Ayden: On Campus

As Ayden is walking to his car after a shift at the library one evening, a man falls into step with him unceremoniously. The fellow is pale and stocky, with a blonde buzz-cut that displays a prominent widow's peak, broght green eyes, a hawk-like nose and thin lips. It's obvious, even before he opens his mouth, that he's British - though his cargo pants, brown tee-shirt and black vest harken more to a Manhattan Greenwhich than the UK's.

"Evenin', guv," he greets promptly. "Got a spare bit o' change? Make it worth yer while, I will."

Ayden takes a moment to look calmly around, only slowing in pace a bit, to ensure that there are other people in line of sight. He sees a small clump of students not too far off, and seems reassured by the security call-station several yards away.

Shuffling his briefcase to his off hand, he reaches into his pocket and feels around. Damn, no coins... "Well, as for making it worth it to me, I don't swing that way." He chuckles as he says it, trying to amuse. He pulls out a random bill and is a little annoyed at himself when he sees that its a 5. "Tell you what, why don't you hit the McDonalds across the road and get something to eat." He extends the bill, still ready to keep walking.

The man eyes the fiver, but doesn't move to take it. In fact, his expression contorts into consternation and he shakes his head. "Nah, nah - I need coins. Can't make do wi' a bill, m'afraid." And he begins to lightly steer Ayden's hand back toward him...then pauses, blinks, and suddenly clasps Ayden's wrist. The gesture is not threatening - more that he's been gripped with sudden inspiration and is using Ayden as an anchor not to go whirling off into the space of epiphany. "Here, now. You look harmless and...bollocks - how'd Bel put it? - 'Magoo'. Yeh. You'd be perfect."

The man released Ayden and smirks (again, not meanly, but more complacently) and inclines his head slightly. "Any chance you're interested in rescuin' a dear little girl who's been kidnapped? The blighters who done it say they'll kill her if anyone goes t'the constanbulary...but me, I've figured out a way to get her outta their clutches. And I need someone who looks harmless, but is secretly brilliant. You're perfect."

Ayden blinks a few times, taking in all that the man says. "I'm sorry, come again?"

He slowly withdraws his hand. He shakes his other hand with the briefcase and hears a small jingle of pens and other loose bits. "Hold on," he begins, "I may have some loose silver in my case." He walks toward the trashcan nearby to set his briefcase down- incidentally walking closer to the security call-phone.

"Now, what's this about a girl? Kidnapped..." With his case settled, he turns to the man. "Alright, whats all this about? Who are you with- MI6? NSA? The Eschlon Group? If this is about that paper I wrote, I was quoting all unclassified sources." His voice goes lower as the younger students approach.

The man just looks at Ayden for a long time after that outburst...and then, slowly, a grin of honest amazed pleasure spreads across his face. "I knew you were th' bloke. Bloody fantastic. Grab that silver, guv, and come with me. You know how this goes - you get th' choice of the green or blue pill." He chuckles and rocks back on his heels. "Coo, I was worried for a tic. Thought I had the wrong fella." He chuckles again, turns and begins to stroll across the parking lot. After a moment, he stops and looks over his shoulder. "Come on, then. Let's get those blinders torn off yer eyes, hm?"

Ayden looks at him with dull blinks for a moment- he had obviously expected the stranger to fluster up in denial, and the response took his steam. Fumbling a hand into his briefcase he claws a few quarters from the bottom, scratching his pointer finger on some scissors in the process. Hissing, he speaks again in an attempt to regain his momentum.

"Chr-ist, so you're private sector? Who are you, then- Masons? Triune Committee? Sons of Jacob?" The man keeps walking, and Ayden starts after him, practically sprinting to keep up. "Who's the girl? Who's got 'er?" The man, obviously amused at his catch, chuckles. A few steps behind, Ayden slumps his shoulders and raises his voice, a comic edge of desperation to him. "Well at least tell me your name!"

The man pauses and turns around, extending a hand. "Bristol. An' I'm not spillin' a bloody thing 'til we get my -...erm, the girl back. You got coins? Yeh? Good. Get yer car and follow mine. We're goin' to Rollins College. Hup, two."

His car, as it turns out, is actually a battered 1978 VW van that looks somewhat dubious. If he IS 'private sector', that particular sector's got shitty funding.

"We're parkin' at the theater once we get there," he tells Ayden. "Look in yer car and see if you've got spare pennies or what've-you under the seats, too."

Ayden follows with a stuttering indignation- obviously intrigued but also annoyed. "That dog wont hunt, Mon Signor- who's the girl and who has her? What do they want?" He follows and approaches his car, going along all the while he demands his answers.

He doesn't get all the information he wants, but is sadly used to that at this point in his life. Muttering to himself, he loads into his car to follow.

Bristol is not hard to follow; his van sputters along jauntily but at a somewhat reduced pace due to its age. Rollins is reached in twenty minutes and he parks in the small lot across the cobbled street from the theater. Once parked and out of his vehicle, he's all ready with answers for Ayden.

"Her name's Jenny, and she's...six years old," he begins as he strolls over to Ayden's car once Ayden himself has exited. "Her dad's rich as bloomin' Midas, so these people want ransom. We're, erm, gonna give them a token of good faith, as it were. Which is why I need the coins. And you're a brave fellow, so it'll be good to have someone t'watch my back. In case shyte goes down," he adds as a dramatic afterthought.

"Now, then. Bring the silver an' let's see what we can do about this terribly tragic situation."

Ayden grumbles as he hears Bristol's answers. "That doesn't explain why the paper money wont help..." He falls in step with the stranger, walking with some small familiarity along the campus. "I want you to know- I am not happy about this." He growls the phrase off with a supermodel portion of aggression.

"So who is it that has her, eh? I haven't heard of any kidnappings in the news recently- this isn't the sort of thing they typically keep quiet." Ayden sees, or believes he sees, the concern on Bristol's face about the girl, and he reacts with a touch more sympathy for the man. He's still curious, obviously, and suspicious definitely, but with newly armed with a clue about the situation, he seems to have gained some confidence.

"And just what level of 'shyte' do you think we could be looking at here?" He puts unnecessary emphasis on the word to thinly disguise his own concern.

Bristol strolls across the street with Ayden. The campus, in the early evening, is quiet and as lovely as ever. Next to the Annie Russell Theater is the beautiful Knowles Chapel, which - Ayden notices - Bristol offers a brief scowl. But after, he grins good-naturedly at Ayden's inquiries.

"Well, the kidnappers told the bloke not to go to the police, right? And the silver we need isn't part of the ransom. It's a...well, it's a token task we have to perform so the badd'uns know we're on the level. Just trust me, and soon we'll have dear little Alice home safe with her mum and dad."

Bristol seems to by bypassing the main entrance of the theater, instead going 'tween the building and the chapel, mounting steps into an airy corridor that connects the two edifices. He walks 'cross the breezeway and down into a charming, somewhat overground courtyard that hosts a couple of stone benches and a dry fountain made of lovely spanish mosaic tiles in earthy browns and deep blues.

"Right," he sighs, sharply. "Happy or not, guv, I need those coins from you now. Let's get this going."



(OOC: The theater, left, and the chapel, right, with the breezeway between.)

"Right," he sighs, sharply. "Happy or not, guv, I need those coins from you now. Let's get this going."

He nods, following, with an empty expression. "Alright then, wait-" He pauses mid-step as Bristol walks round a corner, and has an almost comic quirk to his brow, "I thought her name was Jenny?"

Ayden shuffles the 94 cents in nickles, quarters and pennies into his pocket and follows him in.

"Wha-? Oh, yeh, yeh. Jenny. Right." Bristol is distracted. He is staring at the empty fountain, eyes narrowed in pensive rumination. "Sorry. Fergot for a tic." Impatiently, he turns entreating expression toward Ayden. "Look. We don't have time for this. Can I please have th' coins?"

Distantly, Ayden can hear footsteps, approaching from the way they'd come. Bristol doesn't seem to notice, however.

With this, Ayden's face ticks with a rising paranoia. Suddenly, he began to think about how secluded he was, how outnumbered he was about to be, and how late it was- no one would know if he went missing until late the next day. He started to curse himself for going so blindly along with this Bristol. He thought about how his cousin Victor had been the target of a kidnapping attempt several years before- blind luck had saved him, and Ayden could hardly count on that.

Thinking as fast as he could, he sputtered a response to Bristol. "Oh, certainly, here-" His hands dive into his pockets, and while his left slowly claws at a fist full of coins, his right fumbles with his cellphone. Poking the buttons in his pocket, he goes through the short list of numbers on his speed dial to his office phone. He pulls out most of the coins and gives a half-hearted smile as he hands them over.

"There you go- woops." Trying to do three things at once, hand over coins, dial his office, and control his expression, he accidentally lets a penny slip from his grasp. "I've got it. And a couple more." He kneels and scoops up the penny, and reaches into the pocket to pull out what felt like a few pennies and nickels, coughing as he did so. He was making noise to cover the small sound of his answering machine droning on over his phone. He handed the coins over to Bristol and stepped back, still coughing softly. Once it stopped, and began recording, he pressed the speaker-phone button on his phone and withdrew his hand from the pocket, and stood with crossed arms.

With the coins handed over, Ayden stands back, well out of arms range, and starts looking around the courtyard. He guesses that men are approaching from where he had come, and starts looking for the best direction to run if things turn foul.

Bristol's eyes light as he takes the coins eagerly. "Ah, mate, that's it," he declares...and then promptly about-faces and hurls the change into the dry fountain. "THERE, ya dirty piece o' work. There's yer bloody coins. Now cough it up!"

"Bristol!"

The voice is female and belongs to the one who had been making the footsteps. Not a hired goon at all, but a rather lovely young woman in a 1940's stylized suit of mocha-cream brown, her hair pinned neatly atop her head. She enters thr courtyard with a frown marring her features. "Bristol, I should have known you'd do something like this. What do you mean, dragging Mr. Caster all the way here?"

Bristol looks vaguely sheepish, but still largely unapologetic. "We were gonna bring the bloke in as it was - an' I didn't have change on me for this devil of a fountain." He glares at the tiled stauary and gives it a kick with his Doc Marten-clad foot. "Give it back, or I'll have you dismantled, ruddy piece o' junk!"

The womangives world-weary wince and then looks over to Ayden. "Mr. Caster, I apologize. You were not meant to assist in this particular matter."

At Bristol's outburst toward the fountain, Ayden simply gawks in surprise. My god, he thinks, Is this man raving mad?

When the woman enters, he loosens up somewhat, then promptly tenses again. She resembles in no small way a woman from his past, though it is certainly not her. He coughs a bit more and shuffles his feet until she names him. At that he stops still and his eyes dart between the two of them. Bristol gives his weak excuses and Ayden stares with suspicious eyes. As she apologizes to him, he merely bristles.

"Alright, that's quite enough of this- exactly what game are you two playing? If its money you're after, I'll tell you you wont see a dime!"

He shuffles sideways slowly until the two of them are in front of him, with the blue tiled fountain beyond. "Who are you with, eh? Who do you work for?"

"Mr. Caster, we do not want your money," the woman informs him sincerely and entreatingly. "This whole thing is simply a misunderstanding. Bristol was not meant to enlist your assistance. As a matter of fact, I was going to pay you a visit this evening, but he somehow managed to find you first and trick you into coming here."

"Hang on a tic," Bristol protests hotly. "I didn't trick th' man. All right, maybe I embellished things a wee nip t'get him t'help, but this bloody fountain wouldn't give up what it took 'til I gave it some coin. I thought we could nip two buds in th' bush. Ah!" And his attention is suddenly on the fountain, from whose innards a Zippo lighter emblazoned with a Union Jack is launched upward. "THERE it is!" Bristol catched the lighter deftly in a hand and begins to examine it for marks or scratches. "Hmm. No damage. Yer lucky," he snaps at the fountain.

"Oh, dear," the woman says softly. "Bristol, now it's going to take something of Mr. Caster's."

The woman goes through her explanation and Ayden seems to calm down. Though confusing, her words at least put him at a little ease. When the lighter flies into the air, his expression changes to that of simple astonishment. "How did tha-" He trails off while Bristol is cursing at the fountain.

The woman makes her softly spoken statement, and his attention is refocused on her. "What do you mean, something of mine?" He grip tightens on his briefcase. "I gave you the coins- who is controlling that thing?"

"This particular fountain is...touchy," Bel explains, whilst Bristol is continuing to examine his lighter. "It used to be quite the lovely wishing-well, but living this close to the chapel..." she pauses, decides not to persue that tangent of explanation and switches track smoothly. "At any rate, it's glitched now. Instead of giving, it takes. Whoever's coins go into the fountain, it steal something from them. Usually nothing major - as you can see, for Bristol it was a lighter. I'm afraid you've been duped, Mr. Caster. Perhaps harmlessly, but I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience."

A sharp look is cut to Bristol, who looks up long enough to offer Ayden a rather lopsided but ingratiating smile. "Sorry, guv. But you can get yer...whatever ends up going missing...back. Just get someone else to give you some coin and toss it in. Jus' remember - someone's gotta give you the coins that you use."

Bel frowns sympathetically. "It's a neverending chain. Now you'll have to get coins from someone and toss them in. I suppose I'd be willing to assist. After all, this is hardly your fault..." And she opens her trim pockebook and begins to pick through its contents carefully.

At first Ayden seems to react with slowly growing concern- What could it have taken? He pats down the pockets of his pants and coat, feeling for anything to have gone missing, and is already holding his briefcase open and searching it franticly before he realizes what he is doing.

He closes his case and shakes his head. "Now this is getting quite ridiculous. Who are you people? What did you want from me? And don't say coins," he cuts himself off with a sharp look at Bristol, "you've both said you were going to come for me regardless of that!"

"Who are you two with?"

ooc:
Do you want me to come up with something personally important that goes missing? If not, feel free to simply state what it is.

Everything seems to be in order and, as he rifles through his belongings, Bel sighs. "It may not have gone missing from there, Mr. Caster. It can be any possession, so it's just as likely it vanished from your home. Sometimes it's something as insignificant as a coaster off your coffee table. Unfortunately, sometimes it is the coffee table. I suggest you wait 'til you know exactly what was taken, and then we'll go from there.

"In the meantime," she continues, and opens her purse, peering into it. "I had hoped to've gained your help on a small matter, but the window of opportunity has passed." A meaningful look toward Bristol, who smiles lamely and shrugs. Bel plucks out a slim, white card and offers it to Ayden. "If you're interested in learning more, I am more than happy to provide you information...just not at this exact moment. This is the address where I, Bristol and a small group of people just as confused as you will be meeting on January 3rd at eight o'clock in the evening. I would be very pleased and grateful to have you there."

When she explains that just anything of his may have been taken, he twitches with notable concern. Obviously, he seems to be a man of none too few trinkets, and the prospect of an unknown item of his going missing is not something to wink at.

He stares at her with firmly controlled agitation as she alludes to having had plans about him. I hardly think telling me her name would be so difficult. He thinks to himself. At this point it's simply getting rude.

He takes the card from her without a word and steps back, looking down at the paper. She says the date and his eyes un-focus. "Wait- the third?" He seems very distressed by this. "I'm not... I don't know..." He obviously is trying hard not to reveal what he is thinking about. "That would be very difficult," he finishes lamely, "I will be unavailable. Simply tell me who you are and how you can be reached!"

"My names is Belinda Mills, Bel to almost everyone who knows me," the woman responds. "As for how I can be reached, that's something for a later time. If you're unavailable on the third, I'll contact you sometime after then with a new date."

She peers at the fountain. "As for what's been taken, I'll suggest you go home and check. If you can find anything or if it's something significant..." And here, back into her purse she goes, retrieving a quarter and offering it. "Come back and use this."

Ayden calmly reaches out and accepts the coin from her hand. He steps back from her, holding the coin gingerly by the rim by his thumb and forefinger. "Very well Ms. Mills. I suppose we shall speak later then. My apologies," He pauses, shooting a hard glare towards Bristol, "for my terseness."

He looks at the coin for a long moment before putting it in his jacket pocket. He then squares his shoulders turns, looking at Bristol. "I'll not forget this, sir. I suppose I will see you again as well."

He turns and walks slowly back the way he came, out of the courtyard and toward the parking lot. He walks slowly with soft steps- listening for the sound of steps following. When he finally reaches his car, he climbs in, takes a handkerchief out of his breast pocket, calmly folds the coin up, and puts it away in his briefcase. He watches the parking lot for a moment before taking down the liscense plate of Bristol's VW van, and looking around for any other cars that look out of place. After noting this, he takes several long, deep breaths, and drives home.