"...cheers..."
Ozzy and Grimm tapped Guiness bottles together, both sitting back in their comfortable LazyBoys across from each other. Baxter turned the bottle up, taking a few gulps with a satified sigh.
"So...don't you feel a weensy bit guilty ordering everyone to go do important things while we raid Merrick's beer?" Ozzy asked with a grin.
Grimm belched from his swig, shrugging.
"Nah...I mean, how the hell else were we going to get to the beer so easily?"
"Ha!"
Grimm smirked, looking out of the bay window to their left.
"Besides...you and I...heh...what use are we right now?" Grimm added, staring out at the cloudy gray.
"Do right...." Oz nodded, taking another drink. "...there's nothing to hit."
"Yep." Grimm nodded once.
"Yep." Baxter nodded back.
A moment, and both broke into a chuckle, taking more drinks.
"I'll tell you something....which I'm pretty sure you already noticed, working with her before and all.....but Lyly's got a nice set on her..."
"Ooooh yeah..." Ozzy agreed with a dirty smirk on his lips.
"You ever hit that?" Grimm cocked an eyebrow.
"Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!" Ozzy laughed so hard, beer almost came out of his nose. "Are you fucking kidding me? Hell no!"
"Why not, man?"
"Well, first of all...." the boxer shrugged. "...it'd be like doing my sister. Second, I don't think I'm that invulnerable..."
"Wait---....your sister is a hot, six-foot-five Amazon?" Grimm tried to clarify.
"You know what I mean, fucker..." Baxter rolled his eyes, giving him the finger.
"Heh..." Grimm grinned. "...no, really...I don't. That's a fine piece of--"
"Okay, okay!" Ozzy interrupted, holding his hand up. "Let's not just completely break her down to meat, alright?"
Grimm paused, staring hard at Ozzy.
".........holy shit........" Grimm chuckled.
"What?" Ozzy frowned.
"You like her."
"...what?!" Baxter shook his head with disbelief.
"You like her."
"Haven't you heard a word I've said?"
"You do. You like her..." Grimm smiled wide, leaning back gratified at pinpointing this. "...all this 'sister'-talk is just a good excuse to not acknowledge it."
"No I don't!"
"Yes you do."
"No I don't!!"
"Yes you do."
"I swear to FUCKING god, Grimm....I do NOT like Lyly in that way, okay?!" Baxter insisted. "Haven't you ever had a...a..female-friend that you didn't automatically want to just jump in her pants?"
"Yeah, sure." Grimm nodded, taking a drink.
"Thank you..."
"I was in love with her." Grimm added, cocking an eye at the man.
Ozzy sighed very loudly, burying his face in his hands.
"I am not in love with Lykopis..." he stated, his words muffled by his palms. He looked up at Grimm with a serious expression. "....we're just kindred spirits, that's all. She's a fighter. I dig that. I respect that. I understand that."
Grimm just stared at him with a smirk, leaning casually back in the recliner with the bottle resting against his lips.
"She's proud, and regal..." Baxter continued. "...she's seen stuff that we can't even imagine..."
Grimm dipped into the bottle for a moment, never taking his eyes off Baxter.
"....and she keeps her self locked down so hard, and so tight, that when she gets frustrated by little things, I just know it's her frustration at herself for not being able to let go around everyone...."
Grimm continued to stare, listening, casually blowing against the top of the bottle trying to make it whistle.
"...and I understand what it's like to have a life, and a family, and watch it all go to hell...or in her case, age to dust....I just watch her, and I just know there's so much passion and...and...desire absolutely frothing at the seams to get out. Can you imagine what it's like? Can you? I mean, FUCK! You and I...we live, what? Eighty-years, max? And look how...how...passionate we are about the smallest little day-to-day things. Sports. Parties. Sex. All the things that make it worth getting up every day, you know?"
Grimm turned his bottle up, completely downing the beer, still watching and listening.
"But her....damn....she's been around for centuries. Centuries, man. How much passion does someone accumulate in a lifetime? What about a hundred years? Three-hundred? She's so incredible. To be able to hold it all back. To torture herself every minute, of every day....to only be able to find that fire in the heat of battle...but nowhere else. God, what a woman."
Grimm's eyebrows were raised all the way up, balancing the empty bottle on his fingertips...an amused expression lining his mouth.
"What a person." Baxter continued, seemingly now lost in his own personal revelry. "I can't help but be impressed. I can't help but dig her. I swear, I love that woman."
Ozzy stopped...dead...cold....his mouth still open. He stared at the hardwood floor for a brief, agonizing few seconds, before finally looking up.
"I KNEW IT!!! HA! HA! HA! HA!" Grimm yelled, pointing straight in his face. "You fucking LOVE her! HA! HA! HA!"
"THAT'S NOT WHAT I FUCKING MEAN, YOU ASSHOLE!!" Baxter yelled back.
"...You lo-ve her.....you lo-ve her...." Grimm sang with a mocking tune, waving his hands around merrily.
Baxter jumped out of his chair, beginning to pound on the man head.
"Hey!" Icarus barked, leaning out of the doorway of Merrick's home office. "Do you mind?! Some of us are trying to work in here!"
"Have you got anything yet?" Grimm asked, holding Baxter by the throat.
"Well.. no, not mu---"
"Then shut the fuck up and get back to work!!" he barked.
*Knock-Knock-Knock*
They all froze, staring at the front door. After looking at it, back at each other, and back at the door again, Grimm easily shoved Ozzy off, getting up. Victor and Icarus came out of the office.
"...............yes?" Grimm asked very carefully, peeking through the eyehole.
In the fish-eye lens he could make out an older woman standing in the hallway. She looked somewhat distraught.
"{Dr. Merrick...it's Pauline from 7-G...}" she said through the door. "{...M-May I come in?}"
Grimm looked back at everyone with a shrug.
"It one of Merrick's neighbors..." Victor said very calmly, translating for the rest. "...she's asking to come in."
"Well, get rid of her..." Grimm insisted. "...the last thing we need are visitors."
"Dr. Merrick ist nicht hier im Augenblick. Bitte später zurückgekommen." Reilley replied loudly enough for her to hear him from across the room.
"{...I...I'm sorry...I really need to come in for a moment.....please...}" the german voice replied.
Victor frowned. Having been blindly facing the kitchen up to this point, he turned his head towards the sound of the voice behind the closed door. He concentrated, the infra-red spectrum beginning to peel back the heat signature behind the door and wall.
....the woman's signature.........and a second signature, flat against the wall...
Victor sneered, ripping his Beretta from its holster...
"Everyone down!!" he yelled, opening fire at the wall.
Pauline found herself shoved down, Nadia falling back-first to the floor as plaster began exploding from the wall above her.
Victor popped the clip, running towards the door as he slid a new one in. He rared his foot back to kick right through the doorway, but, a fraction of a second too late. Nadia kicked the door in, catching him off-balance, the splintering door knocking him into Grimm. She fired off two rounds from her .357, Icarus diving hard behind the sofa to avoid the slugs.
Ozzy leapt from his crouched position, running to tackle her. She quickly tossed a four-stringed-bolero at him, the cables of the weapon wrapping around him instantaneously. She side-stepped his now uncontrolled dive, his body flying past hers straight into the wall.
Grimm was up, now holding the seperated door in both hand. He swung it wide towards the bounty hunter, even as she ducked. A few steps back to find her balance, and Grimm was already on her again.
This time she ran straight at him, before he could bring the door completely down. And, like a runner stealing homeplate, she slid straight under him, cup-checking him as she slid between his legs. Still in motion, Grimm came fully around with the door, catching a rising Victor in his path instead. The man slammed into the ground with a grunt.
"FUCK!" Grimm barked. "...sorry Vic..."
Nadia was already across the room, side-kicking Icarus in the gut to put him back on the floor again. She turned, Ozzy stampeding towards her. With his arms still tied tightly to his upper torso, his head was bowed like a bull....intent on literally ramming her head-first.
Nadia just stood there, letting the boxer get within a few inches. And, with an almost bored grace, took one step to the left.
Ozzy careened straight through one of the bay windows, falling the four stories with a pavement crunching stop at the bottom.
Nadia could not pause to see, as Grimm started swinging. Her nimble, cat-like reflexes were too fast for the massive brawler. His teeth gritted with an undetermined anger, his fists kept missing their mark as she dove, dodged, and twisted. Finally, she spun just far enough out of his reach to hit a button on her wrist watch.
A small beeping sound came from below, Grimm following it down to his crotch. A small pack of plastique was attached firmly to his package. He looked up at the woman.
She merely smiled, blowing him a kiss.
A sudden roar of thunder and fire erupted from Merrick's apartment, Nadia backflipping just ahead of the fireball, straight out. She landed on the fire escape a story below, grabbing the rail to keep from falling. A smoldering ball of flame and smoke fell past her, Grimm on his way to the ground below.
"I don't care how tough he is..." she muttered to herself. "...that had to hurt..."
Inside the destroyed apartment, Victor crawled through the wreckage, keeping under the smoke. Fire alarms and shrieks of neighbors could be heard in the background. Immediately following, a sprinkler system kicked-in, the cool wash soothing Reilley's senses. He made his way towards the opening Grimm's body had made, pausing as he heard coughing.
He tilted his head right a bit, something moving in the apartment.
"...Icarus?" he asked.
"*cough*...*cough*...Victor?...that you?" Sidewinder's voice came back. "....where are you man? I can't see you....all *cough*....all this smoke...I can't see where you are...."
"I know how you feel." the man replied cooly. Surprisingly, he then turned, crawling back into the wreckage, following the sound of Icky's coughing. Finding the man laying in the corner, he pulled his leg free from a piece of flooring it had been caught on.
"Come on....work with me..." he said, holding Icarus under his arms, and slowly dragging the man out towards the open air.
Rolling Icarus out onto the fire escape below, he followed, landing in a grunting crouch next to the dazed man.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, black soot smeared over his face, and haphazardly across his singed fatigues.
"*cough*...no...no, I don't think so..." Icarus replied, lying there trying to catch his breath. It took a minute, but he finally looked over at Reilley. ".....you saved my life....."
Victor made no change in expression.
"Yes."
Icarus stared at him for a moment more, before finally looking away.
Meanwhile, four stories below....
Ozzy strained and grunted, trying to break the metal coils that bound him. To no avail. Finally, with great effort, he pulled himself up in a sitting position, suddenly noticing Nadia walking up with a casual stride. He roared, fumbling up to his feet. But, before he could get all the way up, she hit another button on her watch. All four of the ball-bearing magnets that held his coils in place suddenly popped open. With a hydrolic piston fire, each one launched seperate wired-spikes into the ground, effectively anchoring him in place.
Another switch, and they retracted, forcibly yanking his body flat into the pavement.
Baxter squirmed and strained and turned, to no effect. He was bound tight and good.
Captured.
"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT WITH ME?!" he shouted furiously.
"Oswald Johann Baxter...A.K.A. 'The Fist'..." Nadia began in a formal voice. "...you are under arrest for the murder of Edward Drake Marshall..."
