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

[goodsoldier]

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.

Comments

[perfectcameo]

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.

[caballero]

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.

[perfectcameo]

"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."

[caballero]

"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.

[perfectcameo]

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."

[caballero]

"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.