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For most people, a phone number isn't much to work off of. Fortunately, Domino is not most people. Numbers tell an awful lot, if one knows where to look.
Just don't ask how she managed to find a mailing address connected to the number in question.
(Crap, did I remember to let that guy out of the trunk..?)
The process is surprisingly efficient and doesn't require much time start to finish. It even gives her a chance to prep some bigger, nastier guns for where their little entourage is planning on heading. And now the 'Brotherhood' is here. In Liv's apartment. She even picked the lock on the door rather than let one of the bruisers bust it open. You're welcome.
The albino's got her boot-clad feet kicked up on one piece of furniture while she sprawls back upon another, one pistol loosely resting upon her lap and the other getting idly flicked and turned about within one of her hands. The other hand is her booze-fetching hand. The alcohol in question may or may not have been found within this domicile. She's happy to make herself right at home while keeping an eye on the main entrance. Their mark should be showing up sooner or later.
With any luck Fred and Cain find places to squish themselves into without ending up halfway on her lap. That might make her a little grumpy.
"I wonder if Raven turned herself into a demon yet to fit in with her new pals."
*
Rummage, rummage, rummage.
What kind of food can be found in the cupboards and pantries of three women living in such a space? Fred is finding out!
Having already looted what he cared to take from the icebox, Fred absently pokes through one of the ladies cupboards, moving jars or tins aside as he looks around curiously… Now, it is terribly typical for the fat man to be pilfering food but they've got a big day ahead of them and had little time to stop for lunch!
There was also likely a issue of three differing opinions on what constituted a good mid-day meal but I digress!
Never the less there is Fred, the bulk of him located in whatever passes for a kitchen, working away at a not immodestly sized sandwich…
Oh hey, olives!
*
Cain is fairly certain none of the furniture is even remotely on a scale to suit him. Still, he does have his head in the fridge, "Who the hell doesn't have beer? I think there's a cabbage in here. This is a dame house. The ad was put out by a dame!" he says.
"Present white as snow company excluded, ain't a lotta dames goin' into hell. Maybe she's like a witch or somethin'. Witches gotta be real. Hell is real. Gods are real. Makes sense witches are real. Shit. What are witches like?" he asks, scratching his big bald skull.
"Fred, don't leave big pools o' slobber in their cabinets, we're not savages and we don't want the place to flood," he mutters, stepping over a breakfast nook and going back into the living room.
*
It is entirely reasonable to expect someone to come home through the front door. Completely, and totally. And if it were either of the girls that aren't Max… it would probably even be the case. But Max is not Liv or Jack, and she never, ever uses the door. Point of fact… she doesn't even use the window, exactly.
She arrives home through the exterior wall.
Not destructively, or even loudly, as it happens. She just… floats through it without any fuss and lands lightly on her boots, as if the wall weren't at all solid.
To find… people. Not the people she was expecting to find, either. So she announces her presence the way any good metahuman girl from Brooklyn does.
"The SHIT is this?"
Very nice.
She's just come off a shift, so the 5'3" blonde is wearing ugly, dirty coveralls with visibility stripes, a pair of goggles pushed up her forehead, heavy boots, and a pair of work gloves hanging out of her hip pocket. And frankly, she just doesn't seem as cowed as the situation warrants, hands on her hips like an irritated mom finding kids in the cookie jar— NO FRED THERE ARE NO COOKIES.
*
Albert Chambers is one of the taller buildings in the neighbourhood, but tall and skinny don't count for much in Greenwich Village. Sounds travel through the apartments, even if the topmost flat is fairly well soundproofed by a number of means.
Cain may regret the question what witches are like, because one who might be mistaken for a witch rises from her interrupted nap with nary a noise save a grumble. A few flights of stairs separate the activity below from Scarlett's weary preparations, and slipping out through her open door into the hallway. Down to the landing where switchbacking stairs reveal the source of a commotion. Loud voices stand out easily.
She clenches her fists on the railing, a standard gesture. The redhead peers down. Someone just wants to have a damn nap without criminals trashing another apartment.
*
When in Brooklyn…
"The SHIT did you just come from?!" Domino suddenly yelps, very nearly dumping her drink onto the floor as she scrambles upright, pistol in hand. Aimed at Max.
Until she remembers that they aren't actually here to shoot anyone. They actually want -help- from the people that live here.
Um. Whoops.
She looks to the pistol in her hand, then back to the new arrival, then promptly yet nonchalantly lowers the gun.
"You..wait. Are you Liv? Can you still be shot? Just out of morbid curiosity, I mean," she rather lamely says as she looks back and motions toward the door-
-the front door-
-THE ONLY DOOR-
-with her pistol then looks back to Max. "What, with the..and..yeah."
Quickly narrowing her eyes, she glances back to Cain and Fred and loudly whispers "Did either of you just see a chick in construction gear appear out of nowhere? 'Cause I'm gonna be mighty pissed if someone spiked my booze. Seriously, warn a lady next time. I've shot people for less."
*
…Aw.
"Shut yer hole, Cain, Ah ain't droolin'! For fuhks sakes, can't a man be hungry without gettin' lip?!" Snarls Fred in a angry, Texan drawl as he mashes his sandwich flatter and hefts it from the plate upon which it had been constructed.
He's just lifting it up to the yawning maw of his mouth when they get a unexpected visitor… Or, well, when a owner of the place unexpectedly walks in through unexpected means to find herself with three unexpected visitors.
Through a wall…
She walked through a wall.
His heart lurches in his chest, seized for just a moment with fright, was she a ghost?! WAS THIS PLA-
Oh, no… she was just another freak it looked like.
Fred steadies himself, placing the sandwich… reluctantly back upon the plate. "Like th' little lady said, we're lookin' fer Liv." he answered as he lumbered in from the kitchen, hand dipping back behind his back for a-GUN!?
No, a newspaper.
He unfolds a section of the classifieds and prods his finger into them without discrimination, his chubby digit accidentally landing in the personals, "We're answerin' th'wont ad."
*
Cain doesn't startle as easily as his companions, likely because he's long past having anything to fear. Being deeply possessed by prehistoric chaos deities does that to a person.
"There's a portal to hell in the park, which someone who lives here knows about. My sister went through it and we're gonna go get her. We're gonna need all the help we can get," he says. He leaves out the part about the humans being cannon fodder expendables that they'll abandon at a moment's notice once they get back Raven. That seems to be a minor detail and probably not conducive for dealmaking.
"Blob found that ad an' him findin' anything in the paper other'n a 20 cent off pork and beans coupon is a damn miracle. I didn't even know he could read! So, maybe cut us some slack about the B&E an' tell us what the hell ya know."
*
Fred scowled and loosed a angry bark of, "HEY!" indignitly.
*
The prospects of dealing with so many shouting voices trips off a sense of self-preservation. Listening and strained to pick out their responses, not enough filters up to the higher floor to necessarily draw down the redheaded bohemian, nor cause her entirely to pause. She moves back towards her apartment, glancing at the door that has helpfully shut itself. Without a key.
Scarlett is left to murmur something obscene in a language dead for quite a number of years, then takes to the access that puts her on the green-topped roof in her garden. Sometimes discretion proves the more noble virtue… or when she breaks back into her apartment, she can call the landlord.
*
Max makes a face, taking in the trio— Fred's sandwich— Dom's gun, Dom's boots (which she seems to be less happy about then the gun)— and Cain's exxplanation. Ugh. She's not drunk enough for this.
"No, Liv's out. Sure, I can be shot, but it'll just piss me off. Landlord hates us enough as it is." She makes a face, crosses over to lift Domino's boots off the furniture, slides a coaster under the heels, and sets them back down. There. Now it's not her fault if there's boot prints.
"I know the ad said 'Call Liv at' and not 'Break into Liv's apartment and piss off her roommates'," she says acidly, then glances at Fred. "Or 'free sandwiches'. Is there ANYTHING left in the kitchen?"
*
What th—?!
Oh.
There Dom sits, now with boots on a coaster. She still has her drink, too! There's one thing she has in common with Max, this situation calls for further inebriation. "Duly noted."
"We're on something of a schedule," she counters. As if 'being on a schedule' automatically allows ..everything these three have just done.
"Besides, talking on a phone is so impersonal. Alright, so if you're not Liv then I'm guessing you're the 'Max' on file. Do you know when Liv will be back or if there's somewhere else we can find her at this hour? Time is kinda running out on us here, we'd really rather not have to drag our friend back out of Hell in multiple pieces. Some of us don't even want to go at all, so we're all kinda up shit creek here."
*
"An' the name ain't Blob. It's Fred!" Fred added for good measure, jabbing a thumb into his own chest… please ignore the gentle, rolling of flesh such a act caused beneath his shirt.
"An' we did call! How you broads gonna post a number an' not have anyone 'round to pick up the gatdamn phone?!" he demanded.. the inquiry of food did kind of.. well…
She hada point.
With less volume, Fred replied, "Now you never mind all'a that. Like the lady says, we're on a schedule."
*
Cain rolls a hand over his scalp, "Fred, you do realize the point o' codenames is so that we ain't just tossin' our civilian ids out willy nilly? Like a soldier, rank and serial number. I mean, I know we don't blend, but you don't gotta make it easy to look you up in the damn phone book, ya big pudding," he sighs.
"Yeah, if you ain't got the help, just tell us where yer friend's at or we'll just wait for her here. We gotta go in one way or 'nother, but the more we know about what we're gettin' into, the better. Don't suppose she gave you any notes or maps o' hell or nothin' like that?"
*
Max thumps Fred lightly on the belly with the back of her hand on her way through the kitchen, aiming for the wall under the pantry. "Some of us work a nine-to-five, buddy," she points out while, we can assume, The Blob's tummy does a good Jell-O impression.
"All right— I just got off a double-shift throwing what was left of a building in the back of two dump trucks, so I'll leave the home invasion aside this time," she allows. Her hand reaches into the wall, and witchdraws a partial bottle of Rebel Yell bourbon— her personal stash, obviously, and she laughs her way through a healthy swig straight from the bottle in response to Cain's question.
"Look, I don't know how professional hero-types or—" she gestures at the trio. "whatever you three are do things, but Liv's whole plan consists of getting some people and jumping into the damn thing with a sword in her hand. As far as getting out? I believe her exact words were 'stuff is coming out, therefore there must be a way back out'."
She shrugs. "Anyway. She should have been off work before me, so if I had to guess? Liv's probably out somewhere tearing a demon's spine out of its body or something."
*
It doesn't take Domino's mind long to reach an important conclusion:
"I like her," she states with a smirk, pointing at Max from around the glass filling her hand. "Hey, those gloves on the dresser yours? Maybe while we're all waiting on the lady and her sword you could point me in the right direction for some more of those."
Being all casual-like also helps her to get over how insanely fugging -creepy- it is that Max can reach right through the damn wall and retrieve things from beyond. She understands some strange things, such as being abnormally strong and whatnot, but phasing through walls? That doesn't seem like it should be possible within the realm of physics, and..and boundaries, and..all of reality!
Frankly if she doesn't keep herself distracted she's probably going to mentally crash, in a very not pretty way.
"As for the plan, the upside is that it isn't complicated. Think we're all kinda on the same page on that one. Not enough intel to lay things out any better. We really do need to find her, though."
*
"Th'fuck kinda code name is Blob?!" snarls Fred even as Max walks by and just traight up Pillsburys him! Beneath the overalls and the shirt.. there are ripples indeed. He is soft and pliant.
"You worried about some buncha tin-badged geeks chargin in on ya while yer shittin' then fine, we'll switch! You be The Blob and I'll be.. what was that dumbass name you called yerself, Jiggerbug?" he prattled… really having just lost the thread for a minute or so.
*
Cain raises an eyebrow, "I ain't worried 'bout it any more'n you, but guess what Fred? The damnes here ain't you an' me. Bullets…well, apparently, this chick would be fine, but Domino ain't bulletproof. Raven ain't bulletproof. Also, names like Blob and Juggernaut sound tough an' shit. At least my real name's pretty scary. Who the fuck is gonna wet their pants at the thought of Fred comin' to get 'em? 'OH NO NOT FRED, WHATEVER THE FUCK SHALL I DO!' Shit, you already look like a sack o' laundry inside a person suit, I'm jus' tryin' to help!"
"On topic, yeah, we ain't got swords, but we're just gonna go in there and kick the crap outta anything that moves an' ain't one o' ours, so the more the merrier fer that sorta gig, ya dig?"
*
Cain's final notes on the name topic makes Max choke on her bourbon shightly. It takes a moment to get the coghing jag under control. "Dunno, man wanders through a fight like 'Who am I, I'M FUCKIN' FRED' you could scare some shit," she notes.
Domino get a tilt of her chin. "Motorcycle shop in Harlem. You gotta be like 'fuck you sell me shit' but you look like you'd enjoy that part. they're assholes, but best in town."
She's about to say something else when the phone rings, and she scoops it up. "Hey, yeah, I'd like two large with extra cheese— Oh, hey Liv! Yeah, you got three weirdos showed up for your ad— What, fine, go ahead…"
What starts out as a playful, devil-may-care convesation appears to take a turn, since as Max listens, her drow furrows. "What." It's an interesting slow burn to watch. Lips compress into a thin line, and the blonde's fingertips turn white against the glass bottle as more pressure is applied. After a dozen seconds or so silently listening to— presumably Liv— on the other end of the line, floorboards creak audibly, and there's a loud >pop< when the bottle shatters and bourbon ends up all over the kitchen.
"I'll be right there," Max finally says, and after a pause. "I. Will. Be. Right. There." When she puts the phone down on its cradle, she seems to set it gently, but still ends up crushing the phone under her hand, like a large weight is settling onto it.
She takes a few moments to gain her composure, though she doesn't seem very happy when her eyes open. When her hand relaxes, powdered glass falls to the floor.
"So that was Liv."
*
With the banter between Fred and Cain Domino's voice softly lilts "Ooo, we're rockin' the codenames now." She's learning so much about these two, and Raven by proxy, just because of how much they both talk. And argue. Really more arguing than talking.
Next she's lifting her glass into the air in mock-salute to Max. Biker shop in Harlem… There's something worth checking out later. Maybe even before their epic journey. Road leathers would survive a fight through Hell better than jeans.
And suddenly..there's Liv. On the phone. It's a start!
Then the bottle of bourbon is shattered. "Hey, that's alcohol abuse!" She doesn't press the matter any further, what with Max so effortlessly demolishing the phone and all.
"Is this a 'take a number' sort of sitch or an 'arm up and follow me?'" Seeing as the call didn't go very well. At all. She's guessing.
"Right, next time we're finding a goddamn portal to the Bahamas."
*
Yes, he is neigh invulnerable… but mentioning the Boss.
Fred is mollified, reduced to a simmering glower, lips drawn thin as he silently relents the point. Fine… But he'll be looking for a good damn better name!
Max doesn't help much… but then the air gets sucked out of the room with the sudden ring of her telephone… and the following destruction of said phone.
"Guess she's got all the help she's gettin'." he mused blankly, recalling the phone number and their own unsuccessful attempts.
"So, that was her, right? This about the job, she already there?"
*
Max looks… like she wants to hit something. Really hard. She dusts the last of the bottle off her hands. "Something's come up. Liv was out with our other roommate— Jack— and apparently she got kidnapped by… something. Something big." She heads briskly off to the bedroom she splits with Liv, already peeling out of the top of her coveralls as she goes. Gotta get changed…
"Look, I know you said you've got a schedule, but this is priority for me and Liv. If you guys wanna come fuck up some vampires in Hell's Kitchen I'm sure we can go diving for your friend in whatever shitty hell dimension suburb shit is on the other side of that thing afterwards," she yells out the door, pausing to swear as she gets a foot caught in her jeans or some similar normal annoying thing. Who knows.
When she reappears, it's a shirt, jeans, boots, her gloves Domino liked so much, and a leather jacket being pulled on over it. "Or you can go hit up the hell rift thing and we'll meet you there later, I really don't care, your choice."
Is she doing the hero thing all of a sudden? She is. Mom would be proud. Fuck. Whatever.
*
Sigh… No, really! It's been a damn rough week for Domino! On the upside, she's getting plenty of chances to kill lots of different things so it can't be all -that- bad… She's got a truckload of new weaponry stolen from a bunch of HYDRA goons, Raven's mystery bag full of MORE guns, a free submachine gun from Wade, several new guns from the police station, and a -van- full of toys from hitting up a gun store two weeks ago.
Really, what she needs now are more targets. Lots and lots of more targets.
She empties her glass and sets it aside, casting a glance back to Fred and Cain. Really, they're kinda in this together. Wherver it happens to lead them. Cain would probably carry her along by the throat if she tried to split now. "What's the word, boys? Head start on demon-mashing, or shall we go help fuck up some vamp—" she suddenly stops herself and turns to -stare- at Liv. "There's fucking -vampires?- Great! We can swing by and assassinate the motherfucking Tooth Fairy on our way! -Jeezus- this world is a fucking mess!"
The two pistols are brought up, spun around crooked index fingers, then smoothly holstered right as she stands. "Fuckit, I don't care. Just give me something to shoot."
*
Fred, well, it's not that he's torn on the matter. His features shift through consternation and consideration. He's not one to lend a helping hand… but this is a side-quest that's got the main one on lock! "Agh!" he snarls his discontentment, running his meaty hands back along the buzzcut of his hair, "Whatever gets us to the boss sooner."
*
Cain grins and rolls his neck, popping vertebrae loud enough that it sounds like a series of boulders rolling down a hill, gritting his teeth for a moment, the veins popping out in his neck. He doesn't like waiting, he wants his sister back now. But he'll do what he's gotta do.
"Point us at some vamps. We're gonna pop 'em like zits. NO FRED THAT DON'T MEAN I'M GONNA POP YOUR BACNE. Let's roll.
*
"FUCK YOU, I AIN'T GOT BACNE!" Fred protested… and this was not a lie. His mutation meant he'd never get a blemish at all… Not a bad power to have were it not for the three hundred or so extra pounds it saddled him with.
*
Max nods once, and tugs her jacket a little more firmly into place. "Deal. Let's fuck 'em up." She starts towards the wall she came in through, and her foot is like halfway into it when she realizes… her company. Right. She spins on her heel and, for the first time since moving in, actually uses the front door.
ONLY FOR YOU, JACK. Goddamn. What a way to run a railroad.