"Carmen?"

The comm spoke in Tailchaser's ear with the low, tense tone of Pennywise's concern.

She blinked and the observation deck came into focus again. Bigger than she remembered, the Empire State Building towered over New York. She peered out into the hazed air, straining to see anything but the gray and black fog that wreathed buildings in the misty tendrils of its grasping fingers.

"Carmen? You alright?"

"Y-Yeah. I'm good." Her voice was strained a reflection of her stress and uncertainty. She turned away from the depressing city and found herself facing the lobby that crowned this jewel in New York's skyline. People milled about aimlessly, chattering and gossiping. Families had taken shelter inside against the gritty pelting of drizzling rain.

"Good. Cazador is almost up the stairs. Anything suspicious?"

Suspicious? Suspicious how? She put that out of her mind for a brief moment and scanned the people in the lobby. Three people caught her eye and she paused in her forward movement to skew her vision into the astral. Two of the men had large black splotches that grew from their spines and interlaced with their limbs. She squinted a bit.

"Two razor types up here." Tailchaser turned her attention to the third man and was surprised to see a shaman with Plumed Serpent curled around his shoulders. Normally this would have served to reassure her, lower her guard to the man. But Serpent's wings were... singed for lack of a better word. The edges of the feathers curled and blackened. The scales that covered his sinuous body were slimy looking, cold. Not the vibrant emerald her totem spirit typically wore on his skin. Dully glowing red eyes looked back at her and she felt... very alone. A rustling reminded her that Serpent rode with her. He curled his wings close to her body and she was almost completely reassured. Whatever that man was, he wasn't a true shaman of Serpent. She'd deal with that later. "And a shaman. Where's Cazador?"

"Oh that's wonderful. Alerting the others." In the moment Pennywise was silent, Tailchaser crossed the threshold of the lobby and entered it in full. "He's at the door... coming in now."

On the opposite side of the room, from a corner she hadn't noticed, Cazador emerged. He carried a metal briefcase and had donned one of his typical suits. A tightly fitted maroon jacket with flared shoulders and a full sleeved shirt of blinding white. His blood colored slacks faithfully outlined his physique without giving away the many guns on his body. She could never keep up with how many he actually carried of the small pistols that he preferred and that became as deadly as any Panther cannon in his hands. At least five, as many as seven.

More importantly, what was going on? Her memory began when Pennywise called her name. Why were they here? Why was Cazador of all people making a meet? That was Pariah's job.

Where was Pariah?

"Remind me again, Penny... what are we doing here?" Tailchaser knew she sounded like an idiot, but there was no way around it. She had to know what was going down here.

"Caz is.. making a meet. You sure you're alright?" Worry tinged his voice now.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine."

Tailchaser suddenly became aware of a man who she hadn't spared a glance for earlier. He stepped forward on a raised area, placing both hands on the railing in front of him and her unease became a clamoring alarm inside of her skull.

He was mundane, but powerful. Her attention became instantly riveted upon his face. His cold, reptilian eyes didn't flicker in her direction as she studied the long white scar that bisected his right brow and reached to the corner of his mouth. His skin, hair, everything told her the stranger was Aztlaner just as she and Cazador were.

She had no idea who he was. No memory of his face, not even the scar triggered a name or the slightest clue of his identity.

Cazador and he shared a long glance before the man stepped down from the raised area and approached. Caz met him halfway but maintained a good meter and a half distance from his contact. Fear, sudden and intense, twisted in Tailchaser's gut.

This was bad.

The two men spoke briefly.

"You have it, Ramon?"

Carmen blinked at the use of Cazador's real name.

"Si." He offered up the briefcase with one hand, flicking his cigarette in the other. That little touch of reality made all the rest seem even more surreal. What was going on?

"You'd better not be trying to cheat me, Ramon."

"Don't be stupid." So very Cazador. Tailchaser felt an ache around her heart, a fist that squeezed then released her with a sweet sensation.

The man made a movement with his hand and a lackey materialized to take the case from Cazador. As the case was opened and offered for the man to look inside, a creeping dread gathered in her stomach. The man merely nodded and transferred his attention back to Cazador.

"Now, I believe you have something that belongs to me." Finality, finality and a threat.

Tailchaser began moving as the words left the man's mouth, this had just gone incredibly wrong. Several things happened at once. Cazador stepped back, almost staggered, and raised his hands to stare at his fingers. Fumes rose from his skin, stinking wisps of foulness that rose with acrid slowness. The two sammie types lifted large guns from their sides and brought them to bear on Tailchaser and Cazador both. The shaman stepped from his corner, eyes fixed on her also.

Swiftly, her battle plan sprang to being within her and just as quickly was changed by events happening around her. Two gunshots rang out, flat and muffled by the muggy air yet brutally harsh in the confined space. The sammies fell against each other, bleeding. She glimpsed a grim white face with black painted eyes and mouth in her peripheral vision.

Pennywise.

Chanted words in Aztlaner spilled from her lips. They grew in volume and power as she clasped her hands tightly palm to palm before her breastbone.

The shaman approached her, framed between the silhouettes of the still standing Aztlaner businessman and Cazador's crouched form. Their eyes locked, she could see the strength of Plumed Serpent within the man. Every cell in her body cried out against attacking him. He was supposed to be an ally.

Cazador screamed, pawing at his waist, he was attempting to get his guns but his hands were useless. Flesh peeled from his bones and splatted on the tiled floor.

Carmen went a little mad. Her lover's screams ripped at her heart and soul with a fierceness that almost destroyed her will. Panic and terror propelled her faster to Cazador's side, heated rage fueled the eldritch fire that itched in her palms. She thrust her open hands towards the oncoming shaman whose magic was surely responsible for Cazador's suffering and an emerald fire streaked from the center of her palms. It arrowed in a scintillating arch of blinding power to strike her enemy directly in the center of his chest.

He didn't even scream but collapsed into an unmoving heap of flesh and clothing. His totem spirit glared at Carmen with huge crimson eyes that cut with an edge of accusation and hatred before it fizzled into nothingness. At the same moment she heard and felt the rush of feather propelled air as Plumed Serpent pushed himself up and away from her presence. Then he was gone.

Stunned, Carmen jerked her glance down to Cazador... or what was left of him. He lay upon the tiled floor, in a puddle made of his own liquefied flesh. His once heartstoppingly handsome face was ravaged, skin hung in long, dripping strands from his brow, chin, and jaw. She could see his teeth and the strangely jagged bone that should have been hidden by the cartilage of his nose. His hand, nothing more than bones and tendons now, feebly reached towards her ankle before he collapsed with a finality that slashed open a gaping wound in her heart.

A vague feeling of disconnection grew, then faded as she realized that the businessman was leaving. He was walking away, calmly, apparently in no rush to flee the scene of this murder he'd committed.

With less fumbling than she would have expected Carmen drew the Colt Manhunter from her shoulder holster and pointed it at the center of the murderer's back. Directly between the shoulders. The high powered ammo she was packing would punch through his silk piped suit and ravage his heart and lungs with a simple twitch of her finger. He was not walking away from this.

"Stop." Her voice pierced a silence only broken by the weeping of a woman and her husband's soothing somewhere behind Carmen. She almost cared that these people's day had been ruined by this scene. Almost. "Stop, or it's all over for you."

The stranger halted. He turned slowly, no tension in his body, no fear in his snake eyes. She tried, again in vain, to place his face with an identity. All she could think was that this was the man who'd murdered Ramon. This was the man she was about to kill.

His thin lips quirked in a sardonic twist, "Wouldn't you like to know what he gave me, Carmen?"

She almost jerked the trigger at the sound of her name oiling from his foulness. He was proffering the briefcase, toying with the clasp to pop it open in a brief second.

"Yes. Yes, I do. Open it." The words came from outside of Carmen but she said them. Weirdly, they echoed through her skull and she was grateful. They drowned out the insistent replay of Cazador's screams.

"You'll let me go if I show you?" He almost didn't make it a question. It was close to an order that she felt compelled to agree to. "Right, Carmen? You'll trade me one peek into this case to know the fullness of his betrayal for my release."

"Yes... Yes...." She didn't voice that either. Something else was speaking through her. A bitter taste rose in her mouth. Ashes, a flavor familiar to her. Bitter, cold ashes. Even as she spoke he flicked the switch that opened the case. With a snick the top opened. She could see into it if she merely lowered her eyes from the man's strangely compelling stare. He turned it on his palm to display the contents to her.

"No!" The word burst from her with a violence that shook her entire being. It felt good to be this enraged, to fuel the fire of her agony with this passion.