2020-05-17 - open the flood gates

Despite being an incredibly easily overlooked person, Megan is also an incredibly easy person to find - as long as you know where to look. Lucky for Ruiz, he knows where to start looking at the very least. Though the desk clerk has absolutely no record of a Megan Keene checked in here - and of course he checks IDs! he's a totally diligent employee! - and no memory whatsoever of a brunette in her mid-twenties at the motel, Ruiz can just hang around a while and find her for himself. She gets off a different bus than the one she caught downtown a few hours ago, having imploded August's brain, and tracks down from the boardwalk to room number four.

There's no obvious tail on her right this second, but she takes a look around the parking lot before she puts the key in the door and goes inside. The curtains are drawn over the window, but just enough light shines beneath them to prove the room is occupied. So Ruiz can come over! They'll braid each others' hair.

Okay, so de la Vega doesn't blend in with his surroundings as well as he might like to, on account of there aren't too many snarly looking Mexican cops stuffing croissants into their mouths, in the hotel lobby. Hey, he's been waiting a while and he got hungry. Spotting the familiar girl cutting past him, he pushes to his feet and makes to follow. It might take her a minute to realise what's going on, but she'll figure it out.

"Hello, again," he greets on the heels of a weary sounding sigh, as if he's already exhausted with the way this is going to go. Battered leather jacket today. Tee shirt and jeans and ball cap. Expensive looking boots with a slightly pointed toe. No trace of that cop smell he wore like a shroud in the park.

Enh. Megan's got reasons to be paranoid. So it's probably less that Ruiz is obvious so much as she's just hyper-alert. Sometime before she drives the deadbolt home in her room, she kens to the cop's presence, and winds up standing outside the door to room four with an expectant look in place, just in time to catch his 'hello, again.'

"Oh, hi." She's neither surprised to see him nor unsurprised. His arrival is greeted neutrally, like it's just the way the universe works, so she's fine with it. "You don't look like you're about to try to arrest me. So." Up go the questioning eyebrows; so!

Now figure this one out: she hasn't noticed the totally ignorable people in the unmarked white van parked at the edge of the parking lot, but Ruiz is well aware that they're there. He can only see the driver and the passenger thus far - shiny guys in street clothes, parked in such a way as to keep tabs on room number four - but that windowless van could have like 19 guys in it for all they know.

Time was, it was his job to notice things like that. Before he became a champion sitter at desks and eater of donuts, that is. So yes, he notices the van. And narrows his eyes a tetch as he pushes past her to make his way to the window with that lumbering prowl of his. "No," he murmurs, distracted. Fingertips to the edge of the curtain, so he can pull it back a couple of inches and watch that van. "Not going to arrest you." He doesn't even fire back with a snarly quip, today. "Who're your friends?" He counts two, at least. But they're in a fucking van, so who the hell knows what else they've got packed in there.

Megan doesn't even need to look out the window to know the answer, though the question makes her stiffen, hand on the deadbolt that she winds up not even bothering to turn. It's an easy read: she's irritated that someone else noticed them and she didn't, rabble. "The nice men with the white coats," she says dully, shaking her head and leaning with her back against the now closed door, hands mashed into her pockets while she side-eyes Ruiz. "We probably better do this now. I have no idea what'll happen if we get interrupted halfway through, but it probably wouldn't be good."

Beat.

"Unless you really want to be a vegetable for the rest of your life." It's a real 'no judgment' comment.

"This," repeats the cop, still loitering at the window, dark eyes squinted as he peers out between that sliver of curtain. "Asumes que sabes para qué estoy aquí." Does he know whether she understands Spanish? Does he care? There's a rustle of movement, a brush of his thumb against the grip of his gun. And he clearly, clearly considers drawing it for a moment there, when she starts blathering about them getting interrupted and him being a vegetable.

But the moment passes, clearer heads prevail, and he lets the curtain fall back into place as he pulls away from the window. Thunk, thunk of his boots, dark eyes zeroing in on the younger woman, practically pinning her into place against the door she's leaned against. "Sit the fuck down. And I'll tell you what I want." Not, I'd like to ask you some questions or any other polite lead up like she might be accustomed to from the folks in this town.

There are a couple of quick blinks from Megan. But no sitting the fuck down. Just her hand returning to the doorknob, a visible arc of static electricity between her fingertip and the metal grip before she curls her palm around the thing and turns it. She can't open it and lean against it, but the noise of the door releasing from the jam and the slight widening of the gap around it still indicates its new willingness to open. "I don't have time to fuck around. Because those men? Actually scare me." Implication? Ruiz doesn't. "So either talk fast, or I'm going to electrocute you and leave."

Electrocute him and leave? That gets him to roll his eyes, head tipped back, fingers scruffed through his hair like, the fuck do I have to deal with this shit on my day off. "Okay," he relents, settling down on the edge of the table, and still boring angry holes in her with his eyes. "I don't necessarily give a shit about getting my memories of that fucking place back. What I want to know is.." Is what? He scruffs his fingers through his hair again. "What you told me before." When she broke into his head. "About making me more, uh." A glance to the window, then back to the girl, eyes hard. "Stronger. What did you mean by that?"

The handle stays turned. Megan was serious about bugging out any second. The room in which they're having this conversation is barely lived in - the bed could be made, there are some towels on the floor outside the bathroom, but there's no personal effects to speak of - so she can be gone in a flash if when it comes to that.

Her thumb taptaptaps against the metal handle, making the faintest tic-noise when it rattles slightly, even while she nods understanding at the question he takes his sweet goddamn time articulating. CLOCK IS TICKING, OFFICER! "You're a one-trick pony, right? You don't heal people or levitate things or whatever?"

Maybe he takes some umbrage at that, or maybe he doesn't. The semi-permanent resting bitch face buried under his scruffy beard makes it hard to discern whether he's irritated, or just kind of has a headache. Or maybe hasn't been sleeping too well. This fucking town. "Don't know, don't care," he replies flatly. "Why?"

"Because it's - "

Annnnnd that's when there's a resounding THUMP on the door that Megan has been holding open this whole time. It jostles her pretty well, has her skittering forward a step on shuffling feet that quickly bark back against the door. She shuts it, turns the deadbolt, and immediately bolts for the bathroom. Since the window is the only other way out of this room.

From outside, a male voice informs, "Housekeeping!"

It might just be the secret to life, the universe and fucking everything that she's about to give him. But then some asswipe who probably isn't even Housekeeping has to go banging on the door, and flushing his erstwhile host like a bird from the brush. She goes bolting for the bathroom, and the cop? Well, it's probably about zero on a scale of one to ten of surprise, that he draws his gun with a smooth pull of his hand and shifts to his feet. Clack as a round's dropped into the chamber, dark eyes trailing the girl to the bathroom before he moves to position himself between it and the door. "No English!" he calls back, shoulder and ear pressed to the wall. Listening for signs of other people out there.

"Jesús follando las bolas de cristo, no estoy de humor para esto hoy," grouses the cop in a long, aggravated string of Spanish that's probably interrupted before he gets a chance to finish, by the door busting open on him. And when he counts not two, but six fucking goons at the (remains of the) door, he pinches his eyes shut for a moment and gets a pained look on his face. Then both hands go up, his gun palmed in the right, round still in the chamber. Dark eyes on the guy he recognises as the driver of the van, mouth making a little moue as he shakes his head. "Durmiendo, tal vez?" He hitches his chin toward the bed, which with any luck is mussed enough to warrant at least a once-over for signs of the girl. "Tú sabes cómo es."

He's watching, of course, for someone to make a wrong move. Give him their back. Give him any fucking excuse at all to let this get ugly.

The 'surrender' lasts all of about three point five seconds, until that jerk tries to snatch his gun out of his hand. And then with an irritated growl, the cop yanks his weapon back and swings it in low to try to blow the guy's knee out. He's not actually trying to kill him. But he's also fucking annoyed, and needs him to stop. Somewhere off to the right, he's also dimly aware of the girl trying to drag herself out the bathroom window, and it's probably occurred to him that he needs to decide whether he's with her or against her. But he's sort of got his hands full at the moment.

Things happen fast - Ruiz fires off a shot, one that blasts the driver of the van right in the center of the chest, knocking him backward into the shattered doorframe. He pulls a hand over the wound, looking at the blood staining his fingers and palm. An angry flurry of objects sail at Ruiz, the lamp from the bedside table that breezes by his head, narrowly missing, the Bible out of the top drawer that beans him in the shoulder but does no harm whatsoever. He can feel the itch of someone trying to open his skin, but it does nothing, even when the two other goons shove into the room.

Just in time to hear a loud, "GOT HER," bellow from outside the bathroom window. There's a momentarily muffled shout beneath them, Megan's voice, and then she's silent.

Three of the goons stare at their bleeding leader. He stares at Ruiz('s gun, really) and says shakily, lips trembling and face pale, "We're leaving."

He's no blazing star, where his Gift's concerned; that's left to a handful of other denizens of this broken little town. No, de la Vega's a steady burning bonfire, strong in his own right, and moreover, annoyingly impervious to being killed. He's panting by the time they reach their little detente; the room looks like it's been partied in, with lamps knocked over and drawers upended, and the fucking Mexican standing there looking distinctly annoyed about everything.

"I'd really rather you didn't," he murmurs to the driver. It's not some veiled threat. He's tired, he's getting too old for this shit. He came here looking for one simple answer, and what he got instead was a bunch of rent-a-thugs and a bible to the shoulder. It's probably some Jehovah's Witness sacrilege, too.

He racks the slide on his gun, knocks another round into the chamber. "Leave the girl."

It's like watching a brick wall being peppered with someone's stinky old socks. The cop looks kind of irritated, or maybe disgusted with it all, but it doesn't seem to damage him; the sum total of all of that glimmer just sort of.. plinks off of him, fizzling when it hits the static field that seems to coat his skin in a fine, pale haze. He's dimly aware of firing on the driver again when he doesn't fucking listen, and putting a bullet through his gut. Then his buddies are getting in the way, and instead of moving for the door, the cop turns and bolts for the window instead, and throws it open. Why?

So he can cock his gun, sight a tiiiiny bit to the left, mind the little old lady who's crossing the parking lot very goddamned slowly..

..and attempt to shoot the van's front fucking tire out, naturally.

He knows it, the moment after he hits, that it's for nothing. He has some sense that things are about to go a way he hadn't planned, hadn't controlled for, and the raging beast of a headache pounding through his skull, like pieces of things and places and time he didn't know he had are ripping their way back into him. He swims in and out of consciousness for a moment, is dimly aware of those men scrambling toward the van.

The little old lady finally making it to her car.

Darkness. Megan. Open the flood gates.

His hearing's gone when he looks up again, sees the men piling into the van one after the other, dragging the wounded one with them. And then his vision swims and his knees give out, and he drops to the floor with his back against the wall. "Fuck." His head drops back against the wall. Thump. Thump, thump, thump. "FUCK." He's going to need a minute, here.

Once the storm of synapses screaming, fusing, rerouting and lighting up new pathways is nominally complete, the cop is silent. Save for the rasp of his breathing, the occasional tink, tink, tink of fragments of glass still crumbling from that broken window. He swallows, stows his weapon in its holster and pushes to his feet slowly. Goes first to toss the bed and nightstand and bathroom for any obvious possessions of Megan's, because fuck the chain of evidence and fuck involving law enforcement in this. They're not going to find her, and he's sick and fucking tired of due fucking process that goes nowhere.

Pocketing anything small enough, or taking pictures with his cell phone if for some reason he can't, Ruiz shoves his way back outside and prowls for the van next. Should be pretty obvious what he's going to do with it; hand on the door where the goons all piled in, he'll try to read the thing for imprints. And then? Well, he'll attempt to climb on in. What's the worst that could happen?

The bag, of course, is taken. He'll get the contents read, possibly by someone stronger, at a later date. One thing at a time.

Inked fingers run along the van's paintjob, he smudges a neat pattern of mud spatter, lets the contact sit for a few moments, then pulls the door open to climb inside with a grunt of effort. A breath's blown out his nose while he tries to settle his mind enough, make it blank enough to fill it with impressions from the vehicle and its prior occupants. The conversation that took place here, and the emotions pingponging back and forth between those men.

It leaves him a little nauseated when it's over, and he blinks a couple of times before reaching for the note. A quick glance, and it's shoved into his pocket. He'll get that checked out later, too.

He's already got his cell phone out of his jacket pocket by the time he's ducked outside. Hey, Alexander, I need to talk to you.