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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"Nah, you just punch 'em and take their lunch money," Dante said. He took a thoughtful sip of his drink.

"I return their lunch money to the people they took it from," Kathy said. "Gorgon's the one who'd just take their cash for himself after he was done reading them their rights."

By which she meant, quoting Battle Group and scaring the pants off them.

"But then, he always went for the dealers more than the regular pickpockets and the like."

"How's that any better than the actual pickpockets?" Dante asked. "Shitty heroing."

"Gorgon's more focused on convincing criminals to stop what their doing, rather than returning goods to civilians," Kathy said. "So he robs them, threatens them, and scares them within an inch of their life so the next time they think about doing something illegal, they'll have a damn good reason not to."

Gorgon preferred to substitute the distant 'fear of God' with the much more direct and personal 'fear of him.'

"He's been pretty successful, I've seen the numbers for his patrols. Crime's dropping. Me, I stop the immediate crime, but I don't often give a lot of incentive not to do it again. People could argue he's a better hero than I am."

Dante shrugged. He was rapidly losing interest in the whole thing already. "It's both still stupid," he said, "But his end sounds like more of a get rich quick scheme. That's all."

"Most of the money goes to finance his heroing," Kathy said. "He's got a lot of nice equipment. And probably upkeep on his bike."

Which rivaled Dante's in quality, though Nick's was American.

"And, to be fair, he forked over a bunch to me while I was in LA for the funeral. Helped me cover hotel room costs, since I wasn't going to stay at home for that. So I probably can't judge too harshly or I'll be a hypocrite."

"You don't read about this shit in the comic books," said Dante, who hadn't touched a comic book since he was thirteen, if that.

He took a casual swig of his beer, feeling himself mellow out further.

Or a few months ago, depending on how you looked at it. Oh, Fandom.

"You really don't," Kathy agreed. "They're big on giant crises and planet-wide dangers, but awfully cavalier about how to juggle real life and a superhero gig. It's convenient that all the gadgeteer heroes are always independently wealthy anyway, so they don't ever have to worry about building or buying new stuff."

"Running outside to fight crime with gadgets kinda sounds like a rich guy thing to do anyway," Dante said, shrugging. "That makes sense to me."

"Maybe they're just really good at tinkering with stuff," Kathy suggested. "Poor but smart genius, working out of their garage and a junk yard. Rich people have more productive ways of stopping crime at their disposal than fighting it at the street level."

She finished off one of the plates of fries and moved onto onion rings. "Is there anything that could induce you to become a hero, you think? Like, what would it take to make Dante put on a mask and fight for truth, justice, and the American Way?"

"I mean running around the rooftops seems like a bored rich guy thing to do, period," Dante clarified.

He took some more fries for himself as he talked. "And no. Why the fuck would I do that?"

"I'd like to point out that I'm none of those things," Kathy said, rolling her eyes at his continued intrusion upon her fries. "And I was just wondering if there were any circumstances you could see yourself doing that. For money, or..."

Yeah, she wasn't coming up with any additional incentives, either.

For protecting a world from going through the same suffering he'd felt all his life?

Nah.

"You're still kinda middle class," Dante said, "Running around in the dark, punching poor people." He stuck a fry in his mouth. "Nope."

Yeah, inexplicably, Kathy hadn't wanted to bring that up in the middle of a relaxing dinner. She could wreck a mood by herself without bringing Dante's traumatic childhood into it.

"Dante, Defender of the Poor and Indigent," Kathy said, quirking an eyebrow at him. She was a bit surprised to find herself wanting to defend against his accusation of being middle class. Child of non-European first-generation immigrants skewed class a little oddly.

It wasn't really like either of their positions were textbook in that regard. "I'm not defending shit," Dante said. "I'm just sayin'. Not every purse-snatcher is a drug kingpin."

In fairness, Dante's was a little less textbook than Kathy's. 'Nephilim orphan abandoned in demon-run orphanage' wasn't something that came up a lot in social worker case studies.

Probably because Mundus had murdered the others. #TooSoon

"And not every purse-snatching victim is a bougie college kid with money to burn," Kathy returned, shrugging. Plucking the cherry out of the glass, she downed her shot--then looked at it in surprise. "Oooh!" she said. "That was good!"

"Aw, we got a server who knows his shots?"

Dante downed his fast, too.

"... Fuck, yeah, we do."

Much better topic, too, considering Dante's usual patience for the philosophy of superheroing.

"I want, like, another twelve of these," Kathy declared, biting into her cherry. "This is a way better dessert than whatever they had on the menu."

"It is kinda a bar," Dante said. He just popped the whole cherry in his mouth - no reason to take that slow. "But damn, he's got taste."

"I'd say so," Kathy said, smiling at him. "But then, I know how he's going to spend the rest of the evening, so it's not like this is a surprise."

Look, for all the shit they gave one another, Kathy was willing to give credit where credit was due and Dante had a lot going for him as a casual lover.

Though not up to and including being able to stomach the term 'casual lover' if it was ever directed towards him out loud.

"Does that make you my sex cheerleader tonight?" Dante wondered.

Different from 'sexy cheerleader'. They could do that another time.

Don't worry, Kathy would always default to 'booty call' out loud. Unless she were feeling really affectionate and decided to upgrade him to 'fuck buddy.'

"You're just lucky I didn't start offering references while he was setting down our food," Kathy said. "I mean, you did move me to poetry that one time."

Dirty limerick. Still counted.

"I could've distracted him," Dante mused. "'Course, then it definitely would've been the toilets."

And don't you start again with your 'always having had a place to bang' privilege, Kathy.

Hey! Kathy'd gotten fucked right and proper in an alleyway once! For Dante's stupid stereo, no less!

"Remind me to hold out for head in the coat check when we finally end up fucking in public," Kathy declared.

And she was lecturing him about hygiene?

Dante laughed. "Deal," he said. "If you've gotta be picky."

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