prompt: Sigrun and Cherryblod being total badasses and kicking butt, mob au. roles

Sigrun honestly can't pinpoint what surprises her most: that she found the sweetheart owner of the Delilah Café in the murkiest part of town, unharmed and looking more at-ease than any civilian had a right to in such a dangerous place, or that he fights better than any civilian she's ever known. He's a good man to have pressed to her back, a knife looking right at home in his hand, and Sigrun grins at him over her shoulder.

"When were you gonna plan on telling me you moonlighted as a self-defense instructor, Cherry? You nearly gave me a heart-attack walking around here like that!"

Cherryblod shrugs with a small smile, not answering, which is fine; not everyone chats the way she does in the middle of a fight, carrying conversation with an ease that makes her new superiors grind their teeth whenever they hear about it. Sigrun ducks out of the way of a knife, feeling Cherryblod swing to the left to catch the man off-guard around the side; she levels a clean shot at another man's neck, wincing when he goes down against a dumpster like a bag of potatoes. That'd smart in the morning, she's sure of it—as if being dead wasn't going to be enough of a problem on its own, really.

She almost gives a start when Cherryblod's knife slides neatly past her face and into someone else's, her cheek stinging with a shallow slice from it; he lets go of the weapon while her would-be attacker stumbles back, hands half-up to his eye as if unsure whether or not he should pull the knife out.

She's pretty sure he shouldn't.

Which she rethinks anyway the second Cherryblod brushes past her and slams the heel of his hand into the bottom of the knife, driving it deeper into the mobster's eye socket. He screams for just a second before dropping down, maybe dead? She's no doctor—that'd be Bruce, despite his insistence that lab chemist is not the same as Doctor, Sergeant—but she is pretty fucking sure that people die if a knife goes right to their brain.

Preeetty fucking sure.

That's three of their opponents down for the count, joining the two they'd dispatched separately; the last one's bigger than the rest and looking fairly nervous at the state of affairs, and Sigrun twirls her gun around her finger. Cherryblod gives her a look that she's also pretty fucking sure says what are you doing, but she ignores it; she's gotten the same look from fellow officers before.

"You're better off livin' there, buddy." For her anyway, and something like annoyance flits over Cherryblod's face. Sigrun regards him curiously out of the corner of her eye, but decides to file it away for later, just like the rest of her questions. "Your friends probably aren't gonna make it, but you can, so just come easy, all right? We're gonna ask you some questions and then you get to spend the rest of your life behind bars, just like every other criminal."

"I'd rather die," their last man standing replies, voice shaking something awful, and Sigrun knows that if she pushes his chance at life one more time, just one more time, he'll break and come with her and spill everything he knows about the underground—it might not be a lot, but it'll be a little more than they know now, and-

and just like every time she's tried the same trick, someone interrupts. Usually it's a hitman or vigilante, finding money or justice in what is irrevocably her business; sometimes it's one of her own men, on the excuse that they've been here longer and they can tell when someone's going to actually be useful. (It's in the eyes, they say.)

Today it's Cherryblod, cleanly slicing the big guy's throat; he's very calm, very methodical when he steps back and wipes it on the dying man's shirt to clean it, and Sigrun stares at him with her mouth agape.

Her last line of info falls to the ground with a gurgle. Cherryblod turns to her with a faint, tight smile before he seems to realize something; the expression switches to abashed, the knife hiding somewhere out of sight, and he seems at a loss for words before he clears his throat and tilts his head at the blood pooling around his feet.

"Was worried he'd go for a last-ditch effort there. A lot of people do."

"No problem," she replies after a moment, sliding her gun back in its holster, and studies him before clapping a hand on his shoulder. "How about you and me go to the bar and talk about all your neat skills I never knew you had! My treat."

Cherryblod looks, for a moment, like he'd rather do literally anything else—but it passes as quick as it comes and he nods, following her out with a careful watch over their shoulders.