Meli-Mel150-:D Nothing bad will ever happen to Lemon. Jason...well...sucks to be him. But not today!
"-knock on this door," Jimmy's grumbling from the back of the elevator. "You didn't knock on mine, who knows how long you two were lurking behind me in the dark-"
"Quicher griping, I didn't get a knock either-"
"You were into it! I know you, you were packed and ready to go in ten minutes, I was terrorized in my own basement-"
"Look, at least you got to be in the A/C," Trent points out. He looks incredibly uncomfortable, wedged as he is into the corner. "I looked up and he was on my fucking roof-"
"He is right here," the Knight says petulantly. He's ignored.
"I got a knock," Mark says. The others roll their eyes and the Knight...shifts. A little.
"That was because of unforeseen complications," he says. "This is because of a high likelihood of booby traps."
Antoine sighs. Great. One of those people.
They troop out of the elevator, avoiding eye contact with the lady watching them through a cracked door, and head to the apartment at the end of the hall. It's dark, which makes the red light of the camera very visible.
"So you were just gonna break in?" Mark demands. "Seriously?"
"Yeah. But then we needed you to fix Antoine, so we knocked instead."
"Shut up, Jimmy."
"Nah, I'm happy to know." Mark pats his arm a little too hard to be nice. "Thanks for getting slashed up by a rake."
"Yeah, it was so much fun."
Knock-knock!
They shut up, because they are, after all, professionals. Nobody answers the door, though, and after two minutes of standing awkwardly in the hall, Jimmy raises a hand and goes, "Maybe nobody's home."
The Knight shakes his head. Sure enough, another minute passes and the door creaks open enough for a gun barrel to poke out. Who are they here for? Antoine has visions of some sort of ancient, grizzled veteran with, like, claw marks across his eye and a hatred for the government for leaving him to die or...or something.
"Riley Dylan." Claw marks. There have to be claw marks. "Can we talk."
Silence. The barrel goes down, though, and the door opens the rest of the way.
The guy on the other side does not have claw marks. He's disappointingly normal, like the rest of them (well, Trent and the boss aside). Shorter than Antoine, though, which...okay, it's a little mean, but good. Being the shortest sucks.
Riley looks up at the boss, expression neutral, before doing something with his hands. Mute, then. Okay. If he decides to come along, he'll spend some time on YouTube or something.
That said-and he only knows a little bit of baby sign language because his sister was into it-whatever this guy just said, Antoine's pretty sure it was something about clowns. He might die instead; the boss has a. A thing about clowns. Nobody's sure what it is, but they're not dumb enough to ask.
The Knight laughs, incredulous even with the modulator, and goes, "Did you just call me an assclown?*"
What.
Riley pales before breaking out in a very wide grin and stepping back to let them in. There's a gun in the umbrella stand, a...mechanism...that looks like it'll do something bad if the door's opened from the outside (how does this guy go out? maybe he doesn't.) and no less than five locks on the back of the door. The apartment's well-lit otherwise, but the large window in the living room has a handgun attached to it.
Jimmy, as ever, is the one to ask about it.
"So, does that like, go off if you try to force it open?" Riley nods. "Man, what the hell? This is like Home Alone, but R-rated."
He shrugs and flops onto the couch, makes a sort of, whaddaya want gesture. The Knight decides to talk to what is, frankly, one of the ugliest portraits Antoine has ever seen in his life rather than to the man on the couch.
"I'm building an army," he says, and ah, he's starting to get a bit of a spiel going. Ten to one the next thing is something about killing Batman. "The end goal is to invade Gotham City and kill the Batman."
Called it.
Riley makes a sharp noise that can only be translated as, bullshit. So not, like, totally mute, then? Huh. Whatever. He doesn't respond otherwise, though, just shakes his head and leans back, arms flung over the back of the couch, looking, honestly, a little bit smug. The Knight doesn't turn around when he continues.
"The people I'm looking for have a particular set of skills and experiences." He runs a finger along the bottom of the picture frame. "You have a reputation as a sniper, but I'm a little more interested in your, ah, stealth skills." Riley's a little less smug now, and a lot more wary. The Knight tends to have that effect on people. "Though I'll admit, the picture's impressive. Is it acid or a bullet that comes at me if I move it?"
What the fuck? Where did the Knight find this guy?
Riley stands up, cracks his back, and wanders into another room. They all stand there in awkward silence for maybe...five, ten minutes before he comes back with a duffle bag and a backpack. Um. Okay, then.
"So what's with all the booby traps?" Shut up, Jimmy… "Hobby?"
Riley laughs, genuinely friendly (hopefully…) and turns to face them. His mouth is wide open and it takes a second to realize that he doesn't have a tongue. Well. Not much of one; there's a charred stub back there. Jesus Christ-
It shuts Jimmy up, anyway. Unfortunately, it gets Mark's attention.
"The fuck happened? Hot tongs?" Seriously? Yes, apparently; Riley nods. "Why? Talked in class or something?"
Mark, why.
Riley just laughs again, grabs his gun from the umbrella stand, and strolls out into the hall. Fine. You know what, surely this is the weirdest person they're gonna find, hands down. It doesn't get worse than having murder traps all over your apartment. It can't.
Right?
THE END
*As far as I can find out, there is not a direct ASL translation for assclown. It was, however, Speaking Riley's go-to insult and he wasn't about to give it up; he's combined the signs for 'ass' (donkey) and 'clown' to make it, and since Bruce made Jason learn ASL for Robin-ing, he can guess. (Riley's file may or may not have something that basically translates to 'mouthy shithead' in it, which helps.)