Greens, Greens, and Nothing but Greens

Participants:

delia_icon.gif eve2_icon.gif luther_icon.gif tasha_icon.gif

Scene Title Greens, Greens, and Nothing but Greens
Synopsis A heist for the Safe Zone's true riches goes awry.
Date July 20, 2018

Satoru Memorial Garden

Winding paths slip between wood frames filled with soil, each growing its own, unique variety, giving the garden a mosaic of greenery. The northwest corner holds plant beds dedicated to seasonal plants, each blooming in turn and providing flowers almost all year around. Centered within these beds is a tall menhir with a plaque inscription reading "Satoru: Forever Loved, Always Remembered". The Satoru Memorial Garden was reclaimed from old parkland in Elmhurst and the residents of the Safe Zone are welcome to rent out a plot to grow whatever they choose. The eclectic nature of the garden and its gift of beauty and nourishment are all part of the dedication, whether the people partaking know it or not.


The Safe Zone makes a promise with its name. A promise that cannot always be kept, given the realities of daily life in New York. The food shortages have been… manageable for some people, but not for everyone. Not even for most people.

Night is a lot darker these days here in The Much Smaller Apple, and it's under the cover of that darkness that four figures move through the gardens. They're dressed in black. They move quietly. But they are definitely not supposed to be there. It's an odd sort of crime, but the quartet walks the plots, taking the food that other people are paying to grow there. Each of them carries a sack or a box or something to that effect, filling it as they go along. Other people's work, their gain.

chk chk

The shotgun is levelled toward one of the shadowy figures and then Delia's tembling finger squeezes the trigger.

BLAM

What should be buckshot scatters through the air toward thief but it's not. The shell was carefully loaded with rock salt, because there's a redhead that doesn't like killing people… but she sure does like hurting them. Especially when she catches them stealing.

"The fuck you think you're doing?" She yells over the noise, "Drop the produce and get out or else the next shot will really hurt."

Close to the entrance, Tasha Lazzaro-Renard is carefully making her way through the gardens looking for Delia and carrying a box full of seeds and supplies donated to the council. She'd said she'd bring it to Delia, so here she is — in Italian heels and a fashionable black suit that helps to make her look less like a college girl and more like the legal eagle she's pretending to be these days.

The shotgun blast isn't expected, and she drops the box of supplies, scattering them across the path. Tasha herself freezes in place, her dark eyes wide, gaze darting through the darkness ahead. After a moment, she calls out, voice a bit tremulous. "Deli?"

There's some things in life Luther has come to accept as inevitable. Being friends with a precog, when she shows up to drag him somewhere for reasons, he goes. The questions don't cease to turn in the man's mind, but he does admit as he's walking along side Eve in the gardens, "It's nice out here. Peaceful." Until it's not. Until there's the sound of a shotgun round blasting away that peace. Luther's first reaction is to turn his head in the direction of the gunshot. The second, to shoot a glance at Eve before running towards the shots fired. He trusts her to be right beside or right behind.

"Oh oh go Hot Hands!"

Calling after Luther, Eve strides forward on her staff. Messenger bag swinging side to side. The seer's raven dark hair spilling out of the messy bun she was holding it in, brown eyes flash as the pale woman makes her way forward with a tilt of her head. She gets that feeling of something looking at her from behind and she wheels around distracted and almost losing her balance.

Nothing there.

Eve hears a giggle from an unseen voice. Roughly shaking her head, "No time for games lady." But I like them.. comes the coy retrot and Eve rolls her eyes at herself and moves along faster towards Luther. "Shhh."

The shot takes the group by surprise— especially the man who takes the brunt of the rock salt. He falls to the ground, box dropped haphazardly as he curls up into a ball. Whimpering. A second person shoves her sack into her friend's hand before turning toward Delia.

"Get out of here," she says and her friends listen. The remained pair take what they have in hand and leg it away from the shotgun-wielding garden guardian. But this one, she steps over her wounded friend and runs toward Delia. Her hands grab onto the gun and yank. Her strength is far more than it should be and the gun slides right out of Delia's hands. She has very little warning before it comes swinging at her like a club a moment later.

Delia's right arm gets wrenched and the sickening feeling of the shoulder coming loose from the socket threatens just before the redhead lets go. She starts falling backward, grappling at the air in front of her. Her left hand catches on her assailant's shirt but is quickly rebuffed with the butt of the shotgun.

crack

When she hits the stone walkway, she lands with her wrenched arm behind her and cries out in pain. Darkness threatens to close in, making her vision a blurry round circle, but she focuses on her name.

It takes a moment — too long of a moment — to shake herself out of that frozen state. Tasha pulls out her phone and punches in numbers, knowing that it'll be far too late for any help to arrive. While she waits for it to connect — or not, as the case may be — she calls out. "I'm calling for help!"

To intimidate the robbers or to lend Delia encouragement — or both.

She pulls out the small firearm she carries — she hates guns, for good reason, but she carries it anyway — even if in the moment, she's as likely to freeze as to fire.

He's not exactly the quick gazelle on the savannah. Luther is more the cape buffalo that looks placid, until pissed off. Spotting the fight happening between Delia and her assailant and hearing Tasha's call, he angles away from that situation and instead towards the escaping robbers. "Ducky! Take a left and blink twice," he also calls back to the seer following him.

The reason for his somewhat strange statement soon clear as Luther slows enough to focus on a point in front of the pair of running thieves and lets out a sudden flash of bright light energy. A tried and true tactic, the blinding, silent flashbang.

Hustling forward still the seer twists her head and spots Luther with a sly smile on her face and a snort, "Ok ok," a she stops short of a plot and looks to her.. right, "Left! He said left!" She insists and while the woman goes for left in her mind, her body jerks to the right the slightest before she is swinging herself to a crouch and blinking her eyes twice but then she's just shutting them and humming softly to herself. Swaying in the dirt before she hesitantly raises her body, eyes still closed.

"Luthie! Luthie!" Throwing her free hand out in front of herself as she flails about blindly, "I've lost my specks! Halp!"

One brown eye peeks open as she goes on pretending to be disabled as she stumbles forward towards the man on the left that should be blinded temporarily and she teeters as if she's going to fall backwards before she stops and slides back on her ass while swinging her staff forward in a wide arc to take him by the knees, "Swing batter batter!"

The pair running clearly do not expect the flashbang. One of them stumbles and covers his eyes a bit too late, which doesn't help at all when Eve comes in swinging. The staff hits and he falls hard on his knees before scrambling off to one side and up to his feet. He's managed to keep hold of one box of goodies, but the sack is lying on the path in front of Eve.

The fourth, though, is less hindered by the flash, having the luck of facing away at the right moment. She comes in for Eve moments after her staff swings. The woman elbows Eve in the ribs— not super strong, but effective all the same. She follows up with a right hook that hits like she grew up doing it.

Delia and Tasha have an armed woman pointing a shotgun at them; first one, then the other, swinging back and forth wildly. Her boot reaches out to prod her friend on the floor. He groans, but starts to try to move. He gets as far as his hands and knees. When the flash goes off behind them, she passes him the gun and takes off back toward the others. He sighs and falls into a sitting position. He points the gun at Tasha, but looks like he would pretty much rather be doing anything else. Also. He looks young. And thin. Too thin.

The strong woman heads toward Luther at charging speed. She comes from behind and tackles him through a plot of tomato plants.

Delia's eyebrows knit together, furiously, as she pulls herself together and then twists her wrist around in a circle. She's not so concerned about the gun, she knows what's in it, the guy holding it knows what's in it, and it's only lethal to people with outrageously high blood pressure. People like her father, if he knew what was going on here right now. She stands and starts moving toward the thin man, whatever charitable feelings she might have had once are gone right now.

"I said…" she growls as she begins her sprint, "The fuck you doing in my garden?!" Unconcerned with her own safety, she launches at the armed man attempting to tackle and wrestle the shotgun back into her own possession.

When she sees the rifle being aimed at her, Tasha freezes again, stopping in her tracks on her way toward Delia. Her eyes are huge in the dim light, and she looks like the proverbial deer in the headlights. Visibly trembling, she forces a breath into her lungs and is about to speak when Delia launches herself at the man.

"Stop! Please! No one needs to get hurt!" she manages to rasp out. Her hand on her gun is shaking — if she shoots, she's as likely to hit friend as foe — and for that reason she's not about to try to. "Hey kid, just give her the rifle back and go, okay? We're not going to hurt you." That probably is an empty promise, given that Delia's already blasted the thieves with rock salt.

Poor tomatoes. They don't deserve the wrecking crew that tumbles through them, but Luther and the strong woman do just that and send vines and fruits and fertilized dirt flinging along. The focused bright light dissipates immediately. But almost as immediately as his recovery, Luther is trying to flip over and kick a booted foot into the woman's face to free himself from her grasp.

That woman knows how to throw a punch like she grew up doing it and Eve takes it like someone who remembers taking it all to well since childhood. The elbow makes her lose her breath and with eyes wide she's punched right in the face and as she's thrown back the woman almost loses grip of the staff but she plants it hard into the ground to stop herself from falling, gathering herself she gasps as Luther is tackled and there's a shift in her expression as it darkens and a shudder runs up her spine as she runs as fast as she can to her fallen friend. A sly, dark grin quirks on her lips and the oracle reaches out at the woman's head as Luther kicks at the woman's face.

Brown eyes narrowed as white teeth gleam in the pale moonlight and Eve clamps her teeth over the skin of the robber's cheek. The look in her eye cold and odd as she rips her head from side to side, raven dark hair flying in the wind.

The boot is effective in shaking the woman loose. She rolls out of the way of any second hit that might come, even before she bothers with cleaning off her face. She isn't deterred for long, though, and she gets to her feet to come over to kick him back. Hers lands on his arm and he can feel the bone fracture under the force of her.

Eve finds it difficult for her teeth to land where she aims, because her own punching partner is hot on her heels. She leaps onto Eve's back, gripping onto her hair to keep her face away from her friend.

It's mid-piggyback when the group deeper in the garden hears the shotgun firing.

The younger man closes his eyes against the incoming and very angry woman, and when he squeezes the trigger he isn't aiming at all. Delia gets hit, being as close as she is, but it isn't with the full force of the blast. He doesn't have the strength to fight her off, but at least he's evened the playing field some. When he opens his eyes, he looks over at Tasha. He pushes himself up to shaky feet and he seems to want to leave and forget this ever happened. But before he can do so, the second man barrels out from one of the plots to take advantage of Delia being shot to punch her in the gut.

"Son of a—" The jeans she's wearing stopped most of the salt from painfully piercing her skin but not on her torso, which didn't stop a few of the rocks from embedding themselves. "..uuggnnnfff"

Insult to injury, the redhead doubles over in pain and just falls onto the ground on her hands and knees. She needs a shower, to get the sting of salt out of her wounds. Most of all, her thoughts run along with the thin man's, except this is her livelihood. Gritting her teeth, she clenches her fists around two handfuls of dirt and gravel and quickly flings one of them in the direction of the newcomer. "I'm… gonna…" her low gravelly voice turns into a piercing shriek, "kill you!!"

Tasha cries out with fear when that blast comes again, shrinking back and looking like she might just crumple to the floor if a strong wind came along to blow her over. Her eyes widen at the young man, and she's about to speak when the other comes bullrushing from the side to inflict more damage on poor Delia.

The other woman's shriek seems to shake Tasha from her shivering but still status, and she fires her gun in the air once, the report sharp and loud, before aiming it at the kid with the rifle. "Drop it and go, both of you," she says, voice only a little more than a whisper, with a nod to the entrance of the gardens. "These are real bullets. And you really, really don't want to make our families angry."

The extra strength behind the kick to his arm cracks bone, eliciting a pained yell from Luther and hasty roll away from that possible second blow. Beads of sweat form as he struggles to a knee, clutching the broken limb close. Momentarily torn between the sounds of gunfire further off and the immediacy of the fight unfolding here, he focuses on the strong woman whose one kick could do that much damage. He pulls from his own energy, holding his good hand up and fingers outstretched. Electrical lightning blasts out towards the woman before she can team up with her accomplice on his friend.

The dirt has the man wiping frantically at his face and backing away from Delia while he clears his vision. Unfortunately, he's wide open despite his efforts. When the gun fires into the air, both the men stop and look toward Tasha. The younger one drops the shotgun and tugs on the other's sleeve. It's only a moment later that the pair of them are running for the nearest exit.

Further in, Eve and her opponent have entered an out and out melee. Hair is pulled, skin is bitten through, and there is at least one headbutt. It leaves the thief dizzy and clutching her head. The strong woman looks about to abandon Luther to help, but the electricity hits her before she can hit Eve. She screams and collapses to the ground.

Just in time to hear sirens heading their way. That is the sound that prompts the last woman standing to make her own exit. She scoops up a box on her way, but proves to be quick-footed on her way out.

The garden is left in chaos. Food taken or ruined. Luther is covered in the guts of the small tomato crop. Delia is wounded by her own weapon. And Eve's face pulses with pain, promising a nice black eye later. But for their trouble, they have a catch curled up in a ruined plot and trying to breathe through her own pain.


Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License