2013.07.05 - Fourth of July Thugs

The Fourth of July brought all sorts of fireworks to the city. Most of which were handled by the City, and explosions filled the air, giving onlookers the chance to see some spectacular sights. However, not all the fireworks were being provided by the City itself.

In the worst part of Metropolis, there were criminals who were taking advantage of the celebration of American Independence by liberating goods from shops. The ones that were active tonight happened to be metahuman, and had caught the eye of the Young X-Man Channel, who had been watching fireworks from a nearby roof earlier. She'd thought there were only a couple, and that they could be handled. But it turned out there were a half dozen, and even though the girl was tough to hurt, the sheer numbers were problematic, and she'd found herself heavily on the defensive.

The first two were a pair of twin men who were flinging some sort of needles from their hands, trying to impale her.

One woman had a pair of blades and was closing in on the teenager.

Two more women were firing energy blasts of some nature at her. One some sort of black energy and the other shooting off a white hot energy burst.

The sixth was a man who was just standing there, staring at her, his attack invisible to the naked eye.

Channel was busy dodging and shifting around, putting herself in a position where only one or two could attack her at a time without the risk of hitting their comrades. This was going to be one heck of a night, she wagered.

Cassie is not a tremendous fireworks fan, but she at least enjoys doing stuff with friends and family. Unfortunately, on the way to do Independence Day stuff with her mom and Courtney and Courtney's mom and step-dad, Cassie had to stop to take care of something. Courtney also had to take care of something. They both, infact, needed to take care of something. These somethings were taking place in different parts of the city, but they were more or less the same issue. 'People being jerks on the 4th of July.' Cassandra Sandsmark quickly changed, put on her gauntlets and magic sandals (magic sandals? Magic sandals!) and flew off to deal with some looters and other no-good-nicks. The whole time, she's thinking how worried her and Court's parents probably are, worrying if they'll be angry when they finally arrive, what excuse she'll have to come up with, and hoping she doesn't get any cuts or bruises or gunshot wounds that she'd need to explain.

"Lousy ****ing holiday-ruiners," Wonder Girl curses. Some major commotion draws her attention just as she's wrapping up with some kind of almost-gang-fight that her appearance causes to break up (the fact she straightened a street light that was bent at a 90 degree angle one-handed probably helped), and the blonde just siiiiiighs and flies to the next source of trouble.

Some red-haired woman that Wonder Girl doesn't recogize is being teamed up on by a bunch of powered people. She doesn't know who is whom, but she doesn't like seeing people picked on, so she decides to at least buy everyone some time to rethink their actions. A red and gold streak comes tearing down out of the sky right in the middle of things and slams into the street hard enough to shatter it badly, sending cracks up and down the street, and leaving a big dusty crater at the epicenter. Wonder Girl straightens up slowly from her hunched over position having just punched the street REALLY hard. Glares around with her blue-grey eyes, and calls out, "Everyone here REALLY sure they want to be doing this tonight? REALLY? I've got my own stuff to do, and I don't really have the time to perform violence on all these faces. But, if you keep it up, I'm going to take some very angry time out of my schedule to do that violence thing."

Though she hasn't exactly been looking at Jocelyn during this, the impression is that whoever is responsible for the trouble is going to get punched in the mouth. If it's not Channel, great. She doesn't seem like a bad sort. But if it is, punching is clearly the answer.

It's a shame that Jocelyn doesn't know that Cassie is friends with Courtney, since Jocelyn and Courtney are friends. The group of baddies shifts, and now the two spike throwers and the dual swordswoman turn to face Wonder Girl. "Shouldn't mess in affairs that don't concern you, like this one did," the woman states. The men launch a series of needles at Wonder Girl, attempting to impale her against the wall. Meanwhile, the swordswoman leaps fifteen feet into the air and comes down, attempting to take Wonder Girl's head off with a quick stroke of the blade.

On the other side of things, the energy blasters keep firing at Jocelyn, and now freed from having to deal with a half dozen enemies, Jocelyn holds her hands out and 'catches' the energy blasts, absorbing them into her body. The man continues to stare at her, sending some sort of invisible attack at her as well. Right now, Jocelyn is mostly just holding their attacks at bay, though she exchanges a quick glance at Wonder Girl. "Don't suppose you'd mind helping me clean some scum up, would you?" she asks.

Yeah, their attitude sucks enough that Wonder Girl decides the ones shooting at her instead of explaining themselves are probably the bad guys. In one swift movement she reaches out one-handed, using her superhuman strength, and grabs a parked car. When the needles come flying at her, she attempts to block them by putting the car between herself and them. She then swings the car at the incoming swordswoman as she attempts to leap over the car and slash at Cassie's neck. This level of fighting expertise took many months to develop. Not just under Wonder Woman's training, but from experience in actual battles as well. She used to be so wet behind the ears that if she saw video of her old fighting skills she'd probably be embarassed. Now she can act quickly, and usually correctly, putting her abilities to their best use to deal with the problem. She still gets hurt sometimes, she still makes mistakes, but these guys don't seem to be in the same league as her -- let alone Channel over there who seems to basically be immune to those energy blasts.

Wonder Girl turns her attention on the red-head for a moment and calls out, "Any idea who these jerks are or is it just the usual random jerks that show up on important days?" She then looks towards needle-and-sword people to make sure her car swing was actually effective and that those needles aren't going to penetrate the shield and put holes in her where there shouldn't be holes.

The ones shooting the spikes basically put some holes in the car, but don't have the oomph to get their shots through to even strike Wonder Girl. The swordswoman is sent sprawling by the parked car swing. Now the spike throwers fan out to either side, trying to get around Wonder Girl and fire some more spikes at her. They really only have one trick up their sleeves, and they were trying to get through to at least hurt the superhero. "Come on now, bringing a car to the fight? What are you, some sort of coward?" one of the men says, taunting Wonder Girl.

Meanwhile, with some of that energy absorbed, Channel points her hands at the one who was staring at her and returns fire, sending beams of energy at the man. He goes flying and crashes into a wall. "Stealing some sort of chemicals. They've got some sort of science project they don't want to tell the class about," Jocelyn comments to Wonder Girl. As for the energy blasts, well, Channel's main superpower was energy absorption. It made things miserable for those who shot energy at her. The teen rushes foward now, intending to deal with those energy blasters and keep them off Wonder Girl long enough for her to finish dealing with the spike throwers.

Wonder Girl generally prefers a fist fight when possible, so when she is challenged, she accepts. "Oh, did you want me to put the car down? Okay." She throws more or less a ton of metal overhand at one of the spike throwers as they try to circle around, and then uses her own flying ability to skim the ruined street mere inches above the cracked surface, in an attempt to fly underneath the barrage of needles. At least one scratches her upper arm regardless, but she'll worry about if it's poisonous or not later. Right now, she just tried to close with the second of the spike-shooters, coming up underneath the barrage and trying to deliver an uppercut to the jaw. "I'm not sure I have a witty retort to go with that statement right now," she replies to Channel. "So let's just finish up here. Those spikes aren't poisonous or anything, right? I have to get somewhere and I don't have time to be poisoned." She scans the area either way, making sure the people she has attacked are actually down instead of already recovering.

It's not necessarily LIKELY, even if Wonder Girl was holding back and not exerting her full 50 ton capacity strength, but she was not exactly trying to leave them conscious/mobile either.

Spike Thrower #1 attempts to dodge the car, but gets clipped by it, which is more than enough to knock him out, because a ton of metal is still a ton of metal, and that was going to hurt. As for the second, he's quick, but not quick enough to avoid an uppercut from Wonder Girl, and he gets knocked out.

Meanwhile, Channel grabs one of the energy blasters by the arm and swings them like a baseball bat into the other one, knocking them both out in the process.

"Thanks for the assist," Channel says. All of the attackers are knocked out at this point. "Don't know if those spikes are poisonous, but I can heal you up if you like," Channel says to Wonder Girl. Just in case they were. "Hate it when these sorts show up on holidays. Ruins a perfectly good night of fireworks watching".

Wonder Girl's adrenaline rush has not yet worn off, considering she has been to four different trouble sites BEFORE this one, and given what a combat fanatic she normally is ANYWAY, she's still looking around for some sign of trouble. "That'd be really great, thanks. Let's also make sure the cops or someone gets here to take care of them. Not much point to just beating them up if they're going to wake up in an hour and finish what they're doing. There a payphone around here?" She pauses in her search for such to say, "Wonder Girl, by the way. Nice to meetcha'." Then she resumes the search while explaining her feelings about the 4th of July. "I used to enjoy fireworks. Then I started fighting bad guys and things kept exploding when Jojo the Fire Breather or Combustion Man or Psychically-Explosive Excitation of Matter Dude would show up, and now I find myself on edge whenever I hear the 'boom'."

Walking over, Jocelyn puts her hand on Wonder Girl's arm. She'll feel her energy levels briefly increase as Jocelyn accelerates the healing process, mixing in some of her own life energy to fix any injuries Wonder Girl might have, be they from this fight or from previous fights.

"Ahh. Wonder Girl. You're with the Titans. I've got my cell on me. We unregistered mutants tend to not particularly enjoy those conversations". Jocelyn did know about her hero groups. Comes from hanging around Axiom. "I'm...huh. I'm in my civilian clothes. That's awkward for the whole secret identity thing when it comes to introductions," Jocelyn comments with a small grin. "Call me Joce". Which was the shortened form of her name that most people used. It would have to do.

Once she finishes healing the woman, which only takes a minute or so, she nods about the fireworks. "I've not been at this for long myself. A few months or so," the teenager offers. She pulls her phone out and offers it to Wonder Girl to make the necessary call.

The blonde brushes her hair back out of her face and huffs as she is healed. "I hope whoever owns that car had insurance. I'll feel really bad otherwise. Anyway, uh, yeah, I have a... Thing to get to. But I'm glad I got here when I did--Oh. Oh! Oh, right. Yeah, I'm with the Titans. One sec." Cassie has no issue with mutants, registered or otherwise, but she understands that some other people do and why that would make 'Joce' nervous. She accepts the phone and dials up the authorities, waiting until she has completed the call and let them know she's Wonder Girl, and that she managed to defeat six powered criminals at INSERT LOCATION HERE and that they were after some chemicals that they would not divulge their purpose behind wanting. Once she has confirmation that an appropriate type of law enforcement is on the way, she hands the phone back and thumbs up. "Glad I got here when I did. Feel free to look me up if you find out more or need help in the future or anything. You know where the tower is, right?"

The phone, of course, was secure. A combination of it having the YAL app on it and being issued by the X-Men makes it hard to trace, even if the police wanted to. Jocelyn will take the phone back and nods. "Yeah. I think most people have things to get to tonight, but when I saw they were doing the chemical theft, I stepped in. Only two of them were doing the actual theft. The rest were hidden as backup". Which is why Jocelyn found herself over her head.

A nod is given about the Titan's Tower. "Yeah, not that hard to miss it. Can't say I've actually met any others from the Titans that I know of. Mostly Avengers and JLA types," she admits. She smiles a little. "Star is going to give me grief when she hears I missed spotting the backup though". Because Stargirl and Jocelyn just rolled that way.

Reaching into her pocket, Jocelyn pulls out a small pad of paper and a pen. She writes her phone number down. "You ever need a hand as well, feel free to give me a call," she offers.

Wonder Girl blinks. "You know Stargirl? Well, I feel even better about this then. She's my best friend! Yeah, we actually had to split up to cover all the crap going on. Don't worry, it's not like you have the ability to see the future or anything! Hahaha! ...Right? You can't see the future or anything, yeah?" She grins to show she's joking and accepts the phone number. "I certainly will. Glad I could help! I better scram though. Have a good July 4th! ...Or what's left of it, at least!" Then she takes off into the air with a salute and a wave and is on her way!