spin_kick_snap | Baltimore, Sunday Night

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Baltimore, Sunday Night

Banzai rarely patrolled Sunday nights, taking the night off to rest and prepare for the upcoming week, but since she'd bailed on patrolling on Friday, it seemed only fair to make up for it tonight instead. Crime around the club and various campuses would be lower, but there were still plenty of drug deals, muggings, and various other, more dangerous crimes for her to stop instead. And it wasn't like Banzai was going to miss spending extra time manhandling drunk idiots into cabs and breaking up fights in alleys over stupid bullshit the participants couldn't even remember four steps away from the club itself.

The Ukranian mafia had all but vanished from the city over the past few months; apparently losing the Butcher was enough to convince them that Baltimore wasn't worth the effort. In a way, Banzai almost missed them; they were good practice for when she'd be going up against the Seventeens in LA eventually. Patrolling around Stanford (if she got in, please God let her get in) probably wasn't going to be all that much effort, so she was already making plans to portal down to LA proper at least once a month to get in a proper patrol.

Spotting Jewels, one of the working girls that was part of Banzai's loose confederation of informants, Banzai swung down from the rooftop to land on light feet nearby. Always good to check in, see if Jewels had heard of anything going down, make sure that no one was bothering her, pass along money and supplies to stay in Jewels' good graces, all that good stuff.

It felt good to get out and patrol. For all her speeches about wanting to do good for the people around her and make the world a better place, Banzai had to admit that the real reason she ran around in rainbows with a bokken on her back and rope darts in her belt was a lot more selfish. What could she say?

She loved this.

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She eyed him suspiciously for a moment. "Are you messing with me?" she checked. She didn't think so, but it seemed important to check.

"Nope," Dante chirped, merrily, and then took a big ol' swig of his beer. "You might even get his number if you asked."

Dante: always at him most cheerful when he was teasing the hell out of Kathy.

"And do what with it?" she asked--rhetorically, she might add. Even she knew what she was supposed to do with a phone number. "I think I'm at max cap for pretty boys to mess around with."

"You don't have to do anything."

Dante put the beer down on the table. "I'm just saying you could."

Kathy was just going to look down at the table and smile a little--inasmuch as she ever smiled just a little. The thought that she, Katherine Hana Li, could get a random guy's number in a bar was...pretty cool, actually. She didn't need it, certainly didn't want it, but just knowing she had a real shot at it was doing nice things for her ego.

"Maybe," she allowed, raising her eyes back up to his. "But if you give him the sex smirk, I'll be out of the running completely."

Dante let out a little chuckle. "Eh," he said. "Still trying to decide if I'm game for that one tonight."

He held up his bottle in toast, though. "To you flirting."

"To me finally figuring out how," Kathy said, clinking her bottle with his. "And to your tutelage, for helping make it possible."

She took a long draw off her bottle, then set it near the edge of the table to ask for another. "You know, either that beer is better than most, or the bottle of whiskey we killed has permanently corrupted my tastebuds."

Dante put his own bottle next to hers a moment later. "Nah, you're just getting used to drinking," he said.

Not that his rate of drinking was anything any sane person should emulate. "Burning off all the newbie buds."

Not that his rate of drinking was anything any sane person could survive. He gave Kathy's enhanced metabolism a hard time.

"And probably burning a hole in my tongue at the same time. I've tasted your cheap Scotch, Dante. It's terrible."

"It gets you drunk," Dante pointed out.

And he kind of needed 'burn a hole in your tongue'-level scotch to do that.

"You know," Kathy said, tapping her finger against her lip as she thought, "you can filter cheap vodka to make it taste better. I wonder if you can do the same for cheap Scotch."

"You can?" Dante asked. "Wish I knew that sooner."

"Yeah, with either coffee filters or a Britta filter," Kathy said. "It's pretty easy. Just run it through a few times and it tastes a whole lot better. You can get the cheap stuff in the plastic bottles to taste like you spent more than a few dollars on it."

Just then, their server came over with the nachos and more beers. Kathy beamed at him again--FOOD!--and was hastily digging in before she realized what just happened. "I did it again, didn't I?" she asked after he was gone.

Why didn't Dante know that? That woulda been something good to know. Then again, he'd never exactly bothered with buying coffee filters or whatever.

"Yep, you did," Dante said, stealing a whole bunch of nachos. "Didn't you see him blush?"

Because Dante wasn't a chemistry nerd like Kathy was. And see! He'd seen no point to all her studying!

"He wasn't on my plate, so I missed that entirely," Kathy said. "And don't think I don't see you stealing my nachos. I am going to remember this the next time you tell me I can only have one slice of your pizza."

"Hey, you didn't tell me not to," Dante said.

Because he hadn't asked, but details.

He stole another chip.

Yeah, she was going to remember how this had worked for you Dante, just you wait.

"Can't believe you'd steal food right out of a growing girl's mouth," Kathy said, shaking her head mournfully but not moving to protect the chips. She had ordered a lot of food after all. "Especially after she spent the night protecting the good denizens of this city."

"You're getting like four burgers later," Dante said. He popped the chip into his mouth. "And you know how I feel about the rest of that shit."

"What, fries, onion rings, and potato skins?" Kathy asked, deliberately misinterpreting his question. "I thought you liked them, but if you don't, that's fine. More for me."

Dante rolled his eyes and threw the last remains of a nacho chip at her hair.

And Kathy reached out and snagged it from the air at a speed so fast it almost looked lazy.

She learned it from watching you, Dante!

"Aww, you finally learned the value of sharing!" she said, eating the chip with a smug smile. "I'm so proud. I know it's been my tireless influence."

"Why are you the worst?" Dante wondered.

He was snagging a whole handful while she was busy. Watch him go.

"I learned it from watching you," Kathy said, because why not crib from her own damn narrative? "Don't pretend. You like me better this way anyway. You have no idea what to do with me when I'm being nice."

"When you're being nice, you're usually flailing like an idiot and yelling," Dante said.

Unless you meant the, like, deep and you'll-be-fine type conversations, but he was blocking those out. "So it's not that I don't know. I just don't want to."

Kathy rolled her eyes at him. "You know, I spend more time yelling at you than I do damn near anyone else. So maybe it's not me."

Okay, even she didn't believe that one.

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