ArchivedLogs:Not What They Seem

Not What They Seem
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Regan, Poly-NPC police
In Absentia	2013-07-04 Retribution.
Location <NYC> TriBeCa
Home of the most expensive residences in New York, and of many a celebrities' penthouse, TriBeCa is now best known for being merely that - the richest neighborhood, and, as a result of the many films and television shows shot there, one of the most recognizable ones. Still, the vast majority of the people who walk its streets are that vermin most despised by New York City residents: tourists. The holiday means a city even more alive than usual, even late on a weeknight. Most of the fireworks in most parts of the city have finished -- at least the /official/ displays, though there are a constant gunfire-esque reports of explosions as people set off their own fireworks scattered illicitly around town. Bam! Bam! Bambam! Mixed in with the loud cracks of explosions there are hoots and hollering, sounds of parties in apartments or on rooftops or in parks. This stretch of TriBeCa is currently -- not quite quiet but quieter than many. There's a bar nearby with plenty of noise coming from inside, an apartment building with lots there too. The whizz-CRACK of fireworks, illuminating the street with intermittent shimmers of light. Walking down the street, two officers are looking around at the various drunk revelers with some amusement. "What are you doing when you get home, Mark?" Her companion shrugs his shoulders, shaking his head back and forth. "I've got to celebrate the fourth with my girlfriend, before she breaks up with me." He chuckles and shakes his head, looking back and forth at the street around him. The first officer - the woman - laughs, warmly. "Yeah, well, Mark, can you blame her? You spend more time with me than with her," she says, crossing her arms over her chest. "I don't know how you do it, Liz. Husband, kids, and the overtime." Mark gripes, shaking his head. From the bar, the sounds of revelling spiking into something harsher. Angrier. There's a crash, a thud. The door bursts open, a man half stumbling, half thudding out of the door. He crashes into another already lingering outside -- tall, thin, messy blond hair, a scattering of stubble; his bloodshot eyes tell of too mcuh to drink already and the stumble sends the cigarette he's just lit tumbling to the floor. "Hey hey what thefuck hey --" His words are a little slurred and he /shoves/ at the redheaded man who just stumbled into him. "Yo -- man watch it," the man goes sprawling. His hand lands nead the dropped cigarette. He picks it up to /throw/ it at the other man's face. "Maybe I'm just a better man than you are, Mark," The female officer says, laughing. Mark shoulders her, grinning, before he points out the beginnings of a fight down the street. "Over there." The two officers both stop smiling almost in unison as they head down the street. "Hey!" The male officer shouts. "Knock it off, you two." "Auuggghjesuschrist," the taller man claps his hand to his face when the cigarette flies into it. His foot /slams/ down with a stomping crunch onto the hand of the man on the floor. "Fffffffffffuu," the redhead jerks his hand back, stumbling to his feet. He /tackles/ the other, shoulder thudding heavily into the taller man. For his troubles, he receives a sharp elbow slammed towards his gut. "Hey-hey-hey," the blonde is answering the cops irritably, one eye still squinted up because it just had a /cigarette/ fly into it, "this asshole -- this asshole --" Oof. He thuds back against the building. "Alright, that's it," The two police officers head in, quickly, Mark grabbing the arms of the redhead and wrenching them backwards, bodily pulling him away from the other man. "Take it easy, take it easy. You're going to spend the night in the drunk tank if you don't quit it, right /now/." he says, dragging the man away while the other officer puts her hand on the blonde's chest. "Stay there. Easy now." "Thefuck --" The redhead stumbles, hissing in irritation when his arms are yanked. He looks behind him in surprise, like only seeing the cops for the first time. He's not a small man, there's a lot of strength to his sudden LUNGE back towards the man he'd been attacking. The blonde /shoves/ past the other officer, ramming his shoulder towards the redhead's chest with a weighty heavy SHOVE that pushes back at both the man and the officer holding him. "S'a asshole," he explains like this is a perfectly plausible explanation for their behavior. "Hey!" Mark stumbles backwards, once, and he yanks out his tazer. "Get off of him, or you're going to get tazed." The other police officer, too, pulls her tazer out, red dot lancing out and flashing in the center of the blonde's chest. "Stay there!" The female police officer's voice is harsh as well, hands steady on the tazer. Mark does not actually wait very long to see if the redhead comes into compliance - after all, he got shoved. Barbs shoot out and the sound of crackling fills the air as high voltage races down the wires into the barbs flying towards the redhead's chest. "On the ground, hands behind your head!" Because, compliance is easy when you are being tazed. The redhead does not comply, anyway, swinging around to swing his fist towards Mark's /face/. It's a sort of drunken-disoriented swing. "Tssss --" His voice hisses out of him as the tasers fly. "Shit shit shit," the other man is apparently panicking; drunken barfight is one thing but tasers? Now there is a NEW target for his rage. He had been shoving forward and he /continues/ to shove forward -- this time towards Mark instead of the redhead. It's kind of disorientingly quick, his sudden lunge. Except this time he isn't punching; this time there's a knife in his hand and it is slashing straight for Mark's throat. Mark is busy dealing with the tazer in his hand, and not fast enough to do anything but take a step back. The knife, still, is too close, cutting into his throat, though not quite as hard as the other man had intended. It is still hard enough for his eyes to open wide in shock and for him to let out a gurgling moan of pain and surprise. The female officer responds to this quickly. She drops the tazer and draws her service weapon. She takes two steps to the side and opens fire immediately without warning, three shots, into the blonde man's back. The shots are at an angle, wide of Mark, as she yells, "Get /on/ the ground!" The redhead on the ground is twitching kind of erratically! But his flailing twitch-roll-/rams/ straight into Liz's shins. Unintentional, it looks like, but it's /hard/ and certainly enough to throw her off balance, throw her shots off /course/. The blonde has meanwhile stabbed again, once more, hard towards the throat. But then he is taking /off/. Sprinting in panic around the corner and down an alley. Liz responds with a kick to the other man's head and whips around, gun pointing at the other man as he disappears around the corner. "Shit, shit!" she yells, and grabs for her radio even as she gives the redhead another kick and holsters her weapon. "10-13, 10-13, officer down, officer down, we need a bus at the Greenborough Tavern for an officer stabbed. Shots fired!" --- There is a trail of blood leading into the alley -- all the officer's. And then it peters out. And then there is nothing. Not the man, not anyone except the regular flow of holiday foot traffic through the streets of Chelsea. There is nothing for quite a long while. But, eventually, there is a pair of people making their casual way through the streets. A young woman with blonde hair and casual-chic jeans, strappy sandals, red tank top. A young man, dark hair, a sprinkling of stubble. Her arm slung through his, possibly affectionate, possibly the faint lean of mild inebriation as she leads him into an apartment building. Up the stairs. Into an apartment. It's only once the door is closed behind them that his giant wings become apparent again to view, that the sprinkles of blood across his shirt are visible again. The gloves on his hands. Dusk is a good deal paler than usual, save for the red splotched against his face. An arm. His wings are restless, shaking, trembling. Kind of unthinkingly he lifts his hand, dips his head to swipe his tongue through the blood drying on his arm. His lips compress into a grimace. "-- I need a --" he starts, wings shaking again. His knuckles press to his eyes. "There's a bathroom." The apartment, when the lights are switched on, is sort of college-student furnished. A mismatched scattering of furniture. Not a lot of clutter. Regan leans against the front door, watching Dusk steadily. "Clean clothes in there. I can take yours." Dusk just nods. Disappears into the bathroom. The hot water runs. It runs for a very long time.