The Razorgirl's Five Hundred Suitors

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IamLEAM1983
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Re: The Razorgirl's Five Hundred Suitors

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The two of them made their way to and down the nearest Pedway access, essentially reaching what felt like a call-back to the Victorian galleries of old.

If the Battle of Hope had changed one thing, it was the general atmosphere of the city's underground segments. Reconstruction had allowed for the laying-out of a complex network of electric streetcars and a slew of ancillary roads that all crisscrossed the Q's main artery. The Pedway was a place that was brightly lit twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, the walls and pedestrian zones employed as interactive display areas. RFID tags sewn in Archie and Mary's clothes randomly picked them out amongst the slew of other people they'd cross, sometimes altering ads that were on display to show things that would suit their tastes. All anyone had to do to pick an ad and stick with it long enough to study it was to press the Focus button that usually appeared.

Most importantly, however, these little magnetic tags acted as flags for their using the streetcar service. All Mary or Archibald had to do was to consult the city's Transit Authority public webpage and essentially recharge their accounts with a fresh annual, bi-annual or monthly pass.

As for Mary's concerns about weapons, she really didn't need to worry. Being Lord Holden came with some advantages. In extension, travelling with him meant you were subjected to the same privileges. Plenty of cops looked her way and frowned disapprovingly at her unmistakable ordnance, but Archie was always there to spare a forward tip of his tophat and a knowing glance. Not everyone responded in a particularly kind matter, but it was clear that those that did trusted the Clank's better judgment.

Reaching the Hall, they were greeted by the distant sounds of chamber music playing from one of the study rooms on either wing. The main hallway's twin grandfather clocks ticked away, but Archie spared no time in greeting the mansion's loci. He hurried upstairs, urging Mary to follow him. From there, they made their way to what had to be the Clank's own bedroom.

In true Victorian fashion, Archie's private quarters were both staid and possessed of some ostentation. Tones of green, copper, red and brown made up most of the room's luxurious furnishings that were all as unreservedly floral as the olden times' idea of masculinity allowed. Mary could imagine Archie's puzzlement upon realizing that manly men were no longer expected to find salmon or light red to be a suitable colour... In any case, if he had been surprised, his wardrobe gave enough indication that he didn't care. Somehow, his waistcoats managed to make an orgy of botanical details and roses in full bloom look unreservedly badass.

As a man of his times was wont to do, Holden didn't simply pick a pair of waders and slip them on - of course not. Everything had to be coordinated. What was surprising, however, was that what should have been a fastidious process, a bit like the stereotypical woman flip-flopping indecisively, was blown through in under five minutes. A dark corduroy waistcoat was slipped on and underneath the waders, while high black rubber gloves followed. The cravat was switched for a black bowtie and the hat, for a simple black derby.

"I would slip the bloody waders on and call it a day," he explained as he left his room, "but my brother's affliction has not left his ego entirely untouched. One would surmise that appearances would no longer matter for a Ringleader who has celebrated his bicentennial long before your own mother's birth, but there is a smidgen of misplaced pride remaining in old Art... He abhors seeing me chasing after him for the sake of business, only to see me covered in sewer filth."

He shrugged. "I could not give less of a damn, but we apparently have a family name to maintain. Or so says the frustrated actor who most assuredly does not possess a title..."
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Re: The Razorgirl's Five Hundred Suitors

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Mary had lived too long in Hong Kong to ever fully trust subways and other mass transit, a notion firmly reinforced by a few months spent in Tokyo for a kendo tournament. All the bright ads and blinking lights were an uncomfortable reminder of all that, and she spent most of the ride over standing in a corner, trying to relax, one hand firmly on her things; it was with unmistakable relief that she stepped off the tram and felt the ground beneath her boots once more.

She would have liked to poke about the manor a bit, but Archie seemed to be in a hurry so she followed after him. "Hm," was all she had to say at the sight of his rooms. She liked the floral motifs though. "Nice to see a man who isn't afraid of his own fashion sense."

She took the chance to throw her own water gear on, and then followed him out. "Well, I've got a family name too, so I know how he feels. Besides, I much prefer it when the smell of the sewers doesn't take a liking to me, you know what I mean?"
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Re: The Razorgirl's Five Hundred Suitors

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Archie gave her a slight smile. "The aristocrat agrees and has his moustache quiver in expectant disgust, but the operative in me is more inclined to approach this as repeated urban exploration. There is a certain... je-ne-sais-quoi to the act of seeing corners of the city no self-respecting member of the bourgeoisie cares for or even knows of. The old canals have surprisingly detailed brick arches, for one, and their acoustics are second-to-none."
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Re: The Razorgirl's Five Hundred Suitors

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"Most of my poking about has been above ground," Mary admitted. "I like to pretend I can fly, you see. I'd love to scale Buck Tower, but security wouldn't be my friends anymore if I tried." She shrugged ruefully, and smirked. "Not that they aren't nice enough on good days, of course."
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Re: The Razorgirl's Five Hundred Suitors

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Again, that knowing smirk. "Ah, hired hands. Ever so dependable, but generally quite blind. Today's mercenaries seem to operate in organized bands offering their services as contractors, but it used to be that any bloke with some money to burn and a good sense for people could hire whatever stocky fellow you happened to cross, out on the docks. I remember my family's estate in Kent being largely manned and defended by Canterbury natives."

He shrugged thoughtfully as they headed outside and back to the closest Pedway access point. "The sense of belonging helped, I suppose. We were of their town, not simply chaps with a fat wad of money to burn. We'd contributed to the city's coffers and kept several businesses afloat."

Still, that train of thought made him appear glum for a few moments. "A pity that Arthur never took to it, really. I had the gumption to run to the Indies for emancipation; the poor boy was nearly choked with Mother Dearest's kindly attentions. He ran to London but..."

He sighed. "Ambitions can be fickle mistresses. All I'd ever desired was adventure, and I'd found it in spades. He desired notoriety, something for which I frankly have little interest even if it does stand as a useful tool. He looked for it in all the wrong places. Whenever I'd return to England, such as was the case for my training in the matters of Russian politics, we'd have words. Not the kindest ones, either.

He looked to me, adored me as only a younger brother can adore his sibling, but felt as though I'd stolen his fire - betrayed him, in essence, by leaving Canterbury in such a clandestine fashion. I kept trying to remind him that his bloody artistic aspirations had no basis in reality, at least not for the time period, and he would stubbornly refuse to consider my words."

He fell silent for a while. "I died, assassinated by the Russian Grayskins, only to be recalled from the Afterlife by a British Secretary of Defense that was all too eager to please James Buchanan. Again, Arthur would rub my good fortune in my nose and mistake his mediocre levels of appeal for laudatory reviews of his performances.

Irony had it that I had managed to establish polite terms between myself and Alana, his old flame. I attempted to pull him away from hubris, and she dragged him underground..."

Archie's features very briefly trembled, old anger straining his facial mechanisms. "While I... cannot deny that her ministrations have had a tangible effect, I am all too aware of how Freaks operate, and how easy it is to alter one's personality with a few normally lethal blows to the head. She has never confirmed my suspicions and Arthur has made a game out of embellishing or exxagerating the circumstances of his change of heart - but I still am able to make an educated guess.

As much of an insufferable and mewling idiot as he used to be, I would have preferred treatment and repeat visits to - whatever it is that was done to my brother, in order to open his eyes. Now he stands as a perennial jokester who has finally transcended the woes of his nature, but at a cost that would chill my oil into inert sludge, if it could."

His decorative, albeit piston-connected Adam's apple bobbed. "The new shape of his skull clued me in, at first. Art used to be so similar to me we were sometimes thought to be twins, while alive. At the very least, we had the same dome, the same upper skull. Now?"

Holden didn't elaborate, his lips twisting into a silent and contrite moue of disgust.
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Re: The Razorgirl's Five Hundred Suitors

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Mary was silent as Archie explained his brother, and when he finished she only nodded and swallowed. "The Freaks we had to deal with in Hong Kong were basically the same," she began. "Most of them were alright, fairly decent even if they stuck together too much. Then you get the uppity fellows, who'd get into fights or upset the Ringleader." She shrugged, but her face was dark. "One day they'd be themselves, the next there's a dent or two in their head and they're... off. Different, and not always in the same ways either. I lost a fair few informants that way, and didn't get quite as many back either."

She couldn't empathize any more than that, having grown up the only child of affluent parents. "So tell me something, are you and Jimmy Winters acquainted? You've got to be about the same age range and nationality..." It wasn't surprising that she wouldn't know the connection between Holden and Winters; for a great many reasons, practical and otherwise, Jimmy had kept his association with Holden's black ops teams out of the public perception. Everyone knew about the duo of Archie and Bucky, but almost no one was aware of how Jimmy made it a trio as often as not; not even Archie and Bucky were aware of some of the things he did back then, and it went both ways of course.

Of course, Archie wasn't likely to divulge all that to someone like Mary, especially in the middle of a public transit...
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Re: The Razorgirl's Five Hundred Suitors

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Another wry smile was etched out in near-silent piston hisses and gear whispers. "Acquainted is one word to describe our relationship," he evasively agreed. "A few others would match, but I am afraid I find myself obligated to refrain from confirming or denying any past instances of close collaboration. Having directly contributed to matters of national security, my hypothetically entertaining ties to the criminal underworld would compromise my office.

Assuming I do maintain such ties, then you may infer them to be forged in a decent amount of trust. If those ties do exist, there is also a fair bit of professional doubt attached..."

His expression changed to a contemplative moue. "I've sleuthed, cheated and deceived often enough to know when I've acquired a guardian angel, and I've lived long enough to become extremely aware of how... varied they are. Winters would consider your suggestion that he keeps an eye on an old sack of gears and copper to be an inference at some sort of misplaced nostalgia that, quite frankly, would damage his reputation."

The smirk returned in a ghostly form. "Which, in a roundabout sort of way, would confirm your suspicions. But you did not hear it from me, mind you."

By the time he finished, they'd reached a padlocked service door for which he'd leisurely pulled out the key during the last few steps. "Now," he said, going back to the pedagogue's tone he sometimes took with the Shield recruits, "my brother has earned a few quirks from these suspected blows to the cranium. Notably, he absolutely adores torturing a newcomer's nerves and, like most Freaks, loathes self-importance and affected wealth. Nevermind that some snobbery still characterizes him, apparently. Circus members generally tend not to react too kindly to excessively self-assured types."

He delivered an uneasy cough. "Which, in a roundabout sort of way... means he quite thoroughly loathes my affectations. He loves his older brother, of course - but he hates the spy and the people's hero. Unfortunately for him, they are all inseparable. Considering, you'd best keep your instincts in check and prepare yourself for a few barbs and general unwarranted hostility. He truly doesn't mean anything by it, as he cannot always reason past these surface-level emotional transports."
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Re: The Razorgirl's Five Hundred Suitors

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Mary nodded thoughtfully as Archie pointedly failed to explain any relationship between himself and Winters, filing away the non-information for later. "I didn't hear anything from anyone," she confirmed vaguely, discretely rolling her eyes. Spy games werefun.

She sombered up as they came to the service entrance, however. "Vampires," she muttered noncommittally, trying to shove the memories back down. "No, no, don't back down now, you can deal with this," she went on, largely to herself. "It's just- he's just another source, just another informant..."

Keep telling yourself that, Jameson...
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Re: The Razorgirl's Five Hundred Suitors

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Past that door was a maintenance corridor which seemed to have been connected to the city's previous subway system, before '75. Archie followed the corridor down a few flights of stairs, after which they found themselves staring at pitch-black darkness. A little whirring sound could be heard coming from the Clank's head, after which he briefly bowed his head the way someone might in order to remove contact lenses. He essentially removed his porcelain eyeballs and stored them aside as carefully as possible - leaving the naked mechanisms of his eyes to produce twin beams of light.

Very quickly, the ground grew cracked and uneven. In short order they found themselves facing a total collapse, the corridor reduced to a very narrow channel through which only one person could squeeze at a time. Through it waited the busted remains of some sort of generator room, the walls and floor covered in now understandably old scrawls and graffiti.

Another door and another corridor, those two leading to a condemned sewer tunnel. Another tight crawl, and they found themselves staring at the city's oldest cistern, a dried-out cylinder of heavy concrete that had once served as the city's first concealed water source, possibly right after the last water tower was brought down in the late eighteen-hundreds. In typical late Victorian useless ostentation, the entire inside surface of the cistern had been covered in little white tiles reminiscent of a bathroom floor. Lines of blue ones could be made out, suggesting that someone had once had to use some sort of porthole system to look at the water level from the outside, and using these lines of blue tiles as levels.

Now, however, Mary would find herself staring at the stubborn remnants of those few Freak groups who refused to indulge in the Pedway's offered subterranean condos. They still lived by the old process of scavenging and readapting scraps and refuse from the surface, having covered the inside surface of the cistern with a little community of platforms and huts bolted into the curvaceous side, with precarious gangplanks and rope bridges connecting everything together. Down below, in the murky waters remaining at the bottom of the tank, an old generator could be heard rumbling. They'd obviously done something to insulate it from the water, with its only exposed part being the artificially elongated exhaust pipe that poked out of the muck. Despite the fact that they'd apparently punched a hole through the cistern's top and dug their way to an old storm drain in Naughton, the ventilation was fairly horrendous, giving the place an utterly horrid smell. The diesel fumes made everything rather hazy, which gave the settlement's pilfered Christmas lights and half-functioning neon signs a deliriously star-like appearance.

This place probably wasn't that bad a spot to live in, if you were insane, didn't need to breathe and were in pathological need of something to stand in for starlight.

Grunting sounds could be heard from above, as well as scuttling and creaking noises. They'd both been spotted, obviously.

Archie started along the flimsy catwalk that stood as the beginning of a fairly suicidal ascent, only to be stopped as a Freak jumped down and right in front of them. It was hard to tell if she'd been pretty in life, but her tattered power suit and miniskirt, along with the mangy remnants of permed hair and the tied-off corpse of a pearl necklace gave the indication that she'd probably been alive in the eighties. She looked like Margaret Thatcher's zombie, with a gait and sounds to match. Still, she was obviously sapient.

"Go back!" she rasped. "We don't owe you taxmen anything! We do everything the walrus says, and that means we can't feed no more! Arthur brings us scraps, and we stay down here! Haven't you had enough?! Go back, before the voices make me kill you!"

Before Zombie Thatcher could do anything, however, a voice that sounded curiously like Archie's - if Archie had been more Eurotrash and less British - could be heard from somewhere up above.

"Lay off, Margie! It's my brother, see? Scratch one carter, nick one plate or break his precious porcelain mustache and I'll tear you limb from limb... from limb," the voice said, apparently finding a little too much relish in that prospect. "I'm the only one who gets to whale in on Mother Dearest's favorite. Besides, the ingrate never tracks me down to say hello, doesn't he?"

The voice came from somewhere below them, without any obvious transition. "He could stop by the graveyard for some tea, crumpets and a blood martini - but does he? Of course not. My doors are always open for a bruising and I do so love my brother - but it's always 'Arthur, I require this! Arthur, I require that! Arthur, stop harassing my recruits! Arthur, stop having fun! Arthur, Arthur, Arthur!'" he said, briefly slipping in a cartoonish rendition of Archie's own voice that dribbled with contempt.

"I'm paying a visit to the lesser ones, brother dearest. Surely you'd understand that tact demands you leave right this instant," the voice said, the last few words laced with more threat than a human throat could have generated. If that fazed Archie in any way, it didn't show.

"I am not leaving, Arthur. You know better than anyone that the reason why I do not coddle you with courtesy calls is because you have always abhorred them. You confuse concern and judgment, and then typically attempt to terrorize whoever it that dared to question you. That isn't very sporting of you, brother!
- You honestly think I care about being sporting?" the younger Holden replied, cackling. "What is this, the nineteenth century? Am I 'on my honor' now? You should know by now that Alana took my honor and opened my eyes!"

Archie gave Mary a look of vague exasperation and rolled his eyes. "I have a girl with me," he added, his tone deadpan, as though he were meant to state this teasingly but had no patience to spare. Almost immediately, the light sounds of someone alighting onto the catwalk after an inhumanly graceful tumble could be heard. What stepped out of the shadows look like Archie's old living self, if you'd taken a tire iron to his face and skull with the proportionate torque of an angry gorilla.

"Ooooh," Arthur Holden crooned, "a fresh-faced little morsel, eh? You look tough, little girl; I bet you've reduced a lot of impertinent English rats to nice little cubes of meat with that pig-sticker of yours. Before you ask, the rat in this room? It ain't me, sis..."

Again, Archie rolled his eyes. "Nice to see you in such high spirits, brother. This is Marianna Jameson, formerly of the Hong Kong Special Ops task force.
- A vampire killer," deduced Arthur, faking shock as he did. "Oh, lord! Whatever shall I do? Please, ridiculously well-endowed woman armed with a dangerous tool that is clearly not legal and that stands as a good indication of her potential state of disgrace, do not kill me with this dangerous tool that is clearly not legal and that stands as a good indication of your potential state of disgrace!"

Archie groaned. "To think he is actually an appreciated voice actor...
- Oh, don't spoil the fun," chided Arthur. "At least I'm not liable to backstab my own friends because Queen and Country are asking me to.
- Enough, brother! If courtesy fails, then kindly have some threats," he said, his tone suddenly incisive. "You will listen and answer our questions as well as offer your services to us for the duration of our current investigation, or you have my solemn vow that I will conveniently forget the key to the collapsed maintenance tunnel that led us here. I will find yours and misplace it, and then leave you to claw your way to your precious retrogrades, when you have three hundred progressives waiting for a community meeting in the Pedway condos!"

Arthur's face quivered. "You wouldn't.
- As the Americans are fond of saying, brother - try me. You may not remember, but I distinctly do recall you loathing the results of your ignoring the breadth and depth of my patience. You are a Ringleader, and this petulance of yours is frankly unbecoming of your station."

Arthur made a face and parroted Archie's words back at him as he spoke, in a snide and frankly childish tone. Still, he sighed and grimaced in defeat.

"Fine. Ask."
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Re: The Razorgirl's Five Hundred Suitors

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It was a tight fit squeezing through the crevices, and Mary found herself glad that her front had been pulled as tight as it was or it could have been a closer squeeze yet. I dearly hope there's an easier way back out, she thought to herself as she finally popped out into the cistern, having had to leave the gun cases behind in what she hoped was a dark enough corner that no one would see them. What she saw was just like any other illegal Freak den, and she was hard-pressed not to fall back on training and whip out a badge she didn't have any longer, to arrest the lot of them with the backup that wasn't coming; as talented as Archie and herself were, she suspected a whole gang like this wouldn't have much trouble overpowering them.

Didn't make her feel better, of course, but the thought helped keep her instincts in line.

Still, though, she couldn't quite keep her hand from drifting to the hilt of her blade as first one, then another of the Freaks came at them, the second quite obviously the man they were looking for. Just another informant, she insisted to the scared little girl inside who'd just lost her parents to vampire assassins. Don't- don't panic, this'll all be fine. "Don't need tools," she replied out loud. "Kill you with my endowments, I will," and she wiggled said endowments a bit. "I've heard you somewhere recently... Oh! Didn't you narrate that one movie? With the icicle man and the helicopter? I thought you were younger."

Enough flattery, though. "Anyway. Archie and I are going after Watatsumi and the Five Hundred Dragons. Anything you can add?"
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