3026/Recruitment! Pt. 3

Recruitment! Pt. 3
Date of Scene:	31 October 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Comedian, Ares

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Comedian has posed:
30 MINUTES AGO: In the back alley behind a dive-bar, Edward Blake - out of costume and dressed in jeans and a black leather jacket - is silently garroting an individual in a tacky suit. Obviously some kind of pimp, or criminal; though whether they've just upset Eddie in some way or pissed off the people who he takes his orders from...

Well, details like that hardly matter, do they?

Having deposited the corpse in one of the garbage bins behind the bar, Eddie proceeds to walk out the alley onto the street - taking a deep breath and exhaling into the crisp Autumn morning. As crazy as this city is getting, with the Invasion, with that goddamn election, with EVERYTHING... it still feels great to be home. Especially after that bizarre encounter in Gotham the previous evening...

Whistling as he walks, Blake calmly re-enters the bar from the front entrance. He gets a few odd glances from patrons who saw him entire minutes before, and then leave through the back entrance.

Stepping up to the bar, he smiles broadly at the bartender - obviously eyeing him suspiciously. "Hey, what the fuck can I say? Took a wrong turn. But look at that, I found the bar. Pour me a drink, kid," he grumbles in a gruff voice, bringing out a Zippo - engraved with a smiley face - and a half-smoked cigar from one of his pockets. He lights it, and begins to blow the obnoxious smoke directly at the bartender as he pours a Bourbon.

Ares has posed:
    The stigma of battle, death... war. It clings to a man like Edward Blake, the tell tale hints of it there for some to perceive as clearly as if a trail of debris and chaos followed along in the man's wake. Which it often does. For most he's a friendly looking fellow, cheerful and perhaps a bit edged, but still on the upswing across the stratum of jovial humanity.
    When John Aaron saw him some years ago the man stood out. Only a few mortals exist that are so marked with the passage of years. The one known as Castle, whose hands positively dripped with blood. And the Russian soldier, whose metal arm had taken many lives. All of them had a similar aspect to them, though Eddie. He was different. He seemed to exult in who he was, seemed to embrace the darker aspects of what had passed. But still there was something... else.
    When he had been tasked to assemble a squad of like-minded soldiers and train them, the image of the Comedian has sprung to the fore. And it was only today that he had found him.
    The door opened, and the tall man darkened the doorway for a moment. Halfway to seven foot from six and broad of shoulder. He moved into the dingy surroundings uncaring for the glances given by the bartender and the regulars. A glance is given to the side, "Barkeep, leave."
    The anger visibly flares for a moment, the bartender's an old towny, used to dealing with much. But something in that tall man's eyes has him abruptly packing up and even going so far to help out the regular near the door and urge him out as well. No explanation, just a quick departure.
    Though it does leave the two men alone in there. Silence reining between them. That is until the man near the door lifts his voice. "Edward Blake."

Comedian has posed:
The sudden light coming into the bar from the outside as the door is opened - and more noticeably, the massive man stepping forward into the doorway and almost completely eclipsing the light behind him - is enough to warrant a glance from Eddie. He's now firmly in his cups after a job... well, done... pausing with another dusty tumbler glass of Bourbon already halfways to his lips as he turns his eye to catch a sight of the hulking figure.

"Barkeep, leave... the bottle," cracks Blake as the gigantic God of War stomps up to his side, grabbing the bottle of Wild Turkey off the bar before the bartender can snatch it away. As the bar empties out, Blake still keeps his eyes forward, nursing that glass.

"Edward Blake, that's me, big fuckin' war hero. Thanks, by the way. Place was too fucking crowded anyway. Christ, these people need to shower," he says - without a hint of irony, funny considering he was just in Gotham strangling a troublesome Priest to death yesterday night.

Finally, he signs heavily and turns in his stool to face the 7'+ Greek God. If he's impressed, he doesn't show it beyond raising one eyebrow and offering a quip, "Holy shit, pal, what you been eating?" There's a fair chance he recognizes the man, having firm ties to intelligence from not just the U.S. Government's various intelligence services, but leaked SHIELD documents as well. He's hardly the type to make a big deal about having a face-to-face discussion with the LITERAL God of War... after all, where's the humour in that?

Ares has posed:
    SHIELD had intel on him for years, fifty and some thinking the man was a Russian asset of some kind ever since the incident at the 84 Olympics. And other nations had been tracking him since World War II so he'd been something of an anomaly amongst the intelligence community. But he is recognizable, even at a glance. But those agencies never connected him as an actual divine being of some sort. Perhaps an early mutant was one school of thought. But as for the details...
    "I am here to make you a job offer, Edward Blake." He tells the man calmly, not quite the bluff and bluster one might expect a man his size, though his voice is deep and resonant. He folds his arms over his chest and eyes The Comedian sidelong, quirking an eyebrow with a measure of curiousity. "It pays nothing. It will grant you few benefits. And it will ultimately end in your death. But then again what does not?" For mortals are so bound by time.
    With that glowing pitch thrown out, he lifts his chin as the man drinks. "What I can tell you is that at the end of it you will never lose another battle, you will have brothers in arms that you can trust, and you will make those that dared give us such affront as to invade our world reason to fear those of Earth."

Comedian has posed:
Half-turned in his stool to face Ares as he begins to break down his proposal, Eddie sits there with a smirk on his lips, firm grasp on his tumbler glass resting on the bar. He lets out a few chuckles here and there at certain phrases like 'it will end in your death', obviously slightly amused by the dramatic nature of the man. Then again, if what he's read is even half-true, then he's earned a right on the battlefield to be a bit theatrical. Eddie'd met a ton of them in his time; often the best warriors leaned towards the dramatic.

Blake, personally, never subscribed to that notion in his own life. But it's hardly new to him. He once had a Colonel he worked with in Somalia who was always reciting poetry. The idiosyncracies of soldiers in the field, and veterans returned home, are well-known to the war hero and Government asset.

Once the man has finished, Blake simply raises his glass of bourbon in a half-hearted toast, "Shit, brother, you might have a future in politics with a pitch like that," he says, guffawing rudely as he takes a moment to drain the remainder of the glass, "With 'pays nothing', 'few benefits' AND 'my death' thrown in the mix? How could a man pass THAT up?"

Finally, though, the smile is gone from his face - and his voice takes on a tone that is a tad more serious, if not completely so. "Y'know I was born in Brooklyn? Don't know if you did. Heh. Went by my parents' old apartment... place I was raised in, after the Invasion. Gone," he pauses and looks down into his empty bourbon glass, suddenly snatching the bottle off the table and re-filling it as he puffs his cigar.

"Just fuckin' gone. I've been pushing my pals back in Washington to do something about this shit. You got a plan?"

Ares has posed:
    Arms folded over his chest, John looks upon Eddie with a gaze heavy with import and gauging him with such utter candor that it might be unsettling. His brow furrows and he says levelly, "There are still some across the world. We're going to kill them, and continue killing them until none are left. And then we go to their world and start there." A simple plan, all told. And yet...
    He lifts a hand and gestures to the side, as if brushing away his own words as immaterial. "But before that it will take some time to train, to come together as a unit. There will be little margin for error." That having been said he reaches into his pocket and places a card upon the tabletop. A business card. Blank, however. But it has hand written an address and a time, "If you are inclined to pursue this matter, then I shall find you there."
    There's a pause as he looks Blake over again, then says. "If not, then I hope you fare well, Mr. Blake." That said he turns away and starts to walk back towards the door outside. In the window next to the door the silhouette of the bartender and his regular can be seen hunkered down against the chill of Autumn.

Comedian has posed:
Blake's seen the news. Scattered parademon attacks, unconfirmed rumors and reports of nests, potential entrances back to their own world... things that, if left unhandled (as they presently seem to be by SHIELD), could lead to a second, even more disastrous attack. He might be a man largely without morals, a man who has killed without knowing the reason simply because some Washington suit handed him a dossier...

But he'll die before he sees that happen to HIS city again. The place he grew up, the place he spent years on the street fighting criminals, robbing their stashes but also, in a way, wanting to protect his home..

"Alright," he says definitively, putting down the glass again and this time removing his hand from it - a sure sign he's finally taking Ares seriously. Though, of course, he's still puffing casually on that half-smoked cigar, the entire bar filled with the fumes, "Listen..."

He pauses for a moment to collect his breath, pulling the cigar out of his mouth to better pronounce his words and give Ares the respect, finally, he deserves. But by that time, the man is already stomping off, leaving him with a hand-written card. He pockets it immediately into his leather jacket and then zips it shut.

"Be seein' ya," he calls after Ares as the man begins to leave the bar, picking the glass back up and draining it once again. He takes a moment to glance around the deserted drinking establishment, then shrugs and heads off to the coat room. Might be a few wallets or interesting photos in some of the jackets.

"Holy shit, what a trip..."