Participants:
| Scene Title | Have You Seen This Gun |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Tibby hasn't. |
| Date | February 22, 2018 |
The greenbelt.
The fringes of the Greenbelt were green before. Now they're real green, saplings pushing up out through the carapace of an overturned golfcart, manicured grass grown up into scrubby wilderness.
It's a cloudy afternoon over the ruins of Staten Island, miserable and cold just shy of snow and ice.
A lone figure is fording through dead grass grown knee-high in a black leather jacket and dark jeans, a knit cap pulled down low over his ears. He's got his hands jammed down in his pockets, swinging along with his head down, squinting after any signs of smaller feet gone before him. A stocky blue pitbull pronks in and out of the grass around him off the leash. Excited!!
"If I'da known you were gonna fuck up the trail I'd left you at home," Buddy tells the dog. A lazy kick goes wide — easily dodged into a tongue-lolling roll into obscurity.
Over It, Buddy splits the quiet with a whistle sharp through his teeth — loud enough to carry in through the trees.
"You in there, kitty cat?"
What do you want Wit Ou.
The voice that enters Buddy's mind is childlike, small. It is not a question though, out with it white man. But there is steel in that tone. Tibby does not like that nickname, at all. Out of the trees comes a black cat, it's lazy gaze fixed on the man and his pitbull. It's tail swishes side to side as bright green eyes study them. Another cat hops out of the trees into the line of sight this one a fat tabby, it purrs but licks at it's paw. Eyes on the pitbull, weary. A mangy white stray cat pads up behind the man and his dog, a british shorthair follows afterwards peering up at the man. The white stray pounces close to the dog trying to bat at his backside with a paw.
Eight cats sit or stand in a loose circle around the man. When coming to Staten Island one must be armed and though yes she has guns, she walks with a pack of stray cats when she is in these ruins and not in her home in Park Slope. They sit waiting, heads tilted up at the man. A few of them are visibly upset at the presence of the pitbull but something is keeping them in formation, subverting their will.
Buddy belches, low and slow, spare air blown out through his nose while he sizes down the first cat's approach. In a world any less strange, he might balk at the sound of a voice in his head, however small and childlike.
In this one, he settles in where he stands, bootheels rocked in, shoulders wide open.
"Theeere you are."
There they all are — cats of every color circling around in formation. Buddy's pup wheels clumsily after the paw batting at her bottom, jaws chopped with an audible click despite the playful swing of her tail.
"Got a few questions is all. We oughta get you one of them Barbie cell phones or somethin' for you to keep in that cute little butthole of yours."
Then speak.
Her tone is bored at this point but his comment about her butthole is just.. So rude. Is that where ya keep yours or in ya piel? A bit more of her unusual mix of an British accent with something else comes out. She doesn't like Buddy, he's cute but he's also disgusting.
The cats all yowl, one at a time tails swishing in anger. The mangy white one just barely escapes the jaws of the pitbull before it's bounding back towards the grey cat and hissing.
Tibby isn't particularly worried yet, he wouldn't be the first man bigger than her that has tried something. But she is weary, she hates this part of the game. She likes her boat, she likes smuggling in goods under the eye of law enforcement she hates all this violence whose dick is bigger shit. But here she is again, right in the thick of it.
Buddy's dog isn't finished with playtime — the brute prances in pursuit of her attacker, only to shy away sideways when the cats yowl in unison. Less sure of herself.
"I'm lookin' for a gun," says Buddy, who's less impressed, cell phone fished out of his left pocket so he can fat-finger his way through a passcode in gloves and pull up a picture. The picture is of a black PSM pistol — compact and slender. He turns the screen out to show the cats arranged before him like some kind of show and tell, letting everyone have a chance to see, like they're a circle of mangy kindergartners. "Actually I'm looking for seven guns."
His right hand has stayed pushed down into his pocket all this while. Just another part of the game.
"They would've shown up with a suddeness in this past week or two."
A smirk crosses her lips from where she is perched in her hiding place. Adze and Oya at her flank watching, she's nestled good in the trees. He can't see her but she can see him, flitting from cat to cat to see through their eyes, her own head tilted she hides. She uses the cats surrounding him to study him from all angles, and the dog too. The fat tabby notes his other hand and the African woman snorts in her head.
Might have heard something, I'll check with friends, leave your contact somewhere.
She has not offered to move from her hiding place, she hasn't given it away. There is tension in the back of her neck though and not just from the use of her ability. The cats seem to pick up on her emotions, their own bodies tensing eyes as silts.
In the trees, Tibby's lips curl back.
He's not a big fella — average, in most ways, with a foot for a face and a hard nose and keen eyes. There's a thuggish swagger to his shoulders, confident in this current state of strange affairs. The clip of a pocket knife gleams silver in his right jeans pocket, embellished with filigree.
"You mighta heard something," he echoes, agreeably, and nods while his dog creeps back up on the white cat, one paw outstretched at a time. Testing how close she can get.
Buddy ignores the pup, pulls the revolver out of his jacket pocket, and scratches under the hem of his hat with the nose. His phone goes back in the far side, tucked away.
"Listen, Tiddy, I don't wanna make an enemy outa you, least of all by wastin' bullets on a bunch of fuckin' cats." He leaaans, shifting his weight. "I'm an optimistic guy. I think we could be friends."
At the sight of the revolver in his hands Tibby gapes open in a smile showing a hint of fang, predictable. Looks like to me you want a pehrer Bucky. She would rather he not shoot the cats but seeing as it's their lives or hers. Tibby begrudgingly begins to accept that this guy is not gonna go away. There's a rustling in the trees and four more strays creep forward into visibility, the white mangy cat hissing as the pup gets closer her tail raised in the air.
Put that away and chase Bucky, I'm not in the mood.
There's a moment of debate for the small woman hiding in the trees with her dark blue mini backpack strapped to her back tight, her legs clad in dark jeans and winter coat covering it all. She lets out a small sigh and relinquishes control over the cats vision. She doesn't like guns.
Click
But she does sell them and has had to deal with them since she was a child. Though she's bigger (not that much) now and again, her felines are usually her preferred way of shenanigans but since he wants to pull out big guns. She looks at Bucky's chest through the scope of the assault rifle that she cradles in her lap. It's heavy but she's had practice, she's not cocky. She just likes to live.
Click
The safety is released. "So ya gunna leave and quit the games ya? If you don't want guns, if you want this gun.." she allows his imagination to finish that.
"Awh, shit," muttered in the same beat he lets the revolver slip out of his grip, Buddy lets it hang off his trigger finger, held aloft only by the hook of his knuckle through the guard. Both hands raised, one wearing his gun like a christmas ornament, there's something off-kilter in his still standing there, parked on her porch like an alligator on a golf course.
"Don't shoot the messenger, Tibby."
Now he knows her name, hangdog in the limelight of her gunsights.
"I'm just being real with you. We don't get those guns back, they're gonna be paid for in blood. You know how the business is."
His dog goes in for the pounce beside him, chops snarfed out in a slobbery grasp after the white cat's head. Licking, champing. She just wants some sugar.
Good boy. She wishes she was inside one of her feline friend's brains but she settles for good ol fashioned thinking it in her own head. Saying her name makes her stiffen because he finally got it right. She does not release her grip on her rifle. She stays in place, still watching him. "Like aye said, don't know nothing about that shit. I'll look around if you stop talking about my butthole, like don't you have better things to do than fucking with a girl just chilling in the trees with her cats?" Tibby cannot understand.
"Whose 're they?" An eyebrow raises and she flicks her head to the left a little, the cats all shift their weight to the left as well. It's just a trick, she's having fun. Or well trying to have fun while not being nervous, Madagascar taught her, she had to buck up or she'd be run down. And there weren't any panthers in the greenbelt that she knew about to save her.
She is curious who this thief may be, she'd have to give them a high-five and smacking for causing her so much trouble.
Buddy's revolver glints bright in a break in the cloud cover, still dangling. It's got filigree of its own to match his knife, all shiny against the matte black of his glove.
"Somebody not as friendly as I am."
He squints up at Tibby's tree, struggling to catch a glimpse of the situation up there through the cold biting his nose, and then away, across the golf course. Knew he shouldn't have come fuckin' with the cat lady on his own. Meanwhile, his pit is trying to inhale the white cat's head in a slobbery mess of tongue and jowl, overlarge paws shoving at white fluff.
"Trust me."
"Well if yer have no names to give, I can't help ya look can I?" She'll hear the name eventually she has little feline spies all over the place. But if he wants to be friends, then can be homies if he behaves. "We could be buddies," she takes a breath resteadying her rifle, there's a rustle in the trees. Tibby continues to look dead at Buddy, she's not keen on showing him her face. The white cat currently in the pit's mouth yowls and flails trying to claw at the dog. The grey cat next to them swipes at the dog's nose.
"Oi call the mutt off, Scurry doesn't like that." Scurry does not like that at all. Tibby is patient, she can sit there all day. She use to sleep in trees in the wild in Africa. Come on Buddy. "Either give up some info or push off." Cat Lady is over it.
"PRINCESS!!" belted out from the diaphragm, Buddy stamps his bootheel and the dog bolts, ears pinned, paws throwing mud up over the grasstop. "Gatdamnit, Princess. Getcher ass back over here!"
She doesn't, running circles through a dead stretch that must've been a sandpit at some point.
Buddy frowns hard, scruffy goatee set out at a jut.
"Okay, first of all," he says, at length, "can I put my fuckin' arms down? My fingers'r falling asleep. Second…" Second? "If I tell you, you gotta promise you didn't hear it from me."
"Gun gets thrown behind ya, you can pick it up as ya leave."
"If ya arms fall off whoever you work for will be mad at me," and is she shoots him but claiming self defense is a better strategy than torturing the poor thug. Tibby nods her head as she watches carefully as he make his movement. "Aright, ok ok I'll lie. Listen ya know about me, they'll believe one of my cats heard about it."
She is eager for the piece of information, waiting to sniff the bait so that she can go on the hunt. Tibby does not like when trouble knocks on her tree. The cats are in formation but a couple of them have joined the fray, four cats against the pig with Scurry in his mouth. This is becoming a problem.
"Throwin' guns is dangerous."
But Buddy does it anyway, slow and without too much care for how the thing lands behind him, lazy through the shoulders. Less concerned about having a hole blown in him for some dumb shit, now that she's marked herself willing to negotiate.
"You should know that." Seeing as she has one pointed at him. "They belong to Zain. Or The Zain, I dunno what he fuckin' calls himself. I need a cigarette. Back left pocket —" he makes a show of turning around to show her his ass with his hands still up before he makes the reach.
"Don't shoot me."
Zain? Ah..
She sighs because she knows that name. What a blueberry muffin stuffed with poison "Ya mean the flashy one with the.. Ya know," if she could make the gesture in front of him it would something happening over her head. "The Flair Hair." She readjusts the aias he turns his back exposing his ass.
"Keep that ass out." She likes it.
"Well m I'll take a lookie around with my friends here, and they're friends." It's good for her tor remind him and Flair Hair that she has a lot more kitties then these. They are her friends but friends protect friends so.. Tibby likes to think this will be solved with no violence. Just a promise to work together. .
"He looks like a cue tip," Buddy agrees, mildly.
Enter stage right, Princess the pitbull goes tearing through the grass between them with a golfball in her mouth, bowling over any unwary cats that might be in the way. Buddy ignores her, busy working the cigarette box out of his blue jeans and tapping out a smoke.
He pauses when she tells him to keep his ass out, a hike at his brows lost to the wilds of the golf course beyond.
"I'll give you my number," he says. You know, for business purposes. "You got somethin' to write with?"
"He pay that good?" Because honestly that hair. As Princess runs back into view the cats growl as they are bowled over. Stupid dog, Tibby thinks but she does continue to study his ass through the scope. "I'll take it." Cuz he's fun.
She wiggles a bit in the tree, Oya and Adze stay alert but the African Golden Cat yawns, she wants a nap. The caracal runs a claw through the bark of the tree, impatient. While she wants his number, for business purposes. She doesn't wanna put her gun down but seeing as Buddy is unarmed.. She places the rifle in her lap and digs out a pen and tiny notepad from her backpack, reaching in it from over her shoulder, "Go 'head." He can make a move all he wants, if he so chooses. She's ready to knock him down for dat ass.
"What yer doin after you get done with your messenger boy duties for the day?" Tibby is outspoken, yes. And men have said worst to her, she likes being able to keep one on his toes. "It's perky. Squats?"
"No comment," on the subject of how much he is or isn't paid, Buddy lights up and tucks the smushed rectangle of the rest of the box away again, his digits counted out loud and slow. He's following instructions otherwise, still facing away, watching Princess pawing that golfball around in the grass like it's alive. Probably only a matter of time before she swallows it.
"Good genes."
Human ones. A long draw later, he spits into the grass. Hard to tell if it's an intentional punctuation mark from behind.
"Gotta kick in a couple o' doors, break an old lady's kneecaps if she don't pay up, feed the hogs. Crime stuff. You?"
If it was it doesn't bother Tibby, worst has been said and done to her as a girl of mixed heritage in Africa. She scribbles down his number quickly and then shoves the notepad back in her backpack. "Great," as she hefts the rifle back in her arms.
The cats stare ahead now in straight concentration. Princess is forgotten now that she's off being a dumb dog. Tibby's eyes slant as she listens to him. "Drop off a package, take a cat nap and smoke some weed." she has a sense of humour. Just not Kitty Cat.
"Where do you buy ladies drinks?"
"When you leave and pick up your gun, make sure you bend over.
An afterthought.
"Wherever they want."
Buddy winks at Princess, cigarette rolled over to the side of his mouth. Wiiiink.
Princess garbles around her golf ball like a dumbshit.
In any case, his gun is just a few paces away, and he starts after it, moving slow-like, so as not to have his spine splintered out through his belly.
"You call me first if you hear anything," he says, as he bends over, a little too stiff to manage it without some bend in his knee. There's mud on his gun when he snags it up out of the grass, and he shakes it loose, smoke lingering over the fade of his breath when he sighs. "I'll make it worth your while. C'mon, Princess."
It's always nice to act like you're gonna bang the guy so he lets his guard down. Maybe you bang him, maybe you don't but his guard is down. Is it? Tibby watches as he bends over and she snickers and whistles as he walks away. She continues to watch him leave and Princess. "We'll see about that."
A light sigh escapes the blonde as she looks up towards the sky, the other cats do the same before snapping back to stare at Buddy as Tibby continues to stare up a the sky. She goes from mind to mind, watching him until he disappears.
A small black cat follows after the Dog and his dog. The pair none the wiser.