2013.06.13 - Sentence First, Verdict Afterwards

It's another night out in Bludhaven. Tonight's seen its share of people getting punched, tasered, roughed up, and beat down. Pretty average for this place, except that a fair portion of the skirmish had come from just one individual.
One individual with skin as white as the fur of a lab mouse and with a large black spot surrounding all of her left eye, and not even from having gotten punched in the face. It's cosmetic, for whatever reason. Maybe a little asymmetrical contrast had been intended all along, who knows.
Out here in a run-down warehouse, Bludhaven lives up to its name. There's a fair amount of it streaking across the worn concrete floor. A thin haze hovers in the air from the brief but frantic exchange of gunfire, pockmarking the walls and cement pillars which help support the roof. Only two individuals remain. One's scrambling backward across the floor, largely uninjured but wholly disarmed. The other is smaller, lanky, and hopelessly albino.
Both of them cause spent shell casings to clink and rattle across the floor.
"You won't get anything from me, you crazy bitch!"
"I already have," Domino easily replies as the slide of her pistol drives home to battery with a resounding -Chak!-
"I have you. Time to go for a ride."
It had been an interesting night for Vorpal. Having agreed to help Justin Hammer was the first link in the chain of crazy. Deciding to check out the criminal havens whilst waiting on a call from Sam Simeon was probaby the second link. From then on, it had just gotten curioser and curioser. He had started chasing the petty thieves, trying to see if they knew someone who could turn themselves invisible. As misfortune would have it, during his sniffing out he caught the trail of destruction that someone had left in her wake. Being the do-gooder that he is, and also feline, curiosity was just too much, and so he tried to follow the trail as best he could.
The trail ended, of course, at that warehouse. He was too late to catch the beginning of the showdown, but as he perched himself on a high window with perfect balance, he caught a sight of the scene.
The question, of course, was which one was the bad guy, and which one was the good guy? or gal? He didn't exactly get the best vibes from the lady down there, but the man clearly was no angel, either. So he decided to do his tried and true approach of getting a reaction, and seeing how his targets reacted.
"Tsk Tsk Tsk, White Queen!" comes the reproachful, mocking voice from above, "It looks like you've been getting into the Queen of Hearts' hobby here, too much bread and butter clogged your arteries?" Should Domino look up, she will see, perched on the window, Vorpal... the Cheshire Cat, grinning from ear to ear, green eyes aglow.
I don't see that here.
There's always a way to get Domino's attention. Granted a lot of them aren't things people would do in a polite society, but she also doesn't happen to live in one. The falling of heavy boots upon the hardened floor comes to an abrupt stop as a third voice speaks out, from above, and immediately dives into references which she picks up in an instant. It's almost faster than the pull of a trigger.
Almost.
In a flash the alabaster-hued woman has a second pistol out and ready, the sights darting across the room until they're aimed upward, where that third voice had originated from. It's still a possible hostile, one that may know her better than she's comfortable with, but when she finally lays pale blue eyes upon the speaker?
"No fuggin' way..."
Her arteries are fine but now she's wondering if someone spiked her last cup of coffee with a hallucinogenic. Her eyes are wider than before, as if they're caught in some spectral headlights which only she can see. Not that it takes her -completely- off of her game, as the scraping of metal upon the floor causes one of those fingers to draw tighter.
BLAM!
A brief spark across the floor erupts right between the downed man's legs, the ricochet smacking into the brick wall an inch away from his ear. The weapon he had been reaching for is suddenly abandoned.
"Don't."
Either she's got eyes in the back of her head or that was a freakishly lucky shot.
Vorpal is pleased at her reaction. Hey, at least she didn't outright kill the guy. Although if he hadn't such a good control of himself, he would have winced in sympathetic reaction at any man's jewels being threatened that way. He slowly stands up, nothing fast so as not to provoke her into shooting. "Now now, White Queen. You're better than this. Care to tell an old friend what's going on, hm?" Taking advantage of his ability to levitate, he pushes off slightly, but remains only an inch above the window frame. Thinking creatively, he then starts apparently walking down the wall, with his head raised to look at her (though in reality all he is doing is levitating downwards whilst keeping his body perpendicular to the wall, making a very believable effect of walking down a wall.) "Did he steal the Queen's tarts? Must be, since you're threatening to blast off his cookies like that!"
Admittedly, it's kinda hard for Dom to keep her head in the game at the moment. With the next chunk of brass clinking merrily across the floor she pulls back on the second gun, the one that had been aimed at the levitating cat, and holds it across her face in complete disbelief. Eyes closed and everything.
"This is not freaking happening. Get it together."
"Hey, can you maybe have your damn crisis some other time? I've got work to do!"
Distractions are bad. She's going to lose her target at this rate. Another quick turn brings her back to the lone survivor, twisting her hand enough that a pair of wires fire out from the top of her wrist, tasing the guy enough to put him out of the conversation for a while.
Y'know. So he won't run away. Or interrupt.
Dom's heard about facing one's demons. Heck, she spends a lot of time around someone that's half Neyaphem, already. But, if her demons decided to manifest as the bloody Cheshire Cat then she's going to need a lot more to drink today.
Both of her arms drop to her sides, standing there with subtly hunched shoulders before she turns around, in search of That Which Should Not Be.
"None of my old friends can fly, and th--are you even real?"
"I'm real enough. Of course, that all depends, you know. If the Red King happens to wake up, it's *poof* for all of us. But last I saw him, he was snoozing away peacefully, so there's no worries. Yet." His grin would be potentially charming, in other circumstances. He stays where he is, though, as walking towards her could be seen as a threat. "You look like you've seen a ghost, White Queen. I saw all the little unbirthday parties you left scattered around. He snaps his fingers and a purple, glowing arrow appears over the unconscious survivor, suspended in midair and pointing at him. "All for this little card?"
Threat or no threat, Dom's in a peculiar situation. She doesn't know what to do! The foundation of her very reality seems to be falling apart. There's also an arrow floating in the air like a displaced mouse cursor and she knows that's not supposed to happen.
"I..."
(Good job, Domino. Care to try that one again?)
"Would..you stop with the Wonderland act, already?" she finally says in a voice that's found some proper footing, gesturing with irritation and a weapon in hand to nothing in particular.
Her first course of action is to get things as grounded in reality as possible. Remove as many unusual elements as she can. There's gotta be something she can work with hidden away in all of this. Even Deadpool has a foundation which she can understand.
"Yeah. All for this idiot," she confirms with something of a glare cast your way. "Not that it's any of your business. You with these guys? Maybe working for another source? I don't have time to stand around and trip the hell out talking to a live cast member from a children's story."
Ah, who is she kidding? This is one of those moments where she can't simply walk away. She's just attempting to regain some semblance of control over the situation.
"It isn't an act, White Queen. I am whom I appear to be," he says, firmly believing it, "But for your benefit, I'll make myself more ...prosaic... though don't tell anyone, hmm?" the arrow fades, and suddenly instead of tights the Cheshire Cat is wearing a suit and tie (illusory) and a cute little pince-nez, golden, over his nose. He didn't say any magic words or anything, it simply changed from one moment to another. "Work with them? You should know by now that cats don't work 'with' anyone. We just let people hang about. But no, I'm not with them. So, what has the little maggot done to deserve a visit from a rather lovely White Queen? Someone needs to be punished for being bad?" He grins, clapping his hands just a little "I do so love punishing people when they're wicked. I use them to play crocket." And as if on cue, a glowing, purple flamingo club appears in his hand, which he uses to lean on.
So much for grounding things in reality. Dom's only got a passing familiarity with magic, though from everything that she's seen nothing happens unless someone makes it happen. That is, things don't happen on a thought or a whim. Like what just happened.
It's enough to make a control freak feel a little on the hysterical side.
"Never been that big on owning pets," she replies while tucking her sidearms back beneath her shoulders. "But yeah, cats can be a real pain sometimes. Thanks for following the stereotype, you're a real team player."
With her hands free she almost immediately reaches up to massage the bridge of her nose. Maybe if she just keeps her eyes closed and focuses on the voice...
Good luck trying to get the image out of her head.
"Bad guys doing bad things, I told him to get his butt in the car and one thing led to another--why am I telling you this?" she says aloud while stopping herself short. That hand at her nose holds itself up with an open palm in protest as she firmly shakes her head. Keeping her eyes closed isn't helping all that much.
Screw it. Look, acknowledge, continue.
"Got tired of living in your own world, Cheshire? You could have picked better than Bludhaven."
..Where the hell did that flamingo come from?
"You could say that the cat took an interesting in this world." Which wouldn't be too far from the truth, as he sees it. "And you're telling me this because you've always been the smarter of the Queens. Just between us, the Queen of Hearts is a basket short of a picnic, and the Red one is just boring. Besides... if I'm bored enough, I've been known to help out. This little card over there, he doesn't run with a crowd that happens to turn... invisible, now, doesn't he? I've been very curious about such little mice."
When the matter of her being the smarter of the Queens comes up, Domino just starts laughing. What else is there to do? It feels like she's having a psychotic break!
"Yeah, she's a real piece of work."
And now the albino's playing along. Gods help her.
"Red always fit other people better, anyway."
Bored enough to help out. That..sounds suspiciously like her own thoughts when offered a job with the other Gotham vigilantes. Hopefully Oracle hasn't been following this massacre too closely.
Little card. (Two of Clubs, maybe?) "What, this Simpleton?" she asks while thumbing back to the unconscious baddie. "If he does then someone's been holding out on me. Far as I know I haven't butted heads with any metas today, present company possibly excluded. On the prowl, are we? This town should be a good start for phase shifters, real elusive lot."
Yes, discussing work! This is something she can wrap her mind around!
"Sounds like it. I guess I should continue looking... though I must ask what are you going to do with that one?" He dismisses the illusion and suddenly he's dressed in a deerstalker hat and a cape, with a purple magnifying glass where the Flamingo was. "... If you'll excuse me benig nosy. It's my nature, after all." He had to admit that he was having fun, she hadn't decided to go on a psychotic killing spree, and she was following his drift. So to speak. Even if that drift was now far out asea.
Making something out of nothing is a talent. One which is greatly aided by luck, more often than not. This time when Domino looks toward the cat she does so with a hint of curiosity, though it's not difficult to tell that her guard is still up. What are the odds of her bumping into someone that should never have existed from her single favorite story?
Astronomical. Even for her.
"I'm excusing a lot of things right now," she admits in a flat, emotionless voice. "Like taking a leave of absence from reality. As for this guy I'm going to dump him into the trunk, take a drive across town, then drop him on someone else's doormat. Catch and release, what happens beyond that is none of my concern."
That, and she's only getting paid to make the delivery. And to watch a magic purple cat, apparently. Her, transfixed? Only slightly.
"Hm... I see." He says, with a mischievous look in his eyes. "Normally I'd give you a talk about you should take him to the police... but I figure that this being Bludhaven, you'll probably do a better job. I still have those invisible mice to catch, which is why I decided to take a peek into this little unbirthday. So be it, I guess I should keep looking. But I'll be visiting you again sometime, White Queen. We shall have some splendid tea and we shall get on famously, I expect." he says, and he puts away the magnifying glass. A purple, glowing rose appears in the air before her. "We may be able to hunt mice together in the future. That would be quite splendid."
"I've already paid my dues to the Commissioner," Domino replies in a 'not quite an answer' answer. Though with a slight grin, she adds "And I always do a better job."
Invisible mice. More time around Cheshire. (This Cheshire, not the one that Roy had broken up with. It gets confusing, but that's nothing new.) Things which come to exist out of thin air. "Yeah... Splendid," she repeats in almost zombie-like fashion.
Once more the merc starts rubbing at her temple, thinking to herself "It would be so nice if something made sense for a change."
"Don't take it too hard, White Queen. Remember, we're all mad here. I'll be seeing you again sometime. Until then... keep your eyes out. And remember what the doormouse said. Feed your head." He says with a wide grin, and the rose disappears in the air. And so does Vorpal. He vanishes into thin air... except for his smile, which remains there for a second before it disappears completely after blowing her a kiss. Already invisible, he looks up at the window, thankfully shorter than fifteen feet away, and Sidesteps onto the windowsill. He then jumps off and into the night, running whilst invisible. 'So much for a false lead. But at least that was fun... now... if I were an invisible thief, where would I be?"
With a gentle sigh, Dom quietly says "A grin without a cat... It's the most curious thing I ever say in my life."
Category:Log