ArchivedLogs:Serving Justice

Serving Justice
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Eric	Wednesday, April 1, 2015 Warning: Violence. (Part of future past TP.)
Location <NYC> Clinton
Despite its rough and tumble reputation of old, Clinton has come far from the illegal gambling and shakedowns of Prohibition, and the gang warfare of West Side Story. Clinton has now become the industrial supply center for midtown Manhattan, with hospitals and the light industrial and commercial businesses required to support so many thousands of people. The neighborhood has become quite expensive, but many actors still cram together in small apartments due to its proximity to Broadway. Tonight it’s pleasant. Warm and springlike, only barely even jacket weather even now as the sun sets. Dusk is in jacket /anyway/, a lightweight ankle-length trenchcoat thrown on over his jeans, heavy black boots, plain grey tee; it hides his wings, more or /less/, though in a very ungainly hunchbacked kind of way. Distinctive as they are, though -- and /wanted/ as he is -- some hiding is better than no. At the moment he’s leaning up against the railing of a short staircase leading up into a grungy apartment building, cellphone in one hand, cigarette in the other. He exhales a stream of smoke from his nose, tapping at the screen of his phone. There’s a video now pulled up on it, low-resolution security camera footage of the inside of a holding cell. A pair of cops, one currently kicking at the only barely-twitching body of a beaked feathery-winged youth on the floor. Dusk tips the screen outward. “-- You sure we’ll find ‘em here.” It’s probably a question, though it’s half-muttered around the cigarette that bobs between his lips. “Have I lead you wrong before?” Eric’s voice is bemused as he pats Dusk on the back, once. His clothing is much more casual - a pair of blue jeans and an almost offensively generic white tee. His attention shifts from his phone back to Dusk’s, then up to his face. “Staked out the place myself. Trust me, they’ll be here.” Eric’s grin is a friendly, pleasant looking thing that belies the hard look in his eyes. “Remember, Núñez probably has his gun, yeah? So, we make sure ta get him, first. We don’t want to start a shootout, since I ain’t sure either of us’ll make it out if we do.” His grin widens, and he chuckles to himself. “Pff. How many times have you been shot, man? How many times have /I/ been shot. Though,” Dusk admits with a quick snort, “flying you out of here quick /would/ be a little bit harder with a sucking chest wound.” He shuts off the screen of his phone, slipping it back into his pocket. “Not really feeling the /attention/ a shootout’ll draw, though,” he does allow. “I got a fucking date tonight, hard to get to those bleeding or in handcuffs.” “Yeah. Usually those end with bleeding and handcuffs for you,” Eric says, shouldering the other man gently as he chuckles at his own joke. “C’m on, let’s get goin’.” The ex-police officer steps up the stairs first, one hand going to his side to pull out a small black stick, about a foot long, with a steel rounded tip at the end of it. He leads the two of them up the stairs three floors and then down the hall, stopping in front of a door with a rusted 403 poorly nailed to the edge of it. He steps to one side of the frame, nodding at it. “Only the really good ones,” Dusk answers, light and amused. He trots up the stairs after Eric -- /inside/, he sheds his trenchcoat, draping it over an arm to shake out the enormous wings behind him. He drapes the trenchcoat absurdly casually over an arm, stopping outside the door to draw in a slow breath, head turning as though listening to something beyond it. A faint tightness pulls at his jaw, and he draws back a half-step so that he can lift one booted foot and slam it forward, kicking the door in with enough blood-fueled strength to not just open it but send a shower of splinters raining down, the doorframe rattling from the effort. Inside there’s a sudden flurry of /commotion/ as four men who /were/ just sitting down to crack open beers and play a hand of poker are suddenly on their feet -- two of them, not one, are already reaching for sidearms at their hips A third is reaching for a /phone/. “Internal Affairs!” Eric calls as he rushes into the room after Dusk. “Hands up, hands up, get ‘em up!” His hand comes out with that small stick in his hand, swinging it forward though he is still far from the men. As he swings, the baton expands with a rasping metal sound, locking out into a foot and a half long metal rod. Eric heads straight for the two armed men, barreling towards them with baton out to the side of him, whipping it towards their midsections as he rushes them down. Dusk doesn’t bother with weapons -- none that he doesn’t come already /equipped/ with, at any rate. He leaves one of the two armed officers to Eric, but the heavy spar of one enormous wing tsnaps out hard, a resounding /crack/ of snapping bone accompanying its connection with the second gunman’s hand. There’s the deafening boom of gunshot in the moment before his wing connects, though if it’s /hit/ him it’s hard to immediately see. His wing lifts afterward, sharp upper claw spearing up through the soft underneath of the man’s chin. His other wing is spreading, hard and fast, snapping out towards the windpipe of the man with the phone. The other armed officer is levelling his gun on Eric; at close range there’s only so much room to /miss/ as he pulls the trigger, though his aim is somewhat off (about shoulder, not heart) at the /thump/ of baton into gut. His elbow slams upward towards Eric’s face as the last of the four rushes Eric from behind, burly-strong arm reaching to try to curl around the (ex-)cop’s neck. Eric lets out a loud grunt as the bullet thuds into his shoulder, but it doesn’t stop him from lifting the baton to snap it into the underside of the gunman’s chin, then left to smash into his hand. The gunman’s elbow probably would have connected if not for the force of his bullet shuddering through Eric’s body. The ex-police officer tosses himself backwards against the heavy arm wrapped around his throat, thrusting off of the floor with a grunt and driving the top of his head towards his assailant’s face, his weight against the other man’s upper body. The hand that is not gripping the baton tightly briefly reaches backwards, but has little strength, thanks to the bullet in that shoulder. The gunman reels backwards with the force of the baton blow, his gun dropping to clatter to the floor. The man behind Eric is crushing his arm in more firmly; his grip only seems to tighten with Eric’s headbutt, though now his nose is dripping blood down against the other man’s hair. He shifts his grip just slightly to try and turn Eric /just/ a little bit more towards the gunman, who is reaching out to try and wrest the baton from Eric’s grasp -- admittedly, not as successfully as he /would/ if he hadn’t just been smashed with it in his good hand. Dusk’s teeth are baring sharper and fiercer with the spilling of blood in the air, a low growl rumbling deep in his throat. His wing flexes in a sudden hard curl-shove to /throw/ the man who’d had the phone /towards/ the man who is trying to wrestle the baton from Eric, an inhumanly-strong hurl that sends one man reeling into the other. It’s clear /now/ from his movements that the gun did find a target in him, only a graze but a deep one torn out of his flank. Eric struggles with the man in front of him, and does finally lose the baton when Dusk’s toss adds weight to the gunman’s grip on his baton. This, however, frees up his good arm to ram his elbow back into the man behind him. Immediately afterwards, with a loud growl, Eric’s hand wraps around his arm and he drops suddenly into a squat, trying to pull the man behind him head-over-heels over onto the floor on top of him. “Son of a bitch!” The man does go tumbling, over Eric’s head to kind of /pile/ on top of the other two men that have just gone down, leaving a /trio/ of tangled forms trying to extricate themselves and get back up at Eric. Dusk, meanwhile, has the other gunman still at him -- this time not with a gun but with one of the beer bottles the men had been drinking, smashed against a table and wielded in true barfight fashion with the jagged ends slashing towards Dusk. Maybe more weakly than he /would/ be if there were not a copious amount of blood dripping out the underside of his face. Dusk hisses soft as the glass tears at one arm; his wing slams forward again, talons this time raking hard and deep across the man’s throat. Eric grabs one of the chairs that the men were sitting on and brings it down, hard, on top of the pile of three men. “Stay down!” He bends down a moment later to pick up the gun off of the ground and aims it at the pile of men. “Gimmie a reason,” he says, aiming down the sights with a steady hand, as he rolls out the injured shoulder with a hiss. “You shot me, only seems fair.” “He’s /given/ you a reason.” Dusk is pulling his phone back out of his pocket, replaying the video on it even as the man behind him is gurgling his last gurgles. He tips the screen out towards the pile of men, crouching down to bring it to eye level. “They were /kids/. You know Lana had a little sister she was taking care of? No parents, just /her/. And you motherfuckers trying to sweep this shit under the rug,” he’s talking to the other two piled up with Núñez, now, “you’re just as fucking bad. But you go tell your thug buddies that even if /you/ won’t do anything to stop this kind of shit? We fucking will.” His wing brushes gently against Eric’s back, though there’s a very faint tremble to the touch. “Just do it and let’s get out of here.” “See ya in hell, Núñez.” Eric says, and he pulls the trigger. It seems his training hasn’t been completely forgotten, as the bullet goes straight through the police officer’s forehead, splattering brains on the other two officers and the floor. Eric looks down at the other cops and shakes his head. “Ya swore, just like I did, to serve justice. Coverin’ this up just makes ya dirty cops.” Eric gives them a disappointed look, and then turns around to head back out through the door, his wound already starting to knit together. “Come on, Dusk,” he murmurs under his breath. “Let’s get ya a couple blocks away and then you can get’a drink.” Dusk’s eyes linger on the two remaining cops for a moment -- who seem kind of /debating/ the wisdom of continuing this fight, but look at Dusk’s enormous wings and the gun in Eric’s hand and their two compatriots spilling blood onto the floor and evidently decide better of it. Dusk wraps a wing around Eric’s shoulder, hand curled in against his side, which is very much not healing up like Eric’s do. “{Yeah, alright, Brother,}” is in tired Spanish, here, as they leave the bloody scene behind them, “{I think we could both use a drink.}”