A Promise

[Pyre]

((Lol! Yea, this is gonna be fun. Oh, I guess Wysocke doesn't know that Aston's bipolar yet. He will... >> ))

Ashton peered up at him with one eye. Her other was closed against the sunlight, which wasn't her best friend ever since the night before. He'd already been talking like a tweaker on red bull when she'd met him, so the new vocabulary was probably something to be ignored. Still, if she was going to be able to sanely spend time with this guy...

"Crasting...?" she asked, ever the predictable one. She was surprised that, if Wysocke had been born in her home neighborhood, that he hadn't been mixed up with the same sort of crowd Ashton now found herself surrounded by. From all three-hundred-sixty angles. And she was more surprised that mister injured-and-nervous didn't protest about where she was taking him. Anyone with experience would know better...

She kept leaning in to him, enjoying the frenzy she could send his mouth flying in, like a chicken without its head. She'd led him down the walk to a corner, where a single lamp post, with a broken head, stood in forlorn singleness. behind it was a building that looked like it came from the eighteen-hundreds, with crooked bricks and mold-covered wood frames. She slipped right through the door before Alex could have a chance to notice where he was. She could rely on that mouth of his to keep him occupied, she was sure.

The door opened up to a dark room, one that their eyes wouldn't be properly adjusted to yet. There were some tables. And some walls. I say "some" because one wall was evidently missing, torn down into a crumpled heap by old age and ill treatment. Instead, the back of the restaurant (for that's what it was) was partially open to the alley behind it.

[Warrior Poet]

And in Alex went, grinning happily as though there was no way she couldn't know what that meant. Casually reaching into his coat he grabbed his cigarettes and lighter, plying one to the other and placing the cigarette into his mouth before putting the pack away.

Perhaps he should have first observed the locale. No matter, he would do so now. Taking a drag, he casually sighed the smoke out of his nose before looking around. Run down was being kind. Dilapidated. Beyond belief. He was surprised the place wasn't condemned. "Classy," he remarked.

There were a few people there, but nobody he recognized, which was interesting, because he thought he knew everybody in this part of town. "Looks like the kinda place I'd find Ilario and Mac." Both of them lived and hung around this area, so it was a bit of an injection of himself. He actually wouldn't be surprised if she knew them.

"So," he said in a voice easily recognizable as 'pretending to be hurt,' "do I guess your name, or do you tell me when you shove a knife up my jaw?" Then he chuckled. "Maybe that'd nail it shut." Wysocke casually fell into a chair, taking the cigareette out of his mouth and leaning his crutch against the wall.

[Pyre]

"Mmmnn," Ashton murmured helpfully. She rubbed her eyes, coming to appreciate the sore that this place really was. Usually she forgot...

The other patrons were few and sat in clearly-separated clumps, though none of them seemed to be here for the food. Never come here for the food. Maybe it was the beer, then, or the way they sat in groups hunched together, eying the new fox with anything but hospitality.

"Sorry," Ashton said quickly, resting a hand on his shoulder as she passed to find her own chair. "You can relax, though. I wouldn't stab you on a first date." She winked slyly, just to freak him out.

She sat down more gently, giving an innocent big-eyed look his way. "No, I wanted you to meet some people. Do you mind?"

[Warrior Poet]

Alex leaned back slowly. This was going too well. There was no way she was that impressed. Was she? He could always pretend that sshe was. Actually, that was a sound plan. If she wasn't, well, he'd burn that bridge when he came to it. He also chose to pointedly ignore the looks of hostility. They'd all come around soon enough. Taking another puff from his cigarette, Alex suddenly realized that he'd done something he normally didn't.

"I never mind meeting new vecks. Social butterfly, as it were." Leaning back in his chair, Alex grinned into Ashton's eyes with an easily penetrable false innocence of his own. "On one condition. I get to meet you, too. I never got your name. It'd be flip bezoomny to call you 'Oi, pretty one,' which, while I'm certain it flatters, also tends to present a bit of contempt. Contempt is rude, and I don't like being rude."

Reaching into his coat, Alex withdrew his cigarettes and lighter again, placing them on the table. "Speaking of, I forgot to offer you one. Do you smoke?"

[€l SonikkÜ]

"Like a train wreck." A dark, husky voice came from behind the new arrival, and no sooner snatched the pack from the table. Metal rimmed combat boots, worn and scratched from years of harsh use, made slow, hollow clumps on the wooden floor as the jagged brown hedgehog continued his way around the table in the dark room. He pulled a single cigarette and shoved the rest in his coat pocket, a small flicker of flames racing down from his fingers to light the end then vanish in a puff of smoke. He looked a little...smug. Smugger than usual. But then, who could blame him after the little personal message he'd received earlier? Regardless of how...strange...the means. He looked back over his shoulder, faint smirk appearing as he gave a curt and...rather unnecessary "Thanks, that's generous of you."

He stopped his circle at Ashton's seat, smoke flowing from his lips as he looked down on her with narrowing eyes. " 'the hell is this?" He gave his head a brief tilt toward Alex. If he remembered correctly, they'd sent Ashton to scout the theater for a certain unsuccessful drug dealer who owed them some cash. Scorch had given her a specific time-frame which the mouse would likely make a show and a specific time to be back if he didn't, to not raise suspicion. That time had been about an hour ago. Not only was she pitifully late, but she'd managed to bring some outside mutt with her as well? Ah...well...if there was ever a time for her to screw up it might as well be now. Scorch didn't look quite so on the verge of going psycho about it as he would have ordinarily. Weird, eh?

[Pyre]

Blue eyes stared up at the newcomer calmly, then a small smile creased her face, baring a single fang. It looked almost wicked. "I could ask you the same question. What are you doing here smoking your arse? Don't you have enough hot air in that head of yours?"

She mentally swore, one finger tracing the splintered grain of the table. This wasn't who she'd been hoping to run into. At least not yet. Not until she got her brother to back her up. Nothing was ever predictable with this guy, and he actually had prescriptions for personality disorders. She glanced at the bulge in his pocket where Alex's cigs had disappeared to and flashed the fox a warning glance.

"Alex, this is Scorch. My, ah...boss." She shrugged casually, snapping her fingers at the man behind the counter to signal she wanted a drink. Something strong would be nice, and maybe something weak to keep Scorch's mood in check. Because she didn't note that he was being uncharacteristically forgiving. She just knew she was on shaky ground.

"And I'm Ashton. Sorry, thought I told you my name," she added. She glared at the counter--the rat running it was studiously ignoring her, though he managed to give her his yellow-eyed dead glare.

She focused her eyes back on Scorch, silently imploring him to hear her out.

[Warrior Poet]

And more chances to show off. Woo hoo! He was based in street level pick-pocketry and other manner of illicit monkeyshines. He also had a second pack with him, that one having been low in the first place. Alex's shoe came up to meet the table, his parachute pantleg falling down half way to the floor, jingling the chains he was wearing as he pushed back. A few of the crosses he wore around his neck slid off his chest as he twisted his abdomen a bit to get a better viddy at the veck what crasted his cancers.

"Horrorshow generous." Alex flashed a grin, as though his intention was to have some hem-korn veck bust up lke bezoomny and nick his nicotine. "What's it gonna be then, eh?" He gave a hard shove with his foot, pushing the chair backwards at the same time he shifted his gravitational pull. The effect was him pullling about three quarters of a backflip only to land on the wall. And stay there, catching the chair before it fell and righting it.

And there he stood on the wall, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, at Scorch's head-level. "Nice to make your aquaintance." One hand fell into his outer coat pocket, the other replaced the cigarette in his mouth and was subsequently offered for a handshake, twisted a bit to make it less awkward. He had eased the pull of gravity a bit so that his leg was under minimal pressure, making him seem in a lot better shape than he was.

[€l SonikkÜ]

The hedgehog grinned faintly at Ashton's responce. "This hot air of mine is likely to come to a boil if you don't start explaining a few things, babe..." The grin faded, "Instead of seeing my money, OR the head of the b*st*rd who owes it, all I see a freak and a slacker who I'm beginning to think aren't worth much more to me than target pract..." He trailed off, feeling a slight shift in the atmosphere of the room and catching Ashton's little prostitute in the corner of his eye flip out of his chair to start standing on the wall, of all f*cking things.

"Nice to make your aquaintance." He said and promply stuck out his hand, as if this were some kind of 'gentlemen's' harbor. Scorch had been ignoring the blabbering he was doing over there rather nicely until now. Poor Alex. He would learn soon the best place to be in Scorch's mind was not there at all.

"Pretty sick power you've got there." He said in nonchalant tones that pretty much gave away the fact that Scorch could snap, crackle and pop without much excuse, "But uh...this isn't a f*cking astronaut cocktail party. Get your hand out of my face and your feet off my wall before I give your circus *ss something to dance to." Pff, like the walls were clean or something. It just bugged him though. And things that bugged Scorch didn't last very long.

((Yeah, definetly going to need a less confrontational charrie in the blades to kind of even this out and put some yen to my yan. Or maybe I should just say one of my other characters joined.))

[Pyre]

((That could work. I got Wraith, but more members the merrier. Lol! Scorch has upped his act since I last saw him.))

The girl in the party had to bite her thumb to keep from laughing, hiding her face behind her hand and shaking silently. But she'd better cut in before someone ended up dead. It wouldn't be Scorch.

"Calm down, hot *ss, go sizzle your biscuits outside. Look, Iee...ah...got a little drunk on the way home, and...he wasn't there anyway. It's fine." She waved it off nonchallantly, giving the rat a fierce glare.

Perhaps sensing his livelihood was in peril, the restaurant owner came over and slammed a bottle of whiskey in front of Ashton before leaving. Ashton promptly slammed it down next to Scorch. "Drink this. And calm down. I found something better than cheap drug laundry. Trust me..." She fixed Scorch with a look, one she'd never been good at around him. The neutral look. The..."I'm trying not to turn the whole town into cinders around us" look.

A glance at Alex. She couldn't have him around making things worse, and Ashton was bad enough at negotiations on her lonesome. "Wysocke...could you, ah...go fetch me some coffee? Up the stairs, there's an old flat. Coffee maker's on the counter to the right."

[Warrior Poet]

Alex grinned. She was already caling him Wysocke, like all his friends did. "I think I can do that much," he said to the girl he seemed to be on a date with. His grin the shifted to Crankypants McGee. "Oh, I can be plenty off-the-wall when I need to be." That said, he leapt from the wall, turning all manner of acrobatics through the air as he once again toyed with his gravity, to land all dramatic like at the foot of the stairway.

Then, just to mess with Hotpants dePrickface, he aligned himself sideways again and climbed 'down' the stairs he was going up by standing on the fronts of them instead of the steps themselves.

Once he reached he top, he took a step out into nothing and reset his gravity no its normal state, albiet with a lighter hold on his person to keep his leg sated. ((I'll leave room for him to bump into someone here, in case any other gang-ey type people are about.))

[€l SonikkÜ]

Scorch studdied the bottle for a moment, then grudgingly plopped down in one of the nearby chairs and snatched it off the table. He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket before he slid down a little lower and started to drink, unfolding it with one hand. "Oh, you found something better?" His fiery gaze shifted to Wysocke out of the corner of his eye, watching him briefly like he had some kind of repulsive tatoo across his face.

"Oh, I can be plenty off-the-wall when I need to be."

His eyes jumped back to Ashton on his other side, brows furrowing like she were the lamest person he'd ever met, before they lowered to the paper. "You are one drunk piece of sh*t..."

[Pyre]

((Oh sweet, I can use Wraith? And if Sonic wants another char in here, I dont' know.))

Of all the things in the world to do, Ashton barked out a laugh. She couldn't help it. "Only a little drunk," she corrected, though her judgment was still out on break.

"Look, look, look," she cut in as soon as Wysocke had gone. That womanizing idiot would be kept busy for all of maybe a minute, two if the coffee machine hated him as much as it hated everyone else. Still not a lot of time.

"Scorch, he's an absolute idiot. He gets in street fights with mass murders and walks out of it with hell all over his body but acting like he's just been to the fair. Stupid as a dog, I could probably get him to jump in the river if he thought he'd get tea at the end of it. Kay, but that's not he point."

She leaned forward, tapping the bottle she'd just given him pointedly. "Let's just talk hypothetically here. Got your eyes on any banks lately? Any big plans? You've always got them. And sorry to tell you, but destiny's a b*tch and it likes to make sure your plans rarely work out."

She eyed the paper but didn't think much of it or take more than a passing interest. She was focusing on not starting a bonfire here. "Chaos users are rare in this city, you know that. That's why that blue guy gets so much rep. So...what if...we could up our chances? You know, think what that kind of ability could do against a security system." She gestured vaguely with one hand, her ears drawn forward.

-------

Upstairs, a pair of dark eyes peered over the arm of the couch. Then narrowed. What the heck? Strange guy in my apartment... That wouldn't do.

His white fur stood out clearly against the leather furniture, he wouldn't go unnoticed for long. But if the fox's attention were elsewhere for just a moment, even a little distracted...

And, just like that, it appeared to all eyes that Alex was alone. Well, there were two shut doors that could be hiding anything, but aside from that. It was a run-down apartment, clothes on the floor, a short fridge and an over-filled sink in a tiled area that could be called a kitchen in some places. Half the windows were boarded, the others wide open.

Suddenly a hand grabbed out at Alex from the side, around his collar. A white-furred hand attached to a spotted arm in blue sleeve, a tall feline shape, and narrowed black eyes. A snow leopard, though certainly not Ashton.

"What are you doing here?"

[Warrior Poet]

Alexander's knee-jerk reaction was to completely revers the pull of his gravity, which was normally confusing enough to make someone let him go. He decided not to. He could, however, respond to whoever happened to have him by the collar of his coat. "I'm here getting a young dvotchka a cup of kaff at her request. I assume she is talking with the mild mannered veck in the leather. I also assume it's a private conversation." While he didn't throw any sarcasm into what he said, it was rather plain that he was not entirely serious.

Attempting to slowly turn around, on the off chance his accoster had released him, Alex smiled disarmingly. "You don't feel threatened by ikkle me, do ya?" Due to his decreased gravitational pull, he actually had to be exceptionally light. Realizing this, he cracked a joke. "All the big platties are just to make up for how scrawny I really am. Don't even got a britzvah, viddy?"

[€l SonikkÜ]

Ashton's backstabbing of this poor fool didn't strike him as unexpected. If she'd been more of a stranger he might have laughed and praised it in one way or another. But instead he just half heartedly listened, half consumed in the paper he was studying, a quarter consumed in the drink. She was making some good points though. A brainless gravity bender who could be easily kept under control would be extremely benifitiary. Not that it mattered if Scorch had to kill him eventually. Destany might be a b*tch, but he had confidence about this next "big plan".

He tilted his head back slightly as he layed the paper out on the table and pushed it toward her, returning that arm to the arm-rest as he took another drink. "When we pull this off," He said, "and if it's for real, we won't have a need for cracking security systems anymore." He then discribed the two freak twins who had appeared to he and Wraith earlier that day, what they had said about the treasure and the underground city, and the map. "sounds kind of bogus to me, but it's worth investigating." His eyes flashed up to the staires where Wysocke had disapeared, "I like your thinking, you're the hottest leopard I know. But if he gets fishy and decides to turn on us while we're in an underground tunnel or some sh*t, I'm not digging everybody's *sses out if he makes something collapse."

________


The patter of small feet could be heard from around the chair Wraith had been in moments ago, and a small...what almost looked like a toddler, stepped into sight. He was a cute little guy, couldn't possibly be older than four or five, with a black and white hoodie over golden fur and wide, innocent green eyes with a sliver of blue in his left. He looked cat-like, but an obvious mix. And after a moment of staring curiously at Wraith and Alex, he began to approach on those big, clumsy paws.

[Pyre]

"Don't worry," Asthon said easily. She held out one hand, blue flame crackling on her fingertips. They were intense, and the color said that it was hotter than Scorch's own flame. Though she couldn't produce the same raw power attacks he could. She let the fire grow slowly, building in her hand and warming her still slightly alcoholic blood. "I'll keep him under control. If he becomes a problem, I'll handle it myself."

She kept the fire clear of the map, smiling faintly at the idea of finally getting everything they'd ever dreamed of, everything they'd fought and bled and killed for all their lives. After living on the streets or in dumps like this all her life, greed surged through Ashton's veins like a cancer. "It does sound stupid. But...well. We're a gang of chaos users. What could go wrong?"

Famous last words. She stood up, brushed off her hands to get the fire to go out, then picked up the bottle Scorch had so far ignored. "We better get started then, no? Let's get Wraith, and let me pack a few guns in my gear." By guns she meant beer. And by gear she meant the backpack she would pretend held something useful.

((Here, you take 'em up the stairs. Or something. XD ))
------

Wraith's snarl widened, whiskers pricked. His first move was to tighten his grip on Wysocke's collar and shake the fox slightly by it. He had no clue what was coming out of his mouth either but...

Slowly he let go. "You Ashton's new boyfriend or something?" She did have a thing for foreigners. He stepped back, nearly tripping over the sudden appearance of the kid in black fur. "Ah! Watch it, runt."

((Short post, sorry. Next one'll be better. Is this young Saylo or something?))