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Three Eyed Jack's. It's a dive, a Mutant dive. A lot of the guys who drink here can't even make the cut to be Morlocks — not civilized enough.
It's dank, it's dingy, it's in the basement, and Doug Ramsey has gotten himself a booth where he can sip a little of this absolutely god-awful bourbon and take notes. He's been in here a lot the past few days — he's decided he likes it. He can drink till he plotzes and nobody asks questions.
Jebediah may or may not have warned either of his brothers of his arrival into New York. Of course he wouldn't immediately go find either brother when he found out the legal drinking age here was 18! Sam or Jay will find him eventually, he's sure of it. It's time to have a little fun in this new place. And he absolutely would pick the place that looks like the perfect scene for someone to crack a chair over the back of someone else's head. What else were you supposed to do on your first night in a new place if not punch someone else in the jaw?
When he enters the bar, he looks /young/, baby faced and green to this bar scene but his eyes light up like a kid in a candy shop when he approaches the bar and orders one of whatever the hell the guy beside him had in a heavy southern accent.
Dive, mutant or not, is about Clint's speed. The man may not look like a mutant, but hey, plenty of them don't. And this place doesn't have the bouncers like Eight Ball has to try to keep non-muties out. Score.
Not even entirely sure how he got here and still nursing a couple of cuts on his forehead from his latest misadventure, Clint has taken up a large space including several tables, and has made several new best friends. Loud, drunk friends. Who all try to make an impossible obstacle course for him to bounce nickles through, composed of glasses, forks, toothpicks, general bar fare. They're loud, and annoying, but all in all the group is in a good mood and laughing.
Things go silent rather suddenly around the gathering, the teetering glass on top of a napkin dispenser has a number of forks on top of it with their tines shoved together in the center, handles braced on the open mouth of the glass. Clint licks his lips, the blond idiot thumbing the nickle a couple times while he considers. Standing up straight, there's a flick of his wrist, the coin spinning as it strikes the first table, bounces high and seemingly uncontrolled. Strikes the second table, hard and careens wildly toward the glass. Rather than falling IN to the glass, the nickle halts suddenly, stuck between the twined tines of two forks braced above the glass. Like a tiny centerpiece to an altar. For mice.
The group around the two tables explodes into laughter, cheering, groaning and jostling. A man with a sincerely unfortunate skin condition (green and furry) bumps into Doug's booth table rambunctiously. The 'passing' guy with the built arms thrusts them both up into the air victoriously and laughs, pitching forward when he's clapped on the back by a fellah twice his size.
Doug looks up, and catches his bourbon as it's jostled. Truth be told he's three glasses of Old Grand Dad in, and our Wee Dougie is a mean drunk. It's even in his character traits. He looks up at Oscar the Grouch and says, "Hey. *Watch it, furball*," before he takes another sip of his drink and then goes back to his book — which is War and Peace in Russian. It's not properly depressing unless it's in Russian, see…
The boy is entranced by the bar game that seems to be happening from the loud table of the bar and he is drawn to it instinctively, hovering just out of the way to watch what's happening. He's never played any bar games, but then again, he's never been in a bar before. His mama would probably be upset with him if she ever found out he was in one now. What mama didn't know won't hurt her.
When the table cheers, Jeb finds himself smiling too even though he's not sure if the blond has won or lost this game. He shoots some kind of look over to the man who calls another mutant a furball, it hits a little too close to home, all the nasty names the Cabots called mutants but he chalks it up to alcohol talking and approaches the blond anyhow. "Hey. What're y'all playin'?" He asks, voice sounding like the boy just fell off the back of a turnip truck heading to Hickville, U.S.A.
Clint wins a pair of shotsone with clear(ish) liquid and one with darkergrinning as he drops the first one back and slams the glass back down with a hard clink, grinning from ear to ear with a rough step backward and sway forward again for the second shot when he's waylayed by an inquisitive… …child. It's a child. Clint rubs the back of his hand against his mouth, wiping away the shine of moisture, then laughs mildly. "Hey, who lost their kid brother?" Clint shouts over the din while the course is torn apart and a new one slowly constructed. They've been at this a while though, and they're all a little, well, fuzzy. When nobody answers, he chuckles and reaches out to clamp a hand down on Jeb's shoulder, turning him to face the two tables. "They make a course out of stuff in the bar. I see if I can get this nickle—" Clint holds up his hand and finds he doesn't have a nickle in hand. Swallowing a gulp of air, Clint barks, "Hey! Who's got the coin?!"
Doug's grumpy reply to the green, furry man, is met with exception by him and a couple of his buddies. One very small man with a curve in his spine that makes him hunch over, arms long and thin, amphibian appearing in nature. The other is very simply just NOT pleasant to look at with pieces of his skin pock-ridden. "What the hell did you say to me, Pinkie?"
Doug looks up at the two, and drains his whiskey. He starts to get to his feet. "I said get outta my *face*." He starts to get to his feet. "You an' froggo an' the man in the moon there can all go someplace else, okay?" Doug says, "And just let me get back to my whiskey. I'm in a real rotten mood, buddy." And there he is, all 5'9 buck fifty of him, getting in Oscar the Grouch's face. This is going to end poorly. Wasn't Jeb the one who was supposed to start the barfight?
Jeb puffs up his skinny little chest a bit when the blond calls him a kid. "Ah ain't no kid, ah'm in here, ain't ah? Old enough to drink makes me a man, right?" Jeb huffs at Clint a little but then Clint turns him to face the table and explain the game to him and those brown eyes light up all over again just like a kid at Christmastime.
That is until Groucho McGee over there starts saying all kinds of mean things to the other mutants in this bar and Clint's distracted tryin' to look for a nickel and also, just tipsy enough that he probably doesn't give a damn where the kid he'd just been talking to was going. He ducks beneath the hand at his shoulder to approach the fight rearin' to start. "Hey man, you ain't gotta be ugly like that. I'm sure no one meant to interrupt your book club over here." He says as if that might diffuse the situation, but Bookworm was about to get his head punched clean off his shoulders by the other two if Jeb didn't at least try. "That's just the drink talkin', right?" He moves himself to be in between all three of them. Shorter than Doug is even, forming the world's most unthreatening barrier.
A shrill whistle is Clint call over the din, indeed, a little too worried about finding his coin than he is about the boyman who was just in front of him. While he's waiting for people to find the coin, he drops back that second shot, still holding the glass in his mouth with his teeth and lips as he swallows, then spits the glass out into his hand and slams it down on the table. A slow look around, his eyes are blue, but overcast with gray; like the sky over the sea when it storms. His attention swims toward Doug's table. His 'dumbass' alert going off, he watches the kid try to fend three grown mutants off of the king of the nerds.
The trio of good-time drunks square off with the energy of people who don't really want to throw down, but are plush full of ego and experienced enough ugliness in life that they don't feel like they can back down any longer. Especially no on their own terf. 'Oscar' eyes Jeb as the young man shoves himself in the most direct path between him and Doug, assessing him, then glancing back to Doug. "Sit back down, Whitman. If you didn't want to get interrupted while you're /brooding/ over there, you should go back to the library. I'd hate to bruise that squishy meat sack you're piloting around."
"I bruised your mother's squishy meat sack." Oh, that's it. Somebody — was it Oscar or Moon Man — takes a swing at Doug's face and doug… isn't there. He went down below it, and Clint could see he started ducking *before* the guy cocked back to throw his punch… but Doug shoulders Jeb out of the way and buries both of his fists in Moon-Man's belly and doubles him overbut he's got his back to a table, there are three of them, and Doug is drunksomebody else catches him in the face, and he goes backward onto the table.
Jeb isn't sure if Doug elbowed him out of the way to spare him from taking a fist to the face as collateral for trying to stop all this madness or because he just really was itching for a fight. Even Jeb knows you don't bring someone's mother up unless you wanted to lose most of your teeth. "Hey!" He says as if that's going to catch any of their attentions while the fight gets underway but it's really not fair, three of them against Bookie.
He steps out of the way so that he doesn't actually catch an errant elbow to the head as the three mutants take on the smaller man and then he decides to do something /real/ stupid as he takes a long blink, opens his eyes and shocks the nearest one, Jeb affectionally calls this one Lizard, from behind, bright blue lightening seeming to shoot from his eyes. The level is low, meant to be stunning but it's not going to tickle either. "/Hey/." He says again, certain he's got that one's attention at least. If he can pull one of them off of Doug, he might keep at least two of his teeth.
Clint, for once in his life, stays out of the eye of the hurricane, smiling easily to himself while he watches the exchange. One hand braced on the table (for steadying), his eyes shine with glee over the trouble brewing. it's just not a night at a dive without a good brawl. And This time he's not in the middle of it. Though, he does /laugh/ out of surprise when Doug delivers that zinger about the guy's mom. "Guy's got jokes…" The archer murmurs appreciatively.
First swings exchanged and Clint couldn't be more at home while he watches Oscar take that first swing and a miss at Doug. He's misjudged his distance as well, lunging forward too far and stumbling past Doug, bumping the table while Cypher buries a series of punches into the Moon-Man's belly while he tries to react. The wind knocked out of him, he swings both of his arms sloppily back at Doug to shove him back.
Oscar comes back around with a wide fist aimed for Dougie. The leap of electrical spark flashes and he smells ozone. Hell, everyone smells it. "NO POWERS!" Oscar yells at Jeb as he incapacitates the amphebian man. His long-limbed body slumps to the floor.
Clint likes a good fight, but he was also busy making eyes across the bar with someone when he hears 'powers' and smells ozone in the air suddenly. The fine hairs on his body stand on end as plasma runs thick in that corner of the bar. One thing that he does /not/ need is a bunch of powered people tearing each other apart. Drunkenly, he rushes forward with a slight stagger, trying to grab Jeb from behind, beneath his arms and adeptly pivot away; plucking the young man up and turning him away from the rest. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, Huckleberry!"
Escalation of force. Probably a bad idea, because now the powers come out, right? Except Doug was already using his—and when his back hits the table he knows exactly how to respond; he swings both feet up and kicks Oscar the Grouch right in the chin. WHACK! It's not so much trained martial arts, to the experienced eye, as it seems to be… instinctive response? Like 'How to respond when somebody's trying to beat your face to a bloody pulp'. But then Jeb electroshocks some guy and the other two are turning and — too late, all hell's breaking loose. Fortunately this is Mutant Town, and the cops will get here Never.
Well, how was Jeb supposed to know there were rules about what you could and couldn't do to kick another mutant's ass in a bar? He's new to this scene. Was there a sign on the door that said they could only break glasses over each other's heads and punch each other? If there was, Jeb would have ignored it anyway. When hands come up to scoop him up, and Jeb's a skinny, small thing, Clint would have no problem swinging him around. It shocks him (ehehe) enough to make him blink, cutting off his attack on the reptilian man. "They're gonna punch his face off!" Jeb complains as he's turned away from the scuffle.
It really is for the best. nobody needs the police showing up at a mutant dive bar. Nor do they particularly want to.
Clint's arms are /strong/. Significantly strong, though not impossibly, so even drunk, when he grabs Jeb and turns around to drop him once more on his feet, it is all very neat and precise. Clint gives Jeb a short shove forward and apart from the rest. "Yeah, probably! And you're in time-out before someone starts mauling /your/ face off!" Yelling above the din of, well, fists and feet shuffling on the floor. Clint turns to make sure the bookworm isn't going to get his face literally beaten in, only to find that…he's…actually holding his own. Shock rings loud and clear through Clint's body language. Then intrigue. "Oh…dang Poindexter…" Murmuring under the din.
Amphibian fellow still incapacitated on the floor thanks to Jeb's helpful rule breaking.
Oscar turns around and pushes away from the table to come at Doug again, but the problem here is that he's drunk, and even someone without predictive abilities can see him coming a mile away. He catches both feet under his chin and stumbles backward, falling against the table with half of the new course for Clint set up, falling through it, glasses and a napkin holder crashing around him. A bottle hits him square in the face and he's flat on his back, groaning and cussing, holding his nose.
Moon Man straightens himself after the punches to his stomach wear off a bit, but he's still bent as he tries to grab one of Doug's legs to yank him off the table to a crashing pile on the floor as well.
Meanwhile Doug has come off the tablehe's pulled, but as he goes, he's kicking out at Moon Man's chest, pushing him back. "Your language is sloppy." He says, "But so is mine." He's on his feet now, and ducking — he caught a beautiful fist to the eye when he got hit the first time and he's got a lovely shinerbut now, Doug is juking around Moon Man and making a break for the back door. Why, you might ask?
A fireball goes whizzing over Clint and Jeb's heads. WHOOOSH. That would be why. Mutant Bar, Hawkeye. Mutant Bar.
"What do ya mean I'm in time out? Ain't no one gonna do anythin' to me!" Jeb complains as he's shoved and he takes a clumsy step back to steady himself. When Clint turns around, Jeb pushes up on his tiptoes to look over the big, fun-spoiling blond's shoulder to see that, damn, Bookworm really is holding his own. "Wow." Jeb says, thoroughly impressed. He likes this guy a little more now, despite the fact that he was being rude to the other mutants. He was small, like Jeb, and was still kicking some ass.
When the fireball goes whizzing over their heads, Jeb instinctively ducks, throwing his arms up to shield himself. He forgot for a moment that anyone in this bar could have powers like him and probably were far more practiced with theirs considering Jeb's the only one in here who looks like he just got weaned off his mother's breast yesterday. "Oh no," was a less than appropriate reaction to what kind of mayhem he'd just caused but that's the choice of words Jeb goes with. Bookworm had the right idea. They should get out of here. Now.
Good going, Jeb.
Clint watches Moon Man and Doug duke it out with the same fascination that high society types watch the ballet, his face awash with attentiveness. Sure, he's been drinking, but he still has nearly perfect situational awareness, Clint reaches out to one side to try to grab Jeb by the back of his shirt and yank him backward a couple feet as a chair goes sailing past, crashing into a table just behind where Jeb was previously standing. "Wow is right, Huckleberry."
Fire, though. Fire is where he calls it! Not after his latest mission and the shortness of breath he still gets when he runs, Clint ducks his head as well and turns around to look at Jeb, eyes widening. "Yeah, 'oh no'! /Now/ you see why you don't bring powers to a bar fight, Huckleberry? /MOVE/!" Clint shouts in the young man's face and juts his chin upward. "Follow Hemmingway over there. Out! Out-out-out! Goddamn I hate greenhorns."
Outside, Doug is leaning against the wall, and wiping a bit of blood off of his lip. He's breathing hard—and when he watches Clint frog-march Jeb out of the bar, he looks up, his eyes flashing. "Wait…" He's still drunk, still got that whiskey courage, and that whiskey anger. "Hey! Don't I know you!" He looks up… at Jeb.
"You're Jebediah Guthrie." And that, for some reason, seems to piss Doug off all the more. And lo, the Mutant Master of Languages says, with his eyes rolled up at the sky, "Mac br%<233>ige! Guthries!"
For once in his short eighteen years of life, Jeb listens to someone older than him and does exactly as Clint tells him to. His mama would be beside herself with glee as Jeb hasn't done a single thing she's told him to do since he was seven. He doesn't even pause to tell the taller blond that his name isn't Huckleberry. He rushes right out the door because he isn't looking to be fried himself.
Once they're outside, he hears his name for the first time since arriving in New York. "Yeah, see, it ain't 'Huckleberry'." He says pointedly at Clint as if he'd really thought the boy's damn name was Huckleberry. His eyes widen when Poindexter starts, what he assumes is cursing, in some kinda devil's language. He straightens up, tries to make himself a little taller. He takes offense to whatever the hell Doug just said, he don't need to know what it was. "Listen, ah was trying to help ya in there, but if you gonna keep talking nasty like that, I'll shock you too, man. Bein' rude is what got you into this mess."
|ROLL| Douglas +rolls 1d20 for: 2
Doug looks at Jeb, and his brow furrows in a moment of drunken, petulant anger. And then he says, "Don't you mouth off to me, sprout!" Whiskey brain. Whiskey brain… don't say it, Doug… not to the kid. Don't— "I poured my heart out to your *asshole brother* about how I felt about him and…" He sways on his feet, "Well let's put it this way, bean, people don't come to Three Eyed Jack's caushe shit's *goin well*—" He swallows. "Excuse me." Then he turns go projectile-puke into the dumpster. Blarrrgh!
Clint isn't about to let the troublemaking kid completely out of his sight until he's sure that the little idiot is out of the building, but the rest of them are full grown adults and can figure their own shit out. A few others are also like minded, escaping while they can—a couple morlocks seem to be clinging to each other as they flee, laughing, and a guy with tattoos all over his pale-as-snow, hairless body, wearing a biker jacket strolls out casually, among others.
Clint gets out of the way, looking over at the bent Doug when Jeb veers around. "Hey, Bookworm. That was impressive. I didn't peg you for a brawler." A flash of a grin reeks of cocky congratulations which matches the healing cuts on his forehead, but the angle of his body reads like interest to Cypher. Right up until Doug addresses the kid by name. Clint slides to a halt, hands on his hips as he looks sidelong to Jeb. "Your name is /Jebediah/? Trust me, 'Huckleberry' is better. That sounds /Amish/. You Amish? Holy shit, is that why you're here? Because you're all…electricity? The electric Amish?" It's a fun theory.
Though the love-lorn rest has the archer's eyebrows lifting waaaaaaay up while Doug just spills his purse out all over the sidewalk. And then his stomach all inside the dumpster. "Uhh…" Clint eyes Jeb, then Doug while he ralphs. Judging by the kid's accent, he may not take that news well, so Clint slide-steps himself between Jeb and Doug's bent body, holding his hands up toward Jeb. "The guy's drunk. I wouldn't think too much about what he's saying right now, Kid."
"What are you tryin' to say about my brother, huh?" It doesn't matter which one, Jeb's hands are already curling into fists. It doesn't matter if what Doug is insinuating is true or not, Jay and Sam aren't here to tell him otherwise and they aren't here to defend themselves. Clint is ignored, no matter if he's trying to make sure Jeb doesn't manage to get himself killed tonight, no matter if he's well meaning, no matter if Clint's probably right, he shouldn't take much of what Doug is saying to heart. He takes a bold step forward and then Doug starts throwing up all over the sidewalk and he hops back. "Ah'd… Ah'd hit you if you weren't throwing up!" He assures casting a look up at Clint like a child about to be chastised for misbehavior. "My brother ain't no fairy."
Doug wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and now he's crying. "Shit." He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "…I didn't say he was, kid." He turns, to start walking away. "I'm just a drunk idiot, kid—ignore me. Hey, friend," He says to Clint. "Stick bean there in a taxi and tell him to take him to…" He rattles off Jay's address. "That's where his older brother lives."
|ROLL| Clint +rolls 1d20 for: 2
Clint keeps himself stuck between the two mutants like the great wall of idiot that he is, a hand outstretched but not quite touching Jeb, just in case the kid gets any bright ideas to try to attack Doug while he's puking. His eyes may be a little glossy from the drink, but they're focused on the younger, fiery young man. Feeling Doug move behind him, there's a glance backward while the surprise brawler starts walking away. Quiet, he watches the drunk guy walk away down the street. There's a frown and the archer turns back to Jeb, jutting his chin in the opposite direction from Doug. "Walk it off, man. Walk it off. Truth or not, it looks like he's having a worse night than you are. You know where you're going?"
The other guy starts crying and now Jeb is really confused. He doesn't want any part in that. "Yeah. He just said where to go." No. He doesn't have any damn idea where that is and he doesn't want to get in a taxi and waste any of the limited amount of money he had but he doesn't want Clint to know that he's an idiot. Also, which brother's address was that? Was it the supposed fairy one's? "Ah'll be fine." He turns the opposite direction to stalk off confidently, like he knew New York like the back of his hand.