2020-03-15 - Chaos Fest

Summary:

A music festival turns nasty when someone plays with a chaos gem they really shouldn't be playing with.

Log Info:

Storyteller: None
Date: Sun Mar 15 08:42:23 2020
Location: Washington Square Park

Related Logs

None

Theme Song

None

lokilydia-dietrichgwen-stacychristopher-powell

.~{:--------------:}~.


The night is one of promise, the full moon waning, the sky only lightly dotted with clouds, and a brisk fifty degrees, not that Loki minds such things. After all…he's both a God of Fire /and/ a Jotun, if he actually manages to get cold he can always warm up the old fashioned way. Tonight finds him dressed in a worsted jacket dyed black, and a pair of black slacks and shoes. Why yes, he's somewhat fond of black.

Eyes the green of a glacier's heart are warm as he approaches a gathering of mortals, a small festival hosted by NYU, a musical gathering with local bands.

"Ah youth. THIS bids fair to be fun."

Moving with a casual step, hands in his pockets, he doesn't really stand out, save perhaps for the eyes, those eyes stand out against fair skin, and slicked back wavy black hair.


Lydia is burning the midnight oil, as it were, having stayed on NYU's campus for a lot longer than her last class. She's finally getting out, and decides to go and take a walk around the park before heading home. She's dressed warmly against the chill air, with a beige fur lined coat and a knit cap.

She finds, instead, a small music festival, which she had totally forgotten about. Hunh. Wondering if the current band on stage is any good, she makes her way around to it to listen attentively, and stands in the back of the crowd. She's been going to the school here long enough that most people recognize her and don't freak out over the glowing green girl, but there are a couple of people that give her a wide berth.


Christopher Powell had heard of a couple of the bands that were playing, and so he'd planned to come out and watch the show. He is dressed in jeans with a dark green sweater and matching chucks on his feet. A brown leather jacket is thrown over the sweater for warmth. He strolls along with his hands in his pockets, listening to the music and kind of bobbing along a little bit in time with the rhythm as he wends his way through unfamiliar faces. He spots a couple of guys he knows from classes and lifts a hand in a wave in passing, and continues on his way, finding himself a spot where he can get closer to the stage and watch the band that is currently doing its set.


There was a time when Gwen would have gone to these sorts of things just to have fun. (Well, if she could manage to drag her introvert-self out of hiding to be in public, anyway.) Now, she can't remember exactly when she was last at a music festival or any other sort of gathering and been there just to have fun; it always seems more pressing, somehow, to show up in costume and make sure nobody gets hurt. (Which nobody ever does, but it'd be the one time…)

So it is that Spider-Woman is currently holed up in a large tree; which you'd think would be a pretty obvious place to be positioned, but when everyone's focused on a stage, nobody notices a shadowy figure in the shadowy treetops, so there she is, keeping an eye to make sure nothing gets out of hand, nobody underage has a drink, and most importantly, no super-villains start monologuing unapposed.


Glacier hued eyes study the crowd, and Loki gets a bit of a charge from the music, more from the mood of the folks. A pause when he sees the glowing green girl, well, that's a bit exotic. At the moment he doesn't see Gwen, or rather, note her - nor Christopher. Not yet. Settling to lean against a wrought iron lamp, Loki sort of fades from most people's perceptions, not truly invisible, just…easily overlooked, a subtle illusion causing the weaker willed to see either nothing, or something very banal.

Another person catches his eye then, one moving with a particular quality to their steps that speaks of skill at arms, of training. "Well well well, what have we here?" He murmurs.

The young man is dressed in a jean jacket, and blue jeans, utterly unremarkable save for that peculiar quality of his step as he approaches another young person, this one a woman in her early twenties, dressed in a trench coat and modest heels. She too seems to move with that particular sort of step. They pass one next to the other, and the perspicacious might see a folded over newspaper leave the lad's hand, ending up in the woman's en passant.


Lydia find that this particular band isn't to her taste, so she turns to go. It's only through happenstance that she spies Spider-Woman through the corner of her eye, and she looks up to wave to the hero in passing. When she looks down again she stops.

Is that… is that Loki? She looks around to see if anybody else has spotted him, but everybody's too focused on the music. She bites her lower lip in indecision. She she go up to him? No. That's just inviting trouble. Then again, just being around him is inviting trouble anyway so she might just want to meet it head on.

She looks back to the crowd and then back to the Norse god. If nothing else, she should just hang out in case shenanigans break out.


Christopher Powell has no particular reason to be looking for anyone in trees, or nondescript nearly unnoticeable people by lamp posts, but he's never seen the glowing green young woman before, so her appearance catches his eye first and he studies her only for a moment or two — long enough to satisfy curiosity, not long enough to be rude, before he turns his attention back toward the stage. He's not currently 'on duty' so he's not scanning the crowd and totally misses the pair and their newspaper passing as well. Instead, he trades comments with someone standing nearby about the band, where they came from, and whether they'd played the campus before. It's only when Lydia waves at someone up in a tree that his gaze even catches on it and then he looks upward to notice someone in the branches. He tries to make out who it is, but doesn't recognize Spider-Woman. He takes a step or two back from the people he was talking to, suddenly curious who else might be present.


You'd think Gwen would notice a glowing-green person (that she's met before) waving at her, but either she didn't notice or is too laser-focused on the couple with the newspaper for the moment, as she doesn't return the gesture. And laser-focused she is. She's never met Loki before, so although she isn't one of those weak-willed souls who'll just not see him, she's… just not seeing him right now, really, nor Chris for that matter.

That newspaper hand-off, though. Her eyes narrow behind her mask, and she sighs softly. "Alright, I've seen that movie before," she mutters. "Like forty times. In thirty-seven different movies." She leaps out of the tree, and sails through the air; one hand extends to shoot a webline and once it lands she yanks hard, pulling herself into the branches of a different tree, one much closer to the woman who received the newspaper. She remains there, hanging upside down with one hand pointing towards the woman, just waiting for the moment. It's a pose that anyone else might find hard to maintain, but hey; being a Spider has its benefits.


Okay…now a white clad girl shooting strands of sticky stuff from her hands…/that/ is notable too. So…glowing green girl, web slinging girl, and two mysterious (but not TERRIBLY mysterious!) trained fighter types doing a hand off.

Softly. "I love New York." Loki moves closer to the woman with the package, and on the way almost bumps into Christopher since he doesn't move out of his way like the rest of the people in the park.

A blink. "Excuse me." He says with a chipper tone and a half smirk.

The woman? She didn't notice the Spider-Woman, her partner in (presumed) crime, yeah, /he/ did. He takes out a cell phone, paused actually fairly close to Lydia, and starts typing a text while watching Spider-Woman as she dangles.


Now, Spider-Woman suddenly shooting out of the tree and flying through the air, that definitely catches Chris' attention, so much so that he almost backs right into Loki. Then he blinks when he turns to look at him and he pauses, and then his mouth opens, and then closes, and then he's like, "Wait.. Loki?" Then his eyes flick back toward Gwen where she's heading toward the two figures, and he starts moving in that direction. Whatever's going on, he's going to at least check it out even though he has no idea what's going on. There are too many unusual folk about for something to /not/ be up.


Okay, Lydia. Stay cool. Stay cool. Loki is *right there within arms reach.* Her eyes spot movement, and there goes Spider Woman about to web somebody. And then there are the shady looking couple. And then Chris names the god, and is off towards the woman that Spider Woman has pegged.

In her minds eye all of these disparate elements come clashing together into a giant chaotic mess. She starts to trot over to where all of this seems to be happening but decides it would be rude to just suddenly run away from a Norse god, so she murmurs, "Excuse me," politely to him and hurries off to provide backup should Spider Woman need it.


Spider-Woman currently has no idea if she needs backup or not. She doesn't know for certain yet that there's anything fishy going on — and ironically, if it was just a fish wrapped in newspaper that wouldn't count as the sort of 'fishy' she cares about — so she's just hanging there, upside down, mostly concealed from mostly everybody, and waiting for something to happen.

She's scanning the rest of the crowd, mostly looking to see if there's a potential target for Miss Newspaper, but the man who handed her the package in the first place she's managed to lose sight of. Chalk it up to less than a year of superheroing experience and no tactical training, perhaps, but she hasn't spotted him pulling out his cellphone and texting. Well, at least she's got the drop on the one who's probably armed, right?


The text goes through, and the results are immediate - the woman is suddenly wrapped in lightning. RED lightning. She screams, and goes to her knees as people around her panic and start to flee. The guy? He RUNS! Fast. The moment he hits the send key.

The lightning suffuses the woman's form, and then INFUSES it, and she stands, glowing and casting off sparks. "Oh…this is even better than I had hoped!"

Eyes blazing with crimson energy, body crackling and arcing, she laughs long and loud and yeah…/then/ Spider-Gwen feels a very not good feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Loki blinks. "Well, fuck."

That doesn't sound very Norse, but it DID sound quite genuine. A nod to the green girl, and the a questioning look to the young man. "Mm? Excuse me a moment, someone, I assume the twat who sent the text, just infused that woman with the essence of a Chaos Elemental…I don't suppose that's something you can do anything about?"

And then the woman raises her hand, and streamers of red lighting leap forth, striking a dog, which grows to the size of a horse, a MEGA-chihuahua…a guitarist, who shrieks, and then with eyes glowing red, starts to play…and of course, the tree that Gwennie is inverted hanging in. The tree? Starts to move…uprooting itself, and shivering.


"Whoah," Chris says as the woman suddenly crackles with red energy and suddenly there's a mega-dog, an ent, and tenacious D going on all around them. He takes a couple of steps back and then just blinks at Loki's question, "Not carrying my Law and Order PH-Balance kit on me at the moment." But what he does have on him is his amulet, and his hand goes over it somewhat instinctively as he ducks away from those gathered, finding himself a spot behind a small kiosk to perform a bit of a quick change while chaos is ensuing around them.


Lydia's eyes go wide in surprise. "Oh, shit!" The glowing ectoplasmic mist that constantly surrounds her, coalesces around her into a suit of armor, the hands into oversized gauntlets with wicked looking claws on them.

She looks around, making a mental sitrep to herself. Chaos lady. No good. Ectoplasmic armor can deflect physical attacks no problem, but getting hit by her lightning would be problematic. Giant tree. Spider Woman has that handled. Chaos Metalhead. Not sure what his deal is. Loki. This isn't subtle enough to be his work, to be honest. Probably a coincidence. Besides, going toe to toe with him is all sorts of bad news. That leaves…. horse sized chaos chihuahua. Well. She never liked chihuahuas anyway.

She leaps at the dog, the oversized gauntlet curling into a fist that could knock the engine out of a sedan and sails in the air to land, fist first, on the dog's head.


Well, what the heck?! When her danger-sense started going off, Gwen was expecting the lady to have a gun. Apparently she shouldn't have been silly enough to expect something so pedestrian as a handgun, oh boyo, that would just be silly. No, the kids are all about the weaponized chaos elementals these days.

Gwen does a quick mental calcalus about the situation; everyone is running away, except those two guys so who knows what their deal is, and — oh, Hi Lydia — and the dog is enormous now, as is the guitarist (does that make him a Noise Marine?) and the tree—

"WHAT THE HECK TREE?!" Gwen lets herself drop out of the tree, plummeting head-first towards the ground, before she sends a webline to catch one of the branches. She lets the momentum carry her downwards and then sideways, letting the line play out as she whirls around the tree, trying to catch as many branches as she can. "None of that today please!" she shouts, as she reaches the end of her momentum and drops to her feet, between tree and chaos lady.

Well, hey, at least Lydia has the dog under control!


Chris is easily able to duck under cover, Loki shaking his head. "No, didn't think so." And you know what? All he wanted was a quiet night of music and watching college kids do crazy stunts. Was that so much to ask for? Apparently so. "Well bugger you too, Norns." He mutters. "Take care of the minions, but do not touch them any more than you have to, this will become a plague." Grumpily, he draws a sword from thin air at his back. "Burn, Laevateinn." He murmurs, and the blade ignites with green and gold flames, because…why not?

The sword's glow catches the eye of the infused woman, and yeah…her skin seems to be blistering, that can't be fun.

The Chihuahua is clocked /hard/ in the head, and staggers before snapping a bite at the spooky grrl, it actually has to pull its feet from holes in the ground before it can lunge though. Sparks of red flare at the impact point, and cling to Lydia's ectoplasmic armor.

The webbing from Spider-woman binds many of the branches of the chaos infused tree. Her dangersense shriks warning the trunk splits, and it spits a hail of thorns at her!


It is a quick shift, and when Chris comes back from behind the kiosk he has gained several inches in height and quite a bit of muscle beneath the suit that is the Darkhawk. Silver wings spread as he swoops down on the Heavy Metal Chaos Rocker. "Alright buddy," comes the dual-toned voice that only somewhat sounds like Chris. "Time to turn down the volume, some." He pulls the guitar's plug out of the amp and quickly takes the cord, trying to tangle up the guitarist with his own equipment in an effort to get him to quiet down while the others deal with the tree and the dog.


"NO! BAD DOG!" shouts Lydia, leaping to the side, holding up an arm in defense. The dog manages to bite her arm, but it isn't strong enough to pierce her armor. It's still a bit taxing for her since she has to actively keep the jaws of the beast from closing on her, chaos lightning crackling about her arm.

She focuses, and expands the armor on her arm, to almost double size, and slips her hand out from the dog's jaws, leaving the armor behind. She quickly dissolves it letting the dog snap his jaws shut with an audible *CLACK* and quickly reforms the armor before she can be bitten again.

Quickly, she whirls around to deliver another double-sized fist, hoping that she can knock it out sooner rather than later.


"Thorns?!" Gwen dives to the side, catching a handful of flying pointy bits across her leg and side, albeit nothing serious. Well, there's blood, but not serious blood. "Alright fine," she snaps. "I tried to be nice, but you just wouldn't 'leaf' it alone, would you?" Did she just say that? Yes she did.

The Spider springs forwards, dashing two quick steps and then jumping right back up into the tree. "Never thought of myself as an emergency gardener, but I suppose it's time to branch out," she continues, as she grabs branches and snaps them off, tossing discarded bits away from the tree, and moving about as quickly as she can. "Gotta get to the root of this problem…" She kicks a big branch, and scurries around to the other side of the tree.

"Oh! Found it," she declares triumphantly, before firing a big glob of webbing at the chaos-elemental-woman.


The Chaos Rocker seems rapt on his song, and even without the amp, the sound is powerful, though diminished. Interestingly enough the others seem weakened too, as if the rocker's cacophonous riffs fuel their power a well! The man seems bound to playing, it is not too difficult to tie him up with the cord, indeed…he's corded and knotted up, mid-chord as it were. Denied the use of his guitar, he sings instead, pure dissonance. And with that the power he provides is even further lessened.

The Chaos Infused woman snarls at Loki and tries to blast him with the red lightning. Lightning he catches on his sword. He chants, in some ugly sounding language, and then a sphere forms about the woman. "I can't hold this for very long. I mean, I don't /mind/ chaos, but it does play havoc with the weekend."

The weakened dog shrinks a bit, when Chris binds the guitarist, now singer. The haymaker she launches knocking it ass over teakettle and bouncing it off a stage. Strong as the thing was, it wasn't strong enough for that! *THUD* One KO'd doggie! Still pulsing with chaos, alas.

The tree is pruned back with dramatic effect, and the assault of puns actually has Loki sniggering, then laughing, then /roaring/ with the awful barrage. The huge glob of webbing strikes as the sphere Loki is holding wavers due to his laughter.

Chaos Infused Lady is /not/ happy to be so glopped!


Lydia nods in satisfaction as doggo has been successfully KO'd. That's one less menace to be worried about. Well. When it goes small and normal again it'll still be a menace, but that's chihuahuas for you. She glances about herself to get another sitrep.

Chihuahua: KO'd. Check. Heavy Metal Rocker: Tied up. Check. Tree: Pruned. Check. Chaos Lady? Looks like Loki and Spider Woman have her distracted. Ah, here's an opening that she can take advantage of.

So far all of Lydia's abilities have been close range, but she knows she can do more than that. She holds out a fist and giant gauntlet shoots off her arm, leaving a trail of ectoplasm to keep it connected to the mutant, in an attempt to wallop Chaos Lady while her attention is on Spider-Woman.


Gwen takes a moment to break a few more bits off the tree, and mutters what must've been another great pun, except nobody but her could hear it. With that done she jumps down, spins around to give the bas of the tree a roundhouse kick that would break a car in half, and then walks away from it, dusting off her hands.

"You know, I gotta ask," she inquires, as she approaches the woman trapped in a sphere, "What possesses you people to do these things?" Get it? …Possesses? "I mean, seriously. You cause some mayhem, ruin everyone's evening, and for what exactly? Was there a point to this? Come on, Lady, time to face the music. You're in the doghouse now, but don't bark at me, it's your own fault."


Chaos Lady's skin is starting to crack. "It…wasn't…for…me…" She chokes out in answer to Gwen's question. Her voice? Twisted by agony unspeakable. Eyes literally melting like running wax.

Loki just can't stop laughing at the puns. And then Lydia's ecto-fist is launched and is permitted through the shield, mainly because Loki's laughing too hard to keep it two-way, it only prevents escape, not ingress. The Chaos Lady is staggered, dropping to her knees.

"If you young ladies would be so kind as to bring me the the bole of the tree, the singer's guitar, and the dog's head…kidding, the collar will do…we can end this." States Loki. "And then maybe get a bite eat."


Lydia lets the extended arm dissipate into harmless ectoplasmic mist and nods at the Norse god. When one of them tells you to do something, you do it. She trots over to where the dog landed, and carefully removes the collar, making sure she doesn't wake the pup up. She, then, quickly grabs the guitar from where it lays and then trots over to Loki.

"Here you go," she says, handing them over.


Gwen doesn't move from her spot. "Not for you, hunh? Then what on Earth were you thinking? Woman your eyeballs are melting. If I hadn't seen Indiana Jones when I was a kid I dunno if I could take it." As she speaks, she extends one hand behind her; webbing connects with the splintered remnants of the tree trunk, and a hard yank pulls it into her hand. She sets the roughly two hundred pounds of tree down in front of Loki like it was a barstool, and then resumes glaring at the woman in the sphere, hands planted on hips.

"I mean, seriously, I thought you just had a gun and were planning on shooting someone on stage," she continues. "So if this wasn't for you, who was it for? I mean you might as well tell us, you don't have anything to gain by just standing there doing your best impersonation of an ice cream cone in a furnace."


Loki nods his thanks as he does -something- to the collar, and it crumbles, something to the guitar…with the same result, and finally the bole of the tree when it is delivered. In the interim, the Chaos Lady answers. "Thinking…of…paycheck." She grates out, and yeah, her flesh is literally starting to run like wax - and no, it is /not/ beautiful at all. "…dunno…just…address…890…Fifth Avenue…" Which, yeah, that's Avengers Mansion. This lady must be from out of town not to know that.

Loki has done whatever it was to all three objects now, and then steps forward, three red spheres forming in his hand. He approaches, and then pushes that hand flat against the Chaos Lady's brow. "Sleep now."

And just like that the red is all gone, well, almost. Loki's hand grasps at it, and then the threads are pulled from the woman like pulling taffy. He gathers it up, and then twists and presses, eventually forming a small crimson jewel. "As it began, so it ends." A wry shrug. "Well, mostly." The woman is still badly burnt, probably won't survive without immediate medical aid.


Lydia scowls as Chaos Lady explains what the plan was, and she folds her arms. She looks up at Loki. "This is twice now. Some guy passes some super dangerous object off to somebody and then sets it off." She gestures at the lady, "This one fared better than the other guy. When it became obvious that we weren't going to kill him, the contact took matters into his own hands and murdered him" She mimes pointing a gun to her head and mouths *POW*

She's silent for a moment, watching Loki form his gem. "Twice now," she reiterates, "and I don't even go out looking for trouble. I wonder if anybody else has been in this scenario." She takes a deep breath and lets out an equally deep sigh. "At least this one doesn't seem to have been targeting me directly like the other one was."


Gwen already has her phone out, and is rapidly typing in the code to unlock it. "Well I do go looking for trouble and this is my first time seeing this nonsense," she pronounces. "I mean really, was she getting paid enough to die? Seems like she signed on pretty cheap." She dials three numbers, and holds the phone up to the side of her head.

"Uhh yeah, hi, ambulance please," she replies to whoever is on the other end. "I'm in Washington Square Park, at the music festival. There's been an attack, a woman is badly burned. I saw it all, she was the attacker, might want to send a SWAT team or Avengers or something." She pauses, "Uhm… uhh, you're breaking up… fxsxxxst ooh the static, sorry."

She pulls the phone away from her ear, ends the call, and tucks it away again. "You did great, by the way," she adds, giving Lydia a thumbs-up, before turning towards Loki. "So uhh… you seem like you know what's going on. Have we met before? I don't think we've met before? You can call me Spider-Woman, Mister…?"


"Well, Lydia…look on the brightside, these things come in threes…at least you won't be bored." And for Loki, yeah, this really is something to look forward to! Then again, he's just shy of three thousand years old, boredom is an enemy doughty and vile. The Trickster god rests a and briefly on Lydia's shoulder and laughs softly. "She's right you know, you did do well." And then once Gwen's made her call, Loki laughs softly. "Loki Laufeyson, Ambassador to Midgard appointed by the All Father of Asgard. Called the Liesmith, the Trickster, the Lord of Fire, and many other things, a pleasure to meet you, Spider-Woman."


Lydia can't help but feel a little thrill at Loki's touch. "Thank you," she says to the both of them. "I've had, uh, I guess you could say that I've had training, because apparently you can't be a mutant in New York without somebody trying to kill you or something."

She takes another deep breath and turns to Loki properly. "Sorry. Manners. I'm Lydia Deitrich. English student at NYU and apparently a magnet for…" she waves a hand at the general vicinity of Chaos Lady, "whatever the hell these things happen to be." Despite the sarcasm in her voice, the smile she shoots up at him is genuine. "A pleasure to meet you and, thank you. For helping."

She looks over at Spider-Woman and says, "If you want to skedaddle, I'll stick around and say that I was the one who called it in. I can't exactly hide the fact that I was involved and besides," she says with a shrug, "I'm good with the cops."


Gwen stands still, listening to the list of names and titles put forth by the apparent god standing in front of her. She's still silent for a moment afterwards, clearly processing all of this, before reaching the obvious conclusions: It's another one like Thor. She snappoints with both hands. "Pleasure to meet you," she replies, once her brain is un-broken. "Glad we could all get this sorted. And, uhm, if you don't mind, I'm just gonna call you Loki for short, that all sounded like a bit of a mouthful to have to say every time."

The Spider-Woman bobs her head towards Lydia, "Yeah, if you don't mind, that'd be great. The Cops don't always approve of us Spiders, and neither does the news." She sighs audibly. "And yeah, people trying to kill you is kinda part of the super-power territory I guess, wether you're a Mutant or a Spider or… God, or whatever." She shrugs, "Well. On that note, I think I hear sirens, so it's time for me to get going." She takes a step back and lifts one hand in salute. "Hope we can do it again sometime! Stay in school, kids!"


"Where's the fun in a week without at least a /little/ mayhem?" A grin. "And yes, call me Loki, that's fine Spider-Woman, Lydia Dietrich." A chuckle at the two girls. "I'm sure we'll meet again, if nothing else I owe you dinner." With that he steps back, and bows as he sheathes his sword…vanishing as if he never was.

Even after he's gone, his words float back. "Good evening, girls…sweet dreams."


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