Logs:Cops and Robbers
| Cops and Robbers | |
|---|---|
cn: a little bit of death | |
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia
|
2024-10-01 "Officer down!" |
| Location | |
After some of the zany and perplexing and disorienting and horrific arenas that some of the games have had, perhaps it is anticlimactic that this one looks like an extremely ordinary field, just a nicely-tended plot of grass, green and neatly mowed and soft underfoot. Even more underfoot it's been heavily undergirded with a neat powerful grid of electrical wiring -- not that that probably matters to most of the people here, but it's humming and lively to someone's senses, anyway. Mojo's cheerful announcer voice has gotten no more pleasant in the time here. No more pleasant today, particularly, when he comes into view overhead he seems to be in a mood, so far as these things can be told. His horrible wide smile is even wider, his harsh rasp even raspier. "You all," sounds like an accusation hurled down at the competitors, "are way more entertaining than some hideous hairy water dog. And you're going to show them -- you're going to -- nobody appreciates the lengths I had to go to, the research I had to put in -- there's real Earth grass here! Where else do you get verisimilitude like this! It's not cheap secondhand content, this is fresh, original --" He cuts his rant off halfway through, turning his smile out to the stands. "We've got a classic today, folks. A real earth classic. Should be easy for our heroes here. Catch the badguys --" Here, a spotlight is shining down on the BROTHERHOOD of EVIL MUTANTS, "-- and put them in jail!" There is no jail, but a cheerfully red and purple cordon appears to rope off a corner of the field, a blue and yellow one on the other side. "Cops and robbers, they call it. Tag a badguy, put 'em in JAIL! Brotherhood, catch the cops that caught your friends, you can jail 'em in your buddies' place." There are bright electronic bracelets appearing on the contestants' wrists -- unsurprisingly, glowing YELLOW AND BLUE for the COPS and RED AND PURPLE for the ROBBERS. "Put 'em all in jail, you WIN. Easy, right? But just to keep the pace quick --" He's pointing to a countdown timer, appearing in the cheerful sky. "Two minutes without an arrest, your whole team LOSES. Anyone gets tagged three times or stays in jail two minutes -- yer out." His smile has gotten much, much brighter here. "Happy hunting." And the first several minutes have been almost, in fact, easy. Maybe the silly playground atmosphere is not so silly and so playground as it would be if they were not all exhausted battered captives here. Maybe it is not so silly and so playground as it would be without Pyro's overly theatrical crowing when he's put Beast in jail (again) (lightly singing fur with a fireball does count as a Tag, evidently, according to the careful tracking of the bracelets which so very helpfully buzz loud and track the Number Of Outs and YOINK the contestant to jail upon any successful contact) (-- probably the fireballs themselves are not all that silly either but the fur doesn't hurt, right? Right!) This early, there's no real lead, just yet, but even so Beast is clearly losing -- maybe it's the bright blue fur or maybe the pompous attitude that has made him a particular Brotherhood favorite, because he's the first by a wide margin to make it to Three Tags. The buzz this time is louder, accompanied by a stark flash across the scoreboard as his name is crossed out. He doesn't make it as far as jail -- just crumples where he stands, limp and slightly smouldering from the sudden surge of energy the bracelet sent through him. "Ohhhhh," Mojo is crying, overhead. "Officer down!" Probably even under entirely different circumstances, Jax's heart would not be altogether into being a Cop, here. In these circumstances maybe even less so, although he has largely evaded Tagging as yet via simply being invisible. He's come back into view somewhat abruptly after Beast goes down, eye fixed not on his fallen teammate but on the once-more reset countdown clock overhead. His mouth presses into a thin line as he watches the stark two minute timer start over again. A shield flickers up around him -- and then his other teammates on the field, too. There's a small flutter of bright lights that whirl to life around him, starting to scatter outward like will-o-wisps -- but then the little orbs of light and the shields both fade. His shoulders tighten, his hand scrubbing down against his face. He looks up at the clock again, silent. In most circumstances Ion's heart is very into being a Robber. He has (unfortunately) already been responsible for multiple Tags -- including (also unfortunately) that Very Last hit on Beast. The very helpful and totally extremely fair electrical grid underlying the playing field has meant that he is spending a lot of time not extremely taggable himself, and as such he has been temporarily discorporated the moment after actually tagging the fuzzy blue X-Man -- he's reappeared right beside Jax a moment after the Blue Cop goes down, just inside the shield that the photokinetic puts up. It's Jax and not the buzzing that draws his eyes upward, his hook dropping back to his side a half-inch shy of reaching out towards the other man; there's still a crackle of electricity sparking around it, though the sparks stop short of actually making contact with Jax. Thank god. He's blipping back -- far back, halfway-across-the-field-back, a moment later, his eyes riveting on the inert lump of blue fuzz. Then the clock overhead. He hisses sharp and hard through his teeth, and he's back by Jax's side a moment later. "{You gonna fucking blow, Firefly?}" Scramble had been cooling her heels in X-jail, not looking too concerned about the length of her sentence. Her faith is quickly rewarded when Ion avenges her ignominious capture. She was mid-teleport when Beast got eliminated, and reappears where her game bracelet deposited her on the Brotherhood side of the field. She's immediately running again, looking for targets, but then her eyes follow the gazes of the others to heap of blue lying on the field. "The fuck." Is that a question, comment, or insult? We may never know. She moves toward their fallen opponent, eyeing the other X-Men to be sure they're not ready to pounce. She doesn't get as far as checking for a pulse -- it's an open question whether she'd know how to find one through all that fur -- but drifts to halt when she sees the updated scoreboard, her mouth pressing into a grim line. "Ain't none of us gettin' out of here 'less someone wins." Mystique's bracelet counts 1 stint in jail so far already, which no doubt she is deeply offended by. She is not in jail at the moment, though, dropping down to light a short distance from this huddle, the wings that bore her here retracting as soon as she has landed. Her eyes flick up to the clock, too, and then narrow on the X-Men. "Is there a question here? Ion, you could end this foolishness in a heartbeat." Up until -- well now it's been a few seconds -- ago, Scott was taking this game of tag at a leisurely pace, measured and unhurried if not exactly easygoing. Probably it helps that he could tag anybody in (literally) eyeshot pretty easily -- if fireballs count then surely so do eye-punches, right? With this logic he has mostly been pacing around the sidelines, head on a swivel -- actually, quite in the spirit of Policing. He pulls to a short stop just before he can collide with the suddenly-manifested shield, hands flexing at his sides, a surge of complicated emotion that spasms across what little of his expression is visible. While Heather's first tag was also on Beast, with a slap and a declaration, ("That is for trying to two-time on me with a twin! I should have known that blues would stick together!") now she feels a pang of regret when Hank goes down and makes no sign of moving. Her eyebrows shoot up, the blur of her motion comes to a stop and all she can manage to add is an ad-libbed and flat, "Oh no, my secret husband." She glances towards Mystique with a small frown at the moment, and then says to Scramble, "Elimination of such a large contingent. Perhaps if we end it completely the consequence is not deadly?" This last thought (hope?) sounds less than convinced. Jax's jaw tightens at Mystique's comment, but he doesn't put the shields back up between them. He just glances across to Scott, and then back down to Beast's fallen form. There's a fiercer heat pulsing around him, and when another shield does go up it isn't actually protecting anything at all -- just a half-dome that ripples slightly overhead, very slowly growing like a slowly expanding bubble until it dissipates into nothing. Jax has gotten several shades paler, though the heat is still fierce. "Either way," he's saying uncertainly to Heather, "there's more'a you than us, if -- it'd at least..." His brow just creases here. He doesn't look back up at the clock again. There are several more shields sprouting overhead, more complicated structures now, fanciful and aimless where they build and re-build themselves in the air. "{I need a minute, then I'll -- Be good.}" "Shit, you see the size our field today, zafada? {Ain't none us getting out here we lose wrong, too.}" Ion is watching the clock, real damn close. And the blessedly so-far-untouched numbers on both his and Jax's bracelets. His tongue sucks hard at his teeth as the clock counts down, and as it dips lower he huffs. "You got two, Sunshine, {work fast}." He pulls the other man in close, pressing a firm kiss to Jax's forehead. There's an extra jitter in his arm when his hand drops down on Nothing, Anymore, other man blipped away from the hug, just a shower of sparks scattering from the end of his hook when he lowers it. "Fuck. You want come free your boy, Punch-Eyes, two fucking minutes." Scramble's expression does not change. She looks at the clock, too, chewing on her lip. Then just lopes across the field at a leisurely pace -- toward Scott though staying well clear of him. Not that distance would actually save her with his reach. But she isn't going for him just yet. "Fancy math only gonna keep up so long, and not even that long if they get bored." Mystique raises her eyes to the empyreal structures forming overhead. Her arms cross over her chest, her own shoulders tightening. "You ought to listen to your president, Storm. The math is simple enough. Let the boy bleed off his sunlight and then put your husband in his place." She turns her hand upward in an indifferent shrug. "The derby ended when you won. Perhaps Heather is right and we will just walk out of here. And if not --" Her eyes track after Jax towards the yellow and blue corral. "We can more easily afford to lose two than five." Scott is walking toward Scramble, too, though he's also keeping clear of her, taking a somewhat circuitous path to his fallen teammate, apparently not too worried about being tagged (he has two lives to go, at least) and popping a squat next to Beast's furry blue form, eyebrows pinched worriedly. "Three," he says. Heather shakes her head when she frowns down towards Hank again, answering Scott with, "Two." She shakes her head, "I find no fault with Blue Mystery's calculation. I'm sorry. The math has spoken." A blur overtakes her outline for just a moment before she blurs towards Scott in a weaving pattern, though does not quite approach close enough for the tag, more acting as a potential distraction. Jax is still, presumably, very much in the jail. The jail is taking on quite a life of its own, over in the corner. A whole forest has sprouted and blossomed and then withered back away; it is growing elaborate crystalline walls and then deconstructing them again, the intricate shield-structures are sprouting and unsprouting. In other circumstances, maybe it would be quite a spectacle, but here it probably does not warrant nearly as much of a second glance as the still-ticking-down clock above them. "Your man gone, hermano. Shit we can do for that now." While Heather weaves into motion Ion has appeared in front of Scott, flesh hand extended like he's offering the other man a hand back up. The glowing bracelet on his wrist is stark enough reminder otherwise, though, bold red-purple and accusatory in its labeling him a CRIMINAL. "Is the living still fucking need you." There's a small crackle of energy that sparks between them as Ion's hand reaches for Scott's -- and maybe, despite Ion telling Scott to get his boy, it serves to quite clearly mark this tag as contact in one direction and not the other. The Brotherhood plays dirty, after all. The jolt-kick that accompanies it is familiar, a sudden crackling surge and when it's over Scott hasn't gone anywhere, an entirely pointless expenditure of teleportation energy discorporated and reincorporated exactly where they started. Ion glances down, looks faintly relieved -- for just the briefest of moments. Overhead, the familiar fanfare is beginning, a triumph of red and purple. "Yo," he's saying to Scott, "just look after Bear till --" But that's as far as he gets. As the scoreboard overhead is shuffled, crossed out, the small explosion from the X-Men's "jail" corral in the corner rumbles the entire field. It overshadows the the sharp cutoff buzzing from the bracelet that crumples Ion -- now lit up bright yellow and blue around his unmoving wrist. The one that now sits on Scott's, slightly singed in fractal lightning-patterns, is still glowing in boldly EVIL purple and red. | |
