Logs:Who By Fire

Who By Fire
CN: antisemitism, racism, Nazis, graphic violence, hate crime, dentistry.
Dramatis Personae Akihiro, B, Erik, Joshua, Scramble, Shane
In Absentia	2023-09-25 "You will not burn them, Nazi!"
Location <NYC> Freaktown - Riverdale
There's no bazaar in Town Square, currently; the stalls have been dismantled or moved aside to make space. In several of the neighboring lawns around the cul-de-sac there are tables set up, food waiting for sunset and the conclusion of the fast. For the moment, though, the food is emotionally a hundred years away and a sizable cluster of hungry Jews -- a number familiar faces around Freaktown, a number here just for today for the promise of mutant solidarity and community on this holiest of days -- have arrayed themselves in the center of where the bazaar usually is. There's a smaller scattering of people not joining in the prayers -- a couple scattered members of Freaktown's safety squad over here, over there a few curious mutant children kiiind of gawking at the ongoing prayers, over there a few mutant adults who probably should not be gawking but are anyway. A couple of them, broad and heavily scarred white men who were some of the many streaming into Freaktown in the fall of Prometheus, have been glaring in the direction of the services, talking quietly among themselves for a short time before (thankfully?) they melt away into the gathering dusk. In the minyan itself the song (familiar to most all gathered in its words though no doubt some have Extremely Fierce Opinions about whether the current tune is The Correct One) continues, building powerful with emotion: Avinu malkeinu kaleh chol tsar umastin m'aleynu. Over with the lurkers is one tiny blue shark, nondescript in her clothing today -- B has on white slacks, a plain blue and white button-down under her heavy Mongrels cut, heavy metallic boots and wrist cuffs. She's leaning up against one of the food tables, claws clicking light and idle against the tabletop. She isn't singing though she is humming quietly along with the music, wrong tune? right tune? In her limited exposure it is, anyway, one of The Only tune she actually knows well. This is almost certainly not Joshua's Top Choice of tune. Maybe he'll complain about it later but it doesn't seem to bother him right at this moment. His voice is soft but clear and he isn't looking at the machzor he holds in his hands, eyes drifting around the faces around him with -- well, it's his usually flat and heavy-lidded expression, but something there has gentled the dour contours of his face just a little. Towards the back of the minyan, Erik is following along in a pocket sized, aged book held in one hand. He's shrouded in white -- white suit with muted grey tie, white leather oxfords, white yarmulke pinned to stark white hair, larger white tallis with thin black and silver striping draped over his shoulders, held in place with steel clips chained together. Tucked under the ends of his sleeves are twin steel link bracelets, a steel ring on his left hand and gold one on his right. Someone looking over his shoulder would find no English here to help them along -- only Hebrew letters, cramped and small. Even though he has not been abstaining entirely from food or drink his voice is beginning to grow hoarse. Maybe this is why he's singing softer now (and not because he does not know this niggun), his rounded Ashkenaz prononciation less prominent among all the other voices singing. Beside B, Scramble is also slouched somewhat against the table, lanky limbs rendering her posture more exaggerated. She's dressed in a fitted white blouse with a mandarin collar and slightly billowy sleeves under her cut, which coordinates with her black leather trousers and dress boots to sharp yet roguish effect. Her rank patch is new, and absent the "V" on her previous one, identifiers her simply as "PRESIDENT". Belying her apparent languor, her eyes sweep ceaselessly over and past the onlookers gathered around the perimeter of the plaza. Expression unreadable, she is not singing or humming or, probably, praying. Just watching, Atop the nearest building to tables squats Akihiro, dressed in dark blue coveralls with a matching balaclava pulled over his face. His full attention is on the scarred men, carefully taking in their body language and tracking them as they walk off. A very tired sigh escapes from him and he unclips the radio from his pocket, bringing it to his mouth and pressing the button, “I have eyes on a possible threat. We need to get a team up for a potential evacuation. Move slow, there’s no need to cause a panic yet.” Shane's book definitely has the English, and the transliteration as well; it's the second one that he's following along carefully with a claw. The kippah he wears is white, as is his vest, though the rest of his clothing is blue -- shirt embroidered very subtly with blue scrollwork, neatly-tailored slacks. His tallit is simple, white with slim blue stripe at one side. For much of the service he's been a little antsy, attention restlessly shifting between the others gathered here in prayer and the background ebb and flow of Freaktown lift, but as prayers shift into each other he's focusing here, focusing now. Too many -- far too many -- people are standing, here, as the Mourner's Kaddish begins, and he's among them, the intermittent flutter of his gills lending a slightly tremulous note to his voice, though he knows the words all too well. Around them in Freaktown -- there's a shift in the air, as the prayer continues, and it's not just due to the weight of all the blessed memories of those, here-but-not-here being remembered around them. Some of the kids who had been watching wide-eyed have conspicuously scattered and vanished further into town. One of the grizzled ex-Prometheans has returned -- though he certainly walked off in Akihiro's clear sight when he comes back it's more difficult to track, simply stepping out of a distorted ripple in space. From this distance in the dusk it may not be possible to see his self-satisfied smirk. A moment later, though, a tall man strides out from behind one of the houses at the other end of the row of tables from where B and Scramble are leaning. In his swagger he's hip-checking one of the carefully arranged tables to knock its wine and challah to the ground. His head is shaved to each side of where his thick blond hair is plaited straight back and down his neck, thick bushy beard and a Swords of Tyr vest (PRESIDENT, reads a prominent one of his front patches) on over his currently bare chest (there are a number of more esoteric Nazi symbols decorating his skin, but the swastika right over his heart in quite unambiguous.) Y’hei shlama raba min sh’maya v’chayim aleinu v’al kol yisrael, v’im’ru, the gathering has been saying, but over and above Amen comes this man's booming resonant voice: "Autonomous zone," he's clearly not addressing the Yom Kippur gathering but some of the mutants watching beyond, "you want freedom but you let yourself --" But Deep doesn't finish. There's another man -- certainly not short at an even six feet but small next to his leader, brown buzz cut, scars, faint flickers of red curling up his arms -- who's leaping over the fallen tables. "Got the Zionist-Occupied Gang calling all your shots," Ernest is crowing, and it's only when he looks briefly to his President's faintly exasperated expression that he realizes maybe this eager interruption was not a welcome addition. Trailing behind Deep on the left (Deep's right), farther back in the crowd... 6 and a half feet of phrenology, Nazi tattoos, and gravity-assisted advanced race theory is cutting a path through the crowd. Mountain at least has enough sense of drama to know not to interrupt Deep's speech -- he is bare-chested, wearing a rather expensive-looking pair of sunglasses that disguise his eyes. As Deep starts speaking, he stops and folds his arms, just looking dramatic. When Ernest interrupts him... he doesn't move, but there is a barely visible sigh. Coming up behind Mountain in the rear is another one -- it's hard to even tell he's one of the Swords, given he looks like he came dressed for a job interview at an office. Blue collared shirt, buttoned up; one flap of the lower half untucked, dangling over his dark trousers. Hands in his pockets, thumbs out; a face that's awkward and forgettable -- like the sort of slightly-pimply guy who refuses to take your coupon at the drive-thru because the edge got torn and typing the numbers in manually is 'against store policy'. He goes by Hurricane, and stands right behind Mountain... rolling his eyes. Fuckin' Ernest, man. "-- still don't want a panic," this voice is coming from a tiny beetle-like drone that has just zipped up to hover beside Akihiro, "but we're definitely moving to evac." There's a second drone that's been perching on the back of Shane's machzor and it flits up as the Swords begin streaming in: "You all need to --" becomes a little obsolete as the Swords arrive and the panic immediately spreading through the crowd preempts this. There are a half-dozen more drones skittering out from under B's table -- larger, these look like friendly-knockoff versions of the Sentinels, cutesy jumping-spider in their modular design; they don't actually approach the Swords but fan out between them and the congregation. As the crowd around him starts dissolving into panic, Joshua just goes very still. He folds the mazchor he's been holding, sets it down as he takes stock of the group. His jaw tightens, and he is looking reflexively towards a cluster of children who have gathered towards the center of the congregation -- takes a half-step in their direction and then checks himself. His fists ball up at his side and he vanishes for a brief moment, only to rather return a second later. He's looking -- just exactly as he had a second ago. Kind of underwhelmingly. "... oleinu v'akol yisroel v'imru omein." Maybe Erik is the only one with the words still on his lips as panic spreads through minyan. Before the prayer is finished he is, too, looking at that cluster of scared children, his nostrils flaring. Before the prayer is finished, the ancient mahzor folds closed and is tucked away into his breast pocket. Before the prayer is finished, he is turning, looking up from the drones to the interlopers beyond them, gaze setting on the swastikas and narrowing. A shiver ripples out from him, through every piece of metal between him and the Nazis, on the Nazis, in the Nazis. Without his helmet, with a tallis instead of a cape, decked out in Jewry, maybe the Swords do not recognize the Master of Magnetism. He is not yet announcing himself -- but at his wrists, the steel links of his bracelets are unlinking, floating in lazy circles around his arms. Scramble straightens up from her slouch and moves out into the plaza between them and the panicking crowd. Her pace pace looks casual but her strides are long, and when she comes to a stop across from Deep her stance is loose and ready but not squared off. Yet. "Damn, y'all come all the way up from Staten Island just to bully our people while they praying? That's pretty pathetic, even by Nazi standards." Though she projects her voice well she still sounds deadly calm. "You ain't welcome here. Get the fuck out. Now." An even longer sigh leaves Akihiro’s lungs not seconds after he’s finished speaking and he hits the button again, “Alright, this isn’t a drill. Those without combat experience join with the evacuation efforts and those who are comfortable holding the line group up with the robots, I’m about to lay concealment.” Instead of returning the radio to his pocket it’s clipped onto a small black bag next to him on the roof. “You’re being paranoid, Akihiro. You won’t need that Akihiro.” he grumbles quietly to himself as he starts pulling grenades from the bag, pulling the pins, and throwing them out to create a thick white wall of smoke between the new arrivals and the non-combatants. Shane hasn't waited for the drone to finish speaking, anyway; he's deputizing several of the people around him to help direct the crowd away. Or, at least, he was trying; once the smoke bomb hits he's mostly just hacking, a wheezing-gasping kind of breath for a couple seconds until he shuts his mouth tight and his gills flat. He's honing on on the people in the crowd -- too old, too young, too disabled -- who he knows might have extra difficulty with this evacuation, disappearing into the chaos to assist. The panic is spreading fast -- deep and hardwired at the first sight of the swastikas but devolving into a more generalized confusion when visibility drops. Some people are going along with Shane, some people are helping direct people to Shane. Some people are running straight for the Nazis. The confusion does not get any better when a freezing white mist begins flooding out within the billowing white smoke, further clouding visibility but also just stinging prickly-cold against those trying to escape. From a different part of the crowd there's an outpouring of pink bubbles; from another the grass is starting to curl up and cling around people's feet; from another there's -- a bunch of chicks and ducklings wandering over from the nearby yard to quack plaintively up at Erik like he might have food for them. The erratic misfiring of powers is not helping the current state of mess in the evacuation. Ernest is smirking as the Yom Kippur crowd dissolves into chaos and panic, and smirking more when Scramble approaches. "Holy shit these mutts managed to teach their monkey to talk," he's trying again, very hopefully. Deep has a look of longsuffering patience, a small and exasperated sigh. He doesn't address Ernest -- and he doesn't address Scramble, either, doesn't even acknowledge that she's spoken to him. He's just stepping back as the first panicked congregants start to run their way, his open-hand wave to the other Swords a clear invitation to attack. The wisps around Ernest have started to grow at Deep's sigh, and then coil out and solidify at his gesture, forming into an ominously glowing and very solid mace in his hands whose heavy-spiked end is slamming straight towards Scramble's gut. The icy mist approaches Mountain... and just flattens down around him, as if pressed to the earth by a massive invisible hand. He unfolds his arms; with just a gesture, a few frosty chunks of gravel float up from his feet. One hand swats them into his fist, and -- without looking -- he hurls them behind him -- right at Hurricane. Hurricane gives a crooked grin, hands still in his pockets; he steps forward into the icy gravel. The handful of rocks veer wildly out of his way, spinning around him in a rapidly accelerating orbit -- half a dozen stones, all making a distinctive whistling noise as they spin around faster and faster, building velocity... B's drones are springing to life, rapidly shifting to each pick a Nazi and focus in on him. The small thwips that come from the robots are -- probably also underwhelming, as a round of suppression darts fire at each one. B herself has risen into the air, a low hum coming from her boots and the wristcuffs she wears (telescoping outward swiftly to form a pair of sturdy metal gauntlets.) She's taking aim at Hurricane, though the SPLAT of webglue that shoots out towards him is directed more at the whirling stones that are building up speed. Somewhere in the thick smoke and chill-freezing mist, Joshua has disappeared again. Unsurprising; quite a lot of people have disappeared in the obscuring visual chaos. In the fog, it is almost hard to see when a just-faintly-shimmering translucent wall wraps itself in firm barrier between the Nazis and the congregation. Erik is not feeding the ducks. Is not outwardly acknowledging the ducks at all -- just rises silently up into the smoke and frosty mist a beat after B takes flight. Maybe now the Sword of Tyr will recognize Magneto, now that his tallis is fluttering in the breeze, now that his voice is booming out from fifteen feet in the air above the shield -- "You have been asked once to leave, vermin." The steel links orbit his entire body now, some fusing together, others developing sharp blades. In Mountain and Ernest's shoes, the protective layer of steel suddenly crumbles inward, sharp and tight and crushing around their toes; in Hurricane's mouth a silver crown is wrenching itself off a tooth and flying hard into the back of his throat. Magneto's eyes are squarely on Deep, now, blades poised to strike down at him. "Your betters will not ask again." There's a quickly solidifying mass of red that swirls to life around Ernest; his suppression dart plinks harmlessly off of it. He's barely paying this attention, looking up instead as Magneto rises up above them. "Holy shit," is breathless with excitement, "-- it's Magneto -- yeah, you tell these ver-- wait, why --" His eyes are narrowing on the kippah with a growing and horrified recognition that crunches off with a strangled scream as his boots crumple in. Is the betrayal in his expression from the attack or from the Jewry? Insult to injury, honestly. He's currently now engaged with a strenuous and careful shifting of his projected armor to push the metal off of his injured toes (kind of destroying his boots in the process.) Deep just smirks, at the forming blades, a cruel hard smile cutting across his face. When he rises into the air -- it's not really him anymore. Swirling rapid and sharp, the churn looks almost humanoid in shape -- then doesn't -- then does again, a fluctuating whirlwind of biting sand that, as it blasts through the air, chokes the lungs and abrades burning-harsh at skin, eyes, anything it touches. The sandstorm whips through Scramble briefly before swirling up, ensconcing Magneto in an excruciating swirl of stinging fury. Scramble doesn't acknowledge Ernest, either. By some combined virtue of her lankiness and skill it looks almost effortless when she sidesteps his attack. She snaps a sharp punch in reply at his flank that she pulls at the last second as his armor swirls into existence around him, but the punching was kind of secondary to her attack, anyway. Her power tears into him with an awful hunger, and his shock at discovering his hero was Secretly a Jew All Along expands and deepens and warps into... ...whatever it is, he's briefly distracted from it by his boots trying to eat his toes. Scramble isn't having much better luck enjoying her newly enhanced sanity. She coughs and recoils as the living sandstorm that had been Deep-shaped up until a moment ago score countless fine cuts into her skin and airways. Recovers while Ernest is extricating his appendages from his traitorous footwear. "You gon' let him do that to your hero?" she sputters, staggered and still trying to blink her eyes clear to take stock of the fight breaking out all around. "You can he a hero too." Unseen, her mind strains for something to sink its claws into. Akihiro jumps down from the roof, landing with a shoulder roll and popping back up onto his feet immediately. He breaks into a sprint, using the smoke the cut wide and angle himself towards Mountain, his claws popping with a 'snikt' that’s barely audible over the chaos. He keeps himself low as possible, hoping to get as close as he can before the man notices. Mountain's response to the sudden crnk of his boots' toes is a visible grimace of pain and surprise; his typical stoic expression reflects the shock and pain. He looks down, brows crumpling into a tightening knot... briefly distracted from Erik as he ascends. When he does look up, his eyebrows launch upward -- his arms unfold -- staring at Magneto in momentary confusion. The confusion only lasts a moment, though... before he's grabbing one of the nearest crowd-goers -- a poor teenager running past in panic, her arms wreathed in frost -- and flinging her like she's some sort of pebble... her body suddenly weightless. The weight returns mid-arch, just as she's entering the sandstorm interfering with Erik -- launched straight at him as a distraction. An instant later and there is a sharp thnk -- as a suppression dart lodges itself in Mountain's chest. He looks down at it, briefly puzzled -- Hurricane's sneer goes away as he suddenly clutches at his throat, falling to his knees. The pieces of gravel are struck -- plp, plp, plp -- by B's incoming webbing, plastered to his chest -- reducing the rest to just a few errant grains of dirt that are flung harmlessly away. An instant later, a suppression dart strikes him dead center in the back -- he doesn't notice, though, too busy choking. Mountain, meanwhile, has removed the dart from his chest. He's caught the glimmer of Akihiro's movement out of the corner of his eye, and is starting to turn -- B is diving, a moment after her glue strikes, repulsors firing hard to shoot her at some speed straight towards Hurricane. The sharp metal claws of her gauntlets gleam, extended in hopes of raking at his face. The instant B lunges within range at Hurricane -- still on his knees, still choking -- her velocity dramatically shifts; suddenly, she is veering wildly to the left as she begins to orbit him, held just out of immediate arms length. The orbit is gaining speed, and wobbling -- as if it's starting to slip out of control. Was Jackson Holland here at Neilah? Surely, in all the furor and fuss, someone would have noticed if the Famed Mutant Hero had broken his public radio silence -- but he's here now, anyway, and the so-faintly-iridescent shield wall is vanishing and reforming as the smoke begins to thin. No longer a straight long wall, as the Freaktown mutants continue to scatter it curls sinuous now between the Swords to more neatly segregate them from potential quarry -- -- but only for a second. A moment later and maybe it was a trick of the eyes in all the smoke and mist and sandstorm and panic that Holland was ever here at all. The shield wall vanishes. There's a warping distortion of flesh and then a different Boring White Guy is in his place. Alas that Matt does not have a pun at hand; perhaps a less dour Matt would be obliging. His power is flexing out -- currently only reaching Hurricane, and nipping his ability out of existence far more neat and quick than the suppression serum. Ernest and Mountain don't have to struggle with their shoes for much longer -- Magneto is yanking the steel caps out and up towards him in the sky, as well as that small piece of silver pressing against Hurricane's throat. These join him in the sandstorm for a moment, rotating through the sand as if they might disrupt the shapeless grains. There's not much he can actually do against this assault -- Erik holds one arm over his nose and mouth, eyes watering as his suit begins to fray. Another moment and the tallis flies off his shoulders, Erik's sand-battered steel pinning itself to the corners. The wide cloth dives first, attempting to wrap itself around the falling girl and slow her fall that way. Erik dives next, sand be damned, to try and catch her if this fails. Deep is picking up considerable speed -- as Erik dives he follows, a searing flay at skin that whips past old man and young girl alike, tiny speckles of sand embedding like glass into skin. For an instant when he reaches the ground he solidifies again, distinctly human -- though just a moment. The screams from the remaining congregants are keening higher as that sandstorm whips away through the Town Square, several young people waylaid with blindness or pain. Ernest has been watching Magneto -- looking back at Scramble -- looking back at Magneto. Her claws have taken root in his mind, but the shock here deepens and expands into horrified rage. It's a rage that's lashing out, fierce and furious in the blows that rain down towards Scramble, his projected weapon moving with far more agility than would be expected of a heavy spiked club -- but no less punch. Akihiro lowers his center of gravity arms going behind him in a full Naruto run as he somehow picks up even more speed. The exact moment the steel toe caps block Mountain’s field of vision he cuts sharply to the right, vanishing from the other man’s sight as he moves to flank him, flinging himself forward the last several yards in an attempt to bury his claws into the man’s lungs. Erik catches the girl, the wide cloth having slowed her descent; she manages a confused squeak as she is plucked out of the air amidst a raging sandstorm by none other than the Master of Magnets. Given all her other options, she desperately clings to him, suppressing a cry at the sound of sand scraping across the cloth he used to catch her. "--hh--" Mountain's shock is visible as the steel caps of his toes lunge up. He stumbles back just in time to face Akihiro, though in all the confusion, he briefly loses sight of the incoming attacker. Something else is going on, though; litter is starting to lift off the ground; a mylar balloon suddenly drops as if it was solid lead. Just as Akihiro lunges, a wave of intense vertigo rushes out across him and everyone within thirty feet. Akihiro is slammed down as his effective weight quadruples. A young woman screams, falling sideways at an angle that will put her through a nearby second story building's window. An old man seizes hold of a bike locked to a rack, as both he and the bike fall straight up. Various people are being pulled in several directions at once; several onlookers drop, while several more start to float. Mountain is one of the floaters -- arms out, his shades having drifted off his face toward the heavens. He tries to make it look like this is all part of his plan, but it's obvious he has NO fucking clue what's going on. The entire area around him -- about thirty feet or so -- is operating on random rules of gravity. Everyone within range experiences intense waves of nausea as they're pulled in varying directions all at once, all at different levels of intensity. Telling which way is up or down becomes physiologically impossible. Hurricane -- who's cheek is blossoming bright red as a piece of metal lunges out of it -- manages to stumble out of the field, falling to his hands and knees. His mouth is full of blood and he's gurgling: "G -- get me the fuck -- o-outta here..." And just like that, he flickers out of existence. Wish granted, shitbird. Except it looks like somebody traded up. Standing where Hurricane once was is a new face: a blonde freckled beanpole with the world's biggest shit-eating grin. He surveys the chaos -- gravity gone mad, a living sandstorm fighting the Master of Magnetism -- and that grin somehow gets bigger. "Fuckin' finally," Wick whispers, his expression one of pure joy. He cracks his neck... right before he vanishes inside an opaque column of pale metallic blue flame. Scramble is still blinking furiously. Sees Ernest coming and throws up an arm, not quick or precise enough to do anything but catch the blow squarely. At least it's her arm that breaks and not her skull. Her power rips into him again, wild and unguided now where pain breaks her usually excellent control. As he's winding up his next strike Scramble turns aside at the last moment. Her good hand catches his wrist as she follows through pivot, trying to guide him and the force of his movement down toward the ground. B definitely did not expect the sudden sharknado that she has become. Whirling -- whirling -- her limbs kind of flail, the flare of her repulsors wobbling her orbit precariously but not breaking free. When she does break free it's abrupt, flinging wild and almost on a collision course with Akihiro; she manages to slow her trajectory and right herself before coming to any harm. She's starting to lift back into the air -- and then tumbling in an odd loop-the-loop in midair as her personal gravity goes abruptly quite haywire. One of her gauntlets flings up to hit her own face even as her lower half is twisting too-rapidly towards the earth; for a split instant, the contortion of her torso against the divergent pulls looks deeply unnatural. It is all things considered perhaps a bit of a blessing when she slams into the ground. The !Matt is stretching further, trying in all the chaos and the many (many) mutant signatures around him and his own sudden dizzying nausea -- he's dropped too-heavily to the ground, stifling his retching and keeping his eyes firmly shut as if this will help. It probably does not, but at least he does not need to see in order to reach out, seeking out just the Nazis to squash their abilities. He reaches Ernest first, grabbing hold and flicking that off-switch. It makes it slower, more cautious, when his power snakes into Mountain -- a trickier prospect, and at first the man's odd fluctuations just get weaker. He's frowning intent at the people tossed around in the air, levelling out the chaos to something a little gentler on the descent. Even while that chaos begins to calm he's squinting his eyes open again to seek out the sandstorm -- Frowning deeper as he scowls in its direction. Perhaps his brief frustration at finding nothing there to latch on to has made him miss the newest arrival. Ernest's expression is getting wild-eyed, kind of desperate, and though the next strike he winds up isn't any less hard it's a lot more erratic. The mace vanishes from existence when Scramble grabs him, and for a split second he's just baring his teeth in a tense sharp grin as her grip catches on not-really-anything. The grin doesn't last -- in the next moment his armor has vanished, too, and he's flung -- -- not to the ground. Probably that's where he should have gone; instead he's careening improbably away, hurled back towards Wick, tumbling through the column of fire and landing blistered and screaming far on its other side. The sandstorm is continuing to blast through the remaining Jews in the square, and the Freaktown residents who are still working to help the injured escape. Was this girl Jewish, or was she a gawker? Doesn't matter now -- Erik wraps the wool of the tallis around her, pulls the blessing on the collar up as a hood around her face while she's in his arms. When they land, Erik's exposed skin is speckled with red dots of blood, his suit fraying at all corners. "Go, child, hide," he's telling her in a hoarse whisper, pulling the battered metal out of the corners of the tallis before turning back to survey the square. He has not missed Wick's arrival -- for a moment, he goes very, very still. Only for a moment. All around, now, the tables that had been set out with food are lifting jerkily into the air by their metal legs. The bike rack pulls out the concrete with a groan -- hopefully whoever is holding onto that bike has gotten clear! -- and with chunks of concrete still encasing the bolts. Magneto doesn't lift into the air this time, just flings the objects with as much speed as he can into the space in the flame he last saw Wick. "You will not 'burn' them, Nazi!" Each word of this -- prayer? command? warning? -- is punctuated by another flying object. The bike rack, and its concrete weights, flies into the flame. "I will not permit it!" Akihiro’s forward momentum just dies and he plummets straight down, barely managing to catch himself in a three point landing. “Oh you motherfucker.” he growls breathlessly, veins bulging as he struggles to push himself upright but only really succeeds in sinking into the earth as he fights against the increased gravity. Mountain's gravitational effect is starting to get tamped down on via !Matt; the lady who was falling toward a window is now gliding toward it, and now gliding toward the ground -- the man who had been clinging desperately to a bicycle as he prepares to fall into the sky is now just drifting idly upwards. The variable gravity effects don't stop, but they become less violent and more directed toward moving (relatively slowly) toward the ground. The waves of nausea are starting to dwindle... Mountain is staring at where Akihiro has collapsed, clearly not wanting any of that. He flails his arms, trying to push himself away, but... it's hard to navigate when you're floating. His eyes drift past Akihiro, toward the blue column of flame, and -- now his entire stoic facade cracks, a look of sheer panic on his face: "Get me the hell out of here," he mutters, before shouting, louder: "G -- hey! Get me the hell out of here!" Sorry, shitbird #2; somebody already curled that monkey's paw. Speaking of which... The bicycle rack slams into that column of pale blue flame; it seems to hit... something. The column splutters, reeling; the flames briefly lessen. The rack is then launched from the column -- crashing into the side of a nearby bench. Said rack is now orange and sizzling, reduced to molten slag. Like the column tried to 'eat' it, then spat it out. The column surges, thrashes -- as if whatever is within it is struggling to escape. It makes a sound... A high-pitched keening, like metal squealing against metal. Something emerges from the center. It has the vague shape of a face, but far larger, distorted, composed entirely of darkness wreathed in blue fire. It becomes clear, then, what that metallic keening is -- the face is laughing. The face is swallowed by churning fire; in its place, a tree-trunk limb of liquid blue flame surges out. A nearby Freaktown resident screams and runs. The scream is abruptly cut off as the trunk smashes down atop of him; when it retracts, the space where he was is now just a bubbling crater of asphalt. The fire grows a little brighter, a little hotter... starting to swell. Swelling with shadow and flame. Scramble's feet come off the ground in the same instant that Ernest's do, but unlike him she started out more or less stationary and kind of just drifts sideways while slowly rotating from the residual momentum of her pivot. She's finally able to get her eyes all the way open just as she rotates to face the pillar of fire. "Oh hell no," she mutters. Grabs hold of the cafe lights that had been strung up over the food tables and walks herself to the nearest pole holding it up, though her buoyancy seems to be fading, anyway, as she drifted farther from Mountain. She looks over the chaos and sets her jaw. Picks up the pole she'd not ended up needing to get back down to earth after all. Stomps on the base to snap it off, leaving a long break in the cheap wood. Hefts it in both hands and rushes at Mountain as if she's going to pole vault over him. When her feet lose purchase again she does not flail, just glides forward on her momentum and jabs her improvised harpoon into Mountain's armpit. Though they're both drifting he has significantly more mass, and she uses that as leverage to push her own feet down to the ground. Then uses the ground as leverage to shove Mountain toward the edge of the plaza nearest the riverbank. Matt!shua has been continuing to level out the gravity, helping ease all the Freaktown Floaters into safe reach of the ground. When Scramble jabs at Mountain, though, his hold is releasing. Mostly because his body is warping again, one form and one power traded out for another. It's Jax's single eye that narrows on the fire, and though he's gone a little sickly-pale at the bubbling crater where a mutant should be, he isn't moving any farther from the searing heat. He's just casting a brief glance back to those still limping out of the square and then fixing his eye on the blaze. Around the column of flame, a large bubble forms, glimmering and ephemeral-looking but quite solid -- and very airtight. The whirling sandstorm has rushed off -- chasing down a pair of elderly women trying to leave in the company of a small blue shark -- but somewhere across the cul-de-sac he's paused, stopped, reassembled himself into the shape of a human being. The fireglow gleams off his bared teeth, snarl or grin it's hard to tell -- but when the sandstorm gets to blasting again, this time it hones in right on Joshua's (currently) very familiar form, surrounding the not-actually-Jackson in a choking, flaying churn. Ernest -- is just scraping his whimpering way off, slinking behind the upturned tables to stumble away from the fire and brimstone. The redness of raw skin is the only colour left in Erik's face when the acrid smoke of flesh burning hits the air. He tears his gaze away from the asphalt, fire reflecting in his watery blue eyes. With a wordless roar, booming and grief-stricken all at once, he reaches his hands out and visibly pulls. Between Erik and Wick, the street shakes and cracks. Chunks of concrete rip out of the ground, held aloft by the rebar laced throughout, before they hurtle down violently towards Wick again. Less aim, this time -- less attention to Wick himself and the bubble surrounding him that may be deflecting these attacks anyway. Erik is digging for something else entirely -- the main water line into this neighborhood. The section that tears up from the ground is long, metal twisting out of its intended shape until it clears the surface and Erik can aim its contents directly at the pyrokinetic. With Mountain otherwise engaged and the gravity field wearing off, Akihiro finally pushes back up to his feet and tears the mask from his face, sucking in air as he asses the situation. Movement catches his attention and he fixes his gaze on the table Ernest is now hiding behind. “Oh no. You don’t get to hide now that the bloodshed’s started.” he says mainly to himself, the words not loud enough to be heard over the commotion. He rushes back over and with one swipe of his claws splits the table into fourths, aiming roughly for where the man was hiding. “Don’t be a bitch, we’re in the shit now.” Mountain's dwindling control doesn't let him do much but watch helplessly as Scramble approaches; with nothing to push himself off of (and with his power malfunctioning), he has no means to change direction or dodge beyond desperately flailing. The pole strokes hard, slamming into his armpit; he manages a sharp cry as he's driven up higher, lifted up into the air... trying to seize hold of the pole that's now impaled in his armpit, dribbling blood. Even as he takes to the skies like some sort of spiteful, bitter balloon. The flailing stops, and for a moment, he just... scowls through the pain, staring down, as he continues... up, and up... A few chunks of concrete hit Wick, leaving him spluttering; the shielding orb encloses him right before the remainder of the concrete strikes. He's stuck inside the space, the column writhing and spluttering violently -- suddenly, the bright blue becomes near-incandescent as the heat inside spikes up hard. He's turning up the heat -- burning through the remaining oxygen in a desperate race to over-pressure and over-heat the shielding. For a moment, the orb becomes so brilliant it's opaque; like a blinding blue sun... In all the chaos, the screaming, the fleeing, the blinding sandstorm, it might be hard to follow along with Joshua's fluctuating identity. The sandstorm that ensconces him does not make things easier, all but obscuring his actual form. Somewhere in the blast he's trying, desperate, to pull his fraying tallit up over his face, but the whipping sand tears it from his bloodied grasp to flutter tattered and stained to the ground. The hoarse rasping cry that tears out of his throat sounds barely human. Right in front of him, though, the bubble doesn't waver. It stays firm and strong, tight against the concrete that hurtle violently against it, now, firm and strong even when one of those chunks cracks into pieces that rain down onto the figure within the sand. Firm, too, at the blinding-blistering heat that flares up within. Joshua himself -- seems less stolid. Inside the sandstorm there's another searing glow, human-shaped, painful-bright to look at and painful-bright in the intensity of its heat. The glowing figure has slumped to his knees, the screaming has stopped -- but the bubble is, for now, still holding against the tempest within. B had definitely not noticed Joshua's carefully chosen shifts or mitigating influence, but the bubble -- the bright-lit figure in the sandstorm -- these, she definitely notices. "Ba?" As she's getting back to her feet, Joshua is falling to his knees -- the scream that echoes Jax!shua's is pure rage. "'Ba' --" For a second her thrusters are veering closer to the twinned sources of light, and it isn't the crackling heat that stops her path, even as her skin starts to blister. Her gaze fixes on the glowing figure, on the bubble all but lost in the blinding light, and then her eyes close. She peels away, tracking the scattered injured that Deep's searing storm left across the courtyard, and as she zooms down to scoop up one elderly woman stumbling with legs cut and raw, her drones are veering in pairs to simply pick up other stragglers and get them to some relative safety. "No!" Ernest's voice is quavering, and as his hands come up he continues to scramble backwards. His glowing red armor ripples back into place. "I didn't -- I had no fucking idea 'Magneto' was a --" He's glancing over towards Magneto. "I'll be one of you now! I didn't know --" It is perhaps physiologically impossible for Ernest not to be a bitch. Even in the midst of his sniveling plea he's just stumbling back as quickly as his blistered-injured legs will allow. Deep, meanwhile -- pretty unmoved by the screaming. The water splashing off the shield, the incandescent heat, though -- well, that doesn't mix well with sand. Tiny shards of glass are forming, peppering Joshua for a moment with their needle-spikes, melting against -- well, what remains of his skin. Only for a second, though, before, with a roar, the storm is peeling away to resolve into Deep's form stumbling back from the heat, a few ugly melting scars running down his arms, now. His arm tries to flow back into sand, then solidifies into flesh again as he gulps at the crackling dry air. Scramble has no time to admire the sight of Mountain flailing off into the sunset. She's sprinting madly back towards the firestorm. Swerves to avoid a flying chunk of concrete and again to dodge the water main as it rears up. Skirts the center of the chaos, slows as she tries to assess the situation. Inferno raging inside a fragile-looking bubble of a shield, check. Master of Magnetism animating a giant pipe he just ripped out of the ground, check. Living sandstorm attacking Jax who's incandescing brightly -- "-- oh shit!" There's real fear there, but for all that she's running toward the glowing figure. Staggers to a halt only a few steps away, throws up her good arm against heat and light and grit. Looks over her shoulder at Erik, eyes wide and wild. "Get your folk away from here -- hey! Max! Snap the fuck out of it!" The edge of almost-panic is gone from her voice when she turns back to yell into the sandstorm. "Yo Deep Throat! Come at me, you chickenshit dirt devil-ass motherfucker --" When Deep re-forms she rushes him. No finesse, no technique, she just slams into him shoulder-first with a wordless cry. Her power scrabbles desperately for terror, or something like it -- anything like it, even if it only makes him turn on her. Magneto does not hear Ernest's sudden acquisition of faith -- doesn't seem to hear anything, not B's scream for her father, not Deep's roaring return to flesh, not Scramble's first call to him. The world has narrowed to just the bright-burning orb, the tremor in his raw-blood-red hands as Erik strains to hold the pipe aloft, just the water flooding covering the pavement -- -- but at Max, something shifts, finally, in Erik's expression. The pipe falls heavily onto the remaining pavement as he turns (too slowly, too sluggishly) to meet Scramble's eyes. The few stragglers left in Erik's sight that have yet to be caught by B's drones find themselves pulled up by their belt buckles and shoved, none too gently, far afield. Max Eisenhardt steps away -- maybe to run, maybe to attack again -- but stumbles, staggers, falls forward. “You’re fucking pathetic.” Akihiro slams his foot into the armor over Ernest’s ribs. “You came here to kill right? You should’ve been ready to di-“ the thought is cut short as the pipe slams into the earth, his attention moving immediately to Magneto, the rage on his face melting to concern as he retracts his claws and runs over to catch him mid fall. “You did good Magnus, now catch your breath.” Scooping the older man up he darts back towards the security teams handling the evacuation, keeping his back between Erik and the Swords. The fire inside that shimmering sphere dwindles; the blinding bright light dims to just a whimpering splutter. Wick has burned through his supply of oxygen in a near-instant; the sphere is now filled with churning clouds of smoke, giving it the appearance of a dark grey marble with a constantly shifting interior. The sphere remains pressurized -- not enough to violently explode, but enough so that, once released, there will be an audible fwoosh as the pressure equalizes... whenever that happens. But inside the sphere, there is no visible trace of Wick's glowing flame. Mountain continues his grim upward voyage, a pole sticking out of his bleeding arm-pit -- rising up, and up, and up... at some point, he gets close enough to a balcony to use the pole as an awkward arm, dragging himself over the edge and out of sight. Does he land and escape? Or does he keep rising up, taking his advanced race theory to the stars? Unknown. Did Deep intend to come at Scramble, probably not! He looks wide-eyed with alarm when she tackles him, and not just because of the claws rending through his mind. He's throwing his arms up as if this can fend off her assault, but stumbling back, going down -- and then, with a spattering of grit around her much weaker than before, it's flaying power spent, the sandstorm sludges to life just long enough to vanish. Scramble also doesn't have the leisure to gloat at Deep's panicked retreat. She levers herself off the broken pavement. Sucks in a sharp breath -- maybe at the strain on her broken forearm but more likely at still-brightening photokinetic. "Don't die!" she calls into the blinding light as she breaks into a dead run for the edge of the plaza. "Take cover!" Though despite her impressive stride she probably will not herself get to cover in time. When Deep moves off, the figure he leaves behind looks all the brighter for having lost the obscuring cloud of dust and glass. Joshua has collapsed against the ground, but the bubble stays in place as its captive tempest burns itself to smoke. And then -- FWOOSH. The smoke roils free in a stunning upward blast, curling out from where it is venting as of trying to grasp at the last stragglers being led from the cul de sac. Then that, too, is obscured by a brief but searing flare. Hopefully everyone has listened to Scramble's exhortation for covet. The forcefield vanishes entirely, the heat that blisters outward sizzling the still-leaking water main into instant evaporation and bubbling at the asphalt and metal around. The ground shakes, the windows of the mansions around this end of the street rattle. As the light fades, the figure in the center looks barely human -- blackened with the seared blood, features peeled away to only a twisted mask of pain. Or maybe that, too, was illusion -- by the time the wind takes the smoke, there's nobody there at all. Just a charred silhouette on the devastated pavement, haloed round in cooling streaks of molten glass.