ArchivedLogs:Keep Calm and Carry On

Keep Calm and Carry On
Dramatis Personae Toru, Thea, Regan
In Absentia	2014-01-24 War. War is hell.
Location <BOM> Compound Grounds, Ascension Island, then Government building
In some places, reaching the main grounds of this island takes a precarious scramble up from the rocky-craggy shore; in some places, just a short hike away from the beach. Once an old homestead, most of the 28 acres of property are taken up with forest, a dark thick sprawl of greenery through which a small stream winds crookedly. Under its shady canopy, myriad buildings are tucked away, an eclectic mix of sheds and tiny sturdy log cabins that give the area a rustic feel. Centrally, a wide clearing has been cut out of the trees. A large sweep of lawn has had a metal swingset -- two swings to either side of a small trapeze bar -- set up to one side. The lawn leads up to a cabin bigger than the others, a squat one-story building. Long and low, its wide front porch and cheerfully-painted yellow and pink shutters lend the building a welcoming air. It’s a cold grey evening, threatening rain but not actually wet yet. It’s been quiet on the island; a single Brotherhood sailboat headed out to Brooklyn hours ago and none due back for hours yet. And yet there is one heading in now -- not any of the familiar Brotherhood craft but a sleek speedboat with no markings except a single blue stripe painted around its side, purring in quietly in from Brooklyn and running up -- not into any of the piers where the Brotherhood boats dock but just onto a rocky shore and killing the motor. The boat holds only a single man, youngish, dressed warmly in black insulated jacket, heavy jeans, warm leather boots and leather gloves, a blue scarf tucked into the jacket. His boots crunch softly on the stones as he hops out of the boat, making his way slowly up the steep shoreline through the trees, a cameraphone in his hand. Also in the woods today is a woman and her beetle-man. Thea is dressed in olive cargo pants, black boots, and a heavy black pea coat with seamed cuts in the back to let her wings through. Also trailing the pair, trundling through the scrubby undergrowth is a terrier-sized pill bug, not really rushing to keep up, but exploring for a bit, before gallumping along to catch up every time he finds himself behind. Hercules, the man-shaped beetle who is much bigger than most ordinary men, whips his head and meter-long horn around when he hears the man's footsteps on the beach. Hercules is off at a thundering sprint before Thea even realizes what's happening. She whips around to finally see what caught his attention and her hand whips out as she calls out, "Herc, no! Don't hurt him!" She starts to trot along in that direction as well, adding, "Just catch him." The man seems to have this same idea in mind. At the sight of the humungous beetle-man thundering towards him he swings his hand around -- first capturing the image on his video camera and then ducking behind a nearby boulder to /hide/. But then he reaches, not for the carbine that he wears under his jacket but for a /taser/, for all the good that it will do him against the enormous Hercules. He holds the weapon tight, lifts it -- apparently thinks better of it and turns to /sprint/ the opposite direction, taser held in one hand and his phone still recording in the other as he runs along the woodline, aiming for the nearest cabin he sees. "Sonic, go get the boss, /now/," she doesn't stop in her jogging pursuit of Hercules and the interloper, so she doesn't notice Sonic's brief hesitation. But after the brief moment, the little rolly bug runs off in the direction of the correct cabin, theoretically with the purpose of fetching Regan. Insects are scarce in the dead of winter of course, but places near the water are hardly ever fully insect-free. Casting around with her ability, Thea finds what she's looking for and splays out the fingers of her right hand. She nods as the lonely, starving mosquito falls from the air, already swelling in size. To her trained eye it looks emaciated and was probably near the end of it's normally short life, but the starving thing would suit her needs perfectly. She increased it to nearly the size of a person, doing the math in her head. Losing a couple of liters of blood ought to take the fight out of this man, long enough to deal with him properly at least. "Go," Thea commands, and the hideous creature leaps into the air flying low with a screeching buzz, not unlike a gas powered remote control car opened to full-throttle. "And feed." She jogs after it to make sure things go according to her orders. Toru showed up on the Island earlier in the day but, failing to find any success in whatever it was that brought him here, he's been laying in his cabin, /in the dark/ occupying himself while he waits for the next boat to leave. Until there's some kind of /ruckus/ outside, which is-- strange. It isn't until Sonic is passing his cabin to head for the main one that Toru heads outside, brushing a hand over his hair. Today's Toru is dressed in a crisp new leather jacket - it still has some squeak to it, even - with a hoodie underneath it, gloved hands crammed into his pockets as he heads down the stairs, a pair of Chuck Taylor boots on his feet. "Lady, the hell is goin' /on/ out here?" He spies Thea easily enough, but then she's-- jogging that way. Which is apparently enough to make the teen realize some kinda shit is going down, because /that/ sight has him pulling his hands back out, jogging to catch up with Thea, loudly hissing, "The fuck's going on?" when he gets in earshot. Staying /behind/ her, since she's the one managing things right now and all. The man is scrambling up off the beach and through the trees, weaving his way through the cabins when the suddenly overgrown mosquito buzzes after him. The motor-like droning draws his attention behind him, eyes opened huge and his taser lifting to shoot out towards it even as a strangled half-sound catches in his throat. His phone, still on camera, is still held in his hand, still pointing at the mosquito-thing as it descends towards him. “Jesu--” He doesn’t even get the entire word out as the creature comes at him. --- This time of evening, Regan is in her cabin, scrolling through evening news online now that the island /has/ wifi hooked up. A little more pleased than she would previously have been, though there’s still a somewhat grim set to the thin press of her lips as she flicks through the stories, fingers tapping quickly at her mouse. She’s in jeans, warm thick knit cowl-neck sweater, dinner half-eaten on the table. A restless twitch even to her impatient scanning. Sonic twitches to the side skittishly when Toru comes bursting out of his cabin, but then he resumes his pursuit of Regan's cabin. Scrabbling up onto her porch, Sonic headbutts her door several times before backing away from the door a ways. "What the matter?" grumbles Hercules' gravelly voice as we watches the huge mosquito whiz past him. "Don't think he safe with me?" But his grotesquely human mouth is pulled to the side in a sardonic grin. "You're not a comedian," Thea says, clearly not amused. "And witty banter doesn't suit you. Just make sure she doesn't drain him dry." Thea nods in approval when she sees Hercules chuff a suppressed laugh and start making his way up the little hill. Meanwhile, the mosquito is aiming to tackle the man, and hold him down with all of her legs before she can actually start feeding. She's actually trying to be /careful/, and not just spear him through the heart, which may leave her open to the man's riposte, and she's not nearly as sturdy as Hercules. However, Herc is standing nearby watching the struggle with interest, ready to jump in if something goes other than according to plan. He even speaks up, in a warning tone, "/Relax/, if she want you dead, you be dead already." Thea composes herself, and resumes more of a walking pace while her minions deal with the immediate threat, and she turns to wave Toru over. "Hey Bones, over here. We have… an unauthorized visitor. Likes taking pictures. Something makes me think he's not like other tourists though." She sighs and crosses her arms over her chest, mainly focused on the struggle on the hill. "Are you fucking serious?" Toru scrubs his face with one hand, which he then runs over his hair in frustration. He crosses his arms over his chest in an unconscious imitation of Thea's pose, looking up to the hill and just. /Glaring/. "Well, it looks like the bugs have him handled... I think?" Frowning even more deeply, he makes grumbly noises, stalking in a small circle like a tiger in a cage. "The hell're we supposed to do about this? Is the boss around?" A pause. "Oh, that must be where the little guy's going. God /dammit/." “Jesus,” the man actually spits out this time, firing the taser at the mosquito as her legs knock him to the forest floor. “What the aauugh.” The phone falls from his hand as he falls to the floor, crunching down against the icy ground. Hand now freed, it comes up to strike hard against the mosquito -- hard at first, though weaker as his blood drains from him. Farther off, Regan hits CTRL+ALT+L to lock the screen on her laptop, heading towards the door to open it. She looks out at person-height first, looking downwards only after a second delay. She frowns, looking past Sonic in search of Thea. “Sonic? Is Thea alright?” At Regan's question Sonic does a running dive off the porch, actually managing to roll up into a tight little soccerball-sized form, and is bouncing along in the direction of the commotion. The huge mosquito twitches as two of her legs go limp on the side the man tasered, which makes her stumble forward and push her proboscis all the way through the man's shoulder by accident, to emerge on the other side. She jerks back, pulling the needle-nose all the way out, knocks at the taser with a twist of her head, and tries to pierce his other shoulder this time, well above the beating, thumping heart she so desperately wants to plunge her way into, drinking deep until she's full. Thea watches the process dispassionately until Toru starts cussing. "Yeah, I sent him after her. Actually they should be…" Thea turns, and her antennae quiver when she hears Regan's distant voice addressing Sonic, and then Sonic is tumbling down the hill in Thea's direction. "Hey!" she calls to Regan, waving her arm high to be seen through the trees and shrub. "Down here!" "God /dammit/," is all Toru says at first, repeating his earlier sentiment. But with the knowledge that Regan should be on her way, for lack of knowing what else to do the teen starts to head in the direction the boss will be coming from, though he doesn't stray too far from Thea, either. Just enough to be visible once Regan arrives. "Hey!" He shouts, waving his arms as well. "We got a situation down here!" If nothing else, while he is inwardly panicking, he's at least putting forth an attempt at seeming like he's got himself under control. The man continues to thrash as the proboscis pulls out and back in, but weaker with the greater loss of blood. The taser prongs latch on and don’t dislodge, in the manner of taser prongs, electricity jolting; his hammering blows, though, turn into just thumping ones and then no blows at all. Regan steps out onto the porch when Sonic rolls up, frowning deeper at the pillbug’s evident haste’ It’s Thea’s waving that sends her into actual full-speed mode, though, hastening back into her cabin to grab her winter coat and yanking it on as she shoves her feet into boots, not bothering to actually properly tie them as she sprints out through the woods to follow in the direction of Thea and Toru’s voices. Her coat flaps open behind her as she jogs, icy branches crackling with her footsteps, and she looks first at the pair and then down at the barely-conscious man on the ground, the oversized mosquito. Her initial question, faintly out of breath, is just flat and to the point, a brusque-blunt: “What.” Her eyes narrow on the man on the ground, breath clouding the air in front of her as her attention focuses in on him. Thea gestures at the mosquito with her hand outstretched, palm down, and says simply, "Off." And the mosquito pulls away from the man, limping, and jerking with the taser cables until it breaks free, still twitching too much to fly, but if the rotund red belly is any indication, she probably couldn't take to the air right now anyway. She stumbles a few feet away from her prey and collapses into a pile of frozen brush with a huff, apparently passed out. Hercules looks like he wants to step up and take over for the needle monstrosity in his own way, but Thea says softly, "Don't. He's not going anywhere. Just keep an eye on him, and take that stupid thing away from him." Hercules nods his reluctant acceptance, and just stomps on the taser, which accidentally happens to still be in the man's hand. Herc shrugs as if it were an accident. Thea turns to Regan and says, "I found this guy coming up the beach, filming with his camera. Rather than turn and run /back/ to the beach when he saw Hercules, like I thought a lost tourist might, he ran /this/ way. Either way, I thought you'd want to know about it." Thea bows her head in deference, waiting for orders. Toru just shrugs at Regan, one of his hands coming up to run through his hair, /gripping/ it tightly in the back and just. Anxiously pulling at that handful for a minute. "I have no idea what the fuck, I just heard shit going down and --" Another helpless shrug there. "I mean I guess the bugs got the guy--" he turns to Thea, "-- which, y'know, was kind of /super creepy lookin'/ --" and back to Regan, "so what the hell do we do? I mean it ain't like he knows what we're doin' here, unless we put up a fuckin' neon sign sayin' so while I wasn't lookin'." Regan sucks in cold air through her teeth. For a time there's a distracted expression to her face that might almost look like she's paying little attention to Thea and Toru, but after a moment her attention turns back sharply to them. "Not a tourist," she tells them. "Hercules, his phone. It's still recording, destroy it." Her tongue presses up beneath her upper lip, the tip of it running along her teeth as she finally buttons up her jacket. "No neon sign, Ion hasn't brought home anything so flashy quite yet. Thank you, for stopping him. It seems he had a tip -- someone saw J.C. coming this way, thought perhaps she might be hiding out here, but when he saw you, Thea --" Her smile is thin, but she looks more /amused/ than annoyed by this. Still, there's a hard /tension/ to her posture, a crisp clipped precision to her motions that does not suggest she is taking this lightly. "He's only half conscious, still, his thoughts are pretty -- jumbled. I don't know exactly how /much/ that phone was sending to his home office but it /is/ sending his recordings back there. It doesn't sound like this trip of his was a big organized /project/ yet but I don't think we have a large /window/ before it's noticed he's missing /or/ before someone notices whatever he's sent back." Hercules looks to Thea when Regan tells him what to do, and she confirms the order with a curt nod of her head. He picks up the phone to look at it for a moment, before just crushing it in his hand. The shattered bits tumble from his grasp onto the frozen ground. Thea grins and says, "Yeah, I'm a real celebrity." She strides forward to kneel down next to the disoriented agent, carefully searching his pockets for any clues on where to follow up with him. She takes a moment to tuck his gun into the back of her waistband as well. "We should probably move fast. If it's going to the cloud, we're fucked. But if he's law of some kind, it's probably uploading to a secure server and hasn't been checked yet. I bet he hasn't even called in backup, so we might have a /little/ time at least before anyone knows he's missing." Thea slaps his hand away as he reaches toward her deliriously. Toru-- actually looks a little clueless with all of the tech talk happening. It's pretty clear a lot of it is going over his head. But the notion of people noticing the guy /missing/ is a pretty easy enough one to grasp, so it's the one he chooses to latch on to. So he all but whirls to face Regan again, teeth clenched with frustration as he kicks at the shattered pieces of phone. "Yeah, so what're we gonna /do/?" As if abruptly realizing his face is visible, he suddenly pulls his hood up over his head, cinching the drawstrings to cover much of his face. "I mean, if we ain't know where he works for." "You are delightfully eye-catching," Regan agrees, with a warmer smile. It turns even more wryly amused when Thea's pocket-search turns up items. Keys, A wallet (driver's license, credit cards, medical insurance), a receipt from Brazilian takeout. A Sharpie. A Homeland Security badge. "And all these boys want a piece of you." She crouches down near the agent again, almost absently prying one of his eyes back open with a thumb. Her eyes focus down on his, her jaw tightening. The air around them feels warmer, briefly; the man groans, looking a little bit more alert. Regan looks a little /less/ so. Somewhat woozily she reaches a hand towards Thea, opening and closing her fingers in grasping motion. "Pen. There's an office -- hhis office. He came -- on a. Whim. If you get there before anyone notices you could just. Torch the place." Her mouth curls into a small smile, though her words slur faintly. "They would notice /that/. But not that /he/ had ever been /here/." Thea watches Toru's panic and hood-cinching with an even gaze for a moment, like a scientist inspecting a bug under glass before Regan gets her attention again. She winks a black, multifaceted eye at the other woman's playful banter and then looks on seriously as Regan extends her powers to get them more information. When the woman first reaches for Thea, she thinks she needs to be steadied, and grips her upper arm with her spider-leg fingers, and then nods when she asks for the pen. Thea comes up with the man's sharpie and the takeout receipt. "Give me the address. I can take care of this for you. For us. But," Her eyes flick to Toru. "But I'm gonna need someone who doesn't look like… me. Doesn't look obvious." "'Course you fuckin' do," Toru mumbles in response to Thea's request, hands crammed into the pockets of his leather jacket. Between that and the hood over his face, he looks /so cool/. "Yeah, well, I keep sayin' that's what I signed on for, so... y'know, that's what I signed on for. Pretty sure we got someone who handles the-- the hell?" And there he frowns, the man's sudden alertness -- Regan's lack thereof -- finally clicking in the teen's head. He storms over to the man of the hour, kicking him in the side. Not /too/ hard, but certainly enough to make a point. "The /fuck/ you doing?" To Regan, "'re you okay, boss?" And again to the man on the ground, "The /fuck/ do you think you're /doing/?" Regan just nods, slow-motion as though she is underwater. She doesn't /say/ anything, not aloud, but a moment later the address of one of the new Mutant Affairs locations on Roosevelt Island pops into both Thea and Toru's minds. She leans into Thea's grip when it comes -- apparently none too averse to /being/ steadied, her weight slumps in heavily with a sudden sinking of her shoulders. Her hands drop to her knees, and she shakes her head at Toru's questioning. "He just --" she starts, words still more slurred than before. "Not a lot of. Brain. Left to. Search. Should get Kay to. Cremate." For a bit longer she still leans against Thea, but then somewhat unsteadily pushes herself upright as the man groans rather incoherently at their feet. When she makes another 'gimme' gesture with her hand, this time it's for the gun. "Doubt there'll be many -- people this time of. Night. But it's -- Mutant Affairs anyway." Thea blinks and nods when she suddenly knows the location, picturing the place in her mind. "Can't say I'll be sad to see that place come down." Thea stands when Regan does, helping the woman to her feet, and then hands over the gun as requested. She handles the weapon as if it's alien to her. She knows which end to hold, but that seems the extent of her knowledge about firearms. "Yeah, of course. Not gonna do /me/ any good anyway," she says, glad to be rid of it. She thinks for a long moment, and still makes herself available in case Regan needs someone to lean on. "Ok, so I can get us across the water faster than the boats can, but honestly the fliers draw too much attention in the city. Too noisy. Unfortunately, we don't have any tunnels on Roosevelt Island either, so we can't go in underneath. Can one of you drive a van or something? Me and mine can hide in the back, while you flash that badge at the entrance to the garage. We just need to get inside. I can do the heavy lifting from there." Toru jerks his head a little, with surprise, when he gets that image in his head - and a hand runs over his head. Once it's clear what's going to happen with /the guy/, he's a little less concerned about keeping anonymous, and the hood is uncinched while the teen just tries to work things out in his head. "Christ, I didn't think we were gonna fuckin' /kill/ the guy." Not that he's offering alternatives! "Fucking Mutant Affairs anyway. Fucking... /fuck/!" He brings the point home, punching a fist into the opposite hand, then bringing that hand up over his hair. "/Fuck/. Okay. Uh, I can't-- drive. Y'don't really... I mean, I'm from New York, nobody here drives really." A helpless shrug, there. "I can prolly figure it out if I gotta, though." Here he looks to Regan questioningly. "I mean it's just sticks and a wheel and some foot things, right?" "We'll have to boat it, I guess." Regan leans against Thea's side, handling the gun almost absently -- even with droopy-exhausted arms there's a routine to her motions that's so habitual it's practically thoughtless. "Hm?" sounds distracted, too, when Toru says he didn't think they were going to kill the guy. A moment later the loud report of gunfire fills the forest. The agent's groaning ceases. Regan puts knuckles to her head with a sloooow clench of eyes, other hand still holding the gun as it drops to her side. "Rooting through his mind in that state took a lot of -- I am not sure I trust myself not to get you both killed if. Mmm. Kay can drive. Ion. Perhaps we should see if one of them is around. And -- slightly better at remaining vertical currently." Thea seems a little confused and Toru's impression of the man's fate being unsure, but doesn't comment on the fact. She nods when he says he can't drive and then listens as Regan lists more options. Thea nods, and then shrugs, "Hey, I'd be happy to have either of those guys come with, but I haven't seen anyone else around all day. Honestly, I'm tempted to just say fuck the sneaky bullshit and fly in guns blazing." She flinches when the gun goes off, and takes a deep breath. "Someone is gonna come looking for him as soon as he misses some kind of check-in. I don't think we have a lot of time." Thea splays her long fingers out to put a steadying hand on Regan's back and says, "You're right though, you gotta stay here boss. And send the cavalry if you hear from the guys, but I think me and Bones oughta move now." "Well, I came here lookin' for Kay and didn't find 'im, so I dunno if he's even on the Island. Didn't see Ion neither," Toru shakes his head, letting out a frustrated noise. "We can figure somethin' out, it probably ain't a good idea to go trawlin' the island lookin' for someone.. we'll figure somethin' out." He looks to Thea hopefully with that sentiment, striding a few paces closer to the older woman. "I ain't exactly in love with the idea of just runninn' in the front door, I ain't exactly built for range. Though /fuck/ it would be sweet as hell if I could do my thing without havin' to touch people, that'd--" Frowning, he kicks at the ground. "--anyway. So let's get the fuck going, yeah?" "Guns blazing," Regan echoes this with a small smile. "Well. You are excellent at that," she agrees with a nod. "Take the whole place out, then. Anyone you find in it. Just -- anything he sent there, we don't want a trace of. If any of the other heavy-hitters turn back up, I'll send them to help." She turns the gun towards Toru, handle-first. "This is built for range. Not hard to use. Lightweight. Pull the trigger. No touching required. Watch each other's backs." Hercules steps forward, his grin showing a mouth bizarrely full of broad, flat molars, even in the front. He wears a knowing expression when Regan gives the green light, and Thea nods at him. She leans down and scoops up the soccer ball-sized Sonic, and says, "Go get my case, and leave him in the cabin," she tells him flatly, handing her pet over to beetle-man. He jogs off and she turns back to face Toru and Regan. She reaches out and wraps long fingers around Toru's shoulder, giving him a broad smile which is nearly the most human expression left to her. "Don't worry, Bones. We're not going in through the front door. We're using the roof." When Hercules returned with Thea's 'case' it turned out to be a converted cat carrier doing duty as a small terrarium. Inside were half a dozen more beetles of Hercules' long-horned species which Thea wasted no time in converting but this time she didn't simply enlarge them. With a chorus of scraping and cracking noises, the six each rose on two legs, flexed two arms, and went to a knee before Thea. After just another moment of preparation, all were ready to leave. Hercules picked up Thea, and another offered to take Toru before all seven beetles leapt to the sky. As they approach the roof, the collection of enormous beetle-men sound like a squadron of B-52 bombers coming in for a landing. When they're close enough, Hercules throws Thea into the air as if she were a doll, but her own wings flick out and she begins her own gliding approach to the roof, landing softly with a little run. When she's still, she dips her head slightly and her antennae quiver as she focuses. When Toru is close enough she sounds slightly confused but says, "No alarms, and no one's running around like crazy downstairs." She cocks her head and finally nods. "Yeah, no unusual movement for several floors down… Weird." She reaches up to run spidery fingers through her hair, pulling it back into a new ponytail after the flight. Toru was a bit /hesitant/ to accept /beetle-flight/, but given the situation, he wasn't really in a position to decline. So up into the air he went, carried by one of Hercules' brethren, his hair fluttering majestically in the wind as they buzzed along to their destination. When Toru hits the roof, he staggers a little bit, regaining his balance after the flight, shivering a bit from the chill wind. He is, however, listening to Thea, and when she expresses her confusion he just kind of rubs the back of his neck uncertainly. "Dude, you can tell that from up here?" That, at least, sounds impressed. "And I mean, it /is/ Roosevelt Island... maybe everyone left early to beat traffic?" He suggests, not entirely /helpfully/. "So what're we gonna do from up here? I figured you were gonna pull a Grover's Mill." "Yeah," Thea says, still half focused on things far away. "It's hard to sense far. Easier to read through solid dirt and rock than all the electronics in this building." She blinks suddenly and her antennae curl up into a more relaxed-looking posture. Her expression seems more present now. "You could be right. It's an office, at night." He expression falls momentarily at the mention of her home town, but she shakes her head slowly. "That took months to set up. We'd need at least a week to sink this building, assuming the tunnels didn't flood." While the mutants are speaking the beetle soldiers spread out, apparently looking for something that wasn't discussed aloud. Finally one of them grunts and waves. Apparently it takes a while to develop speech as high-functioning as Hercules'. The grunter found a roof access door. When he sees he has everyone's attention, he lowers his head and spears the thin metal door with his horn. With a sharp twist and a step back, he rips the door off it's hinges and shakes it violently to dislodge it again. The door sails across the roof to land with a clatter, knocking over a spinning rooftop ventilator. "A /government/ office at night," Toru notes, cheerfully. "You know our taxes are payin' for their leisure time. Fuggin'-- anyway." He catches that response to his mention of Grover's Mill, and lowers his head with a mumbled, "Sorry. I guess that makes sense, I don't really know..." A wave of the hand. "Y'know. How bugs. Work." While the beetles are off doing their dynastes thing, Toru pulls the handgun out of his pocket, never more thankful that he wears gloves as a matter of course. "I'd say I should just let you handle things since you obviously know what you're doin', but I kinda need a heads up on... whatever the hell it is we're actually gonna /do/." Thea chuckles darkly, shaking her head. "/Your/ taxes, maybe. I don't pay for shit. I don't think any mutant should give this government a dime until they start treating us like people. Hit 'em where it hurts, and they'll notice." Apparently she's happy to leave the topic of Grover's Mill behind. She eyes Toru's gun when he draws it, and then nods at his question as a gust on the roof briefly pulls the loose bits of her hair not in a ponytail back into the wind. She probably would have been beautiful if her mutation hadn't ravaged her features. "The short version is this - we're here to do violence. Anyone tries to stop us, you can't hesitate. Even a fucking janitor can pull the alarm. We're all or nothing here." She looks around at her beetles to make sure they heard her too, and then back to Toru. "But the big picture kind of depends on what you can do. I know we call you 'Bones', but I'm not actually clear on what your ability is." "Toru," is Toru's initial reply. "My name's Toru. I don't really like the nickname anymore." Letting out a little sigh, he rubs the back of his neck with his free hand, scuffing his foot along the rooftop and looking sheepish. “My thing ain’t all that impressive. I gotta be touchin’ you. I turn skin into bone. And muscle. Into bone. Dunno about cartilage.” He frowns thoughtfully for a moment, then shakes his head. “Anyway. Usually I do it to myself, make bonefists,” his free hand lifted, gloved fingers wiggle in a little ‘hello’ gesture. “‘swhy I usually wear gloves, ‘cause the skin changes color, goes all whitish.” “Anyway, that’s why I was sayin’ I’d be more helpful if I could do it from far off, but way it works is I gotta be touchin’ you with /my/ bare skin - don’t gotta be my hands but that’s what works best - and then it takes a few seconds to kick in and itches like a /fucker/. I mean, I’m used to it but--” He frowns, suddenly, shaking his head briskly. “Sorry, didn’t mean to give you my fuggin’ biography. Long story short,” too late, “gun’ll probably be more useful in a hurry, my thing’s better for like… stealth. Or I guess torture.” "Ok Toru, sure," she says in response to his new introduction. Thea narrows her eyes as Toru explains, openly impressed by his description, but also obviously confused. "But couldn't you…" She frowns slightly, looking at Toru's /chest/ for some reason, and then turns to wave over Random Beetle Guy 1. He trundles over, not possessed of as much thinking capacity as Hercules. She raps her knuckles on the beetle's chest to demonstrate how card the carapace is. "You said you don't know much about bugs. I don't mean to tell you your business, but I just wanna explain this part." She uses her hand to turn and pose the beetle-man next to her, who /is/ smart enough to be confused at this mannequin act, but he goes along with it, because, well, he has to. "Humans are 'endoskeletal'. Just means, 'bones on the inside'," Thea chuckles and winks at Toru, nodding at his hands. "Most of the time. So pretty much all bugs are /exo/skeletal. 'Bones on the outside'. But that's all this /is/." She clonks her fist on the giant bug's shoulder armor, eliciting a strange look from the taller creature, but it does sound pretty solid. "It's a kind of bone. On me..." Thea pulls up her sleeve revealing patches of thin carapace on her forearms, "It's kind of a shitty, half-assed layer, but it's better than nothing. It you ask me, you're missing an opportunity. Turn your skin into plates, here," she says, not stopping to see if it's ok for her to touch the young man, and places her palm flat against his pecs. She's clearly not playing the role of cougar, but her long, spidery fingers might make the gesture creepy for other reasons. "And then your back too, if you don't have to use your hands on yourself. Could even do your scalp, but I bet your hair would fall out." Thea steps back, giving Toru room again. Apparently she needs to remind herself that other people like personal space. Then she shrugs and says, "Just a suggestion." Toru is /just/ amused enough to let Thea go for the grope, nodding a little at her suggestion, after having been smirking just a bit at the biology lesson. "Yeah, I do that too sometimes, it just... I mean, bone'll still break eventually, y'know?" Since the teen's chest is still the target of scrutiny, he takes a step back from Thea, shoves his gun back into his jacket pocket, and starts unzipping. First the leather jacket, then the hoodie underneath, and then he pulls those back, lifting up part of his shirt to expose his ribs. Along the right side, there is a series of thin scars that, in the moonlight, almost resembles spiderwebs, coming from three or four central points. The shirt is lowered again and hoodie re-zipped, though he keeps the leather jacket open, removing the gun once more. "That's what happens when you get hit with a billy club. Like, a lot." He winces, at the memory. "And it gets kinda hard to breathe. Limits movement, yeah?" Toru starts to make his way towards the opening that the beetles had made, but he stops abruptly, turning to look to Thea again. "I mean, I ain't sayin' it's a /bad/ idea, that's just why I didn't mention it." "Like I said," Thea says with a smile and a shrug. "I don't wanna tell you your business. I just figure some cracked carapace beats a bullet in your chest." The mannequin beetle chuffs an idiot's laugh at that, while Thea tugs her jacket tighter around her in the freezing night air, and shivers a little. "Back to that 'long story short' though," she says with a wry grin. "There's so much crap in these walls, I can only sense a floor or so in any direction. Maybe two if I really focus. But we definitely have the advantage of surprise. So here's what I wanna do. A building like this is gonna have gas piplines coming in for hot water and shit. I wanna visit every floor on the way down, start little fires on each as we go, and then find the basement. From there, we crack the gas main and just bug out." She smirks at her unintended pun but continues. "By the time the lower level fills with enough gas to reach the burning upper floors, this fucker will blow out like a house of a cards. The little fires should be pretty easy. A five story building like this - probably has at /least/ one breakroom on every floor. Some metal in the microwaves oughta get things started for us. I wish we could jam the fire alarms from going off, but I don't know shit about that stuff." Toru lets out a long, slow whistle when Thea explains her plan, eyes just slightly widened, the teen looking /pretty obviously/ impressed by that plan. "/Fuck/, lady. We oughtta recruit you.” He grins, oh-so-charmingly, and runs his free hand over the front of his jacket, nodding. “I got a lighter on me, so if we don’t find microwaves or nothin’ I can at least light up like… I dunno, trash cans? Fire alarms are a bitch but at least there ain’t a fire department on the island, and bridges’ll be a bitch to cross when they do head over.” “And how do you figure we’re gonna get out when we get to the basement? I’m guessin’ you don’t know the layout any better’n I do.” He frowns a little, shaking his head. “I ain’t tryin’ to second-guess you or nothin’, you got a solid plan and all, I just wanna make sure our asses are covered and all in one piece once we’re finished.” Thea smiles and nods. "You go with what you know. I've learned a fair amount about structural integrities. And I don't even /like/ this building. This shit's coming /down/." Thea's Jersey starts to surface a little as she continues, in spite of all the effort she puts in to hide the accent normally. She reaches out and rests what she must think is a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "We should have pretty free movement inside. There's a good chance we'll get cops before we're done, but that shouldn't be too hard to deal with. They won't know to send SWAT until later." It could just be the late hour, or face-numbing cold, but it sounds like she actually relishes the idea of the police showing up. "And getting out of the basement will be a breeze. We just break the gas main and walk out." She makes a finger-walking gesture with her other hand, walking her extra long fingers across a beetle's shoulder. "The basement and ground floor will fill up, and ignite itself when it finds the fire from the second floor. Easy peasy." She snaps her fingers and raises her eyebrows, "Oh! And keep an eye out in those breakrooms. I'd /kill/ for a trail of ants. Even just a few." She winks and nods at the door leading down. "Good to go?" "Yeah, well, fuck cops," Toru replies, patting his side where that scarring was. "Hell if it's just a fire alarm we might not even have that much to deal with. It ain't that I don't like the idea," he adds, reassuringly, "I just was so not prepared for this shit when I woke up this morning." He stretches his arms over his head, then, twisting his torso from one side to the other, and does a little jog-in-place. The tiniest of warmups. And then he thinks to actually take his lighter out of his pocket, flashing it to Thea briefly - bright blue, with an ironic peace sign in the bottom corner. "Let's get this done." "Good, I'm fuckin cold," Thea says with a grin. Her expressions flattens again though when she turns to the beetles - a commander addressing her troops. "Fan out, but pay attention. Don't ever be where you can't hear me. I want you four out front, taking point. Hercules, you're with me at all times." The enormous monster actually puffs up, sticking his chest out with pride, a strangely human expression for him. Maybe he's been watching too much TV. She points at the two left over. "You two trail behind and keep a look out. If Bo- If /Toru/ here gets into any trouble, you stick to him like glue." There's a chorus of deep, gravelly 'yes, ma'am's and with a nod, the first four start down the stairs. Downstairs, the top floor of this building is the fifth floor, and it looks like this is where the nicer offices are. Corner offices and others only slightly less nice, surround a collection of cubed secretary and assistant's desks. The 'boys' immediately go to work and Thea smiles as she finds herself walking calmly in the eye of the storm, stepping over debris and detritus, or sometimes just crunching through it. She stops to pick up a fax machine from a side table, raises it over her head, and smashes it down, splintering the shitty pressboard government furniture and breaking the fax machine into lots of fun little pieces. She doesn't seem any stronger really than a regular person her size, but she does like breaking things. "Go nuts, boys," she says as the beetles continue to fan out wreaking havoc everywhere they go. "You don't get this kind of exercise every day!" When Toru follows Thea's brigade downstairs, at first he seems a bit hesitant to join in the destruction. He does kick a few things over, following in Thea's wake, but when she tells the beetles to go nuts, apparently that's enough to get the younger mutant going as well. The handgun is once more crammed into his pocket as he pulls out his lighter, looking for /flammable things/. It being an office, it's easy enough to find wastepaper baskets that haven't yet been emptied - it doesn't occur to the teen that this suggests there might at least still be janitors in the building - and he grabs a few of those, pulling them into a small clump in the middle of a random cubicle. Once assembled, he lights his Zippo, setting alight a few sheets of paper in each small can, and while they do take a while to catch, it does eventually start a steady burn. He also spies a /stapler/ on the desk in this cube, grabbing that and heading out to find Thea, holding it up to show her once he's within view. "Hey, they got-- staplers. All metal and expensive-style. You find any microwaves?" Thea nods her approval as Toru joins in on the mayhem. "Now you're gettin' into it," she says with a wicked grin. Whatever damage Thea and Toru manage hardly compares to the massive destruction the beetles are bringing, but fun can still be had by all. When he asks about the microwaves, she looks up from the remains of the fax machine and then points at the corner of this floor, near the elevators. She crosses the distance with long, purposeful strides, stopping only to flip a long table over which held several neatly stacked piles of paper. When she reaches the break room, she waves to Toru and says, "Yeah, we got two in here. Crashing and smashing can be heard throughout the floor, but the two tasked with keeping a closer eye on Toru are doing just that, stepping in to lend a hand if he ever struggles to lift something, for instance. Hercules, meanwhile, followed Thea into the kitchen and is ripping down cabinets with his horn and hands, crushing up more IKEA grade wooden boards to go in the microwave with the staplers. While Toru follows Thea, he does pause by a printer, ripping open one of the paper drawers and kneeling down to crumple up some of the sheets. These also get set on fire, and the drawer shut most of the way - kept partially open to let air in. It isn't an overly effective fire, but eventually, with luck, the plastic parts will catch fire. But then he's in the kitchen, handing Thea one of his staplers, throwing another one he'd plundered into one of the microwaves, and looking around for other flammable things. "Kay would fuckin' love this," he remarks, perhaps more wistfully than intended, as he opens a cabinet marked 'plates'. And sure enough, inside is a pile of paper plates, which gets pulled out and dumped into the sink. He pulls a few from the top of the pile, lighting them on fire - and the ones left behind - before tossing them in the trash, but now that the staplers are out of his hands he's notably avoiding the general microwave area. "When I was little sometimes we'd like, tape a plastic bowl over the fire alarm when ma was cookin' something smokey. Though I guess there's a lotta alarms around here, it's like someone bought stock in the fuckin' company." Flames crackle to life in half a dozen different spots on the fifth floor as Thea and Toru consider the break room. Thea's eyebrows go up as she considers Toru's plan for the extinguishers but eventually comes to the same conclusion. "Yeah, that'd be nice, but you're right. Seems like there's a hundred just here." She shakes her head and swings the microwave shut, filled with stapler and cabinet chunks. "You might wanna step back," she says with a grin and dials up five minutes on the front panel. She waits for Toru to clear out if he wants to, and then presses start before quick-stepping out of the break room herself. The results don't take five minutes. In just moments, the sparking, spitting device shorts out at the fuse, catches on fire, and even the outlet in the wall starts smoldering. As if on cue, the fire alarms start going off as well, a ululating klaxon pulsing in everyone's ears. Thea claps her hands over her ears and laughs out loud, apparently thrilled by this turn of events. "No elevators for us!" she shouts to be heard over the noise. She nods at the stairwell access door next to the bank of elevators and Hercules crosses the distance in a few floor-thumping strides and punches the door open. It probably wasn't even locked. He just likes hitting things. With the door open Thea organizes the vanguard of four through mainly hand gestures -- 'Second verse, same as the first, but a little bit louder and a little bit worse.' When they head downstairs she winks at Toru and heads down as well, Hercules right on her heels. Needing no further encouragement, Toru is all too happy to book it out of the breakroom when Thea sets those timers. He’s busying himself with setting a few assorted things alight when the fire alarms go off, eliciting a surprised, “Jesus /Christ/!” from the teen. The lighter is closed and he instinctively holds his hands up to his ears, but it only takes a few seconds for him to get acclimated to the noise. “Fuck!” But then Thea is heading towards the stairs and so he jogs to follow her, grinning a little shakily when she winks at him, but following her eagerly enough. Though once he actually gets to the stairwell, his hand is once again on the gun - still in his pocket, for now - and he yells, “If there’s other people here they’re probably gonna be goin’ this way too, y’know!”, and points downward with his other hand as he follows the Bug Brigade downward. "Almost certainly," Thea calls back at Toru with another grin. On the way down they caught a glimpse of janitorial staff rushing down the rectangular stairwell, but no one seems to notice them right away. The group manages to tromp through the fourth and third floors with pretty much a rinse-and-repeat technique. So far, along the way Thea has managed to collect a plastic tiara from someone's two-drawer rolling cabinet, some dusty old mardi gras beads (purple), and $48 dollars in odd bills that she keeps trying to slip into Toru's pocket if she can manage it without him noticing. When everything is finished on the third floor she kicks over a couple of flimsy cube farm walls, and orders the front four to the stairs again. The four are down and on the second floor while Thea is still in the stairwell, looking back up to see if Toru is coming along. The two beetles on sweep duty are getting their last kicks in on third floor, so it's just Thea and Toru in the stairwell when the first floor door opens down below, just when Thea calls out to see where Toru is again, so she doesn't hear it open. She's leaning over the railing, craning her neck to look up, and is completely unaware of the security guard down below. The guard stops and his mouth drops open when he finds himself staring at one of the top ten most recognizable mutant terrorists, and realizes he has the drop on her. Her warrant is 'dead or alive', and Officer Friendly isn't wasting any time on warnings or Miranda rights. He draws his service pistol and cocks back the hammer, walking to the middle of the stairwell's drop shaft to get a clear shot at the back of Thea's head. The first few times Thea tried to cram that money into Toru's pocket, the teen turned to give her a weird look, but after a while he would just let her do her thing. He didn't really see /what/ she's trying to give him, but let the lady have her fun. He doesn't seem to be enjoying things /quite/ as much as she is, instead carrying out the plan with a more ruthless efficiency. Rather than looting, though, as they progress through the floors he's getting more cavalier about /breakin' shit/, shoving monitors off of desks as he goes by and, at one point, discovering that office chairs go up in flames /really well/. At that point, Toru gave up on the wastepaper baskets, instead piling paper on chairs and setting the fires /there/. Shoving the chairs under their respective desks to set those alight as well. But then! Thea is in the stairwell, so the teen follows behind dutifully, taking just a moment to look back at the mess left behind. Knocked-over walls, small fires, broken computers everywhere, and the teen does let himself grin a bit at it as he sidles in to stand next to Thea, raising his voice to shout over the fire alarms, "This is just like prom night!" And then /he/ looks down, and sees that security guard - who no doubt is surprised to see a second face out of nowhere - and his eyes go wide. Without even thinking, he /grabs/ Thea by her front, yanking her out of the way with little regard for how rough he might be, and pulls the gun from his pocket, firing two shots blindly downwards - he's keeping his head out of view - and hissing, "Shit! Shit shit shit!" Thea raises an eyebrow. "I'll have to take your word for it. Never went to pr-" She's cut off by Toru's discovery and then being yanked out of the way. She stumbles to the floor on her hands and knees, her normally cape-like wings in disarray around her. She looks confused and hurt until the gunfire goes off. The shots also draw the attention of Tweedle Dee and Gerald, the two beetles on sweep. They come charging out, assess the situation in a blink, and split up. One goes to yank Toru to the ground with Thea and cover both of them with his body if he can. The other just leaps into the drop shaft and drops the 10 feet to the floor, tackling the security guard. When he lands though, there's no sound of scuffle. The beetle just grunts and calls up the stairs, "S'ok. He dead already." And indeed, the guard is lying in a pool of his own blood. Either a direct hit or a ricochet from Toru's gun looks to have torn through his jugular, doing the job pretty quickly. "Bring me his radio," Thea shouts over all the noise, struggling to get out from under the protective beetle, and also help Toru to his feet again. Toru is, for a moment at least, difficult to pull upright. He was in an awkward position when the beetle pulled him down, and once he hears the other one’s assessment, all he can do is ask, “Shit, did I kill him? Shit! Shit fucking… /fuck/.” So when Thea goes to pull him up, he’s still in a mild state of shock for a moment, shaking a little bit before finally managing to snap most of the way out of it, though once he does stand, he’s a little unsteady on his feet. “I’m okay. I’ll.. I’m okay.” His grip on the handgun tightens, the weapon held close to his side, almost protectively. “To the basement now, yeah?” The big beetle on the bottom floor kicks the guard in the side and then grunts, apparently answering Toru's question as if it weren't rhetorical, "Yeah, he dead." He also takes the man's radio off his belt and carries it up to Thea as she also extricates herself from the beetle+Toru pile. At this point Hercules comes back out from the second floor exit looking perplexed in a very complex and human manner. Thea takes hold of the front of Toru's sweatshirt as if they were jacket lapels and and pulls him close to her buggy face. Unfortunately she still has to shout to be heard, even though the sirens are somewhat quieter in the stairwell. "You saved my life, Toru. I won't forget that. Not ever." She wraps her arms around the boy and hugs him whether he likes it or not, and then she orders everyone downstairs to find the basement. Immediately upon exiting the stairs the group finds itself in the building lobby. It's the kind of place with faux leather couches and chairs where you wait for the stuffy, standoffish receptionist to finally acknowledge your presence - the first line of defense against government wasting time and energy on helping the average citizen. In the lobby is the evidence of a hastily exited janitorial crew, and really nothing else. The elevators are dark, and probably the only thing anyone in this merry little band is interested in is the plain metal door across the lobby labeled: 'BASEMENT'. Toru is still a little too shaken up to protest the hug, but he does give Thea a bit of a weird look during and after. However, he also manages to force a smile, running his free hand over his hair and replying, just loud enough to be heard, "Yeah, well." It's clear he's still upset, but he does finally manage to pull himself enough together to follow Thea down the rest of the stairs. As they head out to the lobby, he does a visual sweep, holding his gun up at the ready, but when nobody shows up just yet, he makes his way towards the basement door. Shoving over a few of the armchairs on the way, kicking over a trash can, and overall just expressing his frustration in the form of destruction. Down in the basement things really aren't a mystery. Everything is supposed to be properly labeled, and if there's one thing you can count on a government office to do well, it's label and files things. It's a matter of minutes to identify the gas main coming into the building, jimmy the safety valves to not clamp shut, and then start breaking pipes open. Before long the basement is filling with gas, and it's time to go. The basement will fill in short order, and then start rising to the lobby, where all of the intervening doors have been propped open by your friendly neighborhood beetle-men. By the time the gas reaches the burning upper floors, it'll be enough concussive force to shatter the building like a child's toy. Just as everyone is heading towards the lobby again and patting each other on the back for having committed such thorough and clever mayhem, the radio Thea commandeered crackles to life. --Building security, building security, do you copy? This is the NYPD. Is everyone out? The fire department is on their way. Again, do you /copy/?-- Thea raises an eyebrow at the request, and then looks at Toru. "You saved my life once tonight already. How about I distract these guys while you get clear, and I'll catch up to you up at the north end of Roosevelt Island? We can take the beetle red-eye back home from there." Concern crosses Toru's face when the radio delivers its warning, the teen chewing on his lip with some concern as he considers the matter at hand. “You sure you got it under control?” He looks to the front entrance, shaking his head a few times, then turns back to Thea. “I’ll-- find a back door somewhere. Can probably get out in the confusion, yeah?” The teen takes a halting step closer to the older woman, holding a hand out to grip one of hers, tightly, in an attempt to be reassuring. “If shit gets bad, send one of the guys to get me. I ain’t gonna leave you behind, you got that?” "Oh shit, no," Thea says when Toru suggests finding the back door. "The place is about to go up like the fourth of July and there might not even /be/ a back door. Just let me and mine go out first, and follow behind us. Trust me. The cops are gonna be plenty busy." She gives the young man a wry smile and grips his hand. "Just wait for the signal," she says with a cryptic smile. Then she's striding to the front doors of the lobby like a regent in her great hall. The six new beetles fan out ahead of her, and Hercules sticks right by her side. The ones in front crash through the floor-to-ceiling windows and doors at a dead run, charging the three patrol cars and half-dozen shocked-as-hell police officers. Most of the cops dive out of the way as three of the beetles each get one car, and set about flipping it over. The other three are chasing down cops, and one unlucky woman has already been caught. She rises into the air, impaled through the belly by the beetle's huge horn. She lets out one bone-chilling scream and then goes limp as he shakes his head back and forth to dislodge her body. Thea hangs back slightly, but otherwise just stands and watches the disaster unfold before her. Tonight, she is a monarch. She has ordered these deaths. Her soldiers carry out her orders without thought. One of the officers sees her and recognizes her. He crosses the sudden battlefield and takes cover behind a trashcan, pointing his pistol at her and Hercules. "Call them off, Garretson! /Call them off/ and you live to see court." "No deal," she says quietly, and Hercules steps in front of her as the man opens fire. The weapon isn't nearly powerful enough to hurt the bug-man, and while the officer is distracted, one of the others approaches from behind and swings a car axle at the back of his head. The spray of gore is horrific, but Thea just puts a grateful hand on Hercules' back as the rest of them continue to chase down cops. Toru spends the first moment or so of Thea's carnage waiting just inside the lobby, pacing back and forth like a caged tiger, waiting to see /what/, exactly, the signal even /is/ before he can follow it. It is when that officer offers to let her live - and her rejection of that offer - that he decides that /that/ must be the signal; that, or he’s just too amped up to wait any longer. The handgun gets crammed back into his pocket, one less thing for light to reflect off of as he sneaks away, and sneak he does - crouching low to the ground, he’s always sure to stay /behind/ things, keeping as little distance between sources of cover as he can. This time, the scream belongs to Thea. Many things happen all at once. One of the last cops here has scrabbled his way into one of the overturned squad cars, and retrieved the heavy gauge shotgun locked up in the rack inside. He rolled back out of the car just as one of the beetles caught up to him on a mission to crush. But the cop rolls onto his back, braces the weapon against his shoulder, and fires at almost point-blank range into the underside of the bug’s grotesquely mutated jaw. There’s no contest. It blows his head off in a spray of black and gray, but even before the creature can topple, he begins to shrink and change before the eyes. Much of the fighting comes to a halt in that moment - the cops because they’ve never seen an obscene physical transformation like this, and the beetles because they can’t believe their brother is dead. This is when Thea screams. It is filled with rage, but mostly with hurt. She dodges past Hercules' protective security and sprints to cross the distance, but she’s not visible to him because the flipped car is between them. He comes to a knee and shoots at Toru who has suddenly become visible. One of the beetles was already running in Toru’s direction to protect the young man, and much of the buckshot just bounces off his carapace, but the officer fires two more shells before Thea gets to him, raining lead on the beetle man and Toru. The beetle trying to protect Toru finds his knee torn out by the low gunfire, and collapses to the ground, trying to make a low barrier for the young man, his last ditch effort to follow the orders of his queen. It is in this moment that Thea leaps over the car between her and the beetle-killing cop, descending upon him like an angel of death. She tackles him back to the ground, trying to wrestle the shotgun from him, but he’s stronger than she is. Hercules is doing his best to get there, but she’s so much faster than he is. He closes the distance as best he can, fifteen feet, ten feet, only five feet away, but it might as well be a mile when the shotgun goes off again. Thea looks down at her chest, shock and disbelief the only expression there, and then she collapses onto her back, displaying the crushing wound to the carapace of her chest. She looks like a bug that’s been stepped on, cracked and oozing red from a dozen places. Hercules is there in the next moment and steps on the cop’s head, but it’s already too late. All of the new beetles are already shrinking, presumably now lacking the vitality Thea had supplied them with. A clear thinking person in their right mind might demand why Hercules isn’t reverting in this moment as well, but he isn’t. And Hercules doesn’t ask questions like that. This was the last cop in fighting shape, so Hercules scoops up his queen, held as gingerly as he can, and rushes to Toru’s side as well. “/GO/,” he shouts. “We must go.” He tries to help the boy up to get him moving, cradling Thea’s limp body in the crook of his other arm like she weighs no more than a doll. Toru comes out luckiest in this encounter; the beetle shielding him protects him from most of that buckshot, though at least one of the pellets graze his leg, evoking a scream from the teenager as he crumples to his knees. As a result of that pain, he doesn't notice the gunshot that hits Thea, only /barely/ notices his guardian beetle shrinking next to him, and he's hardly capable of making the connection as to /why/ it’s happening. After all, Herc is okay! Which Toru only notices when the beetle man rushes to his side. Here the teen pulls himself to his feet again, favoring his right leg and just nodding dumbly. “Yeah-- yeah we gotta--” He shakes his head, looking at Thea cradled in Herc’s arms, and just opening and closing his mouth quietly. “Is she okay? She-- she’s okay, right?” He’s moving by now, heading north despite the regrouping plan now being moot, and limps heavily for a bit before something changes, and he manages to start running a little better, if stiffly. “If you can carry both of us, we really oughtta get in the air, man!” Hercules shuffles along as Toru works at getting his feet, and replies to the question, "No, no she not fucking /ok/. Come here." He reaches an arm out to scoop up Toru on the opposite side, makes an odd flexing gesture to deploy his wings, and takes a couple of running steps before launching into the freezing night sky, squeezing frozen droplets from his eyes as they fly. "Which way? Don't know… the fucking way." Hercules’ voice is pure, helpless misery. Toru allows himself to be scooped, wincing a bit at Herc’s words, and shaking his head a few times. “She’ll-- she’s fine. You’re just a bug, what the hell do you know?” His tone has more pain to it than malice, and once they’re in the air he whips his head around, trying to get his bearings. Once they are acquired, he points off in the appropriate direction, waving his hand a little. “That way. The way we came, remember? Jesus. Be /careful/.” He tightens his grip around Herc’s arms, just shaking his head a few times as he watches the ground below them. “We gotta get outta here,” is his last remark, mumbled under his breath. The beetle follows Toru's directions and ignores his words born of hurt. He just flies on into the night. Just as they've nearly left Roosevelt behind, the forgotten plan finally comes to fruition. Firetrucks from three different departments struggle to get across the bridges, even at this late hour, and so no one is really on site when the building is engulfed by concussive fire. The ground floor explodes outward like a bomb, and the four floors above, already weakened by dozens of fires, collapse down onto the foundation, nothing more than a burning pile of rubble. Hercules doesn't even look back, he just keeps focused on the directions Toru gave him and eventually the dim lights of the island come into view. The droning of Hercules' wings grows louder as he puts extra effort into making as soft a landing as possible just in front of the porch to Thea's cabin. He sets Toru on his own feet, but nods at the young man to come inside with him. Once there, he lays Thea out on her bed, and the creature actually chokes back a sob when he sees the extent of Thea's injuries in the light. Blinking, Hercules glances around the spartan cabin as if looking for something, and then his shoulders slump when he doesn't find it. He slides down against the wall until he's sitting on the floor, putting him nearly eye-to-eye with Toru. His big black eyes look distressed, and he shakes his head. "S-sonic. Gone too. Thought maybe..." He pulls his knees up and wraps his arms around them, just sitting quietly. It's at this moment that Thea draws a ragged breath than ends in a wet, hacking cough. This is not the breath of the recovering, but the final gasps of one not long for this world. She turns her head, and reaches limply first to Toru, then to Hercules, beckoning them both closer. “Maybe.. maybe he’s with the boss.” Toru followed Hercules into the cabin without any argument, though he seems to have to force himself to actually step inside. He’s standing at the door for the moment, but when he hears Thea’s breathing, the teen lifts his head hopefully. Toru doesn’t need any further encouragement to move to the woman’s side, kneeling next to her bed and tearing his jacket off, followed by his hoodie - this, he drapes over Thea’s chest, an attempt at providing some comfort. “Hey.. hey, don’t move, yeah? Save your strength, just.. just lay there.” He gulps, closing his eyes for a moment, and shakes his head. “We’ll.. the boss is probably better at this stuff, I’ll get her and she’ll fix you up.” With the chest wound covered by his jacket, it’s easy enough for him to ignore just how bad the prospects actually are. Nonetheless, rather than going to leave, he drops a hand to hold Thea’s in an almost viselike grip. “This is stupid, you’re better than this.” Hercules comes as well, but he doesn't take her other hand, he just kneels at the edge of her bed, hands clasped in front of him like a child saying his evening prayers. Thea swallows hard and shakes her head minutely at Toru's reassurances. "No," she whispers. "I'm already gone. I can feel it. But don't let them get me, Toru. Herc." She coughs in a spasm that looks and sounds as if it's tearing apart her body from the inside out. When she catches her breath again she says, "They'll cut me up, and… and…" She drifts, and then her eyes refocus again. "See that I'm cremated, here on the island, ok? Just promise me that?" “Y.. yeah!” Toru is quick to answer, reassuringly, but then shakes his head again. “But you can’t--” He grips Thea’s hand again, just staring at her for a long moment, but then he finally just nods, once. “I’ll… Kay can do it. If he won’t, I will. It’s a promise.” With that said, he finally lets go of Thea’s hand, pushing himself to his feet with a wince and stepping back from the bed. “Herc, do you…” His hand is waved vaguely in Thea’s direction, but either way the teen steps away, to give Hercules some room, should he want it. Thea nods, barely, when Toru agrees, and then smiles up at Hercules as he shifts over to take her hand. He holds in both of his, and then brings up to press her palm against his cheek. He was never her lover, but he loved her anyway. "Why I still here?" he chokes out between hitched breaths. She just smiles up at him and shakes her head. "Because you're my beautiful boy." She cups his cheek with her hand for one last moment, and then she's gone. Outside on the porch, there is only cold air, and a harsh breeze coming in from the winter ocean. That is until a rustling from the bushes alongside the cabin. When Toru steps out the front door, a questing, curious creature emerges from the undergrowth, peering up at him with it's dark eyes. A pill bug the size of a terrier, looking lost and alone. It struggles to climb the steps, until it can finally curl up, leaning against Toru's legs. This is enough to cause the teen to just drop to the porch floor, leaning up against the outer wall of the cabin and wrapping an arm around Sonic, rubbing the little bug’s carapace absently as he stares off into the distance.