Awaiting the Maiden

[L]

Cryptic as he was, L left a voice message to Amy Grace to meet him at the place of the fallen Martyr. It was poetic be it that the location was known as the Crowbar. He ventured into the establishment, it was dusty with low lighting, the perfect kind of place for a wanderer to escape from the thorough of life and get a drink. L sauntered to the bar and looked at the girl behind it, she was cute and her eye caught his.

He smiled, "I would like a drink love, top shelf scotch, no ice, in a chilled glass."

The girl nodded, her eye lingered on him a bit too long as she went to make the drink. When she sat it down he already had placed money on the counter and took the drink in hand sipping off it slowly, it was perfect. He lowered the glass, his devilish smile still on his face.

"Can you send a message to your 'managers'? Tell them the Sword of of the Maiden would like to talk," he said with a wink and stepped away from the bar walking to the corner and sat in a booth, he would wait for her arrival now...

[¤Amy Grace¤]

Kris got on the phone rather quickly after his little message to her, she phoned LJ and told him what happened who immediately called Amy.

Amy was laying face down in bed when her iDroid's emergency contact list began to belch out music. She turned her head to face the room and lifted her hand, the iDroid slid across the coffee table and flew straight to her palm and she turned on the voice channel.

"What's up," she asked sleepily.

"We got a problem, I'm sweating more than a pimp with one ho right now," LJ said, "you know that mother fucker that wiped out that checkpoint? The same guy who escaped from the RPD?"

"Yeah," Amy replied.

"He's sitting in the fucking Crowbar right now," LJ said.

Amy quickly slid out of bed and tossed the iDroid on the counter, "I'm on the way."

"Hurry up, don't need that girl or the bar flattened," LJ replied.

---

While heading to the bar she listened to his message, the place of the fallen martyr... How fucking poetic.

Amy entered the bar, she looked straight at Kris who pointed to the corner of the room and she saw him sitting there, Amy crossed the room and sat down across from him, she unlatched the holstered weapon and grabbed it putting it in her lap.

"Let's set the ground rules right now," Amy said, "you try anything and I split you in half under the table... What do you want?"

[L]

He smiled at her, "I don't like being threatened. Normally, I would have splattered you across the room. For you however, I have made an exception."

He raised his glass to his lips and finished his drink off, when he sat it on the table he motioned with two fingers and it slid away from him, "You called my father, Yuri Deminov. You probably weren't aware of his death a year back, either way, all life comes to an end eventually, and with its end comes a replacement.... I am his replacement. You may call me L."

L wasn't fascinated by her yet, she was definitely pretty like the pictures but she already rubbed him the wrong way by threatening him. At the same time, he damn well knew she had seen and heard what he had done and she was not afraid of him unlike the others, that was the most intriguing part about her, perhaps he was more fascinated than he realized.

[¤Amy Grace¤]

"I called Deminov because I needed a General, not because I needed him to murder a dozen innocent security guards," Amy said at once, she wanted nothing more than to pull the trigger right now. Everything in her body was screaming to just put him down and move on but something was itching at the back of her mind telling her to hear him out, "L, you answered the call and I can't guarantee I'll not kill you in the next five minutes given how I feel..."

"So I need you to persuade me otherwise," she said, her eyes narrowed it was the hardened death like stare she always had when she was hunting targets.

[L]

L's smile slowly faded, "If you try to kill me, I can guarantee only one of us will be walking out of here alive but both of us will die before we make it very far. So, lets cut the bullshit, if you want to dance we can do that instead of talk... I can assure you, your revolution will be short lived doing so."

There was a red glint in his left eye and his smile began to creep back, "otherwise, I offer you my sword. You've earned it with your fearlessness. Something only my father had with me, and here we are sitting in a bar where the bartender is shaking in her boots and everyone has left because of the uneasy feeling in the air. Do you feel it? The hair on the back of your neck standing up? I do, it's exciting to be sitting across from the one person who has ever made me feel threatened."

He took it back, she was gorgeous in his eyes, fearlessness in the face of the Devil. She would ride the waves of hell and usurp the demons of the underworld no problem with her attitude and capabilities, this made her something worth fighting with.

[¤Amy Grace¤]

L wasn't wrong, she had been tense the entire time she had been sitting here, but according to him so was he. Did she put off that same feeling to everyone or was it just because she came here with the intent to kill if she needed to? He offered his abilities to her, she shouldn't be surprised given that he was a BOW in a time where BOWs were hunted ruthlessly.

"You're a problem," Amy said, "I can't build a real revolution against a government when you're murdering people. At least not yet, not until the government shows its true colors."

[L]

"I promise not to murder anyone else, as I promised your friend at the police department," L said, "at least I promise not to murder anyone until you give the kill order. I am your sword should you accept and I will remain sheathed until you draw me."

Why was everything he said so poetic sounding? He spent too much time as a child deep in old literature and poems, most people wanted to live a romantic life, he romanticized everything in his life because he was the master of his own destiny.

"I want nothing more than to bring Himura to his knees," L finally said, his smile gone again, there was anger in his eyes, "his father brought me into this world and I will be the bane of his existence until I am taken out of this world. So, allow me this chance to prove myself..."

[¤Amy Grace¤]

Amy mulled it over, she needed to speak with Victor over this.

"I'm going to give you a chance to prove yourself, however I still need to speak with others about this," Amy said, she holstered her weapon and clipped it, "I'm not welcoming you into TYRANT yet, but I will use you as my sword for the moment. L, I need you to do something for me that I cannot do in the public eye."

"I need you to enter the HIVE, I need information that we cannot get without physically being in there," she was dead serious, "it'll be hard given that most of it was destroyed by Ocelot but recently there's been broad casted signals from within the hive. Something is down there and I want to know what."

[L]

"Consider it done," L said, he stood up, "I know where to start already. I will contact you with what I find."

To prove himself? That wasn't the direction he thought this was going but he would accept the task at hand, he bowed slightly and walked for the door looking over to the bartender and winked at her as he put his back against the door and pushed it open into the street where he made his departure. The room was theirs once again, the tension he left was now gone.

"You are interesting," he said to himself as he walked down the street, thinking of her blue eyes, "We love the things we love for what they are... And you are definitely interesting."

[¤Amy Grace¤]

Amy looked at Kris who let out a sigh of relief when L exited, she stood up from the table taking his empty glass and brought it to the counter setting it down, "you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Kris replied and Amy nodded to her and made her exit. She pulled out her phone and began dialing into a secure number leaving a message.

"Legatus, we have a problem. I encountered the guy who took down the checkpoint and escaped the RPD, he's highly dangerous but wants to work for us. I need eyes on him. I'll be meeting with you soon on another subject as well," Amy said and ended the call pocketing her phone. It was going to be a long day.

[Legatus]

One hour later, in a TYRANT safehouse...

Victor had listened to the message over and over, and braced himself for the worst. He had eyes and ears all over Raccoon, and enough of them around the RPD and security checkpoints to know that the entity that had ripped through the checkpoint with only one survivor the other day was nothing less than an Omega-level BOW. He had ideas about what was afoot here - ideas he would voice to the Maiden when she arrived.

Speaking of which, she was due to arrive any second now. Pocketing his iDroid, Victor secured his mask. The situation was moving apace around them; it would soon be time to get to work in earnest.

[¤Amy Grace¤]

Amy entered the safe house in the company of another, a former member of White Rabbit, LJ. He was partially her benefactor given that he had the deep pockets to fund some of the things she was planning but he also was the only family she really had left from the old days.

"Legatus, LJ," she said motioning to both of them and LJ shot his hand up in a peace sign and nodded to him.

"L is currently in our pocket, I've got him doing a dive into the Hive as we speak," Amy informed, "I'm looking for the source of the signal that our guys picked up the other day. Otherwise, I'm here to talk about a serious subject."

There was a reason LJ was here, this one was bad juju to touch and she needed both of their opinions on the subject matter, "Alice is dead, but she doesn't have to be..."

"Shit Amy, what the fuck," LJ said shaking his head and put his hands on his hips turning away from them.

[Legatus]

So this was the long-suffering financier. Victor had heard LJ's name before, of course, but never met the man in the flesh. He dipped his head by way of returning LJ's greeting, and turned his glowing eyes on Amy. L.

"So that's the name he goes by," his mechanical voice remarked. "Judging by his grandiose entrance, he won't be hard to follow." Thus he acknowledged Amy's first request - to keep an eye on this L figure, and make sure he was on the level. As for her second request though...

"...Assuming it can be done, because we all know it can... where, when, and precisely how?" He tilted his head quizzically. "I won't deny she would be an enormous help if she were here, but where would we start looking? Do we even know if her body is still intact, and where to find it?"

[¤Amy Grace¤]

"Alice is dead," Amy firmly asserted, "she's been dead for four years now. There's no coming back from that. However..."

"There's always a however with you," LJ interrupted, "she's about to tell you the catch. You see, all of Alice's clones except for two are dead. One of them has never been seen, and the other one is a raving bitch."

"That raving bitch," Amy began, "is known as Nine, she is just as skilled as Alice was with hand to hand combat even if she lacked the leadership of Seven. If we can get her to agree to help us, we could have the face of the resistance in person... And quickly the Maiden of Revolution becomes her, not me, keeping me out of the picture."

[Legatus]

"If I'm able to take this in stride, it's only because I can be certain I'm about to hear something even stranger," Legatus commented dryly. Truly, nothing surprised him any more. "I'm sure it goes without saying, Amy, that this isn't just an attempt to pass the buck. I expect you'll be continuing to hand down decisions from behind this new face of the organisation, assuming this 'Alice number nine' will be willing to play ball."