Participants:
Also featuring:
and Eugene
with a cameo by:
| Scene Title | Be the Match |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | With a little help, unrest amongst the refugees of the Manhattan Explosion turns into something far more violent. |
| Date | February 2, 2009 |
Before the bomb, this was Thomas Jefferson Park. Some of it still is, stretches of grass and trees that far fewer people visit than once did.
Some of it is not.
Faced with the sheer number of people displaced from their homes after the bomb, but too stubborn — or without the means — to move from Manhattan, this is one of the many places the city and various federal agencies have given over to shelter the refugees. As such, what was once meticulously maintained greensward has been turned into dirt road and trailer lots. The grass has been worn thin by the repetitive passing of hundreds of feet. Trailers sit all but side-by-side, with room only for a car and perhaps a few chairs to be parked in between. Younger children run around underfoot, seemingly undeterred from their games; older ones might slink behind the trailers with hungry eyes, resentful of those who have more, while the adults seem more heart-weary and worn-down than not. These are the people who have nowhere else to go; some have jobs, but many do not, surviving on as little as possible. Alcohol and drugs are common; so is suicide, for those who have passed from desperation into surrender.
The events of January 28th were met first with silence, the stunned quiescence of people expecting the absolute worst. But the worst didn't come. Subsequent days were quiet. Quiet enough for the shells to unfurl, inhabitants to poke their heads out, believe that it might possibly have been a false alarm. Or at least that they wouldn't be struck by instant and certain disaster. As confidence returned to the transitionally-permanent denizens of Thomas Jefferson Park, so too did darker emotions, swept in on the wings of painful memories, unhealed loss, dark and bitter resentment.
It's happening again.
In a population that is in some ways incredibly diverse, and in all too many others practically homogeneous, these feelings are infectious. Today, it seems they're approaching some intangible, invisible critical mass. It began where trouble often does, with the disaffected youths, loitering in the walkways and swapping stories of who was hardest hit. Who came out worst. Others — adults, elders, children — found themselves joining in one by one, caught in the conversations, the building miasma of frustrated, fearful anger that slowly darkened the atmosphere without ever doing anything to quell the pale winter sunlight.
What's next? Are we all going to die this time?
Early afternoon finds most of the trailer farm's occupants outdoors, restless, concerned, united in fear, grief, fury. Kayla is one of them, but not one of those thronging the settlement's poor mimicry of a common green; she stands back beside the open door of her trailer, watching them mix and mingle, roil and bubble, through narrowed grey eyes. She might join in, if not for her self-imposed isolation — that and the visceral awareness of just how ugly this might become. So the healer watches.
How can we stop it? Who's going to stop them?
Thirty minutes ago, someone called the NYPD from a payphone. Left no indication of their identity, just delivered a warning: Trouble brewing at Thomas Jefferson, in short. Stretched to the limit already by recent events, it's an unlikely assortment of officials who have been sent to deal with this additional problem. They might be thirty minutes too late.
We have to do something. Can't rely on anyone else.
All this tinder needs is a spark.
Ben is still on duty, driving an ambulance around with his partner for today, Fred. Fred is talking about his dogs again, which was interesting the first time Ben heard it but has become progressively more grating since. They're near the area, for once in a calm period, no lights flashing.
She's already been out patrolling for days, it's not like this is a call out of the norm lately. The squad car rolls into the area slowly, the driver cautious. Elisabeth's wishing that SCOUT wasn't spread so thin — in the short weeks she's had Darius for a partner, she has TRULY come to appreciate his forcefield. This is gonna be one of those times that she misses it, and him, like hell…. like all the patrols she's run where they've been split up lately. Forcefield=good! Getting out of the car slowly, her black uniform and jacket (and kevlar!) marking her clearly as NYPD, Elisabeth walks toward the nearest group, offering a quiet, "Afternoon, folks. Everything going all right down here today?" Yeah… it's gonna SUCK to be the first one on the scene, she's reasonably sure.
The PoPo is here. Squad cars, riot vans. A glint of shields in the gap ajar of white chrome doors. For now, however, there is only a tenuous line of blue uniforms and kevlar vests, a tidy offering of SCOUT officers and dog patrolmen. Bolivar is among the latter.
Which goes to show how incredibly fucking thin the PD has been stretched as of late. A small man, unprepossessing and unimposing by the standards of most, his image is further marred by the scarring that rages down the left side of his face and the narrow wrist that peeks out of his glove. At his side, his shepherd is old, if not out of her prime. The winter sunlight bleaches the brown from his skin and the luster from her coat.
The officer to his left is giving them both a skeptical look. While ordinarily Bolivar would return it, his eyes are on the trailer trash, flashing pale one moment, dark the next saccadic twitch of a glance he sends past those faces. He scowls. Tightens his grip on his firearm. Thinks about how incredibly over-represented everything he hates about people are on this square of refuse-riddled land.
"Hey," Shifting his hands into the pockets of his jacket to keep them out of the cold, a young man casts his eyes across the crowd of people towards the woman who lives across from his trailer, "Kay, the fuck is going on?" The question is as rhetorical as they come, Trent Daselles has been lingering on the fringe of this growing firestorm for the last half an hour, once the noise simply became too much to ignore, too much to brush off as another drunken spat between neighbors.
What Trent does not see, is deeper in the crowd of people gathered, trying to push her way through. A young girl, shorter than almost everyone in the crowd, trying to shoulder her way through groups of people while nervously clinging to a scrap of paper in one hand. "Jupiter!" She shouts over the crowd, voice carrying out as she calls out to a brown and black dog making faster headway through the throngs of disaffeected and displaced citizenry. Trent, you asshole. You better be okay…
And right behind Elisabeth, in lieu of her partner, is a Fed. Fel's in similar gear - Feds don't have uniforms, per se, so he's in a polo marked with the Bureau seal, jacket, kevlar vest blazoned with 'FBI' in yellow letters, and dark slacks. He looks pale and wan, but fit enough. A far cry from the comatose lump so recently in St. Luke's ICU. Seems like miracles do occur. He doesn't appear all that happy to be here, blue gaze darting like a dragonfly, assessing threats.
"Steady boy." The voice seemed otherworldly, it didnt even sound like his voice. He closed his eyes, as Eugene set the binoculars down. Carefully he double checked his sketch, and set it to one side where he could see it. Six hundred twenty eight yards to the cruiser, no sweat. "Don't let them psyche you out, its just like Germany." He shrugged, rolling his shoulders slowly back before tugging the dropcloth away. A national match M1A, a far more accurate weapon than the M1D he'd carried throughout the war.
Eugene had done everything right, he'd been a good christian but still. He knew what he needed to do, he knew who he needed to hate. Wrinkled hands brought the M1A to rest in his lap, before jerking back the bolt and bashing in a clip. "Be the match," he whispered, as he brought the rifle's buttstock to shoulder. Finely machined peep sights take a moment to come into focus, "christ I'm getting too old for this shit."
This was punishment, this was the hand of god. He knew the nature of things, he could recite the theories from memory without flaw. The evolved were an abomination, genetic engineering the Germans had scattered to the wind to foreward their goals. This was all Odessa, it was all their fault. The bomb, the power outage, his son's disfigurement. This wasn't murder, this was more. This was god. "Relax Eugene", and so he did.
Six clicks, two for windage and a hair of kentucky in there to keep it on track. He finally thumbed the safety off, as he waited on a low roof overlooking the trailer park. His right hand straying back to finger at the carving in the stock of his rifle. "Foreign," as that hand traced foreward once more to delicate rest a finger on the curve of that trigger. His sights bobbing ever so slightly, over a uniform. "And domestic."
"The hell should I know?" Kayla calls back at Trent, the snappish snarl characteristic of her interactions with… well, anyone. She rubs her hands over her arms, eyeballing the crowd with sour apprehension. There's just no way this can be anything other than unpleasant…
One side of the crowd focuses on the officer who offers herself up as a target for its attention. The rumbling susurrus of discontent briefly ratches up a notch in volume. It provides a menacing backdrop to the more clearly heard calls voiced by speakers made anonymous by the gathered mob. "Th'fuck do you think? Miss officer sir." Sarcasm at anything but its finest. A different voice: "What're you going to do about it?"
Ben squints out the window; that's a number of police cars at the trailer park. He slows the ambulance to a halt and lets it idle; he's got a view of the backs of the gathered officers from his vantage point. "Fred? Does this look not-good to you?" he asks his fellow EMT.
Well…. on the up side, crowd control has been her specialty this week. Elisabeth laces her voice with all the subsonic 'calm' suggestion she can layer onto it, and speaks to the group she's got gathered in front of her. "~I think you folks have a bunch of pretty valid concerns, but that stirring each other up is only going to make the situation a lot worse. If we can all just stay calm, maybe you can tell me if you have particular issues that can be addressed today to help keep everything on an even keel.~" She looks around at them, continuing, "~The more riled up everyone gets, the worse it makes the situation. The best way to head off a riot anywhere near you is by not contributing to it. Try to stay calm and lay low, and in a few days, things will settle out again.~"
Wincing, Trent sulks his shoulders and hangs his head, one hand coming up to rub at his forehead, "Thanks, sunshine." He takes a few steps away from his neighbor, listening to the shouting while his eyes linger on the sight of flashing blue lights surrounding the park. All of the raised voices and agitation, this is so much worse than the crowd on election day. I gotta' get the hell outta — Thoughts and motions all halt as Trent pauses in his evasion of the crowd and the police, recognizing the dark-haired profile moving in the opposite direction of him, through the crowd and towards the louder and more violent voices.
"Colette!" Damnit, that idiot! "Colette!" She doesn't hear him over the howl of the crowd, the growing noise of shouts and frightened residents, "Shit, shit, shit why does bad stuff only ever happen to me when she's around!?" Shoving one of his other neighbors aside to clear a space to walk through, Trent shouts again, waving his hand above his head, "Colette!"
She doesn't hear him, focused solely on catching up with her dog, Colette hustles along the edge of one crowded gathering, stopping dead in her tracks once she sees police officers moving through the crowd, though her eyes focus for a moment on the blonde speaking to a crowd some twenty feet from her. Distracted, her small frame is shoved aside by someone trying to move closer to the action, sending her rattling into the wall of one of the trailers. "Crap, crap crap crap, why does bad stuff only ever happen when I'm looking for Trent?" Jupiter disappears out of sight, ducking under a trailer and heading towards something, someone. "Damnit! You stupid mutt…" The humor of the situation is lost on the both of them.
There are increments to Bolivar's hate. The level is rising as the crowd begins to seethe louder. His physical discomfort, the perpetual soreness of brittle and fluid transfer between troubled organs, increases with the stress. They're getting louder. It's hard to forget the decades he spent higher up, further back, and sighting down a sniper 'scope at isolated targets. It isn't hard to remember what he's supposed to be doing here, though.
Well, not until a dog pops out of the crowd. Black saddle and lupine features mark the creature as a shepherd. No tags or ready identification indicate Jupiter's history with the Force, but all the time, when the man to Bolivar's left begins to lift his .9, he finds his arm accosted by the tiny Mexican man, flung skyward. "Don't even fucking think about it, gringo, or it's off-schedule colonoscopy for you," Bolivar snaps, dropping into a crouch once he's done scouring the flesh off his fellow officer's face with a glare.
"Here, boy." He stretches a gloved hand out toward the animal bounding nearer. Conveniently making himself a smaller target as he does so. At his side, Nina Lou points her ears forward, nostrils flaring, marking the lack of aggression in the approaching dog's scent. She doesn't bark.
Elisabeth…..that's the first time Fel's been around her when she breaks out the power. And he's suitably impressed. He's quiet, letting her handle things, still happy to play bodyguard. He can't beat a fired bullet, but he can stop a thrown object, anything short of a fastball. There's the golden gleam of the badge on his vest as he turns a little, eyeing the edges of the crowd.
It comes in silence, even without the aid of a silencer range is sufficient to silence the report. A rubber tipped round slams home, and the results are immediately catastrophic. The rubber tip is shoved back into a cavity, and forces the bullet to expand faster and far more violently than normal. Just under the shoulder blade, after slipping past two other poor refugees. Immedately there are screams, as blood, bone and flesh erupts from the man's exit wound over the riot shield of a nearby officer. Just like that, a thirty something is put to the ground like a sack've bricks. No drama, no dying words its just over that fast. A second round, finds a second target soon after. Burrowing in just below where the neck terminates into a woman's shoulders, this round is similarly catastrophic. She falls immediately as well, as a few bullet fragments shower towards Bolivar.
"There we go Eugene, there you go; it's just like practice." His sights swinging back up to the police, the rest of the ammo he'd brought was of course armor piercing. He just needed to set the stage, he needed to provoke the crowd. He needed the crowd to cheer what would follow, and hopefully his work would be over soon. He stiffens, taking up trigger pressure as he lets his crosshairs float over the shortest officer he can put his sights on.
Kayla isn't immune to Elisabeth's charm, but the mob… They collectively give the impression of flinching back for an instant, retreating back to some sort of group-mind discussion, just a step inside of the action threshold. Maybe they will accede. Return to their homes. Post their grievances in a peaceful, civilized manner.
The ripple starts from Bolivar's end of the crowd, as they see the officers begin to fall. There's no conscious decision made, no moment of rational realization, just reaction. They can't even protect themselves. How can they protect us?
The mob breaks loose, mindless, incoherent, driven only by the desire to lash out at the world's injustice. The officers are merely in their way. People who would not normally even contemplate such actions charge for the policement clad in riot gear; others find stones, sticks, empty soda cans and beer bottles as impromptu missiles. Some, caught in the midst, are swept along without acting themselves but without any means of getting out. A few, pressed upon by all sides, find themselves in sudden and unfortunate acquaintance with the ground, caught underfoot.
Others, like Kayla, have secluded themselves in the lee of trailers, out of the action zone but also too ensnared in the horrific moment to attempt their own retreat. Drawing her arms close, her shoulders in, Kayla… watches.
"Damnit," Colette whines out, moving to turn around so she can circle the trailer and find her dog, only to run head-long into an irate Trent Daselles. Her breath hitches in her throat, eyes wide as she feels his hand reach out to clamp down on her arm. "T-Trent," relief, slowly fading in after shock. "You're okay!"
"What are you doing here?" No hello, no how are you, no crazy weather we're having. "Did you get here before or after the cops showed — " He cuts himself off, yanking her by the arm, "Come on, we're getting the hell out of here, I don't like the way this crowd is acting."
"Mmnh — Trent!" Colette yanks her arm back, not strong enough to get out of his grasp but enough to make him stop and look back at her disapprovingly. "I gotta' go find my dog, he took off." She waves one gloved hand towards the other side of the trailer. Trent's brows lower, eyes narrowing, "Thanks for appreciating that I was worried about you." She adds with a sneer afterwards.
"I didn't ask you to be worried about me, I can take care of myself!" Trent rolls his eyes as he talks, "Fuck, a dog, he'll be fine. We've got to get out of here, okay? Why did you even come — " Screams shut down everything that Trent was going to say, loud and piercing screams — not of rebellion, but of fear. Colette immediately ducks away, crouching down as her back presses up against one of the trailers as she hears the change in the crowd's tone, eyes wide and fixed on Trent. However, Trent is far more proactive, wheeling around to try and see which direction everyone is running away from, to be absolutely certain that isn't the way he goes.
"Fuck yeah!" A voice cries out from the crowd nearby, "When're we getting our homes back!?" Another voice joins the chorus, these ones aren't afraid, it's as if whatever spooked one part of the crowd invigorated the others. "Piss off! Get the hell outta' here!" A bottle is thrown over Trent's head, crashing into the side of a trailer, then another. A rock is pitched into the air, crashing into a window. Colette stays crouched, hands covering the top of her head as Trent grabs her by the collar of her jacket, "Get up, get up, get up!" She can't see what he does, she can't see the orange glow of a lighter flicking on, and the consumptive burning of flames on alcohol-drenched cloth. "Colette, get up!" One of the people in the crowd hurls a bottle thorugh the air, whirling flames end over end before it crashes down — not amidst the police where it was intended, but on the roof of one of the trailers. The bottle shatters, spilling liquid fire across the roof, though the snow and ice help dampen the effect some. But the sheer presence of a molotov amidst the screaming only heightens the chaos.
The usual instinct is to take cover. And that is what Fel does, summarily dragging Elisabeth with him. No point in standing out there to get shot — a kevlar vest does you no good if they just shoot you in the fucking face. "Shit," he says, peering around a trailer corner, trying to figure out who or what's shooting, and from where.
Hauled around the far side of the trailer with Felix, Elisabeth plasters herself against the wall and listens, trying to tune out the crowd and listen to other sounds. If the shooter shoots again, she'll be able to give Felix a general direction… but by doing that, she also catches another sound. "FUCK!!" Into her radio, she barks, "RIOT in progress, send backup!" And then she says, "There is not a single FUCKING thing that's gonna go right this week, is there??" She dodges around the far side of the trailer, making her way, keeping low, toward the end of the row. She can hear people screaming, and as she reaches the end of the trailer, there are four small children who've been shoved into the tiny alley between the trailers. She heard the smallest one wailing from where Felix tried to stash her. "C'mon, babies, we gotta get outta here," she murmurs gently, coaxingly.
Frowned, Eugene was taking careful stock of the situation. He would wait, he'd wait for backup. He'd wait ideally for the chopper, hopefully it'd come low enough for him to sneak a shot into the cockpit. At the very least, he needed to kill its FLIR system and give it harassing fire.
The two lines of NYPD presence that are sandwiching the mob promptly buckle when the screaming throng decides it would rather not be contained. The riot vans on Bolivar's end of the park blow open, all running boots and flashing shields, shouts constructed on imperative and exclamatory terms, lie down, get down, shooter!, canisters of tear gas singing gray against the flat pallor of the sky. The clubs come out, thrusting stark and black into the sky.
Jupiter hangs a sharp halt by his collar on Bolivar's hand. "What the fuck," the little half-breed remarks, glancing up along his swathe of litter and frozen dirt. Though not exactly abandoned to the crickets, he is conspicuously more alone than he had been seven seconds ago. "Demsky?" A rock whizzes past. Officers shrieking for backup in the same tones as the next bare-foot baby momma. He hesitates for a quaver-beat. Spits another curse; unlocks the lead from Nina Lou's collar, and onto Jupiter's.
"Let's go, girls," he says, joining the charge at a crouching jog. His .9 raises, straightens, discharges once. Half of a man's face goes missing, and the rest of him sloughs down on top of an officer, blood and bone shards splattering down on helmet shield. "Lou, take him down!" Another man, this one wielding a broken bottle. The scarred man's grip tightens on Jupiter's leash.
The spacing between the trailers prevents fire from spreading, but it doesn't make the molotovs any less devastating to people who have already lost everything once. Some of the mob look for the throwers, or take out their anger on whomever is nearby but in the right direction; others, enchanted by flickering flames, find things they can ignite and toss in turn. The tear gas has its effect, but only on one portion of the crowd at a time. There's too many of them.
Tear gas. Blunt trauma; broken bones. Blood. Gunfire. Death, just not quite here. With her. Kayla flinches from the rioters as they surge outward, retreating from them and everything they bring along in their wake. But she doesn't make it far before backwards turns into down, a bland gray shape with dark hair curled in the shadow cast by trailer's lee.
Gunshots, the pop of gunfire is enough to make Colette sink down and curl into a small ball, even as Trent tries to yank the girl up to her feet by her hood. "We have to go! Colet— " Trent is pushed aside by a panicked crowd of screaming residents trying to flee the trailer park, even whil eothers push against the crowd, baseball bats, tire irons, broken pieces of wood carried as they move towards the oncoming black tide of SWAT officers.
"You draw the line. You say, I will be pushed no further."
Grace's words to Colette always come as an anchor of stability. Maybe this isn't exactly what the Raven had in mind when she said those words to the girl so many months ago, but the emphasis she placed on them is invigorating, though perhaps disproportionately so to the girl's actual capability for rational thought when afraid. She pushes up to her feet, back pressed against the wall of the trailer, shaking beginning to move towards where Trent was knocked down.
"You draw the line. You say, I will be pushed no further."
She listens to that rough voice in her mind, over and over again, but as she watches a man wielding a baseball bat be smashed down by a plastic shield, followed by the foomp of a grenade launcher lobbing a hissing canister of tear gas her way, calm and rational thought is tossed aside for heady panic and reactionary movements. She moves away from the spreading cloud of gas, moving to Trent to reach down and grab his flailing hand, helping him up to his feet in the same way he was doing for her. "T-Trent, w-we — we gotta — "
"Down on the ground, now! Down!" The barking order from one of the SWAT team members may as well come from some lumbering monster out of a horror movie, for all of Colette's reaction is a shriek of terror at the advancing black forms with raised shields and batons. One hand reflexively moves away from herself, fingers splayed as a whirling ring of light traces a circle above her palm, forming a convex lens of shimmering yellow-orange surrounded by tiny motes of firefly-like luminescence.
It is so very sunny.
There's no sound that comes with a flash of light, a brilliant eruption of focused sunlight in a cone-shaped spread, like an enormous camera flash that flares out from Colette's palm, casting her shadow and Trent's long against the ground. The SWAT officers as well as Trent let out a howling shriek from the light, more so towards the men it was directed at as they recoil from the photokinetic eruption, like a flashbang without the bang. "W-what the fuck was — Colette what — " She's already pushing him away, her whole body shaking as she tries to shove Trent away from what she just did. No words, just trembling, reactionary fear. She has to get out of here.
Fel can't really give orders to Elisabeth. Rank is a sticky thing, between Bureau and Department. "Shit, get 'em out of here," he says, but it's not so much an order as curt agreement, even as he moves out, Sig in hand. He's running, but it's still well within human normal. And then there's that flash - it brings him up short. A photokinetic. He sights on that light and its reflection, and heads for it, blurring into motion. Quite prepared to beat down whomever it is if they bring powers to bear on the fleeing masses. Only to skid to a stop and nearly go down in the freezing muck like a racehorse cornering too hard on a wet track, once he's reached her. "Colette?" he demands, voice laden with incredulity. "Sweet Jesus, what're you doing here?" It's almost as if he'd sprung up out of the ground, so suddenly does he appear.
Elisabeth acknowledges Felix's agreement/order with a curt nod, and she gathers the children - ranging in age from barely 18 months it looks like to maybe 5 or 6 years - to her and starts to herd them as quick as she can through the tiny alleyway. There is starting to be fire all around, and the kids are scared to death. Liz has no idea where the hell their guardian went, but her primary concern is getting them the hell OUT of the way. And the only way she can work on the situation is to start singing. She starts with a lullaby, barely remembered and half wrong, but the sound of it allows her to take the sound waves, layer them with soothing subsonics, and send them outward from herself in a broad radius. Maybe it'll help, maybe it won't, but she has to try something and it's all she's got at this moment. It works on the kids, at least. And as she ducks, hides, runs, and hustles the kids toward the borders of the trailer farm, she switches to pop rock songs that she remembers from high school and college, singing anything and everything she can think of so she can continue to 'broadcast'.
Its a distinct sound, everyone knows exactly what it is. A helicopter! A big, beautiful Bell 412 in NYPD livery sweeps up to the police line. Using a mixture of rotor wash and big scary noise to push the crowd back. For a moment, it even works! It hovers for a moment, almost directly over where Bolivar has stationed himself. Then, a light shower of shattered plastic rains over where Bolivar has set. Immediately the Big chopper eases towards the crowd, loosing altitude as its main rotors begin to tip threateningly close to the assembled rioters!
Holy mother of God, there is a chopper above Bolivar's head. The small man tilts back to glance up at it, in time to see gunfire shred through its windshield. He casts an arm up and hooks his torso down, blocking Jupiter's brown-furred head from the plunk and tinkle of riven plastic. He's up again in a moment, spitting Spanish, trying to do too many things at once. Track the trajectory of sniper fire back to its origin, and instruct the mob and his comrades, both, to run toward him.
No one's going to do that, of course. Helicopter crashes toward you, you run the fuck away.
Which is at odds with the angle of falling, but hey, you're either civilians or a cop with your back turned. Their error is understandable. Doesn't stop the machine's whirling blades and groaning chassis from ramming down into a struggling throng. It bounces, rolls, tumbles like a toy of catastrophic proportions. Guts a trail of panicking officers and civilians as it goes, spluttering fire, smoke.
Bolivar shouldn't have switched leashes, probably. He loses his dog somewhere in the deafening cacophony and reek of burning, can't make her shaggy shape out amid the feet that stomp on her broken leg or the falling corpse that crashes into her back. She's too far away and it's already become painfully evident: no one can hear him. His face is a mask of keloid and frozen fury. He drags toward Eugene's perch, gun in hand, stomping indifferently through the vacated path of troughed-up grass, blood, and slush the chopper had left behind it.
The car was not at all noticeable in the grand scheme of things. All the ruckus and commotion that is currently ongoing, surely no one would even consider looking in this direction. Yet inside the vehicle sits Company Agent Katherine Marks as she surveys the scene. Her dark hair and tinted sunglasses really the only thing visible through the window of the car, she picks up her cell phone and makes a call. The content of the call is not that important, at least not at present. In fact, even if someone were sitting right next to her, there would be no clue. She says not one word until whoever is on the other end finishes speaking, and she responds. "Got it. On it." The phone flips shut and she tosses it onto the passenger seat, then the video camera joins it. She considered getting out and flashing her HomeSec badge to find out what is going on here, but there's no reason to now. She has all the information she needs for the moment. She'll gather the rest in time. She puts the car into DRIVE and the crackle of the tires on the shoulder of the road is unheard as she pulls onto the road and drives away from the scene.
The voice is enough to make Colette jump out of her skin, but she doesn't recognize it at first. Colette whips around, eyes wide and watering, holding out one hand with a gleaming lens of light gently held between her fingers. The lens bends and flexes, and begins to glow before she understands who she's looking at. "Felix!" The girl shouts, lurching backwards as she crumbles the disc of light in her hand into tiny fireflies of golden illumination.
Still rubbing at his eyes, Trent staggers back and looks between Colette and the slim agent, "Fuck, fuck," His eyes dart up to Ivanov, recognizing him from the Nite Owl, then back down to Colette, "Come on, we gotta' go…" He tugs at her sleeve, blinking away spots in his vision, even as the SWAT agents are starting to come to.
"F-Felix… w-we — I — " She looks to the blinded agents, then back up to Ivanov, "I — I'm sorry." She begins to backpedal, letting Trent urge her away from Felix, "I-I'm — I'm sorry."
It's frankly dereliction of duty, what Fel does next. But Judah will literally never forgive him in the history of ever, if Colette comes to harm when Felix is there. He doesn't do anything but warn Trent flatly, "Run," And then he scoops up Colette, to throw her over his shoulder like a pirate stealing a new wench, and bolts for the fringe of the crowd, throwing up that absurd roostertail of mud behind his pounding boots. She'll find herself deposited beyond the fringe of the riot, set on her feet. "Get out of here. Get home. Now." There's a ferocity in Felix's face and voice Colette's never seen before, that brooks neither disobedience nor disagreement.
There are two pilots in a Police helicopter as big as the big 412 of course, but still things are going sideways. The copilot tries to recover, whilst he recoils in horror. The Big Bell yawns backwards, rotors deflecting visible upwards as they cut cute white ribbons of air into the atmosphere. It almost works, as the big chopper's skid slams into the pavement, it yaws back and that tail rotor hits -hard-. Its blades cutting three down before they stop working entirely. Immediately, the 412 rises only to start spinning like a top. Theres a few instances of incredible piloting, where it almost looks like its going to make it away from the crowd before it finally just goes. It rotates wildly, falling again into the crowd and churning over onto its side to run all four of its massive rotors through the crowd. The engines scream, gasping for air as aviation fuel begins to pool around it.
Eugene meanwhile, isnt really -done- yet you see. No he rises fully, rolling those sights down to start blasting wildly at the crowd. Each round finding a target, and sending somone to the groud. Some men, some women, some children but they're all civilians now. The clip ejects loudly with a stereotypical -PING-, before Eugene slaps another enbloc into the rifle. Its right back to work now, entirely uncaring who saw him.
Covered in blood and gore, it takes the copilot a moment or two to realize whats happening. His left arm is suddenly numb, he cant reach the collective. The big Bell 412 leans over, as the pilot struggles for control. Rotors deflecting upwards, straining both visibly with the inclusion of crisp white contrails and audibly. The whole thing takes on a new tone, as the workhorse struggles to keep itself in the air. Quickly, a single gloved hand reaches from the stick to grasp at the collective but its just too damn late.
The chopper slams down into the crowd, crushing maybe five or six immediately. The jolt, shakes loose the locking clip on the jesus nut as it tears the splines apart. The tail rotor goes out of control immediately, spinning the chopper to one side and running the tail rotor through the crowd. It blends its way through people until it strikes a trailer and tears completely free. Inside, the copilot has gotten his hand on the collective. He firewalls the engine, torques up the collective. He doesnt care what happens to him, but he has got to get that huge bird away from the crowd!
Like a rocket, the Bell hurtles skyward but almost immediately it begins its death spin. THe pilot tries, in an entirely superhuman attempt to manuever the chopper away from the crowd but he has physics working against him. THe spinning, means less power goes to the rotor. The jesus nut uptop, is already starting to freely unthread itself, he looses the collective soon afterward. Down the chopper falls, almost freefalling from a solid eighty feet until it hits. The blades are still spinning of course, as it yaws to one side and rakes those rotors through the crowd. those who dont get blended immediately, are showered with shrapnel and burning aviation fuel. THe side doors on the Bell slip open, two officers manage to jump free but theres a section of rotor blade the size of a man thats ensured there is simply no cockpit left anymore.
Meanwhile, on the rooftop. Eugene isnt out here for his health. He stands fully, as he cranes that M1 down into the crowd and begins firing. Picking off anyone he can find that doesnt already look maimed from the crash. -PING- goes the enbloc, before he can refresh the rifle and go about dumping the rounds oncemore. Each staccato beat, downing another and another in a brilliant testimony to his army training.
There are pieces of people and turf lying all around. Fortunately, Bolivar isn't so short that he has trouble waddling over and around these obstructions, breaking into proximity enough to find the likely epicenter of all this gunfire.
As he marches toward the sound of mayhem and explosions, miniature and otherwise, his gait changes from something less boldly aggravated to something skulking, using his small size to slip through. Jupiter is ushered along with a firm hand and low words, guarded from trampling feet and falling bodies by sporadic jabs and shoves of the man he walks with.
It is by no means a smooth trip, fraught by suspicious light works and ridiculous havoc, but Bolivar is determined to go and cautious enough to make it without more than a dozen new forming bruises and a sluggish bleed on his cheek, litany in his head.
—hysterical bitches and negroes cost me my fucking dog—
He pops out of the crowd some seconds in, his internal camera shaking and blurring somewhat from the stray elbow he copped in the side of his skull. He points the Glock at the lunatic's broad chest, just above the line of the massive weapon in Eugene's arms, and pulls the trigger.
Lost on the other side of the riot, seperated from Trent, Colette stares up at Felix with wide eyes, her hands shaking, "Y-you — you have to — " The helicopter crashes, the horrible sound of groaning steel and shattering glass, whirling debris flying across the street, up into the air, pieces of metal, smoke and flames. There's gunfire, loud and wild automatic gunfire, and Colette practically falls backwards over her own feet as she trips on the curb, staring past Felix at the chaos and the sounds of screams. She just stands there, lower lip trembling.
She and Judah both should have left.
It's too late now, isn't it?
She wants to ask Felix to help Trent for her, she wants to ask him to look for Jupiter, she wants to ask him for so many things. But instead, now, faced with so much carnage and destruction, she can't ask anything. She just covers her mouth with one hand, shaking, as she turns and begins running as fast as she can away from the scene of the riot, away from the smoke, flames and death.
It's too late now.
Fel's not happy. She shouldn't even -be- here. But he saves the lecture for later. The sound of the chopper crashing has him hitting the deck, though he's up in moments, once he's certain it's safe again. "Jesus," he mutters, under his breath, carrying his Sig in a two-handed grip, heading for the worst of the chaos, in search of that shooter. A mad dash back gets him there just in time to see Bolivar open up, and he pauses, frozen.
Now the accuracy of glocks is debatable, but at this range with a pistol the shot is pretty damned good! The round strikes his buttstock, and finds meat on the other side. Splinters shower his neck, sending no small amount of blood to pour down his shirt. It takes Eugene a moment, before he turns to let off a snap shot. His weapon is far more accurate, and arguably Eugene may be the better shot to boot. After that one shot though, the enbloc pops out with a loud -PING- and he steps back with a choking swollow to grasp at another clip. Slap,clack and he turns his rifle back towards not Bolivar but the crowd. That barrel swings upwards, towards civilians. Towards a girl, as he takes Colette into his sights. His finger begins to tense. Just a couple more"You can do this, you can do this god damnit!"
No, he can't. Goddamnit. Bolivar can't stop him, though, and he knows enough about the terrain and all the stupid poor people in it to recognize that this isn't a shot he's going to get to take. His lip curls high, a flare of sharp, white teeth, an infuriated sneer at not only the sturdiness of his enemy but his own incompetence, the faltering and fuzz troubling his eyes. A concussion. As if he needs more health problems. Shrieking impotent fury bounces echoes off the inside of his skull.
When he spots Felix oogling at him some point-seven seconds later, his mood does not improve. One deft motions, and the ugly old Glock's empty clip is spat into his hand. He proceeds to throw it at the Russian from across the grass. "Kill him, you fucking Commie!"
No need. Fel has that lovely Sig. And everything sinks into that beautiful clarity. Time slowing down is mostly a cliche. But in Fel's case, it almost literally does, where he's a dancer moving fluid through the cast court of still plaster figures. All the horrible tableaux of a riot and an aircraft crash. Later he'll be sick and shaking, with the images of a human head shattered by a bullet like that famous apple replaying itself. It's a miracle he doesn't drink more than he does.
But for now, there's nothing but the terrible exaltation of pure adrenaline, the surety that he has all the time in the world to take that shot. To those around him, he's impossibly fast, a trick of vision like film skipping, as he fires nearly point blank. No Miranda rights, no offer to surrender.
Eugene's head jerks abruptly to one side, as he goes stiff. A fine pink cloud explodes out from just above his ear, no doubt giving Bolivar a taste of what he's missing. His body turns as it falls, before toppling off the trailer to land head first with a particularly gruesome sound. Theres a moment, before -BOOM-. Semtex is a pretty versatile cocktail, and truth be told the original plan involved bombing busses but he could only get a pound of the stuff. It produces a distinctive scent, a particularly memorable waft in deed. Theres plenty here to completely shred Eugene's body, but lacking any real embedded shrapnel it fails to injure anyone shy of a ringing ear or two. It does however, produce a most spectacularly complicated crimescene which is now scattered not just over an area but over horrified people as well. It had to be S-30, considering a particular lack of fireball and the somewhat unremarkable volume of the detonation.
Fire, blood, more noise. Bolivar stumbles backward with a shout that is not exactly instructive for anybody around him, scowling toxic at anybody stupid enough to spare him a look instead of running. There aren't a lot of anybodies. A new clip finds its way into the pistol and, with a jerk of his arm, he sends Jupiter's lead slithering and skipping down his forearm and back into his hand to grasp. In the distant corner of the sky, another chopper is coming. Megaphones are blaring up from the ragged fringes of the field, orders reverberating through the algid air.
The riot has been largely suppressed, give or take a few isolated blossoms of violence that aren't near here. "«Small fire on the Northeast corner of the park,»" he comms in, brusquely, before dropping the unit back to his side. He backs into the shadow of the adjacent trailer and strains his eyes through the crowd, making no move to join any of the officer streams in or the ushered civilian herds out.
Fel is…shellshocked. Now he's the one standing, caught in that pose, two-handed shooting stance with the gun lowered, eyeing the wreckage that is all that remains of Eugene. A suicide bomber? Here in New York? As if it were all a dream, he holsters the pistol and turns slowly away, expression utterly numb. Only to pause, a still figure in the river of refugees, emergency personnel, until a cop comes up to him, questioning. Fel motions mutely at the mess behind him, explaining in a few clipped syllables.
Kudos to Bolivar, Colette, and Fedor for helping with the various NPCs.
 February 2nd: Going Damaris |
 February 2nd: Testing The Waters |