rogueinladysclothing | [Duplicity] IC Inbox

One hour. [He gets a last word of acknowledgment before she hangs up and makes ready.]

As requested, she's waiting in the park an hour later, dressed in black and with a handful of hidden blades on her person. She looks as nondescript as she can as she adjusts her braid to something more tightly pinned to her head with one of her recently gifted wooden hair pins. He'll hear the faint clack of her two pendants striking one another beneath her shirt.

"Good evening, Mister Frost. What is it you wish to discuss?" She has a feeling it's about what happened during Realignment, but she'll hold for his confirmation. Best not to jump ahead of him.

When he arrives, he also looks non-descript, this time in a long sleeve olive green pullover, not a Henley, and slightly baggy black jeans with a different pair of athletic shoes than last time. These fasten with velcro. He has both hands tucked into his deep pockets.

"Realignment. I want to know if we're OK or if there are things that need to be said." He doesn't like the feeling of anything up in the air. It's much preferable with cards on the table.

He's not sorry for protecting Carver. He dislikes it felt less like something in his control than instinctive reaction. How she feels about it will largely frame his approach.

His state of dress tells her one thing: he's ready to hunt again, too. It seems they're of one mind on that after the bullshit the Creator pulled with all of LIEs.

"I'm fine. A few days rest was more than enough to get me fully on my feet again." She frowns softly. "I'm sorry about Carver. If there had been any other choice, I would have taken it. I didn't mean to hurt him the way I did, or to cause him to lose himself like that." But there's nothing to be done about it now.

"You took care of mine, when you had them. Others may have hurt them more or worse, and I'm grateful for that." There are still plenty to kill for what was done to them, to all of them, but where it comes to her own pain and what he did to Wolfe and Chris? Everything that matters is now out between them.

She nods to him and gives a little shrug of her shoulders. "If there's anything you need to say, I'll take it. Carver's had his words, so you're all that's left. Once that's out, I'll be glad to get back to the way things were." Or as close to them as they can get.

"You couldn't have known. I wasn't angry at you. I was just...trying to protect him. It kicked in harder than I expected, that instinct." He's fiercely defensive of his people, especially those he's bonded to.

"I tried to shield everyone brought to me in what ways I could. Some were easier than others." He considers Chris more than halfway one of his own, just as he does anyone who works at The Crucible, her included. "And you and I both knew it had to look real, or it would have been worse."

He shakes his head. "If you aren't angry at the strength of my response, we're good. I regret it but not the motive or the result for Carver." Only for the hurt he put on her.

She shakes her head. "We were all pushed to our limits. A few days of soreness and one bruised rib aren't enough for me be angry with you. You did what you had to, same as I did. That earns respect, not anger."

She won't say she deserved to be hurt for her part in Carver's dissociation or pain, but the thought is there. At least that was retribution that made sense. That was the only fucking part of what happened between the three of them that made sense.

This fucking city. She can't change it, but dreams will she burn and stain parts of it while she can.

"If there's nothing else, I'll ask who you'd like to go see tonight." Her lips pull into the barest hint of a dark smile. "I have plenty of suggestions, but last time we met like this, I led us. It's your turn now. Lead, tell me where you need me, and you'll have whoever you want wherever you want them."

He nods. They're in agreement. Not for the first time he finds himself grateful to be dealing with someone who understands him, thinks like him. It simplifies things when the city tries to complicate them. "We're settled." What he lays to rest stays there.

He lifts his head then, filtering out one scent from a multitude, the first to depower him after he knocked her away from Carver. "This way," he says, starting roughly northeast.

"We're going to have weeks of targets. They're going to get understaffed." He clearly relishes the idea. The malice of it contributes to his already more inhuman than usual appearance, paler, sharper. However, he's unhurried as they walk. All parts of a hunt are to be relished, not just the culmination. "I won't be using many powers tonight. I'm healing an injury. It won't hamper me. Consider it an opportunity for showcasing your skills, but leave me plenty of blood. I"m going to take as much as I can hold."

"If they don't want to be understaffed, they shouldn't behave so poorly." Anyone and everyone who comes after theirs has forfeit their lives. It's truly that simple in her mind. They don't like it? They'll learn to keep their hands, mouths, and everything else to themselves.

She walks beside him at a leisurely pace, nodding. She won't ask after the injury - if Grayson isn't offering details, then it's not her business - instead focusing on the more important part of the evening.

"I'll avoid gutting anyone." It's offered in a completely casual tone. "I can scare them plenty with directly laying blades on them, too. People are so much more breakable than they want to believe, even when they're well-built and muscled." It would be nice to snap someone's neck when they think they're so powerful and above it all. Dreams it's been a long while since she had that kind of satisfaction.

Her head tilts slightly to one side at the thought, her dark smile returning. "Anything in particular you'd like to see or have them experience? I enjoy taking requests for this kind of work." Especially given the circumstances that have them out this evening.

"Indeed." He has no empathy to spare for their captors. They've created their own problems by bringing them here and provoking them to the point of action. He behaved for months and would have continued to do so if they hadn't started tearing into his Subs. And by extension him.

"Good. They bleed far too much too quickly. Another time when resource management isn't part of the goal." He smiles thinly, eyes catching a glint of streetlight, bled of color. He chuffs a soft laugh. "In the 80s I favored gym rats when I felt particularly spiteful. The shock on their faces when they'd strike me." Something he always allowed when he knew he was going for a kill and not a clandestine feed. Why not?

"Powerless. I want him to feel powerless. If he has a partner or a spouse, he's going to watch us take them apart first. If he has children, quick, quiet kills. Leave them in their beds."

Ah, full cruelty. They're sending a message all the way up the chain tonight. Maybe not to the Creator's ears, but at least to those closest to him who manage the SIN guards.

Good.

"Done." Emotional torture before the physical. Fitting for anyone who laid hands on them during this latest round of bullshit. "Are we tailing the man home to make sure we catch all of them? If he's out, we can scare him into a false sense of security by allowing him to reach the house before we strip it from him. Let him think he's found some haven that doesn't actually exist."

Her lips purse thoughtfully. "We'll need to keep our eyes open for his phone. If he reaches for it, I can destroy it, but I need to see it and have a decently clear shot to keep him from using it."

He thinks about this question for a bit. "If he's out, I can still find his home," he says. "We'll split off. I can telepathically guide you in where to herd him." His telepathy takes less blood than his more active disciplines.

"He'll think he's running to safety when he's running to me." He likes this idea very much, his smile a scythe.

"I trust you can manage his phone. If you can"t destroy it, you can deprive him of the use of his hands." Hard to make a call when one can't hold anything. "If he's already home, we'll take different points of ingress, make him or them think they're facing one assailant instead of two." That's largely for the fear factor. He's not worried about resistance.

Her grin is wicked as she nods. "I'll manage something that keeps him from calling for help. His comrades will have to travel to his home to find out what happened to him. Even then, they'll struggle to put the pieces together with how little we're going to leave for them." The two of them are hardly going to leave a myriad of evidence for their captors to use to trace the 'crime' back to them.

She falls quiet as they get further along, eyes sifting through the streets for any wandering SIN guards, bird drones, or passersby interested in them for anything. So far, there's nothing out of the ordinary. An auspicious start to their hunt.

"Do you sense our prey? I'm ready to begin when you are."

"Yes, we won't leave much," he agrees. He'll take some blood. He won't exsanguinate. Not fully. If there are two or more there, he can be more circumspect.

He's equally watchful, senses extended, ears tuned for any hums of electronics or unnatural sounds. He nods at her question and tips his chin subtly in a direction to the East.

"I have his scent. I won't lose it." For all of that, he doesn't speed up, doesn't give an outward sign of the fact he's getting more excited. The anticipation is such an enjoyable time. It's more so with her since he knows he can rely on her now. He can tend to his own side of it.

There aren't as many out as the last time they hunted. It makes not standing out a bit more of a challenge but finding the target a bit less. Again, he simply tips his chin up and angles it. The man is walking with a determined stride and both hands shoved into his thin jacket pockets. It's a city issued jacket, the kind for the realignment staff, not the SIN guards. "I trust you'll keep him in sight. I'll see you at the house."

He peels away and even without using his powers, he's difficult to spot once he finds shadow, harder yet to hear.

Amelia's heartrate slows as she stares at the man's back, training and the calming stone at her wrist helping to settle her. There's no room for error in any hunt, but even less so now. These people tore into them, hurt the ones they love. So, as with Chris' captors months ago, this isn't merely about death. This is about vengeance.

Grayson slips away, and the Shadow Mistress makes her first move. She moves easily through the sparse crowd, exhaling the right word to be excused and ignored, bumping in the right way to blame someone else nearby. A ripple begins through their number, an agitation that spreads its way up to her target. He glances over his shoulder, seeing her but not registering who she is, then picks up his pace a bit.

Perfect.

As he pulls away from those closest to him, she slips up behind him, whispering of his fate. "You're going to die tonight." The man turns sharply, but no one is there. He glances around, trying to find the source, and eventually gives up. Amelia steps close again, drawing a finger up the length of his spine and ending it with another whisper. "It's time you felt what your victims did."

This time the man swipes for her with a hand before stopping and doing an about face, shouting for her to reveal herself to him. Again no one is there, and he digs into everyone who passes by him with a wary look on his face. Whispers begin about the state of him, about why a trained staff member would be waving his arms and shouting like a lunatic. This, as Amelia wanted, goes over poorly with the man, who shouts at the passersby that there is someone after him and that they should stop and help. The call goes unheeded save for muted laughter, and suddenly the man realizes it's time for him to go. He turns to leave, a shadow standing in his way.

"Run while you can. You can't escape your fate."

The Shadows Mistress advances, dodging past the man and into the crowd as he screams and tries to make a grab for her. When it fails and the crowd turns on him again, he panics, and immediately turns toward his home to make a run for it. A shadow follows him at an easy speed, eyes never leaving him and ears open for his panicked breaths and footsteps.

Now it's Grayson's turn for a taste of him.

Grayson doesn't hurry beyond the normal demands of night to night walking in following the scent. He takes care of his angles with regards to city cameras. In all other ways, he's unremarkable on his path. The home is one of the more detached ones in a quiet suburb. When he arrives, he realizes it has two occupants, not one. An unfortunate night and association for someone who isn't deserving of this. Pity her husband is.

He yanks the electric cable to the outside box and circles to a window at the back of the house to TK the locks and let himself in silently. The woman is in the kitchen lighting candles and muttering under her breath about the power grid, dressed in a robe and slippers, her hair in foam curlers. He lets her finish her task. When she turns with a candlestick in hand and spots him across the room, she shrieks and drops it, backing up and stammering. The candle hits wick first, extinguishing.

Closing the distance, he keeps his good hand up and visible, his sleeve over the damaged one altogether. "I have no quarrel with you," he says. "It's your husband who has brought this onto your head." He pitches his voice to command, easier to use a discipline than force her to what he has in mind. "Now come. We need to get you ready. He'll be home soon. Arrange the candles first, then meet me in your bedroom."

Her wide eyes are glassier now. She nods and turns toward the remaining lights to get them set in the kitchen and living room. By the time she joins him in the bedroom, she's carrying two. She sets one on a nearby dresser. He gestures silently toward the bathroom and follows her in.

By the time he hears the approach of hurried, panicked footsteps, he's back in the living room on the sofa with the man's well groomed, well dressed wife seated in his lap. She looks calm save for the tears staining her cheeks. He has left her enough will to understand what's happening. He'll ease up on that much control once the man is inside. Her fear will set him off, undoubtedly. Exactly what he wants and exactly why it's satisfying knowing Amelia is on his heels. His injured arm is clasped firmly around her waist. He sinks his fingers into her hair to tilt her head to the side and force her gaze toward the front door, easily visible from their vantage. His is intense from over her shoulder.

The man's rush to his home is so easy to follow a novice could do it. He's panting and muttering under his breath the whole way, fumbling with his keys as he curses about the front light being out. He calls out to his wife as he bangs on the door, his struggle sending him deeper into a panic as he looks over his shoulder and sees shadows in every person's face. It's to no avail, but eventually he overcomes his fears enough to let himself into the house with another curse and a stumble.

He's not ready for the sight that awaits him. His wife in the arms of another man, crying the whole while, sends him into a panicked rage as he reaches for anything long and heavy he can use as a weapon. The umbrella he grabs makes him looks foolish, but it gives him some amount of bravado as he turns to Grayson.

"Let her go!" His voice shakes as much as his arm does, but he stands his ground. "You don't belong here. Get out! Or I'll call the authorities."

The door closes behind him with a soft click. Too late, the man realizes he didn't bother to close it or to look one last time for his shadow. Amelia slips behind him, hand running down his arm to grip his wrist, her body far enough from his to not pin him but close enough for him to feel her warmth. She twists suddenly, wrenching his arm and forcing him to drop his improvised weapon as she pins his hand between his shoulder blades and forces him to his knees with a well-placed kick. Her looming presence just outside of his vision makes him begin to sweat in terror.

"You don't give orders here. Now, why don't you ask the man what he wants? I'm certain he has words for you." She kneels behind him slowly, searching his pockets until she finds his phone. A moment of shifting, and she smashes it beneath a knee before shoving it aside. "Don't worry. We have hours for you to get it out."

His single chuckle is a rusty hinge grate of sound. He allows the woman more control of herself, her struggles intensifying to no avail against the iron pin of his arm around her waist and his grip of her hair. "You're only hurting yourself," he murmurs to her, voice caressing. "And frightening him. Your bold protector." Some mocking makes it into the latter. All the while, he focuses his gaze on the man, hard and unblinking.

"I can't fault you if you don't recognize me. The lighting in here is regrettably low, and you were far more focused on my Submissive at the time, my Submissive and the Dominant behind you. You forced her to torture him beyond his ability to endure it. You showed no mercy to either of them and forced me to intervene." He watches his eyes widen. "Oh, yes. Yes, good. You do recall."

"I was doing my job," he protests, twisting his head to try to include Amelia in his excuse. "We all were."

He silently sends the memories of what he witnessed and felt that day to his wife, as clear as the day it happened. She stops struggling, eyes widening and more tears spilling as she looks at her husband with a different sort of expression than fear. Disbelief. Bewilderment. "I know," he murmurs to her, just loud enough to carry to the man and Amelia, too. "It's hard to see the truth about someone you love. To see that not only are they cruel, they take pleasure in it."

"What? What are you doing?" he demands, trying to start forward on hands and knees.

"I'm showing your wife what a sadistic piece of shit you are. When I'm not depowered, I can do that. More than that." He sets the feeling of an ember directly behind her sternum. Her scream echoes from the walls, body arching at nearly an unnatural angle and thrashing to try to escape it. He sustains it for close to twenty seconds before suddenly dropping the magic. Her sobs and breaths are ragged, desperate. She's shaking violently when she brings her hands to cover her face.

"I'm a sadistic piece of shit, too. I suspect worse than you. The only difference is I don't need to be told to do it as an excuse to indulge."

"I-it's not like that," he insists, looking between Grayson and his wife. "It's just a job. We're trained to be like that."

"You're trained to make us hurt others for sport?" Amelia's voice is sickly sweet and dark at the same time. "Or do you really believe you can 'teach us' to be better through physical and emotional torture?"

The man begins to tremble under the rogue's hold. The fantasy he'd built for himself, the lies he told himself, crumbling as he watches his wife recoil and cry. He doesn't answer Amelia, and she doesn't press him to either. She merely tightens her grip on him, leaning closer to murmur against his ear, just loud enough for everyone to understand her words.

"You're nothing compared to those you harm. That man with your wife in his arms is a hundred times more than you could ever dream to be. The man you made me hurt is worth a thousand of you. And I?" She chuckles softly. "You could never dream to be half of me."

Tears roll down the man's face as he tries to look over his shoulder at Amelia. Not looking for his pleas for mercy or pittance of excuses, she wraps her free arm about his neck and forces him to look toward the couch again. Her hold on him tightens to take some of his breath, the same way he'd insisted she take Carver's It feels good to give this back, even if she's not going to take it much further.

"Don't look at me," she hisses. "Look at your crimes. Face your shortcomings. You're not allowed to beg for death yet."

Grayson is silent while Amelia speaks. He forces the woman's hands down with Thaumaturgical control so she can't hide her face. He wants the man to see everything, every shift of fear, the moment when despair hits her, and she realizes there's no escape, no mercy or pity, the same realization he, Amelia, and Carver felt during the realignment. He remembers Amelia desperately begging Carver to come back to her, to be all right, watching her fear and being unable to help her any more than he could help Carver while he was depowered.

He slides his good hand up her throat and squeezes enough to cut her air by more than half. She pulls at him uselessly, clawing at skin she can't harm and breaking a few nails trying. One rips down to the quick and begins to bleed. He releases her throat to grasp her wrist and suck the digit past his lips. A preternaturally strong pull at the tiny wound takes enough blood to leave her dizzy. He feels her starting to sag against him. He could drain her dry like this. It's too quick.

The man is saying something to her. He's not listening. He hears her heart beating too hard, the sing of her vessels. He smells her fear, devours her trembling as his due. This time when he closes his hand over her throat he squeezes hard enough to fully restrict her air. Her wheezing cuts off as she claws at him and starts to kick. The man's voice rises in panicked begging, promises of anything. Anything.

He releases her again but only to prolong it. At some point, he lifts his gaze to meet Amelia's. The calmness in the pale depths speaks his satisfaction in this game of theirs together. He squeezes again, tighter, tighter. It's several more cycles of it, over an hour of it, until the man is sobbing, tears and snot making a wreck of his face and shirt. Each time she loses consciousness, he brings her back to it telepathically. Even on the final squeeze he doesn't snap her neck. He forces her to suffocate. He holds it beyond any hope of revival.

Only then does he bite her viciously, rend flesh with fangs to drink his fill and then toss her to the floor like discarding trash. "Bring him to me," he says, sanguine mouth a dripping horror.

Amelia remains silent as Grayson takes his time with their secondary mark. She holds the trembling man against her, still and unflinching in her push to keep his focus on the obscenity of having his wife taken from him in this way.

There's no escape for him. No chance of mercy. No release from the pain. Now he feels the struggle and helplessness he forced on them. Now he feels how much suffering he inflicted on them by making them hurt one of theirs. It's satisfying in a way she's needed since that first morning after they were all sent home when she was still sick with guilt, fury, and pain.

The rogue rises to her feet when beckoned, dragging the shell of a man along his knees with her. He's not worth hauling to his feet. She stops them next to the dead woman, holding his head down to look at her for a moment before she grips his chin and forces him to look at her.

"This is the prices of your cruelty and senseless need for suffering for suffering's sake." She leans close, breathing her last words against his lips. "I hope it was worth it."

A brief, angry smile pulls across her lips before she stands again, stepping behind their prey and holding his shoulders in front of Grayson. "As you like him. He's not worth the blood on my blades, but that doesn't make his blood entirely useless to you."

"Not at all." He doesn't need the gesture, raising his hand. He wants clarity for the man, awareness that he's the reason for what follows. Ribbons of blood emerge from him and not just orifices, the pores of his skin. They flow in strangely beautiful formation, like electromagnetic whorls, absorbing directly into his palm. He grows more flush as the man grows more pale. Weaker.

Before he can swoon, Grayson stops the flow, absorbing the last of what's flowing through the air. "Break his neck. We're almost done here." One last thing, but not before they're out and away.

He's going to burn the house down with such intensity, there will be nothing left for the forensics detectives to analyze save ash.

There's a brief moment where the man in her arms realizes what's about to happen and starts to panic. His eyes widen and his lips part to beg for mercy, only to be cut off with a swift movement of Amelia's hands and a loud crack. The body slumps to the floor as the rogue stands, dusting her hands off as if they'd been dirty by merely touching him. In a way, they were, and she's glad to be rid of his filth.

She kicks the man's body away from his former wife's, then steps aside. With no one else in the house and everything quiet in the darkness, she gestures to the bodies and then the door.

"Are we taking them with us?" He's mentioned the ability to dispose of bodies in the past, but she suspects it means removing them from a home filled with flammable objects. She's going to be very pleased to hear that they're setting the whole damn place alight.

"No. They were careless with the candles in the darkness. It will be a wonder if the fire doesn't spread." It won't. He'll see to that. They don't know who lives in the other houses. Simply being native to this place isn't enough to earn his ire.

"Come. I'll show you another gift of my blood." He stands and steps over the bodies to vacate the premises. He walks a good distance from the house, concealing himself deep in tree shadow before calling up the flames from the still burning candles, hotter and brighter than anything natural. In minutes, the house is a spiraling inferno of white hot destruction.

At the wail of sirens in the distance, he says, "That's our cue to head home. Good hunt. We'll do this again sometime soon."

The flames are a spectacular sight, brought about by magic she can't see and doesn't yet fully understand. Someday she'll ask him about it. Tonight, she simply enjoys the satisfaction the flames bring as they takes the house and its trash with it.

She grins as he calls an end to their hunt, eyes full of wicked delight. "Whenever you're ready, you know how to contact me. I have a list we can start on if yours becomes shorter in my absence." A small, dark chuckle falls from her lips as she turns from him.

"Good evening, Grayson," she whispers back to him. "May the rest of it be as pleasant as the start has been."

[Duplicity] IC Inbox

voice --> action

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CW: mention of killing children (will not be threaded as per game rules)

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CW: Ongoing, physical and psychological torture, death of an innocent

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