Board Thread:Role Plays/@comment-24595669-20160322024131/@comment-25389303-20160410081837

Smile froze the second he heard the voice from inside the building, and his hand instinctively went to the knife which hung on his belt, but he managed to stop himself before he made any obvious movements.

He turned his head to the speaker, and was pleasantly surprised to find it was just a student who had challenged him. A first or second year, from what he could tell - nothing he couldn't handle easily enough. The problem was, he'd found, was that they rarely travelled the city without a team these days. From what he could tell, though, he seemed to be without backup.

Nonetheless, Smiler decided to take a calm, measured approach, just in case. If it were up to him he would have just snuck up behind him in the street and slit his throat, but while he never really liked direct confrontations, he couldn't just leave either.

Instead of a knife, he reached into the folds of his trench coat and pulled out a small device instead. While keeping his eyes fixed on the newcomer, he quickly pressed one of the buttons. That would activate an emergency beacon which summoned any nearby Patched members to his location. With any luck, he should have a sizable force gathering right outside the building within minutes.

Next, he pressed a second button on the device. This one activated the new voice modulator he had had implanted a couple of days ago. It was designed to make it easier and less painful to speak, but Smiler was instantly beset by a sharp pain in his throat as the device took effect, and for a few seconds he resisted the urge to claw the bloody thing out of his neck. Too make matters worse, the device in his hand then sparked and died in his hand.

...Damned thing...

As the pain subsided, Smiler's thoughts turned back to the situation at hand. The student eyed him suspiciously, still waiting for an answer.

"I suppose..." he said slowly, "...that means that you're not in your right mind either, then." His new voice was strange - metallic and robotic, as if someone had autotuned it, but something went horribly wrong in the process. It sounded nothing like his original voice, but it would do for now.

"It's dangerous to be wandering the streets by yourself, you know...they're still full Grimm and..." his grin widened as he spoke, "...evil people."

He began advancing towards the student, and slowly his hand fell to his side, drawing out his long, dagger-like knife, swinging it lightly around cheerfully as he spoke. He saw the student tense slightly, but whether it was because of the sight of his knife, the large scars on the sides of his mouth, or something entirely, he didn't know. Nor did he really care.

"I've seen quite a few groups of students wandering the streets these past few weeks," he continued. "It's quite annoying, actually. It makes them so much harder to KILL!"

With the final word, Smiler slammed the knife deep into the wooden countertop barely a meter away from where the student was standing, the knife piercing the expensive mahogany - its ten-inch blade rattling as it stuck. Smiler stared into the student's face, any humor in his eyes having suddenly vanished, and yet his smile only widened further, revealing rows of sharp, filed white teeth.

"I've answered your question, now you'll answer mine," he said coldly, roughly pulling the knife out of the wood and casually pointing it at the young man's chest. "Depending on your answer, I may let you live. So...why did you come here ''alone?" ''