Logs:Background Check

Background Check
Dramatis Personae Kamil, Scramble
In Absentia Kasim	2024-11-30 "I'mma be honest, Ionno which one you are."
Location <NYC> Hellhound Bikes - The Hole
Located not far from Jamaica Bay in a predominantly Latinx sector of East New York, this garage doesn't look like much from the outside. A low-slung squat dingy brick building with a hand-painted sign over front proclaiming it to be HELLHOUND CUSTOM CYCLES, this garage has a small office area with its own pedestrian entrance from the street at the front, containing a minifridge usually full of beer and beaten down old desk with a ledger and an antique cash register that no one ever seems to use. The rest of the space is roughly L-shaped, its walls lined with racks of tools and heavy workbenches with built-in steel drawers full of hardware and spare parts. There's a raised platform in the wider leg of the space for working on one motorcycle, and there's space in the narrower leg for parking at least three more. It is bitingly cold out and the sky is looking dim long before the sun actually goes down. Dinner is still being prepared, though it already smells delicious, and Scramble is standing outside the garage, smoking. She isn't really dressed for the weather -- now, anyway -- in just her cut over a yellow waffle thermal shirt, dark blue jeans, and no-nonsense engineer boots. Her 'fro is neatly teased out like a soft black halo, especially with her silhouetted by light from inside the garage. There is a roar of approaching motorcycle, somewhere in the distance, a bit before it's actually in sight; its rider is not dressed for the chill either, in a colorblocked windbreaker under a raggedy canvas jacket, his jeans worn thin at the seams and torn through at the knees, aviator shades and no helmet. Kamil parks and dismounts with weird, grimacing grace, raises one hand in an awkward wave as he's walking toward Scramble, then gets immediately waylaid from whatever also-awkward overture he was about to make: "Holyshit, who's cooking? Smells good." Scramble watches Kamil's bike approach impassively, but pushes away from the wall she's leaning on when he dismounts and approaches, jerking her chin up in greeting. ""Technically, Manny." She glances back at the warmth and light inside, without any obvious discomfort for its lack. "But his abuela, in spirit. There's always enough for guests and more." She takes a drag on her cigarette and studies him sidelong as she breathes the smoke away from him. "I ain't really known you and your brother before y'all gone. Everything after Lassier was. A lot." She huffs a mirthless laugh. "I'mma be honest, Ionno which one you are." Though Scramble has detached fron the wall, Kamil lopes past her to slump against it himself anyway, then -- perhaps not deeming his initial slump satisfying enough -- cracks his head solidly back against the brick with a muted thunk, skull squashing out like clay for the moment of impact, though then his head jolts forward again. He turns this into a bobbing, considering nod, tucks his sunglasses into his shirt collar. "We were only there a few months," he says. "Kinda surprised that was long enough you remembered us at all. Let alone enough to come to our whole-ass induction." His laugh is huffy too, though slightly more genuine -- "Nobody does, it's cool. 'sKamil, but you can just say 'K' if you forget, I'll know it's either for me or I should come watch anyway." "Kamil, alright. Well, you know who I am." Scramble laughs, just once, kind of harshly amused. "I doubt I'd recognize you now if you'd just tucked tail and ran after that night. Plenty folk did." She produces a pack of Newports and offers it with just a gesture and a hitch of her brows. "But we watch the Swords real close, and we sure as hell ain't forgot you yet when you put on their colors. Didn't hurt the Swords were so damn proud of all y'all." She shakes her head. "I'm guessing that wasn't on account of your acting skills so much as their eugenicist bullshit." "I know who you are," agrees Kamil, with a slim but amiable grin; he shrugs, ducks his head forward, takes the proffered cigarette with rather less bashfulness than his demeanor is suggesting. "Oh. Yeah. That'll do it." The smile flexes into a grimace, then fades. "That and they thought the triple-K thing was hilarious," he grumbles, with an air of crabby censure that suggests he does not find it nearly so funny. He slides a little lower on the wall; the canvas jacket stays where it's pressed between his back and the bricks, giving him a hunchbacked look. "Hmmph. I need a new job. Fucking hated working for those fucking shitbags." Scramble puts the pack away and lights the cigarette for him with a startlingly gaudy lighter that doesn't seem quite her style. "Wait, you gave them your real names and they still bought that you was pure Aryan?" She looks baffled and kind of charmed. "Maybe it was your acting skills. Which, considering you managed to bite your tongue for a whole goddamn year, ain't nothing." She considers him for a moment, then looks away down the darkening street. "If you ain't fussed 'bout the kind of work, we can always use some hands moving shit, out on the corners or across town. We got a rep and plenty of enemies still. But you got determination and balls of steel." She nods, more to herself than to him, though she is looking back at him again. "Stay for dinner, we can talk shop after." "Oh fuck no. I told them my name was Kameron," says Kamil, voice a little muffled around the cigarette he's lighting. He scoots his feet closer to the wall again, lets his shoulders sliiide back up into the shoulders of his jacket. "Ain't fussed. Ain't a lot of work would take me in the first place. Hhhggh." He shrugs again -- for a moment, his jacket hunches up again, swept around his wiry frame, before he props one foot behind him to push off from the wall; his round, beady eyes flinch open, even rounder, at the offer of food more so than any of the praise. "Shit, sure. Grub first."