Commissioned (2)
At a particular bookstore, Friedrich was standing there and sipping his morning coffee. He read a newspaper on his watch, the headline 'Half-Blood attacks man on the street', and he laughed, reading the article. What an entertaining headline, and reading it was for him. The store was empty, no one was ever buying any books, but it felt nice having it as a way to spend some money. The door would get opened, and a bell would ring. He looked up and saw Aiden standing in front of his desk. He smiled at him, "Now what may I do for you, my friend Aiden?" he leaned on his arm with a wicked smile.
Aiden was staring at him, or rather glaring at him. If someone's glare could kill, Aiden might have killed him multiple times already. "Come on, buddy, why so mad? No wait, let me guess," Friedrich didn't take the situation any more seriously than he would normally. "Yesterday you had the meeting with the old man, so…right, you are mad that I was his broker, right? Oh, trust me, I'm not cheating on you or the others." He was still joking around, but Aiden wasn't going to listen to it.
He punched the table, making Friedrich go silent. "I have had enough with your jokes." The tone had shifted. Aiden seemed angry; it was shown on his face that the things Friedrich did had pushed him quite to the edge. Friedrich looked at him, a bit innocent like a lamb. The facade would quickly fall; however, Friedrich seemed bored now, looking at his expression.
He yawned and rolled his eyes. "So what?" His tone changed, sounding just so arrogant. He had an arrogant smirk on his face as he stared at Aiden. He stood up from his chair. "What can you even do, my friend?" he grabbed the chin of Aiden. Aiden pushed his hand away and took a few steps away from Friedrich. His face showed no hint of emotions, not stimulated enough to appear on his face, but there were twitches all around it. At the corner of his mouth was slightly twitching while a frown was trying to form on his face.
He walked to a shell of his "You came thinking of intimidating me or even worse, threatening me." He took out a book with the simple title "
"What you are mad about is the toying that you believe I'm doing with you." An insight that Friedrich had gained from the long years of observing Aiden. "You hate the authorities, your entire life you've been their dog at your best times and in your worst times, that's why you started to do more dangerous things. Things that still are rational but are on the border of danger, that while daring are things that are still you when one knows you well enough."
His eyes looked at Aiden, the face stoic once tried to be stoic showed obvious anger, but the hint of surprise was hidden in all the anger from how he understood him so well. It was these subtle things, the time of waiting and just the moment that made him, him, but that made Aiden, Aiden.
"Or is the thing that is bothering you the breach of trust that you believed existed between you and me? I told you often enough you are playing hard to get, Aiden, and that's what I wish to break. Friendship between the two of us was never possible I'm sure you were long aware of it but could it be in this brain of reason and logic of yours, you thought maybe just maybe it might be wrong you could form a bond with someone a bond of friendship like the bond you once had so many years ago"
A punch was thrown at Friedrich, and the cracking of bones could be heard as the punch hit his face. The book was dropped to the ground, making a thud sound, while Friedrich held himself in his place as the bookshelf stood in its place firmly. "Agh!" Friedrich let out, but he wasn't given time to rest as he was grabbed by his collar. Another punch was thrown at him, Friedrich couldn't escape the grip of Aiden was tight around his collar. The forehead had swollen veins widely exposed, as the anger was visible. Aiden, by all means, was seeing red.
Aiden would hit Friedrich multiple times before letting him go. The nose of Friedrich was swollen, a his left eye was swollen. Aiden let go of Friedrich's collar, and his face was left a mess as he stood up. "Are you done?" His voice sounded different, bruised around his eyes and bleeding without stopping.
"You made me quite dirty for your outburst. I always thought you would do a cleaner job and not a messy one." Even with a broken nose and a now funny voice, Friedrich still seemed relaxed with the current situation. He went to a shelf of his, putting the book down and opening the shelf, grabbing a bottle of wine. "Next time, do it better if you are angry at me," he sighed as he opened the wine bottle and chugged most of it down with one swing.
"Dammit my nose hurts you know. You made sure to break it, didn't you?" He tried to ease the air, even though it was his fault that it was so tense to begin with. He turned to look at Aiden, but turned his head quickly away when he saw him glaring at him as if he was going to murder him if he dared to look even a second longer.
"You will just answer a few questions of mine, and for the payment…I won't break a different part of yours, how about it?" His voice was cold and threatening. He wasn't joking, and he was ready to use violence. The detective who has killed more criminals than he was after arresting them, misfortune of criminals, as some called him, as death comes soon to the criminals he tries to bring to prison. "That's fine with you, isn't it?" Aiden's voice sounded happy, as if he was just asking a favor of a friend of his.
"Fine, ask them, I already got quite the payment through your reaction." He laughed, but because of his broken nose, it sounded quite funny as it was more nasal. "I can do that much for you." Friedrich drank the rest of the wine bottle, letting out a long breath of air, and turned to face Aiden. His face was slightly red, but Aiden couldn't tell if it was because of the wine or because of him having broken his nose.
"Why did you recommend me specifically to Rimerd? There is something you must gain from it, telling him to send me specifically for this mission." Aiden leaned on the table of Friedrich, staring at him with distrust and disdain. He couldn't explain it properly why but he felt disgust towards that man at the moment.
Friedrich stared into Aiden's light brown eyes with his dark brown eyes. The eyes of an animal stared at the predator not with fear, instead with the spirit of fighting. Deception was the way humans fought, or at least the civilized ones were fighting in this way. "Purpose? The only purpose was that you were doing your job, detective, and even then, weren't you itching for a challenge, especially with how the criminal was taunting you?" His pupils widened as his face was essentially sparkling but ridden with twisted pleasure.
"What did you say…ah, right. It seems I have a lovely fan, everyone." Mimicking the tone of Aiden, the way he acted, and the actions he took when he said those words. Replicating them like a piece of theatre. "And you ask me why I don't want to make you do it? You were craving to do it, but you changed your mind a day before, likely because you were being commissioned, instead of pursuing it out of your own free will, but now you are being forced to do it." He came close to Aiden, even though he was shorter than him, a full head shorter, but he still gave off a menacing aura.
His eyes seemed lost, a smile that was wide with a face that was full of emotions, but Aiden could tell, like a small voice screaming in the back of his head. That wasn't normal, nor were any of the emotions good. "Hm, did I say it right?" His voice was in a mocking tone, the calm Friedrich one who would act mysterious or mischievous was gone. The tension in the air was heavy; any moment it might break into a full fight, a second more and it might have happened, but Friedrich started to laugh.
"Oh man, your expression is just the best." The tension ceased to be; the menacing aura around Friedrich was gone. All the emotions that he had shown, that made his body scream, weren't there anymore. A simple lie? A mere figment of his imagination from his anger or the twisting of his perception, done without him ever being able to know. "Take this while you're at it," He held a pill package in his hand.
With his focus gone for the moment, he didn't even see him move. The pills were a bunch of small tablets with an X engraved on them. They were quite small, as long as his pinky finger, being a simple white pill, but the X engraved was what stood out. "This will help you with the mission, don't reject it as you will need it" His smile was back, the smile that would be there in every moment and he would have even if he slit the throat of someone open.
Aiden simply took the package from him, popping a pill out and swallowing it without any water. "Happy?" He said arrogantly. "Now, answer the next question: what do you truly know about that cult. It seems unlikely that you looked into them just recently." The questioning continued while he put them in a pocket in his coat.
Friedrich put the book back on the shelf ."I know not that much, Aiden, but I do know some. Bunch of rag tag kids that want to make change in society, all led by a single man, you met him at the building, and who had killed himself then, or that's what he made you all believe at first." He hummed around.
"There is nothing to worry about them, you dealt with such people before, as they are just drug addicts, aggressive teens, and some fanatics," He said with an amused tone. Aiden thought about the info and how he should go about it. He looked outside the window of the store, and everyone was simply walking around, the ads playing as always. People with mechanical arms, legs, or what else that had to be replaced in their bodies were all around, talking or silently walking.
The homeless on the street begging, and addicts dying, and that cult was supposedly the same? >>What a joke<< It couldn't be true at all, as no drug addict can break a specially made protection gear, even if the leader was a nutjob. "Then tell me this, did this cult relocate somewhere else? You seem to have told Mr Rimerd that the cult may have relocated by the time I'm there, and wasting time is wasting money for a broker like you."
Friedrich went back to his table and opened the drawer, pulling out a piece of paper and a pen, starting to write on it, "It didn't change that much, they are still in the same city but just a different alley of it" He wrote down the address and handed the piece of paper to Aiden.