Elena regretted thinking that stakeouts were boring. This one in particular was going to give her a heart attack, or maybe drive her completely around the bend - and she was pretty fucking crazy already as everyone well knew.

If it was just about sitting in a shitty one room loft apartment they'd appropriated from the owner, staring down into the front of the Pharmacy for hours on end, she'd have been fine. Looking for one particular guy shouldn't be that hard, it shouldn't be so complicated. But the gods hated her, or maybe they hated poor fucking Aerith wherever this guy had her, because the rainy season had brought in a whole host of respiratory illnesses and it seemed half the fucking people in the slums were walking around wearing disposable masks to keep from passing it around.

Ordinarily she'd be kind of impressed, she didn't think people down here cared that much about getting other people sick but apparently that was something folks up on the plate could stand to learn. Turns out if you basically live in a box with ten other people you're going to all pass a miserable cold back and forth all winter if you didn't do something to keep it from happening. Maybe she could figure out a way to manipulate people into making it a trend, but then she'd curse herself on a stakeout six months from now trying to find a mark in a sea of anonymous masks.

Damned if she did, damned if she didn't. She held her breath for a moment as something tickled in the back of her throat. She'd better not be getting sick herself or she was going to be making it everyone else's problem.

She stewed in a vague state of petty hatred as she sipped from her bottle of water, anything to keep the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach from turning really rancid when she wondered what she was going to do if the guy didn't show up for five days and Reno and Rude had no luck in the sewers…

Elena didn't want to know what Tseng would do. She didn't like the way he'd been ever since the whole serial killer hunt started, and now it was one of the handful of people he cared about - maybe even more than cared about, not that he'd have ever acted on it, she knew. They all knew that he was soft on Aerith in a way he never was about anyone else.

It had been two days since she'd been taken, and Elena was even more on guard today than she'd been the day before - Doc Montrose had said the guy usually came back after two days. He better not fuck it up and act all scared and tip the guy off if North showed up - she'd be admittedly hard pressed to just sit here and wait for six to eight hours for him to head back home so she could follow him.

She watched from her little perch as people walked up and down the muddy mess the dirt streets had turned into with rain leaking down from the plate, listening to the crackly connection on her earpiece from Reno and Rude down underground - they, at least, were just as miserable as she was. More, probably, because the sewer water was rising and killing any possible chance to get any kind of scent now.

"I think I'm gonna have to call it, yo," Reno said, and he sounded as dejected as Elena felt. "If it ain't the water, it's the monsters we keep havin' to kill and that's messing the pup up too. We got, I think, half way between the pharmacy and wherever this motherfucker's set up shop. I'm just gonna… gonna maybe hope he took her up top somewhere? Fuck, lets find the nearest ladder and pop back up and see if Darkstar gets a hit up there."

"WAIT!" Elena hissed into the mic clipped to the lapel of her jacket, dropping down and twisting her head to make sure she was seeing what she thought she was. "That fucker is here!"

A figure in green scrubs and a white coat shuffled down the street, glasses fogged from the humidity caused from the condensation sizzling on the sun lamps. He walked cool as you please into his job like he didn't have a girl stashed someplace drugged or tied up or tied up and drugged who the fuck knew…

Elena guessed that when you were crazier than a sack of doom-rats you could just go about your day like this, especially when you've got away with it a bunch of times - and she and Tseng had been trying to get hold of the Mideel Constabulary to see if they had their own string of missing women and cut up bodies but they were dealing with a natural disaster of some kind and hadn't had any time to get back to them. Like it wasn't literal life or death. Okay, she could be sort of nice, they were dealing with their own life or death shit too.

Tseng had figured out right away that the guy walking into the pharmacy wasn't actually Doctor Bertrand North at all, but they were still using the name for lack of anything else just yet. The real Doc North had been a family doctor about thirty years before, in a backwater mountain town called Feigerheim that had a grand total of twenty five residents and might as well not even exist. It was right down the way from Nibelheim, which didn't exist anymore either. Nobody knew what had happened to him, so any records of him were free game for a scammer to use if they could get hold of them, which this psychopath had taken advantage of.

"Copy that." Reno sounded as though he weren't certain whether they were supposed to be happy about it or not, and then he swore several times over and she could hear Darkstar barking as she went after yet another monster of some kind.

"Which direction did he arrive from," Tseng asked, and she could hear him shift in that loud-ass desk chair in the Tower surveillance room.

"From the train station, just like Montrose said," she answered, plucking the mic and its accompanying battery pack and receiver from the inside pocket of her jacket once she'd stripped it off. She unbuttoned the top three buttons of her shirt and pulled it out of her pants, grabbing an ugly pink sweater she'd bought from a thrift store and tossing it over top. It itched, and was way too warm for the muggy heat of the slums - although it might have been comfier on the plate with the weather getting rough. It would still be too hideous to be seen wearing there, but ugly was a lot less memorable down here. Ratty sneakers replaced her shiny dress shoes, and she reclipped the mic to the inside of the sweater.

She checked over the contents of the messenger bag before she slung it over her shoulder. Full medkit with extra elixirs, a bracer full of Materia she popped onto her wrist right away and hid under her sleeve - Heal, Cleanse, obviously and that was for Aerith or for herself and Tseng if the guy got some kind of hit in or there were nasties in the sewer if they really did end up there. The others were just for fun. Ice was great, good damage output with not a lot of collateral destruction and not likely to set things on fire or knock out electronics the way the other elements could. Her favorite by far, for interrogations, was Gravity - Demi hurt like a motherfucking truck hit you right in the chest but it technically couldn't kill you. She'd been hit with it plenty of times in training, and she thought honestly she'd rather get waterboarded, but the fact that it couldn't actually do permanent damage was what made it the best tool in her arsenal.

Honestly, she wasn't even hoping they'd have to use it on the guy, cause that meant he hadn't led them right to Aerith and they'd have to get the info out of him, and who knew how long they had even if they had the killer in their hands. Aerith could still die from just being locked up wherever had her if they couldn't get to her in time. They had to follow him home and hopefully that was also where he worked out of. A basement apartment was probably pretty good for muffling screams, and that was if you didn't have a basic silence spell up…

Elena shook the thought right out of her head and covered her hair with a ball cap. She'd kept one eye on the window the entire time she'd been changing, and he hadn't come back out the way he'd gone in.

Her watch did get a little boring after that, despite listening to Reno and Rude come across some kind of monster that spat slime at them, and then Darkstar had rolled in it. Rude suggested they make Rufus give her a bath - he'd apparently given them a headache when they'd taken him to the Honeybee a couple of days ago - the new President did not like having an allowance rather than unlimited spending money. His leash was tighter than Darkstar's these days.

Elena thought it was pretty damned generous to let him have any fun, what with his ranting and raving about ruling through fear now that his father had been 'deposed'. She rolled her eyes and forced herself to choke down two protein bars and another bottle of water as she waited - Tseng was watching through the cameras inside the pharmacy and on the street just outside, letting her know when she could go take a breather and a piss, before planting her ass right by the window again.

If she hadn't set up a little noise trap at the door, Tseng would have surprised her when he made his appearance. His expression was tense, but he gave her trap a small nod of approval as he stepped around it - she knew that he knew she'd know he'd catch it. He'd set it off anyway, so that was nice of him at least. The little pile of dog toys wheezed as they toppled over and he closed the door behind him.

Her boss looked incredibly strange in a dark blue tracksuit that seemed realistically sweat stained, and with his hair pulled into a messy bun on top of his head. A towel that looked damp was draped over his shoulders, and it took Elena almost a full thirty seconds to realize what looked so wrong about his face. He'd crossed the room by the time she figured it out - the little mark on his forehead was missing. She'd never seen him without it.

Tseng leaned against the wall beside the window, peering down at the street, and she could see him slip his usual emotionless mask into place. If this were any other situation she'd have made some kind of remark that she'd caught him caring.

"This is the usual time that North leaves early," he said after a moment, "I will jog ahead and you follow behind. Keep me apprised of any detours he decides to make and I will be certain to keep my circuit close by. With any luck he'll go straight home and this will be over quickly."

Her earpiece fuzzed as Reno spoke up, "Think we'll need the dog?"

"Perhaps." Tseng turned and walked back toward the door. "Come back up the ladder behind the pharmacy after Elena reports he's left and wait there until I call you."

"Mess him up a little for me, yo," Reno said, "til I get there anyway!"

Elena had her own plans for that too, patting the little rolled up tool kit she'd tucked into the side of her bag. Probably she wouldn't get to use the nastier bits, but she wanted to… more than a little. She'd just need a good excuse, really.

Tseng wasn't the only one with soft spots, and one of Elena's was seeing her fellow Turks. upset. She was worried about Aerith too, but she hadn't basically grown up watching over her, herself. Tseng had spent literally half his entire life, and pretty much his entire career doing that. Elena didn't think she'd have been able to do it, especially the part where someday she'd maybe have had to turn a scared little girl over to her worst nightmare… Her boss was a good Turk. He'd have done it. Elena wondered if that gave him nightmares sometimes.

The squeaky toys whined again and Elena glanced over her shoulder as Tseng disappeared through the door… He'd kicked them on purpose. Maybe even he needed something to lighten the mood? Nah.

She watched the pharmacy's double door swing open and the serial killer walked into the street and began ambling back the way he came, seemingly in no hurry at all. That made one of them, she guessed, punting the toys away with a bit more abandon than needed as she headed out the door. She did need to get some of her own aggression out, before she snapped.

Out in the street, North was the easiest mark she'd ever tailed. He never looked behind him, barely even looked left or right even when someone walked right in front of him - which was when the weirdness started kicking in for her. He wasn't a big dude, kind of scrawny beneath the white coat, and he shuffled more than he walked, but if someone got in his way he just… stopped. Waited for them to move. And there must have been something they could see, the crazy, probably, and it did make them avoid him. They avoided even brushing by him, and that was creepy as hell.

Elena wondered if Tseng had looked at whatever it was in the doctor's eyes, and Elena wasn't sure she wanted to know. She followed behind as he made his unhurried way home. It was only in sight of what must be his building that his pace changed at all - going from practically an undead shamble to perking up with clear excitement. And then he flicked his eyes back and forth and cast a glance over his shoulder.

She kept going along, passing him without even the slightest attention, and heard a jangle of keys behind her. Tseng nodded as she passed by him, turning a corner and then whirling back around to join him just out of sight.

She settled against the wall, wrapping her arms around her middle and ignoring the way the hair on the back of her neck was standing right at attention. She'd seen it. The killer in him. She couldn't even see his whole face, just his eyes, but that had been enough, and she really, suddenly, didn't want to get into close quarters with the guy… she was glad he hadn't tried to pick her up in the bar now.

She wondered how he hid it the rest of the time. She knew killers, she should since she was one herself, but she'd never looked at people as though they weren't… people. That's how it had felt just getting his attention for a few seconds, and he'd had Aerith for two days.

She pulled out her PHS and texted what counted as an address down here to Rude, 'three streets from the station, across and east past two buildings from the lewd malboro graffiti, recessed door at the bottom of a short set of stairs'

Tseng brought two fingers up in signal and they both began to move.