Neena Thurman is getting too old for this shit (godplaysdice) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2014-11-09 20:27:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, clarice ferguson (blink), neena thurman (domino) |
Who: Neena, Clarice, and random NPC Thugs.
What: Moneylender Scare Tactics gone horribly horribly wrong.
When: This evening, around 8pm
Where: Lucky Shot Guns, Neena's shop.
Rating/Warnings: R. Warnings for gun violence, blood, and severe character injury.
Status: Complete.
The past few weeks had been filled with highs and lows. There was her birthday, and Neena still considered that day ‘the day that shall not be named’. Another year closer to forty, and this time she really, really felt it. Clarice had pampered her and cheered her up and even assured her she didn’t look any older, but none of that mattered. She felt older. In her bones. And at a time in her life where she was about to take on serious missions again, she found herself questioning her ability to do them.
She’d been questioning that for a few weeks now, and that wasn’t the only thing her mind tended to wander off and dwell on. Dream information definitely wasn’t helping, what with Nate dying and aliens kidnapping her and Piotr choosing something else over her. It wasn’t the first time a guy had ditched Neena. By now she almost knew how to let it roll off her back.
But what she’d never been good at was letting go when the people in her life were in trouble and she couldn’t do anything about it. Logan had lost his healing factor. The way that man lived, the enemies that they’d made? Neena didn’t think he’d live through the next year. He didn’t know how to live when he couldn’t get right back up. And he had poisonous metal covering his bones.
Fuck, it was a mess.
She’d buried herself in her work to try and deal with it, taking the closing shifts at her gun shop all by herself. The shop was usually slow in the evening, and Neena wasn’t exactly the type of woman that was scared to be alone by herself at night.
Though with everything that had happened to her so far, she probably should have been.
Nevertheless, that night was a slow night, and Neena decided she might as well close up a few minutes early. She took a pit stop in her office to knock back a shot and grab her keys when she heard the familiar jingle of the door opening. That seemed pretty strange, considering how dead it had been all night. Something told her to be wary, but she let that roll off her back, too, and headed back out to the main room to see what was up.
A man with tawny skin and dark hair was standing in the center of her shop. He had on a nice pair of jeans and was wearing a loose shirt over wifebeater, which made Neena laugh, “I was just thinking about a guy like you. That’s pretty funny. Welcome to my shop, what can I help you find today? Bear in mind we’re close to closing time so I can’t really let you down into the range or anything, but I can definitely show you around.”
She stepped behind the counter. The man gave her a look, and folded his hands in front of him, “You know a guy, Booker DeWitt?”
Oh for fuck’s sake. Neena rolled her eyes a bit and folded her arms over her chest, “I haven’t worked with that asshole in months, what the hell do you want with him?”
Was this guy mafia? Neena squinted a bit as she looked him over, surveying him in a way that she normally didn’t bother using on customers. This guy wasn’t a customer anymore, not in her mind, but was obviously a threat. She wondered if she’d pissed off the Mafia recently, or what the hell Booker had gotten himself into. The man glanced deeper into the shop, then inched closer to the counter, “He owes my employer some money, see. We’ve done everything we can to get the man to pay up, but he’s being pretty sketchy.”
“So… now we’re on the part where you hurt his friends to drive the point home, right?” Neena snorted her nose a bit and pulled off her jacket. If shit was going to get real, she wanted her arms free to move.
“Somethin’ like that, yeah. Sorry, Lady. You seem like a nice enough person, but I got a job to do here. Why don’t you make this easy on yourself and bring out a chair, we’ll sit you down, tie you up and bruise up your pretty little face, then call it a night.” The guy smirked at Neena and slammed a fist into his palm. He had a dangerous glint in his eye, one that told her he was kind of hoping she didn’t want to just make this easy for him.
That suited her just fine. She leapt over the counter and slammed her fist into his face, “Yeah, I don’t think so. How about I bruise YOUR pretty little face?”
The hired thug was experienced with this kind of thing and sturdy enough not to go down with one punch, even from a lady as lucky as Neena was. He barked out a laugh and retaliated with a swing of his own, one that never really landed on its target.
This was going to be a challenge, Neena decided. She grinned a bit and bounced around to swing at him again, though now that he was prepared for her attack it was harder for her to land a hit as well.
So they went on for a few minutes, trying to trade blow for blow, until it became clear to the thug that he wasn’t going to gain any ground with mere fists, alone. He reached into his back pocket and brandished a butterfly knife, “Alright, bitch. I didn’t want to have to cut you up to prove a point here, but you’re leaving me no choice.”
That only made Neena laugh more loudly as she pulled a pistol out from under her counter, “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to bring a knife to a gun fight, kid?”
Of course, this was a gun store, and the thug wasn’t exactly unprepared for this kind of scenario. Neena also had a name for herself in that world. One that he hadn’t taken that seriously, seeing as she’d been retired for a while. But he’d at least taken it seriously enough to bring backup.
He stared into the barrel of her gun, and she realised that he’d probably stared into enough of them that this situation wasn’t really that scary to him. But she hoped she was intimidating anyway when she ordered, “Now I want you to stick your tail between your legs and scurry the hell out of my shop. Go back to your employer and tell him that Booker DeWitt’s friends aren’t so easily intimidated, and that if he wants his money he’s going to have to be patient and wait like anyone else.”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll just do that.” He replied, while rolling his eyes. But he didn’t back down, and it wasn’t until something cold pressed into her back that she realised why. The asshole had brought someone else along, someone who must have snuck up on her while she’d been distracted.
“That’s my pal, Jimmy. Now it’s two to one, and I still got orders. You’re gonna give me that gun, and we’re gonna go about this evening like we planned. You know how I know this for a fact? YOU ain’t got a pal named Jimmy in this shop.”
That made Neena roll her eyes. She stood there, gun still pointed at thug number one, while mentally thinking through her options. It wasn’t like her to just give up, and two versus one was hardly a new situation for her. She could take these guys. It was better if she solved this problem before Booker learned about it.
Behind her, the safety clicked off. The first guy - who Neena decided she’d just mentally call ‘cupcake’ - grinned at her, “You don’t put that gun down, and I’ll let Jimmy shoot you. HE wanted you left alive, but at this point I figure you put up enough of a fight that it’d just look like self defense anyway. Don’t you think so, Jimmy?”
Jimmy grunted.
Neena thought this was the kind of situation that would be hysterically funny to watch happen to someone else. But she wasn’t someone else, and she was tired of fucking around with this. So she held the gun up and made a fancy motion like she was about to set it down on her counter top. Then she twirled, and went to grab Jimmy’s gun out of his hand.
As she twirled, there was a blinding flash of pink light. It threw the two thugs off momentarily, and Neena let out a shout of victory as she easily disarmed Jimmy. Clarice blinked into the scene, a smoothie in one hand and takeout in the other. Cupcake hadn’t been expecting any extra company, and before Clarice or even Neena could take in the entire situation, he pulled the trigger.
The gun let out a popping noise, like a firecracker had gone off down the street, only the noise was there in the shop. Neena’s ears began to ring. Burning pain exploded in her side as the bullet clipped past her, and she let out a bit of a shocked squeaking noise as she dropped to her knees. His gun slipped out of her hand and clattered to the floor. Jimmy was a hell of a crack shot… but wait, she’d disarmed him, hadn’t she?
Clarice didn’t feel anything at first. She dropped the bag of takeout, flinging lances in the direction of the thugs. Her body felt suddenly numb. She took a step towards Neena, then faltered, dropping to the ground and pressing a hand against her chest. Blood pooled around her fingers, red on pink, before flowing over and onto the floor.
Everything felt like it was falling apart around her as Neena pushed her hand against her side. The thugs had disappeared into thin air and there was only one woman in the entire world that she knew could create a flash of pink light, but it wasn't until a shock of purple hair fell to the floor next to her that she realised the horrifying truth.
Her fiance was on the floor next to her, and she was bleeding out. Her own wounds were superfluous. She wanted to scream internally and curl up into a ball, hide somewhere and let her voice leave her throat, but Clarice was going to die if she didn't do something. She had to do something. She had to move.
Neena mentally kicked herself upside the head, enough of a kick start to grab her jacket off the counter with her hand and turn. She grabbed Clarice's hands up and quickly looked under them. She immediately wished she hadn't. It was bad, very bad, but Neena pressed her jacket in against the wound and grabbed onto Clarice's hand, "You're going... you're going to be alright, you hear me? Baby... I've got you. OKay? I've got you."
She made a gurgling sound and grasped at Neena's shoulder with one bloody hand. Shouldn't this hurt? She thought that it did hurt but she felt too numb to really care. Clarice still wasn't sure what was even going on. Neena had been attacked. Her chest was warm. "youkay?"
"I'm fine... Don't even worry about me, okay?" There was blood all over the floor of her shop, she was certain that the majority of it was still Clarice's, and the entire thought made her insides cold. She squeezed Clarice's hand even more firmly to reassure herself that the other woman was still there, and then let go so that she could press down on the wound.
"I just have to... I have to call someone, but I'm right here. OKay? Don't GO anywhere, don't you dare go anywhere, Clarice. If you see a light you better tell that light that it's not your time yet."
She wasn't good at these kinds of things. She wasn't good at saying goodbye in any iteration or form and when people she loved got hurt it just made her feel helpless. What good was being lucky when it couldn't save the people you cared about? No good at all.
Her cell phone was in her back pocket and she pulled it out without even thinking to wipe her bloody hand off. The 9-1-1 call went through and Neena could hardly even believe how steady her voice was as she called for an ambulance.
“I don’t...I’m not going place...What…?” Clarice tilted her head down to look at herself. “Oh… Oh…” She pawed helplessly at Neena’s arm. “It’s. okay… it’s okay. jus put me in the crystal…”
There was nothing left to do but wait, and Neena hoped she was quick enough. She grabbed onto the hand that was pawing at her, and looked down into Clarice's eyes. Her tone was gentle, and a bit rough with unshed tears, "There's no crystal here to put you in, baby. But it's going to be okay. The paramedics are coming and they're going to fix you, so you better just stay with me until then."
The pink woman gripped Neena’s hand with sudden, surprising strength. “Always...kinda..you know..that I’d be the one...without you.”
"I know..." Neena lived a dangerous life, and she was older. She didn't have portals to escape with. Everyone that knew them would have figured she'd be the one dying first. She'd even made up a will recently because of it, "... But you're not. You aren't... you aren't. You're going to stay right here so that I can die before you like I'm supposed to."
Clarice closed her eyes, because that was simply easier. She was terrified. She’d never been this hurt before, even in the dreams. Really the only thing worse would be if their positions were reversed. Clarice had lost nearly everyone in her dreams. Sometimes she felt like she was too clingy to the people she still had.
It felt like forever before the paramedics arrived. Neena kept pressure on the wound, but was otherwise scared to move or even breathe. She only took a few moments to ball her shirt against her own wound, but most of her attention remained on Clarice.
Neena didn't believe in God. Too many things had happened in her life, she couldn't believe there was some deity up there that allowed those things to happen. But she squeezed her eyes shut and sent out a silent prayer as the Paramedics looked Clarice over and loaded her into the ambulance.
She didn't even let them go near her. Clarice was more important.
The police arrived a few seconds later, and she was forced to stay behind to answer questions as the ambulance sped away. Neena watched it go and added a threat to her prayer. God, if you DO exist, she better not die while I'm not there. If she dies in that ambulance I will come right after her to find you and kick you in the face.