Logs:De-tergent

De-tergent
Dramatis Personae James, Joshua, Scott
In Absentia	2023-09-29 "Leave it for the police to find that’s tampering." (cleaning up after robbery gone sideways.)
Location <NSW> Cave Beach
When the world reappears -- they are far from the sirens and chaos, far from the dirty crowded streets, far from any sign of a Duane Reade. Instead there is bright sun (clearly rising rather than the downward-creeping afternoon sun they had just left), a long strip of beach uncurling to either side of them, rocky swells rising behind them. In the mouth of a nearby cave a few people have evidently set up camp, a trio of small tents, a camp stove, a few beach chairs. There's a young woman in the water not too far distant, waiting for the next swell; at the camp, another young woman and a young man who both look up and then proceed to look startlingly unsurprised when they notice Joshua returning with one two strange men (or one strange man and one gorilla.) Joshua does not lead Scott and James close to the camp. They get parked a very much non-conversational distance away -- and then he disappears. But only for a moment, barely long enough for them to start wondering if they have been abandoned on this strange beach. When he returns only a handful of seconds later, he has a small trunk with him (PROPERTY OF NYCAM, it reads on several of its faces). It's Scott he's turning to first -- looking to Scott's burned hand, to his cheek -- then to James. Back to Scott. His brows have gone up again, in pointed question. Scott's tinted glasses seem to be doing him no good against the sudden bright sun -- he has a hand up already to block the glare as Joshua blips off. He does not seem started by Joshua's reappearance; he is shrugging off his ruined motorcycle jacket, and -- after a moment of thought -- his blue flannel too, though fortunately the layers seem to have protected him from any more chemical burns than Joshua has already noticed. "Hold-up at Duane Reade," he says. "Kids making little Drano bombs. Nothing special, but --" he's jerking one thumb at his companion -- "I think they got freaked by Clark Kent over here. Get him --" he gestures vaguely at the burns on James's chest -- "figured out first, I can wait a bit." James turned, looking out at—a Beach?—a sudden wave of nausea hit him. “ Where?—“ He doubled over, throwing up on the sand. He groaned miserably. THAT was something he never wanted to do again. When he stood back up fully, he looked at Shades and the other man apologetically. “ Sorry..” James noticed that his shirt was in bad shape, and it was starting to rub against some of his chest burns painfully. The slick red fabric was singed, peppered with holes and ripped near his collar. He tore at the rip until it split from his neck down and fell to the ground. There was no saving it anyway. Joshua takes a step back as James throws up, his lips pressing hard together. His brows go up further. It's hard for him to look any more displeased with the situation, at least; his default expression already looks kind of mournful about the general state of life. "Are you sick?" It's the first thing he's said, and this is directed at James. He's getting out a face mask to put it on before the man answers, though. Gloves, too. Scott gets a very large plastic bottle from the tub -- sterile saline -- Joshua is attaching a nozzle tip to the bottle and tossing it lightly to his team leader. "Rinse," is the only direction Scott gets, with a gesture of Joshua's gloved hands towards Scott's injuries. Then, a second bottle, a second nozzle -- Joshua does not hand this over to James. He's scrutinizing the singed fur with a critical frown. Scrutinizing his bottle with a critical frown. Looking at the fur again. His mouth twists to the side, one nitrile-purple forefinger tapping at the side of the bottle before, with a small lessening of frown, he's looking to the ocean. "Drano bombs?" is probably not what he's thinking, but it's what he says. Scott catches the bottle with a slight grimace, but without complaint -- as requested, he is rinsing out the wounds on his right hand with gritted teeth. "Detergent bombs too," he says, then, succinctly, "Kid turns things into bombs. He got his cousin pretty bad, too." “I— no..” He wasn’t sure why he got sick. He could only guess maybe it had something to do with his sensitive nose taking in all those detergent fumes as well as the quickness at which things unfolded after this whole crazy shit show had ended. James followed Joshua’s his gaze, he wasn’t sure exactly how to treat burns himself, but he could tell where this could possibly go. "-- His cousin? Why?" This pulls Joshua's heavy brows back down into a slow frown. "Those the kids you want to find?" There's a habitual gruffness in his tone when he's asking these questions of Scott, and though it doesn't entirely go away when he turns his attention back to James, it's been tempered down into something milder. "Stress hits people different ways. Sounds like -- a hell of an afternoon." He taps the base of the saline against his palm and then continues: "I'm Joshua. By the way. In my other life I'm a paramedic. I could try rinsing all those but I'm worried it could make things worse if any of the chemical stays trapped in your fur. Do you, uh. Know how to swim?" Probably, behind the glasses, Scott is blue-screening at the simple question of why? "Huh. I guess his cousin got himself pretty bad, actually," he says -- now, for the first time, he is glancing at James with a wry look. "Yeah, those are the kids. Might be easy enough, I got a name and their gun." He moves like he's about to produce said gun, but then thinks better of it -- his hand is still dripping saline. He nodded at Joshua, “ I’m James.” he sighed, frustrated. “ Well that’s great.. yeah I can swim.” He looks out at the beach, scattered with people. “ Might not be such a good idea though, Wouldn’t want to scare anyone else today.” He ended that with a bitter growl. He knew half this mess was his fault for overestimating and not thinking things through. He was hoping it wasn’t serious enough and he could at least go home and have a cold shower without having to deal with people watching him. He looked at Shades then, “ wait, you still HAVE the gun? Why? Leave it for the police to find that’s tampering.” "What, them?" Joshua tips his chin over towards the small camp in the near distance, them and the woman out surfing the only people on this stretch of beach. "They won't give a -- they won't bother you. Lingering chemical burns probably will. Can try to rinse it here but the ocean would be faster." He points the bottle towards the nearby surf. "-- dude. That gun is not gonna be registered to them, you should --" His eyes cut to James at James's 'leave it for the police to find' suggestion. The mask, at least, covers up most of his expression. It does not cover up the disdain in his voice: "Seriously?" "Oh, no," says Scott, "I took the gun 'cause the kid was waving it around like an idiot, I know it's not registered --" he, too, cuts himself off, though he doesn't comment, just looks from Joshua back to James. He looks at Joshua, then out towards the Ocean, then at Shades. “ I mean, you should have left it, he was gone by the time the police got there. Those guys could be anywhere by now. The police know what to do with it, they know how to find people. you aren’t going to find them by teleporting all over town.” He said that last part directed at Joshua. “ I’m going to..” he said after an awkward silence. He turned and bounded down the beach. He could be seen running out into the waves, and diving under. "I jump quick." Joshua's gaze stays, flat, on James until he turns to head into the water. He watches the man diving only for a moment, eyes lifting back to Scott as James rinses off. He's digging through the trunk while James is in the water -- nonstick burn dressing, some ointment, setting them atop the trunk in preparation. "Exploding Drano. You got a name?" He's peeling off his gloves, one into the other, and holds out a hand for Scott's as he gets up from beside the trunk. Not out of any actual difficulty with rising -- healing is just considerably easier with contact. "Neighborhood Watch over there's raring to sell some kid out to the cops." "Dion," says Scott, plopping his hand into Joshua's, staring with bemusement after James. After a moment he looks back Joshua-ward with a slight exhale. "Yeah," he says. "He's most of the reason they started exploding Drano all over the place, I think -- not that the detergent was pleasant, but --" he shrugs. "Never dealt with a stick-up before, probably. Or --" this press of his lips is a little darkly amused -- "A teenager." James plunged into the cool Ocean water. It stung, a LOT, but it felt better than he thought it would. He took a few minutes to run his fingers through the fur on his arms and what was left of the fur around the burns on his chest. It didn’t take long before he was ready to get out. He walked back up to the beach where Shades and Joshua were after shaking himself off a little. "Mngh," is Joshua's eloquent answer to this. It comes, just as eloquently, with a deep and pensive frown. As he pulls himself to his feet, the pitted burns on Scott's skin are already healing up -- first a little itchy, then neat new skin; by the time James reaches them again, it's like they were never there. "-- where d'you need to get back to?" This question is directed towards Scott, a little distracted as he looks James over. To James: "-- sorry. I don't have a blow dryer." He does have a towel, though -- where exactly did it come from? Hard to say, but he is offering the large beach towel out to James as he comes near again. "Can take a better look at those now. You, uh, never seen a robbery before?" "Mm," says Scott. "My bike is still in the Lower East Side, so is some kid in a balaclava. 'Sprobably -- burnt onto his head." He shakes his head, looking down at his hand as it heals -- "I'm gonna call -- someone, you don't need to stick around. Get him --" this with a jerk of his chin at James -- "uh, wherever he's headed. A different Duane Reade for some DayQuil." “ thanks,” It was a simple reply for both the towel and the hospitality of not wanting to dump him at somewhere and make him some poor Doctor or vets problem. He took the towel and proceeded to dry off momentarily making his fur frizz up like he’d rubbed it with a balloon. He grimaced in pain as he gently brushed over his chest and arm burns. “ Never been in the middle of one no, there wasn’t much of that back home. I’ve gotten jumped a few times though. Stolen wallets, old workplace discriminatory stuff.” He paused, then “I’ve never hurt anyone though.” He added, thinking about his shameful exit from Texas and the busted wall that caused him to leave. “ I don’t know what Shades told you while I was gone but all I did was try to back him up. Didn’t seem like he had much defense on his own.” Joshua disappears while James is towelling off, taking Scott with him -- when he returns a moment later, he's alone. "He's very capable." There's just a touch of defensiveness in this statement. "Think most grocery-store robbers don't want to hurt anyone." He pulls a fresh pair of gloves on, gesturing for James to sit on the trunk. "I'm just going to bandage these and get you --" His brows crease. "Where do you need to get to, anyway?" James sat on the trunk carefully. “ Do those shades shoot lasers or something?” He snickered, half kidding but mostly annoyed. It was often impossible to know if anyone had any abilities these days unless they were like him. And so far that had been the only thing unusual about him. “ I just want to go home. I’d like to spend the rest of the day in peace before the police comes knocking down my door and I end up chained in a jail cell. Lower East Side, that apartment complex a few blocks from the coffee shop-Evolve.” "Sending some other freak kids to jail, though, you sleep good with that." Is it a question? It doesn't sound like a question; Joshua's tone is flat and direct. For all his gruff tone, his touch is careful and skilled as he bandages the injured sites -- his medic kit seems prepared for injuries to furred persons, though the neon-colorful vet wrap that he uses to securely hold the gauze is hardly inconspicuous. "That apartment complex," he's echoing in the same flat tone. "There's probably three dozen within 'a few blocks'." This does not seem like a request for further clarification, though, because he's immediately following it up with: "I'll take you to Seward Park. Hopefully you can walk from there." “ Walking is fine with me.” He watches as Joshua works on his injuries and wraps them. “ I appreciate all this. I take it you were somewhere a lot warmer when all this went down. You live in New York or do you.. just flash in an out whenever you want?” Joshua's brows hike at the question of somewhere warmer, and he's glancing -- briefly -- around the beach. Down to his slowly drying but still damp board shorts. Back to the ocean. Up to James. "Nope." He carefully dresses the last of the wounds, sets the last bit of vetwrap in place. As he stands -- -- the sunny-warm beach vanishes, replaced by the cool late afternoon of an almost-dusk New York. There's a playground nearby; on the fence by the park they've just appeared at a placard says SEWARD PARK. "You need your bearings, Evolve's that way." Joshua is pointing across the street. Hopefully it's enough bearings, because with that -- Joshua flashes back out, leaving James alone under the setting New York sun. James got the feeling he might live around—wherever they were. There were no signs on this stretch of the beach and it didn’t look like the only other beach he’d been to, which, had been in Galveston. It was one of the last truly great memories he could still recall before everything changed. After that, his parents had been too afraid to take family outings like that. Joshua was.. odd, but he decided he liked him. He didn’t think he’d mind running into him again. With a touch they both instantly appeared in Seward Park. This time he did not throw up. “ Thanks for the lift. What do I owe?” He said jokingly. He looked at the spot where Joshua was supposed to be, but he was already gone. He set out for home. Ready for a long nap.