Location The Pitt

[The Pit Master]

It was such a lovely affair, the daily brawls that brought out the masses in their pink and blue numbers. There was champagne and liquor, finger foods and snacks, idle chatter and the ever glorious sound of flesh upon flesh as competitors battled below. His customers were not all of the upper class, though the ones that were were given extra attention, personal greetings from the man himself. It was a wondrous, joyous thing, these parties he threw every night.



The Pitt Master wander through the crowd of bettors and competitors with the air of a king, for king he was in this building. No one stood against him, threatened his business or the name he had made for himself. He was adored, if not for his work then for the entertainment he provided. It was all on the up and up, with waivers and penalties and clauses and everything his discerning clientele looked for in an establishment such as his. Underground as the Pitt may have been it was legally above water, as far as any in depth investigations would go.



Of course there were those who simply took offense to the violence of it all. Broke hippies with little more than an argument and a paper sign to their claims of righteousness. The Pitt was an expression of what was right; it had made its Master into a Somebody and gave those secreted empowered people a place to express themselves where no one would bat an eye. Some heroes and some villains, The Pitt was no more wrong than the Swiss, and everyone loved the chocolate that the Pitt Master had offered. Gambling was an American past-time, after all, and even if he couldn’t go out on the town to enjoy the fruits of his labor the rooms full of money were plenty of sweets to satisfy him for an eternity.



Eventually, after the gauntlet of riches had been traversed, the Pitt Master would find himself beside the only entrance to his grand arena, a pair of blue double doors that led to a bare and unimpressive hallway with a desk surrounded by bulletproof glass at its end. It was there that the Pitt Master would congratulate those who left with winnings, console those who had added to his coffers, and occasionally convince those who had only come to bet to use their miraculous gifts to blow off some steam and fight back against the world they hid from.



Or so he would argue, and so he would play, though what the Pitt Master truly wanted might have been the greatest mystery the Pitt had to offer.

 

[Coldcall]

"'Ey Paulie," Coldcall said, cell phone pressed to the side of face, "You know they say the fuck who runs this place is a fuckin' ghost? How bout that. If it's true, turns out souls are real."

There was a pause as the crook's contact on the other end of the line replied. Coldcall leaned up against the concrete wall of the The Pit's exterior, keeping his goggled eyes on the clientele as they made their way into the clandestine establishment.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. Hundred bucks says he's just some meta fuck like me. You, ah, get them golf clubs I asked for?"

(Guns.)

"Good. Yeah, the regular place. I'll let ya know what I find here. Yeah. See ya."

Coldcall flipped the phone shut and slid it into his pocket. He preferred it to a smartphone because it was much, much more resilient. He was dressed in his full supervillain regalia, the red parka giving him a hulklike appearance in contrast to the skimpier night-on-the-towners he was surrounded by. It was good to rep the colors, for one - to help build up his notoriety in the event there was an incident - and it also helped keep him insulated in the event he had to flash-freeze someone. Contrary to popular appearance, he wasn't actually immune to the effects of sub-zero temperatures without focusing on making himself so. That took extra effort he wasn't always willing to spare.

Sliding a toothpick between his teeth, Coldcall put his hands in the pockets of the parka and ducked into the Pit, well aware that he was effectively in hostile territory. He was in Pittsburgh to pull one of the biggest ops in meta-criminal history, and there were types here - he well knew - that would either try to stop it at the scene, or muscle in on the winnings. Superheroes, supervillains - all schnooks from where he was standing. Best to case everywhere he could and find the lay of the land.

Call me Sun fuckin' Tzu, he thought, squeezing past the drinkers and revelers, making a beeline for the bar.

This is all gonna be mine.

 

[The Pit Master]

It was your standard night, which wasn’t to say it was boring but for the monotony of it all. The Pitt Master only had so many things to offer, so many fighters to toss down into the ring. He had arranged the building in its standard configuration; once past the initial hallways a series of rooms and hallways ringed an open arena with no walls obscuring their views. Though each chamber was decorated in a different manner and housed all sorts of different people, the rooms arranged around the empty concrete floor below held in common the raucous, joyful noise that the Pitt Master so desperately craved from his visitors.



He shook hands with some president or another, whether from a small country or from some successful business afar it was hard to guess. His clientele had gotten to be something of a showstopper themselves, even to the point that many of them would deign to wear masks inside the building to better protect their identities. The Pitt Master might have been running a legal game, but the brutality, and the legal nuances that left little protections for the metas he employed, were grey enough that many of his watchers wished to remain anonymous though in his house anonymity was difficult to come by.



It was that hard won anonymity that led the Pitt Master to the man in the red coat, sliding up to the bar next to him as he ordered his drink. In a place such as this one was hard pressed to stand out, metas in their special suits mingling with the sharply dressed and scruffy alike in a hotpot of activity that often confused the eye. The Putt Master was notable, though, with his makeup and tailored suits, not to mention the astoundingly tall hat. He pretended to mimic the red jacketed man’s anonymous nature for a moment as he eyed him through his peripheral vision.



”Are you here to play, to compete, or are you simply ghost hunting?”



Words fell from the Master’s lips as smooth as silk and thick with an indefinable accent like honey. Deep and sonorous, at odds with his ling and lanky appearance, it would have been enough to cut through the static of the crowd around the bar even without a direction; his face thrust in front of the new client to bring the man’s attention fully to the Master’s words and visage.