ArchivedLogs:Preying

Preying
Dramatis Personae Isra, Jim, Anole, Anna
In Absentia	2014-03-16 WARNING: bloody violent. (part of Perfectus TP.)
Location <NYC> Bronx
The northernmost of New York's five boroughs, the Bronx... well. You might get shanked. It's a typical late-winter afternoon in the urban armpit that is one of the Bronx's scattered residential neighborhoods. Edging on warm, with the sun bare and baking against the brickwork and pavement, it's brought out a few hoodlum teenagers to lurk around outside corner stores, a few others hanging on a front stoop up the street, able to strip down to opened jackets and hoodies. Cars rumble by at intervals, though light enough to permit a more leisurely jaywalking for the errant native on their route from one location to the next. Jim is not outside in the weather; he's taken up position in an abandoned rowhouse in the middle of the block, creating an entrance of a back door from an alley behind the strip with use of a crowbar and a lack of compunction. Upstairs in a back bedroom, from a lawn chair dragged in off the curb, he looks out through the window at a house across the street - a very normal house set amongst its brothers, two-story, some wear. Dressed in shorts and a hawaiian button-up shirt, unfastened far enough to expose the white undershirt beneath, his hair has gotten the look of a man that's spend a fair time away from full toiletries. In the corner of the room, a rumpled sleeping bag is littered with a few empty cartons of Chinese take-out and a few water bottles. Urban camping. Clad in a lilac wrap dress, massive gray wings folded over her shoulders beneath a leaf-green shawl, Isra looks like a herald of spring come early. She is unpacking a canvas tote, which, clown car-like, continues disgorging more cartons of fragrant Lebanese food onto the shaky fold-up card table among the other essentials. "I was not certain what you would find palatable, so I brought the whole spread. Anything you do not want or cannot finish, I can take to the Lofts, after all." She pauses and shoots an appraising glance at Jim. "I still feel that a remotely monitored camera would serve just as well. All the same, have you made progress?" Chk. Jim's own camera - a Nikon D3200, easily the most expensive object he owns - makes a quiet insectile click, following a young man that had paused outside the house across the street, "Don't get me wrong, lady," -- chk --, "I love a good camera. But for all I've seen against all I've snapped a picture of," he turns away from the window finally to meet Isra's glance dead-on, brows raised while exhaling, "they miss things. Call it a trust issue." Of technology. He approaches the table like it's one more tableau to investigate, frowning and circling around the outer side of it, darting eyes over each item and touching an edge of a food carton with an awkward sort of care. Rotates it, moves on to a different one. Mumbles downward, "...you uh. Weren't one of those that had a strange - issue with dreams a few weeks back were you?" He pulls a different carton closer, stoops to smell it. Dip a finger into its interior. Lick. A smile quirks Isra's mouth, flashing sharp, white fangs. "Believe me, I am familiar with the issues involved--if on a rather different scale of time and space." She empties the bag and folds it neatly on the table beside the row of boxes and tubs. "I have utensils in my satchel if you need them, but all of this was made to be rolled up in flat bread, or just scooped up in your fingers, if you prefer." She rearranges the shawl around herself, eyes snapping to the window to which Jim has lately been devoted. "The sheer /obscurity/ of this operation gives me some hope. If his captors are small-time amateurs, our prospects for reaching him are considerably better." "Fff, yeah," Jim rolls his eyes towards the ceiling - the sky above, the black void, presumably, beyond that, one side of his upper lip peeled back in some sort of grin-grimace, "Guess you astronomy types are long-game stakeout artists." Finger food seems agreeable to him, selecting finally some small green kabibble - a stuffed grapeleaf, perhaps - to scissor loose a bite of. Slowly, seemingly inevitably, his eyes return to the window, the house just visible from this current angle. "...just the three. Same steady number there ever was. There was a, uh --" He gestures with his food, "Truck. That swung by but uh." For a moment, something hardens in his jaw, pausing his hands. … then they resume, casual and flat-mannered, murmuring down to the food in his fingers, "How're /you/ in a dust up?" "We like to think it's the longest game there is, though I'm sure there are physicists or philosophers who would argue otherwise." Isra's shrug rustles her folded wings. She tears off a bit of bread and swipes it through a tub of hummus, then fixes unblinking green eyes on the building in the window while she eats. After some rumination, her reply comes quiet and low, two voices speaking almost as one. "I am not much good at range, but quite...efficient in close combat." She leans on the word 'efficient' just enough to make it sound deeply unpleasant. A low rumble lingers in her throat after she finishes speaking. "Not a lotta places closer than indoors," Jim opines. There's no rumble to join Isra's - there is, for a moment, no sense of breathing at all. Instead some inanimate creaking of greenwood from somewhere beneath his clothes. His flesh has grown a grayer, darker color, the deep lines and scars of his face splitting and hardening to treebark that makes the whites of his eyes and faded blue of his iris absurd and stark. "Three men." His head slowly shakes, and he tosses the last piece of his dolmas back into the carton it had come from with a soft scoff. "'Kay." Wipes his mouth with the back of a wrist, "Let's go." And, he turns towards the door, "You see guns, get in behind me. 'm fuckin' immune." If Isra is surprised at this turn of events, she gives no sign of it--intentional or otherwise. She merely finishes her food and wipes her clawed hands daintily before falling into step behind Jim. "I shall keep it in mind, but I make no guarantees if they threaten the boy." Removing her shawl, she ties it around her waist and leave the excess to flutter behind her with the slow, steady swish of her tail. Across the street, the house is looking quietly as houses do. A plain brickfaced rowhome at the end of a row of houses, bricks city-dingy to a muddled greying hue rather than its original red, shutters peeling, shades all drawn inside. A tiny balcony outside one of the second floor windows, three steps up to its front door; around the unadjoined side there's a second door leading inside as well. There's been a stretch of quiet for a while, but now the side door is opening, disgorging a stocky-burly dark-skinned man for one of his typical frequent smoke breaks. Coming out the front door across the street, Jim uses a foot to hold it open for Isra to exit. He uses the time to fish out a cigarette, lighting it behind a cupped hand while he clumps down the few short steps to cross the street, asking as he goes, "You got this guy?" "Yes." Isra sinks down on digitigrade legs, dropping half a foot in height as she moves out of her target's visual range, shadowed by the building. She approaches the corner on the smooth, silent gait of a stalking predator, and pauses to give Jim a fractional nod. One of her ears rotates toward her mark, waiting for his footfalls to walk away from her. As soon as he turns his back, she darts around the corner and hooks her left wing around his neck, yanking him back whiplash-quick and pinning him to her body. The sweep of wing shadow flashing over the pavement matches a break in Jim's stride, darting forward with shoulder braced down to bounce the door back open. He snaps out a hand to catch it before it hits the wall, making a quick scan of whatever might be inside with cigarette pinned between his lips. The man Isra grabs turns out to be less easy to /yank/ than one might expect, a sturdy-strong conglomeration of muscles that seem to offer /far/ more resistance than one might expect from a man of his size. There is, almost immediately, a sudden /tearing/, his gloves first and then the shabby canvas of his jacket starting to rip clean through. Where one would expect hands to be his limbs are /unravelling/, un/coiling/ into a writhing mass of tentacles that are making shredded-quick work of his clothing. One long tentacle, freakish-strong, snakes upward whipcrack-fast to coil around Isra's neck and yank /her/, tugging /upwards/ to try and lift her of his back. Where his other arm once was (and now is only a snaking writhing plethora of /extra/ limbs), another tentacle snaps out sharp and strong to grab at /Jim/ and yank him back from the doorway -- through the entrance there's little of interest to be seen. A mud-room filled with coats and shoes, a doorway leading past it into a kitchen (the pleasantly herby smell of basil-oregano pasta sauce wafts out from inside.) The walls are all oddly paneled, not quite a standard housing material but something strange and plasticky-reflective. "What in the /fuck/," the man is barking sharply. Sharp and loud. A barely audible growl rises deep in Isra's throat, but she does not thrash or make any violent movement at all. She merely extends the thumb claw of the the wing already wrapped around the man's neck, pressing it into his skin enough to let him know she could make him bleed. "I think we've a similar question for you." This comes out only as a whisper, but he's near enough to feel her breath. "What have you done with Anole?" The growl never abates, but there is a tensing in her muscles as she runs low on air. Jim's morphology twists inhumanly as well, when it's seized on; hard as oak, a second snarl of fabric ripping with an eruption of thick thorns and spears - SOME into the tentacle grabbing onto him. Hauled from the doorway, he reaches up, locks his fingers around the tentacle as well and fingertips /too/ then extend, finger joints transformed to solid wood like a locked vice. "With who the fuck." The man's tentacle tenses /hard/-sharp as well, constricting tight enough around Isra's throat not just to cut off air but to dig the sharp hooklike barbs in their suckers painful-prickly against skin. "Crazy fucking bitch --" His words cut off in strangled hoarse cry, tentacle /thrashing/ -- perhaps deliberately, perhaps in /pain/ -- to slam Jim up against the brick side of the building. His other tentacles writhe, too, a shuddering flailing that does not /loosen/ his grip so much as just /spasm/ it against the others, barbed-hooks and all. "The /boy/," Isra snarls, scraping her wing-claw against the man's neck. The writhing, thrashing tantrum cuts off whatever else she might have said. She has managed to bring one hand up to the her neck and is working her talons in between the tentacle and her neck, trying to take off some of the pressure. Her other wing has curled around to slam its knobby thumb joint against the man's forehead. "If you have harmed him, I /will/ tear you apart." No breath, no vital pulse of oxygen, Jim is crenellated with treebark and thorns, sinking in his feet - expanding, warping out at the ankles to flow from his shoes and brace his center of gravity with knuckling roots that seize into the pavement - and lurching away. The fingers sunk into the tentacle sink deeper, deeper, like talons without limit. And where they sink, they expand. Hard-faced and single-minded, if left to his own, he'll /start/ tearing off pieces right now. "Kkkhhh," is all the man says, rough and harsh. The slam of wing against head sends him reeling backwards; his tentacle wrapped around Isra's neck lashes outward at the same time, /dragging/ the woman away from him with a harsh /scrape/ of talon against neck that leaves a sudden bright red flow to leak down his neck and chest. The fingers digging into his tentacle tear and rend at flesh, denser and stronger than most normal flesh but, ultimately, still yielding to sharp thorny talons. The man doesn't make a move to stop this; in fact he drags his tentacle /back/ in a jerk that /finishes/ the job for Jim, leaving the other man free and hanging on to a bloody dismembered length of tentacle. It's already starting to knit itself together where the torn-off stub remains, flesh slowly closing up even as blood seeps out of the torn skin. His tentacle around Isra releases, after it's torn the woman away from him, lurching her into the air but then leaving her there as he scramble-falls, dripping blood still, back through the open doorway. "-- Get /out/," he's yelling -- hoarse, wheezy -- at someone inside. "Get out get /them/ out." Isra rips the tentacle from her neck even as it is in the process of releasing her. Her wings beat down hard, propelling her up and forward through the doorway, knocking the man to the ground if he wasn't there already. She does not stop, however, but launches herself off of him--not excessively careful about where she braces her feet--and into the kitchen. Throwing aside a chunk of tentacle - splut - Jim is right behind Isra, ducking under her wing when it passes over his head and snarling, "-- it's fucking /mutants/!" There's a creak and crackle of branches either drawing in or breaking off with movements plants are not intended for. "Other /fucking/ mutants." The man is already reeling backwards to trip-fall against the floor even as Isra comes in over top of him. His tentacles whip out over his head, coiling tight around Jim and Isra's legs to yank them down and back -- but once they've been yanked his grip is already starting to slacken; the thick spurt-flow of blood from his torn neck is weakening, joined by new thick red holes against his chest where Isra's talons pushed off. Further into the house there is movement. Past the kitchen an (also rather ordinary-looking) sitting room, with another man, broad and tall and thick-muscled, hurtling down the stairs from some upper level; there's a wiry-hard woman, lean and ropey and redheaded, hurling herself off a couch. Both heading for a door in the side of the room, thick and heavy with thick heavy /locks/ on it. The tentacles halt Isra's momentum briefly, but she fans her wings again and plows through the kitchen, knocking over errant cups and containers. Bright green eyes zero in on the man and woman even as she makes for the living room. She rips a lamp from an end table as she passes and hurls it at the woman, aiming to slow her down and catch her. Jim skids past Isra into the room, and then charges past to slam bodily /towards/ the man in the room, arms out as though intending to pin him to the locked door. The woman is not in the least slowed down by the lamp -- possibly because the lamp, when it reaches her, passes right /through/ her as though she were air, to crash and shatter instead against the far wall. The grazing ends of Isra's claws do much the same, slicing in through nothing and /leaving/ Isra with a /handful/ of nothing to hold on to as the redhead -- does not bother to open the door, just phases herself straight /through/ it to vanish onto its other side. Jim's skidding charge is similarly met with nothing, though not because his quarry is intangible -- simply because as Jim charges the man's speed veers radically higher, a sudden /zooming/ rush that leaves Jim charging /at/ the closed door while the man, now blurry-speeding in behind him, slams a shoulder hard up towards the broad flat of Jim's back. Roaring with frustration, Isra turns her ire on the other enemy in the room. She catches his arm, mantling her wings wide in case he could try to dodge her as he had Jim. "Get through that door!" she commands, voice low and gravelly, as she tries to pin her opponent down, bringing her other hand in to tear at his face. Slammed into, the speedster will find Jim a very hard target; no bones nor soft flesh, with hands that have struck down against the wall instead of their target, he's braced as a tree trunk and will feel similar. This also means roughly as swift, blocky joints having to reform, muscle fiber softening from unelastic plant fiber, in turning his head. So much said, in just a look; Jim's glancing to Isra for only a moment, while he leans back weight onto one foot, roots expanding again to brace this foot in PLACE, fists spreading out to either side for balance. His final foot SLAMS down on the door, hard. And repeatedly, if necessary. Creeeakcrack. The wood is sturdy-hard and the first slam shudders all through it but doesn't give -- there's a small crackling of splintering around the hinges, though. The other man is starting to pull back from Jim -- at largely normal speed, now -- but his slowly-building momentum finds only Isra's wings to contend with, Isra's arm halting him before he can build /back/ to his previous fierce burst of speed. When he's pulled down he goes down swinging; his other hand comes up in a sharp-/fast/ slam, the blade of his hand moving towards Isra's throat. His writhing lashing struggle leaves Isra's talons tearing at his shirt when her hand closes around his arm, ripping open the buttons on his button-down as he tries to get a booted foot up in a hard strike towards her leg. Beneath the torn shirt his body is heavily scarred, a number of lines that look more like surgical incisions in their neater healing than like tears won in combat. His face turns to the side, aiming to protect at least one eye as Isra's claws rake across his other. Crrrrreeakcrack, creak-splinter-crack. The repeated thuds find the door crackling, showers of splinters gradually beginning to fall away from the hinges until the bottom one finally /gives/, swinging the entire heavy door crazily inward to send its top half swing-thudding down towards Jim. Beyond, stairs lead downward into the cool cement of a cellar. Isra meets the man's strike by snapping her wings shut around him, pulling him much too close for either his hand or his foot to do much damage. This also cuts her attack on his face short, leaving three shallow gashes on his cheek. However, it does put his shoulder within convenience /biting/ range, and she sinks her fangs into him with a snarl. All while Jim plunges downwards in the background, an arm thrown up over his head to protect from the spinning door, clumping down the stairs at a semi-suicidal speed that skips a few steps, nearly misses the next, throws out an arm to grasp for whatever might be balancing below - and sweeps his eyes across this first view of the world downstairs. In close quarters, the man has little room to build speed but even without the added benefit of metahuman abilities he is just /strong/, built /solid/ and tough. His arm curls around the back of Isra's head as she bites down on that shoulder, yank-dragging her /inward/ rather than trying to pull away from the sink of teeth; his other hand has come up in a hard bar against her throat, pressing in hard enough to restrict blood flow. Down in the basement there is, at first, oddly /standard/ things. A washer-dryer unit (with a basket full of fresh-laundered towels beside it), a water heater, a circuit breaker, floor unfinished cement, exposed supports running up to the ceiling. To the left side of the stairs there is a door presumably leading outward, it is at least fashioned in the heavier-duty mode of external doors, but the way to it is currently blocked by stacks and stacks of packing boxes. To the right, past the laundry area, there are three doors in the far wall. Two closed, one open. Emerging from the open one, the woman is currently half prodding, half /shoving/ along a teenage girl with jet-black hair and jet-black /skin/, hard-rocky in its irregular appearance; there's cracks in the obsidian surface of her skin through which a red-orange /glow/ shines through, fierce-hot like magma running beneath the cracked rocky exterior. The girl is stumbling uneven-unsteady. Trip-fall against the floor; it seems like an effort to drag herself back up. Possibly because one of her feet is missing and most of one arm from the elbow down, as well. There is an almost /methodical/ savagery to Isra's attack now, fangs ripping deeper into her opponent's deltoid even while he is strangling her. She works her right hand up inside his grasp and tears into the softest tissue she can find, probably somewhere in the clavicle area, though she cannot quite see what she is doing. Her wings remain folded in around them both, but the outer one has some room to maneuver, and with its massive thumb talon she slashes blindly at the man's head. Jim stands, flatfooted, in the way of the red-headed woman and her hobbled ward. Covered over in hard bark and wood, spines and sharp edges sticking out of his shoulders and elbows, his faded-blue eyes. One of his hands is - in a pocket. His head is shaking slowly, whistling low. "Freaks preying on other freaks. Lady." From his pocket he withdraws - his cellphone. And raises it up, facing the camera out towards the woman. "You're something else." He begins to walk forwards, to the thumping from upstairs, eyes jumping from the staggering girl, back to the redheaded woman, "The fuck kind of business you running here." The redheaded woman downstairs doesn't even balk at Jim's words, nor at his camera. Instead she leaves her quarry on the ground and leaps forward, the baton in her hand clattering down right /through/ it as she lunges at Jim. One hand reaching (oddly /intangibly) for his cameraphone as her other shoots out towards his chest. Upstairs, her remaining partner is breathing ragged-harsh through clenched teeth, gritted hard against the pain of his tearing shoulder. His other arm stays slammed up tight-hard against Isra's neck; though the arm she tears at is starting to weaken in its grip the /hard/ forward /press/ of his arm in close quarters keeps the pressure up well enough even with this weakening backboard; as long as she /stays/ pressed up this close the pressure doesn't seem to be slackening there. His head ducks and turns inward, half-shielded against /Isra's/ shoulder for this slash, talon raking to leave a bloody streak cut into his short crop of hair that, as head wounds are wont, immediately starts bleeding far more copiously than it has much right to. Isra digs her claw into her opponent's chest as she struggles to free herself, feet kick-scraping against the floor now. She buries her face in the wound she has dug into his shoulder, seizes a mouthful of flesh, and /twists/ her head to the right as violently as she can. The real aim of this move becomes obvious as her left horn rips into his bicep, though she will gladly take a chunk out of his forearm if she can get hold of it. Jim's fingers close around the phone; and then gnarl, swell, melt together as a tree might swell and envelop if put into fast-motion of years, decades. His bark thickens, flakes, peels away and replaces in cycles of accelerated cell generation, branches expanding, growing leaves, growing /seed pods/, dropping them, roots pouring out from shredding pant legs. The ominous creak and crunch of expanding branches and leaves is almost bone-like. A basement is no place to house a rapidly expanding tree, and when his roots pour up against the washer and dryer, the remaining closed doors, the water heater, they begin to warm and swallowing up the manmade surfaces, slowly shoving them back. A hand passing into his body will not find the soft squish of lungs, nor throb of heart. Only a lingering mammal warmth in a texture of plant fiber. His blue eyes remain coldly watching from the center. The woman doesn't actually even try to grab the phone. To human nerves there'd be an odd tingly-cool sensation to her hand passing /through/ the enveloping thickening bark of Jim's -- to plant fibers, who knows what it feels like. But she does not aim to /grab/ the phone, only to shove her hand deep into the enveloping mess, phase-shifted fingers raking /through/ the machinery to leave a short-circuited fried /mess/ of the electronics housed within Jim's barky hand. Her other hand fishes around inside him; finds nothing to fish. She steps back -- back towards the girl on the ground, instead squatting down to shove a hand into /her/ chest. The man under Isra lets out a strangled scream; as long as Isra's head is in close enough proximity /to/ him to be /biting/ there's not much relieving of the pressure on her throat. At least not until her horn tears down into his flesh; /then/ he scrambles back, dragging a bloody trail out from under her as he tears a chunk of his flesh clean /off/ in his haste to pull himself free, scraping up to his feet. Isra rolls into an inhuman crouch as soon as the man pulls free of her. She is a horrific sight to behold: tousled, breathing hard, cat green eyes staring wildly from a bloody face, the red standing stark against slate gray skin. Spitting a piece of her opponent out, she lashes at his legs with one hand and the opposite wing. Hypoxia may throw off her aim, but she clearly has little concern for precision at this point. It is hard to say whether she is even intentionally herding him toward the splintered door, or if she merely wants to make him stop moving. Not all, but many of Jim's branches pull in when the woman withdraws from him, slurping in like dry, straining noodles. The more his face reforms to human expression, the more it's one of unbearable human strain, bared pearly human teeth strange set in a semi-wooden face, the tendons in his neck standing out in throbs, thrusting forward an arm to spear it through the woman. Not seeming to care whether it phases through her or skewers her wetly. The branch slips through the woman like mist, passing through her untouched. The girl on the ground is screaming, though; a strange grating noise that doesn't /stop/ when the woman pulls her hand back free. From upstairs there's a strangled yelp as the man backs up; he's easy enough to herd as he's /running/ from her, increasingly fast as he bolts out of range of her lashing limbs. And then turns right back around to charge forward again, a zoom of hyper-speed as he aims a blurring-fast headlong /roll/ straight towards the membranous part of her outstretched wing -- towards and likely /through/ at the speeds he moves at. Not that he's looking for any more fight. Just /bolting/ for the door too fast to really even /track/ visibly, leaving a spattery trail of blood in his wake. At the yelp from upstairs the woman spits out -- something, in this state the motion of her lips makes no noise. Leaving the girl still writhing on the floor, she bolts as well, straight for -- and then /through/ -- the exterior wall. Isra snaps her wings back rather than try to corral the panicking speedster any further. As he passes her, she looks quite tempted to give chase, and even hops to her--still unsteady--feet in preparation of the same. The grating scream from downstairs, however, snaps her out of predator mode. She knocks the remnants of the door aside and descends the steps in a few long hops, coming up short when she encounters a dendriform Jim. Her ears press back against her skull when she sees the girl lying on the ground, and she picks her way around Jim's roots to reach her. Having done so, she seems at a loss for what to do. "We'll get you help," she says gently. Casting an uncertain glance over her shoulder at Jim, she gestures at the two closed doors with one wingtip. Jim is dragging together the expansive flora as swiftly as is possible, hands in fists and stooped over so that the first sound from him when he has lungs is a snarled, "Aaaghh/fuck/." Not pain exactly, but rushed effort, he looks instantly at his fritzing phone and swears, "-hazy bitch had a fist through her chest. Stirred up her insides." He has the forethought to /try/ a door to see if it's unlocked, but if it's not his shoulder is applied with abrupt-hard impacts like a controlled tantrum. "Killed my -- hff! -- phone. Might have a picture. Dunno. Anyone dead," the door is open by now one way or another, slamming open, "upstairs?" The girl doesn't answer Isra's assurance except with a low pained moaning. The door down here is already open when Jim tests it, perhaps in preparation for the woman to herd her other quarry upstairs. One of the other two rooms is bare and empty (though bloodstains are splotched dark across the concrete floor); in the other, the room beyond is -- fairly exactly what it was in the painting of Anole. The boy himself is huddled, backed up against the wall, wide-eyed and trembling, on the mattress in a corner. When the door opens he just /shrinks/ back against the wall, shoulders curling inward on himself. At least, one shoulder. Where his other one /should/ be his sweatshirt just hangs loose-limp over nothing underneath. Isra's tail starts swishing rapidly again at Jim's explanation, though she gives no other sign of agitation. "We must take them to the clinic," she mutters, fishing a comically oversized smartphone from a hidden pocket of her dress. "My driver can pick us up." She does not even bother making a call, merely swipes a few words with a stylus before putting the device away again. "I do not know, but if the--the first man we encountered remains, he'll not be giving us any more trouble. Let's get out of here." As gently as she is able, Isra scoops up the injured girl. Standing where he is, with his back to Isra, looking into the room with its sole occupant and the window and the mattress and so much seen already, Jim seems for a moment to have missed with Isra said. -- it's a short delay, "--right." And one foot after another, he goes into the room.