Gasoline Vigil

[Heathen]

His first instinct was to let his fists do the talking. The knife was for dispatching an enemy, and that wasn't what he wanted to do. He wanted to knock the big guy to the floor and hammer his face with knuckles until they were bloody and bone showed through flesh. He reeled himself back though, distracted by the fancy guy's words. It only lasted for a split second, and only that long because of the pain lancing through Milo's body. It was enough time for the formerly gun toting guy to get his uninjured hands on the weapon once more. With the return of the woman, they were right back at square one all over again. ****.

She slapped at the man while he spoke, and Heathen's hand fell to apply pressure against the wound. It certainly would have been easier to let chubs take the girl. "You ******* shot me. What am I supposed to do about that?!" He hissed. Things were moving quickly. The big guy really only had one good hand, because of the damage the vampire had done, which meant that he couldn't really grab the woman up and keep his gun aimed at the same time. Heathen took a step closer and the gun swung around, pointed towards him. He lifted a dark brow as if to say 'Really?'.

"Consider it the cost of getting involved in my business." The man said. "Learn the lesson and get out of here before you bleed out." The words offered a reasonable option. It really wasn't his business was it? And if someone was coming after her with a firearm, chances were it was a good amount of money the girl had skipped out on paying. In a world of victims and monsters, nobody was really a good guy. Everyone eventually deserved whatever **** they had to deal with.

But that fat asshole had shot him.

He stepped closer. A finger tightened on a trigger. He didn't care. His body swung back a pace from the impact and then he leaped the last of the distance. His hands went for a neck, his knees slamming into a chest to take the other man right down to the ground under him. He'd dropped his knife somewhere along the way. One set of fingers struggled to curl around a neck. He didn't bother to disarm the man, and he continued to squeeze off rounds, though none of them hit Heathen because the big guy's arm jutted away from where their bodies met. His other hand descended with a crunch on a nose. Then it kept falling right over a face with continuous pops, cracks, and smacking sounds.

"Gonna make you uglier than your mama did!"

[Lincoln King]

Lincoln watched on with a shake of his head, the woman had come forward to slap at the guy as if that would do **** and the other dude who'd been shot was looking pissed and rightly so. CLEARLY this wasn't just going to be let slide; no good old fashioned knock to the jaw, kick to the guts and bail. His jaw was clenched, he could feel it but the sensation was distant as if diminished by the medicinal fog. There was more talking, always more talking and all of it was pointless because Linc was pretty sure he knew exactly how this was going down but not entirely sure of the outcome. Of course the option to run away was there, or to step up and send his chubby *** reeling with a simple push of energy... And yet he didnt, nope. He didn't move other than back a half step in surprise and in preparation to dive out of the way as the gun went off with a loud, echoing crack. He cringed,hands lifting so fingers could press gently at the cartilidge of his ringing ears.

"Well... ****."

His green eyes went wide and he felt like he had been watching in slow motion, things suddenly coming into sharp focus as another shot rang out and the guy went down, the young looking man pouncing on him violently. Linc dodged sideways, pressing his back against the wall so he could swing around and avoid the flying bullets. One grazed him, hitting the side of his neck and barely leaving a smear of crimson which he pressed his hand to immediately. A bold step forward had him within range of the guy, already being laid into by Heathen but that gun wasn't entirely empty and Lincoln wasn't interested in taking chances. He gritted his teeth, taking a sharp breath through them as he tried to ignore the encouragement from the man in the back of his mind and drove his already well used shoes onto the guy's wrist. The gun was released with a spasm, Linc ducking down to grab it just in case, tucking it into the back of his pants' waistband to join his own gun hidden by his jacket.

The pudgy pleb disarmed and downed left his hands free to grab at the guy swinging fists if he wanted to, to stop him, but he paused a while with palms facing outwards as if trying to ward off the issue rather than get himself further involved in it. No doubt it would be too dark to see the blood smudge, but he felt it, drying and sticky against his palm. What was the girl doing anyway? Planning on cutting her losses and running? He wouldn't blame her, but she was around and he was in the mood to be snarky."Hey cherry bomb, what the ****?" He demanded, whirling on her and gesturing to the messed up scene.

[Birdee]

Really, Birdee didn't know or think about how effective her decision would be as she moved to slap the guy. His glare at her didn't last long, because the guy that had been shot was reeling his own form of *** kicking with fists. All Birdee could do was watch in horror how the table had turned and the other guy that seemed surprised and shocked, was a big ball of rage underneath it all. Shots echoed out and hit the wall and floor, discharging from the gun. Whatever remained in his gun had to be empty by now. At least Birdee hoped so. She didn't really know the first thing about a gun.

"HOLY CRAP." Birdee jumped back as the bigger, beefier guy was hunched over taking it like this was his destiny. To get the crap kicked out of him. Birdee looked around, mostly behind her, due to the other guy who called out a name of 'cherry bomb,' only because she wasn't sure who he was talking to. A new face on the scene? Not seeing anyone as her head wildly wiped around, she realized that he was talking to her.

Her right hand lifted up to reveal just the middle finger before she spoke."It's Birdee. Like this. Not 'cherry bomb.'" She dropped her hand before she shrugged her shoulders."I might owe him a couple hundred dollars, but I was gonna pay him back next week. I just got a new job." Birdee explained, not that it was their problem. "I can help." She admitted, eyes on the guy who was injured. "Your friend. Not that impatient jerk." Birdee nodded to the biggest guy of all of them before she took a step back from the guy with the pulverized nose and face, calling the other two guys over with a hurried hand that waved for them to follow.

[Heathen]

He was breathing heavily, even though he didn't need to. His fists kept dropping right over a face, leaving behind sprinkled droplets of blood and flesh that was already discoloring. "I hope a rat comes along and SHITS in your ******* mouth!" He said. There were some people in the world who were quietly vibrating balls of rage, who just barely contained their anger. Heathen was not one of those people. He put everything out there and let them see exactly how he felt when he was pissed. He was so focused on his task that he didn't even realize the other two people he'd just met were there, chatting about him. And normally, he would have just kept going until he ran out of energy, but with heightened senses, he could actually hear the raspy breathing of the human. He heard as it grew more labored. And slowly he pulled back. His nostrils scrunched up with distaste. He didn't need to kill a guy to get his point across even if the fat **** deserved it. He spat on the dealer's face (or what would have been his face) and then he moved to stand.

"******* missed chance at an abortion." He muttered under his breath as he began to investigate his clothes. Some parts he'd painted himself. Other's he'd outright made. Virtually everything but the shoes were touched at some point. Also he was in pain, but that was entirely beside the point. The blood at least seemed to be flowing more slowly, even from the fresh wound. Even so, he tugged the mesh tank top off. The first gunshot had done pretty minimal damage thankfully because of how big the arm-holes were. Really it'd just frayed some edges. The second shot however had torn right through the alien's face. He didn't actually know how to repair mesh, so it was basically ruined. With a snarl, he rolled it up and let it lay on his shoulders. He would worry about it another time.

His gaze lifted finally so he could glance to the other two. The bullet holes were in full view, thankfully the first had torn all the way through the flesh. The other was embedded against his chest, but there was no rush to get it out. The skin would heal normally, and eventually push the thing out. He noted how the woman, had she called herself Birdee, was flipping the guy off. He eyed her for a moment. And then Lincoln. "Oh right." He said, when Birdee motioned for them to go. Scene of the crime and all that. Not that he was too worried. There were a bunch of ugly monsters in the catacombs that would probably finish the guy off. Technically as long as the death wasn't on Milo's head, he didn't give a ****.

So he followed along after her.

[Lincoln King]

"Birdee?" He repeated, testing out the name and subsequently looking at her like THIS was what made her strange. "Whatever, bomb. I'm Lincoln, and this is too heavy for even my brand of painkillers... Wait, my friend? Help? Sure, alas he is not my friend, we just ran into each other and then you appeared. If he were my friend I'd probably be on my knees driving a fist home too." Lincoln sneered in distaste as Heathen seemed to finish up, only vaguely acknowledging the man's colourful choice of insults and suggestions. The blonde peered reluctantly around him to the guy barely breathing on the ground. "So... Don't ask don't tell? None of us were here? Otherwise we should... I don't know, His gaze narrowed, clear green eyes moving lazily to focus in on the one called Birdee, a vague smirk twitching at the left corner of his mouth. "Help
Him?" His hands lifted, using air quotes around the statement.

When he looked back to gauge Heathen's reaction and wellness status he got a front row seat to the disappointing strip show and holey expression. A low whistle pushed between his teeth, Linc biting his lip with a wince as he surveyed the damage. One of the bullets appeared to have gone clean through, the other trapped somewhere in flesh and muscle. His knuckles were showing damage from his pounding session but he seemed unphased. "Ah, screw it. Let's bail, you coming , punch happy?" A hand lifted, pausing midair in warning before falling against the pale man's shoulder, focusing his energy and letting it flow from him, with intention to use his healing touch.

[Birdee]

All Birdee could do was wait when she got at enough distance from the ball of fury, and the guy who reminded her of potatoes at Thanksgiving time. Sorta lumpy, with gravy spilling over the fluffy, lumpy mess on her plate when her mom and her celebrated the holiday. Since Birdee took off to live her own life, she didn't go home a lot to celebrate customs and traditions back in the good ole U. S. of A. "LIKE WOW." Birdee said when she heard Ball of fury (aptly named in her mind) say the things he said and she laughed. Was it really that funny, or was it just something to focus on instead of the pounding heart in her chest, the cold sweat on the back of her neck and the occasional twitch of her hands?

When Lincoln suggested that they might help the guy out, Birdee shook her head. "No way. Screw him! Super Screw him!" She said jumping around, then clapping her hands together, because the twitch was moving from her fingers, to up her arms. Birdee could help him, but he decided to bring a gun to the party, so whatever happened was entirely HIS fault and not anyone elses. Besides, one less person in the world meant one less person's frequencies she might encounter on the wrong day, so it was a win-win in her mind.

Punch happy was a good name for the guy who no one really knew. "You're incredibly strong." Birdee said as she looked at Heathen, or more like the hole in his chest. "And...super dead." She concluded, wondering now what role Lincoln was going to play in this entire thing. Was he lunch for Heathen, that she interrupted? "Right? If so, I don't feel as bad as I did a few seconds ago, but wow." Birdee whistled as she focused off Heathen's chest and to his face. Other than being insanely fast, and strong with his fist (oh! and the wound in his chest) he looked pretty normal. They all did, when Birdee thought about it.

"Right! So, I can sort of help you. With the hole in your chest, if you want. If you want the help, I'm going to have to touch you. You okay with that?" Her eyes landed on Heathen, it was the least she could offer. "That was super sick and insane, by the way." There was not an ounce of negative in her tone or words put out there. The opposite, in fact. That was evident in the way her eyes were brightly lit and Birdee's lips were pulled up in a smile.

[Heathen]

Despite what his friends said, it wasn't just a switch that got flipped. He still had adrenaline hammering through his system, causing his fingers to ball into fists, pupils to grow into large black pools which left only tiny rings of color around the edges. Muscle tightened, and the concept of pain folded under the weight of hormones. He picked up on the random collection of facts, like their names. And at the mention of helping out the guy on the ground, even with the air quotes, Heathen half turned to spit in the human's general direction. The guy picked a fight with the wrong person. That was the problem with guns and the criminal world. Metal courage. But the world was full of big, nasty, ugly monsters, and those weapons were little more than false confidence against something that could heal in a few days time.

"Aw ****. Where the **** is my..." He scanned the floor for his cigarette, which he'd lost at some point during the scuffle. Not surprising. When he saw red, he tended to block everything about the situation out a few minutes after it was all said and done. He grunted, and patted himself to find his pack so he could retrieve another and light up. Smoke filled the air around him with a gray barrier which most people recoiled from. In the modern day, it was socially acceptable to tell a smoker to **** off. To get out of an establishment. To completely avoid them, like they were plague rats.

Punch happy. The name earned a heavy lipped sneer. "Heathen." He said. Though he didn't disagree with the assessment; it was the same variety of name he'd earned since he was old enough to realize that the world categorically **** on anyone who couldn't defend themselves. That had been the same day he'd earned his most enduring nickname. A story for another time.

"The two are related. Wait till you see me in the light. You'll piss yourself with how ugly I get." He responded to Birdee. He not-so-secretly loved praise, so she earned points with him for her observation. He didn't even care that she brought the big guy down on them, for which he normally would have held someone accountable.

A hand lifted in front of him. He stared at it. It continued to move. He could have stopped it, but he didn't particularly dislike touch. Had he, it would have been made very clear very quickly. "Sure. Need to balance the karma anyway." He said at the suggestion to leave. Before they could head out though, Birdee wanted to do something to help him out. He shrugged one shoulder. Left to his own devices, he would have just let it heal naturally. He was dead. What was the worst that could happen? "Sure. Just nothing below the belt. I don't think Dead-In-The-Eyes here would appreciate being left out."

[Lincoln King]

In the moments of distraction while the other two yammered on, especially the excitable woman who seemed to have energy to waste, Lincoln had begun to focus his own energy. It flowed through him freely now, he could feel it in every inch of his body, rushing to his extremities and back to accumulate in his chest. Linc imagined it as a ball of light, growing in strength and purpose at his very core and when it was ready he let it move, running down his arm. It was at his wrist, ready to reach across his palm, into his fingertips and leave his body to go into Heathen's when he was distracted and Linc imagined the ball of light stopped dead, retracting quickly. Heathen WAS cold, yes, his skin pale in the low light and the way he'd taken the shots with little trouble made it clear he wasn't human, not even one of the super kind that could potentially survive a knock like that. He was a vampire, though this didn't bother him any really, it was good to note and he'd not paid a huge amount of attention to his living status in the drama of the past ten minutes.

What made him scoff, loudly enough to be pointed, and withdraw his hand was some of the other statements. "Dead-in-the-eyes? I seriously hope you aren't referring to me, Heather. If you want Cherry Bomb to do it instead then sure, i've got many other creative ways I can use my time and energy." He drawled, using his free hands to search instead for the cigarette case once more and sparking the one he fished out. Why was it he was still hanging around? He wasn't kidding about having better things to use his energy and time on, so then why was he curious enough to hover and watch? Maybe it was that Birdee was one of two things, a vampire like Heathen with the ability to heal or a sorcerer like him. If it was the latter then he was at least intrigued. Maybe she was something else entirely and he just didn't know about it, in this fucked up city he wouldn't terribly shocked. With a sound of annoyance he pulled out another cigarette, offering it to Heathen because he had yet to find out if the guy was trying to start **** with him and in the meantime might as well hedge his bets by playing nice enough. Somewhere in his jaw a muscle twitched, evidence of it's tensed nature and a reminder that if a fight was to be presented then Linc was unlikely able to just brush it off as easily as the dust that settled on his jacket. "Here, smoke 'em if you've got 'em... Or some other cliche ******** to lighten the morose mood." The man took a drag, the rich smoke trailing slowly from his lips when he inevitably exhaled, managing a look of manicured disdain while he waited for the other two to move their asses away from the pulped pile of pissant bleeding out on the ground.

[Birdee]

Birdee watched Heathen search for something as he talked to himself. Wasn't that the first sign of being crazy? Supposedly. Or was that only if a person answered themselves? No one in their right mind would just beat someone's face into lumpy mashed potatoes, right? It made Birdee laugh as she thought back to it. the guy deserved it and would think twice about hounding someone when all he needed to do was wait a couple extra days. Someone like him didn't need a few hundred dollars that badly. Not with the car he was driving and the sweet pad he had in the better side of town. Birdee had seen it once; when she arrived on his doorstep with her friend who set the transaction up. The guy probably made two hundred bucks in a span of an hour tops, while Birdee made that in two nights of hard work, if she was lucky. And while she knew everyone in his line of work owed someone some money for the product they were selling, Birdee always knew they didn't ask for the money the next day.

Heathen. What an appropriate name, Birdee thought when he gave it. She wondered if it was his real name (because a lot of people didn't believe her name was actually Birdee), or a name he was given for the way he was so...savage in the way he handled things. When Heathen talked about seeing him in the light and how ugly he was, she only shrugged. While Birdee knew about vampires, she didn't know the finer details of vampires and their hang-ups."I've seen a lot of ugly stuff. Doubt it." She shrugged, then jumped up and down a little, her neck rolling from the right, to the left as she closed her eyes to focus, just like her mom had taught her, and then popped them open as soon as Heathen talked about Birdee touching him anywhere that wasn't near his injury. More specifically, in a place that just wasn't needed for anything so harmless as helping him with being shot.

When Heathen called the guy who was so hell-bent on calling her 'Cherry bomb', dead-in-the-eyes, Birdee laughed. The way they acted solidified that they weren't friends, as she previously assumed. "No worries, H. Totally above the belt." Birdee professed as she hopped back a little, getting a little more room from the guy who was beaten to an inch within his life. His almost dead vibe was throwing her off. "This is a one time transaction deal. Not a charity case here." Birdee said, looking at both guys, even though Heathen was the only one that was going to be benefiting from her 'talents' tonight. Birdee raised her shoulders, then dropped them and clapped her hands together, washing away all the negative thoughts about the guy that was probably going to end up like one of those things down here.

Her right hand lifted up, very shakily, trembling not because she was hanging for her next fix, but because she was willingly going to touch someone. While she believed she couldn't pick up anything off the dead (vampires and alike), Birdee still held some caution to just slapping a hand against some guy's bare chest. "Stay still for a minute. Please." Birdee said, more than asked as her hand finally found his chest, just to the left of the hole in it and her eyes closed to focus on manipulating the damaged, negative energy from around and in his wound, to the positive, uninfluenced energy in other parts of his body.

[Heathen]

For some reason, Lincoln's hand pulled back. Had Heathen a moment to think about it, he probably would have thought it weird, especially given he'd nodded for the man to proceed with...whatever he was doing. However, the vampire was naturally a little sluggish between the ears, not that he'd ever admit to it. He was good at 'on the spot' thinking, but casual observation of other people usually only mattered to him in as much as he needed to be sure they weren't trying to **** him over or kill him. A cigarette was offered to him though, and he was happy to take it. Probably one of the first things people noticed about Heathen was that he was a chain smoker. It was the most surface level observation, and usually the only one a person made before politely declining to get to know him.

That was kind of the point.

He ended up balling up the dead nearly-to-the-filter cigarette in his mouth, before flicking it away. His fingertips were singed when he reached to take the offering from Lincoln. Seconds later, the smoke stack was back in business. "Try not to get too butt-hurt, Eyes. It's not even the third date, and I'm a fuckin' lady." He said on an exhale, the dark miasma flowing from his lips, curling into the air like tendrils. He glanced down then, to the hand Birdee had on him. One of the first things he'd learned after dying had been to regenerate his blood quickly so he didn't go out of his mind, with the desire to rip someone's throat out.

The process felt weird to him, of replenishing his own blood. So he expected some of that same weird feeling when Birdee went to touch him. His eyes slid shut almost on instinct. But that feeling didn't come. Eyes popped open. He could see her touching him, but his bullet holes were still there. They still looked like bloody chasms surrounded in the pinks and purples of both irritated skin and bruised flesh. He wasn't bleeding, and in fact, when his hand lifted, he was able to scrape and flake off the ashy remnants which had clung to him.

"So uh...was something supposed to happen there?" He asked.

He was smiling, clearly trying not to chuckle before he held his hand out for her. "Don't worry about it. Give me your phone though." He said. He wasn't too worried about the wounds. He knew from experience they would close up. Hell. He'd been shot at when he'd been a human, and those had healed up too. "I can sell you whatever that **** mouthed lard pile was selling you. For cheaper. But you're gonna have to pay up front." He said, a hand lifting to scratch at the edge of a bullet wound.

"We should raid an all night pharmacy for bandaids. I'm new here. Either of you know where one is?"