In his element
Feb. 15th, 2010 03:14 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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writing_shadows an evening of awkwardness & pointless noise, he finally felt at home. There'd been far too much feeling & passion flying in all directions for him to have really felt at home there that night. Things were worsened by the premise of the evening hardly being condusive to his settling in. He'd have to run through meeting the entire Freehold again, in a month's time. This struck him as a nuisance, worse still was the way in which he hadn't been sworn in.
Still, there was a job for him to do now, & he was back at home & happy.
The exchange had been a swift one, with him entering just after a massive gash had been cleaved in the chest of a reptilian man-thing. It was assailing another of the guests in a dingy backroom, a nondescript man rendered less so by breaking out into shards of sharp frozen crystal. These the dragon-creature proceeded to impale itself upon, with a huge headbutt that caused its quarry to collapse. It was then struck in the neck with a sword wielded by "Richard", their apparent host for the evening.
The room had been a bad enough pit as it was, but this rendered things utterly intolerable for the Elemental. The blood went everywhere.
The woman who had been banging her head on a piano corner earlier (who according to the Turk was "upset", & shouldn't be asked if she was a masochist) entered the room & began applying healing magics to stop further defiling of the room's floor. Cleanse was told, along with two others in the room, to restrain the near-dead Draconic, but told off by the suited pretty one who'd stabbed someone on a public street (this had caused a further threat of mess to be made by a brown haired Ogre, although he'd thankfully not caused more of a mess by following through, so a light sponging of the pavement slabs had sufficed to resolve the situation).
Apparently he was not meant to obey Richard, & should instead leave, but he perservered. The inter-mingling fluids on the floor were marshalled into a golem, who tilted his head at the others present in the now thoroughly cramped room. When the dragon made an attempt at flight it did as ordered, only holding onto the would-be escapee, but the others present had a rather more permanant solution in mind: further stabbing produced further mess. There was barely an inch of the floor left uncoated.
Once they were done with this catastrophe, the healed Darkling had leant to make some dealing with the cadaver, & Richard had agreed to let Cleanse deal with it. This he attended to once all others were out of the room, as always. This was easily when he worked fastest. He firstly summoned a second golem from the vitae which had been expended in the Draconic's death, then frowned in distaste at the scent of petrol which struck his nostrils. In addition to causing a great deal more dirt, flames in body disposal was the tell-tale sign of the amateur at work: the amount of evidence left between from fires was far greater than people imagined. The attention setting something ablaze would attract far outweighed the effectively random odds of the flames causing damage to any of the forensics. You were most likely to coat vital evidence in a layer of soot & ash, which could be swept away before a thorough analysis began. Heat would damage data, but far more convictions had been caused by attracted attention over limited evidence than would ever have been secured if a more subtle approach to trace annihilation had been attempted.
He recalled this well, but could no longer quite recall why that was...
Cleanse redoubled his efforts, springing to work before the burning started or the police kicked in the door. He flung open a Hedge-gate & pointed at the golems through it. His job had become a lot easier since his discovery of the Hedge. Previously amongst the hardest parts of his work was ensuring that waste was reformatted in such a way that it could easily be placed into the sewage system. But the Hedge, it seemed, was one big sewer, a perfect location for disposal of all sorts of foulness & accessibly via any form of portal treated correctly. That a vat of excrement was so easily to hand was perhaps a tiny bit unsettling, but the utility in his efforts in terms of rapidly evading the attention of the law was endless. Prior to his realisation of this possibility his sole alternative was that bodies had had to be carved apart with a saw & flushed down domestic systems by their component parts. This process would require a freezer, a great deal of time & endless galleons of bleach to prevent the source being traceable. Indeed it was this form of act which restricted even his aptitude for completing tasks quicker than they had any right to be done by: the system could end up jammed, or authorities alerted, had he attempted to dispatch too large a set of chunks down too quickly. Time was gnawed at like grain by rats in such a way. By comparison the throb of Glamour was a minor price to pay.
The creatures lifted the carcass, then slumped through the gateway. Cleanse watched them carry it into the Hedge shallows, thus removing all save trace evidence of the murder from the room. They then averted their gaze. Now, the real work could begin.
The blood was dealt with via the sponges which lined his pockets, after they'd been liberally doused with bleach. Any clumps of gristle which were resident on the floor from the massive slice he'd just missed were plucked up carefully. After this, water & tissue paper was applied. Then another layer of bleach, then water. Paper towels were wrung out into his bag, every drip was targetted. He carefully targetted the boot-prints of the blood which had been left from those in the room walking out. Attention was paid to the flecks which had splattered the walls, even the ceiling was carefully examined for stray splashings. This would have taken around a five minutes (perhaps up to quarter of an hour) for a normal human, but Cleanse had been trained to operate upon a higher level. Once he was done, all evidence that a body & a half's worth of blood had been spilt here was re-located into a large plastic bag clutched in his right hand. Indeed, the room was spotless. & would remain so for all of two minutes once the fire started.
He tossed the bag across the boundary into the Hedge, followed by the disposable rubber gloves he'd coated those given him by the Turk with. Giving an appreciative nod to the golems, he had them set the body down onto the Hedge's floor before allowed he them to collapse. He then sealed the gate & headed out of the building towards The Turk, to whom he nodded thrice. Although he didn't share the taste of those he'd met today, and had found them for the most part entirely unfathomable, he did at least walk away from the gathering with a sense of satisfaction that there was, here too, dire need for his rather particular set of skills...
Still, there was a job for him to do now, & he was back at home & happy.
The exchange had been a swift one, with him entering just after a massive gash had been cleaved in the chest of a reptilian man-thing. It was assailing another of the guests in a dingy backroom, a nondescript man rendered less so by breaking out into shards of sharp frozen crystal. These the dragon-creature proceeded to impale itself upon, with a huge headbutt that caused its quarry to collapse. It was then struck in the neck with a sword wielded by "Richard", their apparent host for the evening.
The room had been a bad enough pit as it was, but this rendered things utterly intolerable for the Elemental. The blood went everywhere.
The woman who had been banging her head on a piano corner earlier (who according to the Turk was "upset", & shouldn't be asked if she was a masochist) entered the room & began applying healing magics to stop further defiling of the room's floor. Cleanse was told, along with two others in the room, to restrain the near-dead Draconic, but told off by the suited pretty one who'd stabbed someone on a public street (this had caused a further threat of mess to be made by a brown haired Ogre, although he'd thankfully not caused more of a mess by following through, so a light sponging of the pavement slabs had sufficed to resolve the situation).
Apparently he was not meant to obey Richard, & should instead leave, but he perservered. The inter-mingling fluids on the floor were marshalled into a golem, who tilted his head at the others present in the now thoroughly cramped room. When the dragon made an attempt at flight it did as ordered, only holding onto the would-be escapee, but the others present had a rather more permanant solution in mind: further stabbing produced further mess. There was barely an inch of the floor left uncoated.
Once they were done with this catastrophe, the healed Darkling had leant to make some dealing with the cadaver, & Richard had agreed to let Cleanse deal with it. This he attended to once all others were out of the room, as always. This was easily when he worked fastest. He firstly summoned a second golem from the vitae which had been expended in the Draconic's death, then frowned in distaste at the scent of petrol which struck his nostrils. In addition to causing a great deal more dirt, flames in body disposal was the tell-tale sign of the amateur at work: the amount of evidence left between from fires was far greater than people imagined. The attention setting something ablaze would attract far outweighed the effectively random odds of the flames causing damage to any of the forensics. You were most likely to coat vital evidence in a layer of soot & ash, which could be swept away before a thorough analysis began. Heat would damage data, but far more convictions had been caused by attracted attention over limited evidence than would ever have been secured if a more subtle approach to trace annihilation had been attempted.
He recalled this well, but could no longer quite recall why that was...
Cleanse redoubled his efforts, springing to work before the burning started or the police kicked in the door. He flung open a Hedge-gate & pointed at the golems through it. His job had become a lot easier since his discovery of the Hedge. Previously amongst the hardest parts of his work was ensuring that waste was reformatted in such a way that it could easily be placed into the sewage system. But the Hedge, it seemed, was one big sewer, a perfect location for disposal of all sorts of foulness & accessibly via any form of portal treated correctly. That a vat of excrement was so easily to hand was perhaps a tiny bit unsettling, but the utility in his efforts in terms of rapidly evading the attention of the law was endless. Prior to his realisation of this possibility his sole alternative was that bodies had had to be carved apart with a saw & flushed down domestic systems by their component parts. This process would require a freezer, a great deal of time & endless galleons of bleach to prevent the source being traceable. Indeed it was this form of act which restricted even his aptitude for completing tasks quicker than they had any right to be done by: the system could end up jammed, or authorities alerted, had he attempted to dispatch too large a set of chunks down too quickly. Time was gnawed at like grain by rats in such a way. By comparison the throb of Glamour was a minor price to pay.
The creatures lifted the carcass, then slumped through the gateway. Cleanse watched them carry it into the Hedge shallows, thus removing all save trace evidence of the murder from the room. They then averted their gaze. Now, the real work could begin.
The blood was dealt with via the sponges which lined his pockets, after they'd been liberally doused with bleach. Any clumps of gristle which were resident on the floor from the massive slice he'd just missed were plucked up carefully. After this, water & tissue paper was applied. Then another layer of bleach, then water. Paper towels were wrung out into his bag, every drip was targetted. He carefully targetted the boot-prints of the blood which had been left from those in the room walking out. Attention was paid to the flecks which had splattered the walls, even the ceiling was carefully examined for stray splashings. This would have taken around a five minutes (perhaps up to quarter of an hour) for a normal human, but Cleanse had been trained to operate upon a higher level. Once he was done, all evidence that a body & a half's worth of blood had been spilt here was re-located into a large plastic bag clutched in his right hand. Indeed, the room was spotless. & would remain so for all of two minutes once the fire started.
He tossed the bag across the boundary into the Hedge, followed by the disposable rubber gloves he'd coated those given him by the Turk with. Giving an appreciative nod to the golems, he had them set the body down onto the Hedge's floor before allowed he them to collapse. He then sealed the gate & headed out of the building towards The Turk, to whom he nodded thrice. Although he didn't share the taste of those he'd met today, and had found them for the most part entirely unfathomable, he did at least walk away from the gathering with a sense of satisfaction that there was, here too, dire need for his rather particular set of skills...
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Date: 2010-02-15 08:13 am (UTC)Well done on the creepy!