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

[lottawork]

He fixes the other man with a glare, a muscle twitching in his jaw. This has entirely dismantled whatever nascent plans for attack he's formulated, and his strategy will require a full rewrite because fucking Seth got himself fucking shot.

"Fuck," he pants between clenched teeth, "you."

He is distantly aware of the sensation of becoming insubstantial, which is certainly a feeling he will have to categorize as among his least favorites, along with the distinctive impression of being fired upon by virescent energy-based projectiles through the fading thick smog of his own design.

"Make us fucking corporeal already," Nick snarls, unraveling a grapple from his belt with the intent of clamping it along the building's edge as soon as it becomes logistically possible to do so.

[powerdealer]

Even in the middle of all this, Seth can't help be amused at how Rush is insulting him while also trying to save his life. It's comfortingly familiar in a way.

Seth gives a nod and does as he's told, though he keeps an eye on the advancing enemies.

"What're you doing?" he asks. He doesn't have the strength to be specific about what's insubstantial and what's not, so if Rush wants to interact with something, Seth will have to let them be at risk. Any sign of getting shot at again though, and Seth's going to have to make them intangible.

[lottawork]

"Executing a fucking plan," he says with airy exasperation, fastening the grapple over the lip of the building's edge with the satisfying click and rattle of locking bolts shooting into place. "Hold the fuck on, will you."

Without any further warning, he readjusts his grip around the man's midriff and drops over the edge. The line takes them down the sheer drop, wind tearing through his hair and catching at his jacket, the cuffs of each sleeve. He squints against the inevitable shift in pressure, against the stabbing pain of staring into the churning buildup of wind resistance.

For a moment, there is only the vertical streaks of lights blurring into obscurity and the hum of the line paying out.

Then their trajectory catches and slows, and Nicholas swings one foot to plant it against the side of building from which they fell, sliding them to halt something like five feet above the asphalt of the road below.

"This," he says calmly, "would be your stop."

[powerdealer]

Oh, Jesus. Seth might not have a significant problem with heights, but swinging yourself off the edge of a building is usually enough to make anyone a bit queasy, especially when you're not the one in control.

He specifically does not look down, just grips on tight to Rush. He almost opens a tear underneath them out of pure instinct, maybe have them drop into a pool or something, but it's okay, they may be flying down the side of the building at an uncomfortable speed, but they are not actually falling to their deaths.

Once they've finally come to a stop, Seth does at last look down, to make sure the drop is a lot less deadly before he lets go. Five feet is still pretty significant for someone who's been recently semi-seriously shot, but he lets go anyway. His landing isn't all too grateful, collapsing onto his hands and feet, and reaching up to clutch at his stomach again. Jesus Christ, that hurts.

[lottawork]

He unclips the line and lets himself drop, gloved hands catching smoothly against the rain-slick wall with the rasp of leather over concrete. His legs nearly buckle beneath the impact as it stings his ankles but he's fully and entirely capable of righting himself and moving swiftly to the other man's side in a relatively expeditious manner.

Nick stoops to hook one hand under Seth's arm and tug him upright.

"I'm assuming they'll attempt to follow," he says crisply. "I recommend we no longer be here when they do."

[powerdealer]

"Good idea," he answers, letting himself be pulled up, his legs thankfully holding him once he's on them again. His breathing is hot and heavy underneath the mask, and he reaches up to pull it off again, his face damp.

"Hold on, just..."

He leans a little on the shorter man, concentrating hard. A moment later another tear opens up in front of them, showing the inside of a mostly empty warehouse.

[lottawork]

"Have you no insight as to your own limits," he hisses, managing to sound breathlessly annoyed and not the slightest bit concerned for the apparently flagging strength of his unwanted, unneeded, inept companion. With a low dragging sound of annoyance he yanks one arm over the uneven set of his shoulders and heaves the other man through the split in the quantum fabric of their spatial existence, into the relative safety of a conveniently deserted warehouse.

"If you suffer some sort of fucking vasovagal episode," growls Nick, dark and weighted with unconcealed warning, "I will be extremely annoyed."

[powerdealer]

"I do, I just choose to ignore them," he answers lightly, though he knows he would be every bit as annoyed if it was Rush who got himself hurt for Seth's sake.

The rip closes immediately behind them with the sucking sound of fluid disappearing down the drain. Seth groans a little and untangles himself from Rush, leaning against a wall instead, dropping the mask onto the ground and letting himself sink to a sitting position.

"I have no idea what that means," he admits, wishing people would stop using big words at the clueless drop-out, and unzipping his leather jacket.

He pulls up the bottom of his hoodie to inspect the wound - it's weirdly patchy and only somewhat burned, only vaguely resembling anything that blast should've made. Thankfully his power significantly lessens the damage when he redirects it onto himself. The area is stained dark with blood, but it's no longer bleeding - his healing power is doing a good job too.

[lottawork]

Spatial tears are evidently fully capable of hydrogelizing, which is both expedient and appropriate given the situation Seth has unwittingly placed them both in. Nick backs away from the man as he recovers, hands clenching and unclenching with an arrhythmic, frenetic energy he seems unable to dissociate himself from.

"If you fucking pass out," he clarifies, shooting the man a glare from beneath lowered brows, "that will go significant lengths to make the current situation unworkable from a biomedical standpoint."

He crosses the gap between them in a brusque step, eyes raking the dark ridges of the burn and the - the points where the skin appears to have melted or singed beyond recognition unless he is, he is very much -

Nick swallows, closes his eyes, and breathes through his nose.

In retrospect, this is not one of his more well-reasoned ideas. The smell of burned skin is, as he is well aware, beyond fucking unbearable.

He opens his eyes. It's not so terrible.

"I'm not that sort of doctor," he says, utterly composed.

[powerdealer]

"I'll keep that in mind," he answers to Rush's clarification. He has no intention of passing out, and he doesn't think he will. There's not too much blood loss, and the pain may be bad, but it's nowhere near bad enough to make him faint.

He glances up and Rush's next words. "It's alright," he says, pulling out a clean handkerchief and presseing it carefully over the wound, then pulls the (somewhat bloodstained) hoodie down over it again to keep it in place. If things get dire, he can go find help, but right now he'd just prefer not to move for a while.

"I didn't get the full blast," he explains, voice a little strained, trying to pull as little as possible at his stomach muscles as he tries to shift into a more comfortable position. Or as comfortable as you can be, sitting on a concrete floor, leaning against a hard metal wall. "And I heal pretty quickly."

[lottawork]

"No," he says icily. "You simply took the blast." He retreats, surveying the vast emptiness of the room they both occupy. He resists the urge to curl a hand over the section of his abdomen, the phantom itch of plasma searing into skin.

He eyes the other man coolly. "Been spending too much time with fucking Jackson, I see."

[powerdealer]

There is a brief moment where Seth tenses and heat rises to his cheeks and he's about to protest, when he realises that no, that's not what Rush actually said, there was definitely a preposition in there, it's an intensifier, not a verb.

He relaxes again (though he still feels a little warm around the neck) and gives a one-shouldered shrug. "Probably," he admits. Though really, he did this kind of ridiculous thing before he met Daniel too.

[lottawork]

Nick crouches swiftly, one gloved hand pressing against the opposite wall as he leans in close, a slow, deliberate invasion of the man's space.

"What is it you meant," he says, snapping the consonants with a cold precision redolent of a coiled menace, "by not anymore."

[powerdealer]

Seth recoils a little at the invasion on space, but given he can't really go anywhere it's not too effective.

It takes a moment for the question to click, the appearance of his pursuers having driven it out of his head. And Rush really needn't be so intense about it, Seth would've told him anyway. Mostly because he doesn't think it's really a secret, and he would've wanted to know it if had happened to him.

"Well, apparently," he begins, head leaned back against the wall and trying not to be bothered by Rush's closeness. "While he was floating about after it happened, he couldn't remember anything. But he recognised you, so he... I dunno, read your mind, I guess? I thought you knew."

[lottawork]

"Get to fuck." He shifts back, his expression twisting with distaste. "Did what."

His fingers dig ineffectually against the wall for a halting moment as he hovers on the precipice of a course of action he does not want to take and should not take and will not take and so his jaw tightens and he pushes away from the wall and straightens because he must and looks away because he must and breathes, rapid and uncontrolled.

He tries to marshal his thoughts into something translatable to verbal expression to assert his opinion on the manner, but fails.

He tries to transduce the fury clenched coldly between his teeth into an executable function, tries to torque it, turn it, dissolve it, turn it, but fails.

"Fuck," says Nick.

[powerdealer]

Seth merely watches, sympathetic to Rush's distress at this news. Of course, he doesn't really know the context, or their relationship from Rush's point of view, or really much of anything that Daniel would've found out. But having telepathy used on you without your knowledge is unpleasant at the best of times.

"He didn't mean to," he adds, and even speaking quietly their voices seem to be amplified by the vastness of the space they're in. Of course, Rush probably knows Daniel wouldn't do that intentionally, but Seth feels like he should mention it anyway.

[lottawork]

"Of course he didn't," he growls, the words heavy with disgust. "He never does."

Nick lifts his eyes to glare at the ceiling, as if in inane hope that a divine-mediated solution will spring fully-completed from the ether and present itself to him.

As one could fucking well predict, no such thing comes.

He turns on his heel to face the other man and raises a hand, palm out, his eyes hard. "We're done here."