Muse U. Hunter's Story

#e3001f

It was a quiet Saturday morning, more like time for lunch but since Vincent had not felt like getting out of bed when he woke up the first time he was still in there. It was not because he was tired, it was more like his whole body was protesting so he was not that urged to move. He felt a bit bruised, most likely because he had got a bit beaten up at yesterday’s mission. Still there was no bruise to be found on his body, it was only a play of his mind - since he was aware of the fact that he had gotten extreme amounts of metal in him. The part that was the worst was getting them out of the healed wounds however, because that was not something the body did by itself and sometimes the projectiles do get stuck in there. The operations to get them out was not something Vincent would recommend to anyone. It was mostly ripping the metal out of his body before the opening had closed up again. And now he felt exhausted after spending the first hours of the night on the operation table.

But after a couple of more moments of hiding his face in the softness of the pillow he crawled out of bed like a sloth. When he was done stretching out his stiff body, waking up the somewhat completely naked body before he even consider dressing himself. But hey, it was his room and no one was allowed to enter it like he avoided to enter the other rooms as well.

As the body started to loosen up he stepped over to his closet and started to dress up. But the only thing he actually put on was his usually black jeans while he only took out a white t-shirt and the leather jacket so he could carry them with him out of the room. Sure they shared a big house, these so called "siblings", but no there wasn't bathrooms attached to every room and that was why Vincent walked around bare chested inside the house without even the slightest shame.

It wasn't a long way from his room to one of the bathrooms and when he was inside he took that much needed shower before dressing up completely. As he left the room he couldn't help but notice that someone had tampered with the decor so as he walked pass it he fixed it. It had to look like it usually did, no exception. When done he went down the stairs and even if there was people around the house he didn't bother with greeting them, like the nice and friendly person he was. He just walked inside the living room over to the bookshelf and started to inspect the content. Controlling that it still was the way he had left them before going away on the mission, this was not his books it was those the whole family shared. Or you could call it a cover and things the organization had left them so that they had things to play around with when they weren't working. But in Vincent’s mind all of these was his and his only. No one could screw up his order, he had made it all so pretty.

But he had no intention to read anything this day, just check that Flynn hadn’t been there touching Vincent’s books. No, he had something else to do today. Gardening. The garden had looked dreadful yesterday when they came home, at least in Vincent’s opinion. Other than that Vincent also believed that he had been indoors for too long by now - in his opinion. As long as it wasn't too sunny outside he preferred to be outdoors anyway, more space between him and the other's then. More space for him to be alone in. Inside the house it was almost impossible not to have people breathing down his neck if not being locked up inside his personal room, which wasn’t too fun after a while.

As he walked out through the door he glanced slightly upwards, a cloudy day. A perfect day. He walked over to the shed to collect the things he needed before he crouched down beside his favorite flowerbed, the one with the reddest roses of them all, and started to work.

D- #737CA1

Well, wasn't this just an exciting way to start the day, by being at work. Honestly, Muse was lucky she got any rest last night. Between the mission and being called into work as soon as the sun came up, she was close to running on empty. The only break she seemed to catch was that she managed to get someone else to take over her shift. Who ever said working was fun clearly didn't get to deal with a bunch of whining and bossy customers every damn day. She'd be happy if she didn't want to throw a chair at the end of it, and thanks to 'changing' she never actually did. Had she still been the same Muse from a few years ago, she would've wanted to throw more than just a simple chair.

So that was always a plus.

But when heading home, Muse was already dreading the mess that was probably unfolding. It was about noon, so it wasn't like they were all still sleeping. Someone had to be awake, right? And knowing her 'family', that would just end up waking everyone else up in the process after awhile. If she was lucky, maybe if she went through the backyard they weren't to spot her right away... But judging by the way the voices were erupting from the backyard when she approached it, that entire plan was popped.

Now, don't get her wrong, she loved everyone in the house the best she could, it was just the fact that she was running on about an hour of sleep from the night prior to the mission. Blah. Opening the gate, Muse reluctantly drew closer to the entirety of the crowd. Vincent, saying something in Russian, Caddy being Caddy, and... Oh no, she dragged Persephone? Wait, wait, wait, were those pregnancy tests? Muse paled.

"...Is this a bad time to come home?" Muse asked, eyes darting from person to person before she gave the garden a once over. She'll have to mention later how nice it was looking. Which wasn't surprising. Vincent took amazing care to it, so it was only natural. Maybe she could help him later? If his mood wasn't completely shattered, that is. "Cadence, I don't believe waving, uh, those around outside is exactly a good thing to do..." She added in, walking right on up to the group, holding her purse close to her with a sigh.

Ah, the joys of actually spending part of the weekend at the house.

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Vincent had a predictably unenthusiastic reaction. It was almost as though he didn't care if two of his partners were pregnant. He was busy screwing around with his garden. Percy looked at it with narrow eyes, analyzing the soil and then she felt something touching her. She looked down at her feet, her eyes widening. There was a garden snake coiling around her leg. No one else seemed to see it or if they did they didn't care. It was probably a hallucination. Vincent's plants turned into snakes, each hissing and slithering around her legs, up her body, underneath her shirt. They constricted her chest, making it impossible to breathe. No, no this couldn't be real, her mind said rationally and yet she was panicking. Her breathing quickened, it felt as though she were rooted to the spot.

It wasn't real, it wasn't real. Percy chanted in her mind, she didn't need to tell them, there was no reason to freak out and yet she could feel their scaly skin. It wasn't exactly slimy, more smooth in a metallic way like a large sheet of metal crushing her in a vise sort of grip. Percy closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and when she opened them, they were melting, dissolving in a puddle at her feet. Melted snakes at least were much more bearable to handle than live ones.

Vincent cursed at them in Russian. It shouldn't have come as a surprise but still, it did. Percy knew a little bit of it, she had a Russian friend in school who had taught them curse words and basic slang. She could call him a number of things in a number of languages (when one has a lot of free time on their hands, they tend to get curious). Percy knew that would do nothing to escalate the situation though and so she knelt down to Cadence's height, whispering in her ear. "He just cursed you out." She said, wondering what the pink haired girl would do now that their plan was foiled.

#404040

“Alright Pops, I got it covered, you know I do. You’ll have your papers on the printer in ten minutes. Aie, Deactivate. Anything else I should know?”

“No, that’s it. I will come back later if I need some help with anything else,” Even as he spoke Flynn had to think about it. There wasn’t anything more, right? No, he had already taken care of the things he wanted to take care of. Or… yes he had. If there was anything more he had already forgotten about it. So it couldn’t be that important.

“And hey, back off with your cleanliness shit. I hear you’re driving the kids mad.” Flynn was already by the door when Olsen pointed that out and that comment, out of the blue, it made Flynn chuckle. He just found it funny, like some sort of joke. He couldn’t take it seriously coming from Olsen. But it wasn’t a mean laughter in any way, it came from the heart. The heart of some sort of father figure.

“What are you talking about? Back of? Cleanliness shit? He chuckled once more while shaking his head, “Olsen… You disappoint me, how can you say something like that? I remember when you were younger and used to clean your room as well. I understand that you want to be the kid’s friend and all that but I’m not here to be a friend. And once they’ve understood that I’m the one in charge I will continue to have rules and demand that they are followed.”

After his little speech he gave Olsen a small nod as a goodbye before leaving the room. He needed to get back to his office and take a look at those new papers. See what the mission was about. And then let Edward take a look at them. Yeah, so much to do all the time. No time to rest at all. But the kids played around, well, there was nothing wrong with letting them play around a little bit. They were still kids after all.

Once inside his office he sat down in the huge armchair once more and picked up the printed papers. As he glanced through them he relaxed, it seemed to be an easy mission this time. Nothing too complicated. They could definitively do this without any setbacks.

#e3001f

What a quiet night. Nice even. Vincent had never been a fan of long car rides with his family, but the whole mission thing was always enjoyable. Even if he didn’t have a part in plan A, the one without violence and confrontation. He just had to wait for plan B, the one where the hacker fought back and he got to play. Ow, he was just waiting on the outside. Leaning against the wall beside the window, waiting for something to happen. The view was nice though, the moon however over the city like a big eye. Watching everyone. Kind of like Dragonfly. What a scary thought.

Everything was fine, everything was quiet. Even boring. Vincent was starting to lose interest, to lose focus, it was a late night so he should already gone to bed by now. He was starting to fall asleep where he stood and guarded the exit, yawning constantly as well. Just as his eyes started to feel heavy and he started to nod off there was a sound, a voice in his ear. A single word, but it made him regain focus immediately. Opening his eyes and glancing towards the window, Fuck?

He couldn’t hear fighting or shouting from the inside. But what had made Dani respond like that? Oh, perhaps the hacker wasn’t home. But that didn’t make sense either, why would Edward choose this night if that was the case? Edward usually never was wrong when it came to these kind of stuff. Yeah the whole situation confused Vincent. It seemed so strange, well that was until he suddenly heard someone calling his name from the inside, “Yo! Vince! A hand, please?” And inside his ear. Leaving behind a ringing tone and a headache.

So he stepped inside, it was dark. Not that surprising. But as he walked through the apartment he seemed to furrow his eyebrows more and more. Things was gathered on the floor, drawers was left open. This was not professional. This was not the Dragonfly style, he couldn’t understand why his companions would do something like that. Were they crazy? No one was supposed to know that someone had been in here and just happened to kidnap the guy who owned the apartment. People was supposed to believe that he had just disappeared, vanished, moved on. According to their information he was a loner so that wouldn’t be that surprising. But this, no one would be fooled.

But as he moved around in the rubble, there was this hint in the air. A smell. A stench even, of death. Vincent remembered it. He had smelled it so many times before. But this time… it wasn’t supposed to smell of death this time. The closer he got to the source the stronger the smell got, if he wasn’t used to it he would probably be feeling sick by now. Because… it smelled bad. Like the dead thing had been lying in here for a while, in the heat. It smelt of decomposition.

And sure enough that was just what Dani had responded to, once he found her he found her beside the corpse… no mess left of the man. “Oh man… Is that? Yeah, it probably is…”

Once the initial shock had subsided he slowly shook his head while dragging the hand over the neck, “So… What do we do now? I guess we need to pick the pieces left of the computer and bring them to Olsen? See if he can find anything.” The others should have heard the whole conversation, they should had picked up on the smell as soon as Dani had opened the door. So even if the earlier statements was directed towards Dani Vincent continued to talk, without even moving an inch of his body. The small microphone picked up on the sound anyway and sent it to all the others earphones of the team, even Edward and Olsen who still was in the main house. “The dude is dead. Murdered. Should we clean up the mess and do some tests on the? Because well… the way he’s been dumped here will raise some eyebrows. People will be too interested in the case. Should we perhaps set the apartment on fire as well? Erase all fingerprints or something? I don’t know what to do.” Even if this was a major setback Vincent still kept his composure, he didn’t need to work himself up over this. No, the best way to handle the situation was to stay calm and collected. And figure out a way to get back on track and make something out of this mess.

#e3001f

"No need to cause a scene," Alright then. If that was what Edward thought was the best idea Vincent could accept it. Even if he still was a bit concerned about the fact that they could have left some sort of DNA evidence behind. Like a strain of hair. But since no one else believed that something like that would happen there was no need to argue about it. "Be ready to engage in combat as they might already know we are here."

"What? They? Who are you talking about? The ones that killed the guy?" Did Edward think that someone was waiting for them? Was this all a trap? Holy crap, what if this is a trap? And they just walked straight into it! Even if Vincent didn't want to he could feel his pulse raising as he made himself jumpy, staring around in the room. He even walked over to the window and as he reached out his glove covered hand to separate the blinds something made him stop immediately, a new voice. One he had never heard before spoke inside the small ear piece.

The first thought was simply This is it, this is the end. He was so sure that the guy was one of those that belonged to that They that Edward had mentioned. Who else could it be? Neither of them had gotten any information about someone new joining them. Vincent was sure that they had been hacked, it was so obvious. Or maybe not... It was not like the guy on the other side made any types of threats or demands. Or he did demand things, but not something that could be expected of the culprits, right? No, Vincent had no clue by this point. He could feel the thoughts bounce around his head in hyper speed. Why was it one of these types of missions? He wanted to punch someone so bad at this point.

After a couple of deep breathes and a unhappy look from Dani Vincent collected himself again, somewhat, "Who are you?! And how are you able to access our devices? A hacker?" Dani's comment about a new family member had entered one ear and went out through the other. "If you are one of those who killed this guy you are extremely stupid! Wait... what..? Don't disturb the scene? Who the fuck are you?! Don't give us orders! Just collect the things Edward told us about so we can leave this place before someone notices us. This was supposed to be an in and out mission! We can't stay much longer."