ru(i)n this city

[ ✉ → Birdie ] Asphyxiating you with coal dust would be poetic justice.

[ ✉ → Birdie ] Might have to get my hands on some, just for you.

The man who technically was his partner in ownership, with the New York club, had requested ever so nicely that he wear his prosthetic around the working gals on the floor.  They were so much more eager, now, his company for the evening settling her head on his shoulder and stroking her hand along his collarbone as Roman turned to answer respond to the comment he’d caught one of the patrons muttering to herself.  

He turned just in time to see her down her drink impressively quickly.

“Whoever said you can’t be both wasn’t trying hard enough,”  the crime lord drawled in response, waving a hand at the club around them.  “I suggest drunk first–makes it so much easier to find the former.”

“I’m gonna assume you mean rhetorically speaking, since you seem a bit young to be frequenting this sort of nightclub, princess,” Roman drawled, raising a brow at the young woman his men had caught skulking around outside.  “You make a habit of getting yourself into trouble with men that you shouldn’t?  Or is the mask thing?  Seems everyone and their mother is taking up a cause these days.”

There were certain villains amongst Gotham’s criminal underworld who almost seemed to look forward to their run-ins with one of the Batman’s little birds, if not the Bat himself.  Roman was not one of them ( Hood wasn’t a Robin anymore, and if you asked him, had never really been one anyway ).  Roman Sionis had become the leader of the city’s organized crime because he believed in control, absolute and unyielding, and he didn’t appreciate the wrenches that the little birds liked to throw into his plans at the most inopportune moments.  

He did have to concede that he rather enjoyed the banter, especially with the youngest Robin.  Nightwing was entirely too perceptive for his tastes.  “I’m not haunted.”  

He wasn’t.  He rarely thought about his time before the mask.  

“You lot seem to be awfully familiar with ghosts, though.  Baby birds rising from the grave, coming back new and improved.”

[ ✉ → Squeaky Clean ] You’re gonna want some extra bleach.

[ ✉ → Squeaky Clean ] And one of you might wanna drop by Home Depot.  The rug is a toss--blood doesn’t come out of jute.  The husband won’t notice a swap.

...

[ ✉ → Squeaky Clean Unknown ] lol my friend stole my phone sorry

@speedysmaximoff

[ ✉ → Roadrunner ] Faster than a speeding bullet, huh?

[ ✉ → Roadrunner ] My friend here begs to differ.

[ ✉ → Roadrunner ] Or was it a deliberate choice? I do understand the urge to shut him up, believe me.

Guns had never bothered him before. In Sokovia, there were guns on every street corner, people barely into their teenage years loaded down with weapons in the interest of survival. Pietro had never carried one — he’d never needed to. He could outrun any trouble they found, or Wanda could neutralize the threats with her powers. Until Hydra, the two of them were untouchable. Until Ultron, the only thing that could hurt either of them was their own intense inability to let one another down. That was what Hydra had used against them, how they had turned them into the things they had hated as children.

It was not how Ultron had ended his fight.

Guns had never bothered Pietro before, but today… Today, he heard bullets whizzing and anger burned in his chest. There was fear underneath it, a desperate panic that he would thoroughly deny if asked, but the anger was far easier to focus on. Anger drove him to zip between the men with their guns and their bullets and yank the weapons from their hands, vibrating his hands until they fell apart and were deemed useless, worthless, harmless. 

(He pretended it was the only reason his hands were shaking.)

He pushed the bullets off their paths, made them splinter trees instead of skin, made sure no one died. It was over in an instant, but to Pietro, it felt like a lifetime. Every heartbeat was like that, dragging on endlessly. When the world happened before you in slow motion, every second took years to end. When it was finished, though there was quiet. For an instant, for a heartbeat, for an eternity, there was quiet.

And then someone spoke.

He’d missed a gun, he realized. He didn’t usually miss things, but he’d missed a gun. He’d missed the man holding it, too. “No? This is America, is it not? I thought you gave these things out at children’s parties. Goody bags loaded down with bullets. Is this not the American dream?” He stopped running, letting himself become visible as more than a blur and stopping in front of the man, head tilted to the side. 

 The blur solidified into a man, and Roman cocked his own head, clearly sizing him up despite the inability for his expression to change much without the prosthetic.  This man was a speedster, but the clothes and accent were all wrong for the Flash and his ilk.  

“See, that’s what I thought,” Roman drawled, “But you go to give a kindergartner a Glock, and suddenly you’re endangering children and setting a bad example.  Better to tell them to cower in their classrooms when the crazies come knocking.”

And yes, he was well aware that he looked like one of them.  

Roman kept his gun at his side, taking a step closer to the man.  Another.  “You know, now you’ve gone and kept me from making my point.  Very inconveniently, I might add.  People need to understand that I’m not the sort of business partner that you can betray without paying dearly.”  That uninvolved civilians had also been in the line of fire was of little concern to the criminal.  No one was off limits.  

“That being said, I may be willing to let it slide.  I could use someone with your unique... gift... for a job that’s posed some problems.  If you were interested.  Then again, it may be beyond even your skillset.”

Patience was a virtue--but virtuous had never been a word that could be used to describe Roman Sionis.  

He’d been raised by parents who believed in instant gratification, who were confident that they could have nearly anything they wanted if they threw enough money (or punches) around, and the habit had rubbed off--when he knew what he wanted, Lord help whoever got in the way.  

To say that he was irritated at the delay in shipments was an understatement.

“How do you lose five cargo containers worth of explosives?!” he yelled at the unfortunate messenger from his arms runner.  “They’re all on the same goddamned ship!”  

“I don’t-- we think they might have been pulled for inspection at the checkpoint before comi--”

“You think?  I thought it was your job to know what goes in and out of this city!”   

“We can’t possibly keep track of every--”

“You can keep track of mine!”  The words ring harsh and loud in the warehouse that serves as their drop point, seeming to suck the air out of the lungs of everyone else there.  Even without the prosthetic, without the ability to emote on his mask, there’s no mistaking the sheer fury in the crime lord.  “This isn’t fucking rocket science.  Tell your boss he ships the next load free.”

“You can’t honestly expect him to agree to that.”

Roman’s got one of his pistols out and pressed up underneath the man’s chin in a second, and he’s itching to pull the trigger--let the blood splatter where it may--when an unfortunately familiar voice rings out from above them, in the rafters.  

There were some things he missed, from back in Gotham.  

Established business partners.  Familiar territory.  Not having to pay for half the shit he ‘bought’ because businesses paid him to keep his illegal business elsewhere.  In another life, he might’ve made a killing selling insurance to Gothamites to cover the damages from the constant chaos wrought by their resident masks and capes.

More to the point, he missed the recognition--if not of him, with the prosthesis on, then of his men.  Even his guys who just dealt with the everyday criminal operations were recognized by the rest of the criminals in Gotham, if only so they knew when to get the hell out of the way of Black Mask.  

The Society got a whole different sort of recognition, and fear from even the citizens of Gotham on the upstanding side of things.  

In Gotham, he wouldn’t be finding himself short his wallet after a walk down the street, not with his men lingering around.  But so he found himself, pocket suddenly much lighter than it’d been just moments ago, and he turned just in time to catch a glimpse of blonde hair disappearing into a Starbucks, feet just a bit too swift and hands just a bit too swift to be anyone other than the pickpocket.  

Quick girl.  He could use talent like that.  

He had his men circle to the staff exits, and settled himself at the main door.  Sure enough, a few minutes later, his phone buzzed in his pocket, and he circled around to the back of the cafe to see two of his guys with the little blonde at gunpoint.  

“You are fast, sweetheart, I gotta hand you that.”  He holds out a hand.  “I believe you have something of mine.”

“Smash.  Life’s no fun without a bit of danger.  And flexibility is always a plus.”

They were guard dogs, through and through, who were meant to respond only to the person holding their clicker--an accessory that was, he’d been informed, only necessary for the first few days.  Less than a week, and they’d respond only to Roman, or whatever lackey he’d passed the little device off to when he wasn’t around.  

Of course, getting the dogs where he needed them required them to be unloaded in a way that was rather less than innocuous.  Toting six crates of Dobermans into a warehouse wasn’t exactly something that the average person would ignore, which was precisely why Roman had waited until late at night to collect the dogs.  

Not late enough, apparently, because suddenly there was a girl at the end of the street, looking between him and the van and the two guys walking into the building with the first crate with confusion that he could already see veering into suspicion.  

He plastered on his friendliest voice, thankful he hadn’t pulled the facial prosthetic off in the van as he’d planned, because that would have been even harder to explain.

Skittish little bastards, if you asked him.

At any rate, his go-to meeting place on the other side of the water had been Carlotta’s, a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Little Italy, and he’d thought that there was an understanding.

When he was running business, they wouldn’t be.  Easy enough to put the little closed sign up, to station a couple of guys by the door.  Course, having his people at the tables might make it look open, but the pair near the door should be more than enough to stop people schlepping in if the sign wasn’t enough.  In theory, at least. 

In practice, there was a man wandering into the restaurant, apparently without a care in the world, strolling up to the counter to order.  The waitress behind the counter looked between him and Roman with a near-panicked expression.

Roman only shrugged, letting her take the kid’s order as he cut his eyes over to the men at the door, who apparently were too engrossed in chatting about something on one of their phones to have even noticed someone else walk right past them.  Shame--he’d thought they might have some promise.  

The man returned his gaze to the newcomer, fingers drumming slowly against the table as the man wrapped up his order and the waitress flitted into the kitchen as if she couldn’t leave the room fast enough.  Probably for the best. 

“First time here?”  

That snapped the boys at the door to attention, and they made as if to get out of their booth before Roman sent a glare their way that could have withered an entire flower shop.  

“I thought the sign on the door said ‘closed.’”

Normally, this was the sort of thing that Roman would leave to other people.  He had no problem with blood, with violence, with death--rather enjoyed it, in fact.  But being in the middle of a firefight was a different beast; it was one thing to enjoy threatening and hurting people while in perfect control, and another when the person being threatened was shooting back.  

That wasn’t to say he wasn’t prepared.  He was known for carrying two pistols for a reason, after all, and it wasn’t because he didn’t know how to use them.  Just because he preferred to get his hands dirty while safe didn’t mean he couldn’t be every bit as dangerous against an enemy who fought back.  And this idiot definitely had some spunk, even if that very same attitude was now more of a pain in the neck than a mildly amusing quirk of one’s business partner.

He’d rather hoped that his name would carry similar respect just a mile across the water in New York as it did in Gotham, but evidently he was going to have to work a little harder for it. Putting a bullet in a double-crosser’s head would start them off on a right note, as far as he was concerned--even if the firefight had since bled out into the streets rather than their original meeting-place.

Suddenly, though, it’s far less of a firefight, bullets disappearing in a blur somewhere between the guns and their targets, and Roman paused and lowered his weapon, watching the blur with a scowl.  “Bullets aren’t free, you know.”   Not that money was a problem for him, but it was the principle.  

Starter call!  Accepting up to 5 starter requests.  If it matters to you, specify whether you’d like an event thread or a non-event thread, and if the latter, whether you want a Roman starter or a Mask starter.