Two Birds With One Shot

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"I don't think about it much at al-" and then Hotaru cuts off, and her eyes open wide. "Wait." She stares off at... nothing in particular. "There was a fight there. Robots. The... Combaticons?" She shakes her head and then lifts her hand to her forehead. "Primus, what's going on." A beat. "Primus?"

[Sentinel Prime]

"One of your gods," Elly supplies helpfully. Primus doesn't exist in her reality, and she thinks the guy sounds like a jerk, anyway, which is the pot calling the kettle black.

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Hotaru holds her head, then shakes it a little, as though trying to clear it. Finally, her eyes open wide once more, and she stares straight ahead at no one in particular.

"I remember," she whispers.

[Spinister]

So Ghostfire goes out of her way to mess with the security cameras in the hotel so that there will just be an innocuous loop of innocent footage. She makes sure that no one much is around, and then...

...and then the living dead girl has to stick her nose into things.

Ghostfire could just shoot someone! She's only here to kidnap Hotaru, but an invisible figure knocking out Hotaru and dragging her off is going to get Elly's attention. Det. Dahlia will notice eventually if Elly goes missing, but...

...Elly is almost certainly an Autobot of some kind, and Ghostfire has suffering being human long enough. She can give Hotaru to Terrence to test spark extraction and Elly to Victoria. Victoria is resourceful. She'll find a use for the living dead girl. The visit to Elly's place taught Ghostfire that Elly tends to carry a concealed firearm and also a knife in a thigh sheath. That means Elly has to be neutralised first.

Ghostfire takes the gun and knife away from Elly, decloaks, and holds the gun to Elly's head. She says very simply to the two women, "Make a sound, and I shoot."

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OOC: Posing of Elly with permission.

[Sentinel Prime]

Elly is about to push Hotaru for some more, since Hotaru apparently remember being the David Bowie of the Autobots now, when she feels hands on her legs. Then there's a gun at her head.

Elly feels sick, every muscle of her body tensing. She stares straight ahead as cold sweat start to bead on her skin. One of the costumed lunatics of the city has come for her, and all her preparation doesn't mean a thing. Elly is rendered helpless again, and she despises that.

There's the phone she was playing with in her hands. Thinking, Slag it, she dials three little numbers.

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Suddenly, there is a strange woman in the room holding a gun to Elly's head. Hotaru has no more time to spend on figuring out who she is.

Her instincts say move, but... gun. And if the trigger is pulled, Elly is dead (and Hotaru doesn't know that Elly is a zombie, anyway). She glances around, trying to get an idea as to what there is that she might use as a weapon.

"What the blazes do you want?" she demands angrily of the stranger.

[Spinister]

By the Ultimate Warrior! Ghostfire grabbed the gun and the knife and forgot the cellphone, and Hotaru's not obeying the whole, 'Make a sound, and I shoot,' thing. This is just not a good day to be a spooky mysterious character.

Time to show that Ghostfire does not make idle threats. She tries to put a bullet through the cellphone, glaring balefully.

Ghostfire says quietly, "Shut up, or the next one goes in her head."

What does she want? Just their fear.

Okay, also to kidnap them for mad science.

[Sentinel Prime]

Elly's cellphone gets a bullet put through it. The bullet itself ends up buried in the couch. Lucky Elly was sitting with her legs apart, though not very lady-like. She looks a bit stunned. There's a sort of visceral rawness to everything that there isn't when she was a machine.

When she was a machine, she could lose her head and be fine. Humans are so fragile. Elly feels so sick, like she wants to throw up.

Ghostfire had to move the gun from her head down to shoot the phone, though. Elly tries to seize the moment to try to grab the gun away from Ghostfire.

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Hotaru quiets, scowling. She continues to look for some way to get Elly out of that, but for the moment, she's stuck.

[Spinister]

Ghostfire decides that Elly is definitely an Autobot. Only Autobots have that stupid kind of courage.

Now, in real life, a crack to the head that knocks someone out might well kill that person. Any gunshot might be lethal. Sedative doses are tricky to manage.

Luckily for all of them, they are either in a cartoon or a comic book, not a live action movie.

Ghostfire keeps her grip on the gun. She's not particularly strong or skilled in melee combat, but Elly is just pathetically weak. Ghostfire yanks it away and stalks over to Hotaru and tries to run the barrel of the gun along her jaw, looking at Hotaru's eyes. Is there fear there? Fear makes all of this worthwhile, after all.

Then in a violently quick motion, Ghostfire reaches for a syringe in one of her nondescript pouches and attempts to jam it into Hotaru.

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Cut to black.