thisavrou_log | bodies are where you find them [closed]

bodies are where you find them [closed]

Who: Miles and Lara
When: 1/18
Where: Avelle, near the river
What: Miles wants to see the dead body Lara found, but they wind up finding something else.
Warnings: idk probs not but TBA

Miles likes Lara quite a lot already. She's daring, obviously quite intelligent, and she's got a good head on her shoulders and knows how to handle herself. He can tell there's something more going on inside her head -- something decidedly not yet handled -- but he isn't going to pry. They certainly don't know each other well enough, and nosy though Miles is, he does have some respect for other people's privacy.

But they do know each other well enough to go look at a dead body together, so Miles feels this is the start of a beautiful friendship.

Dusk is setting in when the transporter drops him and Lara down in Avelle, Miles dressed in his Barrayaran uniform rather than his Moiran one. He isn't expecting trouble, but in the event they run into any, he'd rather not be associated with the Moira when it happens. He glances up at Lara with a slight grin, though his eyes are practically glittering. "Lead on, Lara."

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In the back of her mind, Lara thinks she ought to be more unsettled by the explosion that happened earlier that day. The body she can at least pass off as being the sort of thing one occasionally finds in archaeology digs and wasn't one of the Solarii's strung up sacrifices. This feels... Larger. Like she ought to be doing something else instead of going back to look for the body with Miles.

In the front of their mind, what they're doing makes perfect sense. There is still a thrumming sort of tension in her every movement, but it's measured and calculated. She can nearly hear Roth's dry "Situation normal, all fucked up."

Miles is a far cry from Roth, but she's glad he's there. He's sharp and observant and most importantly, Lara doesn't feel like she's dragging him into something he didn't ask for. Still, the pick axe is slung across her lower back, in a makeshift harness of belt loops and velcro, the jacket she'd found hanging just low enough to cover most of it. For the first time since arriving, she feels well and truly settled in her skin, enough that she shoots Miles a smile of her own as she sets off towards the house near the river.

"You look like you're enjoying this."

The difference in the way she holds herself is palpable, compared to when they'd met in the bar. She'd obviously been on some shaky ground, still fresh and raw from whatever it is she's just survived, but she seems more...herself, somehow, though Miles doesn't exactly have the experience to judge. That smile is enough for him, though.

"It's been over a month since I last saw a dead body. I'm overdue. Have to make quota, you know." He flashes her a grin of his own, bright-eyed and manic. "Aren't you?"

She would object rather emphatically to the idea of this being herself, but... Well, he isn't wrong.

"I'll admit, it's rather novel to be heading back towards the mysterious dead body." She scans the distance ahead of them, loose and casual and carefully eyeing the uniformed men clustered near the river. She shifts paths slightly, taking them down a back alley where the shadows are a little deeper, circling around. "Has anything else strange happened on this planet?"

Miles huffs out a laugh, following her lead with ease. Discretion seems to be the safer option here. No doubt whatever happened to that body, they wouldn't want to be caught anywhere near it by the local authorities.

"Today, you mean? Yeah, actually, funny you mention it. I was over in St. Murtel earlier. There was some kind of big scuffle, someone called in a threat -- but all I saw was a very noisy arrest. They practically had to drag the guy away, it drew in quite the crowd." He frowns slightly. "He said something about 'the Komai' as they were taking him."

That brings her to a full stop.

"Komai." That... could be a coincidence. She doubts it. "Do you remember what he said?"

?Miles comes to an abrupt halt at her side, blinking curiously up at her. "He said the Komai won't stop until it's over. Does that mean anything to you?"

She frowns. "A little.. There was an explosion here, earlier. A ship in the river. The locals seemed. I don't know." She starts walking again. Better to not hang around in one place now, she's starting to feel uneasy about this. "It didn't seem like an accident. There weren't any emergency vehicles and there hasn't been any new reports. No one is saying anything about it, except 'the Komai.'"

Miles hopskips a couple of steps to keep pace with her, his own stride quick enough to match her pace. By the look on his face, he's looking about as uneasy as she feels. "Naturally," he mutters, frowning. "The local authorities wouldn't want anything that might spoil their image of matrimonial utopia. It'd be bad for business. If this Komai is hitting other places besides just Avelle and St. Murtel -- and I'd bet you Betan dollars they have -- they're not small-time by any stretch of the imagination. They're too well-spread out and organized to just be some gang, though, and this doesn't have the odor of an organized crime ring. Terrorist group, perhaps? Some local malcontents, inevitable victims of the system?"

"If that is who the Komia are, could they have timed all of this with the arrival of the Moira? A ship full of outsiders shows up, two weeks later, things start exploding-"

Again, Lara comes to a dead stop, this time at the mouth of the alley. She puts a hand out to stop Miles as well, nodding to the house not far ahead. At the door are two armed Link'd Inc security personnel. A second and third can be seen doing perimeter patrols.

"That's not good."

"It's...not impossible," Miles admits grudgingly, making a face at the very possible scenario unfolding in his head. "God help us if that turns out to be the case. The captains had to fight hard enough just to let us dock here, and after the last planet we stopped at, the last thing we need is a major PR disaster."

The thought's a little chilling, though, and it stays with him. He halts at her wave, peering around her to look at the house. Damn. Well, there go the evening's plans. He glances up at Lara with a slight grimace. "I don't suppose there's a back door?"

Lara considers the house, laying out what she knows of the rooms in her mind. "There's a window around the other side I could get through, but the floor's caved in. Straight drop down about 9, maybe 10 meters. Assuming we could get in before a guard spotted us-"

As she speaks one of the patrols rounds the corner of the house, putting them in sight of the alley the two stood in. Lara stepped slowly back further into the evening shadow, pulling Miles with her. "Assuming we could get in, I don't know how we would get the body out without being spotted."

Miles ducks along with Lara with a little thrill. Now this is the sort of stuff he's used to doing. He doesn't get to do much of this anymore, anything even resembling Admiral Naismith's work, really putting his covert ops skills to work -- the morgue break-in didn't count, on account of how embarrassingly disastrous that went. But this -- even as Miles quiets his breath automatically, going uncannily still, an electric grin lights up his face.

"With only two patrols? Oh, we could get in, but yes, that would be a problem..." Miles blinks. "Wait, we're taking the body with us now?"

The smile is strangely infectious, so at odds with the careful stillness running through the rest of him. Lara returns it, smaller and more subdued, but there's something running underneath that. This makes sense (should it?).

"I thought that was why we were here, unless you really did just want to look at it." It would simplify things at the very least.

Miles actually laughs at that, though hushed, under his breath. "I did, but it's probably more conducive to a proper examination than hanging around in there, waiting to be discovered. Not, uh, that I'm a mortician," he adds as a disclaimer. "I'm afraid my skill set is limited to bartending, personnel management, and daring rescues."

He gives her a slight grin, eyes alight, and studies the problem from afar with a thoughtful look. "Getting in isn't the problem, it's the exit that's always the trick." He glances up at her with a deeply considering look. "How much weight can you carry?"

"Unfortunately, as it happens, my expertise in that area is with bodies that have been dead a bit longer. I suppose there must be a doctor on board the ship who can help."

She considers his question (and the possible ramifications of it) seriously for a moment. "Depends how heavy for how long and what I'd be doing. For instance, if you're asking if I can carry a dead body while scaling a sheer wall, then... Probably, but not very well."

"Well, at least you wouldn't have to worry about her comfort," Miles says cheerfully, chewing at the side of his thumb in thought. "I suppose dropping the body from a sheer height like that won't really help our investigation, given the inevitable damage. There has to be an alternative."

He narrows his eyes in thought, lips moving in silent calculation as he sorts through a plan. Then his eyes light up with a fresh grin. "In fact, I think walking out the front door would be much more preferable. I'll get you in through that back window and buy you as much time as I can, but you may have to make a quick escape without me."

By comparison, Lara hesitates, frowning slightly as she considers the possibilities that could lead to.

"Any plans that don't involve you probably getting arrested." One thing to put herself in danger, quite another to risk someone else.

"Yeah, we're fresh out of those." Miles' grin takes on that wild edge to it, the look of Miles Vorkosigan with a Plan. A Plan that he's completely bullshitting as they go, but it wouldn't be a Miles Vorkosigan Plan any other way. "We passed that point the second we decided we were going to break into a building surrounded by police patrol. If you were looking for a fun bonding activity with a low risk of getting arrested, I'm afraid you signed up for the wrong one, Lara."

He can shift more of the risk to himself, at least, which is the least he can do for asking Lara to take him back here. He nods toward the guarded house and in the vague general direction of the other side.

"Take us around to where that back window is, or at least as close as you can get us without being seen. Then we'll wait for the next patrol to come around."

She doesn't look the least bit convinced, but there's something dangerously infectious about the smile he gives her. She opens her mouth to say something but is interrupted by a call.

"Oi! You two! What do you think you're doing." One of the security guards from the front door is making his way towards them. Lara tenses. Shit.

Miles has never gotten anywhere by hesitating, so as soon as the cop steps in close enough to be just out of sight of the other patrols, Miles steps forward in front of Lara, fumbling with something on the inside of his uniform jacket.

"Oh, us? Getting lost, apparently." Miles gives the cop a toothy tourist grin right up the barrel of the pistol the guy's pointing down at him. Well, above him and then down, once the height difference registers. His accent has suddenly shifted -- no longer the very Russian-sounding accent of Barrayar, but the flat tones of Beta Colony, which would sound startlingly similar to an American accent to Lara. Miles is still rooting around in his jacket pocket, patting himself on the other side with his free hand. "Some locals told us about a shortcut to a nice waterfront view -- she warned me it seemed suspicious, and now I feel like I should've listened, eh, sweetheart?"

The officer doesn't look any mollified, watching Miles warily. "Sir, I'm going to need to see both your -- "

"'Cause I'm starting to feel like we were set up to be mugged or something," Miles goes on blithely as though he never heard the cop, frowning as he starts turning his pockets inside out. "Only whoever it was didn't think it through, 'cause I can't imagine they were counting on us running into -- well, shit, where's that map? Could've sworn I put -- oh, damn!"

Miles fumbles some small object from his pocket in the dark and drops it to the ground, quickly following it at a crouch. The officer, clearly on edge, starts slightly and keeps his gun trained on Miles, stooping in closer with some kind of muttered warning. Once he's close enough, Miles moves like lightning to disarm him -- neatly divesting him of his gun, he jerks the cop down by his weapon arm and delivers a swift blow to the backs of his knees to bring him down, and one last strike to the neck to drop him like a sack of bones to the ground before them. Miles blows out his breath and shakes out his hand with a slight wince. Thank you, ImpSec training. At least he could execute that without breaking anything.

"Well," Miles says briskly, staring contemplatively down at the now-unconscious police officer on the ground in front of them. He looks at the gun in his hand, examines it for a second, and then holsters it in his uniform belt. Still at a crouch, he snatches officer's wristcomm and gives it a similar once-over. "That wasn't really how I imagined it going, but close enough."

It seems to happen in between one breath and the next. Lara tenses, ready for the fight, waiting for the sound of the gun shot. When it ends with the guard on the ground and Miles standing up, she lets out a breath that twists into a shocked laugh.

"Incredible." Adrenalin up and blood roaring through her, she almost thinks they might pull this off after all. "Can you get rid of the other one at the door?"

His face alive with adrenaline, Miles grins and taps the wristcomm. "Oh, I think so. But it's a little premature just now. I think there's only so long I can keep him occupied, which is why we're going to get you in the back." He nods vaguely in the direction that would take them around to the back of the house. "The one patrolling around the back is the one in our way right now. We'll make our way as close as we can without being detected, and -- "

The wristcomm buzzes and Miles, lips drawn a little thin, answers it in a passable impression of the now-unconscious cop's local accent. He glances quickly at the tag on the uniform's jacket. "Grante here."

"Reddig. Just checking in on that disturbance at the perimeter. Did you find anything?"

Miles, glancing down at the unconscious cop at their feet, nudges it with his foot and looks back up at Lara as if to say this is the part where we hide the body. "Yeah, actually," he reports back, with a convincing undertone of oh, fuck. "I think...I think you're gonna wanna come over here and see this for yourself, Reddig. It's bad."

Miles snaps off the wristcomm. "That happened a lot faster than I wanted it, too," he mutters, crouching to move the body out of sight, behind some convenient foliage or whatever they can find. "We'd better hurry."

Her eyes widen as she listens, bending when Miles indicates to grab the guard around the shoulder. There's a nearby dumpster that with a little help she can haul him over, shoving him just behind it. She jumps up to drag a few bags out and drop them on top of the bits hanging out. There. Body hidden.

That doesn't give her much chance to shove Miles out of sight as the second guard rounds the corner, gun drawn. "Grante? Where the- HEY! Hold it right there!"

Lara's movements aren't nearly as clean as Miles, but when the guard's unholstered gun lifts, it's a second nature reaction. The climbing axe slams point first into the guard's gun hand, yanking up, Lara's palm colliding with the man's head and using the combined momentum of his backward stumble to slam his head against the brick wall. Brutal and ugly, but on the bright side, she managed to not kill him.

Miles almost moves to help even as she pushes him back, but he hardly has time before Lara springs into action, and he finds himself watching dumbfounded for the scant few seconds it takes. He watches the man drop to the ground, bruised and a little bloody, and looks back at Lara with a healthy mix of respect and mild terror, with a little dash of growing fondness. He knew he liked Lara for a reason.

"Ah," he says eloquently, nodding. "Remind me never to get between you and a dead body."

The stolen wristcomm crackles with Reddig's alarmed voice and Miles stares down at it, brow furrowed. He frowns, turning that concerned look on the two unconscious bodies. "No, this is definitely not according to my plan." He taps a thumbnail to his lips. "Well, we could try and take out their other friend for the complete set before he manages to call for backup, but I'm starting to think our odds are better on a tactical retreat. I don't think I want to see the body that badly." He glances quickly up at Lara, eyebrow raised in silent question. And what do you want to do? They don't have a lot of time to deliberate.

Lara retrieves the downed guard's fallen gun, checking the clip, the corner of her mouth turning up in a slight smile.

"I'd go easy on you."

She blows out a breath as the comm crackles and Miles makes his recommendation. Retreat hadn't actually occurred to her as an option, but it's more appealing than what she had been gearing up for. That she was so ready to go straight to shooting people is. Off putting. "Going back sounds like a good idea."

She puts the gun back on the ground. Better there than with her. She doesn't need it on the Moira.

Now there's a smile. He hasn't seen those too often on Lara. Miles offers her an exhilarated grin in return.

"Oh, I'd hope not." He watches her leave the weapon on the ground with a small breath of relief. Not that he'd have stopped her taking it, she's entitled to it, but -- better this not escalate. Miles is all about a good thrill and doing backflips over odds against his favor, but the bad PR from Caducus Primary was bad enough and honestly, he just doesn't really feel like getting arrested today. Miles tosses the wristcomm on the chest of the unconscious man at their feet and nods quickly at Lara as he straightens up. "Tactical retreat it is. Debriefing at the bar, maybe?"

The smile widens a little more, caught between shy and a little wicked.

"That depends, are you going to be the bartender as well?" Adrenalin makes it easy to tease. She's already half turned to retrace their steps back down the alley to find a safer place to get back to the ship.

Oh, he likes that smile on Lara. It's a good look for her. Miles wonders, briefly, what he can do to tease a smile like that out of her again. He follows at a quick pace, light-footed, with only one glance cast over his shoulder to check for pursuers.

"It's Jacky's shift tonight, so not this time, no. But," he adds, eyes lit up like a livewire with all the adrenaline, "I could always relieve her if you'd object to sharing a table with me."

"I'm feeling agreeable," she says, taking a sharp turn down another alley. Strange to feel so light when their mission was an objective failure, running high when they're moving away from the violence. "You can buy me a drink."

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bodies are where you find them [closed]

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THIS...GOT OUT OF HAND LMFAO LMK IF THIS IS OK

THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL 2 ME

IM SO GLAD

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