Summary:An attack on a Mutant Advocacy Dinner by militant types is interrupted by the presence of Zatanna, Eve and the Maid. Log Info:Storyteller: Amelie |
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It had been quite the evening. A high-profile dinner, a entertaining stage show and a few speeches from a particular international Mutant Rights NGO. As much as Mutants and Metahumans might have it rough in plenty of places around the world. There had been speeches, political motions and advocacy through the day and all the while behind the aging man of Eastern decent there had been a French woman in a black dress, her 'uniform' minus the usual apron whom had been standing nearby.
The evening was coming to an end now, comfortable as it might have been one could be forgiven for winding down their guard…but they might be about to pay for it. The sudden screeching of tires announces something being wrong, the pair of large trucks that suddenly turned opposing ends of the street, cutting off the path and opening their trailers to reveal half-a-dozen heavily-armed gunmen. It was brazen and brutal, but someone clearly wanted to make a point!
AM To be honest, Eve is a supporter of mutant rights. Big time. She's gone out of her way to support them. How couldn't she? She's donated to the NGO in question and thus was invited to the dinner. One of the lucky ticket recipients, really. She's not rich, no, but she has exactly zero in the way of needs that take up a lot of people's wealth like, you know, /food/.
When the gunmen arrive, she lets out a sigh and shouts right at them.
"Masks? Shouldn't you assholes be wearing hoods?"
AM
At Shadowcrest Manor, there is a cat. The cat probably has a name, but it hasn't told Zatanna what its name is. It's a perfectly normal housecata black and white coat, a demanding attitude about wanting chicken, and a spiteful love of knocking things off flat surfacesexcept for the fact that its left eye is made of some kind of turquoise crystal. This morning, while Zatanna was eating breakfast, the cat looked into her eyes, then left. It seems to have left the Manor entirely, as far as she can tell, though she might be wrong about that, since she spent some time (long enough for her yogurt to turn watery) in a trance, picturing what she had seen reflected in the cat's impossible eye.
This. She doesn't know WHY, yet; but this.
"Krow sehtolc," Zatanna announces from her perch in an alley across the street. Blue-white light flashes, transmuting what had been a perfectly reasonable outfit for October in New York into the top hat, the top half of a tuxedo, and the less than black tie formal bottom of her costumed persona. Stars sparkle in her hair. Her first priority has to be containment, so she points her wand at the dinner hall across the street and cries out, "Gof slaenoc su morf nugnem!" From her wand, pea soup fog billows out in shockingly thick, weirdly rich waves, reducing visibility to about twenty feet, if that.
Zatanna has time to hope there are no women with guns in the trucks, but it's too late for that.
AM
Technically speaking, Eve wasn't a mutant, but she looked 'different' and she was shouting their way, so that was apparently enough for one of those men to decide she was probably one and turn his weapon towards her. Even in New York, there's apparently ease enough for these men to be armed with automatic weapons when bullets begin to rake the surroundings and fire towards the speaker first and whatever 'mutants' they could see. Monsters they might be, but they're well armed when they're going to be targeting potential people with superpowers.
Zatana's arrival was certainly striking and the sudden spewing of fog was going to cause a little more wild gunfire as they're blinded, but in those first few moments before it rolls in? Well, there was -a- 'Gunwoman', but she wasn't on the side of the attackers; the 'maid' that had been standing behind the speaker grips the taller man and shoves him against the car, pulling him downwards and out of sight before producing a handgun of her own from seemingly thin air. Bullets fly through the space in both directions now, but one semi-automatic firing weapon is dwarfed out by the wave of returning bullets from nearly a dozen men, even if Amelie was far more precise in her shooting.
AM "Oh, hey Za-," is what Eve says when she's distracted by Zatanna's arrival, surrpised by it and having not seen her earlier. That's hard to miss, of course, but then well — she's being lit up pretty good in gunfire. Believe it or not, this is going pretty much as she hoped. Their ammo is being used on /her/ in some cases, which means it's not being used on someone else.
Being shot is highly unpleasent. Despite being an extra-dimensional entity from beyond space and time, in a manner of speaking, Eve's body is still perfectly human and she feels the blinding pain of every single one of those bullets that are ripping through her. And they are /definitely/ ripping through her right up until they're blinded.
The dog rolling is more than helpful for the next part — giving her a moment to collect herself and seal up the worst of her wounds, forcing her body and flesh to mend where possible. Oh, sure, she won't be talking. Her lungs are filled with blood. That's gong to have to wait, but hey, she can vomit blood on someone in a nasty surprise soon enough.
She can sense their they are, generally, and she's immediately and bloodily lunging herself at one of the gunmen to bring him down and inartfully grab his gun and break the hand holding it.
AM
The dining hall has guards? Good to know, if not necessarily an immediately useful fact to Zatanna. Into the mist she conjured, she breaks out at a fast trot; the conditional fog conceals less from her than the gunmen at first, but the closer she gets, the more the spell thickens to protect her, thus cutting down her visibility as well. Best not to sprint into what she can't see coming.
She can hear bullets whizzing, and watch their tracks bore through the fog. Since the street wasn't deserted, that's a big problem. Another, relatively smaller one is that the chatter of their bullets threatens to drown out her spells unless she gets right up on them and screams them.
Looks like it's down to hand to hand combat, then.
With a set jaw, Zatanna stalks through the fog for her enemies until she bumps into one who's sweeping forward, hunkered over in a credible imitation of military style, probably learned from a Call of Honor video game. She grabs his gun and yells at the top of her lungs, "Laorahc nrut ot tsudwas!" The bullets should be pretty much useless now, which means all she has to do is get in a fistfight with a murderous racist. She throws one hooked arm over his shoulder as if taking a biu gee stance, and lets her weight do the rest, throwing him down for a swift kick to the temple that sends shockwaves from her toes to her knee. If that didn't knock him out, she's in trouble.
AM
The para-militant murderers were well-enough trained in how to fight. Certainly, they could hold their own in a fist fight…but that didn't mean they were expecting one! When the man brings his weapon up to fire point-blank at Zee, the sudden clicking of the now useless ammo refusing to fire gives her all the window of confusion she needs to sweep the man off his feet. The kick itself might not have knocked him out entirely, but combined with the trip to the pavement had left him dazed enough he wasn't going to be getting back in the fight immediately.
With Eve apparently down, most of the gunfire had turned to Amelie and her place taking cover behind the limosine. Despite what one saw in movies, a car door wasn't actually a great form of cover from most bullets…but this car was clearly more than standard as the rounds hit the glass of the vehicle and created heavy circles and dents. If they could afford the 'Maid'? They could afford such a vehicle. Shoving the man into the car, the petite French woman finally pops out of cover a little, but even her eyes go a little wide at the sight of the apparent stage magician engaged in hand-to-hand combat with one of the guys. It's a moment that passes however as she pivots, takes aim and fires two rounds at another gunman who was turning to try and back up his buddy. A moment of victory…right up until a round slams into Amelie's own stomach and she jerks back with a cry of pain.
Still, she does stand back up as the bloody hole in her dress begins to melt back into unblemished flesh beneath. The 'poor' gunmen weren't expecting this sort of trouble with their assassination!
PM There's a quick pop of the hand in question that Eve was grasping as she breaks every bone in the fascist's wrist. He screams in pain, dropping his useless gun before he even had the chance to find out it isn't fire worthy. Eve's attention is on others, now, though the smoke and haze and fog of combat, and actual fog to boot, is making it a little harder for the moment.
Moving with inhuman speed, now, she's onto the next one, grabbing him by the back and flipping him up into the air and smashing him down into the ground with ease. She's strong when she wants to be. More than capable of doing it. Obvioust mutant, right? It's the blue hair.
HEck, maybe she's related to Hank McCoy?
PM
This is going badly. People should not be getting shot as much as they are. Zatanna suppresses a growl; she needs her voice for other things. Specifically, she picks her hat up off the ground from where it landed after her throw and curls her arm around her body like winding up for the world's most dramatic Frisbee throw. "Tahpot dnilb namnug!" she yells at it and flings it in a sweeping sidearm throw. It soars through the air like a blade, arcing upward into the nearest gunman's face and grinding against his nose, spinning still in defiance of physics, consuming his vision with black silk.
Zatanna is a little surprised to notice that once he's blinded, the fog thins in a path to him: after all, it no longer needs to conceal her from him. That suggests interesting tactics, but between the chatter of gunfire and the dampening effects of the fog, she can't trust experimentation. She charges the blinded man, twisting her hips on the final step and dropping into a crouch from which she springs into a flying spinning crescent kick. It's a vainglorious attack, more suited to a demonstration or a movie set than a real fight, but Zatanna has made sure her target can't see her to punish her for throwing herself off-balance like that. The blade of her foot connects with his cheekbone and rearranges the geography of his face: her hat's enchantment is no longer necessary, so the chapeau drops to the ground slightly more slowly than the man it had been molesting.
Zatanna whips her head around (her hair fans out; alien constellations shine in that void), looking for someone else to finish.
PM
With the fog about it was difficult for most to see what was going on. Bystanders were screaming and scrambling for cover and even the gunmen themselves were looking wildly for targets as they were being thrown around, beat down or shot by the three women. It really -wasn't- going well, they were dropping like flies and soon enough only several were left standing and trying to find their way back to the truck they'd arrived in to speed away if they could make it.
For Amelie at least, there was a limit to her action: ammunition. Dropping the magazine, she's left to scoop up one of the fallen guy's guns…and promptly huck it as hard as her smaller frame could at one of the men. They hadn't exactly been preserving their own ammunition either, so she had to improvise!
PM "You god damn mother…"
Eve's swearing a blue streak. The blood she absorbed back into her system from her lungs, promptly driving her fist right into the face of another, shattering his nose and sending him careening tto the ground in a scream of pain, clutching it. Everyone has a plan until they get ounched in the face, militant racists included.
The fact remains that Eve's not a particularly gory sight to behold at this point as, thankfully, wearing a predominantly black color does a little to disguise just how badly she was injured until a closer inspection occurs. Oh, sure, there's a lot of holes in her dress, but clearly they're gothic artistry, right.
PM
Zatanna can't find her foes in the haze, but maybe there's a cheat around that. She drops to one knee (more to present a smaller target than because the spell requires it) and touches the tip of her wand to the ground, saying as loudly as she can without screaming because this is a mouthful she can't run out of breath for, "Lairt fo reppils eci morf em ot eht snissassa!"
A thin, gleaming plane of ice spreads from the tip of her wand and races across the street in an impossibly straight line toward her foes. She gets to her feet and follows it at a run, grinning to herself when she hears one of them curse and fall as the slippery ice trail finds its way to his feet. He comes into view a moment later, and as a reward for his actions in defense of the human race today, earns two kicks to the ribs while he's dazed and a stolen assault rifle swing like a golf club into his temple.
The trail of ice on the ground continues on past the loser on the street. Zatanna follows it. She hopes the other defenders are okay…
PM
Finally the violence will come a an end, but that didn't stop the noise. This much shooting? Sirens were on their way. Police were going to be here in moments. For Amelie at least? She'd technically performed a hired duty, she didn't -need- to depart…and she had to check on her client. Still, that didn't stop her from pausing and trying to peer through the crowd. Like Eve, her clothing was spattered with her own blood and she didn't seem worse for wear for it.
"Are you alright?" she calls, accented tones clear across the din. "Is anyone hurt?"
PM The last thing Eve wants is to really be the center of attention. Too easy to see what's going on with her and Morning Glory isn't exactly known for her immortality on the superhero circuit. So she slinks down a bit, or at least starts trying to. She's no medic, but she can at least find some of the injured and try to help them as she can.
Which is why she can be found applying direct pressure to one who was grased in the leg by a bullet.
PM
The fog is dispersing; the gunmen must be defeated. "Teerts sehtolc," Zatanna mutters quickly, before the fog can lose the last of its concealment. Her costume explodes into light and reforming into what she privately thinks of as her people clothes. She jogs down the street, scanning cars and their occupants; everyone looks pale with fear but otherwise fine. The only two visibly bloody ones are the women talking to each other.
"Hi, are you two okay?"
She doesn't acknowledge knowing Eve. Not in front of strangers.
PM
For her own part, Amelie wasn't moving too far from the car where her charge remained, but that still had her looking towards the pair. Eve was upright and tending to others, so she was -probably- okay and Zatanna does explode into light and change almost 'magicial girl'-like fashion. That again was pretty eye-catching. "I am unharmed," she answers, although her eyes are rather wide. "How did…how did you do that?"
PM "I'll be fine. He'll need a few stitches but I'm pretty sure the bullet barelky grazed him." She's lying. He needs way more help than htat, but she doesn't want to say that out loud in front of him. She's got her hand over the wound and, well, she's not gonna let him see it. It won't help.
The sirens incoming spell good things for everyone. Well, unless you're a murderous anti-mutant racist.
PM
"Secret technique," Zatanna answers Amelie glibly. "I could teach you, but to learn it you'd need about three weeks, six thousand dollars in unmarked bills, a dedicated work space, an unopened Egyptian sarcophagus, and a scuba diver." She doesn't wink, but one corner of her mouth quirks. She glances at the assassin on the ground without much interest and with less pity. Play dumb games, win dumb prizes.
PM
"I am…lacking a sarcophagus," Amelie answers. Was that a joke? Had to know for certain. Still, the maid pauses to wipe her hands on her skirts and leave the smears of blood and the grime of the road she'd dived to. She was going to need a shower and a change of clothes anyway. A slow glance goes between the pair, looking over the pair once more before she bends in the equivlent of a curtsey. "I thank you both for your assistance," she speaks softly, "things could have gone fair worse."
A pause, she turns on her feet once more and makes to walk back to the car and away from the chaos. This was a job for the cops now!
PM
Zatanna's ears perk at the sounds of the sirens. "Sounds like the police are on their way, so this is all settled. Thanks to both of you for helping people today. We're all lucky you two were around." With that, she sets off at a brisk trot, taking the time to wonder if this was all the cat was showing her or if she missed something. Where's a fortune-teller when you need one?