Kanda did not limp back to his post, but his pride may as well have. His muscles were humming with that loose, ropey ache of a long workout, but there was nothing satisfying about this night's activities.
And to think, this job had started out so boring.
In the field, in the midst of battle, there were often times of quiet, of stillness, when he had to endure hours upon hours of doing nothing. Much of his job involved sitting or standing, and waiting. Waiting for a target to arrive, for an attack to commence, for orders to move to some other location where he would be told to wait some more. Sitting in some little hole, barely big enough to curl up in with his rifle, and wait until his prey came into his sights.
It wasn't anything new to him. Most people would kill for a job that paid them lavishly to sit on their ass for hours upon hours.
He had killed for such a job.
If his ass was plunked down in the wet and the filth, squatting fifty feet up a tree, or currently painted with a neon fucking target because someone gave him shoddy information and the asshole he was forced to work with turned on him, and yes he was still fucking pissed at that, it was the job.
It was the only job he knew.
Though it was humiliating, he walked the long winding route on the streets back to the grand house and its immaculate gardens, in no shape to jump from roof to roof any longer, and that pissed him off almost as much as losing his target. Fucking urban runners. Fucking acrobats. Fucking hipsters. Why did everyone add dumbass frivolous styles to simple, good old fashioned fights?
If he hadn't been ordered to bring the masked moron in alive he would have shot his prancing little ass midway through his fancy twisting jumps. Outrun that you little shit. Who the fuck robs a place in white? Fucking asshole. Fucking street running. Fucking fence.
He kicked the elaborate wrought iron gates at the entrance of the absurdly extravagant building, who the fuck wanted a glass dome ceiling. He was lucky rich people were so gaudy; "rob me" their décor screamed, protecting their ass was the source of most of his pay. As lucrative as war was, governments tended to hire established teams and their well-trained psychopaths. Kanda had long since ditched that scene, but everyone wanted stuff, they were obsessed with stuff, and they needed all these rooms to stuff that stuff in. When you had rooms full of expensive stuff, there followed that others would want to take it.
Security was shit work, but it beat shooting through plywood shacks at impoverished rebels at the whim of some deranged head of state.
A quick snarling exchange over the intercom with the butler, (people still fucking had those?) and he was buzzed through the gates and stomped his way up the pretty white marble stairs and through the door, slamming it behind him.
His phone buzzed in his pocket and he flipped it out, a plain, simple grey satellite phone. "What?" none of his temper, his frustration, entered his voice. He was calm, he was controlled, and he was a fucking professional.
"As you have not contacted me to inform me of the thief's capture I can only assume you failed." The voice was a rich cultured baritone, thick with accent and pompous arrogance.
The insult snapped through him, breaking his tenuously held patience. "If you hadn't ordered me after him before he entered the fucking building I wouldn't have had to chase him all over town, so shove that "you failed" shit up your tight ass. You made the wrong call, you failed."
There was those moments of silence, a more imaginative person may have liked to think the stuck up bitch had to take a second to get over being so rudely spoken to. Kanda figured it was just to get on his fucking nerves. He had too short, too volatile a fuse to think anything else of others. Everything they did was crafted to fucking annoy him. It was the extent of his empathy.
"He'll be back." Was all that was said and the call ended.
What a fucking asshole.
It absolutely had not been his failure. He had had a plan, HE had known what his job was, and if that shitty little costumed freak had set foot in the building there would not have been any rooftop running or cocky banter tossed at him from a grinning mouth.
Up in the loft style second floor library he felt restless, and it had nothing to do with having nothing to do.
He could be off on some adventure, ass deep in trouble or neck deep in the swamps. He could be taking a plane to some far off country with blood feasting insects that put diseases in your body and little brown skinned children that put bullets in it after.
Unfortunately, the life of a hired soldier too often crossed with the more civilized world, if you could call it that, and he had spent his fair share of time stone faced and silent in the company of the rich and arrogant.
Cash was cash, and the blood soaking it was no less red if it came from a CEO or Weapons dealer. In his line of work he found those two often were one in the same.
At least if he were guarding some high bred socialite or setting in to take out the leader of a would be union he could find some action, or a purpose. No. he was here, stuck in one tiny room, with a servant a bell ring away, looking after wall after wall of withered bones and ancient taxidermy.
With an acrylic wall circling the room projecting a hologram of him pacing all over the damn place, as if he would be that fucking impatient. Sit down and close your eyes asshole, you're wasting energy.
He mimicked his prerecorded self and paced to one of the bookshelves, the stony bastard he took this job from was the type who kept books to impress those visiting, wall after wall of priceless antique first editions and big worded literature with uncracked spines and glass covered trinkets dividing them.
Look at that. An actual mummified monkey's fist, a shriveled piece of dead primate sat on a velvet cushion in a glass and wood box, and he had to make sure no one else would ever break in and steal it.
That there were people who even owned the thing was one thing, that some other equally insane person wanted to take it for their own just down right boggled the mind.
Humans were fucking weird. No wonder they wanted to kill each other all the damn time.
Death did his job well enough without people giving him the helping hand, but hand giving they did, in ignorance, in ancient grievances, petty quarrelsome leaders, skin color, culture, or even for calling some god by some different name.
Humans were kind of funny, and stupid, and self-destructive like that. Insane little vermin fighting over territories on the host they were slowly sucking dry.
He felt an itch between his shoulders and gave the place a good long sweep of his gaze. The second floor was difficult to see if you weren't looking for it, a portion of it extending over the bookcases, rimmed with statuary and exotic endangered plants that smelled of tropics, any person up here would certainly be hidden if they weren't right there on the edge. Which, as a professional, he knew better than to be.
Nothing, no sound, no movement, everything as it was, no one had come through the door, no one at the windows. He checked his phone, no call from the security system. Of course if it had been tripped the alert would have gone to his employer's mobile, his request to have access to the system had been angrily refused. The asshole didn't even have it set to contact the authorities. His instincts were humming like a plucked string.
Adrenaline.
He had wanted that fight. Even knowing that, the fact that it had been done too soon, with the thief posed at the edge of the building with the entire fucking world to hide in instead of a sealed room in a high security building, infuriated him.
There would be no more battles tonight, at least. He knew, from the near limitless files he had on the Pierrot, that he only struck at night, and never more than once.
'We'll resume another night.'
Unbidden the words of that card slid through his brain. Digging it out of his pocket he scowled at it. Then violently ripped it to tiny pieces. Imagining it was the thief himself he was tearing apart.
D*E*C*K
The curtains in his bedroom swished open and early afternoon sun speared straight through the membranes of his lids into his eyes.
"Oh Christ, Jesus, save me." He threw an arm over his face and twisted away.
"Morning Allen." Johnny was in his room. So it must have been passed noon.
"I leased this flat specifically for the fact that it did not ever face the sun. How is there sun in my room? What sorcery is this?"
"I watched the Mummy on the flight over. Amazing what can be done with a few mirrors. Let's get a look at you." The smaller man stripped away the blankets with the skill of an expert parent. "Ouch. Allen, did you break anything?"
The object of scrutiny was naked to the waste in a pair of drawstring sleep pants, his bare chest and shoulder clearly displaying the freshly forming bruises from the previous night.
"Nothing that I can tell. Jerk unloaded five rounds in less than that many seconds. Bruised my ribs, and barely missed breaking my collarbone, but I did get hit in my bad shoulder. It's pretty tender."
"I'll say, you're lucky it didn't rip the muscles again, you've only just recovered. I told you not to go before I got here."
"And I didn't," Allen sat up, ignoring the sudden vertigo and need to vomit, "but who was the one who took an extra day? We had planned last night all week. Besides, he only got three in me. At me. On me. Whatever." He waived it off. "He landed three. Do I smell coffee?"
"What was it you said?" Johnny asked in his not quite mocking you voice, reaching for the mug he had set on the bedside table. "How you didn't need any body armor, how the coat would just get in the way?" He handed Allen the cup with a grin.
"Oh shove off, I said I liked the damn thing didn't I?" Allen swung his legs over the side and tested his feet on the cold stone tile of the floor. "Tell me you got breakfast? I'm starved."
"How long have I been working with you?"
"For, Johnny, you work for me, you always seem to forget that little fact."
"Details. Drink your coffee. I'll go see what you have in the fridge. Then you can tell me all about your sexscapade with your mercenary hunk."
"Don't say "hunk", Johnny. Jesus, are you 16?"
"Oh, just get up. Drink your coffee, take a shower, feel human."
"On it." He limped towards the bathroom, head bowed over his mug.
One of the things he had to do while in the shower was go over the previous night in his head, again, and figure out how the hell the hunky mercenary could have gotten from the library slash trophy room two stories down with no roof access to the roof it had no access to in the nine seconds it too HIM to move from the skylight to the edge of the building.
It couldn't have been someone else, Allen had gotten a good enough look at his face, and gorgeous just didn't come in those colors twice. An identical twin was equally improbably, seeing as he hadn't yet found himself living in a comic book.
He could, and had last night, brainstormed every imaginative scenario, all improbable and impossible, this morning under the hot spray he flipped through each and every one in his mind but found his imagination blocked by simple, stupid sense.
It just wasn't possible when one nixed the express elevator and futuristic teleportation explanations.
It was hard on a man's pride, but he admitted he was stumped. Yanking on a fresh pair of jeans he swiped a frustrated hand across the mirror and watched himself as he ran a comb through his hair. It wasn't what he had worn last night, though it shared in color. His natural hair was shorter than the wig, as it had the annoying tendency to curl after a certain length. He had an oval face that had taken a teenager's eternity to lose its baby fat, currently angled with strong bones and dominated with long, wide eyes the color of polished silver, or good hard stone depending on his mood; they would dominate, that is, if you retracted the long, jagged scar running from hairline to chin, topped like a satanic Christmas tree with an inverted star.
Aside from being downright ugly, it made shaving a bitch.
His skin, currently flushed from the shower, was the only shades away from the stark white of the thief's facepaint and blessed with a porcelain doll's airbrushed teacup rose flush on his cheeks. It made him look delicate, a deception he wasn't above exploiting. He was competent, skilled, downright fucking untraceable. He may have been outwitted, somehow, in the hide and peek attempt, but he could assure himself he still had the leg up on the, hah, leg work.
He could chew at it, stew on it, worry it like a penny in his pocket, but he'd figure it out, he always did. This irritating setback would only make it more difficult, and thus fun, for him.
Satisfied with his internal pep talk he walked back into the room now perfumed with the smells of breakfast.
The apartment was studio style, though the kitchen was divided off with a long counter, where Johnny chopped potatoes to the tune of Italian radio.
He could see the back of Johnny's head, all wild curling hair fought into a tail at his kneck. He was a boney thing, where Allen was lithe and well-toned Johnny was stick thin and twig brittle. He was older, but much shorter than Allen, and less inclined to activities of athleticism. He turned and smiled, his eyes comically large behind thick horn-rimmed glasses. "Hey, breakfast will be done in a few minutes. Just need to finish the potatoes."
"Sure." He was starved.
"So tell me about last night?"
"Sure. Give me a moment?" He slid into prayer position. A few moments to himself would be enough to clear the clutter out of his head, the speculations, the impressions, until the memory sharpened into a crisp picture. With a grace Johnny envied he moved into a basic sun.
Last night was crafted with the idea of risk in mind. They knew their target would likely react instantaneously, they could have had minutes to seconds to recon, but that had been acceptable. So long as Allen had caught even a passing glance at the single man security the event would have been successful.
He felt the burn of his muscles as they moved, not just his shoulder but various other abused areas, his knees when he had flipped the mercenary and landed on top, his back from the commando roll, his arms from scaling the buildings.
In Dog Down he felt everything pulse through him in one solid ache; it beat like a heart, burned like a good whiskey, and brought everything in his head to one clear focal point.
"Food's done." Johnny called.
"Done here too." Allen said, back in his base pose. He let the pain, the burn, the quiet misery of his body ooze out of him and back into their dull solitary aches.
His limbs now loose and warmed he slid fluidly into a chair at the counter where Johnny had spooned eggs, sausages, and potatoes onto a plate in large portions. "Thankyou," he forked up some eggs, "makes up for everything."
"Well I'm happy about that. Sorry for the rude wake up, but you're grouchy after a mission."
"Hmm." He made a noncommittal noise in his throat. "So what did we find about our mystery mercenary?"
"You mean you're hunk?"
"Please." Allen grimaced. "Don't hold me to what I say in uniform.
"Can't help it." Johnny slid onto a stool next to him, "It's a post mission reflex. I don't know what face you're wearing."
"Currently none." Johnny was a joy, both as a friend and an informant, but there were times Allen regretted letting him get so close. He toyed with the idea of slipping into Allen Walker. It was Johnny's favorite mask, it seemed to be everyone's favorite mask, and he could usually handle things better under that particular skin. Instead he downed the last of his coffee and poured himself another cup. "I still don't understand how he got to the roof."
"The blueprints don't show any roof access for that room, but it's not unusual for a homeowner to make changes without updating the records. Avoid all those permits and fees."
"True, but even with roof access added to the room, there's no way he could make it up from the ground floor in the timespan. I saw him Johnny. Pacing like a caged cat in that room. I turn away to run, and he's there behind me. He can't fly, because that's impossible, so how?"
"I don't know. But I'll look into it. Did you get a good look at his face?"
"Oh yeah. Up close and personal, when he was trying to handcuff me."
"I bet the Joker liked that."
Allen sniffed. "I will not discuss that particular individual's prurient thoughts." He stated it in a prim, superior voice with his nose in the air, but the grin fish hooked at the corners of his mouth betrayed his amusement. "Nor will I discuss his vivid erotic dreams last night."
"Really." Johnny's smile was as wide as his glasses. "Erotic dreams?"
"I said I won't speak of them, in minute detail, nor their X-rated nature. Though I endured them."
"I'll bet." He rested his head in his palm and grinned. "Was this sex fantasy mercenary any good."
"Superior." He reached over into the folders near the land line telephone and tugged his tablet PC out of the stack. "With a superior face. I should know, as I was unwillingly present during said libidinous dreams."
"Well." Johnny said as way of comment, looking at the image on screen. It wasn't a sketch. Allen was skilled in many arts, but line and form was not one of them. Instead there was an image from the miniature camera attached to the Pierrot's silver mask. A man, dressed simplistically in black, with gun drawn and sighted in one hand and the broken oval of restraints in the other. He had a long face with sharp angles, he was of Asian descent, with slanted eyes, a long nose, and full lipped mouth. His face had a feminine look to it, though it was currently hardened into an irritated, dangerous scowl.
"I have more images, from the chase and the fight, most of them partials; I can tell you that he has a high forehead under all that fringe and blue eyes."
"This is good. Can put this into the program and run a scan. We'll probably have thousands of probables, but the good news is most of them will likely be girls."
"Pretty isn't he? Like, girl pretty."
"You," Johnny poked him, "are in no position to talk."
"Hey, I'll have you know I'm 'boyish', and I'm growing out of it."
"Uh, huh, sure you are. That's why you wear makeup." Johnny got up and started digging around in his duffel bag for his laptop.
"Costume makeup! It's facepaint." Allen pointed at his face, "I have a scar, a ruggedly handsome masculine scar, that I need to hide."
"I believe you." His tone was a very mocking way of saying his obviously didn't.
