Description: Slayer (1990). "God take away your alms. For as you live by charity, so do I by war, and to me it is as genuine a vocation as yours." - Sir John Hawkwood
War. Contrary to a common belief, war changes constantly. It's not that the beliefs and ideals behind them vary. Before mankind first started walking upright, the reasons behind armed conflict have always been the same: resources, territory, and fear. No, what changes about war is not the motives behind it.
It's the effects of war.
With each passing day, mankind thinks of new ways to commit atrocities on one another that ripples through the populace of the world like an earthquake. The feirce combination of creativity, technology, and in this world, the 'magic' of life energies generates a recipie for disaster like none other. With so many variables and the nature of conflict permeating life on every scale imagineable, the depth and scope of war reaches across the globe down to the most molecular level of human civilization: the individual.
And in order to survive changes on that level, a person has to change as well. Those that fight against the tide, or are simply swept up in the wave may survive, but they do so at their peril. But if the person wants to ride those waves if only to see what places it takes them, then change is necessary. Adaptability to the mercurial nature of war is a virtue, not a vice.
And that's why, in the middle of Southtown, Elle is fighting a running battle with several armed soldiers.
Who they are and where they're from doesn't really matter. Shadaloo, NESTS, other mercenaries... the whys and wherefores of the fight mean little. Elle was in the wrong place at the wrong time. A freak delay in guard changes, a random patrol of lost troopers. Whatever the case is, it doesn't change the fact that right here, right now, a battle is being fought that showcases the visceral absurdity of the situation.
Troopers in high tech combat armor squaring off against a emotionally stunted murderer for hire, simply because fate conspired for them to be there in the same area. And for that? People have to die. The exchange of weapon fire fills the air with rapid, staccato bursts in the early afternoon. A mid-day running fight in broad daylight. Automatic rifles shattering the pavement as a woman in a black jacket charges at them in what seems to be the polar opposite of sense, firing her own handguns in return.
The enemy is met at close range. The clash of steel and the shouts of determination from troops that beleive in their leader mingle with the cold determination of a woman whose only belief is in the sanctity of her own ultimate goals. The primitive nature of basic thought contrast the high tech melee battle as the woman seems to produce weapon after weapon, mowing through the two patrolling agents like a scythe through wheat.
And in the end? She's still standing with minimal, almost cosmetic damage. Her clothes stained with blood of people she doesn't even know and will forget about in the next ten seconds. The katars that are held tightly in her grip slide back into her sleeves with the sound of steel on steel.
War changes more than itself. It changes people as well.
It's a funny thing, how war can change not only on that fundamental level, but also depending on the position one happens to be taking in it. This is Francois's first real major outing since he left the Foreign Legion, looking to sell his skills and make a name for himself. It meant that the bark of weapons fire, the sounds of conflict and death, were not seen as something to run away from, or something to intervene in.
They were seen as a simple... business opportunity.
It had been a strange few days for the Frenchman, with little real idea of where to begin, it had been a time of annoying close calls, misunderstandings and frustration all around. This time, however, Francois manages to make it to the scene before everyone is dead, or gone. This time, he is there just in time to see Elle make short, brutal work of the two soldiers.
This was not, perhaps, what he had expected to find.
The cigarette is plucked from his lips, and casually dropped to the floor, to be trodden on and put out. The boxer walks slowly over to the woman, eyes dropping to the murdered soldiers, before moving back to her, a questioning look in his eye, though, he doesn't seem... -too- worried.
"That was impressive." He calls, a smirk tugging at the corners of his lips. "Out for an afternoon stroll? It's a pleasant day for it, at least."
Well. What was the point in showing fear? Either Elle is a psychotic murderer, in which case he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but his introduction would be unlikely to change her reaction, or she was someone he could talk to, in which case, seeming at ease in this madness would probably make all the difference in the world.
Politeness, faux or not, is how a lot of people like to start things out.
People that, ultimately, are deranged and tend to giggle when you mention things like 'crushing babies with cement mixers'.
Elle reacts accordingly, turning to face Francois. It's not an immediately aggressive action. No weapons are drawn, no motions forward. Why? For good reason. The man appears to want to hold some kind of conversation despite being a witness, and is closing in rather than keeping his distance. Most people stop to monologue, either to admonish her for her behavior or to attempt to dress her down before attacking her for either being too evil or not evil enough.
In essence, he's presented the most neutral face he can, and that's recognized in an instant.
Still, talk is cheap and so is icing, and both are usually tossed on top of something to distract from the fact that what's underneath is probably something that's not good for you. Sometimes. Not always. The point is, charm's wasted on Elle, but not for lack of trying, perhaps.
"Alright," she says after a moment, "I'll bite. It's a great day for a walk. I turned on the radio this morning and the weather report was 'violent, with a chance of disembowelment', and I thought 'Hey great. Let me go out and get my nails done."
"Don't take this personally, pal," she says, her rasping voice sounding only slightly fatigued, "but nice-nice chit-chat's just not my speed. Who, what, why, in no particular order, or I gun your francophonic ass down in the street." No menace in her voice, no motions to back the threats. The words come like cold hard fact as she stares at the man, her hands where he can see them.
She doesn't know what she's dealing with, but damned if she's going to be tricked into letting her guard down.
And as quickly as that, Francois is brought up short.
He can't help but smile at the casual venom, but, perhaps he had been expecting anyone with the propensity to rip through people like that to also have a tendency to dance around subjects and avoid the direct questions. He stops moving towards her, and instead just... stops, focusing his good eye on her, he hrms for a moment.
"C'est la vie, I suppose." He laments to the world at large, before he continues on. "What I am, is a man looking for honest work. Why I am doing so, is because sleeping in the cold and eating cheap noodles is starting to wear thin my patience, no? And of course, counting my days in cigarettes, there is not long before I run out!"
Finally, he gives a little nod. "As for who, well. It would be unfitting for me to give you other than my nom de guerre, in the situation, but I am Francois Poirot, and that name is, for all intents and purposes, more than enough of an answer, I think."
He smiles broadly, then, and winks. A rather... strange motion for a man with one eye, perhaps. "If you don't mind, I'd like to ask the same. Unless, of course, you'd have to shoot me. I've had quite enough of that, lately, and it's getting quite tiresome, no?"
The woman nods. There's only a need for unbalanced bargaining when there's something to lose. She's not detecting any dishonesty from the man, so there's no need to be particularly dodgy. Francois is... interesting to say the least.
For the most part, people have a tendency to go overboard on certain attributes. If they're 'funny', they can't stop making jokes. If they're crazy, they're a stark raving looney. If they're heroic, they'll jump in front of a bus to save a bug, and if they're dark, brooding anti-heroes, they never let you forget it.
Francois isn't tossing any of those vibes, nor is he yet stepping on the triggers that generally cause the 'instant personality assault' from Elle, which is when the woman unleashes the full fury of her ascerbic personality and rails on people in what can only be described as a rant the likes of which would make the ghost of George Carlin proud.
"Elle," she replies, "I make people sad for a living, because Mom said I should always play to my strengths." If Francois has had his ear to the ground as far as mercnaries are concerned for any appreciable amount of time, the name 'Elle' may be vaguely familiar. After all, the woman caused quite a stir for about a year, then disappearedoff into the ether for reasons not yet explained.
The fact that Fracois is looking for work does intrigue her, though, and she presses forward on that. "What's your deal then? I take it if you're wandering around a war zone looking for work, your expertise isn't flower arranging."
Francois does indeed recognize the name. Funny. He'd assumed, from what he had heard, that she'd either died... or, more likely considering the shady rumors, had made enough money to set herself up for life somewhere, and forget about this business. The fact she was walking around free as a daisy... if you didn't count the dead soldiers... was quite a surprise.
"And as you can see, my nails are already exquisite." He grins, and shakes his head slightly, "No, I think, if you are who I think you are, that you and I are in a similar line of work."
There's a moments pause, and then he looks up at the sky.
"My mother always wanted me to be a priest, but, alas, I could never get the hang of that. No, I am good at hurting people, and, I never had the taste for the camera, so, what is a man with my particular talent supposed to do for a living?"
He smirks, reaching into his pocket in order to produce- so that she could see it as clearly as possible- another cigarette, he lights it up, and takes a long drag. "I have to admit, I was a little disappointed. To get work, one must first be known, no? You seem to have killed the first two men I've seen who might have been able to put me in touch with someone relevant." He shrugs, easily. "But, then again, they would likely have just shot me, too."
There's an inherent fallacy to that statement. So Elle clarifies. "You don't have to be known. Plenty of people in town looking for cannon fodder," she says, watching the cigarette get lit before kneeling, starting to search the bodies before finding what looks like an electronic key-fob. "That's how most of this stuff works. They put you feet-on-ground in the shitties combat scenarios, and maybe they promote you if they like you if you manage to crawl back from a few suicide runs."
"What else are you good at? You have any actual skills other than being an eloquent bastard?" A bit of a backhanded compliment, but the man does know how to craft words, meaning that he's inoffensive enough for quite a few intelligence jobs that may arise.
Jobs like that need trust, though, and Elle doesn't easily give that. Especially not to random people on the street, and even less so to anyone smart enough to assemble a sentence that doesn't start with 'Argh!' and end with 'Smash!'. And those guys aren't good at espionage at all.
Witht hat, she motions for Francois to stay where she can see him as she moves. The place Elle is pushing Francois to is the real purpose of the running fight: an armored vehicle. Her jerry-rigged armored car is starting to show signs of decay, and the next best thing is what NESTS considers an armored fighting troop vehicle: basically a fancy-pants Humvee.
Francois laughs at that, and shakes his head. "No, no, you see, I would like to stay alive longer than I have cigarettes on my person, remember?" His expression falls, becoming... just a little bit harder. "I know how these things go when you sign up. You get a nice title, and, with the army, you might get some nice medals too. I do not think these people even offer shiny bits of metal, just promotions. I am not looking for a command structure, I am looking for work to be taken outside one."
If Francois is upset at all by the insult, he doesn't show it. It was, really, a fair enough question. Besides, soldiers weren't particularly known for their tact and grace. It isn't part of the necessary skill set.
"I have a bad habit." He admits, walking at an even pace, and still quite careful to appease the woman. He had been sincere; he had his fill of unnecessary fighting already.
"I never got the hang of staying down when I should have. I am a soldier at heart, and a boxer by nature. That, and my sparkling personality, are all I have going for me, you see?"
The armored car is, of course, noted. A smile flashed to the woman. "I can also drive, naturally."
Elle pauses. She turns to Francois, staring at him. "You can drive?" Elle can drive, in the classic sense. She can't drive in the 'Transporter' sense. While she can certainly handle a getaway vehicle, she can't make any motorized transport break the laws of physics.
Someone that /can/ is definitely someone of value.
"Now, when I mean 'drive', I mean 'drive'. I mean taking a vehicle and making it dance. Right now, that's something I can use, and something I can compensate you for. I am sick and tired of having to fight my way through every encounter. I get up and try to get anything from fresh ammo to a goddamn carton of milk and I'm facing a hailstorm of bullets."
She holds up the key-fob, dangling it in front of Francois's face. "If you can drive, I have work and all the money that goes along with it."
"If you don't," she says, lowing the keys, "Well... I already have enough meat sheilds, and one that can match me in witty conversation, while a great novelty act, won't do me any good. After all, you can't talk bullets down."
There comes a time in every mans life when you need to, as the saying goes, bite the bullet.
Now. Francois has driven this kind of vehicle before, in the middle of a warzone no less, and though he wasn't necessarily bad at it, not one bit of that is down to skill. No, for the most part, in all reality, Francois had made it through those particularly hairy moments in his life through luck and gumption.
So, on the one hand, he can gamble, and if he wins big, he's got a job. Money. Food that doesn't come in little plastic packets and require a microwave.
On the other hand, if he loses, he's probably going to blow his chance, and -perhaps- be shot, too.
On the other other hand, he could try not to get her expectations up too much, and play it safe. But. Where is the fun in that? If you are going to do something stupid, you may as well jump in both feet forwards and hope you come out smelling like roses.
With a quick motion, Francois takes the keys, and flashes Elle a winning smile. "Taxi service, eh? Well, let us see how you feel I measure up, and we'll talk details after that, eh?"
An eyebrow is raised, and Elle motions for him to take the driver's seat as she climbs into the back, inspecting the contents of the vehicle. NESTS usually had better equipment, but less indoctrinated soldiers and a smaller fighting force than Shadaloo could bring to bear. The vehicle definitely shows that philosophy. She rummages in the back and finds what she's looking for: automatic weaponry.
Elle doesn't carry that stuff naturally, and it's enough to keep most people at bay. There's also still enough room to load all the important stuff in her broken down transport.
"I want you to take a back thoroughfare and head towards the mall. My old truck tuckered out back there. Some equipment in that area that I need to pick up that I couldn't carry with me."
She hunkers down, calmly loading the weapon as she watches Francois carefully. She doesn't feel the need to say 'no funny stuff', because the man apparently seems smart enough to recognize how that's really just not a good option with a heavily armed woman sitting behind him. "Think you can handle that, Descartes?"
"I think, therefore, I can."
A silly joke, perhaps, but Francois grins nevertheless. The trouble with this being, well. Francois only has one eye. Depth perception is not on his list of favorite party tricks. Still. He was certain he could could do this. He just had to remember how to get it going. The key fumbles in the ignition for a moment...
AND AWAY THOSE RACERS GO!
The car squeals its horror at the way it is treated, forced to accelerate far too fast to be healthy, it's at this point Francois makes an interesting discovery. Namely that, luckily, the car is an automatic, and so though it is still squealing away, the gears aren't actually going to erupt through the hood.
Which is, probably, a plus.
Either way, the world is suddenly a much faster, and louder place, as the car is swung around, barely missing the wall of a very lucky building as it tears away in a terrifying cacophony towards the thoroughfare. It's good for Francois that he took the time to get to know Southtown before he started wandering its streets.
To his credit, despite the fact that the car is jumping and crashing along the road, and he finds himself driving /in the wrong lane, towards oncoming traffic/ at one particularly messy point, he does a remarkably good job of keeping his cool. Swerving and tearing around cars and the debris and potholes that now scar Southtown's roads, he looks... as though this is just how driving is supposed to /be/, right?
And so far, he hasn't hit anything.
The plus side? There's not much in the way of 'oncoming traffic', and most of the swerving is probably due to the mess of abandoned vehicles all over the place, strewn about due to the constant warfare. The bad part is that those oncoming vehicles aren't exactly friendly.
Not that they were obvious. NESTS has learned camoflague, naturally. So Elle holds her tongue when the things turn to follow them, soldiers inside readying an attack.
To her credit, Elle isn't saying anything. The man clearly knows how to drive, but not /precisely/ in the way Elle was looking for. She hunkers down in the back of the vehicle and remains focused as the other armored cars behind them change course to follow the rapidly swerving mercnary vehicle.
A helmet is flung up behind Francois, falling into the seat next to him as Elle snaps on on herself. "Put this on your noodle," she intones, taking position. "Things are about to get rocky. Keep this crate steady, call it if you can't." She lays down in the back, snapping the satfey off just as the gunfire starts. The enemy bullets carom off the armored hull of the machine as Elle lines up her shots. The NESTS assault rifle fills the small car with the loud chatter of machine gun fire as spent casings clatter bout the back, the scent of gunpowder filling the cabin of the vehicle.
There's two vehicles that resemble a minivan and a sedan. 'Stealth' units, meaning they're built to blend in rather than have heavier armor... but they're still more resliant than your average Japanese car. The outgoing fire cracks along the hood and windsheild of the NESTS vehicles, but to no great effect.
Clearly, Francois is going to have to get creative, and soon. Otherwise the NESTS soldiers will actually be able to line up that rocket launcher in the back of their minivan.
Francois's eye twitches for a moment. The helmet is taken, and jammed down firmly on his head. A string of quite inventive french words are grumbled, their meaning, however, is painfully obvious. A grumbled, somewhat bitter cursing. Stupid! Of course he shouldn't have thought that he could do this, what a silly way to try and make a living, exercise the one part of your training that does not deal with punching people in the face or shooting them, you know, the parts you were actually good at!
Francois reaches up to adjust the rear view mirror, checking there was nothing behind as he notes the positioning of the enemy units. It was a little bit different to what he was used to, the handling, for a start, was much smoother- the speed this thing could go at considering the armoring... without peer! Far more exciting than anything he had gotten his hands on in his army days.
Oh look, a rocket launcher.
If there is one thing in the world that Francois has going for him, it is that he'd inherited the devils own luck. There isn't much room to maneuver, and he was already flooring the acceleration as hard as it would go, so, how many options were open to him now? The rocket launcher seems to expand to take up all of the world. Ah! Was it to end like this? Dying in a flaming wreckage with a woman he had met merely minutes before, and who half the world probably thought was dead already?!
"I hope you remembered your seatbelt, mademoiselle."
And suddenly, he wrenches back on the breaks, and the entire car screams as it is forced to slow. If his timing is correct, then the rocket will slam into the road ahead...
And at that point, he'll hammer the acceleration forwards again, fully intending to use the remaining momentum, and the rather... amazing engine this thing had on it, to pick up speed fast enough to jump the crater.
"And would you mind shooting the man with the actually dangerous weapon, merci beaucoup!~"
The mercenary woman lifts her gun again, drawing a bead, carefully aiming...
Then the whole world lurches out from under her as she nearly falls on her face. All she catches is 'seatbelt', because she's too busy cursing in words that aren't really creative. Just utterly crass.
But she doesn't lose focus. The cursing is more autonomous than through any active though on her part as she resettles herself only to have the exploding rocket behind her (and in front of Francois) to illuminate her with sufficiently dramatic backlighting.
In a movie, this would be where the male and female protagonist share a meaningful glance, hinting at romance.
Francois instead gets a stare that could probably curdle milk into the disgusting cheese the man's probable nation of origin produces.
"Don't have to tell me twice," Elle mutters under her breath. She draws a bead again, opening fire. This time, she manages to get through the windsheild of the sedan, sending glass and screams all over the road while a few stray shots put the rocket launcher back into the van.
Not exactly a clean score on a hit, but it's better than two fully armed vehicles coming after them. The sedan veers off, out of the fight and likely with the driver dead, if not all the passengers, leaving the bullet-riddled NESTS minivan.
"This is gonna sound stupid, but I need you to hit the brakes," she says, raising her voice more than shouting as she pulls out the weapon clipped to her hip. The gun, whatever it is, looks just plain ugly, aesthetically and otherwise... but she sounds fairly confident. Whatever that's worth.
There is a moment of stunned silence.
And then Francois realizes that he's still alive! "HAHA!" He shouts, whooping as he throws the car roughly around a particularly large lump of debris.
In many ways, the situation summed up Francois's life spectacularly. If it was a movie, then someone had decided to rip out all the parts that would make it easier to get through, and instead spend it on more guns, shooting, and danger.
This explain much of the reason that, rather than argue the point, Francois just laughs. "Of course! Of course! Throw the breaks on in a high speed chase, why, any other course of action would be /completely/ suicidal!"
At which point, he does so.
He had no idea what Elle hoped to accomplish with the nasty looking weapon. But, what did he have to lose? If he was going to die, he was going to die. There was nothing to be gained from fretting about it, "Take it away, mon cher, you are, after all, the boss, no?"
The world does seem to be slowing down, at last. The hefty breaks the NESTS vehicle was fitted with meaning it was almost as good at slowing as it was at speeding. Now, if only the same applied to the bullets the enemy were firing, Francois might even feel confident that he could pull out of this after all.
The woman braces herself properly, aiming the weapon at the general front of the vehicle behind them and takes a deep breath as she feels the armored car slow down suddenly. The windsheild of the 'minivan' behind them seems to close in with alarming ferocity, as if the enemy car was a raging bull dead set on tearing through the mercenary transport.
But the people inside? Looks of stunned terror.
Everything happens quickly in that moment, but as the cliche goes, seems to stretch on forever as Elle pulls the trigger on the weapon.
The sound the gun makes puts the assault rifle on notice that it is /not/ the big boy in the car. The 'pistol' is a heavily modified shotgun, with fully automatic capabilities.
The van's bumper crashes into the armored car, crumpling. The veritable storm of 12 gague shot rips through the windsheild. But that's not hardly the worst of it. Along with each explosion is a torrent of electrical energy that goes after it. It's like a chi-flamethrower, with hyper-accellerated shrapnel to just make things that much more uncomfortable. Each rattling burst from the weapon illuminates the interior of the cabin.
The results are horrifying. The people in the NESTS car /erupt/ for lack of a better term. The stench of cooked meat fills the air as the soldiers practically fragment under the maelstrom, the recoil of the gun pushing Elle back to reduce the impact of the bumper strike, which keeps her braced legs from snapping like twigs under the force. There's not even enough time to scream as the people inside just stop being alive.
Blast after blast pummels the van, tearing into hood, the bumper, the engine block...
The trigger is released.
And Elle raises her voice for a shout for the first time.
"Punch it, Descartes!"
They've got about 5 seconds before the thing cooks off, taking the entire van up in a rocket propelled grenade inferno.
There are remarkably few times in his life that Francois has been speechless. Not only has he not said anything, but he didn't have anything to say at all. His mind just shut down and his expansive vocabulary failing him utterly.
Nevertheless, this is one of those times.
The sheer brutality of the explosion behind him leaves the frenchman in a state of shock. The only time he had ever experienced anything -comparable- was... well. Suffice it to say, that the precise memory surrounding that particular incident is hazy.
The shout is what snaps him back to reality, and his body reacts on reflex. Years of conditioning to Obey Your Superior Officer hammer on home, and Francois's foot ploughs into the accelerator so hard it is a minor miracle that he doesn't break something.
NESTS does build its stuff to last, though.
The whole car roars forwards as though it has been fired out of a cannon. As fast as they had stopped, now, they are tearing away from the doom that they have left behind them with the kind of speed that would make a cheetah jealous. Nothing sharpens the mind quite like the prospect of imminent death, and Francois's has been looming in his mind throughout this entire, terrifying, ordeal.
Now, however, there was nothing to do but clutch the steering wheel, and trust that his instincts weren't ready to let him down just yet.
The gun drops into her lap, and Elle leans back, letting go of a held breath, which is half because of what you need to do in order to aim a gun properly.
The other half was that she's just as glad as hell as anything that the gambit worked. The weapon is stowed in it's holster, and she's quiet for a good moment as she mulls what just happened through her head. There's a lot of factors to consider.
First, it's pretty clear that Francois wasn't entirely straightforward with her on the whole driving thing. Anyone in the business can tell that. But, and this is critical, he followed orders in a clinch. No hesitation, no questions. He just did what he needed to do when ordered, and reacted without overthinking it.
In other words? The man's pretty damn near well close to perfect for Elle's purposes.
She sits up, clambering over the seats to sit in the passenger side. "Here's the deal," she says, settling in and flexing her hand and arm. The gun always left her shoulder stiff after firing. "You're a smarmy, smartass, cocky Frog that bites off more than he can chew. That much makes me inclined to kick your ass out of this car right now. But."
She turns her head to look at Francois, "You're also a smarmy, smartass cocky Frog that follows orders. And that's enough to outweigh basically every single one of your annoying personality traits." Is she serious about what she's saying? hard to tell. Elle's humor is really deadpan.
"So... all I need to know is one thing," she says, turning to look out the windsheild, "When it comes to work, where's the lowest you draw the line?"
Francois opens his mouth. Then he closes it.
The car, at least, seems to be cruising along at a happy speed. Now that nobody was trying to blow it up, this didn't seem so difficult after all.
The Frenchman takes a long moment to compose himself before he answers, wiping some sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. Wow. That was intense.
... good fun, though ...
"I don't work for less than five hundred a day." He replies, evenly. "And, obviously, the more dangerous or unsavory, the more I want."
The insults? Well, honestly, he's not in any kind of mood to rebuff them. It wasn't every day that he wound up in this kind of crazy situation, and it was easier to just go along with them. The adrenalin rush was just starting to come down, in a crash harder than he had experienced in -any- of the fights he'd put himself into the last few days.
One hand moves, perfectly steady, to replace his cigarette, long since abandoned and lost, and light it. He exhales slowly, and then seems to calm down just a bit.
"Unless you mean... the lowest in any other sense. But then, the answer is still pretty similar. I don't care who what or why, I only really care how much, you see?"
$500 a day? Guy must be used to a 'per job' basis. "Mighty high price you put on yourself," she says, although the second part sounds fairly apropos. "Tell you what."
"Don't know what you've heard about me, but I'm only generous when you've worked with me long enough. There's only two real games in town right now, and that's me and Rugal. You can try your luck with him, or you can get real experience working through me. I give you a place to stay and food, and it's not a foxhole and MREs, either," she says, matter-of-factly. "In short, I take care of you. But the pay's not $500 a day, I'll tell you that much."
"But," she continues, rubbing her eyes behind her sunglasses, "I guarantee you that you'll see serious action. I don't dick around. You want a resume builder? You stick with me. Almost all my old associates found work the second I left. You won't have a problem. You drive a hard bargain, though, and contrary to all sense, I like your style. $1,500 a week, and you barrack up on my tab the second this situation cleans up. You learn to drive better, and I'll up that pay. There's a lot of work out there for someone that knows when to think on his feet and when act on command."
She lets that sink in for Francois.
"I'm not looking for snap decisions. But I can make sure you're always busy. Or... you can try your luck with the two monster factories, the guy getting his ass kicked, or the guy that bronzes people for shits and giggles. No skin off my nose."
Well, you can't blame a guy for trying!
If anything, the price was a greater indicator than anything else of just how inexperienced Francois is. On the other hand, if he'd gotten it, by some miracle, he'd have been laughing all the way to the bank. As it is, he'd been looking for an opening to bargain from. The trouble is, Elle doesn't... seem to be the sort to want to engage in haggling. Honestly, he could respect that. It was a touch less than he'd been hoping to get, but it was more in a week than he had been earning in a month. That, really, is the thought that colors all others.
"I was intending to work job to job." He admits, hesitating for a moment, but, really. Can you put a price on experience? This woman was supposed to be /dead/. In the short amount of time he'd been around her, he'd seen her kill a good dozen men, and she, unlike he, hadn't even broken a sweat. And he'd just been driving the car!
"But ... for you, I think I will make an exception. You are competent, and, my gut is telling me, you are not an easy woman to kill." He flashes a smile, then, a genuine laugh on his lips. "Besides, I have tested my luck enough today already, no?"
It's at that point which he hits the pothole, the sudden jolt causing the cigarette between his lips to spill into his lap. A frantic, hot cursing and embarrassment ensues, as he slaps down at his pants. Grumbling, and obviously just a /little/ bit disappointed that he couldn't have kept his cool throughout the -entire- journey back.
On the other hand, his pants hadn't actually caught fire. Lucky to a fault, that Francois.
"Oh, you can do other jobs. Just check with me first," she replies. The entrepreneurial spirit is strong in Elle. The more work her operatives get, the more (in)famous she becomes. It's a cycle. Every success she attains is prestige that's passed onto people that work with her. Every success her people attain get passed back to her. Her shop is much, much different than the rest of the yahoos.
"Think of it more like a guild membership where I pay you instead of you paying me. The only difference is, when I say that it's time to do a job, or I say no to a job that you want... it means no. Usually, it'll only because I have conflicting interests or because I think it's over your head and I don't want you to die," she explains. He deserves that much. "I'm not a military commander. I actually give a damn when people I hire die."
"It's hard," she expands, "To find decent help."
"Give me some contact information, and I'll start setting things up for you." Her brain has already shifted gears. Francois' words are good as an acceptance to her. It's now more setting things in motion. All she needs to do is cast a line out to the straggling former members, and she'll have enough people to do what she needs to do.
"Also, I hope you play well with others. I have other associates you'll be working with, and some of them are problem children with personality problems." Like a woman that's pretty much almost undead, for example. Francois will find out in due time.
She shifts slightly as the pothole is struck, and she raises an eyebrow. Unless he burns himself to death first.
Log created on 12:58:06 05/03/2009 by Elle, and last modified on 00:55:07 05/04/2009.