Back Alley Brawl (Samantha/Balthazar)

[Augustine]

New York City, the Big Apple, and Samantha's go to answer when asked what the capital of the United States was.  It was the most well known city and seemingly 90% of all American movies and shows took place there, so perhaps her frequent mistake was understandable.  Never was a lot of mercenary work in America anyways, but devil hunting? Now there was a business that brought her to the States more often than she was used to.  Probably because the country was too bloody big for its own good.  Then again it wasn't like she got many jobs from China.

It was a chill early evening, the sun had set maybe an hour ago and many streets were still packed with cars going to and fro.  At least that was the state of traffic in the busy and thriving parts of the city.  Samantha wasn't walking along the big roads though.  Sure the nature of this dense urban jungle meant she'd had to go across quite a few crosswalks but most of her traffic was on foot as she moved through back alleys and side streets.  The woman had a large hooded coat on to ward off the chill, zipped up and bulky to hide the gear she had strapped to herself beneath it.  Of course, she'd had to leave her shotgun Black Betty behind, no way to discreetly hide that, and apparently a full military shotgun with a bayonet was too much for the supposed gun loving Americans!

Samantha stepped into another alley, heavy boots trodding across asphalt and concrete covered with who knew what without a care.  She'd marched through worse in her time.  "Tolya.  Target still moving?"

A Russian accented voice on the other hand crackled over the earpiece in Samantha's left ear, "As before yes, I would tell you if it stopped.  It shouldn't be going much further, there can't be that many places to drop off something like this."

"I swear to fuck if this is a wild goose chase I'm tracking the client down and shoving my boot up their ass."

"Ah, wait it's pulled in!  Just a few more blocks ahead, get moving!"

"Fucking finally."  Samantha replied before picking up her pace, walking a bit faster.  It took serious effort to not just burst into a run, but she managed.

Their quarry for this hunt was a trio of devils who had been making a little name for themselves in the criminal underground.  No one officially knew they were demons, but the client had figured it out and wanted them taken out.  Given the circumstances around the job, Samantha suspected it was some mafia leader or some shit, especially given their lead was a tracker discreetly placed in payment meant to be delivered to the trio.  The area of the city was half homes half business district, the homes small and shoved out of the way out of the more glossy front streets.  The car they were tracking having pulled into one of the sprawling multi-floor parking lots that littered big cities like this.

[salmony]

Balthazar was hot on the hunt to wallop some demon derriere.

Dragging Secret Crush along the pavement like a pink, dangerous briefcase, he stomped down the paths with purpose. A combination of his fashion sense and giant hammer where attracting second looks from passers by and folk in the traffic, idly looking from their windows then almost recoiling at the giant man in a heart-cutout crop top and...giant kawaii mallet. It is the type of shocking that encourages one to mind their own damn business.

He was here for a reason, some demon stuff had happened to his family-parents, one sibling and all. Mama and Papa had too many broken bones to count and Amelia had a missing arm, slashed so severly it had to be amputated. One could chalk it up to a mundane car accident, but in demon hunting one can't assume "mundane". After consulting Dama Moura, and his own investigation it had something to do with demons from the heady residual magic left behind.

He pulled further strings in the demon hunting community...what strings he had anyway. He learnt that it has been a fight between two Hell-based organizations that crossed in the human world, "Encantadores" and a crime organiation no one could exactly place.

Either way, he's gonna march through a rift in the veil, find them, and reduce them to gore salsa.

He checked his phone regularly, directions on how to find his prey-related to the criminal portion of who caused that car accident, apparently-laid out by his agent, who he found through Moura (having ties to Hell in the family has its perks, you see.)

It took him through alleys and back streets, twisting, turning and winding through the miserable atmosphere only a concrete city could bring.

It took him, at last, to the entrance of a car park ("Huh, why's this suprisng me?!" Balthazar thought, it just seemed so mundane, a car park.)

And then he looked up from his phone. He saw a woman, Samantha, but he didn't know her name.

Her thick coat, rather easy to be hiding stuff under also obscured her face with its cavernous hood. She was looking intently into the maw of the multi-story park...and fuck, what where the odds she wasn't a demon hunter also after the same target, skulking around with that shifty, anticipating look upon her face?

He sighed, half-amused, seeing some humour in this situation. He smirked at her with the self-evident joke upon it, Gingerly threw Secret Crush over his shoulder and said, just to see how she'd react, "Are you lost, sweetheart?" a bit too saccharine not to be subtly poking fun of her. "It's said all the ghosts and ghoulies start coming out at this hour...."

If she wasn't a demon hunter, maybe she'd just get nervous and leave, so it was good either way.

[Augustine]

Samantha had stopped at the entrance to the car park to have a smoke. The only thing illuminating her deep in the hood of her coat being the glowing embers at the end of the cigarette as she pondered how to approach things down there. She knew about the three demon brothers, but what about whoever the fuck was driving the car? The goods were bugged, that didn't mean the driver was in on it, or whoever else was down there. Tolya hadn't been able to confirm if they had security, so she might be going into a real wasp's nest. Frankly she'd been in worse places, but she had a policy of always enjoying one last smoke before going into a situation where she might die. She'd be damned if she was going to hell hankering for one last cigarette.

Her waiting out there though attracted attention. Her head shifted slightly to look towards the man approaching her. He wasn't being stealthy and he was also...absolutely impossible to miss. What the hell was that get up? "I must be fuckin' lost if I'm near a goddamned Sailor Moon convention." She replied, pulling the cigarette out of her mouth and exhaling the smoke up into the air. "Fuck's with that outfit? You gonna beat the devil with the power of love literally?" She snorted, before taking one last drag off of her cigarette, and then dropped it, stamping it out with her boot, grinding it into the icy pavement.

"Fuckin' whatever, you're not one of my targets, and anyone workin' with the devils would show at least an ounce of restraint, so you must be a hunter." She was quick on the draw too huh? "Well whatever, even if you can't actually swing that mallet worth a damn you'll distract a few of 'em for a coupla seconds."

"Wait, what's going on? You've met another hunter?" Tolya's voice crackled in her ear, not something her new 'associate' would be able to hear without supernatural hearing, and even then it'd be hard to make out anything. Samantha just rolled her eyes and started walking down the ramp into the park. She seemed rather quick to accept the help of another hunter, even one as...oddly dressed as he was. Although she didn't seem convinced he'd be worth much in the coming fight.

[salmony]

Balthazar's chunky form merrily strode behind the sharp-talking woman, but with his mallet held steady as to not smack against the concrete and alert his target.

"Well, well, barracks babe, did ya' wake up at the wrong side of the trench this mornin'?" he caught himself being a little too bitchy and tried to switch the subject with a less-loud voice "And 'power of love'? well you're quite the perceptive thing... suppose it's obvious with the fact it looks the way it looks though." he patted First Crush's heart shaped head, and made it shimmer with its enchanting magic briefly, just to show off.

"Say, lady, you heard of this "Encantadores" thing by any chance? I'm kinda after them, and the crusty motherfuckers who we are going to encounter any second now...who knows, you could make a pretty penny hunting the criminal portion and...kidnapping the noblewomen 'Cantadores guard and holding them ramson?"

That was an attempt, however feeble, to appetise Samantha to making these groups targets. She seemed like a right little mercenary virago in his eyes, maybe the mere suggestion of money would convince her, or so he hoped.

[Augustine]

His response, while in his own head a bit too bitchy, only drew a smirk from Samantha. "Fuck I wish it was a trench, nearly got sick enough of that bus to crash it into a damn ravine." Traveling by bus? Probably not what he was expecting, especially if he thought of public buses.

"Encantadores?" She lifted an eyebrow and in her earpiece Tolya spoke to her.

"Hmm, might have heard of it. I'll check the Velvet Underground while you two get busy burying the Brothers Grimm." That wasn't actually the trio's official name, they were suspected to be siblings, but 'brothers grimm' was what Tolya had taken to calling them while tracking them down.

"Nah can't say I have." Samantha said after that pause. "Either way, if they've actually got folks they'll trade for, I'll be happy to trade them their nobles for a pit in the ground to bury the lot of 'em in." Well...that sounded like she wasn't very interested in money and more...in killing as many devils as she possibly could. "If you're trying to get me to help you tackle some devil mafia whatever, show me you can fight and I'm in." Yeah her motivation was absolutely just killing devils. With those words she was going to start walking into the underground parking lot.