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Scene Title | Who's Afraid of the Dark? |
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Synopsis | With power outages becoming more frequent and longer lasting, some citizens of the Safe Zone find a scapegoat and an unfulfilling release of tension. |
Date | September 22, 2018 |
Sheepshead Bay has seen better days. Much better. But as much of it as there is that lies in decay, it has at least one thriving venture: bars. People don't seem to come to party, but to drown their sorrows and shake off a rough day. Tonight, however, the lights never came on. And signs sit in windows, all proclaiming one thing:
CLOSED FOR POWER OUTAGE
A crowd has gathered outside a bar, flashlights and phones being used to light up the sign and look in the windows. Angry rumblings already stir within the mass of people. Hard to make out, but it isn't hard to guess what they're upset about.
One man pushes through the crowd, coming up toward the bar doors. Large fists pound against wood, making glass and metal shudder. Inside, the owner can just barely be seen coming out from a back room. He also has a flashlight, which sweeps over the crowd. He waves his arms, points at the sign, and shouts, "We're closed!" although it is muffled by distance and doors.
Among the crowd of people stands Lucille, pale blue eyes looking around. Her bike parked around the corner she slips a hand under her asymmetrical blazer into her waistband, pulling at the material as she sees the anger in the crowd. Wanting a drink was something the woman wanted often after the news of her dad being sick. This, was an inconvenience.
Weight shifting to her right hip the auburn haired woman looks over at the man that she's with, “Well that fucking sucks. I was hoping to get hammered and make you drive me home.” Any assortment of weapons Lucille may have on her person aren't seen at the moment, a pale hand goes to flick strands of hair out of her eye. “As in really hoping.”
It’s not the best part of town, that’s for sure, but there’s one thing that Sheepshead Bay does have — Brooklyn College. Although Lance isn’t a student himself, he was on his way to meet some of his friends who were. He was strolling down the darkened street at a brisk step with a messenger bag slung over one shoulder, sleeveless hoodie’s hood drawn up and a long-sleeved shirt of a paler color covering his arms, because his fashion sense was apparently trapped in the 90s.
Given that most of the past decade was fire and death, maybe he can be forgiven that.
As he comes upon the crowd, his steps slow… and he moves to cross the street with plans to circle around, keeping a wary eye on the situation. Angry crowds can just get ugly sometimes, as he’s seen before.
“Yep, that sucks.” Devon’s tone is deadpan as he echoes Lucille’s sentiments. He finds himself feeling ambiguous to the lack of booze being available. It might also be partly due to the company he’s with, some minor annoyance with the woman that he doesn’t feel like explaining away. But since they are teammates, he’d agreed to go, if only to make sure she got back to wherever she was staying in one piece. It didn’t mean he’d have to hang around with her the entire evening.
He’s watching the crowd with arms folded over his chest. They should probably move on, instead of getting caught up in whatever storm is brewing in that crowd. But Dev knows he’ll never talk Luce out of it. Or he probably won’t. He could always walk away. A glance over his shoulder is used to measure his surroundings as he weighs the idea of leaving Lucille to her sober self.
The day has been a long one for Marlowe Terrell. The reason for it is posted right outside the window of the local bar and in several handwritten or leaning CLOSED signs posted all up and down the streets of Sheepshead Bay. Truth told, she could use a drink too. But the woman is still on the clock so to speak, and her determination drives her to see the day's tasks done in a professional and as timely a manner as possible.
Even if she must take a break every now and again to check herself in a compact mirror stuck inside one of her pockets. Even so, she's showing signs of the daily wear and tear of a person working the long shift. Her hair, pulled back in a bun, sees stray bits trailing in the breeze. Her outfit pinpoints her as an employee of Yamagato Industries, the sleek design of the engineering uniform bearing the dual-triangular logo patched on the shoulders, golden yellow lettering, and steel grey piping against black, grey and white sections stands out in a much more notable outfit than that of any traditional mechanic's coveralls.
Which is to say, Yamagato certainly takes its cues from a futuristic fashion aesthetic.
"Excuse me," Marlowe calls out from the edge of the milling crowd, her voice straining to be polite but firm, "I need to get through. Please make a path." Clutching a bumpered tablet to her chest, she employs some light elbowing in efforts to shoulder her way through to the barfront.
"Come on! We're paying customers!" The ringleader shouts back at the bar owner, but instead of giving in and letting them in, he disappears into the back. One hopes he has a phone back there somewhere. And that the signal is on his side.
Outside, the crowd's volume pitches up and the large man turns back to the crowd in frustration. "This is supposed to be New York City," he growls, receiving shouts and grumbles in reply, "and we can't get food? We don't have phones? No power and now we can't even buy a damn beer?" Around him, people call out their agreement and start pushing through each other to get closer to the front. So when Marlowe calls for them to make room, she gets attention, but not compliance.
"It's Yamagato!"
"Bunch of liars!"
"Where's our city, Yamagato?!"
As the crowd seems about to turn on her, a woman breaks through the crowd and comes over to Marlowe's side. Ezra puts a hand on her arm in a show of solidarity. "Please calm down," she calls back to the crowd, "if she can't do her work, how can we ever get steady power?"
Trying to reason with the group comes a bit late, though, and the ringleader lets out a shout and starts pounding his foot against the glass. And once he starts, the other do, too. Some go for the bar, smashing glass with the odd brick lying around, but others go for Marlowe— upset by her uniform— and Ezra, who does her best to keep them back. But one person against many leaves her shoved to the ground before a punch gets thrown in Marlowe's direction.
All the commotion carries through to the alley across the way where Jim is busy digging through one trash can while Hailey and a few racoons dive into the dumpster. At the foot are a collection of stray dogs, cats, and other assorted feral animals that have slowly come to grips with the empath that spends her nights helping to find them food.
The yells cause more than a dozen sets of ears to perk.
It’s the rats that emerge first, afraid but too curious to contain themselves to the shelter of the narrow bit of forgotten street that the rest are currently in. Lifting noses to smell, running a few steps, sniffing again, a few more steps but it’s the raccoons that command a bit more attention. They are on the larger side of the scale and rival some of the dogs in size. Their banded masks don’t keep them from being recognized and they are easily agitated and hiss at some of the people throwing the bricks.
Lance receives a friendly cuff to the back of his head and will find himself with a bit of shoulder company as a heavy but familiar weight lands on him. “Hey bruh,” his sister’s voice is a bit gruff and a touch worried, “this is the better side of the street for sure.”
Devon’s mood and behavior is quietly noted by the other Hound but she doesn't engage. He’ll get over it. Lucille’s eyes find the source of the crowd’s fury as Marlowe enters the group of people and the commotion starts. Her posture stiffens as they descend into violence and as the man that throws a punch at Marlowe makes her move, Lucille’s response is instant.
“Come on Dev.”
Pale eyes swirl to a burning gold like hot amber as she feels for the man’s biology and clamps down on his vision to blind him, until she says otherwise. Total darkness embraces him. Moving in time with the transformation of her eyes the auburn haired woman ducks under a man screaming next to her in a move of grace and goes to deliver a sweep of her leg to the man that she's blinded intending to lay him flat on his back. Blazer flying in the air as her eyes narrow and her breathing slows, centering herself. With the way that Lucille’s life has been this sudden outburst of a fight is something she's oh so willing to throw herself into. She has pain she wants to beat away.
As the crowd grows louder, Lance’s steps slow… and as that first boot hits the glass, he stops dead in his tracks. There’s a moment’s tension as he calculates the best way to get past this riot-in-the-making, and then sudden monkey. There’s a brief jerk of his body, then he relaxes, smirking back at the girl that’d just smacked him in the back of the head.
“Hey, sis,” he greets, “Been looking for you— “
His gaze roams back to the crowd, and as he hears that scream he drops back, “Shit. That’s gonna get bad.”
“This isn’t our fight,” Devon points out. It’s probably useless, since Lucille’s already heading into the teeming mass of angry people. This isn’t also what he’d expected on a night out. If he wanted a drink, he’d go bother Richard. Or he’d’ve stayed home in Rochester. “Luce… We don’t get paid for butting in…” Still futile, he’s sure, but at least no one can say he didn’t try to warn her.
With a mildly exasperated sigh, he does end up following, eventually. A few seconds later. He drags a hand over the back of his neck as he weaves by elbows and hips, giving little effort to disperse the crowd as he follows in his teammate’s wake. “I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish.” That’s muttered as he gives a hard stare to someone getting a little too jostly. “Maybe you lot should figure out how to help instead of just complaining all the time.”
He kicks a couple of bricks aside, hopefully out of reach of those grabbing hands. In spite of his reluctance to get into the heated, dried up throng, Dev finds himself shouldering in to stand with Marlowe and Ezra, snarking a “Back off, you lush,” at those trying to crowd in closer. “I said back off.”
Having been tired enough to not have been paying attention to the overall mood of the crowd, Marlowe doesn't realize until the people nearest her turn upon her, and Ezra comes to her aid, that the Yamagato engineer realizes the predicament. Fuuu…
She takes a step back, telling Ezra, "It's alright, just, everybody needs to calm dow—" Her sentence doesn't finish as people break off to come at her and her sudden supporter. Marlowe doesn't see the fist flying her way until a fraction too late, but a belated protective reflex has her jerking up the tablet she's clutching to try and shield from the blow.
The man's fist connects with the clipboard, jostling, but not actually harming Marlowe. He also ends up blind and on the ground a moment later. The fact that he can't see sends him into a panic, but his distress is drown out by the crowd. Part of the mob climbs through broken windows into the bar where chairs and bottles are easily found and grabbed.
Ezra gets herself back up to her feet, but she takes Marlowe by the arm to pull her back from the crowd. It's clear to anyone watching— these people are past reason. Pushed to the brink. Lashing out. Devon and Lucille find themselves at the front line as the crowd surges toward them, trampling the blinded man as they pour into the street. Devon catches movement out of the corner of his eye— a tall, thick bottle of yellow colored liqueur swings at his gut. Lucille is caught in the legs of a bar stool, pushed back and shoved to the side before she can catch her footing again.
Lance and Hailey don't seem to have been spotted by the crowd, but that doesn't mean they're completely safe. Bottles and bricks fly, a few of them much too close for comfort. As the crowd flows around Dev and Luce, a decent number of them come for Marlowe and Ezra. Although given that there seems to be fighting inside the crowd, too, it's hard to say if they're targeting Marlowe still or just looking for a place to put their anger. It's hard to make out the individual shouts or cries, but the volume of the mob pitches upward.
What a time to make an entrance. Jim — man, not monkey — comes up from behind the crowd, probably having been intent on getting a drink, himself — but it doesn’t take him that long to figure out what’s going on, or at least the basics of what’s going on. He probably couldn’t write a factual book about the timeline, antecedents, etc…but a fight is a fight.
“Hey!” he calls out as his steps quicken, bringing him toward the fray at a good clip. Most probably wouldn’t run toward a thing like that, but, you know. Mistakes can be made.
She’s still his big sister and as such, Hailey moves to protect Lance from one of the stray bottles, letting it glance off of her shoulder with a wince of pain rather than allow it to hit him. “Hey watch it!” she shouts, probably not the best idea. Her pain, though, causes the gaggle of animals that she’d gathered that night to react. Some flee the scene, others… others don’t.
One of the dogs nips at a raccoon, who hisses, growls, and then bites back. The scuffle of flying animal fur tumbles into the crowd and a few of the people find themselves in the middle of a literal dog fight. Teeth and claws used as weapons to ward off anyone close by, none of the animals that had been following Hailey are discriminant. Except Jim. Being the only tame one of the bunch, he hops from Lance’s shoulder onto his best friend, clinging like a baby and whimpering in sympathy.
Studying takes up a large amount of a student’s time, especially with classes freshly starting up at Brooklyn College. Owain Mihangle is no exception to this rule — his past few days have been filled with pages of textbooks and worksheets, catching his knowledge up after summer break.
He’s also been avoiding the hell out of the other Lighthouse Kids since the disastrous ending to his date with Brynn — it was more than a little embarrassing to be shot in the chest with a red paintball when he was laying his emotions out there for someone who doesn’t want those emotions. Aside from making sure Lance doesn’t get a good night’s sleep by wrapping his bed with sheet metal, Owain has been pretty scarce.
The riot in front of the bar earns the metallokinetic’s attention, and he quietly moves closer, curious — at least, until he sees Lance and his sister being assaulted by thrown items. While he’s pretty upset with Lance, he can’t very well let his friend get attacked — that definitely goes against his moral code. Silver bleeds over the brown eyes until a mirror remains there, and three large copper ball bearings float out of Owain’s bag — one of them is sent flying, knocking a brick aside before it can get too close to Lance and Hailey as the teen nears the two. “The hell…”
Gold eyes blazing Lucille spins as she thrown off balance, hitting the ground on her knees and bracing at the impact before she's baring teeth and springing forward back into the crowd. Mainly to get back to Ezra and Marlowe, also to feed the part of her that wants to hit something, hurt. Lucille’s leg snap out to aim a kick a man in the head before she's landing in the crowd hopefully not far from the pair in her sights. Devon can handle himself but a quick look is given in search of her friend before she's sweeping her legs out in front of her to create space.
Leaning forward she allows her senses to extend around her, feeling the bodies in her immediate vicinity. Curling a fist slowly, the pale woman stalks forward through the crowd, dodging attacks when thrown at her. Agony. The pain is slow in the crowd surrounding her, a slow creep of pain in the lower back, the stomach. Pressing her threads of influence on the body to ignite pain underneath skin.
She's making a way straight for Marlowe. Intent on keeping the familiar face safe.
As the bottle wings his sister’s shoulder, Lance’s voice lifts in a shout back, “Hey! Fucking watch you, you assholes— Hailey, are you— “ A moment’s kerfluffle as a monkey jumps off him as he turns to Hailey in concern, “— are you alright? Shit, we need to get out of the street, c’mon— “
The situation seems to only be getting worse, so he touches Hailey’s shoulder in a motion meant for her to follow, turns to an alley, and— well, now it’s full of scared and angry animals, and he comes to a sharp halt. “Shit.” There goes the escape route! “Uh, can you— calm them down at all, sis?”
As long as nobody here's a telepath, they'll not know the flash flood of curses that bursts through Marlowe's thoughts as she stumbles back from the jostling blow to her protected device. There's a bit of a shocked offense that she has as she realizes in her horror that the crowd of people has swiftly whipped up into a frenzy. An oh no expression plastered on her features, and only comes out of that frozen fear when Ezra's hand grabs her to pull her back. "Wait!" she tells Ezra even as they retreat, "we have to do something!"
But it's her hesitance to run that acts to her detriment. Caught as a central target, Marlowe pushes at Ezra to get the other woman out of the way, to at least give the angry mob one less body to beat on. That doesn't protect her from the blows that come, and there's too many to defend against all. But she tries.
Just yelling obviously does little good. Likely it’s only going to spurn them on, which is knowledge that’s tucked away somewhere in Dev’s brain. He’s been in riotous situations before, after all. But it doesn’t stop the muttered, “Go home,” and “Get out.” Really, he doesn’t stop grumbling until there’s a bottle swinging at him. That movement, barely caught in the building chaos, causes him to crowd backward so that his jacket is grazed but little else.
He pushes forward after that, still fighting the crowd to shoulder and shove his way in to Marlowe and Ezra. If he can clear a path for them to escape to Luce, or draw attention onto himself, all’s the better. Dev is less nice about it now, and takes a more aggressive approach to try to punch or shove anyone who might get in his way.
Anyone checking inside can see that some of the crowd have taken to hiding behind overturned tables and in back hallways— those less taken in by the frenzy on the street. A few are gathering up liquor bottles in their arms or bags and try to slip away from the actual fighting. And the scene which is certain to be a crime scene eventually.
Response time has really been shaky since the war.
Luce hears grunts and shouts from the people she kicks, but one of them has enough presence of mind to grab onto her leg and pull her off her footing. When she hits the ground, he stalks toward her, obvious intent on stopping her punching and kicking. But. When she sends pain through the crowd, he doubles over just like all those around her do and she's able to get back to her feet and get to Marlowe. Or, close anyway. Because Marlowe and her uniform are still there and still angering the people around her. Some may have forgotten her in the mob, but the ringleader has not. He is the worst, yelling at her and shoving her in an attempt to take out his emotional outburst on her. When Luce gets there, he's rearing back to throw a more decisive punch at the engineer.
Ezra isn't out of the fight, but also isn't really fighting. Because she's trying to pull the ringleader off Marlowe. Trying, but she's easily shaken off and pushed back toward the crowd. And pushed back and forth between several people, most trying to get her out of their way, but some trying to hurt her and anyone else nearby. Jim comes upon the scene as she's knocked down, hitting the pavement on her knees. It obviously isn't the first time, seeing as her clothes have rips and she's got some scrapes here and there.
She's not the worst off. Broken noses, broken hands, some people cut with glass, some sitting on the ground with head wounds from the brawl. At least those seem to have lost the thread of anger keeping the others going.
Devon gets his attention, finding himself with a gauntlet of fists and bottles to dodge his way through. He takes hits, one to his shoulder that is definitely going to leave a mark later, but he can see how the crowd shifts, moving from Lucille's back toward his position as the crowd around him grows louder. Unfortunately, it means the crush of people overwhelms him and he finds himself trapped in the crowd and almost unable to move. Worse than that, it means that he can't dodge everything and he takes a deep slash to his back.
The trio furthest away from the fighting get to witness the madness, and distance gives them time to miss most of the randomly thrown stuff. However, it also means they see it when the dogs take their fighting toward the people, when they involve human legs into the fight, when the already incensed crowd turns on the animals to kick at them in return for the claws and teeth. They aren't nice about it.
But it also draws attention more directly in that direction. Suddenly the bricks and bottles and broken chair legs aren't just ending up near them. They're being thrown at the trio, and in greater numbers.
The first thing Jim sees when he gets right up to the crowd is Ezra getting pushed over by the instigator. “Hey!” he calls again, louder this time, and with a bit of a harsh edge that he doesn’t usually have. “Break it up!” He starts attempting to get over there through those who are still riled up, in an attempt to get to the ringleader.
He sees Dev doing the same thing then, and though it takes him a split second to realize that that is what he’s doing, at least he doesn’t identify him as another one of the angry mob. Once he has that realization, he starts to help, pushing his way through that way to try and clear a wider path for Marlowe and Ezra to get out — and as well, to make sure Ezra doesn’t get trampled.
“Lance,” Hailey really hates to say anything of the like but… “can you call the cops?” Moving Jim to her shoulder, she closes her eyes and starts to breathe heavily. The monkey begins to rock on her shoulder, obviously in some sort of distress. She keeps her hand closed around his paw in a small effort to soothe him while trying to rescue the rest of the animals. The dogs in the crowd, yelping from the pain of their own attacks as well as those of the human kicks, break off first and start tearing down the street at top speed.
The rats, well, they’re rats.
Some pour up from the sewers, others from garbage cans and dumpsters, some even from the buildings around them. The most disconcerting ones are from the bart itself. The rodents are indiscriminate when it comes to where they flee in terror. There are rats in the crowd, rats along the gutters, and rats up pant legs. Anywhere they can fit.
The empath doesn’t wait for an answer from her brother. Like the pied piper himself, she begins to back away from the scuffle, leading the raccoons, cats, dogs, and rats away from the fighting. “Come by the zoo whenever,” she says over her shoulder as she retreats back into the alley that they came from. “We probably need to talk about some stuff.” Because they do.
As the woman is tripped onto the ground with a grunt and makes her way through the field of pain she's emitting she nears Ezra and Marlowe as the ringleader goes for his punch, reaching out Lucille grabs his elbow by the pressure points and squeezes, the sensation of pain evaporated around her as she goes to twist his elbow hard and leans in with gold burning eyes as she directs all of her influence on him alone through the layer of his clothes, she's always been more deadly with touch. Devon is lost in the crowd but she hopes he uses his ability soon, she doesn't see any sign of the young man, worry creeps over her heart as nostrils flare.
A sensation of the ground rushing to meet him sweeps over the man as vertigo sets in. The aspect of her ability that she's most familiar with, one she's reconciled with since her healing and a nasty feeling that she inflicts on the man trying to hurt Marlowe with a cold quirk of the side of her lips. Lucille focuses on him and his pressure points as she tries to kick his legs out from him to knock him down.
“We should move,” her voice cutting through the commotion directed at Marlowe. They only have to fight out of the mob now.
It’s reasons like this he should wear his helmet. The voice of reason points that out as Devon meets shove for shove, because really, it’s one of those things no one should ever leave home without it. He pushes back against the crowd that threatens to swarm over him, there’s little enough room to get a good swing in, but he tries. He gives his hand a shake following the impact of… something against his shoulder. Nothing too terrible that he can’t bounce back from it and shove someone who might have thrown that attack.
The sudden heat in his back causes him to arch suddenly. It slows him for a second, teeth grinding against the pain. But he takes a small step to turn around Or that’s what he means to do. His hands come up as he moves, to find whoever has the knife — hopefully there’s only one. But he tries to find him, to grapple that knife away before anyone gets seriously injured.
“…nnnno, I can’t,” Lance replies, “There’s no cell service here, Hail— agh— what the fuck— !”
Of all things a chair leg hits him in the side of his head, fortunately not straight on, and he staggers a bit from the impact— one hand going up to press against the painful site of the impact, he wastes no time glaring at the crowd or — worse — trying to get involved in the fight. No, he heads right after his sister, hopping over a stream of rats panicking in the street with a long jump.
She’s not vanishing like Batman on him, not when people are throwing things at him anyway!
Caught up in the thick of the mob, Marlowe lets out an involuntary cry of pain as she's roughly shoved and struck by angered rioters. She's looking for Ezra, the one face that was closest to her who was a friendly, but doesn't see the ringleader's fist when it comes. The punch knocks her down to the hard concrete and asphalt, the work tablet lost amongst the stomping, kicking feet of yelling, abusive citizens brought to the brink by their living conditions.
Marlowe curls to protect her more vulnerable spots especially from the ringleader's further blows. It's not until Lucille appears that she's got a chance to look up and find another friendly, familiar face. And the keyword Lucille notes sparks an idea to the engineer's mind, piques her vengeful sort of retaliation against the nearest guilty assaulters. Marlowe plants a bare hand on the ground beneath her, eyes flashing into golden irises and the concrete and asphalt around the mob's collective feet sparks with blue-white energy as it shivers with the breakdown of its solid characteristics. The woman wills the ground to turn into a black asphalt puddle of quicksand-like consistency to suck down feet, ankles, legs of the crazed citizens and hold them. Though at the moment, she's not concerned about friendly fire so much as getting a mass effect spreading out from her centralized epicenter. Some rats may or may not get caught as well into concrete foot cuffs. Her shout is loud, but not necessarily enough to be heard over the crowd's roar. "Everybody STOP!"
A few kicks connect with Marlowe's arms and legs as she curls up to protect herself. But none come from the ringleader, as he is busy trying to keep his balance and not fall on his face. Unfortunately, that's very difficult with someone kicking his feet out from under him and he ends up faceplanting not far from Marlowe. Oddly, even though he started this, those around him don't seem to remember and he receives a kick or two as well. At least one rolls him over onto his back.
Devon finds that his attacker as turned to slice at someone else, which leaves him exposed to the Hound. He's no trained fighter, just someone who lives in a bad neighborhood and who got caught up in the moment. Devon has no problem disarming him. The man tried to retreat, but he's as caught by the crowd as the rest.
No one stops. No one listens. Jim finds himself pushed and shoved and battered as he helps keep Ezra safe. She does her best to take the opportunity and scramble out of the crowd.
But when Marlowe acts, things change. Feet are caught in oddly malleable asphalt. Backs. Legs. Arms. Anything touching the ground— which is a strange variety at this point— starts to wrap up with the street. Lucille, Devon, and Jim all feel it sliding up their legs like a particularly dirty slug. Some people on the edges of the mob notice their feet sinking in and pull free to run. Because they can see those at the center who can't get out in time getting trapped in place as the asphalt hardens again.
And with sirens heard in the distance, it seems like a good time to be gone.
Jim shields Ezra as much as he can, attempting to elbow those out of the way so that he can get to safety. And he might have done something more, too — but then the concrete under his feet starts to suck him down. His eyes widen as he lets out a surprised yelp, and he starts to pull his foot out.
Or try to. It’s just like mud, though — the further he gets one foot out, the lower the other one sinks, and then once he’s gotten one out, how’s he going to get the other one? He isn’t, that’s how. Oh, and then the cement is hardening, too. That’s fun. “Shit,” he exclaims as he looks around, in the direction of those sirens, but there’s nothing he can do now. At least some of those angry mobbers on the outskirts are leaving. That’s something, right?
Once he has the knife, it’s turned so the blade rests against his forearm. Less chance of cutting anyone when and if Devon needs to use his hands again. Which is does, still pushing people back, trying to keep space around Marlowe and Ezra so they can escape. Finally seeing Jim doing the same, he gives the other man a nod of acknowledgement, glad to see someone else thinking along the same lines.
“Hope you’re buying next time,” he yells over at Lucille. Dev lurches toward what might be a break in the crowd, to start pushing the opening toward the fringes so they all can get out. He finds he can’t quite get moving, though. His feet have sunk into the ground, and so his motions are more like slogging through thick, sticky mud and not very productive. “What…” He questions no one in particular as he drags first at one foot and then the other.
Successful in bringing the man who started this down Lucille doesn’t revel in the moment because she’s moving in towards Marlowe and Ezra, amber eyes flick to the ground as her legs are encased in in the street. Eyes widening, she lifts her head and looks to Devon, her eyes all but saying what the fuck. Yanking one foot up and trying to have the other follow she grunts and glares down at her feet, thats when her eyes meet the form of the man laying on his back.
She stiffens not wanting to make the sinking any worst but keeps her gaze on the ringleader, a piece of Lucille is saying to reach out for the man and help him at least sit up and not be swallowed up by the street immediately but a nasty, dark thought holds her it’s pull intoxicating and she’s not sure why. Leave him. Asshole. She’s anchored physically and mentally and her face flattens into a stone mask, lifting her eyes to look anywhere but towards the man that she’s neglecting to attempt to save.
Fuck it.
Seconds pass, and people flee. Those closest to Marlowe are caught up in about a foot deep of the sticky quicksand-like substance when the asphalt and concrete around her resolidifies as she releases her hand from the ground. Blue-white energies snap off, her irises fade back from the nearly glowing color of molten gold to a natural brown. People are left to the mercy of their positioning as she picks herself back up slowly, stiffly, the battered feeling bringing aches and pains. But above all, she is pissed… until her temper fizzles, cools on the surface of her expression when she looks around to see what's happened.
And looks horrified. Hand lifting to cover her mouth, she can't stop the gasp as she sees what she's done. "Oh god, oh my god, I'm so sorry, fuck," she starts with the first familiar face she'd seen coming to her rescue, Ezra. And nearby the woman, Jim. Marlowe stumbles over, dropping to a knee to place her hand back on the ground nearest them to reshape the material off of their stuck limbs. After that would be the helpful, though also stuck members of Wolfhound. Profuse apologies spill from the Yamagato engineer as she works to free the friendlies.
As the friendlies get freed, they're left with the choice to stay and deal with the MPs, or to go their own way and stay out of it. But the others— the rioters— they don't have much of a choice. As that realization settles, some start to shout, some to panic.
Down the street, they can see the flashing lights as the sirens sound clearer.
Ezra reaches a hand out to Jim, taking his hand in hers and thanking him with a clasp of his hand between hers. Marlowe, too, gets the same. But she doesn't urge anyone to stay, even as she makes it clear that she is, by taking a seat some distance from the stuck crowd.
A crowd that has been stopped, but seems no less angry. Resolution will have to come from some other avenue.