multiversallogs | brother what're you gonna do with a 9mm and a three piece suit?

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brother what're you gonna do with a 9mm and a three piece suit?

Who: OPEN
What: an underground fight night. place your bets.
Where: a warehouse in Griss Twist
When: evening
Notes: Jason is fighting in the main bout, but there is at least one other one, so feel free to make up details for that or others. I'll put up one subsection specifically for Jason's fight and directly after his match. That's primarily for Lisa, but anyone else could harass him if you felt so moved.
Warnings: not especially explicit violence.

The warehouse is an old venue and this evening's organizers old hands. The small arena sits low, not quite a pit, and it's standing room only. Plenty of drink is being sold, and a little food, at mostly reasonable prices. The lighting is harsh, the air is smoky, the sound of people spectating and jeering and arguing is muted yet immense, partially suppressed by the murk of the warehouse and the jaded atmosphere. But the evening's early yet.

In a side room, grubby tables and a varied assortment of seating is available. Some desultory gambling is going on. Substances may be purchased discreetly, deals are being made, and one table in the corner is the unofficially designated area to place bets.

A few matches are set to take place. The ultimate total will depend on how fast they come to an end, who showed up, and if there are any adventurers in the crowd. The main event has a designated time and is between a known fighter with a good reputation, and a newcomer. It hasn't been hyped much, but for regulars, that may be more promising than if it had been.

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Fights like these have an element of theater. This isn't work, which is not to say that his work never incorporates theatrical aspects. No, he knows that better than anyone. Yet here there is the sense of stage, lighting, audience, and role. Tonight he is not a vigilante. He is not even Jason Todd hiding his identity. He absolutely must be someone else, an entire persona, no halfassing a disguise; it's not a matter of lightening his hair to a dull brown and using a different name, it's changing the way he fights, both the method and style. Killing and maiming are frowned upon, obviously, and it's only be prudent to avoid using the same skills he might use for work. It'd be inconvenient for someone to recognize him later.

However, there isn't any guarantee he'll win. He's not trying to build a long term career in this but he has to be careful. Among the weekend gawkers, the casual thrillseekers, and those seeking to be entertained for a night, there are serious criminal organizations and chronic gamblers. This system cannot be gamed, as such, not by someone with as few remaining connections as he has. He must participate correctly, follow certain rules, and be careful what fights he takes to maximize money and minimize danger, both in the form of physical injury and attracting the wrong attention.

His opponent is more exciting than he is a solid fighter, one accustomed to some of the necessary showmanship for underground fighting. A smaller, agile man of great flexibility and acrobatic talent, their match-up looks almost comical; from what he can tell, most gamblers believe the man will run circles around Jason, who is built more along the lines of a big guy street brawler. It is genuinely a bit challenging to lay a hand on his opponent, and would be even more so if he really were only a big guy street brawler. But of course, he's not, and neither is his persona. Some flashiness is necessary in order to get in on these gigs. Letting the fight stretch several rounds is expected and sensible, and it's anything but boring. He's better at taking hits, though the smaller man does pack a surprising punch, and he turns out to be much faster than he looks, if not nearly as fast as Jason Todd is capable of being. And if the newcomer, Not Jason Todd, displays more versatility and quick thinking than actual skill, so be it. When the fight ends, it's not out of nowhere — there was a definite progression, steeper as time wore on though still respectable enough for the other fighter, and a satisfying knockout. Not Jason Todd seems genuinely elated by victory, surprised and pleased, a talker, a bit of an idiot, a likeable enough guy, assuming you'd bet on him. He lingers after the match to investigate other fight opportunities and take casual stock of the kind of people in the scene right now.

Adam weighs the odds and the opponents in the match. Odds seem to favor the smaller fighter strongly, but his gut tells him otherwise. The newcomer is bigger, more solid; in Adam's experience, skill is helpful but there's something to be said for a fighter who can take a punch.

He places a bet on the newcomer, and settles in to watch the match. The longer it goes, the more confident he feels that he's made the right choice. The knockout is vindication; he probably doesn't feel as elated as the winner seems to be but it's not bad.

The odds against means he collects a respectable payout for his bet. He's pleased by this, it's that much more toward getting himself a stake in something in the city. That's how he's always operated, every time he's had to start over: new place, raise capital, buy into some form of respectable business, let the rest fall into place.

He's tempted by the other fight on the bill but he decides to abstain rather than let his current good fortune and good feelings carry him along. So he lingers too, drifting through the crowd, sizing up the other attendees, fighters, and would-be fighters.

He sees his lucky fighter for the evening headed his way. Adam nods in polite greeting. "Well fought tonight."

It's in line of most of the comments made to him, and Jason fields it the same way as he has the others, the casual, pseudo-modest cockiness typical of the young and talented.

"Hopefully next time there'll be more of a challenge." He says with a smile, watchful behind his carelessness. For someone who just finished a multiple round fight, he's alert and not very tired, though he's not making a show of it. It's in the little reactions, the continued awareness of his surroundings. But that could be passed off as post-fight adrenaline.

Ah. So the young man knows he's talented, and isn't afraid to acknowledge it. But not so boastful as to be outright insulting or draw unwarranted trouble. Quiet confidence and not shouting insults and challenges. The latter is more common than the former, particularly following a victory. Once again Adam is pleasantly surprised.

He doesn't ask the man's name or introduce himself; that would beg his name and he's not inclined to give it here. Instead he nods, smiling. "Hopefully so. You intend to return?"

"Bet on me again." Or don't, since, you know, odds and payout, but statements of such simple confidence are as likely to alienate as to win over serious gamblers. It all depends on how people take it, and who his next opponent will be. Granted, he still looks pretty good after this fight while the other guy had to be carried out. There's just something solid and seemingly unmovable about Jason.

Someone yells at him to stand everyone a round and he rolls his eyes, but makes a little gesture of acquiescence. If they think he's a moron with his money, they'll want him back. He himself accepts a drink, but doesn't drink it.

A faint smile curves Adam's lips, amused. "I just might," he says. It seems he's one of those won over by that kind of confidence, or at least willing to entertain rather than dismiss it.

He accepts a drink, sipping slowly. It's just for show, alcohol does nothing to him anymore, but there's no need showing that off. Let people have a different idea about him: reserved English dude, not much of a drinker, therefore not much trouble.

"Is this the only place you fight?"

Jason leans one elbow on the bar, keeping up cocky and casual while wondering in a very vague way if this conversation, which he judges as just one small step past the typical amount, is interest of whim or interest of some other nature. Not prurient, as far as he can tell, though that wouldn't bother him.

"So far." That will change, his tone says, though in fact he only plans on a few more fights. He prefers to diversify when it comes to gambling. Jason concludes in a sunny tone: "I figure I'll get in, get rich, and get out before I rack up major brain damage."

Adam wouldn't be bothered by anything prurient either, but he doesn't shit where he eats. Or, in this case, screw where he bets. It's mostly whim that keeps him here, lingering over his drink, and the thought of perhaps looking this fighter up at another bout, taking another chance with his money.

And what the fighter says about getting out is actually sensible. "That's a good plan," he says. "There's no point fighting to get rich if you come out of it too much a mess to be able to enjoy what you've worked for, hm?"

His smile is quick and cynical. "And that's everyone's plan. Even that guy I beat tonight, I'm sure he came into it thinking exactly like I did, but here he is, oh, three, four months later. Probably run up some debt doing dumb things like buying everyone a drink."

Jason flashes a more normal smile at some other drunken patron, lifting his drink in answer to the toast and once more failing to drink. He continues in his conversational tone (though in a crowd like this, 'conversational tone' is much louder than what it would normally mean), not caring if anybody else should overhear. "But me, I can actually do it. You keep betting on me. Just don't tell everyone else. It'll be a very sweet little run."

It occurs to Adam, briefly, that this young man seems awfully sensible for a confident fighter. Particularly one that was recently taking blows. It might not hurt to see him fight again, perhaps bet in his favor again.

"I'll keep that in mind," he says, faint, interested smile back on his lips. "May everything work out as you planned."

What might have once been a work station or a front desk, long since stripped and left to rust, has been turned into a bar; fencing pylons ring the pit, then again meters back, spectators leaning, straddling, leaving drinks and various rolled bits of slow-burning herbs on. Steel-scavengers of yore have stripped most of the inside of the warehouse, but the catwalk that edges the walls four meters up remains, a raised ring of shadowed onlookers, hovering at the height of the intermittently scattered and hanging light bulbs with tin covers. In every crowd - particularly these kinds of crowds - there's the belligerent ones, the assholes, the ones waiting for marks and the ones waiting to be suckered; mostly, though, it's people looking to have a good time. So sue them, this is their idea of a good time.

A blue-skinned woman in a chainmail bustier slinks through the room enticing bets, the bar tender - old, chatty, one of the organizers - gossips in his gruff voice about anyone he's seen before, amiable, with his one half-drunk friend permanently attached to one side of the bar, offering his own commentary. From the back of the crowd, a man shouts loudly, cajoling an acquaintance into throwing his hat into the ring. Somebody gets clocked near the betting table, but he's dragged out, and everyone nearby bursts into roaring laughter. Up above, a black-clad man with tape on his knuckles rests his forearms on the railing and watches, while his cranky-looking companion puts the stub of his cigar out in someone else's drink.

Should be a good night.

This is a backdrop that Logan has often integrated into with a certain frequency, both back home and in Baedal. A job, when he'd first arrived. A passtime, later. And these days, it serves as cover and outlet, but tonight he's in the cheap seats with Tom and so that counts as hanging out and doing their particular impressions of social.

The ambiance works for him, too. Flanking Nuala for his more regular paycheck puts Logan into situations where his difference is all too plain. His own roughness and impatience feeling deliberately out of place, senses uncertain what to make of people's perfume and nuances of looks and body languages in a code that is a different script to how he operates. It's not so much that it bothers him so much as it does make places like these make more sense -- adrenaline is a rank undercurrent to booze and smoke, and he has more comprehension for the combatants squaring off down below than he does for politics in a pocket dimension.

"If you're gonna put money on someone, put it on the small one." Said the big one. Once he's polluted the drink of someone else, his own lifted up to knock back a big enough sip to partially drain it of its whiskey.

People who know Bruce Wayne or (and?) Batman would be surprised to find him fitting in with a crowd like this so seamlessly - but for seven years, this was where he thrived, and he took to it far easier than the life of a socialite. These clubs and pits were (are) the nicer edge of what he did to himself, actually, considering rural communist prison. But even that had its uses.

"That's only half the battle, when you don't have help." Help like an adamantium skeleton - there's a particular way mortals combat. Tom isn't drinking, though he has picked up the remains of someone else's emptied and abandoned turpentine and soda cocktail for the ice. (Gross, dude.) "Quickness doesn't help if you can't take a hit when one inevitably comes."

He doesn't sound argumentative. Conversational.

Edited (what happened to that first sentence) 2012-09-06 01:56 (UTC)

"Yeah? And maybe I bet on the big one."

Wise guy. Because Logan is always argumentative, if without hostility, because it is just talk. He absently cracks his knuckles, a noise that sounds as metallic as it does organic and usually sickening for those that flinch at such noises. "Thing is that maybe they got somethin' else going for 'em. Like taking a hit and not staying down. Never know in this city."

"That's a crap racket."

(He kind of sounds hilarious when he swears. And it's kind of hilarious that 'crap' counts as swearing.)

Logan has a point, of course. Even if Bruce is good at spotting metahumans by now, he isn't perfect - he can't be, it's just too varied, and too subtle. Piled on top of that is the fact that between them, surely Logan would know. Still, though, apparently he's going to pick at it for sake of soft-spoken conversation in this din:

"That taller kid wouldn't go up against somebody he wasn't sure he could knock out, I don't think." Oh really, Tom.

Edited (I NEED TO GO SLEEP) 2012-09-09 10:18 (UTC)

Logan would like to think he knows too, and most of the time it's true, whether it's something subtle like an elevated heart rate through to smelling completely alien or animal or, like himself and Laura, carrying with them the reek of adamantium. But magic exists, and sometimes they just don't.

He's not telling Bruce, anyway, leaning again on his forearms with his drink taken back up. There's a raised eyebrow at that first part, looking at Bruce side on, then squinting back at the entertainment below.

"Maybe. Or he needs the cash real bad."

"Maybe."

An agreement - he seems curious, too, watching the match. Like he genuinely wants to know if this kid's going to go out there with a plan, or if he's going to get his head knocked clean off for the chance at a couple of dollars. His curiosity isn't fervent or purposeful, but there's the suggestion of a thread he could pull. And that's always interesting.

Then he spares a quick glance at Logan, "I caught him staring at me a while back."

There are certain ways they have to speak in public, in the event someone is eavesdropping. This sounds appropriately inappropriate or meaningless, sort of funny, maybe. The implication that only Logan will get is that people who might recognize Tom - who is capable of what he's capable of, who does what he does - could be a college friend from another dimension. Or they could be a can of worms.

He knows, because Logan is capable of what he's capable of, that he gets it.

How Spike wound up in the warehouse during the main event was anyone's guess. It might have been the type of crowd he was gravitated towards, or a certain energy he picked up on that lead him to where the fights were taking place. Or it could have just been what happened when he kept wandering the streets after he was done patronizing the local bars. Either way, it was more interesting than going back to the inn.

This wasn't a totally unfamiliar scene -- almost nostalgic once he realized what was going on -- and even the woman walking by with blue skin barely made him look twice. If it was all a dream, it seemed like one he would have.

Spike managed to get his hands on a drink and found a vantage point towards the back, mixing well enough into the crowd to avoid standing out as a new face. In theory, at least. And if nothing else, it was an opportunity to make some money, since apparently he still needed it. Some things never changed.

With the main fight over, the ring is open to all comers, but Jason is wary about stepping in without first checking out prospective opponents. These fights don't pay as well and they come with serious risk: the kinds of opponents he still thinks of as metahumans could hurt him seriously if he's busy trying to play his own skill down. If he has to fight for real in one of these rings, that could lead to trouble. It's not fun to stick to his guns on these points, but the point is making money.

And anyway, there aren't too many people in the joint he thinks are worth fighting just to fight them. Nobody who's up for it, anyway. In time, the push of the crowd and his own inclinations lead him toward the back. The guy with the hair seems laid back enough; Jason will loiter nearby, watching people and sizing up potential future opponents. He'd actually really like to be up on the catwalk, but it seems pretty occupied at the moment. It's too dim up there for him to make out any faces. In any case, the turnover on these crowds is fairly high. Spike doesn't stand out as a newcomer in that sense.

Two decidedly amateur fighters are in the ring now, displaying plenty of enthusiasm (prior grudge, perhaps?) but not so much skill. Jason exhales just audibly, a mixed sound of exasperation and amusement.

It wasn't hard to recognize the other man from the fight that Spike had caught a few glimpses of while the crowd was really getting into it. They'd become less focused during the time it took to get a new round started, which gave him a little more space back in his corner. It just so happened to also make it an appealing corner for someone who had already taken his turn. That was fine with him. Considering the circumstances, he had to take the opportunities as they came.

Spike made a point in observing the next round as he got near, and didn't bother saying anything as a greeting. When he did speak up, it was almost like starting in the middle of a conversation.

"They'll really take anyone."

Jason grins at the comment, only glancing at Spike out of the corner of his eye. "Don't I know it."

Possibly Spike didn't mean it that way, but he figures on the probability of recognition for the rest of the night, and if Spike hadn't recognized him, well, it still works as far as conversation goes and is perfectly in line with his persona du jour.

"Another crowd like this, maybe I'll do an all comers."

Unlikely. Even with a bunch of doofuses like the two in the ring, all it takes is one competent asshole to ruin everything.

All comers. That phrase piqued Spike's interest, but he didn't comment. Even in an unfamiliar city, he hadn't lost his ability to keep up an air of presumed detachment.

"Bigger crowd than normal?" Saying so was a way of pointing out that he wasn't a frequent spectator, but sometimes getting information outweighed the need to appear that he didn't need any. Had to start somewhere.

There is a man in the corner watching the matches closely; not just the matches but the people around, too. Analyzing their movements, how they talk, how they react, what they do. Word carries itself around if you know how to listen. There was no space for a criminal in many places but the Arena and places like this. This where many wore a brand like it was a way of life. For many, he would suppose, it was.

A heavy drink lay in his hands for the better part of the evening, enough to make him warm. A very heavy drink lay in his hands. Old bourbon. War almond in color and smooth burn. It was not comparable in strength to the ales of his realm but it would do. He decided on something similar to those about him. Leathers of green and more simplistic mortal fashion. Nothing what he would wear as he did in ring fighting.His ceremonial armor becoming a 'thing' as it were.

What must it be like to be as this, he wondered. Where you could break a sweat after five minutes of dancing on squared canvas. Loki was unsure whether it was pathetic or interesting but likely both to some degree. Just the genetic primitiveness. Of course eventually, Loki being Loki, and a place like this being a place like this, he caught someones attention. Someone who took issue with marked criminals.

It ended. Fast. First with words and then when it escalated to fists a broken wrist and a kick to his diaphragm that would have a human half way across the room and dead. The only reason it didn't was that he weren't a human. All Loki could do was smirk.

Well then.

The establishment, if anybody could call it that with a straight face, is rough enough that some outer ring conflict of this type can pass, though not without some dark, pointed looks. Gambling can make for intense feelings, after all, especially when combined with drink. Still, Loki has accomplished about the usual level of successful friend-making with this tiff. Hardly anyone here is much of an upstanding citizen, but there remains a certain attitude toward branded criminals that is evidenced in mutters and general irritation all around.

Jason isn't too far down along the bar, waiting for his winnings. He'd observed Loki and his buddy with the laconic interest of a professional, not least because he's seen that face on the cohort network. When it comes to keeping mental files, he's not as disciplined as the rest of the family, nor does he have eidetic memory like Babs, but his recall is pretty good all the same. His file says: magic user, arrogant, Norse pretensions or, possibly, more than pretensions...

Well, while he's here, he might as well dig a little.

"Wow, settle down, tough guy, we can't all be as cool as you," he drawls from where he's leaning on the bar, a full and otherwise untouched drink in his hand.

For all the crime - there was crime and then there was crime he guessed. Either you were sloppy (which perhaps some were) or you did something really bad. Honestly, what was one life? This city. He could roll his eyes at it until then fell right out of his skull. Yet he'd long since ignored the whispers. Perhaps one thing he was fairly good at was riling others.

And thus, this.

He slips the glass down and tips his head to Jason, calm. "Were not I shaken to ire. Merely, I ended it."

Jason exchanges a look with a fellow bar patron at the syntax, which seems tortured to him, but there's far weirder in Baedal than odd turns of speech.

"Yeah, merely," he says, dry. He flicks a look up and down Loki, taking in the green leather, and shrugs — more for anyone watching than for the man he's addressing, as if to say it takes all kinds... I guess. It wouldn't hurt to look like a stand up guy, if only in comparison to Mr. Personable here.

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brother what're you gonna do with a 9mm and a three piece suit?

JASON'S FIGHT

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the peanut gallery

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Bar (fights)

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