Mockingbirds in Mexico City

[Dane Gregory]

For someone looking into the abyss of his own death, Oakland was a surprisingly pleasant fellow. "Since you've asked, I am rather fond of Lord Gregory."
Damien's entourage opened to swallow Dane within. Just like that, he was side by side with the individual he'd known only from television. Unfortunately, the colors of Damien's attire dwarfed the more sensible selection chosen by Dane. The man was taller as well, but Dane would have the advantage once his ankles were sawed off.

Wisely, Oakland acknowledged Dane's potential. He was not going to be accommodated, but the gesture of affirmation was nice.

"You promise?"
Dane asked of Damien before sharing his attention with the one walking nearest them. A Mexican, he was about Dane's age with sleek hair, grim eyes and a slender build. Uniformed and armed, he was security. "I don't like broken promises,"
Dane shared. The guard kept his gaze forward.

The interior of the estate itself was grand. The marble shone, the furniture was new. There was artwork and flowers and beauty all around them. Columns held enormous ceilings far overhead. Tropical themed murals decorated palacial walls. Yet there were hints of family life, danger, boredom and a conspicuous desire to appear sophisticated sprinkled about. Whomever lived here - prior to Oakland - produced cash like cocaine. The evidence of which piled about like discarded trinkets. The Gregory's home, the one he barely resided in as a boy, having been shipped to the continent for boarding school, felt dusty and ancient by comparison. Dane sniffed in disgust.

He roamed at will, but of all the things to draw him, he drifted to a sideboard where waited a discarded take-out menu. Dane recognized the restaurant as a trendy sushi bar downtown. A swipe translated the Spanish into English.

The party paused briefly, perhaps to let their guest gather their bearings. Dane felt their eyes on the back of his neck, and loved it. It gave him a moment to speak his mind. He dropped the menu "A waste of time. Their sushi is filth."
Bored already, he returned to the guard that ignored him the first time. Dane cocked his head, trying to meet the man's eyes and when they didn't, a scowl sprawled itself across his lips. The guard took a step back, seeking Damien's help instead.

Ignored again. Dane's sharp gaze whipped to Oakland and back. On its heels curled a strike of power. The slap twisted the man to the floor like the worthless bloodsack he was. Satisfaction surged fascinated relief. Particularly when the man cupped his face and groaned. He started to kneel and gauge a closer look, but Dane's act was not without consequence. Half a dozen black barrels suddenly surrounded him. Surging with powers resonant of superiority, Dane smiled into their cold faces and remained upright. Such was when a glimpse of high glossed ebony in the background tempted him beyond the foyer.

He moved toward it and asked of Damien, fondness filled the void of his otherwise articulate voice. "A Shigeru Kawai. May I play it?"

[Damien]

Damien accommodated Lord Gregory's wishes and endured his ramblings with aplomb. The tension within the ranks of his men was high but he remained unaffected. He had spent years listening much the same and it had left him unimpressed.

Most serial killers thrived on the mind games they played. They lured their prey into a corner, convincing them of their overwhelming power to bring despair. The illusion was frail and persisted only on =

Damien halted in his tracks. The men around him sprung into action but Damien paid them no heed. An aura of foreboding emanated like a cloud of dust from behind. He could feel power radiate and illuminate the immediate vicinity.

It could only be the work of one man.

"Mockingbird,"
Damien whispered, his back still turned. So that was how he had been so successful. Whatever power he felt from the man was most certainly the key.

Could it be similar to his own? He had felt nothing from Spectra Lin.

Whatever he possessed, the source mattered not.

"A Shigeru Kawai. May I play it?"


Damien held up a hand to halt his men. He stood tall and straight, every muscle in his body primed. Like a cobra he turned to face the Mockingbird with the full force of his presence.

Damien met the man's hollow gaze once more filled now with arrogance and that persistent foreboding. He stared as the Mockingbird waited for his answer, etching the feeling into his memory before he shattered it.

Damien wasted no time on words. Under his titanium gaze he unleashed the Light in full force. Ablaze with power incarnate Damien held nothing back. The marble underneath the Mockingbird's feet splintered as he brought down a hammer of force that would knock him from his feet and pin him to the ground.

[Dane Gregory]

No answer.

Dane looked to his left and right. Faces were hidden behind gun barrels. Many brows were drawn low, the eyes intent. They were aiming at him. He blinked in response, innocent as a child misunderstanding the reason for such overreaction. And to what? Shigeru Kawai was one of the three greatest pianos in the world. He'd played better and the condition of Damien's was poorer than he would have preferred. But it had been so long since his fingers touched ivory.

Instead, the air splintered. The hairs on the back of his arm lifted, and Dane gasped when the weight of a thunderclap buckled his legs. Marble rushed up to meet him. His skull cracked the suddenly risen floor. He tried to roll away, but the sheer might of the heavens pinned him down.

Fear crippled him within in a way he hadn't known in years. And as he had once been jumped and pinned down, his mind clawed its way to anything that could help. Like then, his mind crafted some defense his hands were too delicate to wield.

His power. Fire seared the edges of his gaze while the heat of a thousand suns rushed his bones. Guns were dropped while faces shielded themselves from incineration. Screams and gunfire punched the air, but Dane wanted to burn down the house and amid the symphony, yearned to hear the crunch of Oakland's skeleton beneath his shoes.

Dane was furious, but with what love of the carnage did he roar his defiance. He found his enemy's face. "Is you who should fear me, Oakland!"
And from the ground, Dane laughed while his flames lifted higher. Their very own ring of fire.

Edited by Dane Gregory, Nov 21 2014, 09:22 PM.

[Damien]

Damien’s eyes widened as patterns of red fire looped through the air towards him and his guard. The others shied away from the heat, dropping their weapons. Damien remained steadfast as the wall of heat engulfed him. The spreading fire licked the edges of his coat singeing the delicate material.

Mockingbird clawed like a madman while raving. His words held less interest than the pattern that emanated from his body. It was the same as his own power of Light. Why could he see it so clearly now when he had not done so before? The possibilities were many but the smoke curling from his cuffs demanded his immediate attention.

Curious now, Damien lifted his assault. The reprieve was no kindness. On the heels of his withdrawal he formed a blade of ethereal Light just as he had done with Spectra. This time there was no blind slices of desperation. He could see the patterns winding clearly and struck with forceful precision, slicing through each with overwhelming strength that the Mockingbird either hid or did not possess.

Just as Spectra had done the Mockingbird staggered as his fire was snuffed out. Damien used the pause to thread another pattern of his own. Smoke rolled from his clothing to match his eyes of flared anger like an angel of judgement descended to earth.

“I asked one thing of you, Mockingbird,”
he said, propriety discarded. “I accommodated your wishes and you defy my simple request. My hospitality has run its course. This game is over.”


When the Mockingbird looked up he would find a spear of jagged flame inches from his heart.

[Dane Gregory]

His beautiful, deadly light snapped back at him like the gods flicked burning rubber bands. Dane yelled and curled his face to his chest, the cold marble smooth as ice beneath his cheeks. His eyes clamped shut, arms thrown behind his head. He couldn't make himself small enough.

Dane's raged drained away while the building fear huddled him small and nonthreatening. The fire-rings quenched upon themselves, no longer fed by his glorious power. Replaced by Damien's fiends, gun-barrels aimed once more.

He was trembling when he peeked up only to see the gods looming overhead. Damien was a billow of smoke, a demon spit from some furious volcano. Dane's cheeks was streaked with tears, his sleek hair disheveled from huddling. His eyes, rimmed with beads of sweat, were narrowed upon the point of a burning spear inches from his throat.

His chin quivered, but his hatred of Damien was fully unveiled. He knew this was Damien's retaliation, but for what, Dane didn't know. All he sensed was the radiance of nearby power choking Dane of all his other senses. "No more games,"
Dane affirmed and carefully tried to stand, otherwise effectively cowed into obedience. But a quick glance at the witnesses sharpened his gaze like the promising bite of a shark. The day he was fully beaten was the day he died.

Edited by Dane Gregory, Nov 28 2014, 01:43 PM.

[Damien]

The Mockingbird curled up like a porcupine against a wolf. Damien's eyes narrowed at the sudden change, and were drawn down further when the man looked up at him with tear-stained eyes full of innocent hatred.

He waved away the aimed rifles and with only a slight hesitation his soldiers resumed a resting guard. Damien knelt down, embroidered gold still smouldering. "What happened to you?"
he said in a whisper.

He tread a path of thin ice with this approach. The rewards though. They would be worth the cost. "You never wanted to be a murderer, a villain. All you wanted was to be recognized for what you were. But they shunned you."
Damien's voice softened to sympathy after the sharp sting. "I have felt the same pain. Convicted and sentenced to die because they were too afraid of the possibilities. Too afraid of accepting what I was, what I could become."


Damien took the Mockingbird by the shoulder and hauled him upright. "Do not waste yourself on such petty crime. Instead of a man that is loathed, you can become Lord Gregory, adored as a liberator and feared by your enemies. I give you the chance to use your talents for a greater purpose, and you will never have to fear those who have wronged you again."


Damien ventured a smile of liquid gold. "I lured you here not to insult you, but to offer you my help, Lord Gregory. Accept it, and I will put your talents to a more worthy use. There is only one thing I ask in return. Like a the humble caterpillar, you must shed your old skin to become something greater. For Lord Gregory to shine, the Mockingbird must die."

[Dane Gregory]

Damien's rapport was lost on Dane. Other men might recognize the appeal to empathy, that Damien once knew similar maltreatment by others and the emptiness it left inside. But Dane was not other men. He lay motionless while Damien hovered above, uttering sentences that might as well have been a foreign language. Being brought to his feet helped only to lift his dignity, although Dane winced away from Damien's physical presence afterward. The implications of a stronger, larger man looming close did not bother him, rather the touch of his hand on his shoulder. Witnesses were blank faced, but Dane noticed only the lowering of their guns rather than any nuances in expression that indicated a change in their hearts.

There was one phrase in particular that lit his eyes proud. Dane's grandfather had been an Earl in the pre-Custody world, and were it not for the loss of fiefdom, such grandiose titles would have been his someday. It was a historical price they paid, he supposed, exchanging the ancient ways for security and continued wealth. Titles did nothing for a bankrupt family. He would rather have wealth than prestige, because one can accumulate the other over time but not the other way around. It was always easier to inherit wealth while prestige was a mysterious emotion that swirled behind other people's eyes like conspiracies he would never understand. Damien lured the wrong bait to force Dane's compliance. Followers' adoration and enemies' fear meant nothing to Dane. A tree could bestow as much emotion upon Dane and he would not know the difference.

Dane's fury was dampened, however, by the lure of Damien's second bait. Intimacy was what Dane craved, which was why he always reverted to the satisfaction of devoting his attentions on one person at a time. Could Damien recapitulate what he'd experienced with Aria and the whore? He did not understand why Mockingbird and Lord Gregory were mutually exclusive of one another. Mockingbird simply enjoyed kicking the ant hill and watching the chaotic aftermath. What would he doodle if not the Mockingbird? After a thousand cards, he'd finally perfected the sketch.

The real temptation in Damien's offer was the prospect of survival itself. Dane bowed his head, knowing the posture was one of subservience. His voice was compliant, soft. "Mockingbird and Lord Gregory are conjoined twins that if one were cut away, the other would wither. I cannot kill one part of myself no more than I could cut off my own arm. But I think you are asking something else of me entirely, though I do not know what it is. Tell me your offer and I will tell you if I accept."


After so many convoluted comments, Dane needed plainness.

[Damien]

Gregory was for the most part a blank canvass. It was not as he had hoped but it was an outcome he was prepared for. Gregory was in many ways an alien presence in human guise. The emotion and nuance of humanity had been either scoured or never existed.

Damien wore patience like a glove, wielding only two other weapons; threat and temptation. Yet again his years behind steel walls granted him wisdom. Many failed to see clearly the rewards to be reaped and fell victim to the sterile cage designed to break them.

“A straightforward man,”
Damien approved. “Let me make it clear for you, Lord Gregory. You have a unique gift but I cannot allow it to be used against me or this country. Stay with me and you shall have the opportunity to use your gift.”
The lack of discernible patterns in his attacks was telling. “As long as you only approach approved targets – and be sure, there will be no shortage of them – you will not be hindered. Attack anyone without consent and you shall die.”


More sensitive was the topic of the Mockingbird. Gregory’s pride in the alter-ego was plain. “There will be only one other condition. All traces of the Mockingbird must disappear from public view. No more cards. If you do not understand why, understand that you will die if you do not comply.”

[Dane Gregory]

There were two options. Leave the country and do what he wanted, when he wanted. Or stay here and bark at Damien's ankles until he was thrown a bone to play with.

It would be nice to expand his hobbies without threat of the authorities breathing down his neck. More, since Damien was the authority in Mexico, it would be like the Mockingbird had their blessing.

His face split into an oily grin. His agreement wasn't forever, and what Damien didn't know wouldn't hurt him. "Alright. I agree to these terms. What can I do first? Or would you like a demonstration?"
He bit the tip of his tongue between his teeth, giddy at the prospect, and scanned the nearest faces for a choice selection.

Edited by Dane Gregory, Dec 21 2014, 07:49 PM.