Logs:In Which Some Mutants Take Part In An Unfortunately Regular Community Event, And Some Humans Eagerly Join In

In Which Some Mutants Take Part In An Unfortunately Regular Community Event, And Some Humans Eagerly Join In
Dramatis Personae Alice, B, Desi, Dusk, Flicker, Ion, Jax, Rasa, Shane, Taylor, Ted
In Absentia	2019-05-30 "Put down the motorcycle and back away."
Location <NYC> Sara Roosevelt Park - Lower East Side
This long, thin strip of a city park runs north-south through much of the Lower East Side, along its western boundary with Chinatown. At various points it offers ball courts, gardens, or just regular green space (less green in some places than others), and isn't necessarily the most peaceful of urban oases given that it's sandwiched by busy Forsyth and Chrystie streets. The gray sky has been threatening rain all day, which seems a bit too on the nose for the somber occasion set against the lovely backdrop of the M'finda Kalunga garden, dozens of people gathered on one of the balding lawns nearby where the park interrupts Rivington Street. Some are carrying picket signs that read 'Rest in Power Benjamin', 'Black Mutant Lives Matter', 'Justice for Ben Wells', and the like. Most of the attendants are locals, but there's a also small contingent of generally better-dressed young people, hovering on the edges of the crowd and looking a little lost. Though perhaps slightly less so now that one of their own is speaking into the microphone. "Ben had this amazing presence," says scrawny young man wearing a heather gray 'Property of NYU' t-shirt and rumbled khakis. "He loved people, would start a conversation with anyone, just anyone." His face is pale and his eyes are red, though he's not currently weeping. "And they just -- and he's just. /Gone/." Not for the first time, Ted wonders why he's here... he feels like an unwelcome intruder, which he probably is. But he couldn't stay home. Not that he and Ben had been soulmates or anything, but they'd known each other for a while and he'd been willing to talk to Ted about the whole mutant thing, and... well, that counts for something. (Not that Ted had come out and said he was a mutant, but he'd gotten the impression Ben had connected the dots.) And now Ben is dead. Which, rationally, Ted understands has nothing to do with him, but... well, he isn't feeling very rational right now. And he wants to DO something, but, well, what is there to do? So he just stands in the crowd, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, eyes on the ground, and listens. Dusk is dressed in plain black shirt, dark jeans, his huge black wings an inadvertently fitting somber backdrop for him where he stands up by the front, nearby and adjacent to the speakers. He's been here since the beginning as well, interpreting their words into ASL -- with no partner to trade off with he looks a juuust little wilted in between each speaker. Fingers flexing. Shoulders flexing with a gentle ripple of soft dark wings. Somewhere near the edge of the crowd there is a table set up with coffee, tea, water, muffins, some cupcakes though these have been /rapidly/ dwindling. Cookies, some small wrapped sandwiches and sliced-in-half burritos (also disappearing fast.) Together with the refreshments the table has been /collecting/ literature that people have been, apparently, dumping on it. Some pamphlets with the young man's face on it. JUSTICE FOR BEN. BLACK MUTANT LIVES MATTER. A few palm cards advertising a support group that meets at Evolve Cafe once a month. Another for a grief counselor who works at the Mendel Clinic. For some reason a few copies of some newspaper calling itself THE SOCIALIST ORGANIZER. The young man who is seated /behind/ the table is picking up this last thing with a bemused expression. Taylor is tall, broad, ink-black skin, a bristle of bizarre and somewhat gruesome looking variably sized nubs sticking out of the many holes of his shirt (STAND UP FIGHT BACK, it reads across the front) -- shinier than the rest of his skin they have a disconcerting habit, right now, at twitching a bit spasmodically at intervals. His lips quirk as he looks over the newspapers. Relegate them to a pile /below/ the pamphlets. Near the crowd there's been a line of motorcycles parked (toootally illegally) on the edge of one path. Leaning up against one sleek futuristic looking contraption (that doesn't actually appear to have any wheels) is a tiny blue figure in pinstripe slacks and button-down a leather vest (MUTANT MONGRELS MC, it reads on the front; on the back a Jolly Roger, its grinning sharktoothed skull bearing a pair of crossed violin bows in place of crossbones) sipping on a coffee. "How long's it been since the last one?" Shane's voice is quiet. Kind of heavy. The identical tiny blue person beside him wears silver skinny jeans, a flowing asymmetrical purple tank top, her nearly identical vest crossed with fencing foils on its Jolly Roger. B plucks the coffee from Shane, wandering away from the bikes closer to the group. "Not long enough." Jax is by the the front of the group, where he's been since the beginning -- helping with setup of the sound system, announcing the people who get up to talk, though not actually speaking himself. At the moment he's seated on one of the speakers, head slightly bowed and a deep crease in his brows. He's dressed conservatively, for him, -- black button-down piped with purple, dark grey jeans, his hair /one/ shade (although that shade is a vivid neon blue.) His glittery purple nails pluck restlessly at the cuff of his shirt. Despite the overcast day, he still has a large pair of mirrored sugnlasses on his eyes. There's an odd blur that stops just by Evolve's table. Vanishes back over the top of the crowd. In neatly pressed khakis and plain grey polo Flicker could fit in with the NYU crowd, maybe, if not for the -- blur. He settles down by the front of the crowd silently. Sets a cup of coffee down by Dusk. Stops to set a muffin down on Jax's knee. He folds his arms (the prosthetic right arm, today, is deep red with white roses scattered over it) over his chest, head bowing momentarily. Ion has a coffee in one hand, a muffin in the other. His own MUCH abused vest (skull horned and fanged, lightning bolts jagged underneath) worn open over a white tee. Plain jeans, heavy boots. Restless, he's been weaving through the crowd. Stopping by the smallsharks, by Taylor, by /whoever/ the hell. By Teddy, now, with a small lift of chin. An offer of the untouched muffin, brows raising. "Too damn many times we out here, huh?" There's a rough sympathy in his deep voice. Tucked beside Shane and looking unobtrusive despite her considerable relative height, Desi glances down at the phone in her hand and scrolls up a bit. "Six weeks," she replies softly. Today she's wearing sober earthtones, a three-tiered brown skirt with a scalloped hem, a gauzy dark purple tunic cinched with a muted green corset that somehow manages not to look pretentious or even particularly out of place. The phone disappears back into her purse, which is dark green and shaped like a leaf, down to the contrast stitching like leaf veins across its front. Alice has been busily helping the contingent of NYU students feel less out-of-place. Or, at least, that's been one incidental effect of her making the rounds, greeting those she recognizes or who are visibly sporting university gear, passing out her /own/ pamphlets for a pair of campus organizations ('H.A.M.': Human Allies of Mutants, and 'NYU-X'), a stack of which has also made its way to Evolve's table when she stopped by to inhale a coffee and muffin. She's eying Teddy speculatively now, pamphlet half-extended. "You NYU?" she asks, keeping her voice low, though there's plenty of other chatter below the amplified voice of Ben Wells's roommate. "Who, me?" Ted is startled by Alice's question, looks up to meet the woman's eyes. "Um... yeah... yeah, I am," he stammers, taking the pamphlet from her instinctively, without really looking at it. He isn't so much near the motorcycles as he is on the edge of the crowd, trying to be unobtrusive, which happens to be where the motorcycles are. Either way though, he's close enough to Desi to recognize the somewhat familiar voice, and he turns around curiously. "The l--" His comment is strangled to startled silence as his eyes widen at the sight of the blue boys, a reaction he tries hard but ultimately ineffectually to conceal. "Um... the last one?" he finally manages to echo, cluelessly. It's not that he's unaware that dead mutants, dead young black men, dead young black mutants, are a fact of life in this neighborhood... it just hasn't really sunk in all the way. "Six weeks since what?" "Since the last time we were out here," B explains, gills fluttering at the sides of her neck. "Kind of a regular thing these days," adds Shane beside her, ruefully. "I'm sorry --" "-- if he was your friend," B finishes. "Not to be rude but I really hope --" "-- we don't see you back." Shane's enormous dark eyes have strayed to a nearby poster with the young man's face on it. Desi's vivid green eyes flick to Ted with a spark of recognition, and she offers him a small nod of greeting. "Joseph Langley," she adds, "and Audrey Brown only two weeks before him. They got less press, but..." She lowers her eyes. "It's been a bad year." "Nah, friend, you forgotten Erika Mendoza she that same week," Ion speaks up, swilling his coffee and leaning an arm right on /top/ of Shane's spiky prickly head. "But out in my neighborhood, my sisters they don't make the papers at /all/. NYU students they get vigils. Undocumented girls, I think that cop he still in line for a promotion." Ted's eyes widen further as he looks back and forth between B and Shane, barely registering their actual words before focusing gratefully on Desi. He nods once, politely, then does a double-take as what she's saying finally sinks in. "Oh. I... oh." He looks at the floor again, blushes with shame at Ion's comment about NYU students and undocumented girls. "Erika Mendoza," he mumbles... it's suddenly important to him that he remember her name, though he couldn't say why. "I'm really sorry. That... that's awful." Flicker lifts his head again when his prayer has completed. Claps his hand onto Jax's shoulder, disappears back into the crowd to materialize beside the Mongrels. "Have you heard anything about --" His lips press together briefly. "I only heard he died. I didn't hear much about how this happened." He's looking to Ion, at this, as if the man will know. Shane tips his head back slightly as Ion's arm comes to rest on it. Not really making any effort to dislodge it. Just GRINDING his prickly hair up into the skin a little more intently. "It is what it is," he replies with a small shrug of one shoulder. "We'll be out here next time, too." "My apologies," Desi tells Ion with a slight bow of her head, sincere but unflustered, "and thank you." Her delicate eyebrows draw together slightly. "Let me double-check that she will be named among the dead later. Pardon me a moment." She lays one firm hand on each sharkpup's shoulder briefly and meets Ted's eyes once more before peeling away from that group. Her progress towards the front is much slower than Flicker's in the opposite direction as she slips between the gathered mourners with the grace of a native city dweller, swiping something on her phone screen. She circles around behind the person at the microphone and kneels down beside Jax, holding up her phone. The screen reads, "Is Erika Mendoza on the memorial list?" B's eyes have focused on Ted -- kind of intently, it might be just a /little/ unnerving given the truly uncanny /enormous/ amount of space her wholly pupilless pitch black eyes take up in her narrow blue face -- the sharkpups can't really help but give the impression of Staring. Soft and kind of regretful: "There'll definitely be a next time." Her gills are fluttering faster. She lifts a hand, presses it to one side of her neck. Looks over to one side of the park, where a cruiser is parked. "It wasn't cops, was it?" Ion puffs out a forceful breath between his teeth, head shaking. "Them pigs? I don't fucking put it past them but usually by now they tripping over themselves to slander the kid if they done the murder." He lets his hand slide downward, resting on Shane's shoulder with an absent jostle. "We been seeing a lotta them Nazi clowns this week I'm check them out." A brief frown. "The /out/ of uniform Nazis. This shit getting so out of hand." Jax has been picking slowly at his muffin -- looking slightly more alive with the addition of Calories, though his shoulders are still heavy. He looks over to Desi's phone when she presents it. Down to a sheaf of papers near at hand. A frown crosses his face. He pats at his pocket -- frowns deeper, leans over to grab a Sharpie from where it's fallen beside the speaker. Adds a name to one of the papers in a jagged spiky handwriting. Only afterwards shakes his head to Desi, mouthing a 'thanks', and then, belatedly, a 'who?' At Jax's 'thanks', Desi inclines her head in Ion's direction to indicate where the credit is due. Her thumb swipes to the next page of her note app, which reads, "Undocumented immigrant. Killed by police in East New York." Apparently this is the extent of her pre-emptively recorded communication, since she now swipes below that, "I hadn't heard of it at all." Her lips press together, just for a moment, as she glances up at Jax, then over at Wells' roommate, who seems to be running out of energy, words, or both. Flicker follows B's look toward the cruiser. (And past it, to where several others are lurking in -- disproportionate numbers to the small and quiet vigil.) The fingers of his red flower-decorated bionic hand flex stiffly, and he nods once. "Yeah, we'll be here next time. But I kind would rather we --" He shakes his head, teeth clicking together hard to bite back the thought. He looks to Teddy with a sympathetic half-smile that dies almost as quickly as it starts forming. "Is this the first time you --" He gestures vaguely -- around the gathering. Rasa is here, but has been spending most of hir time with the NYU students. After a while, hir scarf covered head manages to pick out some of hir more colorful friends (in relation to both language and skin tone). Ze is wearing all black for the occasion, a black tank top under a well worn practically transparent cotton shirt, the long sleeves needed to protect hir skin in these crowded conditions. Seeing Ion, ze pulls out hir phone and powers it down. Once it is stuck into the back pocket of hir dark jeans, ze continues on hir way. Ze bumps shoulders lightly with B. It doesn't seem feasible that Ted's eyes could widen any further, but they seem to just the same as B stares at him. Perhaps it's a shapeshifter thing. Either way, he's pretty obviously overwhelmed by everything, although for the moment at least he's freaking out quietly and without calling too much attention to himself. He's even mostly not staring at her gills. "Cops?" he blurts out, then shakes his head, wishing he hadn't said anything... even growing up in Vermont he'd known enough to know that police in Black neighborhoods weren't widely trusted, and with reason. He manages to keep his mouth shut at Ion's reference to Nazis, simply nodding twice, a bit jerkily. "It's... not my first funeral," Ted tells Flicker. The artificial hand gets added to the list of things he carefully isn't looking at. Then, with an apologetic shrug and a wave to indicate their surroundings, he admits "But, yeah... it's different. This..." he frowns. "I guess you've been to a lot of these, huh?" There's a distant rumble -- though rapidly growing much less distant as a pack of Harleys come tearing in. Straight /past/ the parked cruisers and into the park with a deafening roar that drowns out the tail end of the speaker's flagging words. The men who ride the bikes wear identical black vests, large white crosses emblazoned bold on their backs. For the moment, they don't actually dismount nor approach the gathering, lining the bikes up in a row near the edge of the group -- even their idling engines loud enough to muffle the sound of the crowd -- and certainly loud enough when they intermittently rev them, staring down the speaker at the front. The cops parked on the adjacent street -- flick on their bar lights. They also do not, though, approach. "You have got to be kidding me." Shane's webbed hands rub against his face as the motorcycles draw nearer. He looks up toward the front of the crowd with a deep frown. Then to the cycles that are pulling in. His shoulders have tensed up, his hands now pressing to the flat shells of his ears as the noise grows louder. His lips have pulled back -- his grimace reveals a truly /extraordinary/ number of jagged sharp teeth. "Where's Ba?" One of the black-vested bikers glares at Shane, meeting his grimace with a gap-toothed smile of his own as he finishes off a beer and throws it, hard, at a nearby trash can. It hits the rim with a loud CLANK and bounces, missing the can altogether and skittering into the crowd. B's hands flex. She looks down at the slim metal cuffs around her wrists, then back up at the bikers. "Still at the front. Flicker, can you get him out of here? Last time he saved everyone's life they put him in jail. We can't --" /She/ grimaces, now. Closed-lipped, unlike her brother. "Too many of these. We --" But Flicker's words are cut off by the bikers' arrival. He doesn't look /surprised/, so much -- his jaw sets, his shoulders squaring as he breathes out slow. Watches their trajectory -- watches the cops. "Sorry," he tells Ted. "You might want to -- go." He nods at the pups, briefly. Then disappears, just a faint blur, vague and ghostly as he disappears off to the front. "Sorry," /this/ time to Jax, one hand clapping to the photokinetic's shoulder. "But I'm on evac. Your kids' orders." << Ion, >> from behind the table Taylor's voice reaches the Mongrel's pack leader clearly despite the roar of the cycles and sudden panic of the crowd. Reflecting a very imminent intent to charge on the part of the bikers, from their minds to Ion's. << There is /not/ time to evacuate before they gun it. >> Many of the /mutant/ side of the crowd have already started -- to grab their things, some of them to clear out -- some of them, defiant, to wave their posters higher, to chant louder over the roar of the bikes. The NYU students, obviously /far/ more oblivious to /who/ these newcomers are but very sensible to the sudden tension, cluster together in uncertainty. Ion, contrarily, perks /up/ at the sound of the bikes. Rises onto his toes, his eyes lighting and his hands curling into fists that tap lightly together, a light skitter of sparks dancing between his knuckles. There's nothing particularly /eager/ in his voice, though, despite his posture. "Disrespectful mother/fuckers/," he's muttering under his breath. His dark eyes focus -- extremely intent given the resulting -- absolutely nothing, that initially seems to happen. But then one by one in a quick succession, the roar of the bike engines shut off, their engines sputtering and dying. Not quite fast /enough/ -- the last pair in the row buck forward and charge straight for the (suddenly screaming, scattering) crowd. "My kids? You're not getting /them/ out of here?" Jax isn't fighting this, though. He gets up, with a /very/ worried backwards glance at the crowd. And a solid hard /wall/, glimmering and prismatic and /looking/ ephemeral as a soap bubble, thrown up right in front of the charging motorcycle for /just/ as long as he can manage it before Flicker inevitably whisks him away. "You're fucking kidding me." It's a sentiment raised around the crowd, echoed in the metamorph's mouth. Colors ripple across hir skin, shifting the bronze hew ze had before to red, yellow, then green, eyes shifting to a hard black. "Okay, back to the students I go. Yell if you need me." Unsure if the twins even noticed hir during the current state of things, Rasa bolts towards the NYU crowd just a little before the last remaining motorcycle does. Hir legs pick up speed and hir tail flicks out of no where. When the bubble goes up, Rasa changes course to tackle the driver. Dusk's wings have been folded up small and unobtrusive behind him for the purposes of interpreting but now they snap out wide. He /isn't/ leaping into the fray, though the look he throws towards the Purifiers briefly seems like he might want to. Instead he's heading toward the panicking and scattering crowd -- ushering some away from the incoming bikers, curling a wing around another who he knows. "Hey, y'all, this way. Over with me, I'll get you -- away." The awkward conversation is interrupted by the far more-than-awkward arrival of more bikers... though even Ted, clueless as he is, can tell that the newcomers are not friendly. His new acquaintances are suddenly in motion, running here and there with an intent air he doesn't quite follow but certainly recognizes, and the crowd is angry and scared and loud. "Fuckin' muties," growls one biker, who spits to his left before revving his bike towards the NYU students... perhaps attracted by their obvious fear. Ted stands frozen in shock as the bike approaches, as fellow students he hardly recognizes run, as a rainbow wall appears out of nowhere and a rainbow-tinged figure tackles the cyclist. "Goddamn it!" The biker is quicker than he looks, knocked to the ground but gets his feet under him easily enough. There's a gun in his hand and he fires, vaguely in Rasa's direction but mostly into the crowd, which goes from frightened to terrified and panicked. Only the efforts of those like Dusk prevents them from trampling one another. Ted tries to run, like the others, but it's like his feet are rooted. The screaming of the crowd grows faint, all he can hear is the blood pounding in his ears. The denim jacket he's wearing grows tight at the shoulders, which strain and burst; the sleeves split open, the black T-shirt he's wearing underneath it rides up to reveal his abdomen, rapidly turning green, before the shirt disintegrates around his expanding chest. "Holy --" A second biker, bleached white hair over a bushy black beard, sees him and stops trying to rev his engine, drawing a snub-nosed machine pistol and firing. Ted winces at the sting of bullets striking his chest, and time returns to normal all at once. "Stop that!" he yells, and runs towards his bearded assailant. The other bikers are quickly enough getting over the confusion of their dead-in-the-water rides. No matter. They came armed with more than one kind of weaponry. A tall man with an iron cross tattooed on his hand has pulled a long knife from its sheath at his hip as he dismounts his bike. Beside him, a blond kid who looks like he could still be in high school has gotten a pistol from his saddlebag. Iron Cross is stalking toward Shane as Baby Face takes aim at B -- the pups such /bright/ and easy targets. Meanwhile an older Purifier, salt-and-pepper stubble and a baseball bat slung over one shoulder, is just snorting at Ion. "You fuckers turn up everywhere, don't yo..." His eyes have started widening as Ted transforms. Kind of /reflexively/ he swings toward the green monster charging his compatriot. B flexes her hands again. This time she flings a wrist outward -- shooting a sticky strand of webbing toward Baby Face's pistol-wielding hand. Yanking hard to jerk him closer -- to Shane, not her. "/We/ turn up everywhere." Shane snorts, ducking as B /delivers/ him a webbed Purifier. Slamming a foot hard into the back of Baby Face's knee, shoving /him/ towards Iron Cross's drawn knife. "The fucking nerve." His claws flick out toward Ted. Big green Ted. "That's new, right?" Rasa is also back on hir feet after hir tackle, ramming right into the same person with a shoulder, shoving the gun upwards, hopefully sparing the crowd some bullets. As both hands wrap around the Rammer's arm, ze growls inhumanly low and turns hir face to glare. "DON'T" ze snaps, hir mouth growing in size and filling with large and pointed teeth. "Drop It." Flicker /has/ vanished with Jax. Returned. Vanished again a few more times with people who are having difficulty getting away on their own. He's only just returning again, settling down between Taylor's table and the Purifiers' dead cycles to size up the ongoing chaos. Glancing toward Ted with a lift of brows. << That's new, right? >> He disappears once more, appearing just beside the Purifier Rasa is wrestling with. Reaching out to touch the gun briefly. /It/ disappears. Only /now/ are there a line of cops making their way over from the vehicles -- they don't look like they're in a great hurry, though they do have their hands on their guns. One has a megaphone. "This is an unlawful assembly," the one with the megaphone announces. "This is your first warning to vacate the area." Alice had, when the Purifiers first arrived, Tweeted a few discreet photographs in rapid succession, but seemed to realize quickly that this was /not/ where she wanted to be. She casts around frantically and heads towards where she had seen Desi last, but gets caught up in the stampede of sensibly fleeing vigil-goers. The rush of bodies slams her, none too gently, up against Ted's fortunately considerable bulk...which then promptly starts getting /bulkier/. Her jaw drops open, but then she catches sight of the machine pistol and shrieks, reflexively grabbing Ted's arm to try to drag him to the ground. She's not /weak/, but likely her tug barely even registers to him at that point. When the bullets start flying she is nowhere near as resilient to them as he, so where he charges at the Purifier who had just fired on them, she just crumples to the ground, one arm pressed to her left side, much darker blood soaking her tight scarlet t-shirt. Her mouth is open, but if any sound is coming out it's drowned beneath the general din of screams, gunfire, and megaphones. At the first sign of trouble, Desi had made her way to the far edge of the gathering and was ready to clear out well before the Purifiers started their rather anticlimactic charge, and from the other side of the park has regrouped to help Dusk direct those fleeing to relative safety. She slaps a hand to her mouth when the first gunshots ring out, only belatedly ducking for cover, her breathing rapid and shallow with terror, mouthing a steady stream of barely audible sacres to herself. Blackbeard looks kind of /panicked/ when charged by a huge green monster. He backs up -- still firing! At Ted, /past/ Ted, he isn't much fussed at this point -- towards the bikes to scramble /right/ back onto his, evidently having forgotten they aren't actually /working/ anymore. Rammer is briefly startled but overall undaunted by the sudden disappearance of his gun. This is /not/ his first rodeo with mutant fighting, clearly. His head slams up toward Rasa's face, his other arm reaching behind him to draw a knife that he's stabbing at Flicker's side. Iron Cross ducks out of the way of Baby Face when Shane hurls his companion towards him. He /tries/ to use his knife to sever the strand that binds his friend but when this proves ineffective instead surrenders the knife to the goop, drawing a second to charge the tiny sharkpup. "Did you all hear that?" Baseball bat is yelling at the crowd, still brandishing the bat generally at Ted. "You freaks have to /go/." He doesn't remotely seem to consider that the cops' orders might have also been meant for /them/. Flicker doesn't wait around to get stabbed. He doesn't seem particularly invested in this fight at all, honestly! Disappearing quickly after vanishing the gun to return to evacuation -- this time appearing beside Alice. "Hey. Can you hear me? I can teleport. I work at a clinic nearby and I teleport. I want to get out out of here where we can get you patched up, okay? It'll be disorienting for a minute but then you'll be safe." If you'd told Ted, a week ago, that before the month was over he'd be charging an armed killer with his bare hands, he'd have laughed at you. And yet, here he is, charging Blackbeard as though the homicidal Purifier were an opposing quarterback, shrugging off bullets like they were BB-pellets -- painful, but harmless. Later, he would remember this moment, and wonder how many of the dead and wounded were hit by bullets that bounced off him. But that was for later. For now all he really noticed was his target getting on his bike, which again refused to start, remaining stubbornly in place until Ted reached the bike and lifted it off the ground like a toy. Blackbeard slid off of it almost as quickly as he'd jumped onto it, hitting the ground as Ted prepared to smash the bike on his supine form. That's when he hears the police, and Baseball Bat's gloss, and pauses in confusion... he isn't quite prepared to fight /cops/. It only distracts him for a second or two, but it's enough. Blackbeard scampers out from under him, grabs the nearest fleeing body, pulls their body against his own, his arm across their neck, his gun to their temple. "Back off!!! Back the fuck off or I blow their head off!!!" Ted stands there, bike still held in two hands above his head, unsure what to do, looking around at the others in confusion. Rasa growls once more, nausea and loss of focus accompanying the headblow. Ze remains latched on, not needing all of hir vision to apply hir knee to Rammer's chest. Ze immediately follows with leg sweep that takes him off balance and onto the ground. Ze punches him hard in the face after that, still kneeling on the ground when the hostage scenario starts to play out. Hir eyes narrow, but ze stays where ze is for the time being. "Back off, Ted. It's okay. Set it down and back away." Alice had curled herself into the fetal position, /both/ of her hands pressed to the gunshot wound now. Her rich brown skin looks oddly pale, and she is quietly hyperventilating. Her eyes try and fail to focus on Flicker when he appears beside her, and when her mouth opens a cry of pain forces its way out in lieu of actual /words/. The jerky nod of her head, however, is clear enough a reply. Shane snarls, teeth bared as Iron Cross charges him. His black claws lengthen, and he whirls far more rapidly than a human would be capable of, out of the reach of the knife and behind the charging man. Claws slashing out toward the side of the charging man's face as he moves, spinning back in to throw an elbow toward the Purifier's side, trying to knock him back toward B once more. Several of the police have begin to get out sheafs of plastic cuffs. Others have their guns drawn. If they /did/ intend their announcement for the Purifiers, it definitely doesn't show. "This is an unlawful assembly," repeats the man with the megaphone, /even/ as the officers are fanning out to encircle the lawn. "Disperse at once. Put down the motorcycle and back away. You with the --" A hesitation as he looks over Rasa, "tail, release that man or you will be arrested. You in the blue," as if Shane and B are /wearing/ it, "drop the --" frown. "Knives." Claws are close enough, right? "Yeah, listen to the freak, /Ted/," Blackbeard spits out. "Back the FUCK off!" This was ridiculous. Here he is, fucking bulletproof, more powerful than a locomotive, he can probably take on this entire fucking gang of psychopaths singlehanded... like /literally/ using just one hand... and here he is completely fucking /useless/. But, dammit, Rasa was right. If he keeps fighting he'll just get people hurt... or worse. He wants to throw the bike down to the street and stomp it flat as a pancake. He settles for dropping it on the ground. "Nice and easy, Jolly Green Giant," Baseball Bat snarled, the bat still out. The cops didn't seem to notice... or, more likely, care. "He's got a fucking GUN to someone's HEAD!!!" Ted shouts at the nearest cop, whose gun doesn't budge from where it points at him. There's still a slashing knife-fight going on not too far away, and he gestures incredulously in its direction... a mistake, as the cop is clearly spooked. "Goddamit," he mutters, defeated. B hisses, claws and anger both keen and sharp as Iron Cross is knocked toward her. She draws /one/ of these back in, at least, sidestepping and lifting her hands carefully, palms-up as her claws retract. Her fingers fold inward, her eyes snapping toward the cops. "You all do see them /shooting/ people, right? Don't suppose you've called an ambulance?" Rasa is definitely not pleased, but also sees no point in continuing now that the law is involved. "You know there were innocent bystanders here... moms with babies, using the park for park like things." Ze raises hir hands in surrender and rises, backing away from hir opponent. Several of the cops are moving in at this point, closing in around the scattered remnants of the vigil (though, conveniently enough they leave enough room for the Purifiers to make their way out) to begin cuffing the mourners who remain. "I know what I saw," one of them says to B. "Some destruction of property," with a nod toward the dead cycles, "and some people exercising their right to self defense." The cop is not particularly rough -- but not particularly gentle, either, as he tightens the cuffs around the sharkpup's wrists. Moves her to the ground. Around the park this process is being repeated with all the stragglers. The cop with the megaphone has lowered it. Getting his radio instead, eying Ted as the others handle the arrests. "We're going to need a bigger wagon."