Eve Kelly (fearlessfelix) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-10-05 23:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman, catwoman |
Who Thomas Brandon (note, not the Bat) and Eve Kelly
What: Eve tries to break into an 'empty' apartment.
When: Saturday night, pre-Joker.
Where: The Aubade
Warnings: None! Just lots of gratuitous violence.
The directions are on a flimsy piece of paper, pencil difficult to read beneath the orange glare of streetlamp-light. They take her from the small and crowded bar with its fug of cigarette smoke and (badly) organized-crime, from the contact who commissions this take with eyes that dart too quickly to be anything high up in the food-chain, whose fingers are sweaty as he marks out her route with passing land-marks. They are the kind to stand out to a thief, to a criminal: banks, police stations, a couple of streets where the girls don’t scream because the pimps are harder on the clientele as a matter of necessity, the beat of a drug-dealer who serves the yuppies with their loose ties and twitching fingers. She is more caught up with the running than the directions; the grey rain that slants itself against her face, unrelenting and the feel of cold and clean air up this high. The running is a glory of limits; toes at the edge of a rooftop before a jump, a drop that leaves her heart pounding and her blood thrumming, fingertips catching at the next ledge and swinging on. It is better than joy, better than sex, this private constant push to tire herself and the streaming rain down the back of her neck and the squeak-slick of leather gloves on fire-escapes and gritty bricks do not bother her. It is only when she is outside the building, approaching from an angle that is not in a taxi-cab driven from a lawyer’s office, that Eve knows where she is. The real-estate around is the kind where art is bought in bulk, to compliment interior design sketched out by women named ‘Buffy’ or ‘Sunny’, colors matching. The security systems usually come from the same companies: heavy looking, advertising ‘hi-tech!’ when old-fashioned skills still take them out easy. The Aubade has no real difference except the people fighting and fucking and laughing and eating and sleeping inside have an extra pinch of something else -- but it’s three am and what light there is comes from the security station downstairs, a couple of windows halfheartedly lit. One, two and a silent-silver shuffle of feet on a ledge outside and she’s on the balcony: thieves’ paradise when they started designing like this, wrought iron and stone and secure enough to perch to find an in. She spots the boxy security system against the wall: red-eyed and solemn but it’s a familiar one and with a slip of the catch through cut glass, her fingers dance against it, tools in hand and it’s silenced before it can say anything. Rich people are idiots. She slides across the windowsill and into dark that is thick and stark, a security of its own that cannot be bypassed with learned tricks. The street outside may be quiet of the blare of those awake, but it is well-lit and even with sight better than most, her eyes cannot make out anything just yet. Her feet are dust-light on the floor, her movements small and careful as Eve waits with poorly contained impatience. Usually the apartment at the top corner of Aubade was empty. Thomas spent his days in meetings and his nights in the warehouse or on the streets, and he had no time for a luxury apartment that offered little shelter from the sun and little but a large closet filled with suits he hadn't worn. Last year he hired an interior decorator and after a little while she had come back with an alarming bill for the furnishings, but that was about as much effort as he put into the place. Every time he came back he noted that it was dusty, but it always slipped his mind to have it cleaned. The quiet watcher would note the arrival of the occupant by the peculiarity of the light patterns: the long stretch of yellow light from the hallway, its subsequent narrowing, and then the return of the gloom with the addition of one shadow. Automatically he reached out and patted out a pattern on the number pad that deactivated the already silent alarm, and, tired from several nights abroad, he didn't notice the absence of the tiny red and green indicator lights. As was his usual habit, Thomas waited for his eyes to adjust, ignored the plethora of lamps and light switches, and made his way forth in the half-darkness. A dark garment--several hundred dollars in thread count--was tossed over the back of a couch as he passed the window, but his features were still hidden. He walked back into the interior of the apartment. The sound of a shower running penetrated the relative silence. She heard the swish-sweep of fabric over fabric as the coat slid down the back of the couch, expensive suiting on plush silk: Eve was motionless in the dark, body like a bowstring tight and taut and poised for movement. No one came home at three am unless poured into town-cars and guided up stairs by the deferential: whoever it was was drunk, very likely but the home-owner’s presence wasn’t a part of the goddamn plan. The security desk in the lobby was too quick to respond to careless dialing: the wealth of those who could live here was too great to risk being anything but zealous. The in-and-out job just became a ‘in-and-get the hell out’ job and one for which re-numeration was going to climb unless the greasy blot of an underling wanted to argue (and she’d enjoy the argument). The hiss of the shower was balm: a cover for movement that seemed louder in an awake apartment than one buried in sleep or emptiness. Already the apartment was rich in grey-scale: furniture placed to look grand and imposing that Eve wove around. The window she’d come through, she could see now, was not best placed: a couch lay between it and the rest of the room, hedging in the exit in a way that sparked a quickly-quelled demand for caution. All soft-touch and quicksilver sliding movement, she began the hunt for the item on order, fingers roaming over expensive, impersonal things on tables, the art on the walls. An apartment worth hitting again with a less tailor-made intent, and one where her own surveillance and keen-bright eyes established the risk factors. The shower was still running when Thomas caught sight of the silent movement out of the corner of his eye, movement that didn't belong in his apartment. He didn't do much thinking as to the why and the how. The extra security had been installed after another Aubade resident's report of a break-in, and the motion sensors were no joke. Someone had just made it past the window locks maybe seconds after he deactivated the alarm (it never crossed his mind that it might have been deactivated already). Three AM, he had an intruder. Moving on silent bare feet and feeling extraordinarily light and fast without his usual extra sixty pounds of armor, Thomas slid into the living room behind the intruder, who was slight and black-clad, hallmarks of a professional. He got close fast, and since his height and weight were an advantage, he stepped out in front of her from the hallway and caught an arm. With his larger, forward hand on the inside of her wrist and his other hand behind her elbow, he pushed her wrist up and her elbow in, folding her arm against her shoulder, stepping neatly under her arm to force her back. No challenge, no shout, just the attack from the larger, bare-chested shadow in silence. Nothing to hear or see or catch -- the moment Eve’s attention was snatched from the statuette on the side-table, bent to see in the non-light if it bore resemblance to the grainy photo she’d been shown of the haul demanded tonight -- and then all at once too close and silent, and her wrist and arm caught and twisted with dojo-skill and professionalism. Security? Or a dangerous occupant to steal from and one who moved like water, fluid and draped in shadow -- and then she was pushed back, falling and the indignity of it was a bitten-back hiss of breath as even ability could not twist her out of the grip. Her legs could move though, and with her free hand thrown out for balance and her back dropping against the floor, she engaged momentum in the way of what she’d learned in long hours, along with what benefit that ability could provide, intent on anything but being beneath a weight that was sizably greater than hers. He did not expect her to react with skill; something about being in a place that was markedly his, or perhaps the fact that the intruder was so small--either way, it was a rookie miscalculation that he should have grown out of nine years ago. As she fell backward his grip on her arm slightly loosened as he tipped forward instead of hauling back, and he felt a slim wrist turn ninety degrees to escape his grip. A lesser man would have exclaimed in surprise but Thomas just stayed loose as he went over and tried to avoid getting a knee in the gut. Fortunately he'd already stepped past her so once he disengaged he didn't have to worry about getting kicked-- More like strangled. Scissoring legs caught his neck and their positions abruptly reversed, and Thomas found himself temporarily pinned by his assailant in the semidarkness. There wasn't a great danger yet, as he caught an ankle and yanked down to prevent a chokehold by thighs and he had an arm free. He barely registered the pouring water from the shower, still on in the bedroom. The thief was a woman. Her assumption about him being drunk was obviously in error: not a whiff of alcohol. "What are you doing in my house?" The water drummed on: he’d heard her over that? She wasn’t as good as she thought she was and that underling was getting strung up by his meaty innards -- but her assailant went down as she twisted her wrist quick as knives and the training kicked in and then she was astride a man who was neither drunk nor your average expensive-art homeowner, and her ankle wrapped in a hand that was as capable as the dojo-master’s. He'd fallen with the ease of the skilled, someone who knew what they were doing and that was more dangerous than someone able to reach out and dial security. She needed to be free in order to get to the window, to bail -- mayday, mayday, mission aborted, twenty grand was not enough to play ninja with a half naked man in the dark, but Eve couldn’t hold her tongue even when it was good for her. “I would have thought that was obvious. Although you weren’t supposed to be home,” her smile was a sliver-glint in dark, the pride of a professional mixed with the gloating of one too obviously under-estimated. “Buy those mass-produced alarm systems and you’ll lose every time.” She was a little too high on his chest, and he wrapped an ankle around hers, trapping her leg to his side as he shoved one hip up and rolled. His weight, a full two-twenty or so of solid muscle, sat low on her hips, right in the center of her body, preventing her from using the same move he'd just used on her. The change of position gave him enough light to see her face and clothing in more detail, but the reverse was the same: Thomas Brandon, CEO, third to possess that name, was apparently able to defend his home with more than alarms. His eyes narrowed. "What do you want?" What little light there was was merciless, and it took only a second’s look to recognize the features: the jaw and nose of a newspaper photographer’s fantasy, and the poster-boy of charity work and established industry in Seattle. Now she knew why their base offer had been so easy to up, the job had more damn risk than just finding out Thomas Brandon had skills greater than his business acumen. But he’d rolled her and her moment of brief-bright triumph was lost, trapped against the floor -- she pulled in her arms and slid them behind her: the weight heavy enough to make it painful, but at least her hands were free. Eve shifted and wriggled, fish on a line squirming for freedom, trying for weak points and finding only muscle. One hand slid free from behind her back, eyes shining from behind that mask, and as she curled fingers against his forearm, “A house on the beach, a trust fund, maybe a pony,” her foot pushed against the outside of his leg, hand wrapped around his arm and with her feet pushing against the ground she thrust upper-body against all that weight in an attempt to throw him off. Thomas didn't have time to protest that he'd never had a pony before they were rolling again. She knew better than to stay close this time, since not only was he heavier and taller, he had as much training in floor-work as she did. More, he knew, but this was not the time to be counting years of experience. She was up faster than he had given her credit for, and she dodged when he went for the outside of her knee, so he got up to pursue, rolling off his shoulder and up onto one knee, than two legs. Slacks, no belt, a body that was hard with muscle that you didn't get from sitting behind a desk. It was too dark to see the scars, too dark to see anything but the outline of his face as he lunged at her again, putting himself between her and the door. She had fallen back into a ready stance, loose and fluid and as Thomas Brandon -- who apparently did more than run on a treadmill in his lunch hour (there was a sweeping assessment that was not without some measure of admiration) slid between her and her exit, Eve moved snap-quick before he could stop her. Left leg bent and her hips thrown into it, a rotating kick precision-aimed at the left side of his head: move out the damn way or I’ll make you, her arms loose and steady. All that solid muscle and corded strength would be given true feminine appreciation if it weren’t testament to how difficult getting out of this would be. He was bigger and stronger and from a moment or two’s grappling on his hardwood floors, he was better. Was there anything the man couldn’t do? It had been some time since Thomas had fought a skilled opponent, but not so long that he didn't remember what it was like. This woman. This woman was fast, and she deserved the term. She was too quick for him to get outside the kick and too flexible for him to get under or over it, so he stepped in before it, taking what amounted to a high knee into his shoulder where it bounced off a bicep that felt like iron. He'd have a bruise, but that was hardly new. There was no pulling punches because she was small or female. Inside her guard, she had about a quarter of a second to slide around a low driving punch to her solar plexus that would have knocked the breath out of her as she landed five feet away. The adrenaline was moving now and if he stopped to think, he'd realize that he was enjoying it. Maybe he was proud of the floors: he seemed to want her to get to know them well. There had been no avoiding such a reaction, she’d thought to drive him aside and he moved forward. For the second time in so many minutes, Eve’s ass got acquainted with polished hardwood and her breath escaped her in a painful punch of air, but she was able to recoup in the seconds’ worth of distance five feet gave her. Her feet pushed up beneath her, a twist and a spring and she was up -- her breathing ragged but adrenaline an ice-kick of heady excitement that dulled some of the pain of getting the air kicked out of her. They didn’t fight like this in dojos or gyms -- a slam toward the jaw, knocking aside his attack with the other hand. Too easy, quick as it was. Her chin tipped, her smile sly-bright now: Eve didn’t need to think to enjoy testing herself. This wasn’t a girly tussle where the terms changed on her. In the dark, chest rising and falling in black leather jacket and hearing and feeling as much as seeing the counter-strikes -- it was a kind of exhilaration that would more than make up for shitty intel. Thomas hadn't been in a gym in a long, long time. Even longer since he was under a roof that could feasibly be called a dojo. She got him good with that backfist, and his head rolled sideways as he retreated in a quick arc that brought him back around to face her. He rolled his jaw to make sure it still worked. Not bad. He still blocked her exit, aided by a small end table and the couch, loose and intent and slowly wavering forth and back as he waited for her to try to escape again. "Tell me what you're here for, and I might let you go." His palms were up in front of his chest, open to her, but it was a deceptive stance, ready. She looked at him, and it was clearly withering behind the mask: scorn easy enough to read even in semi-darkness. “Sure you will.” Because men who worked themselves until they fought like that, stepped aside and showed the metaphorical door. In a dojo, the fight ended when they said it did, opponents shook hands and stepped aside. This wasn’t a dojo and they weren’t friends. “I’m a thief. I’m here to steal,” she spelt it out for him, clear as it was condescending, and her eyes swept between door and the couch back: jumping it might work, but only if she was quicker than he was. A kick then, leaning back on the right leg, whipping up the left to lash out and keep him at distance before a turn and a spring toward it. Thomas was actually serious about the offer, but he was not surprised that she wasn't all that eager to take him up on it. He had been waiting for her attempt to get past, and the feint plus the spring didn't surprise him. He dodged out of the way of the kick as he was meant to, but instead of just faltering back he swept out a kick that was so smooth and trained it moved like silk over sand, then smashed into the little table. Tipping and shattering a glass bowl that had been atop it, it skidded behind the couch and was right where she would land if she went over where he thought she would. He got the whiff of the perfume as she swept past. Oriental spices--cardamom, black tea... Usual... Familiar. It would come to him. "Steal what?" Broken pieces of glass jumped where she’d been planning on leaping to -- forced to change direction mid-course, her spine twisted in a way it shouldn’t and where she ought to have fallen awkwardly, she landed back on her feet but not the way she’d wanted to go. Too close: keeping Brandon at kicking range was the only way she could feasibly get the distance needed to make the jump again. Her foot wove around his ankle, a tug -- a very simple take-down but tacked onto that turn in the air, perhaps.. “That was expensive,” Eve had noticed the bowl before. “But it wasn’t what I came for.” That landing went beyond impressive and into inhuman. Fascinated despite himself, Thomas mechanically stepped back out of range of another kick, sacrificing his ground and walking right into the trip. He had taken worse falls, however. He didn't throw out a hand to catch himself, which would have risked a broken wrist, but instead slightly arched his spine, took the impact at a barely perceptible roll, and used his momentum to spring from knee back up to feet in a crouch. "You're here for something then." His tone was flat and merciless. "You could have just asked me, Kelly." He had identified that perfume, and with her build, height, and that sardonic tone--it was hard not to guess. He waited to see the effect of the comment. He devoutly wished she hadn't seen him in the mask, but that conversation had been short and certainly not as physical as this one. Kelly. Her eyes flashed wide behind the mask, and there was a thin a hiss of breath through her teeth -- Brandon had disproved the notion that he was all business in a suit, but she hadn’t expected that. Man was entirely too clever to have a deadbeat security system -- although leaving himself in the apartment certainly counted. The mouth between the mask twisted, a barely perceptible flicker of eyes toward the window. Glass was a bitch to avoid, but the game had just become for keeps. “And booked a slot in with your secretary, Brandon?” Who probably didn’t schedule in training for this kind of movement -- Eve’s body coiled tight -- sloppy, they would have said in the gym, telegraphing where she wanted to get to -- but it was a distance that pulled on ability-skill and training both and she leaped for the still-open window with impressive force. As soon as he said it he realized his miscalculation. No--not a miscalculation. Miscalculation was a nice word. This was a mistake. He should not have come after an intruder in his house, not without a shirt on, not without calling the police. It was blatantly obvious that he was more than the business suit, and at least she had bothered to wear a mask. Thomas just wasn't used to being two people. He lived by himself, without company to account his actions to. In Musings a proxy had handled all his business affairs to his satisfaction and despite Alfie's pointed observations, he had not involved himself in society either. He had his out purpose, and under stress he did not think to hide it. It was, without doubt, a mistake. A big one. She leapt, he lunged, and his hands brushed the stir of air after her passing, and nothing more. He landed flat on his stomach, winced at the glass, and watched her reach the window. Her fingertips brushed the sill, her palms pressed flat to push herself on and carry the momentum through: Eve was out, night air and rain a welcome greeting after the unforgivably stupid course the night’s work had taken. From the balcony, a frippery of stone and wrought iron -- a smaller version of the solid ones for the occupier to sit out on, she turned back to look, water streaming down her face and dripping down the back of her neck. Brandon was interesting, too interesting and she risked the second just to look back but the smugness of victory was tinged with worry. Regardless of what Brandon was or wasn’t, he was powerful and he wasn’t someone she’d have cared to share her penchant for breaking and entering with. Empty-handed, Eve jumped and dropped in free-fall, until she hit the ground rolling. A second later, up and on her feet and running, away from a prospect far more trouble than she’d signed on for. |