Summary:Brownies get loose in the park and run riot. No, not the edible kind. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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Koa Turner has the world's worst headache. This is partly because the ambient magic of the park is giving him one and partly because brownies are just THE WORST. Okay, technically not a brownie, technically a 'brunaidh' or maybe a 'gruagach' if you're better at Gaelic than he is. Like most kinds of faerie creature, they have a penchant for pranks and a very specific set of bans that turns them hostile and abusive once they're violated. Like thanking them.
This has resulted in WAND being called to Flushing Meadows Park, in Queens. The brownies are long gone but the people they injured are not. Koa had Keiko call out for medical while he went to sweep the area. He's just getting back now.
"Well, they're well and truly departed for the moment, I think. But we're going to need to do something about this because I suspect they've taken up residence in the park."
"I placed the call, Koa…" Keiko answers as he returns, her quarterstaff in her hand. "Those were … interesting. Brownies, you say?"
She'd had to deal with a couple and then try and help park goers who'd been affected. It probably hadn't gone well for the tattooed woman.
"I'm not sure when they'll be here."
And up to the park comes an ambulance, the driver hopping out and circling around the back when the other gentleman grabs a bag and approaches the head-throbby guy. Dark hair, green eyes, fit…and both Keiko and Koa would sense a LOT of magic infusing the man. "Hello there, I'm Cain McCormick…" A glance at Keiko. "…I'm going to guess you're Agent Kurita, which would make you…" He turns to Koa. "Agent Turner?" Nope, he seems blithely unaware at the moment that there's any other magical people in the area, though…he looks off towards where the Brownies were, a faint frown forming, then fading as he turns his smile back to the two agents. "So…how can City Fire be of assistance to SHIELD tonight, agents?"
Koa takes one look at the guy and can SEE the magic infusing him and unfortunately for everyone his first reaction is 'wonder what it'd be like if I sunk my claws into him and took a chunk out of his soul?' Cain may or may not be in a good position to see Koa's eyes go red for a solid few seconds but Keiko most certainly is.
"Uh, sorry. Yes. Hello Mister McCormick. We do have some wounded with some fairly unusual injuries. Are you… used to dealing with unusual injuries?
The way he says it he probably doesn't mean what most people say when they say unusual.
"Do I need to put a lead on you?" Keiko mutters to Koa when his eyes go red. All she knows is there's magic around and Cains arrival does little to affect her tattooes. She does step in front of Koa, obstensibly to greet Cain.
"Hello, I'm … Keiko, yes. This is Agent Turner. We've had a disturbance and there are people here who need help." Koa's done the rest of that … she waits to here the answer.
Well, the thing is that Cain's perceptions are super fast to match his ability to move - if they weren't hed not be able to see, or manuever, and that would be very bad for him at two-thirds of the speed of sound! He does notice the red-flashy eyes, though he doesn't know what they signify, he's just hoping they won't follow up with some sort of attempt to kill him. That's the usual order of operation.
Relieved when no attempt to murder is made, and then he looks to Agent Kurita. "Keiko, a pleasure." He looks about the scene, and nods. "Right then, my partner and I will get to work, I take it neither of you are in need of medical assistance? Anything we should know about the 'unusual injuries' then?"
"Agent Kurita might be? Looks like you took a few knocks, Keiko." They might not be serious but you know. Better to be safe than sorry in this case.
There's something else specific that might twig Cain's senses a little bit. Keiko is carrying a rod made of gossamer. That material comes from Faerie and is extremely hard to work into forms durable enough to remain in the mortal realm. And yet… here it is. Interesting, no?
"Will you look at me funny if I tell you that they're mostly brownie bites?" Brownie bites proooobably doesn't mean dessert in this case.
"I always take knocks. But a couple sunk their teeth in." She doesn't *seem* to be in pain although there are bloody marks on her triceps. Hard to see among the ink there, but there none the less.
The Quarterstaff is collapsed to a rod, though the smaller WAND agent doesn't let it go. There's something terribly serious about her. She's not smiled at all. Not even when she greeted the EMT.
Sadly, Cain's knowledge of his own origins is slipshod at best, though the rod /does/ draw a glance, and maybe a bit of a shudder, before he nods to her, all business. "Sit." He indicates a bench, and then opens up the bag and will, unless she violently objects or resists. "I am going to treat your injuries, Agent Kurita, is that okay?" He's essentially going to make sure that the wounds are cleaned and then bandage them if she permits.
A look to Koa. "And…no, it wouldn't, but the question is what idiot /offended/ them so badly they they were in a bitey mood?" He has some experience with one type of spirit that's similiar, Hobs, and they need SERIOUS pissing off before they get bitey!
"Well apparently some have taken up residence in the park and were cleaning it." Koa says, folding his arms as Keiko is directed to sit and be treated. Which she should be, really. It might fester or make her dance or give her pixie wings and a bobcut. You never know.
"Some locals saw them and thanked them. It went RAPIDLY downhill from there. Keiko and I arrived to break them up and then things went worse."
They ran from Koa. Koa is a predator and they know of him. Keiko, though… well, they tried her. It was a mistake but they tried her anyway.
"Not many City Fire have experience with that sort of thing. Though not many City Fire have as much magic in them either." That's said SLIIIIGHTLY suspiciously but only because, really, there have been so many magical issues of late and this seems a little bit convenient.
"Keiko." The woman corrects as she sits. Obedient, or at least not arguing. "By the time we got here, they were chasing people around. They thought me prey. My spirits and I taught them differently." Now that he's seeing to her, Cain can see a lot of bites.
Far more than she should have really.
"You know about Brownies? Don't think them edible or anything?" The wolf tattoo on Keiko's arm, ripples as Cain draws near - the lifelike eyes peering out from the ink balefully. He'll also feel the pull of Gossamer from the ink that's been used.
"Ouch." Cain states firmly at the thanks. "They do -not- appreciate thanks, that much I know." He says as he works on Keiko's injuries. He'll even apply a couple sutures if needed, but will try to keep things as minimalist as he can. "And…I'm not any kind of expert, Agent Turner. Not by a longshot. I just know a few." Hobs. "A few things." This added slightly rushed after. He goes very still at the mention of his magic, and pauses to look at Koa. "So." He studies the man, not really seeing anything, but his ability to do so is fickle. "So." He repeats. "Is this where you try to kill me and drain my power, then?"
He really hopes not, and man, Keiko has a lot of little bites! He "Brownies that you bake are edible, brownies awake are not." His touch is probably a little weird for Keiko, sometimes, particularly when he touches one of the tattoos there's a strong sense of the magic inside him, and once or twice faint purple sparks.
"If I wanted to do that, Mister McCormick, I'd have tried already." The WAND agent says with quirked brow. "Also it would be drain your power, then kill you. Harder to harvest if you're not still alive."
This might be the first time Keiko has heard him openly talk about that but it's probably also the first time Keiko has heard someone openly ask about it.
"I'd take that as a yes, Keiko." Koa chuckles as Cain rhymes a bit. "Clearly they didn't think the same about you. Let him do what he needs, don't want that stuff to fester."
Cain won't miss the scars already on Keiko - well masked by the ink of the tattooes. In fact, he might think it sort of strange that the ink itself hasn't been marred by the marks of her injuries but it hasn't and neither has the colour seem to dim despite the age the of images.
"Koa…" she says quietly, slitted eyes finding his red tinged ones. She meant what she said about a leash and if she has to ask Illyana for one, she will. "How did you know he could do that?" That's to Cain. Incredibly direct and it's clear she expects an answer.
"The red eyes when he saw me, that was a dead give-away, Agent Keiko." Yes, Cain is focusing on the tats, wondering how they work, and sort of feeling the magic in them, but only that…and that it is a bit disturbing. He looks over to Koa at the corrected order of operation for maximum feeding efficiency, and can barely suppress a shudder. Okay, he MOSTLY suppresses that shudder. He looks back to Keiko then. "Well…actually…it was a good indicator, not a dead give-away. It is just that in my experience most of the magical folks I've met want to use me like a Duracell or snack. You two, and a girl fire-fighter I met being the only exceptions." He is still working on Keiko's wounds, of course. "At least…so far." The not killy-drainy thing.
Koa folds his arms and looks at Keiko with a small smirk on his face. There's that flash of red again. They've been happening more frequently. Nothing's come of it so far but it's still probably a bit concerning.
"That's probably because you're stuffed with energy and it's kind of rare. There's lots of magical beings that don't particularly have a problem getting their energy from someone they don't think is using it as effectively as they could."
He's seen that a lot. In fact that kind of thing is often what leads to WAND's involvement in something bigger. "I'm a predator myself but… I don't eat people."
Generally.
"Of course you don't…" Keiko murmurs, meeting that smirk and cocky stance with a flat look of her own. There's a piece of Keiko missing that would indicate that Koa lost control at least once. "He really doesn't, Cain. I'm not a predator and anything you see about me … is the tattooes."
That's not technically correct now, it was once, but not now. There's a dark energy about Keiko. "The worst you'd get from me is a mauling by my spirits and beaten by my quarterstaff."
"You should be careful though, being so blunt to people you think have power. Some … will just take as an invitation to try and eat you." The Limbo demons that bother her would certainly do so.
"Well, I can generally run away if I need to." Cain doesn't elaborate, and then he straightens. "There, that's about the best I can do for you, Agent Keiko. You really should see a doctor when you get a chance, follow up to make sure that there's no infection or side effects."
He looks to Agent Turner and sighs. "Yeah. I am." He looks a little reassured at Koa's semi-declartion of not-eatery-of-sentients, and then less assured when Keiko cautions him about being blunt. "And then I run away, or punch them a lot." He doesn't seem all that keen on the punching part. He does look at Keiko. "I…you feel…/off/. Not quite right, I don't have the words."
"You've got keen senses. What is it exactly that you are again?" Being able to run away is one thing. Knowing what a brownie is, is another. Koa can see that he's got some Fae influence both on and in him, but that doesn't tell him what Cain is. It only gives him a general flavor.
"Yes there is something slightly off about her. She spent a number of years in a hell-realm. That kind of thing takes its toll." He'll leave Keiko to further elaborate. As to the flat look… he seems immune. Ish.
At least the flat look doesn't get a smirk. That's an improvement. It's strange that she hadn't flinched or shown any response to the pain she must have felt when Cain was seeing to her. "I'll go to medbay when I return to The Triskelian." Is all she says. No thank you.
"Some things you can't run from." It's said bluntly again. "You need to be careful how you approach them." At the comment about her feeling off, her slitted eyes slide to Koa, then back to Cain and she sighs.
Those dark brown eyes slowly turn yellow as obsidian scales form over her skin and head, large leathery batlike wings appear on her back - for a moment, she looks just a like a demon.
The scales slough away, the wings disappear - leaving Keiko with bright yellow eyes looking at Cain.
"It's one of the spirits I bound to me." It's not *just* that but they really have no idea how badly she is corrupted at the moment.
"Depends, I don't miss much, but when it comes to the magic foo, that is a lot more hit or miss." Cain shrugs. "Me? I'm an EMT, of course." He says with a purely fey smile. He looks to Keiko as Koa does, and then steps back again before he starts putting stuff back in his satchel of medical supplies.
"Good, you're not in immediate danger, so that should be fine now that your wounds have been cleaned and dressed." No comment about how calm she was, no twitches or yelps, nope.
And then she literally goes demonic to support the explanation from Koa, and /that/ is when some of what he can do is revealed, because Cain instinctively moves to a safe distance. Like…INSTANTLY.
There's a pulse of magic, and then he blurs, little more than a purple streak, and fading sparkles as the lines of crackly violet and lavender energy dissipates. When he says he mostly can run away, well, yeah, that's sure likely. "I…yeah. Okay, I see what you mean about spirit mauling."
In fact Cain /is/ intimidated!
"Well…" Koa blinks. "Isn't that interesting?" That movement had been so fast it might as well have been teleportation. He can tell it wasn't, mostly because he would have seen a signature involving magical teleportation but that was indeed quite fast.
"That's not the half of it but that's indeed the most dramatic version of it." Koa folds his arms and considers Cain. "Sylph perhaps? Or something more exotic? Jackalope, maybe?"
As Cain bolts, Keiko-demon actually starts as if to make off after him, but it's soon Keiko again. The yellow-eyed woman just stares a Cain, looking just a little hungry as she does. "That wasn't the spirit that would maul. That's Bella or Glydril. I can show them too…."
Koa might have something to say about that but he can tell she's shifted back towards that dispassionate, cold being.
"Did you teleport?"
With Koa clearly having sensed pretty acutely what he could do, Cain sighs, and looks more than a little put out. "I'm…a Quickling." He looks between Koa and Keiko, genuinely frightened to be speaking of it to them. "A fey, but you know that already by the guesses you made." The last said to Koa. "I was raised here, though, don't know much of anything. Just what I could piece together the hard way, old books, trial and error."
And then he looks at the cold Keiko. "I dunno if I should stick around. You're both kind of freaking me out here, a bit. I mean, I appreciate the not eating my power and not trying to kill me, but…"
To Keiko. "No, I just run really fast." He blinks. "Is teleporting a thing?"
Koa's phone rings and he steps away to take the call, leaving the yellow eyed Keiko to stare at the Quickling. "A Quickling? Fey? You're a … fairy?" Koa might gibbs slap her when he hears what she said. Slowly the eyes start to fade in colour and revert to their natural brown but it really is slowly.
"Teleporting is a thing. The Darkchilde does it." Whoever that is. Another name though that might fill Cain with terror. "So do others. Mutants and Sorcerors. WAND has a couple of sorcerors who can do that."
"Never admit you are scared to one like me…"
"Yes." Cain nods, reluctantly. "A child of the Fey, though not raised by them, I guess I'm sort of a half-blood or maybe a changeling, not really sure." He notes the shift in eye color and then starts to calm a bit.
A hand rubs at the back of his neck. "Teleporting. Huh. Sounds like…perfect speed." He DEFINITELY seems attracted to that idea.
And no, 'Darkchilde' does not inspire him with warm fuzzies, not even tepid fuzzies! "Have you ever done it?" He's a lot calmer now, less skittish. "Oh, I'm generally pretty brave, just…one of you I might've been okay with, but two to one odds can be bad, and we really don't know each other, yeah?"
"Never admit your fear to a demon. Never show you're weak either." That might explain Keiko's stoicism. Pain is weakness, after all. "They will use that to get the drop on you and you will not survive." beat "Well you might. But you'll wish that you hadn't."
Really, they should have Keiko speak motivationally.
"Teleported? A couple of times, yes. When the Darkchilde wills it or when the other mages are around. I don't teleport on my own. I don't have power, just my spirits."
"Were you kidnapped as a child as well?"
"In my defense, you're the first demon I've met, Agent." Of Limbo. "Keiko." Cain pauses, and then nods. "Well, the first I've been able to talk to. I mean, you know, if the others even were demons, could have been something else." He moves back towards the tattooed woman. "What's it like?" A smile. "Teleporting, I mean. Not getting beat on by demons, that I can figure out - I'd sum it up as 'Bad juju, no do'."
And then the last question. "Actually…an Orphan, never knew my parents, fostered out until I was adopted by the first guy to try and kill me." A nod. "Twice."
Ouch.
There's a flicker of something in Keiko's eyes. The only emotion she's really shown. Hard to tell. Anger, hurt or fear?
"I'm … not a demon. I am human." She is, isn't she? Despite everything. There's a look towards Koa on the phone, he's still busy.
"So … abandoned then." She shakes her head. "I would never leave my daughter alone, willingly." beat "Teleporting? Depends. Sometimes it's cold. Sometimes it's nothing. You're here and then you're there. Some people don't cope with it too well though. Not me. Or Koa."
"Did you kill your adoptive father for doing that?"
And Cain's perceptions let him catch every nuance of the emotion that flickers over Keiko's face, and his shoulders slump a little. "Sorry, I didn't know." A sigh. "I didn't mean to…err…tweak your feelings like that." After all, he can't tell which it was, so better to use a neutral expression to get the idea across. "Could be abandoned, that's what they said at the shelter, that I was -literally- left on the stoop in a wicker basked with a note." He shakes his head. "Basked Boy some of the kids would say. Kids are jerks." A grin. "I was just as bad, of course."
He's definitely intrigued by the teleporting stuff, because 'fast' is not the same thing as 'instant'. At all.
"Well, yeah, had to. I think the first time was more an accdient, but the second — he wanted my power."
The apology gets a flat look which might be acknowledgment for the apology. Cain might have noticed that Keiko doesn't say 'thank you' or 'sorry'. "It sounds like you didn't mind the home you grew up in."
"He wanted your power of Quickling?" The tattooed womans expression barely changes though she nods at the fact he killed his father. No recriminations from the woman, though it seems she's not sure what a 'quickling' is.
"Well, the shelter, it wasn't all bad. The people there tried hard to do the best for us, the households we got fostered to, those were a different matter." He stands a couple yards away. "At first my adopted dad was pretty cool, moved me into a mansion really, it was pretty amazing. But then I started getting sick, wasn't sure why." A shrug. "Still don't -know-, but I suspect he was giving me stuff, trying to awaken my fey powers. I found a journal and some notes, crytic but he was doing -something-. Anyway, I got really sick so he dumped me." A shrug. "And when I wok up I could do stuff, could see and move faster. Not sure what happened, but I figured out I was fey, it was pretty interesting." Bad. "Taught myself to use my powers, but yeah…he wanted my magic more than anything, if could grab the Quickling Faerie stuff too,..he'd have been only too happy."
"So you move fast." Keiko nods, almost to herself and stretches.
It doesn't seem to surprise her that people would hurt children to get what they want. "I think we need to be going." She looks to Koa who gestures. "If you need anything, Agent Turner and Probationary Agent Kurita. Ask for them at WAND, in SHIELD."
They've still got a park to clear and paperwork. Keiko really, really hates paperwork.
"I'll be sure to get to medbay when I get back." That's … the most thanks Cains going to get.
"Really fast." Cain confirms with a nod.
Sadly, having lived through such, Cain isn't surprised either. Angry maybe, but not surprised. "WAND in SHIELD, got it." He hands her her copy of his papwerk. "And my info is on that, so when you do your report about this, you'll have it." He definitely sympathizes about the paperwork, and nods. "I should probably see what I can do for the others here. It was…interesting meeting you, Probationairy Agent Kurita."
And with that they part ways, the unspoken thanks - if they were thanks - noted and filed away before he snaps to and gets on with the work at hand.