[center][h2][color=lightblue][b] - Sharp - [/b][/color][/h2][/center]

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[img]https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/000/258/638/large/daniel-romanovsky-the-slums-final.jpg?1443930448[/img]

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There was a click and a brief whir as Sharp's camera cycled, capturing an image of two men meeting - one from the Kings and one from the Pure - for beer and information exchange. He wasn't entirely sure who they were working for just yet but these two gangs don't get along well enough for this to be a part of their normal operations; these two were up to something abnormally shady, and Sharp couldn't have that, not without him getting to know about it.

Click, again. Whir, again.

The pair were shaking hands outside a dive bar, the Pure's expression muted and dull, the King's vibrant and boastful. Both were grinning, creases forming at the sides of their eyes, expressions sly. The King was wearing a black leather bomber jacket that looked like it was one full size and three quarters too large for him, lined with torn navy synthetics and stained deeply with sweat - the buttons on the left side front pocket had long since been lost to time and the pocket itself had torn through, though that last part was an intentional if ham fisted modification, as this particular criminal also kept a gun concealed on the left side. His trousers were filthy off-white cargo pants, trimmed in what might have been purple a decade ago, with a bright golden handkerchief hanging out of both back pockets, just screaming 'look here, look at my ass and my clothes, look how much better I am than you'. His boots were the most interesting part and Sharp had taken great care to catch them in the photos from his perch on the second floor of the next building over - combat boots, MARCO Security issue ones, caked in pale mud from one of the flooded districts of Korven that are [i]technically[/i] abandoned. The fact that MARCO had leaked surplus product into Korven was no surprise, even while Sharp had been-

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- they had done that. Cost cutting measures, they'd said. They never sold the surplus that was anything other than fashionable inside Eden, so Sharp wasn't surprised about this at all, it was only logical that some ganger would want boots that looked as good as they served. The only informative part there was the mud - this King was a King of Smugglers. Sharp had spent as much time in the shadows of the flooded parts of the sanction as any smuggler, and he knew roughly where this idiot was keeping his shit. The Pure here was interesting too - all simple clothes and asceticism - but one thing he couldn't hide were the marks on his arm; not tattoos or scars, needle marks. The rest of it was irrelevant. Pure aren't meant to do drugs, and the King here had what looked like a small crate full of them.

Working theory? At least one - though probably more - of the Pure were collaborating with at least one - though probably more - of the Kings either for profit, a fix, or both. 

Sharp took the camera focus away from his eyes for a moment, shifting a caffeine pill around in his mouth for a bit before crushing it between his molars and holding it under his tongue. Those things were bitter as hell, but they didn't kill you, and they kept you alert - and they didn't smell. Smells in Korven were myriad, strong, confusing, overwhelming - all of the above - but they give you away all the same. Sharp always took care to keep his smell either neutral or ambient. Preferably neutral. No deodorant, no cigarettes, no scented or flavoured gum or mints. If it stinks, even pleasantly - especially pleasantly - then folks will smell it.

Nobody realises how acutely they can pick up an out of place smell until they do in their own home. Sharp didn't need that kind of heat.

Sharp put the camera back to his eyes. The Pure junkie handed his Kingly counterpart a slip of paper with something written on it - Sharp couldn't see the text in the moment it was passed over, but he could look back through the feed on his camera later and figure it out. He might not need to, of course - the chances were that it was an address for a dead drop or a pickup point, most likely a pick up point for human cargo either in part or in whole. Any criminal organisation that grows to the scale of either of these gangs learns to accept that a certain level of skimming off the top in their operations. When you deal exclusively with other criminals then the norm is to get fucked over - profitable and sustainable gangs just make it known what level of skimming is acceptable, and what level gets you turned into livestock.

Working theory? These two were trading in skimmed product. The King needs flesh, the Pure needs drugs. The King was offering up a footlocker's worth of high, the Pure was offering the location of their payment in kind. This leaves us with a number of possibilities.

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[*] 1. King's giving drugs they legitimately had as part of their business and therefore is doing no wrong by their gang other than dealing with the Pure - which, for the right price, could easily be forgiven. Pure is trading human body parts in return, which they're less likely to have had access to legitimately with the Pure, from the look of their rank - thus the Pure is skimming in order to provide for a drug habit or drug dealing. Is this likely? Not really. If they only had to transport body parts then sure they'd need to keep them cold, but the deal would simply have taken place somewhere where that could be arranged, so the King could take the merch away with them. But then what does a King need with dead bits anyhow? Not a whole lot, most of the time. This ain't likely.

[*] 2. King's giving drugs they legitimately had as part of their business, is doing no wrong. Pure, instead of trading dead body bits, is trading a live human being, or live human beings plural. This, this is a bit tricky, but probably more likely. See, the Pure tend to run a tighter ship than the Kings do - they're still motivated by greed and profit about as frequently on an individual basis, but the overall organisation has this terrifying tendency towards religious fanaticism. How they reconcile this with committing a variety of the worst crimes known to man, Sharp could never tell, but it made it hard to get certain things past them. Stealing a bunch of body parts in a cooler is one thing, stealing a human being still alive and crying is another - even if it were part of their legitimate, usual sales goods, covering up for their disappearance is harder and makes you more of a target. Why is this the more likely option then? Specifically because it's harder to do; the Pure ganger only gave the King information here, meaning he doesn't or can't have the goods on hand. You might not want to be caught with a bag of arms, but they're not gonna [i]try[/i] to escape custody like a person might, doubly so if the person in question is [i]people[/i]. More likely.

[*] 3. King's giving drugs, legit or not. Pure isn't trading anything material, but in fact solely on information. The intention is the same - Pure get drugs, Kings get people - but the MO is radically different. Sharp knew that the Pure kept their living stock together for ease of administration and security but also that these sorts of places aren't impossible to break open, especially with insider help and info. The King is fraternising with the enemy and possibly stealing from his bosses, but the Pure might even be turning traitor for profit. Only thing against it is that the Pure are well known to deal especially harshly with people who actively betray them, but for a fix when they're itching people will do a lot of dark and dangerous shit, religious fanatic or not.
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Conclusion: Need to go look at the photo to be sure, examine the details of the note itself. Never act on suspicion alone unless lives hang in the balance. Reasonable cause to believe X, Y, or Z doesn't matter in the court of law or on the court of the streets, only evidence past the threshold of a trigger's pull.

The two subjects of Sharp's surveillance exchanged a few more words, but their relationship was clearly enough business first and nothing second; they dropped the niceties soon enough and headed their separate ways. Sharp, not being in a rush, took the time to dismantle the tripwire he'd set up around the entrance to the room he'd squatted in - and then the backup tripwire and two further redundant traps too. Nothing flashy, plenty deadly.

Then he went home. For the first time in three days.

Fuck, he needed some coffee.