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Scene Title | The Many and the Few |
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Synopsis | On the night of the election, Phoenix makes miracles happen, but ones that go unsaid. |
Date | November 4, 2008 |
Canal Street Market, Chinatown
Day or night, Canal Street is busy in Chinatown. Perfumes, purses, produce, pork, and poultry are all sold side by side in busy open storefronts. One entire portion of the street is dedicated to nothing but jewelry stores catering to various price ranges. Box vendors sell all manner of sizzling foodstuffs to passing pedestrians, some of it identifiable, some of it better left unexplained. The ambiance is one of business and pleasure.
Long shadows cast across the streets packed to capacity within the heart of Chinatown. On any evening, Canal Street is a busy and bustling site in this borough of New York, but tonight — of all nights — it is far busier than normal. The crowds out in the street are some spilling over from the Financial District, others residents of Chinatown out for the most singularly busy night of the evening thus far in the year. Steam rises up in billowing waves from the manhole covers in the crowded streets, the voices of not only roadside vendors and peddlers fill the air, the the sounds of automobiles and cheering people.
Televisions in the windows of storefronts are all tuned into the same coverage, the singular event that has this city so polarized and at the same time so energized. Flashes of Allen Rickham, Andrew Mitchell and Nathan Petrelli fill the screens, followed by colorful maps, graphs and charts of early election predictions. Tonight is a turning-point not only in the history of the country, but also in the life of one young girl.
Amidst the crowded and packed streets of Chinatown's most famous and busy market, no one could possibly imagine, or even find concern with the changes of one person's life. But here, within the sea of so many gathered in the crisp late autumn air in the fleeting wisps of dusk change is coming. Both for the many…
"Hey, there you are!"
…and the few.
"What took you so long!?" Stepping out from the shadow of a fruit stand, a young man dressed in a motorcycle jacket waves down a young girl making her way through the crowd carrying a pair of plastic bags, "You went shopping?" The approaching girl, nudging her way through the crowds, ducks her head down and shoulders past a pair of Rickham supports waving signs over their heads.
"Sorry jerkface," Colette responds with a wrinkled nose, "Can you believe the crowds tonight? It's like — crazytown." One milky-white and one emerald-green eye scans the crowds around her, then back up to the dark-haired young man in front of her. "Where's your Rickham-buddies, Trent?"
"Up at Columbia, getting ready to watch the election coverage. It's gonna be hard dodging the Hero-card Petrelli can throw down now after taking that bullet. Did you walk here?" The girl nods, setting down her bags with a grimace, fingers curling within the overly long fabric of her bright red hooded sweatshirt's sleeves.
"Bus, but close enough." Colette looks out over the crowds of people, "Man, it feels like it's going to be crazy tonight…"
Jezebel rides her Harley into Canal Street, pulling into the first thing resembling a parking space. Once the bike is parked, she pulls off her dark helmet, then closes her eyes. "I could *swear* I heard explosions," she mutters. She looks around, hoping to see what made all the noise.
Every now and then, Helena gets the urge to cook for people. Yes, even for as many people as qualify as 'roommates' with her at the moment, but she's picky about her ingredients, as a good chef would be. And so she dragged Abby along with her to Chinatown, in search of certain perfect and exotic vegetables, thus rendering both girls with arms full of paper grocery sacks. It's going to be a long way back to home base.
Of which, Abby has no issues carrying them. After their talk the other day, the religious woman is feeling bad, and guilty. So it's make up mode, and putting what limited knowledge of foreign food, read none, to work and helping the Phoenix Leader out. "Your promising this is going to be the best meal I ever had, despite whatever happens tonight? Was a treat, to go into town and have chinese food. I had it like… twice a year, when we went into the city" Abby's dressed for weather, a scarf around her neck and grin on her face that things for now seem better between her and Helena. Maybe.
Alexander is the third terrorist. Only, just out shopping. He's dressed in his army parka, jeans, boots, a knit watchcap covering the bright hair. He's trailing Helena and Abby, and watching the bustle of the market with a tourist's open wonder.
Deckard is showing his support by…oh. Wait. He isn't showing his support. He's arguing with a chinese guy about a price for the (suspiciously unpackaged) car battery he has slung up under his right arm. There is finger jabbing going on, followed by a reach for the battery that prompts Flint to turn his shoulder to the man's over-eager advances. "Try again and I'll fill your eyes with so much mace that you'll have to scrub your corneas clean with a fucking toothbrush." The busy life of a travelling salesman.
Food is certainly not the only thing to buy on Canal Street. To be blunt, there are probably far better places to buy food, period. There is a redhead among the other colors of hair and hats in the street crowd, bobbing along towards a shopfront with a tiptoeing sort of innocence. Delilah, wrapped up in a woolen peacoat over a dark blue dress, and black stockings, meanders her way through the figures with both brown eyes upon the televisions and the different faces. She brushes past Flint Deckard with a click-click of her short boots, and past a smelly perfume stall with rows upon rows of colorful bottles. Pretty soon, she comes into the vicinity of Colette and Trent, attention wholly elsewhere and quite possibly in La-la Land.
"The bus, all the way from Queens?" Trent cocks his head to the side incredulously, hands resting on his hips. Colette cracks a smile, shifting her weight to one foot as she clics her tongue and uses one small hand to brush her dark bangs away from her face, tucking a few errant locks behind one ear.
"Actually I moved, I'm back down at Rivage now." Her cold hands tuck into the front pouch of her hoodie, shoulders rolling forward. "Did you already vote? You're lucky, you know, being able to do that. I'd totally do it if given the opportunity." There's a hint of a rueful smile on Colette's face, head tilting down for a moment, letting those jagged bangs fall back in front of her eyes.
"I was at the polls at six am, kid." He cracks a smile, "You're gonna be at the memorial on Saturday, right? Not going to bail on me like you did for the rally during the debates, right?"
"I had things to do." Colette wrinkles her nose again, though the girl is nudged to the side as a pair of people rudely push past. Her eyes immediately dart to the raised voices nearby, looking first at the wild-eyed older man leaning forward and finger-wagging into the vendor stall, then down to the car battery under his arm, and then over to Trent, silently mouthing what the fuck? as she rolls her shoulders and points with one wiggling finger towards Deckard.
Trent shifts his eyes to the side, glancing at the man, then snorts out a laugh, "Gonna' be more crazy stuff than that toni — " A series of loud pops in the air cuts Trent off, and both he and Colette look up with wide eyes, only to see flashes of bright colors and whistling shrieks that rise up over the buildings, followed by the crackling snap of fireworks that burst over Chinatown. "If Rickham doesn't win, it's gonna be 1984 up one side and down another here."
Out front of a nearby electronics store, a few people listening to a radio let out a loud cheer at something overheard, and across the street other smaller cheers break out, but it's hardly unanimous. The election taking place has divided almost every portion of the city, and the country, into three seperate sections, all staring one another down ideologically.
"….Nineteen-eighty-four?" The reference is lost on Colette, and Trent strains out a sigh as he slaps one hand to his forehead. "What!?" She huffs, throwing her arms down at her sides, "I wasn't even born yet!" That elicits another groan as he wipes his hand down his face, only to be bumped into from behind, stumbling forward into Colette, who's awkward posture at the moment causes her to tumble off balance, falling backwards onto her rear with a squea of surprise. Trent stumbles, but manages to catch himself by grabbing a hold of Deckard wildly, trying to keep from falling face-first onto the sidewalk. Delilah, having begun this domino-chain, wavers a bit where she stands, stumbling backwards in mid-fall towards the dark-haired woman who was bold enough to squeeze a motorcycle thorugh this crowded street.
Jezebel does her best to plant her feet before trying to catch Delilah. Her motorcycle suit doesn't confer extra balance, just protection from road rash. She really, really doesn't want to fall back into her Harley and start knocking over who-knows-what.
Helena strains her neck, wanting to catch a glimpse of the poll results thus far. With a sigh, she keeps on going, and smiles sidelong to Abby. "It'll be as good as I can make it, with the sort of cooking units we have. But I promise it'll be at least better than edible. I'm sure Teo and Al will weep in appreciation." Her wry tone implies they'd better!
'Oh, I'm sure they will and be kissing your feet" Abby laughs, the sound drifting around them. She stops though at the familiar sight of deckard, just, less beat up. "Shit" One bag is transferred to the other occupied hand, and hastily wraps her scarf a little better around her and to hide part of her face. Her eyes on the battery bearing man, even as he's bumped into and a rube goldberg starts. "I met him, in the diner. Beat up and scraped to hell 'n back. he knows, I think. Walk faster Hel" Abby hisses.
"I'll wash your feet," Al says, apparently serious. Or so his deadpan would indicate. He's got each hand jammed into the opposite sleeve, like a monk. And then his gaze flickers around warily at Abby's comment. "Whom do you mean?" he asks, tone low, though not quite a whisper.
"It's in perfect condition, and I told you I would charge for labor, Wang-Chung. You'll pay what — HEY." At the Delilah brush, Deckard stiffens upright out of his attempt at a threatening mutter to narrow too-blue eyes sharply after the path of her escape. A distracted pat at his own ass is enough to determine that his wallet is still in place, and so pursuit is aborted before it actually begins.
Which, of course, leaves him in prime position to be toppled into.
There is enough humanity in the wiry man that his initial instinct is to brace the incoming Trent with his free left hand, but he's being clutched at too, and that complicates things. Enough so that the Chinaman glimpses golden opportunity, snatches the battery from Flint's shaken grip, and vanishes into the surrounding crowd. "I — god damn it! What the fuck is the matter with you?" Automatic assistance turns into a bolder shove, just in time for Abby to do her scarf thing. He doubletakes.
Delilah is all of a sudden…not standing up straight! The girl gives out a startled sort of squeak before tumbling into Jezebel's clutch. She manages to push herself back up again on a pivot without knocking the woman or her bike over. Dee's face turns to see immediately who she had buffeted into, and the faces directly around her.
Incidentally, standing up brings her back into the path of Trent, who is being muscled back towards her by Flint. "I'm sorry!" Is the only thing that manages to leak out before the young woman literally gets squashed into Trent from momentum and the fact the crowd is being shoved back and forth all of a sudden. She's just trying to find something to hold onto at the moment, be it a person, or a coat, or what have you.
Trent lets out a yelp of surprise, even more so when he hears Deckard's howling voice and the shove. With enough balance to stay on his feet, Trent stumbles back and away from Deckard with eyes wide, "O-Oh shit s-sorry!" He doesn't have much time to apologize to the wild-eyed man just moments ago spewing violent profanity at a man on the side of the street before he's collided into again, and it's about now where his patience completely runs out. "God damnit!" He shouts out, knocked back into the marketplace stall nearby, sending a basket of apples down onto the pavement, sending the fruit rolling away in all directions. He grabs at the auburn-haired girl's hands, yanking her back and away with a stern expression, "Watch where the hell you're going!".
Colette, down on her backside, lets out a muffled groan with one eye squinted shut, lifting her hands up and looking to her reddened palms. She grumbles, struggling up to her feet as she hears Trent shouting at the girl, "Hey!" She puffs out her cheeks, "Trent you dumbass!" She crouches down and snatches her bags grumpily. The loud pop-pop-crackle-bang of fireworks overhead drowns out the sound of voices for a moment in the chaos, flooding the street in hues of purple, yellow and red.
Jezebel was bracing to catch everyone, but apparently doesn't need to. She looks up at the fireworks, smiling. She seems content to watch the firework display, for the time being.
Helena blanches a little bit at the display in surprise, but it's soon replaced with fascination before she's jostled by Abby to keep moving. She concedes, making her pace quicker before murmuring, "What is it?" as they pass along.
'He came into the diner, and he was all beat up, puppy dog looking. I mean he put his head down on the counter and looked like he might pass out. I healed him. But I think he knew. he just kept staring at me. I bandaged him up and gave him some advil. Just enough that he wouldn't feel it so much the next day. can we just move, before he stops m… shit, he saw me" Her eyes lock onto Deckards and she looks away and stops. 'just uhh, go ahead, i'll catch up. he doesn't need to know about you guys"
"I'm registered, angel," Al says, with complete aplomb. "But if you think we should fade into the crowd, it can be done."
Deckard flinches out of the stare he's aimed after Abby And Friends at the second round of fireworks, blind to purple, yellow and red, but accustomed enough to their going off overhead at this point that he's stopped trying to duck and cover. Still. It's enough to remind him of what he was initially pissed off about, and his scruffy head snaps around in the direction the thief might have gone in. He can see through the mass of bodies nearest him, but…there are a lot of bodies to see through, and they're all moving. No sign of the battery. Momentarily ignoring Trent's apology and the ripples that are still sprawling outward from the initial clash, he sets to cursing again.
With the fireworks overhead, booming and sparkling in the evening skies, and the crowd still loud and almost waving about into one another, there is only so much surprise and excitement that a girl can take on in such a short time. Adrenaline, confusion, whatever you want to blame; when Trent grabs Delilah by her hands and yanks her to attention, those brown eyes are wide like a rabbit's, and her skin flushing into flustered splotches.
Even on this cool night, the girl's visible skin is suddenly slick with what seems like sweat. Perhaps it is, in part, but not as a whole. In just a few more moments, Trent will be feeling…abnormally different, certainly.
"Let go of me!" The deceptively sweet-looking girl almost seems like she's going to start snarling. Must be the red hair.
Trent's hands slide away from Delilah's with a wet slickness, "Jesus Colette she should watch where the hell she's going!" He loosk down at his hand, wrinklign his nose, "Man, what the hell's wrong with you!?" Wiping his palm across the side of his jeans, Trent flicks his gaze back to Delilah with a scowl, then looks over to Deckard, "And what're you looking at?" So easily pushed into an angry corner. Colette walks up, slapping a hand on Trent's shoulder, giving a tug.
"Come on you dumbass, let's get out of here." The girl's mis-matched eyes flick over to Delilah, offering her a grimacing smile. "He doesn't mean it, r-really." Her shoulders roll forward, and just as she looks back to Trent, her eyes grow wide, followed by a shriek as she notices how red the young man's face has become, hands shaking and shoulders trembling, a white frothing foam beginning to stream out of one corner of his mouth. "TRENT!"
The young man's legs buckel out from beneath him, extremeties kicking and twitching wildly, splotches of red discoloration like hives fading up through his fair skin. Colette drops her bags, canned food falling out with a clunk, one can rolling across the street. The nearby crowd begins to spread out when Trent falls over, a loud murmur of voices filling the air. "Oh my god, oh my god, Trent! Trent!"
Spasming on the ground, Trent's eyes roll back in his head, and Colette's eyes dart around the young man's body. On his hands, the ones that had gripped Delilah's hands are pricked with droplets of blood being expunged thorugh his skin. "Oh my god! Some one help! Holy shit! Trent! Somebody call — Someone — Help!" She looks up to Delilah, eyes wide, "What did you do to him!? What did you do to him!!?"
Jezebel unzips her motorcycle suit a bit, rummages around inside for a bit and pulls out that universal demonic summoning device, a cell phone. She calls 911!
Helena spots the guy going down and pauses mid-step. "Abby - " she breathes, looking over to the guy just went down. She doesn't say anything else, merely draws Abby's attention to it. She'll let the blonde decide if there's, well, something to do. Helena can offer cover, but that's about it. "Did you see that?"
'I did" It's a torn statement, but, it's Abby, and within split seconds she's put the pags down and pulling off her little thin gloves and pushing her way towards trent. "I can help!" She calls out, happy she has her hair covered and a scarf up. "Please, I can help!" Deckard is sure to recognize and quite possibly, trent as Abby tries to make her way to kneel beside trent.
"You." Having turned back to the group from the now hopeless task of trying to locate his, his car battery, Flint tips his head a few fractions of a second before the guy actually collapses. Mouth slacked slightly open and eyes definitely unnatural in the intensity of their glow, he just stares while Jezebel dials 911, and takes half a step back to allow Abby a clear passage to Trent's thrashing. "His heart's about to beat out of his chest." Theeen he looks to Delilah and Colette. He sure as fuck didn't do it.
Delilah is perfectly find with initially leaving the bastard be, but when the commotion begins again, the girl stops to turn around to see what it is all about. The look on the redhead's face is pretty much back to that wide-eyed, ghastly stare of surprise. When Colette's voice rattles her out of her head, Delilah turns her eyes and shakes her head immediately.
A shout comes back, that quickly wavers into a noise of confusion. "I didn't do a damn bloody thing to him! Is he having a seizure?!" Hands reach to pull at the front of her coat, shoulders twisting in anxiety where she stands. Her attention flutters up to Deckard, eyeing him as if he were another crazy person.
Colette is panicked, not sure what to do, kneeling down by Trent's side with her eyes wide and threatening to burst out into tears from fear. The young man continues to kick and froth from whatever chemical was induced into his system, hands still pricked with very tiny droplets of blood, palms bright red from the very obvious allergic reaction, his body going into shock from what looks like a severe allergic reaction.
When Abby comes rushing over, Colette does nothing to dismiss her, "H-help him! S-she — She did something to him!" Her eyes whip up to Delilah, "She — He touched her and — she was yelling — he's — Oh my god, oh my god!" She finally spots the blood on his palms, her whole body treembling. The deference of Delilah to Trent's immediate reaction brings a baleful stare from the tiny girl, "He grabbed your hands and now he's freaking out! He's bleeding!" Her brow lowers, "What did you do!? Make it stop!" Fear sinks in, deep down, the fear of what she has been trying to repress. "Stop it you're killing him!"
Paranoia.
The crowd becomes more vocal, drawing people from across the street, some people on their phones like the biker-woman, others taking pictures with their cell-phone cameras without bothering to call for help.
No police or ambulances in sight, not that an ambulance could ever hope to get through this crowd in time.
Jezebel tries anyway. "Hello?" she says into her cell phone. "We need an ambulance down at the huge market on… " she pauses to check, or remember the last street sign she saw, "Canal Street. There's a man going into convulsions and foaming at the mouth. No, I have no idea if he's epileptic… "
Oh, let's not get this to be any worse than it has to be. Helena follows Abby, and the air starts to get cooler - slowly but surely, a mist is forming, making things a bit hard to see, save in the center of the hole where Abby and Helena and the guy who went down and whatnot are. Camera phones should hopefully have a hard time getting a decent picture, and there should be a modicum of privacy. Helena seems prepared to concentrate the mist as necessary, and well - she's got other tricks up her sleeve.
"Not if I can help it" The face concealed blonde who's trying to disguise her accent. "Don't call an ambulance. I just need his neck, or his chest would be faster" Abby's not reaching for anything in any bag, or pockets, inwardly thankful for helena and her trick. She's just pushing up her sleeves, quickly as she can. "Not going to die on me you unlucky bugger. You owe me coffee" She mutters. "Not meeting your maker today, no siree. Not if I have any say in it" She works, with everyone else, try to get one palm and then other to his chest, skin to skin. Faster, quicker. Over him she kneels, trying to pour the whole of her energy and try and save the man where he lays. Not a care for the fast that she's getting blood on her, just an under her breath singing, some incomprehensible and faint to heard prayer reapeated over and over.
Abby's hands are warm, gentle, even as they're searching for skin to contact with. With the touch though, no matter how fleeting and then very present it is, there's tingling and greater warmth that seems to suffuse from it's point of entry and go to the body parts that need it most. It's slow, not so slow that he'll succumb, and the effects are felt immediately, but it's not fast. Trents heart will start to calm, all the wrongs, being put right by the woman who looms.
"He's not epileptic. He's dying." Cool. Flint continues to watch, hardly blinking until someone tries to wave their phone in past his shoulder. Click, goes the picture. Click, goes the safety on his gun when flashes the butt of it at the picture-taker and wrestles the phone out of their grip with his free hand. "No flash photography." They protest. He tugs the gun out a little more, and his glare goes dull while he flips the phone back open and thumbs his way quickly over to check the picture quality. Thanks to the mist, it sucks, so he chivalrously flings the device back at its owner and turns once more to the fray's epicenter. Likewise thanks to the mist, when his ability switches on again, the lurid light of his glare hangs ghostly in the air around his head. He watches.
About now, there is only clamminess to Delilah. No real hints as to what actually happened. Whatever it is, it is colorless, and Trent had bad luck with it.
"I didn't do ANYTHING. I'm not DOING anything! Stop bloody sayin' that!" The girl reasserts with a half-scream in her choppy accent. "Is he allergic to something?! You can't be allergic to people, can you?" Dumb question, but. At this point, little Red can feel her own heart beating a thousand miles a minute. For all intensive purposes, the Toad-Girl is more like a deer-in-the-headlights. Perhaps out of uncertainty, and perhaps out of reverence for the man's suddenly odd incentive to wreck a phone, Delilah does take some unconscious side-and-back steps towards Flint.
Behind Colette, Flint's gun brandishing goes unnoticed, thankfully for her already burgeoning fear. But the sound of raised voices all seem just too much to her. She watches Abby, though, eyes wide with a bit of disbelief and confusion, "W-what are you doing, he needs a doc — " Colette's eyes grow wide as she watches Abby part the front of Trent's motorcycle jacket, then unbutton his shirt hastily and slide her hands over his chest. Her lips part briefly, in awkward uncertainty, but the momenbt Trent's extremeties stop trembling and shaking, her first reaction is that he just died.
Fingers curl, his back arches and Trent's head stays pressed back against the street. A breath pushes out through his mouth, legs writhing as his heels scrape across the street. Trent's eyes open wide, tears from the pain he had felt finally rolling out of the corner of his eyes, even as his breathing seems to regulate.
It's only now that Colette can see the fog rising up and hear the sounds of the crowd's confusion. She looks around, watching Delilah backing away, then her attention goes back to the young college student gasping out breaths from a throat that is no longer constructing closed. "Oh… oh my God," she whispers in disbelief, looking over to Abby with wide eyes, "W-what did…" She stares at the girl through the drifting waves of fog and mist, looking at the serene expression on the young woman's face, the muted light reflecting off of the glinting gold cross around her neck, then down to Trent. She's awestruck.
"Whar…" Trent rasps out a wet slur of words, "What did… it hurts…" His jaw clenches slightly, even as the pain begins to fade from the touch, breathing leveling out, whatever the young blonde did worked miracles. Some people who didn't back up witness the events, trying to parse exactly what they're seeing play out before their eyes. A man touches someone, and begins to have a violent reaction, and then another woman approaches and seems to take away the pain and injury. It's a lot to grasp.
Keeping the mist in mind, Helena moves over to where Delilah is flipping out. Holding her hands up as if in supplication, her tone is nonetheless meant to penetrate through the hysteria, calm but strong. "Listen - you need to calm down." she says. "Something extraordinary's happened and it won't be figured out until you get control of yourself and we get you out of here…so please," she looks around hastily, "Just…breathe. Calm down." It's like dealing with a spooked horse, only it's a person. She also keeps a watchful eye on Abby.
Jezebel takes a deep breath, then talks to her cell phone. "Wait, he stopped convulsing and actually said something." She listens, then replies, "Honest, he looked horrible." She listens a third time, then glares at her phone before tucking it away. Her eyes blink shut for a moment as she takes a second deep breath.
Even when trent starts speaking, Abby doesn't stop, jsut lost in her own little world, lips moving quick and low behind her scarf as she switches from one prayer to the next. Her gift will tell her when she's done, till then, she won't stop. It's a face maybe, possibly familiar to trent, what little of it can see. Same for Deckard if he's keen. The womans head starts to droop a little, voice going just a shade more quieter and her eyes close tight.
Eyes blazing, Flint tracks Delilah's approach without making much of a show of not being able to see her or whatever. For some reason he's really not that enthusiastic about her proximity. "You should listen to her," he offers a little distantly, tipping his chin back to Helenah. "I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure nearly killing a guy in the middle of the street is a felony." Abby, Trent, and Colette get a sidelong glance, and his mouth thins.
The parallel of a spooked horse is certainly not that far off. Delilah looks from Flint to the stranger now speaking so cryptically to her. "Who are you? Not yelling anymore, but her words are still rather boiling. "I didn't do anything to him, much less try and kill him." The freckled female face turns to Flint with a jutting of the jaw and a clutching at the front of her own coat, feet hesitant between him and Helena, and eyes bouncing back towards the other girl again. "I don't understand what you think is going on." Delilah's denial isn't gone, by far, but her temper has certainly jaded itself to normal.
"T-Trent? H-hey jerk, y-you worried me there…" Colette lets out a meek sound in the back of her throat as she crawls on her hands and knees across the street, sending an aluminum can rolling across the pavement. Her mis-matched eyes divert up to Abby, one of them a milky-white and blinded eye opposing the bright green eye next to it. "W-what did you do?" There's a hushed tone to her voice, an almost reverent and dumbfounded one as she lays a hand on Trent's shoulder.
"Holy shit." Trent strains, obviously unaware of what particular blonde he's laying beside, "I… I thought i was going to — " He blinks, abruptly sitting up and looking down at his palms, tiny little dried droplets of blood there, all of the splotches of red have faded from his skin, and there's a dumbfounded look in his eyes as he just stares at Abby. "I was going to die, then — There was this… it was warm." He sounds perfectly fine, not a hitch to his voice or any sign her was hurt. The crowd is growing thicker now, people trying to spot what's going on in the fog, even as another pop and crack of fireworks overhead absolutely bathes the mist in fiery orange hues, followed by bright shades of blue and green.
Both Trent and Colette are staring with wide-eyed wonder at Abby, but Colette is the only one who can manage words at the moment, "Y-you're…" Her brows knit together, and then worry sets in as she begins looking around the crowd, leaning over Trent, "We gotta get Trent outta' here. I — I don't know what I'd tell the cops if — Oh god Judah." Colette blinks for a moment, then looks back up at Abby, "Judah." Her eyes widen, then narrow, and she reaches out as if to grab Abby by the hand, then hesitates. "D-Did you really help Trent?" Now she needs to know.
Jezebel walks over to the rest of the clump, moving slowly so as not to frighten anyone. For the same reason, she keeps her voice quiet and calm as she asks, "Does anyone need help?"
'I'm not going to ask for twenty pieces of silver. It wasn't me. It was god. Not me. /God/. Do you understand? Don't look for me" Abby's answer when she pulls her hands back, voice weak. "It was a prank. Someone threw, red food dye, something, you thought it would be funny. Lie. Just /don't/ come find me. please" Abby's eyes meet the other two there beside her before the blonde stands up abruptly, turns to leave, stumbling a bit as she tries to Reach for Helena. 'Get me out of here. Quick. before I pass out"
"Not helping!" Helena gives Deckard a look, then continues to Delilah, "Someone here has had an Evolved gene activate, and the likely candidate is you." Before Delilah can protest, Helena overruns, "Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but people are going to start pointing fingers and they're going to do it really soon. We need to keep from being mobbed, so you need to high tail it, okay? I have to get my friend." The mist increases, which might make it difficult for Jezebel, as she goes and slings Abby's arm around her shoulder, helping her to move away as quickly as she can. Del may or may not follow, but Abby and Helena are making like Tom and cruising. The mist will thicken surrounding them, but within a foot or two of themselves, all is clear. Funny, that.
Jezebel frowns for a moment as the mist thickens. Then she shrugs. She puts her helmet back on and zips up her suit. Hmm, walk the bike clear of the crowd, or go shopping?
One corner of Flint's mouth twitches up at the Look, effectively matching it with a less-than-pleasant Look of his own. It helps when you have creepy glowing eyes. But he doesn't offer up anything more inflammatory. Rather, he reaches into his coat after a carton of cigarettes and sets about the process of lighting up while the major players start to disperse. The light in his eyes doesn't fade until he's had his first drag and turned to shoulder his way back into the crowd.
Colette gives a little start as the woman walks over, and mis-matched eyes upturn towards her, brow furrowing for a moment before a hesitant smile crosses her face. "N-no, I — " She looks at Trent, "Everything's okay, I just — " She looks back over to Abby, "I need your help. If — If you're like her," she doesn't specify at all what she's talking about, "you can help Judah." The young girl seems to have almost single-mindedly forgotten about Trent, who looks down at his unbuttoned shirt, then to Abby, wiping at the corner of his mouth. His face flushes a bright red, bashfully smiling to the blonde.
"H-Hey w-wait, you — w-what's your name?" Trent's a bit awestruck, so much so that he hasn't even bothered to close his shirt, or move from the seated position. Colette, however, pushes up to her feet when Helena moves over and helps Abby up, squinting as the fog grows more thick.
"N-no! I — You — You can fix his back! Y-you have to help him!" There's a weak, pleading tone to the girl's voice, she doesn't realize the strain Abby's ability has put on her. "Don't go!"
But they're already gone, and Colette looks down franticly to Trent. She breathes in deeply through her nose, crouching down to grab him by the hand and yank him up to his feet, "Get up goddamnit!" The girl growls out in a squeaking voice, all five and a half feet of her struggle to pull the young man up to his feet as she watches the people in the crowd, spotting the blue glow of Deckard's eyes as her breath hitching in the back of her throat from the ominous sight of his silhouette and luminous eyes. "Come on!"
"C-Colette, w-what's — " Trent staggers, shivvering as cold air blows against his open chest, "What the hell is going on?" He whines out helplessly, one boot clunking a can of food rolling away as they try to slip away in the fog weakly.
Delilah , though confused, bewildered, and frustrated, is in no mood to stick around now. Especially when Helena's proclamation came with her leaving; the first thing the redhead does is look to Flint and those bizarre eyes of his, then to the departing Colette, and only lastly does the girl gather her arms around herself and take off at a trot for Helena's retreating direction. Only one person there seemed to try and calm her down — only two seemed to know what they were doing — three will meet again further away, in a safer place.
November 4th: It's Still Ivy League |
November 4th: Featherlight |