diversified | Death ain't nothing but a heartbeat away [closed]

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Death ain't nothing but a heartbeat away [closed]

He's late.

Being in the employ of Shannon Vaughn means that being late is a bad thing and Eli knew that well, but living with his father and having to deal with him meant that sometimes he ran late because of a conversation had gone on too long or he needed to go run an errand for him. Normally, he could cheat by just teleporting to get there on time, but he still wasn't familiar with this part of town and he didn't want to be seen by anyone who didn't know about his powers. Plus, he had been ordered to go to an alley and teleporting in would just be a bad idea all around in that case.

So Eli had to run all the way from the apartment he shared with his father to the specific alley he had been told to go to, nearly getting turned around at a couple of points due to the mental map he had of the area not being fully complete yet. But he successfully got to the street the alley was connected to only a few minutes late, looking like he had run all the way from home. He took a moment to slow down his breathing and heart rate and did his best to make himself presentable. Once that was taken care of, he slipped down the alley and did his best to try and make sure Shannon didn't notice when he got to where he was dealing with whatever unfortunate person who had gotten on the wrong side of his boss.

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Shannon barely reacted as Eli practically stomped down into the alley. His current appointment was going swimmingly thus far: whether or not the man coughed up what he needed was not Shannon's concern. This man was in the way. If he tattled, his employers would take care of him personally; if he twitched, Shannon would have the pleasure of doing it himself. Just another gear in the works squeaking too loudly for more grease.

That old adage was never really appropriate when it came to those who worked in the darker areas of the law.

"As you can see," he was saying, patient and even, "my associate has just arrived with word." Shannon turned, then, giving Eli a great look at the coldly amused look on his face. He was completely in control right now, cat and mouse never being so satisfying as the one moment the mouse was against the wall and finally had nowhere to run. "Tell me, Eli, what did Skates' bosses have to say about his proposal to us?"

It was a bluff and a test. If Eli could give Shannon an answer that would get a reaction out of Skates, then all the better. If he stumbled or stuttered in the face of also being late, there wouldn't be much salvaging the meeting. Either way, someone was already in trouble and he had a feeling his protege would not be the one feeling hot under the collar by the end of it.

There was a brief moment of relief before Shannon decided to drag him into whatever game he was playing and force him to think on his feet. While Eli might not seem like the sort who could think fast, he was sharper than he looked and had been taught to keep on his toes and get himself out of situations like this.

"Nothing good," Eli answered calmly, despite the nervousness he felt, and paused. "Well, nothing good for him. They didn't appear to be pleased that he was giving us proposals without their approval."

He looked at Shannon and hoped that what he said was the answer he wanted to hear. Whatever he was doing, Eli just hoped he didn't screw it up giving that answer instead of going in a completely different direction with it.

The startled man in front of them looked about ready to shake apart. Doing sanctioned footwork was one thing, but attempting to break out and make his own name and place in their world was another one entirely and it was the sort of risk that would cost someone their life if handled improperly. Judging by the way Skates reached into his jacket for his piece, "improper" was the polite way of putting it.

"Wouldn't do that if I were you," Shannon said. His attention turned back to Skates at his own pace, not seeming threatened by the gun in the slightest. Despite the glasses and his eminent confidence, it was well-known among the circles that he was blind. Well, not that Shannon Vaughn was blind, but that one of Shannon's own footmen had a visual impediment that seriously hampered his ability to work at times. Whenever he decided to toss away the veneer and show that, yes, he could indeed perceive someone brandishing a firearm at him, it was for pure power and effect. Skates' hand was trembling, hesitant, and Shannon took the opportunity. "If you fire that, you're dead. Your finger won't even finish pulling the trigger before you drop to the floor, dying in one of the most painful ways known to man. I have it on good authority that it makes slow torture feel like a blessing."

Skates was no longer hearing him. Fear had blocked out common sense and all he could apparently perceive was that this was the end for him. Not to say that he was wrong, but Shannon privately would have very much liked to get his hands on the information he had been carrying. When Skates spat out a curse and lifted the gun higher, ready to make the shot, Shannon had dealt with enough. His wrist was the first target, flesh burning and melting down as impossible heat assaulted the limb and ensured that Skates would drop the weapon to lower the chance of an accidental discharge. Next were his clothes, his hair, all of the easily flammable bits that Shannon hardly had to reach for. The extra heat made it more exhilarating to reach in and burn the air out of his lungs, make it impossible to scream while he lit up from the inside out.

Fire was a gorgeous thing, bright and warm, life-sustaining yet so easily abused into becoming a gruesome tool. Shannon afforded the proper respect for such a volatile element and was rewarded in kind for the precision and power to use it in the most elegant and showy ways possible. It was his partner and his guide. Not merely a tool, but his empire itself was built upon the ashes it created for him.

Reaching up to begin mussing his hair, Shannon turned to Eli while Skates immolated further inside the alley. "Your hair is too neat," he noted. While he could usually perceive the world around him by the vague influences of heat in people and objects, Eli was unusually vibrant, even parts of his clothes being more detailed than Shannon had ever before experienced. It was easy to see his hair smoothed out, the rise and fall of his protege's chest. "Fix that. Look distressed. We just saw a man spontaneously combust after all," he instructed with a grin that belayed the order for anxiety.

Instinct kicked in and he raised his hand to use his powers, but then Skates burst into flames in front of him and Eli dropped his hand in surprise as he watched the man burn alive. He didn't know why, but he's always had a fascination with death and this was the first time he'd ever seen somebody burn from the inside out. It was beautiful and he wanted to keep watching, but Shannon's voice pulled him out of the sort of trance the fire had put him into.

"Ah, right. I'll fix that, boss," he said breathlessly, sounding in awe than having any sort of terror. Immediately, he puts his hands up to muss up his hair before doing his best to look distressed.

Shannon nodded. He couldn't see Eli's expression to confirm, but he had enough faith that the kid could pull off some sort of frantic look after witnessing someone burst into flame. Most people who saw what Shannon could do didn't have to fake it all that much. He took a moment to shift his overcoat around into a disheveled muss, then pulled Eli in closer to wrap his arm around his shoulders and almost hang there as he dragged them from the alley.

"H-hey! Help! Someone's on fire in there! Call the fire department!" he shouted out into the blob of masses on the street. Crowds were always his weakest point, the hardest place to identify any single object in the heat mingling about between the people and their busy little lives. Then again, in large crowds like this, Shannon didn't exactly need to have much accuracy because everyone only saw a blind man and reacted accordingly. Funny how society worked like that.

Eli wasn't most people, but he could fake it well enough to pass it off as genuine. He slipped into the role with ease, following Shannon's lead on what to do. It was obvious that Shannon had done this before with how well prepared he was for this. At that point, it had become obvious to Eli that Shannon had set the man on fire himself in a more controlled way than Eli used his own powers.

At Shannon's shouts for help, people reacted in an obvious manner, with some panicking and others running to see if they could help. Eli had decided to act more like he was in shock over pure panic like Shannon had gone with. It was a safer choice for him so he wouldn't have to deal with his voice betraying him and revealing that had had enjoyed seeing that man burn up as if he was paper. Plus, that wasn't even mentioning the fact that the smell had made him a bit hungry.

When it seemed like people weren't really paying attention to them, Eli took advantage of the closeness to each other and whispered softly to Shannon. "You're like me, aren't you?"

Shannon had led them a fair distance away from the crowd by that point. He was intending to use the payphone nearby to get them a ride and out of the spotlight. As long as they didn't stick around, it was very unlikely anyone would be able to pin the two of them as witnesses. They just had to get out before the police arrived.

He tilted his head toward Eli, brows raising and amusement obvious in his tone if not his expression. "Depraved?" he asked. "Insane? Otherwise not fit to participate in society? Be more specific, kid."

There was a slight huff of annoyance at being called a kid, but otherwise Eli didn't seem too bothered by him not picking up on what he meant. "You set a man on fire with your mind. I can electrocute people and manipulate what they see."

There was also his teleportation, but that was a secret to everyone including his father. There was no way Eli was planning on telling Shannon about that unless in case of an emergency. And this didn't really count as one.

Edited 2014-01-27 19:03 (UTC)

"Can you?" Shannon's interest was definitely piqued by that crumb of information. It was as he had guessed—something was definitely different about Eli, the same sort of different as most of his trusted higher ups—but the specifics definitely opened up quite a variety of options on how to operate going forward. Electricity was a much more subtle way to kill a man. Manipulating sight, on the other hand, had limitless options. For some reason, human beings were very fixated on what they could see and rarely let their other senses override it.

Shannon gave Eli's shoulder a pat as he pulled away to begin dialing on the payphone, leaning up inside of the half-booth for fake privacy. "You should have told me sooner, Eli. That's incredibly valuable. You know how important appearances are in the world," he said pointedly. Their current ruse was case in point. He tilted his head as someone picked up on the other end. "Michelle? Be a sweetheart and get a driver out here. My meeting went tits up."

"I can. There's more to it than that, but I don't want to talk about it here." Even though there was nobody else around, Eli didn't feel like really discussing his powers out in the open. Or at all, but Shannon had powers too, so he could at least trust him with the knowledge of most of them.

"I'd rather not have the appearance of a freak, boss," he muttered half to himself. Ever since he was a kid, he had been told to keep his powers hidden and he had done so dutifully as he and his father learned together how to control his powers and fine tune them to do other things than just kill people and play with lights. As much as he loved his powers, he wasn't very proud of them and even though nobody knew about them, he still felt separated from other people just because they were normal and he wasn't.

There were still enough people milling about. Those who had just rounded the corner, or those stumbling away from the scene of a crispy fried traitor in the alleyway. Firemen and ambulances and police cars would all be on the scene soon depending on how quickly the concerned citizens were to an available phone. Shannon was currently using one, no longer on the line with Michelle but making it appear as if he had something left to say for the passers-by, to try and tie things up even longer.

"You're beautiful just the way you are," Shannon said with a notable edge of sarcasm to it. That wasn't the type of statement blind men made so casually. "No, I was thinking of another use. Can you make other people appear as someone else?"

"Excuse me if I don't believe you about that," Eli said bitterly. He was well aware that Shannon was blind and wasn't quite in the mood to deal with his sarcasm. There was a moment where he thought quietly on the question, tapping his foot as he did. "Yeah, I can do that no problem. Why do you want to know?"

Shannon frowned. He reached out with a spare hand and tapped it against Eli's nose — well, near it enough to matter. "Always believe me. You work for me, you believe what I've got to tell you." He paused, bobbed his head to the side. "Though I guess I'll make an exception for when I'm being a smartass sometimes."

A grin surfaced shortly afterward. It was a genuine expression, something Shannon was not very shy about when operating outside of business hours. "Why, I want you to reinvent me. Most people know that I'm the voice and face of Shannon Vaughn, everyone who watches me would know it's the name I use. But we've got to invent a different Shannon Vaughn to take the heat off of me."

Getting tapped on the nose by Shannon seemed to have gotten some sense knocked into Eli because he looked ashamed by what he had said and looked down at the ground, scuffing his shoe against the sidewalk. "Sorry, boss. I won't forget that and won't speak out of turn like that again." Even if he really wants to when it comes to his power.

"I believe I can come up with something suitable for you. Work with a person's expectations as to who they expect you to be instead of who you really are. But my glamours only work visually, so you'd have to do something else for a voice," Eli explained thoughtfully. "And I'd have to be wherever you want this new you to be. I'm not strong enough to project it over a distance and I haven't figured out how to make it permanent yet."

"Speaking out of turn? Shit, kid, that's good stuff," Shannon said with a chuckle. "Do it respectfully and it can really make things bloom. I like it when my people have spice, but you'd better not think I don't know what I'm talking about. If I don't know, I ask a question."

Shannon finally hung up the phone and motioned for Eli to follow him while he pressed his back up against the cold brick wall behind them. "Could you do it to someone standing right next to you? You're not someone I'd trust to take on a job alone just yet."

"I'd never think that, sir." And it's true. Eli had a lot of respect for him and he didn't believe that he knew more than Shannon did on really any subject that he could think of. "And I'll be sure to remember that for the future."

Automatically, Eli fell into step behind him, looking surprised at the implication of him think he was going to do it alone. "I couldn't do it alone even if I wanted to. With something as complex as a working illusion of a person, it would have to be done on somebody other than myself so I can keep an eye on its stability."

Well, to be fair, Eli probably knew a lot more about the color wheel than Shannon did. On most important topics, however... it was always a safe bet to assume Shannon knew best. He was very much the cocky asshole, but he had earned that by backing it up with real and powerful knowledge. He had little use for those who wouldn't keep themselves open to being wrong, either.

"Perfect. There's another meeting I was going to send one of my men to in two days. We're going to be taking over that appointment," Shannon said. He seemed utterly pleased by the idea of being able to take the spotlight off himself. "Your second trial run. Oh, you passed this one, by the way."

"So I have two days to figure out what I'm going to use. No pressure or anything, boss," he said with a sigh. He glanced over at Shannon, slightly confused. "Wait, how did that count as a pass? The guy was going to shoot you and you set him on fire because of what I said. I would have thought that was a fail."

"You made it on time," Shannon explained patiently. "You rolled with my punch. And you didn't panic when he pulled his piece. Skates was going to die no matter what happened. Crossing your bosses like that doesn't end well, and I hate disloyalty as much as the next guy. Only downside was that I didn't get what he was holding in the end, and I can live with that. It's not like I'm any worse for the lack, and maybe I can even swing his execution as a favor to his old bosses."

Shannon dipped his head as he heard sirens in the distance. Michelle's chaperone had better be showing up soon, or he would definitely have some strong words for her organizational skills in a crisis. "What I'm saying, Eli, is that nothing went against the plan. You pass."

Things clicked together immediately in Eli's head and he was impressed. "You had manipulated the entire situation before I had even arrived. Guess that's why you're the boss."

And because Eli's curiosity knew no bounds, he had to ask the question that was floating around his head. "What would have happened if I had failed?"

"I would have let him shoot you," Shannon said simply. There was no explanation for how Shannon would have changed the trajectory of the bullet or any of the other complications in turning it around on Eli. If he said he was going to do it, it would have happened. "Competence, personality and loyalty. That's all I ask in my people."

Underneath the sirens came the comforting purr of their getaway vehicle. He knew that engine hum anywhere, and it was only confirmed when it pulled up right next to them on the road, one hand reaching out the window to tap on the outside of the door in the practiced rhythm. Shannon nodded to Eli, then motioned with his shoulder toward the car. "Take shotgun," he said. The back windows were tinted more than the front, and he preferred being able to stretch out along the entire back seat anyway.

There's a tilt of his head as if he's amused by what Shannon said and was going to say something on it, but didn't respond. He could mention that his natural electrical field is magnetized to the point that bullets are deflected around him instead of hitting him, but he didn't need to reveal everything at once. When it became convenient to tell him, then it will. "Then why exactly did you pick me of all people?" It was something that had bothered him from the first day. Sure, he's loyal to a fault, but he didn't really have those other qualities to him.

When the car rolled up, he took Shannon's lead and followed his order, getting into the front passenger seat while Shannon took the back for himself. He didn't really pay attention to who was driving, knowing it was either one of two people and didn't really care either way. Once he got himself sitting comfortably in the seat, he closed his eyes and replayed the entire meeting and everything that happened in his mind so that he could learn from it.

Shannon merely turned a look upon Eli before he climbed into the car. He forewent buckling up and instead laid himself out, one leg bent down into the footwell while he let the other crook up against the armrest of the opposite door. Using his power to such an extend always left him feeling drained, his head shriveling up in a hum of notably displeasure. It was something he learned to live with and could certainly still function through, but rest was still appreciated and he would take what he would get. Everyone knew better than to ask questions by now as Shannon had proven he was more than capable of fending for himself despite the weak position.

Using his foot against the door to tap twice and indicate they were ready to move, it seemed that Eli's question was all but forgotten. Shannon had even turned down his fifth sense to let it seem like the car had dimmed, let things become more muted and easy to shut out for rest. Halfway into the ride, he abruptly said, "Loyal, thoughtless dogs would have agreed with me without embellishing. People who value their individuality too much would have run away with the story. Anyone who knew what they were doing but couldn't back it up with sincerity would have blown it right from the start. You're well-rounded, and I saw that the first time I met you. Good enough?"

Shannon's answer dragged Eli from his thoughts and forced him to look back at Shannon laying across the backseat. He wanted to argue with him, but he was smart enough to know that arguing with Shannon, even after passing a test like that, was a bad idea and was downright suicidal if he cared to think about it long enough. "For now. I just don't see what you see in me."

It was the consequences of growing up the way he had. The boy in the graveyard who had to learn to be like everyone else, but stuck out because no matter how hard he tried, he was different and people made his life miserable because of it. Yeah, Eli was smart and calculating and perceptive, but he had confidence issues and a negative amount of self-esteem. Which would make him a bad protege for a mob boss, but yet Shannon had still picked him up and decided to train him. Eli honestly couldn't see why he would when there were better choices than him.

Shannon grunted in response, merely letting the air flow in and out of him with ease. Eli had no idea what he possessed, but that was generally the way of the common man. Raised in a country where everyone was so special that no one had anything special to call their own, it was hard to pick out a unique existence among them. Still, some people managed to shine through and make themselves known in the world; others had to be pulled, kicking and screaming, until they could see what made them a cut above the rest. Lots of people had potential, but not many got the chance to understand how to use it.

"I already told you, kid," he said. "If that isn't enough for you, take it up on your own time. Stop thinking about it in what you think I see, and pay attention to how I act. That's important shit for our work, might as well start somewhere safer than most."

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Death ain't nothing but a heartbeat away [closed]

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