RP:To Catch A Thief

Summary: Eleanor, accused of thievery, is the subject of a pursuit by Rynvalian Guards. Hudson happens upon the chase at the city's stables, and follows Eleanor, eventually helping her to elude capture. They then meet up later at the docks for some post-crime companionship.

Stables (Rynvale)

The sounds of cracking wood and the crackle of magic permeated the air. With a yell, the spellblade came bursting through the doors, splinters flying everywhere as she somersaulted backwards, narrowing avoiding the whirring bolt of a crossbow. The bolt became embedded in a post behind her with a thud, and she gave it a quick glance, celadon-hued eyes wide, before a grin parted her lips. "Ah, ye hae missed me!" she taunted the guard who came chasing after her. Peeved, he began to reload his crossbow, but not before Eleanor spun around, throwing her left boot up toward his face in a graceful round-house kick. Caught off-guard, the man stumbled backwards, a bruise already rising to the surface along his jawline. With seconds to spare before he regained his footing and chased after her again, the roguish woman kicked off the post, vaulting over the gate of one of the stalls, and landing with a puff of dust circling her ankles. The stallion within the stall shuffled backward nervously, huffing out anxious breaths through his nostrils, and he whinnied at her in warning. "It is okay, loove. It's jist me," she murmured to him as she moved around to his side. "Come, we hae tae coorie."

"You are not going anywhere! You're under arrest!" The guard stood poised just outside the stall, crossbow reloaded and the bolt aimed directly at the blonde-braided woman.

Eleanor growled. "Ye arenae gonnae arrest me," she countered, grabbing onto the horn of the saddle. "As a matter ay fact, ye ur gonnae turn aroond, an' rin." She stepped into the stirrup, and quickly pulled herself atop the roan horse. "Afair ye gie trampled."

The guard hesitated, Eleanor's unwavering stare - as well as her blue glowing tattoos and general arrogance - causing him to falter. "You-- you stop! You stop right there! You're under arrest, thief!" he repeated, although his tone lacked authority.

Amused by his bravado, but generally impatient to loiter any longer, she rolled her eyes. "Ye need tae move. Noo!" she warned again, this time nudging the horse forward with her heels. The horse reared up, Eleanor's head just barely missing the rafters, and she leaned forward, holding tightly onto the reins and bridle of her horse. "Ah dornt want tae hurt ye, but Ah will if ye dornt move!" Her horse whinnied again, beating his hooves against the gate until it gave with a groan. "Hyah!"

The gate finally splintered under the assault, and the guard barely escaped a beating beneath the steed's weight as he dove aside. Eleanor and her steed surged forward, rounding the corner into the corridor between the rows of stalls, and with another, "Hyah!" they lunged through the outer gates into the courtyard. The guard recovered quickly, and began yelling as he started after them, "Stop! Catch that thief! Catch her!"

Hudson is incidentally just about to turn into the courtyard himself when who should charge through it but his friend Eleanor, evidently in hot pursuit or flight of something. "Turn, Cleo!" he tells his horse, his hands shifting the reigns to do just that. Maybe to the neutral observer it might look like he's trying to catch Eleanor, because Huds gives Cleo a kick, and like that he's at full speed, the sudden shift in the thoroughbred's gait much like the effect achieved by suddenly depressing the accelerator. She's got some lead on them, but Cleo's keen on closing it, somewhat competitive herself. In any event, it's not immediately apparent to him whether Eleanor realizes that she's being pursued by him or a total stranger, though if anybody else was following, they're definitely in the dust for the time being. Not that 'speeding' around Rynvale wouldn't get them noticed. It would. In a very short time, if it hadn't already. "Eleanor!" calls out Hudson as their horses come neck-and-neck, nearly trampling a small child, who is forced to flatten herself to a wall as the horses come in close around a bend. "It's me! Hudson! What are you doing? We can't keep riding like this! We're attracting attention!"

The spell blade’s steed dexterously dodged to and fro around the courtyard, hooves kicking up dust as the bandit duo narrowly avoided running into Hudson. There was no time for hellos, but the way her celadon-hued gaze narrowed, it was clear she recognized the alchemist from their prior encounters. With hardly a beat passing for due recognition, Eleanor and her horse quickly leapt past the courtyard and into the main streets of the city proper. “Hyah, hyah!” she urged the stallion, boots digging into the creature’s flank.

Somewhere in Rynvale

From behind them, more guards gathered thanks to the initial guard’s cries, and Eleanor cast a worried look over her right shoulder. With Hudson now chasing after her - and much to her surprise catching up to her rather swiftly - the spell blade growled at him, “Whit ur ye daein', Hudson?” The blonde-haired woman didn’t wait for a reply, her gaze turned ahead of them as she tried to come up with an escape strategy.

The road splintered ahead of them into several other, small roads, and with a hard yank on the reins, El drove the horse to veer left, turning onto what looked like a narrow back alley. Giving another look toward Hudson, she withdrew her crystal wand he would likely recognize as having mended some time ago, and she aimed it ahead of her: with a muttered incantation, the crystals began to glow bright cerulean, and the air crackled with magical energies. From the foremost point a beam of light streaked outward, cutting through the brick walls of a shop. As if disintegrating from an immensely hot force, the wall seemed to crumble away into dust. The tattooed woman pulled the horse to a stop, and alit from the saddle before hurrying through the hole she’d created. Looking back to Hudson, she asked, “Ur ye wi' them?” The wand was holstered once more on her left hip, and already the hole she’d created was beginning to shrink as she stepped backward over the apparent rubble to enter the storage room of a local general store. “Ur ye?” Her celadon-hued gaze stared at him, her chest heaving with the thrill of the run, and a wolfish but wary smile tempted her full lips.

Hudson's attention dances between Eleanor and the road. His horse could sometimes improvise if left to her own devices. "I don't freaking know," he calls back at her, steering Cleopatra after her into the narrow alley. He doesn't have time to process the dead end. Eleanor's blasted a hole in the wall, and Cleo is losing it, rearing up and whinnying and trying to throw Huds. She does. Spirited filly that she is, she launches him into the air and then backs into a cautious circle, whinnying nervously. Huds' fall is mercifully broken by a pile of garbage. Of course it had still hurt like a mofo. "For Sven's sake, woman," he groans, unclear to whom he refers as Cleopatra has now come over to him and is sniffing him apologetically. "I'm with myself. I saw you running and thought insanely that I should get involved. Ow." Several expletives follow as he manages to stand and grab his horse's reigns. He'll be bruised all over for sure. And he smells like tomato sauce. Was there ever a dull moment with Eleanor? He eyeballs the apparent escape route she's created, and exhales in frustration. "I can't just leave my horse here," he tells her, in much the same manner of a dude who's being asked to parallel park his Ferrari in a bad part of town. This is his baby we're talking about! Huds waves at Eleanor, apparently signaling that she should go on without him for now, "Close it up, I'll... say you vanished. Meet you... Where do I meet you?"

Eleanor shook her head, confused by Hudson’s actions and wary of his intentions. Her own steed was restlessly stomping on the ground, impatient for the two to decide what to do. Understanding Hudson’s dilemma - and wincing empathetically for his sake - she huffed out a sigh. “Braw!” she growled, rolling her celadon-hued eyes. “Tak' th' horses somewhaur safe …” Her stallion eyed her as if to say, ‘Please don’t leave me with them.’ But El paid him no mind. Instead, her gaze was on Hudson, sizing him up. “Meit me at th' docks in half an hoor … Aloyn.” She frowned, stepping further backward into the shop’s backroom. “Aloyn!” she repeated. The frown faded, and her expression softened, allowing a half-grin to take shape. “Ah hae some business tae attend tae furst.” El winked to Hudson and patted the bulky sack at her hip and presumably the confiscated items to be found therein. “Cheerio th' noo, Hudson.”

The wall was quickly closing back up, the crackle of magic still lingering in the alleyway. Back in the street, the spell blade heard scuffling, and a guard rounded the corner, weapon drawn. He was too late for Eleanor, however, and with a sloop! the wall was closed back up completely. The guard yelled for the others, and the foremost one turned toward Hudson, warily approaching him and the two horses.

Hudson is pretty good when it comes to horses and sports. Maybe less good when it comes to alchemy, but he'd been known to pull through on that from time to time when it counted (or booze was involved). "Yeeeap, you got it," he says, as he snatches the reins of Eleanor's horse and, with a curious glance to whatever transacting she's about to do - not his business, but dang, what's this woman wrapped up with? - turns both horses and begins the process of trying to get the heck out of dodge before they get busted. He almost succeeds, too. As the guards crowd around him, he makes casual. ...So this is the part where looking gods awful and smelling like tomato sauce comes in his favor. He is already, with a grimace, hoisting himself back up onto Cleo. Oh gods, that hurt like a mother. Tomorrow he would lie in bed all day and make pitiful complaints and annoy the piss out of his roommate. "Where is she!?" demands one of the guards, and Hudson very genuinely gives the guy a hard eyeball for asking such a dumb question. "What do you think, mate? I didn't eat her. She rode me off my horse onto a trash heap and vanished into the wall, literally," he hopes that Eleanor's conducting some swift business, "so I'm going to, if you don't mind, tuck my tail between my legs and give up. I wish you happy hunting men. I can return the horse, seeing as that was my original destination." It's true he did look a little bedraggled. And he was here, not with her. There's no time to engage in a cross-examination. They leave the alley, bolting for the main entrance of the building into which she'd vanished keen on catching Eleanor on her way out.

Docks (Rynvale)

Hudson, for his part, takes a very painful ride to the docks, both horses in tow. He rides slower than he normally would, seeing as how his bruises are alive to the gait of his horse. He makes it though, and, after tying the horses up near some grass, washes his face and some of the splattered red sauce on his person. The only thing left to do after that is wait. So he seats himself in the shade and rolls a joint and goes about the business of getting stoned until Eleanor arrives.

Eleanor was not new to this bandit business, and by the time the guards circled around to the front of the shop, she was nowhere to be found. The shopkeep had been, perhaps conveniently, passed out drunk in the office, and claimed to have neither heard nor seen any woman fitting El’s description. It is a good thing the guards did not think to question him about the large sack of gold he was using as a pillow upon their arrival.

With the guards losing her trail, Eleanor slipped back across town using dark alleyways to remain off the guards’ radar. The exchange of her item for a large sack of gold coins was carried out quietly and efficiently, and in no time at all, the spell blade was making her way toward the docks for her rendezvous with Hudson.

Long before she saw the alchemist, Eleanor could smell him -- and he smelled like he’d been sprayed with a skunk and then thrown in a vat of tomato juice to fix him. She followed the smell with little problem. Ensuring first that he had come alone - save the horses, of course - she stealthily approached, taking a seat beside him. “Ye hae some interestin' timin', Hudson,” she said at length, sending a celadon-hued gaze edgewise at him and the joint he wielded. “Ah suppose Ah ooght tae thenk ye.” Beat. “Ah hink.” Despite their previous encounters, she was still rather wary of him -- nothing personal, of course. In her line of work, and given her … unique history, it was no wonder she knew how to trust anyone at all. After a moment of consideration, she asked him, “Wa did ye follaw me?”

Hudson turns at the sound of rustling behind him, catching Eleanor as she slides into place. His expression registers her, and he grins wildly. "You freaking made it," he exclaims, handing her the joint like it's the most natural thing in the world. "Er, no pressure, I'm in a mood. Have the rest if you want though." After that, he chuckles, for no reason - well, there is a reason, it's called drugs - and falls back onto his palms to regard her. Amusement lingers in his gaze. "Honestly?" he asks, shifting his weight from shoulder to shoulder. "Between you and me?" He lets a slow smirk creep across his expression. Can't be contained anyway. "Because you're a babe with a cute accent and I was feeling heroic." Anticipating some reaction on her part, he lifts his eyebrows in unison. "What? I got a girlfriend, I'm just saying, off the record-like. I'm up to literally nothing here but the business of being a guy. You on the other hand, eh?"

Eleanor did not judge Hudson for his leisurely practices, and took the joint without protest, taking a long drag of the herbal cigarette. She held the smoke in her lungs a moment, relishing in the feel of burning plant matter, before exhaling with a slight cough. “Ah, 'at hits th' spot.” The spell blade turned her celadon-hued gaze back toward him, a mixture of curiosity and disbelief taking hold of her features. His response inspired a husky chuckle from the so-called ‘babe’, and she shook her head, disturbing the arrangement of the blonde braids draped over her shoulders. “Is 'at sae?” In an effort to avoid answering his question, she posed one of her own, “Whit woods thes lassie ay yoors say if she kent ye waur chasin' me aroond Rynvale?” She took another drag of the joint, pinching it expertly between forefinger and thumb. Already she could feel a familiar tingle in her cheeks, and an easy, albeit somewhat guardedly wolfish smile spread her lips. “Ah hink she woods nae loch it huir uv a much, whit wi' th' lack ay attractife men runnin' aroond.” But that was not to say Eleanor did not like the attention, and in her own way, had returned the apparent compliment.

Hudson's laughter in response to Eleanor's question lingers long than it would under more sober circumstances. "My 'lassie' would say," he begins, leaning his head back and twisting his neck in a manner calculated to elicit a satisfying crack. "Ahh, heck yes," he exhales, before throwing his gaze back Eleanor's way and continuing, "Where was I?" Laughter threatens to encroach on his train of thought but he manages to batten down the hatches and respond. "Oh my lassie. I dunno what she'd say. Maybe roll her eyes. I think she knows she's got a fixer-upper, if you will. Long as I keep my hands to myself and don't embarrass her, I think I'm doing OK." His eyes dance as he studies Eleanor over the broad slope of his shoulder. "Don't look so shocked. We're all this way. The secret lives of men. I'm just honest because I'm stoned. Speaking of honesty," he pushes his weight onto one palm to wag a finger at her, "you dodged my question, girl."

Eleanor studied the alchemist throughout his laughter, her own full lips twitching with her barely-contained humor as it bubbled up. The man’s mirth was infectious, encouraged by the herbal remedy still held betwixt two fingers, and she found herself chuckling too, albeit less enthusiastically. “Sae, lit me gie thes straecht. Ye ur allowed tae swatch, but ye arenae allowed tae tooch? 'At disnae soond fin at aw.” The woman found it hard to believe such an arrangement would be any fun, and she shook her head, chuckling again. “It isnae yer behaviur Ah am shocked ower,” El clarified with a dismissive roll of her tattooed shoulders. “But raither th' fact 'at ye lit someain else dictate whit ye can an' cannae dae.” At his insistence that she answer his question, the celadon-eyed woman found herself considering it as she glanced down at the joint. She flicked the ashes from the stick and took another drag, as if to prepare herself, then said, “Alrecht, whit dae ye want tae ken?” Eleanor was by no means ready to divulge all of her secrets, but Hudson intrigued her, and that was as good a way to start as any.

Hudson rolls his eyes in response to this ribbing he's received. "Oh I see, the lady is insinuating that I'm whipped?" he says, snorting lightly as his gaze fans out beyond the docks and over the water. "For the record I spent many a year being a bachelor doing whatever. I like this one. Yo, it happens." He lets this banter ease the transition to their discussion of Eleanor's escapade earlier. "Why you got a pack of guards chasing you, for one," he ticks off his first question, his gaze having returned to settle on her with a sort of humoring inquisitiveness. "For two, sup with blasting holes in walls? If you can do that, why are you not massively rich yet?"

Eleanor parted with a husky chuckle, her celadon-hued gaze warm with humor. “Nae, actually, Ah wisnae,” she began, full lips curled in a broad smirk, “but ... if th' bit fits.” When he shifted the topic back to herself, and her recent endeavors, El narrowed her left eye toward him, her lips subtly pursed. She had been expecting these very questions, and it showed in the resigned way she exhaled slowly through her nose. The joint was nearly out, the remaining embers close to the fingers still wielding it, and she passed the nub back to Hudson before speaking again. “Weel, 'at is quite a bit ay a lang story … Oan baith coonts.” The spell blade considered her words carefully before continuing, her gaze edgewise toward her companion. “Tae answer yer first question, 'at was an unfortunate turn ay events,” she began vaguely. With a wink, she added, “Ah hink a body ay them has a hin' fur me.” Beat. “As fur wa Ah am nae rich, weel ... fa is tae say Ah am nae?” Although she had been tucking away some of her earnings for a rainy day, most of what she made off her various jobs ended up as ‘unaccounted for’ funding in a local charity’s coffers. “Fur aw ye ken, Ah am queen ay thes haur rock.” She playfully patted the ground. Cocking her head to one side, Eleanor assessed the alchemist with a curious glance. “Whit abit ye? Apart frae th' baa an' chain, whit is yer story?”

Hudson will - thank you very much - have one last puff before he kills the joint. He gingerly takes it from Eleanor and sucks in one last inhale before letting it drop to the ground. He brings the sole of his shoe over it, doing his part to prevent arson. He blows the smoke up in the air as Eleanor begins to unwind her side of the story, maybe with a playful fib or two tossed in. "Oooooh, well, you're bangin', who can blame them?" he is quick to cut in, amusement lining his gaze. "But... chasing women down with weapons is generally not good game. All the same, perhaps... differences of approach. Clearly." He winks back at her. The second part of her answer draws an interested eyebrow raise. The silent go on that goes unheeded. She's content to be enigmatic. Fine. He thinks he can smell his own, and he bites. "Who me? Much less complicated I expect. Easy upbringing. Normal schooling. Unlike you, no magic wands to speak of - I will avoid making puns, don't give me that look -" ...but he laughs anyway... "-uh right, just got a hobby interest in alchemy in my late teens. Now I'm 27 and...well I'm doing fine but I could do better and most of the time I'd rather be outside playing sports or on my horse or chilling, getting beers, whatever." Yeeeaah, he was built like a guy who digs sports, enough said about his competence with alchemy; she was familiar enough with that. He eyes her here, silently implying that a sometimes-slacker lifestyle was something they had in common. He remembers their first meeting, and something about her having come here from elsewhere. "So what, are you on the run, Eleanor?" he asks abruptly.

Eleanor’s celadon-hued gaze followed Hudson’s gestures as he extinguished the joint, her attention lingering on the ground before slowly drifting back up to her companion. ‘Clearly’. His words inspired a smirk and a slight shake of her head. As she listened to him, she barely tempered a chortle, having thought nothing of the apparent pun; that was, until he pointed it out, at which point she rolled her eyes and snickered, shaking her head at him once more. But when he asked her that question point-blank her expression faltered, and she narrowed her gaze at him. Thanks to the drugs in her system, she could not be trusted to keep her thoughts or history to herself, and El thought it better to make a run for it. “Ah hink Ah shoods be gonnae noo.” The spell blade stood up quickly, readjusting the chakram hooked to her left hip and the wand hilted at her right. “Thenk ye fur th' …” The woman jerked her chin pointedly toward the ground. “See ye aroond.” With that, the woman, tensed and guarded once more, started to leave.

Hudson realizes that he's come up against a point of resistance. He returns her narrowed gaze with wide-eyed surprise. What's a little nosiness between two stoned people, after all the near-death experiences they've been through? Surely that knitted people together in unexpected ways. "All right. If you say so," he replies, his gaze following her as she begins to order her things and collect herself for departure. He doesn't push her on her enigmatic reply, but his eyes follow her as she carries herself away. "See you around. Stay out of trouble!" he calls out after her retreating figure.