☠ 🕱 💀 Mimi 💀 🕱 ☠

Lane blinked as Mimi came into better focus. It wasn’t particularly necessary; she could speak to a blurry face as well as a sharp one.

… That said, a friendly face did much to settle her nerves. Hm. She hadn’t realized they’d needed settling.

“Well, that makes things easier. No, I doubt Noemi expects Delia to go after her, considering they’re sisters. History, and all.” Lane unwound the rest of herself from the seatbelt as she spoke. Glass from the shattered windshield fell off her lap and onto the car floor. “Karma is aware of the general idea of a threat. This isn’t the first problem we’ve had, just the worst.”

Mimi just shrugged, taking Lane’s word on the Noemi thing. She could check later, but right now there were more pressing matters.

...Quite literally. Tons of rock, pressing down on the car... not a great situation.

Clever. This was what Lane thought (and tried to say, though she only managed Cl—) as the taser struck her and electricity coursed through her body.

Now, she had been tased before, prior to the incident with the Strigha—part of owning one, she reasoned, was knowing how it felt. Not that she would ever use it lightly in any case, but if she’d been shot (with a vest, of course—she wasn’t that insane), she reasoned she could also manage being tased.

Turned out, tasing as a human in good health felt different than it did when you were a not-quite human in questionable health. Shocking, that.

Lane’s body stiffened, and cracked, and bones in her chest and limbs snapped. She probably should try not to clench her jaw. Oh, well, it clenched, and her pained gasp as bones attempted to set themselves came through gritted teeth.

(But, you know, the cut on her forehead healed, so she wasn’t left with a second scar there. Excellent.)

By the time it was all said and done, two minutes later, Lane could move, if painfully, and it was obvious she would still need something to protect the areas that had been broken until she could find something else (an AED, perhaps, or a broken socket, whichever) or have them properly cast up.

Bonus: breathing wasn’t a strain. She turned to Mimi, gingerly, trying not to upset her still-sore arm, and finally realized her glasses were long gone, somewhere in the rubble. Shit. Well, it wasn’t as if she was driving anywhere tonight anyway. 

“Clever. Thank you,” she told the blurry vaporvolph. “Noemi. Escape. Have you met Karma before?”

Mimi pulled back, the taser held up and away from Lane now in a dainty little hold. She smiled at Lane, though sympathetically and encouragingly, as things started snapping back together. It was clear she was worried and concerned for her, but there were no cringes of sympathy pain either. Whatever the redhead was going through right now, Mimi had no idea what it felt like except that it must be remarkably unpleasant.

“I can do it, if it would be too upsetting.” The resulting sight might be a lot either way—Noemi hadn’t been present for the last to explain how things had looked, but the Strigha had seemed satisfied with his attempted torture, at least what Lane remembered of it.

She supposed she’d find out.

“If you wanted to duck out, too, and, ah, not look, it’s alright.” Lane tucked her injured arm against her stomach. She was sure Mimi had seen shit, even with the capture and following fall of her home planet aside. “You didn’t sign up for this, I’m sure.”

“No, but there’s a lot I don’t sign up for.”

No, Lane doubted she was; her work was done, and Lane doubted she intended to murder her more than once unless she’d been paid for it.

“I’d like to test a theory,” she simply said, as if that explained it. …Which it absolutely in no uncertain terms did not, and she realized that, but she knew how insane the theory sounded. 

Lane made an uncharacteristically indecisive sound.

“A shock should fix me up enough that I’m not a ragdoll.” Which was an exaggeration, she wasn’t so far gone, but, you know. “Some… odd side effect of dying.”

Mimi paused, clearly stuck in thought. Huh. Huh? ...Huh.

...Huh.

Then she resumed looking for the taser. Her right arm phased through the back of the seat, and she felt around until she grabbed hold of it. The car was pretty badly banged up so she had to maneuver a little bit to bring it up to the front, but she managed.

“Correct, and yes,” Lane said, rather than a full sentence, because breaths, it turned out, when an airbag had struck your chest, were in incredibly short supply. Her other arm wormed its way free of the tie—that one was in one piece, and handed the device over. Priorities, you know.

Right. Her priorities, knowing what she did (or what little she did, she supposed) were bound to be different than Mimi’s.

“There’s also a taser in the back, somewhere.” She hoped. Without it, she wasn’t sure how she’d (literally) walk away from the wreckage of her car. “Hand me that, please?”

“It—certainly is.” Lane finished freeing her arm and dragged it forward, trying to avoid jostling the break. She wasn’t smiling, either, but she wasn’t gasping with each movement. Shock, likely. “And you’re here, which is an excellent second. Shall we try for three? Could you text Noemi and warn her Delia’s coming for her soon?”

This step came first, because while Lane severely doubted Delia would bother with more than one job in a night, a wrong guess meant Noemi’s life. She wasn’t immortal. Then, they could work on the rest.

“Do you have your phone with you? I can get mine but it’s still out there.” She pointed upward. “I’m guessing Delia is the one that did this, huh?”

Delia, that had been Lane’s first guess. The assassin had changed her mind and decided cutting Lane’s head off and punting it like a football down into a lake was a better option than leaving her anywhere she might someday be found (intentionally or not).

Karma had been Lane’s first hope, though how the volph would have thought to find her, she had no idea. They couldn’t progress on the journal, for reasons Lane couldn’t explain, even if she did remember Gabrielle’s visit and what had been said prior to her departure.

Had Lane said this? No, Gabrielle hadn’t Mendaxi mind tricked her into forgetting, or into convincing the others to give up the search. So fuck you, Gabrielle. You should have been clearer.

Anyway.

Who it ended up being made less sense than either of those she’d expected.

“Mimi.” To her relief, her voice came out far more stable than it had after the Strigha death. (Were they deaths? Another problem for later…) Pained, yes, but her throat hadn’t been crushed and burnt this time. (There, another win.) “How did you—” No, that didn’t matter. “Hi.”

… Alright, so she had it less together than she’d been pretending to herself. It had been working.

“Hi!” Again, not smiling, but certainly full of (perhaps infectious) optimism. “I saw your car driving off, but not in a way that you would be driving it. Sooo...” Mimi motioned her fingers in a little ‘walking motion. “I followed!”

To the outside world, though, those minutes were anything but quiet.

The bulldozer roared to life as Delia started up the engine. No need to worry about finding the key - she’d stolen it earlier when she had come up here to move the huge machine into place. This work took a lot more preparation than most people realized. She hoped Lane had appreciated it.

With the dozer’s shovel, she scooped up a pile of rocks and gravel, brought them to the edge, and dumped them, crushing and burying the car and her victim. She added a second scoop for good measure. Survive that!

The vampire shut off the machine and jumped out, landing in a crouch before standing and brushing dust off her clothes. She took out her phone as she started strolling back down the dirt road.

“Macy, I need a pick-up. Quarry road. And bring me a drink. You know what I like.”

laneluthorblog​:

Blue eyes opened to utter darkness and raw pain filling what seemed to be every nerve in Lane’s body. Something was broken, some somethings. But she was breathing, which shouldn’t be happening, and her brain was still going, which should be happening even less.

What did she have? Lane heaved another breath and took stock. The weight of her phone in her pocket (small miracles). The taser would be somewhere, and hopefully, that would juice her up—eugh, what a phrase—to get her intact enough to call Noemi and Karma. The airbag had blown up, keeping her from going through the shattered windshield, another perk!

What were the challenges? Her arms secured behind her back, for one (although they appeared to be looser than they’d been… best not think about that). The fact that her car was buried and the roof slightly caved in. Her laptop was likely gone; had she backed up the files?

No. Stop. Those were problems for later. For now…

Wiggle your big toe.

She focused on freeing her arms.

Lane would be able to hear, or feel, the slight shifting of rocks and debris above breaking the silence. A few stray pieces of sand and pebbles rained down on her through the broken windows.

The pure black darkness was suddenly broken by a strange glow, blinding periwinkle, in the shape of a canine snout phasing through the crushed roof of the car.

Following this trail had not been easy for Mimi, but it had been simple. 

The snout disappeared, and a moment later Lane was joined by a very human shaped Mimi descending from the warped metal above and landing with a little fluff of her hair and skirts into the driver’s seat. She had to lean forward or her head would be in the crushed metal above, but she fit. Her tilted face aimed right at Lane, eyes meeting hers with an impossibly pink glow. 

Was it a weird time to show up with coffees? Probably. Was Mimi doing it anyway? Yes. After all, she’d accidentally gotten someone else’s order, two drinks instead of one. She could drink them both herself, or she could share! The solution was obvious.

It was also happy coincidence that Lane’s work was nearby. Mimi wasn’t sure if she’d be there, but she headed on into the garage anyway. If she saw Lane’s car, she’d send her a text. If not? Oh well, two coffees for Mimi.

Ew, it smelled like burnt rubber in here… Probably the jerk she could hear revving from a block away. She’d caught a glimpse of it, a flash of dark green as she’d turned the corner at the intersection. Maybe they’d get pulled over, but probably not. Why did people always have to be so loud?

She pouted a bit when she saw Lane’s station wagon wasn’t in its usual spot. Mimi had noticed her parking closer to the elevators lately, while doing her usual rounds of ‘checking in on friends and leaving tiny gifts’. Was that creepy? It wasn’t creepy for a big sparkling space dog, but maybe it was a little creepy for a grown-ass woman. Oh well, creepy was her aesthetic.

Abruptly, she stopped thinking about Earth’s social mores. Instead she was thinking about the rubber skid marks that started right about where Lane would have parked. Parked… her dark green station wagon. Flash of dark green...

(For this ask prompt)