| Energy for All - Part II | |||||
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Rogue had come into the city to meet with some friends of hers from her graduating class at Xavier's. They'd met at her friend's apartment and had since moved down to the Pour House bar and grill. With the night being fairly young on a weekend, things were pretty bustling, Marie was inside the bar with a big glass of beer sitting in front of her and she was chatting with her friends, a married couple who were both fellow mutants, though they never flaunted their powers and always kept them a secret. Marie, thankfully was still enjoying the winter weather which allowed her to bundle up and not look like a total weirdo. So she had her leather trench-coat on and some gloves on her hands, hoodie beneath her coat and some jeans tucked into old leather boots.
The Punisher sits in his van, parked about a half-block from the theater. Inside is a scumbag named Mickey 'Monkey' Delorenzo. Monkey's mobbed up to his eyeballs, which is bad enough, but pretty low on the totem pole. A bagman and a courier mostly, not given any serious responsibility and not particularly dangerous. Not the kind of guy who normally pings on Frank's radar, except for the fact that the prick has a taste for teenage girls and doesn't mind paying premium to the Ukrainian cartel to import 'em. The last girl ended up in a shelter with her arm broken and scared for her life.
The nun who runs the sheltered called Frank.
Now, Castle sits behind the wheel, a half-eaten ham and cheese on the passenger seat, waiting for the punk to come outside. Monkey better have enjoyed the show because the next one he sees will be in hell.
Mia is in Metropolis for the first time in weeks, but she seems to still be powerless. Nearly three weeks since that stupid surprise physical. Someone at school was apparently doing drugs, so they decided to give a surprise physical to like everyone in gym class.
Fortunately Mia overheard the principle ordering the surprise physicals and was able to shed her power so all they caught is that she has a unique blood type...but shed her power a bit TOO well it seems because they are STILL gone. Granted, the lack of good sunlight this time of year may have something to do with that, but she is worried that the power burn may have actually damaged her somehow.
Still, she did decide to come to town and visit the Titans...and heard about the problems in the Greenwich. She decided to wander over to investigate. After all, the one thing she should still have is an immunity to chemical attacks, if there is something in the water it should not effect her.
Through the streets swings a blur of red, white, blue and black, not quite with the grace of a Spider-man, or a Batman, but with still his own controlled and reserved take on the act. There's no real care for if he's caught on camera, as he finally hits the landing dead on in the middle of an alleyway, cane clacking down against the ground with a light thunk.
He's on the hunt as well for poor Monkey, stopping at the edge of an alleyway to look out with cane held right to one side. His bright blue eyes catching the light of the streetlamps, as he waits for his own target. Though to be honest he is a bit surprised that it's a cinema that he's found himself before instead of a traditional Theater.
The light of the full moon competes with the street lights lining the intersection in front of the Village AMC movie theater on a snowy winter night. The sidewalks quickly become crowded with people as one of the showings lets out. Among them is a group of young college-aged men and women happily chatting about the horror flick they have just finished watching. Suddenly one of the girls in that group (a gangly, skinny girl with glasses, brown hair, and wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the house crest for Hufflepuff House) stops dead in her tracks. The green color of her irises starts to bleed into the sclera and covers her pupils until her eyes are nothing but bright green orbs. At the same time she slowly starts floating off the ground, ending up with her feet about 3 feet off the sidewalk.
Her friends are so engrossed in their conversation and the girl had been so quiet that they fail to notice she is no longer with them until the screams behind them start. When they turns around they find that their friend is now the center of an area of fleeing people. People being pursued by black and brown tarantulas the size of ponies. The Punisher and Union Jack may even recognize one of the first victims of the spiders, which seemed to pop into existence out of nowhere, since right there under a particularly menacing example is Monkey.
Solaire is rather burdened with his charge.. in the ever pressing moral debacle of where and when to vent. As such he's floating over the village atop of Hand, staring down at the people below when panic begins to unfold.. slowly but surely. He descends down and approaches the ground from above with starlit eye-holes of his helmet glowing brighter as he assesses the situation and how best to intervene, if at all.
Rogue stands up from her table with her friends and takes a moment to go outside. She pushes the door open and steps out on the side street. She pulls her cigarettes out of her pocket and proceeds to light one up, trying to make sure she's far enough away from the building so that The Law doesn't get mad at her. She stands outside, shivering some from the cold air and looks around, placing the lit cigarette between her lips to take a pull off of it and shoot the smoke out.
Frank Castle sees the sudden emergence of the spiders and gets a quick glimpse of Monkey's fate. He certainly has no intention of saving that piece of shit, but the rest of the people were, as far as he knew, innocent. Now, Frank's not a superhero - he'll be the first to say, his job is punishment, not protection. There's no moral component to weird ass giant spiders popping up out of nowhere. But a basic human being's gonna do the right thing and, in this case, that's go on a bug hunt.
Frank slides out of the van, his longcoat open enough to show his death's head emblem and walks around to the back. He throws open the doors and reaches in, drawing out an M-16/grenade launcher combo, dropping a few extra clips into his pockets and jacking one into place. Safety off. Time to splatter some eight legged freaks.
The movie was not bad, but she kept wandering off in her thoughts. Movies? Well it is a break from studying, but nothing like what she was used to as Superlass. It is a bit depressing to think this might be the rest of her life, just normal. OK, so she is working on training, in like five years she might qualify as a new Sidekick...
Mia is not really paying enough attention to her surroundings, and so is caught by surprise by the sound of metal rending and glass breaking as a giant tarantula drops from a leap to land on a car about twenty feet away. She sees the old man with a walker near the monster and reacts without thinking...heading towards danger to pull the innocent out of it.
Well alright that's something new to be sure. There's something to be said for fighting against Hydra, and that's the fact that the giant spiders doesn't surprise him perhaps as much as he should be. An arm goes down to his belt, before reaching back up with a single fluid motion. His Webley Mk V leveled right ahead as he fires off five rounds in rapid succession one per spider.
The last round spent, he lowers his arm back down snapping open the breach to rapidly pop in a fresh collection of rounds. His expression is rather calm and reserved as he works this solid fluid motion of finesse.
"Right chaps keep calm, and form an orderly panic." Still supporting himself on the left hand side with his cane as he fires off with that red gloved hand. His MKV smacking back against his leg to ready it for another volley of fire, clicking the breach back into place.
Traffic comes to a stand-still and the panic on the streets redoubles as zombies start to claw their way out of the ground. Strangely the creatures don't damage the asphalt or the concrete they claw out from but once they are fully out they are clearly solid, as can be attested by the people they are beginning to drag down in an attempt to feed on them. On the plus side, no more spiders are appearing, even if at this point there's already 10 or so of the giant arachnids chasing after people. But the only casualty up to now is Monkey, who managed to pull out his gun but couldn't get off a shot before the spider on top of him literally ate his face off. He's the only one to have been killed but he's not the only one to have been caught. There are multiple civilians that are struggling to keep from becoming food for either the spiders or the first of the zombies. Union Jack's shots slow down the spiders, saving multiple people that were about to be caught and causing a chunk of the crowd to start running towards him... Making it harder to shoot without hitting civilians.
Elsewhere, in Button's lair, the little redhead pops out of her slouch as one of the monitors around her starts showing the panicked scene in front of the movie theater. As she sees the floating brunette she perks up even more, "Oooo... I wonder if the formula caused this?" Clattering a few commands into her keyboard she brings up multiple angles of the scene.
Back in Greenwich woodpeckers start coming out of the sky. First it's one, which settles on the edge of the theater's marquee but the first one is followed by a multitude of others, which take their places on perches forming a rough circle around the area of panic.
Rogue stands there on the street corner near the Bar, smoking her cigarette and watching the giant spiders. "What the fu**." She mumbles, the cigarette bobbing up and down between her red-painted lips. When the zombies start rising out of the streets and moving to grab onto people on this busy Manhattan street, Rogue just starts walking toward them, her trenchcoat sweeping around her legs as she steps up to one coming for her. She reaches up and places her gloved hand on his face as he claws for her. She twists, and yanks... detaching his head and dropping it to the ground.
Rogue then steps past his rotten body as it falls away and she goes to another holding onto some random New Yorkers that were screaming. She grabs this one by the back of the head, twists... and yanks, detaching his head with a wet squish. "I seen the Walkin' Dead... ya'll let me know if Daryl's around. I got a serious crush on that hunka man meat." She tells the people she just saved, still smoking her cig as she held the zombie head against her hip under her left arm like a basketball. The two New Yorkers just ran off.
Frank Castle sees the zombies and narrows his eyes. Lot of dead bodies in New York but, last he checked, there weren't any graveyards underneath this particular section of street. Meaning that the zombies either weren't really zombies or were being transported in by somewhere other than just climbing through the asphalt from underneath. Somebody thinks it's Halloween, seems like.
A couple of zombies climb up and roar at him, only to be met with a hail of bullets, two quick autofire bursts putting them down and making their heads pop like pumpkins. Just flunkies. Frank starts to search around through the crowd for a source and stops when he comes across the girl with the glowing eyes. Bingo. Kid looks kinda out of it, though, meaning probably just some mutie with some bad wiring. Nothing that deserves punishment. Which means Frank can't just put a shell through her head and be done with it. Damn.
Mia barely pulls the man with the stroller down as the spider jumps, so it passes over the two of them, but then the Zombies start coming out of the stonework. There are zombies in every direction and the spider seems to have reoriented. The monstrous arachnid jumps toward the civilian, and Mia too of course, and she reacts by going the only open direction...straight up! A bit too fast on the straight up actually, as she creates a sonic boom that sends the zombies near her flying in all directions and sets the old man's hair and clothes on fire from friction. She drops down and rips open a hydrant to put him out. It looks like Superlass is back, with a vengeance!
With another flick of the hand Jack holsters back down the revolver into his belt, latching it back into place. He walks his way over to the group, calmly smacking a spider with a great deal of force with the bottom of his cane. Right at the moment he's trying to get right up to that green eyed woman, just in an attempt to try and settle this situation.
In the midst of the source of panic Solaire drops, back to the floaty one at the epicenter. Everything was sprawling away from her, something of suspect. Hand is tossed into the fray to seek out the spiders and the arisen dead and skewer them, politely.
Solaire himself maintains his position near where he dropped, bright glow seeping from beneath his plates and radiating around them, air shimmering with increased heat in his immediate vicinity. For now, he continues to gather information and let Hand idly assist how it can.
As people start to realize there are 'heroes' among them they start to run towards the people opposing the nightmarish apparitions. If there was a few of them that would be the perfect thing to do but considering there are a few hundred people panicking and running around now the heroes find themselves surrounded by innocents looking to them for protection, which makes it all the harder to deal with the threats.
Spiders and zombies fall, sizzling, under Solaire's attacks but he's only one man so there's plenty more monsters left to continue attacking the civilians. The situation becomes even worse since now on top of the eight remaining spiders and about 20 remaining zombies a UFO of the saucer type, of all things, has appeared in the night's sky. complete with warp speed effects. As the large spaceship blots out the night's sky beams of light shoot down in a circle from its bottom and Greys appear on the streets, leveling futuristic looking blasters at any human in sight. Out of the middle of the ship one last beam of light appears, slamming right into the hovering brunette coed and starts to slowly pull her towards the ship. This causes the first reaction from the girl since she went into hover mode, which is opening her mouth to scream out in sheer terror.
In Button's lair the little redheaded mad scientist is bouncing in her chair with excitement. "Wowwowwow! Phobia manifestation! I'm betting the kid was under so much stress from the formula it triggered her mutant powers and what a doozy!" Then she sees Union Jack trying to make his way to the girl and she starts to clatter away at her keyboard again. "Oh no you don't! No ruining my fun when it's just started! This is better than any Romero movie!"
Back in Greenwich six of the woodpeckers take flight and dive at Union Jack in an attitude that is closer to what one would expect from a hawk than a woodpecker!
Rogue was helping to usher people toward safety now. She tossed the zombie head into the garbage can on the side street, then punched her fist right into another one's nose, causing her hand to go inside its face. "Awww, shit, nasty..." She muttered, yanking her hand back and wiping it off on the creature's tattered old clothes. She then exhaled and helped people move toward the theater. "Go inside, get off the streets." She told people, some were listening, most were ignoring her... doing their own thing as scared people usually do.
Rogue looked to the sky then to see a... UFO. "Figures." She muttered. "I bet the Stay Puffed Man is on his way next..." She said to no one in particular. She looked around at the others, but she didn't recognize any one else she saw doing heroic things, so Rogue stayed near the theater for now, trying to help people go inside to hide.
Frank Castle wades a bit more into the zombies, kicking a few out of the way as he starts to wade into the crowd to get at the girl who appears to be the source of it all. Luckily, while he might not be a nightmare, the Punisher is a fairly well known figure in New York and, between the guns and the skull, people cut him a wide berth. He takes down a spider with quick grenade, shooting it into the things open mouth when it roars at him and turning his head away when it explodes, sending spider guts and spindly legs flying in every direction.
He reaches into his pouch and tries to find a dosage of sedative he keeps on him. He uses it mostly to just drug potential stool pigeons to kidnap for torture but, in this case, maybe it'd be enough to put the kid down safely. Now to just get close enough to jab it in her ass.
Well now, flying saucer, that should be a good test...and something that really needs to be handled. The Zombies and spiders do too, but the saucer she can probably handle fast, if she can do it at all. She flies up at it, looking inside with her X-ray vision in the couple of seconds before impact.
OK, not any technology she knows. Of course, the "She Knows" is the limiting factor here, but also not a major alien race. Not a Khund or a Dominator or Shi'ar or Kree. It may be something she has not seen...even Kree she barely knows...but whatever it is it is likely not going to resist as she grabs the saucer, spins it around, and hurls it into space. Hopefully pushing herself like that so soon after getting her powers back will work...
Solaire is.. confused by the other lights, and the unusual things with 'boom' weapons. As such he recalls Hand and uses it to fly up after the abductee in the girl that was just behind him and dropping his glowing coat to level safely with her and offer a hand to the shoulder and another to the hip securely to see if she can be freed from this pillar of light, while offering a response.
"You need to help me help you." clearly spoken, "Being afraid is fine, fear is a good thing, you see and hear and feel more accurately. Panicking is not, you ignore what your senses say and act inappropriately. Stay close and even if we can't get you out now, I can keep you safe until you're back on the ground." attempting to reassure the panicking floaty lass.
Although some people ignore Rogue a surprisingly large amount of the crowd realizes the wisdom in her suggestion and starts to run back into the theater. Even if one older gentleman vaporizes in a flash of bright neon blue light as he's hit by one of the Greys' weapons, leaving behind nothing but his clothing. Meanwhile things around the girl dressed in the Hufflepuff t-shirt and sporting the glowing green eyes start to happen all at once. Union Jack's approach is brought to a stand-still as the woodpeckers attack him. He is able to keep most of them off by focusing all his attention on the attack but at least one slips through, leaving three long, shallow, bloody gashes along his forearm. Frank reaches the girl after finishing off the spiders and adding a couple more zombies to the re-dead tally but right as he's reaching out to her she gets yanked out of his reach when Cir-El tosses the UFO (which is surprisingly light for all its size) like a massive Frisbee. The only thing that saves the girl from being pulled out all the way into space inside her tractor beam is Solaire. As he grabs her he finds that it takes a lot more effort to pull her out of the beam but pull her out he does . His words and actions, however, make no dent in the girl's terrified screaming, which continues on as if he wasn't even there.
In her lair Button lets out a loud resigned sigh as she sees the end coming. "Why, oh, why does there have to be so many damn heroes in New York!? They spoil things so damn fast. OK, back to patrol little birdies." Much slower this time she types in a few commands into her system, eyes still glued to the monitors.
Back in Greenwich things start to slow down. Once the flying saucer breaks the Earth's atmosphere all of the Grey's pop out of existence, as if teleported back to their ship. And thanks to the efforts of the heroes there's only a few zombies to finish mopping up. Zombies which have very little prey left thanks for Rogue's efforts.
Rogue picks a handsome man out of the crowd and tells him to stand by the doors and guard them, keep people going in and staying back away from the glass doors. She then walked away from the theater and reached down to grab a big blue mail box off of the side street by its rounded top. She yanks the mailbox up out of the concrete and starts to walk toward one of the remaining zombies. "Yep." Rogue says through the cigarette that was still in her lips... She flips the mailbox over and grabs it by its legs then swings it like a big damn baseball bat and slaps the zombie right as it came toward her with zombie-arms out... the creature goes flying through the air.
"Batter-up." The Southern Belle muttered as she changed course and found her next target, doing the same to it, sending it soaring across the street right into the side of an unoccupied delivery van causing a massive amount of coagulated blood to splattered in all directions. "Nastay." Rogue grinned a little and went to find the next one then.
Frank Castle watches as the supers, as usual, throw their weight around and almost crash headfirst into each other. Typical. He flicks his gaze over to the girl with the smoke, who at least seems to be getting some stuff done. He gives her a nod as he shoves a pistol under the chin of another zombie, blowing its skull off and throws a kick at another, knocking it down so that Frank can curbstomp its greasy brains out.
With the worst of the chaos apparently over and the capes and tights crowd full on in effect, Punisher figures it's time to get the hell out of dodge. He pauses to look down at Monkey's headless corpse, spitting on the guy, and then moves along. Looks like an early night of pizza and Breaking Bad tonight.
When she hears the screams being Doppler shifted Cir-El realizes that she sent someone with the Alien ship...but fortunately as she strives to catch up with it she sees Solaire, also a member of the Titans, rescuing the civilian. She hopes she will be more aware next time, but there are some Zombies to wrap up, and spiders to search for...
Solaire's expression deadpans as the girl keeps screaming. He holds her in the air and looks her over, wondering if there was an 'off button'. He had assumed the phrase on television was true, that people had a cleverly hidden button to turn them off.. but alas, cleverly hidden it is indeed. Instead, the screaming one is shifted to be held in his arms as Hand lowers closer and closer to the ground, so a fall wouldn't be dangerous. There's still isolated bits of fighting here and there he takes note of, lowering to the ground entirely and stepping off, letting Hand have at the zombies while he guards the focal point of all this.
The woodpeckers that had so suddenly come to witness the scene disperse into all directions of the night. While this happens a ghostly figure forms in the air above Solaire and the still screaming girl. Cloaked in a voluminous black cloak the only part of the figure that is visible is its face. Skin tinged a yellow so pale that it makes the figures skin look sallow and lifeless. Its eyes are sunk so deep into its face only a menacing glitter is visible and it has no nose to speak of, instead having only two slits in the middle of its face positioned over strangely meaty lips.
The figure remains see-through as it finishes its appearance then suddenly lunges at the screaming girl in Solaire's arms, only to disappear into a cloud of black smoke right before making impact. The only effect of this apparition? Causing the girl to finally succumb to her terror and pass out.
On the streets the remaining clean up for the 'heroes' that stick around is easy enough. And in the distance sirens become audible as emergency services start to draw near.
With the zombies seemingly taken care of, Rogue just drops the blue metal mail-box in the center of the street and then reaches up to pull her cigarette out of her mouth. "I hate this city sometimes." She said to herself.
When the sirens become audible, Rogue turned around and walked back toward the bar that was also loaded with civilians who had been hiding from all the chaos. She saw her two friends inside also and pulled the front door open. "I still had half a beer left." She said with a smile as she walked inside to go finish her drinking-night-out with her old friends.
Cir is headed home...and hoping no one got a good look at her because she was dressed in civvies...not to mention those were barely decent after being ripped by her first flight. As soon as her X-Ray vision sweep assured her that there were no major problems left she was headed off to Westchester as fast as she can manage without losing more clothes...
And now holding a collapsed girl after she was smothered by her own fears, he scratches his head. He doesn't know her, doesn't know who could help her. "I have no power here to further assist this girl." he mutters, looking here and there.. enforcement arrives, to whom he'd deposit the girl wordlessly aside from 'get her home and have her talked to about not panicking' and exiting as enigmatically into the sky under Hand's grip, sliding to stand atop the blade as it goes out to the harbor for him to return home and digest today's events.