ArchivedLogs:Splash Zone

Splash Zone
Dramatis Personae Ion, Tian-shin
In Absentia	2018-08-24 "Ay, Simon, you know everybody leaving, that was like, a fucking /hint/ right?"
Location <NYC> BoM Safehouse - Lower East Side
Tucked away off a little-used side street in the Lower East Side, sandwiched between a youth drop-in center and a taqueria, this narrow three-story townhouse has very little to catch the eye. Boarded-up windows, a door peeling its paint, shabby grubby brickface; from the outside it does not look like much. Inside someone has gone to great lengths to renovate the building into something more habitable. It isn't glamorous but it is comfortable, old furniture dragged in, the place generally swept clean. The first floor holds a large living room, a smaller dining room, a spacious kitchen, a half-bathroom. There are three bedrooms and a full bathroom on the second floor; the attic is just a large empty space crammed full of boxes with a window out to the large flat roof. The basement, much like the attic, consists of a lot of empty space. A bare concrete floor, no windows, occasional poles running up to the ceiling. A tiny half-bathroom down here, too. Not a whole lot else. It has been crowded down here, raucous, bordering on claustrophobic with the packed bodies and loud cheering, air heavy with sweat. The previous bout -- quick as it was -- drew plenty of spectators, plenty of shouted encouragement, very little surprise when Flicker turned his opponent over in a bloody heap to Joshua's expert care. Just about as quick as the teleporter's rapid blinking, the room is emptying out. An evacuation that leaves only a sparse handful of mutants left scattered down around the edges of the room. Joshua is still there, quiet and rather blase about the sudden exodus; he seems to be paying it little mind over in his corner where he tends his last patient. Ion, on the other hand, is grinning as he steps into the center of the room. Barefoot, in faded jeans, he stretches one bare arm across his scarred and tattooed chest, relaxing again once his shoulder pops. Several of those who have chosen to remain he pays no mind to though one -- a shaggy-haired teenager restless with excited energy who has been watching wide-eyed and eager all night -- he gives a glance, a raise of eyebrows. "Ay, Simon, you know everybody leaving, that was like, a fucking /hint/ right? Last I check you do breathe? {Oxygyen}? No? You maybe you want to sit out this one huh?" Tian-shin has been a bit jittery herself, watching the matches with interest but ducking outside in between to join the smokers on the stoop. Not now, though. She's calmly stripping off her shoes and socks, tucking them under a chair that bears her gym bag, her longsword propped up neatly beside it. She's wearing an old, fitted cyan tee shirt with a black cat sitting on a white cloud, and black athletic shorts with cyan piping. "Might want to at least scoot back a little bit to begin with?" she adds, nodding at the teen. "Out of the splash zone." "What, /I'm/ not fighting," Simon protests. All the same, he shuffles back a couple of steps, but also crosses his arms and tips his chin up, his smile faintly defiant. Tian-shin rolls her shoulders, and meets Ion's eyes, barely holding back a smile herself as she reaches up to check her hair (needlessly; the bun is as tight as neat as it was when she arrived). She steps into the ring, her powers immediately grasping at Ion. There's little precision in this sweep, just a brute force electrolysis of the water in his blood stream, sensible to him only as a wave of agony--if she's fast enough to catch him. "You here, hermanito, that --" This ends in a sharp hiss. Then a crackle, a sudden snapping of sparks. The clench of Ion's teeth, widening of his eyes, sharp catch of his breath, suggests that Tian-shin's grasp has found purchase -- at least for a moment. In the next moment, though, there /is/ no water in his blood stream. No blood stream, either; Ion has vanished, reappeared across the room, vanished again. Though his body is somewhat hard to track in its brief moments of corporealization, he does leave easy enough clues as to where he's been -- a bright jolt of lightning that arcs out from his last landing point, coursing through the two people nearest him en route to Tian-shin. Tian-shin is already pivoting, though she cannot possibly know in that instant where her opponent will rematerialize. She is by no means fast enough to actually avoid the living current as it arcs toward her. Instead, she drops her weight low and grits her teeth, reversing the electrolytic process she had just used against Ion, but this time focusing on the air around her, turning the oxygen and hydrogen in the air into water vapor that manifests as a dense ring of fog that begins to dissipate almost instantly. The current ripples through Tian-shin with a sharp and juddering kick of pain. Ion snaps back into existence just beside Tian-shin, his teeth still clenched and eyes narrowed as the fog clings to his skin -- and hers. He is already reaching for Tian-shin's arm, his own skin alive with energy. Tian-shin jerks as the current passes through her, crying out involuntarily, but manages to keep her feet. She slides one foot back in an effort to delay contact with Ion, though her recently electrocuted muscles move much too slowly to avoid him altogether. Her powers shift back to him again, though, creating another wave of microscopic gas bubbles in his blood and attendant wave of excruciating pain. Ion's cry is rough and strangled. His fingers -- tense, shaking violently -- clamp down around Tian-shin's wrist, a heavy surge of power coursing not just through her but scattering wild and uncontrolled through the room. The lights hiss, go dark. Ion himself does not, an erratic flicker of sparks skittering around him; for the most part, though, it is just steam and smoke, sizzling up from their skin and clothes as the last of the condensation burns off. The jolt of electricity wrings only a muffled yelp from Tian-shin this time as she pulls without much strength or efficacy against Ion's grasp. Her power does not relinquish its grip on her opponent, either. Indeed, she ramps it up in a desperate attempt to incapacitate Ion first. But between the immense pain she's in, the disruption of her nervous system, and the general chaos of arcing electricity around them, her concentration slips just so. It's such a minor change, really--catalyzing both salt /and/ water instead of water alone as she fails to isolate out the separate components of blood and sweat. Not just Ion's now, but her own as well. Instead of just minute hydrogen and oxygen bubbles, she produces sodium hydroxide and chlorine gas. The havoc this plays inside both their bodies is bad enough, though it doesn't necessarily hurt all that much worse in the moment. The sudden billowing of yellow-green gas around them, though, makes it abundantly clear to onlookers that something has gone wrong, and most of them beat hasty retreats. Tian-shin gasps and coughs, her desperate attempt to reel her attack back in only succeeding as her consciousness begins to unravel and she slumps into her opponent. The erratic discharge continues. Ion's eyes scrunch closed, his breathing ragged. It isn't the blackout, nor the bright and volatile arcing of lightning around the room (or the accompanying pained cries of the combatants OR the onlookers) that draws Joshua's attention upward. It isn't, even, the swelling cloud of gas -- his gaze has been drawn up sharply moments before it erupts. He glances down to the still-unconscious patient in front of him, glances over to Ion and Tian-shin. Curses, beneath his breath. His knuckles rub briefly against his temple. As his hand drops, so does the cloud of gas, shrinking back down the same way it had grown as though suddenly thrown into reverse. In the immediate bubble of space just surrounding Tian-shin and Ion, /everything/ is skipping a few seconds backwards -- not that that spares either of them a great deal of pain. Some of the pain, regrettably, continues even once the gas has cycled itself back. The rest of the chaos largely does not; a very abrupt dampening that flicks the switch on both the combatants' powers. Joshua is settling back down into his seat. "You're done."