Closed RP Bitter Medicine

This RP is currently closed.
Ban Bean

Ban Bean

Active member
Marco whistled as he slammed the door to his Cadillac and strolled down the sidewalk, humming a stupid lullaby.

“Daisy, Daisy…give me your answer, do.”

He had spent the last month setting up contacts and feelers around the city of Pittsburg, looking for his quarry. And of course, the whole damn city was a hotbed for metas.

Metas that could fill his pockets with money.

So last week when one of his people had warned him of a strange girl with…ostentatious features, he wanted to check it out for himself.

Apparently the girl was part animal or some shit. A chimera of some kind.

He couldn’t give a fuck. Marco just knew there were at least three buyers for such a freak. He just needed to confirm she existed. Or his source would suffer for wasting his time.
 


It’s been some time now, and Adelyn feels like she can say for sure that she doesn’t like the city. Her grandparents are really nice, and she likes staying with them, but the hustle and bustle just isn’t for her.

The parks, she’s still undecided on. It seems like every time she goes around and picks up the trash, it just gets cluttered up by the next week.

Well, maybe that’s unfair. The deeper parts of the park, where the trees grow closer together and the dirt paths peter out, do tend to stay clean for a good long while. She’s there now, enjoying the outdoors in the daytime for once. It’s rare for anyone to wander out here, so she’s left her gloves and boots folded over her pack, the bundle tucked in the hollow between two roots of the tree she’s currently climbing.

Climbing is most certainly different with her reptilian limbs. There’s a strange stickiness to her hand and feet that allows her to hang nearly parallel with the trunk of the tree, but it’s harder to dig her claws in and hang on. She experiments by hooking her feet claws over a branch and falling backwards, and she swings nearly all the way around before her grip fails and she falls into a bush.

Still laughing from her fall, she throws herself at the tree again and sets herself up for another climb. Enough messing around, it’s time to see how high she can go!

 
It was a lovely park. Marco wasn't particularly fond of parks, but they were an endlessly useful venue, and apparently the meta his sources had talked about liked to hang around here. Apparently, she was a young thing.

Marco exited his car, quickly double-checking his pistol was still loaded before concealing it in his waistband. Dressed in a casual suit, and slicked back hair, he didnt look like he particularly belonged on this parks trails, but he was good at excuses. Making himself belong anywhere. Besides, its a free country. Why can't a businessman walk the trails in a suit on his lunchbreak?

He wandered around the park, keeping an eye out for the meta, or anyone who might have seen her, for about fourty minutes. Marco was about to give up, and turn back when he heard laughing. A girls laugh.

Marco grinned and followed the sound until he saw the creature- girlish enough, but also...fucking weird. Part animal or mutated or some shit. Definitely something someone would pay a pretty price for.

He leaned casually against a nearby tree before addressing the girl in a silky voice, "That looks like fun...come here often?"
 


“Eep!” Adelyn shrieks, pulling herself up onto the branch by pure instinct. She gets her feet under her and whirls, dizzyingly fast, to stare at the stranger. She hadn’t even heard him approach! Dang these lizard ears. She should’ve been more careful.

Her heart in her throat, she clings to the tree’s trunk for a long moment, and then scrambles upwards. Her instincts are screaming at her that this man is bad news, and she can hardly even think over the rush of adrenaline singing in her veins. Maybe if she climbs high enough she’ll be out of sight, and she can wait in the canopy until he leaves.

A branch breaks in her haste, but she catches another and drags herself to the relative safety of a thatch of branches, high above the ground. She can still see the stranger from here, through the gaps between various branches, and she turns so that she can keep her eye on him.

Her mouth is too dry to speak, even if she could think of anything to say that wouldn’t make everything worse. She shouldn’t have come out here without her boots and gloves and- darn, her sunglasses too! Everything is in her pack, way down on the ground below her, and that everything includes useful things like her phone, and her wallet, and… everything! Darn, darn, darn.

 
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Marco smiled disarmingly up her, and gave a friendly wave, "I love tree's but I dont have your skill for climbing. Maybe when I was younger but now...Bad knee, ya know." He crossed his arms, "But you- you've got a real gift for it. See me, I don't get outdoors much. Long hours doing what I do, but if it aint the damndest thing when I go out I meet all sorts of interesting people...I like people. I like making friends."

He spoke smoothly. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. Without skipping a beat he kept talking, pushing himself off the tree, and casually taking a few steps forward- still smiling of course. "I haven't been in Pittsburg long. This a good park for hiking?"

Marco reached down and picked up Adelyns backpack, slipping it over his own shoulder. "Some of these paths, I feel I might get lost."
 


The man’s voice crawls into her ears to smear over her brain, but Adelyn isn’t tricked by the fake-niceness, not with the hair on her neck still standing on end and her hackles raising by themselves. She presses tightly against the tree’s trunk, ignoring the branches that poke her through her sweater, and tries to disappear.

She just has to wait him out, and then she can climb back down and get her pack-

He’s picking up her pack. Adelyn’s eyes go wide, and even her breath stills. But there’s something else, something itching just under her skin, something that will always protect her if she just leans into it, something that screams injustice, unfairness, isn’t she tired of running, didn’t she come here to fight?

It sings through her veins, and it feels right when she bares her teeth and lets the Shift take her. Her claws lose purchase on the trunk as they shift and sprout fur, but the branches catch her before she can fall, and she twists to land on her feet rather than her back, balancing on a wide bough until her new claws make themselves known.

Warmth blooms in her veins again, and the soundscape around her expands into three dimensions as her hearing sharpens, her new ears poking their black-furred tips through her hair. It feels like coming home, and she can feel several tears spill down her face even as her snarl grows into a fierce smile.

“Hey!” Adelyn shouts, surprised at how loud her own voice is when it fills the air. “That’s mine!”

Her new instincts are sharp, but familiar. She skips the intermediate branches that would lead her safely down and leaps directly at the man from her perch, her claws extended. Even if she doesn’t knock him down, cats always land on their feet, and she can grab for her pack with her human hand.

 
Marco smiled darkly when she bared her teeth and she began to transfer into someting less human and much more animalistic. He loved animals- a lot like his Susie did. He liked to break the wild ones.

He was quick, and deftly dodged the girl as she struck, leaping from the tree at him with a snarl. Her precious backpack stayed out of her grasp as he twisted his body, taking the blow across his shoulder, her clows tearing into his shirt and skin. He threw his shoulder into the blow, body checking her away from him and turned to face her.

Marco calmly drew his weapon and aimed it at his quarry, "Stand down, girly. Think twice before bringing claws to a gunfight."

If Adelyn was watching Marco, he was unbothered by the clawing. In fact...the skin she had rendered was knitting itself back together leaving smooth flesh in its wake.
 


Her grab goes wild as his shoulder slams into her chest, but her claws rake unforgivingly across his flesh, digging deep until they’re torn out by her redirected momentum. Her hind paws meet the forest floor before she does, skidding a few feet and tearing grooves into the dirt. She’s already twisting to lunge again, but the sight of a gun pointed at her gives her pause that even her instincts can’t barrel past.

She lets her hand and paw lower, glancing briefly at the blood on her claws then back at the stranger. She’s sure that she scratched him, but only his shirt is torn, the scratches beneath it shallow and then nonexistent even as she watches. He’s a meta? She isn’t sure how she feels about learning that, but it twists uneasily in her gut.

“Why are you doing this?” She asks, edging slowly to the side. If she can get behind the tree to her right, maybe she can get out of his field of vision for a moment. Then she can come up with a next attack, or some other way to get her pack back. “What did I ever do to you?”

 
"Darling," Marco drawled, "It's not what you did to me..."

"It's what you're gonna do for me."

And without a second thought, Marco pulled the trigger. Once. Two times- raimed right at Adelyns gut.
 


Adelyn is already tense, her eyes and ears open and alert for any movement, so when the man’s arm stiffens she abandons all pretenses of subtlety and pushes with all the strength in her hind paws, lunging at the tree she picked out.

White-hot pain rips through her left paw, but Adelyn keeps her momentum even as tears sting her eyes, her claws and nails catching on the tree’s rough bark and working to haul herself around it. “Agh-”

She swallows back a whimper, putting the tree between her and the man with the gun. Her left paw isn’t responding the way she wants it to, refusing to support her weight and sending shocks of pain up her body when she tries to force it to anyways.

She leans heavily on her right, braced against the tree, and tries to gauge if she should even attempt to climb, in this state. It hurts, and tears run freely down her face, but at least she has the trees.

Can she run? He still has her bag, which means she won’t be able to call for help unless she breaks the tree cover and risks making even more problems for herself by running into non-metas with all her animal limbs out. This is exactly what her parents have been trying to warn her about, her whole life. She should’ve listened better. She should’ve been a better daughter.

She’s sobbing, now, great gasps that rack her already trembling body, and she can hardly see through the tears. She has to try, though. She forces her voice out, as pathetic as it may sound. “Just leave me alone! I won’t do anything for you!”

 
Little whore.

Marco exhaled softly, suppressing his irritation and anger at her evasion. But there had been blood. She was hit. Marco readied his pistol again and softly stepped, trying to get around the tree where he could see her. He just had to drop her-

No. Sometimes people will do anything to make the pain stop. Marco knew that better than anyone. And she was sobbing- pathetic really, but he could use that. He kept creeping closer, arcing wide around the tree she was using for cover.

The little bitch is fast.

"Come on sweetheart," Marco called out softly, his voice silky and lulling. "I know it hurts, I'm sorry...listen, I'm a meta like you, except I can heal people. I can help you...please."
 


Adelyn can hear his steps as he shifts positions, and she shuffles as quietly as she can to keep the tree between them. She can hardly think around the throbbing pain in her foot, but she has to. She has to get away, or knock him out, or something. Even if it hurts. She hiccups one last time and wipes her face on her sleeve, drawing her resolve back together.

Quickly, before she can lose her nerve, she throws herself at another tree and pulls herself behind that one. Just one step at a time. One step, one tree, gaining whatever distance she can.

“Put your gun away, then,” she calls, though she doesn’t dare to hope it’ll do much. He can put as much fake-sweetness in his voice as he likes. He shot her, and now he expects her to just go against all her instincts and trust him? She’s not stupid.

The anger is good. It’s useful, letting her push past the pain. She feeds it, letting it lend strength to her limbs. One more tree, and then she’ll see if she can climb again.

 
Marco turns to the sound, grinning wickedly. The bitch couldn't hide forever. He sighed heavily and disengaged the clip, letting it fall to the snow with a soft thud. "There you are love. I'm unarmed."

He kicked the clip away. "Sorry, we got off on the wrong foot...you're a smart girl. You know how this goes. Come on...I'm not gonna hurt you sweetheart. Let me help."

It was an old song and dance. People wanted to be free of pain, it didn't matter if the person taking it away caused it to begin with. He just had to get her to drop her guard.

"There's some bad men in this town...the Crown Killer...the Slasher. I'm not like them. I protect metahumans, people who are different...I got scared. That's on me."
 


Adelyn very, very, carefully peeks around the tree to confirm what her ears are telling her. Some part of his gun is now on the ground, but she can’t tell what it is.

She pulls back quickly, resting her back against the tree as her mind whirls. She was getting bad vibes from him before he shot her, right? Ever since he entered the clearing. Was that just surprise from being found? No, she’s sure that he set off her instincts. She wouldn’t have attacked him if he hadn’t.

She moves to another tree. Not as stealthily as she’d like, but at least she’s gaining some distance. He had some sort of healing power, that was true, she’d seen it with her own eyes. Should she pretend to surrender so that he heals her?

Her hackles raise of their own volition, and she takes that as a big ‘no’ from her animal side. Everything in her says that going near that man would be a terrible idea, no matter what she might get from it. No, it would be better to hide in the forest until nighttime, and then sneak home.

Her paw pangs again, and she breathes around the pain, chancing a glance down at it even as her stomach flips in protest. It’s still bleeding a lot. She doesn’t have anything to staunch the bleeding, and it’ll be a lot harder to get home if she can’t put any weight on it. How much blood can a person lose before it becomes a big problem? She doesn’t remember, but she doesn’t think she’s there yet. Hopefully.

She’ll just have to chance it.

Adelyn reaches for the branches around her, and slowly starts to lever herself up into the tree’s embrace.

 
The bitch was climbing again.

No matter. Marco kept his pistol in his had. He had dropped the magazine, but there was still one bullet left in the chamber if he really needed it, he still holstered the gun for now. He whistled, taking a few steps closer to the tree the girl aimed to climb. He was always curious how people would react when a predator approached. Would they fight, flee or freeze? It all came down to base instinct- animal instinct.

The ones who froze were easy to break, but Marco couldn't deny he liked the fighters. But this one was running.

"You can't run forever, sweetheart," Marco said in a singsong voice. Gentle and soft. "I'm not gonna hurt you...in fact I think you can help me."

The girls reported powers, her ability to shift into animals- or at least parts of them- could prove useful. Not just for money, but for something else that was...personal. He could always bag the kid later if she cooperated with him now.

"I'm looking for someone, someone who isn't you...you might be able to help me find them."
 


Why would I ever help you? Adelyn thinks, uncharitably bitter. Like heck is she helping this guy with anything. She doesn’t voice her thoughts, but a pronounced frown twists her features into something decidedly stormy.

Climbing is slow going, but in a twist of good fortune she makes it above head level quicker than she expects. It gives her more time to find a suitable perch, dark clothing and dark fur blending with the shadows as she watches her pursuer from above. He did admit he wasn’t much of a climber, so she has that in her favor at least.

Careful to keep her paw away from anything that might jab it and irritate the wound further, she snatches a pinecone and lobs it at an angle so that it rustles the leaves of another nearby tree, further down than she is in her own.

Her eyes turn from the artificial giveaway to the man on the ground below, watchful. Part of her thinks she should pounce on him again, and tear him to shreds properly this time, but she doesn’t know if her claws can keep up with the rate at which he heals. Maybe she’ll try it, if he doesn’t fall for her ruse or leave her alone. It would be a good distraction, if nothing else.

 
Marco grinned. An animal she might be, but a clever one at that. The rustling of leaves was an obvious ruse to deter him from where the bitch really was. He turned toward the distraction and began to walk in that direction, her backpack still slung on his shoulder, deciding to cut his loses. After all, any good hunter was patient. And he certainly wasn't winning her over with his charm.


Marco kept Adelyns backpack, and stalked off, not bothering to recover his gun. "Sleep tight, little lady," he called gauzily, and began to whistle a new jaunty tune.

"Round and round the chestnut tree,

The badger chased the weasel,

They ran and ran and had great fun,"
​

Marco dropped a business card, just in case girl wanted to find him later, or better yet, had friends that would want to keep her safe. He would welcome being found, especially if she had meta friends. Let them come and get him.


"Pop! Goes the weasel!"​
 


He walks towards her distraction and Adelyn tenses, her claws pricking the bark of the branch beneath her. Just a little closer, she thinks, and she’ll have him. She’s sure that he won’t be able to fire his stupid gun with a face full of dirt and the better part of a panther on his back.

But the man stops, just out of range, and then turns at an angle, walking away from her. She holds her breath, watching his movement through the leaves, and only once she can no longer hear his footsteps does she breathe properly again, sagging against the trunk of the tree she’s perched in. He took her backpack, and her boots and gloves along with it, but those things can be replaced. She can almost hear her parents’ voices reminding her of that, bringing an exhausted smile to her face. It doesn’t last long, falling into grim determination as she turns her eyes to the ground, planning her route.

What really matters is getting away from here and tending to her hurt paw. Everything else can come later.

Everything else will come later, she thinks, fixing the man’s face in her mind. She won’t forget the pain he caused her, or the way he tried to lie to her face about ‘helping’. That man was dangerous.

She would be more dangerous, the next time they met. That was a promise.

 
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