JAVIER & DOTTIE || cvtiehoneys:
The Zambia Emerald of Bastet was fabled to contain the soul of Bastet, the goddess’ essence distilled into the jewels blueish hue. It was a gorgeous relic, its beauty multiplied in Dottie’s eyes by having once belonged to Cleopatra. Selling relics that were associated with her – let alone, belonged to her – was like printing money. If there were fortunes to be found, then Dottie was never far behind.
However, her ‘simple heist’ had snowballed out of control. Apparently, the emerald was the sacred object of a matriarchal death cult, who was at odds with an organized crime group. MI6 had gotten involved. Like usual, they made an embarrassment of themselves by fumbling their whole operation. Dottie hadn’t anticipated living through a b-list spoof of an Indiana Jones movie, but she wouldn’t be surprised if a solar powered doomsday weapon were unveiled next.
Metal handcuffs clipped her wrists to an overhead pipe. Her elegant bouffant updo, glossy as the mulberry silk of her red dress, helped to obscure her wrists. An acidic, metal-eating fungus was slowly weakening the chain of her restraints. Hopefully, it finished the job before she were either assassinated or ritually sacrificed. “Is this any way to treat a lady?” she huffed. The heavily armed guard assigned to her smirked. Dottie threw a feeble struggle, squirming and swearing to keep the attention of the guard from focusing on the cuffs.
The door opened with a clang. A second guard ushered in another hostage, and Dottie craned to get a good look at their face. Was that Javier? What was he doing mixed up in such a mess? Even in the worst of circumstances, she wasn’t going to reveal her hand and mention the emerald to her competition. “So, what were you after?” she asked, winking. “The death cult, the mobsters, or MI6?”
Okay, this looked bad. But he had a plan...well, sort of. With all the unexpected chaos the person who hired him failed to mention, his original plan was quickly get tossed out the window and he had to quickly adjust to making shit up as he went along. It wasn’t ideal, but he learned to work with what he had and at this moment what he had was some meathead dragging him along ‘in custody.’ The way he saw it, this was just a free escort inside that gave all parties the impression he was now out of the equation. Minus the few initial hiccups, things looked like they might run smoothly from here on out.
Or at least that’s what he thought before locking eyes on a familiar face. He didn’t even know why he was surprised — with all the cartoonish turns this evening was taking, this just made sense. “Right.” He peered around the guard that was busy putting the uncharacteristically cooperative specialist in the same position as Dottie. “Because telling you why I’m here, especially in front of Tweedledee and Tweedledum, sounds like a great idea that definitely won’t somehow backfire on me.”
Javier twisted his body, the best he could in his uncomfortably tight restraints, as if to childishly signify he was done humoring any kind of conversation with his fellow hostage. In reality, he was simply trying to get a better view of his surroundings and survey the room for anything that could be used to quietly deal with their glorified babysitters. While there were a few useful things laying around, the fact that both guards were armed well was going to be an issue. The chances that one wouldn’t starting firing while he was dealing with the other were low. This evening just kept getting better and better.
“So is MI6 kill on sight or do you plan on sticking them in here too? Because if that’s the case, I think you’re going to run out of pipe. I mean, you did see the group of them crawling out of that clown car while bringing me here, right? No?” He let out a low whistle, “I can’t picture your boss being thrilled about them pouring in here like rats.” While the two turned to talk amongst themselves about what to do, Javier glanced back at Dottie. As much as he’d rather not enlist her help, even temporarily, it might be the smarter choice given their predicament — the enemy of my enemy or whatever. He made a few subtle gestures as if to ask her if she had her restraint problem under control or if she was going to need a hand.
