Sleepless Nights and Cold Mornings [North]

[Hazel 'Hobbs' Yeung]

Hobbs checked the time on her phone to find that it was four o'clock in the morning. The sun hadn't broken over the horizon yet but the sky was beginning to lighten to the east so that Memorial Island stood distantly silhouetted against a watercolour shade of blue. To the west was the velvety sky of night, refusing to vanish.

She'd been out all night and hadn't received a single inquiry as to her whereabouts. Not that she expected anyone to wonder; all nighters weren't an uncommon thing for hunters, who only got these few moments during sundown to chase the vampires. She flipped the phone shut and looked out across the waters towards Memorial Island. The ferry had already been and gone since she'd been sat here by the railings overlooking the ocean, and by now she could see the dark shape of the vessel making its way back to the mainland again.

Hobbs uncrossed her legs and shuffled on the cold concrete wall beneath her, yawning and arching her back to ease the stiffness that came with sitting on a wall all night long. She hadn't slept a wink, but that was totally normal for her by now. Her eyelids were starting to hurt, though, a dull ache that returned whenever she blinked. She rubbed her eyes and picked a bit of crust from their corners. Maybe she had dozed off briefly, once or twice during the night, but she couldn't remember it if she had.

She set her feet down on the ground and tried to stand, only to find that she'd seized up overnight. Her right leg was fine, it was just a hydraulic mechanism, but her left knee wouldn't budge. Oh Christ, she was only twenty-five, she wasn't meant to feel arthritic just yet.
Never mind. She sat back down, slowly bending and straightening her knee as she dug into her pockets trying to find the hip flash of rum she knew to be there. And then, just at the second she found it, her headphones cut out. She pulled them down around her neck and tapped at the speakers, then dug out the MP3 player to find it had turned itself off. The battery was flat. Oh, that was just great.

[Jacob "North" Cassidy]

Why was killing Dogs so damn messy?

Bats were easy enough to kill if you caught them unawares. A stake through the heart, or the useless, dried thing they refer to as a heart, and they are dead. Quick, clean, and not a single stain upon the Hunter who properly kills the blood-drinking fiend. Dogs, however, were another story entirely. Even when caught unawares, the damn things thrash like, well, animals. He couldn’t count the number of Dogs he’d put down who had continued to move about even after taking a silver bullet to the chest. If the first didn’t take them, then it just pissed them off more than they already were. Then it became a much larger ordeal of either trying to plant another silver coated bullet in another vital location, or getting up close and personal with a silver bladed melee weapon. To top it off, the Dogs bleed everywhere. Blood and ichor spewing all over the poor Hunter that was unlucky enough not to fell the beast with his first shot.

A poor Hunter such as North, who was soaked through with his prey’s blood.

A stream of curses kept circulating through the man’s head again and again as he made his way towards Eastlington Port, to catch the ferry back to Memorial Island and his spare clothes he kept there. His favorite trench coat was bloodied across the front and back, the cause being an unfortunate slip in a pool of blood and falling on the Dog’s corpse. It had not been a good night for North. A simple job of catching the Dog hiding in an apartment building condemned for demolition had turned into a horrible, horrible night of chasing the damned target through the entire building, only to have his gun knocked from his hands once he caught him. This resulted in an exchange of swings and parries, ending with the Dog on the ground, its head removed from its shoulders and three silver bullets embedded in its chest cavity. The beheading had come first; the three bullets had been just to make sure the damn thing was dead. Obviously overkill on his part, but North had been a bit pissed after slipping onto the body. He also was fairly certain he’d bruised a rib or two and gained a nice claw mark along his shoulder from the melee he‘d had with the Dog. God, he hoped nothing was cracked or seriously damaged.

So, he trudged along to return to the Island, slinking in the shadows to avoid the eyes of those waking up in the early morning to go running or do whatever it was normal people did. If anyone had seen his bloodied appearance, he really wouldn’t have been able to explain himself. Thankfully, not a soul saw North as he made his way to the port, grumbling occasionally about the ludicrousness of a Dog being dead, and still being a pain in the ass to the Hunter who felled it. He was so enraptured in his own mental cursing that he almost didn’t see the woman rising from her sitting position against the concrete wall, stumbling slightly when one leg apparently wasn’t as functional as the other. North stifled his impulsive snicker as he recognized the figure to be Hobbs. He hadn’t seen her since the meeting in the bar with the new Commander.

As he walked into her view, North couldn’t help but smirk lightly as he remembered his appearance once more, wondering what comment she would come up with for it. He wouldn’t lie to himself and say the woman didn’t put him slightly on edge, mostly be cause she scared him a touch, but she also had a quick wit and an acute mind; credit where credit was due, after all. She was also military, like him, and had lost a limb to protect her country. North held her in high respect for that, regardless of anything she said or did. Some saw it as a curse or an impediment, but he only saw a badge of honor. Not a useful one, but a sigil of bravery nonetheless.

“I hope your night was more fruitful than mine.” He remarked casually, coming up to lean a shoulder against the wall, his arms folded in front of him as he faced Hobbs. “I feel like I just went nine rounds with Andre the Giant, and walked ten miles afterward. Did you know cab drivers don‘t like bloodied men getting into their vehicles? Who would have thought.” North smirked lightly, rolling his shoulder slightly. He had a feeling there was a fifty-fifty chance of the woman either ignoring him completely, or actually answering his, in his opinion, genius wit. He idly reached into the inside pocket of his bloodied garment, his hand returned to the light with a cigarette. A frown found its way to his face as he realized he didn’t have his lighter with him any longer. It must have fallen out during the fight; just his luck.

“Don’t suppose you have a light?”[/font]

[Hazel 'Hobbs' Yeung]

And so Hobbs sat on that stone cold wall for a few minutes, trying to straighten out and flex her knee with a pained grimace on her face. It hurt more than it probably should, but Hobbs wasn't exactly at peak physical health now, was she? She slumped atop the wall, slowly screwing open the cap of the hip flask with cold, numb fingers, and took a deep swig of the rum. Woods 100 navy rum, fifty-seven percent proof. It was powerful stuff, quite capable of kicking you in the lungs if you didn't expect it, which Hobbs didn't. She lowered the flask, spluttering quietly and trying to keep the rum in her mouth at the same time. She managed to swallow it, and then spent the next few moments wheezing out a cough and pounding her chest. That was some good stuff.

She screwed the cap back on and rummaged around in her seemingly endless pockets some more, patting down her shorts and briefly feeling through the various hidey holes in her jacket for the fingerless gloves and beanie she knew to be there. She found them and pulled them on, wondering why she hadn't put them on before. It would have saved her the chill of the night, at least.

It was then that a familiar smell caught her nostrils, a smell Hobbs had come to associate with the hunt. It wasn't the cracker-smell of cordite, nor was it the smell of leaking chemical fluids that Hobbs used in her ammo. It was blood. The sour, metallic stench of blood that got into the back of the throat and made you wanna hurl. Hobbs, stuffing the flask back into her pocket, looked up, peering down the concrete docks to either side of her. She tried to stand again, but apparently that wasn't in the cards for her just yet.

As she plopped herself back down, resigning herself to cramp for quite a while, a faintly familiar face came into view. Hobbs wasn't a social butterfly, and so she didn't know many people, nor did she make the effort to do so, but she recognised Cassidy from the meeting. And as he came closer, and the stench got stronger, she saw that he was the one covered in blood. Looked like he had a particularly productive night.

I hope your night was more fruitful than mine.

Hobbs looked him up and down, with an eyebrow raised. "If showering in blood is what fruitful means to you, then I'm glad it wasn't."

He made some remark about how he felt as though he'd done some witty-sounding activity. Whatever man, Hobbs thought, you look like hell.
He asked her for a light. As luck would have it, she did. She rummaged around in her pockets yet again for the cheap disposable Bic lighter she had, the kind with transparent yellow plastic so you could see how much lighter fluid you had left, and a striking wheel which ragged up your thumbnail if you didn't manage to light it first time. She found it.
"Catch," she said, and tossed him the lighter.