2012-07-23 Reykjavik Rooftop Romp

"Armored cars. Like taking candy from a fingerless baby." This is all the mutant terrorist Quicksilver had to say after successfully disabling a Brinks truck, punching the guards several times and taking a package from the back. A cursory check of the package's label had told him all he felt he needed to know about its contents, and he was away in a flash.

Heading northeast from New York City, Quicksilver began running across the ocean at somewhere near his top speed. Finally, reaching the shores of Iceland, he allowed himself to slow down. Minutes later, on the roof of the Tallest Abandoned Building in Iceland, Quicksilver pulls out a phone. "It's done. Send the directions for rendezvous." For a few seconds he waits, a frown beginning to spread across his face. "What? You want me to wait? I'm Quicksilver, not Waitsilver.... Alright. Understood." And with that, he leaves the package on the roof and heads out into Reykjavik for food and souvenirs.

When you need to catch someone as fast as Quicksilver and the Big Boys are tied up, who do you call?? Well, there was actually a lot of confused buzzing before someone finally put a call through to Magik. This whole JLA and Titans thing is new. For the JLA, the Titans, and those supporting them.

By the time Magik finally gets the call, finds out where the package is, and is on her way, it's been at least a half hour or so. A point of light appears on the rooftop, flaring outwards in a two-dimensional disk of light edged in flames about three feet across that slides upwards and leaves the white-cloaked figure of Magik in its wake. The blonde looks about, for both the package and the thief. "Make it quick, they said." She mutters to herself. Iceland isn't US soil, which was another cause for the hemming and hawing.

Wouldn't you know it? Just as the teleporter appears, the speedster is on his way back from his calorie binge. Now wearing a thick down jacket and a ski cap with Iceland's national flag on it, and carrying a large stuffed troll, it's clear he's managed to fit quite a bit into the last half hour. As he reaches the base of the building upon which the package rests, he catches his reflection in one of the windows at ground level and has to pause. A bit of skyr has remained on his face after his feeding frenzy, and the velocity of his run from Reykjavik to this building has caused it to smear along the left side of his face. This is quickly rectified. Smiling at himself, he turns into a blur as he runs up the building and reappears on the roof. "Hey there blondiewaitaminutewhoareyou?!"

There's a pretty short list of people that could have taken the package in question that far that fast but still, actually seeing that it's Quicksilver is pretty sobering. Magik's Soulsword appears in her hand and she points at Quicksilver with it. "Easy there, Quicky. You've been a naughty boy." The sword probably won't do anything to him, but he doesn't know that.

Yes, the girl seems to have shown up from nowhere. Yes, she's speaking English without an Icelandic accent. Yes, she just pulled out a sword. But Quicksilver doesn't seem to register any of these facts before he reacts. "HA!" He points a gloved finger at the sword-wielding young woman. "Way to bring a sword to a... hang on a sec... I had something for this..." Quicksilver zips between the woman and the unprotected (and very poorly hidden) package. "Way to bring a knife to a nuclear... wait for it." He puts his hand to his chin and looks thoughtful. Nothing comes to him, apparently. "Anyway, your sword is stupid is basically where I was going with that. Go away."

The hood on Magik's costume casts shadows on her masked face, but he can still see the brow that arches up as he starts to reply. And... she does wait. The second brow joins the first. "Really?" She asks him as he finishes. "Really? That's what you've got?" She shakes her head. "You're making me embarrassed to be a mutant." While Quicksilver's got his back to the package, Illyana opens another Stepping Disk to teleport it away while he's focused on her. Priorities!

"Wait? You're a mutant?" A sudden blur and Quicksilver is several feet behind Magik, watching both her and the package. "What are you evenWhoaNoYouDon't!" Another blur, and Quicksilver speeds across the roof, blowing right past Magik in his haste to grab the package before her glowing circle things do whatever it is that her glowing circle things do. The stuffed troll is left on the ground behind Magik, replaced in Quicksilver's arms by the package. Holding the package to his chest the way a small child would hold a stuffed animal during a thunderstorm, Quicksilver can't help but smile at the sneaky blonde. "Classic misdirection. Nice. Knew there was no way you could seriously be bringing a sword to a... I knew it was weird."

Magik is forced to turn as Quicksilver moves behind her to keep him in her sights and then... blast! She turns again as he zips over to keep the package from falling through her Stepping Disk. "That's what I've been told. Fancy X-gene and all. Give me the package, Nesquik. We don't want this to get ugly." She sweeps the sword down to point it at the troll. "Also, if you don't give me what I want, the ugly doll gets it."

A surprisingly slow involuntary chuckle comes from Quicksilver's direction. "Nesquik. Heh. That's pretty good. I still think you're probably stupid, but that was pretty good." His silver eyebrows knit close together as he takes in her threat. And then, having knit themselves close together, one of his eyebrows arches. "I thought you said you knew who I am... Joan of Arc." Quicksilver makes a note to learn more sword-specific insults. He does not, however, run to save the stuffed troll. "Tell you what. Why don't we make this interesting?"

"Quick, quick like a bunny. They really skimp on the 'witty repartee' classes in terrorism school, don't they." Magik deadpans as he comes back with the Joan of Arc bit. She really didn't think he'd come to save the troll but eh. It amused *her* to think of it. When he talks about making it interesting, her head cants over to the side a bit. "I'm a fan of interesting. OK, I'm listening." She still doesn't really want to get into a hot-and-heavy conflict here on international soil.

"Whoa whoa whoa whoawhoawhoa! Terrorist? Just because the monkeys are all scared of what I represent, doesn't mean... Terrorist. Who even told you that?" Quicksilver pinches the bridge of his nose as if it's the only thing that keeps the exasperation from spilling out of his head and all over the rooftop. "Anyway, glossing over that for now, let's make things interesting. Why don't we think of some sort of civilized challenge, so that we can settle our dispute without resorting to..." He suddenly blurs, appearing right behind Illyana. "... any course of action that would result in you being turned into a rooftop mural."

Yeah, fighting something that you can barely see? Not a great fan. Magik's not a huge fan of that. "Don't tell me that you don't watch the news. Also, FBI watchlist, things like that." She turns as he speeds behind her, but doesn't bother to jerk around to try to keep up with him. That's just a lost cause. "Alright, what do you have in mind? Nice game of chess?"

"No no no. Nothing like that. I figure I'm pressed for time, and you've probably got back up on the way. Or at least, you do if you're not an idiot. I'm definitely 'get backup' material." Quicksilver's eyes dart about in his head, but whether he's checking for potential hostiles, alternate escape routes, or backup of his own is pretty much impossible to tell. He moves a bit closer to the girl, standing almost directly beside her. "Tell me something, are you familiar with the works of Mr. M. Night Shyamalan?"

Magik has let her arm with the sword fall to her side, because it gets tiring, holding one's arm out like that not to mention you look really stupid. She just smirks in reply to the 'backup on the way' bit. She gives him a skeptical look as he moves beside her. "A little. Sixth Sense, Unbreakable. I didn't see the others."

With his current vantage point, the evil smile on Quicksilver's face is probably difficult to notice, but some of it can be heard in his tone. "You know what I find most fascinating about his movies? The way his endings seem to come out of SUCKERPUNCH!" Not the subtlest of twist endings, to be sure, but Quicksilver pulls back his arm and aims a punch right at Illyana's stomachual region. His arm is completely visible as it moves through the relatively short distance, so clearly there's nowhere near his maximum force or speed behind it.

For all that Magik's an adept fighter, her reflexes are only human, and Quicksilver's is not. His punch drives the air from her lungs and sends her staggering back, but she's not as fragile as she looks. She sucks in a quick breath and glares over at him, her eyes flashing to white briefly as he pricks her temper. One arm is curled around her aching midsection but she throws the other out, opening portals about six feet in diameter standing on edge around Quicksilver in rapid succession, trying to cage him with the circles of light. "I was gonna be all sportsman-like about this," Magik says, her voice a bit cracked and breathless as she works on sucking in oxygen. "But fine. Let's play hardball."

"HA! Run tell THAT! HaWhatthedeuce?!" Quicksilver's moment of triumph is very brief and is replaced by a look of confusion. His head swivels frantically as the discs suddenly appear around him. He doesn't have enough space or time to build up to the speed it would require to fit through rapidly-closing gap. Serves him right for being squeamish about hurting a fellow mutant. But just when it might look like all is lost, it isn't. Quicksilver is suddenly spinning, and the torque from his sudden burst of rapid movement creates a huge gust of wind. This propels Quicksilver rapidly up in the air above a small tornado. Using this, he heads toward the edge of the Teleport Barrier that Magik has erected.

Magik has managed to recover enough to stand up straight, and one arm is cocked above her to help shield against the sudden gust of wind that Quicksilver is creating. "Really? *Really*?" Magik says with annoyance. "You know, I was willing to let you walk, given that you're a mutant too, but you're starting to piss me off, Nesquik!" She summons a stepping disk beneath her, dropping through it while another disk appears above Quicksilver that she falls out of the bottom of to try to land on him or force him back into the cage of portals.

It's impossible to tell /exactly/ what the girl's glowing circle things do, but it's obvious they do something. And Quicksilver enters semi-panic mode in an attempt to avoid them. One of the drawbacks of levitating via tornado is that it requires so much energy and speed just to maintain the tornado that he's basically a floating duck. And so he gets landed on by a crazy Russian chick. However, the sudden disruption of the tornado causes random bursts of wind which are enough to send him flailing about in one direction, and send the precious package in another direction.

One Magik's hands tries to close on Quicksilver's collar as she drops down onto him from above. If she has a hold on him it'll help against his super-speed, right?? OK, probably not her most inspired idea. As they hit the ground, Magik trying to land *on* Quicksilver so she can be the one knocking the wind out of him this time the Stepping Disks wink out. Given the flailing landing, they're probably going to land in a tangled heap instead. The sorceress keeps her eyes on the prize though, and as the package goes flying she tries to open a stepping disk to intercept it's flight. Which means her concentration isn't on Pietro. Downsides to that whole eye-on-the-prize bit.

Quicksilver has had to flail about once or twice, and the current rate of their descent is so slow that to Quicksilver it basically feels like standing still. Feeling Magik's hand close on his collar, he twists and reaches behind him and begins swatting at pretty painful speeds. Meanwhile, his legs begin bicycling in the air, enabling him to adjust his body enough that his feet are oriented toward the ground when he finally lands.

It's hard for Magik to follow those slapping hands they're moving so fast, and she's not going to be looking very pretty after this. The pain sparks her temper again and in anger one arm cocks back and punches at Quicksilver's face. Or... where his face would be if it didn't look like Magik was moving like molasses in January to the other man. It's a good, fast, strong punch! For all the good it does. "You fight like a teenaged girl!" She snarls at the whole slapping attack. The stepping disk swallows the package and winks out.

It's only as the package disappears that Quicksilver finally realizes what's going on. Instead of falling gracefully on his feet, he trips and collapses on the ground, the force enough to separate the two. He quickly scrambles across the roof to where the package was, clawing at the ground. "Not the packageNotThePackage!" But his lightning-fast brain quickly realizes that there is only one way to turn this into a victory. And he charges at Magik so quickly that he's all but invisible to the unenhanced eye.

Magik goes tumbling away from Quicksilver, turning the fall into a roll as she gets her feet under her to land in a crouch. "Point for the good guys." Magik says mockingly as he's left clawing at the ground. As he charges her, Magik has enough time for her eyes to widen in an an 'oh, shit!' expression. She summons a stepping disk in front of her to try to intercept the speedster but he's moving so *fast*.

Quicksilver has had enough of the whole 'Ruin Quicksilver's Day With Whacky Disks' thing, and at his current speed he's already way past wherever he appears to be. He slows only when he's just a few feet from Magik, in order to avoid snapping her spine when he picks her up by the collar and runs with her to the edge of the building. Stopping just on the edge, and holding Magik straight out in front of him, he gives her a good solid shake before yelling "WHAT DID YOU DO WITH IT!?"

Downside to Magik's outfit. There's an abundance of stuff to grab if they can get in close. Her lip has split, a bit of blood staining her jaw but as he holds her there over air she laughs at him. It's a dark, cold thing and this close he can see her blue eyes, as dark and cold as that laugh. "It's in Hell." She says, bearing her teeth in a grin. "You wanna join it?" As Quicksilver drops her, she falls a handful of feet before a stepping disk opens, swallowing her away.