Undying Loyalty(Antonio)

June 28, 2025

PlotLog

Date: 2025-06-27 14:24

(Undying Loyalty(Antonio):Antonio)

[Fri Jun 27 2025]

On a gas station/span>/spanYou stand in front of a desolate gas station situated next to one of the less frequented roads of Massachusetts. The asphalt of the road near you seems gray and dusty, some cracks and holes beginning to appear on it already. The gas station that stands before you seems old, not seeming to bear the symbols for any corporation. The faded-green canopy and roof above the pump stands a bit rusted, and you’d be convinced that it was abandoned if it was not for the booth with some snacks and cigarettes lined on various shelves.

It is afternoon, about 74F(23C) degrees, and there are clear skies. The mist is heaviest At Maple and Lake/span>/spanwaits for Mab and Lykaia to climb in, with the latter probably drawing the short stick as she is relegated to the less comfy backseat of the coupe, at least she gets to sit next to Antonio’s nice briefcase. Antonio starts up the engine and drives for a few moments before speaking, checking the rear mirror a few times, the mirror angled in the best way possible to not reflect the driver before he starts to speak, “I must agree that the timing of this meetup is not to my liking either, but we do what we do due to necessity,” He begins, fixing his tie even as he drives. “The plan is that we are going to meet up with a representative first, from The Syndicate. It could be a squad to supply us, it could be a single guy to brief us. I haven’t been given too many details outside of the spot and time,” He says, the trio traveling for a good few minutes, Antonio doing some good speed with the coupe.

“Mhmmmm,” Mab muses with a slow nod of her head, “and is this the, ‘point guns at us and tell us what we’ll be doing for them’ branch for them branch of the Syndicate, or the ‘show up with a briefcase of diamonds and tell us there’s more where that came from’ branch of the Syndicate?” The New Haven VP says all of this with a smile and her manicured hands folded in her lap, completely unmeaning in her candy-wrapped demeanour. But she certainly sounds like she’s had dealings with them before. “I suggest Nachtlied prepare for scenario one, while I prepare for scenario two? Though I vote hypnosis before guns wherever possible.”

Comfort doesn’t seem to be on Lykaia’s mind at all. She leans back, gets the seatbelt in, listens, but also reaches around to slider out her carbine from a larger backpouch attached to her belt harness. Hand goes along the rifle, the charging handle is pulled back, a bullet is set into the chamber, safety-lock is kept on safe, and the HK416 is set down onto her lap.

Attention mostly on the road, Antonio continues to drive with a poker face as Mab replies, lips parting briefly for him to be able to lick a sharp canine in length as he considers his words, “I’d say the first, but you won’t see any guns today. From them. A deal has already been struck, and they know that I won’t be turning back. Of course they do.” He tells Mab, perhaps trying to be as vague as possible intentionally as he drives, picking up speed as he takes a right before the interstate and enters a more desolate road that only keeps getting more and more so.

It is a bone-scorchingly hot summer afternoon, the sun baking the top of the coupe as the trio, aided partly by the car’s own AC, arrive at a desolate road surrounded by patches of dry land. A suspicious looking, black minivan is eventually spotted up in the distance, the few windows that it has being tinted, another car baking under the June sun. Antonio pulls over and moves the car, stopping parallel to the van before rolling down the window. The van’s window rolls down, as well, revealing a man wearing a poker face along with an olive beret, fingerless gloves and a black leather duster. “You are late.” Are his only words as he takes in the only other passenger that he can see, Mab, sizing her up and down.

Mab flashes the poker-faced man a flirtatious smile, as sunny as he is serious. “Hi darling,” she greets him, lifting up her manicured fingers to wiggle his way. “We’re sorry for the delay, it’s actually all my fault. Mr Vasquez did want us leaving earlier, but I held us up handling a strawberry shipment for Candykane Manfield. They’re just fresh off the vibe and unblemished, you know how it goes, hmm?”

It would sound like nonsense were anyone to record what she’d just said to the police. But anyone discerning, with experience working for folks such as these can probably guess — she’s not talking about strawberries, and her Syndicate contact is not, in fact, a ‘candy’ salesman.

“I’ll have a sample sent your way tomorrow and we’ll call this even?” Mab tries sweetening the candy-pot.

Mab said ‘vine’ rather than ‘vibe’, probably.

Unhooking the seatbelt when the car’s taking a stop and Lykaia’s small sinks down a bit. The HK-416 is grabbed with both hands, upper ready position, eyes able to keep over the lower corner of the side window and her head slowly turns, sweeps around, ’till the evident minivan makes its way over and Antonio and Mab go to interact. A hand removes her sunglasses, slides it in where there’s space below her neck, and the carbine’s barrel vaguely turns towards the van’s driver seat. It keeps being held close, ready, just in case.

Drumming his fingertips on the steering wheel, Antonio’s lips purse with the other man’s words, taking a few moments to consider his reply, the man checking out Mab a little more than necessary as he does. His eyes are a dark shade of brown, his skin is either a little tanned or seems that way from where the trio sit, and his face is adorned by a dark, messy stubble, then there is the cigar that is fidgeted in between his lips, up and down, acting more like an incense from him by the looks of it.

His nose scrunches up briefly with the mention of the Candy Man, and he leans back on the steering wheel, anything beyond breast-level for him being invisible due to the tinted windows of his own, “Don’t care about none of your dope slingin’ pussies, he ain’t paying us,” Is his blunt, apathetic reply that shuts her off, which is a shame, as it was almost seeming like he was beginning to like her.

That is when Antonio decides to butt back in, “Sorry about the delay. We had some scheduling issues-” He is about to say before the other man snaps at him, “Also don’t give no fuck about your scheduling issues. We had a reasonable place and time, you fucking botched it. You begged for another, you got it, and you arrived thirty two fuckin’ minutes late, you owe the boss and you dare to pull fuckin’ shit like this,” He says with an apathetic tone of voice with a venomous undertone, pointing at Antonio as he does. “I’d have your zombie-balls or whatever if I was in the helm, be fuckin’ glad that I don’t.” Are his next words as he scoffs, reaching into the glovebox to pull something out, which might perhaps alert Lykaia watching in the backseat, but fortunately, it emerges with a pair of aviator shades that are pushed onto his face. “Bob’s. He’s waitin’ and he doesn’t fucking like waiting. Good for him, too, test your thing on him then cap his fuckin’ ass, or haul his ass, we don’t care. You got your cam,” He says vaguely before hitting the gas, his engine revving wildly before his van lurches forward, veering into the road before speeding off out of sight.

“By far, that was one of the most eloquent Syndicate goons I’ve ever met,” Mab shares with car cadre once the angry goon is speeding off. She rolls her eyes, leaning back in her seat, and then turns to try the exact same charm on Antonio, like she didn’t just give him a preview of exactly how sincere her niceties tend to be. “I’m so sorry again for the delay, darling. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” She scrunches up her face in the ghost of a guilty pout.

It’s when the man reaches for the glovebox that Lykaia unlocks the safety, waiting, preying. Finger stays off trigger but lined just above it. Her finger shakes and pulls, sliding over the carbine’s metal when he pulls his sunglasses up. Fortunately. Then there’s some more talk, and the van drives off, and Lykaia locks the safety again before setting the carbine back down onto her hips. “What’s the plan on ‘Bob’?”

The lips of Antonio remain pursed as he gets chewed out, hand still on the steering wheel as he takes it with his always-neutral expression. Only when the other man speeds up does his head roll back, Mab perhaps catching a tired gaze by looking at his face from the side, bypassing the dark lenses before that head lowers back down. He would likely sigh, if he could, “It’s alright.” Are his simple words, said with simple defeat and maybe a bit of relief as they are uttered, and he presses the gas to get them off the patch of dry earth and back onto the cracked, unmaintained asphalt road, “That’s the lieutenant of an old friend. Maybe one of a few. These guys deal in violence, diplomacy or deals are not their forte,” He explains as he drives, the tinted and specially treated windshield blocking most of the pain of the sunlight, but it is still obvious that he suffers at least a bit under that scorching sun, but at least the interior is a bit cooler thanks to the AC.

“‘Bob’s’ is the name of the gas station that the meeting is at, it is not too far ahead,” Antonio then explains to Lykaia as he glances behind his shoulder briefly, “We’ll be testing this experimental device on this Garfield guy. After that, they want him bagged, or worst case, killed. The testing of the device is not conditional, they seemed to care less about the rest,” He is explaining further as the gas station appears at the horizon, and then starts to get bigger, there seems to be a faded teal Chevrolet Impala parked under the restful shade of the canopy of the gas station, “That’s likely him.” He says, giving Mab then Lykaia a check, before instructing the latter, “Try not to spook him too much, and pass me that briefcase, will you?” As he reduces speed and begins to approach the Impala.

“And what exactly does the device do?” Mab asks Antonio, lingering in her car seat for now. With a look towards Lykaia, she suggests, “Depending on the kind of condition we need him in, I could just go out and trance him and then she can bag him and we do this the hard way. Or does the device work better if we try to befriend him? I mainly remember you saying it was a simple point and click thing.”

The Montrose casts the Vasquez a sympathetic look, advising him, “The sun doesn’t bother me quite as much — might be a perk of the Fae blood.”

Lykaia does not set the seatbelt again on the drive back, but listens on. When the request comes, she slings the rifle around herself, turns and grabs the briefcase. It’s kept in the angle that it had been placed on, if it’s the side, hands try and lift it by the lower corners, if it’s standing up, by the handle at the top. Then the briefcase is held out to Antonio “Will appear as personal bodyguard. Rifle held up. Fit the image.” She comments to him. “He any kind of supernat?”

“Short term memory loss, dizziness, not too far from the effects of concussion, if the manual is to be believed,” Antonio replies to Mab, receiving his briefcase with two hands before he undoes the clasps, revealing a pen, some papers, a calculator, all that boring stuff … and then there it is, a black, cylindrical device with a reflector-emitter slit at the top, not too unlike a flashlight. It has a palm-friendly lower grip, but no buttons or triggers in sight. He pulls it out, and offers it to Mab as he turns a bit to warn Lykaia, “No bodyguards, this guy is a ‘nutjob’ as they say in the biz’. I believe that…” He pauses, casting a very faint smile aside at Mab, “Since Miss Montrose here is excellent with the sun, and is not at all uncomely if I might say, along with not appearing to be the most threatening person, she must be the one to try this … next revolution in non-lethal technology,” His eyes are probably rolling as he passes the device along to Mab,

“Miss Montrose, you must go up to him, chat him up, appear nonthreatening. Pretend to know about his master, appear symphathetic, and when he lets his guard down, point the light towards him and pull the trigger,” He instructs slowly, then turns back towards Lykaia, “We will wait here in case anything goes wrong, and if it does … you have that gun of yours.”

The car that the trio is in pulls in right behind the Impala, bumper almost touching the rear of the latter vehicle.

“Copy that.” Lykaia says with a hand that slides down into a pouch along her belt harness, retrieving and attaching a bipod to the underside of her HK-416 carbine. This follows by taking out a silencer, rolling that into place at the front. Her form then moves down, trying to get a good angle from which she can better respond from without exposing herself.

Mab looks at the device as though it were alien technology, zero understanding showing in her ‘not uncomely’ blue eyes; but also, not too much interest. Good thing that’s Selena Blackwood’s job, not hers. “Alrighty,” she says with a smile, regaining focus mainly when Antonio explains just how foolproof activating the device should be. Tucking the device away, she then looks to the car door as if she expects someone to open it for her, waits a beat, and then remembers Antonio is a tired vampire and not her chauffeur, so she opens the door herself. But she looks vaguely bemused to be doing so at all, clearly not a typical day for her.

She approaches Garfield with a shy-seeming smile, which does not at all match any aspect of her ensemble, from the frou-frou red dress to the Louboutin manicure. Still she tries, one step at a time. “Hi there,” she greets him. “Do you know the way to the Tea Party Ships and Museum from here? We’ve gotten really turned around. It would really mean so much if you could just take a minute to talk to my driver and help us …”

Pursing his lips, Antonio waits for Mab to leave the car and execute his plan, just staring at her with shade-obscured eyes as she subconsciously expects him to open the door, eventually breaking the impasse with a self-inflicted reality check as she leaves. He reaches for a GoPro, then, the small, army-green device seeming to be one of the higher-shelf models. He sets it to record and places it above the dashboard to record Mab, looking behind his shoulder to Lykaia, then, “It is part of the job, don’t worry about it. Also, no… I don’t think he is a supernatural,” He assures, then answers one of her earlier questions as he goes back to observing Mab quietly.

At the car front, the window of the old Impala is cranked down manually by a hysteric, scraggly young man, bags under his eyes and a shake in his tone and bones as he is confronted by Mab. His eyebrow twitches, then, as it registers, “You are that Montrose woman,” He says, surprisingly lucidly, seeming to be getting a bit paranoid before his eyes are caught, his tone and mannerisms seeming to suddenly mellow down. “I… I was supposed to meet up with someone…” He murmurs, swaying a bit on the driver’s seat before looking back up to Mab more decisively, “How can I help?” He asks meekly, tired eyes open and on her as he does.

“Yeah, I’m that Montrose woman,” Mab murmurs softly in confirmation, almost sounding self-conscious about it. Hey, apparently lots of stars are really approachable and introverted in person? But not her, she’s just acting. She waits to catch his gaze — though she didn’t need to, initially, to render him slightly more pliable. Once she has it, she holds it in a trance, and then raises the device towards his eyes.

Point and squeeze, really simple, apparently. And a good thing too, because anything more complex than that and the century-old vampiress probably couldn’t have managed it.

His eyes on Mab is useful, making Lykaia turn the barrel of her rifle towards Gabriel. The safety lock is turned to burst fire. Her head still stays low, with a finger that lines up against the side of the trigger and the other hand placing down atop the carbine.

Dazed and bedazzled, the young man attempts to reply “I wouldn’t really mind help-…” before he is staring down the slit upon the top of the device, the insides covered in reflective material placed in an unconventional yet technically purposeful way and the center housing a rather large emitter. The capacitors within the device start to buzz to light, making that wonderful noise that cameras make as they ready to discharge a flash, a sound that Mab might be all-too-familiar with, but after the charge; the flash never comes, instead…

“Hope your trigger finger is not too itchy, that is my windshield, you know,” Antonio is about to say to Lykaia in a tone of slight complaint before Mab withdraws the device in a really ‘released bodycam footage’ worthy fashion, but instead of the expected flash, the capacitors within the device crack terribly, one by one, that noise that conveys ‘something is wrong’ being followed up by the emitter simply exploding and taking the glass cover with it, sending small shards of glass all over the young man’s face and eyes. Ouch. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” He says, before rapidly turning to try and lower Lykaia’s barrel, “Hold on, don’t fire just yet,” He urges, leaving Mab to her own devices for the time being.

“Ohhh, that wasn’t supposed to happen,” Mab admits to Garfield. It’s not exactly an apology, but she does sound pretty disappointed. And since imprints don’t tend to override the self-preservation instincts most humans have when it comes to threat of real, physical danger or risk of death, this might’ve gone south a little faster than intended. Stepping back towards the car while the schizo’s left to flail, scream, run or whatever it is that humans tend to do when they’re in pain, Mab calls to Lykaia sweetly, “Nachtlied darling, would you mind dragging him into the back? I guess the prototype didn’t work, he’s blinded now though, and they probably still want him.”

LykaiaAntonio asks if she hears something, and her gaze draws around, only to be caught by Mab. Carbine safety is set to locked, then dropped, unpleasantly hanging from its sling around her. A hand quickly reaches for the door handle and opens it, and out she goes to try and rush over to subdue Garfield, hand reaching for his wrist to pull him down to the ground.

Antonio’s hand lowers from Lykaia’s barrel to quickly undo his seatbelt, hopping out of the car and into the relatively shaded pump section of the gas station, hurried steps echoing as he jogs over to Mab, an expression of utter distaste in his face, the expression of a man whose rear is on the line, “What happened?!” He asks, just slightly out of composure before he regains it, fixing his tie, slowly, “That device was not supposed to explode… did you squeeze too hard?” He asks, almost seeming to be searching for a reason before he walks over to the rolled down window of the impala, nose scrunching up as he looks at Garfield who is holding onto his bloodied face and screaming, for a few seconds, at least, before he starts crying. “This was not supposed to happen,” He says, more calmly now, echoing Mab’s sentiment before his nose scrunches up again, he turns towards the woman, “I think someone is coming, let’s hope it is just passer-bys,” He hopes aloud, looking towards Lykaia now as she hops out of the car to get their target. Hands are placed on his waist as he takes a moment to just look up, at the canopy, contemplatively, “Fuck.” He curses, quietly, of course.

Whoever it is that’s approaching right now, Mab quickly seems to decide that her part in this is all done, and she starts back for the relative safety of Antonio’s car while Lykaia handles the crying Garfield.

“I literally just got my nails done,” Mab tells Antonio in a tone of disbelief, pointedly flicking her Louboutin-manicured talons in the air between them. “Why would I squeeze the device too hard? Do you even know how delicately I have to handle most things with nails like these? I have the touch of an angel’s feather. So not my fault.”

Maybe Garfield didn’t expect it quick enough, got confused enough, and he’s evidently distracted when he looks up. Lykaia’s hands grab his wrist firmly and yanks him forward, sidestep, keep a leg in place and he goes tumbling down to the ground, leading to her climbing atop his back, knee in the middle of his back with no regard to his comfort. Another hand goes into a pouch and out comes a pair of handcuffs swiftly applied to his wrists. A silver collar also comes out and is placed around his neck, just in case.

Then a hand drags at the cloth of Garfield’s neck and she tries to move him out of immediate sight, behind his own vehicle if it’s near enough, a trash can, or any other cover. “Shut up. Else.”

“That is the least of our concerns…” Antonio is about to say to Mab, but as the realization dawns on him that is the least of *his* concerns, his voice tapers off and he shuts up, simply pursing his lips as Lykaia handles Garfield, which is no hard task at all, the strong woman having barely any trouble with dragging him out, manhandling him then cuffing him up for transit. He opens his mouth and seems to be about to complain as he pauses, freezing dead-quietly before his head snaps towards the road where, lo-and-behold…

A Toyota Hilux, a model from the late 90s at the latest, barrels down the road, white with the large, red decal of a hissing and frazzled cat on its trunk and doors. This is no ordinary Toyota Hilux, no, this one seems to have had an M249 SAW jury-rigged onto it, and the masked man manning it seems to be racking it as it appears on the road, rapidly advancing towards the gang. Ever the thoughtful companion, Antonio decides to make a run for the driver’s seat of his coupe as danger approaches in the form of a technical packing an LMG and a few men armed with AKs, not the most sane combo, but dangerous nonetheless.

Mab gives Antonio another look like she probably expects him to open his car’s door for her, but she has very little time to give lessons in chivalry right now. So whether he does or doesn’t, that door ends up open, and the frou-frou Montrose is ducking her elegant self in. She actually doesn’t stop ducking once she’s in the car, because something tells her things are about to go south real fast. It’s probably those sharp supernatural senses, coupled with survival instincts that got her through the most lethal century in human history.

As for Lykaia Mab doesn’t even bother warning her, she seems to expect the Spectress Peacekeeper to already have this whole situation well in hand.

The sound of another engine is coming down into their direction, and Lykaia begins to rush to open the door to Garfield’s vehicle, attempting to search his pockets with patting hands for the keys if the doors are locked or the keys isn’t in the engine. Garfield himself is treated like an object, dropped, slid around, doesn’t matter. The safety lock from her rifle is released but remains lowered.

Now with true danger in sight, Antonio is quick to rush to the driver seat of his coupe with no warning to his comrades, starting up the engine as quickly as he can as he quickly checks behind his shoulder and Mab joins him at just about the same time, “This was not supposed to happen!” He exclaims with a frown as the engine starts up. In the meanwhile, Lykaia seems to be searching poor Garfield for his keys, but alas, his keys are nowhere on his person, in fact, they are right in the ignition lock, which will be quite handy for her if she catches onto that quick enough, going on from where they keys are not.

The technical, however, wastes absolutely no time to catch up to the still-stationary targets. “Hollaaa, gringos!” Comes the yell of an overenergetic voice from the armed beast, followed by a few maniacal laughs, the barrel of the LMG aiming towards them as one song from the boombox ends and another stands… it is ‘Gone Guru’. A man on the truckbed holds a camcorder to record the whole affair while the other ones simply hold onto their AKs, watching the events that are about to follow. “The Los Gatos send their regards!!” Are the machinegunner’s next overjoyed words before he unleashes a barrage of fire towards the trio, both of the cars immediately finding themselves poked like swiss cheese as bullets start flying. Fortunately for Mab her fingernails are mostly untouched, fortunately for Lykaia and someone, the engine block of the coupe mostly manages to protect them. Unfortunately for Antonio, however, a good four 5.56 rounds zip right through him before hitting the dashboard, blood and bulletholes decorating the dashboard and steering wheel, courtesy of the Los Gatos, as he slumps forth and clutches at his wounds, blood leaking from his lips. “Adios, losers!! We’ll see you at the next bounty!” Are the machinegunners last words as he swivels around, but alas, the thing does not turn 360 degrees, leaving the men to merely laugh their asses off as they speed off.

The technical, however, wastes absolutely no time to catch up to the still-stationary targets. “Hollaaa, gringos!” Comes the yell of an overenergetic voice from the armed beast, followed by a few maniacal laughs, the barrel of the LMG aiming towards them as one song from the boombox ends and another stands… it is ‘Gone Guru’. A man on the truckbed holds a camcorder to record the whole affair while the other ones simply hold onto their AKs, watching the events that are about to follow. “The Los Gatos send their regards!!” Are the machinegunner’s next overjoyed words before he unleashes a barrage of fire towards the trio, both of the cars immediately finding themselves poked like swiss cheese as bullets start flying. Fortunately for Mab her fingernails are mostly untouched, fortunately for Lykaia and Garfield, the engine block of the coupe mostly manages to protect them. Unfortunately for Antonio, however, a good four 5.56 rounds zip right through him before hitting the dashboard, blood and bulletholes decorating the dashboard and steering wheel, courtesy of the Los Gatos, as he slumps forth and clutches at his wounds, blood leaking from his lips. “Adios, losers!! We’ll see you at the next bounty!” Are the machinegunners last words as he swivels around, but alas, the thing does not turn 360 degrees, leaving the men to merely laugh their asses off as they speed off.

“Oh my god!” Mab exclaims as bullets go flying, raising those manicured nails of hers above her head to shield it as she ducks right down beneath the window. The New Haven VP is likely used to many unseemly things, but being shot at is not one of them; she mostly fights her enemies in the boardroom. When she sees those bullets ripping through the dashboard, she looks at the bloodied up Antonio beside her and yells, “Mr Vasquez, your car!”

Then it seems those men are just leaving, and in a shaken voice, shuddering, she asks aloud, “Did they just drive by shoot us and leave? What was the point of that? They didn’t even have the common decency to try and kill us!”

Lykaia dunks down to the ground, hands pulling the carbine up when gunfire starts. Gabriel is left down on the ground, and when the moment comes the gunfire ends and they shout their adios, her carbine comes to peak up. And they’re driving… off? She lets out a pained, confused groan, grabs Garfield by the silver collar, raises the other hand to her ear, carbine dropping down and asks into the comms “VP, Ant, status?” Then starts the way over towards Antonio’s vehicle.

Antonio, at the moment, does not seem to be in a mood to truly mourn for the injuries inflicted upon his car, as he just continues to slump onto the steering wheel, the horn of the car going off for a few seconds before he pushes off a bit, hand coursing through his hole-riddled shirt, inadvertently spreading some blood around and into it before he wipes his mouth off, still a bit slumped, “I am fine…” He says in a raspy tone that is also not quite fine, but he manages to stay conscious nonetheless, not seeming to show any signs of pain. “Doubt I was the target… fucking hell… always fucking me…” He complains in a low tone as he opens the driver’s door and stumbles out, falling onto his knees for a moment before slowly standing back up and moving towards Garfield, “How is he?” He asks Lykaia as he stumbles towards her, such a thoughtful man to ask about his target even right after he had a few holes poked onto him. Or perhaps that is how he will try to save face after botching the entire thing.

It is not long before another vehicle begins its approach, it is no technical this time, fortunately, but the black van from earlier. It pulls into the lot of the gas station, the man from earlier jumping off, a fresh cigar in his mouth, glasses on his eyes and dark olive beanie on his head like earlier, but this time, he also happens to have a pistol unlike earlier, a desert eagle. The backdoor is opened not too long after, and six masked men armed with AR-based rifles jump off. The man grins at the scene, almost, and his natural question is, “Tony, you dumb fuckin’ bastard, how did you fuck up this time?”

The well of Mab’s empathy is so vast that she remains very visibly concerned for Antonio’s poor car, even though he himself refuses to draw attention to the harm that’s been inflicted to it. Her big blue eyes look to be on the verge of tears as she beholds the state of that hood.

Oh, was Antonio himself injured too? She probably didn’t notice. She sort of double-takes his way when he says that he’s fine, but decides to take his word for it. The blood, however, gets enough of her attention that she reaches over, tugs at his shirt as if to examine the wound, and then skims a drop of vampire’s blood on a fingertip for a surreptitious taste test.

Mab decides to try handling the grinning bastard, looking his way with slightly dilated pupils after the minor hit of V. “We didn’t fuck up,” she tells him, “you did. Your device didn’t work. We followed your instructions to the letter. It’s your engineer you need to be giving this shit to, not us.”

“Surviving.” Lykaia answers to Antonio, throwing the package down besides the car, away from the approach of the street. And then there is another vehicle on the approach, Lykaia tells to Antonio and Mab “Behind cover. Fast.” While she herself ducks down behind Antonio’s car, pulls the mask from her sternum holster, places it over her face quickly, then grabs a frag grenade, and loads it into the grenade launcher of her carbine.

Then the earlier guy and his six goonies show up with their own carbines. Mab talks to them, and Lykaia uses that moment to spin around, staying down low, gaze peering for distance and location of the seven under Antonio’s car. “VP, I think they sent them.”

Antonio pauses before stumbling out of the car, of course, giving Mab sort of an incredulous look as she just taste tests him nose scrunching up briefly before he goes on to do all of what he did. Battered and bloodied, he stands, or barely stands, before the judge of the scene with his cigar and the glock, and six armed and armored men in tow, of course, all of them looking straight out of a bank robbery. They secure the perimeter quite quickly in practiced moves, taking cover or staying near cover while having three-sixty coverage of the scene, a few of them having a bead on the solely armed Lykaia.

“The Gatos … they tried to off me, yeah? I got Garfield, like the contract asked. The device?” He gestures towards where Mab is sitting, “She… I mean, it just sort of exploded… it is prone to operational failures, you knew that,” He tries to convince raspily and a little wheezily, the man just listening with a poker face, chewing gently at the mouthpiece of his cigar.

It is Mab’s words, however, that coax a good ol’ laugh from him. “My device? You misunderstand my paygrade, missy, I’m here to do a job. Figured I’d check up on this little shit-stain while I was around here sniffing out some gato-cats in my turf,” He scratches at his beanie, “Guess I missed ’em. No matter,” He says, slowly walking towards Lykaia, “I don’t work with no fuckin’ Gato rat,” He scoffs at her, approaching her with a deagle in a hand by his side. With a free hand, he points at Garfield, then beckons with a finger, the latter just curled up and quiet after all that gunfire, although he still seems to be in quite a bit of pain, “Think you’re so tacti-cool, don’t ya? Playtime’s over, pass him over, let me do my job,” He does not ask, he commands before pointing at Antonio, “Get me that fuckin’ footage and the remains of the device, you better.”

Lykaia keeps her rifle up, leaving the frag inside the grenade launcher before kneeling and then coming up to her feet. Again she grabs Garfield by the silver collar, and drags him along, then removes it. Then steps backwards slowly.

“Oh, this device?” Mab asks the man in the olive beanie, still, despite everything, overtly flirting. She dangles it lightly between her taloned fingers out the window, but doesn’t stretch her arm out towards it, and looks apt to snatch it back at any moment. “You could do so much better, you know. But if trash is all you want, it’s all yours, big boy.” Her eyes linger on his, waiting for him to get closer, closer … just so that she can catch his gaze, perhaps.

Scoffing again, the lieutenant of the group regards Lykaia briefly. “Good.” Is what he says before his arm lifts, the desert eagle is pointed at the man on the ground, and the trigger is squeezed, a gunshot reverberates through the gas station and the empty road ahead as Garfield’s life is snuffed away, and with .44, the result is not pretty. The arm with the gun lowers, he considers the dead man coldly, then turns back around, walking back towards the man as his men keep a bead on Lykaia and cover the sectors, still.

It is not him that comes for the device, to take it off Mab, however, it is Antonio, seeming to just follow the man’s commands without question as he first stumbles at the car, briefly losing control near the hood and falling onto it, smearing even more blood onto the car inadvertently before he reaches in through the shattered driver’s side-window and grabs the go-pro which has been recording the Chevy for a good hour or so, and then grabs the device off of her, desperately staggering all the way back to the van before one of the armed men just grab the camera and damaged device off his hands, pushing him and sending him down to the asphalt before those things are handed off to the lieutenant, which briefly regards them before lifting the camera, “The boss will decide if your debt is paid or not, he’s a much deeper looker than I, y’know,” He says with a shit-eating grin before moving to the passenger seat of the van, his men soon unfurling back to the van before one of them mans it, and soon enough, they are off, leaving the trio to deal with the corpse and two bullet-riddled cars.

Mab casts Antonio a vaguely annoyed look when he stumbles, seemingly expecting him to ‘just get over’ being shot a whole bunch of times. “I guess you weren’t joking about the Syndicate not being pleased with you,” she notes, “what did you do to upset them so much, exactly?”

But for Lykaia, she has nothing but good things to say. “Good work, Peacekeeper. I’m glad we had someone who likes it rough.” She doesn’t explicitly say it, but that’s obviously not her. She slumps in her seat, waiting for a bit, and then seemingly forces herself out of the passenger side door, trotting around to the driver seat like it’s a huge burden for her to do this. “I’ll drive,” she tells Antonio.

“This is a mess.” Lykaia says, instinctively to Mab’s seeming praise, hand raising to then remove the gas mask. “Mister Antonio, backseat. Lie down. Your regeneration, you will live.” She pats down along some of her clothing to get some of the dust off. She will help Antonio if he needs, but then makes her way to the passenger seat. A hand goes down to her phone, looking down to it, sending off a few texts.

“I would … appreciate that,” Antonio replies to Mab with a defeated little smile as he stumbles over to the passenger door this time, making his way onto the relatively less bullet-ridden rear part of the car, after sliding the seat forward because coupes do have that inconvenience, before he slumps down into a recline, finally getting some well-deserved rest after his ordeal and not making a single sound of pain while he does all that, or any other sound, really, as his hat now covers most of his face. This also has the fortunate side effect of letting him dodge Mab’s question with the convenient, lazy little excuse of ‘I just got shot about six times in a second’.

Lykaia might now be beginning to realize just how annoying it is to wear a gas mask and full combat attire in such a hot summer day, especially now that the adrenaline of the events that transpired begin to fade. Fortunately for her, also, Antonio does not seem to need any help carrying himself into the back of the car, one fortunate side effect of not feeling pain.

Before Mab takes a seat, she takes a few moments to meticulously dust off Antonio’s chair. Ideally, she is more than willing to steal papers from his glove compartment to do this without having to physically touch the debris. But if not, she’ll use her hand and then look upset about it. She’s the real victim here.

Another suspicious look is cast Antonio’s way, but she doesn’t push the issue, perhaps accepting that he’s in no physical state to answer. And then they drive off! Back to New Haven, barring any further complications. “It’s always a mess darling, that’s what clean-up’s for,” she remarks. “Speaking of, have a team dispatched from Boston Hand to make sure there’s no supernatural evidence on the scene, make it look like an ordinary drug crime. They’re super sensitive about that stuff out there, it’s honestly pathetic.” She is doubtless spoiled by the openness of the supernatural as a long time New Haven resident.

After settling into the passenger seat, Lykaia rubs a hand along the side of her face, wiping some sweat away and some of which doesn’t look right, and doesn’t come off at all. A proper look would show they’re crystallized, attached to her skin. She makes a sigh, and moves to loosen her armor somewhat, then makes a nod to Mab, types a single word message, jumps out of whatever communication app she was using to open the Hand’s. “Done, VP.” She does not stop with the armor, slides out of the jacket that’s over it. “Should consider just coming in my court attire. But less practical for open combat situations.”