Fourth Sin: A Return To Sinner’s Way (Pt. 2)

--- Mercer ---

He knocked on the door -with his helmet off- and after a few moments a man opened the door, giving him a once over.

“Uh, can I… help you?” The (mildly stoned) man asked, looking mildly intimidated as he realized how much larger than him Mercer was. (Let’s underline that shall we?)

“You know, what? Yes, you can.” He smiled, setting his helmet on the ground before grabbing the man by his shoulders, picking him up, setting him to the side, and reclaiming his helmet as he entered the apartment. “You see there was this shipment of drugs stolen from the local clinic. You know, the one that old doctor Betty runs? The one that does kid treatments for free and has been here for like twenty something years now? The only hospital you can trust in the Way?”

“Wh-who the fuck are you?!” Someone on the couch shouted as they stood up.

“Who am I?” He blinked, before putting a hand on his chin as he considered the matter. “Who am I?”

He lifted his helmet up and looked his reflection in the eye. “Who am I?”

He slipped a finger under the helmet’s edge and clicked a button making his double tap skull flash over his reflection.

“You know exactly who I am.” He assured the men with a sidelong glance.

“M-M-Mercer.” One of them stuttered out.

He snapped his fingers and gave the man a finger gun. “Ding, ding, ding. Prize money goes to him… or rather the money you’re making off of selling the clinic’s drugs will go to you if you hand them over. Otherwise the money will be going to Betty’s hospital when they fix your broken legs… they sadly will not be able to fix your incurable case of stupidity in that scenario.”

With his piece said he made his way over to the couch and flopped down before snapping his fingers twice. “Hop to it. You’ve got fifteen minutes to bring me what you’ve got.”

At first the men didn’t move, but when he reached into his jacket they started moving fast.

Within a few moments there was a pile full of pill bags in front of him, (a pile notably smaller than it should be, even accounting for sales…)

“Alright, now I’m going to give you boys the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is all of the drugs you’ve got.” He told them, his eyes drifting between each of them before narrowing at one looking notably more shaky than the rest. “Right?”

The other two gave him a look, before the man eventually crumbled and, “Th-they were for my mom… she, she can’t afford the price doctors gave her… she, she needs lapa-lapiton- L-A-P-I-T-I-N-I-B! She, she’s got cancer… Our, our supplier only gave me it because I asked…”

“Well that’s perfectly fine then.” He assured the dealer, with a pat on the shoulder. “You were just looking out for your mom after all. As a fellow mama’s boy I can not fault you that. Well unless the stolen drugs were specifically acquired for your mom, meaning if you hadn’t been given them you’d be making money for the people who stole your mom’s meds. Now is that what you want?”

“N-no, no.” The man shook his head, looking extremely pale at the idea.

“Which is why you’re going to tell me who stole your mama’s meds, aren’t you?” He smiled, digging his fingers -(wish I still had claw gauntlets)- into the man’s shoulder. “Otherwise they might steal her meds when you can’t get replacements for them.”

“R-r-right.” The man nodded.

“Fantastic!” He smiled, revealing his (stolen) phone with an open mapping app for the city. “Now just enter the address here, and I’ll be on my way.”

While the man shakily hurried through his task, Mercer turned back to the drugs on the table before snapping his fingers and pointing at one of the other two wannabe dealers. “Duffle bag, now.”

Said dealer quickly fled before the mama’s boy handed him back his phone with a timid, “H-h-here.”

“The docks… Why is it always the docks or warehouses with this kind of thing?” He asked the dealers. “I mean, I get that the trainyard is outside of the Way and the river transport has been slowing with the water levels, leaving them open, but that doesn’t excuse a cliche. I mean, this is like how the Den always has drug dealers there, I can almost guarantee I’ve done a bust out of this place before.”

“I-I-I don’t know.” The man admitted.

“Oh, I know. I just tend to ramble about criminal stupidity a lot.” He shrugged as the other man finally came back with a backpack.

“S-sorry, we didn’t have-”

“Eh, doesn’t matter.” He told them, accepting the bag and unceremoniously dumping all of the drugs into the bag before slinging it over his shoulder.

He slipped his helmet back on and started making his way to the door before stopping as he remembered something. “Oh, before I forget.”

Turning on his heel he walked towards the mama’s boy, purposely flexing his face so that his crimson double tap skull insignia would glow on his helmet’s face as he neared, before handing the man a pamphlet. “This should help with your employment issues.”

“Wha?” The man blinked.

“Clearly you had to turn to dealing drugs to this awful economy so here is a pamphlet full of jobs that take convicted felons and offer triple our state’s deplorable minimum wage.” He explained in his chipperest attitude. “I update the list every week so most of those should still have openings at the moment, meaning between the three of you you should be able to scrape together a six figure income and build yourselves up without having to resort to crime.”

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“O-oh…” The man said looking down at the pamphlet in (stunned gratitude.)

“Yep, that should help straighten you all out within a month with a bit of can do attitude.” He assured them, before shooting finger guns and a smile at them. “So stop with the crime or I’ll have to murder every last one with fire and brimstone. Buh-bye!”

--- Julianna ---

Mercer was insane.

(Actually, I already knew that…) She was forced to admit. (I just didn’t think he was…) stupid? (No that's not it…)

A jackass? (No, no, I knew he was that too…)

Shortsighted? (No, he’s less shortsighted and more impulsive…)

A dumbass perhaps? (Not quite, but close enough for now…)

It’s not that she was overly pissed about him getting their house blown up, (again…) She’d come to expect that, and kind of quit fearing it after her mother in law gave her a safeguard ring to survive any killshot for a full minute. (Who said Necromancers are evil?)

Honestly, she was just using that as an excuse to establish her… preferred roles for the evening. (Which probably isn’t happening now…)

She placed a plate of food in front of both of the teenagers that were apparently living with her for the foreseeable future, if the fully furnished rooms she’d snuck away to inspect meant anything. Again not necessarily a first, given how many times he’d keep a victim in the guest room until he’d finished dealing with whatever was threatening them.

(The long term move-in however is.)

Usually if he had a long term case he’d offload the person in danger to one of his numerous contacts, or in the absolute worst case scenario (his mother.)

The fact that he hadn’t meant that there was clearly more to this whole situation than she was actually aware of. Which is why as she joined the girls for a meal -something that caused all humans to let down at least some of their social guard in a weird tribal instinct- she began to poke and prod the girls a bit more than she had with her overly bombastic and blase entrance.

(After all no one expects someone so happily blase about everything to be playing word games and getting as much information as possible and…) She once more realized she was absolutely picking up traits from the family she’d married into. (Ugh, why does it have to be contagious?)

“So how’ve you two liked living with Mercer this last week?” She asked, knowing that while Mercer was fantastic with children, he also had a tendency to get distracted by every little problem that cropped up around them before solving it with a -in her admittedly biased opinion- healthy dose of rage, violence, and hyper violence when necessary. (Which is why I’d rather he mellow out a bit more before we have the ‘kids’ talk.)

The running off part, she was perfectly fine with the hyper violence. (Find it kind of hot actually.)

“It’s uh, nice?” The quieter girl, Bell eventually asked more than answered. “Better than… where we were… by a lot…”

“That’s good.” She accepted, not willing to push her boundaries with this one after the migraine she’d earned on her last attempt. (And this is probably one of those topics Mercer tells me not to dig into.)

Her eyes shifted to -(in my case)- the less dangerous sister as she remembered the relief she’d felt after confessing spending an hour ranting to Mercer about her parents. “What about you?”

The angrier girl, Scarlet frowned before shaking her head. “He’s helped us a lot but… he's always running off…”

(That’s what I was afraid of…) She couldn’t help but sigh. “Yeah, he does that a lot…” (And it’d be a deal breaker if it wasn’t for the fact that when he does focus on you, it’s like you’re the only thing that exists in the world.)

“Yeah, I just wish he’d let me help him more.” Scarlet continued taking that as a prompt to continue. “Here he is getting us out of the labs, but then he goes out and gets involved in all of this shit we can help him with, and all we do is give him more and more to do.”

(Okay, she has the opposite of my problem. Writing that down… alongside that ‘labs’ line.) “I’m uh, I’m guessing you know how dangerous his job is? What with all the guns, violence, fire, and scars?” (The oh so sexy scars.) (Not now, brain.)

“He’s told me.” Scarlet snorted derisively, stabbing a fork into her plate with enough force to bend it.

“Yeah, he’s got… issues with kids being Masks ever since the whole… Virtue thing.” (And there are so many understatements in that sentence…)

Scarlet did not look the least bit appreciative of that statement.

“Let me get you another fork.” She told the teen as she stood before also noticing that Bell had finished her plate already. “You want seconds or are you done?”

“I’m uh, I’m done…” Bell glanced towards her sister before looking back. “I don’t eat much.”

“I see…” She said, forcing back her opinion on just how thin the girl was looking. (Ugh, is this what my gran meant about wanting to fatten me up as a teen?)

She shook her head, knowing that it was too early to try that with someone she’d just met and so instead just took Bell’s plate before making her way towards the kitchen.

Upon throwing the dishes in the sink and making her way back to the living room she found herself freezing as a familiar feminine voice filled the room. Instinctively, her spine straightened as she turned towards the (woman who terrifies me beyond all reason despite loving her) only to find her absent, even as her voice continued to sound through the room.

Curious -and extremely cautious (because it would be just like that bitch to gaslight me like this)- she continued to look around the room before eventually catching sight of a little device in the quieter Bell’s hand, something that made her relax as she realized, (Oh, it’s just Mercer’s auto-reader…)

When she actually processed that thought, her eyes snapped to the auto-reader in Bell’s hand as the girl continued to use it to roam over the book, absorbing every word on the page despite her seeming inability to actually read.

“Uh, hey, heh, where did you get that?” She found herself asking.

Bell blinked, before answering that, “Mercer gave it to me when he found out I’m, uh, I’m still learning to read.”

“I see…” She nodded, as she began putting a few things together.

Her eyes slowly drifted to the other girl hunched over her plate of food as if someone planned on stealing it, distrustful eyes darting towards Julianna every few seconds in spite of the fact that she was the one to give the girl said food. (Meaning she’s probably used to people taking away what they give her…)

Several pieces clicked together, a couple of which she doubted Mercer had put together himself, given his tendency to push through a number of issues involving his… complicated childhood. (Huh, they mentioned something about Betty didn’t they?)

If so she needed to get a handle on this before Mercer’s mom found out. (Or rather before she visits because she probably already knows.)