Even though Atel was still on the line with the Hellsend contact, both his and Haze's eyes lit up at the same time the word 'barbeque' was mentioned. For a second, they looked like a pair of starving wild dogs, panting for food.
Unanimously, they announced, "Yes!"
Haze rubbed his stomach, his thoughts nearly bringing a tear of joy to his eye. "I'd kill to have barbeque-sauce drenched anything right now, A-o-fee. Ya feel me? And we can get plastered too? I don't care what ya say, A-o-fee, we gotta into the wrong business. So, ya think he will?"
Atel finally put the radio away, although he had a slight look of bewilderment on his face. After the device was secured, he stared at the ground for a few seconds before he put into words the message that was relayed to him. "Um, guys. Heads up. Our contact in the area told us to keep our heads down. There's gonna be some more shit goin' down -- something big's about to happen."
Haze glanced at Aiofe, then perked an eyebrow at his brother. "What kinda shit, bro?"
Atel, not informed of the specific nature of the impending event, shrugged and seemed to ask more than state, "A... rescue?"
The first person to reach Insera and Richard was Dante. With Mariam and a few others coming up to them from the opposite direction, this man couldn't have been the help that Mariam went to get minutes ago.
And so Richard swung his six-shooter around to aim point-blank at the man, asking him sternly, "Who are you?"
"Dad!" reprimanded Insera, who pushed his gun-toting arm away. She wasn't as suspicious as her father, given that the man seemed to be offering help. After that, she looked over at the man and asked of him much more cordially than her father did, "Who are you?"
Mariam finally came up to them then, once again bent over and panting to catch her breath. Neseraph was at her side, and Zekial trailed behind all of them.
Neseraph, suffering from the lack of information that befalls a person who just comes upon a scene, looked to Richard, Dante, then Insera and asked, "Insera, what happened?"
She crossed her eyes irritatedly, but winced a little when she did and replied, "It ended with me being shot in the stomach. Now, would you like to do something about it?" She cast a sideways glance at Dante; even though he meant well, Insera trusted someone she knew more over someone she didn't.
"Depends... on if you say the magic word," said Neseraph as he knelt down near her nonetheless, catching a few knives that flew out of Insera's infuriated gaze. He held his hand out to her abdomen-
And continued to hold it there with a puzzled look on his face. Nothing was happening.
"Um... babe, my miracles aren't working," he explained guiltily, even though he had no idea why they were failing. He looked at Dante and clapped him on the shoulder, "Well, I'm glad you got a doc here! God damn, keep up the good work and great timing, doc."
"Don't call me that!" Insera growled in response to the pet name, though she too was confused as to Neseraph's sudden lack of magical potency.
"It's me," Richard admitted with a grim face.
Insera was slowly piecing the evidence together when her father admitted to it, Neseraph was left wondering just who that guy was, and Mariam asked of him with an air of concern, "Richard?"
He looked up at the female detective and spoke, "Yes. I cannot explain it fully, but my presence seems to have some disabling effects on those around me in this time." Richard took in a breath, then placed Insera's hand on the dressing over her wound to take his spot and stood up. "I must go, but I will find you again Diane."
Insera's eyes shot open wide, alarmed, "Dad, wait-"
Neseraph was genuinely surprised when Insera named the man, Richard, as her father, while Zekial's face pulled into a slight scowl as he continued to watch everything from the sidelines.
Richard didn't wait, however, as he was soon running down the street Vivante had walked down moments earlier. He turned on a intersecting road, and vanished around the corner of the houses.
"Look at you... a work of art," came the voice of the woman from directly in front of Vivante. Anima swung down from the doorframe at the end of the straight hall, hanging upside-down from it for a moment as she simply stared at him in a satisfied way. She dropped from her perched and landed on her feet and one hand, slowly straightening her body out until she stood up completely.
"You know, I can't even tell what you're feeling right now," she started as a smirk slowly edged across her face. "Nervous? Excited? Angry? Your face is blank. In a way... it compliments your looks. It adds to the enigma."
She folded her arms behind her back and began to saunter toward Vivante, looking him directly in the eyes the entire time. "But you must be apprehensive. I know, I know... you're locked in a room with someone who don't entirely trust. Believe me, I know the feeling! Doesn't it just," she shivered theatrically, "give you goosebumps?"
She brought her hands out from behind her back, stopping at a table in the hall still a few feet away from Vivante. She held in her hands a fistful of knives, bottles, razors, wires, scapels, and a few other small and sharp tools, laying them all down on the table. "I won't need any of that. You might, but I won't. That said, there's everything. Everything except for the antidote, of course. I may or may not have that on my actual person... I do need you to play along somehow, right? But don't worry, you'll get what you've come for."
Her smirk opened up into a mischievous grin as she took of her leather gloves and threw those onto the table as well. She stepped forward quickly, stopping immediately in front of Vivante and reaching her left hand up toward his hair, never taking her eyes off of his as she moved.
Anima's hand came close, but didn't touch him. "So... beautiful, you are."
She reached up slowly and rolled back the sleeve of her arm down to the elbow, keeping it frozen in place of nearly touching Vivante's hair. She spoke to him in a low tone of voice, "I want you to take a bite out of my arm, to rip the flesh off. I want you to chew it and savor the taste of my flesh. And then I want you to swallow it... because I want to be a part of you. I want a little piece of me to be inside you. That way, we will never part."
She waved her exposed arm up and down tantalizingly, encouraging him, "Go on... just a little taste couldn't hurt, could it?"
Nazune scowled a little when she saw who was speaking at the front doorway of the workshop. Her only memories of Tesri were less than stellar, and she still held that nasty grudge against him she developed when she first 'met' him. She wasn't thrilled that she was about to be in his company, but accepted it as necessary for the time being.
She started briskly for the door after Norriden and his father then, affirming the latter's question, "Yes. We should find them, get out of here and recoup while we think of what to do next."
And Norriden's extrasensory ability was useful. It was a guaranteed find on at least one person, and whoever she happened to be around. The others might be a little trickier to find if they were still scattered throughout the city.
Nazune stepped out onto the street, looking to Norriden then and giving him the lead by saying, "Alright, Norriden. Let's find your mother first, at le-"
BOOM!!!
Her gaze immediately shot to further down the street, where the body of Telarn laid and the two ruined buildings smoldered. The Connlaothian guardsmen and military were starting to get a foothold on the situation in the area, securing it and treating/evacuating the wounded, when another explosion went off. But it was much smaller than the first two, and it sounded like it might have been a grenade or other small device.
Three rockets were fired, all three of them spiralling around in the area down the street and crashing into the street and one into the front door of another shop. They had been aimed at the Connlaothian forces, and one at an unlucky man lying down in the street.
There was sporadic gunfire then, and Nazune noticed that there were men on the rooftops of the buildings around the site of Telarn's assassination, harassing the guardsmen with the gunfire. The Connlaothian guardsmen were all shouting orders and locations of enemies, and began returning fire to their elusive foes.
Nazune glanced at Norriden and Noubohri, saying to them, "Those men aren't under the sway of my mother."
How incredibly embarassing. All Lindraeus could do was hug the ground and watch fearfully as Feyda and Latira engaged their assailant (both of which seemed to be having a blast at that, as well). He wanted to help, he truly did, but the only real way he could help was advise Feyda not to come here, and the time for that was well past.
BOOM!!!
Lindraeus curled up again as his body was pelted with some dust and debris. Was that another explosion? He did a double take, as did many of the guardsmen and military rolling up onto the scene, and indeed it was, albeit smaller and not enough to level a building.
Three loud whistles of rockets sounded next, and he caught sight of a team of two men on a nearby rooftop that fired one of them.
One of them that happened to spiral towards him.
Lindraeus yelped and scrambled up to his feet, bolting away from his spot just as the rocket slammed into the ground where he once was and exploded, sending him screaming into the side of a building near Feyda and Latira. He collapsed into a slump, looking dazed and dizzy.
"We need... to get outta here..." he mumbled reflexively, looking around but not being able to see completely straight.
The sounds of sudden, sporadic gunfire all around the area, not from Feyda or Latira, brought a little focus back to him.
Skylance looked up at the sudden newcomer apprehensively at first, but closed his eyes and spoke dismissively of the man's comments before taking a sip of his water, "You've read to much into it, friend."
Alexian turned her head slightly in a questioning manner when the man introduced himself. She had heard his name before, and it took her a moment to recall exactly where she remembered it. Finally, she remembered that Kaite had named him as the head of the organization she worked for, the SSHE, but Alexian had never met him in person.
"Oh, Brevedor. I have merely heard of you, but we have not truly met," she spoke, much to Skylance's surprise when she mentioned that she had heard of the man. "Please, have a seat if you wish. I am Alexiannastraziel," she introduced herself cordially, returning the man's handshake.
Skylance took a more hearty drink of his water this time. He had not heard of a man, or possibly angel, by that name, but Alexian did and that had to be no coincidence. This man was involved with something, perhaps even something as simple as following Alexian's affairs, but it was something nonetheless, and that made things a little more complicated, especially Skylance's efforts of persuading Alexian to his favor.
He put his glass down and greeted the man, extending his own hand to him as he spoke, "And I am Skylance of Hallow, Brevedor. Pleasure to meet you. Now, if I might be so bold as to ask, what is the nature of your interruption?"
Back in the epicenter of the newly erupting chaos, near all of the shouts and gunfire and smoke and ruin and bodies and guards and attackers, laid the body of Telarn Blackbride.
Whose finger twitched ever so slightly.
