He turns towards Hanzo, looking downright average in his plaid and jeans. He grabs a worn black leather jacket he’d picked up while out one night, smelling of someone else’s cigarettes and blood.
“You assume right. You won’t be much use to me after that, so we should save the best for last. In the meantime—” He slips a piece of paper out of the jacket pocket, holding it out for Hanzo to come and take. “I’ve got an errand for you to run. Might be a bit under your pay grade, truth be told, but you might have some fun with it. I need to you to go pick somethin’ up for me.”
On the paper are instructions, leading Hanzo out from the city and into the desert. Not too far out. He’ll be able to get there within an hour or two. On the other side is a roughly sketched map of a building, several floors with most of them being underground. One room in particular is marked with an X.
“Get in the building, get to that room and retrieve this.” He taps his temple, mentally projecting the image of a box small enough to fit in the palm of Hanzo’s hand. It’s simple wood contrasted with intricate silverwork, every bit of undecorated space carved with sigils for both protection and containment.
“You can get in however you want. Go in through the front door, or take the sneaky route. You might be better off tryin’ not to take ‘em off-guard, though. Password's on the paper if you need it to get past security.” He slips both his hands into his jacket pockets. “I’ll stay in town and keep myself entertained, but I want you back here within an hour of dawn. Kill who you have to if things get dicey, and don’t let ‘em follow you when you leave. You got all that?”
He hasn't forgotten anything. He's doing it to needle him, and it's working. But Hanzo is determined not to give him anything more than the bare minimum, in any capacity. He gets what he bargained for, and nothing else.
But the task would be completed. And he would get one step closer to setting Jesse free. Such was the hope, at least. He couldn't bear the thought of enduring this creature in his fledgling's skin like an ill-fitted suit for all of eternity.
The paper was taken, glanced over, and then slipped away for safe keeping. "Understood."
He didn't quite care for the tone the demon took with him, as if ordering a minion, but...well. The situation was what it was. Bare minimum. Don't blink, don't grouse, just get all of it over with. Endure, for the sake of the one he had to protect.
Then, he cocks his head slightly. Some small coil of satisfaction presented itself, though his tone was as deadpan as ever.
The demon frowns and fixes his gaze on Hanzo, eyes narrowed as he silently considers that. It hadn’t been a request. Seems that Hanzo’s pride is strong enough to shine through, even now. Stubborn thing.
“Shouldn’t you be askin’? It's not yours to take.” He takes the keys out of his pocket and dangles them out, practically tempting Hanzo to just snatch them out of his grip. The keychain attached is a gaudy silver skull with sparkling ruby eyes. Subtle.
“And you know if you so much as put a dent in it, you’re footin’ the bill.”
"It wasn't yours to take, and you certainly did not bother to ask."
Hanzo doesn't reach for the keys immediately, staring the demon down. If he thought for a moment that because Hanzo was bound to do his bidding he wasn't going to give him every inch of resistance he possibly could? He hadn't been paying enough attention during the road trip.
"You want this done quickly. A suitably efficient car would expedite matters, and you selected one that would outperform any I could find if I wasted time searching for one. Since this is your errand, surely this arrangement would benefit you most of all."
He’s not wrong, damn him. But the demon had known that to start. Hanzo isn’t the only one with perhaps too much pride.
“Everythin’ is mine to take, Shimada. Remember that.”
He tosses the keys without further preamble. They’re burning moonlight here, and he wants this to get done before the distractions he’d set up for tonight run their course. The most difficult impediments to Hanzo’s job should be well out of his way at the moment, thanks to a lot of planning on the demon’s part.
“And I meant that about the dents. Same goes for scratches. I want it back lookin’ like it never left.”
And there's some satisfaction in that, too, small and bitter as it might be. But he snatches the keys out of the air, turning to make his way out before the point can be belabored further.
He has a long way to go tonight. A great deal to do. And that moment at the end that he is certainly not looking forward to. He'll need to make sure he feeds somewhere along the way.
First things first. Make it to the facility, scout out the best method of entry, and try to get this done as cleanly and quietly as possible. These people don't know how lucky they are to be dealing with Hanzo, rather than the beast he's left behind.
Hanzo may find it difficult to pinpoint a method of entry that is both clean and quiet. The building indicated in the demon’s instructions sits out in the middle of nowhere, and yet there are cars and motorcycles parked beside it just to the side of the dirt road. And the building itself is… well, oddly enough, it’s a saloon. An old-fashioned, just-yanked-out-of-a-bad-western saloon. A man sits out on the porch by the door—not the swinging kind that exposes the interior of the building, sadly—on a stool, a magazine open in his lap. He doesn’t even look up at the sound of another engine approaching.
The place looks strangely clean despite being out in the desert, all dark wood and brass fixings. Old-fashioned gas lanterns hang from each corner, swaying in the breeze, and another hangs above the door, giving the bouncer enough light to read by. There is no other visible door. Each of the windows are all closed to the night, covered by crimson curtains shut tight from the inside.
There’s no sign anywhere on the building denoting the nature of its business, save one: a square of black metal hanging from a pole attached to the roof, etched with a gold insignia.
Should Hanzo approach, the man—only his eyes visible above the bandana covering the lower half of his face—might look up. Otherwise, it’s up to the vampire how he wants to go about this. Proximity to the walls of the building, even by way of the front door, will bring with it something like a buzzing sensation. Almost electric, like getting too close to a high-voltage power source.
He reaches out as he approaches, not with his hands but with the senses he has at his disposal, honed as they have been all these years. The taste of the air, the scent of the man at the door -- and whether or not he has a heartbeat. If he is to walk right in, bold as brass, it is not going to be blind.
A saloon? Really? It's almost laughable, unless one was familiar enough with Jesse McCree. This is obviously someplace that was familiar to him.
If only he'd looked into the laptop a little further. If only he'd asked questions of his past. If only he'd done so many little things along the way.
Whether or not Hanzo can ascertain the true nature of the building really depends on how much experience he has with things like sorcery. It’s built into the foundations and crackles in the air close to the wood walls like an aura. There’s a subtle way to do magic, but this isn’t it. Rather, it’s the equivalent of someone walking around with a shotgun versus a easily-concealed pistol.
Coincidentally, there’s a shotgun leaned up against the wall behind the bouncer—who is entirely human by the way. The leather bands at his wrists are stamped with arcane symbols emitting a lower-level frequency of magic than the building itself, but he’s otherwise ordinary. A little scrawny even, unremarkable in his worn-out jeans and combat boots.
He starts to turn the page, then stops to glance up at Hanzo, making sure he’s not up to anything unsavory. Still, he doesn’t seem all that worried.
Magic. Employed by a number of people, alive and undead alike. This reeks of those who don't mind people knowing exactly who and what they are, parading their power for all to see.
Could be hunters, if it was an old stomping ground of McCree's, but he seems to recall their ways being a good deal more subtle than this. Either way, he'll need to be wary.
Well. There's one way to go about this. With a gait and posture that says he has every right to be here, he approaches the door. That tingle in the air is thick, it catches behind his teeth as he steps up to the door and -- if the bouncer does nothing to impede him -- through to the other side.
There’s a moment of resistance when Hanzo tries to step through the door, like the air itself is forming a barrier between him and the inside of the building. The bouncer side-eyes him until the spell finds what it was looking for, plucking the password the demon had given Hanzo earlier that night straight out of his head. Whatever it had been, it was something akin to high-level security clearance. The pressure in the air abates and the bouncer’s gaze lingers on him a second or two longer than necessary before he turns back his reading.
From there, Hanzo is free to step into the room beyond. The inside matches the outside by and large, the décor caught somewhere between a biker bar and a high-end casino. The clientele is equally mixed, if weighted a little more heavily on the biker end of things. But it’s not just humans that occupy the space. It’s a real mixed bag of both human and inhuman creatures, and it seems no one is batting an eye at even the strangest of them. Whatever this is, it’s normal around these parts.
Most everyone in the space also seems to be armed, one way or another. Guns. Claws. Fangs. No one seems to be minding that much either.
As for what he wants to do, Hanzo has options. There’s a bar serving up drinks, gambling tables serving up ways to lose some money, and plenty of people to chat up. Other than the door behind the bar and the restrooms, there appears to be only one other door in and out of the main room, “employees only” carved right into the wood.
He has to remember why he's here. It's all to buy more time, to give Jesse a chance to fight for ownership of his own soul once more. Whatever discomfort he feels in a place like this has to be pushed down, suffocated swiftly. He can't afford to show weakness in a place like this.
They exist in other places. Clubs, casinos, dens of inequity all. They are refuges for many denizens of the night, neutral ground for most. This is what becomes of those orphans of the darkness who lose everything and crave that most basic of desires: somewhere to belong. And once they find that place? They are not very kind towards outsiders who threaten that newfound sense of belonging.
He keeps his mind, his ears, and his eyes open as he moves towards the bar, with the intention of getting a drink. Or at least a good place to quietly survey what he has to work with.
Though the room at large doesn’t react to the presence of an unknown face, there are certainly eyes on Hanzo if he takes the time to look for them. Casual glances out of the corner of eyes that linger too long. The bartender’s stare, too intent to be comfortable. But when Hanzo approaches, he lets his eyes drop to the counter in a parody of nonchalance.
Hanzo may not be strictly unwelcome yet, but he’s definitely not going unnoticed.
“Will you be wanting somethin’ bottled, or somethin’ fresh from a vein?” the bartender asks, but the words are barely out of his mouth before the front door swings open again. This time, there’s a hush that sweeps the room, and plenty of faces turn towards the woman that enters. Although her clothes are covered in dust and grit from the desert, her sleeve torn and speckled with blood, she has an air of regality about her. The sharp angle of her short white hair frames a face fit with blood red eyes and lips to match.
She’s human. No mistaking that. She’s also very visibly, almost palpably pissed off. Her gaze sweeps the room, taking in every face along the way before snagging on Hanzo.
"Might want to make your order quick," the bartender mutters.
He holds up a hand to the bartender, indicating that he'll be with him in short order. It's the woman who's drawn his interest. She's not just someone off the street, obviously someone with weight around these parts, and she's looking for him, specifically.
Which begs the question of why. Does she know why he's here?
He doesn't act immediately, appearing instead to ease slightly in his seat, waiting for whatever action comes next. He can move at a moment's notice, and even a den of potential enemies he doesn't know anything quite like fear.
Not here. Not after what he's seen in his lifetime.
The woman watches him right back, the tension in the room ratcheting up the longer the staredown goes on. Finally, just when it seems like the room can’t stand any more of the suspense, she waves a hand—and just like that, the other patrons shift back into some semblance of normal. The conversations are still lower than before, and the sense of trouble isn’t totally gone. But at least it seems like there won’t be an all-out brawl just now.
She starts walking straight towards Hanzo, while behind her a hulking stone behemoth ducks as it passes through the doorway. It stops, at one point, to veer off a bit to the side and straighten one of the decorative items littering the walls. But it doesn’t stray far from the woman, its green glowing eyes staring either at her, or at Hanzo, or at the two of them together. Hard to tell exactly without pupils.
She settles herself into the seat beside Hanzo, seemingly either not knowing or caring what he is. A glass of whiskey over ice is set down for her without her having to order, and she spares the bartender a nod before fixing those burgundy eyes right back on the newcomer.
“You want to tell me how you got into my bar, stranger?”
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
He turns towards Hanzo, looking downright average in his plaid and jeans. He grabs a worn black leather jacket he’d picked up while out one night, smelling of someone else’s cigarettes and blood.
“You assume right. You won’t be much use to me after that, so we should save the best for last. In the meantime—” He slips a piece of paper out of the jacket pocket, holding it out for Hanzo to come and take. “I’ve got an errand for you to run. Might be a bit under your pay grade, truth be told, but you might have some fun with it. I need to you to go pick somethin’ up for me.”
On the paper are instructions, leading Hanzo out from the city and into the desert. Not too far out. He’ll be able to get there within an hour or two. On the other side is a roughly sketched map of a building, several floors with most of them being underground. One room in particular is marked with an X.
“Get in the building, get to that room and retrieve this.” He taps his temple, mentally projecting the image of a box small enough to fit in the palm of Hanzo’s hand. It’s simple wood contrasted with intricate silverwork, every bit of undecorated space carved with sigils for both protection and containment.
“You can get in however you want. Go in through the front door, or take the sneaky route. You might be better off tryin’ not to take ‘em off-guard, though. Password's on the paper if you need it to get past security.” He slips both his hands into his jacket pockets. “I’ll stay in town and keep myself entertained, but I want you back here within an hour of dawn. Kill who you have to if things get dicey, and don’t let ‘em follow you when you leave. You got all that?”
no subject
He hasn't forgotten anything. He's doing it to needle him, and it's working. But Hanzo is determined not to give him anything more than the bare minimum, in any capacity. He gets what he bargained for, and nothing else.
But the task would be completed. And he would get one step closer to setting Jesse free. Such was the hope, at least. He couldn't bear the thought of enduring this creature in his fledgling's skin like an ill-fitted suit for all of eternity.
The paper was taken, glanced over, and then slipped away for safe keeping. "Understood."
He didn't quite care for the tone the demon took with him, as if ordering a minion, but...well. The situation was what it was. Bare minimum. Don't blink, don't grouse, just get all of it over with. Endure, for the sake of the one he had to protect.
Then, he cocks his head slightly. Some small coil of satisfaction presented itself, though his tone was as deadpan as ever.
"I am taking the car."
no subject
“Shouldn’t you be askin’? It's not yours to take.” He takes the keys out of his pocket and dangles them out, practically tempting Hanzo to just snatch them out of his grip. The keychain attached is a gaudy silver skull with sparkling ruby eyes. Subtle.
“And you know if you so much as put a dent in it, you’re footin’ the bill.”
no subject
Hanzo doesn't reach for the keys immediately, staring the demon down. If he thought for a moment that because Hanzo was bound to do his bidding he wasn't going to give him every inch of resistance he possibly could? He hadn't been paying enough attention during the road trip.
"You want this done quickly. A suitably efficient car would expedite matters, and you selected one that would outperform any I could find if I wasted time searching for one. Since this is your errand, surely this arrangement would benefit you most of all."
no subject
“Everythin’ is mine to take, Shimada. Remember that.”
He tosses the keys without further preamble. They’re burning moonlight here, and he wants this to get done before the distractions he’d set up for tonight run their course. The most difficult impediments to Hanzo’s job should be well out of his way at the moment, thanks to a lot of planning on the demon’s part.
“And I meant that about the dents. Same goes for scratches. I want it back lookin’ like it never left.”
no subject
And there's some satisfaction in that, too, small and bitter as it might be. But he snatches the keys out of the air, turning to make his way out before the point can be belabored further.
He has a long way to go tonight. A great deal to do. And that moment at the end that he is certainly not looking forward to. He'll need to make sure he feeds somewhere along the way.
First things first. Make it to the facility, scout out the best method of entry, and try to get this done as cleanly and quietly as possible. These people don't know how lucky they are to be dealing with Hanzo, rather than the beast he's left behind.
no subject
The place looks strangely clean despite being out in the desert, all dark wood and brass fixings. Old-fashioned gas lanterns hang from each corner, swaying in the breeze, and another hangs above the door, giving the bouncer enough light to read by. There is no other visible door. Each of the windows are all closed to the night, covered by crimson curtains shut tight from the inside.
There’s no sign anywhere on the building denoting the nature of its business, save one: a square of black metal hanging from a pole attached to the roof, etched with a gold insignia.
Should Hanzo approach, the man—only his eyes visible above the bandana covering the lower half of his face—might look up. Otherwise, it’s up to the vampire how he wants to go about this. Proximity to the walls of the building, even by way of the front door, will bring with it something like a buzzing sensation. Almost electric, like getting too close to a high-voltage power source.
no subject
A saloon? Really? It's almost laughable, unless one was familiar enough with Jesse McCree. This is obviously someplace that was familiar to him.
If only he'd looked into the laptop a little further. If only he'd asked questions of his past. If only he'd done so many little things along the way.
no subject
Coincidentally, there’s a shotgun leaned up against the wall behind the bouncer—who is entirely human by the way. The leather bands at his wrists are stamped with arcane symbols emitting a lower-level frequency of magic than the building itself, but he’s otherwise ordinary. A little scrawny even, unremarkable in his worn-out jeans and combat boots.
He starts to turn the page, then stops to glance up at Hanzo, making sure he’s not up to anything unsavory. Still, he doesn’t seem all that worried.
no subject
Could be hunters, if it was an old stomping ground of McCree's, but he seems to recall their ways being a good deal more subtle than this. Either way, he'll need to be wary.
Well. There's one way to go about this. With a gait and posture that says he has every right to be here, he approaches the door. That tingle in the air is thick, it catches behind his teeth as he steps up to the door and -- if the bouncer does nothing to impede him -- through to the other side.
no subject
From there, Hanzo is free to step into the room beyond. The inside matches the outside by and large, the décor caught somewhere between a biker bar and a high-end casino. The clientele is equally mixed, if weighted a little more heavily on the biker end of things. But it’s not just humans that occupy the space. It’s a real mixed bag of both human and inhuman creatures, and it seems no one is batting an eye at even the strangest of them. Whatever this is, it’s normal around these parts.
Most everyone in the space also seems to be armed, one way or another. Guns. Claws. Fangs. No one seems to be minding that much either.
As for what he wants to do, Hanzo has options. There’s a bar serving up drinks, gambling tables serving up ways to lose some money, and plenty of people to chat up. Other than the door behind the bar and the restrooms, there appears to be only one other door in and out of the main room, “employees only” carved right into the wood.
no subject
They exist in other places. Clubs, casinos, dens of inequity all. They are refuges for many denizens of the night, neutral ground for most. This is what becomes of those orphans of the darkness who lose everything and crave that most basic of desires: somewhere to belong. And once they find that place? They are not very kind towards outsiders who threaten that newfound sense of belonging.
He keeps his mind, his ears, and his eyes open as he moves towards the bar, with the intention of getting a drink. Or at least a good place to quietly survey what he has to work with.
no subject
Hanzo may not be strictly unwelcome yet, but he’s definitely not going unnoticed.
“Will you be wanting somethin’ bottled, or somethin’ fresh from a vein?” the bartender asks, but the words are barely out of his mouth before the front door swings open again. This time, there’s a hush that sweeps the room, and plenty of faces turn towards the woman that enters. Although her clothes are covered in dust and grit from the desert, her sleeve torn and speckled with blood, she has an air of regality about her. The sharp angle of her short white hair frames a face fit with blood red eyes and lips to match.
She’s human. No mistaking that. She’s also very visibly, almost palpably pissed off. Her gaze sweeps the room, taking in every face along the way before snagging on Hanzo.
"Might want to make your order quick," the bartender mutters.
no subject
He holds up a hand to the bartender, indicating that he'll be with him in short order. It's the woman who's drawn his interest. She's not just someone off the street, obviously someone with weight around these parts, and she's looking for him, specifically.
Which begs the question of why. Does she know why he's here?
He doesn't act immediately, appearing instead to ease slightly in his seat, waiting for whatever action comes next. He can move at a moment's notice, and even a den of potential enemies he doesn't know anything quite like fear.
Not here. Not after what he's seen in his lifetime.
no subject
She starts walking straight towards Hanzo, while behind her a hulking stone behemoth ducks as it passes through the doorway. It stops, at one point, to veer off a bit to the side and straighten one of the decorative items littering the walls. But it doesn’t stray far from the woman, its green glowing eyes staring either at her, or at Hanzo, or at the two of them together. Hard to tell exactly without pupils.
She settles herself into the seat beside Hanzo, seemingly either not knowing or caring what he is. A glass of whiskey over ice is set down for her without her having to order, and she spares the bartender a nod before fixing those burgundy eyes right back on the newcomer.
“You want to tell me how you got into my bar, stranger?”