Collaboration between Mach2 and YoshiSkittlez ---------- By the time Vander returned to her apartment, she looked ready to drop dead. She [i]was[/i] ready to drop dead. Her hands shook as she fumbled to get the electronic key out of her pocket, badly enough that she feared she wouldn't be able to hold the hypodermic steady. However, as she reached her door, it turned out that the key was unnecessary. She blinked in shock, staring at the doorframe. The door itself lay on the floor in front of her apartment. Anxiety coursed through her, and she tossed her jacket onto the bed as she entered the room. Someone had been in her apartment. She made a beeline for her closet, kneeling down in front of it. She swore she felt her heart stop. For several seconds, she couldn’t move, could only sit there and stare at the empty corner of the closet where her backpack of Lucid should be. Panic descended slowly onto Vander’s mind. “No…shit, no,” she muttered. She had to have put it somewhere else. The other side of the closet. She sifted rapidly through the thin layer of dirty clothes on her closet floor. No backpack. There was no backpack in her closet. Nothing. Standing, Vander began to tear apart her apartment with a quickly growing desperation. She pulled the blanket from her bed, checked under the pillows, threw her jacket onto the floor, even tore away the sheets. By now, she was nearly hyperventilating. With some struggle, she lifted the mattress, only to find disappointment beneath. Every inch of her room was scoured, torn apart, and there was no backpack. Not even a single damn needle. Vander swore loudly, sinking down against the wall. She held her face in her hands, realizing that her entire body was shaking with panicked tremors. Everything hurt. Everything hurt, and she felt sick. Her headache, if possible, had intensified further at the realization that her Lucid was gone. She couldn’t move without her stomach cramping in an almost unbearable manner, and if she had eaten anything more than a few bites of toast, she would have thrown it up. [i]Can't do it...I can't...[/i]. She was, once again, coming close to a full day without a fix. Two day-long withdrawals in a row was far beyond what she could handle. And after what she'd had to do to get those syringes... Deon. It had to have been him. He was the only one, aside from James and Mason, who knew she'd had the drug in her possession. And she had spent the entire day locked up in a jail cell with the other two. She cringed, letting her head fall back against the wall with a quiet thud. The last thing she wanted was to see his face again, let alone confront him about stealing her Lucid. But by this point, she had no choice. Defeat clear in the expression on her face, Vander stood up. She grabbed her leather jacket off the floor and zipped it up before leaving her apartment once more. The walk to The Spit passed by in a blur. Several times, Vander had to stop to lean against the walls of decrepit buildings, taking a few minutes to catch her breath and will away the migraine that was tearing through her head. By the time she finally arrived, she looked like a drunk. Balance had left her, and it seemed to be a growing struggle to stay on her feet. The noise of the club hit her like a brick wall, stabbing into her ears, and the lights assaulted her eyes. There was a very large part of her that just wanted to leave. Leave, and go find a nearby alleyway where she could curl up for the night until her heart stopped beating. But she forced herself to cast her gaze around the club. A few seconds of searching revealed that Deon was nowhere to be seen. Not fighting, not sitting at the bar surrounded by a fan club of scantily dressed ladies, nowhere. She hesitated, then resorted to the next option. A bouncer stood near the entrance, and she approached him. "Is Deon fighting tonight?" she asked, her words slightly slurred and quieter than she'd intended. The bouncer, a giant of a man, looked down at her, raising an eyebrow. "What'd you say?" he asked, his voice loud even over the noise of the music. "Speak up." "Deon," she repeated, as loudly as she could force her voice to go. "The Crusher. I need to talk to him. It's important." The level of desperation in her voice must have been just enough to convince the bouncer that it was, indeed, important. After a quick glance around the club to make sure that everything was still in order, he nodded to her. "Follow me." Vander gave a word of thanks, though her voice once again dropped to an inaudible volume. The bouncer led her around behind the fighting cage, through a back door labelled "Authorized Entry Only", and down a hallway. "This room, here," he said, stopping her outside of a door before turning to leave once again. She watched him walk away before nervously turning to face the door. After a few seconds of mental preparation, she finally raised a shaking hand to knock. The door didn't even so much as crack open, instead, the knock on the door went on as if no one were inside; but the muffled music and droned out sound of voices coming from within stated otherwise. The seconds dragged on, until finally Vander acknowledged that no one was going to answer. She inhaled slowly, then let it out in a shaky sigh, before turning the door knob and opening the door slightly. "Hello?" she asked quietly, half-stepping into the room. The room was decently sized, about the size of a district 4 home's living room. The lights had been dimmed drastically, a rotating color ball floated around on the ceiling as it subtly changed colors, changing the mood of the room with each shade. There was an L-shaped bed tucked into the corner with two half-naked women clad in what once was bunny suits practically going at it, their muffled noises of satisfaction droned out by the soft sex music playing in the background. Deon was sprawled out on the couch on the other side of the room, a bottle in one hand and the breast of another woman in his other. He was shirtless again, but this time bore the bandages of a particular 'ruffed-up' situation not too long ago. The woman sprawled out on top of him must have been told about his injuries, because her advances were slow, soft and intimate. At hearing a faint 'hello,' Deon pulled away from the woman's lips to look at Vander, a small smile spreading across his face. "Hey baby, come to join the party?" He asked with a smug expression. The girl who had previously been on Deon slid off of his halfway undone pants and sat up on the edge of the couch, reaching over to the table in front of them where an array of assorted pills and lines of cocaine littered the table, and popped a handful of the mixed pills into her mouth before giving Vander a lustful gaze. She clenched her jaw slightly at the scene before her. She didn't know what she'd been expecting, but it still came as something of an unpleasant surprise. She cleared her throat awkwardly, avoiding the gaze of the woman who had been sprawled across Deon when she walked in. Her eyes instead went to the assortment of pills on the table. She recognized several, having dealt them to others in the past. But there wasn't any Lucid on that table. "No," she answered, trying and failing to keep her words clear. They still slurred slightly. "I just...just came here to ask you for my Lucid back." Her stomach sank even as the words left her mouth. The request was weak and pathetic. She wished she could have walked into the room and demanded that Deon return her stolen drugs. But she lacked the strength, both physical and mental, to be able to pull that off. Instead, she looked at him, her eyes desperately pleading. Deon raised a quirked eyebrow, his glazed over eyes looking Vander up and down carefully. "Have we actually met?" He asked, both looking and sounding genuinly confused. He pulled himself off of the couch, though it took great effort on his part as he hissed and winced with each movement as pain pulsed through him. He eventually got onto his feet and set the bottle down on the drug-covered table and limped over to her to get a closer look. "Lucid huh? Yeah I should have figured you'd be one of those girls. I can hook you up if you really want, but what's in it for me?" Vander met his gaze evenly, her expression visibly crushed as she realized he didn't know who she was. There wasn't even a hint of recognition in his eyes. It must have made it that much easier for him to take advantage of her, knowing he wouldn't remember it the next day. She wasn't so fortunate. One thing was clear. He hadn't taken her Lucid. He'd barely managed to get up off the couch to walk over to her. The realization brought with it a fresh wave of worry, but it was suppressed by the fact that there were more important things on her mind. Things like the quickly-worsening state of her withdrawal. She knew Deon's terms, or at least knew what they had been last time. "Did someone finally beat you in the ring?" she asked, her voice laced with bitter defeat. She exhaled slowly. "I'll do whatever you want. I just really, [i]really[/i] need a hit soon." Deon kept the smirk on his face, looking back to the girl on the couch who was now so submerged in pleasuring herself, he doubted that she even knew what way was up anymore. "Naw, got blind-sighted by the cops for some shit I didn't do. People like us should start to be more careful about getting caught, they have this freaky-ass killing machine bot on their side now." He shook his head angrily, and ran his fingers through what little hair he had on the top of his head. "Don't worry baby, I'll get you covered. All I need to do is make a phone call, and you can have your little drug." He hobbled over to the bed in the corner, practically pushing the two other females off of the bed and onto the floor. He sprawled himself out, stretching his sore limbs before sliding his already half-way undone pants off, tossing them to the floor and gently motioned for Vander to come join him on the bed, adjusting his boxers a bit that had his face and printed signature plastered all over it; a best-seller in the bar's store. Awkwardly avoiding the looks from the girls Deon had pushed onto the floor, Vander made her way over. She sank onto the edge of the bed, weary legs relieved to sit down, even if she herself would have gladly been anywhere but here. The sight of his boxers, in any other situation, may have gotten a laugh from her. She'd seen the merchandise in the store, along with a number of other products, but had never thought he would actually wear his own products. But with the current turn of events, humour was not at the forefront of her mind. If anything, the anything, the underwear just made the entire situation even more unsettling, a reminder of just how truly self-absorbed he really was. Vander let her gaze go elsewhere, focusing on the changing colours of the light on the ceiling. The bruises from her last encounter with Deon still had not fully healed. [i]You're getting Lucid. Just focus on that.[/i] She could focus on that. And she wasn't getting her Lucid until after this time. That thought provided some comfort. Deon adjusted himself impatiently, watching her fumble around like a nervous little kid. "C'mon baby, we aint got time for this..." He said, the impatience evdent in his voice. He outstretched his hand to grab hers, but it was up to her to close the remaining space between them. He wasn't in a dominating position to do much of anything right now, which meant that Vander had to practically and completely take over. She nodded, shrugging off her jacket and letting it drop to the floor beside the bed. Her shirt followed, the shirt that James had payed for, and the true extent of the toll the drug had taken on her body was revealed. Ribs were clearly visible beneath her skin, and her spine stuck out in a series of ridges along her back. The bones were adorned with purple bruises, and she was hyperaware of how hellish she looked. She moved awkwardly, clearly inexperienced, but desperate enough to try to act like she knew what she was doing. Slowly crawling over to him, she knelt with one knee on either side of his lap, straddling Deon. There was no expression in her face as she leaned down to press herself against him, locking lips in a reluctant kiss. A few seconds later, she straightened up again and climbed off of him. She barely had the energy to move anymore. let alone do this. But her need for Lucid forced her on, unbuttoning her jeans and letting them join her shirt and jacket on the ground.