ArchivedLogs:Suffrage
{{ Logs | cast = Ion, Isra, Dragonlord | summary = "Captain America'd be ashamed of you." | gamedate = 2016-10-05 | gamedatename = | subtitle = | location = <NYC> Lower East Side | categories = Brotherhood of Mutants, Mutants, Ion, Isra, NPC-Eridani, Lower East Side | log = 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.
By mid-day, there's a line of early voters accumulating outside the Shuang Wen school. Though the weather has been nice, glorious and crisp as an autumn day should feel, the people standing in line are growing restless. An elderly black man complains that his daughter uptown didn't have a line at all when she voted early. A small Latina with a heavy-looking backpack opines that the Lower East Side polling places seem to be chronically understaffed, and working with subpar equipment.
The entry hallway of the school has been colonized by rows of desks where volunteers help register new voters, while beyond them in the auditorium yet more desks process already registered voters and direct them to the booths beyond. Dozens of signs have been taped up, ranging from official State or City of New York flyers to last-minute instructions hand-written in marker by harried election officials. Electioneers circle the area, handing out pamphets and cramming every inch of soil with plastic signs advertising their candidates or ballot initiatives. Mixed in among the expected endorsements, however, are a number of signs declaring 'No Freaks Allowed' and 'Muties Go Home' and 'Voting is a /Human/ Right.'
Isra has shown up to exercise her /human/ right resplendent in a sapphire blue velvet wrap dress who rather dramatic drape accentuates the hard angles of her muscular body and renders them even more alien-looking. Her skin is a much paler blue on the ventral side, melding in varigated patterns into a rich purple on her dorsal side, while her wings are night-black and dotted with stars and purple-blue wisps of nebulae. Her horns and talons shine like burnished gold, and she wears a simple gold necklace to match--its links form the shape of a double helix. "As I have pointed out to you, I did not yet have horns when that photo was taken," she is explaining in her most patient, level voice to the election volunteer. "The DMV assured me that I did not need a new photo, and so neither do you. I trust you can assess the similarities in the rest of my features." Her tail whips the air behind her, swift but rhythmic; it is probably not helping the volunteer's concentration.
Beside her, Ion has fetched up with on hip on the edge of the desk -- maybe not /deliberately/ to infringe on the volunteer's space, really, that's just a side effect he's mostly ignoring. His main purpose is to use his thigh as a bench for Egg, currently lazily suckling at the neck of a much-abused hedgehog plushie, more out of comfort than hunger as their bulbous eyes flit curiously around the bustle and one wing clings to the leather arm of Ion's MMMC jacket. "Ey, friend, she a motherfucking gargoyle. You had a lot of those come through, huh?"
The election volunteer attempting to help Isra looks thoroughly flummoxed and not a little intimidated--more by Ion and Egg than by the towering gargoyle woman. "I'm afraid the ID card doesn't say anything about Ms. Al Jazeera being a...I mean..." Her lips press into a thin, unhappy line as she holds up Isra's New York state ID. The photograph shows a solemn-faced woman with light brown skin and green eyes, swathed in a slate gray headscarf with not the least suggestion of horns underneath. "It just doesn't look like you, Ma'am. Can you provide a secondary form of identification?"
There's a clink on the floor from near the door, followed by the sound of something metallic rolling. Behind Isra and Ion in the queue, an unusually pale Chinese woman with cat-eye glasses and wandering insectoid antennae looks down at the canister beside her feet and lets out a startled yelp just as the thing begins spewing thick white smoke. The stuff has a definite chemical scent, but quite effectively obscures sight. Though the crowd does not instantly panic, many cries of alarm and confusion go up and some people nearer to the door immediately try to exit, resulting in more yelling and not a little pushing. In the midst of the pell-mell another smoke bomb goes up farther along the hall, near Isra and Ion.
From depths of the smoke plume, a faintly muffled bass voice cries, "Keep America human!" A flash lights up the smoke from within, like lightning in a cloud, but the bang comes after is much sharper than thunder. /Now/ the crowd panics, and in the chaos it's hard to tell whether anyone was hit. Another gun shot from a different part of the smoke cloud punctuates the screams.
"It's al-Jazari, and--" Isra cuts herself off at the sound of the first grenade, but by the time she turns toward it, smoke is already filling the room. Her pupils dilate rapidly, black swallowing up the green of her irises, and she drops her weight low, ears twitching to follow sounds in the smoke. She snarls at the cry of the shooter and flinches at the gunfire. Into the tinnitus that follows she shouts "Get /down!/" while reaching out to drag the antennaed woman over, pushing her under the table. Her wings mantle as wide possible in the limited space (probably knocking down a couple of people in the process) and then beat inward, propelling a sudden gust of air toward the smoke in a bid to disperse it, or at least push it back.
"/Mutant/," Ion supplies, with a fierce emphasis and a fiercer grin --itself emphasized by a faint crackling hint of sparks flickering out along his rangy limbs. The small pops don't seem to bother Egg, tail twitching up towards one of the stray motes of light though if this is an attempt to bat at it, it is quite unsuccessful. "You know where you /are/, huh? How you roll up in /our/ neighborhood you can't even say the damn word. /Mu--{son of a /whore/.}"
His arm has curled more solidly around Egg, hugging the small vampire-child closer to his body; too quick to track he is on the other side of the desk, the volunteer also pulled beneath it in a somewhat discomfiting shock of motion. "{Sister, you hurt?}" And a little louder -- "{Anyone hurt?}" Though this comes from somewhere else in the room entirely, Ion vanished already through the smoke cloud off in the direction the gunshot came from.
Many people do in fact get down, but no one answers Ion's question with anything more informative than terrified screaming. The glow of a mobile device screen, then another, can be seen through the smoke. The bass shooter bellows "Put it away!" and fires at the man with the phone just as Isra's gust of wind slams into him. The smoke stirs into wild eddies, some of it forced out onto the sidewalk where the rest of the queue has already fled, but over all only thins a little...just enough for keen eyes to make out the silhouettes of two men with pistols raised. The force of the air's impact does foul the shooter's aim, but the phone screens disappear all the same. The first shooter emits a loud grunt of frustration that slides into a startled noise when Ion materializes hardly two steps from him. The second shooter speaks for the first time, a clear and melodic tenor, "That one's a teleporter!" When he fires again, though, it is not at Ion's lightning-flash, but at Isra once again.
"I'm fine," Isra's voice is steady and calm beneath the loud, fierce rumble of her growl. She crouches low, tucks her wings in close and flings herself at the nearest wall, rebounding off of it and stretching wicked gold talons at the second shooter. Before her claws can reach him, however, his bullet finds her thigh. Her growl hitches up into a keening whine for just a split second, then returns louder as the smell of blood blooms sudden and thick in the air. But injured as she is, her trajectory bears her down toward the gun-wielding shape in the smoke.
There's a rapid low clicking from Egg, eyes closed and claws tightly curled against Ion's jacket where they cling fast to his chest. From Ion there's only a low stream of gravelly curses, one arms still held fast around Egg. "{Goddamn fucking goatsucking --} no fucking respect this gotta be some kind of. Vote. Fraud. Shit." His free hand, somewhat crackling with energy, reaches out through the smoke toward the nearer of the two men, clamping down with a jolt only to vanish with the shooter to reappear momentarily outside -- and a bit higher up, out on the school's rooftop.
"Goddamned freak!" When Ion reaches for him, the shooter with the bass voice lifts the butt of his Glock and slams it down at the electrokinetic's face. The jolt of Ion's touch and their sudden transportation, however, disrupts the blow and he drops to his knees spasming, the gun still clutched in one hand. He's dressed in a nondescript khaki canvas jacket, a Chicago Cubs baseball cap, and wears some kind of high-tech looking goggles above a muzzle-like face mask.
Back in the smoke-filled hallway, the second, tenor shooter crumples in a heap as Isra crashes into him. There's a slightly panicked edge to his "Get /off/ me!" He flails at her as she bears him down, but is no match for her size or momentum. One brave soul has dared to bring a cell phone out to call 911, though judging by the multiple sirens in the distance, it's possible the police have been notified already.
Isra's tackle ended with a lot less controlled than she had intended, but she makes the best of it, slamming the heavy thumb joint of one wing down at the shooter's gun hand. Up close, her eyes are pools of black ringed with thin green irises, her growl undulating in pitch as her breathing grows faster. She pins her assailant to the ground by the throat and roars in his face as though daring him to continue fighting back. All the while, though, her blood is pouring out onto him and slicking the floor around them. She is visibly weakening and must drop one wing to brace against the ground lest she topple over.
Ion's hiss is cut off by the disappearance; he's sunk halfway to his knees himself when they've reappeared outside, however. There's another jolt -- heavier this time, a stronger shock coursing through the man before this time Ion and Egg vanish, leaving the erstwhile shooter alone on the roof. He reappears back where he'd vanished, or near enough, taking up just about where he left off with the cursing -- albeit with a bit more pained of an edge to it. "{-- /bastards/, honestly do these fucking shit-clowns think this some patriotism?} Captain America'd be ashamed of you. {Sister? Ey? I can't see for shit in here} yo you need some hand huh? {Tinymonster you know where's Isra?}"
The tenor shooter, pinned beneath Isra, drops the gun quite readily when the bony knob of her wing slams into his hand. "Shit, shit, shit" he's chanting as he flinches away from the taloned hand, and then even harder from her roar. But his other hand is jerking a knife free from a holster on his belt, drawing it back to slash at the gargoyle's side.
Ion's reappearance in the hall displaces smoke in picturesque whorls, and elicits a few gasps and cries from people still cowering beside soda machines or under voter registration desks. "{There is uh, police, and ambulance, coming,}" someone dares to offer in utterly heinous Spanish.
Egg twists their head around at what looks like an exceptionally uncomfortable level, clicking fast and flicking their ears to and fro. Their head stops moving and they release Ion with one arm (and the wing on the same side) pointing into the blank white smoke and signing Isra's name. Then they actually let go of Ion's jacket altogether, leaping into the air, fuzzy black wings snapping wide and down in a clumsy stroke, then another. Lacking the strength to actually keep themselves aloft, they merely succeed in making a controlled crash-down onto Isra's back, digging needly claws in and turning around to click quite loudly in Ion's direction.
If Isra heard anything Ion said, she gives no indication. Nor does she pay much heed to the knife slashing at her ribs, though her hand closes harder around the man's throat as she slowly subsides onto him. The wing that had been propping her up slips aside to flail uncoordinated against the floor slick with blood, and she collapses unceremoniously onto the shooter. Egg's claws on her back elicits a sudden start, a twitch of her immense wings, but then a quiet, almost pleased rumble, though even this is fading fast.
"{Excellent, we'll get these motherfuckers out...} Holy shit. Holy shit {oh man oh /man/ little dragon! /Big/ dragon now!}" Ion suddenly sounds excited -- gleeful, even, racing through the smoke after Egg with a joyful /whoop/. "Isra you /see/ this shit {this fierce little monster goddamn /flew/.} Fffff." His head is shaking, lips twisting to one side as he drops to his knees in the -- considerable pool of blood. "Goddamn flew." Maybe he's telling this to the man pinned beneath Isra; at any rate, he's scooping the whole bloody /bundle/ of human and large gargoyle and small gargoyle. "Tell the pigs they can arrest these shitbag on the roof, huh?" Loud and clear to the people still cowering in the room, before all four of them vanish with another cracklepop. }}
