Ole Eagle Eye: Rest and Relaxation at the spa

[caffeinatedink]

Part one :Next Gen

...So I can start the next piece.
Underneath the underneath or in this case the cut should be the story.

They arrived at the spa she had booked for them rather late in the evening. Motorbike luggage had not changed much in the last sixteen hundred years that he could see. Her things and whatever she had packed for him to wear were stowed in two ‘saddle bags.’ The things were actually made out of leather, a rare thing in this modern economy, and had probably cost more then the vehicle itself.
Ole Eagle Eye watched her as she checked them in and requested several of the spa’s available ‘treatments’ for them. Her schedule was full of things that females seemed to like no matter the era. Manicure’s, facials, and the like were on the agenda for her time here. His schedule looked very different save for that both of them were scheduled to be rapped up in seaweed later in the week. Other then that he had a spot in plenty of different meditation rooms booked for his use and many different forms of massage. The deep tissue was something he was actually fond of in the event it was done correctly.
Considering the amount of money she had paid for the various services, and insisted was her treat, though he had offered in seriousness to cover his own expenses, they had beeter be able to do the various ‘treatments’ correctly. He settled in to the sauna and relaxed in the steamy heat. His senses flared briefly when she passed by on the way to the ladies side of the sauna. The eyeless ones were just as fond of the heat as he, but still their smiles appeared for just an instant before all of them went back to basking in the heat like lizards on a South facing wall.
She smiled as her senses detected that Ole Eagle Eye was already ‘getting his boiling on’ in the Sauna before she had time to drop their things in their adjoining rooms. With all his tissues aching with renewed nanites he would have appriciated that most of all right now. She smiled and settled down on the redwood bench in the ladies side of the sauna. Someone had put some kind of herbage in the water prior to it being added to the heating coils to make steam. The smell was of a floral and crisp green nature all at once. She added more water to the exposed element and a fresh puff of steam filled the air with scented moisture.
Relaxing back in the sauna she contemplated what she remembered of the room service menu here at Shady Peaks. She had no desire to be social after watching her father figure and friend go through the horrors he had so calmly endured over the last thirteen hours. Eating in her room was just about the best sounding idea she had heard in years. Decision made she settled back on the bench and sat perfectly still. She was determined to par boil herself until her stomach forced her out of the sauna.
He was nearly asleep as far as consciousness went, but he knew it was going to be time for him to eat something soon. She was already taking care of it as he had expected her to do. Between the two of them the syncronicity was nearly frightening in it’s perfection. He had worked with many others like himself enough to make no nevermind, but he had never fallen perfectly in sync like this before. He stood as she passed by on the way out of the Sauna area and followed her out.
It was as if his thinking of past partners had summoned one up out of the mists of time. Theodore Wreeks, fondly known in the community as Salamander, was walking towards the hotel part of the resort with a fair featured and slender blonde woman on his arm.
“Well hey there little bit, and o course that means that if this red headed darlin is here then Ole E ain’t far away.”
Ole Eagle Eye moved up to back up the girl. She was good enough in a throw down that he would give her even odds against his old partner. However with the blonde being an unknown and Salamander possessing not one small shred of honor, she would need any advantage that she could get. He was a large advantage in that the Salamander had always feared the Eagle, and that was how it would always stay.
She took the Salamander’s hand first. This greeting among many modern men had lost it’s meaning. Between an assassin trained rich girl and an original assassin the meaning returned to the gesture. See my weapon hand is empty and I won’t be trying to kill you… for the moment anyway. The blonde was not a killer of any kind, either born or trained. She thought this was all friendly and cute meeting of old comrades and their women friends. Ole Eagle Eye grined down deep near the Eyeless Ones, though nothing showed on his face. Both the little one and Salamander saw it though and they grinned the same way, invisable to the untrained eye but still sharing amusement among one another.
“I get the feeling Theo that I am missing half the conversation here.”
“You are Ma’am. Its best that you miss it anyway. Just two roosters and a hen with to many feathers all postureing away at each other like no one’s watching.”
His little one had stated it just as it was. Though not one of them, the blonde held some gifts of perception. His Eyeless Ones welled to the surface and took a swift glance at her. What glanced back was not the ordinary inner spirit of a plain everyday person. Though it was not an Eyeless one of a killer it was a spirit beyond the regular by miles.
“Lorraine, Ole Eagle Eye, meet Jennifer Liemrey.”
Jennifer was a seer of sorts. The eyes in her spiritual companions were not the dark empty sockets of a killer, but instead were filled with a nearly neon blue fire with a golden swirling center to them that could suck a person under and allow Jennifer to read them fully without hardly trying. He glanced away at the last second and allowed the Eyeless ones to Look at their compatriots across the way instead. The tiny gasp that came from Jennifer was somehow gratifying.
“So Sal a Seer? Or is she some sort of Sage instead?”
“I am myself and I have found very little in the wide world that resembles me Mr. Eagle Eye. Until I made Theo’s acquaintence I had never met another person with spirtual companions of any kind. So Theo why don’t you explain to me what it means that she has companions with one dark eye and his are blind yet not just like yours?”
“Killing changes a person. When it is your vocation it changes you more. She killed for revenge and for defense of herself and the one she loves. He and I killed as ordered and bound by duty. We still do. She would not hesitate should we ask for her to put her hand in and sink deeper with us then she already has. Or maybe I should say she would not hesitate if HE asked her to or needed her aid. Though the world would surely have turned on it’s ass if Ole Eagle Eye needed help of any kind.”
“Sal!”
Little Lorraine liked it when people kept their speech clean around her. She had been raised to a certain point to know how a lady behaves and how people are supposed to behave around said lady. Then she had been raised the rest of the way to know that the rest of the world rarely laid back and acted as you asked it to, and that you should be suspicious as all hell if you got the compliance that you were after right off the bat.
Salamander was not one to offend the ladies if he could make them pleased with him instead. His apology was meant just a shallowly as his little one’s protest had been though, and both of them knowingly laughed it off. Sometimes Ole Eagle Eye was jealous of how well Lorraine associated with other people. No one cringed first off when they met her. Many people schmoozed her when they first met her, but the did not cringe.
Ole Eagle Eye suspected that this was a lack of perception on their parts. They could not see inside her all the way down to the little Eagle that flew around in her chest. That and she hated schmoozers and slimeballs out for her money. Had she the adaptations he was saddled with then her eyes would spend five days out of seven in a magma hot orange or red hued state, so many persued the funds her clever father’s death had granted her sole access to at her eighteenth natality.
“I have a guess why Ole Eagle Eye needed a spa day but what has the princess out and attending with her griseled old murderer of an adopted parent?”
“I spend five days out of every seven swimming in a mental cesspool filled with blood sucking leeches the size of polar bears. You take a guess why I am here too.”
“Be cause you watched his transfer would be my guess.”
Lorraine’s face when Jennifer hit upon the very thing that had caused her so much upset was a study in cool collected stone walling. Until that minute he had not even thought on what might do her a mental injury over concern towards him. He knew it and his Eyeless Ones were all whispering among each other, pondering for him the meaning behind such a fact set and how it might affect future performance of his and Lorraine’s. The ideas they came up with showed very few outcomes that were less then full out failure. He sighed and looked directly at the cool face of Lorraine as she looked toward the unusual sound.
“Foolish little bird. You should know better then that.”
“Ah Daddy bird since when is what’s in the heart ruled over completely by whats in the head? At best the emotions are rebels never fully tamed. At worst they are sitting on the throne with their boots propped up on logic’s neck.”
“That is why so few women are assassins little bird. You have other tasks for which you are better suited. It would be best if you cast off this attachment to me, but as we all have our addictions I am not going to be the one to force you from yours. Still The Eyeless ones tell me it is best also, though they are scowling about it very much just now.”
Lorraine looked at him with her eyes half lidded. When she squinted he suspected that she could see the Eyeless Ones just fine. She sighed heavily and then turned to walk towards their rooms. Despite the new acquaintence in the person of the perceptive Jennifer she was still in no mood to suffer the presence of loud social beasts or social beasts of any kind for that matter. She settled in and he allowed the room service man into the combined sitting room between their two suites.
The food was nutrient rich and calorie heavy fare meant for those who were seeking to build muscle and bone mass, or in his case nanite mass. The same thing sat on her plate with a few variations meant to uplift the mood and pump the body full of antioxidant substances. She had been working out steadily for the last few months from the subtle shifts that he could see in her flesh. The plate was clean as fast as it was possible to chew and swallow what was on it and three glasses of healthful drinks, one a juice blend, one a mineral water, and one a milk that came from a richer teat then that of a cow, all washed down her supper. A rich desert, though containing little value as nutrients went, was also on her plate and a simpler one on his. Hers was a choclate affair that looked to be a cross between a rich cake and a thick nutty brownie. His was simple berry cobbler with a latticework of pie crust across the top.
He had not stopped to smell so much as a sliver of the main course. Ole Eagle Eye had been to hungry and devoured it, counting on the Eyeless Ones to tell him if he needed to send nanites to work on any poisons or undesirable substances. Now he inhaled the sweet scent of the cobbler and the more decadent scent of hot caked chocolate that was melting into the nicely cooled whipped cream.
His smile was nearly feral, here where she was the only one who could see an emotion cross his normally bland and inscruitable face. Her answering look met it and they dug in. Deserts were rare in the time when he had been bringing her up. Healthy food had been plentiful, but plain until she had learned to cook some of the things she had once eaten and loved as a rich man’s child. Then she had started a serious inroad onto the food items he had loved when he was her age, though those culinary wonders wore the raiment of much more simple people and easier times.
As they devoured their deserts he thought back while conversing in his mind with the Eyeless Ones. In one way they completely concurred among themselves. In one way or the other they had been far to kind and gentle when they should have stuck to adequate. It had brought about a very dangerous result. Dangerous for Lorraine, and perhaps even a small amount of dangerous for Ole Eagle Eye himself. She cared deeply about him. If asked by someone whom she thought had any right to an answer she would probably tell them she loved him very much.
Women responded that way about those they saw as close kin. She had once said that he was her only family, no matter what DNA might have to say about cousins and a half brother of her Father that yet lived. Having met the useless waste of flesh that was her half Uncle, and the handful of cousins who had shown up the last time she had done the polite thing and invited them to a holiday dinner, he would not want to be bound to them in any way either.
The Eyeless Ones were not smiling but they were smirking as if they had a secret that he did not know, and looking at them he judged he probably would not wish to know it in any case. Then he glanced back at her and his eyebrow raised in surprise and a little bit of wonder. He counted three times to make sure. He could hear laughter on the lower levels where the Eyeless Ones often amused themselves when he needed them not. The Six were evenly matched in his dinner partner. His Eyeless Ones and her One Eyed Ones matched up just exactly in the numbers!
When she soved the remainder of her huge desert at him, he tasted the treat and decided he could stomach the sweetness just for once. Maybe the sugars would process well enough to allow him to steal back a bit of his mental function. Eating the food did not result in the outcome he had hoped for when he devoured it though. His mind was still whirling around at ten times the speed of the world under his feet. The sniggering of the Eyeless Ones echoed in his ears and he knew that they had tallied their opposite number long ago.
“ When did she have them first?”
When her parents died before her eyes they were born, so just before you met her that first time. They thrived with our encouraging and have kept her safe in the world of corperate vipers and “leeches the size of polar bears,” that she dwells in on the daily. They have also handed her upwards in several situations where bullets were the perferred method of corperate takeover. None of which you knew of since she handled them and was not even scared afterwards. Save for the one time only. Ask your massage therapist about what happened in the morning. She asked Lorraine to get her a job out here far from the “freakish shit,” after the events that scared them both failry horribly.
Lorraine sat in the exact center of her huge king sized bed and dropped into the hunter’s trance as deep as she could go. This deep in the trance it was the same thing as sleeping for her tissues unless she had to react to an emergency. Her mind could think this way without releasing stress hormones into her body, which she was trying to add muscle to not stress related fat. Ole Eagle eye could handle the one and a half deserts. She certainly could not!
The One Eyed Ladies all sat around their card table playing five card stud as usual. She sat in the seat they saved her. After a moment to deal her in, the council they often offered her began to trickle out in between requests to “gimme two,” and the like.
“You care. Nothing can take that away from you or from him for that matter. He doesn’t remember. His wife was dead before the Eyeless awoke in him. His son was executed right after they had awakened inside him. All that he might have cared for is in it’s grave over a millenia gone. He doesn’t remember how it should go. You will have to gentle him back into it carefully. Even the Eyeless do not remember care and concern. Mockery, amusement, lust, feral killing joy, all these things they know well but they can not save him from the lack of heart felt feelings he now suffers from. They can save him from all else but that.”
“You sure about this? Wouldn’t it be better to forget it and spare us botht he huge fiasco he fears?”
“Would it? It is you that needs to decide what this bond is worth to you and if it is worth the pain that will surely come. We all know the world holds little kindness and almost all of that is a falsehood. Do you believe in this rumor of a chance or do you discard it as another ill begotten fallacy? That is up to you. He will fight against it though. This we know for sure. Are you strong enough, even with us backing you, to take him and the Eyeless on toe to toe? Do you presume to be the equal of a sixteen hundred and thirty six year old assassin from the elder earth? Remember ‘little bird’ once you take up the mantle of ‘equal’ you can’t lay it down again. It will cover over your whole existence. The weight will make the mass of the world seem slight as a feather. That we also know for sure.”
“That is the question and I have a feeling that if I intend to take up the banner and fight the war I don’t have long to get the troops to the front and lay them out as best I can.”
“I do recall something that might assist you in your deciding choice.”
The One Eyed one that sat to the left hand of the one dealing the cards had a red earring in her left ear up at the top punched through the cartiledge. None of the others had visable ear piercings though one had an eyebrow and another one right through the chin flesh. The red earring seemed hesitant to share this recalling that might help Lorraine decide.
“I shouldn’t even mention it. You should try to use your own head and not ours on this one. I for one do not wish the blame should this all go to shit, but here I have to say it now or I would wonder if I dropped you a half clip when a full one might have saved the day.”
Lorraine sighed as the memory of the day when she was fifteen and greener then grass seen through emeralds came back to her in perfect detail. She had come home to a sense that someone was in the flat in Hearthholme Capital that Ole Eagle Eye maintained for his use and made her home after he took her in. Ole Eagle Eye she could tell, was well, and feeling contented and slightly buzzed. Rare was the day that he drank, but with the nanites he had to DRINK to get the effects half a case would get a normal person. He was up with kites and real Eagles at the time.
Passing through the kitchen she had gotten a swift as could be glance towards the kitchen table. Never in her life would she view the table at the flat in exactly the same way. The woman under Ole Eagle Eye was moaning and begging and making other sounds of definitely not pain. She was nude as the day she came into this world, Ole Eagle Eye still had on the black dress uniform pants he favored above all else in the world. They were lose around his midsection when they lay perfectly flat to the waist when he had them done up. All the bits he needed were out while everything else below the midsection was safely covered.
He had to have sensed it, the momentary urge to stab him right in the still covered section of his anatomy that she could see flexing as he thuroughly used what his god gave him on the unknown woman. The feeling came right on the heels of having her emotional guts spilled all over the floor. She had not paused in the least while all this emotional interaction had been going on. Instead she was in her room and the door shut with a soft click that the ordinary woman her adopted father figure was fucking didn’t even have the capcity to hear or detect in any way.
The next morning she had made an anti-hangover breakfast for Ole Eagle Eye that she had only ever read about in a cook book. Then she had grabbed her rucksack and spent the next two weeks at her half Uncle’s house. She knew that Ole Eagle Eye thought very little of her useless lagabout Uncle but she liked him in any case. He was fun, and that was just about all that redeemed him. Adulthood had not taken his ability to blow things off of far greater importantce and take that time for enjoying things far simpler and sometimes better instead.
She had come back to the flat liscenced and in ownership of her first motorbike. Her Useless Uncle took his hobbies as seriously as his half brother had taken his inventing and his work. His main hobby had been racing motorized vehichles of the two wheeled variety. He had tought her carefully and then let her go on her own.
He was not one that lacked concern for his family even if he might never say anything about it. Uncle had insisted she buy the svelt looking, bust boosting, armor plated, safety wear that allowed for you to keep your skin for the most part in the event you wrecked your chosen toy on the winding roads between here and there. She had looked at it in the mirror of the shop that sold it and known that this was something she loved. She had also known that it took away the wounded and lost teenager with eyes so confused they might just be crossed, and placed a young woman with an iron spine and a gas light gaze in the void the teen had left behind.
When Lorraine came back from the deep meditation state in the hotel suite, only the iron hard control she had come to own over years of never showing anything to the corperate vermin saved her dignity. The presence she found so comforting all her days since the death of her parents was strong not because he was in their shared sitting room still, but because his face was inches from her own!
“EAGLE EYE!”
His chuckle told her that he knew what it had cost her not to startle and maybe even jump back. She rolled her eyes in exasperation and slid off the expansive bed. Her troops were caught with their pants down, perhaps all the way off. Hell her troops still couldn’t find their socks and his were breaking down the gates. Were the one eyed ladies right? Was he going to fight, or by going the exact opposite way had they had prodicted was he going to win without a fight? Was there never a reason to fight to begin with?
“Honestly ole bird this is way to confusing to deal with even with the six pack at my back. I don’t have the capacity for this shit now anyway.”
“Yet you intend to take up ‘this shit’ as soon as other matters settle. Why? We both know it will be a disaster. Admittedly a pleasant disaster but still a disaster. So why not now?”
“We need to live long enough to have the disaster ole bird. Think about it. Corperate goonies who want me dead, various people after your hide, both things doable by us. Now add Salamander and his pretty girlfriend’s share of freaks and stupid fools out for their lives or her gifts or which ever combination of the two you care to name. They will come looking. Add to that the fact that I saw three other names I recognized on the spa sign in record screen in the reflection of it while they checked us in. There might even be more then that. Leviathan, Lobos and his brother Sangria, as well as The Skull, and complicated people like you guys only get involved with other complicated people for the most part. As my security manager is so fond of saying, ‘We have gone from Delta Green to Code Red Goatfuck in sixty seconds flat.’ That’s why. Kill who’s coming after us and then worry about weither we’re gonna be ‘special friends’ when we are alive to enjoy the orgasms.”
“Someone must have leaked the Delta Program fact sheet, or simply enough of the pack to get the point across at least. All of us who signed on come in every hundred years, and usually its around the same time. Expedient but a weak point when otherwise they would be coming up against us fully functional and way more then they can handle. I will go find out which others are present. The liklihood is high we will face one or more enemies and soon.”
“If I was them I would come with everyone I had who could hold a gun, even the bean counters.”
“I would guess that your bean counters all take their manditory gunnery range time seriously then?”
“You heard about that?”
“Little bird I have seen a few of them do it, just for the amusement factor if nothing else. Some are serious, others respect their paycheck enough to pretend at serious. Most of them have become decent at arms use just because of repetition.”
“Go find the others and lets get the bad guys in the cross hairs before they land.”
“Little Bird, think for a moment. The liklihood is very high that we are bad guys here as well. Your own corperate shark persona included.”
“Maybe you Daddy Bird, but me? Your little angel? Nah!”
“Lucifer is an angel too Little Bird. Lucifer is an angel too.”
She stared at the gathering. It probably had not happened in centuries. Singly or in pairs or trios they met up now and again as tasks required them to. Sometimes those who became comrades by choice instead of by duty alone might meet up for drinks every other decade or so, but the assassin is a lonesome beast for survival’s sake if nothing else. They don’t bunch up often, if at all. This was like an alignment of all the planets, rare but apprently possible.
“You would think the room would implode with this much testosterone mucking with the gravity in here.”
“I would think that you, being the one who have thought up the scenario most dire, would be a bit more serious.”
“I spend five days out of every seven being Billion credit serious Jennifer. My net worth has more zeros behind it then there are hairs on your head, eyebrows and nose hairs included. I have men, the quality of which can only be surpassed by whats in this room, trying to end my line right quick at least three times a week. Humor holds it all together. You will find that’s a very true fact in time.”
“How long have people been trying to kill you?”
“Since I was a zygote. I was almost miscarried after a clever assassin used weponized plant extracts to attempt to poison my mother, who was supposedly immune to all known poisons. Hasn’t stopped since.”
“Well hell…”
“Not much else to be said is there? Salamander is done with his prep work for the moment. Go hug him like you might not get the chance to do it again. Never skip out on holding someone you love. It might really be the last time. The one time you miss it you will live to regret it.”
Lorraine watched as the girl called Jennifer took her advice for real. The Salamander was known for his nanite controlled scale mail armor. It was a maximum custom job that looked like themed jewelry until he commanded it to cover him and protect him from everything up until large warheads. Then it made him look like a lizard, and the armor’s weapons system allowed him to throw fire. Hence his nickname. Silver Dragon was on board before Salamander, otherwise Salamander might have been Silver Dragon.
Salamander held out his hand and a salamander armor scaled ball the size of a grapefruit uncoiled and jumped onto Jennifer. The biomechanical lizard hung on her neck like it was a torc, then when Salamander focused his will on it it began to expand and turn into the scale armor. Nanite scale armor has to be nanite specific to the person. It’s a multi million credit piece of equipment. With any fancy upgrades it can go over two hundred and fifty million credits. He liked his little Seer fashion doll a little more then he was capable of saying. Lorraine smirked and planned on spoiling the surprise if they lived for the after party.

xposted to flamekaat andcaffeinatedink