Who: Henry & Kenzi What: Checking up on the former kidnapee with milkshakes When: Not long after Henry's rescue Where: Henry's Apartment (with the creepy hole) Rating/Warnings: Mentions of murder and stuff, but low otherwise Status: Complete!
Kidnapped. Kidnapped. Kenzi wanted to know what the hell Henry had gotten himself into that resulted in a freakin’ kidnapping. She hadn’t heard too much, aside from the fact that her brother had been paid to find a location and help set up a meeting, and she had heard things were alright - Monster Boy was alive, all limbs intact, but holy goddamn balls what the hell?? It wasn’t a scenario she ever imagined him being in, and she at least wanted to check on him. To, y’know, make sure everything was good in the head.
She’d brought offerings too, in the form of milkshakes. They helped Bo cheer up, they were freakin’ delicious, she’d gotten a strawberry and chocolate in case he preferred one over the other. Hands occupied she relied on the force of her feet to hit his apartment door as a knock.
“Monster Boy! It’s me! I come in peace, and with milkshakes.”
Henry had been spending the day putting his apartment back in order and debating if it would be in his best interest to move again. Pattycakes had said she’d been watching him closely and that was fucking unnerving to say the absolute least.
On the other hand there was a little matter about the hole in his bathroom wall. Henry had tried covering it up with a sheet while he figured out how to best re-tile the wall. The sheet disappeared the morning after he’d put it up. He lost another sheet and a shower curtain before he got the message that the hole had no intention of being concealed.
Henry wasn’t all that comfortable leaving the apartment with the hole in it. It was doubtful that it would allow the landlord to cover it up and if someone else moved in, Henry feared that the new tenant would be lured into the hole the same way he had been. What leaked out next could be exponentially worse. And just to add to Henry’s problems, the hole was getting bigger.
Henry had been standing the doorway to his bathroom eyeing that damn hole when he heard a thumping on his front door followed by Kenzi’s voice announcing she had arrived. Quickly he hurried to let Kenzi in.
He checked through the peephole first, a habit that had carried over from his dream self. He smiled despite himself seeing her on the other side. “Hi,” he greeted as he opened the door for her.
Leather pants, a corset covered by a violet blazer - plus the belt that went around the waist to keep it closed, Kenzi always seemed to be dressed for a rave. Never knew when you were going to spontaneously find a party and crash it and shame on her if she wasn’t properly dressed. “Hey to you too,” she grinned, holding both whippedcreamed shakes up when she entered his humble abode. Chocolate on the left, strawberry on the right.
“I didn’t want to get anything too heavy if your stomach’s still a wreck. Liquidy deliciousness? And I also got my flashdrive of horrors, by the way. For all our scary movie needs and references. Prepare to take notes.”
He didn’t look too bad. Tired, probably? Kenzi would take that instead of him being beaten into a bloody pulp and hospitalized with like, missing toes or whatever.
Kenzi had a certain style to her, one that Henry really liked. Not everyone could pull off the Raver look in the middle of the day in the middle of the week, but Kenzi could and she looked damn good doing it too. In contrast Henry had on a loose light blue button down shirt untucked from a pair of loose jeans, bare feet sticking out from the bottom. Not exactly a statement of fashion today. He’d showered and shaved at least, so he was clean. The only physical indication of the hell of a week he’d had was the bruise on the left side of his face where Pattycakes’s idiot thug had socked him. Other than that, tired seemed to best describe his current condition.
Milkshakes were probably a bit heavy for his still tender stomach, but he wasn’t going to turn down her offering. No way. No how. Especially as she’d gone out of her way to bring him something nice, something really tasty. The thought alone made him feel good.
“Thanks,” he said. “I could use some liquidy deliciousness. Uh...the apartment is still kind of...well, not a wreck at least. I’m still getting it put back together.” He’d gotten his coffee table righted and bits of glass and ceramic that remained from his grandma’s vase out of the carpet. His bookcases were still a mess, however. He gestured to his couch, “make yourself at home. What horror do you want to inflict on me first?”
“I can help put some stuff away if you want,” Kenzi offered, surveying the apartment’s state of current being. Trashed his place and kidnapped him? Then force fed him high-grade puppy food from the dollar menu at Taco Bell? Those monsters. “I’m free as a bird, for all your distracting needs.”
Getting comfortable on the sofa, she propped the tall cups atop the table and crossed her knees. Those platform heels with jollyroger buckles looked dangerous, even painful, but she always managed to walk in the most ridiculous of things with sublime coordination. She pulled the teeny-weeny flash drive from her pocket, twirling it in her hands. “I got classics, from The Exorcist to Poltergeist. But are you…” Kenzi squinted at him, right before inhaling through her nose and exhaling from her mouth. “Are you okay? Do you want to talk about the whole thing?”
Henry appreciated her offer. He’d apparently thrown a lot more random odds and ends at his kidnappers in his mad attempt to get them off his back than he’d thought at the time. He was finding books and other random items all over the place, some having been flung clear across the room. What the hell had he been aiming at? Granted it had been nearly pitch black in the apartment at the time, but seriously.
He remembered watching Poltergeist once in college, during some party he’d been at around Halloween. He’d been mostly drunk at the time, but remembered the cheesy-yet- awesome special effects. That seemed like a pretty good place to start his Horror Movie lessons. He paused, however when Kenzi asked him if he was ok.
He didn’t know the answer to her question, he hadn’t really thought about it. He’d had hours to process everything that was going on while he was tied up in Motel de Shitbox, but he hadn’t. He’d just watched Lady Mohawk and her thugs and listened to the occasional rain outside. All the while telling himself over and over Revy wouldn’t abandon him as though it were a fucking mantra. Then everything at the sex shop had happened so fast, Henry hadn’t really had the time to process it all. He’d talked a little bit about the experience with Killian via private message, but he still hadn’t really thought about it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.
He looked at Kenzi awkwardly for a moment, his eyes choosing to focus on her pirate shoes and his brain choosing to wonder how she was able to walk in them rather than answering her. “It was terrible,” he heard himself saying even though his brain wasn’t fully in gear. “They were terrible people. They’re gone now. They won’t be bothering my friend anymore.”
Kenzi wouldn’t have blamed it if he wanted to clam up and be distracted from the entire scenario. Being kidnapped, having your place trashed, being used as leverage towards a buddy of yours. All that stuff was filed under the no bueno category. “Hope they were killed hard,” she softly huffed, curling her fingers around his shoulder for a squeeze. “Your friend went back for you. Not a lot of people have that.”
Hell, his friend better have gone after him. Wasn’t it her fault, or something? Killian mentioned something about them being lowlife debt collectors. Something was owed. But she was glad they weren’t pros at what they did - things could have gotten super hideous, and the brutal ones were capable of worse things to get what they wanted.
At least nothing on Henry was broken. Silver linings and shit.
Henry glanced up from Kenzi’s shoes when he felt the hand on his shoulder. “Yeah, she did. And she brought the cavalry with her.” He hesitated a moment before saying anything further. He didn’t want to admit to witnessing a murder and have it come back and bite him on the ass. Or worse, have it come back to bite either Revy or Midna. Despite the unpleasant circumstances surrounding their introduction, Henry liked Midna. Or at least wanted to like Midna. He did not want to see her getting into trouble simply for helping.
On the other hand, he felt compelled to talk, to actually think about what had happened, finally process it and put it behind him so he could move forward and deal with future shit. Like what the hell he was going to do with the hole in his bathroom.
Ultimately he decided he could trust Kenzi. He wanted to trust her. It was her brother who had tracked down Henry’s whereabouts and who had arranged the meeting between Revy and Pattycakes and her goon squad. Kenzi probably already knew enough to get them all into trouble. She may as well learn the rest.
“They’re dead,” he confirmed. “Run through by a hair sword and then sent into some kind of...abyss, I think?” He really wasn’t sure what had happened to Lady Mohawk’s body and honestly, he didn’t really care. He frowned a little. “I think I should be bothered by that,” he said after a moment. “But I’m not.”
Kenzi didn’t see the world through rose-tinted glasses - she’d been young when she ran away and made the streets her home, and what do you think a girl that age had to do to survive? There were a lot of things she hadn’t been proud to do, but everything she’d done was to stay alive in a world where her very own mother chose a creepy scumbag of a husband over her only daughter. She was a survivor, and the means to survival weren’t always pretty. Henry’s situation had also stemmed from the need for defense, and he had friends who gave a shit enough to kill whoever they had to and make sure he wasn’t the corpse they had to hide.
“Hair sword,” she repeated, brow raised, but she looked darkly amused at the explanation - what, did some magic-y person come along and lend a hand? “Well, alright, I’m totally jelly about hair swords, but good. I’m glad those jerkwads are dead. They won’t try to come after you or your friend. Good riddance, thanks for scrubbing that stain on our barely green Earth.”
She picked up the shakes, chocolate and strawberry, and held them before in front of him. He needed something in his stomach, even if it was just sipping it through a straw. “I thought about getting vanilla but, ah, I don’t know, you don’t seem like the vanilla type to me?”
The fact that Kenzi wasn’t bothered by the fact that Lady Mohawk and her cronies were dead put Henry more at ease. If she wasn’t bothered by it, then he really shouldn’t be either, right? It wasn’t as if Midna had killed some upstanding member of society. Lady Mohawk was a criminal debt collector - a really shitty one. Kenzi was right, Midna and Revy had done the entire world a favor by getting rid of them. “Yeah,” he agreed with a nod. “Good riddance.”
He looked at the offered milkshakes again, his eyes moving back and forth between them for a moment before selecting the strawberry one. “I don’t?” He asked. “I’m not all that picky, I guess. If someones going to bring me a milkshake, I’m going to drink it. Unless it’s a weird flavor. Like...I don’t know...steak flavor or something.”
He took a sip of the milkshake. It was thick and sweet and the cool cream felt good against the back of his throat. It was the best and most appetizing thing he’d had in days. So what if he’d do better with lemon and honey to cleanse his system? This was damn good.
“Ok, yeah, so the hair sword,” he started once he’d taken a few healthy gulps. “The woman who came with Revy to the meet-up - her name is Midna - she could manipulate her hair? I think. It was this bright orange color and she literally sent it out to grab me and pull me away from the debt collectors. Like she was straight out of some kind of superhero movie or something.”
“I’ll have to show you the wonders of maple-bacon milkshake with chocolate chips,” Kenzi mentioned. One of her slender, inky brows rose. “Bacon’s that one weird meaty flavor that goes well with chocolate, it’s weirdly surprising.” Bacon and peanutbutter cookies - yep, also a thing, usually something to find at an actual bakery.
But right, right, baaaaack to the hair and the cray it came with it. How fucking cool, though? Hell, if she had a superpower, killer hair of the literal sense would be high on the list of choices. “I’m jelly,” she sighed. “Guess that’s a prime example of the weirdness of this place. Regular people come here to chill or whatever reason, and they come out with some of the most bitchass things.”
Being a regular human was so laaaaame.
Bacon and chocolate. Henry had tried chocolate covered bacon before and had liked it, even if he wasn’t the lover of bacon so many other people seemed to be. But bacon milkshakes? Henry raised his brows. He’d never heard of such a thing and he wasn’t sure what to think of it.
But, yeah, back to his story. He nodded his head as he slurped on his milkshake. Leave it to Orange County to turn something as mundane as a kidnapping into one of the weirdest experiences of Henry’s life. Well, second weirdest. Having a monster drive its hand into his chest would probably top that list for a long while to come yet. Kind of hard to beat that.
He paused his slurping to continue. “And that wasn’t even the most bitching thing she did.” People still used the term bitching, right? Whatever. “She also fired green...fire? Energy maybe? I’m not sure, but she fired it right out of her hands. Then once the goons were dead she used a portal of some kind to get rid of the bodies. And then another portal to get us home again.” He paused to slurp up more thick milkshake. “She and Revy are pretty good friends, I think, but I don’t think Revy’d ever seen her do any of that before. She was just as surprised as I was at what she could do. It was all really amazing.” Henry paused again to drink more milkshake. Apparently he was a lot more hungry than he thought he was and Kenzi’s offering was hitting a spot that had really wanted to be filled. He stopped only when an ice cream headache threatened to set in behind his eyes.
“It’s kind of weird, isn’t it?” He said after the headache started to subside. “Some of us get wicked badass powers and some of us don’t? All I’ve gotten is a gun, a book and a hole in my wall.” He gestured towards his bathroom with his cup.
Green fire, alriiiiiighty then. It wasn’t anything Kenzi’s icy blue eyes - so pale that they were almost a little unnatural - had seen, but she guessed this place and its people had a little more secrets to unearth. “My best friend’s a succubus,” she smirked, toying with her milkshake’s straw. Considering they were on the topic of friends with superhero powers. “Feeds of sexual energy, is healed off sexual energy, she’s sort of a sex super hero.” Bo was an amazoness; tall and sensual, curvaceous and seductive, molded to the definition of her kind. “We share the dreams, and they’re all about her figuring out where she stands with her kind of people.”
And Kenzi, well, was the little puny human in a Fae World, but she had hold her own and had been doing her best to prove her worth. Because she was conniving, resourceful, careful, a keen sense of detecting bullshit when people did their best to hide it - it’s where she stepped in a lot when it came to the succubus, who was almost a little too trusting for her own good. Probably because she wanted to help people and tried to believe the best in everyone, which was totes adorbs, just…
Not realistic.
“I’m still a human, I’ll probably always stay that way unless, I dunno, I get experimented on but hey, knock on wood, right? I got a sword from mine, which is better than the being almost poisoned to death, but being human doesn’t make us any less. Just means we’re more resilient when we face the shit super-powered people face and still come out alright in the end, y’know?”
A succubus on the network was a new one for Henry. He tilted his head a little as he listened to Kenzi describ Bo. In a place dominated by magic users, those who relied on weapons and regular mundane schmucks like himself, hearing about someone who got her power from sex was really unique. “A sex super hero,” he repeated. “That’s pretty bad ass.”
If Henry survived his dreams (and he wasn’t so sure if that was the main point anymore. Signs were beginning to point otherwise) he was pretty sure he’d stay human too. The only non-humans he’d come across were animal-like monsters and ghosts, who had once been human, he assumed. He really rather not be turned into either one of those, thanks. “Knock on wood,” he agreed, thumbing his foot against his coffee table. He would rather not find out Kenzi had been experimented on in her dreams. That sounded bad no matter how you looked at it and would really piss him off.
He pondered Kenzi’s opinion of normal humans having more resilience when they went up against the same stuff their more super-powered friends and came out on the other side victorious. He chewed on his straw as he thought of that and of all the stuff they had already gone through, both here and in the Dreams. It was actually kind of surprising how much they’d already endured between the two of them and so far, they were both still standing. Well sitting right now, but you get the idea. He decided Kenzi was right and it would be something he would choose to believe in later on.
“Are you learning how to use your sword?” He asked. “Your brother is a pirate, so...he knows how to use one, right? Is he teaching you? Or do you already know how to use it from the dreams?”
Kenzi didn’t look like she could pack a heavy punch, but she didn’t always need to - there were other ways to survive, ways that she’s mastered throughout the years, and part of her felt that if she could survive her younger years homeless, she could endure anything. Even this place.
“I learned some stuff in the dreams, it sort of...carried over, in a way?” She didn’t know how else to explain it. Something like her muscles remembering how to move, she guessed. “Makes it easier to catch what Bubba’s teaching me. He’s really, really good with that kind of weaponry.” And it was something neat to learn from him too - they didn’t have a conventional sibling relationship, and things like this filled the gap of what they missed out. “But he’s probably more effective with that hook he’s got, sheesh.”
“I get it,” Henry nodded. “Revy taught me how to shoot before my dreams went all weird, but I got better once I dreamed I got the gun,” he said. That same gun that he’d received before the fog had rolled in. The same gun Henry had promptly moved from his bedside drawer and out into one of the drawers in his living room after he’d gotten home from his little extended stay with the Lady Mohawk and her band of merry idiots. “And I guess if an ax ever showed up, I’d be pretty decent with that too.” He spent enough time swinging it at monsters, he’d better be fucking decent with it.
Henry winced a little at mention of Killian’s hook. The damn thing was menacing to look at and there had been plenty of times Henry had envisioned being on the wrong end of it in a fit of Don’t Touch My Sister fury. It was a respectful kind of fear, not that Henry would have attempted anything anyway. He was harmless unless you were a sniffer dog trying to snack on his leg or a two headed beast trying to squeeze his heart after nearly choking out his best friend. Was he attracted to Kenzi? Yes, yes he was, but more than that he cared about her and the last thing he wanted was to screw up the friendship they had now by doing something irrevocably stupid.
Furthermore, as menacing as Killian’s hook was, Henry’s fear was tempered with the knowledge that Killian himself had been instrumental in setting up the meeting that had resulted in Henry’s daring rescue. Killian didn’t dislike Henry, which had come as a little bit of a surprise, and Henry liked to think that the two of them could probably even get along, if the surly sea captain was up for it.
“No kidding,” Henry chuckled a little. Full of milkshake for now, he set his cup down on the table and sat deep in his couch. “I told you he offered to teach me a few things, right? You know, in case I find myself being used as a pawn in some twisted game of debt collecting again. And considering the utter fail I had in trying to defend myself, I sure as hell can use it.”
Kenzi wasn’t, uh, oblivious the overprotectiveness that came with being Captain Hook’s little sister, she really wasn’t. If she ever seriously brought someone home, he’d greet them while menacingly brandishing that curve of his hook and probably make passive-aggressive stabbing gestures throughout the night. She didn’t think she could tell him to knock it out, either - he did it because he cared, her own mother couldn’t be half-assed to worry about what kind of shit she’d gotten into while she lived on her own. Having someone be attentive to what went on in her life was...different, sure, but sort of nice too?
Regardless, Killian didn’t have much to worry about. She was always cautious when it came to the matters of the heart - and the only real relationship she had wasn’t much of one at all, she and Massimo had been using each other and it ended with Birkhoff intervening from another country. And casual sex seemed more like everyone else’s thing but hers.
“I think he likes you, in his own way,” she snickered, flipping hair over her shoulder. “And if he’s teaching you things it’s because he doesn’t want to see you dead. Killy’s a good teacher, though, and he’s been around the block. If he’s got trouble teaching you how to pick locks, I’ll take over.” A wink. “It’s one of the first tricks I picked up when I was a little girl, and I can do that shit in my sleep.”
“Killy?” Kenzi was probably the only person in the world Henry believed could get away with calling Killian ‘Killy’, and it was fucking cute. “Yeah, I think maybe he does,” Henry said with a shrug. Henry understood how first impressions were often wrong and that he probably hadn’t given off the best first impression, especially considering Killian and Kenzi were still figuring out their family dynamic - were still figuring it out. Being an only child, Henry couldn’t even begin to understand and he certainly couldn’t imagine waking up one morning to literally find a sibling you didn’t have the evening before standing on your front doorstep - or whatever it was you used to get on a houseboat. So, Killian’s protectiveness was understandable. And it was a major relief to know that Captain Hook really didn’t want him dead and maybe a touch flattering to think that maybe he even liked him - in his own way, of course.
Henry tilted his head a little in curiosity. “You learned to pick locks as a kid?” That...didn’t seem usual. Although, as a kid, Henry had been teaching himself photography and being taught how to split a bone, so what did he know about normal? “Why?”
‘Killy’ and ‘Bubba.’ Nicknames of sibling endearment, and her brother would probably gut someone like a fish if they called him that. Kenzi was immune to the gutting. Probably not immune to the noogies and the wet willies, but at least immune to the hook.
“I ran away from home when I was a wee lass,” she informed unapologetically, and she’d been fine with how things turned out. “Not as bad as it sounds, I guess. Learned how to hotwire cars, shark credit cards. A couple other things.” How to con people, to lie, to screw them over without remorse - there’d been a couple exceptions to that but overall, she did anything and everything if it meant survival. And she turned out independent, crafty, and fabulously clothed with an extensive makeup line - yep, all was well. “I turned a crapton better than some people I knew.”
Henry frowned slightly at the thought of Kenzi as a young girl completely on her own and being forced to learn those kinds of skills to ensure her survival. Running away had crossed young Henry’s mind once or twice while he’d been shuttled back and forth across the country and between his parents. There had been times he’d wondered if he’d be able to live in any given airport terminal he found himself layed over in. There had been a movie about a guy who had done that. Based on a true story or something about a guy who’s country had completely dissappeared while he’d been traveling. Henry had been pretty sure he could do it. Airports had everythng you needed, food and places to sleep. They had book stores so he’d be able to teach himself and keep himself entertained. But, in the end, it had always been just a fantasy. When his boarding group was called, he always found himself on the plane headed to Arizona or Maine, usually wedged in the middle seat.
In that regard Kenzi was much braver than he was, having actually run away. Not only that, but surviving on her own all these years. She was a strong one. Henry’s frown turned into more of a smile. “I’m sorry you had to run away when you were little,” he said ernestly. “You did turn out good. I mean, you’ve got a family now and a neat place to live, a brother who loves you and friends. And you’re a good friend. I mean, you brought me a milkshake,” he gestured towards the cup on his table. “And you’re going to teach me about horror movies. Which, you know considering my dreams, is probably something I should have been doing from the start.”
That’s the way she’d seen it, anyway. Things were better now. Running away was the best thing Kenzi could have done for herself - she’d done nothing wrong in her household, and she wasn’t going to stay for the sake of her mother who had a habit of making poor decisions with a douchebag of a stepfather. Like hell was she going to willingly stay under the same roof as that creep anyway; her mom didn’t bother doing anything to change to bring her back.
“My brother’s trying to make me more of an honest lady,” she smirked, reaching for the flash drive of horrors. “But anyway, where’s your laptop? I’ll plug this in, we can binge, maybe have nightmares later on.”
“According to some, my Dreams are nothing but nightmares,” Henry said. He was comfortable in his deep seat on his couch, but he pushed himself up anyway to get his laptop from his room. He was gone for a couple of minutes before he came back and set up the computer on the coffee table.
He settled back onto the couch with her ready and about as prepared as he was going to be for a night of horror movies and Kenzi pointing out everything Henry needed to know in order to survive in one. “Ok,” he said as he reached for his milkshake again. “Be gentle with me, ok, Kenzi? Don’t jump right into the hardcore stuff right off the bat. Kind of...ease me into this.”