Beatty & The Beast

ONE: Where the Beauty Meets the Beast

January 2nd, six days before the start of the spring semester

In the end, Keefe knew this was all his dad's fault.

He generally wasn't one to point fingers or care who started what, and though the resulting incidences were perhaps coincidental, he knew that without his dad's influence, he, Keefe, would not have ended up in front of Whistlebeck's house at this particular moment on this particular day getting his ass kicked.

It all started with, of all things, a rose. Not the garden-variety, usually associated with beauty and romance rose, but a four-and-a-half foot tall copper monstrosity sculpted to look like a rose. Aesthetics were not its strong point (it looked like something one would buy for a white elephant gift exchange party), but what gave it any merit was its position in the infamous Whistlebeck front yard collection.

It usually sat right at the entrance of the aging white fence lining the estate. The silent greeter at the beginning of the worn dirt path that led to the eccentric's mansion, it was within inches of the sidewalk, which made it easy for Cillian Beatty to walk off with it.

The story – a rather long and disjointed tale – had a simple and innocent objective per Cillian: all he needed was a few extra bucks to buy his sons proper Christmas presents.

It was a few days before the holiday, and the Beatty patriarch was in a panic. Never able to forget his past wealth – especially how staggering of a wealth it was a long decade ago – he was desperate for some sort of light - however small - to break through the never-ending cloud of destitution. Thus he set out to find the means to buy some Christmas cheer for his boys.

This led him to his first of many mistakes.

Needing money fast, his only thought was to sneak into the bowels of Villeneuve's dirty little secret: the underground – and very illegal – poker ring. Though Beatty had never been one to play cards, he figured he wasn't looking for a mass fortune, just a few bucks. How hard could that be? So he dove right in and almost immediately racked up an exorbitant debt, securing himself on the bad side of Villeneuve's shadiest of shady characters: Benjamin "Benny" Wolf Fang.

More on that guy later.

Cillian was in a panic. The time crunch (Christmas was the following day) was bad enough, but with the town's gang leader now breathing down his neck for payment, he needed salvation and he needed it fast.

He got it from, of all people, Keefe. While Cillian was sitting in the fix-it shop he managed, wondering frantically how he was going to mend this blunder, Keefe – who worked part time in the shop – was rattling on about something he had heard on the news. It was a report on how thieves were stealing copper bits from street lights and residential air-conditioning units to sell for scrap. This was happening in big cities nearby and was quite the booming enterprise for the criminally-minded.

The minute the word "copper" left his son's lips, Cillian was hit with an image of a statue, a hideous statue, sitting on the lawn of Whistlebeck's estate. A statue shaped like a rose and made entirely of copper.

Christmas came and went without the Beatty boys receiving any gifts from their father. It was the same routine from the years before, so the Beatty boys were not surprised and none the wiser. Even Keefe wouldn't know about any of this debacle until this day, the day after New Year's, when his fretful father finally spilled the beans.

Evidently, he had successfully nicked the Whistlebeck statue and sold it for scrap just like Keefe said the thieves did. However, the money he received for the statue was not as much as he had hoped and not only kept him from buying his sons gifts but also wasn't enough to pay half the debt he owed to Benny Wolf Fang.