Participants:
Scene Title | Boy Hits Car |
---|---|
Synopsis | …and then everything goes batshit crazy. |
Date | August 4, 2009 |
Of the neighborhoods of Manhattan open to the public since the bomb, Chelsea is among the worst on the island. The last to be deemed "clean" after the fallout began to lift from the city, Chelsea still looks the part of a war-torn ghost down, something that would look less out of place in a struggling third-world nation, not the middle of New York City.
While the city has done its best to try and recover the once culture-centric neighborhood, it has slouched further and further towards a ghetto in the near three years since the bomb sent out of control fires raging thorugh the streets. In the late afternoon hours, as the sun is dipping into the skyscrapers and tenement buildings, casting long, grasping shadows on the ground. Traffic begins to congest in the streets, with businesses closing and rush-hour starting to clog the arteries through Chelsea with slow-moving people on their way home.
"Fifty. Right as rain." Pedestrian traffic during this hour is thinning, with night approaching and four hours remaining till curfew. But on the street corner across from the dilapidated ruins of the Washington Irving High School, a few people linger in the growing shadows of tenement buildings. "Here you go, man, live it up." Palming a small syringe from inside of his jacket, a scruffily dressed man sidles next to a young teenage boy, a blue light emanating from the syringe he carries in the dark of the building's shadow.
"Th— thanks." Squinting his eyes, the teenage boy pockets the syringe, the blue glow from its contents spreading out between his fingers as he hands over a stack of money towards his dealer. "What's this shit called, again?" The grubby man smirks, shifting his weight to one foot as he smooths his hand over a poorly trimmed beard.
"Refrain," he says with a cock-sure smile, "hot shit on the streets, got it special, cuttin' you a deal, son." Or, alternately, he's ripping him off and charging more than his contacts are paying for it. "This shit, right here, the blues take away the blues." His waggles his fingers, grimacing as the teen nods his head and takes a few steps back.
"R— right," the kid notes, shifting his eyes to the side as he turns away from the dealer. "See you— uh— man." Starting to move away from the alley mouth they were standing in, the young teen moves out into traffic, weaving between vehicles and looking to cross the busy intersection.
Just a regular day in Manhattan.
Right up to where the kid is stuck by a speeding car pulling out of a parking spot too quickly. He slams into the right fender, bouncing up and over the hood before smashing into the windshield and rolling over the side of the white Ford Taurus, landing on his back on the pavement, one leg twitching and a patch of crimson on the broken glass of the windshield.
The car's tires screech to a halt, and a young woman — maybe five years the boy's senior — steps out of the car with one hand clasped over her mouth. "Oh my god! Oh my god!" The boy does not move, save for that side-to-side motion of one foot, his sneaker somehow dislodged from the impact of the collision ten feet away.
"Someone call an ambulance!"
"Oh shit did you see that?"
"Woah, his fucking head bounced off the windshield."
"Oh god! Oh god someone call 911!"
Just another day in the city.
The Screech of tires. Adelaide was making her home, most of the time she didn't come down to Chelsea too often, and as she checked her watch- curfew in a few hours, but the more immediate concern was that sound-an accident maybe? She didn't press to closely, but she wasn't going to ignore the calls for paramedics either. For her short stature her eyes widden though as she catches a glimpse, the sicken form of a kid, and the smashed windshield of a car. Adelaide swallowed and inhaled, she looked around left and right, how many people had phones out, how many were calling? With the crowd thinning because of the hour, she took it upon herself to place the call-regaurdless of how many others were calling. She checked street names,and building names and gave the information as conciesely as she could.
Alia curses the errand that has her on the wrong side of town at the wrong time of evening. Pushing off her skateboard, she leaves from Alley Cat Couriers, a small mental prayer for saftey and good luck as she goes… Then skids to a halt at the sound of flesh and bone being impacted by high speed metal and plastic and glass. It's not a pretty sound.
Alia turns to look at the accident even as she reaches into the pocket of her jeans for her phone, then just pauses as she realizes how futile her calling really is.
Karate, self defense classes, judo classes, firing range, working out, and more classes.. All at once. So when Brian finally gets a break, it's very, very nice. A gray sleeveless shirt covered with sweat is on his chest, also wearing a pair of basketball shorts. Brian was jogging until he gifted himself with a break and a pastrami sandwich. But that was before the white ford taurus…
The pastrami sandwich now rests sadly on the ground with no owner. More cars come screeching to a halt and they are subsequently jumped over as his sneakers practically glide over hoods. Falling to one knee, and groaning internally at the pain of his knee-crashing against the cement his hand flies out towards the boy's neck. Wordlessly his eyes search the boy, then the woman, then the mouth of the alleyway the boy just came from. He may go over there. But first! A pulse…
Adam ambles along down the street with Michael. They seem to be chatting about sports. But as Michael tries to explain American football, Adam keeps talking about rugby and soccer. "I don't understand…so they wear /pads/ for everything? Like….doesn't that make them slow?" Michael is the first one to notice the boy and Adam looks up in time to see the boy bounce off the glass. "Well, that was quite acrobatic. A rugby player would have survived that."
Fresh off a business venture of his own out here in the musty wilds of Chelsea, Deckard's in the process of biting off the end of a cigar on the street corner opposite the drug deal. The money he pulled in over the Pinehearst ordeal has evidently been spent, if not spent particularly well. Orange lamp light spills bold over the shoulders of a grey suit a little nicer than his norm and glances sharp off the burnished, yellow-brown scaling of alligator skin boots. Why not?
He's still watching the kid when the wreck goes down, chilly eyes blinking hard after the bloody blur of motion that culminates in him being laid out flat on the pavement. Twitching. It takes a few seconds to register. Maybe more like a minute. Then the hand he had frozen in the process flipping his lighter open finishes through a flick of his thumb and he gets on with lighting up.
She's above it all, quite literally. A female shape approaches airborne at the speed of traffic on the ground, perhaps one hundred feet up. Maria notices nothing of the drug deal that went down, she may well have missed all of it as she heads for a place she likes to go for food. But the squeal of brakes and the crunch of the boy hitting the car and bouncing off ends any chance of that. Her thoughts of food are abandoned for the moment, she stops in mid-air to watch and see if she can offer any assistance here as things develop.
Cell phones are out, some people taking pictures and video of the accident, others calling for help. Less than a block away, the wail of a squad-car's sirens is the first sign that response isn't far off. Kneeling down at the boy's side, Brian finds a racing pulse and low, groaning confusion to at least signal that there's some life left in him, but judging from the blood already pooling on the ground under him from his head, he's in a bad way.
The driver of the car breaks down into hysterics once the immediate shock wears off. "Oh my God! Oh my God!" She screams through the hand clutched shakily over her mouth, "I didn't see him! I didn't see him! Oh my God, oh my God!" Three more people move in from the sidewalk, one man daring the closest to the boy save for Brian, peering down over the blonde's shoulder.
"Is he— is he going to be alright? Hey— kid— hey, y— you're going to be alright." The nasally voice comes out shaky, trying to reassure himself more than the teen that everyone is going to be alright. It's one thing to witness a pedestrian accident, it's another to witness manslaughter.
When the sirens draw closer, the scruffy man on the sidewalk who watched the boy get hit after selling him a syringe of Refrain stumbles back into the alley. "Fucking Christ," he murmurs, rubbing a hand over his mouth, "god damned fucking kid, damnit." In the chaos and confusion of the accident, one more person slipping away from the sounds of the sirens goes unnoticed.
Maybe it's the noise, the shouting, the screeching of tires, the general atmosphere of violence and pain that stirs him awake. Not far from Deckard, a few trasgbags stir, shifting to reveal a man clearly attempting to sleep beneath them, or perhaps he was on top of them and shifted as someone sleeping on trash might. He sits up, groggily rubbing the heels of his palms over his eyes, tangled blonde hair half covering his face. One foot scuffs on the ground, clad in a dirty gray slipper.
His eyes stare unfocused towards the accident, brows furrowed, and then jerkingly starts to stand, the dark blue of a bathrobe wrapped around his shoulders spattered with something dark and brown on one sleeve. "Damn, what a morning, right?" Inevitably, he's turned and looking directly at Deckard, brows creased and a crooked smile on a roughly unshaven jaw. Standing straight now, he's six and a half feet tall of dirty homeless man in a bathrobe and slippers, and quite likely pajamas too. "You got another stogie there, man?" Grubby fingers angle towards Flint.
Adelaide pauses she's sort of dazed, though as the sirens draw closer she closes her phone, slowly. The young woman observes she's caught up in it now. Eyes focused on the boy, checking for signs of moment- the future medical student seems pretty unaware of those around her for a moment. Before she breaths its a deep breath of someone who realizes they'd been holding their breath. She tries not to take a step, but she wants to help/
"He's alive." Brian states audibly towards the crowd starting to surround them. "Get cars out of the way, so the ambulance can get in." His eyes wave around the crowd, settling on the man daring to come the closest. "You help direct cars out of the way, we need a clear path alright?" Brian says, tone demanding. Until—
Hesitating, Brian is distracted by a certain man in the crowd. A bearded man looking wide eyed before fading back into the crowd. And abruptly, Brian is back on his feet, and then rushing away from the boy and towards the spot where the man drifted off to.
Alia looks at the scene, her skateboard tilted up by one foot foot on its tail. She looks about at all those present, and wants to scream, to help, to do SOMETHING. But nothing she has is up to this task. She's not trained in anything past basic first aid, and this is well past that. For once she curses her luck and choices, mentally speaking… Then she spots a familiar face or two in the crowd… she takes her foot off the tail of the board and sets it on the flat as she spots Deckard. Then Adam. It's a small world after all. She recalls the bank robbery all too well, then there was that news article about an 'Adam' and a hostage situation at a hospital…
Adam doesn't seem concerned for the boy's safety. Michael just seems to take his cue from Adam. He frowns and glances about and notices Brian. He seems about to say something but just lets the gentleman do his thing, but his eyes follow the man's trajectory and briefly catch sight of Deckard. "Isn't that interesting, Michael. My newest employee and my weapon's dealer in the same crowd." after a moment, there's a passing reason to look up and now he notices Maria, then notes to Michael, "I didn't know people did that so openly. In my day, people hid their powers more." Michael mutters under his breath, "In your day people were still burned for witchcraft."
Six months ago, Deckard wasn't much better dressed, equipped, fed, housed or shaven. Now with clean suit, boots and stogie, grizzled hair buzzed down to a neat (if thuggish) level with the uniform bristle of his stubble collection, he stands where he is and looks the homeless bathrobe guy over sideways like he's thinking about saying no. The slate of is glare is sidelong and skeptical from beneath the hardened hood of his brow, scraping from nasty blonde hair to conspicuous brown stains to slipper before he takes the first real puff past lighting.
Immediately, he coughs. Air blasts out through his sinuses in an unintentional furl of oily smoke. His eyes water. The whole shebang, and he's handing the cigar over with one hand and tucking the lighter away with the other while the familiar blonde blur of Brian goes drilling off after Beardo and a kid lies maybe dying in the street. "Christ."
"Y— yeah, sure I— alright I…" Straightening his glasses, the man Brian ordered swallows awkwardly and turns towards the cars that stopped because of the collision. He leans over, just waving his hand towards the flor of traffic on the one-way street, trying to get them to move along. A few pats to the hood of one car starts an Audi moving again. Blue lights and sirens belonging to an NYPD cruiser start moving in as the traffic begins to flow, one officer stepping ut of the vehicle, a hand on his sidearm as he jobs across the two lanes of traffic and up alongside slowly moving cars towards the accident. "Alright, okay, keep clear." He waves one hand, moving one of the bystanders with a cell phone camera aside.
"Sir, sir?" He pats the back of the man trying to direct traffic. "It's alright, we've got this under control." The bespectacled man ducks his head apologetically, starting to back away as the officer moves quickly over to the boy, crouching down at his side. "Son, can you hear me?" His hand moves out, feeling at the side of the boy's neck, then looks up and around towards the squad car moving closer.
Athletic, in good shape, and fast on his feet, Brian is able to catch up to the man slinking away from the scene, being that he's the only person who noticed him. At the sound of thundering footsteps, the drug dealer turns around and raises his brows, both hands going up. "Hey, man, the fuck's your problem?" He steps aside, as if to let Brian by, assuming that's where any fast-running man would need to be, not interrogating him surely.
"Much obliged, Doc." The grubby man reaches out to take the cigar, bringing it between his lips to take a long, luxurious drag off of it. The smoke is held in his mouth, exhaled through his nostrils in twin jets as he looks over to the police officer trying to handle the situation while traffic clears up. "Damndest shit, isn't it?" There's no real qualifier for his words, not at first, until he looks side-long over at Deckard, motioning to the accident with his cigarette. "Boy hits car, people whip out their cell phones, half of 'em are takin' pictures. Ain't that just the bees fuckin' knees?" One brow raises, isn't it the bees' knees, Deckard?
"People're like fuckin' hogs, all oinkin' an snortin' and shit, just jumbled up in this shithole of a city snappin' their jaws at whatever they can get." He brings the cigarette back to his mouth, drawing in a slow breath before exhaling an acrid cloud of smoke. Reaching across himself to offer his right hand, the homeless man aims it over towards Deckard. "Norman," he introduces, teeth biting down on the cigar.
Adelaide watches her eyes wandering between people, but she takes a few steps backwards carefully realizing that with the parametics on the scene her jobs done. She moves back into the crowd, carefully.
His pace doesn't slow, though he adapts to the suspicion that he is just passing by. Giving an apologetic look, he raises his arms in the universal sign of, 'I'm not going to hurt you'. But this gesture is a lie.
As Brian goes to pass right across Beardo, his raised arm flies powerfully at the man's face. Elbow connecting with skull, the drug dealer goes sailing towards the ground. Glancing over his shoulder Brian then goes to look down at the man. "What did you give him?" He demands, placing his hands on his waist.
Alia tries to fade back into the crowd, but isn't having much luck. too tightly packed to really manuver her board through or pick it up, she finds herself stuck against a wall of people. There's nothing more she can really DO here, at least, not that she knows of.
Adam continues to watch the crowd with an eye for the action. He pauses for some moments and says, "Well, looks like all the important people have finished looking after the boy." he glances a little forlornly at him. Then looks up as there's some action in the crowd, "Ah, vigilantism. When the mob gets together, mob action becomes violent." he shakes his head and tsks and ends up starting to wind his way about to get closer to Deckard and his bathrobe friend. Michael says, "Hey…shouldn't we get out of here, the cops and all that?" Adam shrugs, "They couldn't catch the Son of Sam, why should I worry?" Michael rolls his eyes, "They /did/ catch the Son of Sam. Berkowitz?" Adam looks up honestly surprised, "The Son of Sam was jewish?"
A second cough and a wheezy exhalation still have a hint of smokey kick to them well after the cigar's been passed off and Deckard's moved on into trying to save face, back straight, brow furrowed. Red and blue police lighting plays off both men in a winding cycle, one tall, one on the border of gigantic. Red to blue to red to blue with flickers of lurid orange from the lamp overhead filling the spaces in between.
Adam's approach is noted. It's only slightly obvious in the way Deckard manages to stand up still straighter, spine locked between the terse set of his shoulds while his bristly chin lifts after the manner of a horse having second thoughts about the reins holding it in place. Aaaah.
It's something of a minor miracle that his default salesman setting happens to be an answer rather than ignorance. His freed up right hand drifts to clasp Norman's without him actually looking to track it — he's too busy tracing back after the felled guy in the street with something that looks vaguely like guilt lined fuzzily in around the flat of his mouth. "Deckard. People are soulless."
Above Brian, she sees him deck the bearded man and stand over him. Maria lowers herself into a speaking range, to ask "What'd you hit him for?" And when closer, she gets a better look, which leads to her asking "Are you an undercover cop?" Fifteen feet up still, she doesn't seem about to interfere but she is curious about the assault she just witnessed.
Down goes the bearded dealer when elbow connects to jaw and the back of his head connects to the brick wall he'd backed up against. Like a ragdoll, his legs kick out from under him and he slouches down along the wall in the alley, one hand reflexively moving up to his mouth in a blurry, bleary-eyed few moments after teh hit connects. By now, Maria's angled herself to see this clearly, and when there's blood on his hand, a slur of profanity rolls out on a languid tongue.
"Ffffuck you, man! Fuck you I ain't given nobody nothin'!" The dealer scrambles back, shoulders up against the brick wall, "fuck you for thinkin' I did you fucking son of a bitch!" Foul mouth on this one. "Fuck, fuck you better not be no fuckin' cop." The dealer murmurs, holding the side of his head where he lays half leaned up against the wall of the alley on the ground.
Back across the street, the NYPD cruiser pulls up next to the site of the accident, the driver gettoung out and chirping a confirmation into the radio at his shoulder. He looks down at the boy, seeing his partner handling that, then moves across to the car that struck the kid and the hysterical driver. Their conversation, as he tries to calm her down, draws a frown from Norman.
"People are soulless, Deckard." Norman's words come with a yellowed smile. "You know, I always say this," his eyes narrow, "but fuckin' cops, right?" He glances over to Deckard, cigar pinched between his teeth before looking back over to the police. "You know, it'd be a real shame if somethin' happened to those pig fucks, wouldn't it?" Norman cracks a smile, and in that same moment the sound of cracking stone comes from the brick tenement building near the accident.
Six hundred pounds of brick, mortar and concrete slide from the damaged face of the building, tumbling down in the blink of an eye to both the officer and the young female driver who had hit the boy. The whole forth story ledge that collapsed crushes the both of them in a shower of stone dust, debris rising up in a powdery cloud. Screams erupt from the street as people clear the way from the fallen rubble.
"See? Like fuckin' animals. They're all bleets and yips the moment somethin' disturbs the herd. It's like… Fuck, I dunno." he waves one hand towards the debris cloud in explanation, unphased by the sudden violence when everyone else on the street is moving away from the building in shock. Norman's eyes angle towards the far end of the street, to the ambulance in the distance, its red lights flashing and horn blaring. "See? The people that matter aren't these lookie-loos."
Norman's focus shifts back to the crowd, to the panicked police officer trying to calm things down, and points two fingers up in the air. "Gotta' make room for the ambulance, right?" In that explanation and gesture, three cars moving down the street suddenly erupt into the air with a shattering of their axels as columns of asphalt and dirt rise up beneath them like pistons, shooting them into the air before sinking back down with awkward, cracks to the ground again.
Cartwheeling end over end as they smash repeatedly against the pavement, bouncing like tennis balls. One smashes through the plate glass front of a cosmetics boutique, another lands directly atop it with a shower of shattered glass, and the third car — someone elevated up to the second story — comes smashing through the windows of a tenement building before sliding out with a grinding of metal, stone, glass and screams, landing trunk-first on the sidewalk below as the panicked screams of the crowd rise to a horrified level. The car teeters, tips, and falls backwards to land on its roof.
"Now," Norman notes, "the ambulance can get to the boy." Screams fill the air, the small crowd that had gathered is fleeing from not only falling debris but the previously airborne vehicles. One of the cars crushed below the other erupts into flames, screams coming from inside of someone trapped, unable to escape.
"Well," Norman notes with a roll of his shoulders, parting his bathrobe to reveal gray pajamas, "all's done in a day's work, right Deckard?" His eyes track back to Flint with a wide grin. "Thanks a whole heap for the stogie, man. Kindness a'strangers really is a bright spot on my day."
"It'll be a whole lot easier if you just tell me." Brian murmurs as the man lays on the ground in front of him. But then there's a voice behind him. Whirling around, Brian blinks at the empty alleyway before his eyes go up. Oh what the hell. A curious flying pedestrian. A curious flying pedestrian is going to fuck this up. Saying he's a cop will screw him with the drug dealer, saying he's not a cop will screw him with the flyer. So Brian takes option three
A sharp kick is delivered at the drug dealer's stomach, as he bends over to search the man. Being somewhat careful so that he isn't accidentally stuck with a used syringe Brian frowns deeply, turning the man over physically until-
Falling backwards at the sudden destruction at the mouth of the alley, Brian raises an arm to shield his face. His eyes go wide before he looks up at Maria then back out at the destroyed cars and crushed cops. "Holy shit." He says in awe.
Alia ducks as the world goes topsy-turvy. She manages to avoid getting hit by the suddenly flying debre only by sheer luck as she finds herself too stunned by the sudden outbreak of everything to really flee, or do much of anything. She does the first thing that occurs to her, and dropping her board, skates not away from the wreckage, but TOWARDS it, and towards the screams.
Adam continues on through the crowd as he deals with the revelation that the Son of Sam was caught and apparently was jewish. Why he has a problem with the last part, is up to him, but he was a nazi so…you know. Anyway, he gets up to Deckard and bathrobe man about halfway through the conversation, just in time to see all the crazy bricks and mortar and cop cars. His eyes wide, then turn towards the homeless man, then back towards the street, then back towards the homeless man. An appropo comment might be "That was some of the coolest shit ever." but he's quiet for a moment and then walks up towards Deckard and Norman as if none of that happened, leaving Michael behind to gawk. He says, "Hello Deckard." with a casual smile. Who's your friend?"
The Flying Biochemist studies Brian and what he does, finds it a bit disturbing the way he kicks the downed man, but decides he's an undercover cop and is busy, he doesn't need or want distractions. Maria begins to move back up into the air, aiming for one hundred feet, and not a moment too soon as the building behind her becomes rubbled and there are cars in the air afterward. Her upward speed increases, she zips swiftly to 200 feet and gets clear, then uses her vantage point to scan the street below for people in need of assistance who might be small enough for her to carry. 125 pounds or less.
Some distance away across the shattered street, Brian's sentiment is echoed in graveled kind while Deckard just…stands there. Dumbstruck, used to the world falling apart. Who knows. "…Holy shit," is the first thing he can think to say, clear eyes blank against the now disordered swirl of colored light and screaming people, dust and smoke billowing down and up respectively. Mingling. The same vacant, brow-knit look of helplessness lifts over onto Norman, peejays and all. This time instinct fails him. Mouth slacked slightly open, he does not think to say, 'You're welcome.'
Fortunately the space where an awkward silence might go is filled with blood-curdling screams.
Then there's Adam. Adam and Michael and Deckard in a suit and Norman in his pajamas with a cigar and destruction and screaming and crying and runon sentences all around. Breathing a little faster now, like he might be on the verge of coming to his senses, it's all Deckard can do to force out a hazy, "Norman," on his way to shouldering past for the nearest ruptured person.
The screams Alia rushes towards come from a couple trapped in the car pinned beneath one of the propelled automobiles. Flames are swelling p from beneath the trapped vehicle, starting to catch in the unoccupied back seat. The passenger in the car is slouched to one side, his head impacted against the passenger's side window, unmoving. The driver, an asian woman in her early twenties is frantically trying to push the door open, not realizing how bardly deformed the car's roof and door are. Her passenger's side window has shattered out. but panic is keeping her from thinking clearly and crawling out through it.
Screams, people running, and Norman flashes Adam a smile as he sidles up towards he and Deckard. There's a narrowing of his eyes, one hand moving into his bathrobe before he withdraws something tucked between two fingers. "Norman White," he enunciates clearly, offering the hand out, "here's my card." The orange piece of card-stock says Monopoly on one side, and Get Out of Jail Free on the other, along with a cartoon depiction of a moustached man in a suit sneaking out of a jail cell.
At the sound of more approaching sirens, Norman's eyes focus past Adam towards Deckard's slinking advance towards a young woman holding her bleeding head, having been hit by a piece of flying automobile shrapnel. "Those sirens means our time is, unfortunately, up." The enormous, shaggily shaved man tips his head into a nod towards Adam. "But I think today was a real breakthrough for us," he adds with a flash of that yellowed smile, "maybe we'll have more next time." One large hand pats Adam on the shoulder as Norman smiles again, the cigar tucked into the corner of his mouth puffing with smoke as he starts to shoulder past Adam, headed towards a solid brick wall…
"You little bastard." Brian grunts, shoving a few things in his pockets. "I'm taking the money too, just for you being an asshole. Remember this. Kharma is a bitch." And with that, he goes to add a final vicious punch towards the man's face. Standing up and falling back from the downed man he turns to face the road.
Destruction, calamity. All had to be evolved. This is the kind of specimen the Company should be after. Brian reaches towards his back, pulling up his gray shirt a small black pistol is pulled out. A small .22 revolver. Not much of a gun, but since the hospital incident, he doesn't go out without a firearm. Walking out into the street, he keeps the gun pressed back behind his leg, his eyes searching the street wildly for any sign of what has done this.
Alia ignores the sounds of sirens, the other sounds, asssessing the danger… she reaches seemingly between her backpack and her back, grabbing something… there is a sound that, if it could be heard over the chaos around her, Adam likely would recongize very vicerly. The telltale sound of live steel being drawn from a sheath. She smashes her rapier's hilt into the driver's side window of the car, then quickly cuts the woman loose from her seatbelt that she likely had forgotten in the chaos. "Out window!" She shouts at the woman even as she quickly ditches her board to move to the passanger side to repeat the process, this time trying to physically pull the passanger out of the car. Her teacher would have been proud at her lack of hesitation, at her focus. Even if it was being applied in a very unusual manner. The archacic weapon is an oddity, but right now, it's proving to be too useful as she tries to get both victims away from t he burning car.
Adam blinks a bit at the monopoly card he's handed and then looks up at the yellow toothed man. Ok. So he's crazy. But then, people say he's crazy and he's definitely not. "Mr. White." he says, following the man to his brick wall, "Mr. White, I'm hoping that maybe we can talk sometime." he pauses, and pulls out his own business card, with a phone number and such and tries to hand it off, "Please, call me sometime." and then he sees a sword. A sword? He's the only one in NYC that runs around with a sword, doesn't he? his distraction may just lead to Mr. White getting away.
Gestures of comfort and reassurance aren't really Deckard's thing. There is a callous clumsiness to the way he reaches to cover one of the bleeding girl's hands with his own, palm rough against blood-matted hair. He swings his head around more than once to glance over his shoulder while he works, free hand grasping at her arm to hold her in place without offering any explanation. His life. Seriously.
Meanwhile, back at the trash bags Norman was a-slumbering in, a twitchy, whiskery nose tests the air. Smoke, hot metal, death. Beady black eyes and translucent ears follow with jerky urgency — one damp rat body plonking down out of equally damp garbage to scrabble for purchase on the pavement at Mr. White's heels.
The car where Alia smashes a window with her sword… sword?! draws Maria's attention. The latina wielding it seems within her ability to evacuate, as does the driver she gave an exit path to. Her speed increases, she moves to get close to the windshield and holds out a hand without touching ground. Time is short, she knows, with the flames happening. So she wastes none. In her best naval officer voice, she issues a command. "Take my hand." If the instruction is obeyed, she's soon swiftly rising with the woman to get well clear of the vehicle.
The driver of the car reels away when the remainder of the window is shattered and the glass cleared away, flinching when the razor's edge of the sword slashes her free from the seatbelt, and the fencing blade is withdrawn from the window. Turning towards the passenger, she struggles to grab at his shoulders, pry him free, something. "Paul! Paul wake up! Paul!" Her fingers curl in the fabric of his shirt, even as the flames grow large in the back of the car, "Paul!"
Coughing and choking, the drug dealer gets up onto his feet after a few minutes of laying prone and holding his gut. Shambling with one shoulder against the brick wall, he limps away a few steps from Brian, eyes focused up on the rooftops briefly, in search of Maria. He glances back over at Brian, distracted by the chaos in the street, and lurches his way down the alley to try and make a break for it. Today is not his day.
Over by Adam, Norman White carefully tucks his hands into the pockets of his fuzzy bathrobe. He turns to look back at his whiskered followed, both brows raising in a hello there, fella expression as he turns back towards the brick wall, slippers still scuffing on the sidewalk as he heads on a collision course with it. When Adam focus is torn away by the sounds of Alia and Maria getting the driver out of the burning car, it's Michael who has a response that catches his attention again. "Holy shit." The words draw Adam's attention back, and Norman is nowhere to be seen. "He just— " confusion on Michael's face, one hand smoothing over his mouth, "jesus." His eyes turn back to Adam, rolling his shoulders, "he walked— right through the— " brows furrow, turning to look back at the completely solid brick wall; both Norman and the mouse nowhere to be found "I hate this city."
The sudden tap of a hand and Maria's voice brings the driver's focus back to the broken window. It's just in time, as flames begin to lick at the back of her seat. Panicked and teary-eyed, she reaches out and grabs at Maria's hand, being pulled bodily out from the wreckage and lifted up into the air by her hand, legs kicking and swinging as she ascends away from the car, just in time for the gas tank to rupture in a sudden puff of flames and black smoke that billows up around the pinned.
While all of this transpiring, what seems to come naturally these days to Flint Deckard is so against his very stubbly grain. Holding the injured woman down carefully, he can already feel the warmth of something inside of him seeping out through his hands, that familiar sense of drain on himself that prickles at his palms and draws a confused look from the injured woman. "D— Don't hurt me…"
Being Flint Deckard is never easy. His life. Seriously.
Looking agape down the street as a man walks into a wall. Brian stares at Adam for a moment, and then Michael. The drug dealer, he allows to escape. The gun is slipped back into the holster on his back as he takes a few quiet steps backward. A quick brawl between him and his conscience ensues, on the issue of whether or not to help people out of cars. His hands twitch at his sides as he glares. A deep frown pulls over his features. Looking down into his pockets he sighs. A final glance over to Adam before he takes another step back.
Sometimes the right thing isn't the right thing.
Brian flees.
Alia growls as she is driven back by the flames as she was trying to get the man who was pinned loose but her arms are only so strong and she realizes that if she stays too close much longer, it likely will be her that is going to the ER. She whispers "Sorry," As she retreats, tears in her eyes. It isn't until a few moments later that she realizes her skateboard, when she had ditched it, had rolled under the car… and that means her method of transport is about to go up in flames to. She sheathes the sword back in the well concealed scabbard in her backpack, a practiced motion if there ever was one. She had tried, and in this case, only half succeeded. She sums up the event in one simple word. "Shit."
Adam turns and looks at the wall Norman White disappeared into. He frowns a moment and turns to Michael, then the wall. "I must have that man work for me." he comments thoughtfully, then glances back in the destruction. He could rush in there, carry out bodies with no fear of life and limb. Or, he could walk away and find a nice little deli to get ham and swiss on rye." he pauses a moment as he notices one of his fellow bank hostagees and waves as if it were a sunny day in the park. He tries to remember her name, "What's her name Michael…it was like…Ally or Allison or something."
While there are pre-existing lines etched into Deckard's face to cover resignation, patient resignation is less his style. It's odd in his eyes and in the skewed slant of his mouth, too faint to constitute a half-smile. …If she was someone he knew, it might be creepy. Since she isn't, it's mostly just unsettling — especially since he opts not to answer her or explain himself. Creeping warmth saturates through the ache in her skull, mending and numbing as a car belches flame and freshly shattered glass across the scene at his back. "Dear Diary, today I met an angry insane person and people were ungrateful."
The driver of the car is set down gently about a block away, her hand let go of only then, and Maria doesn't stick around to even hear words of gratitude. She rises back into the air while looking for more people needing help. Alia is spotted, perhaps still in range of the flames, and is approached on the fly. Maria's moving at a rapid clip now, hands outstretched to grab the Latina and fly her out of danger. If Alia moves fast, she just might manage to snag her skateboard just before the airlift arrives.
Sirens are approaching, more and more by the minute. Police cruisers coming from the wrong side of a one-way street, ambulances sent during the initial 911 call blaring past traffic with the loud report of a honking horn. Cruisers pull up and police officers are emerging, some looking up at the crumbling facade of the tenement building that collapsed, others looking to the flying woman zipping back from having deposited one of the injured woman.
One of the officers starts waving Maria down from the air, badge held out in the hopes that she doesn't just bail. Others are starting to move through the injured and panicked, some sweeping out to try and find the person responsible for this. None of them seem to realize what Flint Deckard is doing, that the woman he moves his hands away from had a bleeding gash in her forehead moments ago; now just a bloody mark on her brow and no wound to speak of. She's staring up at Deckard, wide-eyed and in disbelief, shaky fingers pawing at where her skin was once rent open.
The sounds of the sirens rise up beyond the street level, past the tops of skyscrapers and into the partly cloudy New York skyline. It's just another day in the city, here in the neighborhood of Chelsea, just another day in the city.
Business as usual.