Logs:Bringing a Gun to a Giraffe Fight

Bringing a Gun to a Giraffe Fight
Dramatis Personae Cyan, DJ, Halim
In Absentia	2024-12-28 "-- it's trying to eat us," "No," Halim speaks up flatly, "you're going crazy."
Location <NYC> Unspecified Side Street - Lower East Side
The temperatures in New York have steadily been rising over the last few days, thawing away last weeks snow leaving the streets bare except for a couple of small patches of rotten ice in the shadiest of corners. As usual the Lower East Side is a busy area, people rushing to get everything ready for the upcoming New Year’s celebrations. But in this particular side street it is quiet, a soft mist rising from the half-thawed ground as it meets the warmer air, leaving it looking like something out of a mystery novel. And then in the middle of it there’s a giraffe. A wobbly mascot head with two large eyes each focused in its own direction. Its ossicones have been replaced with two festive horns made from strips of foil, making distinct sh-sh-sh-noise as it moves. The sweater the mascot is wearing is very festive -- white with several eerily smiling anthropomorphic pine-trees -- and the pants are very distictly Santa-like, with the bottom of the feet duct-taped to a pair of massive combat boots. Cyan’s not wearing a scarf today, but his gloves makes up for the lack of gaudiness by seeming to be made purely out of golden sequins and the words “Snack” written in black velvet on the back of the hand. At chest level he holds a sign with the words: Shop at Doctor Griby’s (PhD) New Year is “Coming” Written with a thick, almost menacing, handwriting. Halim is looking as unremarkable as Cyan is eye-catching. Plain jeans, black canvas jacket unzipped over a grey sweatshirt, a black beanie pulled low around his ears. His hands are shoved in his pockets, his head ducked low as he threads his way through the mild-weather crowds outside. Here and there, as he trudges down the sidewalk, there are signs of his wake -- subtle but there for those paying acutely keen attention. A surveillance camera turns the other direction a few minutes ahead of schedule. A pair of Sentinels decide to backtrack onto a different street. In a nearby apartment with a view to the street, a young woman's video chat hitches and drops. He is conveniently, then, in an island of temporary anonymity flowing through one of the most heavily surveilled cities around when he comes to a stop. He's not looking at most of the giraffe but he is looking at the sign. Frowning at the sign. One of his hands actually leaves his pocket just so that he can mime tiny air quotes, somewhat unconsciously at his side as his mouth moves in silence. He still isn't making eye contact with the actual giraffe holding the sign, mind. “Ehem...” Cyan clears his throat, getting ready for his well-practiced sales pitch. “You interested in locally-sourced wool? Artisanal rocks? Fairy tales and urban folklore? At Doctor Griby’s-” He does a sharp inhale as he gets ready for the next part,”-PhD, we have what you’re looking for provided we have it!” He forces a smile, even if it’s not visible through the giraffe head, the Doctor was quite insistent that what mattered was the vibes of it. “It’s down there, through the red door.” He points down an alley that very much looks like the sort of place people get murdered. "I have my own sources for local wool." Halim speaks in a monotone, his eyes still not leaving the sign. "What makes a rock artisanal." His hand has stopped making small air-quotes, just dropping now to his side. He is finally looking up -- past the giraffe, to the alley and its strange veiling of mist. He turns his attention finally to the speaker, not really noticing the activity higher up in the alleyway, where a number of figures in tactical gear are getting themselves into positions on surrounding rooftops, quick and quiet. "Does this pitch work on many people. It seems dangerous." “They’re kidney rocks!” Cyan beams, putting on his best positive-sales-face behind the mascot head, if he's noticed anything going on there's no indication of it. “And yes, the pitch works-” he doesn’t sound overly convinced, but a job’s a job and he’s got very clear instructions to not be negative, “-we’ve had six customers today and none of them have died even once.” He leans in slightly, taking on a very clear tone indicating this-is-a-secret-for-just-the-two-of-them, “to be real, the Doctor might seem dodgy, but he’s got some really good stuff on sale, especially if you're interested in books." "I have read most of the books. That sounds unhygenic." Halim's frown is growing, the longer Cyan talks. "Are you hallucinating. Am I hallucinating." This is maybe a question. At least it is phrased as a question, but his inflectionless voice doesn't give other indications as to whether he expects an answer. It is perhaps ill timing that just about now is when several of the dark-clad commandos are swarming down off the rooftop -- is it the skinny sallow man or the gaudy giraffe they think is going to be a terrible threat? It's clearly one of the two, because there are a lot of drawn guns even as one is firing a large and mildly electrified net at the pair. Probably it is not going to do much zapping through the giraffe suit, but where some of its thin wire strands actually touch Halim's skin he is twitching, his batting only getting him more tangled, which makes him more twitchy. Probably this should be more disgruntling than it is -- and maybe he is feeling it, but his expression is just the same sour scowl. "See. Dangerous." The giraffe screams, a throaty yelp of surprise, and immediately Cyan is squirming, doing his best to get away. Slipping out of his giraffe head and the all too large sweater he finds his upper body free, while his feet are trapped, getting more and more entangled and zapped with every move he makes. He hasn’t been wearing his face masks while working today, the giraffe mesh being protective enough as it is, so what is revealed is a startled grey face, a colour quite similar to the singlet he’s been wearing under the whole getup, with green streaks of sweat evaporating as fast as they appear. “Fuck fuck fuck!” he’s in full panic mode, for normal people that tends to mean fight, flight or freeze, but for Cyan it means undress. Whoever these guys are, whatever is going on, he is not going to let anyone grab him without risking a serious case of the loonies. "Not that one," one of the commandos is saying -- behind the dark helmet his voice sounds faintly irritable. Two more are coming in close and maybe their intention was just to extricate Cyan from the net as it depowers, but somewhere in the squirming and screaming one of them is clapping a hand directly against Cyan's newly-freed head. This probably shouldn't under normal circumstances lead to the man pulling back, turning his hand this way and that in the light like it's a particularly meaningful havdalah but here we are -- one of his teammates is yelling at him, another is swooping in to try and grab Halim and Cyan as well. Halim is grabbed easily enough. He's just gone deer-in-headlights still, save for the twitch-twitch-twitch of his eye before the current stops running through the net. The second man who tried grabbing Cyan is starting to hyperventilate, though. "-- it's trying to eat us," he's not staring at Cyan anymore; judging by the direction his blank faceplate is turned he is looking at the giraffe head. "No," Halim speaks up flatly, "you're going crazy." This doesn't seem to help the situation, startlingly enough. Maybe it is the swarm of black-clad military bros that trigger DJ's well-honed spidey senses. Probably the screaming helps, too. He does not look particularly threatening as he detours from his path to lunch and appears in the mouth of the alley -- an extraordinarily bland figure in khakis, neat pale-blue button-down, a brown suede jacket. The Mendel Clinic ID clipped to his belt is flipped around at the moment, his name not visible, but the side that is visible identifies him as part of their medical staff. The way he stops, blinks at the chaos, takes a half-step back, could easily be mistaken for a typical bystander panic. He isn't reaching for his phone in well-trained millennial fashion, though. His hand drops to a small beltpouch tucked unobtrusively next to his pager on his hip. His eyes are flicking in rapid assessment over first the men actively assaulting Halim and Cyan, and then the many others still stationed on the rooftops. "-- who's the -- giraffe?" is the first question he directs toward Halim. Unlike the other two’s remarkable calmness about it all, Cyan is flailing. His brain has shut down, all thoughts of who and why filed away for a later date, all his focus being on getting away. It doesn’t take him long to kick off his boots-- and with them the pants so carefully duct taped in place to keep them from dragging along the ground-- leaving him barefooted and in his boxers. In the chaos a fist catches his jaw, sending a spray of blood and saliva flying as he staggers to the ground. "Don't touch him," Halim says, instead of a proper answer. It's just about right after he has said this that some of that blood and spit speckles onto him. He's already very tense under the net and only gets tenser, here. "... oh." He tries to lift his hands to cover his eyes, as though this might forestall the weirdness that is inevitably about to come. Unfortunately his hands are fairly entangled with net, so this does not accomplish much. He closes his eyes oddly complacently, only to open them again when the Hyperventilating Bro (in a panicked effort to get away from the strange bitey monster he is sure the giraffe head has become) crashes into him, sending him toppling back towards Cyan. "Oh." Somewhere in the mess down here, the panic is spreading. The unaffected shooters on the roof are taking aim. Taking aim with what, again? Where DJ had been standing now there's nothing at all -- an odd flickering person-shaped blur, hazy and difficult to track, that was heading straight for Cyan and the heart of the storm. He pivots on a dime at Halim's warning. Instead the blur has gone higher -- the shooters on the roof very abruptly are divested of their guns, the weapons disappearing from their hands in turn. The weapons appear in a stack nearby, several rifles mangled to the point of uselessness where they've embedded into each other in a tangled heap. In the midst of the chaos Cyan has extracted the giraffe head, grabbing it and holding it up between him and his assailants as if it’s somehow going to protect him. “Don’t touch me!” he screams, trying to get the world to stop spinning, pushing himself as close to the wall as possible. The sight of the giraffe head moving now is really riling up Hyperventilating Bro. He's pulled out a gun of his own -- suppression darts, at least, and not regular bullets -- and is thoroughly letting the giraffe have it, for all the good that it does. "Those don't work on aliens," one of his teammates is hissing. What does work on aliens? Evidently smearing some identifiable grey muck from the sidewalk onto his helmet as though it's a protective sigil. Then running away. The rest of the bros are staying, though, determined to do their job even in the face of new insanities. They are not doing it all that successfully -- two of them have started wrestling each other. One has successfully commandeered Halim -- even put handcuffs on him! -- before instructing him very earnestly to tell "the Rogue Sentinel" (they're pointing to Cyan, here) to stand down. The bro who had just punched Cyan is edging closer to Cyan, now. "It's okay," he tells the ex-giraffe in what is surely meant to be a reassuring tone, "we're gonna end all of this soon." Halim, meanwhile, has transferred his fixated frozen staring from straight ahead of him (horizontal) to straight ahead of him (vertical), lying down now on the cold ground under the mesh. "He'll end all of it," he tells nobody in particular, confident. The blur has blinked back down into the center of the chaos. The net vanishes, and doesn't reappear (except perhaps to those with X-Ray vision, who can see it embedded in a snarl in the sidewalk.) Two of the nearest bros also find themselves displaced, set a short distance away (just outside the red door.) It's now that the blur resolves itself back into DJ -- giving an uncertain look first the commandos who are fighting each other, then to Halim on the ground and then Cyan against the wall. The hand that he has lifted does not settle, just yet, on anyone to teleport next, but it's very obvious at even a small glance that this limb isn't flesh at all, a festively painted plastic prosthetic glittering with silvery-tinged snowflakes on a frosted blue background. There were several other pressing questions that maybe were coming to mind but instead, slightly perplexed, what DJ actually asks is: "... why are you in your underwear?" Cyan blinks, his senses coming back to him now that no one is actively hurting him. For a moment he simply stares at the giraffe head in his hands, his right eye twitching a little as he thinks about how disappointed the Doctor will be. It takes him a moment to realize that the question is directed at him, his gaze darting nervously around, trying to assess what’s going on. “I was stuck.” he points at the red Santa pants, still duct taped to his boots but now free of the net. "Paradoxical undressing," Halim confidently and wrongly opines. He is a little bit shivery where he lies on the ground, opening and closing each eye in turn, now, in some very badly constructed experiment to test what part of the nonsense he is seeing is real. "The New Year is 'coming'." He does not make the finger quotes, this time -- his finger is pointing towards a patch of nothingness over his head that he's staring at intently -- but he strongly implies them. Several of the rooftop bros are descending -- one is rappelling down the building, two seem to be equipped with some kind of hovertech. One of the hovering ones is pulling out his suppression gun -- he vacillates just a little bit on where he should be aiming at before shooting one of the darts in Cyan's direction. "Sorry," DJ is replying immediately, before reaching to grip Cyan's arm very briefly, with his prosthetic hand. They are abruptly both shunted just a foot or so to the left -- the dart that had been aimed for Cyan is quivering in the wall. "I know you said --" He's jumping again, this time to take the suppression gun away from the man -- he leaves the man himself dangling from beneath a fire escape ladder, where his body armor has gotten thoroughly enmeshed with the bottom rung, " -- don't touch but --" Another blurry series of blips, and the other HoverBro is stuck, soles of his boots solidly in the concrete. "-- that stuff sucks." He's landed again in one place, crouching to offer his other, meatier hand, out to Halim. "What is going on." Cyan twitches at the touch, and even more at the sudden feeling of not being where he was, opening and closing his mouth several times to give a reply before deciding it’s pointless. Putting the giraffe head back on, he hunches down and half-crawls over to his boots, one of his feet is bleeding, leaving a small trickle of blood on the ground where he steps. Another good reason to get his pants on before running away. Suppression darts, commandos, internally he goes through his list of people who might be gunning for him only to conclude it’s not him this is about, none of his problems have these kinds of resources, or if they do this is not how they’d go about this. His eyes fixate on Halim just as he starts pulling his pants and boots back on grumbling angrily “Fucking asshole dragging me into your shit what the fuck man, what the fuck!?” Halim is not helpful in clarifying What The Fuck -- he's very much off in his own world just at this moment. Somewhere nearby there's a loud crash and several angry horns. In a slightly different direction there are sudden excited squeals and the sound of many rushing feet. A man passing by the mouth of the alleyway is vociferously cursing his cellphone. Across the block, two Sentinels are busy grappling each other for no apparent reason. "What the fuck - what the fuck," Halim echoes, quiet and monotone. "What the fuck." DJ scoops the technopath up against his side. His eyes are skipping between the loopy and confused commandos who still remain, obliviously in their own worlds now. His mouth presses thin. "I suspect he also didn't want these guys to..." he starts mildly, but then decides against finishing this thought. Instead he's giving Cyan an uncertain appraisal, up-and-down, his brows creased deep. "Are you going to be safe? You don't need --" He glances to one of the commandos, doodling absent patterns on the sidewalk with a fingertip. "I guess they're not hurting anyone." “Of course I’m not going to be safe!” Cyan snarls, putting one arm out indicating at the suppression dart still in the wall grabbing his sweater off the floor finally getting himself to an acceptable state of half-clothed. “Just get your buddy away from here before more of these assholes show up!” He wobbles a little as he stands up, taking in the scene, then sighs deeply before running off, darting to the red door in the Murder Alley and slipping inside. "Very unsafe person," Halim contributes. He's kind of oozing in against DJ's side. DJ just shakes his head. He and Halim both vanish, leaving the commandos to -- whatever it is they're doing, now. Possibly some of them will check out the artisanal rock options. From inside the door a voice can faintly be heard shouting "Doctor, customers for you outside!"