Mafia Round 1-Mafia Hit/SK Kill: How about a nice warm cup...

...of shut the hell up?

“No I will NOT release a hostage! Now put me in touch with someone who can meet my frickin’ demands!”

Between shouts into the phone, Brad looked to his friends with a completely unsuppressed grin, occasionally snickering silently at his own statements and fiddling with his pierced lip.

“Because if you don’t I’m going to blow up the frickin’ building with my frickin’ bomb! How many hostages do you think you’ll get out then?”

Brad slammed the phone down roughly and looked to the rest of the group, running his hand over his bald head. “They want a hostage before they’ll put me in touch with a negotiator. Frickin’ morons.”

“Well that’s just great. What are we going to do now?”

As one, the group of coffee shop goers turned terrorists regarded the hostages, each caught in their own thoughts.

~*~

Lou stood with the others in the beginning just like he was told. That is until the incredulous shock of what was happening to him wore off.

"Look, you'd do better to release us all now and turn yourselves in." The first statement was reasonable, despite the observation that these were not reasonable people.

"Come on, you're a bunch of kids. What makes you think you'll get away with this? Really?" He snorted at one of the terrorists and put his hands on his hips. The kid just looked at him for a moment, no yelling, no shooting, and this encouraged Lou to continue despite one of the hostages shaking her head at him with a pleading look in her eyes.

"Look I work for a very important law firm. You could make a case, maybe get a smaller sentence. I'm sure there was a misunderstanding." He sighed and reached for his water, taking a sip, he paused just long enough to swallow before going on.

"This can't be what you want out of life. You're going to throw everything away to save what? A coffee shop??!?" Lou laughed at the idiocy of it all. " See that's the problem with society today. They don't know what's good for them. Take this place for instance.."

With a deep breath Louis launched into his full blown "what's wrong with the world" speech.

"You come here and get a beverage that is wholly unhealthy for you, then you sit here all day drinking more of them and you've accomplished nothing.. that's right NOTHING. What a waste! You could do so much more with your lives!" He held up his water bottle to illustrate and pointed to himself. " Look at me, I'm a prime example of a reclaimed soul. I used to drink the 10 cups of coffee a day, smoke a pack of cigarettes while running around my job like a mad man, over worked and over weight but I tell you there's better things than this...this den of evil!" Lou pointed to the store around him with a look of a preacher who just found himself in a brothel.

"Stop the drinking and the smoking, go to the gym and get healthy and you'll find life will be so much better!"

He caught his reflection in the store front's glass and it only encouraged him that he was right.

"This will be the ruin of your lives but you can still have your health and that is the most important thing there is."

~*~

Thoroughly unimpressed by the loser’s lecture, Brad turned back to face the group at about the point where Lou really started to warm up to his topic, thus missing the most compelling part of the speech. “No backing out now, guys. Not when we’re so close. Just gotta figure out the best way to play this.”

Ellie frowned and seemed to gather her courage to speak after a moment of listening to Lou’s rant. “Maybe we should let one of them go, like the cops asked.”

The suggestion caused a brief clamor of arguments, ranging from Justin’s outcry of “We can’t give –the man- what they want!” to Mural’s more quiet “Whatever.” Brad mused over the matter as he fiddled with his lipring, pushing it back and forth with his tongue.

“Maybe Ellie’s right. We never wanted to take hostages anyway. I dunno, I just wish…”

Mural pushed her glasses up on her nose and muttered. “I just wish that idiot would shut up.”

Brad nodded in agreement and stood up, shouting. “How’s anyone supposed to get any frickin’ thinking done with all this noise?! Shut. Up.”

As soon as the words were out of Brad’s mouth, rather than realizing the inherent hypocrisy of his statement, he observed a small group huddling together in a corner and talking in low whispers. He remembered one of the hostage’s assurances to ‘take care’ of anyone who got out of hand, and sure hoped they planned on following through.

~*~

Now this kid was a prime example of wasted youth. Too pale, unfit, and he had...are those..safety pins in his wrist??! Lou decided reason was lost on this one, obviously he enjoyed causing himself pain so why would the good sense of better health get through to him.

"Shut up? No, I think this is something you NEED to hear. Look at you, man, tell me this makes you happy." Lou pointed to the tattoos and piercings with a disdainful eye. "SOME people in here would like more out of their lives. WE have jobs and loved ones." Not quite true in his case, all his loved ones had gotten tired of his preaching better health ages ago. He wasn't even invited to Christmas dinner anymore. "Just because you don't have enough sense to get off your lazy asses and DO something..."

Lou shook his head, obviously they thought this stunt WAS doing something. There was no understanding these people. He walked away, grabbing up his water bottle, before frustration caused him to seize one of the little freaks by the neck, THAT was sure to get him shot and, unlike these lunatics, HE had something to live for.

~*~

“You think what this guy says is true? You think he’s really got connections? Could be a problem if it’s true. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I don’t really care if he’s got connections; I just want him to shut the fuck up. I say we do him.”

~*~

Lou made his way to the back, still muttering darkly. His ranting lost some of its dignity, however, when he slipped a little on the floor and had to grab a nearby shelf to keep from falling, and he turned sharply to see if anyone else saw.

Nope. Quite alone back here…

And then with a metal clang and tremendous pain, the world went dark.

~*~

“Umph.”

Not the most coherent Lou had ever been, but one could hardly expect Shakespearean sonnets upon waking on the floor with a headache like a jackhammer. He eased himself up to sitting, wincing at the pain in the back of his head, and leaned carefully on the wall. Gingerly, he felt with his fingertips along the back of his head and hissed when he reached a nasty bruise.

“Looks like you’ve got yourself a bit of a bump there.”

Lou looked up, startled to find himself face to face with another hostage. How long had this person been standing there? How embarrassing; Louis Cannon, the picture of health and fitness, sprawled out on the floor clutching his head.

His eyes went wide.

“Someone –hit- me! They’re trying to kill us all!” Lou scowled and put the tattooed freak on his list of prime suspects.

With a mild head shake, the hostage smiled and held out a cup of coffee.

“Yes yes, that’s very nice. Why don’t you have a nice cuppa, calm your nerves some?”

Lou knew when he was being humored. Why could no one else see it? He figured that was just the story of his life, and took the coffee bitterly.

It took two sips for him to realize he had just ingested that vile substance he had sworn he would never drink again.

By then, it was far too late. Lou had declared many a time that coffee was akin to poison. In this case…he was right.

~*~

Justin looked at the group of hostages huddled together in front of the coffee shop and then began pacing back and forth down the line as he talked.

"Look, we're going to release one of you, okay?" He ran a hand through his already messy hair and continued walking. "They say that this will all work out if everyone remains calm. Okay, so everyone just...remain calm."

Justin looked anything but calm as he stopped walking and looked around him, only to start again.

"We're going to let you pick amongst yourselves. We're not bad people.." He gestured to himself and the others. "We just.. we've got to save this place, see? Its not right and next thing you know everything will be Starbucks, Walmart and...and MacDonalds!"

"THIS is what we're fighting! We don't want to hurt anybody, we just want them to understand that this can't go on! It’s just wrong!"

Justin stopped again and fidgeted with his shirt tale a moment, briefly glancing at the group of people.

"So, uhm, pick somebody to leave, okay?"

~*~

Mural was doing her own fair share of muttering as she retreated to the back, though she had the decency to be quiet about it.

“Oh –Mural- won’t mind getting the hostages something to eat. Don’t get up, -Mural- can do it! What do I look like, their mother?”

Finding a descent sized soup caldron, she turned to leave when she caught the sight of a sneaker…attached to a foot…attached to…the health nut. On the floor. Unconscious or something. Fantastic.

She looked around, taking in the broken coffee cup and a dented metal coffee pot sitting nearby. Hmm.

Shrugging, she hauled the cauldron into the front and set it on a heater, then headed for the walk in freezer to get some frozen soup. Figuring she ought to at least say –something- about the incapacitated hostage, she looked to the rest of the group and said in a flat voice:

“That health nut is passed out in the back by the way. Thought you should know.”