"Maybe you're not hitting them hard enough" suggested Hazel as he bit into a cracker. They had taken a break for a bit off to the side, getting nowhere with their captives. They were just so goddamn stubborn.
"Me?" asked Cha-Cha affronted by the accusation, "You're the one with the stupid orthopedic bracelet"
"I told you already, it's just for support"
Off to the side, Thea sat still strapped to that stupid chair, her butt going to sleep from sitting still for too long. Her abusers had moved on from using the loralite to hurt her, and were using more humane methods. If you could call them that.
The pain was starting to get to her though, obviously she had felt the pain when it had happened, but because of the loralite in her system, her healing had slowed down. In fact any legacy which would of been of help, had slowed down. She could barely keep her head up, let alone fight her way out.
"How you doing, kid?" Klaus tiredly questioned, trying in vain to ignore Ben and the babbling babushka in the corner. Thea merely rolled her eyes over to him and gave a small grunt, the gag still firmly in her mouth.
Klaus wore a look of concern on his face at the girl in front of him. Cha-Cha and Hazel had removed both their shirts when they had first arrived, leaving him in only a towel and her in cat print boxer shorts. Her now dry hair had begun to fall out of their limp braids and lacerations decorated her torso in varying shapes and sizes. He could see the edges of old scars peeking over her shoulders, but it's not like he could judge. He had his fair amount of old scars too.
It had hurt him to see her like this, she reminded him of a cross between Ben and Five. All bite and no bark. She had tracked Cha-Cha and Hazel with her eyes when she had first awoken, like a caged animal. The gag had been placed in her mouth after she had tried to lunge forward, jaws snapping at outstretched limbs and an animalistic growl had sounded in the back of her throat.
But that was hours ago, the cobalt shards that had fallen from her body and used to torture her had done their job. Maybe too well. She looked ready to pass out again, if only to escape from the pain.
"...Withdrawal. It's starting now isn't it? It must be" commented Ben, bringing Klaus from his thoughts, "Otherwise whose the dead babushka?"
"I don't know" sighed Klaus "But it's driving me crazy. The bitch won't shut up!"
"Hey! Watch your mouth!" scolded Hazel from the other side of the room, "What did I say about eyes front?!"
"Stay calm, Klaus" sighed Ben.
"Maybe we're going about this the wrong way" said Cha-Cha, thinking aloud, "Remember section 76, sub A, of the training manual?"
"I barely remember what we had for breakfast at this point" replied Hazel despondently.
"To paraphrase, torturing works best when you know who you're torturing. Hand me his coat" she ordered, pulling her mask back into place.
"Wait, wait, wait..." protested Klaus as he watched the duo rifle through the many pockets on his coat, "That's mine. That's my personal stuff..."
"Now, let's see..." muttered Cha-Cha as she pulled our a small bag of drugs, "Oh! What do we have here?"
"Let me see that!" called Hazel as he caught the small packet thrown his way.
"Hey-no, no, no. be careful with that. That's my...my asthma medication" cried Klaus as he watched Hazel stomp the pills into the carpet, "No! Wait, hold on, hold on...We can have conversation. I mean we're all adults here" he pleaded.
"Okay, you want more?" taunted Hazel.
"No! No! No, no, no! Stop! Stop! Please, listen..." Klaus continued to beg as Hazel and Cha-Cha took a bite out of the weed infested chocolate.
"You gonna tell them that it's special chocolate?" asked Ben, arms crossed.
"Not until their high as kites" whispered Klaus.
"Klaus, be strong"
"This could all be yours for the low, low price of telling us everything" taunted Cha-Cha as she waved a bag of drugs above his head.
"...Okay, fine" sighed Klaus, finally done, tears pouring down his face, "Okay, I don't know where Five is. I wasn't lying about that. But I can tell you that he's...hasn't-hasn't been making much sense since he came back" He tried to ignore the fact that Thea's eyes snapped to him, and glared as much as she could.
"Elaborate" drawled Hazel.
"...Uh, he's just...he's been acting like a-a-a lunatic. He's been sitting in this van in front a-a lab or something, and...looking for the owner of an eyeball. One of those fake ones"
"That makes no sense"
"Hold on, just hold on" interjected Cha-Cha, "Tell us more about this eye, and why is it so important?"
"He said it had something to do with the end of times, or something"
"This is it, it's still here. This is Five's van" said Luthor as he and Diego came around the corner, the van still sitting in the spot as it was yesterday.
"Go, go" muttered Diego as they came up to the passenger's side door. Luthor tried to open the door, rattling the handle, trying not to actually pull the door off its hinges. With a sigh, Diego moved forward to pick the lock. The door popped open in an instant.
Once again, their goddamn male pride got in the way, as both tried to fit in the door at once. It took them two tries before Luthor turned to Diego using the "I'm One" excuse, before Diego tried the backdoor. Luthor refused to acknowledge it would have been easier for him to get in the back.
They both searched the van for any sign of a clue of their missing brother, Diego coming across an open sports bag amongst all the plumber's tools. Looking inside, he found an odd array of items, the most notable being Vanya's autobiography. It was tattered to hell and covered in scribbles.
Diego gave a low whistle as he flicked through the pages, none of the notes making any sense to him. Until he came to the front page, where a library stamp had been placed underneath the title, amongst all the notes. "I know where to find Five" he called to Luthor, showing him the page.
Five pulled Big along like a small child, making sure to keep the knife hidden, but still seen enough so that Big knew he still had it. That is until they came around the side of the building, smoke pouring out of the broken windows.
Five took off around the corner, completely forgetting about Big in his need to get there. A half-baked idea forming in his mind as he desperately thought that maybe it wasn't so bad, or maybe he could jump in grab the files and jump out. Surely the safe would protect them against the fire? Right?
Just as Five came to a stop at the entrance to the building, a large ball of fire exploded outwards, exploding the last of the remaining windows and throwing Five onto his back on the ground. He pulled himself up with a grunt, looking at the damage. All that time, wasted. Sirens could be heard in the background, but Five ignored them, looking on in disbelief as his hope too, went up in smoke.
The sound of Klaus' muffled screams woke Thea from the cat nap she was having in the closet. They had been rebound, gagged and shut in here when Cha-Cha and Hazel had left the motel. Klaus was shoved against one wall of the small closet, taking up most of the space and Thea leant against the other, curling up as much as she possibly could, the pain in her back making her scrunch her eyes close as she constantly shifted trying to get rid of the pain. It kind of reminded her of a cross between really bad period cramps and being stabbed repeatedly.
"Klaus, Klaus!" called Ben, hovering over Klaus' shoulder, "Breathe. You're in the worst of it now, just try and stay calm"
The sound of the vacuum cleaner could be heard in the room, no doubt the cleaning lady. Thea was too focused on her pain to notice the new addition, but Klaus did notice and began to scream, making as much noise as he could. The cleaner paused for a moment to listen to the pants and groans, but wrote it off as the room next door having a bit of...fun.
"She can't hear you" stated Ben as Klaus continued to whine and groan through the noise,"You know what the worst part of being dead is? You're stuck. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to change. That's the real torture, if you gotta know. watching your brother take for granted everything you lost and pissing it all away"
Klaus was reduced to tears, sniffing and whimpering in the tiny little closet.
Detective Eudora Patch walked through yet another crime scene, this one involving the now burnt Meritech labs. Her co-worker had waved her over with a burnt prosthetic. "Well, the fire inspector says that the speed of the blaze indicates an accelerant was used" he explained as he picked up a piece of charred evidence, "Oh! And, uh...we...found this"
"Oh" muttered Patch as she stared at the charred fake dog ear, "Get that over to the lab immediately...I'll be right back" She wandered over to the plumbers van that sat on the side of the road untouched. It was covered in dust, but otherwise remained intact.
A small motel card had been placed underneath the windscreen wipers and across the windscreen of the car a message had been written. Leaning inside the driver's side window she was able to read the dusty message; 'Your brother says hi'. A memory surfaced of Diego telling her his brother had gone missing yesterday.
"Son of a bitch"
