A Chance Encounter?! [Pantheon]

[pkgrn]

Noise and clutter filled dimly lit square to the seems.

People.

Liquor.

Smoke.

The main elements of any bar, no matter the island. Sure, on Funkyard Island, the bars may be a tad more...disgusting. Yet a bar it was that Artemis found himself in.

He had fallen into the Ocean not far from Junk Island, and as his luck would hold, found himself safely ashore when he had awoken. Falling from the sky at such speed and velocity had caused a great deal of blood to rush to the young man's head, and thus he had passed out shortly after jumping off of his native island.

Outside of a few bruised ribs and a pounding headache, Artemis has survived the experience. He warned through the rough terrain of the island until finally stumbling upon this very establishment, the “Junkheap” as it were called.

It wasn't a very large space. It clearly had not been designed to contain more than fifty people at capacity. Yet it must have become quite popular, for the bar seemed to be nearly that full currently. It was almost hard to tell with all the coming and going's of each individual.

Then again that was the allure of a bar. To enter, unnoticed, and also to leave. Perfect place for a meet and greet. Which was exactly why he had come to this very place.

This was not Artemis' first experience at the “Junkheap”. In fact he had become somewhat of a “free-lance employee”. What this meant to the winged man was that he would perform services for a select few individuals, and would receive payment for such services.

And today was no different. In fact, it almost seemed easier than the previous errands he had performed. Yet this was the highest paying assignment yet.

“Transport this fruit. CAREFULLY! And do not let a single person eat it. Better yet, show no one! Only the Conrad. You will know him when you see him! Large fellow, quite stocky in fact. Has a few scars, and most noticeably, is missing his left eye. He doesn't even hide it! Wears the scar like a badge.”

Those were his instructions. Now all Artemis had to do was watch the door..

[cremuex]

The contents of the long champagne flute was twirled around as the golden gloved hand holding it tilted backwards and forwards lazily. As usual, she was punctual, arriving well before the arranged time to make sure that everything was safe and clear. She knew how these sorts of things could work out and it was best to know all the exits in case a situation arose. She was only informed of the bare minimum to get her to show up. There was money to be had, and a sizable amount at that, was normally all it took to grab her attention. Her contact hadn't said much in terms of what the job was so much as that they were looking for a doctor that didn't ask many questions. This alone had made her wary, but curiosity and a slight hint of greed had gotten their grips around the young woman's mind and she was interested in seeing things through.

She wasn't the only person to arrive early though- The contact, someone she only knew as 'Jimmy', a gangling Irish teen with black hair, charming green eyes and a crooked wiry smile with a tastefully fashionable green tartan dress suit was walking around chatting up some of the other ... huh, I suppose you could call them 'associates'. She couldn't quite tell who he was talking to, because his shadow from the lightly crackling fire fell directly over the person he was talking with, succeeding in making them nothing more than a silhouette. She tried to figure out what their conversation was about; Jimmy was quite animate in the way that he spoke, and his gestures were normally expressive enough to tell the mood from across a room, but he was keeping one hand in his pocket, the other tapping off the ashes from a thick cigar into a glass tray.

He attention was stolen away in the split second that she felt something pulling upon her skirt- it was slight, ever so slight, as if something small had fallen upon it. Her sharp golden yellow eyes falling upon the offender. It was a tiny pink chubby hand, a child's hand. She didn't blink but let our a relieved sigh. She should have been paying more attention- how could a child have snuck up on her like that? At least she had managed to not look as startled as she was and kept her composure. A single thin black eyebrow raised questioningly at the child.

"... Yes?"

The child smiled back with glee and pointed to itself. The thick deep-pink dreadlocks seemed to perk up and fan out, showing that the young boy was an Axolotl fishman. His deep black glassy eyes and large awkward smile making him look rather dopey, even for a seven year old.

"My name is Rufus! This is my first job! I'm really excited to meet you! I hope we have a great time together and that we can be good friends!" The child was eager to inform her, seemingly quite proud of their accomplishment of having a job despite being so young. She gave the boy a concerned look- well, as concerned as her otherwise distant face would allow as she turned her body to face him properly. He had a voice that sounded oddly airy, like bubbles floating up from a body of water.

"That's... great? Rufus, but what job are you doing?" She wasn't sure if that was great at all, but the optimistic water breather had caught her off guard and she didn't really know how to deal with children.

"I'm really strong!" The boy gloated, showing off his scrawny arm muscles underneath the over sized hand-me down shirt. "So that man over there says if I can help them carry some stuff I can get a lots of beri! And then, I can use it to buy lots of nice things for my mum and dad!" She could tell just by looking at the boy that he was poor, though the tired, worn clothes that looked like a tent on the boy was a sure indicator. She didn't care much for feelings but could tell that she could only guess was... sadness? No. She'd felt sadness before and this wasn't it, it was like sadness but for someone else? After all, the boy just wanted to help his family.

"Do your parent's know that you're here?" She asked, obviously doubtful that they did. Rufus went to speak again but was interrupted by the heavy oak door opening to display the outline of yet another of her soon to be confederates.

[trash]

Junkheap.

He wasn't familiar with the place. An envelope had been placed with almost surgical finesse in the door jam of his tiny office. Inside, a job- just like any other. Simple locate and apprehend a target, take it or leave it.

Jack liked to drink. Drinks cost beri and beri came from work. Besides, at least he liked his job.

Most in this fucked up world stuck to hunting bounties, becoming renowned as bounty hunters proper. Jack was a PI first and a merc second. Nine times out of ten, Jack just had to find people who don't want to be found. Luckily, he was always real good at his job.

The specs were that simple, no real description or why. Just some kid with a weird looking fruit was to be quietly escorted to a currently undisclosed location. Payment would be half on capture and half on delivery, two stages only AFTER he was invested. Smart client.


----------

A small boat had brought him here, an island that lived up to its name entirely. Junk, scrap and miscellaneous pieces of broken or discarded machinery was scattered everywhere that one might normally expect to see trees and such ilk. It was as if the island grew trash at it's own unique ecosystem. His ferryman was part of the job oddly, a man of six two and a few stone. A curved blade, scimitar if memory served. Probably from a desert, explained the darker skin too.

" Got a name, stranger?" Jack growled through the left side of his mouth. The half mask of steel on the right side of his head muffled and added a metallic growl to his words. This covered a lack of flesh and feature, a ghoulish visage quite capable of enticing nightmares. The mask was also featureless, merely dull grey cutting his face in half. 

" Zadib," Accented English, definitely foreign to the blues. The answer lacked preamble, it was no bullshit and yet mildly giving when he needed not be.

Jack nodded thoughtfully, reaching into his duster to pull out a cigar and prop it in the corner of his lips. He gestured then," Lead on," But he didn't offer Zadib a cigar.

[Blaka]

*Yaaawn*

Keturah woke from her nap. The orangeskinned boa silently slithered up her friend's shoulder and proceeded to open her mouth wide for another loud noise.

"Hush! Quiet You!" A gloved hand slapped the giant serpent on the snout. Keturah responded with resigned hiss and buried her teeth in a bunch of the hand's owner's   hair instead.

Kyria Mitéra sat in the far corner of some bar's backroom, in the shadows, nervously observing every move the surrounding people made. Junkheap, the joint called itself. Quite a strange place if she was honest. All kinds of strange folk was visiting here. In the main room she had seen a guy with wings like an angel. And back here, even weirder people were assembling:
There was this fishman boy, in no way older than 10. He looked quite adorable but also way too young to take part in any mercenary job. Perhaps he was just waiting tables for this Jimmy person, but something told her nobody was allowed in this room if he wasn't going to be part of the job.
Talking to him, a lady in yellow, slurping her expensive champagne. Kyria didn't know what to think of her yet. Sophia's whole demeanour and outfit didn't exactly scream danger or even hired fighter for that matter. Though, since she didn't know what this job was even about, the black haired young woman could just as easily be a package the rest of them was supposed to protect.
Then there was Jimmy himself. A creep that one. Nothing more to say about it. A lot of her employers were creeps like that though, so it didn't worry her too much. Part of the job. Anxiously the former Kuja Pirate's tired eyes tried to make out who he was talking to.

Upon entering the establishment Miss Mitéra had gotten a quick look at this person and what she had been left with was not exactly as safe feeling: The man was tall, towering over Kyria by a a good 50 inches. A dark red face mask with a black lightning pattern and nasty looking layer of spikes on its forehead was covering almost the entire face. Only the eyes were free, steel gray hues that blankly stared out of the shell. His upper body was free of any clothes, leaving the dark skinned mountain like torso barren. His legs were hidden in dark blue baggy silk pants, feet stuck in pitchblack combat boots. In his hands, the stranger held a strange and pretty brutal looking weapon. It consisted of a presumably wooden staff, which was not only curved but had two long row of steel blades, like teeth, attached to it. Only right in the middle of the staff, there was a short bit of wood free of blades where the wielder could grab it. Her and the masked man hadn't exchanged any words, each silently taking place on opposite far ends of the room, waiting for the boss announce the plan.

There were still people coming in though, so perhaps Jimmy would wait till everyone he wanted in had arrived.

[cremuex]

The small pink axolotl child took the distraction of the door opening and a figure stepping through to their advantage and snuck off somewhere, in a distinctly un-stealthy manner, dropping to the floor with a noise that sounded like someone had slapped a wet sponge against a wall. Rufus then proceeded to let his arms lay flat against his sides and using his legs to push him forward like an impromptu mop, his external gills swaying backwards and forwards each time he propelled himself forward. He gave a happy, albeit dumb looking smile to himself in congratulations for not getting lectured about sneaking out against his parent's will.

It wasn't that she hadn't noticed the little fish man with his tragic attempt at an escape, it was just that she recognized the figure that had entered. She'd done surgery on the fellow once for Jimmy when they were trying to traffic out illegal goods from the Pirates Market for some seller in North Blue. Some substance that needed to be hidden inside several layers of plastic bags to prevent them effecting her client simply from how concentrated it was.

The man seemed to be in reasonable health for someone with alcohol abuse issues and the stocky built black haired man grabbed a beer on the way through, twisting off the metal cap by pressing the lid to the side of his forearm and flexing. Spotting the woman on her chair he opened his arms out wide in a warm and friendly greeting, his face contorted in a rough grin that made his unfortunate face look worse than if he had just not shown any expression at all. Sophia didn't need to be a doctor to tell that the man's face had been beaten in a number of times in his thirty four or thirty five years of life. She stood from her chair, reaching out a hand to shake his and getting pulled into a somewhat sweaty hug.

"Lark. You're. Suffocating. Me." she managed to squeeze enough air into and out of her lungs to speak in a broken sentence, severely restricted in movement as the rough old man with scratchy 5 o'clock shadow bear hugged her in the most uncorroborated hug of the over friendly man's life. She barely had the strength to push him back enough to be able to breath and it was a god send when he did finally let go with a hearty chuckle.

"I didn't know you were on this job! That's a load of my shoulders I tell ya that! The missus was right glad when I got back, she thought I'd been workin' out when those little packages came out and let me just say, she was real glad to see it." He gave the somewhat stiff woman a nudge with his elbow, suggesting something that her brain really would rather not think about. Seeing such a response he winked at her and drummed the fingers of his free hand on his stomach, "Don't you worry though! I'll be puttin' it back on so you can be expectin' to see me again some time in the near future." Like most with a substance problem, he didn't see the problem as it presented itself but merely as something that was because of how open society was to it. She went to take a sip of her champagne when she noticed that it had spilled on the floor from the force of the man's embrace moments before. She cast down a look to the small splash upon the floor with only the faintest feeling of regret. It wasn't that she'd spilled her drink and was no longer able to have it, but that it was a more expensive drink from a foreign sea that they only had the one bottle of on the island and that was from a trader and not the pub itself.

"Woooooooooooooow" came the low voice of the child as it looked up at the large orange scaled snake that he saw before him. His eyes sparkling in childish amazement at how cool the woman with her reptile companion looked. His chubby little fingers pressed against his face, pushing his smooshy cheeks forward and his external gills fanning out.

[trash]

Zadib walked through a series of tubing shaped into the semblance of some sort handrail to help guide those walking by through the trash as a walkway. Jack followed, a big inhalation of smoke and ash into his lungs only helping to pollute the atmosphere of this island. The flavor of the cigar was only faintly detected on the man's ruined taste buds- the tiniest tinge of bitterness. The reminder of this mild disability brought a momentary scowl to his half-face, his good eye narrowing dangerously before a sigh brought him back to the present.

" Zadib, was it? Any information I'm missing or been left out on?" He asked while snubbing out the cigar to save for later, placing the stub back within his carrying case. His left hand reached up and past his shoulder to adjust his rather oversized sword, angling the blade diagonally for an easier draw should the need arise.

The target of his questions simply kept walking , uninterested. When the silence started to edge into an uncomfortable zone...Zadib shrugged with one shoulder, remaining charasterically blank," What you know is what you need know. What I know is what I need know," An almost cryptic response and a means to end a conversation that hadn't even started yet. Zadib obviously had no intention of doing anything besides the mission presented to them.

Conversation avoided, the small exchange had killed enough time for them to come across a small bar which Zadib obviously had intentions of entering. The name of the establishment was nailed into the ground and made from scrap metal and junk- 'The Junkheap'. Zadib entered the bar and was gone from sight before Jack could say another word, but the investigator merely sighed and followed the darker man inside.

The ceiling was surprisingly low, causing Jack to have to duck to at first enter and take in his fellow mercs. Dim light, frowns all around, scars and shitty tattoos....yeah, Jack was at home. His name wasn't well known off his island of home as of yet, but the demeanor he gave off did however elicit some whispers of malcontent. 

Adjusting his half-mask, Jack merely grunted under his breath and took a seat at the bar though he omitted to ordering a drink. He took brief note of the lavishly dressed woman at the far end, her flute of champagne and the smaller child seemingly wandering about in awe. The similarly large man without a shirt also commanded attention yet Jack did his best to outwardly ignore his presence and give off a feel of nonchalance and cool disregard to his surroundings. If everyone thought he was ignoring his surroundings, he'd be able to easier observe and take note of everything about him. Hopefully he wasn't the last to arrive, that'd do the opposite and attract too much damn attention....and he didn't know where Zadib had wandered off too.

[cremuex]

((OOC: Blab asked for me to skip them so here you go!))

Jimmy's green eyes darted to the end of the room when the door opened, the last two to arrive were fiiiiiinally here, and his job could kick off in it's most official of capacities. That being, to inform the oddly mismatched group of their purpose, drink some more, kick off his shoes and lie back for the rest of the evening. Oh how it was good to have friends in high places, or rather, low places, since they were talking about the underground after all.

"Ahh! Ladies and gentlemen! Associates! Comrades! Dearest of friends!" He said in his usual sleazy manner as one of the bar keeps left the private room, closing the door behind him and standing guard on the other side should anyone try to enter.

"I know you're all very busy, and my boss greatly appreciates your time and assistance in these matters. What is the matter you ask? I'm fine- how are you? I see you're all got her safely and without trouble, though some are finer than others." He said, at first trying to make a joke and then to try his luck with the ladies in the room, winking and blowing a kiss at the lady with a large snake wrapped around her, then waggling his eyebrows at the woman in gold. Perhaps his charms would land him with not one, but two ladies that night~

Oh for god's sake. The doctor could hear herself think and wouldn't have minded saying it out loud if she didn't know better than to interrupt the man with his monologues. Whenever she did that it often landed her with having to hear even MORE from him.

He laughed to himself and adjusted the lapels of his green tartan dress suit with a sort of boyish flick, like he thought himself some sort of tough heart-breaker.

"But nuh, seriously, listen here and I'll level with you a bit. So the boss has a little problem with thieves see? Those that take from him don't tend to live long and our culprit knew that well enough so they've scurried off down here thinkin' they'd gotten away with it and that we weren't gonna follow 'em. But thanks to MY genius detective work," His head turned up in a cocky manner, like nobody else could have possibly done his job as well as him, "We've tracked the bastard down." He gave a long enough pause to make it seem dramatic.

"Oh- But what did they steal? One of the boss' Devil Fruits is what!" He exclaimed, trying to stir up the scandal more. "If it was just something small like a paintin' or a diamond, the boss wouldn't care, that's pittance, but you know how rare Devil Fruits are? And the boss was keepin' it for a business partner on top of that! Which is why you're all here. You've gotta get that fruit back, no matter the cost. Now you might be thinkin' 'well how bad is this guy?' They done got through the bosses security and their takin' it easy down here. Probably thinkin' that you're not good enough to do the job's what! The boss wants 'em DEALT with, ya got that?" He said in his overly dramatic way.

Another pause drawled on before any of the realise that his speech was far shorter this time than any of them were used to, and when nobody said something for fear of sending him further on a rant, the little fish-man pointed out the obvious.

"But what do they look like?" He asked innocently, possibly the the only one in the whole room that actually bought into the whole act.

It was crucial information and without it none of them could do their job properly. He moved to a desk and handed a picture of the target to each person in the room. The picture was to be destroyed when they left the room, leaving no evidence to link their unknown boss back to the group.

The picture showed a male, early twenties, wearing a gi, a sky forged katana at his hip, white wings of a sky-person, scarred with tell tale signs that they'd had their nose and jaw broken and reset at least once, deep blue eyes, sandy blonde hair - he should be rather easy to find in a place like this, even if they were wearing a hooded cloak to try and hide themselves.

It was now clear that Jimmy was open to questions now, despite having stated 'no questions asked', it might as well have been a tack on to make him sound 'cooler'. Then again, he couldn't possibly get any less cool.