Even though no one reads this, I got bored so decided to post this chapter.
Once out of the diner and in to the night, Question began walking away down street towards the sidewalk, leaving Huntress standing under a streetlamp.
"Wait a minute!" she called after him, "Just where are you going?"
"Home." He answered, not turning around as he continued his trek.
"I don't think so!" Huntress declared, running after him and pulling him back around to face her, "You still didn't answer all my questions."
"You never paid for the food." Question stated, "Besides, we were in there for thirty seven minutes, you had a lot of time to ask questions and you never did."
"Well that's because YOU started bothering me about how I wasn't able to kill Cassamento back there." Huntress explained, "I was a little too angry to ask any questions."
"More like confused and doubting yourself." Question corrected.
Huntress let out a long sigh, "You know what. I'm through. I don't need your help and I'll just find Cassamento and kill him. He can't be that hard to locate…"
"Try an address book." Question suggested, spinning around and going back to walking, "I'm off."
"Um…ok." Huntress replied, "See you….never I guess."
"I guess." Question shrugged, back still facing Huntress.
And he was gone into the darkness of some alley that the city's budget couldn't afford lighting.
Huntress decided to go back to her hotel room and get some sleep, tomorrow was going to be a big day.
Vic Sage new something was wrong before he even stepped into his apartment.
Everyday before leaving his home, Vic would set a piece of transparent plastic between the door and the wall so if the door was opened, the plastic would fall and he would know someone had been in his apartment without his knowledge.
Looking down, Vic saw the miniscule plastic piece resting on the wooden hallway floor of his apartment building. He didn't pick it up and instead, unlocked the door to the apartment and walked cautiously inside, unsure of what to expect.
The first sight he saw was his living room, his TV screen was broken, its glass decorating the carpeted floor. His couch was ripped up, the stuffing protruding from beneath its dull blue fabric, the bookshelf was knocked over and pages from the books were torn out and his bare gray walls now had holes in them, revealing fiberglass insulation.
Passing through his first room, he moved into his kitchen. The refrigerator was on the floor and the food was spilling out, broken jars and cans covered the tiles and the doors were pulled off the cabinets.
In the bathroom, all the toilet paper was pulled off the handle and stuffed into the toilet, which was flooding and the shower and wink were running, wasting water and costing him a lot on water bills.
Vic left everything untouched, he knew it was Fermin who had ordered this done and he had to leave immediately because he did not want Fermin or the perpetrators to know he had seen the damage.
This was not only a scare tactic to try to get him to back off from exposing Fermin's connections.
No doubt, he was expected to call the police, who would come to his apartment and on Fermin's orders, kill him writing it all down on a report that they killed the intruder instead and get away with it. Vic Sage was not about to fall for this plan.
Instead he had to figure out a careful plan on how to confront Fermin about this incident, especially since the mafia involvement had been confirmed and he was now on the kill-list.
Vic dramatically turned, his overcoat and red hair whipping around as he did, and left the apartment exactly as it was so it looked as if he had never been there to see what had happened to his property.
Helena Bertinelli lay with one hand propping up her chin and the other flipping channels with a remote on a lavish king sized bed across from a 23 inch flat screen TV in her very expensive suite room in the hotel.
The remnants of a hundred dollar room service meal, cooked 'just like grandma's cooks used to make', sat on a white plate on the floor discretely covering a red stain setting into the white carpet, from a glass of wine she should not have drank.
Helena had tried everything to get to sleep, but she was still jumpy from running into Cassamento and now was doing what ever she could to not remember the murder attempt that went so horribly wrong.
There was nothing on television that she was any where near interested in watching, and she was beginning to miss her favorite Italian soap operas.
Grudgingly, Helena stood up and crossed the room, knowing what she had to do. She reached down and unzipped one of her suitcase that she never bothered to unpack despite the large closet and dresser in her suite and grabbed a plastic translucent orange container with a white label. Words were typed onto the label in Italian.
Sleeping pills…
A last resort Helena had 'borrowed' from her Grandfather's medicine cabinet the day before she left for Hub City, remembering his words calling America a 'noisy crazy country'; very different from the quiet and calm seaside-countryside they lived in.
A honk and a screeching car supported this claim and added the deciding vote in whether to down the pills or not. A unanimous yes.
But before she could swallow the oval objects resting in her palm there was a knock at the door.
Helena stood up from where she was crouching next to her bag and crossed the room to the door, not looking through the peephole before unlocking the three provided locks and removing the chain hooked to the wall.
She swung open the door, glaring at who ever would pay her a visit at 1am.
"Look buddy, it's one in the morning!" Helena shouted, "Who are you and what in the world would you want?!"
"You know who I am." Question stated, pushing past Helena into her hotel room, "But that was a pretty rude welcome for someone who could have easily been Santo Cassamento or one of his goons come to pay you a visit."
"What are you doing here and how did you find me?" Helena asked following him as he surveyed her suite, "What do you want?"
"Again with the questions." Question sighed, sitting down on the edge of her bed like he owned it.
"You're kind of in my room, so I think I have a right." Helena exclaimed, "Answer!"
"My apartment's been trashed." Question explained, laying back on the bed, hands behind his head, "I need a place to stay."
"And why here?" Helena demanded, "You could have rented your own room or stayed with a friend. You must want something else."
"Some room service would be nice…" Question mused, "You never did buy me any food."
"So you show up out of nowhere in the middle of the night and expect me to buy you food…why?" Helena asked, restating the facts.
"I was thinking we could team up." Question declared, sitting up to look Helena eye to eye…that is if his mask had eye holes, "I need to take down the mayor and you need to take down the mafia. They're teamed up, so we should too."
"Hold up…wait a minute…" Helena said, suddenly starting to laugh, "You want to team up with me. You're the one who walked away before."
"Are you turning me down?" Question asked, "You need my help."
"No I don't!" Helena huffed, folding her arms and turning her back to Question.
"Nice pajamas." Question snickered, changing the subject.
Helena had traded in her huntress costume for pink pjs with red and purple hearts on them. Soon her face matched the red hearts.
"It's like you came here just to annoy me!" she cried, "I need some sleep…"
"By all means, sleep." Question said, standing up and walking over to her closet, "I'll just get the roll away bed…"
"Oh no, no, no, no." Helena shook her head, "You're not staying here. Leave now!"
"So you'd turn a poor victim with a trashed apartment out into the cold night?" Question asked, still reaching on to the top ledge of the closet for the roll-away.
"Okay, okay." Helena conceded, "You can stay…but only for tonight. And you have to help me get Cassamento."
"It's a deal." Question declared, pulling down the bed and reaching to shake Helena's hand.
She reluctantly grasped the gloved hand, almost expecting a joy-buzzer, and shook weakly with a confused face.
"Oh yeah…Italians are more of a hug and kiss on both cheek greeting people, aren't they…"Question remembered, dropping her hand.
"Yeah…" Helena agreed, managing to shake and nod her head at the same time, "That's not gonna happen here…"
"Yeah…I kinda guessed that…" Question agreed, and proceeded to push the roll away bed past Helena, her bed and set it next to the window which was covered by blinds that looked as they had been forced closed by a frustrated Sicilian.
Helena closed the door to the hotel suite, and trudged tiredly to her bed and sitting up against it's back. She grabbed the remote and lowered the television's volume, hoping the white noise would lull her to sleep.
She looked over to see Question bending over next to his bed and rummaging through her suit case.
Helena would have yelled angrily, but was steadily running out of energy at this late hour due to jet-lag, so decided just to politely ask him.
"What the heck are you doing?"
Question stood up, holding the pill canister at eye level and looking it over, "These are illegal in the United States."
"So?" Helena asked, looking down into her palm and seeing two white pills still there, now sweaty. For effect, she opened her mouth and popped them in swallowing them without any water and coughing, "They're illegal in Sicily too."
Question replaced the orange container back into her suitcase and ventured over to the room service plate, lifting it to see the red wine stain.
"How many crimes to you plan to commit?" he asked, his tone of voice ambiguous to whether he was serious or kidding.
"Underage drinking…drugs….hmm……." Helena listed, counting on her fingers.
"Murder." Question added darkly.
Helena reached behind her and threw a pillow across the room so it landed straight in Question's face.
"A murder for a murder." She stated, equally as grim, "Cassamento would have gotten the death penalty if he had been convicted."
"But he wasn't." Question reminded, "Who are you to dole out justice?"
"Coming from a man without a face." Helena countered, not sure exactly how that fit but hoping it would cut deep.
"I have a face." Question shrugged, "I just guard it more carefully than you do. What was the point of the who Huntress persona if I, Cassamento and everyone in his gang already know who you are?"
Question returned to his rollaway bed and flopped down upon it, using the pillow that had been thrown at his to rest his head on.
Helena looked down at her feet folded crossed legged, matching her arms.
"Because…" she finally answered, "Because I am a huntress."
Question turned away from her, accepting the answer and facing the window.
"So you're just gonna go to sleep like that?" Helena asked, "In your coat and shoes and mask. You're one crazy guy."
When he didn't answer, Helena just shrugged and flipped the switch conveniently placed by her bed that killed the lights and left the room lit only by the blaring of the television playing a black and white movie.
Fading in and out of sleep, counting sheep and mulling over suspicious occurrences and possible Illuminati plans, Question was jerked back into reality (whatever that means) by a increasingly sharp tug on the edges of his face.
He flung open his eyes that quickly adjusted to the darkness and found themselves staring up and the disgruntled but determined face of Helena.
"Just what is this mask made of?" she inquired angrily, "It's like it's connected to your face!"
"Get off of me!" Question grumbled, "If I wanted you to see my face, don't you think I would have removed it myself?"
"Fine!" Helena pouted stepping back, and sitting down on her bed facing him, "But it's not fair! You know who I am and since we're going to be working together, I think I should see your face too!"
"So you agree to working together…" Question gathered.
"I did? Huh? Wait?" Helena shook her head, trying to get a hold of her thoughts, "It must be those sleeping pills or something…"
She lay back, squirming onto her side so she could still see Question who had again turned the opposite direction.
"Whatever…I forgive you this time." He muttered, "Just don't try anything like that again."
"But I still have to know who you are!" Helena exclaimed.
"Look." Question responded, "Think of it this way. You don't want to know who I am. Okay?"
"Ugh…" Helena rolled her eyes and pulled her covers over her again, turning her back to Question like he had done to her.
And after it had been quiet for a long time, just as she was seconds from drifting away…
"Good night." Question said.
Helena opened her eyes slowly and glanced at the digital clock sitting on top of the still shining TV which read in red numbers 2:10.
"It's morning…" she mumbled, closing her eyes again and this time going to sleep.
What if you reviewed this? Wouldn't that be wonderful, now wouldn't it.