2012-09-16 Recruiting Drive

'''Warning: strong language within. This scene is not approved by the Comics Code Authority.'''

Manila was a clusterfuck.

The job started simply enough: doing some high-level security work for Advanced Idea Mechanics. Sure, she’s working for AIM, but she also has a cable television bill that’s a month past due and the global economic recession’s hitting everyone, including mercs. It’s either take the jobs with outfits like AIM or get reduced to flipping burgers. Maybe prostitution. With her coloration there are a lot more guys who’d pay money for her services without clothes than there are guys who’d buy a burger from the dominoed freak behind the counter.

But, if you work for the devil, you have to expect to be guarding the demons of hell, and when you wind up guarding a bunch of twelve-year-olds not because they’re little human beings who should be protected but because AIM’s latest cybernetic kill-o-bot is burning through its internal organs at a prodigious rate and AIM needs to safeguard its supply of spare parts…

Well. The kids are free, the AIM facility’s on fire, and one deranged kill-o-bot currently has two weeks to get a new liver and pancreas from somewhere before it keels over dead. On the one hand, screwing over an employer is just bad form and it’s a mark against her for future employment. On the other hand, it feels good. On the third hand, she has a liver and pancreas, and…

… It’s time to get out of Manila, all right.

Domino’s cooling her heels in her backup Manila safehouse. She didn’t go back to her place after setting AIM’s lab ablaze: too risky. Everything there’s already lost, right? AIM’s watching it. It’s probably a crater by now. The safehouse, though, is a good place to spend the few hours until the next plane to California arrives…

… and a knock at the door snaps her out of her thoughts.

“You don’t know me,” a voice calls from the other side. “But you got about an hour before your former employers find you.”

Simply put, there must be better places on this rock to find work. Tough times or no, there’s a line which can be reached where this woman will step no further. Sometimes it’s a little late to cut things off at the knees, sometimes she may end up going home for the night sick to the stomach and filled with regret. No one ever said this job would be easy. Truth of the matter is, that’s part of what keeps her coming back for more. And, hell. What else is she gonna do? She’d never make it working a street corner, she’d gut everyone that looked at her the wrong way. Bad for business. So..yeah. Here’s another shitstorm to add to the growing list of Less Than Great Ideas.

The safehouse is simplistic, as are most. She never did spend a great amount of time out here, it could almost be viewed as a rental crash area. She’s got a duffel bag out, cramming things into the heavy canvas enclosure so she can make a clean break as quickly as possible. Luck should see her through, it always has before. That’s part of why the sudden knock on the door is as unexpected as it is, the bag abandoned as in a flash she’s both staring at the yet closed door and leveling a bulky semiautomatic pistol at it. The other guy’s right, she doesn’t know them. So why in the blasted fuck do they seem to know her?

Luck works in mysterious ways, girl. It’s a warning being given, not a threat. Anyone else that would be looking for her would have sent in an RPG, not someone to delegate. Jaw set with a long breath passing through a pasty white nose, Domino swiftly crosses the room to flatten herself against the wall beside the door, pistol held up and ready. “That’s not something you would know about unless you were following me, and I -don’t- like shadows.” Let alone knowing to find her here…

“Yeah. You can put the pistol away. Draw your blinds and say hi to the sniper across the street. I promise you, the armor-piercing rounds he’s loaded up with are purely a courtesy gesture.” The voice is dry and sardonic: it’s the voice of someone who’s been doing this dance for way too long and is too tired to bother with it any more. “So put down the Glock, open the door and invite me in. Or else say ‘no thanks’ and I hit the road and you spend the rest of your life wondering who’s shadowing you and why. Choice is yours, honey, but in five seconds I walk because frankly my inbox is a stack of paper about two feet high and you are just one page of many.”

There’s few things which will leave Domino’s throat turning dry quite so quickly. She still doesn’t know who’s out there, and yet she can gather one useful piece of information right off the bat: You’re not fucking around. There isn’t another option in sight, plain and simple. She’s in a tiny box of a room, AP rounds would tear right through these walls, and her, and keep on going right back out into the world. The sidearm gets holstered, then the door gets open. An instant later there’s a pair of pale blue eyes glaring at you from around a monochrome-featured face. She doesn’t look happy, three guesses why. “Let’s just get one thing straight, kiddo,” she practically growls. “I do not carry a Glock.”

Her piece said she leaves the door open and motions you inside with nothing more than a quick twitch of her head. You’ve got her complete attention, though her peripheral is still working in overdrive trying to spot any of those snipers. If they’re any good she won’t see them. If she does spot them then you’re not quite as good as you try to act, which is useful info for one in her position. “Awful lot of preparation to tell me something obvious, the hell’s your deal?”

It’s not hard for him to spot the reactions of fear. (Suppressed, controlled, disciplined fear — that’s the best kind. Best for him, best for her, best for innocent bystanders, and worst for the bad guys.) He listens to her initial questions, but completely ignores them: he’s running this show, after all, and he’s not going to cede verbal dominance. “About thirty seconds after I’m out the door you’re going to be calling every contact you have in Manila trying to find out who I am. I figure it’ll take you two, maybe three calls. Don’t tell them I visited you: it might make it harder for you to find work in the future.”

He walks over to the futon (currently in sofa form) and sits down upon it, regarding Domino as a soldier might a new boot: a well-honed professional assessment, untempered by anything other than the facts. “Call me ‘Colonel’. United States Army (Retired), that’s me. Genuine and authentic, hooah. Now, have a seat somewhere and let’s have a nice professional talk. I’m not going to tell you how I knew you were here or how I got my people in position. I don’t share my methods with mercs. That’s just policy, you understand.”

He reaches into his inner jacket pocket — slowly — and emerges with a pair of cigars in metal tubes. He sets one out for her, if she wants it, and goes about the process of cutting and lighting one for himself. “What I am going to do, though, is give you a little bit of professional advice. I’m not telling you how you’re going to live your life. I’m not even going to give you options. Just … information. That’s all. Information you can check out for yourself once I’m gone. Then you do whatever you want to do with it. We on the same page here? — And that’s a Guillermo Leon, incidentally. Fucking fantastic smoke. If you haven’t tried one yet, you should.”

Domino doesn’t enjoy not being in control of things. Sometimes it just works out that way and she has to trust the hand that she’s drawn, but even then it still -feels- like things are within her grasp. Right now, she’s not getting that feeling. Not even a little. Control has been yanked right out from under her feet, she’s been utterly blindsided, and that doesn’t happen often. To that end, congratulations on earning her full and complete attention. And a good deal of anger, but that she keeps in check. It’s probably obvious why.

Across from the couch is a low table, where the bag had been set. A moment later it’s pushed aside and she’s sitting on the edge, plenty close without invading any personal space. This isn’t a situation where one sits across the room, there’s a whole lot more at stake than accepting or turning down another contract. The offered cigar makes her wonder if maybe you don’t know all that much about her, in its stead she reaches around the table for a half empty bottle of vodka. She can tell this is going to require something with an edge to it.

“Colonel, right. Because you’re so obviously still wrapped up in the Army,” comes the sarcastic response. It could have been a question but her questions don’t seem important enough to merit responses. Best save her breath for scorn. “Most people send a letter when it’s a matter of information, they don’t station snipers and walk up to the front door. Look, Colonel. You’ve spent time and effort orchestrating this and you’re clearly not the sort to do anything if you didn’t give a very big shit about it. Say your piece, I’ve got a trip to prep for. Assuming you let me walk out of here, but you’re not here to kill me, are you.” No need to make that one a question. Hopefully.

“Well, I lied. The snipers are not, in fact, a courtesy gesture. You got me. We’re still deciding the answer to your last question.” He gives a faint shrug, but keeps his eyes on her. “Benny and Ramon are still alive. The rest, either the fire got them or we did. We don’t like mercs. We like AIM even less. Mercs who work for AIM, well. And—” Here he opens his coat to reveal a mike: he’s wired for sound. He closes his coat again, pinches a fold of the fabric over the mike to muffle it for a moment. “— Officially, I’m here to scare you into contacting Benny and Ramon after I leave. The thinking is you want to find out who the hell I am and you’ll lead us to them. But frankly, I think you like it this way better. Nobody likes being used as a pawn to hunt other people.”

He lets go of the pinch abruptly.

“Half your trouble is you’re entirely a solo operator. That means you gotta vet all your own prospective employers, figure out what they’re telling you and what they’re hiding from you. Between that, and juggling the books, and getting new sources for weapons and armaments lined up in every new city you have to go to after an assignment gets blown, is it any wonder you’re not getting ahead any in life? Honey. There’s this thing called ‘upwards mobility.’ And I think you need to start looking into it.”

He reaches into his inner pocket again, fishing out a business card and tossing it down on the counter. “You’ve got an interview in a month with CMS Security in New York,” he states. “They’re a PMC, Private Military Corporation. They’ve got everything from lawyers to supply-chain specialists to private investigators to dig on employers. You’ll make a little less, but what you’ll save by not having to blow town every month and start over should more than make up for it. It’s a positive career move. Now, I wouldn’t give your friends at the AIM lab this same deal. They didn’t have troubles with the job. You did. You ain’t some merc-with-a-heart-of-gold. But you ain’t entirely part of the problem, either. And the way I see it, giving you a way to become less of my problem is going to be better for both of us. You follow?”

There isn’t much left for Dom to do but listen, which she does on a level of intensity which is difficult to rival. Yeah, sure, working solo doesn’t always work out as well as she’d like it to be, but she enjoys being a free entity, too. Key word being free. Solo, alone, no one else to worry about. She always pulls through, though it could always be questioned as to just how far ahead she gets at the end of the day. Okay, fine. Point to you, there. And for (presumably) coming clean about those snipers. Hard to tell when you’re being accurate and when you’re twisting the story around for your own gain, you’re here because you want something. It has little to do with her. Just another speedbump in the day to day operation for you, no doubt. That she managed to make large enough waves to get your attention, however? It has her smirking. She’s at a complete disadvantage all around, and she’s smirking at you. This shit just got interesting.

“Well look at you, offering career advice. Should I be expecting a bill in the mail? Because I’m not paying for your time.” Crossroads. AIM… or the card. Yeah, AIM could die in a fire as far as she’s concerned. She pins the card down with the tip of a finger then slides it over the edge of the table, held between index and middle, getting a closer look. “You don’t want me becoming a problem for you, so you offer me a job somewhere that you can keep a closer eye on me and have some level of control over what I do. Very thorough.”

He gives another one of his shrugs. He’s practiced these for decades, it seems, the way he’s able to pack such meaning and nuance into each one. ‘Well-earned nonchalance’ is the flavor of this one. “So I lied about not giving you advice or options,” he answers. “You’re a merc. You gotta expect I’ll lie to you. If I was telling you the complete truth you’d never believe me because you’d be sure I was up to no good. But now, you don’t know if I’ve got snipers, you don’t know if they’ve really got armor-piercing rounds, you don’t know who I am, you don’t know what my agenda is, you don’t know if the appointment is for real, and I’ve openly admitted to lying to you. Means that you can trust me about as much as you trust anybody else in your life. Yeah, I got a pretty thick file on you. And I like leaving you wondering just how accurate it is. I told you: Colonel, United States Army (Retired). Didn’t get my rank by sending in fifty box-tops to the cereal company and waiting six to eight weeks for delivery.”

That phrasing, right there — it’s off somehow. If he’s really pushing forty, as he looks, he would’ve been in the eighties as a kid, and … when was the last time a cereal company ran a box-top redemption campaign?

He rises from his seat on the futon then, picking up the untouched Guillermo Leon cigar and returning it to his pocket. “Remember. One eye. Army colonel. Jacket with a ‘Howling Commandos’ logo on it. Disturbingly professional motherfucker who scares you but didn’t fuck with you. You can spin that ‘scare’ bit how you like to your contacts, but make sure to tell ‘em I didn’t fuck with you. They’ll tell you who I am. And when they do — I want you to know this for a Goddamn fact. I’m there, listening in on that phone call. It’s what I do.”

With that, the Colonel begins to walk over towards the door.

Yeah… about that drink. Domino’s got the bottle beside her uncapped in a flash, an equally well-practiced flex of muscle memory that leaves the cap bouncing and rolling across the floor as she takes a hearty draw of the contents within. “You’re full of shit, I get the point,” comes the monotoned response. “How thoughtful of you to lower yourself to my level for the sake of talking business, really appreciate it. If you’ve got such a detailed file on me then you already know why I ran with this line of work, regardless of why I’m still doing it. That you feel the need to mimic all of the other assholes I get to deal with is… oh. Unprofessional. Well executed, mind, but I know you’re capable of so much more. Maybe next time you can try leveling with me and give a straight answer, or is that not your style?”

The ignorance, the confidence, the presentation, she has to label you as some sort of government spook. Especially if you’re going to be listening in on her electronic conversations. “Gosh, I’m famous,” she teases with plenty of extra sarcasm heaped onto her words. “Want an autograph to go with your collection?” Sigh. Anything more at this point is a lost cause. She’s got alcohol in one hand and a business card in another (and she’s still on the clock.) Luck works in mysterious ways, but is this really luck or is there something more sinister at play? “Fucking hate well-funded spooks,” she mutters to no one in particular.

Who’s she kidding? She’s going to follow up on this lead. She’s screwed either way, may as well know when it’s going to happen.

He stands there in the doorway as she unleashes her tirade. He’s unflustered. “I said you’re not entirely part of the problem,” he answers calmly. “Never said you were part of the solution. Convince me otherwise and you’ll get the respect you want. Or don’t, and you won’t. Really is that simple. You have a good evening now, Ms. Thurman. Safe travels to you.”

And then — the Spook of Doom is out the door, walking down the hallway and out of Domino’s life.