2020-01-01 - Doll for Sale

Summary:

Strange happenings at the Staten Island Flea Market

Log Info:

Storyteller: None
Date: Wed Jan 1 23:08:17 2020
Location: RP Room 4

Related Logs

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Theme Song

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ravenjason-todd

The Staten Island Flea Market happens a few times a years, mostly around major holidays: Easter in Spring, Independence Day in summer, Halloween in fall. With Christmas being a bit overscheduled, the winter market has been shifted to New Year's. While the others are usually open air affairs, the Winter Market happens in a massive building, not exactly a warehouse space but a massive festival hall, intended for state fair displays and county festivities. In this case, it's nearly an acre of sprawled tables full or merchandise, with items ranging from old fashioned collectibles to thrift fashion to farm equipment. The place is crowded, the once clearly defined grid of the place starting to destabilize and blend into a sea of humanity.

Jason Todd isn't here yet. He'll show up a little later, searching for auto parts and salvage. What he'll find will be quite a mess. But not yet. Right now, the market seems to be going just fine, other than the close quarters and a bit of a smell. If anyone notices some of the oddly garbed people filtering through the place, none of them have sounded an alarm about it.

As an artist, flea markets appeal to Rachel. It's the kind of place that produces truly odd objects, weird pieces of art, and interesting material to use in artistic projects. So, the Staten Island Flea Market, and its quarterly frequency, is bound to hold a bevy of potential buys at competitive prices. After parting ways with Stephen, amicably, she's been in kind of a black mood for the past few months. Now, she's a bit more evened out, having had a chance to nurse her sadness and finding reasons to wake up in the morning less difficult.

She's dressed crisply in black, not bundled as warmly as others around her, but warmly enough — an oversized sweater with an off-one-shoulder buttoned fold-down neckline, a dark charcoal turtleneck covering what would otherwise be exposed shoulder and neck flesh.Her leggings are skin tight, tucked neatly down the leg of her thigh-high boots. She has a messenger bag over one shoulder and her neck, and she holds it out of the way of whatever/whomever she's navigating her way around with s fingerless-gloved hand. She wears her shiny black hair razor straight and has a tight, chic black skullcap covering the majority of it. Her makeup is, as ever, perfect, though a bit on the gothy side with her color palette of deep, desaturated berry lips and eyeshadow. She smiles and chats with a person here and there, but otherwise keeps her eyes out for interesting objects.

The woman Rachel comes across is certainly different. She's dressed in an old fashioned way, a long dress with black shoes. The dress itself has a grey-brown tone, faded with time and with a certain doily quality which marks both its age and its craftsmanship. A few holes here and there, signs of moth and disuse. She wears a broad-brimmed hat, trimmed with flowers that have decayed and flaked, a few petals left in her wake. She has a veil over her face and, in her arm, a porcelain doll with curly blonde hair, nestled right in the crook.

"You're pretty," she says to Rachel, facing her from across a table of folded scarves. "He likes you a lot. What's your name?" she says.

Rachel takes a long look at the woman in her very vintage attire, with her tow-headed doll, and the veil. There's something weird, here. She can't quite put her finger on it, but this woman seems a bit off. She smiles pleasantly as she's complimented, though. "Thank you," she replies. Then, not seeing a male near the young woman, she lifts her brows, "He?" she asks. Then, she considers something at the last question. Names, Stephen had told her, have power. Since her tummy's feeling kinda butterfly-y, she goes with a safer option, "There are some who call me…Raven?" She says it with a cheeky grin and a tinge of a British accent, making a Monty Python reference this young woman is unlikely to catch.

"Brother Pig," she says. "It's okay. He's not here. But he can see you."

The woman holds up the doll and, in one of the eyes, Rachel can see the lense of a camera. It swivels slightly towards her, extending. Focusing on her face.

"Raven. That is a good name. My name is Gruecy. It's like gruesome but pretty. Do you think I'm pretty?"

The veil is parted and there's another porcelain visage there, a doll's face with a bow mouth and rosy cheeks. Except masks aren't usually sewed on, visible stitches of thickened gristle lacing skin to mask in criss-cross fashion. And there are the eyes, the real woman underneath's eyes, wide and unblinking and bulging behind the mask. Empty, with pupils like pinpricks.

Rachel's brows lift at the name and she cants her head to one side as she's made aware of the camera lens in the doll's head. "Well, that's…something, isn't it," she replies, feeling sort of uneasy. "What an interesting name. Gruecy. I can't say as I've ever heard it, nor have I ever met someone like you," she says.

Then, the veil is parted.

Rachel's really good at schooling her features, her emotions, and reactions to things. But, if she were anyone else, she'd probably be shocked to the point of stumbling away and shaking, scrambling to get away. Rachel, though, keeps her outward calm, though her smile does twitch very briefly. "Oh, my. I can honestly say that I've never met your like, Gruecy," she says after only the briefest moment of self-collection. "Did Brother Pig have anything to do with your makeover?" she wonders, trying to sound casual.

"Oh, no. Brother Pig hasn't learned how to make dolls yet. He tries but they always die screaming. Daddy Pig made me. He makes the best dolls."

There are a few screams from elsewhere in the market and a sudden flash of heat as flames erupt at the entrances. It seems someone pulled up in a pair of trucks and dumped several drums full of kerosene across the entrance and the parking lot. Then ignited them.

"Brother wants this one special, Strap. Be careful with it," Gruecy says. Then strong arms will try to wrap around Raven and she'll smell hot, fetid breath against her ears, "Don't worry, I won't bruise it much." says a raspy voice.

Rachel's expression is getting a little strained, the longer the young woman talks, the harder it is to keep it believable. Then, the screams and flames…. She feels the arms wrap around her and she instinctively sends a pulse of TK out around her body as she drops down into a crouch and shifts deftly out of the hold. "Uh, Gruecy, that's not very kind. I realize gender is a sensitive topic these days, but do you really have to refer to me as 'it'?" she says dryly, her mood shifting to 'work mode.' Dry, numb, detached. She glares at the guy that tried to grab her and flares an empathic wave of terror in his and Gruecy's direction. "Very rude."

Strap is revealed to be an older man, probably close to fifty, with a long scraggly beard and yellowed teeth. Beneath his trenchcoat, a series of overlaid leather straps criss-cross his body, his pierced nipples and hairy torso still rather prominently displayed. The top of his head is shaved clean, the only clean thing about him.

"It's got powers," he snarls at Gruecy, about to leap when the wave of terror hits him. It works well on him, causing him to yelp and back away, clutching at his skull. Gruecy seems less affected, however, that numbness Rachel felt earlier within her now shielding her from the worst effects of the wave.

"I will deal with you myself. Brother will be pleased," she says. She shoves her hand into the doll, through the buttons at the front of her dress, and draws out a hypodermic needle.

Meanwhile, there's a sudden crash from the front as a car careens through the front of the building, blasting through the flames. The car is black and red, with an emblem like a bleeding bat on the grill between the headlights. The door pops and an armored figure steps out, his face hidden behind a scarlet helm as he comes out with his guns drawn, voice amplified by a mic hidden in the helmet. "Bad guys, give your asses up. Civilians, get the fuck down."

Rachel sends another TK shove in Strap's direction as he's hit with the wave of empathic terror, using his discombobulated state to take advantage and knock him even further away. Turning her lavender eyes to Gruecy, Raven's expression is stony as the young woman pulls out a hypodermic needle. "Oh, Gruecy, you don't want to do that," she says serenely. "I don't know who Brother Pig is, but I don't belong to him, and never will. You might be satisfied to be owned by a family of Pigs, but I'm not interested," she says, even as a car comes skreeling onto the scene expelling a gun-toting red-hooded figure. "You ought to drop that," she says, referring to the needle, "…before it finds its way into your body."

Red Hood just came for car parts, only to find the place on fire as he pulled into the lot. A raggedy tatterdemalion figure in the parking lot tried to stab him through the window of his car with a meathook. Safe to say, probably not the only culprit on premises. After breaking that guy's elbow and headbutting him into concussion night-night, Jason strapped on his helmet and blasted through the doors.

Now that he's out of the car, he takes on a few more of these freaks, which is what they literally seem to be. One guy has a bunch of dried hands on necklaces around his neck. Another one is another woman with a dollface, only she only has half of one, giggling maniacally as she hacks at the Hood with a cleaver. The woman gets a savate kick to the side of the head, the man gets a bullet under the second rib and blowing a hole out of his back.

Strap goes skidding along the floor, bouncing off a few table legs like a pinball and landing near Hood's feet. That draws Jason's attention to Rachel and Gruecy, the latter now leaping and screaming at Rachel and trying to shove the needle into the crouched woman.

Rachel lifts into the air a few feet, enough to put her feet at face-level with Gruecy as the woman makes a dive for her, screaming and wielding the hypodermic. Goodness only knows what substances could be in that syringe. If the needle itself is tainted, somehow. Rachel has no intention of letting that thing get near her. Instead, she swings her leg backwards and sends it rocketing forward at Gruecy's face, using her TK to simultaneously grab and twist the young woman's wrist in a locking position, pushing the pain threshold to try to make her drop the syringe.

Gruecy's pain threshold was surpassed a long, long time ago. She's numb in more ways than one now. The kick hits Gruecy's face, yes, the mask shattering partly under the impact but instead of flying backwards, she clutches at Raven's ankle, trying to find a way to jab that needle into her leg. As the shards fall from the mask, she looks up and the porcelain that falls away reveals the raw meat of her cheek, her upper lip missing and, in her mouth, teeth and metal, some sort of brassworks bound into her upper mandible.

"Whore! Brother Pig loves you more now. You will not be his special one!" she snarls, now literally trying to bite as well.

Only to let out a grunt of shock as a bullet rips through her abdomen. "Lay off the flying goth," Red Hood's voice says, only to be grunting himself as Strap leaps onto his back and starts beating on him like a tantrumming child.

Rachel is surprised as Gruecy grabs onto her foot as she tries to draw back from kicking the young woman in her fucked-up face. "The way your face looks… He did that to you? Brother Pig?" she asks, still using her TK to hold the arm holding the syringe away from her. She kicks her leg a bit, rising into the air a bit more to try to disengage her foot from Gruecy's hand. "If so, you can have him. Like I said, I'm not interested in your family of Pigs," she says, flying free of the girl as the Red Hood nails her with a bullet.

High enough that Gruecy can't physically reach her, Rachel takes the briefest moment to try to yank the syringe from the girl's surprise-slackened grasp, to get it out of her control. Then, she turns her attention in the direction the bullet came from. She manages to catch a rather cinematic glance of Red Hood — backlit by a fire that's consumed an entire stand of old quilts, standing dramatically with his gun arm outstretched…. Just before Strap comes flying at him and pummeling wildly at his general vicinity. "Strap, I thought I told you to « GO HOME »," she says with empathic emphasis.

Strap squeals like a little piggy, scrambling down from Red Hood's back, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" he yells, pawing at his own shaved skull. Before he can turn and run, Red Hood pivots and drives a knee into the man's chin, following up with a leg sweep that leaves the guy dropped. Then a bullet to the kneecap, just for spite.

Gruecy is screaming in frustration and grabs her doll off the ground where she dropped it, turning and starting to run for it. "Should I shoot her or not?" Hood asks the flying Raven, casually aiming in the direction of the fleeing freak.

It's very satisfying to see Strap react as he does, with the squealing and pleading for forgiveness. As he retreats, Raven turns her glowing eyes back toward Gruecy as she collects her doll and begins to run. She slowly lowers to the ground, keeping an eye on the hypodermic that she's floating up in the air, high enough to be out of reach of anyone in the area. At Red Hood's question, Rachel turns to look up at him and smiles thinly. "It might be doing her a mercy, if you did. Physical pain seems to be nothing to her," she replies. It's not really an answer. But, it's also not an admonishment of the suggestion of shooting a person. Then again, that person *did* threaten her with a needle with unknown substance in its syringe casing.

The remainder seem to have mostly scattered. The Hood watches Gruecy depart but doesn't put her down. He gets the feeling, from the little he saw, that something pretty fucked up is going on with that one.

"Cop and fire will be here soon. Might wanna get scarce. If you don't feel like flying off, feel free to hitch a ride. I got room," he says, heading back towards his car. He kneels down on Strap, pressing a knee to the man's chest.

"Who you workin' for, dogface?"

"Fuck you."

"Yeah, figured it would be like that," Hood says, reaching down and casually crushing a fist into the man's kidneys, "Wanna try again?"

"Fffffffffffffffffffff."

Jason backhands the man unconscious, figuring he didn't have time for a proper interrogation. He notices something then, reaching in and drawing an earbud and a slender wire from inside the ear, a wire that seems to be attached to meat.

"Ouch." he says, then yanks it free.

Rachel watches Red Hood as he explains that lots of paperwork is in her future if she sticks around much longer. She is quiet as she follows along to watch him lean into Strap, who she thought she'd sent home, but maybe there's something to those weird, gross earpieces implanted in their ears. She wrinkles her nose as it's pulled out. "You know, normally, I wouldn't accept because I can only presume you're not a bad guy because you were shooting them, but that doesn't make you a *good* guy… But, honestly, I might have a little bit of information that could be useful to you, so…" she lifts a shoulder in a eh-okay sort of gesture.

Jason Todd drops the earpiece into a pocket on his belt. Some old habits just die hard. He holsters his guns and leads the way over to his car, a modified muscle car that he's worked on himself. He hits a button in his gauntlet and the doors pop, Hood sliding behind the wheel with ease and waiting until Rachel joins him to lock the doors.

"I'm definitely a bad guy," he says. "I just fight for the good ones."

He revs the engine for a moment, reverses quickly and then blasts out through the flaming wrecked doors, rapidly accelerating to 90 mph and skidding around the incoming fire trucks.

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