Summary:Killer Moth meets with Captain Cold and Heatwave. Log Info:Storyteller: {$storyteller} |
Related LogsTheme Song{$themesong} |
   |
The criminal element of Gotham City wasn't something Drury Walker ever understood, the supervillains even less, and the vigilante community was an outright mystery.
Yet here he was at a Maggia-backed restaurant, a classy Italian joint for poorer diners, eating in the bar section set aside for the rougher types. He sat at the curved bar, the narrow-shouldered but muscular Italian kid out of his costume and instead wearing a brown jacket and a pair of brown khaki pants, hunched over the bar and fiending on a plate of spaghetti and melted mozarella over a spread of red sauce.
Drury frequently and compulsively pats his parmesan shaker over the pasta, slapping the bottom in a fruitless attempt to get an unreasonable amount of cheese onto his sauce, as he rolls up the spaghetti noodles in his spoon and shovels the noodle sauce mess into his mouth. He has an imperial pale ale on the bar to his left, his shock of brown hair about his head in a towel-dried but unkempt state.
Lena Snart wasn't use to being a big-sister. She was, she had memories of it, but the act wasn't there for years upon years. Even now, she treated her sister as some precious thing to keep at arm's length. She spoke to her without love, but more so conviction and fierce protection. However, some things seem to be habitual, and when she notices the lack of cheese powder leaving its container, the goth-punk, pale skinned girl moves his way. She claims a seat, not asking to, and takes the jar for herself. Giving it a shake to the side, she opens the top and then cleans off the top with a pass of a napkin. Cleaner, she fits it back in place and sets it beside the man.
Once done, she lifts her fingers to call over a tender, placing and order for her own hearty meal - and one to go.
Drury's head perks up, and he looks sidelong at Lena, furrowing his brow as she pulls the shaker from his hand. Leaving his digits open in a gentle but firm manner, his hand showing the prison brawling experience he's built over his life, he picks it back up, pats it over the pasta, and grins.
"Thanks."
He sets the shaker down, and shifts on his barstool, pivoting.
"Drury. You?"
"Snart." She offers in return. Maybe it was something about people like them, those who had lived in a cage for awhile - an aura? A smell? Either way, it's the feeling that allows someone to just offer their name when, perhaps, they may not usually. When her drink arrives, she sips from it - Blood Orange Italian Soda. She sips and then she drinks it down fully, setting the empty vessel aside and ordering another while waiting for her food.
"Long night?" She asks, allowing her icy eyes to find his profile.
"Just wanted a meatball," comes the reply, Drury slicing a meatball with the side of his fork, before spearing it carefully and lifting it to his mouth.
"Don't really want all this stuff, but might as well," he adds, before popping the pork and beef into his mouth, chewing. He loves the meatballs here, they grease the stuff with veal fat, but they don't soften it with the actual veal.
Something sadistic about the Maggia, has always attracted Drury, but just to their food.
Chewing, he lifts his beer with his left hand, and takes a long draw, before reaching back out and setting it down.
"So, Snart," he continues, having quaffed his beverage to wash down the meat, "What's your story?"
"Which part?" Lena muses, her dark lips twisting into a smirk, pressing a dimple into a cheek. She doesn't speak for now, shifting in her seat as her food arrives. Unlike Moth, she doesn't twist her noodles against the bowl of a spoon - she simply twirls and eats. Sighing, contently, she hums in appreciation and nods her thanks once her secondary drink arrives.
"Sorry, I'll stuff my face and move on soon. Just saw your…issue with the shaker and couldn't help myself. Sorry, no disrespect."
"Of course not," Drury says with a little side grin as he tilts his face towards Lena with a little duck of his chin.
"Just the part before you showed up here," Drury indicates, twisting more noodles with his fork and spoon, before he slips them into his mouth, craning his arm about to get the noodles into his mouth without embarassing himself.
Spaghetti isn't date food.
OR was it the /perfect/ date food? Either way, he has the girl smiling in an genuine manner. "Before here? Eh…had some red-head show up at a bar talking shit. It was…special. Sadly wasn't a brawl but, hey. Gave me work." She shrugs, taking up more of the pasta and slurping it down. Reaching out, she gropes for a napkin and drag is over her lips to clean off any residue of sauce.
"What about you, Drury? I mean, besides the meatballs. Though, if that's the only real reason, I don't blame you."
"Between jobs," Drury says, making it a point to not look at Lena as she eats messily. It's a clear avoidance, although not one of repulsion. Maybe the perfect date food for a woman.
"I'm a specialist, like most people around here," he says low, looking straight forward, to make eye contact with her in the bar mirror. "This place is just for guys like me. Are you a gal like you?"
"Yeah? What type of work do you do?" She asks, still eating and lifting up her pale gaze toward him, or at least his reflection. His talk of specialization causes her to smile once more, a nod, another forkful of food and a sip of soda. "Mmm, exactly for a girl like me. I'll bite, what's your thing, Drury?"
"I work anti-cop, anti-cape. I come cheap, and I come equipped."
Drury slices more of his meatball off, before spearing it and inserting it into his mouth.
"They call me Killer Moth."
"I'm not exactly a fan of blues myself. Not that they ever did me or mine any favors…" She shrugs, another sampling up and more eating taken care of while Drury speaks. "I'm sure that comes with a story I'd love to hear. Would you rather I call you Moth, then?" A nibble, a sip, she continues. "Captain Cold."
"Well, it's not so much my story," Drury says, getting animated. "It's everyone else's story in this gig."
"I'm into stories, you see. Crooks, criminals, civilians, cops, capes, they all have stories. But the big names, a guy like a President or a superhero or a real bastard mastermind, they all have something interesting."
Drury straightens his posture and turns to face Lena. "Nixon, for example, had that flop sweat. Or Hitler, he had all the funny uniforms. Eisenhower, he was a modern major general. Each guy has a story that gives him a gimmick, and I wanted to get into this supervillain thing, so I needed a gimmick, but I didn't have a story, you know?"
Drury grins triumphantly, as if he's done the proper thing, and slaps his hand on the bar.
"So I got a degree, made a bunch of gear, and bought a cave."
"That's…it?" She asks now, taking his choices to heart. Finishing off her dish, she pushes it aside and turns to face him. Crossing leg over leg, she lets one thickly-soled foot dangle, her hand busy with holding her drink bottle. "You…got a degree, made gear and got a cave. That…sounds horribly lame." She blinks, brows knitting before she takes a sip of soda.
"The questions is /why/, though. That's a story you can't ignore. Why this side of the fence and not the other? Why be someone who belongs here and not at the bar down the street?"
Drury looks like he's considering it, then slouching, reaching the same mental block he has every time he gets to this impasse.
"I honestly couldn't tell you, actually, Cold."
A helpless look on his face, he looks back up.
"Grass dealing just didn't pay the bills, you know?"
"I'm usually not someone who tells someone else to just get a job or…whatever. Hell, I should be doing that, but I'm better at what I do. I'm, it's just my life. So you use to deal and then," she motions to his hands. "Got locked up? How long?" She sips, trying to get something out of the man. "Doing something without reason just…cheapens it. There has to be a reason, some passion, something that pushed you over that edge to do what you do."
"I don't know, two or three ten month stints for major possession, somewhere around three pounds of pot the first time, the last time a good twenty pound stock of high grade hydroponic in a lab that I was sitting on with some friends. I fight well, I hit the gym, I jog. That's about all you need. All that martial arts stuff, that's just speed fighting, taking a punch is better than throwing it."
Drury is honestly flummoxed now, lifting his beer as he straightens back up with his slim muscle supporting his wirey physique. "Pushed me over the edge? I've never got what the other guys talk about, pushed you over the edge. I just was interested in a newspaper article about some guy with a flamethrower or something, or a giant robot maybe, so I came up with the idea of getting into the supervillain business. But, instead of doing work on my own, I'd treat it as a business, you know, working for criminals, instead of hiring them."
He sips his beer, smiling and holding up his free pointer. The beer lowered, he adds, "The key, is that I studied superheroes, to come up with all of my equipment."
Lena Snart considers this now, listening and nodding. The talk of robots and flamethrowers causes her to smile. "I know a couple of people that like fire." Then he gets around to it and that causes the girl's chilly eyes to fall on his face with genuine intrigue. "You…study supes? Huh, see, now that's a good one. What I develop is in that same line of things. Well, it was specifically for one speedster, but same idea." Nibbling her lower lips, she cants her head to the side.
"What type of stuff do you make, Moth?"
"I've got a kevlar suit that can glide for a fall, a night vision helmet that can integrate radio and infrared, a web gun that can fire tear gas rounds, a car mounting a machine gun, rockets, and napalm, and of course, a nice little cave with a computer mainframe and a police scanner network wired to the city, outside city limits."
Drury sets his beer down, looking at her lips briefly. "Captain Cold versus a speedster? That's not a bad idea. You ever try a quick freeze compound for their hands? That would lessen their sensitive of the fingers and palms, so they'd pull too hard on anything sensitive, like a door handle, until they regrew the skin."
Drury opines, "Mechanical engineering associate's, community college."
"I've battled speedsters before, that's where Jadis comes in. She doesn't actually freeze things. That's a misconception. What she does is slows down atoms on a base level, reaching such a dip that things 'freeze' over. Get it? That's how you deal with a speedster." She smiles, the expression only softening as, for some reason, she misses The Flash.
Shaking her head, she finishes off her drink and then sets the bottle aside. "As for a freezing compound? I'm working on that currently, working on making Jadis cryo as well. I'm going off Doctor Fries work but, it's slow going. I don't have the funds yet or tech." She wiggles a finger, "but you…you have the space and, apparently, the tech to make some pretty nice toys." A smirk. "Just…don't tell Mick about the mounted machine gun-napalm delight. I'll never hear the end of it."
"You want to hang out at the Mothcave, eh?" Drury grows feline, his legs uncurling on his stool as his shoulders loosen and hackle, his back preening, before the name 'Mick' process and he goes slack. "The Mothcave, of course."
He turns back to the bar, and gestures at the bartender. "Hey, can I get some rolls and bread?"
The door opens…another steps through. Perhaps if the place were slightly more 'fancy', there would be a server swetting bullets as the hulking figure of Mick Rory pushes through the door. As it was…it was probably still going to earn the odd look or two as he just…walks straight up through the door and shoves his way past a couple who'd been waiting for a seat first.
"Hey!" he calls, heading towards the table in where Lena works and dropping down into a chair with a thud. "Got tired of waiting…" he begins, reaching out for one of the rolls a waiter had just brought to the table at Moth's beckon. He's already got half a mouthful before he finally nods his head the stranger's way. "Who's this guy?"
"Hey." She greets Mick, watching as he claims his seat at the bar. The grab for the roll causes her to growl and backhand his arm. "Rude. Apologize." She then motions from one man to the other. "Drury, this is Rory. Drury here was just telling me about some nice toys he can make for people like us. Moth, this is Mick. One of the ones I mentioned liked fire. Keep him happy and you'll have a loyal customer for life." She smiles then and motions for a server as well. "I'll take that take-away now. If you could put it on a plate, I'd be thankful."
Drury nods to Mick, before he palms a roll and a packet of butter.
"Hi Mick, they call me Killer Moth. Drury's just the civilian name."
He scoops the butter out with his silver knife, spreading it on the stiff round roll, and slicing the knife out with the butter left folded in the middle.
"I work cover protection for jobs, I don't actually do any hires myself. No contracts, either, only anti-cop, anti-vigilante, cover operations."
A nod, a shrug, a tilt of his head and one last mouthful of the bread roll before he looks up. A dealer of weapons? Alright, a fair enough reason to be talking to the guy. At the offering of codenames? The man grins. "Heatwave," he offers without a trace of humor before glancing back towards Lena. "Tools and stuff are all good, but I've never thought of you as someone to outsource to some stranger!"
"Hey, I'm allowed to shop." Lena tells Mick, giving an upnod toward his plate of food as it arrives. "Couple of cold ones, too, for Mick and Drury here." She requests, buyin both a brew. Sitting in the middle of the two, she turns her attention back in Moth's direction. "If you're still up for it, I'd like to see the Cave. See what we can work up together."
"Make mine a soda," Drury says with a raise of his finger at the keep.
Returning his attention to the duo, he gestures with the roll in his hand.
"I've got all the works to make basic gear, plus chemicals, explosives, parts, fuel, wiring, and of course, matching components to anything I outfit as counter-measures. I've got the Mothmobile around the side, it's a cop-outfitted Dodge Charger, armored up and turbocharged, with a few tricks built into it. Vulcan cannon on the right side, dumbfire missiles in the grill, and a napalm jelly slick that can deploy from the rear. Plus, full radio-audial equipment, a global positioning system, and a database of the city roads."
Drury bites into the roll, talking as he chews, "I'll drive you two back to the cave after you eat."
"Suit yourself," Mick shrugs, hardly going to refuse a drink for himself. His answer to Lena's comment was a little more straight-forward; he shrugs and offers some approximation of a 'pout'. He does turn however, at the mention of the 'Mothmobile', raising an eyebrow. "Lame name…awesome car. Might almost give the Bat a run for his money. Almost."
There was a certain gravitas to the batmobile after all, enough so that the criminal still held the hope of getting his hands on the vehicle one day.
"Still, stuff like that doesn't tend to come easy. You got some military hookup or something? Rob one of those Stark trucks?"
Lena Snart simply smiles, now having Mick's attention on what the man can do. Winking Moth's way, she slips off her stool. "Excuse me, gents. I'm going to powder my nose…or whatever the cliche is." Off she walks, boots thunking and skirt swaying.
"The Bat is where I got the idea, actually, I love that guy," Killer Moth shares.
Drury takes another bite of the roll, getting into the buttery mess in the middle.
"I told you, I have an associate's in mechanical engineering, I build the stuff on the my own. What, you didn't think you could get a decent degree at a community college?"
A laugh…although it's more of a gwarfing chuckle and Mick shrugs his shoulders. "Never was much for eggheads," he shrugs, gesturing with a sweep of his hand. "I was mostly the 'if it didn't kill me or land me in jail or…whatever else? It was all the learnin' I needed." Another sip of his drink, the man leans forwards and grins. The sort of grin that's a little too much teeth and a little closer to a sneer. "Lena's the brains in all this. All I really need. But there's always a place for the guy willing to bust a head or burn something down, degree or not."
"I'm strictly into business. You want me to cover on a bank robbery, forty grand. You want me to cover for a hit on a gang, three grand. A Maggiaso job on a foreign syndicate, twenty five grand. A deliberate move on a costumed hero, fifty grand."
Killer Moth finishes the roll, chunking down a swallow and sipping his soda from a straw.
"Everything else, negotiable."
"I don't know if I'm really big on cutting in a new face without vetting them," the man shrugs, another deep sip of his beer drawing the volume down at an alarming rate before he sets it aside again. "Or at all really, 'less Lena calls for it." The pyromaniac shrugs, jerking his head towards the direction of his partner. "You talk a good game an' all, but so far it's all talk and numbers without any proof that all these fancy toys of yours work, or exist at all."
"Tell you what," Drury says, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a money clip, paying his check and leaving a slim tip. "I take you both in a ride around the city in the Mothmobile?" He pulls away from the bar.
"Just let me know when you're ready, I'll be outside." He shoves his hands in the pockets of his jacket, and jaunts out.