It was painful to be in a sea of people that I would rather have avoided with miles and multiple arms' lengths. The harbor had beautiful scenery and many opportunities that provided ample amusement and entertainment for the Thursday evening that it was, rife with boats, fishing, shops, and restaurants. There was almost always a carnival loitering in an empty parking lot by the water, as if the rides could help you overlook the water when in reality they merely instilled a feeling of fear when the steel of the ride shook slightly with the wind blowing through its "stable" structure. Why people trusted those things, I would never understand. Mothers let their children climb into the seats that would bring their children into the air and spin them around at absurd speeds when their seats were not even small enough to secure the child. When the attendant was not paying enough attention to notice that the straps were not tight enough, weren't wrapped snug around the little body of the precious child that they were entrusted. The mothers watched from below as their bundle of love flew sporadically through the air, to return to them moments later windswept and nauseated from the adrenaline excitement that such an experience could bring them. On watching this sort of display in the past, I'd wondered if it were possible to feel the same kind of exhilaration as an adult. Was it possible to acquire such juvenile delight when your years were past those required for childish behavior and you were too tall for windswept excitement? ... That is, without drugs. The idea of a needle to a vein to feel the same kind of blood rush that a carnival ride brought made sense to me, and I acknowledged trying it once. But after the once, never again did I worry about attaining that same level of delight that the ride would have brought as I had a new, synthetic rollercoaster to ride. And when the desire for those delights and the feelings that drugs or adrenaline brought, I'd found a new outlet for said grievances. Learning to take lives gave me the power of the ride attendant, and a sadistic hand of God that ... Fuck it, why did I bother trying to justify it? I liked it every bit as much as I liked the needle. I liked what I was able to do just as much as I liked the adrenaline as a little kid. Instead of strapping the metaphorical children in, I left the straps loose and found my adrenaline in the anticipation of watching them fly out of their seats.

... And here Azrael is, saying I don't have any sense of humor. Flying children, sadistic ... er, flight attendants. I'm hilarious...

Azrael's words fell on relatively deaf ears as I wasn't prepared to answer his quip about my jokes, at least to him. He had mentioned the word "bloodhound" which had gathered enough of my wit from whatever reply I had wanted to give him about said quip on my humor. What would a man with no sense of the thing itself have to say about my own? Instead, it was far more prudent to allow my attentiveness to flounder towards the hound that wasn't too hard to pick out in the crowd of young adults clustered on a boat in the nearby. The music was loud coming from their ship, indicating a party. A party was truly a perfect scenario to do Azrael's bidding, though because it was loud, there was alcohol and probably other various vices present enough that people wouldn't pay too much attention to any one detail in particular. The hound was at the back anyway, and it would have been easy to trip him and send his body flying into the hungry waters below the boat by only a few feet, though that would harness more attention than necessary. I would have liked the spectacle, onlookers cat calling out for help for the drowning boy who was just so easy to tug under water. Something in me wanted to offer Azrael the peace of doing things in a fashion that wouldn't make his skin crawl, and so instead of the broadway scene I could have created, the body fell under water while its replica remained sparkling on the boat amidst the party and the hollow people. Those hollow people never once noticed that the replica of their friend shimmered under the sunshine once before their backs turned and it began to fade. They wouldn't have noticed, anyway.

Once I had relocated back towards the Hunter, his baritone voice emanated in a low hum that could only be misconstrued as a sort of compliment on my efforts. My, he shouldn't have! All the trouble he went to jus to make that one lowly noise? Perhaps it was truthfully a harsh thing for him to do, exert so much effort into making a sound that I could misconstrue as a positive thing, that he maybe found some kind of impression in the effort I expended in his name.

"I couldn't contain myself. Just something about disintegrating a body gets me..."

I trailed off, widening my eyes as if to leave the desired term up to his imagination. At the same time the utterances fall from his lips and the begin to curl into the tell-tale beginning of a smile, I lift a hand from my pocket where my fingers were curled around a small artifact that had been singing some kind of siren song to me from the body that I had actually disintegrated in the water. The artifact was simple to retrieve and obviously something that he wanted.

"For that useful information, I can give you this complimentary trinket found burning a hole in the mutt's pocket."

I extended a hand to him to offer the artifact that he'd been searching for, allowing him a quick glimpse of it. While his words may have once been condescending, those that fell from his lips now were thoughtful in a musing tone, pondering my choice of actions towards the hound. If it had been fully my choice, I would have made a scene and allowed the hound a brutal end that he was sparred due to Azrael's request. I shrugged in response as I didn't have a clear answer for why I didn't use his bones, and merely snap them like he was a toy puppet. In truth, it hadn't occurred to me that I might be able to, but that was something I was loathe to mention to the Hunter. And when I did? The words fell like rain, unbidden from my lips but laced with a good-natured humor that I hadn't intended.

"Breaking bones is hardly subtle, I assumed you'd appreciate listening to your instructions. And honestly I hadn't tried breaking them with anything other than my hands before. Are you offering to be a test dummy?"

I tossed him the artifact in exchange for the idea of breaking bones. They were minerals, surely I would have thought of this before... I lit a cigarette to keep my hands busy from the attempt that they may have made on any of his bones. Our walk had resumed as if we were old friends simply taking a stroll around town, though it was quickly paused by the extension of Azrael's arm to keep me from continueing. While it was easy to sense Azrael's apprehension in the area of town, I rather liked the way the buildings rose like gravestones on the harbor. The shop that I worked in lurked around here, as did some of the warehouses that I contracted for. It was familiar, and while he wanted to stop I had half a mind to groan and walk through his arm just to prove that he was being an old man and worrying about - ... Oh. Fae. Gross.

Fae were maniacal, absurd creatures that should have stayed in the storybooks from which they were born. My cigarette had been abandoned the moment I was whisked away from the wall I had been contemplating the "Fae Casino" on, left to look at the knife that replaced my figure with narrowed eyes as Azrael pulled me away from injury.

"Just so you know, magic is a communicable disease. You're infected now."

The disgust with which he regarded supernatural beings amused me to no end, and the fact that he'd grabbed my shirt only gave me cause to press a salted finger into that wound. When Azrael commands that I deal with the weapons of said Fae, there is a grin replacing the amusement on my face as quickly as my right hand caught the knife that the fae had thrown amidst the giggles. The knives are more than happy to be retrieved by me like a charm summoning spell and they fall gracefully into my outstretched hands, completing my task with an ease that I hadn't been able to exert in front of the Hunter yet. When the fae returns bound by a spear of light through it's wings, it tumbles to the ground unceremoniously for me to kneel beside and examine. With the curiosity of a child, I lifted the other wing to look at it's design before wrinkling my nose as Azrael's foot came down on the wing. The crunch was audible, which afforded me the opportunity to think of just how I wanted to charm the little shit into telling me what we wanted to hear.

"You and your little insect friends use the old Fireman's warehouse, but I've been there and there isn't anything there. Where is your hive?"

My words began slowly, soft enough that they were silver and masking any venom. The fae squealed more death threats with complimentary spit occasionally, and when it finally hit me I ran a hand over my face, thoughtfully focusing on it's ankles. The first one cracked as simply as the bones of his wing had underneath Azrael's foot. And the second? Breaking bone was easier this way than using my own fist. The fae was unable to howl any more as I clamped its teeth together, using the bones there to meld the teeth shut while he was writhing. And when he wasn't, anymore? I patiently drummed my long fingers against my knee. And when he began to give Azrael the answers he wanted as I snapped each knuckle in his fingers for every second he refused to give us names.

"There are about 272 bones in the Fae body. Only 9 of yours are broken, oh sorry... " Snap of the wrist. "10."