ArchivedLogs:Hostile Crowd

Hostile Crowd
Dramatis Personae Veronica, Anole, Charlie Torres
In Absentia	20 June 2015 '
Location <NYC> Chinatown
One of New York's oldest neighborhoods and the oldest Chinese enclave outside of Asia, Chinatown is a vibrant ethnic community, which draws throngs of tourists annually as well. This neighborhood is packed with Chinese-owned businesses, from restaurants to groceries to theaters to fashion. Veronica is walking down the street slowly, scanning the crowded street. She wears a black tanktop a few sizes too small that says 'QQ' in rhinestones, cutoff bluejean shorts. The bleached part of her hair has grown out and been cut so that only her long sidelocks are hot pink, while the rest is short, jagged and black. Her backpack and boots have seen better days. Anole isn't really walking down the street, exactly. Kind of skittering along above it -- beside it -- over it, a semi-camoflauged kind of brick-coloured blur moving high up against the rows of buildings. He's most visible between them, a /thwip/ and a brief shadow zipping along to swing across a street or alley and then stick to the side of a new set of buildings. Intermittently he descends from his skittering several stories up. There's a less brick-coloured flash of pink -- *thwip* -- and someone loses a wallet. Or a phone. Tuck. Into the pack he has strapped to his back. At the moment he's scurried his way down along the side of a bookstore, headfirst. His tongue shoots out -- a little bit mis-estimated, this time. When it thwaps against Veronica, it's a little too hard. It secures its cargo, for sure, yoinking back a shiny new (well, new to /him/) folding knife -- but not without a noticeable /bap/ of loooooooooong sticky tongue against the girl's side, knife flashing through the air to whizz back towards the (still brick-coloured) lizardy mutant where he perches against the side of the nearby building. Charlie is dressed as is typical for her when she is Out in the City: dark hoodie with the hood pulled up tight, navy and white scarf across the lower half of her face, black gloves with capacitive fingertips covering her hands, grey camping pants, and apparently-oversized sneakers. The hare girl carries an old black backpack filled with cans of spray paint, the cans muffled with cloth to avoid too much obvious clinking but making the bag appear heavy and lumpy nonetheless. In the fading evening light, she is finishing making rounds marking down anti-mutant signs (which are easier to spot before dark) to be 'edited' into more pro-mutant content once darkness falls and she is more likely to go longer without being confronted. The lighter index fingertip of her glove swipes across a screen to mark another location: a shop window to visit later. "What the fuck..." Veronica blurts, turning in the direction of the bizarre pickpocket. She squints at the wall and the apparent lump on the side of the building. "What. The. Fuck." Then she's suddenly moving, reaching out to rip the camouflaged shape from the wall and throw it to the ground. "Mmmmp," is Anole's initial reaction to this; any words he might have said kind of muffled owing to the fact he currently has a mouthful of Knife. He proves somewhat hard to /rip/, the pads of his fingertips seeming stuck rather fast to the wall. He does kind of /peel/ downwards, his arms twisting away from the wall even as his hands stick fast. "Mmmp!" is sharper, higher; he twists around, scrambling to try and get bare feet back upwards against the side of the brick. The backpack on his back shifts and rattles, sliding downwards to smoosh up against the spiky base of his skull. It is Veronica's outburst more than anything that catches Charlie's attention from across the street. The hare-girl pockets her phone, peering out of the shadows of her hood as she tries to get an idea of what is going on. Anole's unusual movements pique her curiosity further. She slips across the street, casually to avoid drawing too much notice, bringing herself closer to better assess the situation from an angle at Veronica's back. Veronica grabs hold of Anole's backpack, too, for better leverage. "\{Thief!\}" She cries out in Chinese. "\{Help! This monster is robbing me!\}" Passers by turn and start to mutter. "\{He's got a knife!\}" she points out, helpfully. Some of those checking their pockets by reflex are finding themselves a wallet short, and they're not happy. The long pink tongue flashes out again. The knife has vanished into the gutter when it snaps back into Anole's mouth. "-- leggo," he squeaks, twisting to yank his lopsidedly massive-spiky arm -- probably none too pleasant to try keeping a grip on -- back away from Veronica. "I'm not a /monster/." Chinese is...about as unhelpful to Charlie as Greek might be, but the tenor of Veronica's words brings Charlie another step closer. Anole's protestations and flailing are the last straw. She clasps a gloved hand heavily on the girl's shoulder. "Hey. Let the poor kid go. He's obviously not a threat." Veronica lets go of Anole when he twists his arm away, but she keeps hold of his backpack and shakes it. "\{Hear what he's got in here?\}" There are nods and more mutterings from the crowd. Two young men close in on Anole and reach for him, looking none too happy. Veronica whirls around to face Charlie, the look of plaintive appeal on her face briefly replaced with a scowl. "\{Here's another one, they're a gang! Are we going to let these things take over our neighborhood?!\}" The grumbling from the bystanders takes on an angrier tone as they press in toward the young people. "Let /go/," Anole squeaks again, yanking back at the backpack as he scoots a half-foot higher up the wall, away from the men trying to reach for him. "Lemme go /home/." Charlie has no answer to Veronica's accusations as she continues not to understand them. She shifts herself, quickly, to put her body between Anole and the oncoming crowd, since the boy has handily gotten his back to a wall. "He's just a /kid/. Leave him alone. He just wants to go home. You heard him." Though her stance is lowered and muscles taut and ready, there is no way she is going to make the /first/ move toward any violence. Veronica's answer to Charlie is to just unzip Anole's backpack and yank at it hard to spill its contents. Then she releases him and melts into the crowd as the muttering turns to shouting and the looming turns to grabbing. Anole doesn't exactly stick around for the grabbing. The look he flashes Charlie is somewhat apologetic, insofar as it can be discerned as his features melt back in against the wall. And then he's scrambling up, high out of reach, skittering along the brick until with a thwip-thwip-thwip he can zip from one building to the next to the next and disappear out of sight into an alleyway. Charlie sticks around, but only long enough to see the lizard-boy is out of harm's way. She dodges some hands, breaks free of another, and works her way out of the crowd with a fleetness that is near impossible to follow. Once back on the street, she employs her considerable speed to get /herself/ out of harm's way, as well.