2019-05-22 - Trouble at Sister Margaret's

Summary:

In a dangerous spot, Logan thinks he needs to come to Betsy's aid. Is he ever wrong.

Log Info:

Storyteller: None
Date: Wed May 22 04:12:14 2019
Location: Sister Margaret's

Related Logs

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Theme Song

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betsy-braddocklogan

Sister Margaret's is home to a dangerous clientele. Typically, those who come come strapped. Those who come unarmed are typically another sort of dangerous altogether. This sort of clientele disuaded most customers, but tonight it's attracted one particular man.

Logan sits at the bar. He has a line of empty glasses in front of him, testament to having drunk an amount of liquor that would put an ordinary human out cold. He has made clear to the bartender that he doesn't want his glasses removed, and in this sort of place, the bartender obliges such requests. Logan is downing yet another glass, adding the empty to the growing ranks of the fallen before him. Tonight he is dressed in work boots, dusty jeans that look like he worked in them today, a threadbare Ramones t-shirt, and a leather jacket.

Betsy does not look, at first glance, like the right sort of clientele for the place. Purple hair is pulled back in a long, tight braid, leaving her lovely features bared, barely touched with makeup. Leather jacket is gray, on over a purple tank top, snug dark jeans, and well worn black boots.

She isn't nearly as heavily armed as most people, at least not at first or second glance. But she doesn't need to be, and she moves without hesitation or self-consciousness for the bar. She will slide up onto a stool, a glance sidelong at the impressive line-up of glasses to her left, before she will order a bourbon, neat. This place is a buzz around her head, and shields will inch down to listen in around her.

There is a dangerous buzz in the minds around Betsy. There are those who are here to hide, to avoid law enforcement or enemies. There are those here to get something - a favour, an illegal item or service, or pay for deeds almost certain to be illegal. There are those here just for the atmosphere, the sort of dangerous people that need to be surrounded by danger themselves. These are the ones most looking to make a reputation for themselves, the ones most likely to be trouble.

It is a cacophany, really, what is yielded by this passive scan. Certainly the man beside her is not thinking with such intensity, or with anything sufficiently different from the rest to stand out.

Logan looks toward Betsy, quirking a brow slightly, but he doesn't say anything. If he thinks she's out of place, or someplace she shouldn't be, he doesn't say so. He just waves his empty glass toward the bartender, who comes over and pours him another double bourbon, well grade. He pours Betsy one of her own, though his words are for Logan. "Hey bud, since you've never been in here before… you may want to keep your wits about you, huh? Don't want to be falling down drunk in a place like this." He then looks Betsy over and cautions, "You be careful too, miss," before moving to head elsewhere, to tend to other customers.

She will slide money across the bar for the drink, as she slowly sifts through the chaos of thoughts. It's almost absent-minded, these days, no longer taking the focus of her younger years.

There's a glance aside to Logan as he's addressed, before she's being cautioned. There's a well-defined brow arching upwards over her left eye, those violet eyes watching the bartender with a faint look if distasteful disbelief. She will lift her glass and sip at the bourbon she knows will be below her usual standards. She manages to not make a grimace of disgust, before her mind takes another stroll. She's looking for certain words in thoughts, idly seeking information that may well be not present.

She glances again at Logan. "Were we just nursemaided by the bartender either one of us could take out without thinking?"

Logan gives a sidelong glance toward Betsy. "I'm sure he means well," the man gruffly answers with a lift of one shoulder. "I expect now 'n again, they get somebody in here who could use the advice. I'm not takin' it personal, anyhow." He stays facing forward, for the most part, aside from the oblique glance toward the purple-haired woman at the next stool. He lifts his recently-filled drink to take it down in one fell shot.

"I mean, I know I don't exactly fit in with the usual crowd.." Betsy will half turn. "Being cleaner, prettier, and more on the female side than most in here. But you? Even I can tell that booze isn't touching you near enough to worry about you not being able to watch your backside." She will tip the bourbon back like a shot of medicine, before she sets her glass back to the bar.

"We all gotta have our shtick," Logan deadpans in reply, though there is a faint upward twist of the corner of his lips. "And besides, a functional alcoholic ain't necessary the biggest badass around." He sniffs then, making it more of a sniffle than anything obviously olfactory. He glances back toward her and he asks, "So… what you here for, anyhow? Doubt you come here to look good and be seen."

"Schtick. hmm? What's yours?" She will signal the bartender, a look back at Logan. "Biggest badass? Perhaps not. Though if that alcohol is doing anything but giving you the faintest buzz, you could have fooled me." After all, she'd 'hear' it when people get drunk.

"This is not the sort of place a lady goes to see and be seen, no. I'm simply here to see what there is to see. Have to keep an ear to the ground, keep in the game, so on and so forth."

Logan polishes off his double, setting the glass down amongst the rest. He glances toward Betsy again, sidelong, and he smirks. "Handlin' my drink, I suppose,' he answers with another one-shouldered shrug. He doesn't give off whatever psionic vibrations she would expect of someone who's drunk, but then again, he doesn't really give off any at all. The sort of passive scanning Betsy is doing gives her nothing on him, though it is not likely so conspicuous an absence as to be remarked, not with the amount of background noise as exists in this place.

"What game are you in, exactly?" he asks, now turning a little more directly to face her. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the men drinking up to bolster their courage. They are readying to approach Betsy. And an approach, in this bar, isn't always as nice as in a regular bar. And that's saying something.

"I dabble in a few things. Information, elimination, it depends on who, what, how much." Of course, she's looking for information in order to be able to hunt down and eliminate some of those who kidnapped her and stole part of her life. She's young enough it still matters.

"Handling your drink is important. Lots of men can't." She's aware some of the misguided souls may be trying to come talk to her. She's not looking forward to that.

Logan grunts in response to the vague description of services provided by Betsy. Vague is, after all, the name of the game in a place like this. His eyes roam over her features and then he opens his mouth to answer, but then he shuts it. His eyes flit over to the side, aware in advance of the approach of the three muscle-bound, tattooed men who've decided to see what Betsy's all about.

One, red-eyed and in full punk affectation, sets himself apart as a leader. "Hey, sweetheart," he sneers. "Why don't you ditch that loser and come party with us?"

Betsy Braddock will pause, before she will turn on her stool, elbows perched on the edge of the bar. Her face is fairly blank for an expression, head tipping just a little bit to the side as she looks at them. "Well, as I didn't come in with him, I can hardly ditch him." Her voice is icy, given a sharp edge with her accent. "I'm not here to party…sweetheart."

The punkish tough gives a confident sneer in reply. "Might have to change your mind," he suggests, an undertone of aggression betraying this as no sort of banter. The other two smirk, taking a moment to give Logan and Betsy a once over - each appraising one of those seated at the bar. Logan is met with scorn, Betsy with something more lascivious.

Logan cautions in his understated way, "Bub, you're pickin' the wrong girl on the wrong day."

"You'd have to have a mind in order to change mind. And I assure you, you don't have enough cerebral cells to change a tire, let alone my mind." Betsy says, chin ever so barely lifted. The lascivious looks don't bother her, you get used to those in her line of actual work.

"You should listen to the man. He clearly understands when a lady doesn't want to be bothered, without having to have it spelled out in neon. You're wasting your time, I'm not interested." She sounds bored.

The leader of the trio steps nearer to Betsy. "I was only bein' nice by askin'," he says, the aggressive undertone rising to the forefront now. He reaches forward, to wrap his hand around the crook of her elbow. "Now get that fine ass up. We're celebratin' over there and you're joinin' us!"

Another of the trio moves to Logan, pushing on his chest and pushing his jacket open enough to show off the butt end of a large caliber handgun. "You'll make a new friend, so just sit down and relax," the second thug cautions Logan.

Logan's eyes drift down to the handle of the gun, over to the hand on Betsy's arm, and then back up to the eyes of the man looming over him. There is something dark and hard in his look.

"Oh, was that your approximation of nice? Americans and the lack of manners. I'm sorry, I must decline. I just can not countenance partying with you, watching you kill the few brain cells you have left. Since you have so few…" She moves to rise to her feet. "Allow me to make it simple. NO."

Even as she's saying now, the hand on the arm not being gripped moves forward and up to strike red-eye punk in the throat, even as her TK will pull the gun out of the second thug's waistband to drop to the floor.

It's a delicate thing, lifting a gun out of a holster without having it go off and without sending it rocketing toward the ceiling. Delicate enough that, when the gun clatters to the floor (only then going off), that it requires not an insignificant amount of Betsy's focus. Enough of her focus that the red-eyed man she aims to punch is able to side-step the blow. He is no normal human tough, but someone with greater power and skill. He slips the blow and twists Besy's arm up behind her back, stepping in close behind her to whisper menacing nothings in her ear.

The gun going off silences the room, turning evey eye in the direction of the growing scuffle.

The man who Betsy disarmed is left looking down at his gun in wonderment, even as Logan drives himself up off his stool, to slam his forehead into the man's nose. The cartilage pulverizing is obvious and audible, and the man stumbles back, gushing blood.

This makes the third man draw his gun on Logan, who thus far seems to be the more dangerous between he and Betsy.

She will slam her head to bash the red-eyed punk in the face. She will use her now freed TK to help her push him back away from her, peel his fingers back away from her arm by brute TK force. She will stomp on his foot ruthlessly with her booted heel, her unheld arm moving to help give her momentum to twist away.

She will see that gun pulled on Logan, and there's a purple flash of light as her psi katana forms in her free hand to slice for the third man's neck, to use the psi part of the blade to try and knock him unconscious or stun him long enough to give Logan time to move.

The red-eyed punk gets his nose flattened across his face - unfortunately getting blood in Betsy's hair in the process. Her telekinetic shove sends him flying back and slamming him into the wall, dazing him if not knocking him out. The man with the gun suddenly finds himself flattened by Betsy's psionic blade, crumpling to the ground as a result of the attacks, faster than the human eye can follow.

Logan is left with a last standing man to deal with. The sideburned alcoholic grabs the man by the head and introduces the back of his head to the floor.

In the quiet aftermath of the fight, Logan rumbles, "Good moves. I'm sure you're worth every penny," to Betsy, on his way to pulling out a roll of rumpled, small-denomination bills. Time to pay up and head out, evidently.

"Not in the slightest. I'm rusty as hell." Betsy does seem unhappy, even as the psi katana disappears into her hand. There's a grimace at the feeling of blood in her hair, pulling a cloth from the inside pocket of her jacket to dab at it to try and clean it up.

"Let me pay your tab, at least. They never should have bothered you, you had nothing to do with it, other than a minute's conversation with me."

Logan's gaze flickers toward Betsy's hand, but he says nothing about the psionic weapon that just vanished. "Wasn't nothing. Didn't even break a sweat," he growls softly as he counts bills. An appropriate number are flipped onto the counter and he notes, "I ain't one to stay when the heat's too high. I'd tell ya to take care of yourself, but I'm sure you will anyway." With that, he nods toward her, ready to slip out anonymously as he can into the night.

"Well, when our paths cross again, I'll have to buy you a drink." Something better than the well bourbon here, but that's another topic altogether. "Sorry to mess up your evening." She, too, is leaving. She doesn't want to stick around right now, and be stared at, or challenged. She won't learn anything here tonight, not now.

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