[center][i]Collab with [@Atrophy][/i][/center]

[color=lightblue]"Vigilance!"[/color]

It wasn't particularly difficult to find them. By the time he had reached the restaurant where the girl was supposed to be - and where he never actually expected her to stay, they never did - the screams and gunshots had started, sending the pedestrians running in panic and luring Cain into an alley with three Rat bodies in pretty bad shape. He groaned when he saw them, already suspecting that things just got a whole lot more complicated for him. He hardly even registered the unusual couple, a young man and a goblin, he saw somewhere in the alley, couldn't have even said where he saw them, because at that point, Cain heard more racket up ahead, coming from the wide-open door of a warehouse.

Inside, he found his suspicions confirmed: Not only was there the girl he was tasked to keep alive but she somehow found herself mixed up with one of the most dangerous enforcers in Santa Somabra, one of the most feared members of the Bloodbloom Syndicate and perhaps the only person in the city he didn't want to fight.
And it seemed that she was already halfway to unleashing her might on his target. But maybe, just maybe, he could still talk her down and save the hide of an informer tonight.

[color=lightblue]"She's one of Kennedy's girls"[/color], he said, calm but firm, entering the scene perpendicular to the two with his hands raised in gesture of peace. Cain's eyes shot quickly to the blonde's face and any lingering doubt vaporized. He definitely knew her.

"You don't know me, old man. I am [i]nobody's[/i] fucking girl," barked Valorie. She didn't recognize him yet. The Demon Blood mixing through her veins and destroying the chemicals in her brain told her that he was an insignificant being of no importance, much like this Vigilance. He shouldn't be standing there with his hands above his head. He should be bending the fucking knee, asking for forgiveness for implying that somebody like Richard Kennedy owned her. She licked her lips, her eyes dancing between Cain and Vigilance. 

The blue flames around Vigilance pulled closer to her body. Her mind fought with her emotions as she gave cautious glances towards the intruder. No, not an intruder, it was her drinking buddy, it was Cain.[i]Calm down, calm down, you can't do this again,[/i] she thought. The sword was an heirloom. It was irreplaceable. But it could be fixed. She took a deep breath from behind her mask, racking her mind for the significance of this Rat belonging to Kennedy. The fires around her body began to smoke. [i]Kennedy, Kennedy, Ken...[/i] Vigilance sighed. Her shoulders dropped slightly. She turned towards Cain, making sure to keep the Rat in her peripherals.

"Kennedy's girl? You mean she works for the f--"

"And I fucking loved that jacket!"

Vigilance saw a shadow blur at the edge of her vision; she moved just fast enough to avoid Valorie's kick. The Rat twisted landed on all fours and launched herself at Vigilance again. The she-elf couldn't react in time; Valorie bowled the bounty killer over. Before she could come back at her, Vigilance sent a few lashes of flames towards Valorie with the remaining draconic flames she had dancing around her. One of the flames caught struck on Valorie's hoodie; the elf could see the jacket launch through the air as Valorie bolted behind some cover.

"Cain, do you really think this bitch needs protection?" yelled Vigilance as she got back up to her feet, scanning the warehouse for any signs of the Rat.

[color=lightblue]"From herself, by the looks of it"[/color], he muttered, his hands now lowered and all pretense of peacefulness gone. For just a moment, things had looked like they were going well, but of course Kennedy wouldn't send him after somebody who would act smart. No, it had to be somebody who would mess with Demon Blood. But as powerful as it made her and as ruinous as it was for her body, the effect probably wouldn't last much longer, not if she had already spent the last several minutes wrecking this warehouse.

But he had an idea on how to end this dispute a little quicker. The question wasn't whether the girl would keep trying to get herself killed but if she would push her luck too much and he'd have to step in before the drug wore off.

[color=lightblue]"No killing or maiming, that's all I'm asking for"[/color], he called to the elf as he knelt down and drew a generously wide circle and runes into the dust, whispering a singsong of archaic words to breathe magical life into this spell. At the rate the girl was moving around, she was bound to get herself caught in this magical trap. He only hoped that she wouldn't piss off Vigilance too much before that happened.

"You're buying the drinks the next time we go out," said Vigilance. "Assuming I ever forgive you for this shit."

She recognized the runes. Cain had set the Rat a trap, only this one wouldn't snap her little fucking neck like it deserved to be. Vigilance knew what that meant: she would be the bait. The blue flames wrapped around her body as she ducked through the warehouse. Her ears focused on the slightest sounds she could hear. The beating of Cain's heart. The thumping of feet outside of the warehouse. Somewhere in the distance sirens had begun to whirl. They only had a few minutes. Finally, she heard what she had been listening for; she hooked a bolt of fire around a large industrial machine. The Rat came scurrying around the other side, smoke billowing from the bottom of her singed ponytail. She had a long pipe in between her hands. Vigilance deftly doubled-back, keeping Valorie at bay by having flames lick at her body but never quite touch her. She could see the runes behind her.

Valorie stumbled out after Vigilance, wildly swinging the pole in a large arc. The Demon's Blood urged her to keep fighting, to keep going, but Demon's Blood couldn't fight the realities of blood loss from the injury on her leg and shoulder or the lack of oxygen she was getting in her lungs. She was exhausted, but she would keep pushing herself. She grinned a slasher's smile and swung again at the she-elf; Vigilance barely had to flinch to avoid it. From behind her mask, the elf smirked.

"What? Aren't so tough without you drugs, Rat?" said Vigilance, her heel almost touching Cain's Circle. "Go ahead, take another hit, junkie. I heard Kennedy loves it when his girl's turn into deadbeats." 

"I. Am not. His girl," yelled Valorie, launching herself at Vigilance. She was fast, but the elf had planned on her attack. Valorie did not hit the ljosalfr; her knees banged against the ground right in the middle of Cain's trap.

And it sprung, just like it was supposed to: The lines in the dust glowed with an otherworldly blue light and the air above them seemed to shimmer and flicker, like it had turned into liquid glass. Demon's Blood or not, this kind of ritualistic spell could have even kept a powerful wizard in check, at least for a while, and it would have had no trouble holding a bleeding, weakened girl in place practically forever, but Cain knew it was only a matter of time until either a local gang or the SSPD would show up - even the most corrupt cops had to do their jobs eventually. That was why he had added a rune or two of his own, and Valorie must have been feeling the effect because inside that little circle, the oxygen was very quickly running out. With how exhausted she was, it probably wouldn't take long until she fell unconscious.

The wizard stared at the surprised and perhaps even scared looking girl, blue eyes meeting brown, as it dawned on her that the fight was over.
[color=lightblue]"Don't struggle. It'll only make you feel worse when you wake up."[/color]

"Yes, please don't, we wouldn't want that," said Vigilance, smothering the flames around them as she scoured the warehouse for her equipment. She flicked on her radio, barking a command or two at her crew to see if they had found Gish. 

"Yeah right," said Valorie as she took a few final gasps of the remaining oxygen. Her head was going light as she stared down Cain. She struggled up to her feet, throwing a punch that bounced off of the runic prison. The confidence in her eyes drained out as she thrashed against the barrier again and again. She had to find a way to interrupt the runes. She could maybe scribe out a counterspell. She dug in her purse as the vision around the edge of her eyes blurred, her hand gripping on the edge of her knife. Blood was a more powerful reagent than whatever this old man had used. The Demon's Blood told her that she could easily annul this barrier; her body suggested otherwise. Her head began to swim, the knife clattered against the runes, and her vision went black as she collapsed to the ground.

One final, defiant kick against the prison and the girl was out.

"I see you have almost as little concern for her brain cells as she does," said Vigilance, staring down at the passed out girl. "Cain, I've seen plenty of these types before. You'd be doing her a favor if you just let her asphyxiate."

[color=lightblue]"Maybe"[/color], he responded pensively, but nonetheless swiping his hands through the air and speaking a few more words of power in Hebrew to release the spell. The air filled the vacuum around Valorie's body with a hiss as the wall came down and the girl audibly sucked in the oxygen, even though she wouldn't regain consciousness for quite some time, or so Cain hoped.

[color=lightblue]"But you didn't see me in my wildest years, Narcissa. A little Demon's Blood and a failed stint with some Rats?"[/color]
He grinned. [color=lightblue]"I'm lucky I didn't run into somebody like you back then. That is, stunningly attractive, smart [b]and[/b] deadly."[/color]

He knelt down and picked up the unconscious girl. It was scary how light she was, more like a doll than an actual woman. It wiped all semblance of a smile off his face.

[color=lightblue]"She's only a kid. A runaway maybe, I don't know. Look at her: Drugged up to her eyes and half-starved."[/color] Cain sighed. [color=lightblue]"I've done a lot of things in my - what did you call it? - 'short' life but I'm not at the point where I won't at least try to give a girl like her a chance. Not yet."[/color]

"How heroic. Kennedy must be paying you well," said Vigilance, lifting the mask from her face. A wisp of snow white hair fell over her pale face. She gave Cain a slight smile and then turned to go; she still had to reunite with her crew and keep an eye on Gish. "As always, it was a pleasure seeing you, although I wish we'd been sharing a bottle of scotch instead of saving some rebelling child. Take care, Cain."

[color=lightblue]"It was all mine, Lady Veclis."[/color] He smiled back. [color=lightblue]"We'll see about that bottle, next week."[/color]

He watched as the Wyrmblood left the warehouse and hung back for a moment, as long as he dared, to give her just the slightest headstart, in case somebody was waiting for the elf - he wouldn't put it past the Faerie to have somebody watch the elf and see if she did anything that wasn't exactly as she had ordered. But the sirens drew ever closer and it was high time he and his involuntary charge left as well. And so he stepped outside and, as discretely as possible with an unconscious women in his arms, he crept down the alley.