ArchivedLogs:Faster, Stronger

Faster, Stronger
WARNING: GORE
Dramatis Personae Marrow
In Absentia	2014-04-07 part of perfectytp
Location <NYC> Bronx
The northernmost of New York's five boroughs, the Bronx... well. You might get shanked. It's not a particularly nice part of the Bronx, a shabby run-down street in a shabby run-down neighborhood. Outside a shabby run-down brickface building, dingy and unassuming -- it could house, /does/ house, some perfectly boring office space together with the home of the Perfectus Church. Throughout much of the week there's only intermittently Things To See, here. A few rather normal-looking people coming and going. On Sunday morning there were a /lot/ of people arriving for church ceremonies, all very /friendly/-welcoming and congregating outside in the sunny-warm weather for a time before dispersing. And now it's been back to quiet, save for the intermittent trickle in and out. Right now, though, there's a van pulling up -- circling, really. Looking for /parking/, never an easy feat in the city. It eventually finds a spot across the street from the church building. The woman who gets out of the driver's seat is wiry-lean, a narrow hawkish face, red hair, drab canvas jacket and jeans and boots, her grey eyes narrowed as her gaze slices up and down the street. Ahhh the excitement of a stake-out. A nice break from her usual Sewer Knight routine and a chance to get a little sun. Or at least it would be if Marrow wasn't currently bundled up in a thick winter coat which'd look shabby even on a Morlock and hunched over a shopping trolley filled with cans, bits of broken mirror and a whole lot of plastic bags. A hoodie completes her disguise, although the hood fails to hide the two bones that poke up through the hood and curl back like rams horns. Nor can her outfit entire hide how lumpy she looks. Slowly but surely she ambles down the street, jingling a can hopefully at anyone passing by in the hope they'll spare a little change. The woman is just starting to open the side door of the cargo van when she stops, sliding it closed again and turning to look towards the jingling of Marrow's can. Her eyes flick up-down, up-down, over the Morlock, and she leans more heavily against the side of the van. Eventually she does pull the door open, letting out a middle-aged man from inside, a little bit pudgy, balding, shabbily dressed in threadbare jeans and a polo shirt sweat-stained at the armpits; he's got a bit of bandaging at the inside of his elbow as though he's recently had blood drawn. "You need some help?" the man asks Marrow, voice contrastingly high and nasal for his large frame. Marrow slows down, then shrugs her lumpy shoulders. "Spare any change Mister?" she croaks, keeping her eyes down. "Or maybe a little something to eat?" A mitten clad hand is thrust out to rattle the loose change can in the mans direction. "It'd be a kindness, winter has been so cold this year and it's been so very hard to find food." The man glances to the woman, and then back to the van. There's a moment of hesitation as the woman looks at the empty street around them, then shrugs. The man digs in his pocket, extracting a crumpled dollar bill and stepping forward to drop it into Marrow's can. His hand doesn't pull back, though, once he's dropped this bill in -- instead he reaches to clamp a meaty hand down around Marrow's wrist -- his fingers close in and yank forward with a /freakish/ amount of inhuman strength. "About fuckin' time," Marrow declares with entirely too much relish. As the fingers tighten around her wrist the tiny little bone lumps, barely visible from under the mittens, sprout into a bracelet of inch long razor sharp spikes. At the same time the Sewer Knight twists her suddenly spikey arm and with her free hand grabs a bag from her trolley. Then, using the pulling force for speed, she whips the contents of the bag (A delightful mix of broken glass, sharp can lids, rocks and rusty nails.) at the woman opening the van door. The man cries out as the spikes nail through his hand, high-pitched and squealing. As blood patters down onto the sidewalk from his impaled hand (which is, now, somewhat spiked /to/ Marrow's arm, though at least his grip has weakened) his /other/ hand slams upward towards Marrow's gut, that same inhuman-strength mixed together with a heavy dose of rather fast reflexes. The other woman is simply -- /frowning/, as the contents of the bag scatter over her. /Through/ her, really, the glass and rocks and nails simply passing through her as though she weren't there, though they clatter and scrape against the van. "/Really/?" She sounds slightly exasperated with this, as though Marrow were, perhaps, a naughty child acting up at school. Shaking her head, she /leaves/ her companion with Marrow on the sidewalk, climbing into the van (where there is a quiet groaning coming from inside.) The blow to the chest stops Marrows forward momentum and there's the sound of cracking bones as hamfist connects with her bone armour. She staggers back a pace, kept upright by spikes punched through the mans other hand. "Oi, Shit for brains. Give up now and maybe I let you keep what's left of your hand." Of course this doesn't stop her twisting her arm and surging forward to try and kick at the vans tire with the newly sprouted bone blade that's bursting from the front of her boot. The man's squealing sound isn't actually ceasing, high and pained at the shredding ribbons of his hand or maybe moreso as his fist connects with Marrow's chest. As his hand drops to curl in limp and guarded against his chest, his booted foot comes up, slamming down towards Marrow's knee as her boot kicks forward to try and stop it. Or maybe just for the sake of slamming down towards her knee. The other woman is emerging again, not from the door of the van but simply walking through its side. There's a pistol, silencer on its barrel, held almost lazily in one hand; her other holds a syringe. "You give up now," her voice is calm and oddly quite, "and maybe I let you keep what's left of your brains." All but one of the bone spikes, each grown into a little dagger blade, burst free from Marrow taking what remains of Hamfists fingers with them. With nothing to keep her upright the Sewer Knight drops to absorb some of the force from the stomp, trusting on bone plates to keep her leg from breaking. While her other arm levels at phasing lady and, with a burst of bone and blood, a stubby little handgun of her own pops out from up her sleave. "Eat shit whoreface," she eloquantly replies, the bones in her skull thickening as fast as her power allows. The remaining spike swells to almost a foot long and she swipes at Hamfists ankle, aiming to chop his leg out from under him. As for her pistol? Well Marrow is hardly the picture of restraint. BLAM BLAM BLAM! The big man yowls, his freed hand swinging, less /strike/ and more anguished /flail/ in its heavy swing towards -- well, nothing, now, it /was/ towards Marrow's face until she drops downwards. /He/ is dropping, too, thudding heavily to the ground when the muscles of his legs are torn, collapsing into a bloody pile beside Marrow. "/Really/." Much as with the detritus Marrow had thrown at her, the bullets pass harmlessly through the woman, slamming instead into the side of the van. She still looks just a little bit exasperated, still holding the pistol lazily at her side. Her head turns, eyes dropping to her bloody twitching-moaning colleague on the ground. She takes a step forward, and then another, only now bringing the pistol upward. /It/ passes harmlessly through /Marrow/ with only an odd cool tingling sensation as she brings the barrel of the pistol up /into/ the young woman's hardened skull. "Do you know what it would feel like," she muses quietly, "if I let this go solid." Her other hand lifts, the syringe held in it, still. "Trust me, this will feel a lot better." As the first shots pass through the advancing woman Marrow drops her arm, still blasting away, only now she's aiming directly for the rear wheel. "Oh I dunno. Maybe like a fuckin' long walk with the cops on the way and blown out tires?" she wonders as her gun finally runs dry, her muscles tensing for the slightest hint that the woman is turning to check her van. She twists her arm for the needle. "But hey if you wanted to party why didn't you just ask nicely?" Marrow's arm does find the needle -- once again its tip passes /through/ her with that same cool tingling, shifting about beneath her skin as the woman moves her hand back to aim the needle for a vein. Being buried half inside Marrow already likely makes it excruciatingly unpleasant when the needle resolidifies -- though thankfully the gun buried in Marrow's skull does /not/. Just sharp cold metal and a fierce burning as the milky liquid is depressed. Possssibly a much heavier dose than is really safe but /look/ this woman is not an anesthetist. "Oh, we're going to party," she assures Marrow, through angrily gritted teeth. Marrow bats her lashes and blows the woman a kiss. "Might wanna save some for your buddy," she taunts, trying as fast as she can to grow a little bone capsule around the flesh where the needle tip ends up. "That looks like it /hurt/." Despite her best efforts some of the drug still hits her system and her eyes glaze a little. "Ooo. That shit is strong." Before her mind clouds over completely she cracks open her little surprise, a little ball of bone filled with stimulants, which will likely make the trip back a little more eventful than phasing lady would like. "Ugh." The woman is grimacing, tensed and gritted-teeth as she hauls, first her companion and then Marrow into the back of the van, where a wiry man is already curled up in an only-barely-conscious heap. "What a fucking mess." The bloodstains and /fingers/ are left on the sidewalk, the van grating rather noticeably in its list to one side where its rear tire is deflated and it rides on the rims. Thankfully it isn't a /far/ drive. While the woman is busy hefting her friend a bloody clod of flesh and bone pops out from Marrows arm, joining the already rather unpleasant mess on the sidewalk. It'd be hard for anyone unfamiliar with Marrows unusual biology to tell, but by the time she's in the back of the van her double heartbeat has started pounding as a dangerous cocktail of crystal meth (cut with who knows what) begins to fight against the knock out drugs. She shifts onto one side and twitches. Lips pulled back in a rictus grin she launches herself at Hamfist, a sword-like blade sprouting from her arm, then with drug fuelled rage she begins hacking away at the poor man. Like something out of a low budget horror movie. Of course she doesn't confine herself to just Hamfist! Once it looks like he's /properly/ maimed she begins trying to punch the bone blade through the partition wall. Aiming for where the drivers head would be. All the while veering between mad laughter and howling with demented fury that is only mostly the drugs. "OH MY GOD." The man in the back screeches, kind of gargly by the end of this. And then his gargly screaming is just gargling, and then it's nothing at all except a wet burble of messily slopping blood and splatting entrails falling onto the hapless half-conscious other passenger drugged in the back with them. There's a /squeal/ of tires throughout this, as the van abruptly pulls over. Marrow's blade slices through thin metal and the leather of the seat, tearing-shredding, but it does /not/ slice through skin or bone. There's just an /exasperated/ hiss followed by a sickened: "Oh /god/," as the woman up front turns to see the mess in the back. "What the fuck is wrong with you." Because clearly this is all /Marrow's/ problem. She's stepping straight through the partition, hands reaching for Marrow -- reaching /through/ Marrow, really, straight into the woman's chest. But then out of it again to open the van door. "Oh god oh god oh god." Marrow, not so much splattered with gore as bathed in it, springs back so fast she leaves the bone blade embedded in the front seat. Phasing Ladys comments simply elicit even more frenzied laughter and she snatches for Hamfists head, which seems to have come off at some point in the proceedings. She grins even wider as the doors open. "Tell your friends this was for Anole," she snarls. Then, almost as an afterthought, she tries to haul the (thankfully) unconcious mutant with her out the door. Of course if Phasing Lady objects she'll leave the poor bastard to his fate. Not like he's a Morlock! The woman drops her hand, resting it on the unconscious mutant's leg; he phases out of existence along with her, leaving Marrow grasping at nothing. Her eyes are opened wide and horrified as Marrow drags her companions /head/ off with her, a look of revulsion on her face. "Ugh --" She is very /hasty/ to slam the door behind Marrow; the /squeal/ of tires (and rims grating against the road) peels away from the curb as she screeches back off towards Harlem.