Logs:Losing His Cool, Dignity, and Pants... Again.

Losing His Cool, Dignity, and Pants... Again.
Dramatis Personae Ted, Anole
In Absentia	2019-06-01 Anole steals Ted's wallet; Ted throws a tantrum.
Location near NYU
Ted climbs the stairs from Astor Place Station on the Lexington Line, checks his phone, shakes his head. 4:30 am! Even the Village was almost deserted at this hour... or, well, as close to it as the city that never sleeps ever got. And if he were at all clever Ted would be going back to his dorm right now and falling unconscious in his bed. Hell, if he were anything other than a complete _idiot_ that's what he'd be doing. He'd stayed up all night in prison, too scared of shifting back to human and having the cops ID him if he slept -- plus also he kept sitting bolt upright with memories of the driver he'd killed, whenever he so much as dozed -- and once they'd released him he'd spent the rest of the day canvassing the Lower East Side pretending to be a fucking detective or something, so he basically hadn't slept in two days. But, well, he was clearly an idiot, because he was not going to sleep. He was just too wired. Instead, he was going for a run around the Park to clear his head, maybe tire himself out, maybe turn green again and smash another car to junk just to make himself feel better. OK, not that last part... honestly, just the thought made him feel kind of sick to his stomach. So, just jogging then. Even in the quiet of the pre-dawn streets, it's easy to miss the vague shift of motion that tracks Ted as he runs. Somewhere high overhead, against the red brick of a university library building, something skitters, moves -- in the dim light it barely looks like anything, some of the brick melting into itself. A brief hop to the building next door, the mottled greyish concrete moving in the same way. It's only at a corner -- a red light, an oncoming taxi (speeding, of course, in the quiet streets) that the shape that has been tailing Ted along the adjacent buildings descends to street level. There's a soft *thwip* noise, a zing of air -- something LONG and pink and -- sticky? that stretches out, thwaps at Ted's rear. A quick hard sting, a quick /tug/ at his jeans, and then the stretchy pink Thing is zipping away. So is Ted's wallet. At the appearance of the speeding taxi, Ted's awareness of the world constricts, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest and a bitter taste in his throat. He stops short at the corner to let it pass, taking deep breaths and trying to calm down before he triggers his mutant power due to sheer anxiety. _It's just a cab!!!_ he reassures himself, paying attention to concrete images, sounds, smells to ground himself the way his new friends had advised him. He _mostly_ manages that when he feels the tug on his ass, whirls around, reaches behind him to feel his now-empty pocket, sees a figure ducking furtively into an alley. "GODDAMMIT!" he yells, charging recklessly into the same alley, not really noticing as yet _another_ set of clothes start ripping at the seams around his expanding body, as his skin changes color and his pace accelerates to something more than human. "NO YOU GET THE FUCK BACK HERE RIGHT NOW I DO _NOT_ HAVE TIME FOR THIS!!!" Somewhere overhead there's a sharp /yip/, high and frightened. The brick wall opens a huge pair of eyes, wide and startled. Skitterskitter -- at /speed/ it's a little easier to track the distortion on the wall, if you're /looking/ for it, a humanoid shaped segment of brick colouration that scrambles high up and far out of reach. "Ohmygod," comes a voice from a fire escape, "it's just a wallet take it!" The wallet comes tumbling back down from overhead, toward Ted. A skinny youth, green-skinned and spike-headed in grungy tattered cutoff shorts and an equally grungy Green Lantern tee is hopping from one story to the next with a remarkable agility. Sproing. A sensible person would take the wallet and consider it a victory. And under ordinary circumstances Ted is a fairly sensible person, but... well, it's been a _really_ hard week, and he's kind of throwing a tantrum right now. He ignores the fallen wallet, looks up to the figure on the fire escape. "It's NOT just a fucking wallet!" he yells, his voice now much deeper and booming, and he jumps up to grab the ladder of the fire escape... or, well, tries to. What _actually_ happens is his overmuscled and entirely uncalibrated legs send him along what would have been a twenty-foot standing broad jump if it weren't for the aforementioned fire escape, into which his head slams with a resounding CLANG!!!, leaving a respectable dent before he falls back into the alley, ending up on his back in a pile of garbage bags, which promptly explode from the impact. Anole springs back against the wall with another frightened yelp at the yell and promptly -- doesn't /quite/ disappear, exactly, but it's a near thing. His skin and clothes melt into the brick pattern, and for a moment, frozen and breathless as Ted jumps, it's certainly a decent approximation. Once again he's visible when he moves -- for all it helps in the dim morning half-light. He's scarpering much faster than any human could move, straight /up/ the wall, leaping easily from this building to the next to zip around its corner, leaving Ted (and his wallet) to the garbage-strewn alley. "Goddamit... get BACK here!" Ted grabs his wallet from where it fell, shoves it into the highly elastic shorts he got on Rasa's advice... which have proven their worth many times over this week alone, as without them the fragments of his street clothes would be doing as little to protect his modesty as they are to uphold his dignity. His phone ends up in the shorts as well as he gets to his feet, as his jeans fall to the floor in tatters, joining the pile of garbage he's strewn all over the alley. Ted's second jump, in the fleeing figure's direction, is _slightly_ more calibrated, but it's clear that he's really new to this. He clears the roof of the building Anole scampers around, overshoots it, lands awkwardly near the building's corner, trips over the edge of the roof as he attempts to regain his footing and falls right off of it, plummeting several stories before hitting the sidewalk with his head and shoulders, a resounding THUNK, and a spray of concrete chips. "Ow."