circle7 | Beam me up, Scotty!

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Beam me up, Scotty!

The warehouse reeked of gunpowder and rusted metal. The air was coarse with smoke, difficult to breathe in, and the floor was littered with freshly dead bodies. Even the old man, a veteran when it came dealing in this kind of business, the scene was a gloomy sight to behold. He bats an eye, a quick glance over the place was enough to tell him the place had been deserted – that is, abandoned by the ones that weren’t so unfortunate. Well, for the most part, it doesn't seem like anyone's lurking around in the shadows trying to get a last strike. His shoulders fall into a relaxed position and he stows his gun in its holder.

Garamond wasn’t typically one to initiate turf wars, but he didn’t refuse a fight when his establishment was threatened. After a short inspection of the area, he was quickly coming to realize their rival gang had been sitting on a little gold mine. The warehouse was filled with all sorts of investments. Raw materials, drugs, weapons, typical stuff for small organized crime groups– but what mattered is that they had a lot of it. ‘Finder’s keepers,’ he supposed. He scoops up a crowbar from the ground beneath him, glancing out towards the row of crates to his front. He lodges the bar's teeth into the upper-latch of the nearest crate and he gives a shove--

The top of the crate goes flying, hitting the horizontal wall with a clatter. Turns out the thing wasn't even bolted down.

"Huh."

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The crate he opens is full of bullets, a sleek silver and copper in the light, just rows and rows of cartridges. The corresponding guns are lying around somewhere in these innocuous crates as well, packaged as stationery supplies - actually, there probably are those in the vicinity, too, lying around, just to throw off potential inspectors, just so that they could pry the lid off one of them and convince inquiring parties that it was harmless after all, that they were really just shipping ballpoint pens and artificial notebook paper. As the lid goes flying, though, and the fragile wood splinters upon impact, it becomes apparent that supplies aren't the only things the warehouse is sheltering.

The beginning of a small muffled cry makes its way from one of the boxes. It's hardly audible, like whoever made it also made the conscious effort to silence it, but in the absolute silence of the abandoned area, it's still obvious to a trained ear.

Garamond bats an eye. The sudden cry distracting him from the flutter of notebook papers. Was that a person he heard screaming? He wasn’t exactly sure, but there was one way to find out. With his crowbar in tow, he follows down the line of boxes, tapping each twice before passing.

Most of the answers are rather ordinary (shipping boxes don't make good conversation partners), and they are about as much as you'd expect a full crate to sound like when being tapped with a crowbar. It's a dull, heavy, lifeless thump. One crate is worth mentioning though. It replies with a thump like the rest of them, but it's tinged with the slight echo of what a human yelp sounds like when it's made from behind a firmly-clamped hand.

Bull's eye.

Another tap. “Come on out. You’re not fooling anybody hiding in there. At least not with that kind of noise, ha ha. And make sure to drop the weapons, alright? I don’t want any funny business. I’ve got about forty men behind me waiting to blow your head off if you try something.”

A short silence follows, broken at first only by what sounds like a weak groan from the box next to Garamond, and then panicked shuffling from the one in front of him, before the top pops off like a bottle cap, nearly hitting the man square in the face. There's a blur of movement, and a young girl suddenly leans over to the next crate, shoving its top off. Only after she checks its contents does she glance up at the stranger.

There is a young man in that other box, curled up and leaning heavily on one side. The left side of his clothes are stained with way too much blood for him to be still breathing, so it only follows that a good portion of that belongs to someone else. Judging from the hand clamped onto his waist, though, it doesn't all belong to someone else.

The girl gives him a defiant stare, but she's pale with fear. "W-what are you looking at, old man?"

Edited 2010-03-06 15:00 (UTC)

An old man, indeed. Just that, in fact. A quick look around the warehouse would dispel the man’s bluff. There was no crew of forty men, just a bunch of dead bodies and boxes. He eyes the two over, leather gloved hands resting unthreateningly on his hips. The two appeared no older than their mid-teens. A shame how young the kids could be caught up in these kinds of scraps, he thought. Unfortunately, disposable units were key players in these kinds of organizations. Pawns, so to speak.

“Well now,” He speaks, offering the two a gentleman’s smile. “Looks like there were some survivors after all. Looking a little worse for the wear, though. Too bad. Creative little hiding spot, isn’t it? If you’d have kept quiet I probably wouldn’t have found you two.”

In answer, Viana puts up her fists, one foot sliding behind the other in a fighting stance. It's not even correct - her body is still facing forward and her fingers are clasped over the thumb in a way that would break the very bone of the digit if she were to actually put any force into a blow. She has thin arms; there is, at most, only a child's strength in them. She looks healthy - the color in her skin is rather tan and flushed, though that may just be because of the rush of fear - but it's doubtful either of them have had a large meal in a while. She has knobby knees and bony wrists. She is a fighter, no doubt, but she is no brawler.

"Go ahead! I can take you!"

“Ba ha ha!! You want to fight me!? Do you have any idea who I am, girl? I could snap you in half by the waist if I wanted to. You go picking fights at the wrong time and you’re going to get yourself in a lot of trouble.” Amusement pulls on his smile, and he shakes his head in disbelief. There’s some charm in the young girl’s spunk, admittedly, but it brings him to wonder how she’s still living. As his glance leaves her in favor of the boy, it becomes noticeable how his bad eye simply sits dead in its place, its glossy coat and unusual color clearly indicating that it was fake. “—And who’s this? Your boyfriend? He’s looking like he’s seen better days.”

The older man takes a step over towards the neighboring box, kneeling forward with curiosity. He takes the way the boy is clutching his side to mean that the kids still bleeding. He assumed it must be a deep wound, considering the amount of time that had passed since the grounds had been cleared. The kid was looking in poor shape. He crouches in front of the box, leveling himself with the boy huddled in the corner. “You going to make it down there?” He asks, a serious question, despite a glimmer of a smirk on his face.

There is a thump and the sound of a struggle as the girl scrambles towards the other box, likely to put herself between Garamond and the boy, though there is little her body could hide from him, a little she could bar him from. Unfortunately, the crates are rather large, and she is yet still rather small, and in her clumsiness, she trips over the edge of the box before she gets anywhere. Thankfully, she manages not to smash her face into anything on the way down.

In the meantime, the question directed at him seems to wake Evan up, and he cracks open his eyes, turning slowly to the stranger. The light behind the large silhouette is blinding, and he winces at first. "¿Quién es el hombre? ¿Un enemigo? ¿Quiere matarnos?" It is foreign in tongue, evidence of their upbringing. Only in the niches of the ghettos and slums did the old ununified dialects still persist, passed down from parents to children. Often, the single family would be the only ones in the entire neighborhood to understand it.

By then, Viana manages to get back to her feet. "I don't think so," she answers, more understandably. She eyes Garamond suspiciously, but not entirely as antagonistically as before. "My brother is hurt," she tells him. "Can you help us?"

Edited 2010-03-10 14:16 (UTC)

“Your brother, huh? Well, you’re brother looks like he’s dying, missy.” Garamond responds honestly, the line of his mouth flattening. “I can’t promise you anything. Bandage him up, give him some water and a clean place to rest for awhile is about all I can do. Whether or not he recovers probably based on how bad that wound there is. Little luck wouldn’t hurt either, but from the looks of it this kids pretty lacking in the luck department, eh?”

“Here,” He untucks his scarf from his coat collar, handing it over to the two. “Wrap up with this until we get out of the warehouse. I’ll call in a few men to help you kids out.”

"He isn't dying!" she yells, voice rising in pitch. She says it with such fervor that it's obvious nothing will change her mind. She snatches the scarf from his hands, tugging it from the hanging end. It is poor manners to show such behavior to someone willing to help your injured sibling, but it's hard to blame her. Viana is preoccupied with Garamond's careless observation, and also with hastily (and messily) pushing her brother up and wrapping his middle with the simple fabric.

In a matter of seconds, she pulls on the knot, testing it. Evan mutters out something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like, "Can't...breathe..." but it's hard to say from either of the other two vantage points. Viana pulls him up by the arm, too small yet to take his weight. Luckily, the boy seems to be able to manage that much, and he stumbles to his feet, blinking slowly at Garamond now that his eyes aren't too busy readjusting to the light.

"Thank you," he says.

"Lead the way," she says.

Only moments later the two would find themselves in a small, cluttered hotel room. It was dimly-lit, lacking windows, and host to several miscellaneous boxes- but it at least seemed sanitary. Evan, the older brother, had been laid out on fresh sheets(now slightly soiled with blood), and bound with surgical gauze. His wound had been cleaned and had been stitched up, albeit unprofessionally. The boy would be lucky if he didn’t scar. The threat of blood loss, however, seemed to have subsided for the time being. The two siblings had been left to themselves, supplied a pitcher of water and some crackers. After a few hours passed by, the one-eyed man returned to the room.

“Ah, so you’re still here. I was worried you two might have wandered off.” He says with a smile. “And how’s your brother’s recover coming?”

Viana turns, her actions much slower than they were earlier, rubbing atone eye. Either the fight or the anxiety has worn her out, and it's painfully obvious. Her brother, meanwhile, seems to be fitfully sleeping on the bed, chest rising evenly and face no longer twisted in a grimace. Though the state of the wound isn't visible under the pulled-up blankets, his relatively peaceful sleep is testament enough to his recovering condition.

"Okay, I think," she murmurs, swaying a little. She must have been fighting off sleep for hours, by the looks of it. Viana returns Garamond's smile slowly. The expression is awkward on her face, so used to frowning instead. It looks almost forced. "...Thanks for this, old man. ...I guess."

“You guess, huh?” Garamond laughs. “You’d better show some respect, girl. That was an expensive scarf your brother ruined. I’m guessing you two kids were involved in the little scrap that went on down at the warehouse, hm?”

She has the audacity to thumb her nose at him. "I'll pay you back!" she answers, defiantly, but it's more likely childish rebelliousness than anything more malicious. Turning away, she looks back at her brother, and then turns around on the bed to look Garamond in the eye, legs hanging off the edge. "It was just a job. Got kind of messy. When things started looking bad...I just dragged Evan with me and hid. So we're not higher-ups or anything! You won't get any information out of us no matter what kind of torture you t-try!"

Edited 2010-03-13 12:59 (UTC)

“Bah ha ha!! Who needs information?” Garamond can’t help but crack a smile over the girls tough exterior. “Your boys are as good as dead, I’m afraid. You should feel lucky you two didn’t suffer the same. Little street gangs like yours aren’t any kind of threat to organizations like ours. I can tell you right now we don’t have any intention to torture you.”

He reaches for a letter sticking out from his front pocket. “—but we do have a business proposal for you. You’re looking a little under the weather. So I’ll let you sleep on it. But give it a look over, hm?”

After eying the folded piece of paper for a moment, Viana slowly reaches out to take it, pulling it towards her with only her middle and index finger, as if purposely trying to touch it as little as possible. There is suspicion written plainly all over her face, but she withholds from any smart comments for now. "...Okay," she answers sullenly, turning the letter over in her hands. She doesn't open it, perhaps waiting for her brother to wake up, perhaps waiting for just simple privacy. "I will...sir."

“Good.” He breathes out, offering the girl a nod. He gives her another once over. “You and your brother, you’re not addicted to drugs, are you? You going to be alright here for the night?”

"Nah, we'll be fine." She is either too used to the question to be offended, or too distracted to be. It's a pretty customary question in their profession, sadly enough, more common amongst the younger generations than the older (if you were older, it was assumed you just weren't addicted, else you wouldn't have survived that long). Viana shakes her head, and slowly, the tiredness seems to settle into her frame, now that she's had a confirmation of one night to 'think on it'. She had half-forced herself to stay awake in case Garamond suddenly barged in and started making demands for his help - like a kidney or a finger, or something. They didn't really have many of those to spare.

"I'll...wait until he wakes up, and then I will show it to him in the morning."

“Alright, alright. I’ll stop being a bother.” Another laugh from the older man as he dismisses himself. He finds some amusement in the young girl’s nonchalant response. She was quite the tomboy, Viana. He wasn’t particularly used to being spoken to on such equal terms, but he supposed the girl couldn’t help not knowing. "You two rest up. We've got some things to discuss in the morning."

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Beam me up, Scotty!

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