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Summary: Vincent discovers Eris in an alley. It seems she fascinates the man, Eris decides not to try to kill him yet.
Log Title: Intrigue
Rating: PG (L)
NYC - Mutant Town - Back Alley
Heavily littered with newspapers, knocked over garbage cans and other unidentifiable pieces of refuse, this alleyway cuts a narrow pathway between two of the older buildings in the neighborhood. The mouth is lined with dumpsters and garbage cans, making it a bit of a deterrent for people seeking this alley as a pass-through. This doesn't stop homeless and fringe elements from using it, however.
Rusty fire escapes dot the sides of the close buildings; they are close enough that one could easily jump from one side to the other but a slip from one of the higher landings could be fatal. Light even during the daytime hours is sparse, though it's easier to see down from one end to the other in the day. At night, it's nearly impossible.
Scene
Today has been another annoying day weather-wise. The sky and the weather-man kept threatening rain and it never came. The wind is pleasant enough however, not too cool and not too warm. It still feels as though it may storm at any minute, but it has felt this way for the past several hours.
"Goddamn stupid…I'll show him to stop protecting me." Eris is referring to the Don of the New York Mafia. It seems he has learned of her betrayal of her own father and no longer wishes to extend his police protection to the woman. This will probably prove to be a foolish course of action for the man, but only time will tell. Eris is, as a result of this news, in a terrible mood. When in a terrible mood she likes to look for homeless people to attack and/or take money from. Everybody's got to have a hobby.
Far above the heads of the homeless, a single sigh is exhaled from lungs that have definitely tasted better air. Vincent sits on the lowest level of the fire escape with his legs dangling over the side. He looks upwards into the bleak sky and raises the hood on his 'hot topic had a sale on straps and belts' jacket, as the sky belches a deep rumble of thunder. Vince looks back down to those rummaging about through the alley and decides that there's no one with any kind of money worth taking.
Eris storms down the alley, kicking a bottle against a wall and causing it to shatter. A few of the people further into the alley scatter back, fearing that it might be a gang or that scary red-headed lady. The woman reaches a dumpster deeper into the alley and glares at a teenager rummaging through the trash. "Disgusting rat. It's people like you that make this city into the filth pit that it is." She narrows her eyes. "So what's it gonna be? If you have any money on you I suppose you could pay me not to kill you, but if you had money you'd probably not be back here." The kid chuckles at the woman, deciding she doesn't look all that scary.
Vincent whispers to no one, "Looky here." before he grows a smirk at the ragging redhead. He stands up and goes over the protective side railing grabbing onto the ladder and releasing the switch causing it to drop and Vince goes along for the ride. Before the abrupt stop at the bottom, Vince jumps off and lands in a three point stance before he approaches Eris. Coming up behind her he adds in, "Yeah, you'd better give it up if you know what's good for you."
Eris jumps when the ladder falls behind her, not expecting the loud clank that results. She turns and glares at Vincent, not terribly amused by his entrance. "Who do you think you are? This is my hunting grounds, go someplace else." While she bickers with the man the teen seems to decide it's time to run away. He turns and scampers down the alley away from the two. Eris frowns and looks over the man before her. "Well you look as homeless as the rest of them. What are you? The hero of the slums?"
Vincent continues to walk closer to Eris, "Your hunting grounds?" A rhetorical question for the woman, "Not a very good hunter." Vincent says casually as he raises an arm towards the fleeing teen, "I was trying to help you, you know the whole team work thing that's been sweeping humanity for the past few millennia?" Then he shrugs, "But it seems to me you want a fight more than anything, and if you are, then I'm definitely the person to mess with." Vince says with his trademark half grin and adds a wink before he unzips the zippers running down the jacket sleeve up to his elbows.
Eris leans on one hip and crosses her arms, surveying the man before her. "Teamwork is only for those who are too weak to accomplish anything by themselves." She shakes her head, "And trust me, I'm not the kind of person you want to be fighting with, kid." She does look physically fit, but terribly threatening. Granted, this IS mutant town. Regardless of whether or not Vincent is a mutant Eris seems unconcerned. "Why don't you run back home if you've got one before you get hurt."
Vincent looks down at his hands and starts to pick grime out from his finger nails and shrugs, "Or to achieve more than any lone person could." Vincent says with a shrug then looks back up to Eris, dropping his hands to his pockets, "So if I don't want to fight you, and I don't want to head to my imaginary home, what should I want to do?" Vince asks raising an eyebrow and a question to the smaller mutant.
Eris gives the man a distasteful look as she sees the state of his fingernails. She rolls her eyes at his little retort to the teamwork comment. "So you don't want to fight me, yet you're the right person to go looking for if I want a fight? That…That IS what you just said, isn't it?" She shakes her head. "And you talk about humanity working together, yet you told the kid I was ready to attack to give me his money. So what are you, the sarcastic hero or the confused villain?"
Vincent shrugs and remains silent until "I'm no one really, and yeah, I do contradict myself, quite a bit. Really I was just saying that to get your attention, and if he did give you any money, great for you. But it worked anyways, you're talking to me, aren't you?" Vincent smirks slightly before he looks down and notices a bottle of booze someone left. He picks it up and takes a whiff, then offers it to Eris. "So is this gonna blow over and we become great friends, or do you beat the shit outta me and then, we become great friends?"
Eris frowns at the bottle when it is presented to her. "What is that? You expect me to drink out of something a human put their filthy animal mouth on? That's disgusting." Despite her seeming annoyance with the other man, she does not attack him. It would appear that the woman is intrigued by his boldness. She begins walking out of the alley, allowing the man to follow if he should decide to. "I see, well you should know I prefer my friends to bathe once in a while."
Vincent looks into the bottle with one eye closed and then tosses it against the wall, shattering into into hundreds of pieces. "Good point." He watches her start to walk away and then smells one of his armpits "C'mon, I'm not that ripe, that's the alley and the dumpster you were standing next to!" Vincent starts to walk, but doesn't make an effort to catch up, he's seeing if she'll slow down to let him catch up or not.
Eris stops when she notices the man is not following her terribly close. She looks over her shoulder and gives him a confused look. "Well? You wanted my attention, you got it. Now what, you want to lurk around in the alley with rats and unwashed humans?" She shakes her head. If he was trying to keep her in here to mug her he would have tried it already. He would probably also be losing great amounts of blood as a result. Eris generally doesn't associate with people such as himself, but she's bored tonight.
Vincent smirks inward and yet doesn't hurry up his pace to catch up. "Nah, though you might want to take it carefully with throwing around phrases like that, some of us might be street rats." Vincent says, as most of the time, despite his connections at Xavier's, he feels like one. "So you were just gonna go on a shake-down spree?" Vincent asks quietly so to not attract attention of any smelly humans in the area.
Eris seems unconcerned with offending people. "Well if I make them mad then they'll try and do something about it. And if they try to do something about it chances are they won't try it again…Or anything…Ever again." She shrugs as she waits for the man. "Why not? If they think Mutant Town is not a safe place to fester in the alleyways then maybe they'll go stink up someone else's section of the city. Either way, I just do it to destress."
Vincent catches up and just listens for now, nodding along, "Makes sense, but then one day it'll only be mutants in the alley, and what'll you do then? Go out to the human parts of the city? Rough some of them up for shits and giggles." Suddenly realizing they're not trying to kill each other, Vince re-zips his sleeves back to normal and looks back up and mumbles, "Stupid rain." he's been wanting it to fall for hours. With a swipe on the top of his head, Vincent takes the hood off and then asks, "So, what's stressin' you?"
Eris smirks, "Oh I'd rather not see either crawling around in the streets. Mutants should be strong enough that they can get whatever they need to NOT live in the streets. If they are weak enough that they're as pathetic as the humans, then maybe they deserve to live with them out there." She waves a hand dismissively toward Hell's Kitchen. "And what's stressing me is for me to know. It's not something you should concern yourself with. It's not a safe topic."
Vincent blinks at Eris, "I'm not concerned about it, nope, not at all." crossing his arms and raising his chin, "But you are." is followed by another one of those smirks. "And really, do I seem like someone concerned with safety?" Vince asks lowering his arms again and scanning Eris' reaction, "Seriously."
Eris gives the man an annoyed look. "I am concerned with it because it concerns me." Circular logic always works best. "And not being concerned with safety does not omit you from danger. Just know that it involves a dispute I had with someone higher up in the underworld." She is probably talking about the crime underworld, and not the metaphysical plane. "I'll handle it a little later, I just need to plan out my course of action."
Vincent blinks at Eris, "You don't seem the type to have workings with the Kingpin?" Probably the wrong part of the underworld, but hey, you go with what you know. "I guess you can take care of it yourself then, so I wont bother offering to help you." Vincent says raising his chin again and looking away, but keeps his eyes towards Eris, to see if his ploy works.
Eris shakes her head. "Kingpin? No. No one that high up. Just your typical old time mafia. No one with any sort of real power." She smirks. "And I'm not the one who needs help for crossing them, it's they who will need help for crossing me. Idiots." She shakes her head again. "I'm done dealing with humans. It's time for a new power to rise up and take out the other syndicates. Not that it would be difficult if the members didn't even need guns.
"And just like that," Vincent snaps his fingers for emphasis, "you're telling me that you're going to take out one of the mob bosses in the area because they betrayed you." Vincent looks at her with one eyebrow raised, "Now why would you tell me that? You hardly know me." And again, that smirk that he constantly seems to wear. Maybe that's his mutation. Just maybe. "If they're a mob of any sort in New York, they've got ties to old cue ball, and once you piss him off, you'll definitely need help. To prevent that, I'm gonna tag along." Vince says, forcing himself into her situation.
Eris frowns at the man. "Trust me, I doubt Kingpin will be so upset with me for shifting powers in the city that he tries anything. I still occasionally do jobs for the man." She narrows her eyes. "I'm just done working for those who lack true power. They want to mess with Envy? They can deal with the consequences." She looks amused that the man seems interested that she'd tell him this. "Hmmm….Maybe I'm telling you so I'll have a reason to need to destroy you…Maybe."
Vincent blinks at Eris, but is still slightly amused, "Maybe huh, sounds like you're having an inner conflict on destroying me or not." Vince notes with a touch of sarcasm, "Though personally, I'd love to see you try to destroy me." Vince says, stepping off a curb and stops just short of hitting a car. "Whoa." He says to himself before getting back on the sidewalk. "How about I let you try to 'destroy' me," Vincent says, lowering his voice and wiggling is fingers next to his face on the word destroy, "any time you want, and I, get to help you sack a mob boss." Then a pause for dramatic effect, "Deal?"
Eris just watches the man as he's almost hit by a car. "Ok, or you could destroy yourself for me." She shrugs. "Let me show you something…" She points to the ground a few feet to the left of Vincent, causing a dangerous looking eruption of crystal spikes to burst through the ground. "See that? Doesn't look fun eh? I could make that happen beneath you. I do it by manipulating minerals and causing them to form sharp crystals." She smirks, "Have any idea how many minerals are in the human body?" Can she really cause crystals to erupt from inside of a living being? That is unknown, but she seems willing to try it.
Vincent looks over at Eris, and down at the 'Crystal-slposion' TM. and then back at Eris, "I don't there's that many, more metals and water than minerals, but I'm not a biologist." He looks back at the ground and kicks the crystals with a foot rather softly. "Interesting, but you should be more careful, you're not even sure if you can trust me or not." Vince looks back at Eris before he starts to cross the street while he has a chance. "But if you want to try, I believe I made an offer to fight you, can't see why I wouldn't change that to just dismembering me voluntarily."
Eris smirks, "Oh there are minerals. Salt is a mineral. And water can be crystalized quite easily." She taps her crystal structure with her foot and it shatters into dust. "Trust? Who cares if I can trust you or not. I'm not one to be screwed with, and everyone who matters knows that." She shrugs and stands on the opposite side of the street, not following him across. "I might take you up on your offer to fight some time, but I have things to do now. I'll find you eventually, I'm sure."
Vincent turns back and has a slight frown instead of his normal smirk, "I'm sure you will." Vince says then pauses a moment, "Hey, I didn't catch your name?!" He shouts, wondering who he has been talking to for the past few minutes anyways.
The woman shrugs and begins to walk away, "You were too busy talking to ask. But if you must know, they call me Envy." If he has any tied to the underground, he may know that name to be associated with a high ranking mercenary. The name has also appeared in the news recently associated with incidents involving a mutant with crystal powers. She does not wait to hear his name as she departs, walking toward Central Park it seems.
You aren't carrying anything.
Vincent slumps his shoulders and turns back around to keep walking, "Always the redheads." He says to himself with a sigh.
~ Fin ~
