower turns his eyes to Katherine at that, practically glowing orbs drilling through anything they catch.

    "That's fine," Katherine says with a smile, "The man reached into my head for ten years and made my schizophrenia worse for reasons I don't know or understand. He never tells me!" She says, "Fuck it, it's mostly just to christen the new loop at this point. If I don't get to it, he sends cops to blow up my apartment, and kill Estelle."

    "No need to justify, coulda named most anyone I'd probably have…agreed." He plays with a knife, moving it between his hands, exercises for dexterity, handling the blade like a butterfly knife.

    She nodded with a smile, "I know, but I like to remind myself why I do it."

    "Yeah." He looks back out the window, waiting for a chance to unleash something.



    It was easy, Belltower's a rate master at kidnappings. Caught him in a barely isolated locale without anyone looking, put Jared to sleep with an injection, and had him wake up in a plastic lined room in a dock-facing house, taped down naked while he set up knives, guns, shock prods and chemicals.

    The process takes several hours, Belltower treats it like an interrogation, asking questions just to give some hope of this having a goal, resuscitating the subject several times before finally sighing, handing a knife to Katherine and going to another room to smoke.

    "I'm going to ask you again Jarred, just for old time's sake." Looking at him, seething, "Why do you do it? What do I do? You fucked with my head, ripped out all my memories. Why? Why me? specifically."

    As Jared speaks, Katherine says his words right along with him in the same cadence, in harmony, "I don't know, you just… Were there. You didn't have anyone who cared about you. So we just… Used you to do stuff, clean house mostly."

    "THAT'S NOT AN ANSWER!" Katherine screams at him, jamming the blade into his leg. "THINK OF SOMETHING BETTER."

    Then she speaks along with him in perfect harmony again, "I… I.. don't know. You seemed… gullible? You liked me that made it seem… Stop it you're freaking me out."

    "I know." Katherine says sweetly, her throat catching. "You said the exact same thing, last time. No matter how I ask, it's like a fixed fucking point, I can see the time on you. I can see the filth. You never change. You'll never make it out of here."

    In harmony again, "Wait wait, I have money, resources, I can pay. I can stop doing that."

    "No. I joined the force at twenty one. four years after I graduated early. Got my bachelor's fast." She said, still not cutting him with the knife. "I got in, and I never even got a chance to prove I was worth something. I was a beat cop, and already you were fucking with me, just in a different way wasn't it?"

    They harmonize again, "What do you mean? I just wanted drinks that's not a cri—" He however shouts out in pain at the end, as Katherine jams it into the knee cap, the blade splitting it in two.

    "You made me think I was getting better. Jared. That my life was finally turning around. The entire time, while you fucked with my head until I was a shattered mess. So obsessed with finding out reality that I literally fuck the time stream so hard that innocent people, people I like go through hell." She takes a deep breath, "I don't blame you for that though, but if I let you go, you panic. My apartment still blows up. You already gave the order, this time my car is in the pier parking lot, so maybe people will think I died or got kidnapped this time." She sniffs, looking at him.

    She says in harmony with him, "I'm sorry I just wanted stop that."

    "No, I don't think I will." Katherine says, looking at him, "I don't think I will. Everytime I die, I'm going to bring you down somewhere. I'm going to rip you to shreds so that I feel better. Except I don't. It's just… A part of the ritual at this point. You're a vampire. You're a fixed point, time magic acts weird around you."

    She takes the blade and looks at him, before jamming it in his abdomen, pushing intestines into his stomach. "You die a few hours later." She says, "I'm thinking next time though I just shoot you, you'll never change what you say."

    Then in harmony as she leaves, "No no wait don't please don't please." She closes the door behind her.

    Belltower has a drifting tendril of smoke rising from a burning point in the dark, igniting his face in the lightless room, assembled placidly in the image of a house, though it doesn't have an ounce of life in it. His face is once again stony, unreadable, no longer young and fresh.

    She lights her own, quietly standing next to him. Taller but feeling far smaller, she forgets he's smaller even when looking him in the eye. He just… Feels more. A huge presence, a huge ripple around him that demands her attention. She hated it, knowing that it was those attentions that caused it in the first place.

    "Stop spiraling." Belltower demands, voice gruff still, exhaustion evident in his every motion and word.

    And so she does, he doesn't blame her. His way works better, grudges are useless. If he's not going to hold it against than she shouldn't either. A quiet nod. "We're the only ones whose seen each other's little chips now." A small quirk of the lip. Still feeling manic and over emoted, over the top. Intense, everything too much. That too much being very enjoyable and ruinously exhausting with the sleep never quite even wanting to come. Even though the body begs for it. A second cigarette makes that fall away too.

    "Do you have a home I can even take you to, or do you actually live at the office." She says finally, after nearly fifteen minutes just watching Jarred slowly bleed out through a window.

    "Haven't been in it in…three years. But yeah. It's pretty good." Belltower admits. "Think it still has wifi."

    She pulls out her phone, dialing a number, it rings once, "Bonjour?"

    "Mon amour, cet ami a besoin de moi. Je serai de retour demain soir, je suis désolée d'être aussi taquine." My love, this friend he needs me. I will be home tomorrow night, I'm sorry to be such a tease. "I would do the same for you." She said quietly, hearing Eleanora say "Ne t'inquiéte pas, mon amour." Do not worry, my love.. Already knowing the answer, and quietly hanging up after soft goodbyes.

    The drive over is quick, its three streets down from the office, a third story apartment that, when the door opens, looks like it hasn't been touched in about three years. Bachelor's furniture, but suspiciously clean, without a single dish in the sink or piece of clothing on the floor anywhere. He looks at it almost surprised, "Thought someone woulda robbed it by now."

    "You can't feel it?" She says looking at the place around her. "I don't think anything but maybe people change here. Almost scared to touch anything."

    Belltower breaks the illusion by sitting down, a puff of dust shifting the feel of the entire place as someone, finally, lives here. "Way ahead of you."

    She decides not to bring up that line of delusions again, "Yeah I believe it." Putting her trench coat full of… her life, on a rack threatening to knock the whole thing over with it's weight. Then walks over to another chair with a much more gentle seat, still feeling at odds with the place, but not as much. Just nervous a bit they saw each other in a real way.

    "You can go, by the way. I can cope on my own." He tries to offer an out, closing his eyes.

    "I'm well aware of my capabilities, Jacob," She says using his first name for the first time since she met him. "I'm where I want to be."

    His eyes open at the mention of his name, and slowly he looks down for the roof and at Katherine. Words are slow to assemble, he's been up for three days, the gunshots aren't bleeding, but they've stained his bandages and dress-shirt with what they were emitting hours ago. The claw mark on his cheek is scabbing into a scar, one Katherine's familiar with and nothing gotten the gunsmoke smell off him yet. "Why's that?" He asks curiously.

    "The cool answer would be something like, professionalism, or whatever." She said smiling, "Because I lived most of my life alone, and it sucked, I want to be in a room with people. Even better if those people want me there."

    "Yeah." Belltower says, looking back down to the floor, a standard hardwood.

    "But if you want to bang it out, I'm not going to lie, I think it's gunpowder and blood, not gender. Like a… Smell thing?" She said snorting, knowing he was perceptive enough to know it was very much a real offer, but also very easily played off if he didn't.

    Keeping his eyes to the floor, he says, "Haven't actually even thought about having sex in…five real world years before the loop." Belltower sounds tired, "Mind if I just smoke in your company?" It's a fragile request, a vulnerable show he's not used to giving.

    "Of course not." She says, wanting to share her own vulnerable moment, "First time Eleanora said she loved me and meant it, I got eaten the next time because I couldn't stop crying about it."

    He's lit up another cigarette, christening his old home in a wash of smoke and tobacco scent. "I, uh, relationships don't work well with the job. Last one was fifteen years ago. Mostly flings after that." Another admittance, "Touch's hard, even before the loop it was hard."

    "Everyone shows love in different ways," Katherine says with a smile, "All relationships are different, people try to put them in boxes to make them easier to classify, but I've kept a million spreadsheets on a million things. They defy categorization and classification." She hoped her point was getting across, trying to say things she doesn't say, "What we have now, whatever happens in the future, it is what it is. It happens or it doesn't, but it never needs a reason to happen or not."

    "I'll meet you wherever you're at, whatever that looks like." She says with a laugh, "I don't even know what a real relationship is." Wait was that megalomania talking, he might not have been talking about you.

    "I get a…correct term is a subconscious analytical interpretation." He chuckles dryly, "A dream, the loop starts when I get shot, it skims my spine, shock puts me to sleep, wake up three minutes later. It's my mind warning me of the loop, I think." A drag of the cigarette fills his lungs, let out in a slow pulse from his mouth as he savours the soporific taste.

    "I get a dream where you're smirking at me, helping me up. Then I wake up and get back to fighting." He twitches at the admittance, "I probably shouldn't have said that."

    "I'm not cruel enough to use that against you." She said quietly, "Unless you mean how I'm going to train a vampire to get from here to Washington in two minutes. Or figure out time travel. I do that, I break the loop. I think."

    "Leaving the loop probably breaks it. Has your file been transferred to the central network yet? It had to be if you were still on the records." He takes a break from the conversation, just for a minute doing something familiar.

    "The QRF?" She says, looking at him, "The… Oil lady, one of them said something about me being on file but my accounts were set up yet."

    "Yeah, that means you've been fully processed. Union knows about you no matter how twisted time gets." He nods, reassured somewhat, "Means I don't have to keep arguing my bosses down."

    "OH fuck that was real." She said quietly, letting a breath go. "I was eighty twenty on that one being real, instead of just a way to recruit me to abuse the loop somehow. That makes me feel better. Though, now that I've seen what happens there, it wasn't eighty twenty after that."

    He grimaces, taking a quick drag to calm himself down. "Once you're past a point, we run out of mercy. We run out of any sort of…limits too." The words make a smirk slip onto his face, "You wanna hear something funny?" Belltower looks up, eyes gleaming slightly in the dark.

    "Yes." Again the delusion was stuffed away deep it's not the time for that, even if it were true. Which it probably is, but that's even more reason not to talk about it.

    "One of the people that dies there, former Director. They wanted to just napalm it, turn the whole compound to ash." His hand starts shaking, making him frown at the unintentional motion. "I argued him down, and they die every time because of it. The loops too late to change the game plan, to make anything different. Just…fight, kill, win." Belltower's hand stops shaking, but his eyes start glistening instead of gleaming. "I feel…responsible. And I have to see the consequences of my decisions over and over."

    "You did the right thing, it just didn't work out." Katherine said quietly, "Two people trapping themselves in time for polar opposite reasons. It's not your fault, any good man, good person, would have argued the same."

    "Those hostages I was trying to save? By the time we get there, the Eddy has them wrapped up. They pick guns up too. Just don't last long, not trained or practiced. I get through them in eight or so minutes. Not hard." He's just short of growling words out, "I made a gut decision based on what felt right and it was dead wrong. And I'm the only one that lives through the mistake. Why do I get to live through it?" A tear slips out, almost nervous in its own right, how long has it been since he's cried?

    She doesn't touch him, but she does get close, sitting next to him on the floor, still eye level funnily enough. "You saw it with Jarred, there is no why. Not one that'll ever be sufficient. Even if you knew the exact reason it wouldn't be good enough. You had the abilities to survive, it's a shitty reason."

    "You're right. It's not good enough." He chuckles dryly as another tear slips, making him hiss as it lands on the scab.

    Not even realizing she did it, that she was doing it, she put a hand on his leg to reassure him. "You're not fine, but you'll get better. You won't be the same, but that's not always worse."

    "Feels like it's worse." The touch locked his gaze to Katherine. Leg tensing as she made contact.

    "Shit, sorry." She said, pulling her hand back, but without fear, disgust, or aggression. Just respect. "That might change, or it might not as well. It takes time to figure out, which means I need to get better at not dying."

    Staring at the hand as it slips away, he says, "You're the first person to do that in…awhile." Looking very tired.

    She takes a second, and looking at the Director, actively trying to keep herself separated from her powers when she says this, hoping it exists outside of… Everything. "If you want a hug, but can't ask for one. You can give me a nonverbal signal. A nod, a hand gesture, whatever. It's there, not something that's being forced but available."

    He gives a dry chuckle, "If you hug me, I think I'll lose my remaining pride."

    "That's ok, I think you'd get a net gain from me." She said, still waiting, observing, looking at the little ripples, waiting for the moment that's appropriate, watching different probabilities.

    Belltower sighs again, gathering the grit and drive that makes him who he is, "I'm a big boy. I can use my words." Another breath, another moment of nerves, "Mind…doing that?"

    Not overly fast she gets on a knee very easily, and drapes over him. Finding strength as his very skin and muscles feel like they're shattering into square bits of safety glass at the touch. Squeezing him, not with pressure, just enough to know her presence is known, just to give him a little bit of warmth that signified that she was alive and there.

    He's lost blood, making him chilly to the touch, and the shiver that goes through him at human contact is nearly full body. Jacob's not sure how to respond, just sort of…drifting in the hold as something warm and human hits Katherine's back. It's not the same but it's not bad either. She knows there's no wrong way to do this, but nothing anyone told her convinced her of that. So she simply let him come to his own conclusions. Letting their warmth intermingle.

    "Thanks." Jacob says, breathing out one last time before he returns to something rhythmic and normal. "I'm…probably just going to fall onto my bed." He shifts, letting Katherine get off him if she wants.

    She doesn't, of course, her love was just… Like that to a lot of people. A bit too different to be recognizable, still she didn't want to let him go. She wanted to carry him to bed but god knows even Estelle would rarely let her do that. So she stayed, and she hugged.

    It's by inches, but, with another minute or two, Belltower slumps forwards, three days catching up with him suddenly. Eyes closed and breath even in Katherine's arms. Scents and feelings and warmth all intermingling as he sleeps. It would be romantic to say it was perfect, and comfortable, and she wished it lasted for hours. It was simply, important, a thing people needed just as much as they needed food, showers, small talk. It was emotional labour. The scents not right, everything just slightly too warm, but that didn't mean it meant less.

    She still cared, in the same way he needed touch but it stung, she needed to give it but it wore on her. The first night of the loop was two hours of sleep. Maybe three, fever pitched in a manic episode that made her want to vibrate off the walls the only sensations she wants to experience are tingly, painful, or extremely sweet. She knows the passage of time perfectly, and know when' he'll be in the deepest sleep, about forty five minutes to almost an hour later he's put into bed, shoes removed, but nothing else.

    Not tucked in, nothing that'd imply his vulnerability had left him… Vulnerable. She put a note next to him that said she was sleeping on the couch. Before going to sleep, she did a group text to Eleanora and Estelle. Forgetting that Estelle hasn't been looped in yet.

    Love you both so much, can't wait for your kisses and Kisses. I miss you, the worst part of dying is realizing that you don't know how much I love and would do for you yet. I hesitate scared of losing you, and I worry that you hesitate scared of how I come off.

    Then, swearing to herself.

    Estelle I'm a time mage, we're a triad. I'm very hot.
    pic attached 4.56MB

    sick
     
  • Threadmarks
    • We're about... twenty thousand words into Book 02, but I like to space these out by about a week to give people a chance to catch up / comment / discuss.
     
    Full disclosure, this hasn't moved past 20k words in the last week. So we're balancing posting a 2nd book that we may not finish, or letting this ending hang as it is, which to me at least is a pretty clear and good one. Katherine has mastered the Loop, and while some day it might break and she dies, she's carved a happily ever after for herself.

    Part of the reason is that other projects keep trucking well along, including a fully written Shadowrun fic which is currently being posted through the week before being marked completed, and then copied to Ao3, Wattpad, etc for archival. Then we've started another fic that's just fantasy OC though that's a WIP, but it's very good so far.

    If I remember @Dapperlad1 's opinion on it and I'm definitely pinging him to prompt him. It was something along the lines of "Stop being so official and formal about things. This is for fun! Follow what you want to do, just enjoy yourself" or some drek like that. Unfortunately, I have content creator brain that has been poisoned by publishing, so every fic has to have a beginning and an end or it'll itch under my skin like nettles.

    If I'm not continuing the last pages will be edited and compiled into a pdf and epub!

    And since I'm not sure I guess I'll float the plotline: Katherine learning about Demisexuals in the last book, now explores more about herself while trying to balance her polycule, her new beaux, and her dangerous work. At work however, things get dangerous with the NWO's war with the Traditionalists, especially as Katherine volunteers for the NWO's raisons d'être espionage. Reason to be there spycraft.
     
    Princess Scribe said:
    If I remember @Dapperlad1 's opinion on it and I'm definitely pinging him to prompt him. It was something along the lines of "Stop being so official and formal about things. This is for fun! Follow what you want to do, just enjoy yourself" or some drek like that. Unfortunately, I have content creator brain that has been poisoned by publishing, so every fic has to have a beginning and an end or it'll itch under my skin like nettles.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    My specific words were "Stop worrying about writing for other people, write for yourself and fun instead."
    My honed and experienced wisdom is, of course, being ignored. :p
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Hello lovely readers, Dapper and I have started up an Original Fiction story. We're quite proud of it, and you should check it out!



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    Once a pirate now a wizard, A tiefling and her companions fight to save the last sparks of magic in a dying world. Original - Novel - Fantasy

    A tiefling wizard and her eclectic band of companions embark on a quest to save a captured fiend. Along the way, they uncover the grim truth about the fading wonders of their realm and must fight to reignite the spark of magic while navigating the complexities of love, loyalty, and power...
    forums.sufficientvelocity.com forums.sufficientvelocity.com

    And, while we were away, we've finished another story if you haven't quite had your fill of our writing:



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    [Shadowrun] Glitter and Chrome - [COMPLETED] Mature - Novel - Modern

    Millie is more wared out than a cyberpsycho, and doesn't have any of the killing power to prove it. In order to be a multi million dollar actress she let Horizon give her every glamour-tech on the market from experimental pheromones to Troll Reductions. Now she's cut off after an on stream flub...
    forums.sufficientvelocity.com forums.sufficientvelocity.com


    Or maybe you're in the mood for something whackier? Did you know that Thanatomania is going to be coming off hiatus soon?



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    [Wh40k x Starcraft] A Sarah Kerrigan knock off MC sleeps her way through the imperium of man with increasing amounts of kink - We're off hiatus! Crossover - Mature - Romance

    TW: Violence, Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Kink, Gore In Book 02, A Swarm Leader has found her place with her new burgeoning family, Saint Celestine and The Inquisitor Katarinya Grayfax. Now she adventures before a crusade, having her final moments before War hits her tired team...
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