Misplaced arrivals.

[Nayt]

"Father-daughter vacation," Z replied promptly with a stern nod of her head.

Talis looked upon Z from over his sunglasses. This being the first time his glasses had dipped down his nose enough for either of the two would be bounty hunters to see his eyes, they'd find that his irises carried a dull, golden-yellow sort of glow to them. Nonetheless, Talis looked at the girl as if to silently ask do you really think anyone is going to believe that?, before pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and turning to Myrria and Circe. It was best if he explained, probably.

Contrary to Z's belief, Talis really had no problems telling these two why they were here. It wasn't like it was any sort of big secret. Anyone from Xexoria seeing him would've known his purpose for being here, and would have probably gone off to inform the local warlord to get the hell out of dodge.

"Same as y'all, actually," Talis corrected his would be daughter, "There's this bastard runnin' 'round the damn world, messin' up all kinds of lives. I've been trackin' 'im for awhile now, and the trail's led here. Problem is, I ain't gettin' paid. Charity work for the greater good, I guess."

If someone voluntarily paid him for his contributions to society, though, that would've been just swell--but money wasn't really an issue for Talis anymore. He had enough to support Z steadily and that was all he needed. Anything more was excess. Though, the girl probably could use a college fund. On second thought, maybe I should charge 'em for my help.

Z folded her arms over her chest and averted her eyes from the rest of the group defiantly. "Okay, fine. It's a vacation to me, at least."

[Zach Kaiser]

"He wouldn't happen to have silver hair, would he?"

Myrria decided this was worth confirming; after all, they knew their target had several previous victims, and Thompson hand not mentioned if they were all in Xexoria if it was simply his current location. And while she did not especially like the idea of bringing more people into a battle, any assistance in locating the man would be greatly appreciated.

And of course, unlike real bounty hunters, she and Circe would have no trouble letting McCarthy take the credit and the money; they could always claim there's was a private contract.

[Paroxysm]

At first Circe was going to add onto the list of distinguishing features for their mark, but ... Well, while there were many ways to describe him, the first few words that sprung to mind were: Disfigured, deformed, invalid, and the like; it, they were not the greatest of words to use with present company. She would have felt horrible if Z took offense to it or something.

"Rumor is our mark's exceptionally ugly, too," she said--she thought about her words a bit more carefully (so to speak?), "and like, he took a fall from the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down-ugly. Can the same be said about your mark?”

That was the nicest-not-nice way Circe could describe their guy; she hoped Scott’s assessment that their target was an ugly son of a gun was a good one, because if he was just slightly disfigured, well... That’d just make Circe’s description an exaggerated mess, wouldn’t it?

[Nayt]

He quirked a brow. Well, that was quick. Not unexpected, though. If these two were out to collect a bounty on someone in Xexoria, no doubt they'd ask Talis if his task was the same as theirs.

"Silver hair? Ugly mug?" Talis questioned rhetorically.

Talis folded his arms and fell into thought. Though they didn't share even a sliver of family resemblance, Talis and Z's familial relationship was likely proven by how they adopted the same sort of thinking pose. Talis was pretty sure he knew the person they were asking about, though.

"Does his head look a li'l too big for his body?" Talis asked.

Z knew him, too. Unlike Talis, she didn't need any further convincing on the matter. She'd only met one person with silver hair that looked ugly as hell within the last month, after all.

"Yeah, hey! Didn't we beat the chicken shit outta that guy?" Z asked as she turned a bit to face Talis.

"Chicken shit?" he said, and though it may have seemed at first like he was going to scold her for cursing . . . "Jeez, don't sell us so short. We beat the dog piss outta that guy. That's gotta be 'least ten times the beatin'."

[Zach Kaiser]

This was...surprising, to say the least. Had their target already been beaten by this McCarthy? That would be quite a coincidence. But silver hair was not exactly common; it would almost be more unlikely for there to be another person nearby matching that description.

"Where is he now?" Myrria asked, noting that he said they beat him up, not killed him. Not that it would have mattered even if he'd killed him, as they'd still need to see the body to be sure.

[Paroxysm]

“Ha! I think Scott did say something like that,” she admitted while stifling a chuckle. It was a little hard to believe that Talis McCarthy had already taken out their target; after all, there was the chance that they had just met a similarly gremlin looking man and beat the hell out of him, but in the middle of Xexoria? That was a little much for a coincidence.

“Yeah,” she echoed after Myrria, “do you know where you beat him? We’d like to confirm.”

[Nayt]

Talis frowned. "Guess that was yer task, ja?"

Well, that was suck news. He really hated it when he stepped on a bounty hunter's toes. Sort of ruined any chance for friendly relations. Though, these two girls seemed to be taking it well. They were under false pretenses, at least. He had to be the bearer of bad news yet again, it seemed . . .

"Sorry, but he got away. He bailed out usin' some crazy teleport. Made all this swirly black shit an' crawled away when I wasn't lookin'."

Crawled being the key word, because that guy was most definitely not going to be walking for the next five years. It was very hard to do that without knees.

"That guy was buds with my task; he was my only lead, an' he's led me right to the bastard," Talis said as apologetically as possible, "I kinda, er, I kinda had to do him in to get him to talk. Sorry, girls. If ya want, though, I can split my bounty with ya. I know what it's like t'get yer task jacked, and I don't want no hard feelin's, y'know?"

[Zach Kaiser]

"Great; he could be anywhere, then." If the man teleported, there was no guarantee he was even in Xexoria anymore, let alone anywhere nearby. That would make him tracking him down difficult, if not impossible for the two of them. Which left them stranded in the middle of the desert with little clothing, no supplies, in the wrong bodies, with a mission that was a good as failed.

This was not, to be sure, one of Myrria's better days. "I don't suppose you have any idea where he might have gone, or what he was doing here." She kept her tone professionally stoic, so as not to betray the bad mood that was overcoming her.

On the possibility of splitting the bounty, she didn't much care one way or another. She more or less lived for the Dirige, and she was in most circumstances capable of surviving on her own in the wilderness, whether it be a forest, desert, or even frozen tundra. So the decision for that was in Circe's hands.

[Paroxysm]

Circe folded her arms across her chest and thought for a moment, quite visibly so. This was all starting to become far too troublesome for her, but not like she could do anything about it; at any rate, just because their target disappeared didn’t mean he’d be impossible to find! Actually, she had an idea about how the two could find him.

“We’re ‘fessionals,” she smiled and shrugged her shoulders, “and we definitely don’t need any money we haven’t earned, yeah? Forgetting that, you said our guy was working with yours, right? Your guy might know where ours scurried off to.”

Well, it made sense to Circe, at least, and it would have sucked colossally to have come all this way and gone through all they have only to fail their mission because Talis decided to blow the guy’s kneecaps off.

“Hell--and your guy might even be willing to tell us once he finds out his buddy sold him up the river.”

[Nayt]

"Sorry, kid," Talis addressed Myrria, "He was here an' tryin' to get all threatenin' to the populace, so I definitely had to put him down.

As much as he regretted screwing up these girls' bounty, it was really for the best that he did. In their state, they wouldn't have been able to take the guy. Regardless, Circe came up with an idea that Talis hadn't even thought of yet. Which wasn't surprising. He was kind of slow when it came to formulating plans. Which was probably why he rarely went into a situation with a solid plan . . . Or any plan at all, even.

"Shit, that's a good plan," Talis said to Circe, "Yer a looker and a thinker."

"D-- dad!" Z protested.

Talis held his hands up harmlessly. "Can't fault a guy fer bein' honest."

Z folded her arms over her chest and scoffed. "I swear. You're the biggest perv ever."

That would have been momentously creepy if Circe was in her own body and Talis was still addressing her (which wouldn't have happened, ever; Talis liked shapely, busty women). Instead, he was commenting on Circe's brains and Myrria's looks all at once. If he knew the situation, he would've blown his own mind just now.

Talis cleared his throat. "Anyways, the guy I'm after ain't goin' nowhere. And yens ain't goin' nowhere soon, either. Y'all need yer rest, so hang here fer a few. We got a few days 'fore my guy makes a move."

[Zach Kaiser]

Normally, such a comment wouldn't have bothered her at all and she may have even been a little flattered if it was aimed at her, but something about McCarthy hitting on Circe in her body annoyed her. Not that he could be blamed, it wasn't as though he knew what happened (and she for one had no intention of telling him), but for the time being she'd rather not deal with things of that nature.

As for the plan, she personally didn't think chances were that high they'd learn anything useful. Part of the urgency of their mission was that their target was very hard to track, and knowing even the general area where he was going to be was more than they'd ever had on him. If he was that tight-lipped about it, she doubted he'd trust someone he was working with with that kind of information.

But then again, it wasn't like they had any other leads, and until Thompson found a way of contacting them there probably wasn't much hope of them finding a way to swap their bodies back, either.

"Very well," she consented with a nod. But she did have a question. "What has your target done to earn their bounty?" she asked.

There was, after all, a small hitch in the plan: Myrria and Circe weren't allowed to kill normal humans. (Usually, anyway; sometimes Myrria got sent on missions where this restriction was waived if the target was dangerous enough.) And while she was certain she could fight a normal human without killing them in her own body, she wasn't sure in Circe's body she'd have the kind of control, at least not yet.

[Paroxysm]

"Ah-hahaha... T-thanks, I think?" Her hands were risen almost apologetically as she looked round towards Myrria and then back to Talis; in all honesty, under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have known how to take that comment right out of the blue, but considering the situation now, it was just plain weird. Well at least she was called smart, she thought proudly to herself.

“That’s fair,” she said in agreement with Talis. “I don’t think I could handle messin’ around in the desert just yet, not so soon after--,” she paused in thought and seemed to consider her words for a moment, “--collapsing."

Actually, that wasn't the problem at all. If there was a chance for armed combat in the near future, another day--another hour, even--to get used to Myrria's body would be invaluable. Especially if Talis' mark wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Besides, Myrria's question brought up a good point: It wasn't like they could just waltz up and attack a regular person, scum or not.

[Nayt]

"He's a total bastard," Z replied pointedly, "And he actually knocked me over 'cause I was in his way at the supermarket. He deserves the worst you can give 'im."

Talis cleared his throat. "I, uh, think yer thinkin' of the wrong guy. I already done put that guy down. Wasn't no bounty on his head, either. He was just . . . eh, y'know."

Honestly, you're at the supermarket and you're in a big hurry and that's just fine. However, if you're in so much of a hurry that you brush people out of the way and not even give a damn about the adolescent invalid you just knocked over during your ill prepared bull-rush . . . well, that was not fine. That girl's father was going to hunt you down, break into your house, and beat you within an inch of your life. It actually did not matter who the father or who the girl was, even. Any good father would beat such a person to an inch of his life for such a crime.

"Oh . . ." Z trailed off, set her index finger to her lower lip, and thought to herself briefly, "Oh! Wait, you mean we're after that Kerington guy?"

This time, Talis nodded. "Guy named Kerington. 'Round seventeen or eighteen years old, but dangerous as holy hell. Kid's been seen at every good goddamn cataclysm you can name. Word has it, he ain't even human. I mean, how else could he, uh-- what's it called, Z?"

"What's what?"

"When ya draw in those shade thingits in 'til they start gatherin' on their own."

"Oh. Uh. How should I know?" Z shrugged her shoulders.

"Eh, well, anyway. Daughter of an ol' buddy of mine got stabbed in the heart by this guy. In the middle of Prompt's fall, t'boot. Girl's lucky to be alive. 'Cording to her, shades weren't touchin' him, either." He could've listed a whole series of crimes against humanity this guy had committed, but the deal with the shades happened to be the worst on that list. "Anyway, I've run into a few people callin' him Daniel." Though, the ugly mugged silver haired guy only knew him as Kerington. "And he's staked out in a hotel in town . . . sorta . . . few miles east or somethin'."

Not like the miles really mattered. Honestly, you didn't count your travel distance through Xexoria in miles, you counted it in rotations of the earth.

[Zach Kaiser]

"Shades?" Myrria gave Circe a meaningful look; if McCarthy's target could indeed summon shades, than he was actually a Voleur d'Ame, and it was their duty to take him out. They'd need to confirm the ability for themselves, though; they couldn't just take his word on it and kill the man.

She also had a question for McCarthy, regarding this Kerrington not being attacked by the shades. "Was he wearing purple?" It wasn't exactly common knowledge, but shades wouldn't attack anything wearing purple, some kind of bred in instinct or something.

[Paroxysm]

Circe returned Myrria’s meaningful look with a nod of acknowledgment: Shades being involved would definitely put this within their jurisdiction, if it was true, but then again, her knowledge of the shadowy spirit-thieves was pretty limited and redundant, considering Myrria. This would probably be why she was more than a little puzzled by the elder of the two Reaper's sudden interest in this Kerington fellow's choice of clothing color, but she had enough sense not to voice her confusion out loud or at all.

Of course, truth be told, and she was more than willing to tell the truth, her partner had not come off as the type to suddenly burst into inane questions or discuss fashion, or have casual conversation for that matter; to this end, she probably had an important reason for asking what color Kerington was wearing.

Oddly, Circe found herself fighting off the urge to frown in disappointment.