New York - Times Square - The Deuce (Late 1973)

[Hollywood Heidi]

The Deuce

The Deuce is an area of 42nd Street between 6th and 8th Avenue in Times Square.

Flashback events taking place late 1973.

[dantalion]

The 9 am light shone diffuse through the quickly graying clouds hanging low over the Deuce as Frankie Teardrop made his way out of the One Slice, down 49th street from Broadway, and the clouds opened up above the Pussycat Theater as he passed by. He'd just capped off an evening of busking largely to streetwalkers, pimps, and johns on the block outside Korea Taste. Working or playing, everyone's a rube to The Geek. Even the late night pepperoni pizza didn't cut the powdery taste of old rust from the beer cans he'd eaten. He'd gone pretty deep a few times with the switchblade, and with nowhere to go, they'd left vivid, keloid scars along his cadaverous chest.

He'd gotten about fifty bucks, surreptitiously slipped into his guitar case by the girls, brazenly dropped by the pimps, dropped and forgotten by the drunks. Couple low class johns stepped outside of the rookery and tried to snag a fiver, but Frankie'd jabbed the broken gin bottle into his own palm, and the dipshit's hand spurted blood across the concrete. Case and a lot of the tips were splattered, along with the case. At least he'd dropped the fiver. Frankie cleaned off the case and cash best he could, called it a night. Dropped five bucks on a flop room, crashed a couple hours, and headed home.

Halfway down 49th, approaching the subway, a sharp, Bowery-accented shout echoed, "Hey! Pin cushion! We wanna talk!" Frankie dropped his hand out of the right pocket of his leather jacket and the switchblade was open in his hand and he stopped walking. No point in running, as a couple white kids in denim and steel toed boots, one with a metal slugger, the other with a yard of heavy chain. Behind him, Frankie heard the owner of the voice crunching along the broken sidewalk behind him, and he turned his back to the posters wheat pasted to the brick wall.

"Can I help you?" Frankie asked as another three white guys, the oldest maybe twenty. Two more metal bats, the voice hefted a sledgehammer. Not a strand of hair among them. SS thunderbolt and eagle tattoos under peach fuzz. Voice lifted his hammer, "You were working on our turf tonight, freak. You just worked for us, and we're here to collect what you owe us!"

"The hell you are, kid," and The Geek pushed the blade down into the meat of his own right leg and the voice screamed as blood bloomed under his jeans. Through his clenched teeth he screamed, "Fuck him up!"

They fell on him, chain swirling, bats descending. Frankie jammed the blade straight into his own throat and the chain swinger dropped gurgling through the slitted hole just above his adam's apple, but that's as much defense Frankie could muster before the first bat connected with his skull and he dropped to a hail of blows ringing like muffled gongs.

[DarkSideCookie]

It was only weeks ago that Charles and his rescue squad, among them a guy from a messed up future, had broken him out of captivity. And for what? Erik had done his utmost to help them ward off a future that would hold nothing else but the result of what will happen when not all mutants would stick together to fight injustice, namely the humankind. And still, that hadn't been reason enough for Charles to see the truth. The war had already begun, long before any of them was born. No war in the world had ever been won by persuasiveness. Mutants hadn't started this war, but they would end it.

However, Erik was no fool. In their eyes, he was still public enemy number one. It might be necessary to keep a low profile for a while after everything that had happened at the White House. He surely couldn't count on Charles' help another time. Well, if his former friend was too blind to see that there was no other way to fight this war, then it probably was best to avoid any more reencounters. If he wasn't on Erik's side, then he was on the side of the enemy. And the next time they would be facing each other on different sides, probably neither of them will stop at the fact that they once had been friends - at least, Erik won't. Anyways, before he would disappear from the public's eye for a while, he had to make sure The Brotherhood will do and grow without him. The cause was much more important to him than his own safety, probably even than his life. The cause was his life.

Erik was thinking as he watched a dime, circling up in the air between the opposite house wall and himself, as if by an invisible hand. Or, in this case, by a hand that made it remain in the air by magnetism. Nobody but him was here in this side street, where he sat leaning on a flawed billboard. So nobody could see his little trick. And even if, Erik had never been someone who would hide his ability. Quite the contrary. He was proud of it ever since that day he had to use it to revenge his parents' death.

"Hey! Pin cushion! We wanna talk!"

Erik's head turned at the sudden voice, coming from somewhere below, while the coin remained in the air yet stopped circling. That was not his business.

"Can I help you?"

"You were working on our turf tonight, freak." Erik couldn't help but clench at that nickname. With a scowl flitting across his face, his head turned once again, this time searching for the owner of the voice, and finally met with a whole group, ambushing just one single man. "You just worked for us, and we're here to collect what you owe us!" Still not his business.

"The hell you are, kid,", the punk guy replied, and what Erik saw then actually drew his interest enough to make him feel like this was his business all of a sudden, as it was something like an unwritten codex of The Brotherhood. All for one and one for all. The man was pushing a blade down into his own leg, yet the screams and blood were coming from another. There was no doubt that this guy was a mutant.

"Fuck him up!"

Erik really hadn't been going to attract any attention and cause any trouble, but if there was something that gave more direction to his actions than his strong-mindedness, it was his impulsivity.

The group of bat swinging bullies didn't get a chance to deal out a lot of blows until something small, yet at that rate of speed, lethal was hitting one of them directly in the back of the head - a simple dime. It was not long after this that an invisible force made the other men lose grip of their metal weapons while, at the same time, meet with their already dead companion's chain that heavily pulled them away from the punk guy.

"I take it these are no friends of yours?", Erik asked rather rhetorically, still a rigid look on his face, while he maintained the tractive force on the chain as if this was no effort at all. Standing upright now, he looked down at the scene from above.

[dantalion]

Still prone, Frankie pushed himself backward, put his back against the wall. He looked up to his rescuer, jaw dropped, "Magneto? You're on the Paris tape, used to run the Brotherhood of Mutants." He relaxed a little, wiped the blood off his face, pulled the closest corpse toward himself and started going through his pockets, "We crossed paths a couple years ago, before the Sapien League took out most of the sideshow troupe I was running with." He pulled a small metal flask out of a pocket, unscrewed the top, sniffed and his eyes widened and crossed all at once. Replaced the lid, stuffed it into his own pocket. "Thanks for the assist, brother."

[DarkSideCookie]

"Magneto? You're on the Paris tape, used to run the Brotherhood of Mutants."

Erik said nothing in return as the man's words had been just a part of his curriculum vitae. When one of the other men he'd chained with their own weapon was struggling slightly, he advanced the force on it once more until a short cracking sound was accompanying the human's last breath. And like this wasn't any different from the way someone silenced a kid that hackled an adult conversation, Erik didn't pay more attention to it as soon as it was quiet again.

"We crossed paths a couple years ago, before the Sapien League took out most of the sideshow troupe I was running with."

At that, he gave the man a slightly puzzled expression, yet still, didn't say anything. If they had crossed paths and this guy was still alive, and at the same time not on bad terms with him, then he must be an ally. Erik's features softened a little.

"Thanks for the assist, brother."

"That is a fascinating power you hold," he finally stated, not reacting to the words of gratitude at all. "Although I wouldn't want to trade with you. Looks painful," Erik added with a look at the many scars the man had. Maybe they would heal, but this guy surely had been going through a rough time lately.

[dantalion]

Frankie scrambled to his feet, the world tilted, his vision narrowed, and he stumbled against the wall, "Hot damn... guess he hit me harder than I realized. That's the bitch about this Thing of Mine, does not a goddamn thing about blunt trauma." He shook off the vertigo, started rummaging through the ganger's pockets. Came out with cash, a few joints, and a half pack of Camel Reds, "Not my brand, but hey, we take what we can get, am I right?" His grin flashed rows of shark-like teeth razor-sharp and pearlescent. He grabbed a stretch of the chain, and, rather than untangling it from the bigot's corpse, "Watch this," took the bottom-mot link in his mouth and bit it cleanly in half. "Trophy," he winked, stood, "Cops'll take forever to get here, but they're probably coming eventually. We should probably split, yeah?"

[DarkSideCookie]

Erik still watched him with a rigid look on his face, not paying any attention to the body-stripping the man did while he spoke. He had never done that himself, but he had also never cared when someone else did. To each, what they deserved. Or in this case probably more like: to each, what they could get. All Erik was interested in, however, was this man's power and how it could be helpful on their side. Erik was sure that he already was on their side, just not officially yet.

"Cops'll take forever to get here, but they're probably coming eventually. We should probably split, yeah?"

"I don't care about the human legal system." he finally spoke up again. Yet, maybe he should start to at this point. That was nothing he would state, though. Erik used his own power to slide down from where he was and land some meters away from the punk guy. For others, it must look like he could actually fly while it was just a simple thing as controlling the terrestrial magnetism. Well, a simple thing for him, while something inconceivable for others. "You're right, though.", he added as soon as they were on eye level. "It would be better for you to not get seen with me. You're all on your own?" Erik asked free of emotion.