ArchivedLogs:Help From on High

Help From on High
Dramatis Personae Ainsley, Pedro, Steve
In Absentia	2015-11-28 "{I hear anthems in my head whenever you introduce yourself.}" (Part of the Flu Season TP).
Location <NYC> Lower East Side
Historically characterized by crime and immigrant families crammed into cramped tenement buildings, the Lower East Side is often identified with its working-class roots. Today, it plays host to many of New York's mutant poor, although even here they are still often forced into hiding. Lower East Side has definitely seen better days. With zombies popping up in dangerous groups, and mutant/human tensions on the rise, there have been several fires as well as general destruction of property. Cars, left behind in a panic, are first stripped of useful things and drained of fuel, and usually end up on fire. Currently though, there's a knot of zombies attempting to enter a house. With boarded up windows, and what looks to be a reinforced steel door, the brownstone has thus far proven to be tougher than the zombies. But the door has been battered for quite some time now, and in danger of caving in. Settled on the roof of the building in question is a bat-like mutant. He peers down below at the small mob of undead, a look of fear and slight annoyance on his face. The young mutant reaches behind him, and casually sends a brick hurtling downwards, smashing the skull of one of the zombies and taking it out of the fight. The city-organized zombie patrol teams can be a bit hit or miss in terms of reliability. Half of this particular team decided to just hare off early, leaving only Steve and Ainsley to finish the route. Fortunately, they are on familiar turf and not all that far from home. Steve wears a brown leather jacket half-unzipped over a too-tight black t-shirt and jeans that have, like the neighorhood, seen much better days recently. He has his shield strapped to his left arm and a long knife in his right hand, both rather bloody despite obvious if cursory attempts at cleaning. Moving at a quick walk toward the zombies, he pauses to look up when the brick falls. Raises eyebrows and glances back at his buddy. "{Can you get their attention, please?}" he asks, his Spanish rough but serviceable now. "{Spread them out a little.}" He illustrates this with a sweep of his hand across the street. In contrast to Steve, Ainsley looks much more well-maintained. She still has that brown newsboy cap, leather jacket, jeans and boots outfit, but it's mostly intact and not covered too much in blood. She's got a tire iron in her right hand and it's actually dripping a little. She looks at Steve for a moment, and then toward the zombies. Her eyes go up-- Her face pales. She momentarily feels panic, but calms when she recalls Pedro is not in too much danger. She then finds a nice spot, and clicks her tongue a few times, making a subsonic sound to gauge the acoustics in the area. She holds up a hand and projects her voice a fair distance to make a loud and not-quite-human noise somewhere near to the building the zombies are crowding at, like someone had fallen over. Then she tries another a fair distance further than that. The effort makes her face turn red and she has to take a moment to breathe, even making her own ears ring from the weird trick she had to do to make that work. She tried to get the undead to spread out, but they're herding undead and not rational humans, so... The young mutant's ears perk up straight when Steven and Ainsley arrive, and he smiles at the clicking noise she makes. He looks to Steve. {Hey, you came a good time. There are people inside and they're pretty much backed into a corner. They've completely blocked off their back door, so they are trapped.} A good portion of the zombies turn their heads towards the noises Ainsley arranges, and they begin to trundle in that direction. The zombies closest to the door remain, their attention on breaking the door and getting the tasty brainmeats inside. Above, Pedro peers down again at the zombies. His eyes go whites as nictitating eyelides close. A look of extreme concentration comes over his face, and suddenly there's a roar of wind at the front of the house. The zombies not attracted to the sounds Ainsley has made are blown back from the door, and sent tumbling across the lawn. The young mutant above disappears from view. Steve salutes the winged mutant up on the rooftop, but does not raise his voice to reply lest he draw any zombies toward his teammate. He does say a quick and quiet "{Thank you}" to Ainsley with a smile before breaking into a very, very rapid sprint. The sudden blast of wind catches him by surprise, but he's not near enough to be caught in its immediate zone of effect. He lifts his shield to deflect one of the zombie sent sprawling, then drops it down to smash in the skull of another that had fallen. A third he stabs up through the underside of its chin as he rises, and leaving the knife there for a moment he hurls his shield to hit a fourth (still shambling off to find the source of Ainsley's voice). The gust of wind is impressive, but Ainsley only smiles from her safer vantage to show her appreciation for the act. She follows the shamblers as they travel away from the chaos, and keeps her eyes and her ears (especially her ears) open for any sort of added zombie activity as a result of all the noise they're making. She doesn't want to get surrounded. Which is why, when one comes stumbling out of an alley nearby, she manages to throw her voice again to distract it away from her. Then she clocks it on the back of its head with the tire iron. She shivers after that and has to close her eyes for a moment, and then look down at it, her face scrunched. She hunches her shoulders for a second, and then turns to catch up with Steve and continue being his backup by checking for signs of activity in any of the ones that Steve's already hit, making sure none catch him off-guard. The mutant on the rooftop above lets out a steady stream of clicks, and as Steve moves along essentially mowing down zombies, gusts of wind mess with the zombies' movements. Any that stray from the noises that Ainsley creates get nudged and slowed, most of them ending up in good spots for the Cap'n to end them. With the door clear, and the yard empty of undead, Pedro descends from the roof, flapping his wings a few times and gliding down to land beside Ainsley. {Ola, Ainsley. Out knocking zombies around, si?}, he says quietly. The last zombie standing ends up being the very same that had gotten struck so hard by the initial gust that it tumbled into Steve only to bounce off of his shield. The same shield, much bloodier, finds it again. Only this time it cleaves its head in half before Steve retrieves it, not winded for the dizzyingly quick battle. "{Are you all right?}" He turns to check on Ainsley again, then turns in a complete circle to survey the battlefield, then finally looks up at the winged man descending. His eyebrows only raise by a fraction of an inch. "{Hello, Sir. Thank you for your assistance.}" He smiles again, the same unguarded smile. "{I'm Steve Rogers.}" Ainsley looks at Pedro, needing to regain her composure before she can even reply to him in Spanish. "{Yes... I'm helping Steve. There were a couple others, but they had to go...}" She looks over her shoulder in the vague direction of where the others went. She looks toward Steve, his pleasant demeanor bringing a smile onto her face. "{I hear anthems in my head whenever you introduce yourself,}" she tells Steve, in good humor. "{I'm fine. I'm not really a violent person, but you know that already.}" Pedro nods to Ainsley, {That was a good trick with your voice. And you would have a decent career in baseball with that crowbar to the head maneuver. And just the two of you? That is brave.} He grins brightly and looks to Steve. {Wait. Steve Rogers? Captain America? No way.} The young mutant looks excited then and moves to offer Steve one of his hand-wings to shake. {It's a pleasure and an honour to meet you. You and Ainsley make a good team. And uhm. My name's Pedro, no need to call me sir. It is you who should be called Sir. With a capital S, no less.} Steve nods at Ainsley, blushes faintly. "{Oh, gosh. Do I sound very...star-studded even out of uniform?}" Presumably he /means/ 'star-spangled', but the man's Spanish clearly has a long way to go. "{Patroling with only two, not really good idea. Maybe, head home after I call dispatch for clean-up crew, here.}" He punctuates the last word by gesturing at the corpses littering the ground around them. "{Captain America, yes, but please to call me Steve. No...need to...capital sir.}" Definitely pushing the limits of his Spanish here. He looks down and smiles sheepishly, blushing harder. "{Nice to meet you, Pedro.}" He starts to offer his hand, but hesitates: it's kind of coated in gore. "{Maybe, hold hands another time?}" "{No, not that much, big guy, I'm just playing with you,}" Ainsley replies to Steve, brightening up some. Her big smile suggests she enjoys messing with him a whole lot. And then she shrugs at Pedro, and tells him, "{I'm just the sidekick. I set them up, and he knocks them down.}" She jerks a thumb at Steve and grins toothily. "{Well, we have to get going, I think...}" She checks her watch, briefly. "{Good seeing you again. Thanks for working with us, made that easier for all of us.}" Pedro chuckles at the gore-coated hand, and shrugs at Steve. {Si, another time for hand shaking. It is awesome enough to have met you.} The young man glances to Ainsley and nods, a bright grin on his face. {Happy to help out. Stay safe, si? It's scary out there. And thanks for your help making it less dangerous. Good luck with your scavenging.} "{You are not sidekick,}" Steve insists, quite seriously. "{These teams, we all volunteer. No rank. No heroes. Just help each other, help city.}" Then, to Pedro, "{Thank you again, and stay safe you, also.}" With a nod and a pleasantly boyish smile, he starts heading back toward the Commons.