Logs:Feeling Lucky?

Feeling Lucky?
Dramatis Personae Domino, Ion, Matt
In Absentia	2020-09-19 "I'm old enough to enjoy an easy win."
Location <NYC> Q-Tip - East Harlem
(QTP) This is the kind of place you go to when you want a dive bar but don't want to wait for compete for use of the sole pool table covered with suspicious stains that always leans toward one corner pocket. Q-Tip may not be fancy, but its tables are solid and the drinks are decent. The bartenders are polite but taciturn, the regulars are diverse but largely blue collar men with a sprinkling of hipsters, and the neon-lit jukebox always seems to be playing classic rock. This is not Ion's first beer. The can in currently his hand (an Other Half sour) is nearing empty -- and a good thing, too, because he's gesticulating with it eagerly, very likely to splatter anyone nearby if not for the fact that he's down to the last few mouthfuls. "Holy shit," the excitement in his gravelly-deep voice is not new, either, and has not diminished at all for how many times tonight he's said: "Holy shit! Boy you see that? You see that?" Bright and animated, he's clapping a hand to Matt's shoulder (with a tiny static POP), jostling the other man. His enthusiasm is also undimmed in the face of his most recent defeat. Today he's as casual as always in jeans, heavy boots, a grungy white tee shirt with his heavily-abused leather vest over top (MUTANT MONGRELS MC, and EMPIRE STATE read the rockers on the back, around a large modified Jolly Roger emblem, the skull horned and fanged and a pair of crossed lightning bolts in place of crossbones; smaller patches on the front breast read PRESIDENT and DOG OF WAR.) He picks up his pool cue from where it's been leaning against the table, offering it to Matt. "You, though. Maybe you do better, huh?" It's hard to tell, by this point, why the other patrons might be inclined to give Matt a wide berth. Perhaps it's simply the fact that he's sitting in a hovering wheelchair covered with interlocking designs of small animal bones. Perhaps it's the fact that he's so sick he looks like he might well expire right on the spot. He wears a red-and-black knitted tuque with the letters "NHL" across the forehead, a dark green Attack on Titan hoodie, ancient blue jeans worn through at the cuffs, and white athletic socks with his brown sandals. Despite his persistent loitering on death's door of late, he looks cheerful enough, a grin splitting his skinny pale face as he accepts the cue from Ion. "The luck I can do better, but that doesn't actually make me any better at pool." He sets his Angry Orchard cider down in his drink holder and taps the controls of his chair, which hovers high enough now for his to reach the table, and takes his shot. The cue ball knocks into the five which definitely heads in the direction of the corner pocket, but doesn't quite make it there. Shockingly, perhaps, this doesn't set up the perfect shot for Domino. "You're lucky we're not playing for anything," says Domino, calmly knocking the ball into the corner pocket. She grabs the chalk and rubs it on the tip of her cue. "You look like you're about to keel over," she says. "What are you doing in this dump anyway? Have you given up? Just running out the string?" "How long he can sit around home? Same armchair, pile of blanket, waiting to play chess with Death. Please." Ion leans up against the edge of the table, gulping down the last of his beer. "I tell this boy, you dying anyway may as well do some funs on the way out. I think, maybe, we go for a ride, find some bigots and fuck their night up --" He waves his hand, empty can still held, "Maybe a little ambitious for tonight. We compromise here." "Who knows? Maybe the chemo took. No way to tell but wait." Matt shrugs cheerfully, adjusting his chair back down to its usual hovering height and handing the cue back to Ion. "Maybe a little ambitious for tonight, but I have your back if a fight finds us, after all." The grin skews crooked. "How've you been keeping, Domino? If 2020 is treating anyone well I have to imagine it's you." "Same as any other year," Domino replies. "To be honest, I've been enjoying the quiet." She rotates around the table, looking for a shot. "But I wouldn't mind some action." She flashes a smile at the group two tables over. They've been eyeing her all night. If she were anyone else, she'd think they had more prurient interests in mind, but the way they've been looking at her tattoos lets her know they have a different type of activity in her. Just as good. Better, even. "Fucking dumb we know so many freaks can't none of them tell if you still dying? We all useless." It takes so very little prompting for Ion's focus to shift away from the game, a wide-bright grin on his face as his gaze follows Domino's. "-- You still got our back if we find a fight?" He isn't, actually, waiting for Matt's reply. There's just the faintest crackle-pop of blue-white light around his fingers as he lifts a hand, waggling his pool cue towards the nearby group. "Eyyy you all got some problem?" "It's not that simple," Matt replies placidly, pushing his tuque back slightly and following the direction of Domino's glance. "Of course I've got your backs." So saying, he turns his hand palm up in an elegant gesture of presentation. Ion's power surges sensibly within him--not unmanageable, but enough that crackles of blue-white lightning travel over his skin. Less obviously notable as yet, Domino's power is also cranked up significantly. "No problem," says one of the gang. "You don't look like much of a problem at all." Without warning, the ground surges up underneath Domino, launching her several feet in the air. She lands with a smile on her face. "Is that the best you can do?" She asks. "You seen that?" Ion is exuberant once more, and his next eager jostling of Matt's shoulder comes with a bit more of a kick than last time. "How I get that kind of style? There some place you all go study that shit?" He's setting his cue back down against the table, more bounce in his frame now where he stands. "You way better than coffee, boy." He's disappeared from Matt's side straight after, a sharp crackle of light fluttering upward; in the very next moment, another bright flash, he's dropping back down just in front of one of the other three. The first he's just aimed square at the man's jaw comes with a taser-strong jolt of shock along with the blow. Matt winces, though his smile is undimmed by the shock. "I'm pretty sure you have to be born with that particular style." Unseen, his power stretches out, questing for the geokinetic and methodically dampening their powers down to practically nothing, though this does not return the summoned earth to its previous state. He's already seeking other targets, but the concentration looks like it's taking its toll. One of the toughs, obviously the leader, holds out his hand. Nothing happens. He looks at his fist, puzzled. "Something wrong, big boy?" says Domino. She picks up one of the pool balls from the table and cradles it in her fist. One, two, three. Crack, crack, thud. Her first blow fractures his orbital socket, the second shatters it entirely. The third knocks him out for good. "Shit ain't fair, bro. Some people get all --" This is evidently directed back toward Matt and not the man Ion just punched -- who is winding up for a blow of his own. Ion does not dodge it, exactly -- but as soon as the hit connects there's another flash, a surge of electricity briefly jolting through his opponent. Where Ion had been right in front of the man now he is just behind, his grin undimmed. His next punch leaves the man -- not quite out but considerably too dazed for immediate retaliation, catching himself against the side of the pool table (where the rest of the bar patrons have cleared this scrap a wide berth now.) Ion plucks one of the balls off their table, tossing it casually in Domino's direction as he wanders back towards Matt. "-- the luck. You dead, man?" Matt gives a delighted cackle--and is immediately short of breath after, but the insidious reach of his power methodically shuts down the third and last of their opponents' powers--even if Ion has left him dazed. "I'm no deader than I was five minutes ago," comes his cheerful answer. "Was that too easy? I assume it always goes about like this for her, but I'd hate to take all the fun out of it for you." "I'm old enough to enjoy an easy win," Domino replies. She grabs the closest body and rolls his sleeve up to his elbow, revealing the claw mark tattoo running halfway down his forearm. It matches the one on her own wrist. "Damn it," she says. "We all deader than five minute ago," Ion answers Matt, fingers tapping against one of the intricate bone designs of his chair, "you just wear it with some flare." He is only just now taking stock of the onlookers -- some gaping, some intrigued; this is clearly Not The First bar fight that has happened in here -- with a brighter smile. "One you want --" he's starting to say to one particularly wide-eyed man nearby, but checks himself at Domino's exclamation. "These clowns, you know them?" Matt's laughter is breathy but pleased, here. "Well, we all have our talents." His chair slides over to Domino, but he peers from the unconscious rough's tattoo to Domino's. "Mmm, and here I thought they were just jealous of your style. Have you reason to expect more trouble, now they know you're about?" "They're a part of my old crew," Domino says quietly. "A bad one. I'm no angel now, but believe me when I tell you I used to be worse." She takes a closer look at the the faces of the passed out mutants. "I don't know these guys, so it looks like they've been expanding their membership. We should probably go before I run into anyone I do know." She starts heading for the door, muttering under her breath. "Sometimes I don't feel very lucky at all."