Summary:Hod is attacked by mercenary thugs, and old and new allies rally to aid him. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
Related LogsTheme SongNone |
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Chinatown is a busteling. It's a Sunday evening and the sun is just headed towards the artifical horizon made by the urban jungles steel and concrete canopy. Shadows are growing long, street lights are moments away from flicking into life, and the varied and sundry shops that dare to do such a thing are on the /verge/ of shutting down. That being said, it's still Chinatown. The sights are colorful, the streets are semi-crowded, the hawkers are hawking, and Hod Odinson wouldn't have it any other way.
It's been months since he made a visit to the other hub of wordly travel in Midgard, Shanghai, and the easiest Way to get there is through Chinatown, at least if you're Hod it is, and he has a hankering for duck that NYC just won't handle. Also… it's time to leave America for a bit. Things are getting tense here, winding up, and you don't have to have two eyes to see what's coming down the pipe, and Hod wants no part of it. None. Time to be scarse for a bit, disappear, the one thing he's better at then anyone.
The Way he usually uses is actually part of a network of Ways even the Learned only know a few of, and this one has it's first steps inside the walk in cooler of a particularly good stir fry bar set between a pair of nick-nack shops, it's long narrow dining area set up more like a bar then a Western eatery, lots of stools elbow room if you're not to greedy to slurp at your food. His mouth waters a bit as he nears the smells of oils and butter and spices filling the air, pushing out the regular stench of NYC and in it's place only leaving delicious delicious gun oil and sizzling thin strips of beef.
…
Wait. Gun oil?
Atop one of those urban jungle trees of steel, concrete, and glass is Silk. She has just gotten off 'work' at The Store and has transistioned from sweet and helpful Cindy Moon to sweet and helpful Silk, spidery-crime fighter not-quite-extraordinaire. At least, not yet. Such a reputation she is seeking to build.
"Alright," she tells herself. "Change of paces for patrol tonight. We'll start in Chinatown, and work our way over to Hell's Kitchen. Should be quick, and easy. And home in time for those leftovers after a good bit of web-slinging."
She leans over the bullding, looking down at the street below, and facing the stir-fry place that Hod is occupying by sheer coincidence and luck (though, good luck or bad remains to be seen).
After a long day of getting settled in in both her new lab, AND a new apartment, Riri needed some relaxation. …Admittedly, most people probably wouldn't find blasting through the sky at high speeds in power armor relaxing, but… It was a good way to blow off steam. And the awesome soundtrack pounding in her ears didn't hurt either. She banks to the left a bit, shifting her path over the city to pass over Chinatown, HUD flashing brief picture-in-picture views of the streets below.
Once again wandering and exploring, Sif has found herself in a part of this city where the symbols displayed on almost every surface of the buildings, shops, market stalls, even the packaging carried about by Midgardians are all more foreign than usual. AllSpeak is making the rest of it a non-issue as usual, though.
Having taken the advice of one of her newer companions, she opts to try and sample some of the Midgardian food while she's here. With no shortage of choices, she picks one place just down the street seemingly at random. Honestly, though, it's because the signage above the small eatery — while still completely unreadable — is heavily decorated in red and gold and reminds her just a bit of Asgard.
Loki is totally just stalking Hod. If Hod is the master of disappearing, Loki is the master of knowing just when someone has had enough and wants to disappear. Perhaps its from years of causing awkward silences during a flyting. The trickster god slinks along, illusions flickering around him to make him blend here. He's a young Chinese man for a block, then an old woman, and now and then himself. But, when he spots Sif ALSO here, he slides over to her, picks up a stick that skewers several fried spiders and offers it towards her with a shiteating grin on his face. "I challenge you." His eyes sparkle.
The pain comes first. Multiple impacts in his back like hammer blows hurtle the blind man to the ground with vicious force, spinning him as he falls, his cane ripped from his hand by the unexpected centrifugal force of the unexpected rotation. He hits hard on the side walk, his skull making a THUNK sound not unlike a coconut falling from a tree. He registers that sound the exact same time the trio of gunshots reaches his ears.
Air is hard to come by. Hod's lungs scream. His back is on fire. He's pretty sure that's a broken rib, if his attempts to breath and the accompanying agony are any indication. He can't curl up around the pain as is the usual reaction to such things, all the pain is behind him, currently grinding into the sidewalk, and so he squirms a little, gasping and moaning as his hand pats out blindly, his fingers trying to find the familiar shaft of the cane. The world is spinning, which for a man who can't see is a feat in an off itself. The gunshots were close enough and without warning and so rendered his hearing a non-issue, a droneing ring taking the place of locational data. His sense of smell now only registers spices, oil, beef, blood, and cordite. At his best he can even feel air current shifts if the environs are correct, but right now his nerves are on fire and the crowd screaming and running about leave his skin a chaotic patina of useless messages not worth trying to read. And so Hodr Odinson, The Hidden, The Exile, Winter's Spear, is rendered a mewling writhing bloody mess in the middle of the street with nothing more complicated then a trio of bullets.
*Target is down* comes the radio call as the shooter keeps the one time Asgardian in his sights from his perch a half a block down atop a roof. He's remarkably easy to spot /if/ someone were trying to find him. Purple and black body suit with military stylings and a dash of personal pizzaz. A consumate professional his heartrate and breathing never spike, nor does his aim slide off the target.
As the crowds scream and panic, running in all directions, a van that was already on the street comes to a tire squeeling stop and two immensely muscled men leap out of it's side board, both armed to the teeth. One's mask is stylized like a skull, his black on black body armor clearly the latest and greatest while the larger of the two wears something read and black with slightly less armor and slightly more 'style'. Also the more theatrical of the two, his left arm ends in some sort of cybernetic weapon who's bore is large enough to cause concern. *This vas to be difficult target. I am-* a booted combat boot lands in Hod's kidney hard enough to make the Asgardian sliiiiide ten feet across the pavement, "disappointed.* The big man stalkes over and with his good hand grips the blind god's vest and lifts him effortlessly into the air, like a duffle bag. *Do the job* the skull faced man says into the mic, his eyes scanning the crowd and the massive machine gun in his hands sweeping where ever his eyes go.
Whoever they are, they are professionals.
Silk hears the gunfire, sees the spark of the fire. She jumps, as if she were jumping into a pool. She plummets. Down, and down, and down further, it's when she almost reaches street level and her speed is terrible that she zips a webline out with perfect accuracy, causing her to swing down towards, with all that force and speed, directly into the man kicking Hod's kidney into the ground with her own feet. "Leave him alone!" She cries, a mixture of fury and worry in her voice.
Riri's music is immediately cut off by a harsh buzz in her ears, data flashing across her HUD from her tap into New York's Shotspotter network. Coordinates appear briefly, before her armor flashes up a virtual arrow in the sky above the target location. "Gunshot detected. .308, High Velocity." The teen hangs a sharp turn, gritting her teeth as G-forces tug at her body, and boosts harder towards the marker. When she's a block away, the rapidly clearing area in the crowd is pretty obvious. She comes in for a landing fairly fast, pavement cracking slightly under the impact of foot, knee, and fist. The armored figure stands, gaze locking onto the group of thugs, and both arms come up. Twin circles on the palms of her hands glow, accompanied by a rising whine. "Let him go, and drop your weapons."
Just barely repressing the surprised flinch at Loki's sudden appearance at her side, she looks at the younger prince and then the skewer of spiders he's offering her. She's JUST about to ask if they're spicy when the gunshots ring out and the Midgardians all around them start panicking and fleeing.
"Do you have your blades with you?" she asks the sorcerer while shrugging her buckler off of her back to transfer to her arm. She doesn't pull her sword yet, as there are still too many panicking people too close by.
Loki hears the gunshots and instinctively ducks down, throwing his arm in the way. He ALSO instinctively leans closer to Sif…because if anyone of the Warriors Three is going to cover him…it would be Fandral, but Sif would do it next! Others he does not know are coming in hard and fast, demanding someone be let go. Good. Good. This is chaotic and probably fun. Blades. Right! "Of course…" Loki looks Sif up and down. "And…you distracted me. I was actually keeping track of him!" He points towards where Hod is being lifted, once the people start clearing away. "I'll get the van." He tells her, and then darts to the left, moving against the flow of the fleeing people, away from where the others are making their confrontations to the bad guys, to try and make his way to the van's driver side, so he can see if its occupied currently.
The large cyborg takes the hit from Cindy hard, and like the worlds largest bowling ball hits the ground in a roll, his body skipping twice across the pavement before he reaches out with his hand to catch the side of a blue steel mail box. His skip comes to a sudden abrupt half as the mailbox groans and dents in slightly from the impact of absorbing the big man's tumble. Using the whipping motion of the sudden stop he pulls his legs beneath him and releases just as the inertia dies out, so that he slides the last three feet on the toes of his combat boots. The red and black mask on the man's face pulls in the lowerhalf as he clearly smiles beneath it, "Now /thees/ es more like et." his Russian accent is thick. The weapon that is his left arm comes up and it's disturbingly large bore makes a 'wumpwumpwump' noise as a trio of smoking grenades hurtle towards the ground in front of Cindy and Riri, his intention to have them impact before the girls and use the ground as a directional plate to force the shrapnel and explosions towards them like the worlds largest death shotgun blast.
The other guy, skull mask included, moves with shocking speed the instant Irongirl(?) lands near them, his wrist flicking out and sending a small metal disk towards her armor, it's magnetic end meant to attach itself, "Psychopath." he mutters as he hears the Russian speak and makes a diving motion for the cover supplied by a parked SUV.
The sniper frowns and speaks into the mic as he begins to scan the crowd, looking for obvious variations in th-There. Those two aren't running for cover. *Two more, dressed like crazy people. One male, white, lots of green, headed for the van. Woman, dark hair, wearing a… tiny shield? Jesus. What is happening to this city?* he mutters before swinging his sights over to Sif and pulling the trigger the instant the crosshairs line up with her sheild weilding shoulder.
In the chaose, Hod was hurtled from the massive Russian's grip, his vest tearing under the strain. He's now half in and half out of a shop front window, his bottom half having smashed through the glass, his top hanging out on the sidewalk. "ooooowwwww…. whyyyyy!?" he wheezes to no one.
Silk's hyper-awareness had already kicked off, and the girl was fast. "/MOve/," she tells Riri even as she gives up her body's instincts to the motion to get out of the way of danger's path. Even as the cyborg's arm comes up to begin shooting, she is already moving. And the girl is /fast/.
She casts a webline across the street and pulls on it, yanking her fluidly and quickly out of harms way from the shrapnel shotgun, then twists in the air, fingers outstreching to ensnare both of the cyborg's feet and as Silk lands on her own feet with the agility and grace of a feline, she yanks, hard, on those two lines to try and send the cyborg to the ground.
Riri's left palm flashes, the repulsor bolt tearing into the ground and hopefully knocking some of the grenades back the way they came. Regrettably for Skull guy, however, her armor plating is mostly titanium, and the disk clinks off and lands on the ground. Fortunately for him, the ensuing blast still knocks Riri back, sending her staggering enough that her return fire misses him and instead takes out a trash can.
The crack of the rifle causes another shotspotter alert to ping up, and Ironheart spins to face the direction of incoming fire. "Sniper on the rooftops!" Helmet helpfully zooming in, she sends a repulsor bolt in his direction as well, before wading towards Skullmask, her suit's matte finish scarred and scratched from shrapnel. "You really should have surrendered."
Buckler in place, Sif pulls her sword and then promptly stumbles when something STABS her in the back of her shoulder, followed by the same loud noise she'd heard before. Her shoulder screams in pain, but she's fought through worse, though not with an enemy she has yet to lay eyes on. Turning quickly, she mentally figures that the stab came from… up there. The man in the purple armor.
With no chance of reaching the strange Midgardian version of an archer with her sword, she hastily puts her sword in her buckler hand and hefts the nearest easily throwable object. She throws the peach at the man with every bit of her Aesir strength she has, though she's not entirely hopeful that it'll hit its mark.
Loki opens the van driver's side door, reaches into the van, grabs the steering wheel…and rips it off. Just…right out of the van. "Best of luck in escaping in this…" He quips to no one. He just simply can't wait until they try to use it. Hearing the crashing sound, though, he looks over and sees the injured Hod. He makes a dash towards his brother and glances around, notes that Sif is injured…maybe…she's throwing fruit? Oh dear. Its bad! Verdant eyes try to find the shooter as he gives his wounded sibling some cover. "Are you dying, or can you yet move?" he asks, his silvery voice smooth except for right on the word 'dying', in which a bit of concern creeps in. He wiggles his fingers to help conceal them with illusion.
Silk is not the only person who's fast here, and even as she's twisting in the air, the cyborg is moving. While not Spider fast, he's clearly faster then a normal man should be. As her webbing cuts through the air, he draws a knife that's hardly short enough to carry the term, and swings downward, the muscles of his forearm bunching visibly. As her webbing impacts his boots, the blade of the knife catches the edge of the webbing, and her drawing it taut causes it to press against the keen edge. She finds herself yanking on empty strands, the big Russian's blade kicking sparks from the concrete, "Bad girlie." he says, "Must be punished." and he raises his left hand blindly and fires another grenade in Hod's downed direction. It impacts the storefront just past the one he's handing out of, glass, flames, and concrete explode out the front in a wave of dust. "KGBeast does not like cheaters."
The original trio blow early, the repulsar blasts catching two of the three mid flight and causing them to expand in a concussive wave, triggering the third. The entire street becomes dust, shrapnel, and the wail of car alarms as the wave of force causes every car in fifty feet to tock on it's tires. The ones who's tires don't blow out that is. The Skull faced villain tosses a look from behind the SUV and curses, "He's speaking in third person now. Great." before moving once again and triggering the magnetic mine that did not in fact stick to Riri but still landed at her feet. It's thermite charge splatters the area in a small spray of ultra hot plasma. The directional explosive /would/ have sent it straight into her armor, instantly turning the inside of the armor into a hellish death suit had it been able to stick, and instead mostly ruins more concrete and causes minimal collateral damage. But it makes for a great distraction. He runs, fast, straight at Riri, the machine gun in one hand spitting heavy still core rounds her way, the sort of bullets that peirce normal armor and leave neat holes in what's behind it. Using it to cover his charge, he only stops firing he gets close enough to swing a first towards her helmeted faceplate, some sort of pneumatic machine on his arm jacking out ahead of his fist to supply superhuman power to the punch.
Purple man blinks as the shot catches the woman in the shoulder and she just… mean mugs him? "Oh shit." he says, unconsciously mirroring his teammate's words. A repulsar blast misses him by inches, the beam ripping the rifle from his hands however and sending it bent and useless across the rooftop in a clatter. "Double shit." he mutters before a peach, A PEACH, shatters the cinderblock that he was just using for a rifle rest a second before, "Fuck!" things have escilated. He pulls the specialized pistols from holsters on his thighs and sprints along the roofts edge, looking for a way to join the fight without being killed by produce.
The steering wheel makes a plaintive noise as it's innocent life is cut short by Loki's violent wrenching of it's neck. It had such dreams for the future. It was gonna end up on a Ferrari on day. Le sigh. Hod is currently bleeding on everything. Loki has seen Hod take elven arrows to the thigh, a giants spiked club to the chest, and dive into a small group of troll's once. Hod never bled more then a small trickle. This is not like that. His skin is pale, his glasses are long gone and so the sunken pits where his eyes should be just stare up into the fading sunlight blankly, no help at all. He moves, but it's feeble, weak, small twitches and the like. "hey." he manages after a moment, his teeth smeared pink, "no horny… helmet?" he tries to reach up and touch Loki's head with a bloodied hand, his fingers only manageing to leave red streaks across his cheek before falling limply to the concrete. He breathes, but not well.
Riri looks down as the shaped charge pops, before lifting her gaze again and squaring off against Crossbones. A quick burst of her repulsors in flight mode boosts her into a run as well, MG rounds jackhammering against her chestplate. Power fist meets titanium fist with an almightly clang, the armored teen trying to quickly grab onto the mechanism as she brings her own left around in an attempted uppercut.
"I said," repeats Silk, emotional, and as much angry as worried for her friend, Hod, as she begins to run towards the cyborg, zig-zagging her way towards him - and as she does so she uses her leg strength to jump into the air - and this time it isn't two simple weblines, but ten. Scattered across his body - yet all perfectly aimed.
"Leave." Several are aimed for that knife-weilding arm, while others are aimed for his head, his back and shoulders, and at the peak of her jump she attempts to pull the cyborg up into the air, then to snap him back down, "Him. Alone."
Seeing that beam of light from one of the other Midgardians who are assisting in the battle strike at the purple-clad archer and hit more effectively than the peach she threw, Sif tracks the man's movements along the rooftop and flings a second peach, aiming to hit him as he moves. With his Midgardian weapon damaged, though, she really doesn't expect him to do much more than flee at this point.
That decided, she once again hefts her sword and looks to see who there still is to be dealt with. The armored woman seems to be doing well enough, and the other is using many strings to handle that adversary. Now … where did Loki go?
She hasn't yet realized that Hod was the target of this seemingly random attack.
Loki pauses for only a moment. Then, he leans down, scoops up his brother and takes onnnnne step beyond the opening of the building. With a blood-smeared face, he looks up again towards the sky and with impressive volume and purpose, he yells, "Heimdal! Open the Bifrost!" There is a beat, and then the sky is split with a brilliant light. It cuts through a flag pole on the way down, and takes out the left front of a taxi as the circular beam slams into the ground. Sif would be able to clearly see the problem, now that Loki and Hod are literally bathed in light. And then, they are slurped into the sky, leaving behind a complex set of burned designs in the ground.
KGBeast is an exceptional combatant. He's faster and stronger then anyman has a right to be, he's literally always armed, he's a marksman, a lethal hand to hand fighter, a stone cold killer. He is however not prepared for a Spider. This was not /that/ kind of job. They were supposed to be taking on a depowered blind guy who was /supposedly/ an Asgardian. Sounded like a good idea, the money was good, and come on. He's BLIND. How hard could it be. No one said shit about Spiders, Ironpeople, and… and… whatever the girl taking rifle rounds like they were misquito bites. Beast's knife hand weaves a complex pattern in the air, the blade glinting in the sunlight as he attempts to catch or cut through the webbing lines as they shoot his way, "Little gerl does no-" he manages to catch 3. The last one webs the knife to his chest firmly. Then he's airborn. "Ut-oh." he says as he reaches the apex of his flight. He twists in mid air, trying to wrench enough of his arm free to engage his weapon, attempting to pull the cybernetic implace up and inline with Silk's torso. A spray of heavy calibre rounds arc through the air missing her by a couple of feet as he slams into the ground hard enough the pavement gains a new solitary crack. The gun jams with a KA-CHACK! and falls silent. The big man lays motionless on the ground, no longer spouting taunts.
Crossbones lets his fist make contact with Riri's, and he turns in a graceful motion to the side as she sends an uppercut up through thin air. Much like the others here, Crossbones is a professional soldier, and a /very/ good one at that. Closing the distance on an Iron foe is the right call to make, they get arrogant in his expeience, they try to box with you. They shouldn't. He spins on that leading foot as Riri's uppercut slips by. His hammers a fullbody hook into Riri's exposed hip, the pneumatic actuator not only firing, but the blade of a knife extending at the same time, trying to hammer it's point into the joint to cripple the suits ability to move that leg. Unrelated. It hits with roughly the force of a sedan at urban cruising speeds.
The man in purple, and the only one no one's gotten a real good look at yet, rolls the instant he spots the woman's arm pump once more, his body falling down behind the code mandated lip on the edge of the building, letting the brick work once more catch the brunt of a fruit based attack. "Shoulda taken that job in Madripoor." he mutters as he leaps from his current building to the next, his run carrying him ever closer to the action. Beast is down, which frankly is fine with him, that guy was a dick. But Crossbones is still active, and already the man in purple can see Bones' plan playing out. He lends the assist by leaping into the air once more, a small metal platform unfolding in the air beneath him, it's short lived rocket burst making it act like a rising elevator that gives him the boost required to get to the next higher rooftop. He uses the momentum to flip upside down as he goes over the edge, both barrels pointed Sif's direction as consentrated energy lances from them. The stunning power of the weapons is enough to render a rhino a twitching paralyzed mess, and while it's variable, he's not feeling like toning it down. Not right now anyway!
Hod doesn't hear Loki's words, and if he did he may well wet himself at their meaning. The rainbow lights that he has never seen and yet are as much a part of him as cold night air and the love of hidden things, rain down around him, bathing his skin the all to familiar tingle. That he can't feel. There's that sensation of moving at incredible speed without actually moving at all. But he can't feel that either. Then it all goes still and quiet and golden and warm. And this too he cannot enjoy.
Standing in the antechamber of the Bifrost, before the only door in and out, is a massive man in g
Silk lands, but she isn't done yet. She's not sure who Sif is, and - somehow there was a bright flashy light of glory. She has time to watch it, briefly before catching the movement from the purple dressed man, changing rooftops and attacking Sif.
She casts a webline aimed at Crossbone's head, and pulls back, hopefully to give Riri some breathing room before her other hand reaches out to cast another line towards the building that the purple fellow is shooting from - and once she hits the building she's literally defying gravity and running up it's side, the feat itself not the only impossible feat, her speed, too, is remarkable. She's taking the fight to him, it would seem, and he's not going to get to keep his 'safe' position for long at all. Time to press their advantage with Beast down.
For all of Riri's talents, Boxing isn't one of them. Fortunately for her, the bulkier legs of her armor mean that the blade isn't able to find purchase in the joint. Unfortunately for her, the punch still hits with full force, sending the armored teen spinning across the street, and crashing through the sheet metal side of a parked delivery van. The suit took most of the impact, but she's going to have a killer bruise in the morning. "…Okay, new plan…"
Riri rolls back out of the van, before clambering to her feet and boosting up to a rooftop, with a bit more wobble than she had on her first landing. "Okay, You've clearly got me at a disadvantage here." She takes advantage of Silk's distraction to charge her repulsors and fire again, hoping to at least suppress Crossbones while SIlk goes to deal with the sniper…
Sif is still trying to locate Loki when the Bifrost slams down on the street nearby. "By the… Loki! NO!" She rushes toward the pillar of light, but is too late and gets there just after they're gone. She mutters a few Aesir curses that are best left untranslated.
When the armored woman crunches into the van, she knows that the battle isn't over yet and she doesn't have time to waste being annoyed. She rushes across the street again to engage the Midgardian fighting the armored woman just as the purple-clad man fires something different at her. With her shoulder still sending needle-like stabs of pain down her buckler arm and the movement in her peripheral vision prompting a reflexive lift of the buckler to fend off the attacks, she manages to deflect only one of the two energy beams. The other hits the same shoulder as was already injured, this time knocking her to one knee and rendering her left arm completely numb and useless.
By HEL that hurt!
The dark Prince Loki of Asgard flicks a grin. "Oh…did you want him to die by being assassinated by a pathetic band of mortals? Does he not at least deserve the right to die in battle and find his way to Valhalla? To the healing room alone, no where else. No one even need see him…or me…pass." Loki still cradles the unconscious Hod in his black and gold-clad arms, though he shifts him slightly, and his eyes dart away from Heimdal for a moment to keep an eye on just how much time there is for /polite/ negotiations. Then, softly, with a look to Heimdal. "He is my brother…same as Thor…and I would do this for Asgard's golden son just the same. I will take the blame of traitor if I must…but you know its the right thing to do, and I can do it swiftly and silently. Or I can do it messily…" His words puuuurr and seduce, entoned with the practice of a million lies, bluffs and charms. His booted feet echo in the bifrost chamber as Loki makes his way closer to where Heimdal blocks the way, though he is angled to pass by him.
Crossbones grunts as a web hits his mask, and he's suddenly tugged away, off balance. He snaps a hand to the side of his head, triggering the release of the hard helmet, letting it pop free and showing a tighter cloth one underneath, the same skull like motif emblazoned upon it though clearly less protective. *Target has escaped.* he growls into his throat mic, *Abort, abort, abort.* He's already rolling when Riri gets her height on him and takes to the rooftops. He pulls a new weapon from his back and breaks it at the breach as he shimmies behind the steeringwheelless van they came here in. He loads a speacialty round from his belt and snaps the weapon closed before spinning out from behind cover just long enough to fire the single round in a simple arc at Riri. Given her previous performance, he suspects she'll shoot it out of the air before it reaches her, which is fine by him. The weapon falls to the ground and he follows suit, rolling under the van and disappearing from sight.
*Copy.* comes the sole reply as Paladin triggers the mic on his own suit. He's not waiting around to catch any more dead fruit from the cadre of Scary Ladies. Scary Ladies would be a cool punk band name he notes idely. He hits two triggers on his vest and a pair of canisters hit the rooftop at his feet. He kicks one towards teh side of the building where Cindy's scaling, and letst he other one lay where it landed. A halfsecond later there's a muted WHUFF! and the entire rooftop is covered in a thick blinding purple fog, cutting vision down to inches. There's another, then another, then another, as each of the surrounding rooftops gets their own purple fog cover, the thick smoke like gas wafting out and slipping over the edge of the building towards Silk even as she runs up it's side.
Heimdal does not move. "You cannot do it /any/ way." but for all of his sternness, his immobility, there just /might/ be something like a softening around the edges of hte never blinking eyes. Might be. Maybe. Questionable. "No further… here." he says after the pause, his words carrying finality. And the rainbow lights flash again, bathing the room entire, their pull like the tide plucking Loki and Hod up in their wake and carrying them away in a surge of energy, "Do… not… dither…" the words seem long and drawn out as they too are carried along the Bifrost, whisking the two princes once more out of Asgard and back down to Midgard. Namely, to the ambulance loading by of Mount Sinai Hospital, an ironically Catholic medical center with first rate trauma facilities… now about to host 2 pagan gods.
Silk reaches the rooftop just as the purple gas cloud hits. She coughs, several times, but there's no way to dissapate it cleanly until the wind picks up. A few more moments of observation and she realizes that by looking back down the fight seems to be over. They've run, and the smoke was a cover for an escape.
And now, she has other priorities rather than trying to find wherever the hell these jerks went. Again she jumps off the building, zipping over to the side of one building and then down to the ground in an effortless motion. She makes quick work of securing down Beast with a mat of webbing until police can come to secure him and interrogate him, then she's looking around, "Hod!?"
The second call for his name gets something more worried, more desparate, "Hod?! Can you hear me? Where are you?!" And, she's dashing to the last spot she saw him at, to see if she can track the blood trail. "Hod?!" She calls, because - well, third time -has- to be a charm with Gods, right?!
Seeing Crossbones aiming what looks significantly like a grenade launcher, Riri launches skyward to get the hell out of the way. She drops into a hover again at about five hundred feet, watching the round explode beneath her into a cloud of… paint? And what looks like fine strips of either foil or wire. "Huh. Chaff." Looking around sees a series of purple clouds heading into the distance as the sniper continues to flee. One disabled, two fled. Not bad.
Descending again, Ironheart lands and heads over towards Sif, a subtle grinding sound as she walks indicating that something's not entirely right in one of her armor's hip joints. "Ma'am, are you okay? I think they're gone now."
"Worthless SON OF A GOAT! DO YOU HEAR ME, YOU FESTERING SORE?! If I had wanted to take him to a bunch of," About this time, Loki is sure to be approached by emergency staff, as he's entering the building in a fierce mood, "backwards, sawboning mortals, I would have taken him here myself!" Loki lifts a finger at whatever combination of nurses and doctors take Hod onto a gurney, "If he dies, then I will personally see to your individual and /lengthy/ suffering…" which, they've probably heard before, just not usually in a poetic manner from a tall, angular, model-man in a fancy costume.
It takes Sif what feels like an unforgivably long time to regain her feet, but she does so just in time for Crossbones to be gone and the armored woman to approach her. "I will heal. What were those men after? They did not seem to be accosting any of the businesses here."
Yeah, still clueless about Hod's part in this whole thing, but she's inwardly worrying about why Loki felt the need to flee the battle as he did. "You fought well, and…" she looks around for the other young Midgardian, having not been able to track Cindy's very fast method of travel.
When the van is moved or checked under, there is nothing there but a shifted manhole cover and the gaping hole of an open sewer. When the smoke clears the rooftops, there is no man in purple, there is nothing, not even his elevator platform remains, no trace of him at all. And when they all turn to look, to check at where the big Russian was webbed to the sidewalk, they find that he is indeed, yup, still there. Webbed all to shit and back. Stuck fast to the ground but /good/. He is however starting to moan and wriggle a bit as he begins to come to.
As for the hospital, the people there are many things, lax in their duty is not among them. Loki's threats are met with stoic looks of 'get out of our way crazy man', one nurse who's face is a craggy mountain range of victories and defeats to numerous to count lets the others take the bloody body of Hod from Loki's arms and wheel him inside the building with double time speed and instead turns her attention to Loki. She looks thoughtful, and her eyes have the thousand yard stare that veterans of bad wars have, of men who's lives are harder then their souls were ever meant to bare… and did so anyway. The einherjar carry looks like this, and there isn't a single soft bastard in the entire lot of them. She looks as if she's half tempted to turn Loki over her knee and half tempted to give him a hug, all at once. She looks like his mother. "Peace." she says finally, a hand resting momentarily upon his chest, fearless in it's presumption, "We are /very/ good." the hand on Loki's chest pats once, then the woman is gone, turning to jog back inside after her new charge.
"They were after my friend," Silk answers Sif, urgency in her voice. She makes a strangled sound, and moves to pick up his cane, recognizing it. Her voice goes soft, catches in her throat. "Hod…," she breathes.
She looks back to Sif. Looks to the Van. Then she remembers the bright light. She asks Sif, "Did HOd - did you see him escape into the tunnel of light and colors that I saw? You must tell me. Please. It's important. He was wounded. Badly." She doesn't know Sif is like Hod, and does not reveal his Godhood to her that he disclosed to her, entrusted her with.
"He's my friend. I - I need to know he's okay." Worry in her tone. Though, the fact ther eis no body? That gives her some hope.
"I think they were trying to kidnap someone. The skull mask guy tossed someone through a window before we started fighting, and that beam of light happened where they were." Riri nods, offering Sif a hand in case she's still having issues from whatever it was that shot her. And then Silk comes back. "They both disappeared in it, Silk. So wherever that went, they're probably there."
Loki looks at the woman and frowns, though he does stop threatening them. He moves over to the counter and flits his eyes along the place, finally picking up a brochure. He grabs two, in case. Then he walks back outside where he's not immediately visible, and disappears. He reappears almost exactly where he disappeared from, immediately on guard until he can tell that things have disengaged around here. "Sif…he's at a hospital. Do not ask, I am still angry about it." The others nearby get a curious look and he continues to wear his worrying frown.
"Hodr?" Sif looks toward the knotwork left on the ground from the Bifrost then back to the clearly worried young woman. "Another from my home realm was here as well, I suspect he took Hodr to a place where his injuries will be quickly and well tended." Or Hod will be immediately executed. But she's not about to say that part aloud to the Midgardian women who defended the Exile so fearlessly.
She's made it back to her feet with Riri's help (though she'll never admit to having accepted the help) before Loki reappears, and she turns toward him promptly while returning her sword to its scabbard. That elicits a sharp twinge of pain from her shoulder and gets her to wondering why the stab wound is still bothering her so much. But, she's survived much worse and she will get some healing stones when she returns to the Embassy. "That is likely for the best. Asgard would not have welcomed him back."
"You are his friends? His allies?" Silk looks for conformation in Loki's worry, Sif's words. The affirm it, in her eyes. She then extends the cane to Loki, "Make sure he gets this. Please. And, I want to see him. What hospital?" Her brown eyes suggest determination, and seem to equal Loki's own worry. "Please."
A pause. "I'm Silk, by the way. I'm his friend," she reiterates to Loki, earnestly.
"Next time, I will take him to the witches…or through one of the other ways. Believe me, I will have vengeance my own way." Loki says with a quiet promise. Regardless for everyone concerned, they could get the address of where he is.