This gang wasn't like most. They had no symbol, no name. The police wanted, to some degree, the people who'd done what they did (bigoted or not, most people still had a line that said too far and wasn't to be crossed), but didn't want them. They were all upstanding men; college graduates, or students; mostly with good jobs and steady girlfriends or young wives, men who went to church and gave money to all the right charities. Not all to the same church, of course; they were good, open-minded men as well. They'd even accepted a Jewish member into their group. So, when tragedy struck a few months ago and the majority of the gang of friends was killed in a senseless mutant attack, no one looked too deeply. Sure, the group was known to be outspoken about their anti-mutant views, but they were good people. It was clear even without looking that they were just innocent, unlucky victims, not responsible in any way.

They were good at keeping that image. And at believing it, too. The five surviving members of the gang--not all of whom had been present on the night of the tragedy--were all gathered. The bar was cleaned; only the slightest of stains were left from old blood, the wood floor and walls were bright, polished and shining, the tables were clean, the drinks were expensive and mostly imported. And strong, of course, but these were good church men; they wouldn't get drunk for hours, certainly not right after the sun set.


Allison had been a bit concerned about her ability to find the place again, but it hadn't been hard. She'd had to peer in different directions at a couple of corners, but hadn't actually taken a wrong turn. And once she reached the alley... she remembered it. Quite well. The door, too; she didn't bother knocking. She could hear voices on the other side, talking, but not loud enough to understand.

Being here was... energetic. Adrenaline. Vibrating, tense, just that close to revenge and holding back for a few more seconds. That was easier to say than scared. She took a breath, turned to Isabel, and pointed at the door. "In there. There might only be a few of them; no way to tell if they're all here. But that's where they are. They probably won't open the door for us, knocking's probably pointless." Not unless whoever was on the other side of the door got a gun pointed at them first, anyway; that was a situation Allison would prefer to avoid. Isabel could resist bullets, if she remembered correctly; she couldn't.

Isabel hadn't asked questions about the gang of would-be victims after Allison had approached her with a proposition. She'd heard more than enough in her brief description of the group. Murderers and worse that targeted mutants. She didn't even want to think about how Allison had come to know about the group or if she'd ever had contact with them. She hoped not, but then it was hard to believe that the other young woman would be so vindictive for no reason. unlike Isabel, Allison did not seem to be the type of person that pursued violence needlessly or for sport.

She hadn't said a word to anyone about her agreement with the other young woman, especially not Zephyr. Even though she thought he'd approve of her current targets over innocent people, somehow she was sure he'd butt in and ruin her fun in one way or another. All she had to do was avoid leaving any obvious signs of her involvement and she'd be just fine. The stupid windbag would never have to know and she wouldn't have to dial back her amount of fun.

She'd fallen back and allowed Allison to take the lead, not knowing herself where it was they were supposed to be finding this gang. She wasn't surprised to find herself being lead down an alleyway and to a single door. Isabel's skeleton had already shifted into her normal defenses before they'd come to a stop at the entrance.

Knocking hadn't even crossed her mind. Forced entry was usually what started off a killing spree if access needed to be gained somewhere. Or on the case of a bar, finding a place to sit and waiting for the opportunity to unleash hell when they least expected it. She wasn't quite sure which method Allison preferred, but if she had dealt with the gang before they may recognize her and ruin any chances of blending in to the atmosphere.

"Would you like to go first, or shall I?" she asked, eying the door as she did so. A more subtle entrance could be achieved fairly easily. Isabel was good enough at making skeleton keys that it should only take a few moments to open the door if it were locked. If subtlety wasn't an issue, she could just as easily remove it from its hinges.

Allison made a face. "I probably couldn't get it open. If you could, please?" She hadn't quite thought about that part... granted, if these guys did recognize her after as long as it had been (and they had better, Allison would be even more pissed at the implications if they'd forgotten), being recognized might get her in. Of course, if Isabel was recognized, they'd probably just call the police and keep the door locked. So that still wasn't a good idea.

Probably a good possibility to remember, though. "I think there's a phone behind the bar. We'll want to keep them away from it."

Open the door and disconnect the phone. Isabel could handle that easily enough. And in the case of keeping the men away from the phone, it might be better not to knock down the door. People tended to react a lot more quickly and rashly to loud noises and sudden shock than they did to a slower reveal. Waltzing into a crowded bar was a lot easier than blasting a hole into it and might afford them a few moments of time to survey the area before anyone realized that the door had been opened. It would also knock out the possibility of limited visibility that could be created by any dust thrown into the air by destroying the doorway. She'd be able to see anyone making a run for the phone and she'd be able to cut them down before they reached it.

Pressing a finger to the deadbolt lock she filled the space with a small section of bone and allowed to to shift and press against the tumblers in the lock until it finally clicked and she was able to twist her hand and slide the bolt back. She did the same with the lock on the doorknob and then jiggled to to be sure she'd done her job right.

Finding the doorknob to be compliant to her testing, she turned it fully, opened the door and sauntered into the bar without the slightest hesitation, acting as if she owned the place. And in her mind she might as well have. There wasn't a soul in the place that could have stopped her and by the time the men in there realized who had walked in it'd be far too late to even try.

Huh. Allison was honestly expecting Isabel to break the door, but that worked too. Of course, she hadn't known Isabel could turn her finger into a key, so that made it a little more logical. And just about as fast, for that matter. Doors did tend to resist being broken down, for a little bit.

The quiet entrance meant they were both inside before anyone quite noticed they were there. Five men; Allison recognized one, and thought she recognized a second. They were scattered around; each had his own small table, with expensive drink and snacks, arranged in a circle. No empty tables, and no one currently outside the circle, so probably no one else was here. Allison smiled, closed the door and stood in front of it while Isabel headed toward the phone.

Most of the men had glanced over when the door opened, but it took a few seconds for them to comprehend what they saw and do a double take. One of the tables was knocked over as one man jumped up, and another stood, much more slowly. "You!"

Allison wasn't sure whether 'you' was her or Isabel. She kept smiling at the men while she called to Isabel. "If you keep them still for me, I can blind them for you. Or paralyze them." And, in implication, Allison did not want them dying quickly.

Actually--a twitch caught Allison's eye, or an arm that ended below a table, and she leapt over to knock the guy, his chair, and his table over. A cell phone skipped across the floor. Allison glanced around the remaining men, smile creeping back in place. No one else seemed to have one, or at least, to be trying to use it. "All of you just wanted a monster so badly, we couldn't help but oblige you. Are you happy now?"

Allison was. Apparently they had recognized Isabel. They looked terrified. Good.

The interior of the building was a lot less crowded than Isabel had anticipated. When she thought of a bar her mental picture usually consisted of dimly lit, somewhat dirty rooms full of people at various levels of inebriation, sometimes with a dance floor. This was not the kind of place she'd associate with the word bar. It was too clean, too sparse, too well-lit.

It certainly made identifying their targets insanely simple, though. Only five and all arranged in a neat little circle. It was almost like they were waiting for the two young women to stroll in. The looks on their faces, however, ruined that illusion. Inattentive curiosity, confusion, anger, horror, all of it passing in seconds and settling finally on some degree of the latter two.

Isabel couldn't help but smirk as she heard the ominous click of the door snapping shut and hoped Allison had had the mindset to lock it as well. While she wouldn't exactly mind giving chase to anyone that decided to run, it really was much easier to play with people when they were confined.

Her hand lifted in a short wave to show that she'd heard Allison's suggestion before the approached the phone, completely ignoring the clattering of the table that hit the floor with one of the men's sudden outburst. She picked the phone up off its hook and with a quick, violent yank disconnected the handset wire from the body of the phone before dropping the useless piece onto the floor and turning back around the face the room, noting that Allison had taken care of the cell phone problem in the meantime.

She eyed the frightened looking men in an almost bored manner, watching as their eyes frantically traveled between Allison and herself, unsure of which one of them was more of a threat, though judging from the length of the glances, most had put their money on Isabel. 'Monster' was probably a fairly adequate term for them in reference to her. She rather thought it was the other way around, but she was more than willing to play her assigned part for the time being.

She walked toward the center of a circle again when a flash of steel caught the corner of her eye and she turned to find one of the men half standing with one arm extended and the other steadying him against his table. A small gun was in his outstretched hand and judging by the way it was shaking he wasn't a very good shot. He probably used it as a scare tactic rather than an actual weapon. Isabel was beginning to find it hard to believe that these men where as horrible as Allison had said. But then, judging by their reactions they most likely targeted weaker mutants, ones that wouldn't have her sort of ability to fight back.

A bang echoed too-loud in the closed room, making her ears ring. Her body rocked and twisted back as her left shoulder took the impact, just below her collar bone and barely missing her shoulder bone. The armor beneath had cracked but quickly repaired itself, pushing the hot metal from her skin as it did so. An amused smile slid across her face as she straightened and a red splotch began to bloom on her white shirt.

"I think we have our first volunteer," she said, speaking to Allison though her eyes didn't leave the confused and frightened gunman. She was banking on the shock and fright throughout the room to keep the other men rooted on the spot for the time being, though she knew it wouldn't last long as soon as the blood of their own was shed, if not sooner.

She stretched her own arm out in his direction, her hand curled into the shape of a gun. her grin remained in place as she closed one eye, making a mockery of him and his prior attempt. "Bang."

Her thumb twitched in imitation of the hammer of a gun and immediately several vine-like threads of bone exploded from her wrist and raced toward the older man. He barely had time to straighten into a full standing position and attempt to step away from his table before his neck and wrists were entwined and he was yanked down and dragged across the floor as he slid in Allison's direction.

"Let's see what you can do."

Allison did not appreciate Isabel being shot. Granted, Isabel seemed to be fine (apart from the bleeding, but Allison assumed Isabel knew how badly she was hurt, and she didn't seem to be concerned), and Allison hadn't exactly been inclined to forgive the men anyway, but trying to shoot Isabel certainly didn't help. Nor did the fact that there wasn't much Allison could do against a gun.

Isabel could, fortunately, and Allison's glare faded back into a cutout smile as the guy fell and was dragged near her. She knelt down next to him and dug her fingers into his hair to hold him still. "Paralyzed, blind, or both?"

Blind would be Allison's preference too; for one thing, it was more painful to do. And a bit more reliable, though with the guy held still she could always just send the ink through a couple times to be sure, so that wasn't really an issue. She let him watch as she flicked her hand--Allison's mocking theatrics were a bit more subtle than Isabel's, but she had them--and the ink in her palm sprang up and collected.

"No--don't--"

"Too late." Allison didn't like his begging. It offended her; like any of them had a right to beg. She doubted they'd ever listened to any pleas from their victims; they certainly hadn't listened to her. They didn't have the right to beg anymore. Fortunately he screamed instead when the ink sank into his first eye. Allison didn't feel any need to hurry, though holding his head still was a bit more of a challenge than she'd expected.

"You Bitch!" One of the other men had jumped up, headed for Allison. Fortunately he was several steps away; she removed the ink from the eye of the man she'd been blinding. He kept whimpering, and she raised the ink; she could kill the guy before he could touch her, though she hoped Isabel would stop him first. She couldn't really stop without killing, and not getting to play wouldn't be much fun. The rest of the men were standing up, and one starting to creep toward Isabel; it seemed they were going to be fighting for a bit.

When presented with a choice, Isabel had opted for blinding the restrained victim. Paralysis was tempting more for the excuse to see exactly how Allison would manage such a feat, but if she was looking for some prolonged torment it wasn't the more appealing option. If the guy was paralyzed, he'd be unable to move, and therefore she assumed also unable to protest. A limp, silent victim was no victim at all. They might be able to see and feel, but there was no struggle, no real satisfaction. They might as well have been playing with corpses.

A blinded victim, however, was a treat. They could react to everything and likely do so in an exaggerated manner. They could yell and curse and plead and pretend that their feeble attempts to escape or fight back would be at all useful. A blinded victim wouldn't know when an attack was coming or where they'd strike and therein lay the fun.

She watched Allison curiously as ink bubbled up into her palm, her eyes occasionally darting to the men around them to be sure they were staying put. She wouldn't have pegged Alli as the vindictive type, but she certainly seemed to be taking to their task with zeal. A person who observed a crime didn't normally seek revenge or gain such satisfaction in retaliation. Her motives seemed to spring from personal insult. She must have dealt with these men before. But Isabel didn't like to dwell on it.

She merely grinned as the man screamed while the ink seeped into his eye. She had missed these sorts of outings. Way too much time had been spent sulking around the Sanctuary, some of it done while drinking. She was back in her element and she was going to return to it with just as much enthusiasm as Allison.

The sudden outburst from the struggling man's companion drew her attention, her head turning almost lazily as he launched himself toward the other young woman. With an equally lazy wave of her arm, one of the vine-like tendrils of bone lengthened and looped toward the man's feet, connecting with one and sending him sprawling before he got more than a dozen steps. She wasn't at all concerned with how it jerked at the first victim's neck when the foot had caught. It wasn't broken, but she was sure there was now some strain on his windpipe. She let the bone loop around the second's ankle and hoist him into the air to let him dangle by his leg.

The slow movement from a third wasn't overlooked. She jerked her arm downward and allowed the bases of the three vines to disconnect from her skin as they were buried into the floor, leaving the first two men to dangle and remain pinned respectively. Two down already, three to go.

She smiled at the man who had been slowly creeping, his frame freezing when he realized he'd been seen. She very nearly laughed at the look of horror on his face as he froze. She raised a finger and wagged it mockingly back and forth, playing at chiding him for his behavior. The remaining two men had continued to move, at least one of them seeming to have targeted Allison. She would have seemed to be the less threatening of the two, and therefore viewed at the easier target. At least one of them had probably already thought that it they could wrestle her away from the door they could make a run for it.

Before they could move too far, she raised her arms straight out in front of her and backed a few steps toward Allison. A number of more vine-like tendrils sprouted from her hands, though this time their ends buried themselves in the floor and they began criss-crossing upwards toward the ceiling to create a wall between the remaining men and the two young women with their victims. Unless they had guns and better aim than their companion, they'd be relatively harmless for the time being.

"That should keep them put for now, until we're done with these two. Then they can play," she said as she severed the connection between the bones and her hands and casually strolled over to the man hanging by his ankle. She gripped his head by the hair, much like Allison had done with the first man, very displeased to find how greasy it felt under her fingers. Either he didn't shower enough or he'd loaded his scalp with product before he'd left his home.

With a sneer she turned his head left and right, admiring how red his face was turning and ignoring the threats and insults the barricaded men were hurling in their direction. She was much more focused on the alarm in her targets face and the way he seemed to be trying to muster some kind of foolish bravado and put it into words, though he was doing rather poorly.

"Did you have anything in particular in mind for these rats, or are we improvising as we go?"

And Isabel did catch the braver one. Or scared one, or angry one; whatever it was, he was now the upside down one. Alli didn't have to touch him, which was just fine with her. She went back to blinding the first man's second eye, and he went back to screaming as Isabel caged the rest. "Sounds good to me." Her answer might not have been heard over the screams, but it probably was.

With him blinded--and a bit more than blinded, Allison really hadn't needed to take that long, but she wanted to--Allison let go of his hair, stood up, and absorbed the ink back into her palm. He was begging again, and Allison took the time to kick him. "Shut up." He went back to whimpering. Allison supposed that was better.

As for improvising... how to best explain Allison's goal? "Have you ever met Megan? She lives across from Sanctuary, she can control spiders.. These guys," she kicked the blinded man's head again, "would have killed her if we didn't have healers. But when I met her, she was trying to get rid of some drug lords," which might be a bit or an overstatement, but oh well, "who turned out to also think they should be sex traders. So Megan called a bunch of spiders into their pants and had them bite." Allison was getting far too used to sweet, playful smiles in this sort of context. "Think we can improvise something like that?"

The blinded man started begging again. So did one of the caged ones. "Please, I'll pay you, anything--"

"Shut up." It was a shame Allison didn't have something to throw at them. She did make note of which it was, though.

It was somewhat difficult to hear Allison over the continued screaming, yelling and general whimpering of the cornered men, but with a little effort and thanks to their proximity she could at least catch most of the words and string them together into a coherent sentence.

Isabel had not ever met anyone named Megan, nor anyone with a mutation that fit her description in the case that pleasantries had not been exchanged. It certainly sounded creepy and not really something she'd like to experience first hand. Spiders were gross. From the sound of it, though, what their captured men had done was far more disgusting. She had never liked visiting the healers personally. All that poking and prodding and general lack of privacy wasn't the least bit appealing, but they were good to have on hand in the case of someone like Megan stumbling through their doors. They were also a wonderful tool for gloating with in the case of ripping someone to shreds and leaving them to bleed to death without being able to obtain such help.

The second half of Allison's short narrative about the Megan girl was nearly lost as Isabel's current captive wailed as he wrapped his hands around the wrist of the hand buried in his hair and received two handfuls of spikes in his flesh in return, effectively pinning the bloody, mangled appendages to her body for the time being. She caught the important points, though. Like biting pants-spiders.

"I'm sure we can think of something," she replied conversationally. Judging from what Allison had done to her victim's eyes, it wouldn't be too hard for her to mangle other, equally as delicate parts of the human anatomy. If not mangle, then at least put them in a world of pain and then some. Isabel was more than capable of shredding any part of a person, the question was how to drag it out long enough to satisfy her partner in this endeavor. Allison obviously wanted them to suffer before they were killed, otherwise there would have been no need for the theatrics. She was sure she could think of something. And if she did poorly the first time, there were three more waiting for her to improve upon.

With a thoughtful look she continued to turn the suspended man's head this way and that, twisting his mangled hands along with it to renewed cries of pain and fear. Eventually she raised her free hand and moved it toward the hanging man's chest where she sliced both his shirt and his skin open and inserted her fingers into the wound, ignoring the cursing, pleading and screaming as she did so. She pressed on the flesh until she hit bone, a small smile curving her lips as she did so. She wouldn't have to go anywhere near his vulnerable areas to do the necessary damage. She'd make his own body do it for her.

Watching the upside down man try to grab Isabel and get his hands mangled was immensely satisfying. Granted, it wasn't this group that had gone after her hands--really, they'd gone after everything but her hands--but it was satisfying anyway. Maybe she should ask Isabel to help go after the Russian mob, too; she hadn't really thought about that yet, but it would be fun. Shame she probably wouldn't be able to find the exact individuals; mostly because she didn't know them. Regardless, Allison knew how disturbing it was to have your hands attacked, and fully approved of the mangling the upside down man's hands had gotten.

Allison abandoned the whimpering blinded man as Isabel examined hers, and wandered over so she could see. Normally watching someone's flesh be cut open, especially with a finger (or anything, really) stuck inside it would have made her flinch, but right now she was too occupied with being gleefully vindictive to flinch. She waited for him to look at her before grinning, then glancing over to Isabel. "Mind explaining what you're doing?" Reaching in indicated it probably would be happening inside, which meant Allison wouldn't see. Even if she could, hearing what was happening made it worse... and the other men would get to listen, too. Both were good additions.

Isabel glanced sidelong at Allison only briefly as the young woman wandered over to stand next to her and examine the handiwork on the hanging captive who was by that point beginning to jerk and thrash under her prying hands. She pressed a free hand to the restraint holding him by his leg and it tightened around his calf and wormed its way down to his spine to help keep him still. If he thrashed too much she might nick something important too soon.

"I'm changing his skeletal structure," she began conversationally as her fingers continued to worm their way into his chest wound in order to be sure she got a proper connection was the bone underneath. "I have to get my hands on it before I can do anything, which is why I had to slice the skin open. I don't want to have to touch more of him than I have to, so his body is going to do it for me."

With a grim she commenced the shifting, three of her fingers having struck sternum. The man's attempted thrashing became more pronounced as the bone started to splinter and press against his flesh, pointed protrusions beginning to show beneath his shirt as they did so. It was a moment or two before the skin was broken and then the shirt as several sharp spikes were formed. Slowly ad agonizingly the sternum wormed its way out of his body completely and hung from her hand like a misshapen urchin.

The little bone urchin twitched and shifted and she attached it to his pant leg, keeping contact with it by use of a leash-like extension. She allowed it to begin burrowing its way through the flesh of his leg and up toward more tender areas as her attention turned back to the upper half of his body. "You could reach right in there and grab his heart now. Squeeze it 'til it popped." She fought back the urge to laugh at the thought, starting to become giddy in the excitement that came with such gruesome fun. She hadn't had this kind of entertainment in too long.

"Zephyr would kill me if he found out about this," she said gleefully, like a child that had stolen a cookie from the cookie jar and had gotten away from it. He would be so mad if he knew, and therein lay the fun.

Alright, that was... gruesome. Allison's smile flickered a bit as the bone urchin emerged, moved, and then started burrowing. Of course, that was mostly because she'd tried to imagine how it would feel, and immediately imagined it happening to her. That was bound not to go well. She shoved the thought aside though, and went back to smirking at the man. He probably didn't notice; he was a little bit preoccupied with pain at the moment. Which was a bit of a shame, he didn't get to be aware it was his own fault... but not so much that Allison objected.

"Really?" Allison edged closer, and leaned over to look for the heart. She had fairly long nails... she considered a moment before reaching for it. The man was loosing blood plenty quickly anyway; he wouldn't last that long, and terrifying the others was fun. "So what does this button do?"

It took a second to pick out the heart; it wasn't nearly as neat in reality as it was in textbooks, and Allison hadn't studied medical textbooks much anyway. At least, not the kind that had anything to do with the heart. She could find it, though, and her nail was perfectly capable of making blood well up.

"Zephyr?" That name sounded familiar. It took a moment to remember the Zephylin, and then Zephyr. He'd been... well, a lot like Queen Maxine, really; king of his own personal kingdom, thriving in the apocalypse and proud of it. Perhaps a bit less outspoken, though. Allison had had nothing against him then, and she was having... well, not fun, particularly, but she was too pleased and vindictive right now to be particularly upset. The comment still got her attention. "Why's he have any say?"

Allison was more hands-on than Isabel had imagined. The girl certainly wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty. She hadn't entirely expected the other young woman to actually grab the victim's heart following the comment she'd made, but then seeing as she'd been the one to recruit the bonemancer for mutilating the men, it probably shouldn't have been that big of a surprise. And if she'd been involved in the things the men had done, then Isabel could completely understand wanting to rip them apart piece by piece. She'd want to do the same thing.

She had forgotten that Allison probably knew of Zephyr from that bizarre dream so many people had experienced. Not that he had been a huge presence, floating around in his zeppelin and only occasionally docking to do business. Isabel had often visited the air ship when it did dock, offering her presence if it was desired as an intimidation tactic as she was sometimes used in the present, and also simply to check up on him and make sure someone wasn't trying to break his face or something. He always looked like an easy target. He'd let her play with the Amazons and in return she made sure that his well-being wasn't in any serious danger.

"He's just a jerk and never lets me have any fun anymore," she complained as she gave the thin leash a small tug and had the mass of foreign bone begin squirming its way back out of the man's body, doing yet more damage as it did so. There was no need to abandon it just yet when there were still more men to be maimed. It wouldn't be long before the one she had expired.

She gave the extension a harsh jerk as her thoughts shifted between their current project and the scrawny young man that tormented her. He was always good at ruining her good moods. She hadn't been entirely aware that her simple statement could turn the conversation toward him when she'd spoken, but it was hard not to start venting once she'd gotten going. "I was helping him do some business for a while. He doesn't like getting his own hands dirty or something, so he had me doing stuff for him. But now I don't even get to do that anymore. He just wants me to behave and he bosses me around all the time and whenever I don't do what he wants me to he-"

She stopped abruptly, cutting herself off before she could say too much about exactly what went on between the two of them. It would be way too embarrassing to admit that he could beat her so easily in an altercation. She prided herself on being just about unbeatable and he did it far too easily. "I get in trouble," she finished lamely, reaching out to pluck the wriggling mass of spines out of the limp man's body and eying the makeshift enclosure with the rest of the cowering victims.

Allison managed to cut a... well, it wasn't particularly neat, but it looked sort of like a plus sign, if the raggedness was ignored, before withdrawing her hand. She frowned at it--a few fingers were coated in blood, and most of the rest of her hand was smeared with it from the man's thrashing, weakening though it was--before glancing around. She settled on using the man's shirt to wipe her hands off; a lot of it was already bloody, but there were enough clean patches to mostly wipe her hand off.

Hm. Allison hadn't realized quite how untalkative Isabel was until she started talking. Perhaps because she didn't know her very well, in this time. Oh well; she could work on fixing that later.

For now, the description of Zephyr was... concerning. Allison couldn't think of anyone Isabel had ever actually described positively, with the arguable exception of the Abyssi, but even that was barely, and only to taunt the boy slave.

Hm, hopefully he didn't remember the future....

Well. Either way. Isabel wasn't particularly positive in her opinions of people. This was unusual, though; he wasn't stupid or human or any typical description, he was making Isabel do thing. And not allowing her to do others. That was bad. And more than a bit disturbing, to think of someone that could force Isabel to do anything... well, without using the threat of letting naked men get within her sight, which seemed like the sort of thing that most people wouldn't think to use, and something Isabel would have complained about. And it didn't seem very like Zephyr, either.

Also? Cutting off in the middle of a sentence, and going to vague 'trouble.' That was definitely a bad sign. Allison only ever did that when thinking about... well. That memory was still one to shy away from, but knowing it existed was much easier with the five men screaming, whimpering, and begging around them.

Zephyr, though. Zephyr was clearly a problem. Isabel could hardly go to the police about him, and the police wouldn't likely be able to do anything anyway, but someone needed to. If Isabel couldn't....

Well, maybe Allison could. She wasn't as powerful as Isabel, but she was powerful in a completely different way. Subtlety wasn't really something Isabel favored, and most likely Zephyr had no idea Allison knew about him; maybe she could surprise him.

In the meantime, though, there were humans to deal with. Allison smiled at Isabel; what exactly it meant wasn't entirely clear even to her. We'll take care of Zephyr later; here are plenty of targets for your frustration; good job making them suffer. It could have been any, really.

And speaking of the men, the blinded one was begging again, and going on about how he was a good, respectable, church going man, and they couldn't do this to him. Allison frowned at him, then smiled, dug her fingers in toward the hanging one's heart again, walked over, and leaned down to smear the blood over the blinded man's mouth. Over was a fortunate choice; his mouth snapped shut, and she barely got her fingers away in time. That didn't bother her too much, since he was finally silent. "Want to guess what that is, sir?"

No, apparently he did not. That, or Allison had somehow discovered a mute button. "Isabel, want to inform him?"