[LOG] The boss.
Jungles, Ista Weyr(#730RJ)
The jungles of Ista Island seem to stretch on forever: wrapping around the Weyr's ground, bordering the beaches and sprawling out across the rough, hilly terrain. The undergrowth is thick with ferns and shrubs that encroach greedily on the narrow footpaths and the wheel-gouged alleys of wagon roads. Beyond the relatively open space of tree trunks and snaking vines, the jungle canopy obscures nearly all of the sky. Intermittently, the forest gives way to open clearings where the path nearly disappears beneath the lush plant-life.
Worn channels cut through the undergrowth to head up to the plateau and down to the main beach of Ista Weyr while other paths meander off toward more secluded stretches of shoreline.
It's a bit more difficult to, say, walk through the jungle from the beach than to walk into your weyr from the ledge, but K'aus makes the trek without complaint, and has been doing so every day for at least the past few. The sun is starting to set so he's in a bit of a hurry because without glows or some other kind of light and without at least some daylight a walk through the jungle is even /less/ fun. Soon he's in the clear, the tavern is up ahead, he can see it. He's already unbuttoning his shirt in anticipation of being indoors.
Another man is headed back from the Lucky Seven, perhaps turned off by the relatively low numbers of customers there to carouse with at this early hour. He gives K'aus the customary chin-tug of 'I see you but do not really care to greet you' and goes on his way. At least, that seems to be his intention, but as soon as they've passed each other on the road, the man's standing behind K'aus with a knife pressed to his throat and another arm wrapped around his chest to keep him still. He moved almost impossibly fast. "Keep a level head," he advises. "And don't go calling in no cavalry. I think we should talk."
K'aus doesn't even bother with that much, he settles for a blank stare at the other man as they pass that then refocuses on the path ahead. That same lack of reaction greets his new situation, his mind taking note of the knife first and the arm second. Good at following orders, he does stay still, he keeps a level head. And in the growing darkness, he stares at nothing. "Wait..." What follows is a silence. If they could see the beach, they would see Ehrudith sinking back onto all four paws and closing his mouth. He's back with, "Okay, all done."
The man's got his chin halfway over K'aus shoulder, so he can see those eyes, and watch them fade in and out of focus. "Good. Let's talk about what's gonna happen next." He lowers the knife slightly, as a gesture of good will, but with his speed it could probably be back at K'aus's throat in the blink of an eye if he chose. "You tell your dragon not to panic. I'm going to knock you out. He keeps his mouth shut, you're gonna wake up in an hour or two. Get a few things off your chest. If he doesn't, and I see anybody I don't like headed towards me, you don't wake up. Tell me when you've told him."
"You're the boss," K'aus mutters, and lets his gaze shift to the side and droop slightly. It takes perhaps longer than might be expected, this communication, this talking down of dragon, but finally he returns to the here and now and says flatly, "He'll go away."
"Good." Then a hard blow lands at the back of K'aus's neck and the world goes black. When he wakes up, he'll find himself in a cramped hallway, stuffed into a rickety wooden chair with his hands tied behind his back. There's a different guy lounging by the door at the end of the hall, behind which the sound of a sharp male voice can be heard from time to time. The lounger glances at K'aus to see if he's awake, some kind of periodic check-up he must be required to perform.
His captor would have had a hard time with his dead weight, as if even in unconsciousness he wanted to make things difficult. Now, bound, locked up, K'aus blearily comes around and lifts his head from where it had been lolling to the side and winces when he discovers his new kink. His squinted eyes search the room, a very thorough examination that ends with him finding the only other person here with him. "Wow you must be pretty high up in the ranks, watch the unconscious guy."
As soon as K'aus moves, the lounger straightens up a bit and raps his knuckles on the door behind him. There's a pause, but then the voice behind the door starts up again: evidently in no rush to answer the call of the recently awakened captive. "It's money," the lounger answers flatly. He'll ignore any other sallies until the door opens, and the guy who knocked K'aus out in the first place comes back to look at him. "All right," he decides, walking over to K'aus. He grabs his shirt collar and yanks him to his feet, whether or not the recently unconscious man is ready for that yet. "You're gonna talk to my boss. I recommend you keep a civil tongue in your head." Because he's very helpful, this bruiser. He drags K'aus towards the door.
A small smile greets that. Yes, it is indeed money. Irony. Once the door opens his smile grows until it might be considered shit-eating. His eyebrows come up as well when he's approached, when he's grabbed he looks about as innocent and undeserving as they come. His feet don't fail him, legs untangling and cooperating probably just on autopilot. "I'll consider your recommendation very seriously," he replies, though there's a tension in the corners of his eyes that might suggest a growing apprehension.
"Good," the bruiser says again. This time, it isn't followed by him knocking K'aus out. Instead, he brings him through the doors into the modest study of what must be somebody's villa, though the drawn shades prevent any identifying features of the landscape from telling /where/ this villa is. Standing next to the desk up front is a short man with a round face, flat-featured, and a twitchy demeanor. The boss.
The boss narrows his eyes at this specimen that just came through his door. "/You're/ the guy who cut a man's face up and shipped his fingers around like fucking birthday presents? Hit him in the gut," he orders his bruiser, who promptly does just that. "I should cut your dick off and fucking feed it to you. You sick fuck."
The boss receives much the same kind of look from K'aus. This is the boss? His narrowed eyes and up-twitched mouth say it all. But he erases the expression from his face so that he might look as bland and cool as he wants to-- right in time for being hit in the gut. His hands are tied so he can't use them to balance himself when he doubles over, so unless that bruiser has a good grip he's on his knees in no time. The sound he made is quick and over, a strangled, pained sound; there are ribs in there, ribs that aren't totally healed. He breathes heavily and sags, and he also manages to rasp, "Happy birthday."
The bruiser caught K'aus, but he doesn't need instructions the second time. He socks K'aus a second time for being a wise-ass, and this time lets him go down. The boss knew this was coming and waited for it as his due; when the rider goes down, he approaches and looks narrowly down at him. "Your little messenger boy's already dead, rider. You're just making me want to add to the body count. Hey, does this fucking guy have a name?" he asks his bruiser suddenly. Without waiting for a response, he turns to K'aus and slaps his sharply. "You have a name?"
The second hit knocks the wind all the way out of him, breath gone. K'aus lands hard on his knees and almost slumps the rest of the way over onto his face. Which would be a real shame, because then he wouldn't be able to enjoy that slap. And there's nothing like being slapped by another man to really rile you. But riled or not, he keeps his cool, closes his eyes briefly before lifting them up to look at the boss. His lip bleeds, just a little. In a low voice he answers. "Brown Ehrudith's, fourth position, Riptide..."
The boss turns on his heel in the middle of that answer and strides back to his desk. "I said /name/, asshole," he reminders the brownrider. The bruiser's hand hovers nearby, fingers open, but it doesn't move and if he knows K'aus's name, he doesn't supply it. They're both waiting on K'aus to say it.
There wasn't really a lot of hope of that working. Still trying to catch his breath, K'aus takes one look at the threat of the hand hovering just there and, despite it, hunches his shoulders protectively and repeats himself.
The hand shoots into action, before K'aus is more than a word into his recitation, but blessedly, it does not hit. It grabs the neck of K'aus shirt and hauls him up to his feet again. The boss is standing in front of his desk, leaning back on it, his dark eyes crackling with malice. "Maybe you're thinking to yourself, I've got this big lump of dragon attached to me like some kind of I don't know, safety charm. Maybe you're thinking I care." He snaps his fingers and the bruiser shakes K'aus by the neck of his shirt. Pay attention to this part. "What you should be thinking is, who's going to guard that pretty prostitute while you're here?" So he did do his homework.
So he doesn't get to finish, darn. A wince accompanies his trying to get his feet under him, when he does he's standing not at his full height but at a slumped half-mast. His head tips back so he can look down his nose at the boss. The stuff about the dragon earn no reaction, very likely it's all spot-on; when he's given another shake his jaw tenses like he wants to do bad things to that hand, but what follows wipes him of all signs of life. He's staring again, blankly, which isn't exactly a tell but it could be if someone's paying attention. He thinks fast, probes the cut on his lip with the tip of his tongue and says, "I think you and your men are laboring under a fallacy. You misinterpret my dealings. Who said I give a shit about a bunch of whores?"
The boss stares levelly at K'aus for a while longer. That answer wasn't worth acknowledging, so he continues his own story. "I've already got men in the place, watching those girls for me. It's not that fucking hard to hide a couple of lowlifes in a whorehouse. If they hear things aren't going well with you, they might just take their anger out on those girls. So do you still wanna fuck around, or do you want to tell me your fucking name?"
That's a lot of information to process. Doubtless, K'aus's mind goes to a lot of different places all at once. There's a frantic energy in the way he passes his eyes back and forth in front of him like he's reading a book or something, and finally he picks himself up to stand straight and lowers his gaze to the floor. That way they might not see it go all unfocused. Aloud he says, "My fucking name is K'aus."
"Don't use your dragon," the boss says softly, ignoring the name. That glance down may have been crafty enough to hide the blurring of his vision, but it doesn't stop the boss from knowing K'aus has a telepathic link and expecting him to use it. "I'll have to go to extreme measures if you use your dragon. You tell him to be quiet. Right now." The bruiser shoves his hand under K'aus's chin and forces it up, so they both can watch his eyes. "No tricks," the boss reminds him, his tone still dangerously soft. "It only gets worse if there's tricks."
His eyes close until the hand under his chin, he must know what it's for because he opens them again, looks at first the bruiser out of their corners, then at the boss directly ahead, there. "Let's move on from this part. So you have a couple of thugs leaning on June and her girls, you have me. You also have two less men in your employ, technically only one, but it isn't like the other one's much good now, you're welcome for that. I know what I want, you know what you want. You can't kill me or else you have more trouble coming your way than I'm worth." Which might actually be true, but in the 'how much does Ista want him' sort of way.
"Now this son of a bitch wants to do business," the boss exclaims, jumping off his desk. He strides up to K'aus and shoves two fingers in on either side of his jugular, which is just immensely uncomfortable, and relieves his bruiser of the task of holding the brownrider's head up. "Keep it on business, you time-wasting son of a bitch. You try to get smart with me again and you'll be so fucking sorry."
K'aus's head stays fucking up. His immediate reflex is to swallow, painfully, past those fingers, which is too damn bad. His eyes are half-lidded again but very very focused indeed on the boss's face, inches from his own. His voice comes out thick. "I maimed your man, it's nothing personal, I just want Kozec." And again, in case it missed its mark, "I just want Kozec."
"You went the wrong fucking way about it," the boss says. He pulls his fingers out of K'aus's neck. "I don't like it when people fuck with my guys. Maiming a guy who didn't do shit to you? I didn't like that." The boss shakes his head and takes a half step back to eyeball K'aus from a distance where he can see, and evaluate, the whole man. "You can't have Kozec. I'm not going to fucking hand him to you, you sick, stupid fuck."
Probably the sudden wolf-grin K'aus puts on wasn't one of the reactions the boss was expecting, but there it is anyway, along with, eventually, some slightly maniacal laughter. "Oh right, sure, I'm the sick fuck. You know what your guy did, he fucking raped and brutalized a young girl and left her to die alone in the woods. So me, impressionable guy that /I/ am, I'm only trying to create an homage, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." When he's denied his temper spikes, so does the volume of his voice. "If you don't fucking give him to me I will come after every single fucking one of you until I find him myself."
The boss waits there, unimpressed, while Kozec's crimes are laid before him. When K'aus starts to yell, however, the other man pulls himself up and roars him down. "You touch another one of my guys, I don't care if it's even by accident, I'll fucking /break/ you. You don't think I can do it, you just try me, you son of a bitch, you watch what I find to fucking break you." During this exchange, he's advanced back on K'aus to get right in his face, and when he's done, he spits on the brownrider. His bruiser's fallen silent, but his grip tightens, in case any of this is enough to tip the already crazed K'aus into full psychotic mode.
Hardly one to back down, K'aus is just as pissed off as he was a moment before the boss drowned him out. Already struggling in the bruiser's grip, once spit comes into play he only makes a low, growled noise and starts jerking around, trying to get free. He thrusts his spit-smeared face at the boss's, his eyes slightly crazed. "I don't have anything to fucking lose anymore you fucking prick."
The boss's upper lip pulls back in disgust at this spit-smeared lunatic. Reading that expression, the bruiser hauls back on K'aus's arms, removing him from the boss's immediate vicinity. He's managed to hold on to the man, somehow, despite all the twisting efforts to wrench free. "Then kill yourself and get out of my fucking hair," the boss suggests. "Or shut up for a second and listen, you son of a bitch."
Though he's still obviously roiling with rage, he manages to bite down on it, to keep it in his mouth instead of let it come out in more hateful, angry words. Shut up and listen? Fine. But don't think that K'aus isn't going to glare sharp, vengeful daggers. He does speak, in a tight voice that growls. "Be a dear and wipe my face for me." Somebody.
The boss shrugs at this request, which is enough of a permissive gesture to prompt the bruiser to bring a handkerchief out of his pocket. He swipes it roughly over K'aus's face and is done, folding up the napkin so the spit's on the inside and tossing it away for disposal later. "I'm not giving you Kozec. You want him, you can have him, though. He's a fucking hassle, a goddamn liability. I got rid of him. He ever sets foot on my island again, I'll wipe him out. You ever lay a hand on my fucking guys again, I'll wipe /you/ out and say he did it. You got that? K'aus?" He spits the fought-for name out with disgust.
K'aus closes his eyes and tilts his chin up for his wipe-down, then grimaces and swallows. It's quite possible he wants to throw up. "Tell me where he is," is his next 'request', made with steely jaw and hardened gaze.
"Between Barnacle and Podunk hold, in the motherfucking wattle and daub hut. I'm not tracing the bastard. But you want to know what I know about it," the boss says, "you tell me something I want to know."
Those eyes roll. "Fucking cute. I know about a lot of shit. How about you tell me what I know that you wanna know about." K'aus gives another half-hearted jerk in his captor's grip and gives the bruiser a sideways glance that's all murderous.
The bruiser doesn't even bother to meet K'aus's eye. He's done this hostage thing so many times it's boring for him, especially now that the fun parts - where he gets to threaten K'aus or beat the shit out of him - seem to have stopped, and he's reduced to a face-wiper. The half-hearted jerk is easily restrained. "I want a name," the boss says. "Some fucking storeworker. Blond hair, smart mouth. Raggedy looking, tall motherfucker."
A name. This is another one of those moments that K'aus takes to scan the inner walls of his mind for details, for a plan. For tricks. He's very good about keeping his gaze clear though, no misunderstandings here, and looking the boss in the eye. "Yeah I think there's a guy like that. His name's Vladilen, why, what do you want him for?"
The boss makes eye contact with his bruiser, and a perfectly silent exchange is carried out. Most likely, they are remembering Vlad's name. Noting it. "None of your fucking business. Kozec's probably headed for Fort. Lots of fuck-ups going there lately."
Just like boss and bruiser make mental notes, K'aus makes one of his own, just there. Fort: check. "And just to be sure, so they're on the same page and everything, he opens his mouth again. "One day I might kill you."
The look the boss gives K'aus is thoroughly unimpressed. He doesn't even have to gesture at his bruiser, who knows that this conversation is over, and rounds it off with another knock to the back of K'aus's head that sends him tumbling into black-out land. He'll wake in a heap on the jungle path leading to the weyr, with a killer headache and sore ribs to remember his visit by.
ETA: The word 'fuck' was used 31 times in this log. XD
The jungles of Ista Island seem to stretch on forever: wrapping around the Weyr's ground, bordering the beaches and sprawling out across the rough, hilly terrain. The undergrowth is thick with ferns and shrubs that encroach greedily on the narrow footpaths and the wheel-gouged alleys of wagon roads. Beyond the relatively open space of tree trunks and snaking vines, the jungle canopy obscures nearly all of the sky. Intermittently, the forest gives way to open clearings where the path nearly disappears beneath the lush plant-life.
Worn channels cut through the undergrowth to head up to the plateau and down to the main beach of Ista Weyr while other paths meander off toward more secluded stretches of shoreline.
It's a bit more difficult to, say, walk through the jungle from the beach than to walk into your weyr from the ledge, but K'aus makes the trek without complaint, and has been doing so every day for at least the past few. The sun is starting to set so he's in a bit of a hurry because without glows or some other kind of light and without at least some daylight a walk through the jungle is even /less/ fun. Soon he's in the clear, the tavern is up ahead, he can see it. He's already unbuttoning his shirt in anticipation of being indoors.
Another man is headed back from the Lucky Seven, perhaps turned off by the relatively low numbers of customers there to carouse with at this early hour. He gives K'aus the customary chin-tug of 'I see you but do not really care to greet you' and goes on his way. At least, that seems to be his intention, but as soon as they've passed each other on the road, the man's standing behind K'aus with a knife pressed to his throat and another arm wrapped around his chest to keep him still. He moved almost impossibly fast. "Keep a level head," he advises. "And don't go calling in no cavalry. I think we should talk."
K'aus doesn't even bother with that much, he settles for a blank stare at the other man as they pass that then refocuses on the path ahead. That same lack of reaction greets his new situation, his mind taking note of the knife first and the arm second. Good at following orders, he does stay still, he keeps a level head. And in the growing darkness, he stares at nothing. "Wait..." What follows is a silence. If they could see the beach, they would see Ehrudith sinking back onto all four paws and closing his mouth. He's back with, "Okay, all done."
The man's got his chin halfway over K'aus shoulder, so he can see those eyes, and watch them fade in and out of focus. "Good. Let's talk about what's gonna happen next." He lowers the knife slightly, as a gesture of good will, but with his speed it could probably be back at K'aus's throat in the blink of an eye if he chose. "You tell your dragon not to panic. I'm going to knock you out. He keeps his mouth shut, you're gonna wake up in an hour or two. Get a few things off your chest. If he doesn't, and I see anybody I don't like headed towards me, you don't wake up. Tell me when you've told him."
"You're the boss," K'aus mutters, and lets his gaze shift to the side and droop slightly. It takes perhaps longer than might be expected, this communication, this talking down of dragon, but finally he returns to the here and now and says flatly, "He'll go away."
"Good." Then a hard blow lands at the back of K'aus's neck and the world goes black. When he wakes up, he'll find himself in a cramped hallway, stuffed into a rickety wooden chair with his hands tied behind his back. There's a different guy lounging by the door at the end of the hall, behind which the sound of a sharp male voice can be heard from time to time. The lounger glances at K'aus to see if he's awake, some kind of periodic check-up he must be required to perform.
His captor would have had a hard time with his dead weight, as if even in unconsciousness he wanted to make things difficult. Now, bound, locked up, K'aus blearily comes around and lifts his head from where it had been lolling to the side and winces when he discovers his new kink. His squinted eyes search the room, a very thorough examination that ends with him finding the only other person here with him. "Wow you must be pretty high up in the ranks, watch the unconscious guy."
As soon as K'aus moves, the lounger straightens up a bit and raps his knuckles on the door behind him. There's a pause, but then the voice behind the door starts up again: evidently in no rush to answer the call of the recently awakened captive. "It's money," the lounger answers flatly. He'll ignore any other sallies until the door opens, and the guy who knocked K'aus out in the first place comes back to look at him. "All right," he decides, walking over to K'aus. He grabs his shirt collar and yanks him to his feet, whether or not the recently unconscious man is ready for that yet. "You're gonna talk to my boss. I recommend you keep a civil tongue in your head." Because he's very helpful, this bruiser. He drags K'aus towards the door.
A small smile greets that. Yes, it is indeed money. Irony. Once the door opens his smile grows until it might be considered shit-eating. His eyebrows come up as well when he's approached, when he's grabbed he looks about as innocent and undeserving as they come. His feet don't fail him, legs untangling and cooperating probably just on autopilot. "I'll consider your recommendation very seriously," he replies, though there's a tension in the corners of his eyes that might suggest a growing apprehension.
"Good," the bruiser says again. This time, it isn't followed by him knocking K'aus out. Instead, he brings him through the doors into the modest study of what must be somebody's villa, though the drawn shades prevent any identifying features of the landscape from telling /where/ this villa is. Standing next to the desk up front is a short man with a round face, flat-featured, and a twitchy demeanor. The boss.
The boss narrows his eyes at this specimen that just came through his door. "/You're/ the guy who cut a man's face up and shipped his fingers around like fucking birthday presents? Hit him in the gut," he orders his bruiser, who promptly does just that. "I should cut your dick off and fucking feed it to you. You sick fuck."
The boss receives much the same kind of look from K'aus. This is the boss? His narrowed eyes and up-twitched mouth say it all. But he erases the expression from his face so that he might look as bland and cool as he wants to-- right in time for being hit in the gut. His hands are tied so he can't use them to balance himself when he doubles over, so unless that bruiser has a good grip he's on his knees in no time. The sound he made is quick and over, a strangled, pained sound; there are ribs in there, ribs that aren't totally healed. He breathes heavily and sags, and he also manages to rasp, "Happy birthday."
The bruiser caught K'aus, but he doesn't need instructions the second time. He socks K'aus a second time for being a wise-ass, and this time lets him go down. The boss knew this was coming and waited for it as his due; when the rider goes down, he approaches and looks narrowly down at him. "Your little messenger boy's already dead, rider. You're just making me want to add to the body count. Hey, does this fucking guy have a name?" he asks his bruiser suddenly. Without waiting for a response, he turns to K'aus and slaps his sharply. "You have a name?"
The second hit knocks the wind all the way out of him, breath gone. K'aus lands hard on his knees and almost slumps the rest of the way over onto his face. Which would be a real shame, because then he wouldn't be able to enjoy that slap. And there's nothing like being slapped by another man to really rile you. But riled or not, he keeps his cool, closes his eyes briefly before lifting them up to look at the boss. His lip bleeds, just a little. In a low voice he answers. "Brown Ehrudith's, fourth position, Riptide..."
The boss turns on his heel in the middle of that answer and strides back to his desk. "I said /name/, asshole," he reminders the brownrider. The bruiser's hand hovers nearby, fingers open, but it doesn't move and if he knows K'aus's name, he doesn't supply it. They're both waiting on K'aus to say it.
There wasn't really a lot of hope of that working. Still trying to catch his breath, K'aus takes one look at the threat of the hand hovering just there and, despite it, hunches his shoulders protectively and repeats himself.
The hand shoots into action, before K'aus is more than a word into his recitation, but blessedly, it does not hit. It grabs the neck of K'aus shirt and hauls him up to his feet again. The boss is standing in front of his desk, leaning back on it, his dark eyes crackling with malice. "Maybe you're thinking to yourself, I've got this big lump of dragon attached to me like some kind of I don't know, safety charm. Maybe you're thinking I care." He snaps his fingers and the bruiser shakes K'aus by the neck of his shirt. Pay attention to this part. "What you should be thinking is, who's going to guard that pretty prostitute while you're here?" So he did do his homework.
So he doesn't get to finish, darn. A wince accompanies his trying to get his feet under him, when he does he's standing not at his full height but at a slumped half-mast. His head tips back so he can look down his nose at the boss. The stuff about the dragon earn no reaction, very likely it's all spot-on; when he's given another shake his jaw tenses like he wants to do bad things to that hand, but what follows wipes him of all signs of life. He's staring again, blankly, which isn't exactly a tell but it could be if someone's paying attention. He thinks fast, probes the cut on his lip with the tip of his tongue and says, "I think you and your men are laboring under a fallacy. You misinterpret my dealings. Who said I give a shit about a bunch of whores?"
The boss stares levelly at K'aus for a while longer. That answer wasn't worth acknowledging, so he continues his own story. "I've already got men in the place, watching those girls for me. It's not that fucking hard to hide a couple of lowlifes in a whorehouse. If they hear things aren't going well with you, they might just take their anger out on those girls. So do you still wanna fuck around, or do you want to tell me your fucking name?"
That's a lot of information to process. Doubtless, K'aus's mind goes to a lot of different places all at once. There's a frantic energy in the way he passes his eyes back and forth in front of him like he's reading a book or something, and finally he picks himself up to stand straight and lowers his gaze to the floor. That way they might not see it go all unfocused. Aloud he says, "My fucking name is K'aus."
"Don't use your dragon," the boss says softly, ignoring the name. That glance down may have been crafty enough to hide the blurring of his vision, but it doesn't stop the boss from knowing K'aus has a telepathic link and expecting him to use it. "I'll have to go to extreme measures if you use your dragon. You tell him to be quiet. Right now." The bruiser shoves his hand under K'aus's chin and forces it up, so they both can watch his eyes. "No tricks," the boss reminds him, his tone still dangerously soft. "It only gets worse if there's tricks."
His eyes close until the hand under his chin, he must know what it's for because he opens them again, looks at first the bruiser out of their corners, then at the boss directly ahead, there. "Let's move on from this part. So you have a couple of thugs leaning on June and her girls, you have me. You also have two less men in your employ, technically only one, but it isn't like the other one's much good now, you're welcome for that. I know what I want, you know what you want. You can't kill me or else you have more trouble coming your way than I'm worth." Which might actually be true, but in the 'how much does Ista want him' sort of way.
"Now this son of a bitch wants to do business," the boss exclaims, jumping off his desk. He strides up to K'aus and shoves two fingers in on either side of his jugular, which is just immensely uncomfortable, and relieves his bruiser of the task of holding the brownrider's head up. "Keep it on business, you time-wasting son of a bitch. You try to get smart with me again and you'll be so fucking sorry."
K'aus's head stays fucking up. His immediate reflex is to swallow, painfully, past those fingers, which is too damn bad. His eyes are half-lidded again but very very focused indeed on the boss's face, inches from his own. His voice comes out thick. "I maimed your man, it's nothing personal, I just want Kozec." And again, in case it missed its mark, "I just want Kozec."
"You went the wrong fucking way about it," the boss says. He pulls his fingers out of K'aus's neck. "I don't like it when people fuck with my guys. Maiming a guy who didn't do shit to you? I didn't like that." The boss shakes his head and takes a half step back to eyeball K'aus from a distance where he can see, and evaluate, the whole man. "You can't have Kozec. I'm not going to fucking hand him to you, you sick, stupid fuck."
Probably the sudden wolf-grin K'aus puts on wasn't one of the reactions the boss was expecting, but there it is anyway, along with, eventually, some slightly maniacal laughter. "Oh right, sure, I'm the sick fuck. You know what your guy did, he fucking raped and brutalized a young girl and left her to die alone in the woods. So me, impressionable guy that /I/ am, I'm only trying to create an homage, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." When he's denied his temper spikes, so does the volume of his voice. "If you don't fucking give him to me I will come after every single fucking one of you until I find him myself."
The boss waits there, unimpressed, while Kozec's crimes are laid before him. When K'aus starts to yell, however, the other man pulls himself up and roars him down. "You touch another one of my guys, I don't care if it's even by accident, I'll fucking /break/ you. You don't think I can do it, you just try me, you son of a bitch, you watch what I find to fucking break you." During this exchange, he's advanced back on K'aus to get right in his face, and when he's done, he spits on the brownrider. His bruiser's fallen silent, but his grip tightens, in case any of this is enough to tip the already crazed K'aus into full psychotic mode.
Hardly one to back down, K'aus is just as pissed off as he was a moment before the boss drowned him out. Already struggling in the bruiser's grip, once spit comes into play he only makes a low, growled noise and starts jerking around, trying to get free. He thrusts his spit-smeared face at the boss's, his eyes slightly crazed. "I don't have anything to fucking lose anymore you fucking prick."
The boss's upper lip pulls back in disgust at this spit-smeared lunatic. Reading that expression, the bruiser hauls back on K'aus's arms, removing him from the boss's immediate vicinity. He's managed to hold on to the man, somehow, despite all the twisting efforts to wrench free. "Then kill yourself and get out of my fucking hair," the boss suggests. "Or shut up for a second and listen, you son of a bitch."
Though he's still obviously roiling with rage, he manages to bite down on it, to keep it in his mouth instead of let it come out in more hateful, angry words. Shut up and listen? Fine. But don't think that K'aus isn't going to glare sharp, vengeful daggers. He does speak, in a tight voice that growls. "Be a dear and wipe my face for me." Somebody.
The boss shrugs at this request, which is enough of a permissive gesture to prompt the bruiser to bring a handkerchief out of his pocket. He swipes it roughly over K'aus's face and is done, folding up the napkin so the spit's on the inside and tossing it away for disposal later. "I'm not giving you Kozec. You want him, you can have him, though. He's a fucking hassle, a goddamn liability. I got rid of him. He ever sets foot on my island again, I'll wipe him out. You ever lay a hand on my fucking guys again, I'll wipe /you/ out and say he did it. You got that? K'aus?" He spits the fought-for name out with disgust.
K'aus closes his eyes and tilts his chin up for his wipe-down, then grimaces and swallows. It's quite possible he wants to throw up. "Tell me where he is," is his next 'request', made with steely jaw and hardened gaze.
"Between Barnacle and Podunk hold, in the motherfucking wattle and daub hut. I'm not tracing the bastard. But you want to know what I know about it," the boss says, "you tell me something I want to know."
Those eyes roll. "Fucking cute. I know about a lot of shit. How about you tell me what I know that you wanna know about." K'aus gives another half-hearted jerk in his captor's grip and gives the bruiser a sideways glance that's all murderous.
The bruiser doesn't even bother to meet K'aus's eye. He's done this hostage thing so many times it's boring for him, especially now that the fun parts - where he gets to threaten K'aus or beat the shit out of him - seem to have stopped, and he's reduced to a face-wiper. The half-hearted jerk is easily restrained. "I want a name," the boss says. "Some fucking storeworker. Blond hair, smart mouth. Raggedy looking, tall motherfucker."
A name. This is another one of those moments that K'aus takes to scan the inner walls of his mind for details, for a plan. For tricks. He's very good about keeping his gaze clear though, no misunderstandings here, and looking the boss in the eye. "Yeah I think there's a guy like that. His name's Vladilen, why, what do you want him for?"
The boss makes eye contact with his bruiser, and a perfectly silent exchange is carried out. Most likely, they are remembering Vlad's name. Noting it. "None of your fucking business. Kozec's probably headed for Fort. Lots of fuck-ups going there lately."
Just like boss and bruiser make mental notes, K'aus makes one of his own, just there. Fort: check. "And just to be sure, so they're on the same page and everything, he opens his mouth again. "One day I might kill you."
The look the boss gives K'aus is thoroughly unimpressed. He doesn't even have to gesture at his bruiser, who knows that this conversation is over, and rounds it off with another knock to the back of K'aus's head that sends him tumbling into black-out land. He'll wake in a heap on the jungle path leading to the weyr, with a killer headache and sore ribs to remember his visit by.
ETA: The word 'fuck' was used 31 times in this log. XD