Participants:
| Scene Title | 15, 31 and Forty |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | A pair of mismatched Loco goons corner Deckard to put in an order more baffling than most. |
| Date | April 29, 2009 |
There's something about the fringes of Staten Island that will always inspire sentiments of unease. After the bomb, much of Staten Island has fallen into glorious disrepair, so much so that places that were already in stages of decay look more like monuments to entropy than once urban settlements in decline. While much of the island was suburban residential areas before the bomb, there were two crowning moments that drove this borough of New York into an early grave. The first was the mass exodus of survivors and panicked people fleeing Manhattan. They came by foot, bicycle and car across the bridges to Staten Island, all manner of desperate and frightened people flooding into a crowded place. While some fled through to New Jersey, others simply couldn't — or wouldn't — go further. This, like in Queens, led to an eventual chaos that would in time eclipse the pandemonium in the eastern edge of New York after the bomb.
Staten Island was in the direct path of the fallout from the explosion, and after thousands fled to the island, the entire populace was forcibly evacuated. Those few that managed to stay, clung to their homes desperately, and those few who did would suffer from radiation sickness and the ever-escalating crime rate. By the time Staten Island got the "all clear" from the government, the damage had already been done.
What was one suburban neighborhoods and parklands is now a monument to decay. Houses lie in various states of disuse and ruin, and like much of New York has seen property values nosedive. Few want to move out to a formerly irradiated zone, and even fewer want to return to a place so rife to violent crime. Now, much of Staten Island lies in various states of decay. Houses abandoned by families that fled the city, were forced into forclosure and were never resold, or simply places where entire families went missing and are now squatted in by any number of transients line the once peaceful streets. Staten Island is a home to crumbling infrastructure, spotty electricity, and people who wish to remain undiscovered by law enforcement. Few police will willingly go into this now infamous island.
Staten Island is a very dangerous place, it's a place where anyone can be followed, kidnapped, mugged, and all sorts of terrible things. Unfortunately for Flint Deckard, there's an entire gang looking for him, and two members of such a gang appear to have found him, slowly tailing him. The gang is following leads, and 15, a short very thin man, with 31, a slightly pudgy taller man, have gotten leads that led to the current tailing.
Mortimer is no where to be seen yet, but he's probably not /too/ far away.
It's cool out. Cooler than it's been, and Deckard is dressed accordingly, overcoat collar flipped high around the back of his neck while he scuffs his way down a cracked line of sidewalk. Wind kicks up off the nearby beach in chilly oceanic gusts, ruffling waves into patches of tall grass stained black by the late hour. The buildings that line the sidewalk are dark too. At some point the power lines between here and the rest of the grid went down, leaving the empty carapaces of shops and apartments to decay relatively undisturbed.
Until now. Not ignorant of the fact that he's got a couple of goons on his tail given that this sort of thing happens to him kind of sort of all the time lately, Deckard doesn't so much as glance over his shoulder before he takes a hard right and breaks into a bolt, long legs propelling him into a narrow alley and then up onto a rusting fire escape beyond that. AAAHHH.
The men look at each other, then they start to bolt after him, though the chubby one seems to have a bit of trouble keeping up, the thin one darts up the fire escape after him. "Hey! Are you Flint Deckard? Our boss wants to buy something from you!" he calls out, in a voice barely out of his teens. The more out of shape one takes a breather, looking up at the scene. Just where are those air conditioners Mortimer promised to install?
Deckard moves like a man possessed, which could be partially true, depending on your outlook. Teeth bared, chest rising and falling fast and hard, he slings himself up one story — two, and then hesitates once the question from below has had time to sink in. A few seconds after the dull gleam of his gun has been nudged out of its holster, he leans his head carefully over the side of the railing to squint down at his pursuit, all scruffy grey hair and sunglasses.
"…What?"
15, the thin one, clears his throat and stands up with a salute, not one inch of either henchman's body visible. "I'm 15, he's 31, we're members of the Locos, in affiliation with Linderman."
31 from below stands up straight with a salute as well, continuing for 15, with a slightly deeper voice, later in his 20s. "We were told you could get a large stock of polyurethane we could use for foam. You'll be paid well."
"You don't look fifteen," Deckard observes from on high, voice hoarse with lingering unease. Visible obstructions made invisible to his eye give way to the thin visage of the self-proclaimed Loco representative beneath him. No way he could shoot him at this angle. He scuffs a few inches to the right, retracting his own head out of easy view. "Polyurethane for foam. …How large is large?"
"Read the helmet, buddy." 15 says as he thumbs at the large red 15 painted on his helmet. When asked about the foam, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. And x-ray vision will reveal that both men are strapped with two uzis, and 31 has a grenade on the back of his belt. "According to this piece of paper, we need enough to screw up one office building floor."
Read the helmet. Nose rankled, Deckard would rather take his word for it, what with uzis and grenades and that sort of thing to deal with downstairs. Jesus. There's a rickety, metal-plinked 'clank' when he takes a step backwards, weight shifted and free left hand braced against the railing. Even with the paper down there at ready, he looks and sounds about as likely to come down as a mangy old possum treed by a couple of retarded dogs.
"Put it down and leave a number and I'll come down and get it after you guys have pissed off."
"Yes sir! Ask for Mortimer, otherwise he might think you're one of those Reptilian Agenda guys who got his number somehow." 15 says with a straight, well, voice, sitting the paper down, then walking down the fire escape. "Hey, 31, what the hell, this is why you're not supposed to wear clothes under the suit!"
"Sure. I was never a big fan of Sleestak anyway," Deckard's voice drifts down in turn, dropped to a mutter towards its tail end. May Staten island never run out of crazy people hemorrhaging money for things like massive amounts of foam. Gun held out at an angle, he stays right where he is for the moment, content to make sure they're well on their way before he makes his move.
31 looks up right after Deckard's reference, then yells, "Man, what are you forty?" Then both men just seem to run off into the night.
FFFFfffff. Annoyance at his own age filtered out into a gruff, nasal sigh, Deckard sinks back into a sit on the narrow rise of the escape ladder to his back to finish catching his breath. Eventually, eventually he picks his way down more carefully than he went up, sunglasses tipped down to the end of the nose while he scans the paper and tucks it away into his pocket. Polyurethane. Ookay.