ArchivedLogs:Never a Dull Moment

Never a Dull Moment
Dramatis Personae Eric, Kyle Whelan, Merit, Nox
In Absentia	2013-05-19 takes place just after frontrowseats and during noxmerit fight. (Part of Thunderdome.)
Location Thunderdome
It's a warehouse, or something like it; at least it's spacious, and was probably once industrial; at the moment it's largely just empty. There are tracks in the floor from long-since disused equipment and the construction of walls and high exposed-beam ceilings is sturdy. The center of the room has been excavated, since this place was in actual daily use. In the middle a pit has been gashed out of the concrete; it's not /deep/ and it serves more as a foundation than anything else; around its wide circular perimeter a cage has been erected. Nearly reaching up to ceiling-height, it is constructed of thick sturdy metal bars wrapped in a thinner wire mesh. Surrounding the cage there is a lot of empty space. Some nights, though, when fights are in session, the room is filled; with people, with cameras (though no outsiders' cameras are allowed in), with paper betting slips and folding chairs. The spotlights in the ceiling are bright-bright-bright, the better to illuminate the fighters within the centerpiece cage. There has been a lull in between fights, for food, for renewed betting, for conversation. For Kyle to disappear somewhere below to do who knows what. But now there is another fight, the headliner for the night and this one is already starting off showy, the slim Asian man in the ring calling sparking showers of lightning to dance between the bars of the cage as his opponent crafts herself into a creature of shadow. "Beats fucking wrestling, doesn't it?" Kyle is saying to Eric; he doesn't smile but there's a hint of it crinkling his eyes as he watches. Kind of more alertly than the last fight, admittedly, a little more edged, a little more tense. "Certainly a bit different." Eric says, turning to glance over Kyle's face for a moment. He glances back behind him, looking at the others sitting in the stands, then looks back towards Kyle. "I gotta say, I'm surprised you can keep all these people contained. Do you guys have a command post somewhere you're usin'?" he asks, curiously. The tension in the other man's body doesn't go unnoticed, and it grows in his as well. "Should I be worried?" he asks, glancing towards the cage. "Nah," Kyle shakes his head. He doesn't take a seat, though, instead resting one boot on the end of a bench and his elbow on his knee. His other hand doesn't stray /far/ from his weapon, though, and since returning from who-knows-where there's a sturdy flashlight clipped to his belt. "Just shine a light on that shadowthing and she wilts." He's keeping an eye on the cage carefully, though, even as the crowd cheers loudly. Because LIGHTNING. It's like freaking Jedi up in there. To Eric's question, he just shrugs. "Not that hard to contain 'em once you get 'em, really. Give 'em a few good /shocks/ and they mostly stay in line." "Yeah, you say that, Sarge, but I ain't as stupid as I sound. I ain't been a cop for however many years without seein' when someone is close to drawin'." Eric drawls, watching the combat beginning to unfold in front of him. He tilts his head to one side, eyebrows drawing together. "Some fuckin' electric guy tried to fry me, back couple months ago. He's on a slab at the morgue, though, so it can't be the same one. How many of 'em can there fuckin' be?" "More than is good for the world," Kyle says with a snort. Like he is perfoming a civic /service/. "Puts on a good show, though, doesn't it?" In the ring, Nox is bird-formed, something huge and shadowy and taloned to slash at Merit. "Better safe than sorry," he says to Eric with a shrug. "Things are entertaining, but you know as well as I do they can get dangerous as fuck." "Mmm." Eric's reply is non-committal. The smile is still on his face, but around the edges it is fixed as Merit lets out a noise of pain. "It's certainly a show." he glances right at Kyle, and his voice drops slightly. "I don't suppose they're available for... taking out for a night on the town?" he says, quiet enough for the words to slip off into the ether in the noise of the crowd only inches away. "Jesus fucking Christ, Sutton, do you ever not think with your dick?" Kyle's snort could be laughter or could be disgusted or! could be disgustylaughter, it's hard to tell. "Fuck. I mean, it's not what they're here for. And who knows what the fuck would happen if we let them out far. People do," he admits with a kind of disgusted curl of his lip, "take 'em out of their cages once in a while but, shit." It's the kind of 'shit' that is like: /some/ things are just /too/ far. "You for real? You /can't/ be that hard up." "I never said I was hard up. I came home with someone same as you did, Kyle." Eric drawls, winking playfully at the other man. "And we are on our second date, so I have high hopes." A teasing note plays in his voice as he glances over Kyle for a moment. "Still. Variety is the spice of life." "They're freaks, Sutton, look at this shit." Kyle waves his hand, holding the flashlight, now, towards the cage. "Jesus," he calls, a little louder as a young man edges up to tap! lightly at the cage. Like he is being so daring. "Get the fuck away from there, moron. -- We're not running a fucking /brothel/," he tells Eric in a lower grumble. He looks back at the cage. "You into that electric shit?" "The guy was a hitman." Eric says, quietly. "Got a round off into him. There was a big hunt for him - before I was in your precinct. Turned up in the morgue." He pauses, then grins. "But, I mean, electricity can be fun too." "Freak," Kyle mutters, eyes on the fight. "Jesus /fuck/ get /away/," -- but this is not quick enough. There's a flash of lightning, a sizzle of burning, the smell of scorched flesh and hair, and the man posing for a /picture/ with one hand on the cage is crumpling. Not dead but not /well/ either. "Fucking idiots," Kyle mutters, "fuck. One sec." He claps Eric on the shoulder and shoulders his way off through the crowd. At the flash of lightning, Eric automatically presses himself down, making a smaller figure, even as he draws his weapon in a smooth movement. His finger rests against the cool metal of the gun, pointing it down as he looks around the room carefully. He glances down at the gun in his hand, and his lips narrow. He shoves the weapon back into its holster, making a grunting noise at the back of his throat. It takes a decent while before Kyle returns, the young man taken away, presumably for medical attention. "Fucking idiots," he says again to Eric. "Seriously, these fucking people. Don't know how many times we have to tell them --" His head shakes. He glances back to the ongoing fight. Nox is pinning Merit, blood trickling out from the wounds she's inflicted. Blood that the crowd has been clamouring for; their cries of "Kill him!" are intensifying in the wake of the spectator injury. Kyle absently flicks his flashlight on and off, glancing over to one of the police guards nearer the cage. "Kill the guy who touched the cage? I'm not sure I disagree, considerin' we want to catch him early before he has more stupid fuckin' children committin' crimes that we're goin' to have to clean up." Eric says, and his voice is hardened. He is not dumb enough to think that they are calling for the spectator to be killed. He looks over at Kyle questioningly, then glances back at the cage. Nox is getting up, leaving Merit bleeding on the ground. The guard at the cage glances over to Kyle. Kyle grimaces, looking at Merit. Looking in the direction the young man was carried off to await an ambulance. His head shakes. The guard outside flicks on his flashlight, and off, and on, and off, two quick-bright beams that hit Nox for a second and then vanish. "Stupidity isn't a crime," Kyle says. With a tone that says: 'unfortunately'. "Should grab some dinner afterwards, you down for Mexican?" "Too bad, indeed." Eric says, and nods. "Yeah. Dinner sounds good." His smile flicks briefly back onto his face, a flash of warmth. "Dinner /and/ a show. You sure know how to treat a boy, Sarge." He crosses his arms over his chest and looks back towards the cage, expression flat. "Fucking hell, Sutton, don't make me --" But wherever this threat was going, it is cut off. By a sudden flash of lightning shooting towards the spotlights. They start to burn out, the darkness around the cage growing in successive fizzling zzzps. The reaction is instantaneous, from the police guards scattered around the cage. Perhaps they were, if not expecting it, at least /ready/ for it. Kyle has drawn his weapon in a heartbeat, firing it straight towards Merit unhesitatingly. Two other shots come at pretty much the same time, from other angles. His flashlight is the next, switched on to shine bright towards the cage. "Shit!" The gunfire causes Eric to draw his firearm once more, raising it automatically towards the person with the weapon in his sight - Kyle. His finger does not move to the trigger, though, and he lowers the weapon to a ready position pointed down towards his feet a moment later. "Jesus, Sarge, you could give a guy a little bit of a warning before you draw down," he says, and the adrenaline spiking through his body sounds in the ragged edges of his voice. Perhaps it is all for the best, as the slightly nauseous look is not uncommon in high pressure situations. "Jesus, Sutton --" Kyle is tense, too, thick muscles bouldered up but he holds his firearm now, finger off the trigger, pointed towards the ground. "Didn't have much warning. Fuck." His knuckles press to his eyes, for a moment, and he watches -- there is some kind of Lovecraftian /horror/ in the cage, although it is shaved away back down to a woman under the bright lights pointing at her. He watches as they re-collar and cuff her, bright LED lights in the bracelets and collar banded to her, and then drag her away. Merit, too, a thick streak of blood left in the wake of the body. The cage has been bent, in places, and he grimaces. "Goddammit. Gonna need Mexican /and/ a fucking beer." Despite this, though, he smiles at Eric. "Never a dull moment." "Jesus fuck, Sarge." Eric's mutter is dark and he shakes his head for a long moment, from side to side. The queasy expression on his face doesn't immediately disappear with the removal of the body and of the terror-from-the-night. Nor, this time, is he so quick to holster his weapon. "I think I'm going to need somethin' stiffer than a beer." Kyle eyes Eric skeptically, and /he/, at least, holsters his firearm once Nox and Merit have been dragged away. "Would've stuck with our pick-up games if I knew this was too much excitement for you, Sutton." Eric glances down at the gun in his hands and holsters it, giving Kyle a brief look of apology. "Just a bit of a surprise, Sarge. Ain't often you see somethin' with that many tentacles loose." He gives the older man a smile. "This the keynote fight, or are there more? I'm fuckin' hungry." "That was the headliner. Gonna have to get someone in to patch that fucking cage up, anyway." Kyle claps Eric on the shoulder. "Tentacles were straight out of a horror movie, weren't they? You never really know what these things are going to pull out next. /Had/ a fucking octo-freak in here. Strong as goddamn /hell/, we thought it'd tear apart the last ones we put in with it but shit if those shark-things didn't fucking /eat/ it." His head shakes, slightly. "That," he confides with a rub of the bridge of his nose, "was more than we were expecting. Had a couple people watching lose their fucking dinners." "You sure can't ever know what someone's gonna pull out." Eric shakes his head and pulls a face. "Ate -- Gotta tell ya, not sure I blame 'em for puking. Not exactly somethin' they teach you how to deal with at the academy, you know?" Kyle just snorts at this. "Got some shit to check in on," he tells Eric. "Meet you out front." "Yeah, I imagine y'do." Eric drawls, amusement in his voice as he gives the cage a pointed look. "See ya out front, Sarge." he says, giving the older man a rough salute and heading for the exit.