loch lemach gives zero fucks (cutandthrust) wrote in emillion, @ 2014-08-27 17:32:00 |
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In an empty warehouse by the docks, Loch Lemach waited for a fortune that never arrived. When the hour passed thirty minutes after the agreed rendezvous time, she jumped down from her throne of crates and put her years among sailors to good use. She cursed the Royal Bank of Ivalice, the Commerzbank, the fucking foreigners who thought they could rob two banks if they could rob one, their reckless plan and the day she had let herself be roped into it. She cursed Miles Baines, his master plans and his easy trust. Last, she cursed herself for knowing which way to the hell away from that mess and heading into the evening in the exact opposite direction. First she saw the patrols outside, the prideful mockery of the thieves' failure, the Peacekeepers in full armor standing on the steps to the bank in case anyone thought to finish what others had started. She was watching the bank's mammoth iron doors when the foiled criminals were marched out one by one and handed over to the authorities right at the spot with the best visibility, a cautionary tale for all to see and hear. The man they called Lake kept up a stream of angry Kerwonian throughout the display, and resisted the agents leading him into the patrol car. In the instant it took to subdue him, the man behind raised his head. Had she not been under Vanish, Loch might have believed Miles had looked straight at her. Then he too was shuffled into the vehicle and the engine started like the departing roar of a victorious beast. Loch watched it gain altitude and turn to face north. Rooftop to rooftop, she followed. Lake was still grumbling when they got him out of the car along with the others. He had to be restrained by two agents on the way into the Peacekeepers' holding station. One of the Kerwonians tried to use that moment to escape, and did a poor job of it. The peach sky was showing bruises of quickly-deepening purple by the time Loch moved from her post in the alley in front of the station. The thieves had not been moved again; they would likely stay there at least for the night, until the date of their trial was decided. If Loch's childhood had given her any privilege, it was an intimate knowledge of every holding station in the city, refreshed and updated with regular visits throughout her early teenage years. She climbed the six-foot stone wall concealing the facility's back entrance from view and, after an instant spent assuring herself of the absence of approaching footsteps, slid a pair of machinist's work glasses onto her face and went to work on the lock. For a station imprisoning the men who had attempted the biggest robbery in the history of Valendia, the hallways were sparsely guarded. Where she encountered vigilance, she removed it with judicious use of darts full of muscle paralyzer and sleeping compounds. Twice she feared discovery after hearing voices while she worked on dismantling traps to clear her path. Third time was the charm. There was only a glimpse at the end of the maze of Miles inside his cage, a sudden explosion of heat across her lower back and the oily sensation of her Vanish veil slipping, and then there was nothing. Reality came back like a sick joke. Through the bars of the cell, Loch saw her captor laugh. Her vision wavered like a first-time sailor stumbling drunkenly across a ship's deck. It took a few seconds to come into clearer focus and define the object the guard was holding up for her to see. It was one of her sleeping darts. "This is a fine toy you got here, Miss Lemach." The man tapped the dart against the bars. The clang of metal pierced Loch's skull like needles. Her hands curled around the pockets of air where her knives had been, and into fists. "I got more," Loch grunted through gritted teeth. "You ought to let me show you sometime." "I'm sure. But I like mystery." Another laugh. "But I've got a question for you. Why come here tonight? You missed lockup that much?" "Forgot a hairband last time I was here. Thought I'd come get it." "And your friend Miles Baines, while you're at it?" Her head swam with an echo of rumbling, a demand like claws raking down the inside of her skull. Her right hand moved to clasp her left wrist, and found the cold burn of Hashmal's mark under it. Her bandage was gone. "How ambitious of me," she said, rolling her eyes. "I like to accomplish tasks one at a time." But the officer's smile didn't waver. "Well, you got all night to accomplish," he said, and walked away. He returned at random intervals throughout the night, perhaps to dull the tedium of his lonely shift by torturing his captive. Loch did not sleep. When he wasn't around, she tried to pick the cell door with a hairpin. When he was, she sat in a corner of her cell and fought to temper her rage at being locked up like a street dog by vowing to fill her next batch of darts with a dose potent enough to kill a small wyvern. "He tried to steal a shipment coming into the Royal Bank of Ivalice." When Loch cut him a glance, the guard specified: "Miles Baines, I mean. Along with a bunch of Kerwonian jackasses. Several of them matching profiles put out by the Commerzbank of Kerwon a few months ago, when they got cleaned. Seems like we killed two birds with one stone today." Again, the same snide laugh that made her hands curl around her knees for not having the man's throat within reach. "Ain't that jolly fucking good for you," she said. "You're damn right it is," he agreed. "Well, I don't know what'll happen with those charges the Commerzbank is pressing, but just trying to abscond with the treasury here's good for a couple of decades behind bars, at least. Then again, Mister Baines should be used to captivity, like you. Can't count the number of times I've seen you in lockup in the past." She looked at him again. There were lines around his eyes she hadn't noticed before, lending credibility to his words. Same age as Thornton, maybe older. "They used to serve the prisoners food in metal bowls, way back then," he continued. "You drove me up the fucking wall, throwing yours against the bars just to be a pain in everyone's ass." "I can throw farther now. Got better aim, too. You wanna see, for old times' sake?" "Nostalgia is a trap, my friend. I know better than to fall." Unable to reach the man through the bars and dispossessed of her knives, Loch settled for flipping him the finger. He let her out at ten the following morning, with a disposition like a ray of sunshine pointed straight at her eyes. The presence of the two officers behind him as he unlocked the cell door was all that kept Loch from trying to murder the man with her bare hands. "While I would love to revive old anecdotes with you all night long, I got no charges to keep you here any longer, and I wouldn't go for a drink with you. You're a free woman, Loch Lemach." He made a sweeping gesture toward the door that led out into the hallway, so grandiose he might have been indicating a palace instead of a stone corridor. "The gentlemen will see you out and return your weapons and various trinkets to you, once outside." She led her scowling entourage out of the room, head held high, like her wrists weren't bound and her pride unwounded. The manacles around her wrists were considered only as possible tools to garrote her escorts if she needed to, if they passed by the cell where she'd spotted Miles the night before and she felt like impossible odds to let off steam. Then she heard the voice of her captor, a call from behind them, like he'd read her mind: "Miles Baines was transferred earlier this morning to await trial. So don't bother waiting up for him tonight, Lemach." She bit down on a retort — I'll wait up for you instead — and did not even glance behind as the guards led her outside into the mocking daylight, and returned Serendipity, Little Bitch and her machinist's tools to her, with an admonition to abstain from sneaking into holding stations in the future. She paid them no mind. As she walked away from them, her mind was racing. She had had a full night to revisit the consequences of this worst case scenario. To curse Miles Baines, the fucking Kerwonians, their merry band of fuck-ups and the various bypasses they had planted through a vault of the Royal Bank of Ivalice, like a trail of breadcrumbs leading straight to her. |