basic_powers | Seattle Summer Showoff

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Seattle Summer Showoff

As they exist from the narrow door of the linen closet for his apartment, Dinah will see two doors down the hallway to her left. One has a biohazard sign hanging from it, and the other is part-way open, enough that one can see the window and bed inside. There's a couple of photos hanging from the wall, one of Beauford and a blonde young woman laughing with the lights of a carnival in the twilight background, and one with Beauford and a reddish-brown haired man in a repurposed tan flightsuit, grinning in front of a college graduation ceremony.

To her right, she'll see that Beauford was infact not exaggerating at all about the shoebox size of his apartment's kitchen, as there is only a tiny island seperating it from the small living room. There's a well-used black futon and coffee table with a little black laptop on top of magazines and comic books. Against the wall there's a shelf with a flatscreen tv, several videogame consoles and a dvd/bluray player. Light filters through the curtain outside and Dinah can likely see the door out of the apartment with three bicycles hanging from hooks beside it on the wall, and pannier bags for the bikes hung with coats and hats from the coat rack.

It doesn't take much guessing to figure out that the blue and gunmetal bike is Beauford's from the homemade welds and adjustments given to it.

"Welcome to my humble bachelor pad...I'd give you the tour but this is pretty much it."

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"Hey, it's tidier than my place," Dinah points out.

She bravely resists the temptation to gravitate over to the his CDs and videos and judge him by the titles thereon (those thin video cases look weird. Like CDs but movies?), but instead ends up peering out at the bikes, assessing his modifications.

Beauford's is the only one really bearing modifications, the other two bikes, a lavender and black racing bike and a silver bmx trick bike don't look nearly as used. His bike's been modded out for having a wider rear wheel and several ports and braces to attach bags, baskets and other things.

"You want a soda or a beer before we start off?" Beauford says, heading towards the kitchen. "Or do you want to admire the frankenbike some more?"

"I will take a soda," Dinah says, pulling herself away. "It's fine, it's just a bike worth admiring."

"It's nothing like your Katana, but Frankenbike is a good ol' human powered model that has been proven to handle Seattle winter streets." He can't always just take the bus everywhere and sometimes he needs to carry more than what is allowed to be loaded onto a bus.

Dinah gets handed a nice cold bottle of Mighty Maple Old Fashioned Rootbeer.

Which is it has to be said, delicious rootbeer.

"I think I'd be wearing too much to be able to cycle in Seattle winters," she remarks, still remembering how cold it was the last time she visited.

"Once you get a good head of speed going, you honestly don't notice the cold. And it's faster than walking." Beauford replies, shrugging. "Seattle summers however, are just about perfect for biking and free-running."

"I guess it's like the fishnets," Dinah muses. "Once I've got a sweat going, it doesn't matter if we're in the Arctic fighting.

"Free running, though. That's better than cycling." Bikes should have motors. Fact of life.

"Much better, and I've got a rough route planned out, how do you feel about seeing the aquarium?" He grins, grabbing a hooded sweatshirt and keyring off of the coat hook. "We make good time, we'll get to watch them feed the sea otters."

...

"I do like sea otters."

Dinah doesn't bother with a sweatshirt, even. If she's not going to be warm enough in her tank top and pants, she doesn't want to know about it.

So she waits by the door, stretching her quads with her foot behind her ass. "It'll be nice to see an Aquarium without Aquaman talking to the residents."

"Oh? Does the King of the Sea take offense to the animals being in exhibits?" He asks doing his own full stretching, twisting to make sure the muscles in his torso are nice and stretched before opening up the door into the hallway stairs.

There's a kid happily sitting by the railing upstairs playing with one of her action figures making vreeeeeeeeeeoooooo noises as they leave. And as Jasil once pointed out, Beauford does live in a little bit of a rough neighborhood, there's wires and bars on the windows of the entrance of the building complex, and one heck of a sturdy electronic lock on the front door.

"He just likes knowing his subjects are happy," Dinah remarks, looking up towards the little girl and sneding her a dazzling smile.

The lock on the door is met with a curious look, but she's happy to step out into the sunlight, sheilding her eyes with a hand immediately.

"OK, this city is prettier in the summer," she decides.

It's also busier in the summer, there's a couple of kids who seem to be dressing in a fashion that's half punk and half gangsta, lurking dirty by the side of the building with a cardboard sign between them. Several people are zipping by on the street riding various bikes in the slim margin between the parked cars and the busy street itself.

"Yeah, and it's tourist season." Beauford grins, walking past the pandhandling punks, ignoring them.

Dinah fingers a couple of bills in her pocket (even as a Gothamite, she still pays attention), but decides that the serial number is probably out of date and will mess with interdimensional economics, so she keeps pace with Beauford.

"I'mm not surprised," she says. "If I were on vacation, I'd rather come here in the summer than the winter."

Gotham, on the other hand, doesn't get many tourists.

That is because Gotham is a termite mound of scum and villans under all the good people there.

You couldn't pay Beauford to go on a vacation there.

One of the two kids panhandling gives Dinah a very rude gesture as she and Beauford pass by, with Beauford starting into a light jog.

"I'd rather go see Uncle Ray in New York during the summer, could see Nico, and maybe a Mets game," He says, taking a moment to do a warm-up wall handspin. "But summer is when I really make a lot of money at Q57."

"Has that got something to do with you bartending without a shirt?"

Dinah totally supports anything that results in getting more tips. She follows him into the jog, then ups her own pace before lightly vaulting a fire hydrant.

"No, but don't think Jasil hasn't suggested that before..." He's grinning, kong vaulting over a set of concrete bike posts. "I don't think anyone really wants to see my scars anyways, really. It's just busier because more people are working the tourist industry, and after so many hours working..well. Let's just say they tip REALLY well for getting tasty, tasty drinks."

"Hey, scars work on girls, I'm assuming they work on boys too."

As a wall appears on the side of the sidewalk, Dinah leaps lightly on top of that and runs along the top.

"Still, gettiing paid for being a great bartender is preferable."

"I'd rather get paid for skill than for being just another pretty face..." Beauford grins, jump flipping over someone's bike before using a light post to make a quick right.

"I mean, the bar has enough pretty pretty brainless cage dancers. Talented as heck at dancing but there's one that has trouble with any word with more than 3 syllables..."

"Maybe that's what they want you to think," says Dinah, following him and leaping far off the wall when it comes to an end.

"I know how valuable underestimating a pretty face can be."

"True...true...I'm just not comfortable showing those things off to a crowd of people." A tree closer to the street gets grabbed around the trunk and swung on like a slingshot. "Only so many times you can explain where they came from before you start wanting to make up a different story each time, just to mess with people."

Dinah giggles when she somersaults over the leash of a dog using the wall to relieve itself, to the shock of its owner.

"That's true. I forget how much people think they're entitled to answers like that."

"'Well, ye see here now, I had this one wicked nasty farming accident when I was helping dad harvest tha corn down in Kansas..'" Beauford drawls, faking a horrible country accent before running up the side of the wall ahead of Dinah to clear a group of passing chatting young people.

"Oh my god," Dinah says, folloing his path to avoid the same group. "That was a terrible accent."

She swtiches to the street side of the sidewalk, using a street lamp to vault over a pile of the week's trash.

"I know, it had too much Texan in it." Beauford chuckles, swinging from the support bars of some overhanging awning monker-bar style. "But people hear I'm from Kansas and that's the first thing they think I should be like."

"....and it's horrible and mean probably, but it's just so much FUN-" He's somersaulting just for the heck of it now, "To play on and off of their expectations sometimes."

"You're telling me," Dinah says, laughing when he somersaults and spinning around another street lamp.

"I'm all about playing of people's expectations."

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