14404/The Odd Job

The Odd Job
Date of Scene:	13 March 2023
Location:	Delmar's Deli-Grocery
Synopsis:	Gabby and Bellona run into Victor Creed who was hired by some old enemies to assasinate Gabby. Some talking ensues, and a plan is formed to get them off her back for awhile. A messy plan.
Cast of Characters:	Gabby Kinney, Victor Creed

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Gabby Kinney has posed:
Usually the deli was slammed. This was one of the few, rare times a day that the often crowded place thins out. Between shifts, just before rush hour, when things thinned out. It was the perfect time for someone who got a bit over-sensitive in crowds to go shopping.

Gabby has one of those little red handbaskets draped over her arm as she moves along the aisles pausing here and there to read a hand written shopping list that she did NOT make. There were already a bunch of sandwiches in the basket. Premade but delicious. Some fruit, and oddly enough bakery items. Flour, sugar, baking soda. She's currently standing in the middle of the baking aisle where few people were wandering looking at the Glabber Girl powders.

"The hell is the difference between baking soda and baking powder?" She mutters to herself with a bit of a sniff trying to suss it out.

"Ya need both to bake!" Mr. Delmar calls out only to inform, "Got to grab a new ham out the freezer, back in a jiff." And then he vanishes into the back leaving the store even emptier than before.

Victor Creed has posed:
Perched on a rooftop on the other side of the deli, Victor Creed absently picks beneath his claw while Gabby does her shopping. He had gotten the message on his service line. Some trouble maker causing trouble for a laboratory that no doubt was causing its own trouble. Difference was, the lab could pay. He didn't have much to go on, just a description of the individual, and some small details on her general whereabouts. He told him it wasn't enough to go on, so they did the surveillance and called him when it was go time. Their security was pretty high end, but they said she was far too dangerous for them to engage. Which was where he came in.

They had been closing the loop on her for a few days, and put Victor up on standby at a hotel in the vicinity. Waiting to get the call to come. This was, frankly, the easiest sort of job. Enjoy room service on their dime, and eat a bit of the food room service delivered, too. And then when the time for the actual WORK came, it was fairly straightforward. Find the target, kill the target, move on. Boring, but easy and dependable. Then he could go back to stalking more interesting prey.

Eventually, the target will be done shopping. Maybe she's buying something interesting for him to take back to the hotel after he leaves her behind.

Gabby Kinney has posed:
A hooded figure walks around the corner, and ducks into the deli that Creed is currently survailing. No one of importance, likely, but it was someone important to Gabby. When the figure comes up it whispers something to Gabby that causes her eyes to narrow with a single nod. Then she calls out cheerily, "Sorry, emergency came up. I've got to go--I'll leave the groceries on the counter and send Tommy by in awhile to grab them, if that's okay?" There's a call of agreement from the back so she does just that.

Then she flips up her own hood.

The pair leave from the deli moving in lock-step. Their movements were identical in that 'eerie, uncanny valley' sort of way. They were even the same height. They pause only a moment before suddenly taking off in opposite directions at a full run. One goes across the street leaping over the hood of a confused cabby, while the other ducks around the corner into an alley to who-knows-where.

It's up to Creed which he goes after.

Victor Creed has posed:
Victor grits his teeth. He was not told this would be a damn shell game. He isn't sure if he was made - most likely not. It is really hard for anyone to make him, short of perhaps Logan. And he was able to get the drop on him from time to time. He grins a bit, his spirits lifting slightly as he thought about some of those meetings. Good times, good times.

He could chase either of them, and if the one he finds isn't the target, he is sure that his client will let him know. In some respects, better off that he picks the wrong one, because he'll get double the fee for a similar effort. He stands from his perch and leaps over towards the alleyway. The one in the clear can live until later. The one on her own? Honestly, that's more likely to be the one he wants anyway.

He drops down into the alleyway, using his claws to steady his descent, landing on his feet. He sniffs at the air, now that he is following in her wake, he can lock onto her scent and there will be no escaping his pursuit.

Gabby Kinney has posed:
The lingering scent of deli ham and spicy mustard goes down the alley. Fresh. New. Perhaps it had been on her. There's a darker corner in the alley just beyond a dumpster where someone could potentially hide, or attempt to climb the wall unseen. There's no sound from there though. Hardly any sound at all.

And it's not until Vic goes underneath the fire escape ladders on the wall above him that there's a rush of air being displaced as a figure leaps down to the ground behind him. Keeping crouched low Gabby lifts her head with a toothy grin of her own preparing to fight--At least until a quick whiff of air brings his scent to her.

The look of confusion that flits over her is obvious, but it does cause her to hesitate. A silly thing that. Moreso when it turns from confusion to a moment of panic.

Was she scared of Creed? I mean who wouldn't be? She could be thinking he'd come to do exactly what he was hired to do. Which makes the words out of her mouth suspicious as she calls out, "Bell, stand down!"

Gabby Kinney has posed:
And that's when a little metallic click of a guns hammer being rolled back sounds from the entrance of the alley where the other hooded girl has emerged again holding of all things a Mac-10 tucked against her hip with the business end pointed at Creed.

The scent of TWO Logan clones can be made out now.

Victor Creed has posed:
It was a clever ploy. He had to give the girls credit for that. Not that it really mattered, if this was going to be a fight to the death, he knew who was walking away from here. It did give him a certain element of who gives a shit when it comes to taking actual precaution.

"Well shit," he replies, a bit of a grin on his face as he regards Gabby. "You sure managed to piss off some pretty rich people. What kind of trouble you getting yourself into, kiddo?" Is she really a kid? Maybe not, strictly speaking, but to him, she sure seemed it.

He has not necessarily relaxed, per se. There are still guns trained on him, and bullets still hurt going in. But anyone else he'd be at (or through) their throat by now.

Gabby Kinney has posed:
Gabby Kinney reaches up to flip her hood back completely revealing the nice raven hair beneath. In spite of the tense situation she finds herself grinning. Maybe this would still be a fight, maybe not, but at least she knew who was after them. "I tend to do that a lot. Who was it this time? Alchemax?"

"We blew them up last time," comes a voice very similar to hers from the entrance to the alley. The gun remains trained on Victor in spite of Gabby's call out to her. She does, however, raise her own hood letting it fall back showing a shock of pure white hair. Pale skin. And red eyes. She looked just like Gabby, if a bit older and with a different series of scars cut into her face. Just absent any color.

"Right but they're always pains in our asses. So uh... Yeah I tend to piss people off a lot," Gabby has to admit with her hands spreading in a helpless shrug. A slight glance is cast back toward Bellona who was still blocking the alleyway. "This is Bellona, one of my sisters. The last one left alive out of our run, anyway," she admits with a sideward glance toward Victor. "Bell this is--"

"I know who the fuck he is, Gabby," bites out the paler and perhaps angrier of the pair. "I also know he's working with those hacks that have been following you the past few weeks. They're sloppy," she adds over to Creed.

Victor Creed has posed:
There is a bit of a shrug from Victor. "Assassin/client priviledge, kid. Can't tell ya that." He take a moment to look over Gabby, while he just sniffs at the air to catch whatever differences in scent there are between her and Bell. "Those aren't people to mess with, either way. Could end up getting yourself killed." A pause. "Permanently."

He laughs a bit as Bell calls him out. "Working for, Bell," he corrects, turning his gaze towards her. "Working with implies some sort of relationship beyond transactional. And if it makes you both feel any better, they scrimped a ton on surveillance so they could afford the best damn killer money could buy because they view you as super fuckign dangerous."

He laughs a bit, grinning at Bell, before he turns to look at Gabby. "You're the smarter one. She gonna shoot me and make me do what I was hired to do, or what?"

Gabby Kinney has posed:
"SMARTER!?" Bellona practically growls out. If she had hackles to raise they would, no doubt, but... but she did have some sense of self preservation. The gun is swung back down by her hip looking none too pleased. Likely some of that survellience was going to get a very unpleasant beating later.

Gabby shakes her head a little though she resists the urge to sigh. "She just has a harder time controlling her temper is all," she explains, with a little wince. "And you wouldn't survive him, Bell. You know it." The truth it may be, the response is the albino turning to kick at the wall angrily. "Fucking. Fine. But if you do anything I'm coming back after you." With that she storms out of the alley to head off and make someones day very bad.

Gabby waits until she leaves. Completely leaves, before allowing her shoulders to untense a bit. "She got the short end of the mutation stick. Shorter than mine," she jokes lightly from what was said at their last meeting. "Just albinism. Actually I'm the only one out of my clone batch that ended up with the healing factor and claws." A wry smile is given. "And she's in your line of work."

Victor Creed has posed:
"She's the one telling you to put those useless things away, and you're the one that took forever to put 'em away, so yeah. She's the smarter one." Victor rins as he looks at Gabby. "Got a bit more of the ol' man in her in that regard, then?" He glances back as the albino stalks away, and then turns his attention more fully on Gabby as she offers more explanation.

"I dunno, kid, you missed out on the ugly gene," he says, smiling for a brief moment. "That smacked pappy around quite a bit before leaving him on the short end of everything." He considers what she says for a moment. "I didn't realize they made more of you," he says quietly. "Sorry to hear that. I mean, I'm glad you're here, I guess, but..." He reaches up to run his hands through his hair for a moment. "Makes me wonder if I've got any mini-me's running around out there." Then he looks at her again. "Although I suppose mine wouldn't be quite as mini as Logan's..."

Gabby Kinney has posed:
"Ten of us. Not including Laura," Gabby explains only to give a stiff shouldered shrug. She had already mentioned she and Bellona were the last out of that batch, after all. "Yeah, apparently the lab that made Laura had some guy steal DNA to go off to a rival company who fuck things up even more." Here she pauses, cracking a grin. "Which is why I usually try to take out any shady labs like that. There doesn't need to be more of us--And if there are, then I want to free them."

She reaches up to run a hand back through her hair with a little shake of her head as if to deny the sadder side of things. "I'm here, I wouldn't be otherwise. I just get to choose where I go from there. So." She pauses awkwardly a moment. "I guess it's a bit late to offer you a sandwich."

Victor Creed has posed:
"Copy of a copy, getting a bit fuzzier along the way?" asks Victor. "And starting from pretty damn fuzzy already." He scratches at the side of his cheek as he tries to think through all of that. Not his strong suit. "Yeah. I could see that. Make sure it doesn't happen what happened to you." A shrug. "He was the same with Weapon X. Like father, like cuter copy."

"Choice is a big thing. Where you go, where you live, what you do..." He shrugs, watching her for a moment. "Yeah, kinda late for that. Besides. Who offers a sandwich to the guy that came to kill them?"

Gabby Kinney has posed:
"Yeah that's essentially how it went. The first few weren't mutant so they tried again by tweaking the DNA. Then when that didn't work they were running low and just decided to make the rest of us to use as guinea pigs for their experiments. I got lucky." Gabby grins again only to shrug, hands spreading wide. "Including missing the ugly hairy part."

"Yeah, exactly." Choice. That was a big deal for her and one she held onto jealously. It was her right, one she had fought hard for, and lost sisters for. The last question though just causes her to grin broadly with a genuine look of amusement. Raising her eyebrows she asks, "ARE you going to kill me?" Simply. "Besides, however it happened, we're family. So things aren't going to be the same as if you were some random hitman."

Victor Creed has posed:
"Be thankful for that. Short, ugly, and hairy is no way to go through life, kid." Victor grins back at her. It's funny how a copy of Logan can actually be somewhat charming. Somehow. And not make him want to rip her throat out.

She raises a good question in response to his own. "I mean, I could. I think we both know that." He scratches at the side of his cheek for a moment. Then he laughs a bit at the family comment. "Nah, I'm the guy who's made your DNA donor's life a living hell. We're not family." He does not say it dismissively so much as...well, it just seems to be a quick denial. "But again my better judgement, I kinda like you, and don't want to see you dead." Then he laughs. "I think you cause Logan more aggravation alive than you could dead, too." He glances around for a moment, and then leans over towards her, grinning. "But the folks are paying me a /lot/ of money for the peace of mind of knowing that you are dead. And if I don't do it, they'll just send someone else."

He cracks his knuckles. "How good is your healing factor, kid?"

Gabby Kinney has posed:
"Eh, no one said family had to get along. Though to be fair the files on you two were iffy on the relation, or if there even was one--" Gabby's starting to gab again. She did on occasion live up to her nickname after all, and letting her mouth just go wild was something that happened even at her age now. She's still working on that line of thought when he leans in closer to ask her that earning a little hiccup of air as the words fail her.

It results in a little roll of her eyes at the question though. "Better than anyone gives it credit for. Also don't feel pain," she adds in with a burgeoning grin. Pushing up onto her toes she leans in closer to him. Much as she can--She was still short.

"Soooo I get a cut of it, then? Because I kind of like this hoodie."

Victor Creed has posed:
Victor's eyebrow arches at Gabby's statements. "We like to keep Logan guessing. Not about to spill it to you." He winks at her as if it were some sort of deep conspiracy. Maybe it is, maybe not. But his grin broadens as he brings the Gabby to silence. An impressive feat, no doubt.

As she seems to understand where he is going with this, he nods along with her, but he laughs at the last question. "What you get is these assholes off your back thinking that their perpetrator is gone. 'cept they don't know you how I know you, and that you'll come away just fine."

He considers for a long moment. "Don't feel any pain at all, huh?" He runs his tongue over his fangs for a moment in thought.

Gabby Kinney has posed:
Gabby Kinney hold that gaze with eyes narrowed as she stands her ground after that question. Holds it... then rocks back on her heels with a puff of breath. "Worth a shot. I'm not making as much money as when I was younger and could get away with more."

Her arms cross over her chest lightly to peer at him from the side of one eye. The other is already glancing back down toward the alley to make sure Bellona wasn't doubling back to potentially see this. "Lemme warn Bellona first so she doesn't lose her shit," she adds while reaching for her phone.

"And no, I don't feel pain. The last experiment they did on us turned that off in our brains. My sisters died from it. Not me." A small, indifferent shrug comes. "Why, did you already stab me?" She actually thinks to glance away from her phone and look down to check.

Victor Creed has posed:
"You can get away with whatever you want, kid. Don't let any of them tell you not to." Victor seems to almost bristle at that. "They'll always tell you to cage the animal, but what they won't tell you is that that's for their benefit, not for yours." He shakes his head, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a wallet that may very well be older than she is.

He nods in agreement as she warns Bellona. That certainly could make things go to crap pretty fast, especially if she can't heal from whatever was about to happen. He focuses on sliding his fingers along some bills, until he finally withdraws a pretty thick stack. Hundreds. Being an assassin-for-hire pays well. "Make sure she stays away, because that'll confuse the hell out of them." He glances around for a moment, as if to double check and make sure that they aren't being watched. But he told them to give him clear space to do his thing once they pointed her out, so they should be good. "No, I didn't stab you yet. You might not feel pain, but you'll know."

He straightens a bit and hands the stack of cash to her. "Buy yourself something nice." A grin. "SomethingS, nice. From your Uncle Victor." Then he puts the wallet away, and looks at her. "Ready whenever you are."

Gabby Kinney has posed:
Gabby Kinney finishes shooting off the text to explain the plan to Bellona. She was not happy, of course, but it was a decent plan. Victor's urging about caging the beast causes her a little look of surprise only for it to fade into an amused grin in response.

"I meant more that I let people underestimate me for my age. Doesn't work quite as well anymore." Of course there were times. There were always times that she wanted to tear into something, or some one, but she managed to hold that off for the most part. Usually.

When the money is offered out she takes it without any shame. Money was money after all.

"Okay, but I'm gonna fight back some, feels stupid not to," she points out with a grin. Only to suddenly lunge at him. Both hands snap up for his neck as she brings a knee up aiming for his side where his kidneys would be. If she was going down it was going to be a bit of a fight, even if mostly one sided. Who just stood there and got cut up?

Victor Creed has posed:
"Well, anyone who underestimates you is in for a rude awakening. Same thing with the old man, just because he's short and ugly." Victor grins a bit at that. He seems neither surprised nor disappointed that Gabby takes the cash and has no further comment.

His face twists into a grin as she launches herself at him. "I wouldn't have it any other way," he says, as he takes the knee to the side, returning with a slash of claw.



Alchemax gets what it wants. Photographic evidence of the violent dispatch of the girl who attacked their facility, and a message to any who would mess with them.

Victor crouched on the roof nearby to make sure that Gabby, once her body knit itself together, would be able to get away. The occassional glance to his phone to wait for the update to his bank account helped him pass the time.

Gabby Kinney has posed:
There was a lot of damage done to Gabby. A lot of blood everywhere. It didn't have to look real--it was real. But so was her healing. While he's on the roof waiting for that account balance to balloon he would hear sounds others likely couldn't. The quiet crick-crack of bones knitting back into place, the wet throb of muscle reconnecting to bone and regrowing where needed.

Honestly for the damage done she was healing very quickly. It would be done likely in half an hour, tops, if not sooner. Maybe it was her youth, or the lack of adamantium poisoning like Laura and Logan had. Whatever the reason her healing factor *was* strong. Very strong.

And Bellona is sitting on another rooftop not far away glaring at Victor with arms crossed the entire time, waiting for it all to finish so she could go and help Gabby get home.

Victor Creed has posed:
The problem which may manifest down the line is that Sabretooth is the ultimate predator, but he respects other predators. That is why he has never actually killed Logan in any of their matches. And why he chose not to kill Gabby tonight. Bellona?

Victor looks up at her, watching her glare at him from another rooftop. And he winks at her.

She, he will see again sometime. And likely not with her 'sister' anywhere near by...