Just Bea

working as a counter cashier was certainly a downside of running the business that he did. for years, his mentor let him work in the store during the day while he fought in the ring through the night. he thought, once he took over, that this menial job would be over, but alas, here he was, stacking pasta with boredom in his huffy breath. he had assistants, of course, but unassuming part-time teenagers couldn’t be trusted with the secrets that cornerstore convenience held. all jungle matters belonged to gerrard, and he couldn’t risk leaving the place unattended. with crime always came trouble, something that he had come to learn during his fighting days. he also learned how to handle the trouble when it came. he doubted some naive kids could do the same.

today was a slow day, especially after the lunch hours, so the store was pretty much empty aside from him and one of the assistants. the bell of the door caught his attention, and he raised an eyebrow upon seeing her. he knew her, though more of her than anything. they had spoken maybe once or twice, but he knew plenty from what other people had said. there was almost an excitement in him, as there always is when there’s other level fives around. potential fighters were always something he welcomed openly. gerrard dropped his box of pasta to the floor and made his way to behind the counter, eyes fixed on the girl. 

and like he had hoped, music to his ears, she asked about the fighting. he couldn’t help but smile, half with greed and half with satisfaction that his wishes had come true. gerrard told the assistant to watch the counter before gesturing towards the door behind him. “downstairs. we can talk there.” he said simply, leading the way. the back of the store was unassuming at surface level, boxes stacked on shelves and a small desk with papers and post-its displaying random numbers. plain and boring enough to hide the real money-maker of the store. gerrard traced his fingers along the cracked walls, until they reached the edge of the tapestry covering most of it. he pulled it back, revealing a door that was as boring as the rest of the room. pulling the key wire on his belt, he opened it, revealing a dark descending staircase. gerrard made his way down, ensuring she was following. 

reaching the ring, he pulled up a chair from the spectators’ area, swinging his leg over it so that his chest was resting on the back of it. he motioned for her to take a seat and waited for her to do so. “so, fighting,” he started, the same old questions he asked anyone that displayed interest. “why the interest?”

A normal girl, one with any brains and without her particular skill set, might hesitate to follow a man she barely knew into some dank back room. She’d be even less inclined to follow him down a secret staircase that led -- supposedly -- to an underground fighting ring, no doubt abandoned at this time of day. A normal girl, sure, but Bea wasn’t normal. She didn’t have a really highly developed sense of self-preservation, which she supposed is what led her to a place like this to do... whatever it was she was about to get herself into. Besides, most scrapes Bea got herself into were not hard to skip out of again. Not with her powers, if she chose to use them. But it wasn’t her powers she was looking to use right now.

So Bea followed without word or protest, not so much as a glance over her shoulder to speak of hesitation. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised to see an actual ring in the middle of the hidden cellar, to be honest. She’d been kind of expecting something a little jankier maybe, not a whole actual setup. Her eyes skipped over the space, taking in the chairs and the ring itself. “Fighting,” she echoed in agreement, sliding into a chair across from him. She slumped down onto it, folded her arms across her chest as she considered him. Why the interest? A good question to be honest. She was only partly sure she wanted to do this at all, but wouldn’t it feel good to get some of it out? To sink her fists into something solid, something that could hit back with equal power? That’s all she wanted really. A fair fight and a little physical therapy.

time: 3:00pm

location: cornerstore convenience

CLOSED ( @latcrmenta )

Everyone needed an outlet. Isn’t that what people said when other people talked about being frustrated or angry or whatever the fuck? You just need an outlet. Well, Bea wasn’t an artist or a writer. She wasn’t a gym rat or a dancer. She didn’t like to drink and drugs weren’t her scene. But there were other forms of release -- release that didn’t make things crumble or people drop dead, preferably. With an ear to the ground, Bea was able to hear whispers. She was a quiet sort, a blending sort, so people didn’t much seem to care if they dropped tidbits around her. Besides, she was family now, just like Gerrard Bermudez. A Jem was a Jem, and inter-family business was always acceptable. 

The power fighting, that shit didn’t interest her. If she was being honest with herself -- which she rarely was -- it kind of scared her, the idea of letting loose like that. She had decent enough control, but her voice... it was a killer. Literally. So no, she didn’t want to mess in that. But the idea of fists in flesh, of giving and receiving blows, there was something there that appealed to her. The raw, brutal honesty of it. The being able to wail on someone who could hurt you right back the same way. Sometimes you just needed the channel, right? And maybe she wasn’t built like a tank, but she was scrappy. And she had, you know, some muscle. In a business like hers, it was good to be able to do a little dirty work with your hands. 

day: 02/07

time: 7:15pm

location: random street 

It isn’t like she needs to be out. She’s cutting it close to curfew, it’s dark, she doesn’t have anywhere to go. She doesn’t have work of either variety and with a level like hers, she knows for damn certain she’d get in a fuck ton of trouble if she stays out and gets caught. But the night is cool and the air feels so good on her face. February was turning into a real balls-up situation with everything going down and for once, just for once, she doesn’t want to be closed up in her shithole apartment with her shithole non-existent life. She wants to be here. She wants to feel like a person, just a person, with no fear of curfews or those who enforce them. What must it be like, she wonders, not to be a monster? A murderer? What would it be like to walk the streets without worrying about gang politics or whether or not you’d open your mouth and tear down a fucking building?

Bea’s eyes track away from where she’s been focused on an old, dilapidated apartment complex long abandoned. They fall instead to the few who walk the block around her. A man, shoulders hunched forward, pace hurried. A woman on the opposite corner from her that Bea’s pretty sure is hooking on the DL. A pair, a couple, walking hand in hand. Not a very romantic setting, but Bea remembered what it was like to not see the world around you when your focus was the other person. She looks away from them quickly and watches an older woman pushing a granny cart loaded with groceries down the sidewalk. Chicago at its finest.

February 10 4:30 PM Bea’s Apartment Closed (@beacomingamonster) Cain feels a lot of ways about his Mutant Risk Level. He fucking hates that it’s as low as it is, legal proof that he’s got a weak, harmless shit power, but at the very least a low MRL means most of the time the government leaves him the fuck alone. Nobody is knocking on the door of a level two in the middle of the night to see if they’ve somehow brought down a building. Even in the curfew, Cain’s a non-entity to mutant control. He can’t say the same for other mutants. There’s a lot of destructive power among the Jem Family and Bea is no exception. Cain keeps tabs on all of his family and he’s acutely aware of how hard it’s been for all of the upper level Family to move about the city in the days following the fire. Helping them out is almost second nature to him. It’s what a doctor does after all. He’s not sure what kinda stuff Bea actually likes to eat so he just stocks up on the basics, bread and eggs and milk. Her apartment is a shithole but it’s no shittier than Cain’s. His knuckles rap hard on the door. “Hey Einfalt, open up. I got food.”

Bea wanted to scoff at the new mutant curfew -- after all, she’d been forced to follow it nearly all her life so it isn’t like it changes things for her. But as the days and weeks pass, she can see how the stricter parameters have completely fucked with lower level mutants, with business, and even with emotional states. Others are feeling the squeeze of mutant control in a way a lot of them never have before and the strain is showing. (A dark corner of her mind whispers, good, let them know how it feels for once, but she pushes it back. Other mutants are not her enemy, after all).

She’s taken to closing herself up in her apartment when she isn’t working. Two in the afternoon, eight at night, seven in the goddamned morning, what did it matter? Bea didn’t have a real life to get to outside of working for the Jem family. There’s no one waiting for her, no one relying on her. Better for everyone if someone like her stays tucked away, unseen and -- especially -- unheard. If she’s laying in her shithole apartment counting cracks in the ceiling then she isn’t out there, blowing things to pieces and turning brains to jelly inside of skulls. 

Yeah, this is better.

It’s rare that anyone visits her apartment so the knock on her door startles Bea slightly. Slowly she looks over towards it, squinting against a haze of exhaustion and strips of dying sunlight leaking in through the broken blinds she can’t be arsed to replace. For a moment she doesn’t move, doesn’t react. Not until a familiar rumble calls through the door, her name and the word ‘food’ acting like magic stimuli. She’s up and out of bed in a matter of moments, crossing to unlatch her collection of locks before swinging open the door.