Callisto looked pensive from the alcove she stood on as she watched the camp down below. Things weren't great by any means, nor was it how it used to be, but she could see some vigor in some people, and these few people were somehow infecting the camp with it.
They were still on the brink of starvation but no one was complaining, not even the kids. Everyone was doing what they could along with a little more just to make sure they could carry their share of the burden a little bit further.
Among the newly motivated, two stood out to her and she wasn't a bit surprised at who it was. Annalee and Mikhail were the ones who set the snowball effect into motion, and it all started from a chance meeting.
Unlike the others however, she didn't share in their enthusiasm, and it wasn't because she was a cold bitch like they called her behind her back(she was a cold bitch). Someone had to be practical and a hardass in case things didn't pan out for the optimistic fools.
They could hardly grow anything down here. Yes, sure, the doctor had a few makeshift greenhouses but they contributed exactly jackshit.
Their only means of survival was the number of odd jobs a few of them could do, like Dreamer and the doctor, but the majority of it came from the polite robbery they carried out every now and then. It wasn't a frequent thing but it bolstered their reserves for a good while.
'And we can't even go out.' Callisto clicked her teeth. She almost laughed at the irony when Mikhail decided to do a job on his own when he'd been the one most opposed to it when he first arrived. The big man had quickly realized that morals did not exactly stuff full the bellies of children.
The problem still persisted and the best way for them to get over it was to figure out who was interested in them, and to do that… 'We have to go out.'
It was an irritating loop that cited up a feral need in Callisto to slash her knives at someone anytime it crept up.
According to Mikhail and the others, they had secured a good enough contact and a potential solution to a good chunk of their problems, all they needed was money. Or things good enough to barter a trade with.
And speaking on this contact…
'Isaac.' Callisto rolled the name over her tongue and frowned at how bland it tasted. Even without meeting the man, she could tell right away that there was something off about him. He felt too… muted. Nothing about him stuck.
According to the others, he said he wasn't a mutant but he had other means.. Magic maybe. He easily restrained Mikhail and Caliban without moving so something was obviously at play. She shelved the information about 'violence not permitted inside the shop' and thought of a dozen other ways to restrain someone like Mikhail and even prevent him from teleporting.
Despite the danger this person presented, Mikhail did not take it to heart and became the runner between the Morlocks and Isaac. It was stupid and reckless and he was actively putting himself in the sight of someone who could capture him if he wanted, she'd told the stupid oaf as such, but, well he wouldn't be an oaf if he listened.
"If Isaac wanted to, he could. He is friend." The bloated mass had said as much in his Russian-accented drawl. "If you're curious, woman, go take look for yourself."
She left the matter at that but had let Mikhail know that it would be his complete fault should anything spiral out from their transactions.
Callisto was an extremely pragmatic and strictly objective person, as well as dangerously sadistic, so while she was able to look at the pros that came with the new contact, she looked away from it to continue staring at the extensive list of flashing red cons.
She'd sent some of their scouts to watch the pawnshop and when they did, they reported that the man never left his shop, not even for a second, for days on end.
Mikhail had told her not to antagonize the man, Callisto agreed. She did not have a fetish for making new enemies, and not raising hostilities did not include not spying on him for more than 15 hours a day.
And yet after everything, she had nothing to show for it. She dialed the threat the man presented up a few notches when all of her scouts, even the ones with x-ray vision and echolocation, failed to find out what was going on behind the doors.
It was like everything stopped at the door. She had already underlined magic as a prominent factor but it started to seem like the obvious one every passing day.
She looked down at Caliban and Henri discussing something and strained her ears a bit to listen to what they were saying.
This was the main reason why she liked this spot. With the vantage point, she could almost cover the radius of the main camp.
She stopped paying attention to Caliban and Henri when she heard the rubbish they were speaking about. She could faintly pick out the conversation between Dreamer and the woman with her.
She absentmindedly pulled out one of her knives and started twirling it around her fingers as she drew herself deeper into her thoughts.
Unimpeded, their only course of action carried itself out to her.
"We can't keep pushing it safe." They can't play being passive forever. If they let themselves be pushed to their breaking point they will be bound to make a costly mistake. Their optimal response was to act boldly so that their enemy will be forced to reveal themselves.
It will cost them but better on their terms than being blindsided.
Enough time had passed, maybe it was about time she visited this Isaac. She never met with any of their former contacts as that was the job of Caliban and the others but she was making a dangerous exception, all because of what Mikhail insinuated.
The naïve moose somehow held the belief that this man could get him anything he wanted, or perhaps the man had shown him everything he wanted.
"Time to meet this Merchant." Her dead eye behind the eyepatch twitched, making her pause for a moment before a frown doused her scarred face. "This is definitely a bad idea."
Her instincts were grumbling and that was a dead signal that something bad would happen, and that was what she wanted. The more explosive the escalation, the clearer the picture she'd get of her enemies.
"Sunder." She called out harshly as she walked off the jump from the alcove. "We're paying him a visit."
The loyal brute just grunted and followed after her. Sunder was the perfect example of muscle. He looked the part and acted it excellently. He never cared about Callisto's orders, no matter what they were, only ever silently following them.
"Mikhail." The sound of her voice killed every decibel of casual conversation around Mikhail. The people quickly gave the big man a wide berth as they saw Callisto walking towards him.
"What do you want?" Mikhail asked.
"Movement." She replied straightly. "Get me as close as you can to the shop."
Mikhail rendered her with a deeply inquisitive stare and he responded in kind by leveling him a daring one.
"Don't fight, Callisto." Mikhail relented with a sigh. There was little to nothing he could do about her decisions so he could only hope she doesn't feel tempted.
"That'll be my call to make." Her remark was curt and strangled. He might be the only one in the camp that could be this casual with her but that in no way meant that he held any means in curating her actions. He forfeited that right when he rejected her leadership.
They did not speak another word as he led Callisto and Sunder to one of the tunnel entrances and tore open a rift in space to an empty alleyway.
"How close is it?" Callisto asked as a wave of new sensations wafted around her.
"A few blocks." Mikhail stood aside and watched Callisto and Sunder cross over. "Keep going straight and take a right turn after the laundromat."
"I think I got it." She took a few sniffs from the favorable winds and assured herself. She could already pick up the faint scents from her boys that she'd put on watch around the shop.
The sun had gone low which meant that the streets were full of people trying to get somewhere which allowed her and Sunder to blend better into the crowd.
Her scars and eyepatch and Sunder's physique made them quite noticeable but it was easily muted with the hat and hoodie she wore and with the large coat and bandana Sunder wore and wrapped around his mouth.
It didn't take them long before they arrived at the shop in question. Junk 'N Stuff – even standing right in front of the door her danger sense remained muted, almost as if there was nothing in front of her to register. With the reports from Mikhail and Caliban, she expected to feel at least a thrum or something by being this close.
"Whatever happens, don't do anything until I say so." She ordered Sunder and the huge man behind her gave a grim nod with a grunt.
Her hands brushed against the knives that were in the inner pockets of her hoodie. It has been a long time since she last came up, having lost every interest in the outside world, but standing in front of this store was giving her a sense of déjà vu that she couldn't remember.
She opened the door and stepped inside the store and instantly noticed how prominent the muteness grew. It was as if it was wrapped around her.
"… business with you, Harry. See you next time." She caught the ending of a conversation second before a boy rounded her corner and promptly froze as he saw both of them.
"Run along." She snapped at the frightened kid who hesitantly looked behind him, a gaze she followed until she saw him, the so-called Merchant.
"It's alright, Harry. They are my customers." The man said with a disarming wave of his hand which prodded the boy and sent him skittering out.
The man looked at them with an embarrassed smile as they came close. "Sorry about his reaction. He's a good kid. He didn't mean anything bad by it."
She took a good look at the man. He looked well groomed in an effortless way, casual yet business, probably in his late thirties or early forties. She frowned a second later as she noticed a discrepancy between the man and her abilities. He was a guesswork. She couldn't get anything concrete by reading him.
"How can I help you, miss?" He looked at her curiously.
She drew her eyes from him, her danger sense still humming in ignorance, as she took in the inner dimensions of the store – Windows, blindspots, obstructions etc. – half suspecting an ambush to spring up in the next few minutes.
"Um, miss? Anything the problem?" The man looked between her and Sunder, not at all phased by their appearance and attitude, just curious.
"Isaac," she started, "that's me," he replied with a service smile but she ignored it. "You're the one making Mikhail run around as if he had a dead sewer rat in his pants."
Isaac's face lit up in recognition. "Oh, you're from Mikhail's community. That's nice."
He held both of his hands behind him, making Callisto's eyes narrow in vigilance but he made no reaction if he saw hers, and took on an openly friendly attitude.
"Haha, I think you're mistaking something. I'm not making him do anything he doesn't want to." He said jovially and cocked his head towards her and asked again. "Now, is there anything I can help you with, miss?"
"You say you buy rare things, right?"
"Yes, but it's mostly dependent on their nature."
Callisto nodded. She was never one for long talks so she went straight for the jugular. This is how you help people, Mikhail, was what she thought as she opened her mouth to speak.
"How rare is the X-gene?"
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