There's a fine line between fishing...

[araignee_du_soir]

Who| Widowmaker and Parker
What| A request meetup
Where| In the vent system
When| Late night after this happened.
Warnings/Notes| none expected

It wasn't long after her confrontation with Tracer that Widowmaker had been able to meet up with her Talon comrades to get the things she needed. Widow's Kiss was gone (for the moment), but with her visor back on her head, she felt as complete as she could without her fangs. Her thoughts turned toward the meeting she needed to arrange with the leader of the Legion's covert ops team.

What an odd way to get a meeting, taking the stack of currency Reaper had provided her - a respectable amount - and a small bar of dark chocolate, adding a handwritten note, then hanging it all from a string inside one of the vents. Hopefully, this would work.

***

Mademoiselle Parker,

As one new to the Legion with a particular skill set, I have been directed to speak with you regarding the unit you command. I hope these gifts find you well. Should you have the time to meet with me tonight, I will be located at the large vertical t-junction within these vents near Engineering at [specific coordinates] until the Witching Hour.

Sincerely,

Amélie Lacroix
Widowmaker

***

While Widowmaker waited to see if she'd successfully caught herself a covert ops leader (and testing said leader's skills in the process), she hung upside down in the vent shaft, her grappling hook wound about her one leg in just the right way to control her position and stability. She had made many a shot from such a position, but it was practice that kept her sharp. And, after the day she'd had, the soothing silence of no people around was a blessing.

Extending her arms out, she stretched and closed her eyes before a brief wetting of her bottom lip reminded her that while it was no longer bleeding, it was still split from Tracer's punch. Such a minor injury was nothing she would waste a doctor's time on. She'd wear it like a badge for the moment. Lowering her visor to activate the infra-vision, she scanned the area to see if she could detect Parker's approach - assuming the woman would come at all.

But Widowmaker was a patient woman.

Comments

[leverageintceo]

This 'leave cash and chocolate in the ventilation system if you want to get in touch with Parker' thing was the best rumor anyone has ever spread about her, including all the ones upon which she'd built her criminal reputation back home. Being the good guy and making money and being good at her job was nice and all, but most honest people don't think to break out grandma's chocolate chip cookie recipe when the criminals show up to fix things.

Given the reason and the location for the meeting, Parker approached in her habitual stealthy fashion. The flight ring definitely helped with that -- it was even easier not to make noise when you weren't touching any of the walls.

"Hi," she announced herself. "Nice. I can appreciate a woman who knows her way around a grappling hook."

[araignee_du_soir]

Not a sound was heard over the ambient sounds of the ventilation system, but Widowmaker did pick up on a moving heat signature moments before Parker made herself known. Head turning as her visor lifted, she gave the other woman a nod of greeting and acknowledgement... which probably looked odd given her current upside down state.

"Merci. I must be capable of making the shot at any angle. And it is somewhat peaceful," she replied, reaching up to wrap her right hand about the line so she could upright herself. It would just be rude to carry this conversation on and still hang as she had.

Foot catching the edge of the horizontal juncture, Widowmaker lowered herself to sit on the edge before disengaging her grapple, the line sliding back into her arm piece. "You are quite skilled, Mademoiselle. I did not hear you."

[leverageintceo]

"I know what you mean," Parker answered with a nod of her own. "Sometimes I fall asleep hanging upside-down in elevator shafts."

A veteran holder of upside-down conversations, Parker wasn't sure why Widowmaker decided to rearrange her position, but waited politely for her to finish and settle herself. She shrugged at the compliment.

"I'm a thief," she explained. "I'm very good at what I do. That's why I'm running the Espionage Squad now."

After all, that was what they were here to talk about.

[araignee_du_soir]

"Such responsibility. It is good to know that the Squad's leader is properly skilled. It makes it easier to follow when a leader is respected." Not that Widowmaker respected Parker as an individual - yet - but she certainly did respect her skill.

"I am an assassin - a sniper to be precise. I would like to apply my skills toward your Squad."

[leverageintceo]

"Well, yeah," Parker said. "Having someone in charge who doesn't know what they're doing would be stupid. I wouldn't follow anyone who didn't have the skills to utilize my own skills, and I wouldn't expect anyone to follow me if I didn't either."

She cocks her head to the side. "Guns, I'm guessing? Since you mentioned needing to be able to take shots from strange positions. I can see some ways to use those skills. Plus you'd have to be sneaky. Are lots of people blue where you're from, or is that unusual?"

Back home, attractive women are noticeable, but there are ways for them to blend into a crowd. Someone with blue skin though would stick out like a sore thumb everywhere they went, so whether or not it's unusual for Widowmaker's reality will tell Parker a lot about how sneaky she is.

[araignee_du_soir]

"Rifle, to be precise, though I am capable of taking a life with my hands or other means." An almost painful pause. "Or incapacitate them, however the mission may require." Killing was just so much more efficient. And enjoyable.

"As for my complexion, I have never seen another on my Earth like me. It is most definitely unusual - a side effect of a procedure I endured nearly a decade ago. It was... unexpected." Widowmaker wasn't entirely sure Talon had meant for it to happen; she certainly hadn't.

[leverageintceo]

"So you're very sneaky," Parker said approvingly. "Excellent. We should swap techniques sometime."

She thinks for a moment. Considering the way Widowmaker talks about her skills, she's not likely to appreciate a "we try not to kill people because that's a thing that's wrong" speech. She thinks back to her own mindset prior to hooking up with her crew.

"We're going to stick with incapacitation where ever possible," she said. "Because it's Legion rules, but mostly because people get very tense and very serious when dead bodies happen, and that makes the getaway more difficult. Agreed?"

[araignee_du_soir]

"Generally when I am assigned to a mission, a dead body being found is the point," Widowmaker replied with little emotion. Then she gave a bit of an irritated sigh. "But I can follow the rules as needed. I do my job; I just enjoy certain aspects of it more than others."

She needed to remind herself what her goal was, what the real threat was, so she coukd swallow this idealistic nonsense down. She needed these people - Talon needed them - so she would play nice.

"Though make no mistake: if I am given a direct order from a Legion superior to eliminate a target, I will." And for the time being, Parker ranked among those superiors. Widowmaker wondered if the woman grasped that.

[leverageintceo]

"Dead bodies will rarely be the point of missions we go on," Parker answered. "But I'll keep that in mind if we ever need a specific dead body instead of one we stole out of a morgue."

She did in fact grasp what Widowmaker was saying to her. She didn't think that it was going to be something she'd take advantage of -- as she'd said, people got very tense and very serious about dead bodies, and Parker's criminal preferences were for bad guys ending up humiliated, penniless, and imprisoned, not dead.

"In the meantime, we can probably find some way to make sure you have satisfying missions without dead bodies."

[araignee_du_soir]

"That would be appreciated. Despite the unnatural skin tone and my lack of emotion, I am not a psychopath that kills for pleasure." The pleasure was just a perk. "My skills have a variety of uses and I typically provide support for my team as few things can hide from my sight."

She tapped her visor. "Infra-sight."

[leverageintceo]

"What does bring you pleasure?" Parker asked, curious. "A job well done? Money? Revenge? Good food?"

She seemed like she might be French, or at least spoke the language. The French tended to be pretty into food.

Parker grinned when Widowmaker tapped her visor. "Ooh, that's very handy. Having someone who can see what's going on is very valuable, especially if it's something other than strictly the spectrum of visual light. What's the range on that thing?"