Love Among Thieves

[Malkavia]

Shimmerlace squinted. "Eeeeh...Is that like. Some kinda roundabout dig that I was...born? Being born was my biggest mistake?" She sniffed, annoyed. "That's a bit of a stretch, Ange."

A chunkier vehicle, like a bus or a cement truck, rumbled down the street, just out of sight at the end of this alley. The rumble of its engine echoed in the tunnel formed by three walls. If she'd been a dog, her ears would have been perked straight up, tilting at every new disturbance—listening keenly for any of the surrounding doors to swing open.

"Aaaanywho, I don't think you'd have the heart to give a fuck if someone were bleeding out just now—and even if they are, Well! Y'know. You, my dear precious pirate queen, can make this stop. Aaaaany. Tiiiiime. You. Want. Speaking of—"

Shimmerlace adjusted her seat on Angelina. She felt the weight of her body press through the column of her thigh, through the knee. She enjoyed leaning forward and feeling that point of contact compress. She licked her teeth and cocked her head to one side. "Next thing out of your mouth is gonna be an acknowledgment that my rabbit exists and you have it, or..." The Axon PULSE+ taser slid over Angelina's nylons. One of the two metal prongs caught on the cloth and introduced a small tear. But then she pulled it out from between the Marauder's legs and instead pressed it into the base of her spine, where its payload could do the most substantial damage to all of Angelina's teeming bundles of nerves. "...Next thing you're gonna feel is somewhere between fifty thousand and ninety-five million volts...depending on which advertising you believe...tearing up your central nervous system."

[Monsy]

Angelina had a dry laugh at the state of her humour. They noticed, but didn't land at all. Like landing a backflip on your fuckin' back.

Welp. That was no fun.

She took a moment to explore where her head can turn. A survey of the surroundings didn't provide much at all. She could maybe throw some rocks if she could get her arm free, hope to catch the eyes and that would be enough to teeter over totter towards the pavement. There was also screaming. But with the prongs of something biting her back, she closed the thought. 'Don't push it...' -- Well duh, but. On the other hand, as she was hearing Shim talk, she slowly hurried up her breathing. First from her nose, then with an open mouth, to adding a heave with her shoulders and finally catching a strain in her throat and a whiff of lightheadedness.

"H-H-Hell, S-Shim... I was j-just pp-playin around... p-Please don't. I-I can't give ya anythin' if I'm out." Angelina put more of her face in the dirt, "Ya didn't have to say all that, yanno. Y-You cut me up, b-break my fingers, my orbital, s-say I'm a hh-heartless monstah... W-When is it enough, Sss-Shim??" She puffed out air harder and harder, working some dust into her eye so she rapidly blinked, felt a sear on her eye's top layer, then released a tear at the corners with puffy-ness building all around. "P-Please don't do it. I--I'mm... I'm havin' an asthma attack." Then she coughed. Once, then twice, then a flurry. "G-Get off my b-back, SSHH-ack-" Another flurry of six coughs, each one seeing to come drier and more violent grunt baked into it. "I can't breathe. . . cccharlotte... I-Iii-can't breathe!"

[Malkavia]

Whatever Shimmerlace was expecting out of the Marauder, the demon of the past months of Shimmerlace's life, terror of LAW, it was not...whatever the fuck this was. The snivelling and whining twisted Shimmerlace's spine, made her want to squirm as she felt things in her gut she wasn't sure she liked to see in herself.

"Sh-shut up..." She dug her knee harder into Angelina's back, but that only made her start hacking out asthmatic gasps. Fuck. The only word Shimmerlace could think was pathetic. Well, that and a series of modifiers and synonyms. Fucking pathetic, for example. A disgusting waste of human flesh.

Was she actually choking, though? She'd heard about people dying in the ring from too much pressure to the chest for too long. Lungs and heart are right there, you know, all delicate and essential cobwebs to your organic existence. Shimmerlace found herself unconsciously lifting her knee off Angelina's back.

"I can't breathe. . . cccharlotte... I-Iii-can't breathe!"

The knee slammed back down. Her face had gone tight and dark, any uncertainty that might have been lingering snuffed out like a candleflame. She pulled the stungun's trigger—and held it for a five-count. That shut her up. After a ten second break, she pulled it again.

But it still wasn't quite enough, was it?

Her eyes flit to a nearby brick Angelina had been so hopefully glancing towards. An idea flit through her mind. What if she propped Angelina's head against that brick—cheekbone to stone? Then, while your devil girl here is languishing in the post-taser paralysis, you could stand. Rest your boot on the top of her head. And if you really felt like it—STOMP.

How would Madeleine feel about that bruise?

But Shimmerlace swallowed the idea, like an ostrich swallowing an egg. She grabbed the hair at the crown of Angelina's head and lifted her face from the dirt. "My name is Shimmerlace," she said just over a whisper into the Marauder's ear. "Fuck that up again, and I'm going to take that brick over there and use it to ruin your face in a way that lasts. Feel me?"

She dropped her back into the asphalt.

"...While we're at it, stop your fucking begging. Should be better than that, ya fuckin'—fuck. Gonna make me puke."

The seconds ticked by. Shimmerlace sighed, head cocked on her shoulder while she took in all the details of Angelina's prone, helpless body. It still didn't feel real—there had to be a trick to it, as if this were just a dummy and any second the REAL Angelina was going to leap off the roof overhead and bash in her brains with a missile dropkick.

Shimmerlace sighed. What was she going to do if Angelina just refused to budge, even faced with facial rearrangement?

Make her miss her fuckin' date, I suppose.

Right. As she sensed the moment when Angelina would recover approaching, she leaned back into her knee. "C'mon then. Let's hear the words, cunt. Thistledown is yours, Shim."

[Monsy]

She started to internally scream.

Her muscles seized, squeezed and squeezed until she felt her body was iron—a robot exhibiting basic but malfunctioning motion in its limited dynamic range, jittering and throwing her head to the ground, then stiffly shaking. When it was over, she felt every muscle having gone slow, exhausted and tender. Her heart rate was pounding, and she was quite genuinely out of breath while being whispered to, knee still into her back and Angelina as face-down as always.

“T-This isn’t funny, S-Shim...” Her voice became even more strained throughout the ordeal. Some of the coughs came genuine after screaming in her mouth, tiring out her throat. So she spoke in lower register, “Uughh— Madeleine and h-her fuckin’ circus of evil freaks…” Angelina kicked, then coughed some more, “I swear— who woulda kept such a deceitful, violent, cruel, loud and stubborn demon of a pet. The blind bitch. Everythin’ is just eggshells and stupid!”

She put her face into the asphalt, having started to care less as she foresaw more of the same. “Let’s say I take ya fantasy about the missing rabbit, for one minute. You think aftah fightin’ me for it, a bit of hurt will do me in? It takes this long to come up with premeditated torture on the street?? What are you, a cafeteria terrorist???”

Let the shocks come. For better or worse, it’s a chance to reawaken without someone on your back. She’ll roll the dice on that, but there was always a second option. “You’re bettah than that, right? Miss thief in trainin’— Maestro of the lockpicks. Tanya the lawless. Eh? I’ve been watchin.”

[Malkavia]

There was plenty that made Shimmerlace alternately roll her eyes, sniff, huff, and snarl in the shit Angelina said. But that last phrase...Now there were words to put your fuckin' teeth on edge.

"Watching me, ey?" she asked, just above a whisper, pressed the stun gun so hard into naked skin on Angelina's back that it would leave an indent in the flesh. "Weeeeeell, fancy that. Though, you must know I haven't used that 'Tanya' moniker in a hot minute then, hmmm?"

...Though, as soon as she said it, Shimmerlace realized that counted for little. For one thing, just because Angelina was watching didn't mean she heard the names she used. And even if she did. She wouldn't want to go and give away the precise extent of her knowledge, now, would she?

If anything, Angelina's default assumption seems like it ought to have been that Shimmerlace was some squeaky clean baaaaaa-lamb without the guts to do shit. Right, present "terrorism" and past thieving excepted, I guess! Don't give this she-demon credit she don't deserve.

Memories of "past thieving" made Shimmerlace deflate. She sighed through her teeth. Well, anywho, if Angelina was watching — if she had noticed missing oven mitts — then Shimmer'd better figure out how much she knew. Right?

"But—eh. Yeah! I have been. Practicing a bit. After Huan—well that was a shitshow, right? Complete and total fuckup on my part, so I wasn't gonna let that stand, now was I? And. Wellll. I wasn't gonna let your..." Shimmerlace found her triger finger itching dangerously. She adjusted her grip on the gun, jaw up, frowning. "I wasn't gonna let your call for me to dive off a fucking roof slow me down, neither."

Shimmerlace lidded her eyes at the same time as she raised her eyebrows, cocking her head from her left shoulder to her right. She felt the pressure of the stungun against her palm and pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth before continuing. "Any...Particular jobs of mine you found interesting, miss...watching-me-watching-you?"

[Monsy]

Fifteen seconds have passed—and no shocks!

Holy shit! Her bacon was now only lightly toasted. Maybe some parts of her will have a crunch like carby white-bread when they make the heart-attack facilitating abomination called a grilled fuckin' cheese, with its golden tint and greasy munch that shoots your BMI straight to mars.

Blegh. She didn't complain nor thought too harshly on the matter of being chatted to, even in this obviously one-sided setup. Of course, she had one urge to lift her brow and make an internal question... 'Did I say that? Uhhhhh--' Then there was a mental shrug, and she listened to the remainder.

Through it, she felt the taser make her back a stress ball. The prongs, hot, felt like coals being pushed into her. She bit her tongue to say nothing, keeping her mind focused on the next second when the taser will drop another degree. "Particular?" Asked Angelina, pulling up a smirk. Watching-me-Watching-You wasn't new information in the game. Since the magic show, Shimmer was on her ass. All this told her is that Shim still has an open eye.

Who, what, where, when, why and how still blank. However, there was bigger fish at the moment. "Ahh, you know me,. It's alllll about the game than what ya call the job, yo. I can't even remembah what I called half my jobs. Fuck, no newspapah will be bothah'd to name any house burglary, so why should we?" She sighed, "Ya learn fastah than I did." She put her cheek to the ground and glanced up. "So, you been lookin' to step up, thief queen?"

[Malkavia]

Tsk. Shimmerlace clicked her tongue without separating her teeth, eyes narrowing. That was a Hell of a dodge around a clear question—and still didn't tell her shit. It gave her an momentary itch to slam the gun into the base of Angelina's skull and pull the trigger.

...What would that do to Angelina, anyway, come to think of it? Cook her brain? Or just—fizzle owing to the lack of muscle? Research questions for later—

"...I've been motivated." She straightened her back at the compliment. "You know you're talking awful nice for someone with a taser in her ass."

It was meant to be an accusation, but instead it made Shimmerlace shift in her seat and glance around the alley. There were – thank God — no birds to shoot dead-eye accusations with their tweet-tweet-tweeeeeting.

The silence dragged out for a tic before Shimmerlace decided to answer Angelina. "And, yeah. Obviously I'm looking to move up. That's why I've got you in cuffs, cunt." A part of Shimmerlace felt irritation at that word. Cunt. Not that it was the wrong word per se. It just...sounded hollow in her gullet. "Or did I somehow give you the misapprehension I was gunning for something other than you this whole time?"

[Monsy]

"Figures." Maybe there was one more sigh in the tank. After a moment of processing--alas, there was none. But with what little she got, she could take the word motivated for some form of activity in their so-called 'field'. If staging this shit was any confirmation, she put a good deal of stock that this was real determination and not some normie's motivation--with its empty words and unrealized actions, over and over and over until her eyes wanted to roll so hard they'd show her optical nerve. However, it didn't so much as reassure or measure Shimmer's talent in Angelina's mind so much as giving a crumb of anything that could fuel a steadily rising smile.

If she was willing, then why not throw her a bone?

"Good on ya, Shimbutterino. You'll make a fine larcenist, soon." Angelina kicked her feet idly. The toes of her vans tapping the concrete, crossing over, then folding up to give them a light stretch. "Actually. I now just the spot where we could step-up, yo. Yanno it's a whole different league once ya start aimin' a bit highah. All great jobs have multiple steps--and it just so happens I'll need a second. Someone... Motivated." She smirked. "That you?"

[Malkavia]

"'Course that's me!"

Wait...

A hot flush touched Shimmerlace's cheeks. "I mean—it. It sure could be." She bit her lip, wished to the blessed fucking spirits her heart would stop pounding in her throat. "And it won't be any kinda fuckup like last time, right. I've practiced. I could—shit, I could rattle off. Whatever you like. Top twenty home security systems in Tokyo. Not just locksmithing, but motion detection and alarm systems, And. And I've actually done the jobs, you know. Publicly, with like. Hot targets."

Yeah but had Angelina asked, though? Yeah well, you see Ange, it's just I've wanted to talk to someone about this for so long, and frankly Eleanor's not exactly going to want to chit chat about the lore surrounding home invasion.

It was pathetic in her head. She realized her face was cool with a new sheen of sweat. Her gun arm had sagged, sliding to the side. She frowned, and stuck the taser, firmly, back into the tailbone.

"...If I agree to help you, Ange. I want the same terms as last time—I want visitation with Thistlebro."

[Monsy]

“Easy. Done.”

Right, right--yes. She probably should've already assumed Shim would be busy rectifying that fuck-up. A test of fire was as good as any, but it didn’t tell her quite enough. If she was better prepared, she’d talk this down towards specifics. A book somewhere that she started writing when she was younger, The Pirate Index, had a growing encyclopedia of research, volumes filled with chapters, diary entries of learned lessons, drawings that mapped techniques, maps, plans, schematics, security systems in both broad and finer details, escape methods, mechanical devices she couldn't afford or be assed to build yet. Of course it was a work in progress, but hey--times were busy.

And to what her mind was stewing, they didn’t need to know any of that--yet.

Angelina released a huge forced sigh of relief, letting the noise of her relaxation sweep some of that tension under the rug. “Now for my terms.” She looked into Shimmer’s eyes. The best she could anyway. “Get off me.”