[Robin] Wrecking Ball

[Siobhan (DELETED 8415)]

[ Wearing ]

When the bullets ran out, so did courage.
It wasn’t her fight.
It wasn’t a cause she was willing to die for. Not tonight, not ever.



No witnesses — that’s how the Lionelli worked.

The Lionelli also worked with supernatural forces that Siobhan did not have at her disposition. Never had she been offered the bite of immortality, and never had it occurred to her to ask for it. If anything, the existence of the supernatural was something she expertly compartmentalised.

More than once she’d found herself face-to-face with an ambulatory corpse, dead eyes unnervingly fixed on her as she struggled to release the safety on the G29. There had been a time she’d run, but an ugly scar on her lower leg was a constant reminder that those fuckers could move in packs. It was best to shoot one on sight. There were also the series of unfortunate events that led her to an Iroquois man who dealt out of the night market. He’d given her a handful of charms to make her impervious to the whims of those intangible creatures—the fae—who seemed to take great pleasure in her misfortune. While there were less fae-instigated disasters in her life since the implementation of charms, there were still ill-explained events she could only ascribe to the supernatural.

By the time she’d come to learn of the existence of vampires through Paquito—her handler, Siobhan wasn’t particularly bewildered. She had witnessed their strength firsthand since then, and heard—in great detail from others—accounts of their bloodlust. Never had she dealt with a bloodsucker (that she knew of), and she wasn’t eager to do a round of introductions now, not when the magazine of her gun felt too light in her uninjured hand.

So she ran.

Siobhan ran as far away as she could get from the cacophonous barrage. She fervently wiped at the blood trickling down her forehead, stumbling out into the road that would soon be littered in cop cars. The sirens in the distance were barely audible over the rattle of quick-fire shots. The G29 in her hand proved useless now that its slide was embedded with a bullet, but it had served her damn well to keep that very bullet from burying itself into her brain. Never before had she been in such a perilous situation, and if she had her way, never again would she find herself repeating the experience.



Her legs threatened to give out more than once, but an adolescence spent running cross country kept her on her feet. Her dry throat burned as she heaved for breath, the cold night air stinging with every gasp she managed. Years of athleticism had been put to waste by years of smoking and drug abuse. Adrenaline trumped the acid seeping into her muscles, young heart working overtime to ensure its continued beating.

Siobhan was living her life a quarter mile at a time.


Worn boots scraped along the sidewalk as she took a sharp turn into an alleyway, the insignificant weight of her body crashing into the wall as she misjudged the arc. The impact nearly knocked her out, upper arm coming away alarmingly painful. Without any consideration for what might lay ahead in the darkness, Siobhan sought to use the momentum of her crash to propel herself onwards into the relative safety of the alleyway, only to be startled by a figure looming half in shadow.

“WHAT—THE ****!?”

[Robin Little]

Whatever money Robin had been making before, now he was making more. To boot, he knew what he was doing and what was expected of him; he knew that his boss had his back. And he was having fun. Each night he met new and interesting people. People with stories that they chose to tell, or kept to themselves. Everyone had a story. Some liked to be intimate, some liked to be rough. Some were frigid, like being in a club and feeding from another vampire was the last place they wanted to be, but desperate times called for desperate measures. It was a constant struggle of give and take, and like any other blood-carrying vessel, sometimes it was taxing when too much was lost.

Although he wasn’t sure that Amaranthia would mind if Robin fed from the blood dolls in the club, he still chose not to, most nights. Humans were worse off than Robin was; if they lost more than two pints of blood they’d start to go downhill, fast. He knew from experience how much worse it could be, how he often hadn’t waited for the blood cells to regenerate, his blood getting thinner and his health generally hurtling on a downward spiral. The humans were there for the paying customers, and though Robin would pay them for their time, it was probably better if he, a paid employee, did not take the goods from customers who might return if recipient of good service.

On the nights that he did work, Robin spent the majority of his time at the Necropolis. He woke up, showered, and dressed in one of the suits that he was slowly accumulating; nice suits, rather than the shabby clothes he was generally accustomed to wearing. He then went to the club, and waited as the crowd swelled, meandering between the upper floor and the lower. The attempt to gain a list of ‘clients’ was slow going, but he would not give up.

Like everyone else, he got a break. He took an hour in the middle of the night to go out and replenish his own blood. He, too, had his contacts. Tonight, he had texted one of them ahead of time. Gerald. Gerald was a student who worked two jobs in order to keep himself in school, and once he’d learned about the supernatural creatures of the night, he was willing to sell his blood for a hefty price, too. Blood bags cost six hundred dollars from the shops, these days – Gerald charged $800, for insurance purposes. It was a little hefty, but Robin didn’t have the time to go prowling the streets.

It was Gerald he met in the alley between two buildings; Gerald whose neck he had his fangs sunk deep into when he heard the crude exclamation. Gerald was the one facing the girl—the woman—and he just lazily smiled at her, his eyes glazed like he was high. Robin pulled back, aware of the blood that dripped from the corner of his mouth only after he’d turned around, tense, waiting for the inevitable bullet lodged into his skin.

Sometimes he wasn’t so good at keeping himself out of sight.

Hastily, he wiped the blood from his mouth and stepped back from Gerald, who was free to go but who seemed happy enough to be there.

”…It’s not what it looks like,” he said, shaking his head and eyeing the weapon in the woman’s hands.

[Siobhan (DELETED 8415)]

Cradling her injured arm with her gun-wielding hand, Siobhan stumbled backwards at the sight of two people crowding the alleyway designated for her continued escape. Her mouth gaped as she gasped for breath, sweat beading across her bloodied hairline.

Caught between an unseen threat she wished to elude at all costs and an unexpected hurdle, the brunette gawked as the couple disengaged. Two men faced her then, though their features remained partially shrouded in deep shadows cast by the street lighting filtering in from the street behind her. She saw what she needed to see, really.

It could have been anyone; Siobhan was no stranger to the dirty deeds that alleyways could be the stage to. But after all the tall tales she’d heard about vampires feeding in the shadows, it occurred to her that this could be far more obscene than anything she had ever partaken in. For starters, the claim he uttered her way couldn’t have sounded more condemning if he’d tried.

There was also the realisation that whenever she had had to wipe her chin as he’d just done, her knees were usually on the floor. It was thus that she concluded this to be one of those fabled tales she’d been told about. Surprisingly enough, Siobhan was far less concerned with his presence or what he might do to her after witnessing the carnage she’d meagrely managed to escape.

“He doesn’t seem to be complaining,” she pointed out blandly. Lowering the gun-wielding hand to her side, she tentatively stretched out her injured arm before her to understand the cause of the ache. Pain rippled through the frayed nerves of ripped sinew and muscle. The bullet lodged beneath her elbow shifted and elicited a cry she barely suppressed. Jesus. ****. Christ.

Her breath was harsher then, pale gaze unfocused as she swayed forward. There wasn’t any time to waste. Hunching forward to try and catch her breath, arm awkwardly positioned before her, Siobhan motioned towards the two of them with her weapon, unaware of the threatening undertone of her movement.

“You going to let me through undisturbed? I’ve got bigger problems hot on my heels,” she added, motioning halfheartedly over her shoulder with the gun. Talking was difficult when one’s oesophagus felt like sandpaper. Siobhán cleared her throat with a rough cough, asthmatic wheeze audible. If she survived the night, she’d put an end to her smoking. She doubted that would be incentive enough if he was really as bad as she’d been told they were.

[Robin Little]

The gun was rather threatening, and Robin couldn’t say he had one on him in order to defend himself. He wasn’t the kind to carry weaponry around; he worked and he went home. So many of his kin, he knew, liked to hunt and practice. They liked to kill the things in the sewers. Or in the catacombs. Or in the Quarantine Zone. Or the Caverns. There was an abundance of monsters and non to kill on a whim, but Robin had never really been much inclined. Amusing, really, that he’d tried to start making his own guns, when he didn’t even really know how to use one. Eventually, he figured he’d be good with one, if only because he knew how it worked.

His fingers aimed skyward as his arms raised in a gesture of surrender. A few bullets wouldn’t do him much harm, he knew, but he still didn’t like the pain. And the suit was new. He didn’t want to ruin it with holes and blood stains. It was best to just be as placid as possible and cause no trouble.

One would think he’d have learned his lesson by now, not to get caught – he’d had hunters on his tail before – but sometimes, it couldn’t be helped. The factors that brought this woman right to the mouth of this alleyway were beyond Robin’s control. Behind him, there was a murmur and a mumble as his ‘meal’ decided it was time to leave; dazed and out of it, Gerald started to shuffle away, and Robin had to reach out to steer him in a direction that wouldn’t involve him running in to whoever was on this woman’s tail.

”… I have to go back to work. It’s a back entrance…” he said, gesturing over his shoulder to the next building over, a heavy back door to which he had a key barred the way to the thump of the music, the writhing bodies, the general-good-time.

He took a breath but he paused, his tongue blocking his throat and any words that might have spilled thereafter. It was a new job, and he probably shouldn’t be harbouring…well, what was she, exactly? And what if they found her inside, and it started some kind of brawl? What if his boss found out that he’d let her in and started the whole mess?

”What did you do and who’s chasing you?” he asked even as he started to back up, his grip on Gerald’s upper arm tight but not too tight, ready to steer the dazed human somewhere safe. There was no point getting one of his regular donors killed. That wouldn’t be lucrative for anyone.

[Siobhan (DELETED 8415)]

It didn’t escape Siobhan how lucky she was. The odds were certainly not in her favour, and yet she’d managed to get out relatively unscathed considering the alternative was death—the permanent kind. The pain receptors in her brain suggested otherwise, instincts kicking up a fuss as the sharpness of the pain began to blur, ceding to discomfortable numbness. Losing an arm was not an option, and being as ignorant as she was of medicine, it was beginning to appear as though it’d become a real possibility.

The inside of her jacket clung to her skin, the blood copiously coating every inch of her forearm. The paths taken by warm red rivulets left an itch between her fingers she dared not scratch. The mere pressure of flexing her digits caused her muscles to roll, the bullet lodged between sinew and flesh unmoving. If she didn’t get herself to a safe house, if she didn’t get the bleeding under control, her vision would blur further. Were her eyes failing her, or was this dank alleyway just too dark to see a goddamned thing? Blinking rapidly, she dispelled the latter. Blood loss would be the death of her — in an entirely different way.

She watched as the stranger distanced himself, drinking buddy in tow. Siobhan was thankful for the potential the growing space between them offered, but she resented the question. Why would this be her doing? Sure, the brunette wasn’t the cleanest of folk—as indicative of the illegal weapon she was waving around, but this was certainly not her fault. The attack on neutral territory had been instigated by the Lionelli, not their own. (If only she knew how convoluted it all really was, she might have simply responded with I fucked up, but she knew nothing of the strings that had pulled behind the scenes, leading to the massacre she’d meagrely escaped. That’s how they kept those at her level: ignorant. If she knew she would be walking into a trap, she’d have stayed home and binge-watched some Netflix on her neighbour’s ‘borrowed’ internet.)

“Uh…”
It sure was an intelligent answer, but she was distracted.
She was also disinterested in answering truthfully, and was a poor liar. Betrayal was fresh on her mind, and she wasn’t going to trust this guy with anything. It was none of his business anyway. Just as it was none of hers that he was on his break—or whatever—and was due back to work. Her gaze flitted to the back entrance he’d mentioned, but she thought nothing of it. Single-track mind, highly uncreative when her red blood cell count was dropping at an alarming rate.

Instead, her gaze settled on the darkness stretching beyond their poorly illuminated nook. Pointing the gun to his feet, she moved forward, one foot stepping over the other as she arced around the space between them. Now that she knew his destination, so to speak, she could act accordingly.

“You never saw me. I never saw you. Deal?”

[Robin Little]

<Robin Little> Gerald shuffled off, and Robin was far too distracted to reach out and stop him. The kid knew what he was getting into. Robin had been in his place, once, and had always made it home safe, in his own bed. It was like going out and getting blind drunk and not being able to remember the last few hours of the night. He let Gerald go, and instead focused on the woman instead.

It was only then that he noticed her slack limb; the breeze drifted between the buildings, pushing the scent of her blood in the vampire’s direction. Not just a little, either. It was a strong scent. Which meant a lot of blood. Robin’s lips pressed into a thin line.

“Sure,” he said, before glancing back at the door into the club. “If you came in, they wouldn’t follow. I mean. Would they expect you to go into a nightclub?” he said, but flinched. She was bleeding pretty heavily; a nightclub was probably the last thing on her mind. At least Robin had already fed, and it didn’t give him any funny ideas. She seemed determined to be on her way – but Robin lingered anyway, standing awkwardly between her and his destination.


<Siobhan> Had she been any more attentive to her surroundings, Siobhan might have noticed the muffled thump of loud bass indicative of nightlife. It was with a slowed mind that she considered his words, processing them with noticeable scrutiny. A nightclub was an excellent place to hide, but also to deal. A nightclub was likely to house at least two or three dealers at any given time, and that could mean trouble. Siobhan had never dealt in the Gullsborough area before and didn’t even know whether their group had any standing here. The idea he proposed wasn’t a bad one, but it could also lead her into a trap. “That depends on whether this is Lionelli territory.”

The heel of her armed hand skirted her forehead and bloodied hairline. Her locks were damp, sticky, warm. It was everything she didn’t want them to be. There was nothing else she wanted right now than step out of the shower with that feeling of cleanliness, strands unmatted by blood. It would be great to get the bullet in her arm out too, but she was less interested in that process. Her glassy gaze scanned the darkness of the alleyway before settling on him. He looked… he was swaying. Unless… unless it was her. Siobhan caught herself on the wall, gun scraping the brick. It was too late to pick up her sprint. It was probably in her best interest to get cleaned up at the very least, and find something to stem the bleeding.

“How do I know you’re not going to finish me off?” she asked, arm still propping her up. There was no way she could fight him off if he attacked her. Not without a functioning weapon. He wasn’t particularly buff, but he had about three miles of vertical advantage given his height.


<Robin Little> "Contrary to popular belief, we don't all going around 'finishing people off'," he said, laughing. "That'd be like wanting to eat a whole cow after a nice rib fillet for dinner," he explained. Was that accurate? Sure. He gestured in the direction that Gerald had disappeared. "I've already had dinner?" he added, inflection tilted upward at the end as he realised what he was saying, and how absolutely insane it sounded. "I can just let you in, and then I can disappear if that's what you want. Whether or not this is Lionelli territory, I don't know. Sorry," he said, giving a half shrug as he took another half step in the direction of the club. Awkward. Robin didn't think he'd ever change.

[Siobhan (DELETED 8415)]

<Siobhan> Siobhan looked on exasperatedly as he spoke, barely shifting where she stood. Her shoulder was starting to hurt from the angle at which her injured arm hung, but she didn’t dare move it. How incredibly unpleasant this situation was. “That’s so reassuring, thanks. Thanks for calling me a ‘cow’ too. Much appreciated.” The longer she stood here, the shorter her list of options became. A glance in the direction of where she came from her elicited a renewed wave of panic. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. With a grunt, she shuffled towards him on unsteady feet.


<Robin Little> Robin wasn't sure if his breaks were ever timed -- or if anyone ever knew he was missing. All he did was wander around the club looking like one of the punters, but apart from them at the same time. He supposed if he did actually get a client -- someone asking after his very specific and peculiar services -- then they'd miss him. He did have his phone in his pocket, however, and they always knew how to contact him if it was required. Though, he mused, this woman's time was a little more sensitive than his. "I'm Robin, by the way," he said, turning as she joined him, loping toward the back door and reaching for the pin-pad upon which he could secure his code.


<Siobhan> “Sarah,” she offered in return, biting back any comment about comic books at the mention of his name. The backlit numbers on the keypad would be hard to read on any given day, but the digits were nothing more than dots of light. She attempted to blink them into focus, but it was to no avail. Siobhan gave no indication of the turmoil surfacing within. “Do you have a first aid kit in the staff room?”


<Robin Little> The door clicked open and Robin had to glance over his shoulder, and back down at the dead arm. He hadn't really thought that far, but should have assumed that Sarah would need some kind of help. "Aah," he breathed. Would Amaranthia be pleased with him bringing a wounded human into the staff room to clean up her wounds? "Maybe," he said, instead concocting some plan where he deposits Sarah in a booth while he goes to get the goods. He held the door wide, gesturing for Sarah to go in first. He would deal with the rest inside. Living on the edge of his seat was one of Robin's specialties.


<Siobhan> Trust was not something Siobhan did easily. Opportunistic to the core, she took whatever she was given whenever she thought it’d make a positive difference. Planning was not something she was particularly adept at; a child of the system, she had long ago understood that there would be more things out of her hands than she could ever plan for. Adapting after the facts was easier—well, most of the time anyway. It was with notable apprehension that she shuffled into the establishment, using her armed hand to brace herself against the threshold. “What is this place?”


<Robin Little> "It's the Necropolis," he said. As if it was something she should know. "A nightclub. Where I work," he said, correcting his tone. Sarah moved past him and he was reminded of her humanity; the heat radiated from her body in thick waves. She'd been running. She was wounded. Robin was reminded of the wound as she braced herself against the door; it deposited them somewhere near the toilets. "Actually -- yeah..." he said, a great plan coming to mind. But then he dismissed it, entirely. The toilets, at this time of night, would probably not be hygienically clean enough to clean this wound. Sarah looked like she was about to collapse. "Actually -- do you have anything against ambulances? I think they'll do a much better job than I can..."