Kasumi Goto has more to talk about! (shipseveryone) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-08-23 20:40:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, !trigger warning, giles babcock, kasumi goto |
Who: Kasumi Goto and Giles Babcock
What: Their super-secret heist goes sideways
Where: Babcock's mom's mansion
When: The wee hours of Saturday morning
Warning: MA for language, ultra-violence, NPC death
Babcock stepped inside the darkened mansion, his eyes darting nervously. Paintings that hung on the walls were now slabs of black, and the moonlight shone against the marble floor tile.
There were no broken windows or forced locks; Kasumi had merely done her thing. He was impressed with how she so easily glided past any obstacle as if it wasn’t even there. Babcock didn’t know much about art, but seeing Kasumi work was what he thought art should be. It almost embarrassed him to see her work in such a masterful way, reminding him of his own past robberies. He would smash doors and stuff his pockets before leaving. Kasumi applied tender pressure to a situation and it was a joy to see.
Even so, Babcock could feel his heart thumping. It had been a long time since he’d been in the home of his mother: Lorena Boylan, 59, wife to Carter Boylan and formerly Lorena Babcock. He cringed when he remembered back to when he first found her, convinced in his own mind that she would accept him with open arms. She’s reacted with disgust and hatred, paying him off and making it very clear that a further visit was not in his best interests.
Well, this wasn’t a visit. It was a robbery.
As advanced as the old bag's locks were, they were primitive compared to what Kasumi's dreams had taught her. They'd melted like butter. She was a little surprised how easy it was, and wondered if she should be a little scared at how natural it felt.
When they entered, Kasumi found the electronic alarm and used her omnitool to disable it. She certainly looked the part, in the bodysuit that had 'arrived' from the dreams. Now that the security had been dismantled, Kasumi took some time to look around. "Where to start?" she asked Giles, pleased to see he hadn't been exaggerating the woman's wealth.
Babcock stepped further into the large dining room, picking up a piece at random with a gloved hand. It was small, the size of a bobblehead, and was made from some kind of carved stone. It depicted a man begging in ...water? Mud? “This looks artistic,” he said. “Not sure what it’s worth, though.”
Giles set it back down, and opened the table drawer. “Spoons. Silver?” he asked aloud, going to pick up one of the ornamental pieces only to bump his fingers against a glass case.
Kasumi shook her head at the spoons. "Even if it's good, you'd have to take the whole set before it's worth stealing." It would have helped if they'd known more about Babcock's mother. If she kept any collections, any prized possessions. Kasumi would just have to make a few dream-educated guesses.
A few of the paintings looked to be grandiose portraits of Lorena. Kasumi skipped over those to find one that looked genuine. Using her omnitool, she dislodged the canvas from the frame and rolled it into a tube.
Giles walked over to another painting, gazing at it for a moment. It was just a red dot on a white canvas. He didn’t understand it, but assumed Kasumi would. “How about this one?” he asked, gripping it by the frame and pulling it off the wall. As he did, he felt the painting it against something. As he lowered the picture, Giles saw what it had bumped against: a wall safe.
“Kasumi,” said Giles, breaking into a grin.
Kasumi moved over to him, smiling when she saw what Giles had found. "That's just adorable." It was a combination safe, and everything. Just like in the movies. Her gadget might have been meant more for electronics, but it could amplify the sound so that she could hear the pins clicking. After a few minutes, the safe popped open. She took a step back to let Giles examine the contents.
Giles looked in, unsure what to expect. Perhaps giant sacks of money with a dollar sign on them. Instead, there were several small black cases. He popped one open. “These are diamonds,” he said dumbly. “Christ, look at the size of ‘em...”
Kasumi didn't consider herself a particularly greedy person. She was happy with her status in life; if she'd wanted to be wealthy, she wouldn't have run away. Kasumi was motivated more by the thrill, and an appreciation for art.
Still, diamonds. Kasumi thought it was only fair that Giles have first pick of the goods, but she certainly hoped she would get a share of those. She was practically drooling. "They're gorgeous."
Giles thought of the ring he’d given Kirsty, and looked at the diamonds. It didn’t take a genius to figure out these were worth a great deal: God only knew why the Boylans weren’t in an even bigger mansion.
“Okay, we get the diamonds, the paintings,” he said. “I’ll check upstairs.” And then he smelled it. A waft of cigarette smoke, and then came a sound like a spray. Babcock froze as his mother walked into the room.
Lorena Boylan wasn’t as fat as she was in the dreams, where she’d threatened to crush her chair beneath her. She was still a hefty weight, but a life of some wealth had given her a more youthful exuberance. Lorena took a puff on her cigarette, immediately following it up by spraying the air with a can of freshener. When she saw Giles and Kasumi, her eyes narrowed and mouth pursed. “What in the name of Jesus our Lord are you doing here?” she said, every word dripping with hateful venom. Giles felt himself grow smaller in her presence. His immediate reaction, bizarrely, was to apologize.
“Hey, mom,” he said slowly.
Kasumi reached out for one of the boxes of diamonds when she heard the woman. She cursed under her breath. "Time to go." Lorena was between them and the front door, but there was a back door. They could make it. Of course, the woman knew who Giles was, and would certainly report it. How were they going to get out of this one?
“Nobody’s going anywhere,” snapped Lorena, stubbing out her cigarette against the wall. “I know what you’re doing here, Giles. You’re back asking for me to be involved. Will you never rest until you’ve destroyed my life?”
Babcock was quiet for a moment, and then his eyes grew focused as his fists clenched. “Your life? You never put any value on my life, why should I give a shit about yours?”
“Because you have to. Because you want your mommy,” said Lorena. “I would’ve thought you’d have grown up by now.” Lorena moved toward the phone. “You, girl. Did you know this idiot came to me before? He was crying, like a child.”
There was their way out! "Yes!" Kasumi answered. "Giles just wanted you to be involved." She put a hand on Babcock's shoulder, hoping she could calm him down. "To tell you that he just got married, and to show you pictures from the wedding."
But there was Lorena, inching toward the phone. Kasumi really should have done some more extensive testing on the omnitool and how it worked with technology here. She was basically just guessing at this point. Maybe, just maybe she could overload the fuses and knock out the power and the phone lines.
Lorena stopped for a moment. “You got someone to marry you? Russian stripper looking for a green card?” She shook her head dismissively, and went to grab the phone. When she did, a spark ran along the cord and smoke hissed from the keypad. “What the-”
Giles shrugged away from Kasumi’s touch. The anger inside him was beginning to bubble, and expand, and race through every pulsing blood vessel in his body. He couldn’t comprehend it, he couldn’t understand why she hated him so much. Why she didn’t want him. But there was another voice suspiciously similar to hers inside his head, a voice that told him it was obvious: because he was a screw-up. A failure. A convict. A psycho killer. Babcock positioned near the doorway. “Sit down, mom. I got a question for you.”
Lorena stared at him, and then sat down. “You think you have any right to ask me questions, Giles? You want to know why I abandoned you? Why I gave you up? Because I already gave you an answer when you first crawled out from under your rock to find me: you’re a mistake from my youth. You should’ve been an abortion but I had ethics. And wasn’t I right? Look at you now. Stealing from your own mother!”
It was like he was being pulled in a hundred separate directions. His thoughts flew apart, and grief slipped right in beside the rage that was growing with increasing, terrifying clarity on his face. “You can’t do that,” he muttered quietly. Then he slammed his fist into the table, splintering the wood and shouting at the top of his lungs, “YOU CAN’T DO THAT! You can’t deny me one second and act like I owe you anything the next! You can’t!” Babcock’s breaths were coming in deep, bull-like grunts now. His eyes had become intense and fierce.
"Giles," Kasumi called, firmly, trying to defuse the situation. Her focus had to shift away from getting away clean to getting Babcock to see straight. She was even prepared to leave behind the diamonds. The woman couldn't prosecute them for stealing if nothing was missing, and breaking and entering would be hard to prove with Kasumi's handiwork.
"Giles, she's not important. Let's just go." Kasumi’s words sounded calm. She didn’t take her eyes off Giles.
Babcock’s eyes locked with his mother’s. He remembered the cigarettes rolling on his flesh, the smoke foaming upward from her lips. But he heard Kasumi, and he felt somewhat soothed. “Know what? You’re nothing to me,” he said.
“You want to know why I gave you up?” asked his mother, the scorn clear on her face. “Because you were never meant to be alive. You were less than a mistake. You were just some slippery little creature that spilled out of me. And you’ve proven me right, haven’t you? Breaking in here, a common criminal. Just like your dad. Your great dad, who raped boys and girls up and down a highway. Now you’re just like he is....a brain-dead criminal on his way to a bad end.”
Each word dripped with venom and hatred. Babcock could almost smell the intensity with which loathed him. And he felt his own rage build back up. He clenched his fist, and then released it. “You’re nothing. You’re nothing,” he muttered, and turned to Kasumi. “Let’s get out of here. She won’t tell anyone we were here. She’d be too ashamed for people to know about having me for a son.”
“Stay away from that boy, young lady,” called his mother. “He’s crazy and stupid.”
Giles took Kasumi by the arm. “Let’s go,” he said, and then it was on the verge of being over. But Lorena spoke again.
“That boy isn’t just dumb-” called Lorena. Babcock felt his blood freeze in fear and boil in anger. “He’s been struck dumb.”
Babcock nodded silently to himself, and turned back to his mother. With alarming speed, he moved over to her and gripped her by the throat. She let out a quick gasp of nicotine-scented breath before he moved his hands upwards. And with that, Giles Babcock ripped his mother’s head from her shoulders. Blood flowed from the stump of her neck down her body in rivulets. Giles held the head close to his own. “Never again,” he snarled, and suddenly crushed the head in his hands it was an orange. Blood and flesh and chunks of blood splattered his face and chest.
Kasumi's eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. True, it hadn't been long since Kasumi had fought the reapers. She'd killed husks. In her dreams, she'd even killed a few humans on Omega. But those were dreams. And even there, she'd never seen someone's head ripped off. Even the reapers didn't do that.
"Oh my god."
Kasumi took several steps backwards, biting back a scream as Giles crushed the head. She didn't even know what she was looking at. How could this have happened? She knew Giles had a past, but she had never expected this.
Giles let his arms hang limply by his side, blood dripping. Lorena’s headless body slumped in the chair. “I had to do it,” he said distantly, after a moment. “She ruined my life. And my other life.”
Babcock turned back to Kasumi. His face was empty, his tone coldly even. “We’re going to take what we came here for. And then we’re going to burn this entire place down. Burn away everything.”
"Giles." She was already in this too deep. Way too deep. She didn't plan to add arson to the list. She wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. Her instinct was to just run. Turn on her stealth if she needed, and get out. But even after what he'd done, it was still Giles. At least, she thought he was. And she didn't intend to just leave him to become whatever this was.
"Giles, snap out of it." Those dead eyes, that cold tone.. She pulled back a hand to slap him across the face, hoping to shake him out of it.
Babcock barely reacted, and then his eyes moved to Kasumi. “There are fingerprints. Evidence. We have to destroy it all,” he said slowly. “She’s a chain smoker. They’ll blame it on her.“
Kasumi shook her head. "I used gloves on the locks and the safe. We'll wipe down the door handles, anything you touched." Was she being reckless? Was he right? In the dreams she'd broken into lots of places, she'd never had to burn anything down. Of course, people didn't usually get killed.
"Giles," she was almost pleading now. "Wake up."
Babcock looked beyond her for a moment, and exhaled. He wiped away the red from his face. “She deserved to die,” he said. “You’ve known people who’ve deserved to die. You must have.” Giles took a further second to collect himself. “Let’s go, then. And Kasumi....” It was his turn to plead. “Don’t tell Kirsty about this. Don’t tell anyone.”
Kasumi didn't say anything. What was there to say? Maybe there were people that deserved to die, but to rip their heads off? She shook her head, turning away from him to move toward the door.
"I won't tell Kirsty."
Babcock glanced over his shoulder at his mother’s corpse. “She don’t need to hear this. Not yet,” he said, and looked back. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. Now.!
Kasumi was wiping down the front door, the inside of the safe, the picture frame Giles had moved. She was putting things back the way they were--minus the diamonds, of course.
"Go out the back door," Kasumi instructed, avoiding looking at Giles or his dead mother. "Leave it open. They'll think an animal got in. No one's going to believe a human did that." Kasumi wasn't entirely sure she believed it herself.
Babcock started forward, and then looked back. “An animal did,” he said dispassionately.