Summon to the Bird's Nest
A tiny boy with bright red hair and long limbs swung from the bottom rung of the fire escape. He kicked his legs a few times as if he was really trying to properly prepare for the fall he was about to take. But with a childish squeal and an accidental slip, the boy was a heap on the ground. Another boy, identical in red hair and limbs rolled out from an empty barrel and bounced onto his feet, offering out a hand to the fallen child.
Bottle Cap blinked and the two boys were gone, disappearing into the barrels or scurried away down the alley. It didn't truly matter, they were gone and his distraction for not walking into the old condemned tenement building was lost.
"You are late." Slingshot grumbled as he shoved Cap forward into the street.
"So are you." Cap muttered back stepping into the leading stride. The two newsboys glanced down the street carefully before ducking into the building. A loud crash greeted them as they shut the front door behind them. Slingshot glanced up the stairs, waiting for whatever fell to come tumbling into sight.
"… I WON'T! I WON'T! I WON'T!" The unhappy screeching accompanied another crashing. Cap nudged Slingshot before he started jogging up the stairs.
On the third floor, a bit of a makeshift battle was taking place. An exasperated Relic stood against a doorframe glaring at the fallen young Raindrop. Raindrop struggled against the basket she had fallen into, trying hard hide her face as the blush crept onto her cheeks when the leader of Brooklyn stepped into her view.
"You will if you want any dinner tonight, stop this nonsense this second." Relic spit annoyed. Cap cracked a smile, noticing how much Relic sounded like a mother of a small child instead of a legendary bird.
"NO!" Raindrop fought against the basket some more before being able to scramble back up onto her feet.
"What is it you don't want to do?" Slingshot frowned trying to understand what could cause such a raucous. Raindrop dropped her eyes to the ground, unable to look at Slingshot as she answered mumbling into her own chest. Slingshot stepped over to her, bending down to lift her up by the elbow, carefully almost gently.
"I don't want to take a bath." She muttered without looking at him.
"You are making this whole scene over a bath?" Cap chastised lightly.
"The water is cold." Raindrop whined as she stomped her foot as Slingshot stepped away from her. Another crash in the room behind Relic, made the older bird turn around abruptly. Heavy footsteps sounded from above, purposefully, as Jasper let his presence be announced before he appeared at the base of the stairs.
To the untrained eye, Jasper looked like he had been alert and awake only moments before. But to his birds and even to Bottle Cap, Jasper appeared like a man awoken from a nap seconds too early.
"Raindrop." Jasper growled out a sigh of discontent. He reached out and cusped his hand behind her neck, pulling her roughing to be standing against his chest. She struggled only until he shook her, a silent command to be still. The hallway was eerily silent until Relic appeared in the doorframe again. Jasper tilted his head slightly to the right and stare at the young woman.
"Wild and West have gone out the window and Ghost was trying to join them." Relic huffed using her palm to push up her loose strands of hair.
"I saw the two little ones run off when I got here." Cap nodded confirming the information.
Jasper slipped both his hands under Raindrops arms, lifting her up to be at eye level. The girl kicked her feet unable to control how quickly the leader of the birds had her in the air.
"Would a good whacking get you to stop being such a headache?" He questioned. The tone of his voice made it a serious question while his glare made it a subtle threat. Raindrop started chewing on her bottom lip nervously. Jasper shook her, harsher than he had intended to as the girl bite down on her own lip hard enough to make it bleed.
"Enough." Slingshot demanded reaching out and placing on hand on Jasper's bicep.
"This is hardly any of your concern Matthew Kai." Jasper glared at the boy but released the girl, dropping her gently onto her feet. Cap smiled, Jasper didn't want to be rough with her. Jasper had always been gentle but his nerves were grated and the man was clearly at his wits end.
"You will go out and find the twins, bring them back and get them clean." Jasper proclaimed.
"But Jazz…" Raindrop started to protest.
"And you will be going out with the sunrise for the next three days." Jasper added annoyed.
"Jasper!" Raindrop practically cried.
"Now. Before I get angrier." Jasper pointed at the window. "You will be back within the hour."
"Be a good girl then." Slingshot nudged her shoulder with his own shoulder. The girl blushed madly before using her thumb to wipe the blood on her lip.
"I didn't mean to wake you." She whispered to Jasper before sprinting down the stairs past Bottle Cap.
"And Ghost?" Jasper sighed.
"I won that round." Relic smiled triumphantly.
"When Daisy gets here…" Jasper began.
"Tell her you want to kill her pets?" Relic clicked her tongue.
"Something of that sort." Jasper laughed before waving the two newsboys to follow him up the staircase. Slingshot stepped up closely behind Jasper as Bottle Cap dawdled behind, winking at Relic before trudging up after his leader. It was two more flights of stairs before another word was spoken.
"Trouble controlling the family?" Slingshot snickered as they finally stepped onto the sixth floor. Cap groaned from somewhere on the stairwell.
"The younger ones are a bit more showy about their dislike for being in Manhattan. Raindrop and the boys are getting a bit mouthy for their own good…" Jasper sighed kicking his untied boots off as he stepped into a warm kitchen.
"You were a bit rough…" Slingshot started but Cap kicked his leader in the back of a knee, derailing the rest of the thought.
"He don't come to Brooklyn and tell you how to deal with your mouthy newsboys." Cap warned. Jasper smiled at the logic, Bottle Cap had been around long enough to know where a conversation of advice among egos would end.
"Yeah, well none of mine are little girls." Slingshot grumbled.
"If she wasn't so busy worrying about you, then maybe she wouldn't have even bitten her lip." He sounded almost apologetic. Jasper reached up onto a shelf and pulled down a bottle of amber colored liquor. He poured out measured amounts to three tin cups, before putting the bottle away.
"Worrying about me?" Slingshot frowned.
"She's got the sweets for you. I've resorted to trying to curb her willful behavior by not allowing her to be in Brooklyn at all." Jasper explained as he poured, lukewarm tea over the liquor.
"If only I could have such a punishment given out to me, not having to deal with mighty Brooklyn at all." Cap muttered amused. Slingshot shoved him with a half fist in the gut.
Jasper nodded as he turned around and offered up two tin cups to each newsboy. He nodded towards the empty chairs, as he leaned into the wall and slid down onto his bed disguised as a bench. Slingshot stared at the man curiously waiting, as he took a gulp of his drink.
"You summoned us here, Jasper." Cap finally sighed.
"Summoned us to Manhattan…" Slingshot snorted, his face taking on the edge of annoyance that Cap had learned to recognize as trouble.
"Don't get your suspenders in a knot, if you had not wanted to come here you could have sent word and I would have been in Brooklyn." Jasper explained calmly sipping at his drink. The leader of the birds stifled a yawn, as his eyes focused on the liquid in his cup.
"What are you doing moving my birds to Manhattan?" Slingshot demanded hotly. Cap knocked his head softly into the wall.
"Your birds?" Jasper's eyes snapped up and his whole body lunged forward, slightly ready. A tension hung in the air until Cap released an entire lungful of air.
"If you are going to fight, just fight. I put two bits on Jasper." Cap reached into his vest pocket. Jasper laughed and visibly relaxed against the wall again.
"Good man, Bottle Cap." Jasper nodded not at the newsboy but at a stout bird named Bookie, standing in the doorframe. The bird disappeared as quickly as he appeared.
"I'm going to soak that ugly smile off your mug." Slingshot grumbled to his second in command.
"The Brooklyn Birds ain't yours to command Matthew Kai." Jasper threw his empty tin cup at the basket nearby.
"They are the BROOKLYN birds," Slingshot jumped up to pace around the small room. Jasper chuckled at the impatience that had years before inspired a certain other hot headed Brooklyn boy to start carrying around a cane.
"Not because they belong to a boy who thinks he's Brooklyn." Jasper pointed out. A baseball whizzed through the air past Slingshot's head and straight into Jasper's hand.
"Why move to Manhattan now?" Cap frowned, inserting his question before Slingshot could throw his weight around anymore.
"We've expanded and Brooklyn…" Jasper began as he untied a note attached to the baseball. The man stopped speaking as he read the crumpled piece of yesterday's newspaper. He dropped the ball into an empty milk crate, where there were at least five other baseballs. Around the crate sat piles of crumpled paper, bites of shoelaces and yarn. Underneath the plank Jasper sat upon, a feather pillow seemed to have exploded in a mishap and not swept up properly. Single playing cards were lazily abandoned around the room, in no particular order. Everything appeared chaotic, unorganized, and messy but it was possible that everything was in an order, a particular sequence of knowledge constantly reforming.
Cap leaned forward and set his tin cup on the ground while picking up a queen of hearts playing card.
"And Brooklyn isn't Manhattan. We're in the greater New York City." Cap finished the sentiment, suddenly understanding. The Brooklyn birds had always been more than just a group of rag tag orphans and runaways keeping an eye on an overly important boy king. Even the infamous Spot Conlon had understood that, though not readily or outwardly. The birds had always been a network of news for the streets, the shady transactions of the back allies. In the early days there had been reports on a political deal of the Tweed and Tammany Hall variety, but those dealings had always been strenuous and dangerous.
Cap glanced over at Jasper and really took in his appearance now. Noticing how deep the exhaustion reached over his physique. The man's hands slightly shook, and his right eye twitched with every other breath. The pale pallor of Jasper's skin was lighter, paler than usual making the circles under his eyes deceivingly appear as ominous angry shadows. The man was exhausted noticeably over stretched by new demands and unruly children.
"You summoned us." Slingshot stated at Jasper while nodding at Cap. The leader of the Brooklyn newsboys didn't pretend to even sort of understand the interworking of the birds but he could tell his second understood perfectly why the move had been made.
"I wanted to explain a few things." Jasper explained distracted. A faint whistling suddenly caught Jasper's ear and the man jumped to his feet at once. He left Bottle Cap and Slingshot alone as he traveled to the front room to open a window. The evening noises of crying infants, shouting mothers, trotting horses and worn out fathers masked the whistling for only seconds after the window was opening. Slingshot followed Jasper moving closer to the open window and stretching out his right ear to listen to the whistling.
"Only one… only one…" Slingshot started whispering until finally the familiar tune dawned on him. "We're truly two birds of a feather, just one little girl and me!"
Jasper started humming the song as the two men rejoined Bottle Cap.
"My mother use to love that tune, it was popular a couple years back." Slingshot stated happily amused.
Wild and West suddenly appeared in the doorframe. The two little boys had their short arms wrapped around a washing tub between the two of them.
"Boys…?" Jasper glared at the fidgeting children trying to get into the room.
"We don't want to be clean." Wild piped up immediately, not daring to look at up. West managed to get his body and the tub through the doorframe.
"Don't care." Jasper sighed back.
"We didn't mean to wake you up." West struggled to keep hold of the peace offering as Wild finally managed to get through the doorframe.
"You get one bath this month, and tonight's the night. You'll get clean and you'll go to bed." Jasper commanded not wanting to discuss the mundane topic anymore.
"It's always cold after getting a bath." Wild whined sadly.
"You two can come up and sleep with the quilts, if you promise to get to sleep when I say?" Jasper compromised. The twins cheered up immediately and nodded vigorously as they skipped out of the room.
"That was nice of you." Slingshot commented.
"We're getting more quilts at the end of the week, it's been getting cold until then…" Jasper shrugged.
"You've got a soft spot for the babes." Cap laughed.
"More trouble than they are worth." Jasper shrugged. The man set the laundry tin on the table that had been shoved into a corner. "Corn beef and cabbage for dinner gents, plenty to share."
"Two birds of a feather, just one… Is it about Laces?" Slingshot asked abruptly.
"And here I thought you didn't care about the rhymes of your birds." Jasper mocked gently pulling out a beat up lunch pail and a wrap set of utensils.
"She was heading somewhere with Jacob." Cap nodded.
"The hyphen." Jasper informed them.
"The hyphen?" Cap frowned.
"That's what they call the space between the Waldrof-Astoria, ain't it?" Slingshot wandered as he shoved a spoonful of food into his mouth.
"She was going to dinner." Jasper nodded in affirmation. Another bird, a girl with fiery red hair and an apron covered in flour flew in and whispered rapid news to Jasper before flying out. Cap and Slingshot lounged around, knowing they would be in Manhattan well into the night at the rate they got the leader of the birds attention.