RP:Knife For Hire

From HollowWiki

Background

Mr. X, as he has called himself, is interested in jobs where coin is rendered for the work of a blade.


Many in the Rats are interested in bladework, and the resulting mess, and Crow is no exception. Something of an outlier in Cenril's gangs, are the Rats, and perhaps exactly what Mr. X is looking for.


Crow and Cole played by Thistle.

Rats Territory, Cenril Slums

The slums are a warren of old architecture and bad planning; an organic sprawl harkening back to older days when Cenril was more of a town than a city, without the benefit of the rich to order its streets and ensure it be built in any manner of sense. Here, a particularly old part of the city has left large open spaces between buildings often set at odd angles to each other, giving a wide, bulbous area that during better days was once a simple if wide path between businesses and residences in the area. Presently, amidst buildings either ready to collapse or owned by seedy businessmen and women, the poor have taken advantage of these wide spaces. They've constructed their own poor facsimiles of homes by what wood they might purloin, or stone, or canvas. It's at the edge of the Rats' territory, and home to the damned: the elderly, the crippled, the ruined. Often strung out on whatever illicit substances they can get their hands on, these people are unable to find any sort of work, resorting to begging and scavenging for their needs. There are some children here, sometimes starving and sometimes barely getting by, and as a whole the place is miserable and hopeless.


Niran walks down the street carefully watching the intersections. While out and about as Mr. X he chose to wear his mask, black leather with engravings like that of a hellish demon. His form clad all in back the traditional garb of the vampire.


Crow liked to play games. Often used as a messenger by those who claimed power over him, he was used to walking all over the Rats' territory, and sometimes beyond it. In one hand he held a neatly folded message, that hand stuffed into a slightly crooked pocket. In the other he held half a loaf of bread, which he had lifted just over the reach of the flock of children who'd gathered like pidgeons around him, skinny hands reaching up and up for the type of food they'd likely not had in weeks. Months. He liked to watch them hop for it, all skinny limbs and distended stomachs, encouraging them with a cooing, "A little higher, pet," here or a, "Gotta try for't, love," there. He took small steps forward as he crossed through the area, attention on his crowd of hungry and desperate bastards.

Niran chuckles silently to himself as he watches this person play with children giving them false hope of food. If he hadn't already fed on a blind begger after promising him food and money leading him into back alley. Yes he would have most likely wiped out most of the children just to sate his blood lust and hunger. Licking his lips more at the prospect of hearing their screams than renewed hunger. "To what do I owe the honor of your company?"


Crow didn't realize, at first, that Niran was speaking to him. There were other adults in the vicinity, though most of them busied themselves with dreary tasks of washing or marshalling what food and warm clothing they had, or were busy being high or drunk. He broke off a chunk of bread in order to watch the children fight among each other for the privelage of food that wasn't moldy or rotting (or, for the better off among them, an extra helping of what otherwise wasn't enough to fill them). It was probable not a one among them even knew what it was to be full, living instead with a constantly cramped belly. Crow smiled as he watched them scrabble for the chunk, and looked up only when the only other person in the direction he was going didn't move. He dangled the bread absentmindedly as he looked up and looked Niran over. Crow, himself, was a squat, wide-built man with thick muttonchops and shoulderlength hair. He wasn't the tallest bloke around, but he was powerfully built and dressed in cheap, though warm and serviceable, leathers over cloth. "Talkin' t'me?" he asked, voice bass and rumbly.


Niran chuckled. "Yes I am and you can call me Mr. X." He eyed the man up watching his movements curiously. Slowly walking towards him, himself being average height and build, long dark brown hair resting on his shoulders. "Why feed them? They will most likely end up on my dinner plate."


Crow took a bite out of the bread, eyes diverting back to the kids in order to watch their wide-eyed hunger as they watched him, the anticipation of their own slow bites into the half-loaf, their imagination doing his work for them as their bodies produced stomach acid and saliva in anticipation of food that wasn't guaranteed. One or two of them clung to him, begging. Crow knew what starvation did to a man, he'd watched it happen plenty o' times. "'Mister Ex', issit now?" Crow mocked, bushy eyebrows rising. He laughed at the second part of Niran's words, though it was short lived as one of the children almost -- almost -- took the bread from his fingers. He took another bite in retribution, and spoke from around the mouthful, "Eatin' brats, issit? Wot, you th'new bloody Butcher o' Cenril or summat? Can't say 'is cleaverness'd take kindly t'that, I can't."


Niran shrugged his shoulders. Being behind the mask gave him a sense of security. Just like changing his voice so others couldn't recognize it. "Bloody Butcher? Has a nice ring to it. Thing of me as more of ruthless shadow blade for hire. Careful they may not have fangs but they can still take off fingers." He kept his distance as he looked down at the milling brats so hungry that their stomach growls echoed into his super sensitive ears.


The children were, Crow couldn't help but notice, pressing away from Niran, though they were still begging. Was it fear? Instinct? Plenty o' monsters crawled through Cenril's Streets, and while a poxy lot of them were human, many weren't. Maybe, he thought, eyebrows lowering as he looked from cringing, hopping children to the man in front of him, this one wasn't human either. Or maybe he was. Did it matter? "Blade f'hire?" Entertaining thought. Most mercenaries were snapped up in a manner of days on Cenril's streets, such was the need for thugs. Crow cocked his head to the side, taking another large bite out of the bread. He could see the slowly dying hope in the eyes of the brats, but still they reached. Hope was his -very- favorite emotion. "What sort o' work y'sellin', guv?"


Niran snickered as he sensed the mans unease as the children shied away from him. Betting that they could sense the wrongness of a choice long ago. "The secret death kind. I have a special agent his name is Niran he'll handle my contracts. He's not very good at the whole death and mayhem. He was just an aristocrat I had the foresight to turn." He laughed tipping his head back pretending to relish the mock screams of someone begging for their life.


Crow brightened. He liked blood, liked it as much as the other scum in the Rats did, an' the more among 'em who could do the dice-work, the better in Crow's mind. "A nobbler, then, innit," he mused as he looked down at the kids surrounding him. Thoughtfully, he lowered the bread just a slight bit, enough for one of them to make contact with it. Quick as a snake, Crow's other hand was out of his pocket and around the child's neck. Like cockroaches, the rest of the children scattered, though a few stood several feet away, eyes on their captured friend. Crow bunched his fingers around the scruff of the kid's neck and gave him a good shake, the bread stuffed down the front of his shirt with a hearty laugh. "Cole!" One of them said, loud and thin, before the others shushed her. They stood, three of them, eyes wide as they watched. The boy in Crow's grip couldn't have been more than eight, though malnutrition might have played into that some bit. He struggled, though he with his spindly limbs and empty belly had neither the muscle nor the fire to throw Crow off. He was young, hungry, scared and now terribly alone in some game he had no hope of understanding between two men. Crow held him forward, grinning. Bits of bread were stuck gummy between his crooked teeth. "Well then, let's see y'blade work!"


Niran had expected him to make such a request. So many different ways he could kill this child, should he make it slow and painful or fast and quick. Choices so many choices, he plucked the rusted dagger out of his waistband; with a deliberate flick of his wrist that blade arced through the air like an arrow fired from a bow. There was no whistle or ruffle of air just the silent thud as it embedded into the small child's abdomen. Sneering as the boy let out a whimper as in shock he looked down to see it protruding. The boy would suffer a slow agonizing death from the corroded blade that had missed his heart and punctured the bottom corner of his left lung. "Would you be ever so kind and give me my knife back?"


Cole, as he was known by, was ten years old. His father had died in a construction accident two years ago, and his mother had turned to streetwalking to pay their way. It'd aged her, and hurt her, and made her right mean sometimes, but she loved him. He loved her. He had friends, who were watching him as he took his fatal wound, who screamed his name as the impact reverberated through him. Pain came second, it always came second. Cole was used to pain, being that he was a kid who lived on the streets, but he'd never felt it quite like that before. He looked down, breath coming faster and fear clenching tight and watery in his guts. The stomach acid from his hope at food not so long ago burned, and he coughed. Gods, it hurt. It hurt so bad, as his hands rose to hover over the knife, shaking, before the big man who held him tore it free. It hurt. It hurt worse'n he had words for, and breathing was like glass and rocks, infinitely worse than swallowing the wrong way. He was dropped, like trash, but he was loved. He knew he was loved. But he lay there, alone, his friends too scared to come forward to claim him. And the adults just watched, silent, calling for their own children sharp and scared as the ghetto in the midst of the slums slowly lost activity. Murder wasn't uncommon there. They were prey, and they knew it, but they still did the best they could to live on.

"That it?" Crow's voice sounded disappointed as he wiped the blade off on the boy's grubby shirt, pulling the bread back out to munch on it. There wouldn't be any children around any time soon for sport, so no sense holding off eating now. Still, he walked forward and held out the blade hilt first. "Clean," he admitted with a shrug as he chewed. "Could be th'boss might 'ave some use fer a nobbler." He swallowed, and appeared to be thinking through something. "Ahh, wots 'is name, then? Th' one y'go through? Where's 'e at?"


Niran reached out taking his knife back. With another chuckle he pulled out a blueberry muffin he had bought from a bakery. Walking over before bending down to cram the entire thing into the boy's mouth. Yes Cole would have a fitting final meal. "Niran is his name, perhaps I should turn this child and set him free here on the slums. What would you think of that…." Shaking his head, he decided to let the boy convulse and slowly drown on his own blood as his friends tried their best to help him. "He typically bounces from one pub to the next looking for business for me." Look for the same garb I wear, same height, and weight."


Cole, for his part, was having a difficult time breathing. The muffin did nothing more than block his airways further, making him choke and writhe in pain. Crow was watching Niran, unconcerned with the fate of the boy at their feet. He shrugged, "Turn 'im?" The slang wasn't totally unknown to Crow, but he liked his information to be specific. "Y'buddy Niran ever go t'the Whaler's Bar?"


Niran chuckles as he realized his new found friend had no idea what he meant. "Make him a vampire. Give him a choice to live and feed off of his friends. I believe he's been to the Whalers Bar." Standing up he kicks the child away from him so he didn't cough up blood on his boots. "Well now that our introductions have finished I really should be off, polishing my tools and whatnot."


Crow nodded slowly, his gaze sharpening on Niran as he took in that bit of information. Not human, no, though maybe he'd been one some time past. "If y'want," he said, having no clue about the affairs of vampires and not quite sure he wanted to now. "'E's a bit scrawny." He looked down at the dying boy, who'd rolled onto his side as he coughed and spat out the muffin. He was crying, soft and ragged. Crow looked back up at Niran, "I'll hope t'be seein' 'im there. Tomorrow, mebbe. Keep y'tools sharpish, might be usin' 'em real soon." Crow grinned, thinking of their on and off feud with Thonmet's Boys and all the people Rat had wanted intimidated without wanting to use her own people. Could be Crow might gain some favor, after all.


After they had concluded their conversation, Niran turned and walked back into the shadows. Going back the way he had came not really concerned with guards or anyone else he would return to the cemetery's catacombs.