06-20-2009, 01:47 PM
SCIMITAR STORIES
Girl's Night Out
by Sofaspud and OpMegs
The hideout -- or The Lair, as Nena Romanova somewhat playfully termed it -- wasn't particularly hardened against attack. In Katherine Madigan's
estimation, it didn't need to be. Hardened against visual and acoustic surveillance, check; against someone busting down the door? Why bother? Any of
her girls could handle a random intruder, and if it was a determined attack, that meant they'd been discovered and she'd rather they abandon the place
and find another instead of calling more attention to themselves with a massive firefight in the middle of an otherwise-quiet office building.
Since it was -meant- to be abandoned at a moment's notice, that meant she had provided little in the way of creature comforts. Some of the Scimitars
didn't need or want them; Galatea, for example, was equally neutral when surrounded by fancy furniture as when she was curled up on a dirty cot. She
didn't -care-. Fate was similar, though she at least obviously cared about one more than the other. It was the other three -- Jen, Robin, and Nena -- who
preferred and actively sought out quality-of-life improvements.
Like the 120-inch flatscreen display that Robin and Jen had hauled up eight flights of fire escape, while Nena cheerfully annihilated the memories of everyone
in sight who might have noted the strange procession. And, being Nena, some who hadn't, but who she felt like messing with anyway.
Or the satellite reciever, acquired by Jen one night when she couldn't sleep and reprogrammed by Robin -- who, for her part, wasn't quite sure when
she'd picked up -that- skillset, but she wasn't complaining -- to allow full access to every channel, all the time. At no cost, of course.
Or the ever-growing pile of stuffed animals that threatened to spill out of Nena's room in a plushie tide of destruction whenever the door was opened. The
others weren't even sure if the girl had a bed in there anymore, or if she simply burrowed into the stuffies and slept surrounded by button eyes all night
long. After Nena had approached Madigan one day asking how best to clean bloodstains out of plushie fur, nobody bothered asking where she was getting them
all.
Despite the unusual arrangements -- by any normal standard, at any rate -- it was as much a home as some of the girls had ever known.
On this particular Friday afternoon, it was fast becoming intolerable.
"I'm bored," Jennifer announced for at least the twentieth time that day. She lay on her back on the couch, her feet hanging over the back and
her head dangling over the front, watching from her upside-down perspective as Robin annihilated wave after wave of attackers on a video game.
"Me too," Nena put in, entering the room and brushing what looked like ash from her shoulders.
"So am I," Robin said absently, her eyes focused on the screen. "But Miss Madigan hasn't given us orders yet."
Nena snorted. "So what? That just means we don't have to work right now. We can still go -do- something."
"Yeah," Jen agreed. "Anything would be better than -this-." She concentrated briefly, scowling at the lone fly buzzing around the
ceiling. A faint hum sounded and the fly was wreathed momentarily in blue light, before turning into a streak in midair.
Splat.
Jen giggled as Robin sighed and paused her game so she could clean off the screen.
"Well, what do you suggest, then?" Robin asked as she returned to her seat. "The only movie theater I know of around here hasn't changed
reels since the 80's."
"We could find some guys," Nena said thoughtfully. Jen raised her head and looked at the other girl, while Robin settled for raising an eyebrow at
Nena. With Robin's attention distracted, the character on the screen let out a piteous wail as he was skewered half a dozen times in quick succession.
"What?" Nena asked at their looks.
"You only want them for their minds," Robin quipped, shutting off the game.
"Your point?" Nena replied with a grin.
"Hey, I heard there's a new bar that opened up last week," Jen put in. "Supposed to have live music, strong drinks, and it's Mook
protected, so it'll probably still be there."
"I don't know..." Robin mused. "What if Miss Madigan calls us?"
"Then I sober us up real quick and we go do whatever it is she wants." Jen shrugged.
"Yeah!" Nena agreed. "And afterwards we can see how much it takes to get Maddy plastered."
"... Maddy?"
"Oh, hush."
"Can we even -get- drunk?"
"Only one way to find out!"
Fate, seated in the armchair at the far end of the room with a book in her lap, lifted one hand in absent goodbye without looking up as the others left.
First things being first, it was decided that they needed proper outfits for the excursion. Nena viewed it as a chance to see how much she could get away with
before getting caught, Jen as a simple necessity, and Robin as equipping oneself properly for a task, even if she wasn't quite sure what that task was.
Despite their differences in approach, they each managed the job admirably. Robin came away from the shopping trip wearing a body-hugging red dress,
knee-length but with a hip-high slit on both sides. Jen opted for the tried-and-true tight t-shirt, tighter jeans combo, with artfully-placed rips in the
jeans giving glimpses of toned skin below. And Nena, after she finished discussing things with store security, showed up with a backpack full of free
merchandise and wearing what could best be described as the quintessential Sexy Schoolgirl look. The backpack only helped the image.
"That was a nice store," she announced as she adjusted the straps. "I've got a lifetime discount if we ever want to go back."
Robin and Jen just shook their heads, and as darkness began to settle over the city, they entered the bar.
This early in the evening, it was still quiet. The bouncer, a hulking mass of muscle straining the seams of his three-piece suit, nodded politely at them as
they entered. "Ladies," he rumbled in greeting. "Welcome to da Jungle."
"(He didn't ask us for ID,)" Robin noted, somewhat surprised, as they made their way towards the bar.
"(No, he didn't. Imagine that,)" Nena replied, winking.
"First round's on her," Jen said, pointing at Robin. The bartender glanced between them for a moment, then, at Robin's nod, shrugged.
"What'll it be, then?"
"A beer," Jen replied.
"Um... Long Island," Robin said.
"Sex on the beach," Nena answered, batting her eyelashes at the bartender. Completely unfazed, the man set about filling the orders.
"Well, he's boring," Nena pouted.
"Hey, they have pool tables!" Jen plucked her beer out of the bartender's hand before the startled man could finish setting it down and was
across the room in a flash. "C'mon, we can get a three-way going!"
Nena spluttered into her drink as Robin closed her eyes and shook her head. This time the bartender reacted, hiding his laughter behind a cough into his
closed fist. Robin dropped some bills on the bar and collected her drink. She and Nena crossed the room to join Jen, who stood impatiently with cue stick in
hand and the balls neatly racked.
// Burn It To The Ground* -- Nickelback -- Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen OST //
Things went well until the band's second set. Jen was somewhere between buzzed and tipsy, and despite her best efforts didn't seem to be able to take
it any farther. With Nena it was hard to tell; she might have been a little more playful than usual, but that might just have been the plethora of targets
available to her. Like putting candy in front of a starving kid, the packed crowd provided an endless source of entertainment for the psychic, and she was
flitting from group to group, leaving confusion and minor chaos in her wake.
And Robin... was dancing. If you could call it that. Her drinks-to-inhibitions ratio was a big one; it hadn't taken many of the former for the latter to
fly out the window. She'd spent the better part of the past hour pressed between two men on the dance floor, and Jen was pretty sure, from her vantage
point, that only the layers of clothes had prevented it from going further.
"Hey, you gonna take your shot or what?"
Jen glanced up at the man across the pool table from her. "Sure," she responded. "I was just watching the girl in the red dress."
The man chuckled. "You an' half the bar."
Jen grinned as she bent over to line up her shot. Which of course was the cue for all hell to break loose.
"LET ME GO!" Nena cried from over by the bar. Her voice cut through the din of the bar, grabbing Jen and Robin's attention instantly, along with
several others.
"Don't look at her eyes," the tall woman holding Nena by the arm commanded. "The little minx can mess with your head."
"Roight, boss," one of the men surrounding her responded, nodding vigorously. He produced a black bag, moving to position it over Nena's head as
the young girl struggled vainly in a steel-hard grip.
Robin began moving through the crowd as Jen shifted her point of aim.
"Your game," she announced. Her opponent glanced at her, puzzled. Jen grinned to herself as she fed some extra density and kinetic energy to the
ball and the cue. Then she drew it back and slammed the stick forward.
The white ball blasted off the table like a rocket, flying across the bar to strike the thug with the sack in the temple. He dropped like a sack of bricks
just as Robin arrived.
"Excuse me," Robin said politely, tapping the woman holding Nena on the shoulder.
"What?" she snarled.
Robin punched her in the face. She flew back into the wall with a pained yelp, clutching her nose.
"Hey!" another one of her thugs yelled. He pulled out a baseball bat, frowned momentarily, then turned and whacked his neighbor with it. The
recepient of the blow, a large man who had been, until now, enjoying the catfight, bellowed incoherently and rose to his feet, knocking his table into the next
table over and spilling their drinks. They responded in kind.
Nena jumped over the bar, ignoring the bartender's startled protest. Jen arrived a moment later.
"You two can't be back here!" the bartender cried.
"We're not the girls you're looking for," Nena quipped, staring intently at the bartender for a moment. The man blinked, then nodded.
"No, you're not," he agreed, and without further word grabbed two bottles of vodka by their necks, climbed over his bar, and promptly smashed the
bottles onto the head of the nearest targets he could find.
The bar erupted into chaos.
"This....is getting a little dangerous," Robin noted, sliding to a stop behind the bar and dodging a few thrown bottles. Jennifer giggled, before
Robin gave her a look and she sobered slightly.
"Yeah. I mean, I can only boost you guys so far without my armor. It's exhausting doing this much, even if I have all this stuff to fuel off
of," she noted, nodding at the bartender's progressively more battle-damaged shelf of wares. True, it wasn't an efficient calories-to-output
ratio, but it was the only thing on hand at the moment.
"But if Madigan finds out we blew our cover over something as small as this, we'll never get out of the lair again!" Nena said, frustrated.
"If I had my armor, I could take all of them down and blame it on Trolls or something."
"Trolls don't get out this far," Robin noted absently.
"Lost then!"
"Lost don't drink booze."
"I dunno, I've seen some tipsy hobos in my time," Jen commented, taking the shotgun off the bartender's rack and handing it to Robin, who
absently bent it into non-functionality. Truthfully, the girls didn't need weapons, so better to deny them anyone else.
"Well, what do you recommend then?" Nena said testily, looking at Robin. Robin glanced at Jen, got much the same look, and considered. Of the girls,
Robin knew she herself was the most battered, but her bruises were minor. It was exhaustion that was creeping in, the same exhaustion that was blunting
Jen's ability to keep them sped up and able to react faster than the bar patrons and occasional security staff. Nena, for her part, didn't have the
brute force enhancement her armor provided with its electrical armament and thus was limited to what she could do psychically. Not that that was
inconsiderable -- she'd remote controlled those men into doing her fighting earlier, after all -- but Robin knew from experience that Nena's limits
were a lot lower than the girl admitted when out of armor, just like the rest of them.
She sighed. "Right, here's what we d-"
The sound of a single gunshot caught the attention of everyone, even as the girls peeked out from behind the bar, as a familiar elegant woman in a dark black
dress and coat held a smoking pistol and scanned the crowd with unnervingly natural looking red eyes. Robin and Jen winced as one, as Nena squeaked slightly.
Galatea looked over at them dispassionately, and made a slight signal that indicated they were to come with her. As they stepped up to follow her, more than a
few patrons started edging forward, intending to pursue. Galatea cocked the truly massive pistol and aimed it in the general direction of the voices.
"You will leave them alone. We're leaving."
A Family Capo, his white suit ruffled and torn from a brief scuffle with Robin, pushed his way to the front of the crowd anyway. "Yeah right! Youse
think you can just waltz in here an' take those three troublemakers out wit' no payment, no nothin' for all the damage they caused? Well, lady,
you got another thing comi-HRK!"
No one in the room saw Galatea move. In one moment, she was visible at the entrance, and in another, she was behind the Capo, a pair of nasty looking blood
red claws jammed through him from back to front. A gust of wind rustled the hanging lamps in her wake, and as they moved away, cloaking the two in dim
darkness, there was a thud. A second later, the lamp swung back to highlight the dead Capo lying on the floor in an expanding pool of his own blood, while no
one had noticed Galatea return to her position until she was simply... there, again.
The girls swallowed as a group as Galatea pulled out a hand cloth to clean the blood off her claw with simple attention to detail, as the rest of the bar
unconsciously took a step back. All four women stepped out of the bar without incident, though within ten minutes, speculation was rampant as to just who
they'd been to have such a nasty hired killer on their payroll. Within another ten minutes, no two people could seem to agree on descriptions for the
three troublemakers at all, which spontaneously caused another bar brawl amongst drunken patrons a couple hours down the line.
"I'm impressed. That was you, huh?"
"My team, yes." Madigan produced a bloodstained wallet and passed it across the immaculate desk to her contact.
Emil Marcone flipped through it briefly and nodded. "Yeah, that was him. Hey, you have the proof, I have the cash. It was an open contract, I just
wasn't expectin' you to pick it up. Kinda lowbrow for you, ain't it?"
Madigan shrugged slightly. "I had opportunity."
"Heh. Yeah, I guess. Well, it was a nice bit o' work."
"Thank you, Mr. Marcone."
"Hey, we been workin' together long enough, you can call me Emil, yanno?"
"If you insist... Emil."
"Nice workin' wit' ya. Tell yer team I like their style for me."
The Lair was quiet. Too quiet.
Robin sat nervously on the edge of the couch, her face an interesting study of bruises. At the other end of the couch, Jen slumped forward, resting her elbows
on her knees and her chin on her palms, one foot restlessly tapping. And in the armchair, Nena fiddled with her nails and scowled at the results.
The door opened and footsteps came down the hall. Very familiar footsteps. The three women in the room sat up straighter.
Madigan entered the room and regarded them all steadily for a moment.
"Ladies... we need to have a little talk."
(* ignore the video for the purposes of this piece; Nickelback apparently doesn't like YouTube much. No
promises on how long this link will work.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Girl's Night Out
by Sofaspud and OpMegs
The hideout -- or The Lair, as Nena Romanova somewhat playfully termed it -- wasn't particularly hardened against attack. In Katherine Madigan's
estimation, it didn't need to be. Hardened against visual and acoustic surveillance, check; against someone busting down the door? Why bother? Any of
her girls could handle a random intruder, and if it was a determined attack, that meant they'd been discovered and she'd rather they abandon the place
and find another instead of calling more attention to themselves with a massive firefight in the middle of an otherwise-quiet office building.
Since it was -meant- to be abandoned at a moment's notice, that meant she had provided little in the way of creature comforts. Some of the Scimitars
didn't need or want them; Galatea, for example, was equally neutral when surrounded by fancy furniture as when she was curled up on a dirty cot. She
didn't -care-. Fate was similar, though she at least obviously cared about one more than the other. It was the other three -- Jen, Robin, and Nena -- who
preferred and actively sought out quality-of-life improvements.
Like the 120-inch flatscreen display that Robin and Jen had hauled up eight flights of fire escape, while Nena cheerfully annihilated the memories of everyone
in sight who might have noted the strange procession. And, being Nena, some who hadn't, but who she felt like messing with anyway.
Or the satellite reciever, acquired by Jen one night when she couldn't sleep and reprogrammed by Robin -- who, for her part, wasn't quite sure when
she'd picked up -that- skillset, but she wasn't complaining -- to allow full access to every channel, all the time. At no cost, of course.
Or the ever-growing pile of stuffed animals that threatened to spill out of Nena's room in a plushie tide of destruction whenever the door was opened. The
others weren't even sure if the girl had a bed in there anymore, or if she simply burrowed into the stuffies and slept surrounded by button eyes all night
long. After Nena had approached Madigan one day asking how best to clean bloodstains out of plushie fur, nobody bothered asking where she was getting them
all.
Despite the unusual arrangements -- by any normal standard, at any rate -- it was as much a home as some of the girls had ever known.
On this particular Friday afternoon, it was fast becoming intolerable.
"I'm bored," Jennifer announced for at least the twentieth time that day. She lay on her back on the couch, her feet hanging over the back and
her head dangling over the front, watching from her upside-down perspective as Robin annihilated wave after wave of attackers on a video game.
"Me too," Nena put in, entering the room and brushing what looked like ash from her shoulders.
"So am I," Robin said absently, her eyes focused on the screen. "But Miss Madigan hasn't given us orders yet."
Nena snorted. "So what? That just means we don't have to work right now. We can still go -do- something."
"Yeah," Jen agreed. "Anything would be better than -this-." She concentrated briefly, scowling at the lone fly buzzing around the
ceiling. A faint hum sounded and the fly was wreathed momentarily in blue light, before turning into a streak in midair.
Splat.
Jen giggled as Robin sighed and paused her game so she could clean off the screen.
"Well, what do you suggest, then?" Robin asked as she returned to her seat. "The only movie theater I know of around here hasn't changed
reels since the 80's."
"We could find some guys," Nena said thoughtfully. Jen raised her head and looked at the other girl, while Robin settled for raising an eyebrow at
Nena. With Robin's attention distracted, the character on the screen let out a piteous wail as he was skewered half a dozen times in quick succession.
"What?" Nena asked at their looks.
"You only want them for their minds," Robin quipped, shutting off the game.
"Your point?" Nena replied with a grin.
"Hey, I heard there's a new bar that opened up last week," Jen put in. "Supposed to have live music, strong drinks, and it's Mook
protected, so it'll probably still be there."
"I don't know..." Robin mused. "What if Miss Madigan calls us?"
"Then I sober us up real quick and we go do whatever it is she wants." Jen shrugged.
"Yeah!" Nena agreed. "And afterwards we can see how much it takes to get Maddy plastered."
"... Maddy?"
"Oh, hush."
"Can we even -get- drunk?"
"Only one way to find out!"
Fate, seated in the armchair at the far end of the room with a book in her lap, lifted one hand in absent goodbye without looking up as the others left.
First things being first, it was decided that they needed proper outfits for the excursion. Nena viewed it as a chance to see how much she could get away with
before getting caught, Jen as a simple necessity, and Robin as equipping oneself properly for a task, even if she wasn't quite sure what that task was.
Despite their differences in approach, they each managed the job admirably. Robin came away from the shopping trip wearing a body-hugging red dress,
knee-length but with a hip-high slit on both sides. Jen opted for the tried-and-true tight t-shirt, tighter jeans combo, with artfully-placed rips in the
jeans giving glimpses of toned skin below. And Nena, after she finished discussing things with store security, showed up with a backpack full of free
merchandise and wearing what could best be described as the quintessential Sexy Schoolgirl look. The backpack only helped the image.
"That was a nice store," she announced as she adjusted the straps. "I've got a lifetime discount if we ever want to go back."
Robin and Jen just shook their heads, and as darkness began to settle over the city, they entered the bar.
This early in the evening, it was still quiet. The bouncer, a hulking mass of muscle straining the seams of his three-piece suit, nodded politely at them as
they entered. "Ladies," he rumbled in greeting. "Welcome to da Jungle."
"(He didn't ask us for ID,)" Robin noted, somewhat surprised, as they made their way towards the bar.
"(No, he didn't. Imagine that,)" Nena replied, winking.
"First round's on her," Jen said, pointing at Robin. The bartender glanced between them for a moment, then, at Robin's nod, shrugged.
"What'll it be, then?"
"A beer," Jen replied.
"Um... Long Island," Robin said.
"Sex on the beach," Nena answered, batting her eyelashes at the bartender. Completely unfazed, the man set about filling the orders.
"Well, he's boring," Nena pouted.
"Hey, they have pool tables!" Jen plucked her beer out of the bartender's hand before the startled man could finish setting it down and was
across the room in a flash. "C'mon, we can get a three-way going!"
Nena spluttered into her drink as Robin closed her eyes and shook her head. This time the bartender reacted, hiding his laughter behind a cough into his
closed fist. Robin dropped some bills on the bar and collected her drink. She and Nena crossed the room to join Jen, who stood impatiently with cue stick in
hand and the balls neatly racked.
// Burn It To The Ground* -- Nickelback -- Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen OST //
Things went well until the band's second set. Jen was somewhere between buzzed and tipsy, and despite her best efforts didn't seem to be able to take
it any farther. With Nena it was hard to tell; she might have been a little more playful than usual, but that might just have been the plethora of targets
available to her. Like putting candy in front of a starving kid, the packed crowd provided an endless source of entertainment for the psychic, and she was
flitting from group to group, leaving confusion and minor chaos in her wake.
And Robin... was dancing. If you could call it that. Her drinks-to-inhibitions ratio was a big one; it hadn't taken many of the former for the latter to
fly out the window. She'd spent the better part of the past hour pressed between two men on the dance floor, and Jen was pretty sure, from her vantage
point, that only the layers of clothes had prevented it from going further.
"Hey, you gonna take your shot or what?"
Jen glanced up at the man across the pool table from her. "Sure," she responded. "I was just watching the girl in the red dress."
The man chuckled. "You an' half the bar."
Jen grinned as she bent over to line up her shot. Which of course was the cue for all hell to break loose.
"LET ME GO!" Nena cried from over by the bar. Her voice cut through the din of the bar, grabbing Jen and Robin's attention instantly, along with
several others.
"Don't look at her eyes," the tall woman holding Nena by the arm commanded. "The little minx can mess with your head."
"Roight, boss," one of the men surrounding her responded, nodding vigorously. He produced a black bag, moving to position it over Nena's head as
the young girl struggled vainly in a steel-hard grip.
Robin began moving through the crowd as Jen shifted her point of aim.
"Your game," she announced. Her opponent glanced at her, puzzled. Jen grinned to herself as she fed some extra density and kinetic energy to the
ball and the cue. Then she drew it back and slammed the stick forward.
The white ball blasted off the table like a rocket, flying across the bar to strike the thug with the sack in the temple. He dropped like a sack of bricks
just as Robin arrived.
"Excuse me," Robin said politely, tapping the woman holding Nena on the shoulder.
"What?" she snarled.
Robin punched her in the face. She flew back into the wall with a pained yelp, clutching her nose.
"Hey!" another one of her thugs yelled. He pulled out a baseball bat, frowned momentarily, then turned and whacked his neighbor with it. The
recepient of the blow, a large man who had been, until now, enjoying the catfight, bellowed incoherently and rose to his feet, knocking his table into the next
table over and spilling their drinks. They responded in kind.
Nena jumped over the bar, ignoring the bartender's startled protest. Jen arrived a moment later.
"You two can't be back here!" the bartender cried.
"We're not the girls you're looking for," Nena quipped, staring intently at the bartender for a moment. The man blinked, then nodded.
"No, you're not," he agreed, and without further word grabbed two bottles of vodka by their necks, climbed over his bar, and promptly smashed the
bottles onto the head of the nearest targets he could find.
The bar erupted into chaos.
"This....is getting a little dangerous," Robin noted, sliding to a stop behind the bar and dodging a few thrown bottles. Jennifer giggled, before
Robin gave her a look and she sobered slightly.
"Yeah. I mean, I can only boost you guys so far without my armor. It's exhausting doing this much, even if I have all this stuff to fuel off
of," she noted, nodding at the bartender's progressively more battle-damaged shelf of wares. True, it wasn't an efficient calories-to-output
ratio, but it was the only thing on hand at the moment.
"But if Madigan finds out we blew our cover over something as small as this, we'll never get out of the lair again!" Nena said, frustrated.
"If I had my armor, I could take all of them down and blame it on Trolls or something."
"Trolls don't get out this far," Robin noted absently.
"Lost then!"
"Lost don't drink booze."
"I dunno, I've seen some tipsy hobos in my time," Jen commented, taking the shotgun off the bartender's rack and handing it to Robin, who
absently bent it into non-functionality. Truthfully, the girls didn't need weapons, so better to deny them anyone else.
"Well, what do you recommend then?" Nena said testily, looking at Robin. Robin glanced at Jen, got much the same look, and considered. Of the girls,
Robin knew she herself was the most battered, but her bruises were minor. It was exhaustion that was creeping in, the same exhaustion that was blunting
Jen's ability to keep them sped up and able to react faster than the bar patrons and occasional security staff. Nena, for her part, didn't have the
brute force enhancement her armor provided with its electrical armament and thus was limited to what she could do psychically. Not that that was
inconsiderable -- she'd remote controlled those men into doing her fighting earlier, after all -- but Robin knew from experience that Nena's limits
were a lot lower than the girl admitted when out of armor, just like the rest of them.
She sighed. "Right, here's what we d-"
The sound of a single gunshot caught the attention of everyone, even as the girls peeked out from behind the bar, as a familiar elegant woman in a dark black
dress and coat held a smoking pistol and scanned the crowd with unnervingly natural looking red eyes. Robin and Jen winced as one, as Nena squeaked slightly.
Galatea looked over at them dispassionately, and made a slight signal that indicated they were to come with her. As they stepped up to follow her, more than a
few patrons started edging forward, intending to pursue. Galatea cocked the truly massive pistol and aimed it in the general direction of the voices.
"You will leave them alone. We're leaving."
A Family Capo, his white suit ruffled and torn from a brief scuffle with Robin, pushed his way to the front of the crowd anyway. "Yeah right! Youse
think you can just waltz in here an' take those three troublemakers out wit' no payment, no nothin' for all the damage they caused? Well, lady,
you got another thing comi-HRK!"
No one in the room saw Galatea move. In one moment, she was visible at the entrance, and in another, she was behind the Capo, a pair of nasty looking blood
red claws jammed through him from back to front. A gust of wind rustled the hanging lamps in her wake, and as they moved away, cloaking the two in dim
darkness, there was a thud. A second later, the lamp swung back to highlight the dead Capo lying on the floor in an expanding pool of his own blood, while no
one had noticed Galatea return to her position until she was simply... there, again.
The girls swallowed as a group as Galatea pulled out a hand cloth to clean the blood off her claw with simple attention to detail, as the rest of the bar
unconsciously took a step back. All four women stepped out of the bar without incident, though within ten minutes, speculation was rampant as to just who
they'd been to have such a nasty hired killer on their payroll. Within another ten minutes, no two people could seem to agree on descriptions for the
three troublemakers at all, which spontaneously caused another bar brawl amongst drunken patrons a couple hours down the line.
"I'm impressed. That was you, huh?"
"My team, yes." Madigan produced a bloodstained wallet and passed it across the immaculate desk to her contact.
Emil Marcone flipped through it briefly and nodded. "Yeah, that was him. Hey, you have the proof, I have the cash. It was an open contract, I just
wasn't expectin' you to pick it up. Kinda lowbrow for you, ain't it?"
Madigan shrugged slightly. "I had opportunity."
"Heh. Yeah, I guess. Well, it was a nice bit o' work."
"Thank you, Mr. Marcone."
"Hey, we been workin' together long enough, you can call me Emil, yanno?"
"If you insist... Emil."
"Nice workin' wit' ya. Tell yer team I like their style for me."
The Lair was quiet. Too quiet.
Robin sat nervously on the edge of the couch, her face an interesting study of bruises. At the other end of the couch, Jen slumped forward, resting her elbows
on her knees and her chin on her palms, one foot restlessly tapping. And in the armchair, Nena fiddled with her nails and scowled at the results.
The door opened and footsteps came down the hall. Very familiar footsteps. The three women in the room sat up straighter.
Madigan entered the room and regarded them all steadily for a moment.
"Ladies... we need to have a little talk."
(* ignore the video for the purposes of this piece; Nickelback apparently doesn't like YouTube much. No
promises on how long this link will work.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs