Summary:A Cat, A Dog and a Bird in the park. What could wrong? Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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It's getting cold in New York. It is after all into November now. Nick had some errands to run yesterday. Their guest they had to take to the safehouse established earlier by the Maria Stark Foundation, and then Nick himself had to get his fur trimmed, courtesy of a serum that had kicked it's growth into overdrive.
As such he is now no longer shaggy Nick and he is cutting through the southern end of Prospect Park to get to his car. It's a bit roundabout but there'd been some kind of official meeting of heroic types - sanctioned ones - a bit further into the Park and he'd wanted to avoid that. It had looked like a bit of a crowd. That happens from time to time. The city or state or someone will want to do the see and be seen thing. Brings out all the usual suspects for high profile events.
Anyway. It's nice in this part of the park. Fewer people since it's so cold and the lake has frozen over but there are some kids out skating on it. Nick tried that once, skating. It did not go well. Perhaps he will again at some point but for now he'll stick to the path, thanks.
Isis is pouting a bit because Nick's had his fur trimmed. She likes the shaggier look particularly as it's getting colder.
Dressed in jeans, boots and snug long sleeved top and a jacket, the slim feline-like mutant is keeping away from the pond. Ice is cold and she doesn't really like it. Might have something to do with her first experiences of it when they took her to the Institute.
Finally. Finally this filthy ditch of a Grounder city is starting to cool off to reasonable temperatures. Shayera Hol is finally getting to enjoy some decent weather, and she's taking the chance to really stretch her wings.
At ground level, a not quite bird-shaped shadow passes over Nick and Isis, following the sidewalk they're on before veering off away from the pond and its ice skaters.
The shadow actually gets Nick to look up. "Wow. That is one big bird." It's a bit hard to tell since the sun is rather bright at the moment but the wingspan is certainly enormous. Of course Nick may regret having said 'bird'. Isis has been a little emotionally fragile since the other night and it's easier right now for her to slip into being a cat more than a person. She's made a lot of progress on that so this is probably a minor setback.
Not that he's going to be thinking that if he has to chase her all of a sudden. She's fast. And that shadow is headed off the path and into the park proper.
Nick didn't need to speak, Isis' ears are already tilted forward and if she had a tail it would be swishing. The blue-eyed mutant just moves quickly after the shadow. Off the path and into the park.
Nick can feel the feral wash of emotions from his companion. The exhilaration and excitement that accompanies a chase. It might be hard for him to resist that, particularly given that right now he does have to chase Isis.
Enjoying the rare chance to fly without running into one of those obnoxious little drones, Shayera is banking and wheeling about far more than she normally would, causing her shadow on the ground to do similar. As the trees in the park below open out to a currently vacant baseball field, she dives briefly and pulls up to glide right over the grass, at most ten feet above the lawn.
She's missed being able to do this so freely.
"Isis!" Nick grabs empty air as she bolts off. Damn it! Now he does indeed have to chase her on her looping, whirling path through the park. "Laser pointer. I should have brought a laser pointer." He mutters. Cats!
He does finally catch sight of the woman - it turns out it's a woman and not a bird - as she dives toward the empty baseball diamond and… oh no. That's far. Far too low. It's not that she's going to hit anything.
But something might hit her…
Nick manages to grab at Isis' jacket but the thing just slides from her slim shoulders. The feline-like mutant really is quick and she dashes pell-mell through the park. The chase is everything for Isis, she doesn't even really hear Nicks call.
Nick does have one move he can use to get her attention. He might need it …
Isis leaps as Shayera dips so low. Ten feet? She could that from standing start - as it is she's running so lands on Shayera's back.
Peaceful is suddenly and RUDELY interrupted, and Shayera shouts in both surprise and indignation. With the Klingon latched onto her back she works to gain altitude again, wings working harder with the extra ungainly weight. She can carry heavier loads without effort, but they usually aren't on her back trying to mess with her.
Uttering a string of particularly vile curses in several languages, she manages to clear the treetops then abruptly rolls to knock Isis off her back. If she manages it, she's promptly turn and try to catch her attacker because she's got WORDS for whoever dares to mess with her like this.
"Wow. Nice jump." Is all Nick can say. Isis can't hear him of course and he stops in his path to watch the beautiful trainwreck unfolding. It looks for a moment that the winged woman might hit the trees but… thankfully she does not. Cursing to himself, Nick starts running again. There is no way in hell that will be taken well and he can only hope that the hawk-like girl doesn't just go straight up and drop Isis.
Though it must be said, if that were to happen the feline woman tends to land on her feet.
"Catnip. I'm getting catnip." He mutters.
Isis is buffeted and hit by wings as they move and she hangs onto Shayera's back with her claws. Yes, claws that have extended from her fingernails. Her legs dangling down in the air.
"Hey. You're a person!!!" The realisation hits just a little too late as the hawk-woman lifts them up in the air. And then … turns.
Isis dangles from Shayera's back, her claws probably puncturing skin as she grips reflexively … until they slip and she plummets away. Only to be caught again.
Now she dangles like a kitten. "Um. Hi?" Shayera might feel her anger dissipate a little as Isis manages to focus her empathy on the woman.
"Nick! I'll be back in a minute… That's my friend down there. He won't be happy with me. I've been a bad Kitten." The blue-eyed woman says.
Shayera shouts again, this time it's a sound of pain as Isis digs her claws in briefly. Having managed to scruff her attacker, she glares at the now contrite cat-woman. She's not as angry as she should be, but she's still FAR from happy about this situation.
Keeping her grip on the bad kitten, she banks and makes a loop around the baseball field to angle toward a gentle enough landing… kind of. She lands on her feet more than lightly enough but doesn't absorb the momentum on Isis' behalf, letting go of at just the right moment to send her tumbling into the grass. It's no more damaging than if Isis had done a couple of cartwheels and failed to recover from the last one, but is most certainly undignified.
Reaching to one openly bleeding shoulder, she rubs at the claw wounds and grimaces, uttering a displeased wordless noise.
"Isis!" Nick catches up with her as she tumbles and kneels down to help her up. "What the hell?!" Jumping on a bird that size can hardly have been any better than jumping on a flying person. Though people get angrier.
"Sorry miss." Nick says, looking up at the bleeding and understandably upset winged redhead. "Don't know what got into her."
He does know actually but he's not going to say 'sorry Miss. She's a bit broken on account of having been experimented upon by unscrupulous assholes as a child.'
Though he might consider it. That would probably make most people slow down if only to parse that.
Isis tumbles and rolls as Shayera lands, yowling a little as she does. The tumble stops as she rolls to her knees. "Nick. The bird was a person, not a bird. Isis was a bad Kitten." Shayera can almost hear the capitalisation of the word.
She doesn't stand immediately when Nick helps her up, simply staying on her knees and pressing her face into Nicks jacket. He can feel her shiver with the cold - he does have her jacket after all.
"Isis is sorry, Miss…" Nick and Isis. That's who they are.
Shayera can feel the sad remorse as it rolls from the cat-like mutant.
Shayera's THIS close to letting loose with a nice, steaming pile of vitriol at the pair, both for interrupting her flight and for the scratches. She's been dealt worse injuries, but these aren't just stinging, they're ITCHING. But it's the waves of remorse she can feel rolling off of the cat girl that keep her from venting at them.
"Maybe next time you can try yelling hello instead of just jumping? I had half a mind to just drop you. You're lucky I didn't."
Nick has the good grace to look embarrassed at least. His ears are back. Shayera's seen dogs before yes? She knows what that looks like. "Sorry again Miss. But yes thank you for not dropping her." He looks down at Isis and finally hands her the jacket. She should put it on.
"Though we both did take you for a bird. I can't say I've ever seen someone like you before." Well, there may have been a similar mutant but this looks pretty different to Nick. "I'm Nick, by the way. Nick Gleason. PI. This is Isis, my partner."
She may have gotten their names before but he's making formal introductions.
There is something about the way Isis responds to the anger. The feline-like mutant has clearly been chastised before - it shows in her body language. "I'm sorry, Nick." She can feel the embarrassment he's feeling and it's because of her. "I'll be a better Kitten, I promise."
"I'm Isis Marik." She follows Nick example, rising to her feet and slipping her jacket back on. Then she rubs her ears against Nicks arm and glues herself to his side.
""Thank you for not dropping me."
Sharp eyes watch the pair, particularly Isis, making mental notes of her behavior patterns and far more cat-like than Grounder behavior patterns. If these two ever pose a problem, she'll have to take down the dog first. The other is dependant on him.
Taking a deep breath then letting it out in a huff, Shayera makes a conscious decision to not be angry at this pair. "Shayera Hol. Akah Ma'at Defense Force. And, well… misunderstandings happen. Just don't do it again, right?" She's resisting the urge to dig at the claw lacerations on her shoulders.
"Akah where now?" It's not really surprising that Nick doesn't know where Shayera is from. Certainly officials and heroes do but Nick doesn't especially look like either. He doesn't REALLY look like the locals though. Too furry and his face is all wrong. Might he be of a lineage such as she? Legend has it there were once many other beast men.
"Is that near here? You're… not a mutant then?"
Ah mutants. Surely Shayera has heard of them. Some of them look quite strange. Though she's probably never seen one that looked like her. And the ones that look like Nick or even Isis aren't super common either.
"Do you, uh, need someone to look at those scratches?" That's a phrase that means get medical attention of course but Shayera may or may not know that.
"I know you're sorry Isis. It's okay. Just like she says. Don't do it again."
Taking Nick down first in a fight might be a good idea but then again, Isis is very protective of Nick. Hurt Nick and the feline-like mutant gets rather feral. It's a gamble who to deal with.
"Aka Mat? Is that a laundromat or something?" Because Isis' grasp on Geography is terrible. She does have a sense of direction, which is something, but basic education is lacking.
"I won't and I'm sorry about your back. It was … reflex." She says as she looks up at Shayera.
Shayera's wings rustle as if shaking out something, then resettle against her back a bit more smoothly. "No, Akah Ma'at is …" she huffs a sigh. "It's nowhere near here." Perhaps that faint hint of accent to her voice proves that more than anything else. "And no, I'm not a mutant. At least not in the sense that Grounders use that term."
She reaches to rub at the claw marks on her shoulder again when Nick mentions them. "I should, they're itching more than I'm used to." She keeps to herself for the moment exactly how she feels about having been clawed.
"We know a doctor if you like? You might be having an allergic reaction." Nick wouldn't be surprised if the notion of an allergy to cats offended Isis. After all cats are wonderful. She is wonderful and she is a cat, therefore cats are wonderful. QED.
"Though if it helps I THINK Isis is fairly hypoallergenic?" Nick wouldn't know. He's a walking allergen factory himself. Nick Dander. It gets on everything. Well. Everything he wears anyway. Isis doesn't seem to mind though.
"I have a um… car this way, do those wings fold up any more than that?"
Point in case. "She can't be having an allergic reaction, Nick." Isis answers, tilting her nose in the air just a bit. "I washed my hands and claws are clean. And no one is allergic to me." Because you know, CAT.
"What are you doing here, then, if you're part of defence force." Shayera hadn't exactly said that but that's how Isis interpreted it. "Are you on holiday or something? Nick says people do that, go on holiday sometimes."
Shayera might not be *showing* how she feels, but Isis can feel it "I did say I was sorry." She mutters.
Shayera glares at Isis slightly, not really sure how she feels about the cat girl seemingly understanding what she's thinking. At least that's how it seems.
"Do my—? No, they /don't/ fold up any more than this. They're wings, not bedsheets." She huffs. "Look, I'll just follow you, okay? Unless your car has a roof that folds back, I've seen /that/ around here before."
"Sorry. I read emotion…" Isis mutters again, pressing closer to Nick and rubbing her cheek against his arm this time. The glare doesn't help the feelings of remorse that filling the area either.
"The roof doesn't, no. The cars pretty old really." It might not be, but Isis thinks it is. "I'll contact Hank as we're driving, Nick and see if he can meet us at the clinic?" She means the clinic in the M-Town. Gesturing to Shayera, Isis doesn't move far from Nicks side as she lets him guide them back to car.
"Fine. I'll follow you there." Shayera follows the odd pair back to their vehicle, and once she's got a good look at it she'll fly over the traffic lights and power lines and let them lead her to this Hank person. She can already suspect he's going to be as big a mess as these two.
They seem the type.