Batting Practice volume 1
| Batting Practice volume 1 | |
|---|---|
| Players |
Two criminals meet at the batting cages to discuss a shared future and separate pasts. |
As meeting places go, few beat a batting cage for discretion, universal appeal and the fact it is patrolled by on-site security and off-duty cops. No one looks twice at anyone who shows up, and those who do, they're being judged by performance not their appearance. It's an egalitarian approach to universal safety protocols, with most of them being near airports, for added accessibility. Dressed for the day in a pair of black denim jeans and Converse, his t-shirt indicates an allegiance to the NHL team, the Chicago Blackhawks. His leather jacket, battered yet still holding up well enough, is stuck in the chainlink fencing which surrounding his space; there's a golf bag filled with his personal baseball bats, each one friction-taped at the grip, some of them with electrical tape X shapes at the sweet spot for contact. "You asked, I answered," he says airily, glancing back at the approaching Cleon. "Let me pause the pitcher." Then he walks to the remote pad, keying up a pause, looking to Cleon in full. "This is where I'd hear the pitch, isn't it?" He smirks, looking sublimely at ease.
This wasn't exactly the venue he'd expected, and it put a damper on presenting what he'd brought along so...he shrugged his backpack off, got into the ajoining cage and took a second to analyze this...Temple fellow. Cleon was what you'd expect from the new head of Las Aguilas - a young, tough, serious looking cholo, probably still growing and yet to get that hair-inch to six feet...if the tear-shape tattoo under his eye didn't give away that he was, at this point, a young veterano, the fact that he'd survived to his 18th birthday (and even graduated) did. Temple, though...Cleon's nostrils flared as he took in the other man's scent, very clearly giving him the one over before smiling back at Temple, like he was talking to a favored teacher. "Yessir, that it is." He walked over to his own pitcher, pretending he knew what he was doing as he pressed random keys. "First, thank you for taking the time." Keep it simple, man's moments are valuable. "Second," he looked up from the keypad. "Logan Square's mine. You ever got business there, you talk to me...no Santos, no 89th Skills, no Washmen." He waited to see the man's reaction before continuing.
As soon as he finishes the sentence, the ball he strikes then is rocketed up, up and away, not quite clearing the netting, caught up in the final meter of it. Exhaling, he sets the bat into the golf bag and extracts a different one, this one lightly stained in faded brown. Again, he keys off the pitching machine. "Long before you drew breath, the deal was the deal - by all means, though: be the one who upsets the apple cart. You may experience that ol' Bruce Wayne-style reincarnation." He smiles broadly, displaying that healthful, toothy grin. "You have teardrops.. I have my bats." Sixteen in that one golf bag. Seventeen, counting the one in his hand.
"A'ight, sure, sounds we're of a mind then." Cleon pushed a button and turned the pitching machine on, getting in position and striking a ball as it came in - an edger, 'dink'ing off the bat and thudding along the ground gracelessly. "Yeah well, I got an opportunity to present you so you buy even more bats, or whatever it is you want." Lowering the baseball bat, he looked back evenly at Temple. "Not everyone's as reasonable as you are about my claim...could use a little bit of that weight you got, know what I'm sayin'?"
The shot he lands isn't as graceful as the first, and almost the same as the one Cleon delivered - minus some points for style. It reflects on the sour look Temple carries. "..die." He shrugs, then swaps out one bat for another, this time drawing forth a slightly-longer version. "Everyone thought that they'd outlive everyone else.. and today, well.. you look like a prime example of a healthy adult male velociraptor, and I mean that in the best of ways." He beams, looking.. paternal. Proud. The fuck. "You're gonna go far, and if you need a couple of we happy few standing in the shadows, well.. that's workable." Then he looks to the pitching machine, once more squaring up for a new shot. And that particular shot clears the fence by dint of clipping the uppermost edge, sending a ripple down the entire curtain, a few people even applauding. Out in the field behind the net, the ball-collecting golf cart is again tasked with grabbing up the offender. Temple looks to Cleon, eyebrows raised.
Cleon was quiet, doing that...stare again as he talked about him being a raptor - 'clever girl' played like an ear-worm in his mind. 'Killer' curled his fingers around the bat, nails carving scratches in the metal and found his eyes wandering from the man's pride-filled face. His gaze tracked down to Temple's jugular vein, watching it throb. Cleon's pupils dilated, he grew very, very still, nostrils flaring again as his stomach growled audibly. -THOOMP- a baseball flew at him unawares, but Killer stepped back just in time to avoid being hit, broken from the edge of trance and swallowing. "Ah..." Wiping his mouth. "That's great! Thank you sir, your confidence in me is very, very well placed." He clacked his teeth together, trying to grin normally as he took up position to hit another ball. "Las Aguilas would, of course, return your confidence with golden eggs. A five-share of the ops we acquire from Los Santos, 89th, Washmen, Palmer Park Brothers..." that was...a *lot* guys for a relatively small outfit like the Eagles to dominate. He sounded completely confident. He waggled his eyebrows. "And free drinks rest of your life at El Coyote Gordo, eh?"
"Observe." Abruptly, he turns on the machine by bouncing the baseball off of the switch, catches the ball, then curls up for a cannonade of a pitch on his own. Three tenths of a second later, his ball strikes the one still in the throes of being shot at him, and he turns to face Cleon, angling his head to the side. "The Creeds move faster than most, because we only watch over ourselves and the promise we keep. You will do well to remember: the hand that strikes us, or our allies, it will be a stump." Casually, he gestures to the pitching machine. "Choke up on the bat, Cleon, it's how we win games and score points, after all. And free booze is always appreciated, of course." Apparently, he's going to hang out in Cleon's cage for a while.
His head twitches slightly - enough to be subtle, but for someone who could time hitting a baseball with another baseball, Temple would likely notice the tick, like he was repressing a reflex to tip his head back, or...show his throat, perhaps. Instead he simply took the bat, following instructions as he choked up on the back, the same motion as if he were wringing a neck...and when the ball came at him he stepped forward at it aggressively, smashing it into the back of the net. He wouldn't be playing in the major leagues, but it was an improvement. "HAH! You see that man?" he crowed, perhaps prouder of himself than he wanted to be. "My dad talked about you, y'know? 'Afore he went off to Metro for the long haul, says you ain't afraid to fight with fire." It...almost seemed like he was beckoning, asking for a story?
He then points to the netting's uppermost edge. "Aim to kill it." Then he looks to Cleon again, his face still warm and friendly. "What he didn't tell you was how my family got burned, way back in the olden days, by the other cattle barons." He takes a test swing, his grip squeaking on the hardwood of the bat, his jaw set. "They ganged up on us, starved of us our cows and bulls, forced us to sell at loss, year after year.. and we held our own, even then." His eyes take a glassy look as he exhales slowly, his bat now squeaking even more. That grip looks downright painful to endure. "Then came the nineteen-forties and we had ourselves a hell of a time, filling up ration cans with good, quality beef and pork. Tens of thousands of units a week, all outbound for the European theater." He grins wolfishly, nodding his head, eyes still glossy with.. nostalgia? Was he.. there, somehow? Regardless, he continues. "When the war asked, we replied, as we did for all wars - we sent our brave and our bold.. while they hid behind the bullshit." He chuckles, shaking his head with a mirthful sigh. "We came back with new skills and some friends. Then we got to work, making sure our own old 'friends' knew we meant a whole other kind of business." He pauses, then swirls the bat in his hand, extending it to Cleon. "Swing for the bleachers, Cleon. Do the impossible. If you miss, no one is surprised - if you hit, everyone's impressed." He winks. "The Creed begin with the impossible."
Still...it was clear that when the ball came, he was distracted by something, an internal musing that threw off an otherwise powerful swing as he threw his ALL into it - was that a -POP- of his shoulder leaving its socket? - He winced, watching with displeasure as the ball whacked against the back net, rolling slowly to the ground...not quite there. Still. Better. "FUCK," he swore, swinging savagely at the air and pausing the machine, baring his teeth at it like he was going to rip its throat out, leaning over it. The cholo vented, a feral sound as he -clacked- his teeth together. "...we pay in kind on my block, so. Story for a story, Mister Temple." He bent down and picked up his bat, dusting it off and looking at it almost sorrowfully, like he was sorry for throwing it on the ground earlier. "Okay. So like, this dude...Marcus, back when we was sixteen." Cleon tried to hide the rawness in his eyes, surprised he was telling -this- tale. "So like, me and this girl from his gang, his sister specifically, we hooked up and was sweet, but that wasn't okay cuz he was a Santo, so mi capitan, he cut it off. Marcus though, the Santos couldn't handle one of us Eagles 'sullying' 'em, so they pushed 'im into trying to gat me down but..." his voice became tighter. "Marcus though, the Santos couldn't handle one of us Eagles 'sullying' 'em, so they pushed 'im into trying to gat me down but..." His voice became tighter. "They got my buddy instead. Mikey...Chatterbox Mike. Killed 'im, cuz he sacrificed himself...so cuz of me, he got killed, so it fell to me to take out Marcus. I chased 'im down like a fucking *dog*," he growled, wrenching his hands around the baseball bat again, baring his teeth at it before fiddling with the machine. "Put a gun to the fucker's head...and so we talked, and we talked...and I learned how he never wanted this shit, how he got pushed into it and they threatened him man, and..." Another moment of quiet. "I let 'im go." He looked to Temple for his opinion. "Whatchu think?"
"Just as easily as you could see yourself on the other end of that gun," he adds, "You'd be aware that begging for mercy wouldn't help your case.. so you invented mercy for him. Noble. Very, Cleon, very noble." Then his eyes go cool, if not dead, and he swings. Once more, he connects solidly with the ball, the collision a dull and muted 'thunk' before he heft the bat to his shoulder, looking to Cleon with his eyebrow raised as if in admiration. "It's not the Creed way, though. When someone is 'at bat', we never talk. A holdover from the era of the meat-cutters we used to be. Lines of cows longer than a mile smashed into a space smaller than an apartment complex. Zigzagging heads of cattle, all waiting for one of our own, holding a sledgehammer, ready to send them to where beef goes before it's a burger." His laugh is deep, proud and unsettling. His face was a complex, dynamic mask of emotions that were not easily hidden as he watched the ball fly again, the same way a cat might watch a bird at wing, pulling his lips back again slightly, eyes wide before looking back at Temple. Admiration...Appreciation...Confusion, feral intensity, sadness. "...I can see why you do it that way, sir." Regret, hanging heavily on his voice. "You're the first person to talk about it like that, others said I was a pussy. Couldn't do what I needed, like you cattlemen wit' your sledgehammers, smashin' in those skulls." Cleon's laugh was low and self-dismissive in comparison to Temple's. He unzips his light grey hoody, digging an index finger into the shallow indent of a bullet-hole over a lung, another over his sternum. "Got a constellation in return for makin' up mercy eventually - I think it kinda looks like a fox if you line it up right - make a killer fuckin' tattoo...but like, check it bro." Cleon took a step closer to Temple, lowering his voice, locking eyes with the other man. "The old capitan...Ruiz...he, Chubby Eduardo - we called 'im that on account o' he bein' all skinny - Bobby Montoya, them's what gave me the fox and set me straight for my sins...now they're dead, man. They're fuckin' *dead*, I'm the one who had the fuckin' sledgehammer in his hand that night, not them! Now they're starin' up at the sky, and I'm the one ascendin'...it's just -fucked- how that works out in'it. Do the right thing..." he swung, biffed it, clinked the ball along the ground, watched it roll. "Get a chestful of a lead; kill a cattle, climb the bodies like they sides of beef hangin' on hooks..." he trailed off before grinning. "You cool, sir. Feel like I can tell it straight to you."
He swings and the ball misses, landing in the fencing behind him and he mutters darkly, his eyes gone to doll-like and cold. "Pride goeth before a fall, once more," he murmurs, then he exhales, shaking his head. "Let's try that again." This time, he stands directly in front of the pitching machine, holding the bat as one would a sword, the perpendicular line of it situated with his center. "C'mon, c'mon, do it, do it, you little bastard, I want you to do it..." The words flow from his lips like a speed-rapper on a diss track, his eyes on nothing except the pitching machine itself, as if it accusing it of some moral failing. The machine spits out a ball, and with one fell swoop, he slams the edge of the bat into the ball, spiking it hard into the soft tarmac, sending it straight up, his grin all the wider. For a lack of a conventional swing, he took one all of his own type. Abruptly, he tosses the bat to Cleon, gesturing: it's his turn to take a swing.. on the descending ball. A challenge made to Cleon directly.
"HrrrRAAAH!" he snarled, leaping at the ball and swinging upward with one hand; a clean, solid CRACK as the ball sailed spinning out beyond the nets. Holding his arms up in triumph he whooped loudly, spinning on Temple with a wild, exhilarated grin. "YEEAAAH that's was-SUP!" he laughed, holding a fist out for a pound. "Hnnh...yeah? You wanna bring back the power, the money, all that glory? Sounds like a helluva saga in the making." Cleon's voice betrayed already that he wanted to be a part of it. "The Eagles were small-time under Ruiz, but with you nudging us up those sides of beef? Heh...Lotta skrilla rolls through Logan Square Mister Temple, and that five-share gonna get nice and fat...but if you need -my- help before that, well. We havin' a good time, my ears is always open." He smiled like a fox.
"We want what we are owed, Cleon, and not a dime more.. and not a dime less." When he walks away, he tosses a roll of quarters to a passing attendant at the cages, then snaps his fingers. "Pay for my friend's next hour, and have my clubs taken to the Creed manor." Without hesitation the attendant gives a crisp, hard salute and says, "Absolutely, Mr. Creed, may the meat fall forever," before he almost breaks into a run to grab the golf bag filled with 'clubs'. "Keep the faith, hmm? Let the meat fall forever." He's whistling to himself as he walks away, somehow seeming to be well-armed without carrying even a baseball nor a bat. Some people just radiate a quiet menace, when they're not smiling like a father to his son. Whatever he is behind closed doors, it must not even have a name for it. Yet, whatever that may be, it's on the side of the Eagles. | |