You are in a typical awkward elevator ride with a group of other people, suddenly a man says “So, I bet you are wondering why I’ve gathered you here” before hitting the emergency stop button.
Scarred Faith and Hope ficlet (2016-11-24)
XingYan is closest, fastest, and–as the rest of the team will later learn–easiest to anger. She has the man shoved into the corner, forearm pressed his throat.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she asks the man, at the same time one of the other passengers shrieks the same to her.
The man wheezes, but otherwise doesn’t protest the chokehold. In fact, it’s someone else that tries to pull her away.
“Now, now,” says a different man, skin wrinkled not from age but from rough living. His clothes are worn, too, frayed and faded, but clean. He doesn’t put a hand on her, but he steps closer, near to insinuating himself between them.
Ex-military, XingYan reads in his stance. Commander, she hears in his tone.
“Why don’t we all settle down? Step back and let him explain himself. I’m sure Sol has a reason for all this.”
She might be able to take both of them in a fight, but she has no idea about the other passengers–which way they might fall if it comes to blows, if they can even help or if they’ll just be liabilities.
XingYan gives them space.
—
Minerva stays quiet, doesn’t bring any attention to herself, watches and waits and plans. If this ‘Sol’ has trapped her here with a purpose, then she wants to know what that purpose is. As well as who the hell these others are that they’ve all been gathered together for that purpose.
She begins researching, glasses faintly glowing as she pulls up browser windows, fingertips tapping silently against her palms. Lau XingYan is easiest to identify–unsurprising, considering they’ve worked together before.
Minerva is XingYan’s go-to for a hacker during bounty hunts, and on the rare occasion when Minerva needs something done in meatspace that she can’t handle herself, she calls XingYan.
Provided it’s not too illegal, of course.
The others take a little more digging.
Minerva has backdoors in Cascadia’s police database, and it doesn’t take too long to shake out the name of one Toby Kelly, alias ‘Tiberius Overkill,’ who has been repeatedly arrested but never convicted on multiple charges of breaking and entering, petty and grand larceny, and, on one occasion, arson.
Considering the description of his personality, she’s surprised he’s staying out of the altercation, but perhaps that has more to do with the younger man–kid, really–that he’s trying to hide with his own body. Not that it’s hard, really, Kelly is quite tall while the kid… isn’t.
The kid is harder to find anything on, but given most minors wouldn’t have much of a record, it’s not too unexpected. What is unexpected is what she finds on the kid–not a burgeoning juvenile record as she would have expected from someone hanging out with Kelly.
The kid is Angelo Reyes, runaway heir to SOFCO, the largest and most successful company in the Pacific Northwest.
~
A/N: New series? *shrugs*
Post Word Count: 480, Running Word Count: 9064
JackSGreyson Says 