9587/Landlords...am I right

Landlords...am I right
Date of Scene:	11 January 2022
Location:	Van Dyke Apartments
Synopsis:	Bando trails some bad guys who try to rob Vanessa's landlord. The two rescue him. Even if he is a jerk.
Cast of Characters:	Vanessa Carlysle, Bando George

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Vanessa Carlysle has posed:
It's late in New Lots, and nothing good ever happens in this part of town after 10pm. Still, you were usually pretty okay as long as you were either known around town or stayed off the streets. Not too much happened randomly inside the apartment complexes. Not usually, anyway.

Maybe that's why Mike, the Van Dyke Apartments landlord, wasn't even paying any attention when he backed out of the bottom-floor doorway. He was wearing a button-down shirt, the bottom buttons of which wanted to burst open around his gut, and a pair of khakis that looked like they hadn't been washed recently.

Mike kicked at the bottom of the doorway, grunting, "Stay in there, you freakin' cat, or I'll feed you to Lucky." Keys dangle from his hand, and he yanks on the door to close it. The word 'Office' is printed in bold on a plate above his head, and he rotates the keys in two different deadbolts.

Bando George has posed:
    Some people still paid in cash around here, which made Mike a target. The crew outside had made an arrangement with one of the tenants who had a beef with Mike, they would help Angelo and Marcus mug him for twenty percent. So when Marcus buzzes for entry, there's someone to let him in. They had been loitering out front of the building, peeking through the door for the moment that Mike exited.

    All at once, the door flies open. "Hey hey heya," Angelo says, wagging the gun flamboyantly. "How about you just open that door right back up," he tells Mike. "We gotta little business to talk with you, Mike." They surely don't know him, but apparently, someone told them his name.

Vanessa Carlysle has posed:
The keys drop to the floor with a heavy thud and a metallic clatter.

There was a moment that, no matter how brief, Mike will be able to look back and say that he at least considered standing up to the men. When they first burst in and Angelo started speaking, he turned to assert himself and make sure they knew 'who he was.' It was the sight of the gun that made him drop the keys.

"N-Now men, I-I don't know what you're after, b-but if it's rent money, w-we're rent controlled. M-m-most of my t-tenants b-barely pay at all.." He kept his hands where they could see them, but he didn't go for the keys on the floor.

Bando George has posed:
    "Good, that's good, right?" Angelo says to Marcus.
    "Yeah, great," Marcus agrees. "Then you won't miss it too much. Now pick up da keys and unlock those doohs," Marcus' gun points at the floor at the keys as he speaks with his thick Brooklyn accent. "You can shows us just how much money youse don't got."

Vanessa Carlysle has posed:
"Alright-- f-fine. Easy," Mike assures. He stoops over to pick up the keys, but he has to put a hand on the doorframe to keep from falling over. There's a distinct possibility that it looks like he might fall over as he reaches down, some redness creeping up his neck towards his cheek.

Heck with falling down. The way the stress is visibly rising in his face, there's a chance he might have a heart attack.

Fumbling with the keys, his hands shaking, he eventually finds the right one and puts it into the deadbolt, opening the first. There's more jangling as he switches keys and opens the second, then twists the door handle to open it, only to have a black cat run out and down the hallway towards the door under Mike's muttered curses.

Inside the office, it's an office much like any other. There are filing cabinets of files, a couple of desks full of clutter and old disposable coffee cups, a couple of computers, and a few cheap paintings on the walls.

Bando George has posed:
     Just as the trio are getting access, there's a rattle at the door. "Oh seriously?" the voice of a teenage boy can be heard on the other side. Marcus and Angelo look at each other, and back at the door. "I'll get him," Angelo says.

    The thug moves to the door, glancing out the window. "Get outta here kid," he declares "Ain't no place to be right now."

    On the outside of the door, Bando, wearing a blue coat and a knit cap, looks straight back at the crook. "I uh, gotta get in because I live here," he says. Angelo looks unconvinced. Bando looks at the panel, and then does what always works in the movies. He sweeps his hands down the panel, smashing on every buzzer that he can in the whole complex, probably also Vanessa's.

Vanessa Carlysle has posed:
The speaker clicks on, and there's a woman's voice on the other side. "Hello?" she asks. She sounds nice, if a bit surprised. And pretty. That's a thing, right?

There's only another few seconds for Bando to respond with whatever he was going to say to her before the door is buzzed open, anyway. However diligent this random woman might be about her building's security, apparently not everyone else was.

Mike hesitates in the doorway, his attention drawn to the door, too. He didn't seem like he wanted the kid to get mixed up in any of this, either. "Beat it, kid!" he yells gruffly down the hallway.

Bando George has posed:
    "Hi, um, I'm here like you um...with the pizza that you-" Bando is clearly a terrible liar, and when the buzzer lets him in, he cuts off his explanation. "OK Thanks!" he declares, pulling the door open. Angelo's gun is right in his face.

    "I said," he insists with gunpoint. "Get fuckin' lost!"

    This is the moment where most kids who look like they come from the suburbs would wet their pants. But this kid?

    *FWUMP* the gun disappears from Angelo's hand. "Don't point guns at people, somebody could get hurt!" he chimes in, all sincerity in his voice. The disappeared gun is suddenly in his hand. Well, kind of. The pieces of the gun clatter to the door's threshold, and he's holding just the grip of it as the disassembled gun is clearly no longer usable at the moment. "Oh." He says, looking a little disappointed. He throws the gun at Angelo, and it hits him in the head. Hardly a critical strike, Angelo winces and recoils before grabbing Bando by the coat collar. He drags him inside, and slams him against the wall.

Vanessa Carlysle has posed:
Just as the door was about to close and lock, there's a hand in it to catch it. Vanessa pulls the door back open with one hand, possibly oblivious to what had just happened with the gun, and holds a black cat in her other arm. The cat's rear is resting on the top of a slouchy bag she wears over her shoulder, and whatever's going on seems not to phase her as much as create obstacles in the hallway for her to work her way around. Stepping over gun pieces included.

"Nessa!" Mike pleads, his eyes going wide. "You have to help."

Vanessa lifts the cat slightly to kiss the top of its head and looks from Mike to Bando and back again. "I... have to?" she questions, eyebrows slightly lifted. "They're mad at you, not me. What's the kid got to do with it?"

Bando George has posed:
    Angelo and Marcus both look back at Vanessa. "She with you?" Angelo asks Bando.

    "Me? No," Bando says. "I'm just here to save the day," Bando explains. "Hi," he offers to Vanessa. "How're you?" Yeah, just casual conversation. "You may want to be careful, these guys are bad guys and are in need of being stopped," he explains. *FWUMP*

    Bando disappears, along with his jacket, and reappears in the same space as Marcus. He bounces off the man as the law of impenatrability dictates, and crashes into Mike. "Whoops, sorry!" he apologizes to the landlord as the two crooks wheel their attention about for a moment, confused about what just happened.

Vanessa Carlysle has posed:
Vanessa opened her mouth to respond, but before she could get the words out, the kid had disappeared. And reappeared. Her brown eyes flickered to the sudden commotion, the unexpected crash of another human being sending Mike toppling through the office door and out of sight with a plaintive yelp.

Instead of waiting any longer, and with Mike thankfully unable to see anything for at least a couple minutes as he rolls himself up off the floor, Vanessa lets the cat go onto the floor and takes advantage of the chaos to step directly up to Marcus-- the only one left holding a gun. Her hand goes smoothly to his throat, but as she does, her fingernails thicken and lengthen into talons that stop just short of piercing his skin.

"Hey-- Harry and Marv. Drop the gun. Take your friend. And Go." The 'or I'll rip your effing throat out' part seemed to be adequately implied.

Bando George has posed:
    "Look out!" Angelo tells Marcus, who isn't able to react quickly enough to avoid the grab around his throat. Angelo looks to help the surprised Marcus, whose eyes have grown wide with shock at the dangerous predicament.

    Angelo charges at Vanessa, and there's another *fwump*.

    This time Bando appears back on his feet between Vanessa and Angelo, throwing a fist out straight at the second crook's face. It connects, and while Bando isn't nearly as rough and tough looking, the surprise stuns the unprepared Angelo, and the youth takes advantage. He grabs Angelo by his coat collar, bending him over into a knee strike to the face. That's enough to knock him out. Bando smiles. "Whoa! That worked!" he declares, failing to keep the 'cool superhero' image by bragging on his own surprise. "D'ju see that?" He looks back at Vanessa and Marcus, who quirks a brow in confusion. "I was like, pop- papaow!" He's very proud of himself.

    "Uh, yeah kid, we saw it," Marcus says, afraid to move from Vanessa's dangerous grip on his throat.

Vanessa Carlysle has posed:
Vanessa sighs. The threat was /supposed/ to be enough. She didn't actually /want/ to rip out anyone's throat. She /wanted/ the entire thing to just go away and leave her otherwise moderately peaceful home to its regularly scheduled chaos. Unfortunately, Angelo was an idiot.

The dark-haired woman's grip on Marcus's throat tightens enough to draw a few droplets of blood, but she was bracing herself for the impact. It was a miracle to everyone present that it didn't happen. Instead, she smiles at the kid, a soft laugh escaping her lips. "I did. You could be a Jedi with those reflexes," she muses.

But that only lasts a second before Vanessa's attention is back on Marcus. "Look, I don't know what to say. Your friend nearly got you killed, just now. Maybe.. re-think your life, when you wake up," she says, seeming genuinely concerned. And then, without another hesitation, she swings her free palm up to connect with Marcus's chin, her arm a little thicker than it was a moment ago, and carrying more force than a girl her size might otherwise seem capable of.

Bando George has posed:
    "I know," Bando agrees with Vanessa, tugging on the collar of his coat. And then she smashes poor Marcus' face. He stumbles back from the strike, dazed from the surprisingly heavy blow, not able to keep his footing on his own accord.

    "Oh, nice hit," Bando compliments, looking at her mild shapeshifting. "Wait, are you a mutant?" he asks. "Me too!" He points at himself. "That's so wild, so you're a superhero, too? Oh man that's great," he says, not waiting for her to answer. "I got my start with Ms. Marvel, and then now, I do a lot of stuff with Ghost Spider. She's like my partner, really. Crime fighting duo. We've taken lotsa bad guys down. She's not here right now, I mean, but she's around a lot. She's probably over in Queens right now, keepin' it safe, y'know?" He seems to talk a lot.

Vanessa Carlysle has posed:
Vanessa's claws retract and her arm withers again back down to its normal size. As she steps back from Marcus, her attention turns to Bando, and she smiles appeasingly.

"Hey, easy on the..." The woman's making a little 'fingers across her throat/cut it out' gesture when Mike appears from around the corner.

"You did it!" the man exclaims, reaching his hands out for Vanessa to hug-- or something. The woman steps back, raising her hands defensively so she can stay just out of the man's grabby paws.

"No, no. Not me. The kid's the one you want to thank. He's the hero." There's a small, genuine smile on her lips when her eyes shift back to Bando, for a moment, then back to Mike.

"Have you got this, though? Call the cops or whatever? I'll make sure the kid finds his way back out of this part of town."

Bando George has posed:
    "Oh oh, right," Bando puts a finger over his lips as Mike comes back into the room. "It's nothin'," he says, "Just helpin' people out," he tells the landlord. "I'm okay," he says to Vanessa. Though he is a teenage boy, and she's pretty, so he doesn't resist THAT much. "I mean, unless you need a moment to regroup yourself, or something," he adds with a non-commital shrug.

Vanessa Carlysle has posed:
"Well, I mean, yeah, but..." Mike starts to complain.

"Thanks, Big Mike," Vanessa interrupts dismissively, turning to make her way back towards the exit. She loops her arm into Bando's as she goes. "Come on, hero," she says, bemused. "You can walk me somewhere safer."

"Don't forget to find Whiskers," the woman calls over her shoulders, tugging Bando along if he lingers. Clearly, Vanessa had no intention of hanging around with Mike any longer than she had to.

Bando George has posed:
    Bando does linger, needing that tug to get him out the door. "Good to meet you Big Mike," he adds as he disappears out the door. "Be safe!" he adds just as the door closes behind him. He steps on a piece of the dismantled gun. "That's so cool, I didn't even know I could do that with my power. If only I could figure out how to make that happen on purpose," he says, glancing around the pieces as they walk down the steps to the street. "Thanks for the help. How did you know they were there?" he asks. "Were you following them, too? I totally saw them, and they looked all sketchy and stuff, so I was like 'Gotta watch that'. And then they came up to this door, and pulled the guns? I was like, 'oh man, it's on' and then they charged the door and burst in. It's like there was somebody on the inside that was in on it. Oh man we should've told him that. That big Mike guy better be careful. Can you imagine doing that to someone?" The amount of time he goes without taking a breath seems impressive. Maybe he has a secondary mutation of extra lung capacity.

Vanessa Carlysle has posed:
"I'll let him know when I get back," Vanessa says warmly once she can get a word in edgewise, glancing over as they make their way down to the sidewalk. "He's a dirtbag of a landlord, but he doesn't deserve to be shot over it. Most the time. I'm Vanessa, by the way. What's your name?"

The woman hadn't taken her arm out of his, yet, but once they'd made it out of there, she wasn't hanging on or tugging him along like she had been before. "And... you're saying you didn't do that on purpose? Any of it? Or just getting the gun to fall apart?"

Bando George has posed:
    Bando clearly noticed that she didn't take her arm out of his. He's not sure how to respond to it, so he just leaves it be. "Oh, just the gun falling apart...part of it," he says. "The rest was mostly on purpose. Sometimes weird stuff happens when I teleport stuff? Some kind of...I dunno, quantum flux thing with the interaction of my...mutant... something." It sounds like he's making the explanation up to be certain. "So you're a superhero too?" he asks her.

    His eyes follow her glance over behind them, though he's not sure what exactly she's looking for. "He asked for your help, so I figured he knew. Didn't mean to blow your secret or anything," he apologizes.

Vanessa Carlysle has posed:
Vanessa's nose wrinkles. "No. I'm.. neither of those things," she says with a little shake of her head that shifts her hair around her shoulders. "Mutant, yes, but it's not really something I go around advertising. Mike's perfectly happy just thinking of me as the normal girl that lives in his building. I don't see any reason to fix that. No-- he just asked for my help because he's a simpering moron and he knows I can take care of myself. Side effect of the job."

There's a pause, then, as she ponders. "So, you really seem to know a lot of people. Are you really just down here.. trying to be a hero? Isn't that.. dangerous, for you?"

Bando George has posed:
    Bando shrugs, "I mean, if I can help people, I think God's really called me to help them. It might be dangerous, but you gotta do what you can. My pastor is always sayin' you do what you believe, the rest is just talk. So if I believe God gave me these powers, and he wants us to use his gifts to help others. You know, it kinda follows." Definitely a religious kid.

    "So what's your job? Are you like..." he gives her a glance over. "A boxer? Or...bouncer?" he asks, seeming unconvinced of either conclusion. What kind of job would mean she needs to be able to handle herself in a fight?

Vanessa Carlysle has posed:
".. Oh." It's all Vanessa can come up with, really, her mouth working a little as if she were trying to figure out what else she might be able to add to that. Instead, the normally quick-witted heroine is left without a clever retort.

"I'm a..." Great, Vanessa. Good plan. Planning to admit you're a prostitute to the nice Christian boy?

"...Mercenary. Freelance." A tight smile pulls at her lips, but as if in cue, there's a digital ringing from her purse. She stops to withdraw her arm and pull out her phone, bringing it to her ear as she says, "Sorry. Speaking of.."

"Hello? No, I can do that. Give me thirty minutes? Okay. Bye."

She hangs up the phone with an apologetic smile. "Sorry. I need to run. Thanks for saving Mike. Maybe I'll see you around some time." She smiles a little, but she's already backing away.