ic The Weight of Wealth (IC)

[Supercape]

Snakebite

 

"You call me stupid?" retorted Snakebite. Wow, it was tempting to actually explain to them how they had fallen for the ruse! But she bit her tongue. 

 

"I'll never give you the journal!" she said proudly. "Now, YOU give me TATE!" she demanded. 

 

With that, she gave a quick run forward and turned into a side kick at the other man. 

 

One of these guys would surely no something!

[SpicyWaffle]

GM

 

Ker-pow! One well-placed kick later, and the goon accosting Cassie crashed into the wooden domicile, crashing through its rickety walls and into sweet, sweet slumber. One down, one to go.

 

His compatriot was looking much worse, and more than a little green around the gills. Despite the man's well-toned physique and clearly militant stance, his hands were shaking - quivering, even! - from fatigue. He was unsteady, and as he swung the baton towards Snakebite, between the darkness and illness, the strike didn't even come close.

 

"Whatever you did to me," he barked back, rubbing the growing sweat from his brow to clear his vision, "I'll never tell you where the doctor is!"

 

If ever there as a confession to be had, Snakebite couldn't have gotten anything better.

[Supercape]

Snakebite

 

"Ah! You say that now!" answered Snakebite, spinning backwards away from him. 

 

She turned around and fired the tranq-gun once more into the man with a gentle pffft. The small needle poked out of his chest. 

 

"But when my truth serum hits your brain, you will be singing like Aretha" she grinned, before the smile turned cruel. 

 

"It hurts, by the way. And fries your brain. But I guess you are happy with permanent neurological damage if it keeps the doctor safe?" she asked. "Of course, if you start talking now, I don't have to shoot you with five more doses...you may even come out of this unharmed...."

[SpicyWaffle]

GM

 

Whatever elaborate and convoluted lie Snakebite had rattling around in her skull, the man didn't even seem to understand it as the poison crept its way to his body from the second dart. First, there was nothing. Then suddenly he just collapsed, eyes rolling into the back of his head as he fell to the cold ground, his baton clattering away as he slipped into sweet, ignorant slumber.

 

Ritterton, for his part, let out a hushed (but nevertheless rousing!) "Yes!" as Cassie finished the fracas between their assailants. The aged explorer crept back out from behind the creaky shed, clutching his cane as if he might strike one of the men for their bamboozelry.

 

"Well then. I thought I'd need to come galloping in to assist you, Miss Crowe, but once again your reputation precedes you. That was done quite handily, if I do say so!"

[Supercape]

Snakebite

 

A quick spin of her gun and it was back in the hoslter under her jacket. 

 

"These guys weren't your average street thugs" she said. "Ex-military, maybe. Hired for their brawn rather than their brains, I am guessing. Still, they certainly knew Tate. Or knew of him..."

 

She pulled them both to one side of the almost abandoned road, out of view. 

 

"Lets have a look. See if they have anything on them. Care to give me a hand?" she asked Ritterton as she set about searching the two bodies for clues...

[SpicyWaffle]

GM

 

"Right. Yes. Of course," Ritterton said hastily, assisting Cassie in rummaging through the possessions of the two men lying in the road. Like a bloodhound, Doctor Ritterton came away with much the same as Cassie. The men were armed; though it was somewhat peculiar they hadn't resorted to their firearms. There was little else of note on Ritterton's side as he came away with the second agent's smartphone. Giving it a few taps, he gave an aggravated sigh. "Locked. Of course."

 

Snakebite, in addition to much the same on her snoozing victim, also came up with a set of keys. Though the keychain was extremely crude and inappropriate for children by every stretch of the imagination, the keys themselves were a mystery. Their shape was unremarkable, plain, and otherwise perfectly normal in appearance -- they were either wholly humdrum, or the literal key to unraveling Tate's whereabouts. The phone, while potential goldmine of information, was also locked. They might have been hired for their muscle rather than their brains, but the goons weren't completely brain dead, it seemed.

 

"If there're clues as to our missing doctor's whereabouts, it's nothing I can access. But perhaps there's a local who might be able to get us access the phones our two gentlemen here are carrying," suggested Ritterton, before shifting his gaze to the ex-soldiers unconscious beside them. "Not unless you believe they'd be more receptive to gentle persuasion." His tone, honestly, didn't seem to suggest anything gentle of the sort. "But we're running out of time. We need to find Tate before something worse befouls the poor chap. Doubly so since he's still our only solid lead."

[Supercape]

Snakebite

 

Cassie had no idea how to unlock a phone, but she pocketed it anyway. They keys might well be handy, but offered no substance right now. 

 

She emptied the clips out of the guns and through them into the nearby water. She never approved of guns, or killing, or, for that matter, torture. No matter what the cost. 

 

Ritterton was, however, correct. Time was running out for Tate. 

 

And a bit of questioning was at least worth a try. 

 

She slapped the sleeping man around the face a litle to wake him up. The drug would be playing havoc with his brain, which might give her an edge in getting information, even if that information was corrupted!

 

"Wakey wakey sunshine! We want Tate. Where is he?" it was a blunt and most likely ineffective strategem. But she would sweeten the deal with carrot and stick. 

 

"You can tell me now, and Ill pay you well enough to get out of the city and start a new life. Or you can start a new life at the bottom of the sea feeding the fishes..."

[SpicyWaffle]

GM

 

The man, groggy and sullen, looked like he'd just walked about ten miles of bad road with no shoes. The drugs had done their work and put him on his butt, and now that he was no longer in a position to act like the tough guy he thought he was, the now less-than-incognito agent wasn't in much of a position to argue. The money probably had something to do with it, too. And also the fact he was outright terrified.

 

"If you just wanted to bribe me, you could have just said so instead of... whatever you shot me with," he groaned in an extremely poor attempt at acting like a badass, still shaking his head to clear the cobwebs even as his lip quivered discreetly. Not only was he ex-military, but he was unscrupulous ex-military, it seemed, though that was probably just a happy coincidence.

 

"We were ordered to take him. Someone overheard he shipped some kind of relic across the pond because he'd uncovered some kind of mystery. They knew someone was coming to investigate it, but they thought Tate already knew. So we kidnapped him and gave him over to some spooky militant guys who paid top dollar. Guess they didn't like what he had to say, 'cause they paid us to kidnap Tate's friends, too. Guessing that's you."

[Supercape]

Snakebite

 

"I find its best to offer a carrot when someone has felt the stick" replied Snakebite. Her tone was polite, firm. A soup of hot and cold flavours. 

 

"But you haven't earned your carrot yet, Bugs. And the stick is still fresh. That's interesting information. Worthy of a few drinks and pat on the back. But what I really need is to get Tate back" she explained, very very slowly and very very clearly. 

 

"So what I need is to find those guys who paid you top dollar. Then they can feel what it's like to get on the wrong side of me. As opposed to you feeling it..."

 

 

Edited September 14, 2018 by Supercape

[SpicyWaffle]

GM

 

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! I don't need you to shoot me full of whatever this is again or kick my ass like Greg," insisted the still slightly drugged-up goon. He was trying to put on a tough facade, but Cassie's relentless questioning (and the fact she was still armed) was making it especially difficult.

 

"Look, I don't know where they took him. But I know how you can find them," he bargained. "Check my phone. There's an app on there called 'Jelly Jouster.' It's just a gimmick; it's actually a re-skinned icon that opens a line for how we get in contact with them -- and no, before you ask, I don't actually know their name. Just that they're loaded and paid me and my buddy enough to coast for six months. We'd organize a drop-off, we'd collect our cash, and that was the end of our arrangement. But hey, you wanna play hero and go after the doctor? That's fine. Text them, tell them we captured you, and meet them at the rendezvous. Bam. There you go."

 

Still beyond the realm of putting up a fight, checking the man's phone revealed he was telling the truth -- it really was a communication line hidden behind the phony application!

 

"Look. I held up my end of the deal. No tricks, no lies. I just want my money and to get outta this hellhole job in paradise."

[Supercape]

Snakebite

 

"Jelly Jouster?" 

 

The name was specacularly silly, but she kept a straight face. She actually rather liked the name. 

 

"Don't worry. Ill pay to get you off the island. I keep my word. As long as you keep yours" she explained. She didn't like the man one bit, but she wasn't going to back out of the deal. "Although if I cross paths with you again and find you doing wet work, then its not going to go so pretty" she added. 

 

"Now sit tight and let me check what you said pans out..."

 

She pulled out the phone and pressed the icon, ready to follow the man's instructions...

[SpicyWaffle]

GM

 

Tapping the icon, the screen on the phone goes black for Cassie. But only for a moment. Suddenly, that same darkness is replaced by a borderline neon shade of green text.

 

"CONNECTING . . . CONNECTING . . ." it read, "AWAITING TRANSCEIVER RESPONSE . . ."

 

"Okay. If you ping em', they're going to want the coded response," explained the still anonymous thug, his mind obviously clear enough to warrant a swifter cognitive response. "If they ask 'Are the the sparrowhawk's singing?', you're supposed to respond with 'In their cages in the morning.' That's how they'll know it's me or Ryan."

 

Sure enough, after a moment of tense silence as Cassie looked to the phone, the man's words proved true as more vibrant green text scrawled across the screen: "ARE THE SPARROWHAWK'S SINGING? . . ."

 

"Now hold on a minute, Miss Crowe!" interjected Doctor Ritterton, who'd been content to let Snakebite take the reigns thus far. "We can't trust this clandestine communique, can we? What if this bloke is just hatching some elaborate ruse?"

[Supercape]

Snakebite

 

"No, we can't. That phrase...caged...sounds to me like that's a code. A code for under duress. Which would be standard operation. We give the duress code. They lock onto our signal. Or set a trap"

 

She turned back to the drugged man.

 

"So, you blew it. You just cut your payment. Next time you criss me, I'll cut something off you that's going to be a lot more painful" she said, bluntly. 

 

"You may think you are in control here. But that's all it is. Just thinking you are. How about I throw you in the water face down with a couple of tranq darts and see if your buddy is going to be as stupid, and dead, as you are?"