Lockdown ceased. He relaxed his grip on Temujin's mask, the cyber ninja dangling from beneath his hand.
"What have we here?" Lockdown mused aloud. Whirs, clicks, and hisses came as his mask split apart, then folded out of view, revealing the face of the man beneath. His thick, wide features were starkly pale against the jet black of his armour, a pallor that was highlighted by the shadows around his deep, staring eyes.
"You're Marionette." He remembered. The girl who danced every night above Northbridge's skyline. The corners of his eyes wrinkled with a smirk. A moment of silence passed as he glanced between Temujin, the thresher, Umbri… and put the pieces together. "Hmm. Good to see you're not half-digested in some thresher's stool."
Lockdown released Temujin. His limbless body flopped with a careless clank. The machine-man's heavy footfalls dominated the alleys as he approached Umbri, his full height and width barely confined within the walls. He looked at her from top to bottom, with a gaze that tugged and stripped, the kind she felt even without meeting his eyes. Black metal fingers conformed to her cheek and lifted her by the chin, with a touch that seemed almost gentle… if not for the inhuman heat that flared from his fingertips. "Have you come back to mend your strings?"
Umbri certainly hadn’t intended for him to get this close, least of all touch her, but her old habit of freezing had her by the throat. Gross. She wanted to cast off her skin like a reptile and it showed in the curl of her lip. Her eyes were heavy, unable to lift with her chin he controlled. She held a gun and he approached her still. Her trigger finger twitched. She caught a glimpse of red in her peripherals.
She watched the ninja do what she was about to attempt and fail. The smoke and mirror tactics she’d been quick to adopt from Temujin against the threshers were useless here and her head was empty of anything else. She was, as the gang leader called her, Marionette. No brains, just strings. And no other choice.
She didn’t slap him with a witty retort. That wasn’t useful. She might have accidentally made eye contact as her hand came down. Her heel rolled the fire extinguisher away from her and the barrel blasted off, releasing the last bullet in the chamber. The extinguisher exploded. As the smoke cleared, Umbri was about… ten feet away, huffing and grunting as she dragged Temujin across the ground by his horns. Slowly. Painfully. And disappearing into his approaching shadow.
No.
No, that wasn’t happening. She might have been poor of a highschool diploma but she had brains enough to know how this would end. She pocketed her imagination and drew her heel, nudged against the body of the extinguisher, back in. Her gun lowered in an arc deliberately away from Lockdown. She had to talk, and that was okay. It was work.
She pulled out the stinger, met his eyes and held it out to him.
Lockdown raised his brows. His smile faded, giving way to intrigue that lingered upon his gaze. His grip drew away from her cheek to rest beneath her hand, lifting those slender fingers for a better look. "You did this?" He asked, the stinger reflected upon his golden eyes. "What for?"
Usually, before Umbri committed to a client, there would be a screening process. A meeting in which she would learn his psychology; his desires, his insecurities, one's relationship with one's mother. Right now, she was diving into negotiations with none of that information. Dangerous. But not undoable. Her eyes slid to the snake's pulverised carcass. Her bloody axe hit the ground with a thud and she leaned on it for balance.
"A trophy," she said. "It's a glower. Sell it to the right scientist and it could be worth a couple ten hundreds. Or a third of a debt."
Temujin whipped up to look at her. His mask seemed almost wide-eyed between the cracks as he shook his head, muttering a weak, garbled 'No'... Not after all the blood, sweat, and tears.
Lockdown's smirk returned, carving dimples beneath his cheeks, accompanied by a low and distinctly mechanical chuckle. "So the doll fancies herself a conqueror?" He asked, his voice beaming with approval. "Good… the people of Northbridge could learn from that kind of ambition." His gaze turned to the stinger, and a moment passed as the thoughts spun in his head. His hand swivelled atop her fingers, coaxing them to close around her trophy.
"Keep it. A true hunter does not claim the spoils of his peers," Lockdown declared. His leering gaze returned to meet hers. And came closer. "One fourth of the debt and three months extension…" His hand remained over hers. "...If you'll join me for dinner."
Umbri’s knuckles went white around the stinger. She read him right. He was a hunter. She hadn't expected it to go this "well" so fast, though she should have known it. She was already in his peripherals. She knocked her head Temujin’s way.
“Dinner and a show if that one comes with me right now.”
Lockdown's eyes darted to follow hers. He scoffed. Then looked back to Umbri, towards those piercing red eyes, and the lips that gleamed with a nostalgic shimmer. "Deal."
A sound was coming from above, stark against the silence of the night - a rolling, roaring staccato, that came closer and louder by each passing second.
He drew his hand back and stepped away. The whirs and clicks of his servos seemed twice as loud against the prone ninja, who squirmed, helpless to the situation and his own instincts.
THUD.
Lockdown's stompers stopped dangerously close to his head. He bent down to a squat. "Consider this a… tribute to our shared history," the machine-man whispered, staring at the name across Temujin's mask. The name that stamped out another. "Next time we meet, I won't be so charitable." Lockdown petted his head twice - like a master would a dog - and walked away, casting one last smile at Umbri. A false smile that warned her of the consequences of a broken promise.
Light shone in from above, accompanied by the billowing wind and spinning rotors of a helicopter. A ladder extended - twice - and ceased just beside Lockdown's waiting hand. A figure stood by the open window - clad in robes of blue-tinged white, the face beneath its pointed hood completely shrouded in darkness.
"Be ready for when I call you," Lockdown instructed Umbri. "And wear something… gold." The ladder retracted, pulling Lockdown along the way, before he shrunk into the sky and rode away upon the chopper.
