Saving Lives a Mile High [open to all]

[applesaucemod]

Welcome to another ordinary day in Manhattan. This barely even qualifies as a dream at all, it's so like waking life. The dreamers will find that they're their own perfectly normal selves going about their perfectly normal business and thwarting perfectly normal crimes in their perfectly normal spandex outfits.




What's that? No, of course it's normal to wear spandex (or leather, for the more chic among you) and go around beating up muggers and thwarting your villainous counterparts, don't be silly. What else would you do with your afternoon, not use your superpowers to better the world? That's grossly irresponsible of you; don't you know that with great power comes great responsibility?

So get out there and make the world a better place -- and be sure not to let that disguise slip if you do make it in to work today. Wouldn't want anyone to learn your secret identity, after all.


[OOC: Characters will find themselves thrust into the role of superhero...or at least, super-powered human. Whether they'd use those powers for good or evil (or use them at all), they'll think they've always been this way (or maybe just since that time they fell in toxic waste and developed cancer telekinesis). Usual dream party rules apply: all players and characters welcome regardless of membership status. Characters will remember or forget the events of the dream at players' discretion.]

Comments

[omnomnom_feels]

He should not be burned by his own fire, yet he is -- the intensity of it is so, was so --

Nhodd staggers to a landing, not sure for a moment where he has come down. His skin is tight, sore, wrong, his very cells raw with the effort of serving as conduits for such intense heat. His fire flickers out as he hits the ground, all the heat burned out in that one great conflagration, leaving him scorched and dim. He shakes wings that shed hot ash on the pavement, and it's not until he's blinked the ash out of his eyes that he remembers that he should be feeling another kind of energy flowing through him. Where are Nick's emotions? There's a trace of it, but it's like the source was cut off midstream. Is the mortal dead? He did not intend that.

He draws a ragged breath and turns to search out -- yes, there. Not dead, relocated. Fallen. The other one over him now, neither looking at him. He might escape detection were he to simply turn and go, leave to go about his business elsewhere without their interference. Or he might turn to go only to be interrupted again.

Decision made, he strides toward them, hand outstretched. He will finish what he started with the one on the ground, take away the drive from both of them so that they stop, so that they will let him carry out his mission of peace.

[lottawork]

It becomes unclear to him what events have occurred and whether he may be contextually linked to the allegedly intervening parties when it comes to the pressurized, progressive knifing of pain down the length of his spine, and said pain's unnerving sequelae.

He makes a noise; rough, ravaged, unformed, the pronounced scrape driving itself into the back of his throat with blazing, terebrant persistence.

His shoulders spasm in a cough, and he realigns his objective and tries again.

"Move," he rasps, and rolls over and slams Asadi's arm out of the way and fires the weapon in his hand.

The weapon does not discharge with a streak of blue, and it is not of the same snakelike design.

It fires a grapple, hooked and curved, its sharpened tip aiming for the thing's outspread wings.

well this is totally brutal gosh sorry rashad

[etherthief]

If Iman could stop the motion of events to think about what was happening, she would understand that Nick is firing with intent to spear and snare, and he's an expert marksman but his arm is broken and he's aiming from the ground, there's a chance the hook won't hit its mark, and even if it does, a harsh flap of those wings could adversely affect her comrade, dragging him in, hurting him worse, and she would conclude that what they need is a stabilizing force, something to brace their enemy against, make sure the shot hits and disarms, rather than only angers.

But there is no time to think about any of this. There is raw instinct and the rhythm she and Nick have developed, and these alone are enough for her to jerk to the side as directed, pivot on her organic arm, raise the mechanical one, and fire a reflexive burst of etheric energy, designed to envelop and tug the creature forward sharply, driving him to meet Nick's grapple with force and momentum.

cw: broken bones, limb trauma

[omnomnom_feels]

He is prepared this time as Nick aims at him, already drawing in one kind of energy, ready to take and discharge the streak of blue lightning he anticipates when he realizes the human is attacking again. It will hurt, but he will manage it and they will not have long to attempt their rebellion against his message of peace before he --

His arm doesn't drop, but he stumbles and his wings flap like an enormous, awkward golden pigeon as his body is yanked forward. It's while he's off balance that it registers too late, far too late, that it's not blue energy rushing at him but something very physical. The correct response was not to anticipate energy but to lose his tangibility, but he is devastatingly solid and physical himself in the moment when the wicked hook punches through his wing, hollow bones shattering under the impact.

tw: brutality and physical trauma, mild bone/joint-related body horror

[lottawork]

The other man crumples like something broken, the kickback of the blast sending a jarring tremor down the shattered bones of Nick's arm, curling tightly around his skull and his spine.

Possibly he screams. Possibly.

In a largely pointless expenditure of energy he cannot afford to be expending, Nicholas rolls to his feet apropos of little to no forward momentum to speak of, his voice tearing with the effort of rising, his bones grinding over one another in agonized chorus.

His arm is a limp and mangled thing by his side, and so it can be disregarded.

He moves forward with swift efficiency and pins the thing's fluttering, damaged wing beneath one heel and leans heavily forward, mercilessly yoking all of his weight over the wing he and Asadi willfully shattered via blunt application of physics.

"I suggest," he says, his voice trembling with poorly-concealed strain, "that you don't move."

[etherthief]

Iman grimaces at the horrifying crunch as Nick's weapon pierces the wing, but she steels herself and follows him up and over to their downed enemy. Nick's arm needs attention now, and she would know, but tearing him away from this will be a struggle of its own.

Nhodd is railing wildly in a mixture of agony and savage rage, the pitch and fervor increasing sharply as Nick steps down on the wound he made. She keeps her stare cold. This is more brutal, more gruesome than either of them are generally accustomed to - this really escalated in a direction she did not anticipate. But they're here now and they can't afford to give any ground. So, she threatens.

"Restore them," she barks, indicating his blank-faced victims who are still lingering nearby. "Or we'll break the other one."

[omnomnom_feels]

Nhodd screams as the searing pain in his wing becomes impossibly sharper, agony lancing up into his shoulder. It is impossible to obey the order to remain still, though perhaps he obeys it in spirit considering he manages only to writhe on the ground. The wreckage of his wing consumes his comprehension -- how dare they, how could they -- so that for a few seconds he doesn't comprehend Asadi's demand, only the threat that accompanies it. His unbroken wing wrenches itself in tight, folding as close to his body as it can though it trembles with sympathetic pain for the other.

"Stop!" he howls, halfway between a demand and a plea. His shaking hands wrap themselves around Rush's foot, trying to lift it or at least to stop it pressing down any harder. "Get off me!"

[lottawork]

Mouth twisting with distaste, Nicholas leans across his own leg as it continues to grind viciously into the injured wing, draping his undamaged arm over his knee in a display of callous, deliberate unconcern.

"I'd do as she says," he murmurs, his voice low and dangerous. "Or I may - " he stresses the threat with an abrupt increase of foot pressure, " - be forced - " and he brings his face nearer to the thrashing man beneath him, teeth bared in a snarl, " - to be more creative."

[etherthief]

"You reeeally don't want that," adds Iman, crouching down to get closer to him. "Look, you're obviously some kind of angel-wannabe, you're all about light, right?" Sure. Close enough. Enough to make her point. "Let me tell you something about light: it always, without fail, takes the path of least resistance." She smiles. "It's a good path to take."

[omnomnom_feels]

Nhodd lets out a high-pitched noise as he feels the shattered bones grind against one another under the weight of Nick's boot. "Please!" he hears himself shriek. "Please, I cannot, it hurts too much!"

He is not a wannabe, he is an angel and they are impeding his holy mission and yet all he can think about is how much it hurts, how he'd do whatever he must to make the pain stop.

[lottawork]

"Then turn them back." Nick's face contorts, his tone vicious. Abruptly, he drops his weight to kneel across the wing, undamaged hand seizing the thing's uninjured wing, fingers digging mercilessly into the golden pinions.

"Turn them back." He can feel the ridge of hollow bone beneath his thumb and he presses slowly, deliberately down upon it. "Now."