| Darts and Other Drugs |
| Summary: | Tanya Tu Yun Li heads to Harry's Bar to relax with a beer, and meets Cable — who is bringing someone else with him… Darts and other pastimes ensue. |
| Date: | IC Date (2016-06-15) |
| Related: | None |
| NPCs: | William "Bill" Greene (drug dealer) |
| Scene Runner: | NA |
| Social/Plot: | Social |
| Players: |
 .. .. |
Harry's Bar can best be described as comfortable. The furnishings, mostly darkly stained wood, are old and scratched. The leather seats are worn and cracking in places. Despite the worn appearance, the proprietor keeps the place relatively clean. The back corner is devoted to a dart board and pool table, while booths spread along the other walls. Tables take up the middle of the room, while a long bar stretches along the left wall. Bar stools cozy up next to it, while the traditional array of bottles and mirrors take up the wall behind the bar. An old jukebox is squeezed in between two booths by the bar.
Fade in…
The jukebox is out of order.
It says so on a piece of cardboard stuck to the front of it with duct-tape, hastily scrawled in black marker. Harry's Hideaway is quieter than usual — largely due to the absence of any real music. The TV on the wall is switched on, showing re-runs of the last game, with some mildly interested patrons staring up at it, nursing their drinks.
Others sit at tables, booths or along the bar talking with one another.
Into this mix strides a man who is a head and shoulders taller than the tallest of patrons in the bar. He wears gloves on his hands. His long, brown duster flaps against his army-boots as he walks, and he has a white left eye (to make his white hair). Grunting, the fellow strides toward the bar…
Dragging a much smaller man — weasel-faced, sporting a black eye — by the elbow. His 'friend' has his hands cuffed together in front of him, and looks like he would rather be ANYWHERE but with his captor.
"Uh…" stammers the little fellow. "Can I-can I, uh… get a beer? Kinda dyin' o' thirst here, if ya know what'm sayin'…Uh. Please? Hey, ow!" The big man roughly makes the little guy sit on a stool at the bar.
"Got'cha, sucker!" cries Tanya, a few dozen steps away from the dart board. She's dressed in her motorcycle leathers, her gloves and do-rag on the bar nearby, next to her chocolate-brown house cat and her mug of half-drained beer. That particular evening, she'd been playing darts for money, and actually coming out a little bit ahead. Not by a lot, but enough to pay for her next glass of beer. Her last dart wasn't really near the bull's-eye, either; it just happened to be closer to it than the rotund man she was playing against. All things considered, she was having fun.
Until, that is, the ruckus started. Peering over her sunglasses, she watches the — whatever he is — dragging the little guy in. Hopefully it's a bounty or something, 'cause she really isn't looking forward to getting her clock cleaned — but that isn't going to stop her from investigating.
"What, some kind'a bounty hunter after white-collar shit?" she asks good-naturedly as she eases onto her stool, facing large-and-hairy and small-and-weasely.
"'Some kinda'?" the bounty hunter asks of the woman, briefly giving her a once-over as he leans against the bar. He does not sit down. After a brief pause, the man grunts a: "Somethin' like that," and lifts a gloved finger to get the bartender's attention.
"A beer."
"Uh, make that two," interjects the little weasel-faced fellow sitting forlornly on the stool — only to cringe as his captor moves his pointing finger in front of the other guy's face. Glaring.
The captive hangs his head down, hands upon the bar-counter, his forehead resting on his hands. A few seconds pass before he turns his head to the side a little, so he can look across the bar, under Cable's arms, at Tanya.
"Hey," is all he says.
Cable gets his beer and downs a mouthful.
"Can I play darts, man?" asks the captive. "I like darts." He directs that last comment to Tanya, offering a wan smile on his bruised face.
Well. Everything /seems/ legit—though considering her recent track record concerning judging people and their motivations, Tanya isn't quite willing to let it go just yet. Not that she's going to press the issue overtly — people with metal for limbs can punch her through a wall so hard she comes out last Tuesday and causes a paradox. So — she shrugs, then pushes herself off her stool again.
"Alright," she says with a grin, pausing only long enough on her journey back to the dartboard to scratch the cat between and behind his ears, "three legs, no leg handicap bet, quarter a point — unless you call your shot. Call it and make it, get a buck. Call it and don't, lose a buck. We clear?" Simple rules, and given as she grins up at him — and up and up, considering he's a full foot taller than she is. Not that she lets that stand between her and a friendly opponent.
Cable snorts.
He almost smirks.
Lifting his beer-glass, the brute of a man drains it in a single go and then replaces it on the counter. Looking askance at 'Weasley', he jabs an index finger at the man's lap, causing him to flinch, and mutters:
"Stay."
Cable pushes off from the bar and walks over toward the dart-board. Folding his arms across his chest, the burly fellow's lips pinch together at the corner of his mouth — in something of a half-smirk, half- 'yeah, right' expression — and he eyes the board.
"You reckon you got game, Sparky?" he challenges, picking a moniker in reference to her attitude… which he appears to like. He looks at the board again and frowns. "What're the target areas mean?" he asks. "Double/triple points?"
Apparently he has never played darts before.
"You gotta get the b — ," 'Weasley' tries to help by calling out, only to have Cable thrust a single finger upward, and then slowly level it in the little man's direction (rather like the barrel of a gun). Weasley shuts up.
"Last week, this kid said he didn't know shit 'bout darts," Tanya says conversationally as she yanks six darts from the board. "Little fucker cleaned me out, so don't think I'm buyin' yer shit, man." She grins up at him, there, the expression actually genuinely warm. Anyone who can sling shit in a friendly way is alright by her. She's much more comfortable around those sorts; she understands the rules of those interactions a bit better. Put her in a "posh" environment and — well, she proved how much that gets to her too recently for her taste.
She hands the three blue-ended darts to him, keeping the three red ones for herself, and as she does so she adds, "Outer-est part — black wit'a numbers — don't mean shit. Dart hits that, got'a 'flat tire'. Multi-colored ring just in'a that — double points. Wedges in the center — get the numbers for points. Multi-colored ring middle'a the wedges — triple points. Dot at the very center — that's the bulls'-eye. Green bit 'round it's twenty-five points, red bit right'n'a center's fifty."
A beat to let him absorb that, then, "Got it, Snow White, or we need'a draw a diagram?" Once more, that grin comes to her face.
Cable's left eye — the white one — glints.
The glint is almost a flash, a literal glow, but fades too quickly for any casual observer to tell. Putting his hands together, he quietly pulls off the glove on his right hand, revealing tanned flesh and ivory hairs on the back — and sticks the glove in his coat pocket.
"You draw too, huh?" he retorts with a half-snort and a sidelong glance at the woman, his opponent. The man rolls his shoulders, then cracks his neck with a leftward tilt followed by another to the right. It cracks loudly. It's all showmanship, posturing, just enough to be 'fun' — without 'trying too hard'.
"A buck a point," he repeats, then fishes out his wallet and tosses a twenty-dollar bill on the table beside them. He holds out his hand for the darts and grunts: "Yer on. Twenty. Challenger or smart-ass first?" He seems to think it will be 'challenger', but could not resist the jibe at the same time.
Weasley, meanwhile, lets his head 'thud' down on his cuffed hands in an approximation of a 'facepalm' (hard to do in handcuffs).
On the one hand, Tanya is not a casual observer since she's looking right at him. On the other, just in the last few days, she's met people — personally met them — who have legitimately white skin, or who fly around in tin cans, and so on, and she works with a few bottom-rung mutants. The eye-flash is noted and filed away somewhere to be doubtless forgotten about, since it's not terribly uncommon in a city with such a large number of people who thinks clashing primary colors makes a good fashion choice.
"Full buck a point?" she repeats, that grin cocking up at the left corner of her mouth. "Alright. Twenty to start shit off, then." As she reaches into her jacket with her right hand, she adds, "And ladies first, or didn't yer ma' never teach ya manners?" Pulling out an old and battered wallet, she takes a wrinkled twenty from it and tosses it onto Cable's.
"By the bye — name's Tanya," she says as she turns and aims her dart.
"Nate," Cable replies.
"Bill!" says 'Weasley', his voice slightly muffled from having his head buried in his hand-cuffed hands on the bar-counter.
Nate glares at him.
Turning back toward Tanya, the big man lowers his hand to his side (no longer holding it out to take the darts) and slowly, deliberately folds his arms over his broad chest. "So it's like that, is it?" he demands — referring to the 'ladies first' comment. There's no smile on his face; it is all 'challenge!'… but the light in his eyes dances.
No, it is not a manifestation of his powers, but rather simple mirth. Taking a single step back, he motions with just the fingers of his right hand (still folded over his left) toward Tanya. "Board's yers, Sparky. Winner buys a round."
Fair, since the winner will have most (if not all) the cash.
"Got'a admit, 'Sparky' ain't the worst thing I been called, Nate," says the pink-haired spitfire in question, putting a bit of a ribbing emphasis on the tall man's name. "Probably the /best/ thing I been called'n forever." With that, she launches the dart, missing the double-point ring on the number-Four wedge by a hair and some air. "Mother fucker…" she grumbles good-naturedly, then steps back to the bar to let Nate take his shot, and finish off the last of her beer, to boot. And besides, Baudelaire looks like he's getting antsy, more from boredom than anything else. A bar isn't exactly a haven of curiosities and such for house cats.
The big man 'hmphs' in good humour, both at the shot and at Tanya. "Ya kiss yer mother with that mouth?" he asks, not looking offended at her choice of expletive in the slightest. He is even smirking… just a little.
Taking a dart, the mercenary/bounty hunter takes up position at the 'throw-line' and prepares for his shot. Over by the bar there is a faint chink of metal on metal, followed by the scrape of a stool-leg against the polished floor. Cable's brow furrows into a frown of reproach, accompanied by a rumble deep in his throat.
He throws.
Bill yelps.
The dart is embedded in the bar, pinning the weasel-faced man's shirt-cuff there. Bill stands there stock-still, half rising from his stool, half-stepping away, his eyes squeezed shut and face screwed up.
"Good shot," says Bill, his eyes still closed. "Good shot, boss."
"I was aimin' fer yer hand," Cable grunts, and as his detainee sits back down he takes another dart and looks at Tanya. "Sorry about that. Where were we… ah." Nate resumes his position, raises the dart, takes aim, and throws…
"Nope — kiss yours," replies Tanya immediately, likely showing it's a knee-jerk ribbing right back. And yes, she ignores the — interesting — way Nate has of ensuring Bill's continued presence. Not exactly the most subtle thing she's ever seen, but she's already cluing in that "subtlety" isn't exactly in this guy's vocabulary. Considering she looks like — well, her — she isn't exactly fond of subtlety, herself, so that's no point-loss.
"What's the story with this guy, anyway?" she asks with a jerk of her head toward Bill, and she ignores Cable basically taking a second shot without waiting his turn. She's more curious in the bounty-bit right then, anyway.
Cable looks down and to the side at Tanya, staring for a bit, then shifts his attention back to the board. "Yer alright," he tells her as the game resumes.
Back and forth the two opponents take turns throwing darts at the board, occasionally making comments, quips, and the like. By the time the match is over, both contenders have a modest audience, some cheering on the guy, others the gal. Mostly, however, they're just there to hear the banter.
Twenty or so minutes later…
"…caught 'im sellin' drugs ta kids," Nate tells Tanya over a beer, referring to Bill — who also sits at the table. Drinking water.
"They weren't mine…" Bill whimpers into his hands, his voice barely audible. "I was just holdin' them for a friend, honest…"
"Figured he could use a life-lesson or two before handin' him off ta the cops." Nate puts down his beer and looks across at Tanya. "So what's yer story? Ya play a mean game o' darts." There's no mention of whom actually won said game.
"Not a whole lot'a say," Tanya says with a shrug as she slides her empty mug toward the bartender a little in that universal sign for "MORE PLEASE". "Raised in'a Bronx, moved to Manhattan, work at a car shop, couch-surfing 'til I find a place'a my own again — can y'fuckn' b'lieve the 'gentrification' shit?" That last said with more "macabre amusement" than any true ire. "Lived in Harlem for, y'know, ever, but then my buildin' got bought out, we got eviction notices, it gets revamped, then suddenly they can charge a bazillion times the rent for each apartment. Fuckers."
She shakes her head as the bartender sets a fresh and frosty mug before her, and she tosses a ten-dollar bill on the bar for him. "Sure this guy's a shit?" is asked with barely a beat's pause, followed by a nod to Bill before she looks back to Cable. "I know some idjits dumb 'enough to really be just holding. Also know some real idjits dumb 'enough to be sellin', too, but that's a whole 'nother thing." At least there was, hopefuly obviously, no love lost between her and such a profession.
"Ya can say that again," Cable mutters in reply, also signalling the bartender for another round. He gives Bill a reproving glance and adds (speaking to Tanya): "Reckon this one knows shit I can use." He snorts.
"Only reason ya can talk," he tells the drug-dealer. It is a lie, of course. The mutant's telepathy is more than up to the task of picking the dealer's brain — but it is amusing for him to watch the little man squirm.
That, and lugging around an unconscious body is just… nuts.
Cable looks back at Tanya and nods. "Had ya figures fer a grease-monkey. My kind'a people. Where's the chop-shop? I might stop by."
"Mack'n Comp'ny in Harlem; got a Facebook page," says Tanya — then realization hits her and she turns a bit more dour. "Stop by, sure, but might wan'a make it soon. Dunno how long it's gon'a be there. Kind'a pissed off the wrong people — the kind'a people what can make a phone call'n buy up everything in a heartbeat, then kick y'off." With that, she lifts her beer in something of a mock-toast, then takes a healthy chug. She leaves the topic of Bill alone for the time being; she doesn't disbelieve the story, and regardless of who she chooses to call friend, she takes a dim view of such nonsense. Loyalty only goes so far, after all.
Cable notes the sudden change in his new friend's demeanour, and a frown causes his eyes to take on a rather steely caste — not at Tanya, but definitely 'on her behalf', so to speak. "That how it is, huh?" he asks, although it is not really a question. "I know the type."
A pause.
How much to get involved? He has only just met her… then again, he has other advantages. "Ya got somethin' else lined up?" he asks her, while directing a gentle telepathic probe of her consciousness. For the most part, Nate is already content with his opinion of his 'dart contender', but when it comes to things like the rich preying on everyone else… he likes to be sure.
Barring any sort of mental block or other interference, Cable goes carefully searching for a general idea of whom Tanya is, as well as the identities of those threatening her business.
Considering Tanya has had zero instruction in mental discipline, particularly of a sort that would keep a telepath out, it's not like there'd be anything to keep the mental plumber's snake from rooting around wherever it wanted. Any blocks or the like would have been put there without her knowledge, too — which naturally doesn't lend itself to the automatic conclusion there aren't any or that there have never been any. Someone powerful enough to shove a mental block in is powerful enough to shove the memories of it right out.
But — as it turns out, there aren't any blocks in the way, so the replaying of the verbal fight between herself and Tony Stark can be observed unabated and unhindered. The way myriad scenarios played out — leaping across the short distance to shove his glass down his throat, grabbing the drink from Pepper's hand to smash it against a table and ram the glass shards in his eyelids, grabbing Domino's firearm and emptying the clip into Tony, so on and so on and so on — could be easily viewed, too.
And then the wondering what was going on with her friends. She'd placed a few calls on her stupidly-long walk back to Harlem, and intermittently as she worked out her frustration on fixing Domino's car. The talk with Mister W had only been the beginning, of course. His comments had gotten her thinking — and, more importantly, observing. As such, she'd noticed the way Tony and Pepper interacted at the party, and it wasn't like people who had been married for a while, friends longer, and acquaintances longer still. It could have been any number of things, of course — marriage was on the outs but trying to keep it from being public knowledge, for just one example.
And yet — this is a city where one of its more (in)famous and maligned spider-themed costumed crusaders had legitimate clones running around. Another is technically almost eighty years old but was literally frozen in an iceberg for a lot of that.
Then, you know — ALIENS! Actual, legitimate, real-serious-no-fooling-from-outer-space ALIENS. So. That's the thought process and the experiences that led her to contacting a few of her friends and asking them to ask around. People talk — that's the one thing people can always be counted on to do. Tony "talked", without intended to. He ended up giving her a lot of information — if she had any doubt that Mister W was alone in what she thought his predicament was, that previous night erased it. Tony needed to find others — so why? The only two things that made sense to her were that either he had no idea what happened and why, or it was a purposeful thing that was ready for whatever "phase two" might be — and the way he, Pepper, and Domino acted, Tanya wasn't ready to believe that quite so easily. They could all have been pulling a very elaborate con job, but—she didn't think so. It was too good, especially when Tony and she had their little — pissing match. It was nothing she planned, of course, but with the benefit of hindsight — that wasn't something done by a man who had all of the information.
So she reached out to her friends — since the one place Tony could never find information was if were never entered electronically. He could and probably did monitor every database in the world, and was probably listening in on her cell phone right that second — but even so, if information were out of reach of the electronic world, then he couldn't get to it. That's where she came in, by reaching out to people who specialized in keeping information away from anything with positrons or electrons. If there was any information to be had, he was going to pay dearly for it — but without handing over a single cent. Just what's left of his dignity.
"…what?" said Tanya, her train of thought broken. "Nope. Ain't got shit but the one thing I know — and that's gon'a be taken away from me. I mena, I got friends I can lean on for a bit 'til I fig're out what else I can do that won't get flagged by a certain cock-sucker." The answer, she knows, is "not a damned thing". When people that rich and that malignant and that immoral decide to ruin one's life, they don't back off.
Surprise.
That is what features on the grizzled soldier's face after his gentle perusal of Tanya's mind. Having so few blocks in place — or none, rather — while at the same time being smart enough to hide data from Tony Stark by not keeping electronic records… it is not quite what Cable had been expecting.
However, it is the images of the incident with Stark and Pepper Potts that really catches the time-traveller off-guard. Grunting to express his surprise, or cover it up, Cable reaches for his beer and chugs down the whole lot of it. "C'mon," he tells the woman, with a slightly warmer tone to his voice. "I'll help ya get home. I'm interested ta see this chop-shop."
A genuine interest, that.
At a moan from Bill, the drug-dealer in hand-cuffs still sitting there at the same table — having not touched his water — Cable frowns and lays his right hand on the guy's shoulder.
"Wha? — Hey!" Bill starts to protest… and then his eyes glaze over. Cable's left eye glows — properly this time, if only briefly — and Bill appears slump in his seat.
The man's head comes up.
He blinks at Cable and Tanya as if not recognising them. Then he stands up, mumbling an apology. "Excuse me," he says as if in a daze. "I have to go turn myself in at the police station. I tried to sell drugs to children. I should be punished…"
And with that, he pushes his chair out, slides it back, and… walks out of the bar. Cable watches him leave, and turns back to Tanya with a 'whaddya reckon? We go?' expression on his face.
If there were still any mental eavesdropping going on, one of Tanya's main thoughts right then as she watched the guy just sort of totter out would be something like, "…wut." Just that sort of confusion at watching a guy who not ten minutes ago had a dart thrown at his hand — just now allowed to leave. Encouraged, by the looks of things. Encouraged in ways Tanya could never fathom. Magic, maybe. Pheromones. Telepathy. Spirit-talking. Maybe Nate here caused him to see a vision of his dead mother wagging her finger at him, for all she knows.
"How'd you — ?" she starts, gesturing with her right hand and the beer mug within it toward the departing guy, then she cuts herself off. "Y'know what — I really don't wan'a know. I've pissed in too many people's cornflakes as it is. Fuck it. Either follow me'n yer car or whatever, or squeeze into my sidecar." That said, she downs the rest of her beer in three loud gulps, then gets off her stool and begins to collect her things, starting with slipping the do-rag on her head again before grabbing the gloves, then Baudelaire. The cat will get stuffed into her jacket to both protect him from the night's chill and to keep him in place. Being a Havana Brown, and one she'd had for most of his life, she wasn't worried about him squirming or clawing.
Cable gets up to leave, watching Tanya mildly — just curious, nothing more. He gives a nod of his head in response to her, acknowledging both her 'don't wanna know' sentence. Upon hearing 'pissed in too many people's cornflakes' he raises an eyebrow and says nothing.
He gets it, though.
"I'll follow," he says, and leaves a large portion of the cash on the table as a tip to the waitress who comes to clear the glasses away. The merc nods to her and makes his way out alongside Tanya. "So," he says as the door shuts. "Hittin' the black 'round the edge is called a 'flat tire', huh? Whaddya call it when ya miss the board altogether…?"
"Call it bein' shit," says Tanya as she heads to her motorcycle, giving Nate another grin. "C'mon, Nate the Great." She heads around to her motorcycle, which is covered with a thin tarp because of course it is. She isn't stupid, after all. After hauling the tarp off and wadding it up, it gets stuffed into the back-left saddlebag, then she fishes the keys out from her coat pocket.
Gon'a be a hell of a night.
END.