Logs:If It’s Not One Thing It’s Another

If It’s Not One Thing It’s Another
Dramatis Personae Jax, Joshua
In Absentia Lucien, Spencer	2024-10-19 "That's my trick."
Location <NYC> Pier 17 - South Street Seaport
It was a beautiful fall evening, and a bustling night down at the Seaport, the restaurants packed and lively funk music spilling over from the rooftop concert venue. The music is somewhat anachronistically still going, entertainment uninterrupted up there even though down here at street level half the diners have long since fled screaming. The group of Friends who had opened fire down here a short while ago have also fled, leaving behind a no-longer-cowering family of willowy-tall semi-liquid looking aliens, a few stray mild-to-moderately injured humans caught in the crossfire, and a whole lot of gawkers. The last of Jax's shields is fading, his attention now turning from defense to -- "Anyone dead?" There's a casualness to his tone that suggests he's already fairly confident of the answer. Joshua is just reappearing -- though he left with one of the more seriously wounded bystanders he has returned alone. "Only if the hospital kills them." His voice is flat, but where his shoulders are tightened and brow pulled down there's a definite suggestion that he would not, personally, particularly grieve this. "Our fault somehow these fascists --" His grumble in Jax's general direction shifts easily enough to a grumble in the direction of Everyone Else as a large bright-orange first aid bag appears in his hand. "I'll check these people out, you wanna. See to our friends?" He's nodding towards the alien family. Jax nods, checking his phone before he heads over to the watery aliens. His exchange with the family is a little start-and-stop, helped along significantly by use of flickering illusions and a small but growing and well-organized document he's been diligently collecting for himself, with notes on all the various New Peoples they've been meeting -- names and homeworlds, physiological needs and communication tips, preferences and what odds and ends of etiquette he's been learning. Somewhere in between the pictures and the pointing and quite a few texts to Lucien he's mostly managed to work out a safe(r) temporary place for them to go by the time an actual Non-Joshua-Ambulance is pulling up. Joshua is ambling back over, hands shoved into the pockets of his (now slightly too-large) X-Jacket. He's looking at the latest shimmering illusion-illustrations, head jerking indicatively towards these communication aids as he saunters nearer. "We got a --" He doesn't get farther than this. He's whirling reflexively, eyes narrowed as several figures in all-too-familiar hefty armor simply appear around them. "... fuckers," he's muttering beneath his breath, as several diamond-esque drones start to rise from the Magistrates' grips into the air. He vanishes, blipping one of the drones immediately away. "That's my trick." Just as reflexive, a shimmering solid wall is going up in between Newcomers and Aliens. At least until Jax actually finishes processing this new development, at which point his hand flings upward -- it's an incredulous, exasperated sort of gesture but also not solely expressive; one and then another of the remaining drones are sizzling and zapping out of the air in brief-bright flashes of light. "Sugar, can you get our friends somewhere --" The termination of the drones has only stops that one section of threat, though; the Magistrates themselves are turning on the mutants. One of them is unleashing two of the same energy-bolas that hit Joshua on the beach; another, small homing tranquilizer darts. A third vanishes from where they are standing to appear just behind Jax, though whatever nasty-looking contraption he seems about to hit the photokinetic with never lands -- the aliens are kind of melting over the armor with a strange slurping noise, its movement frozen and then shorting out as they run over it and then back off again. "-- actually maybe they can hang out a minute longer," Jax is quickly reconsidering his Evacuation Request. Joshua is no longer where the bola was aiming; it clunks hard and heavy into one of the other Magistrates, instead. Neither the impact nor the energy have much effect on the heavy armor, but not being disabled does at least mean that Joshua is free to reappear behind the struck Magistrate and vanish with them. Once again he returns empty-handed. He's looking somewhat irritable and very unimpressed when one of the remaining Magistrates is beginning a spiel -- somewhere in the recitation about terrorism and Genosha's laws they, too, vanish. "Almost admire their gumption." The remaining (functional) Magistrate is simply opening fire -- maybe this is doing very little to the watery aliens who are right beside Jax but Jax himself is slightly less fluid. "I'd admire it a whole lot more if they wasn't coming eight thousand miles just to try and kill us!" There's another shield going up, the bullets alarmingly but harmlessly stopped just shy of Jax's head before they fall to the ground. There's a bright fracturing glow as the Magistrates' armor starts to shear into pieces -- undoubtedly the close heat, though far from lethal in these brief and contained slices, is none too pleasant for the man inside. "-- y'know, you did steal that trick first." One more blip, and -- the last of the Magistrates vanishes. It doesn't exactly end the ruckus around here; the terrified people around still in a bit of a panic and the wail of more sirens closing in. Joshua is giving Jax's statement a frown, and then a nod. He's offering his hands out to Jax, to the aliens, only looking a little uncomfortable at the gelatinous-wet touches to his skin. "I'll thank Spence. Again," he says, and then they are --