capeandcowllogs | Do just what I tell you, and no one will get hurt

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Do just what I tell you, and no one will get hurt

WHO: Cassandra and Bruno and a bunch of thugs who are really in the wrong place at the wrong time.
WHERE: Some back-alley asscrack of the City.
WHEN: Laaaate Friday night/early Saturday morning
WARNINGS: Cass beatin' the shit out some folks. Also later there may be knives, and the cutting of people with knives. And by people I mean robots.
SUMMARY: Bruno kind of lost it after seeing his own memory play and having the-- literally-- unforgettable fact that he is almost certainly a robot burned into his skull, and ran off into the bowels of the City to be alone and listen to Linkin Park or something. Then he walks in on a perfectly normal human commiting wanton violence on some other perfectly normal humans.
FORMAT: Another completely self-indulgent 9000 word intro followed by something doubtless much less stupid.

Bruno... wasn't sure how long he had been out here. Less than a day and a half, because the sun hadn't risen more than once. But he had been hiding in that abandoned building a long time, and he could have fallen asleep...

Bruno let that thought drift around in his head for a moment as he leaned motionless against the freezing brick wall of the alley, his head bowed and his vision focused on nothing. Then he pressed a hand over one eye and his mouth twisted into something that no one would ever call a smile and he laughed, a choking bitter thing that didn't even sound enough like a sob to make someone feel sorry for you, and a homeless man further down the alley just gave Bruno a look like he was nuts and decided he'd try his luck at another dumpster. Bruno barely noticed.

Of course he hadn't. He wasn't tired. He hadn't slept in two days, but he hadn't been tired once. Or hungry, or thirsty, or cold enough to start shivering. He was wearing a coat he'd found, but it was just so that he could use the hood to hide his hair, because one guy pointing a gun at him and calling him an "ImPorted shitstain!" was more than enough. (Bruno had dodged the bullet and bent the gun barrel and left the guy with a broken finger. He wasn't sure if he felt bad about the last part or not.)

After a moment the joyless laugh tapered off, and Bruno pressed his other hand to his eyes too and groaned in frustration. He couldn't just stay out here forever like this, he had to do something. The problem was that he had no idea what.

He couldn't go home. He couldn't go to his barely-used MAC apartment, because Crow knew the room number and would check there eventually. He couldn't go stay with any of his friends because he was afraid to be near anyone right now, let alone the people he cared about. He couldn't post to the network asking for advice because there was no way he could filter it from everyone who happened to know him, and even anonymous someone might figure it out because of the timing.

He didn't want anyone to know. He didn't want his friends to worry, but right now he prefered them thinking he'd gotten ported out over any of them ... any of them knowing. Knowing what he was.

Bruno took a slow, trembling~~, unecessary~~ breath and pushed himself back off the wall again, bowing his head and pulling the hood back low over his eyes and getting back to the slow business of walking to nowhere. People asked less questions if you looked like you had somewhere to be.

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The sound of a commotion could be heard in a dimly-lit alley ahead of him, and as he neared it, a heavy-set thug came flying out and smashed into the pavement. Shouts of anger, but more of pain, echoed off the brick walls.

Inside the alley, a familiar black-haired, masked girl could barely be made out for all the large men surrounding her. Her movements made it even harder to get a glimpse at her: she seemed to be lashing out in all directions at once, simultaneously punching a foe in the gut while delivering a rear kick to the jaw of another closing in from behind.

After just a few seconds, the crowd had thinned and Cassandra could be clearly seen, dressed in her black, armored bodysuit and a half-mask covering the lower portion of her face. One of the gang members swung a wooden bat toward her, but it met her foot mid-swing, snapping it in half and the momentum of the kick sending the broken piece flying into his face. Another had a knife, but a quick twist of his arm--along with a sickening pop--rendered him harmless.

Soon, there was only one left, and he'd managed to pull a gun and point it at Cass. With lightning-quick reflexes, she kicked it from his hand and plucked it out of the air. Looping her finger around the trigger, she put the gun up to his forehead and watched silently as he trembled.

Bruno had had more than one lesson over the past day on the fact that commotion was more common here than in the parts of the City he usually spent time in. (He had actually even prevented a woman from getting mugged yesterday, although that had been partly by accident.) But this sounded like a lot more than just an isolated fight, and when Bruno saw a large man go flying bodily into the ground ahead of him he almost reflexively ran up and crouched down next to him in concern. "Whoa--!? Are you all right??"

The man just groaned, but when Bruno looked up in the direction that he'd been thrown from, every thought of him leaked out of his mind completely.

He recognized her almost immediately, before he even saw her face. He had seen her train and spar and been taught by her enough that that terrifying grace of hers was firmly etched in his memory.

"C-Cass..."

He... he knew what Cassandra could do, and how strong she was, and he'd always known in a general sense what patrolling entailed, but he'd never seen her... breaking people. He had never seen a real person doing that to another human being, but seeing a friend like this, it...

For those few interminable seconds Bruno just stared out from the dark of the neighboring alley, not so much frightened (he'd never had any reason to be truly afraid of Cass) as full of desolate incomprehension. But in the moment he saw her silently put the gun to the last man's head Bruno finally snapped back to himself all at once.

"N-NO!! Stop--!" Bruno shot out of his crouch and sprinted for Cass and for the gun, not even thinking about the fact that he still had his hood on.

She turned toward him in surprise, the gun still pointed at the man's head. Even with the hood, she could still recognize him by his movements. She briefly wondered what he was doing there, but her train of thought was cut short as the thug bolted toward the other end of the alley. She flipped the gun around to clutch it by the barrel and threw it after him, striking him in the back of the neck and sending him to the ground.

She glanced back at Bruno. He looked a little bit disturbed by the whole thing. "Wasn't going to shoot him," she said, her brow furrowed slightly.

For a fraction of a second when the man bolted, Bruno was almost sure that Cassandra was going to shoot him. He seemed genuinely relieved when she only beaned him with it, even though he still winced openly at the sound it made against the base of his skull.

Bruno looked back at Cass, and then glanced around at the unconscious and immobilized and thoroughly physically injured thugs surrounding them both, and then back up at Cass again. He definitely looked disturbed, but it was more than that; he was staring at her like she had two heads, and his postured seemed to scream that it was taking a lot for him to concentrate on this conversation for a few seconds and not just dive straight into carrying these guys to the nearest emergency room.

"... A-... are you sure?" he asked timidly, pulling off his hood. As stupid a question as it was, he seemed just as worried about her as about the guy who would have been catching the bullet, the way he said it.

Edited 2011-02-01 14:43 (UTC)

"Yes. Don't kill. Just... scare." Which she may have done a little too well, apparently. And while his concern for them was touching, they were hardened criminals and none were injured enough to threaten their life. The police would find them, and she didn't want to be there when they did.

"Come," she said, motioning for him to follow her as she navigated the fallen bodies to the alley's exit. Something was definitely not right with Bruno, and she planned on finding out what it was when she found a private place to talk.

It took a moment, but her reassurance finally did filter through to him and calm him down. He nodded, and his gaze wandered vaguely and forlornly down to the groaning men on the ground again, one of whom was squinting up at Bruno through his bloodied face and clearly trying his best to throw him an obscene gesture.

That's right. Cass was a crime-fighter. She only hurt people who were planning to hurt someone else, and... she wouldn't kill them, not just like that. He was starting to feel terrible now for thinking that she would.

Besides, she hadn't... torn them apart with her bare hands, or...

When Cassandra spoke again it seemed to stir Bruno out of some uneasy recollection; he was biting his lip and holding his arms across his chest, not tightly but with obvious tension. His head snapped back up to her and he looked hesitant, but finally he nodded again and followed her out. Gingerly though, maintaining a little distance.

She ducked into a parallel alley and began to scale a fire escape quickly and easily. Even if Bruno wasn't as acrobatic, it would be easy for him to climb the ladders.

Something unusual was definitely going on with Bruno. He didn't quite... seem himself. And while she had never seen him fighting crime, she didn't really expect him to react like that.

She waited patiently for him to appear on the rooftop, and when he did so, would immediately ask, "What's wrong?"

It really wasn't hard for him to keep up with her. Cass was a normal human, after all.

Bruno was about to step off the top of the fire escape onto the roof, but Cass's sudden question blindsided him and he stopped, just standing there gripping the handrail.

"... I-I..." He avoided her eyes. He didn't want to tell her, but he couldn't just say 'nothing, it's fine,' because he knew that she wouldn't believe him for one second. He had only followed her up here because not following her would just make her worried and suspicious, but... now that he was here, he had no idea what to do.

"It's... it's complicated," he said in a small voice, staring at some arbitrary spot on the surface of the roof. At the same time, his hand still on the railing was holding on so tight that the weathered metal was starting to give a little underneath his fingers.

The twisting metal didn't immediately set off any alarms, since she already knew that he was pretty strong. It just reinforced the notion that something was really bothering him. And his body language was a mess.

She lowered her mask, and tried to speak as calmly and sympathetically as possible. She wasn't always the easiest person to talk to, but she knew a little bit about bad situations and how to deal with them. "Tell me."

For a moment Bruno just seemed to retreat further into himself. Of all people, what good would it do for Cassandra to know? To find out that all that time, she'd been teaching a...

... Maybe that was just a reason she deserved to know. At least so she would know what to do if he ever... lost control, or anything. So someone would know.

"Do you--" he suddenly blurted out, then stopped for a moment. His eyes came a little closer to meeting hers, and he went on. "Do you know about that circus... thing? The one that's been in Central Park every night this past week?"

She nodded slightly. "Yes. Didn't go." She didn't really understand what it was about, and just knew that she had more important things to deal with. Like training.

"Nn," Bruno replied vaguely, unsurprised. But before he went on, he looked away again, out over what passed for a skyline in this part of town, just starting to get an edge of dawn to it.

"... It wasn't a circus. The tents there... they had memories in them." There was a weight of significance to his voice that seemed to hope that she would guess the next step for herself.

There was a pause as she thought it over. "You, um... remembered something." Something that he'd apparently rather not known, judging by his current state.

"...Yeah."

His hand that had been clutching the railing let go and drifted over to clutch his left arm instead, worryingly tight considering the obvious indent that his grip had left on the metal of the stairs. Without the extra support, he almost seemed to teeter on the edge of nothing as he sunk back into his own thoughts again.

The memories were the worst part, of course. Everything down to the tactile feel of ripping those machines apart part by part, and later, of brushing against his own injured skin and only feeling tepid metal... but if had just been that, he wouldn't have been this entirely strung up like a taught piano wire, so unsure of what to do. Because... because he wasn't sure. There was still a little desperate voice deep down that said it was all just because of that thing that was turning everyone else into machines that one time, that maybe he'd just been changed like Bakura and it had all ended with that, that there was nothing to worry about anymore, that who was to say he was still the same inside now?

Not that he hadn't tried to find out. The mugger he had stopped earlier had had a knife, and Bruno took it, at first just to make sure that he didn't run off and hurt anyone else with it. But later when he'd been alone again he had... he had tried to use it on himself, just... just a little nick, just to see what would happen. But his hand had just shook and a chill had just shot up and down his arm and he'd just dropped it, and again and again every time he'd tried. And even now he didn't know if it was nerves or if... in his mind, there was some kind of... he just didn't know!

... Wait, that knife. He'd...

Bruno suddenly patted the left pocket of his ratty coat, a look of dawning... something on his face. He finally looked back up at Cassandra.

When he spoke, it was like he knew already that he was going to regret every word he said. "C...Cass, can I... can I ask you to do something for me?"

Cass was starting to feel a sense of dread about this meeting. She knew a little about knowing things you didn't want to. Though in her case, it was what the future held that frightened her, not the past. His body seemed to be displaying a feeling similar to what she had when she'd heard that she joined Deathstroke. It was a crisis over who he was.

"...What?" she asked quietly and uncertainly.

He didn't hesitate. He knew that if he did he would just change his mind, and he also knew there was no one else in the City he would ever, ever ask to do this. Cass was the only person who he both felt that he could trust and who... and who he'd hate himself the least for asking. Cass dealt with blood and violence every day, she was used to it.

He quickly took the handful of steps down onto the roof and across until he was standing right in front of her.

"I need to make sure of something. I think I--"

The words died in his throat like a bird flying head-first into a wall, and he scrunched his brows and bit his tongue in frustration. It was the same thing that had kept him from doing this alone to himself, he could feel it. Cowardice? Conditioning? ... Programming?

He took a deep breath and evened his expression back out as best he could, looking right into her eyes. Then he slowly pulled the small, shut butterfly knife out of his pocket and held it out toward her with an open palm.

"... I need you to cut me."

She just stood there, giving him an incredulous look. It was true that she dealt with violence all the time to the point where it was almost second-nature, but she didn't often take part in things like... this. She didn't take the knife just yet, but simply tilted her head and looking especially concerned.

"...Why?"

"Because!! I'm--!!"

He choked futilely on the words again and it was so clear that he hated himself for it, and for everything else about this. But still, he was resolved and pleading and quietly desperate when he pressed the knife into her hands with carefully calibrated gentleness.

"... P-please. Please, I need someone to do this, and I... I don't know who else to ask."

With one hand he reached back up to his shirt collar and effortlessly tore a gash down the front of the t-shirt. After a moment, he indicated a line down the center of his chest; a place where, on a normal person, there would just be a thin layer of skin with solid breastbone underneath, nothing that could be permanently harmed. "... Here," he said softly.

He seemed so desperate that she didn't dare refuse. She couldn't fathom why he wanted her to do this, but it was clearly something he felt was important. If she didn't do it, someone else--probably less skilled--would. She could at least make sure that if this was as bad an idea as she thought it was, it wouldn't leave any permanent damage.

"Get ready," she said as she placed the knife against his chest, and after giving him one final, concerned look, began to press the blade into his skin.

Bruno let out a sigh of something akin to relief when it was clear that she was going to go through with it, even if he was still light-years away from looking comforted. As she reached up to touch the blade to his chest, he softly placed one hand on the back of hers that held the knife and nodded in responce her look, wordlessly reassuring her that it's okay, this is what I want, even though he knew that she didn't understand why.

When the actual cutting began, Bruno suppressed a shuddering hiss of pain and his teeth clenched and his whole body tensed up just like any normal person's would. But it was probably immediately clear to Cassandra that nearly everything else about this-- about him-- was nowhere near normal.

It took a fair amount of force for the blade to initially break his skin, but that could possibly be chalked up to a power; the fact that, once the skin was being cut, its resistance was infinitely more like something synthetic than it was like living flesh really couldn't. And the cut didn't bleed at all, or at least not with actual blood: all that came out in the wake of the knife was a thin sheen of something colorless and translucent and entirely too viscous. And if at any time she pressed hard enough that the tip of the sharp knife nicked the "bone"... well, for her, it likely wasn't difficult to recognize the telltale feel of metal-against-metal.

She hesitated slightly when she read the pain coming from his body, but then redoubled her efforts, determined to make... whatever it was she was trying to accomplish as quick and painless as possible. But it was soon apparent that something wasn't quite right. She could almost rationalize the strange fluid--because maybe he was like an alien and had different-colored blood or something--but when the knife began to scrape noisily against something metallic in his chest, she abruptly stopped and removed the knife.

"U-Uh..." she stammered and gave him an especially shocked and concerned look. Was... was that what he was expecting?

It might have been the saddest part of all this that, yes. It was exactly what he was expecting.

Bruno didn't seem to react all that strongly to that metallic sound and the scraping sensation that he obviously couldn't have missed. He didn't resist to Cass pulling the knife away either; when he slid his hand off the back of hers it was just to reach back up and run his fingers down the cut. At the same time he opened up his squinted-shut eyes to glance down at it, and at his manifestly bloodless fingers.

To Cass, the look that came over him then was probably perfectly clear: the look of someone who was receiving some very bad news, but at least now they knew just what the bad news was. They didn't have to keep wondering and second-guessing themselves about it anymore. At least from here they could actually take a step forward, finally knowing which direction to go in.

"... I thought so," Bruno breathed quietly. He didn't look Cass in the eye again quite yet. Which probably made it very slightly less alarming when, for a couple brief seconds, a set of faintly red glowing array patterns and series of numbers flickered across his irises like a status screen.

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Do just what I tell you, and no one will get hurt

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yes i can hit the 'post' button i swear, hurp

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ahhhhhh OTL

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OH CRAP i just realized this morning that i never responded to this, so sorry

that's okay! i was kind of MIA for most of this week anyway XD

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