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| Scene Title | Carnage |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | It's MURDER DEATH KILL when Sylar interrupts a perfectly good riot that FRONTLINE and the NYPD were going to bring under control in order to go a little happy with an armored tank. All caught on tape. |
| Date | November 8, 2010 |
Queens is the largest in area and the second most populous of the five boroughs of New York City. Located on the western portion of Long Island, Queens managed to avoid much of the physical ruin attributed to the Bomb. However, Queens on whole suffered from something far more significant in the wake of the explosion that tore apart New York — Economic crisis. With much of Queens relying on industrial productivity for its commerce, it was the mass exodus of many businesses from the New York area following the bomb that crippled the borough.
With refugees pouring in from the western portions of New York following the destruction of Midtown, Queens was inundated with homeless of all walks of life. Food shortages, coupled with the collapse of Queens business centers and the strain put on local police only furthered what would become one of the most embarrassing mishandling of a crisis situation the city had ever seen. Weeks after the bomb hit, riots swept through New York by the panicked populace, this was felt most hard in Queens, where food riots ravaged the businesses that dared remain open. Shea Stadium was used as temporary shelter for bomb refugees, and the riots that swept through Queens enveloped the stadium as well, resulting in a remarkable loss of life in the chaos.
Ever since, Queens has settled down from the turbulent weeks following the nuclear explosion. But while its scars may not be as physical as Midtowns are, Queens suffers just as the rest of New York does, under the shadow of that broken skyline to the west and the collapse of its social and economic centers. Queens is now a ghost of its former self, slowly struggling to recover from the damage done.
"The scene here today is carnage"
Channel four made a bold move, despite the interruption in signals and such that had stopped the broadcasts on television earlier, to send their reporters out on the street. They wanted footage from the ground, not the air, and to show and record the dark days of November.
The blonde reporter, Ciara Collins to those who watch the channel, stands cautiously on the street, a camera trained on her and capturing the surging of people that have split away from the further chaos that rages further in queens and the flames that spread. The television van to the side, engine running and doors open, prepared to accept the crew in case they have to evacuate. Breaking glass can be hear, incoherent yelling as people climb into windows of non protected store, grabbing what they can. Baseball bats in hand, crowbars, all sorts of weapons be they guns or makeshift and impromptu. It's not a good day to be in Queens.
Cop cars though pull up, sirens blaring in their high pitched wail, one of them has been here for the last ten minutes and from it was a petite black woman, her weapons out, same for her partner Patricks and watching the closing in crowd. Two more vehicles pull up, one white and blue police vehicle parking at an angle to Officer Castalide's to form a barricade. behind it pulls up a white van with NYPD across the sides, pulling up to the side and spitting out four riot gear garbed officers. Help, what little of it that they've been able to get, has come.
"As you can see, the police are trying hard to contain the chaos that consumes queens. But with forces spread thin, it's not a matter of when they will put it to a stop but if they can put it to a stop"
Amidst the riots is a confused teenager, Anna. Trying to hide in an alley, she is nonetheless harassed by several of the folks around, and… she has difficulty fighting them off. No, wait… she can't seem to fight them off at all.
While it isn't full out rape, they are nonetheless grabbing her at uncomfortable places, and she tries to bite back, she's fighting for her life… and probably her virginity too, by the looks of it. "Get off me!" She calls out.
And then the riot gear guys come on the scene… and the folks who were busy harassing Anna grow a brain and run off. They are not willing to go to jail for this… especially not considering she is a minor, by all reasonable estimates.
Oddly enough, Amadeus barely watches television or uses the internet, but when he heard people were rioting and looting, hell yeah, he was out there helping. He's in a pair of black Chucks, blue jeans, and a black zipped up leather jacket with two vicious housecats fighting over a fish dominating the back of it. He's wielding his bat for the first time since he's been out of prison, a very old bat with black stains and Deckhard carved into the side of it. His large brown backpack is full of loot, and he has a twinky in his mouth when he slips into the alley with Anna. "Fuck, you should like, go home or somethin'. I was like eighteen when I looted for the first time."
Amongst the cops clad in riot gear is another, far more heavily armored but moving with ease equal to that of the local law enforcement. Gavyn Mitchell, though new to Frontline has responded to the call for assistance. Decked out in the Horizon armor and completely shielded from head to toe, her appearance is otherwise a mystery.
Once clear of the van, Gavyn breaks away from regular officers, though she maintains communications with them. Her rifle is brought around, butt resting easily against the meat of her shoulder and muzzle pointed toward the ground. She watches several civilians pass in haste, then turns to head for the alley they'd just fled from.
Those guys may run off, but there's others here present in this group that easily hits 100 if not more. It's growing as time goes by little by little. But Anna's swept up in the surge forward at the sight of the news crew now joined by the extra cops and the presence of the FRONTLINE officer. Away from the alley mouth, out into the street, the press of people who keep the teenager moving with the flow, Amadeus swept up with it too. One individual with a baseball bat, taps his against the lowlife Deckard as if it were a stein of beer. Cheers!
But Ciara Collins doesn't move even through others of her crew start to edge back, the camera man - her husband - staying put with her. "As you can see, the police have arrived, and a FRONTLINE officer" There's a close up on the scree of Gavyn's suit when she comes out from behind the group, and it presents an ominous sight in the frame that will eventually be on television, her squad number emblazoned on her. Aude jogs over, the crowds a good 200 feet from the cops and barrier of vehicles.
"Reports are coming in, this group is smaller than the others. But it's bad and you guys aren't going to be enough" She shakes her head, looking to the FRONTLINE officer with no small amount of distaste. "Unless you magically got some sort of power that can make this crowd stop dead in their track and get the hell away from here"
The presence of a militant vehicle is amongst the first, for some people in this area, to get a very real taste of how the day is going to pan out. How the next few months are going to pan out.
Heavy enough to make the ground tremor as it roars on by, the armored vehicle— some mash up of a tank and a car with slanted sides and a mounted machine gun— banks around a corner and into view of looters, police and journalists alike. It's alone, as opposed to within a convoy, and totally without escort. Wheels the size of children crack a curb as it goes wide, before steering down a direct path of road, and going far too fast for something of its size and weight to be moving.
Inside, Gabriel is having, maybe, the time of its life. Steering one-handedly with an ice cream sandwich in his other paw, he takes a bite of cookie and slightly melting vanilla ice cream even as he keeps his eyes on the road, humming in the back of his throat. The driving pit is stained with all kinds of human gore, although he's since used his sleeve to mop up the slim windows so as to better see— the sheer amount of people and attention he's abruptly discovered as he wings around the corner. He tosses the ice cream aside, both hands gripping the steering.
The mounted machine gun judders useless and unmanned on top the M1117 armored security vehicle, but Gabriel remains driving all the same, steering the tank-car-thing far too fast down the road.
Bam!
He slams against the back end of an unfortunately parked car, sedan knocked aside like a roughly opened gate as it continues its roar down the road, a looter fleeing out the front of a store with a television set clutched to his chest not looking left soon enough and abruptly sent sprawling by the slanted nose of the vehicle and crushed beneath four wheels. It heads straight for the crowd surging for the barricades, as if bidding them to run faster, towards the police cars beyond it, the news crew with a roar of mechanics and engine.
Fuck… Anna is in trouble, she's led along with the crowd, but at least this is smaller trouble than moments before. By a small degree. She tries to find a way to leave, but she isn't discovering any. Fuck.
"I was trying to go home… didn't go that well." The girl responds to Amadeus' commentary, "Who're you to lord over me anyway?"
And then Anna notices the FRONTLINE officer, and she shoots a glare that would kill if her glares could kill. "Damn inhumans…" She mutters, not caring that the military type could likely kill her on the spot if she wanted to.
And it's about then that a fucking armored vehicle arrives… Anna screams out a wordless expression of fear as she pushes the people to move faster, to get out of the path of that bloody thing.
"I'm fuckin' Amadeus Deckard, and I know when some chick belongs in a riot or not. You're as green as you could fuckin' be." Amadeus tries to reach over for her, but as the guy taps bats with him, the young Deckard finds himself swept further into the crowd. What the hell is up with that big truck? And hell, he sure doesn't want to be in the crowd when people start getting mowed down… "Hey, little chick, where'd you go?" he tries to call out, since if he's going to escape, he may as well do one good deed as payment for his thousands of dollars worth of loot.
If looks could kill… It's not likely Gavyn would use that ability, but while she doesn't respond to the biting comments or dirty looks she returns them in kind. Of course, her face shield is opaque, there's no telling what she's looking at or how behind that. She steps forward with the intent of directing the news crew into its van and telling them to move on when the crash of metal on metal breaks out over the din.
Gavyn's eyes raise to the noise, and with it the rifle with aim, though futile, taken on the armored vehicle. "Fall back," she speaks into the comm's while herself presses forward to point and push civilians toward the police. Looters or not, not everyone really deserves to be flattened.
There's a handful of people who have the misfortune and stupidity to stop and watch the advancing tank with eye's wide, classic deer in headlights that will end up being their undoing and their death as they too succumb to the wheels of the mini tank, one surprisingly tall guys head slams against the front grill, Sylar getting a glimpse of his surprised face before he's down and driven over like some skunk on a highway with no impunity.
Seeing the tank alone is only a little threatening. Seeing a speeding tank - and they can get a good speed - Is a lot more threatening when it's bearing down on people. The reporter is ready to tell Gavyn that she's not going away turns around from the camera, blonde hair whipping in an arc when one of her crew mutters an "oh fuck" and gasps. "Jim, Jim are you getting this? Tell me you are getting this. Get the god damned camera on that, don't you dare stop filming" And she's off. Microphone in hand and running towards the scene in her Burgundy suede boots, hair bouncing.
The riot police and Gavyn knew there would be a tank coming, one of the FRONTLINE GPV's to be even more back up and hopefully the sight of it would break up the group. Tanks on the ground in your own city flanked by stores and brownstones that have familiar English signs would do that, instead of just the pictures of them with foreign words that always seem a world and are indeed a world away.
"Fuck me" Comes from Aude as she widens her eyes at the incoming tank and runs forward too, but unlike the reporter, she's with Gavyn and the other riot geared cops, trying to urge the rioters forward. No alley's at this point, it's a straight road, shops flanked either side, the only side streets are behind the cop cars. This is a death trap is what it is, in the making and a outright slaughter. Aude screams over the noise to the horizon suited individual. "Who the fuck is that! Who the hell is driving your tank!"
Police cars that are being backed up onto the sidewalk to facilitate the flow of people that are quickly approaching at a run, all thought to looting given up. That isn't the FRONTLINE tank though, that was promised to come. The FRONTLINE tank is coming from behind the cop cars, coming up to a stop while the Officer inside that Gavyn knows to be Chester, the FRONTLINE squad one medic, takes in the scene and decides what to do.
"A challenger appears," is Gabriel's speculative mutter as he leans forward enough to see the shape of the FRONTLINE GPV of much the same size and intent, this over the heads of fleeing citizens and cops alike. There is no moving body, no shifting vehicle, that he does not think can't afford to be run the hell down, months and months of pent up violence and simmering revenge all thrown into action with the flick of a psychic trigger that went something like— every prophet in his house.
If he could run over the whole damned ruined city, he might.
"Come on, come on." Baring his teeth in grin and snarl, Gabriel doesn't let himself lose speed, bowling over those too slow at the back of the crowd and barely feeling the impact from in here. His aim is the tank beyond the people and the cars and the barricades — they're just in the way.
"I'm here!" Anna calls out as she tries to get back to Amadeus, the maneuvering likely difficult. Still, she has to get close to that guy… he's an anchor to safety, or so she hopes anyway.
It's about then that she notices they're trapped, that there is no real way to flee. "Fuck." Is her only and probably rational verbal response to that fact. She glances around… maybe she could climb a building..
Nah, she neither has the strength nor the finesse to do that kind of thing. It'd just be asking for more trouble. "Calm down.. Anna, calm down…"
Amadeus is not sticking around for the truck… thing, but there isn't anywhere to go, at least not seemingly. "Come the fuck on." He ducks down and just lifts her up by the waist, hefting the girl over his shoulder. He's trying his best to get through the crowd and to one of the shop windows as people try not to get killed, fully intending to swing his back and smash one of the windows in. He's got no qualms about property damage, especially when large government vehicles are trying to flatten everyone.
Communications are kept on the police band, Gavyn continuing to direct as best she can. There's no verbal response for Aude, but she is spared a look before earning a rather rough nudge back toward the police cruisers and toward safety. With that slight turn, she notes the arrival of one of her own and knows relief for just a moment.
When she turns back to the rogue tank, thoughts of shooting the thing are abandoned, it was a stupid idea anyway, and the rifle is slung over her shoulder. "Let's find out who's driving this thing," she says over the comm's, determination renewed, and then she jumps. Neither high nor long, but the effect is magnified by the armor suit and lands her hopefully around the unmanned machine gun.
Gavyn's running them jumping, people parting like the red seas when she's moving towards them, giving her the room necessary to make the leap in the black armor that seems to come have almost come straight from every persons TV set and lands with an ominous thud on the top of the Sylar controlled tank. Little pig little pig let me come in.
Whether Sylar will scratch the hairs on his chinny chin chin is a whole different story and this tank, is not made of straw.
The Reporter surges forward and screaming for her cameraman to keep filming this. Gold, RATINGS GOLD for her. And he does, even as Sylar's tank still goes forward, people dying in droves beneath the wheels of the tank. This has an unexpected - probably to him - effect on the other FRONTLINE officer who's extracting himself from the GPV now that his partner seems to have engaged the enemy. Chester's evolved strength, fueled by the pain and the people who are killed or otherwise run over and still alive, only inflate that strength and he starts striding forward.
"I'm coming Mitchell!" Over the local radio, Chester informing his co-worker, though she can see him moving forward, careful not to shove people out of the way lest they succumb to his ability. Those they part for him as well.
Aude is nudged roughly back which earns Gavyn a scowl and she works to get people still moving, forward, around the cars and tanks, some others getting the same idea as Amadeus and breaking open windows so that they can take refuge in the stores and hope that they're spared.
It's a coffee shop that Amadeus finds himself crashing his bat into the front window of, the glass shattering into tiny little chunks, safety glass that does little more than score pinpricks on his hands and lodge into Ana's hair. There's no one else, but four others follow suit into there with the same idea.
The thud on the roof of the tank doesn't slow the tank. Obviously. Gabriel does purse his mouth at the implication of possible invasion, but unless he wants to leave the driving station— which he does not— then Gavyn is more or less left to her own devices. For now. Up in the sky, someone has a view of the scene going down that Ciara Collins would kill for — a red-tailed hawk makes expansive loops of the city, an iconic companion to the man in the tank. It provides a map better than Google would provide, sees and avoids the smoke from the fires, makes note of empty streets, and now, its laser-fine gaze ticks over the splayed figure Gavyn makes on the roof of his new ride.
Eileen taught him this one. The hawk presses its wings in close and spills the air from them, swooping into a dive towards prey that is far too big for it.
A mail box gets crumpled like a coke can as Gabriel drives over it, letters bursting like confetti and spilling across the pavement. Gabriel hisses and corrects his course after that blink through birds eyes, losing speed but gaining it again by the time he sees Chester's approach, feeling a little like the Goliath in a Bible tale. He kind of always thought that story was bullshit anyway. The roaring M1117 comes tearing down the street towards Chester, a graveled chuckle in Gabriel's throat.
Gavyn hears it before she feels it — a screech tearing from the throat of a bird before blunt impact hits her shoulder, hawk breaking its neck in the process. Her armor does its thing, the MR fluid hardening against her shoulder in response, but it's a fairly solid whack angled to spill her off the tank. Whether it does comes down to billions of taxpayer dollars spent into its creation.
A surprised yelp is Anna's first reaction to being picked up by Amadeus, and she struggles a little until she notices it's the guy who was trying to be helpful earlier. She calms down enough to let him carry her along. For now anyway.
And then he smashes a window, and they presumably head into the coffee-shop. "Are we safe here..?" She asks, her voice barely more than a scared whisper. She sounds like she needs confirmation.
As she looks around, she notices what kind of place it is.. "If we're safe here… can you at least put me down..?" She asks, already reaching for a pack of smokes in her jacket. She deserves a smoke right now…
Amadeus sits her down after he walks all the way behind the counter, ducking down as people come in behind them. He sits his bat across his legs, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a joint, offering it to her. "That shit is bat for you, kids shouldn't be smokin' cigarettes. Take this instead."
A bird falling from the sky wasn't expected, and Gavyn is rightfully caught off guard. A grunt of surprised pain comes over the comm's and the next thing to follow is the young woman falling from her precarious perch. Kershner's warning about scratching the paint replays in her head as she hits the ground, but spends little time to think about it.
Gavyn rolls away from the wheels of the tank before any parts or pieces can be caught underneath, then uses the momentum to pull herself upright once it's passed. She turns and jogs after the vehicle, passing slain and injured alike and looking for survivors while reformulating her own plan of attack.
David vs Goliath. A tale old as time, and often parodied, portrayed and updated for modern times as it is today. Chester can't stop people from being plowed under, he can't stop the bird from making for his team mate. But he can feel the surge of his ability getting stronger with each person hurt and he can use that. The tank advances and Chester speed in preparation for the tank to get as close as he needs it to. He looks for all the world like he might be playing chicken with it.
"Get off that thing Mitchell" Which she does in thanks to the bird that is summarily squashed beneath the tires of the tank, already dead before it happens. That's all the warning that the black man gives, as at the last three seconds, Chester pushes off with his feet, jumps up into the air enhanced by his arm and lets gravity and weight bring him back down, hand clenched into a fist and drives it down squared on the top front of the tank.
The fornt crumples, armored metal giving way to evolved strength, laws of physics coming into play. Nose goes down, back end goes up as Inertia comes into play. Bad for Sylar, good for the rest of the people who were running and maybe would not have survived if the tank had kept moving forward. But because of Chester, and Gavyn to a degree, the tank slams into the stores ass over teakettle, right into the radio shack beside the coffee shop that Amadeus and Anna took refuge in.
So while Amadeus holds out the doobie and Anna is asking her ominous ill timed question that only ever heralds the warning bells and klaxons of fate, Both heart the impact and a split second later, the roof, walls, bricks and all manner of construction material that is impacted by the tank when it connects with the building. Two of the four that took refuge with them die on impact, wall crumpling in on them, another two for the body count. The other two disappear from sight, likely lost in the wreckage. Anna and Amadeus find themselves trapped, behind the barista counter with light cut off, buried under rubble in a shelter created by the counters and shelves. One shelf pins Anna's leg to the ground, dust and coffee beans all over the both of them.
Chester stands outside, flexing the glove of his armor, looking to Gavyn and gesturing towards the tank and to skip the people on the street. They need to check the tank, check the stores that it went into. 'Talk to me Gavyn, you okay?"
Ciara Collins just watches, mouth hanging open before turning to the camera. "You have just seen the FRONTLINE officers stop the tank by slamming his fist into it, Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot make this up, there is no making this up. The tank has just impacted into the Radio shack and I think there are people inside. You can make out the back end of the tank, we're going to try and get closer, see if we can see who is inside the rogue tank"
The cops keep herding people away, all thoughts of a riot are gone and it's not damage control, calls put out for the ambulances that are spread thin and the GPV tank eases forward, driven by one of the FRONTLINE support members, ready to react if needed.
And he'd kind of looked forward to playing with the machine guns. :(
They crumple like paper beneath the impact of the tank as it flips and buries upside down rear end in innocent buildings standing by. Huge wheels don't spin, dust coated and touching only air as the thing comes to its inevitable, weighted halt, rocking once before completely stilling. The hatch remains resolutely locked down, the windows buried in debris and unable to show much of anything going on inside. The engine killed.
Nothing emerges.
Anna yelps in pain as the shelf falls on her leg. It's a loud sound that should draw some attention to her and Amadeus, even if she didn't mean to make it.
In the darkness, fear takes even more of a stranglehold over the teenager. She starts to attempt to push the shelf off of her leg like her life depends on it. Alas, she simply does not have the strength. The rubble that pushes down on the shelf adding to its weight. "Fuck." Anna whispers again.
The joint and smokes are all but forgotten, Anna is in pain, and in fear, and she couldn't even see anything anyway. But then she realizes she has a lighter, a cute purple lighter. And she flicks it open and lights the damn thing, hoping to get enough light to at least see a little into the darkness.
"Calm the fuck down." Amadeus says as he pushes himself up, after ducking down and curling up completely, to avoid getting his head taken off. His joint is slid back into his pocket in exchange for his metallic lighter with a black cat design on the side of it, flipping it open to add to her light. "Chill out, they'll get you soon. If you move your leg now it's gonna get fuckin' worse."
Those newscasters are becoming rather annoying. Gavyn, though she doesn't slow, continues moving toward the wreckage of tank and electronics shop. She does borrow a moment to point at the TV personality and her cameraman then point toward the police and where it's safe. It's safe there! Go that way. Beyond that, her focus is on the task at hand. Securing the tank.
"I'm good," Gavyn replies to Chester. She's nearly upon the tank when she hears the scream. "Someone's in there," she continues, head turning toward the neighboring building. Not that the woman goes to investigate right away, her feet carrying her still to find some way into the tank. "Get someone over there, we'll pick them up after we finish this."
The scream is so faint, buried beneath so much rubble. Fire hydrants spew out water, flames in the distance give the air that hazy quality that one usually finds in some horror movie with the bad guy emerging from the distance, ready to wreak havoc. insides, the smell of coffee beans is strong, and water drips from a pipe in the cabinet, the flicker of the flames in the small space show the teenager and slacker in a roughly five foot bubble of space.
"You deal with the tank Mitchell" Chester orders, senior to the new officer and he starts in on the building, gauntelted fingers grabbing chunks of rubble, working to try and find a source of the scream, pinpoint where the people are with the extra's that the suit provides, wishing he had Harrison here. But there's a lot of rubble and building between Amadeus, Anna, the two others. The communications system is engaged, the horizon suit with it's modulated voice piercing through the rubble, those inside able to hear it at least. "We're coming for you, stay where you are. Don't move"
The tank is hanging out. The tank is pretty chill right now. Whatever's inside it had want to be broken and bleeding, more so than the people Gabriel stole it from. But either way, he isn't making the first move.
It's a standard army vehicle, and the gear that FRONTLINE gets is probably more complex to operate. Even upside down, there is a certain symmetry to the hatch that Gavyn manages to find in the side. It will open like a mouth, only the stairs will spill out above her helmeted head, and the upper opening will bang against the gravel. Inside, it's dark, and cool air reeking of blood and even worse human waste comes rushing out at her as the overworking air conditioner interacts with less stale, less refrigerated air.
Darkness and confusion and cramped confines. She'll be able to see the crumpled body of a murdered soldier having been tossed around flying like an abused rag doll. And then movement, a shadowed silhouette, scrabbling to right itself in a predator's startle.
Anna calms down a little as Amadeus tells her to, but she only really starts to calm down when she hears a distant voice telling her they're coming for her. She keeps the lighter's light burning as she starts to breath in and out slowly, like a breathing exercise.
She glances to her trapped leg, but now that she isn't moving it… it doesn't hurt so much. "I'll stay still, okay!" She calls back, "We're behind the counter.. beneath the rubble."
Then she starts to feel the need for a smoke again, and she reaches for her pack, taking out a single cigarette and lighting it, inhaling the smoke and breathing it out again. Over and over, like some sort of calming down ritual.
Amadeus doesn't yell anything back to the person calling out to them, since Anna seems to have that covered. It's hard to say if his calmness is due to half a lifetime of pot smoking, or just plain used to bad luck, and the horrors of being a cat, but he takes it all in stride, more or less. "Fuck, that shit is fuckin' disgusting. When there ain't any cops around, I'm gonna have to show you real shit to smoke."
Chester receives only a quiet yessir over the comms, and Gavyn silences herself as she finds and opens the hatch to the tank. With one hand lowering the door and exposing the innards of the rogue tank, the other slowly draws her rifle back around. Amazingly /she/ doesn't startle at the sight that meets her, nor when /something/ in the darkness begins to move about. In fact the muzzle of the gun is lifted and trained at the shadows.
"Going in," Gavyn near whispers into her helmet, gloved hands flexing their grip over her weapon. Slowly, carefully she steps forward and keeps the rifle trained on the last place she'd seen the movement. Then upward the woman steps, onto the hatch and to place herself in the doorway.
There's a great deal of rubble to get through, Ana and Amadeus buried alive, two others between them and freedom. Anna's leg trapped, she's not going anywhere and the smoke off the cigarette while small right now, does add up in the small space from the particulate already in the air from the rubble. Anna's leg throbs, a promise of at the least, bruises to travel the length, a possibility of a broken limb, only Chester might know if he ever gets to them. But as he pitches out rubble, things shift and five feet of space for the pair threatens to become far less.
From a not so safe distance, Ciara is there, camera's turned onto the scene of Chester and the rubble being moved, the limp hand of one of the riot refugee's who was crushed by the tank just in the corner of the frame. "FRONTLINE officers are working hard to unearth survivors of the tank and the devastation that it has left in it's wake" The camera pans to the street, the people on the side walks who were plowed into or only had limbs run over moan, one person lacking an arm tries to walk towards the cops who are starting to make their way down to render medical assistance even as Chester turns to yell for someone to get a fire crew down here, or someone who can help dig these people out. Two of the rioters who escaped harm step in to help take smaller bits of lighter rubble out of the way and help the medic.
"No one has emerged from the tank and as you can see, one of the FRONTLINE officers is attempting to find who was driving the machine"
The camera gets a glimpse of Gavyn sticking a first foot into the doorway of the upside down armored vehicle. Whoever was moving inside sees the same, from a different angle, a sexless shape of Horizon armor that will probably kill him any second.
Gabriel isn't hesitating. A sound similar to a gunshot fills the cramped, upside-down confines of the tank, and the air ripples like a cone-shaped heatwave as a wall of force slams into the soldier at sonic speed. Onlookers fill see her flung back despite the fortitude of her armor, a force that can shift trucks and break walls. MR fluid seals up briefly, protecting her from the worst of it even as it locks down across her chest and shoulders.
The next, black inky liquid comes flooding out the hatch with mad agility, a snake-nest of tendrilly shadows that move as fast as a spidermonkey through the trees, flowing over her and heading to scale the broken wall of the shattered building, to make it to the edge of the roof and escape.
As she realized what the smoke is doing, Anna puts out her cigarette. She fed her addiction by now anyway. And then things shift, and Anna's momentary calm is gone again as she yelps out - again - in fear!
As she yelps out, she accidentally drops her lighter, the flame going down as it falls to the ground. Less light, less space. "Oh, fuck." The girl frantically feels around for her lighter, but she can't seem to find it. Not right now, anyway.
"Just chill." Amadeus crosses his legs, realizing that the girl could possibly be anxious. Alright, think… "So, uh, what, you're like sixteen or somethin'? So uh… how's that Hannah Montana doin'?"
The initial impact is responded to with a pained grunt, the sound cut off when the armor tightens for only seconds around Gavyn's upper body. She hits the rubble of a wall behind her and sinks onto the ground.
Though slow to recover, Gavyn tries to locate the… whatever it was. There isn't anything immediately threatening around the tank, or so it seems, and so she turns her head and raises her gun to begin searching her surroundings.
"Did you just see that? Please tell me you just saw that!!" The editing floor at the station is going to be working overtime to process this all and cut out the parts where Ciara is nearly cursing into her microphone, replacing it with voice over when it eventually gets to air. "A black smoke of some sort has just come out of the tank after the FRONTLINE officer has just gone flying. Some sort of Evolved was inside the tank, driving the tank and responsible for the death that you see here"
The force of Sylar's escape with the concussive blast sends not only Gavyn flying, protected by the technologically advanced armor that makes half the riot geared cops jealous, but it further destabilizes the building around the fallen tank and with it, one of the survivors in the rubble succumbs as it shifts, killing him, leaving just Amadeus and Anna alive in the building. Ground shifts, rubble moving and the shelving that pins Anna's legs lifts enough for the teenager to pull back her leg, safe and sound.
But it has it's consequences, and four feet becomes a little over three, forcing the two of them closer together in their small bubble of safety in the back of the store. But it crumbles no further. The camera crew will station outside the storefront as both Gavyn and Chester work with some of the rioters to eventually unearth Anna and Amadeus from their impromptu prison, a wash of fresh air the first signal that they will make it out alive.
But for many in the streets, Ambulance spread too thin to help everyone, death will be too soon a visitor and the actions here today on the street in the shadow of the fire that will eventually consume the neighbourhood and make this borough uninhabitable, will alter their lives in ways far different than what the martial law will do.