Warren Hampden, Deadpool. (mercofthemouth) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-05-26 16:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | deadpool, zatanna |
Who: Warren Hampden and Zariza Zaldana
What: Just digging up a grave. Perfectly normal.
Where: The Cemetery.
When: Tonight at Midnight.
Warnings: See “What.”
Ever since the extremely weird dream with blood and strange people, Warren and himself were a bit skeeved out. Well, his other self was skeeved. Warren was, well, Warren, the mercenary who never fully recovered all those months ago with the erratic behaviour. Sometimes, he genuinely worried when Warren forcibly tried to make new friends and the way he didn’t seem to care about his own mortality. He had no one to blame but himself, or so he felt. But Warren had no intention of giving anything up just yet. Even if it meant risking every bit of his career for the sake of trying to make a friend.
Standing outside of his stolen van, Warren stood with a shovel in hand, waiting for this stranger who intended on digging up that was buried. At least, he assumed that was the case. What other kind of person would willingly answer a question for a stranger’s help with buried things in a cemetery in the middle of the night? The other serial killers much have been busy, he mused as he dragged his shovel over to the intended location, waiting for the person who agreed to have him meet them there.
She arrived once the van was already there and parked. No, she arrived before, but she approached once it was parked. Five hundred dollars burned a hole in the pocket of her black, wool coat, and the scarf she wore covered half of her face. Even still, she was small, thin, unassuming and young. She was not intimidating as she approached, and she was even less intimidating as she came closer. She walked slowly, but it was not to convince herself that she should not do this thing she had set out to do. No, it was to see who this man was before she spoke to him - to take his measure.
She stopped in front of him, and she reached into her pocket and pulled out the money, holding it out to him before saying anything at all. She was not conflicted, not concerned it was the wrong thing to do. She had no solid idea of what she had planned once he was no longer in the Earth, but she would figure it out. For now, there was only this task ahead.
“You are ready?” she asked him, unafraid. She trusted the universe and her Orishas, and she did not fear this man in the dark, even if he was willing to do unsavory and illegal work.
It was a girl. Odd. He really did expect it to be some tall grizzled guy who was too old for his shit. But, he could learn to adapt to his ever changing situation. Taking the money, he grinned and wiggled the shovel that was in his hand. If he was going to be accomplice to something that needed his expertise, he was going to do things right.
“I’m always ready!” he triumphed, saluting the woman. “As I said, you can call me Nancy. What shall I call you, where are we off to and what are we up to?” he asked earnestly, standing with purpose in the hopes she would go along with his slight shenanigans. He was willing to go with whatever she had in mind in the hopes he might have a good time.
“You do not look very much like a Nancy,” she said, but she did not smile. This was not a time for joking, even if he felt it was. Her shoulders were tight with stress, and she wanted to be done with the work of this evening. “Ven,” she told him, motioning with her head and turning to walk through the gates of the cemetery.
She had to give credit where it was due; Drake had laid her padre to rest in a nice place. The cemetery was cared for, and she had already seen a groundsman as she approached. She had enough tricks in her pockets and up her sleeve to deal with trouble, if they ran into any. For now, she would continue to hope they would get her father out of the earth without incident.
She whispered words in Spanish, and the air around them crackled thick with magic and energy, window blowing hard enough to bow the spring trees in the dark. She walked through it, as if nothing at all was happening, and she stopped in front of a fairly new grave and looked down at it. “Aqui,” she said. “Here.”
Warren wasn’t fazed by the lack of jokes. She seemed like the type for commitment to the job at hand, which wasn’t his style. Not when it came to favors he was doing for other strangers. It was much more fun to inject a little of his own fun into the conversation after he was allowed further into their secrets and deceptions. “Aye yay Ven,” he saluted before placing his shovel on his shoulder and following her to the secret location in the cemetery.
He wasn’t stupid. Anyone inviting him to a cemetery at midnight was going to be up to more than even a simple gravedigging, and he always wanted to be a part of that. Nothing like having information on people when they had no clue who he happened to be.
As he had no plans on getting his butt kicked by someone with a possibly powerful ability, Warren allowed the magic to sparkle around him, doing his best not to flinch in her presence. She clearly had a strong trick or two up her sleeve, enough to keep him worried about doing anything overtly in case she could zap his ass to next Tuesday. Without asking for confirmation, he started to dig and continued whether she helped him or not, and didn’t stop until the body that she wanted was dug up. He waited for instructions from her as to what to do next.
She was memorable, but she assumed this man did not run in the circles she did. She did not think a man who dug up bodies for money with a smile on his face would tell the county that one of their Medical Examiners was conducting unlicensed exhumations. And if he did? Que? She should have been the person needing to give permission to have her father exhumed. It was not right that they would allow her to make the decision, but not allow her to be part of the process.
There were things she was counting on. The electricity, the one Drake had told her of, was Creation based. She hoped it would have been enough energy to preserve the body. She counted on that more than anything; on preservation. If that was not the case, she did not know what she would do, and now was not the time to think on it.
She watched him dig up the casket with the calmness that she always displayed at work, unfazed, as if this was not the most important man in her life that he was lifting from the earth. “There is space in your van, si?” she asked, knowing there was. No one had come near them, a result of the spell she was whispering as he dug, something to make them unimportant. “I have a facility.”
The facility was a warehouse, and she gave him the address. “I will give you two hundred more if you drive us there.” She showed him the money, and then she pocketed it again. “Once we arrive.”
Warren quirked an eyebrow. You’re going to do it aren’t you? That’s a whole new low you’re aiming for there. “Plenty of room! What’s a little casket between friends?” he cheerfully responded, moving to the other side of the grave. “I will take your two hundred when I drive you there, but exactly how are we going to get this casket out to my car? Not that I’m not totally awesome,” he grinned, flexing an arm, “but it’s kinda heavy. Just the two of us can’t carry this over to my wagon.”
“I am paying you for this,” she said, crossing her arms. “And very good dinero, so I expect you will find a way.”
Warren sighed with exaggeration, making it seem like he was more inconvenienced than he really was. “I think I can find one. But only since you asked so nicely. Be right back!” Skipping out to his vehicle, he ignored the annoyed protests in his mind over how it it was a dumb idea and pulled out a chain link and zip ties. It wasn’t the greatest of ideas but it would have to do for now, especially if he was going to get that bonus.
Returning, he jumped down into the hole and did his best to close the casket enough so the body wouldn’t fall out. While he didn’t have any issue with looking at dead bodies, touching them were clearly icky and so he wasn’t going to go the easier route of taking the body out of the casket. They had limited time until someone might see them so he hurriedly tied the longer piece of chain link around the casket as well before climbing back out of the grave and typing it to the bumper of his van. Without a word, he hopped into his car and slowly drove to pull up the casket out from its dirt nap. There was a lot of shudders and cursing. However slowly but surely, he was able to start pulling the casket out of the grave. Warren continued to slowly move until he was sure the casket was completely out.
Turning off the car, he poked his head out of the window to smile at the woman he was still calling Ven. “Alright, what next?” he asked.
She watched all of this with a less than entertained eye. It was disrespectful, as was his demeanor, but she had little choice but to allow him to do this his way. The casket was already above ground, after all, and she could not simply leave her father there because this man was not taking the matter as seriously as she felt he should.
Behind her, the overnight groundskeepers were coming closer, but she had to take a moment to drop to her knees and touch the wood with her fingers, feeling the indents in her father’s casket and then pressing her forehead to the dirty wood, wordlessly.
She stood, and she looked at him, as if she had done nothing strange, as if this was all very normal. “In the van, si?” she asked, because this was the logical thing. He could not expect her to move the casket on her own, surely. She walked to the passenger’s side door, and she opened it and climbed in, sitting and looking at him expectantly.
If she had known his real identity and career, she would be horrified. But she would also have understood why he had such an ease and no compunction with the dead. All a part of his training. Warren had to be okay with seeking out and killing others. He had to be okay with holes in bodies and lifeless eyes. He had to be okay with him being the cause of all that or he would have a mental breakdown. A body in a casket meant nothing to him.
Inwardly he whined when he realized he would have to move the casket himself. Luckily for you I’ve already planned for this. Hopping out of the driver’s seat, Warren grumbled as he walked to the back. Since he had stolen a delivery van, the diagonal ramp made moving the casket in the back much easier. It wasn’t a fast process but he eventually got the pine box inside. Crawling back into the van, he smiled toothily at Ven before driving to the location she gave him earlier. “Here we are,” he beamed as if he got an A on a test rather than drag a body out of a cemetery.
She craned her head to look into the back of the van, and she looked back at him. For some reason, she was nervous now. Maybe it was the huge, gaping hole outside the van, maybe it was the enclosed space with this stranger she did not know. But she was having doubts for the first time. She shook her head, shook the doubts free, and she reminded herself that if what she suspected was true, if the electricity had preserved her father’s body, then it was a sign from the fates. If not, she would not follow this path. She closed her eyes, which might have appeared strange to the man in the driver’s seat, but it did not matter. She found peace, her center, certainty during the drive, and she looked back at him when the car stopped.
“Once he is inside,” she said, indicating when she would give him the remainder of the money, and she climbed out of the van and opened the warehouse door. A large freezer sat in the middle, an autopsy table beside it, and nothing else in the space. “You may bring the box inside, and then you may leave,” she told him, holding out the money. She would do the rest.
Relax Ven. Warren had no reason to kill you! Not unless the price was right of course. He chose to ignore any of her behaviour and instead concentrated on anything that would help get him they money she promised him. Opening the back van doors, he looked between the casket and the autopsy table. “I hope that table’s got wheels. If not, I need a stretcher with some because otherwise this casket isn’t going anywhere, I won’t get my money and you won’t get your body.” His arms were crossed, in some defiance as he was curious to how she would deal with him making a demand of his own. She had been running the whole night, it seemed a shame not to needle her and see what happened as a result.
“Tienes suerte que te necessito,” she said under her breath, and she kicked the brake on the autopsy table and rolled it side, to side, to side. She looked at him, then, still waters in her expression. Only her eyes showed any type of annoyance. Outside, it was getting colder, strangely so, and she waited with growing impatience.
He had no clue what she meant by her remark, but decided that since she showed him the rolling table, it was answer enough for him. Pulling the autopsy table toward him, he adjusted it to the same level as the casket on the truck. Though Ven wouldn’t help him, he used his strength and dexterity to pull the casket onto the stretcher and lightly pushing away from the van toward the freezer. “There, I got you what you wanted. Is that enough to earn me the dinero?” Okay Warren did know a Spanish word or two.
She gave him a look that was slightly withering when he mimicked her Spanish, but she pulled the remaining money from her pocket and handed it to him. “You know nothing about this, si?” she said, because this was important. She did not want this information getting back to people, especially to Drake. “Entiendes?” she asked, walking past him to the warehouse door, which she was clearly ready to close the moment he walked outside. It was getting colder, and she had work do. “Gracias y adios,” she said, less than welcoming and almost sorry for it.
Taking the money, he folded it up and placed it in his pocket. “For this amount and this kind of job, it was like I was never even here.” He tipped his imaginary hat at the girl. “Adios, Ven. Hope to see you soon,” he smiled before returning to his van and driving off. You’ve memorized the location already haven’t you? "You know it, babycakes."