Leverageland XIII - Soundtrack Bingo
Prompt: Surprise
Summary: ‘You mean you actually have a superpower?’ Parker blurts out. Leverage/Chew.
Milwaukie, Oregon-Mason Savoy stands over the remains of Howard Kendrick, a ciboinvalescor the FDA had recently discovered. On Agent Cesar’s tip, he had flown from Philadelphia, intent on getting to Kendrick first. Unfortunately, it seemed that the Vampire had gotten there sooner and had already made off with the man’s head.
Really, for such a connoisseur, the Vampire’s methods had no taste.
“Too late, huh?” a voice comes from the open doorway. What meager light there was served to illuminate Olive Chu’s dour face.
“Indeed,” he replies, clasping his hands behind his back. “It appears that the Vampire’s network is even more extensive than I had foreseen.”
A pause. Olive taps her left forearm impatiently. “So, are we done here? I mean, I still have school tomorrow-not that I care-”
“No.” Mason cuts her off. Olive Chu was a powerful cibopath, more powerful than him and perhaps even her father, and that was the reason he recruited her. But he’s not quite interested in listening to more of her teenage attitude. “While we are here, there is someone I need to warn. I trust you can find your way back to the hotel?”
She nods but does not leave, a contemplative, almost hungry, look stealing across her face as she looks at what remains of Howard Kendrick’s body.
Mason very briefly wonders at what he’s created.
--
Portland, Oregon-He purchases a bottle of 1999 Gager Cabmilot as a gift before making his way to an up-and-coming brew pub restaurant. It is late when he reaches the place, and the crowd is already winding down. Inside he finds five people seated around a table, enjoying some beer and chips. Nate Ford is among them.
The black man gets to his feet. “Sorry, brah, place ‘s closed.”
“I’m afraid I have some business with Mr. Ford,” he states as politely as possible, but the shorter man with long hair sizes him up as a potential threat. Both women at the table dart suspicious glances at him.
Ford sits like a leader among them, takes a swig of his beer. “He can stay, Hardison.”
Privately, Mason matches this man up to the insurance investigator he’d known and wonders what prompted Ford’s transformation. He wasn’t like Tony Chu, a stickler for regulations, and he’d always had a criminally brilliant mind, but he never thought Nate Ford would turn criminal.
Then again, Mason didn’t think he’d end up being a fugitive of the FDA either.
“You know him?” asks the long-haired man.
“We are… acquainted,” says Ford. “This is Mason Savoy, an FDA agent. We met years before at an art exhibit.” Ford explains, then introduces his companions to Savoy.
“What’s an FDA agent do at an art gallery?”
“Former agent, actually. And let’s just say the paintings were delicious,” Savoy says cryptically. But also truthfully. It had been Buongiovanni’s first art show.
“So, Savoy, what brings you all the way to Portland?” Ford asks, gesturing for him to sit.
“A warning. A dangerous man we call The Vampire-”
“No such thing as vampires,” mutters Spencer.
“-call The Vampire,” emphasizes Savoy, “has been murdering people for their powers. He’s a powerful cibopath who can also absorb the abilities of who he eats. As far as we know, he’s currently in Oregon.”
“Whoa, wait up,” says Hardison, “Cibopath? Can ‘absorb the abilities of who he eats?’”
“And how is this related to Nate?” Devereaux demands.
“They are unaware?” He asks Ford. “Of your… abilities?”
“What abilities?” the blonde asks with narrowed eyes.
“That Nate Ford is a vitipath,” Savoy elucidates. “One who gains the ability to read people around him when imbibing liquor. Quite a rare ability, I should say. Maybe even rarer than cibopathy.”
“Cibopaths,” he continues, “can take a bite from anything and can feel a psychic sensation of what has happened to that object. Now some cibopaths can acquire the abilities…”
He trails off, because no one is paying him any attention.
“So you actually have a super power?” Parker blurts out.
“Err,” says Ford.
“What do you mean by ‘ability to read people’?” Devereaux says with flashing eyes.
“Usually, it’s just vague impressions,” Mason says, “but Mr. Ford here is quite exceptional in that he can tell so much more about a person. Personality, memories, strengths, weaknesses, etcetera.”
(While he’s explaining to Devereaux, Parker and Hardison are interrogating Ford.
“What did my breakfast fortune cookie say?”
“How many fingers am I holding behind my back? No, no, I’m thinking of a number in between 1 and 2 to the sixteen.”
A thump that might have been Spencer’s head making contact with the table.)
Devereaux looks betrayed. “So, all this time…”
“No, no,” Ford says soothingly. “It only manifests when I drink good alcohol.” He nods in the direction of the bottle Mason is still holding, which Mason promptly slides over to him.
“Oi,” crows Hardison, “Are you insulting my beer again?”
Prompt: Pots&Pans
Summary: Later, she thinks of writing to Hardison, ‘Eliot makes really good pie. Crunchy crust but gooey and sweet on the inside.’ Leverage/Harry Potter.
It’s not like it’s the first time she’d spend the Christmas holidays alone, but it is the first time she feels that loneliness. Like an itch she can’t ignore, the absence of Hardison’s constant conversation follows her wherever she goes.
His absence was unnerving. That she was bothered by his absence was unnerving. (But, he was useful, she told herself. She took Arithmancy because math had been phenomenally easy back in Muggle school and it looked like it would be the same here. But it turned out that Arithmancy was full of dull books with dull theories and the only reason she’d passed the first two exams was because Hardison had taken to explaining the lessons to her, in exchange for her help with his Charms work.)
So she finds herself sitting at the edge of the Lake at the start of the holidays, watching the black horses take away the last of the students who weren’t staying at Hogwarts. Wonders if she’d get an owl from Hardison or two.
(“Imma email you,” Hardison declared earlier, slinging a dirty red backpack over his shoulder and beaming, clearly excited to be going back to see his Nana.
“… owl you, I mean.” He slapped his forehead. “Dumb EM interference…”)
Then when no more carriages leave the castle, she plays a little game of Fetch the Stone with the Squid. The Squid, she thinks, is not a very good dog. It returns none of her stones. If this were a game of rock volleyball, she’d be winning 20 to 0.
This is how the Hufflepuff Beater finds her some fifteen minutes later.
“What are you doing,” he says in the way most people phrase questions around her-90.5% admonishment, 9% surprise, and 0.5% inquiry.
Parker purses her lips and shrugs, puts down the hand holding the next stone.
He looks at her for what seems to be an eternity, scowling the entire time. She’s getting ready to run away when he says, “Let’s go.”
“Huh?” she says, caught off guard.
“We’re going to the kitchens.”
That piques her interest. She’s never been to the kitchens before. Still… “Why?” she asks suspiciously.
“I’m going to bake a pie. There’ll be extra. You can eat those. Do you like pie?”
“Will it be crunchy?”
“Sure,” he says, shrugging.
“And sweet?”
“If you want.”
“Then I like pies.” Parker declares with finality.
“I’m Eliot,” he says. There’s not a soul in Hogwarts who hasn’t heard of the third-year Beater with the ferociously good aim, but she nods along anyway.
“Parker,” she says, being polite.
--
Later, she thinks of writing to Hardison, ‘Eliot makes really good pie. Crunchy crust but gooey and sweet on the inside.’
How fast did owls deliver mail? Would it eat the pie on the way, thinking it was a snack meant for them?
“You’re not gonna finish that?” Eliot asks about the last slice of pie.
Parker shrugs again. “I want Hardison to taste it.”
“It’s no good cold,” he says. “I’ll bake it for him next time.”
Despite the sound of the pots noisily clanking against ladles and the bubbling of tonight’s stew, the Elves descend into a very distinct silence, none too pleased about the idea of sharing their kitchen again.
(Maybe it had something to do with her saying Eliot would have made a really good House Elf earlier.)
“Okay.” Parker swings her legs beneath the bench and smiles, thinking Christmas holidays this year wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Prompt: Diversion
Summary: “I said,” says Professor Snape and belatedly Alec realizes he had been speaking while Alec was trying to remember how to breathe. “What were you doing in my cupboards?” Leverage/Harry Potter.
It’s the first time Alec finds himself on the receiving end of Professor Snape’s black glare. Ravenclaws don’t normally tempt his ire, being a) not Gryffindor and b) being unlikely to blow cauldrons up. This time, he supposes it’s justified, but that doesn’t keep his knees from shaking underneath his robes.
“I said,” says Professor Snape and belatedly Alec realizes he had been speaking while Alec was trying to remember how to breathe. “What were you doing in my cupboards?”
“Cup-cupboards?” he stutters out. “I wasn’t near no cupboards, sir, no siree.”
“Mr. Hardison,” he manages to say it like a snake would (Misss-ter Hardisson). “Don’t take me for a fool. I found you right outside my personal stores after my wards had sounded an alarm.”
Alec opens his mouth to try and spit out another lie but he’s interrupted by the arrival of a Slytherin prefect.
“Mr. Sterling,” Snape greets evenly, like he hadn’t just been entertaining thoughts of turning Alec into potions ingredients and then deliberately blowing a cauldron full of his manly bits.
“Professor,” says the prefect a little breathlessly. “Emergency in the dormitories.”
The professor clenches his jaw, faces Alec, and turns on his death glare to maximum for about five more seconds. Alec feels the life draining out of him. Then he draws up his robes and walks out of his office.
“Watch him until I get back,” he tells Sterling.
“Of course, sir.”
Alec looks at the fifth-year nervously. While definitely less intimidating than Professor Snape, he wasn’t relishing the thought of spending more time being hovered upon by James Sterling, who, as rumors had it, could also have a pretty nasty streak. Where the hell was-
“That shall be all, Mr. Sterling.”
And just like that, Professor Snape was back. Alec immediately wished for more time with Sterling.
“Sir?”
“It was a minor incident. I handled it summarily,” says Snape. “You are dismissed.”
Sterling bows out of the office, darting confused glances back at the Slytherin Head all the while. Alec feels his heart sinking. The plan didn’t work, and he was going to get a bazillion detentions, and the Slytherin team was going to go unpunished for what they did to Eliot, and Parker probably got caught. And he was never going to trust Nate Ford again, ever-
“Are you going to stand there all evening, or shall we get going?”
Alec blinks. Where Snape had been, there was now a familiar face. Well, familiar in that he’d seen her at Hogwarts before. Lord knows he didn’t know Sophie Devereaux in any capacity, except that she was a Slytherin and she was wicked at Transfiguration.
“Oh,” says Alec. “You’re the-”
“Yes. Nate told me to get you.”
For a Gryffindor, he privately thinks, Nate sure kept strange friends.
“Polyjuice?” Alec asks with wonder as he walks out of the office with her.
Sophie makes an expression of disgust. “Heavens no,” she says, and promptly turns back into Professor Snape.
“Metamorphmagus,” he says it like a prayer.
“Clever boy,” Sophie says, with a sideways smile that looks very strange on Snape’s face. “I’ll have to ask you to keep it secret.”
“Or what?”
“Or I won’t help you and Nate get back at the girls bullying Parker.”
--
Hardison mutely sits on the floor as what he thought was going to be a dressing down from Gryffindor’s notoriously fair and stickler-for-the-rules prefect turned into a discussion of all the things that could go wrong with the prank. He and Parker had been caught by Nate Ford in the second floor girl’s bathroom, finishing up potions that would give the entire Slytherin team butt cramps (and then some) in time for tomorrow’s Slytherin-Hufflepuff match.
It would be payback for what their Beaters did to keep Eliot from playing.
“Snape’s quarters are right beside the common room so if anything happens, he’ll be there in a flash,” says Nate. “You won’t be able to leave undetected.”
Alec grumbles but what he said made sense.
“So what are we going to do?” asks Parker.
“We’re going to need a distraction.”
“And who’s gonna make that happen?” he says grumpily.
“Parker’s smaller and quieter, which makes her perfect for sneaking into the dungeons,” Nate says slowly. “Which leaves you.”
He looks at Alec and grins sharply. “You’re going to be bait.”
Summary: ‘You mean you actually have a superpower?’ Parker blurts out. Leverage/Chew.
Milwaukie, Oregon-Mason Savoy stands over the remains of Howard Kendrick, a ciboinvalescor the FDA had recently discovered. On Agent Cesar’s tip, he had flown from Philadelphia, intent on getting to Kendrick first. Unfortunately, it seemed that the Vampire had gotten there sooner and had already made off with the man’s head.
Really, for such a connoisseur, the Vampire’s methods had no taste.
“Too late, huh?” a voice comes from the open doorway. What meager light there was served to illuminate Olive Chu’s dour face.
“Indeed,” he replies, clasping his hands behind his back. “It appears that the Vampire’s network is even more extensive than I had foreseen.”
A pause. Olive taps her left forearm impatiently. “So, are we done here? I mean, I still have school tomorrow-not that I care-”
“No.” Mason cuts her off. Olive Chu was a powerful cibopath, more powerful than him and perhaps even her father, and that was the reason he recruited her. But he’s not quite interested in listening to more of her teenage attitude. “While we are here, there is someone I need to warn. I trust you can find your way back to the hotel?”
She nods but does not leave, a contemplative, almost hungry, look stealing across her face as she looks at what remains of Howard Kendrick’s body.
Mason very briefly wonders at what he’s created.
--
Portland, Oregon-He purchases a bottle of 1999 Gager Cabmilot as a gift before making his way to an up-and-coming brew pub restaurant. It is late when he reaches the place, and the crowd is already winding down. Inside he finds five people seated around a table, enjoying some beer and chips. Nate Ford is among them.
The black man gets to his feet. “Sorry, brah, place ‘s closed.”
“I’m afraid I have some business with Mr. Ford,” he states as politely as possible, but the shorter man with long hair sizes him up as a potential threat. Both women at the table dart suspicious glances at him.
Ford sits like a leader among them, takes a swig of his beer. “He can stay, Hardison.”
Privately, Mason matches this man up to the insurance investigator he’d known and wonders what prompted Ford’s transformation. He wasn’t like Tony Chu, a stickler for regulations, and he’d always had a criminally brilliant mind, but he never thought Nate Ford would turn criminal.
Then again, Mason didn’t think he’d end up being a fugitive of the FDA either.
“You know him?” asks the long-haired man.
“We are… acquainted,” says Ford. “This is Mason Savoy, an FDA agent. We met years before at an art exhibit.” Ford explains, then introduces his companions to Savoy.
“What’s an FDA agent do at an art gallery?”
“Former agent, actually. And let’s just say the paintings were delicious,” Savoy says cryptically. But also truthfully. It had been Buongiovanni’s first art show.
“So, Savoy, what brings you all the way to Portland?” Ford asks, gesturing for him to sit.
“A warning. A dangerous man we call The Vampire-”
“No such thing as vampires,” mutters Spencer.
“-call The Vampire,” emphasizes Savoy, “has been murdering people for their powers. He’s a powerful cibopath who can also absorb the abilities of who he eats. As far as we know, he’s currently in Oregon.”
“Whoa, wait up,” says Hardison, “Cibopath? Can ‘absorb the abilities of who he eats?’”
“And how is this related to Nate?” Devereaux demands.
“They are unaware?” He asks Ford. “Of your… abilities?”
“What abilities?” the blonde asks with narrowed eyes.
“That Nate Ford is a vitipath,” Savoy elucidates. “One who gains the ability to read people around him when imbibing liquor. Quite a rare ability, I should say. Maybe even rarer than cibopathy.”
“Cibopaths,” he continues, “can take a bite from anything and can feel a psychic sensation of what has happened to that object. Now some cibopaths can acquire the abilities…”
He trails off, because no one is paying him any attention.
“So you actually have a super power?” Parker blurts out.
“Err,” says Ford.
“What do you mean by ‘ability to read people’?” Devereaux says with flashing eyes.
“Usually, it’s just vague impressions,” Mason says, “but Mr. Ford here is quite exceptional in that he can tell so much more about a person. Personality, memories, strengths, weaknesses, etcetera.”
(While he’s explaining to Devereaux, Parker and Hardison are interrogating Ford.
“What did my breakfast fortune cookie say?”
“How many fingers am I holding behind my back? No, no, I’m thinking of a number in between 1 and 2 to the sixteen.”
A thump that might have been Spencer’s head making contact with the table.)
Devereaux looks betrayed. “So, all this time…”
“No, no,” Ford says soothingly. “It only manifests when I drink good alcohol.” He nods in the direction of the bottle Mason is still holding, which Mason promptly slides over to him.
“Oi,” crows Hardison, “Are you insulting my beer again?”
Prompt: Pots&Pans
Summary: Later, she thinks of writing to Hardison, ‘Eliot makes really good pie. Crunchy crust but gooey and sweet on the inside.’ Leverage/Harry Potter.
It’s not like it’s the first time she’d spend the Christmas holidays alone, but it is the first time she feels that loneliness. Like an itch she can’t ignore, the absence of Hardison’s constant conversation follows her wherever she goes.
His absence was unnerving. That she was bothered by his absence was unnerving. (But, he was useful, she told herself. She took Arithmancy because math had been phenomenally easy back in Muggle school and it looked like it would be the same here. But it turned out that Arithmancy was full of dull books with dull theories and the only reason she’d passed the first two exams was because Hardison had taken to explaining the lessons to her, in exchange for her help with his Charms work.)
So she finds herself sitting at the edge of the Lake at the start of the holidays, watching the black horses take away the last of the students who weren’t staying at Hogwarts. Wonders if she’d get an owl from Hardison or two.
(“Imma email you,” Hardison declared earlier, slinging a dirty red backpack over his shoulder and beaming, clearly excited to be going back to see his Nana.
“… owl you, I mean.” He slapped his forehead. “Dumb EM interference…”)
Then when no more carriages leave the castle, she plays a little game of Fetch the Stone with the Squid. The Squid, she thinks, is not a very good dog. It returns none of her stones. If this were a game of rock volleyball, she’d be winning 20 to 0.
This is how the Hufflepuff Beater finds her some fifteen minutes later.
“What are you doing,” he says in the way most people phrase questions around her-90.5% admonishment, 9% surprise, and 0.5% inquiry.
Parker purses her lips and shrugs, puts down the hand holding the next stone.
He looks at her for what seems to be an eternity, scowling the entire time. She’s getting ready to run away when he says, “Let’s go.”
“Huh?” she says, caught off guard.
“We’re going to the kitchens.”
That piques her interest. She’s never been to the kitchens before. Still… “Why?” she asks suspiciously.
“I’m going to bake a pie. There’ll be extra. You can eat those. Do you like pie?”
“Will it be crunchy?”
“Sure,” he says, shrugging.
“And sweet?”
“If you want.”
“Then I like pies.” Parker declares with finality.
“I’m Eliot,” he says. There’s not a soul in Hogwarts who hasn’t heard of the third-year Beater with the ferociously good aim, but she nods along anyway.
“Parker,” she says, being polite.
--
Later, she thinks of writing to Hardison, ‘Eliot makes really good pie. Crunchy crust but gooey and sweet on the inside.’
How fast did owls deliver mail? Would it eat the pie on the way, thinking it was a snack meant for them?
“You’re not gonna finish that?” Eliot asks about the last slice of pie.
Parker shrugs again. “I want Hardison to taste it.”
“It’s no good cold,” he says. “I’ll bake it for him next time.”
Despite the sound of the pots noisily clanking against ladles and the bubbling of tonight’s stew, the Elves descend into a very distinct silence, none too pleased about the idea of sharing their kitchen again.
(Maybe it had something to do with her saying Eliot would have made a really good House Elf earlier.)
“Okay.” Parker swings her legs beneath the bench and smiles, thinking Christmas holidays this year wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Prompt: Diversion
Summary: “I said,” says Professor Snape and belatedly Alec realizes he had been speaking while Alec was trying to remember how to breathe. “What were you doing in my cupboards?” Leverage/Harry Potter.
It’s the first time Alec finds himself on the receiving end of Professor Snape’s black glare. Ravenclaws don’t normally tempt his ire, being a) not Gryffindor and b) being unlikely to blow cauldrons up. This time, he supposes it’s justified, but that doesn’t keep his knees from shaking underneath his robes.
“I said,” says Professor Snape and belatedly Alec realizes he had been speaking while Alec was trying to remember how to breathe. “What were you doing in my cupboards?”
“Cup-cupboards?” he stutters out. “I wasn’t near no cupboards, sir, no siree.”
“Mr. Hardison,” he manages to say it like a snake would (Misss-ter Hardisson). “Don’t take me for a fool. I found you right outside my personal stores after my wards had sounded an alarm.”
Alec opens his mouth to try and spit out another lie but he’s interrupted by the arrival of a Slytherin prefect.
“Mr. Sterling,” Snape greets evenly, like he hadn’t just been entertaining thoughts of turning Alec into potions ingredients and then deliberately blowing a cauldron full of his manly bits.
“Professor,” says the prefect a little breathlessly. “Emergency in the dormitories.”
The professor clenches his jaw, faces Alec, and turns on his death glare to maximum for about five more seconds. Alec feels the life draining out of him. Then he draws up his robes and walks out of his office.
“Watch him until I get back,” he tells Sterling.
“Of course, sir.”
Alec looks at the fifth-year nervously. While definitely less intimidating than Professor Snape, he wasn’t relishing the thought of spending more time being hovered upon by James Sterling, who, as rumors had it, could also have a pretty nasty streak. Where the hell was-
“That shall be all, Mr. Sterling.”
And just like that, Professor Snape was back. Alec immediately wished for more time with Sterling.
“Sir?”
“It was a minor incident. I handled it summarily,” says Snape. “You are dismissed.”
Sterling bows out of the office, darting confused glances back at the Slytherin Head all the while. Alec feels his heart sinking. The plan didn’t work, and he was going to get a bazillion detentions, and the Slytherin team was going to go unpunished for what they did to Eliot, and Parker probably got caught. And he was never going to trust Nate Ford again, ever-
“Are you going to stand there all evening, or shall we get going?”
Alec blinks. Where Snape had been, there was now a familiar face. Well, familiar in that he’d seen her at Hogwarts before. Lord knows he didn’t know Sophie Devereaux in any capacity, except that she was a Slytherin and she was wicked at Transfiguration.
“Oh,” says Alec. “You’re the-”
“Yes. Nate told me to get you.”
For a Gryffindor, he privately thinks, Nate sure kept strange friends.
“Polyjuice?” Alec asks with wonder as he walks out of the office with her.
Sophie makes an expression of disgust. “Heavens no,” she says, and promptly turns back into Professor Snape.
“Metamorphmagus,” he says it like a prayer.
“Clever boy,” Sophie says, with a sideways smile that looks very strange on Snape’s face. “I’ll have to ask you to keep it secret.”
“Or what?”
“Or I won’t help you and Nate get back at the girls bullying Parker.”
--
Hardison mutely sits on the floor as what he thought was going to be a dressing down from Gryffindor’s notoriously fair and stickler-for-the-rules prefect turned into a discussion of all the things that could go wrong with the prank. He and Parker had been caught by Nate Ford in the second floor girl’s bathroom, finishing up potions that would give the entire Slytherin team butt cramps (and then some) in time for tomorrow’s Slytherin-Hufflepuff match.
It would be payback for what their Beaters did to keep Eliot from playing.
“Snape’s quarters are right beside the common room so if anything happens, he’ll be there in a flash,” says Nate. “You won’t be able to leave undetected.”
Alec grumbles but what he said made sense.
“So what are we going to do?” asks Parker.
“We’re going to need a distraction.”
“And who’s gonna make that happen?” he says grumpily.
“Parker’s smaller and quieter, which makes her perfect for sneaking into the dungeons,” Nate says slowly. “Which leaves you.”
He looks at Alec and grins sharply. “You’re going to be bait.”