It

Participants:

bill_icon.gif danko_icon.gif

Scene Title It
Synopsis It is many things: Terrorism, Family, Ice Cream.
Date August 1, 2009

Central Park


It's late in the day or early in the evening, depending on how you look at it. A sluggish breeze pushes ripples out across scummy black pond water, chasing drab-coloured ducks into their roosts close to the shoreline. Wrought iron park benches jut out of overgrown knots of wild grass where a caretaker has gotten lazy in keeping everything uniform, which — might just make Emile Danko stand out more than he already does. Guy doesn't get out much. Not like this, anyway. It's obvious in the way he squints into the setting sun, oranges and reds washed bold over the lifeless grey fuzz buzzed down to near nothing across his skull.

It's cool enough out to warrant the black of the fitted leather jacket he's wearing at least, and the collared shirt beneath that. And the slacks beneath that. All black, save for the vague insinuation of pinstriping at his collar and down his sides when he reaches up to fidgit at his nose. 5'7", cadaverous, hollow-eyed and pale, he doesn't exactly look like the leader of a terrorist cell. Maybe an escapee from a mental institution. Or a time traveling goth kid who never quite came into their own.

"Hope you don't mind a little Rocky Road," comes the thick and gruff voice from behind Danko's bench, "they were all out've Cherry-Chocolate, my apologies." Leaning down from behind the bench, the smirking expression of a round faced, tall and heavy-set gentleman with as many wrinkles as Emile but several more pounds comes clear into view. A styrofoam cup containing a slightly melted lump of icecream and a plastic spoon is offered out along with a broad grin.

"I'm a bit more of a sherbert fan m'self," he notes with a raise of both his brows, loping around one side of the bench to take a seat down ont he creaking wood seat. "You know," he continues as if this was completely ordinary, still holding the ice-cream cup up in silent offering, "I never thought I'd sit on a park bench in Central Park af'ta the bomb went and fucked everything up." He urges the cup forward, temptingly. "It's a right fine pleasure to meet you, finally. Name's William Dean — " he cracks a smile, "but a'course you can just call me Bill. William's too formal and Will sounds like a sissy's name."

Rather than react with surprise to an approach from the rear, Danko drops his hand down into a slack rest between the wide set of his knees and turns to size Bill up. And up. And up. Predictably enough, it's not the size that tips him off balance so much as it is the offer of ice cream over the back of the bench. The breath he'd drawn in to reply with filters out of his open mouth without finding any words to push out ahead of it. He eyes the Styrofoam cup as he might a decapitated baby's head offered out in the same fashion, and is even less inclined to reach to take it. Rather, he turns his head back out to baffle soundlessly at the darkening slosh of the pond. Somehow or another it seems like Bill is probably more than capable of smoothing over whatever awkwardness should arise from his disinclination towards delicious ice cream.

"Me either," hazarded in bland commiseration, he's forced to tip another look down at the ice cream when it comes bumping back his way in second offering. The same bland look he gives it is lifted onto the heap of a man behind it, along with a mildly delivered, "Emile."

The default hoarseness of his voice betrays no shame for the sissy nature of his own name. He looks depressingly comfortable with it in fact — little consideration spared the way William's opinion on it might tilt. "Pleasure's all mine, Bill."

"Emile," Bull notes with a nod of his head, eyeing the ice cream with pursed lips before setting it down on the bench between the two of them, "You're goin'to want to eat that up soon, walked with it two blocks already, it's a bit soft. Unless you like yours like soup, my youngest does that— baffles the living fuck out of me it does. I caught him miceowaving a carton of chocolate chip on day, almost smacked his mouth off his face."

A spoonful of what can only be orange sherbert comes up to fill Bill's mouth as his lips smack together with all the culture and grace of a bull rhino, eyes drifting up and down Danko before he motions to the man with the plastic spoon as if it were a laser pointer. "I brought twelve of my boys down from Sleepy Hollow. Good, strong kids, really into it." It being a very vague generalization of terrorism. "Two've 'em are fresh back from Afghanistan, probably all shaken up inside like a tumbler full of spaghetti," he notes with a raise of both brows and another spoonful of sherbert between his lips. "Mmnh, I tell you," he points to the bowl with the spoon, "these city vendors've got some good stuff. Honestly."

Shifting trains of thought the way some people shift their feet at church, Bill reaches into his coat and pulls out a small spiral-bound notepad, the kind a waitress would use to jot down an order at a restaurant. He offers it out towards Emile with a smirk. "I've got names, occupations and primary skill sets written down in there. Nothing electronic, had a bad run in with a sixteen year old who could read computers by lookin' at 'em funny. Swear to god I'm still finding his teeth in the carpet of my van. Damnedest thing."

Danko nods. Whether it's to advice on the timely consumption of ice cream or the rail of detail on the muscle Bill's brought down from Sleepy Hollow isn't clear. Doesn't really matter. He reaches for the notepad and flips it open with a casual turn of his thumb, sharkish eyes alighting wary on the more affable lines that define the other man's face for longer than they should. Watching, reading, taking notes of his own within the wan case of his skull before he directs his attention down into the open book.

"I have eleven men here ready to go at any time. Most of them hand-picked out've my own squadrons. Couple've 'em are more mercenary. If pay starts to become an issue once we really get going, they'll disappear."

He's careful in turning through the pages. Careful how he holds the book itself, too — fingerpads barely brushing flat where he can avoid prolonged contact. "All of our computers are on close circuit networks. Tied to each other but not to anything else, save for a laptop or two we use to follow website activity and chatter online. Not an unwise precaution to take though," his brows cant a little, approving of tales of teeth and floorboards where he wasn't of friendly offers of rocky road, "Hopefully it won't become an issue here."

"Hopefully," Bill agrees with a nod of his head, the sound of plastic scraping on styrofoam grating between the two as he cleans the bottom of the white cup. "I'm in regular contact with some boys out in Maryland, they've been doing small-time window smashings and buisiness burnings, but their organizer seems to want to get in on something a little more news worthy."

One shoulders rolls as Bill looks down into the cup and sets it on the bench between he and Emile. "So if we need some extra firepower, I can drag them up for a weekend. This is still your show, obviously. I ain't never had the military expertise to pull off something like this here, I just get the boys riled up. You've go tth guns, I've got the sales pitch." He flashes a broad and somewhat yellowed smile.

"Oh by the way," his hands fumble and pat down his pockets, then absent-mindedly recalls Danko has his notepad, leaning over to pluck it up and leaf through the pages after retrieving a bic pen from inside his suit jacket. "This is where we're spread out," he starts jotting down hotel addresses and aliases, then tears off the sheet and offers it up. "Most of us are across the water in Jersey, a couple of the boys are down on Staten Island rooting around for a nice hollow place to set up shop. Do you ave any facilities we might be able to park our ordinance in?"

"We're pretty tight on resources at the moment, as I'm sure you can imagine." Danko doesn't leave much room for him to not imagine in the flat grey touch of his eyes, drolly expectant that Bill will fall into line despite the fact that he could probably pick him up off the bench and smash him like an empty beer can. "Keeping invisible money invisible tends to get complicated when there are technopaths watching. However." However.

Danko considers his options, shoulders settled more comfortably against the bench back some two or three inches lower than the platform of Bill's, "Given a little time, I'm sure we can dig up something suitable. Staten's a good place to start. Plenty of residential land open down there — houses with hardly anything wrong with them. Hook a couple've generators up and as long as you keep a gun on them…" He shakes his head, shadows blacking at eye sockets that are already a pretty unflattering shade of purple. "We've been collecting intelligence on a pair of local Evolved resistance cells since the end of May. Phoenix and the Ferrymen. Give me a few days to get a file put together and I'll have some names and faces for you and your boys to make an example of."

Phoenix. Bill's head dips down into a slow nod, much of his whimsy fading as his tongue rolls around against the back of his teeth. "I may have a bit of an influence we can pull together, what with Phoenix and all." His eyes lift up from his lap towards Danko, folding his notepad into the pocket of his suit jacket quietly. "Their plucky blonde spokeswoman?" His fair brows rise slowly, a bitter smile coming over his face. "She's my daughter."

Then, after a moment of consideration, Bill's eyes dip down to the other styrofoam cup, one thick finger motioning towards it. "You goin'ta eat that?"

Daughter. Well. For all the silence that immediately begins to stretch from Danko's side of the park bench, the hardened, near dumb hood of his brows has plenty to say. Dean and Dean. How'd he fail to see that one coming? "Sorry to hear that," is almost an empathetic thing for him to say under the circumstances. As in, sorry she's a dangerous mutant freak and terrorist. Not, sorry that we're going to have to kill her.

He falls quiet again after that, still watching Bill with a disconcerting kind of closeness. There's no glance down when he pokes a finger after the cup of ice cream. Just a distant, "I'm watching my figure."


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