Who Left This Mess Here?

There were a number of oddities that came with being an undead creature. The inability to die came in handy quite a number of times, though Cillian figured at some point eternity would start to get boring. His emotional senses were a bit dull, though whether that was a side effect from his connection to death magic or simply a byproduct of having spent so many hundreds of years wandering the earth and becoming desensitized to it was anyone's guess.

Probably the weirdest thing, however, was the connection he had to the spirits of the dead. If there was a corpse nearby, he could often sense it from the lingering attachment of its former soul, particularly if they had just recently died. Because of this, he often found himself stumbling into quite a few concerning and peculiar scenes, such as now. There was blood everywhere in the home of this one time millionaire. Cillian could only assume the man had pissed someone off, because this had clearly been a murder yet none of the man’s things were missing. Nothing appeared to have been taken from the home itself, and the corpse was still adorned with jewels. Whoever had done this clearly hadn’t done it while trying to rob the guy. It had probably been personal.

Well, whatever. He didn’t really care too much about that. Instead what he was curious about was whether or not the man would make a decent enough zombie to join his summon party, so to speak. Cillian had used his magic to summon the man’s spirit to talk to him, but it was a fruitless task that had become a bit of a chore. The man was quite belligerent, and didn’t care about answering any of Cillian’s questions about whether or not he had any magic or skills that would prove worthwhile. The only thing he kept going on about was how he’d been killed, how some man or woman in a mask and nondescript armor had snuck into his home and murdered him in the place he should have been the most secure.

Eventually, Cillian sighed. “Yeah, I don’t think this is gonna work out. Thanks anyway, I guess. Rest in peace or whatever. Say hi to Death for me on your way back.” The ghost tried to protest, vehement on having someone solve the crime that was his untimely death, but unfortunately Cillian wasn’t exactly the type of person to spend that kind of energy or empathy. With the wave of a hand, the spirit disappeared and returned to the afterlife.

Blowing air comically out of his mouth and causing his lips to flap together in a dramatic pfff sound, he looked around. This certainly was quite the mess. Whoever had done this really hadn’t done much to clean up after themselves. There were even footprints on the marble flooring through the puddles of blood, with a trail leading toward the window where the culprit had fled. “Well that’s just sloppy,” he commented to himself. Still, if the murder victim had been as annoying alive as he’d been just now as a ghost, Cillian wasn’t really surprised that he’d gotten killed.

With a shrug, he wandered around the home until he’d located the cleaning supplies. Slipping on a pair of rubber gloves, he snatched a bucket, some bleach, and a bunch of towels. Before long, he was scrubbing down all the blood from the floor and the walls, cleaning and straightening furniture, even wiping fingerprints off of things that he’d found. This criminal, whoever he was, had done a service to the rest of the world as far as Cillian was currently concerned so he didn’t really see why he couldn’t give them a little extra security on their job well done.

Not really being the most observant of fellows to begin with, Cillian was completely unaware of the fact that someone else had managed to sneak into the room with him. He simply went about his work, humming to himself in a carefree manner as he poured a bit of bleach into a bucket. When the woman spoke to reveal herself, however, he did not jump or freak out like most people would have in that situation. Slowly, almost lazily, the lanky man turned at looked up at the uniformed woman against the wall with a surprised blink. Whoever she was, she was covered from head to toe, her voice disguised through the mask over her face. The only indication he even had that she was, in fact, a woman was that her outfit was a bit tight and it was difficult to miss the bust on her chest.

Cillian stood up straight, propping himself on the mop in his hand and regarding the mysterious figure with his full attention. He gave her a disarmingly easy smile. “Well, thank you!” was the reply to her compliment at his efforts to clean the place up. He didn’t appear to be alarmed by her presence at all, mostly because there wasn’t a whole lot that alarmed Cillian anymore. Besides, she’d given him praise and it would be rude to ignore it. Who was this woman, though? Was she with the Rune Knights? No, the outfit wasn’t right. Maybe she was one of the people who had been involved with killing this man?

That was his running theory, at least until she asked him a couple questions that threw him off track. If she was part of whatever group that had dispatched this guy, she surely would know that he wasn’t sent there to clean up after the event. Then again, she could just be asking the question to throw him off her own scent. Oh, this was exciting! His smile stretched into a grin. “Well, I certainly do have some rather odd ideas of fun,” he admitted. “As for everything else, I guess it depends on who’s asking. While I’m not too worried about your intentions here one way or another, I like to have an idea of exactly how much trouble I’m going to be in before I actually get into it.”

With that, he turned and went back to cleaning, dunking his mop in the bleach solution and proceeding to sanitize the floor. “There’s some alcohol on the shelf there if you’re so inclined. This guy certainly isn’t going to need it anymore. Just do me a favor and keep your gloves on so I have less to clean.” Cillian nodded to a crystal decanter on a bookshelf that contained an amber colored liquor of some kind. Set beside it were a set of matching, stemless crystal glasses and an enchanted ice box that kept the ice inside from melting before it could be put in a glass.    

The thought of alcohol seemed to pique her attention almost immediately, he noted. Though Cillian obviously could not see her face, she didn’t waste much time in turning to take a look at the deceased man’s selection. For his part, Cillian continued to clean the area as the mystery woman fixed them both a glass, only looking up once to take note of her appearance when her face was revealed. She assured him that she wasn’t interested in getting him into any trouble, at least with the law. It seemed she already had a few other ideas on her mind. He shot her a mischievous, almost wolfish grin in response to the rather elicit suggestion. “And make another mess for me to clean up?” he asked innocently. “I don’t think I have enough bleach left over for a ruckus that size.”

Elsewhere in Fiore, a small blonde Rune Knight surely just got angry for no reason that she could fathom due to Cillian’s apparent ease at flirting back with this woman. Not that Cillian would have been aware of it, of course. To say he was an odd individual was putting it lightly. When it came to people he was comfortable around and whose company he enjoyed, such as Dela and Vera, he rarely if ever picked up on the fact that someone was flirting with him or seriously interested in him. However, when he was in a room with a stranger in the middle of a very compromising circumstance, such as now, he was on high alert… despite the fact that he appeared quite calm and lackadaisical. As such, he was more than aware of the way this woman was checking him out, and teasing her back was of little difficulty.

The woman explained that her interest in him at this moment -- aside from sex, presumably -- was actually in hiring him. Whatever line of work she did, it seemed her business often required the use of someone like himself that was good at “cleaning”. Mix that with her comment about no longer having a job to do now that the man that lived here was already dead, and it wasn’t difficult to put together that she probably worked for some kind of mercenary firm. He stopped mopping almost right in front of her, his tall figure looming over hers with an impish look as he casually leaned on the handle of the mop. “Offering me work on the first date? And how do you know I’m not trouble?” he asked her, his crimson eyes never leaving hers as he gently took the offered glass with his free hand and took a sip from it.

There was a moment where something in his eyes could have been interpreted as heated desire, but after a slow sip of the alcohol it was gone as he easily stepped away from her and set the mop back in the bucket. “Well, you’re obviously not a Rune Knight, so I guess it won’t hurt to give you a few details. I’m a necromancer with a strong connection to death. I can sense, summon, and communicate with both the dead and undead. It’s a bit of a hobby of mine, hunting down useful spirits to form working contracts with them. That’s how I found this spot; I sensed the soul of a recently murdered person and followed it. Dude turned out to be really annoying though, so I let him go back to the afterworld. After a bit of exposure to the guy I realized whoever killed him did the rest of us a favor. Least I could do was keep the law off his scent.”

He took another deep swig of the liquor, downing most of it without really stopping to taste it. “That’s my story. They say turnabout is fair play. Why don’t you tell me a bit more about you and this group you work for?”  

She wasted no time in letting him know that the faction she worked for was a secret, one so closely guarded that only those within the organization knew that they existed. “Ooh, ominous,” Cillian interjected with interest before letting her finish. Their members were required to wear full bodied uniforms and disguises, which explained her get up from when she’d first arrived, though not the fact that she’d seen fit to remove her mask in front of him. Then again, why would she feel the need to differentiate between a full bodied uniform that covered the face and disguise if the group didn’t see a difference between the two? Perhaps the face he was seeing wasn’t her natural look.

Either way, she made it clear that there wasn’t a whole lot she could really tell him until he made an indication that he wanted to join. All she could say was that they did a lot of work for modest prices, and the result of that work was often a body count in need of disposal. If he was looking for an easy and convenient way to get his hands on a lot of bodies and spirits, her offer was that he could get his necromancer fix with them. All they would ask in exchange is that he take up the duties of getting rid of the evidence afterward, which he’d already shown his skill at.

“That is a very tempting partnership,” he admitted when she pulled out an iLac and inquired to his thoughts. Cillian stroked his smooth skin as he pondered the potential repercussions, but only briefly. He had a habit of not caring too much about consequences given his own state of undeath. Really the only thing he could think of was that if Dela and Vera ever found out they might not be pleased with him, given their status as Rune Knights… but despite how unassuming he appeared, Cillian was actually quite good with certain types of secrets, and this fell in line with the kind he would keep.

Finally, he grinned at her and held up his empty glass for a refill. “Alright, sounds like fun. My old lady keeps telling me I need a job, anyway. She was unspecific about what kind. What do you need from me?”  

When Iris asked if he was married, Cillian grinned. “Nah, she’s actually an old lady. No relation. Took me in off the streets. Now I clean her house and cook for her. I’m an excellent housewife.” Still, she seemed pretty glad when he accepted the offer to join, raising her cellular device and snapping a picture of him. After that, the woman just asked for a bit of his information, explaining that the “nerds” back at her headquarters just needed to look into him, which wouldn’t take too long. Once he was approved, she could lead him to wherever it was that they conducted business.

“Well, I never turn down a good drink,” he told her with a knowing smile. Did he actually intend on doing anything with the woman? Nope. Cillian had been alive long enough to know when someone was trying to seduce him. Or well, usually he knew. He certainly had more than his fair share of dumb moments, but for now he was more acute and aware than he usually was. And it wasn’t that she wasn’t attractive -- she definitely was. At least, if that was her real face. It was more that if Cillian had a sexual bone in his body, he’d yet to find it after over four hundred years. There just wasn’t any appeal or interest there for him. He was far more interested in other things. Chances were, he was going to wind up driving the woman up a wall by flirting with her endlessly and it simply never going anywhere.

But hey, he’d still have a drink with her. After all, she’d just given him a job, and she’d been very cordial and open through this entire strange interaction. “My name is Cillian duCrosse.” If she needed it, he’d make sure to spell it for her. A lot of people had difficulty spelling both his first and last name, not that he gave them out often. Even after all this time, Cillian was still a bit paranoid about people knowing his true identity as an outcast Pergrande prince. Still, he would be shocked if the people at their base were able to find much on him. Technology hadn’t exactly been great back around the time he was born hundreds of years ago. Any documents that existed of his origins were probably only on paper, and locked away deep inside the kingdom’s vaults -- assuming any evidence of him and his ties to the royal family hadn’t been burned after he’d been exiled.  

Unsurprisingly, his record came back pretty clean. What little did exist of him wouldn’t be much to write home about as Cillian generally kept to himself and didn’t exactly stir up a lot of trouble. Or at least, not the kind of trouble that often attracted the attention or notice of law enforcement or put him on any wanted lists. He certainly had at least a small criminal record, but over really stupid and silly things that barely even would qualify him as a criminal. If anything, he was just surprised that there were no questions from her about his seemingly having no real origins, since that stuff wouldn’t be accessible to anyone in this era. Perhaps that wasn’t the kind of stuff they were looking for. Either way, it seemed that whatever had come up, or didn’t come up, had been more than enough to give her the green light on letting him in. All he had to do now was follow her to wherever they were based out of. “Alright, lemme just finish putting this stuff away,” he said, taking a moment to wrap up his work in the house.

A little while later, he found himself following Esper into the town of Crocus. She led him to a building that appeared to be a business on the surface, using the ring on her finger to alter her attire from the full body suit to a simple black dress that didn’t stand out as much. They stopped at an elevator where she procured a coin and used it to take them down into whatever recesses the structure had below ground. Eventually, the doors opened to a hidden base that Esper excitedly referred to as Ground Zero. The tall, lanky man walked after her, his hands shoved lazily in his pockets with a slight slouch to his shoulders that spoke more to his casual demeanor rather than to any sense of disinterest in what was happening around him. No, he was actually quite invested in taking all of this in, his head swiveling slowly on his neck as he followed the woman up to the desk, taking in the sight of what was available for him to see thus far.

She congratulated him on being initiated into the guild, which was apparently known as Hidden Blades. True to its name, it was a secret organization that he would not be allowed to talk about outside of the guild, and betrayal of that secrecy was punishable by death. Welp. He blinked for a moment, continuing to listen to her but also trying to figure out the right way to break it to her that death wasn’t exactly much of a concern for him. He would not be permitted to reveal his real name to anyone, so it seemed that Esper would be the only one who knew his true identity. Her and other higher ups, he supposed. This meant he had to pick an alias. “Oh. Uhhh…” Clearly, he hadn’t been prepared for this. One of his hands slipped from a pocket to scratch the back of his head lightly as he thought. He’d never really had any nicknames or anything before, nor any monikers that he’d ever tied to himself. The last time he’d ever had a title of any kind was while he was a boy, before he had magic… before he’d been exiled and could no longer claim the mantle of a prince.

So what would he do? Surely it would make sense to pick something appropriate to his personality or skill set, rather than just something random. But really his life revolved around death, and that was honestly a bit dreary. Then again, it didn’t necessarily have to be. Death herself had often jokingly compared him to gods and servants of death from various mythologies around Earthland, due to the curse she’d put on him and the nature of their interactions. “I dunno… Hades?” he offered, selecting really the only name he could remember of those she’d used over the millennia. It made sense to him. Hades was a god of the underworld whose job was to oversee the dead, and that’s more or less what Cillian did as a necromancer.

“Also, uh… is this… is this a bad time to mention that I can’t die?” He shoved his hand back in his pocket, giving Esper a bit of a sheepish look like he was a child that had gotten caught with his hand in a cookie jar. “I mean I can die, technically, but I don’t exactly stay dead. I’ve died like… I dunno, a lot. I lost track somewhere in the hundreds. So uh… yeah, Death isn’t exactly that big of a concern to me. After four hundred years, she and I are pretty good buddies at this point. Kind of just a regular Tuesday. I hope that’s not gonna be an issue.” Probably should have mentioned that before she brought him here and spilled a bunch of secrets but it was a little late at this point to change that. And Cillian was good for it, honestly; he wasn’t going to tell anyone anything, he could and would easily keep the secret. But still, it seemed like something Esper and the Hidden Blades management should probably be aware of, for multiple reasons. He figured honesty was best. Afterall, if he meant to betray them at any point he could have easily just kept that a secret and used it to his advantage later down the line rather than be up front about it.  

She complimented his choice in alias, and soon he was explaining his whole predicament when it came to death. Thankfully, Esper didn’t seem too bothered by it. If anything, she looked amused. The woman explained that it wouldn’t be a problem, as apparently Hidden Blades had long since come up with contingency plans for people like the both of them, should they turn traitor. That was worth noting; Esper apparently also had some kind of predisposition against death. But according to her, there were options available to them that were worse than death. He grinned back at her, the expression a bit lazy but no less impish. “Well now you’re just making it sound like fun,” he told her.

In his information went into the system, and it seemed things were starting to wrap up. All that was left, apparently, was his guild mark. Esper was more than excited to get to that part, practically wiggling in her seat as she held up the stamp and eyed his body like it was a canvas to be unveiled. He was advised to pick a color and a location, openly admitted that she hoped he would put it someplace naughty. Cillian was about to question the wisdom of having a tattoo with a guild that was supposed to be a secret, but the woman beat him to the punch to explain the seal was magicked so that it could only be seen by others who bore the mark and thus were also part of the guild.

“Hmm…” he hummed in though, scratching the back of his head a little. He’d never really thought about getting a tattoo before, nor where he’d put one if he ever did. With a bit of a shrug, he unbuttoned his jacket and removed it, revealing the fullness of his lean, chiseled, eight pack. As usual, he had not been wearing a shirt beneath the coat. Draping the garment on the counter next to where Esper sat, he pointed at his side just above his hip. “Since no one else can see it anyway, how about right there? And we’ll go wiiiiiithhhh… red. Like a nice dark red. Crimson? Yeah, crimson.”

He almost playfully stuck his hip out at her a bit, raising his arm up above his head to give her plenty of space. The act, in turn, just pulled his muscles all the more taught. Whether or not that was on purpose was anyone’s guess, but there it was all the same. Once the act was said and done, he’d take a moment to admire it before putting his jacket back on with a grin. “Alright, boss lady. Lead on.”