ArchivedLogs:Mutant Human Relations

Mutant Human Relations
Dramatis Personae Peter, Roger
In Absentia	2013-04-17 '
Location <NYC> Abandoned Warehouse - Brooklyn
Just one among many old buildings in an industrial section of the borough, this warehouse was undoubtedly once bustling. It's large, a spacious segment of floor with a number of high-rising shelves still lining the walls from floor up to the exposed beams of the ceiling. There's plenty of smaller nooks and rooms tucked away at the sides of the building, and though the ceiling is mostly still intact and the windows boarded up a crumbling hole near the roof and a few removed planks from a window near the back make it a common home for wayward birds, stray cats, and the occasional vagrant taking advantage of strong walls and bathroom plumbing that still largely works. The latter tend to avoid this place more often than not come nighttime, though; among street people there are rumours that this building is often populated by monsters. BANG. BANG BANG. Gunshots can be heard ringing out in one of the old dusty garbage-ass waterfront properties, specifically a sprawling warehouse. Now often used as a short-lived street gang hideout for various ephemeral criminal gatherings, yes. There has never been a more stereotypical or obvious place for shit to go down in. Stereotypes can be true though, that is why they are stereotypes. One such outfit is being menaced by one Roger Waller, arsonist, murderer, a man of small mind and vast anger. Rather, he is menacing a straggler of a street gang who he managed to corner here. Carrying a pipe behind his shoulders nonchalantly, he is advancing at a leisurely pace upon a kid who couldn't be older than 17 with a Glock the banger probably bought in a brown bag around the corner. Plow. Pwang. Bullets hit Roger and fly off like they were skidding off metal, momentarily knocking him back a step or two, but really not making him BLEED like they should. Y'know? Like how bullets do. The guy gets a lucky shot and the guy's shades blow apart over his right eye, his head snapping back. But he just curls back. The kid has a look on his face of abject horror. What is going on here? There is a sound - barely audible - somewhere overhead. A sound of scuttling hands and feet - the vague outline of a teenage boy scrambling on all fours, up along the wall. In a moment, he's on top of the rafters, peering down below - clad in a black hoodie, black dress slacks, black tabi socks, a black nylon back-pack - and, of course, that black ski-mask with buggy yellow goggles. The warehouse is familiar. He was here only a few days ago, watching two sharktwins nearly /eviscerate/ each other. Now, instead, attracted by the unusual sound of gunshots, he finds something /else/ going down. And this time, it doesn't look like part of a consensual game. Peter scampers above, somewhere. As Roger closes in, there's a set of unusual sounds that come in from above - THWP, THWP, THWP, THWP - in rapid succession. Silver-gray cord descends - one aiming to snap the pistol in the kid's hands and /yank/ it out of his grip, sending it reeling toward the rafters; the other three aiming for the boy's shoulders and chest respectively - and promptly reel /him/ up toward the rafters, too. If successful, the gun would be left dangling high out of reach - along with the boy. Naturally our friend The Spider is successful - up the kid goes, and man, is he ever freaked out. If he wasn't scared before, now he is almost frothing at the mouth. Scratch that, he is literally drooling at the edge of his lips as he struggles and kicks his legs and thrashes his arms in the air as he dangles, the gun tantalizingly out of reach. "God! God! Fucking god!" He might well start crying as he thrashes his shoulders this way and that. Roger is looking up at the ceiling now with squinted eyes, brushing off his ruined sunglasses (why would this guy even NEED them in a warehouse?) and letting what's left of them clatter to the floor. The pipe slides along his shoulders and now hangs loosely at his side. With an accent straight out of the heart of Texas, he cocks his head and curls his lip. "Who's that? Who's up there?" The apex of eloquence and wit, this guy. "Relax." Unusual or not, Peter's first loyalty is to the dangling kid; he descends in front of him - /out/ of immediate arm reach (though if the kid flails enough, he might be able to swing himself /into/ arm-reach), dropping head-first with a sudden THWP - catching himself by one of the rafter beams, ankles crossed over the silver cord, clutching it just beneath (or above, considering his upside down position) posture. "Hey! Hey! Relax," Peter repeats. "Nobody's gonna hurt you. I'm just keeping you up here till I figure out what's going on, okay?" And now Peter peers down - yellow goggles gleaming in the darkness, reflecting back Roger's own gaze back at him. "Hi! You okay? He was shooting you," Peter says, rather blithely. "I mean - I think? Did he miss? Are you okay? Do you need medical attention or something?" Back to the kid who he's tangled up in his web-lines. "Are /you/ okay are you hurt or anything I'm kinda new at this um like I didn't hurt you when I pulled you up here right--?" Oh, boy. Roger is standing there in the middle of this mostly empty warehouse with his neck craned up and his eyes squinted, so much more immediately he's barely there. The kid, however, will not shut up to save his life. "Look holmes, look, I don't want any trouble, I heard a you man, I heard a you, I don't want any trouble. I read about you in the paper so don't /murder/ me, man!" Obviously, he's been reading the Daily Bugle. Roger grimaces a little, his patience already starting to wear thin. "Look - I know you're a mutant right? Odds are, yeah. So you know we've always been on the wrong side of justice. This punk and his crew have been tagging up the bronx with garbage like 'Mutant Scum Get Out' and who knows what else." He sniffs, rubs his finger under his nose. "Nobody's going to stop 'em. Hell, the pigs would probably do the same thing if they could afford canned paint on a city budget. So drop the homo inferior and let nature take its course. It's justice." After listening to the dangling kid's desperate plea for several long moments, Peter adjusts his webshooter's nozzle with a click - then fires again. THWP -- *SPLT* -- right on the kisser. The greyish mass would spread out to clamp the boy's mouth shut while leaving him enough space to breathe through his nostrils. "Okay," Peter says, "you're obviously not-dead." Then there's Roger. Peter readjusts his webshooter /again/; doing this manually is a pain, but the quicker model is currently not in his possession. He drops - falling nearly down to Roger's level - right before, at the last moment, slinging another web up to catch him. The elastic cord /stretches/ as he falls, eating up some of the stress of his descent; his arms absorb the rest of the force. He dangles, about 8 yards away from Roger, upside down - goggles level with the mutant's head. "Seriously? You're gonna kill a dude for - hate-graffiti? I mean -- /dude/ I'm not down with frowns, but killin' peeps for /graffiti/?" Roger gives Peter a face to face frown - he is one of those people who you just know is not the nice or reasonable kind. His lip curls a little more in anger. "Yes! Yes, I sure as fuck am gonna kill him for graffiti. How many of us," and here he emphasizes his point by open palm slapping himself a couple of times on the chest, "do you think he and his buddies have capped in a fuckin' gutter for less? They're animals. I'm just tossing out the trash. Go ahead - ask me again. Ask me again if I'm for real, kid." Peter looks up at the kid dangling in the rafters. Then back down at Roger. Then, back up at the kid in the rafters. And then... "I'll be right back." He proceeds to /climb/ up that silver cord he's dropped - rather quickly, actually! - swaying back and forth as he does so. Almost /zipping/ right up it - until he's up next to the kid, muffled and face-clamped. And then... he reaches into his backpack, shuffling around, looking - pulling out... a small spritzer bottle. SPRITZ, SPRITZ, SPRITZ. Right on the kid's mouth. The grey goop starts to instantly grow weaker; Peter reaches forward to helpfully peel it off - giving the kid the opportunity to speak. "Hey!" Peter immediately says. "Hey, have you ever killed anybody?" What do you think he's going to say? In a shriek, voice cracked from fear, the kid goes, "No!" whilst shaking his head in an almost comedically exaggerated fashion. Roger is, of course, listening down yonder. He spreads his arms wide with a pinched expression, that reads like 'Honestly?' He is pacing now, tapping the back of his shoulders with his firmly clutched pipe. "For fuck's sake. He is carrying a gun around. If he hasn't, he will. Do you think if he'd had half a chance he wouldn't have shot you if the tables were turned right now? Use your head." "Okay. Thanks. And don't worry, nobody's gonna hurt you," Peter tells the kid /again/. Right before readjusting the nozzle on his webshooter once /more/. Another *THWP*, another *SPLT*, and then Peter's shimmying down his webline once again to face Roger. "I'll throw away the gun," Peter tells Roger. "So, no more killing. What are you even /doing/ here why are you chasing down people with guns? I mean, I guess I kind of am too, but like, not /really/, this was kind of an accident, and anyway I'm going to let him go now and I think you should leave him alone?" There's a moment's silence as Roger stares at hanging Peter, slowly absorbing and chewing on the words he's saying. Finally, he decides on a single, razor-edged monosyllabic response. "Why?" He asks this question as if he legitimately didn't understand why he should. Not rhetorically, not strictly threateningly - because everything about Roger is threatening. No - he's legitimately asking this question. "Be-cause..." Peter begins, and now his head jerks back to look at the dangling kid - then at Roger - then back at the dangling kid - then back at Roger. "Um, it isn't cool to /hurt/ people? Like, I guess if he was /killing/ somebody I guess you might have to? To save somebody else? But you're just - trying to hurt him because you /think/ he's bad." Then, in case /this/ explanation doesn't work, Peter soon adds: "Also, because if you don't, I'm going to web you up on those rafters and call the police." "Walk away, kid. You are my mutant brother, so I respect your view-point." Roger sniffs, his brows knit together in a frankly angry scowl. He wipes his mouth again, as if trying to wipe away his mad expression. He is clearly not very good at this talking thing. With his fingers over his mouth, he eyeballs the little web-shooters on Peter's wrists, then looks at the mask. As if weighing his options. Now things take a turn for the bizarre. He reaches into his pants pocket and removes a flask, the bar-code sticker still on it. This is the picture of nonchalance, here, not a deliberate affront. He unscrews the cap, raises it over his head, and starts to pour it down over his head. The stink of alcohol is pervasive. It's probably Everclear, actually, seeing as it's completely lacking in color. He is dousing himself. Now, he is reaching into his pocket again, and removing a Zippo lighter, also probably stolen. He flicks it open, and looks at Peter. "But none of this is going to go the way you probably expect." Peter's entire body goes rigid; his grip on the web-line /tightens/ as the scent of alcohol hits his nose. And when that zippo is brought out... "Dude. /Dude/. What are you--DUDE, stop stop stop, whoa whoa WHOA," and suddenly Peter is on the /ground/, releasing the zipline and tumbling - landing with a thud on his feet, right-side up. Holding a hand out to Roger. "Dude, DUDE, this is totally not worth /killing/ yourself over what are you /doing/ look I'll just take the dumb kid in the rafters and /go/ and everything will be cool okay?" Something begins to tingle in the back of Peter's brain. He is only now starting to put two and two together re: bullets, no damage, and dousing one's self in a flammable substance. Just as Peter starts to put the pieces together, mentally, Roger connects the dots for him in big red letters. He draws the open lighter across his shoulders. Flames begin to wiggle in existence all over his face, on his do-rag, his wife-beater and on his arms. He is not really a fire-ball per se: there is not enough alcohol to really ignite. But it is fire, and it is hot, running off him as some of the excess liquid rolls down his fingers. "Just walk away," he repeats in the exact same tone as before, amidst the flapping flutter and crackle, and he starts to walk towards Peter. "HOLY CRAP YOU ARE INVINCIBLE." This statement is followed by the sound of several rapid THWPs - and Peter is airborn, leaping /way/ back from Roger, sweeping toward the farthest wall of the warehouse. He isn't leaving, though - not yet. There's another THWP, and Peter's swinging in the /opposite/ direction - high over Roger, toward the rafters. Once he lands with a thud, he can be heard scuttling toward the dangling teen - reaching for his vinegar spritzer again with one hand, even as he reels the 17 year old up toward him with the other. "Kid! Listen! Don't kick and flail! I am the last conductor on the train out of crazy-town and I need you to stay /perfectly/ still okay?!" "Leave the kid here, bro! He isn't going to thank you for this, and it's gonna be one of your mutant brothers or sisters he ends up wasting!" Roger calls after him as he disappears into the rafters. He is trying to act cool but really he is pretty annoyed that he is only now realizing that Peter could just take the kid and /leave/. This never occurred to this genius. The dangling kid is wild-eyed but almost limp from paralyzed fear rather than strictly agreeing with Peter, though he no doubt would when he catches a glimpse of what's going on down below. He takes in shuddering breaths as he's reeled up, completely struck dumb. Spritz, spritz. Peter tears through the cords with the vinegar spritzer; rather than spend precious moments shoving it back into his bag, he just /drops/ it to the floor. Hefting the teenager over one of his shoulders - "DON'T MOVE." - and running toward the nearest exit, feet rushing across the rafters. Jumping. Thwping. Squeezing the boy's waist as he /darts/ for the nearest exit - THWP, swing. As he flings himself out, he shouts back to Roger: "I'M AN ONLY CHILD!" Roger is left standing in the middle of an empty warehouse alone with his arms hanging limply at his sides, mildly on fire.