Arci grumbled quietly to himself. Work. Work shouldn't be compulsory, but he had rent to pay and food... plus saving up for an actually defensive suit. Crime fighting in spandex only works as long as you manage to not get hit, ever. He was wearing a faded band tee shirt and some fairly loose pants, both kinda baggy and well within the 'dress code' of his work place. If Arci was gonna work somewhere, it'd be an independent.
Used Record Store is pretty Independent.
The skunk had his distinctive hair tied back into a snug ponytail nearly between the bases of his ears, which along with his blue-framed glasses differentiated from his look when out on the streets at night. He wore sneakers instead of his fighting boots, no gloves, no big jacket. He kept his tail folded nearly up against his back whenever he remembered to do so, so as to not let the big fluffy thing bump into the racks of vinyls or customers. Basically the only things he couldn't change easily about his appearance were his height and species.
Unlike that Mask he met his first night here. Turned out he was as changeable as his suit. Damn expensive tech suit. Arci grumbled to himself again quietly. Morpheus had given him a card with a hand-written scribble of a phone number, a 'secure line' hopefully.
Arci had just tossed the card in amongst the clutter on his desk next to his computer in his apartment. Maybe he'd be a good resource, but the skunk was still grating over having to be saved like that. It had been a couple weeks since that happened, but there was more to grate on his mind.
The skunk mindlessly put the new arrivals into alphabetical order by artist in the racks, while his mind kept doggedly returning to his failure the night before.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Arci stood at the edge of a building, eyes closed as he listened for any disturbances. There was the occasional car going by on the street below. The bars had had last call already. The skunk perked at the sound of a truck. A delivery might get made at this time in the morning, but it was still something to check out. He turned in the direction the sound came from, ran at the half-wall lining the building, put his hands palm-down onto it, and pushed off. He halted his horizontal rotation and let the rest of his momentum carry him to the next roof and cancelled the rest when he touched down. Unleashing just enough to keep him from having to use too much energy getting up to speed running again, he repeated this, working his way from rooftop to rooftop.
He halted atop a half-wall of the façade of a building overlooking a warehouse's loading bay. He froze. He recognized those mooks. Dominion again.
The skunk dug in his jacket, and eased a pair of earbuds up to his ears, snugly putting them in place. Through the vinyl of the faux leather he could just feel the buttons on his MP3 player, and pressed play, before adjusting the volume. He cringed a little and backed off just enough so it wasn't painful. He was intending to drown out anything the wolf might say. Sure the buds were in place and the player wouldn't unplug itself with his movements, Arci leapt off of the façade, towards the multitude of bunny henchmen.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Arci checked the checklist of tasks for the day his Boss had left before heading out. The bear had left the skunk alone with an opossum, his coworker, who had been here quite some time, and a good percent of the time since Arci had arrived, had been stoned on duty.
The shop seemed pretty empty, so Arci was doing the next thing to be done. There was a crate of records that hadn't been able to fit in the racks last time they re-organized, mostly doubles and triples, and the racks had now gotten thinned out enough by regular operation the boss thought they might fit.
The skunk set up a ladder up against the wall, looking at where the crate was housed. As he reached out for the crate, dragging it a bit to the edge, he grumbled again. Seeing the crate was reminding him of the heist he'd attempted to stop, like the other heist he'd interrupted and had to be dragged to safety from. Ugh. He grunted and dragged the crate into his arms and hopped down off the ladder, cancelling his momentum twice on the way down, and again before hitting the floor.
From the counter, he heard his coworker's voice. "Woah... dude, how'd you do that."
Arci bristled, before turning around, holding tightly to the crate as he made his way out towards the racks. "Do what?"
The opossum was still staring, his head braced up by one hand that was on the counter. "You like..." He gestured falling with his free hand, stopping and starting, but he added a sway like a leaf fluttering back and forth. "Slowed down." He concluded.
Arci bit his lip, and then gave a forced chuckle. "You know you can get in trouble for eating Edibles before your shift, right?"
"No way, Bossman's cool! His brother's got a dispensary!" The marsupial sat up indignantly.
Arci sat the crate down and started digging through the records inside. "Got nothing to do with workplace etiquette, bruh." He perked, as a well-dressed rabbit woman with a wireless headset entered the shop. "If you need help finding anything, feel free to ask."
The customer nodded silently, before walking into a row of racks not occupied by the skunk.
"I'm not high, anyway, dude." The opossum insisted, apparently unaware of the customer, or at least not caring.
Arci rolled his eyes and resumed transferring records from the crate to the racks.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The skunk's boot struck a helmet so firmly he sent the bunny inside flying.
The wolf in the shadows of one of the open bay doors watched. Dominion knew he'd see the inexperienced skunk again; it was only a matter of time. He cleared his throat, and let his mellifluous voice strike the air. "Arci, stop."
The mephit leapt horizontally over another mook, arms crossed over his chest while his tail formed a helix around his spinning body, directing blows away like an auger before he effortlessly landed on the other side, spinning on his toe like a figure skater, allowing his extended boot in front and his long bushy tail in back to continue striking out.
Dominion winced, rubbing his temple, before adjusting his glasses and stepping into the light. The acoustics of the space changed as he moved, and one of his ears twitched. Faintly, tinny music reached his ears. It sounded as though the speaker was spinning.
The effect stopped as Arci abruptly stopped his rotation for a straight out punch, knocking one of the wolf's minions over another one that was on hands and knees trying to stand just behind. The reduction of movement also allowed the white of the earbud and cable to stand out starkly from the skunk's fur just above the popped collar of his jacket.
Dominion scowled. Blasting his eardrums out to disrupt the wolf's voice. Not the most civilized reaction to attempts at genteel conversation. He watched the fight continue onward. He was about to reach for his com to just call Aesc in to just use that ray gun of his when he paused. A slow grin began to spread across his face. He knew this song.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
While Arci sorted the vinyls, several other customers came in. Each he paused to greet. None said a word, each nodding like the rabbit had, and dispersing to other parts of the shop. By the time the skunk finished filling the gaps in the racks, there were about half a dozen customers browsing. Not one had found a selection yet it seemed.
The skunk picked up the empty crate and carried it back to the nook beneath the shelf he'd gotten it from, and set it on its side for the time being. As he returned to the shop, the bell above the door rang again.
A tall wolf man in some oblong round glasses, a button up shirt, snug jeans, and a red scarf looped around his neck once came into the shop.
Arci smiled. "If you need help finding anything, feel free to ask." The skunk approached, noting the deep green of the lupine's eyes behind his glasses.
The wolf spoke with a light tenor, smiling softly. "Oh, I just wanted to check this shop out. Hard to find a place dealing in older records, you know."
"Yeah, I know what you mean. Vinyl's rare, even if the big box stores are trying to court the market with their fresh digital presses of the biggest hits." The skunk nodded.
"Oh, I tried one of those once." The customer winced and rubbed his temple, before adjusting his glasses. "Compressed for MP3 format when it had all the nuance of physical media to work with." He chuckled. "I'm a real audiophile, you know. It's why I prefer analogue."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Arci punched another mook down, panting heavily. For some reason he was getting frustrated. He hadn't been successfully struck by one of the rabbits yet, and he seemed to be working through their numbers. He had a moment to pause and breathe, having cleared a space for himself in the grouping with that last strike. He looked around, catching a glimpse of Dominion watching nearby.
Ha, let him try to use his dumb magic voice. The skunk smirked, but looked again.
Dominion was indeed talking. But his lips were...
Arci's eyes widened. The wolf was saying the lyrics of the song he was listening to, a loud angry track about being trapped. No, he wasn't just saying it. He could hear his voice cutting through the track. The supervillain was singing.
His frustration, his building anger... The skunk slapped his jacket pocket, forcing the MP3 player inside to skip tracks, entering an instrumental intro of another song. In the latent lull between tracks he heard a footstep behind him, and twisted, managing to avoid a lunging strike, grasping the minion and carrying his motion around into flipping the rabbit onto his back.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"I don't really mind the compression that much. At least, in isolation." Arci casually replied to the handsome wolf customer. "I mean, I can't exactly go lugging a record player around on my back when I go to the gym, and getting an adapter for earbuds to go into a big hi-fi sound system is a hassle."
The lupine tilted his head a bit. "Oh? But there's so much you lose in the digitization process. The warmth of analogue pulses, one to one of the vibrating air to the mic to the recording device." The customer beamed. "And then played back, it's the exact same signal to the speaker, the exact same vibrations. Nothing tampered with unless you introduce something in between." As he spoke began to walk along the column of racks, as if moving to check out some vinyls.
Arci arched his brow incredulously. "I mean, sure it's closer, but it'll never be exact. The best microphone and the best cable and the best medium and the best speaker will all have some loss." He turned towards the point he thought the wolf was moving, finding no one, and turned further, finding the customer smiling down at him, what was just behind him before he turned. "That's like... thermodynamics." He found a blush coming to his cheeks the way the larger male was looking at him.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Skip! The skunk wished he hadn't filled this playlist with frenetic music now. Each time the lyrics of the next song started up, he heard Dominion singing along. He'd found the crack in the spinning skunk's plan. Arci grunted, tossing another rabbit off of him. He was making mistakes now, and he knew that he'd just get sloppier the more the wolf worked on him. Skip! Goddamn it, where's the word-free techno I put in this damn playlist?
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Oh, I couldn't agree more. The best playback is the voice." The wolf spoke softly, his voice deepening.
Arci blushed a bit deeper, turning back towards the racks to hide the glow on his cheeks and up into his ears as he pretended he was straightening up the record sleeves. "I don't get out to live shows that often. Costs an arm and a leg."
"What about a private performance...?" The customer crooned in a sing-song tone, his tenor given way to a smooth baritone.
The skunk fidgeted, eyes widening as he saw the larger male's arms on either side of him, pressing to the rack, trapping him in place. The smaller male swallowed. Some part of him wanted to just lean back and let the handsome lupine embrace him. Another part of him wondered where he had heard that voice before. It was deeply familiar. Was he actually a singer in a band? Did he usually wear something different on stage and that's why he didn't recognize the male?
Bashfully, Arci pressed his way free of the domineering pose, easily ducking under one strong seeming arm and starting to walk towards the counter. "If you need anything, sir, you should ask..."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
All of the minions were either on the ground or keeping their distance now. Arci reached to slap the skip button again, when a hand caught his wrist. Twisting, the skunk froze.
Dominion was right there, holding his arm just between his sleeve and the base of his glove. The wolf's red eyes almost glowed behind his angular glasses. He continued to sing, close enough that it was replacing the singer in the skunk's headphones entirely now.
Arci wrenched his arm free, releasing angular momentum to turn the motion into a spinning kick.
The wolf grinned, reading the movement, and stooped, not to duck under the kick, but to grasp under the aspiring superhero's thigh, his chest pressing against the mephit's shoulder blades, as he lifted, treating the attack as part of a choreographed dance, spinning to diffuse the momentum. His long coat flared behind him from the movement, just adding to the effect.
The skunk squeaked in alarm, and wrapped his tail back and around, pinning the villain's arms to his sides as he used that leverage to lift his hips away and leaned his head back in a sharp reverse head-butt.
Dominion tilted his head out of the way, and with a low growl planted a teasing kiss on the skunk's cheek just below the strap of his goggles.
Arci's eyes widened. He raised one leg forward, adding to the wound up potential with a release of stored momentum, bringing the heel of his boot back against one of the armored glaives of the villain's power suit.
Like a Newton's Cradle he displaced that leg and planted his boot down, gaining leverage for the next move. He raised both hands and grasped the back of the wolf's head before bending forward sharply, his tail pushing up at the same time.
Dominion went flying, a spin added by the skunk's tail having been coiled on his torso. The wolf spread his legs in midair, slowing his rotation, and landed on one foot, before dropping the other to its side. The whole time, his singing had not hitched. He had not stopped when struck, or thrown, and was continuing his auditory assault on the increasingly panicked mephit.
Arci twisted around. He was running out of his reserves of stored momentum. He'd expended so much energy fighting off all those mooks, and was nearing his limit. Even if he wasn't, the wolf would have been hard to deal with. The skunk moved to bolt, towards the exit of the loading bay.
He felt the gloved hands close on his wrist again, and more alarmingly, its partner tug the wire of his earbud on that side free. The wolf growled, tugging at the skunk's wrist. "Got you." Dominion poured his will into those two words, sending them echoing through the would-be hero's mind.
The mephit's eyes widened and his panic reached a point beyond thought. He pushed his tail backwards, pouring the rest of his stored momentum into launching himself away from the wolf.
Arci landed some twenty feet away, and ran, not looking back, frantically putting the bud back in his ear before the wolf could give an order. The skunk ran, not even paying attention to where he was going until he was sure he was clear.
He leaned against a building and sighed, exhausted. He looked at his hands, which were shaking from the adrenaline. Arci shuddered. His glove was gone.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The customer grasped Arci's wrist from behind.
The skunk fluffed up, flustered. "Sir..." He trailed off, his blood running cold.
The wolf's free hand was holding a very familiar purple pleather fingerless glove in front of his eyes. That unmistakable voice resonated directly into his ear. "Got you."
Arci cried out. There was the skidding of shoes on hardwood. He felt the residual lingering touch on his wrist but no remaining pressure. His glove had flopped to the ground. He turned his head slowly.
About fifteen feet behind him, nearly at the door of the shop, the wolf had his arms crossed in front of his face. When he lowered them, the green was gone, the familiar red of Dominion's eyes shone from behind the civilian glasses.
The skunk stooped to grasp his glove and then ran, vaulting the counter and into the back room of the shop. From there he grabbed all his things he'd left in the cubby and slammed the employee entrance open, dashing out into the late afternoon light.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Dominion felt Arci's wrist once again torn from his grasp. He opened his other hand, trying to grasp at the skunk. The wolf's eyes widened. He'd felt nothing, but the shop moving around him told him that the young super had sent him flying, instead of launching himself. He dug the rubber soles of his 'civilian' shoes into the hardwood, bringing his arms up in front of his face to shift his center of gravity. The friction from his shoes decelerated his body unevenly, but shifting his center of mass further by bending forward slightly kept him from toppling backwards. He came to a stop and stood upright, before lowering his arms.
The wolf watched his quarry stare for a mere moment, before Arci grasped the dropped glove and ran right out of the shop.
The opossum behind the counter turned to watch as the mephit flew past, and then looked back towards the wolf. "Y-you aren't gonna sue, are you, dude...?"
The business-dress rabbit woman tapped her wireless headset. "Attention Hound Squad. He's on the move."
"No." Dominion held a hand up. "Let him go. He knows we know who he is. Let him stew in that."
She nodded, and gestured. All of the 'customers' started to file out of the shop.
The clerk at the counter swallowed. "W-what just happened..?"
Dominion smiled. "Your friend had to go home because he wasn't feeling well. You'll cover for him, right?"
The opossum blinked, and nodded. "Y-yeah, dude. Yeah. I hope he's okay."
"He's mine." The wolf chuckled a bit to himself and started out of the shop.
"What...?" The marsupial called after him.
"He's fine." Dominion pressed the door open and stepped out onto the street.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Arci slammed his door shut, threw his glove on the bed, and dug through the clutter on his desk. It took him longer than he'd like to find the little card. He slammed it on top of his closed laptop and tugged out his cell phone, carefully punching the digits in.
The skunk didn't wait for the Mask on the other end to even greet him, once he heard the call pick up he blurted out: "He showed up at my work!"
"Woah, woah. Arci?" Morpheus' voice came through the speaker on the phone. "He who? There's a few of those around. Breathe."
Arci turned away from his desk, looking at his glove in his hand. "Dominion." He took a deep breath closing his eyes. "He walked in, dressed in normal everyday people clothes." He opened his eyes and blushing a bit, glanced around. "I think he was flirting with me?" The mephit felt his voice belie that he was not really calming down at all.
Morpheus was quiet for a long moment. The skunk was about to ask if he was still there when he spoke again. "...are you alright? He just spoke? Nothing else...?"
"He... Uh." The mephit swallowed. "He returned the glove he took off me last night." He fidgeted with the glove, rubbing his thumb across its palm. "And then I threw him across the shop before I knew what I was doing."
"Lay low for a while." The Mask spoke in a soothing tone of voice. "Maybe don't stay at your place tonight. He, ah..." He trailed off for a moment, before finishing. "He's been known to make house calls."
"Shit." Arci glanced at his door, thankfully locked. He looked at the glove and then towards the closet where he had his costume. "Shit shit shit shit." The skunk pinned his phone to his ear with his shoulder and started to pack his costume into a backpack, starting with the glove, both boots, etc. with the goggles on top, put a soft tee shirt on top of that so that the rest was semi-hidden, and zipped up that pouch, then he put his laptop in the larger pouch, unplugging the power source from the wall and pushing it in. He then yanked his phone charger from the power strip and stuffed that in as well. "I don't know where to go." He realized. The mephit slumped against the desk with a groan.
He just moved here weeks ago, the only people he knew were from his new job, and his boss and his stoner coworker weren't good ideas. And, well, his other job...
"...Can I stay at your place? Is that overstepping?" The skunk rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand, taking the phone back into his other hand.
Morpheus was quiet for a little bit, before sighing. "Let's catch up for dinner." He was maintaining an even voice as best as he could, but Arci could tell that he was tense as well. "There's this nice place downtown. Brown and Bronwyn. Remember to breathe."
Arci nodded even though the other Mask couldn't see him. "Okay, breathing..." He grasped an old grocery list off the desk and found an empty spot. He scribbled down 'Brown & Bron' before he furrowed his brow. "How do you spell Bronwyn?"
"With a Y." Morpheus responded. "I'll be there before you."
"Okay." The skunk finished scribbling it down. "See you there." He hung up and flipped to his map app to plug that intersection in. While it thought about it he zipped up his bag, and double-checked the lock on the door.
Once he was sure it was locked, he tossed his backpack onto his back, put in his earbuds, and turned on a podcast- something someone couldn't sing along to- and opened the window. Unlike when he went on patrol, he didn't jump to the nearby rooftop. He dropped out of it and landed lightly in the alley, before making his way downtown, walking fast.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Dominion stood in the hallway outside the apartment door. He'd heard the locks rattle minutes ago, but then footsteps on the other side of the door heading back into the depths of the space. It had been quiet ever since. The wolf perked as his wireless earpiece beeped an alert. He tapped the device with a finger. "Report."
"Sir, the tracking chip is headed downtown." The professional rabbit woman's voice piped directly into his ear.
The lupine huffed, and turned to head down the hall towards the way out.
forest-wolf 's birthday last month I decided to do a followup to 
