Previously on Ivory Tower:

Flynn began to tremble.

Edmund's voice took on a tinge of sorrow and compassion. "If you haven't seen her, Flynn, then we don't know what happened to her."

Still shaking, Flynn slowly sunk to the floor of his apartment, his eyes fixed on a nearby news article. The headline "Investigation Continues into Dockside Murders" dominated his thoughts as he dropped the receiver back onto its cradle.

Ivory Tower

Chapter 4: According to Plan

A sharp rapping filled the room. Flynn's eyes shot open, bloodshot and wild. He stumbled to his feet and toward the door, slipping on papers and tripping on bottles the whole way. Finally, he reached the door and managed to croak out, "Just a minute." Mercifully, the pounding stopped.

Flynn reached out a trembling hand and undid the locks on his door, opening it a crack to examine his visitor. A now-familiar broad hat and large coat greeted stood outside his door, ostensibly concealing an aged Asian mercenary.

Beside him, looking impatient, stood Delilah. She wore a shorter dress than usual, and her shoes were far more practical than her usual high-heeled affairs. Most noticeable of all, she no longer wore the elbow-length gloves that he had long thought her identifying fashion-statement. In her hand she clutched a burning cigarette, which she occasionally put to her lips but never inhaled.

The investigator classified her as 'nervous, tense, probably in a poor mood' before swiftly opening the door the rest of the way. The broad hat dipped briefly, seeming to examine him up and down. Flynn glanced down at himself self consciously. He had been up for most of the night searching for clues about Elizabeth, and hadn't bothered to change out of his day clothes. As a result, they were wrinkled, creased, and smelled of alcohol. Looking up, he caught Delilah's amused look before she glanced away primly.

Flynn sighed. "One moment, please." He closed the door abruptly and began cleaning himself up.

A few minutes later, he emerged. He had shaved, changed into fresh clothes, and taken the time to shine his shoes. Throughout the wait, Kenta had neither moved nor spoken. Delilah, though…

The clicking of heels from the entry stairs signaled her return. She wore a furious expression as she bore down on Flynn, another cigarette in hand. She stopped mere inches away from him, pointing the cigarette at him threateningly. "It is impolite to keep a lady waiting, Mr. O'Connell," she declared in icy tones.

He held up his hands defensively. "My apologies, Delilah. I got some…surprising news last night. Didn't sleep well. Are we going to…" he paused, his mind finally catching up with the situation. "Wait, how do you two know where I live?"

Delilah looked smug. "I have my sources of information, Mr. O'Connell. And yes, we are going to go see Mr. Moreno now. It is, after all, almost noon." She frowned at him. "That is, if you are finally ready?"

Kenta snorted faintly, but refrained from further comment when Delilah turned toward him with a fire in her eyes. She turned and began to walk briskly back out of the building, pausing briefly at the stairs to ask, "Are you gentlemen coming?"

Flynn stared after her while remarking to Kenta. "Is she truly angry, or just nervous? After what we faced last night a simple mobster shouldn't seem all that bad to her, right?"

The mercenary chuckled. "Who knows how the mind of a woman works? If the two of us don't know at our age, then man was probably never meant to know at all." Flynn glanced down at Kenta sharply. The old man tilted his hat back far enough for Flynn to see his amused expression before he began walking after their red-headed compatriot.

Flynn followed, wondering just what Kenta really knew. Perhaps it was time to look further into his mysterious companion's nature.

As the trio stepped out onto the busy sidewalk, they missed a flash of gray following behind. The bustle of the city smothered the low, growling noise the creature emitted as it followed them at a distance.

"I'm sorry, Miss, but Mr. Moreno said he don't wanna see nobody until his meeting is over. He was very clear on what would happen if somebody was to disturb him and his guest. I ain't exactly heard enough nice things about the bottom of the Hudson to wanna visit, so I think I'd prefer to just do what the boss says. Live longer that way."

Delilah frowned thunderously at the smirking guard, though she took care to turn to the side so he couldn't see her expression. After all the trouble she had gone to tracking down Mr. Moreno's latest apartment and buttering up most of the guards, the one guard she had not met just had to be the one in charge of the front door. And to top it off, he had two things a minion, in her opinion, should never have: a sense of humour and a sense of self-preservation.

Glancing back at her companions, Delilah began to suspect that Kenta was laughing at her. The shoulders of his coat occasionally shook, though she could not see under that damned hat to catch his expression. Flynn, on the other hand, had a concerned expression and seemed about ready to step forward.

Discreetly motioning him to stop, Delilah turned back to the door-guard. Resetting her expression to one of anxiety as she turned, she tried again.

"B-b-but sir! Mr. Moreno's orders were to come straight in and wait on- I mean, for him!" she stuttered, tripping over her words. Her eyes shone with sincerity, and her expression twisted in agonized worry. "Please! I will do anything, but I haveto see Mr. Moreno right now!" She reached out her hand and lightly touched his wrist.

The smirk left his face as the guard looked down at Delilah. His eyes darkened and he began to nod, but shook himself abruptly.

"Okay, that sounds like Vito- I mean, Mr. Moreno alright, but what about these two?" The guard gestured toward Kenta and Flynn.

Flynn stepped forward. "What with all of the…unpleasantness lately, we thought it best to see to the lady's safety as she went about her…errand."

The guard glanced at the noon sun and the bustling street before quirking an incredulous eyebrow at Flynn.

"Yeah, this 'lady' was in real danger. Alright, Miss, you can go on in. These two stay outside, though." As she opened her mouth to protest, he chuckled roughly. "Don't worry, you'll get them back in more or less the same shape. Now get on in there before you get in trouble with Mr. Moreno."

Delilah did as she was told. She felt more than saw the guard's gaze following her every step into the apartment complex. 'Well,' she thought wryly, 'I knew those two would screw up somehow. I just did not believe that it could have been before we even entered the front door.' She strutted down the hallway toward an elevator, not wanting to bother with stairs when Moreno lived in the top-floor suite. She pushed the call button and hoped that the 'boys' wouldn't do anything rash outside.

Flynn was trying to strike up a conversation with the door guard. Every time he tried, though, the man would just make some snide remark and then ignore him. Honestly, he was beginning to get more than a little angry.

"So, who do you think will win the next World Series?" Flynn asked, trying one final time to get the man talking.

The guard opened his mouth to put Flynn down again, something silver flipped past the investigator's head. 'Was that an eagle?' He looked back and spotted Kenta pulling his arm back. Something grabbed his coat from the front, and he turned back in surprise.

For a very brief moment, he gazed into the wide eyes of the guard, who was grabbing at his own throat and Flynn's coat. Flynn quickly averted his gaze and moved to assist the man, pounding his back to help clear his throat. After a few moments, the guard stopped moving and fell to the ground, still not breathing.

Flynn turned back to Kenta. "Did you just kill that man with a quarter?" He asked, anger intruding itself into his tone.

Kenta stepped forward and kicked the guard between the shoulder blades once, twice. The man suddenly coughed and spat out a round, silvery object with the words "In God We Trust" printed along the middle. He remained on the ground, sputtering and breathing deeply. A quick boot to the head sent him back into oblivion.

"No."

"Finally!" Delilah sighed. The elevator had taken at least three minutes of her valuable time. She impatiently stepped into the metal box and pressed the button for the uppermost floor. It was time for her to have a word with a man about some ghouls…

Just as the doors began to close, a cane pushed itself between them and pried the doors apart. Flynn stepped through, twirling his cane. Kenta followed after, pausing to tap the elevator. He let out a grunt at the flat 'clunk' sound, and settled into a corner.

Delilah raised an eyebrow. "Dare I ask?"

Flynn shrugged. "Entirely up to you, my dear."

They rode the rest of the trip up in utter silence. When the doors finally opened, Delilah took a deep breath.

"Leave the talking to me, gentlemen," she said archly. "If we need to get out the clubs, I'll let you know." The red-headed bombshell sauntered toward the suite's double-doors, smoothing out imaginary wrinkles in her dress as she went. Flynn shared a look with the old mercenary beside him before they simultaneously shrugged and stepped off of the elevator.

Delilah knocked on the great doors several times before trying the brass door handles. Finding them locked, she glanced back at her compatriots.

"A little help, here?" she pleaded, eyes wide and shining.

Grumbling about laziness and privilege, Kenta stepped up to the doors. He sketched out 14 brilliant green lines in the air, overlapping and connected. Watching closely, Flynn noticed that there were actually two separate figures hanging in the air, but they vanished before he could look closer. The locks clicked, and the door began to soundlessly swing open under its own weight.

A foul stench began to permeate the hallway. Delilah began to gag, Flynn held a kerchief to his face, and, beneath his broad hat, Kenta's eyes widened in recognition.

"Death, old death." he muttered, drawing looks from both Delilah and Flynn. He forged into the room, gaze sweeping corners and shadows for any possible foes. Flynn, following him, almost ran over the shorter man when he stopped suddenly, pointing to a chair in the sitting room.

Suddenly all business, Flynn lowered the kerchief and stepped into the sitting room to get a better look. There, reclining in an antique chair carved to resemble two lions back-to-back, sat the desiccated husk of a man. Flynn noted that the figure appeared undisturbed, and that it had already entered the fifth stage of decomposition.

Delilah walked into the room and gagged, turning away from the corpse. "How long has he been dead?" she asked. "Weeks? Months?"

Kenta shrugged. "I've seen this before on battlefields. It takes weeks. Maybe a month, maybe two." He shook his head. "This does not make sense."

Flynn heartily agreed. Pulling out a notepad, he began jotting down quick notes, moving around to observe the corpse from different angles. When the sound of the elevator opening drew Kenta and Delilah's attention back to the entry-way, Flynn didn't even flinch. He reached out his handkerchief and took something from the right hand of the body before wrapping it up and shoving it in his pocket.

He straightened in time to hear, from the doorway, "That's weird, the boss said to keep this door closed no matter what. Do you think he's finally gonna come out? I haven't seen him since last night."

Another voice answered, "I guess we should go check and see if he's still inside. If not, he can't be far away."

The first voice protested. "But what if he still doesn't want to be disturbed?"

The two fell to bickering as Delilah turned, wide-eyed to Kenta and Flynn. "We need to get out of here. Now!" she whispered urgently. "If they find us here with this body, they'll tie us to Rothstein and the war will start anyway!"

Flynn quickly re-examined the room, smiling as he noticed the open windows. Taking Delilah's hand, he led her over to the window. Turning to smile at her, he whispered, "Gnáthgaoth" and stepped out onto empty air. Delilah stepped out after him, her face full of wonder.

Kenta came to the windowsill, looking down the 40 feet between him and the ground. He seemed to swoon and took a step away from the window. "I'll find another way, Mr. O'Connell."

Flynn shrugged and began lowering himself and Delilah to the ground. Frowning in concentration, he pronounced "An Modh Orduitheach!"

Kenta watched the two of them waver and disappear before pulling himself back inside of the suite. Still staring outside, he heard the two guards still arguing outside of the suite's front door. He frowned. "Nobody can be that stupid."

"You're right," came a new voice from behind him. "Too late, though." There was a massive explosion, and then nothing.

Nicholas Jeanetta stepped up to the windowsill and looked down into the alley below. Seeing nothing, he shrugged and blew the smoke away from the muzzle of his 12-gauge. Turning back, he frowned at the corpse sitting in his boss' favorite chair before calling out, "It's okay, boys, he's gone. You can stop arguing now."

Two voices sighed simultaneously in relief. "Catch him by surprise, did you Nick?" one of them asked.

Nicholas smirked. "Little bastard never saw it coming. Slug must'a gone clean through, there was hardly any blood."

The second piped up. "So what do we do now, huh? The boss is still missing, right?"

Nicholas paused, looking at the seated corpse before replying. "Yeah, still missing. Remember, he put me in charge before he went into his meeting…"

Flynn's face was a mask of concentration. Between maintaining the wind spell that kept them afloat, catching Kenta's body before it hit them, and veiling their movements, he was hard-pressed to remember how to breath, much less cast. At last, he lowered the three of them down to the alley floor, where Delilah immediately rushed to examine Kenta.

Kneeling by the mercenary's side, Delilah reached out to check his neck for a pulse. What she felt was cold and unmoving, with no signs of life at all.

She looked up at Flynn and wordlessly shook her head.

Flynn swore violently, slamming his cane into the ground. The earth rumbled and pitched around him.

"Temper, temper" came a voice from the alley's entrance. When Delilah and Flynn spun around, they saw a short, fat gentleman in a bowler hat standing between them and the main street. Flanking him on either side were a pair of massive ghouls, easily seven feet tall and looking hungry.

"I can't exactly let the two of you roam the city undoing my plans, now can I?" The man snapped his fingers and left the alley, leaving behind his two minions.

Delilah glanced between herself and the obviously fatigued wizard to her left, then at the slowly advancing ghouls. Looking back revealed the alley to be a dead end with a massive brick wall.

The bombshell let out a very un-ladylike word as the two giant ghouls charged.

A/N

…I have been informed by my beta that if I do not put the next chapter online by tomorrow morning, she will strangle me.

Sorry for the short chapter, but this just felt like the perfect place to end it. Look for more tonight or tomorrow morning.

Oh, and please take a look at the poll on my profile. Due to the lack of response, and the 4-way tie, I'm keeping it open for an extra week. This week, I'll just publish two chapters and stand by.

By the way, nobody has guessed what poor Kenta was yet. Very sad.