Participants:
| Scene Title | Blue Sky, Part III |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | A battle ensues on a rooftop, one that lasts, in reality, no longer than the blink of an eye. |
| Date | February 20, 2011 |
The Dome: Queens, near the Autoshop
There are ways to get up the building, unseen. Especially when all eyes are on the street below, across the road and towards the mouth of the opened garage when a man stands, his arms up like worship, unknowingly revealing himself to a dire threat. Shadows around him — Benjamin Ryans waiting watchfully, but not looking in the right direction. Though the building that Michal Valentin and Odessa Knutson are on is not massively tall like some of the skyscrapers farther west, it's high up enough that those on the empty street seem small.
Insignificant. Larger, of course, in the scope of his sniper rifle.
The rooftop is a gray, flat plain — the building more wide than towering, a parking lot dotted here and there with cars long since abandoned, tickets strapped into windshield wipers. Valentin is at its northern most edge, his back to the expansive asphalt behind him as he keeps a steady grip on his rifle, coat pulky and padded with armor and the things in his pockets. A crumpled duffle bag at his feet. Odessa at his side, hovering close without contact.
Suddenly—
Wind blows in mad directions across the rooftop of the building, ruffling Valentin's graying brown hair and swiping parking tickets out from the wiper arms of cars. A dull pressure, not unlike the one that signified the day this started. And a queer echo, like the tail end of thunder. It should be now, the muzzle flare and the cacophonous rifle fire, but instead, the Humanis First leader is only lifting his head as if uncertain.
There were a few shabbily-dressed thugs that were set to guarding the parking garage below. They were guarding it, but now they're learning the results of an experiment that Eric Doyle's always wanted to try.
'Will the body's autonomic response to breathe overcome his ability's demand to hold one's breath before death results.'
He'll be down to check on the results of the experiment later. Right now, Doyle's about a floor below the rooftop, panting heavily as he slows a bit, pausing to rest his hands on his knees before with a grunt he's moving forward again towards the next ramp. "He couldn't've… been somewhere… with a working elevator or a… pulley system or something… no… of course not…"
The pressure changes inside the Dome — because the Dome suddenly isn't anymore. This is a blessing for those inside, because their prison walls have evaporated. Disappeared in the blink of an eye.
The snow and ice atop it do not.
It's suddenly hard to get a clear line of sight to the building where the assassins stand. The crushing weight of not-so-fluffy white falls down upon the street. The steel of cars are crumpled like paper. The panes of a phonebooth form spider web cracks and ultimately shatter in their brushed metal frames that eventually yield under the pressure as well. Building supports groan in protest, making loud, angry sounds as their rooftops collapse. The damage is evident once the fine dust of snow begins to settle again, and the wind disperses it to clear vision again. It's catastrophic.
Except over the rooftop of one building.
Hair as white as the snow above their heads whips in the wind, tickling nose and sticking to lip gloss. When the dome blinked out, Odessa Price's stance abruptly changed, adopting a wide stance with one arm outstretched over her and Valentin's heads, palm held upward and for all appearances looking as though she's actually supporting an invisible barrier over them herself. But there's no faint blue shimmer or glow to give it away. Just angry, murderous shards of ice poised to drop like the guillotine.
"If they haven't figured out where we were before, we're a beacon now. We need to go."
"You're a sick man," Devon says, and not for the first time. It was with a sick sort of awe that he watched Doyle perform his little experiments. He's alongside the older man a rifle carried under one arm. He'd picked a pistol up somewhere as well, the weapon hiding against the small of his back, held in place by the waist of his pants.
Face, still a half mask of blood that obscures the bruises and scrapes that are kin to those that riddle the rest of his body, is lifted to look up the stairway to the next level. "C'mon," Devon encourages, quietly and vocally prodding at Doyle. "Almost there. Pulleys would've been worse than climbing. Just keep thinking that."
Distracted, however, Valentin ducks his head again to peer down the scope, a few too long seconds before his back straightens and he shies off from the edge, taking rifle with him. A glance upwards, now, at the hovering ice, and the way dust-fine white snow rises in the air after the thunderous fall of ice over the wider patch of city. "We go down onto the street," he proposes — orders, tells, suggests, his ever-affable tone making it ever-difficult to actually tell the intention behind his words unless he wants one too. "Make sure the thing is done.
"And then Clint Baxter of Homeland Security fame says he owes me a beer. A cold one," he tells Odessa, with a quick grin and a conspirational sort of emphasis as he holds the rifle one handledly, picks up depleted duffle back in other, and starts a stroll away from the ledge.
"Yeah, yeah," Doyle takes a deep breath, and then pushes onwards; he's in better shape than he once was, at least, his time with the Ferry having led to him losing at least some of the weight that had him as bad as he was, but he's still in far from good shape. He's just not morbidly obese these days. "Get that rifle ready. You have an ability, kid? I never— *hff*— did ask— "
The problem with a parking garage's top floor is that there isn't exactly a door up there. So once they start to near the top of the ramp, he stumbles along over to the edge, fingers curling to it as his head pops up to peek and see what's up there. Oh. Hey. People. This wasn't a wild goose chase after all!
Odessa casts a dubious glance down to the street level she can't see all that well. What does he mean make sure the thing is done? "Fine." She takes it as an order. "We make sure nothing went wrong, and then we head to the Suresh Center. We can get out of here through the tunnels beneath the building."
The temporal manipulator turns away from the edge of the building, reining in her curiosity for the damage done below. She's moving toward their way out, her heels sounding artificially loud against the asphalt before she actually bothers to turn her gaze to her destination and spots—
Trouble. Though her chin turns, snapping her head abruptly in Valentin's direction, her eyes fix on the image of an old friend. Enemy? Frenemy. "Canister!" Now it's her turn to issue an order. Then, Odessa addresses the puppet master. "Eric," she calls to him, tone pleading, "you negate me and all this," her head slants upward in a jerky motion to indicate the ice, "comes down, and we all die." It's a warning, but also a threat. After a fashion.
Carefully, slowly, working to keep the noise as little as possible, Devon checks the chamber of the rifle, then cycles a round in. "Not yet," he answers, pressing the butt of the weapon to his shoulder. Once, he would have told anyone asking that he was still deciding, but that answer no longer seems funny. He works his hands over the gun, finding a comfortable grip with one hand resting on the fore-end, the other curled around the trigger guard.
Devon lowers himself into a deep squat and presses up close to the wall of the ramp. He edges slowly forward, just moving enough to see around the corner. He lowers one leg to the knee, sitting back so that his shoulder presses to the ramp wall while he rests upon his heel, the other knee kept up for balance and leverage to move. The muzzle of the rifle is lifted, the teenager taking careful measures to aim toward the two upon the roof, Perry's words echoing in his head. No mercy.
CHONK.
It'd be preternatural accuracy if that was even remotely possible. Luck, then, and skill, drive, with a lot of malicious intent, when a canister wider than a man's clenched fist rams into the middle of Doyle's forehead, bounces end-over-end and goes cartwheeling wasted momentum up in the air over his bald pate. Out of its back end, there's already a roostertail of familiar yellow gas ripping out skyward, a funny little tilde-twirl of gas that lakes leaden certainty into Doyle's limbs and throngs Devon's eyes with its sickly translucency.
Not before the shift of the young man's stare catches the figure in the adjacent building, though. On the adjacent building, technically; a squatting figure keeping itself tactically small in the mouth of an open door, one level higher them. A fat-nosed shoulder-mount launcher crouches on his shoulder like a pet hawk, its snub nose angled down at them through the rusted metal of the fire escape. Kevlar and the bulk of wool make his shoulders big, but his head is bare, the fishbelly flash of a buzzcut scalp.
He signals with his hand. Which gives Devon perhaps half a second to make a coherent decision about where he's going next, cover or no.
The speedster watching the scene was a little too late for the first cannister, not having noticed the man in the doorway before. It's a point of pride for Edgar Smythe to never be late for anything, so of course, this incident stings his ego. A blur of black and silver is what the man with the launcher might see, if he was looking over his shoulder.
It only takes a split second before he's lifted bodily over the head of the speedster and tossed over the side of the building. It gives Devon a little more time to decide, since it's likely the negation cannister launching man will likely be picking himself up off the ground sooner rather than later. Too bad it's only one story up.
But at least he got to keep the launcher. Edgar's not a thief…. right now.
There's only a blink where the speedster is still enough for the boy to catch a glimpse. Dressed in finery befitting a ringmaster, Edgar decided to dress up for the breaking of the dome. A black tie event if there ever was one, his tux jacket even has tails. The magestic stance at the top of the building glitters under the sun more than a Twipire in the middle of sunny California. Mostly due to the silver sequined cumberbund, matching bow tie, and silver lamee shirt.
Well then. This all got quite complicated and less victorious rather fast, Valentin's smile wiped off his face.
The silver canister, one that hasn't yet unloaded it contents, is in Valentin's hand from his pocket in the same time it takes Odessa to finish all three syllables, torn between allowing negotiations to continue and just pitching the thing right there and then, before recognition twinkles bright in Valentin's eyes for both the name and the face Odessa notices before he does. His duffle bag dropped in favour of holding the vapour bomb.
And then the cavalry.
The cannister is slipped away as Valentin hefts the rifle up, ready to abandon it after he takes a shot — one that winds up to be a warning shot rather than a killing blow, bullet splintering concrete a few inches from where Doyle's appeared even as Valentin levers back steps to put distance and movement between himself and supposed threat.
A tilted glance up at the hovering ice, the sky beyond, before he goes to level another shot, three of five potential.
"Brooke?" Eric's brow furrows slightly in shock as he sees the woman there, and then his breath catches as he realizes the first thing she said, his hand starting to lift…
Ow.
That furrowed brow is suddenly marked with a perfect reddening circle as the canister slams into his forehead. It's okay, brain damage can only help him, probably. He staggers back a few steps after the impact (a motion that might savee his life as that bullet cracks through the air to splinter concrete near him), hand slapping to his head as he grunts out a pained sound, staring blankly at the canister as yellowed smoke begins to erupt from it, swirling around him, spilling over his skin with its pernicious effect and making him feel sick to his stomach. There's only a split-second to decide what he does next.
"As…" He bends a knee, scooping up the spurting canister with one hand, ears still ringing, "…you…" An overhand throw, honed from games of catch with Lance and Paul, lobbing the chemical weapon straight for Odessa Knutson where she stands on the roof, "…wish!"
She asked for a canister. She's getting one. Perhaps, before she appealed to reason while revealing that her negation could well kill everyone present, she should have remembered something. Maybe two things.
Santa makes it snow. And Eric Doyle is completely insane.
There's actually a moment of dumbfounded silence when the canister connects with Doyle's skull, and it wasn't first procured from inside of Valentin's jacket and lobbed by him. Maybe he'll think she was shouting a warning? Odessa darts her gaze between the men, and the one on the opposite rooftop, just in time to watch their back-up go over the edge in a streak of black and silver. What was that even?
The hand previously stretched up over her head is carefully redirected, held out warily toward the indiscriminate threat the yellow plume represents to her, even if she's the one who called for it. They'll have to wait now, for it to disperse before they can move in that direction. At least, she will. It just takes more finesse and thought to dodge negation gas.
The wind does an admirable job of spreading the cloud. It also catches her hair again, lifting her bangs free from where they tangle with lashes. Her mismatched eyes stare out, gaze hard and at the same time wary, Brooke Lynwood (in a former life) watching Eric Doyle like a wild animal about to snap.
He doesn't disappoint.
Odessa starts to backpedal wildly at the first sign of the man's arm winding up for the pitch. "No!" The backs of her legs connect with the ledge of the roof. No where left to go. Her face scrunches up small. Can she pull her concentration together in time to avoid absolute disaster?
Devon's eyes flick toward Doyle at the sound of something striking him, though the rifle remains trained 'downrange' as it were. When the gas reaches his eyes, he flinches then squints at some sort of movement above. He begins backing away from the tendrils of yellow as his eyes, still narrowed focus on the movement above, catching a glimpse of someone being tossed down and the speedster.
"Calvary's here," Devon states rather casually. However, the teenagers feet move him further up the ramp and onto the roof proper. No time to consider the canister thrower nor Edgar, Devon repositions himself in tight crouch, back to the wall, unflinching at the sound of ballistic striking concrete. He's a good shot when the gun isn't real, but live ammunition is a whole different story and something he's only experienced firing once or twice. Gazing down the sight, he takes aim at Valentin, trigger squeezed and a single volley returned.
Another fun fact about Edgar Smythe is that he's not a big fan of the cold. Items in this category include but are not limited to: 1) The snow. 2) Christmas. 3) Being crushed to death by a shitload of ice that's hovering precariously over his head and being held up by the ability of one very frail woman.
"Fuckin' christ.." the speedster mutters as he sees the can of negation gas being hurled toward the woman. While trying to surpass the can without passing through the cloud, he pats his body down, looking for something to bat it away with. The blur of black and silver whooshes around Odessa three times before he skids to a stop, his steel toed workboots smoking at the heel. "Well 'ello Gale, fancy mee'in you 'ere."
Minor league fans everywhere might know the speedster as Augusto Hernandez, the outfielder who turned pitcher almost overnight. A quick lookie loo finds Valentin's bag and inside it… heh heh… another cannister. If only the announcers could see this wind up… or the pitch which is really just another cannister hitting the first one at high speed, knocking it— pretty far away. His throwing tends to get away from him sometimes. Turning to level a glare at the one eyed woman Edgar lifts a finger to point. "You stay 'ere an' play nicey nice… Keep up the good work— or I'll make shore another one'a them gets shoved down you're gob. Y'ear?"
Then he's off again. If only she could wear a tuxedo with such flair and style.
In more time than it takes Edgar to cross the rooftop, Valentin falls.
The punch of a bullet into kevlar vest bowls the older man off his feet with a rush of air out his lungs and the clatter of the rifle hitting the ground, strap tangled in arm. It's discarded with what could count as a growl, hand pressing against his stomach as he rolls to crab walk back and back, a dislocated rib singing its choir, lungs pulling in air like its coming through a straw. Whatever the Czech is for fuck, it's snarled between bared teeth.
"Odessa— " It's the name he knows her by, the labrat infant girl. But a cry for help, from an Evolved, is shut between his teeth as he takes the pistol tucked away beneath his coat. Without bothering to get up off his half-recline, he points the weapon.
He pulls the trigger and allows for a swift and heavy unloading of gunfire towards where Devon's gunshots had come from, then wheeling back towards Eric Doyle.
The level of threat that Eric Doyle currently poses can't be described as high at the moment, what with his ability negated. If the launcher had been just a little slower… well. This would have played out very differently. He drops down to one knee, under the cover of the edge of the ramp as concrete showers over him in chips and shards from Valentin's gunfire, one hand pressed still against his forehead. That hurt.
"Brooke," he barks out, anger snarled through his voice, "Get out of here. He's ours! Last fucking chance!" He's not appealing to any bond between them. To her better nature, even to any care for her fellow Evolved. No, he's appealing to the one thing he believes drives so many of Odessa's actions.
Her fear.
The words may be hollow ones, though, because until he recovers from that negation gas, all he has is an intern with a rifle and a pistol, that he's fumbling to get out of where it was tucked in his belt. Well, they may also have a fabulous speedster, but exactly whose side the transvestite is on he has yet to figure out.
When the canister doesn't connect with her, and she doesn't find herself overwhelmed by the sickening sensation of negation, Gale opens her eyes again. "D- David?!" What the hell. He's dressed more fabulously than she is? And here she is without her chief accessory (her eye patch) to spruce up her attire. The red of Odessa's peacoat serves as the only splash of colour over a black skirt. She nods mutely to his instructions, before turning her attention back to Doyle. "You don't understand! You don't know what's—"
Gunfire registers then, along with her companion calling her name. Her real name, girl of many aliases as she is. "Michal!" Odessa shrieks and shoves past Edgar to scramble to Valentin's side. She crouches there, bunching up her skirt in one hand to withdraw the knife strapped to her thigh. "Your last fucking chance! This isn't about us versus them!" Her breath starts to come in quicker gasps, sweat forming on her brow from exertion. The concentration on what she holds still above means she doesn't catch what's happening behind them at the ledge.
They're outnumbered, currently. She could abandon the former Company man to his fate.
For once in her life, Odessa Price doesn't indulge in an easy act of betrayal. "«Get up.»" She orders him Russian. Like if she says it sternly enough (and everything sounds sterner in Russian, if you ask her), he'll find the strength to do so.
It's all Devon can do to make himself smaller as fire is returned, crouching and ducking his head, one arm acting as a futile shield that does little more than ward off the rain of concrete. One of the volleys sent his direction finds its mark with a splash of red wet welling from the meat of his exposed shoulder. The biting pain stuns him for a moment, jaw clenching and body going rigid, but he's got to keep going.
After the sharp reports have ended, both at himself and at Doyle, Devon makes a dash for the ramp to follow the puppeteer's example. Mostly. He hops over the wall, opposite side of the one Doyle has claimed. The teenager stays down for the moment, lifting a slightly trembling hand to his shoulder as he takes a couple of deep breaths.
Movement ripples up the zip-line, as if the cord were a serpent weaving its way toward Valentin, despite that it's reached its destination and there's no conceivable way it could come any closer to the operative. A voice emanates from the windy world below, funnelled by the icy flow of air: "Come on! Come on." Hoarse voices— men in the next building over, faceless figures in armor, holding rifles, too militarily well-disciplined to risk looking out the window at the threat of the sky. Their calls are almost buried in the cacophony of gunfire.
Another noise sears right through, though, a hiss of airy discharge as a second canister whirls up an elegant arc to land two yards from Valentin's rooftop position, tinkling its metal edge against concrete. There's a fractioned instant of gauging silence, this time, a lull where any number of the Evolved and Humanis First! operatives, all, might notice a figure finishing his limp away from a branch-snapped tree, before one of the men waiting for Valentin on the other end hollers, his voice thinned by distance and razor-edged wind, perhaps a touch unnecessarily: "Price! MOVE."
It's a split second at best, lag from a canister left pragmatically, deliberately unpopped.
And Valentin's corner of sky erupts into a yellow cloud.
Down below, in the ground floor of the very same building that the faceless military men are in, there is an artist who uses the color red in almost every painting that he creates. Sometimes he uses body parts. A leg from the knee down stands attention at a doorway, its (former) owner screaming bloody murder as he crawls into the street to get away. A hand still holding a pistol lays at the base of the stairs, powder smelling and barrel smoking from when the weapon accidentally fired out into the street. The body that belongs to the hand is already dead from another cut it received when some intestines spilled out into the middle of the floor.
Pausing to take a brief looksee at his handiwork, Edgar wipes one of his kukri off on the tail of his tuxedo jacket and then peeks out the doorway. "Do a man a favor, eh? Finish 'im off before 'e calls an army?" They've got guns, they can handle one crawling soldier.
Leaving the rifle laying where he dropped it, Valentin is more stubborn about his pistol, clenched white knuckled in his hand even as he reluctantly ceases fire. Once he does, he must move, and gives up the weapon — it skids across the rooftop floor, trusting that for all that Odessa might not be one of those that like pulling triggers, she could at least make better use of it than anyone else. Including throwing it back to him. Rolling onto his knees, Valentin is whipping is coat off in revealing of nothing much — plain, urban clothes. No uniforn. Kevlar vest strapped around his torso, where it dips to his groin.
"The sky," he says to her, then, even as he's moving at a run for the zipline, trusting the fortitude of his coat rather than his gloved hands as he whips the wool around the black chord, and slings a leg over the side.
"We aren't exactly professionals up here, Priscilla! Think you can pick a side and maybe help us with that?" It takes a moment for Eric to realize that the gunfire's stopped, and his bald pate pops back up into view as he leans up - and sees the back of the man vanishing into yellow smoke, lips screwing up in a grimace as he raises the pistol. He's not a very good shot. Devon's likely better. The weapon feels heavy in his hand - ugly, wrong, nothing like the comfortable weight of a marionette dancing on its strings.
He's never been one to use his own hands to do his dirty work. He uses other peoples'.
The puppeteer lifts the gun… and he squeezes the trigger, once, twice, the firearm bucking harshly against his inexpert grip. Only he's not aiming at Valentin.
He's aiming at Odessa.
Another canister drops and Odessa falls so still, the muscles in her back tensing up and screaming in agony where her skin pulls tight against her stitches. She looks up. The sky. Then, she nods to the instruction. "Be swift."
Valentin's discarded pistol is retrieved before she shoves to her feet again and takes off running. Three resounding staccato steps into it, she actually blinks out of sight entirely.
Concrete doesn't explode in place of where she had once been, though. Instead, spatters bright red as her coat take her place. And one can follow the trail of tacky droplets past Doyle and Devon, a darker and more visible smear on the ramp where it can be assumed she crawled on her belly to avoid the cloud hanging sick in the air. Somewhere below, pained screaming echoes cavernously through the structure. Then an enraged howl.
It's all the warning they get before the sky begins to fall.
Feeling a little more together, teeth clenched together as a point to focus on rather than the pain, Devon reaches to his back and draws out his own pistol. It's lighter, easier to use one handed, the rifle finding a home hanging from his uninjured shoulder. His fingers work over the grip and bring the firearm to the fore as his eyes find Doyle, watching, waiting until the puppeteer has made his move. Once again the teenager joins in the fight.
When Doyle lifts and begins firing, so does Devon, moving a half beat behind the older man. The boy's aim is once again on Valentin, adding crossfire to Doyle's volleys. With his arm braced against the top of the wall, he returns those rounds that were fired at himself, each in quick succession.
The howl cuts through the reverberating sound of gunfire, attaching itself to Devon's awareness. He glances toward the sound then upward at the first tell-tale creak and crumble and earliest fallings of ice from above. That's not a good sign, that's a very bad one. He drops down then crawls for the cover of the ramp and structural safety from the fast approaching ice.
Freezing air crystallizes blood, snatches breathy condensation from Edgar's lips and carries the groan of the sky down toward him. It's almost buried under the incoming tidal wave of noise, the onslaught of snow, the third and last pchooooo—
—tink-a-tink, metal skittering past his feet, the spume of buttery vapor sliding up his leg like an insinuating hand. Hello, Priscilla. You probably should have taken that launcher when you had the chance, no?
The next instant, the butt of the weapon is ramming home between his shoulderblades once, a second blow delivered to the back of his neck, sending a brutally effective agony ramming through nerves that are otherwise dulled in every way that's ever mattered to the speedster, a starburst of neon sparks and hornet's-nest blackness needling through Edgar's eyes. "Tell 'Joe' I said die," the startlingly young operative snaps, a pistol out already, his buzzcut head turning to force his attention into the hallway. Away from the man seconds from a crushing death outside. There's simply no time. Ray screams: "Let's go! Move, move!"
Floors above, Valentin's swooping descent is stopped, caught by heavy arms, his boot barely clipping the window sill. He's shoved back onto his feet, but there's a snarl of dismay from his comrade when the man's gloved hands come away soaked through with blood. "Can you walk?" the operative demands, but he means run, and he's already starting, heavy boots slamming the floor. By the time they reach the stairwell, the young one— Ray— has already backed himself into view. He doesn't even blink when yet another operative joins him in the stair.
"You," he says, eyes hardening further still. Odessa Price.
Fucking mutant.
"Save it." The order is snapped down from above. The older operative, clattering down toward them with Valentin. "Did you kill the fucking runner?"
"Let's just get to the sewer," Ray answers brusquely.
The sky isn't supposed to make sounds like that.
"Well… that isn't good," Doyle breathes out as his eyes roll to look upwards at the white. Then he's pushing away from the edge, stumbling a little from the aftereffects of the gas that's left him as powerless as any other middle-aged man that hasn't exactly pursued gymnasiums enthusiastically in his life. He breaks for the ramp at a stumbling run, falling /over/ the rail and tumbling to his feet before heading down towards the edge - planning to just jump down a couple feet and roll under to use the ramp as cover.
"Oh, shit, oh, shit run, kid, run!"
Dogged repetition gets you far, and the kick of Devon's pistol is this. A bullet sinks critical through tough nylon and between plates of kevlar, and Valentin's descent down the zipline is a tumble before his hands release his coat prematurely, careening into the last of his soldiers with blood already staining his teeth. There's a bark of wet laughter at the new plan (let's just get to the sewer), like rats. His hands grip insistently to the arm of the man keeping his weight, his legs like lead.
It's been fun. He glances for the tall building he's descended from, as if searching for something.
But all there is is white.
White that comes down like glaciers dropped by God or some such silliness, making the building shake beneath and notably over Devon and Doyle as it slams down in a thunderous boom, like a bomb going off. Filmy white clouds chase them down into the ramps zigzagging into the building, tumbling run off of gritty ice choking the mouth to out, instantly dark and ashy at the same time, and cold too.
The whine in their ears clears. Soon they'll hear helicopters.
