Match of the Millennium

Description: Echo returns to her shop in Southtown late at night after a hard evening of rolling thugs for information--when Tairyu shows up.

[ECHO]
The night after Echo, Dennis had all made their oaths to assist Tairyu with freeing his little sister from the Syndicate's clutches, the bat lady sorceress had settled in for a long evening out of pounding the pavement--and also cracking a few skulls to get information. Sometimes, things can go bad in doing so, however, so after a few murders and zombie raising later, she's back at her shop, letting herself in through the darkened storefront as it is quite after hours and locking the door behind her. Luckily, she had gotten a sturdier and more secure shopfront door since she was out, and a new alarm system installed for the windows, etc. It paid to be prepared, after all.

"Whew, those guys were even more brief than most the men in my life~ ahh well..." she yawned a little, feeling like a snack--also a shower. She wore black, so you couldn't really see where blood had stained her clothes. At least where it hadn't fallen on her fur. She reached down and unslung both of her patent leather heels, moving up the stairs to the apartment area in bare feet.

[TAIRYU]
Of course, the fates should have it that there's a rather insistent knocking on the front door just as she begins the ascent towars the upper floor apartment. It's the kind of heavyy smack of a hand against door that threatens to shake the entire wall, all just to make sure that it is well and truly heard.

A peek outside through the window will quickly reveal who it is, too; Tairyu, leaning against the door itself with one hand in between the knocks... with his other hand pressed up against his stomach. It's hard to tell with the lack of light outside, but... is the red fabric of his shirt around where his palm is pressed in darker than normal...?

[ECHO]
"Motherf--goddamnit, get that will you!?" comes the bat lady's annoyed voice from downstairs, when there is what feels like a very cold gust of air, and Tairyu would feel the door unlock and open, but when he looked inside... it was dark, and no one was there at all. Creepy.

Meanwhile upstairs, Echo was in the process of dropping her dress in a hamper--she'd have to clean that in the tub later on with some detergent. Not because she /had/ to, necessarily, but she also didn't want to attract attention to her more mundane persona but having bloody clothes dry cleaned. Her cover was of a charlatan for a reason. Who would suspect they were really a sorceress, after all?

After a minute or so in the shower, she had stepped out, towel wrapped around her head and chest. She'd likely be walking out into the upstairs hall when bumping into whoever it was that just came in...

[TAIRYU]
When she steps out of the shower, Echo will find... droplets of blood on the floor. All leading up, in the upper floor apartment to...

Tairyu sat on a chair, with his shirt forcefully ripped open, in the processo of wrapping up torn-up cloth improvised into bandages around his abdomen. The chair and his pants both holding visible stains of blood over it. THere's also an opened bottle of booze left on the table.

"...Hhhh. Hey--" He grunts when he hears the woman's approach, eyes lifting up to find the batwoman herself. "Guess... you were already in the shower... when that ghost opened the door for me... Didn't get to ask if you had a first aid kit or anything somewhere..."

[ECHO]
As Echo stepped out into the plush carpeted upstairs hallway, between the bedrooms and bathroom area--she sniffed at the air. No, that wasn't the blood from her clothes, she could hardly smell that now, this was...

"Tairyu! ...I hope none of that got onto the carpet... ah well, I ordered it in burgundy anyway for a reason--what happened to you, then?" she stepped forward, moving to inspect the man's torn shirt and bandaged chest.

"I take it you didn't get desperate for cash and decide to sell one of your kidneys on the black market," she raised a brow, looking down at him, still in the bath towel.

[TAIRYU]
"... That's your concern?" Tairyu mutters with a quiet grunt. Apparently he's not entirely fazed by the fact that Echo is seemingly wearing a bath towel and nothng else, either. Maybe he's just used to the fact that she is often dressed suggestively.

He shifts slightly on the chair when she closes in, and just focuses on keeping the improvised bandage pressed to where the wound is.

"I got sent to take on this smuggling group--hhh--on my own," he rumbles, now reaching for the open booe bottle. "I bet they figured I could take them but not without getting hurt... fuckers must figure I'm up to something..."

The bottle's brought up when he pauses in his words, taking a long swig from within before slamming it down onto the tbale again with a loud THUD. "It's not like they want to kill me, but they gotta keep me in line somehow..."

[ECHO]
"Well, you /are/ talking to a necromancer, you know--I think bleeding out is the least of your concern, babe," Echo waggled a red-nailed index finger at the man, leaning down to take a peek at what was going on under his shirt.

"You'll have to excuse me for a moment, I am going to get my 'clothes I don't mind throwing away' on, dear," Echo absconds to her bedroom briefly, returning in what looks like an old T-shirt and a pair of black spandex shorts. For her? almost uncannily not something she's usually seen lounging around in. But then maybe she gets off on dressing as provocatively as she does.

When she returns, she's also holding a blue plastic shelled first-aid kit, with the red cross and johnson and johnson logo on it.

"Should try getting a proper one on an airplane anymore--not happening, not if you want a decent pair of surgical shears," she opens it and uses said shears to begin opening the man's shirt, getting a dab of blood on her finger in the process.

"A very good year, I'm sure," she licks her finger, before getting out the gauze and medical tape.

[TAIRYU]
"I wasn't really planning on dying and coming back as a zombie, thank you very much," grumbles Tairyu. He's a bit hesitant to draw his hand away when she looks in, but he does eventually shift it and the cloth just enough that she can make out the very obvious stab wound along his abdomen. Should consider himself lucky nothing too important got pierced there.

He's still conscious when she comes back, thankfully, even if he does happen to be pouring some booze down his gullet when she comes into view, too.

When she gets to work, he dutifully leans his weight properly back on the backrest of the chair, back slightly arched to help bring the wounded part of his body more into view and more easily accessible.

...Though he does squint at the licking at the blood that got caught onto her finger. "... I didn't think you were an *actual* bloodsucker."

[ECHO]
"Zombie? Pfft, what do you take me for? some rank amateur? I can stop the decay of the body, and revivify living flesh," Echo grinned a little, this was perhaps not the wisest thing to tell a drunk person, as they are sometimes more susceptible to hearing weird, outlandish shit like that--but Echo isn't pulling punches for some reason, either.

She uses an alcohol pad to first swab his wound, covers it with a piece of gauze she'd cut out to match the wound's shape--then begins taping it to him around all the edges with the medical tape. The alcohol pad, of course, burns like hell.

"I don't think we're quite there yet, though--and my magic wouldn't do much for you while you were still alive, unless the idea was to make you not alive," she winks, before drawing back.

"You'll probably want to change the bandage every day, or else it could become home to infection, and well, you know," she blinks.

"What? you think all that food from Uber Eats was for /me/, dear? Pfft, hell no--that was for Dennis, I can't eat that much sugar anyway, humans have a fascination with it, or so I noticed."

[TAIRYU]
"I'd rather not get to the point where I can find out how that works," insists Tairyu with a grunt. "At least not yet. I still have--nnhh--unfinished business..."

THe bottle's completely discarded on top of the table with a loud thud then with a grunt, and he peers at her with some bemusement. "I wasn't saying anything about *that*! I was just saying I didn't think you actually consumed that stuff just becaues you are a bat. Teaches me, I guess..."

[ECHO]
"It would be a lot less painful than the hangover you're going to have, unless you get some fruit cocktail into you, honey," Echo grinned and closed up the first-aid kit with a snap of the plastic shell, taking it back to her room and tucked it away. She came back with a half-finished bottle of gatorade and set it down on the table next to his booze.

"You'll be wanting to drink this in case you want to wake with a pounding headache, I don't have much in the way of human food here that might help," she smirked.

[TAIRYU]
"I can handle my drink better than you think, don't worry," Tairyu assures Echo with a wave of his free hand... even if he does take the bottle of gatorade almost immediately when she brings it out.

"So... I think you were going out somewhere too before I got here, huh?" He murmurs then, with a lift of his brow. "WHat kind of trouble were you getting into?"

[ECHO]
"Oh you know, little of this, little of that--few thugs that wouldn't talk," Echo shrugged a little, as this was inconsequential to her. It was.

"I didn't manage to get any of them on my shoes, thank god--but I think I need to let that dress soak for a bit," she came back around and cupped the man's chin and face in one furred, long-nailed hand, laughing softly. He could see her for what she really was, most of the humans around here couldn't--it almost took the fun out of things, so she took extra special care of her special friends, after all.

"And yes, I do drink blood--speaking of, are you hungry-ish?" she raised a brow at him. "I think there are still some left over spare ribs, you eat meat, right?~"

[TAIRYU]
"You were... gathering information," Tairyu deduces, lifting his brows up curiously. "Do I want to know what for?" He asks then, with his lips slightly pursed.

He... actually seems a bit sheepish when she cups his lower face then, blinking his eyes while he peers at her for a few seconds... before flicking his eyes away for just a brief moment during it. "W-...what?"

He lets out a heavy sigh, and finally straightens up in his seat afterwards. "Of course I eat meat. I'll take what you give me."

[ECHO]
"Well our little project, for one thing," Echo replied back, slightly annoyed. What else would she have been doing? She had put a lot of important hedonistic activities on hold for this, after all.

"That's good, I like guys that are easy like that," she went to where she kept the fridge down the hall and came back with a styrofoam container and a chinese take-out box.

"I think that's rice and spare ribs... and eggroll? Egg-fu yung? I don't know," she had heated it up first, at least, handing him a pair of chopsticks.

"Good thing they came with them, I don't keep the funny little stakes people eat with around the house," she took a seat near him, leaning on her elbows.

"So was your trip as fruitless as mine? Well, maybe not 'fruitless' but..." she gestured to the blood.

[TAIRYU]
"...While I appreciate the effort, I worry the Syndicate might get wind of that," Tairyu murmurs, with a quiet grunt, foot reaching out over briefly to nudge at Echo's shin. "I'm glad it went smoother than my evening, though." What with the lack of stab wounds on her.

He waits for the takeout to be brought over, and... he blinks his eyes curiously at Echo. "You've been in Southtown for how long and you call them 'stakes'?" He sounds more amused for once, and it reflects on the tug of his lips, too.

"It wasn't a trip I wanted to be on," he mutters while picking out some rice with the sticks. "Like I said. I was ordered on it. By my... overlords, if you will. The Syndicate. It's why they're holding my sister. I don't think I ever really explained that, did I?"

[ECHO]
"What're they gonna do about it?" Echo didn't seem overly concerned, sitting back down on her large wooden table, sitting sidways a little so she could rest her feet on one of the other chairs near Tairyu. She seemed to want to get off her feet a little, after being out all night, and then coming home and finding him there.

"How did you know a ghost let you in, by the way? You getting better at picking up on those things?" she grinned.

[TAIRYU]
"Any number of things," Tairyu answers with a wrinkle of his nose. "The least bad of them being reinforcing the bar they're holding Miku in. Worst case is they make the logic leap of assuming you're working for me, and... well."

The second question, he lets a little laugh out at. "I just made an educated guess," he admits. "It's not like I can sense or see ghosts or anything. It just seemed the most likely option since it's... you."

[ECHO]
"A bar, huh? jeez, what a place to be held prisoner," Echo sighed, pulling her feet down from the chair, pulling them down beneath her in the chair, sitting up straighter now. She waved off his laugh a little.

"I could have made them manifest to see them, if you wanted--but you probably prefer not to, humans tend to get a little... jumpy when they see people they obviously know are dead, I find," she rolled her eyes a little. Humans.

"I was in the shower--a bit of a vulgar display of power, but eh, I wasn't coming down stairs just to unlock the door."

[TAIRYU]
"I imagine it just happens to be a place the person put in charge of holding her owns," Tairyu suggets with a heavy sigh. "... I don't know what I should expect to happen after we're done there, too. The whole Syndicate might try to hunt me down. Maybe take down Aizawa-gumi... But that's all just something I'll have to worry about when I get there. I can't leave Miku there."

He pops a piece meat into his mouth while Echo speaks... though even while he is chewing, his brows furrow together.

"I think I'd prefer not to see that, yeah," he confesses. "Though, did you even know it was me, out there?"

[ECHO]
"Well, you might want to do some hiding out--maybe in America? You ever been to Metro city? it can be a nice place... well, fun place, too, but," Echo grinned. "When I first landed on this... side, it was in the Eastern part of that country, it can be quite a lot of fun, you and she might like it, too," she nodded.

"Sure I did, I can hear you... well, and smell you," she smiled.

[TAIRYU]
"...I don't know," Tairyu sighs out. "I guess... that will depend. I might have to get Miku out, at least, but..." His lips purse, and his brows furrow into a deep scowl. "... I can't just run, myself. It wouldn't be right. There's too much I need to face here." STupid stubborn men with their senses of honor, huh?

He stuffs his face until the leftover takeout's completely gone, and with some effort, he manages to push himself up from the chair. "Nnngh... I can crash on your couch for tonight, right?"

Log created on 18:57:03 07/28/2020 by Echo, and last modified on 14:01:04 07/29/2020.