Settle The Score | The Assassination of Fenix Down (Player Plot Open-Log)

[aelwyn_aberration]

Who: Aelwyn + Anyone Who Wants To Be Involved In This Assassination
When: April
Where: Around Gloucester, Springfield, the Circus, assorted other locations.
Summary: A murder is planned, executed, and staged. The details are yet to come.
Warnings: Discussions of murder, actual murder, blackmail, espionage, gaslighting, TBA.

[Several months ago, following the Circus' initial visit, Aelwyn was given permission to take down Fenix Down and his circus. Now, after more recent revelations about their unseen enemy, the plan has become a higher priority.

The plan is as follows. To ensure that this doesn't implicate ADI, a false cult will be created for this specific purpose. They'll keep the entity behind it vague, but one must be selected to ensure anyone paying enough attention would be able to identify it. They'll create conspiracy theories, fabricate old reports from decades ago to make it seem like this group is only recently being resurrected.

And then, with that done, they'll execute the plan itself. Staging the kidnapping and murder as if it was the act of that cult, and an extensive interrogation.

OOC Post here!]

Comments

[whisperedone]

With so few people, the carnival practically transformed in the still quiet of darkness. He could hear the edges and dips in places his daytime scouting with Beauregard hadn't afforded. Here, he can hear her near-silent steps and maneuver easily around what obstacles they come across, until a sound a head has their attention. Their quarry. They had a precious few moments to pick how to do this before they lost their window, they would need to make it count.

"Yes." His voice was always low and quiet, but it works for the better now. He pulls the mask from one of the fabric loops of the outfit he'd arrived in, battle-worn leathers and thick, dark, quilting treated to absorb sounds and hits alike. Listening to how she moved, how she carries herself, there's little doubt in him they're both built for this...and all the better. They would need both of their heads.

"Pincer or surprise?" He asks before slipping the mask into place. He would have preferred his usual cloth covering, but he'd been assured this thing would be more thorough.

[musicdied]

She considers the space, well aware of precious seconds ticking by - but she hadn't been part of the scouting mission, having been present during the last encounter with the circus, and while there hasn't been much change to the layout, there also hasn't been none.

"Pincer," she says. "Better if we divide his attention. I'll circle around; give me a count of 45."

Long enough to make sure she can get into position without risking alerting someone who might be passing by.

Their quarry, at least, is easy to keep track of, muttering irritably under his breath.

cw: brief self-harm

[whisperedone]

"Understood." He nods and reaches for the glaive at his back and waits for the sound of her movement before starting his count.

It bought him a couple moments of privacy, and a second to run the edge of his glaive over the back of his left arm, between the strips of leather he usually kept wrapped around it. The cut is clean and coats the edge of his blade in red.

That well of power in him still carried some energy, though it had waned some in the time since his confrontation with Dunn, it seemed to prick and pull stronger as he focuses on his intentions. A new hunt. A new target, and a need for the icy chill that forms along the edge of his weapon where his blood now sits. Steam from the air dances around his glaive, though he only just feels it as he moves to take his position at the end of the makeshift alley and wait.

[musicdied]

Yelena's departure is quicker than their approach had been, but her tread is still light, footsteps fading into silence by the time she reaches the end of the alley between attractions. She keeps her own count in her head, and reaches her mark before she winds down - for the moment, they're entirely clear. It's a good sign, and she can only hope that they manage to complete their business before that changes.

She takes the precious few extra seconds to check the fit of her respirator and goggles, then draws two of the slender tubes in the bag strapped to her thigh. No high-tech weapons here - and she misses them dearly, for perhaps the thousandth time since tumbling out of an air vent in entirely the wrong world - but ADI's equipment specialists are creative in their own way.

The count hits zero, and she darts from her hiding spot. The motion's enough to attract Roderick's attention, and she drops to her knees as his lasers whine to life, slamming the base of the tubes against the ground. There's a dull fwump of sound, and then a haze of sawdust fills the air, smoking slightly where it passes though the beams of concentrated light.

[whisperedone]

He moves as his count hits zero and he hears the fwump of her trap being placed.

She’s the distraction he needs in that moment: a split second of time that allows him to stab the frigid blade of his glaive into Roderick’s torso. The man cries out and there’s pain, but there’s anger and shock just as much. A creature that didn’t expect to be hurt is even more deadly.

Garner tanks the glaive free and there’s no spill of blood he can hear. Not that he has long to think on it as he hears the man turn, ostensibly to keep both threats in sight. There’s no sound of a weapon though, no retaliation to counter he can hear even as braces to meet it. Instead, there’s only the feeling of an odd burning sensation building quickly in his shoulder.

[musicdied]

He's not bleeding. Yelena sees Roderick jerk with the impact of being stabbed with a polearm wielded by a man built like a tank, hears him cry out, but there isn't a drop of blood.

It isn't entirely surprising - she'd seen Aelwyn's message noting that some of the Desolation's servitors are made of wax, and the sheer quantity of candles she'd found in the performers' quarters all those months ago had suddenly made a lot more sense - but not entirely surprising is still incredibly disquieting. Living things should bleed. Things that don't are a lot harder to kill.

She pivots, bracing herself with one hand on the ground, and swings her leg in a low, sweeping kick that hits Roderick hard at the knee. Bloodless or no, his joints still bend, and gravity still has its hold. He goes down hard, sacrificing the ability to break his fall in order to keep his hands where he can still use them. For a heartbeat, it seems almost comical, and then the remaining two canisters clipped to Yelena's belt ignite where the light of the lasers plays across them. She throws herself to the side with a guttural curse, before anything else can go up in flames.

[whisperedone]

The burning sensation dies down when he hears her hit Roderick and the resulting thump of him falling. It gives him enough time to shake out that shoulder and feel how the skin is still warm and pulls, but still has motion. More than enough to start and arcing path for his glaive -one that jolts and misses for the sound of shattering glass and smell of burning.

She curses and he's instinct is to go check on her, but they can't. They're still hunting, he has to keep focus. Garner grits his teeth and takes a second swing for the man, but what solid form his blade catches -ice crackling across him in the aftermath- is nothing compared to the scream Roderick gives.

Garner shouts and jerks back to over his ears, glaive falling heavy to the ground, but for a moment, he can't hear anything but the ringing left behind. And if he can't hear, he can't see, can't even tell if Yelena was caught in the screech as well, it hadn't felt aimed at him, but his head swam too much to be sure.

[musicdied]

The shriek is almost more a physical blow than a sound. It's like an icepick through her temples, all sharp pain and radiating numbness, and pressure like she's dived too far, too fast into deep water.

Her vision greys out, shadows flooding inward from around the edges. One moment, she's fighting with the clip holding the burning canisters, and the next she's curled half-fetal on the ground, the hands she'd clapped over her ears without any conscious direction damp and faintly sticky.

She struggles to orient herself in a world gone strangely silent, vision dimming again as she turns her head, turning both friend and foe into a nauseating blur.

[whisperedone]

Everything's muffled but he can smell burning and scent like candles and if he moves quick, maybe he can still catch where Roderick is.

And hope he doesn't hit his partner, assuming she's not down already.

His glaive is lost to him for now, but there's a hunting knife at his hip that he draws and swipes where he last knew their target to be. The first swipe misses, but the next seems to cut through something and that's enough. He brings the blade quickly back to himself to slide it over the throbbing wound he'd left before, ice coating where the blood sits once more.

That burning sensation from before drives bright across his hip, but it gives him renewed direction to lunge, blade burying deep into something solid. It isn't too hard to twist and rip from there as the sound of male shouts becomes the first thing to come back to his hearing.