Logs:Hand Up, Not Hand Out

Hand Up, Not Hand Out
cn: zombie hand, lil bit of stabbing
Dramatis Personae Leslie, Shane, Spencer	2020-08-18 "I learned from the master."
Location <NYC> Queens
Home to the New York Mets and thus a fierce rivalry among baseball fans, Queens is the largest of New York's boroughs in size, and the most ethnically diverse urban area in the worlds. Many of the different neighborhoods in Queens reflect that diversity, and the various cuisines found throughout often are in keeping with the traditional backgrounds of the residents there. This boba shop has vastly outgrown its original scope and is practically a full-service restaurant now, though without the interior space necessary for seating patrons. Most of their clientele seem happy to carry out -- and there's a steady stream of these coming and going now, every tenth or eleventh wearing a facemask -- but there are several small tables outside for those who wish to sit and admire scenic downtown Flushing. Spence is slumped at one of these, nursing a cup of bright green bubble tea, his fingertips tracing patterns restlessly in the condensation on the side of his cup. He wears a purple t-shirt features a brightly smiling Glimmer from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, black cargo shorts, and blue canvas sneakers with stylized white wings painted on their sides. There's a black kippah with a red heart containing a strand of rainbow DNA pinned slightly askew to wind-mussed brown hair. "We can get going," he's insisting, "I'm fine I just needed to sit down for like, a minute." Shane doesn't slump, he lounges, draped casually, in the chair opposite Spence with one arm thrown over its back and his enormous solid-black eyes unblinking as he regards his brother. He's dressed a bit more sharply -- deep pink short-sleeved button down, grey pinstripe trousers, grey pinstripe vest with MUTANT MONGRELS MC and a very scaled-down skull-and-crossed-violin-bows logo embroidered on the left breast pocket. The pair of motorcycle helmets set on the table (blue and silver in color scheme with grinning shark face insignia on the front mask) point to a very likely owner of the nearby motorcycle parked on the curb, small silver-blue as well and extremely unlike most anything commonly seen on the road, its sleek lines look kind of like what some sci-fi director with Too Much Budget imagines motorcycles might look like in The Future. "'kay." Shane is sipping veeeery slowly at his own almond bubble tea. Reaching out a hand veeeery slowly to skewer a piece of karaage on the end of one needle-thing claw. "But I need a lotta minutes to finish this chicken. Gotta savor it." Normally, Leslie wouldn’t be out during the day. Too many people, normal people, but he didn’t have any choice in the matter. A black N95 mask covered most of his face, with a dirty grey hoodie and torn, worn-out jeans to add to his decrepit appearance. His walking pace was brisk, urgent, even, his eyes carefully surveying his surroundings out of habit. He turned the corner then — stopped. “Okay... Universe, thank you.” Leslie straightened his back, adjusting the hood over his head. Go time. The young boy purposely blended in with the crowd, keeping his head down. When he came by the other two, he quickly reached around and pulled his hand off from the wrist, dropping it on the floor casually while continuing to walk. The hand, to a quick glance, just appeared like a discarded latex glove, not uncommon during a pandemic. He didn’t move it yet, waiting until he was a safe distance away to spy on them. Go time: Part 2. It began with a small twitch, getting familiar with the surroundings, but, soon enough, the severed limb came to life. Slowly, but surely, the gloved hand used it’s emancipated fingers to crawl it’s way behind the chair of Shane. Leslie bit his lip in concentration, trying to keep his hand hidden from the man sitting across from the shark-mutant while the hand embarked on it’s journey to Shane’s pocket. Spence eyes the karaage for a long moment, clearly debating something inwardly, but he finally does not take any. "Fiiiine," he groans, slouching even more heavily -- clearly an affectation now. Takes a long pull at the thick purple straw stuck into his tea. Chews in exaggerated slow motion. "If you're gonna be slow I'm gonna be even slower." For all that, he says this fairly quickly. Perhaps he is not best practiced at slow. Though, perhaps realizing this, he makes an attempt to correct it, "Can't...be...too...haaaaasty, now." For a brief moment as something jostles lightly at Shane's chair he frowns, half-turning, but settles back again when he catches the glance of a pair of young men incautiously making their way off the patio. He snorts at Spence, exaggerated. Wriggles down a little further into his chair, his prominent ridged brow lifting. "Oh, you think you can out-relax me? It's on, man." He licks chicken grease off a fingertip, lets his inner eyelids slip closed. "If I were going any slower, I'd be hibernating right now." Leslie watched in deep focus. If he could sweat, he certainly would be now. His hand spindled it’s way closer, ever so slowly as to not alarm either person. Finally, it found a spot on the seat behind Shane. A good angle for pickpocketing, a bad angle to guide the hand. Leslie was resolute despite this, blindly feeling around with the severed part to find his pocket. There's a gleam of excitement in Spence's gray eyes now. "I know I can." He slinks down further in his seat, one elbow propped heavily on the tabletop just to keep his head up high enough to reach his boba straw. "I'm so relaxed," he declares, "I'm not even worried about how good you are at relaxing. I learned from the master." Shane's outer eyelids blink, slow. He takes a drink of his tea, slow. The small quiver of his slitted nostrils is hard to catch. In the middle of this laze-off it's a deceptively casual gesture when his hand drops from where it's slung across his chair. Extremely uncasual, though, the sudden vice-grip that closes around the hand that is probing at him. Thunks it down on the table with a larger widening of his pitch-black eyes. Flatly, baffled: "What the actual fuck." He's not holding his tea anymore, but he is patting at his pockets. Without any pupils its hard to quite track the rapid shift of his eyes sweeping the area; easier to catch is the steel-sharp glint of blade that's appeared in the hand that isn't holding the disembodied one to the table. "Spence, you good?" Leslie’s eyes went as wide as they could. Although popping off his parts didn’t hurt, a mutant with super strength crushing them definitely did hurt. He let out a loud cry of pain, bending over and coddling his arm as if his hand was still there. “God—What the—hrrg—“ He groaned out. His severed hand, out of instinct, was clawing and scratching anything to try and free itself. Spence unslouches so fast that he would definitely have dumped his tea in his lap if the cup were not partially sealed. His eyes are wide-wide, then squeezed tightly shut in concentration. He manages not to disappear, but when he opens his eyes again they're still frantic, glancing around. "I'm good," he says, his attempt to sound calm not helped by the cracking of his voice. "Is that like, a -- robot?" This sounds vaguely hopeful, his curiosity already starting to overtake his fear as he peers at the opening of the glove where a wrist should be. "Or literally someone's actual hand?" Shane's nose twitches again, a small sniff followed by a quick wrinkle. His knife comes down swift and sure, pinning the thrashing hand firmly to the table in front of him. "Not a robot," is the judgment he delivers, in the wake of this. It's hard to see the shift of his pupilless eyes as he scans the crowd. His gills flutter rapidly, his posture tense though his voice comes out level: "You so much as hear a motorcycle, see anyone else's vest, you jump straight home, alright?" Leslie cried out, falling to his knees while he instinctively curled into a ball. His hand reflected this pain, fingers arching against the table. “Wh—god—“ He whimpered, trying to help himself breathe through it. He wasn’t accustomed to being crushed or stabbed, and not sequentially. He forced himself to stand up (although his knees were wobbling like a newborn colt) and try to retreat to a nearby alleyway to avoid being detected by the hand-stabbing, terrifying shark-person. This was certainly not how he imagined this turning out. With a few deep breaths and a small internal pep talk, Leslie crossed the street and made his way to the others, his handless wrist stuffed into the pocket of his hoodie. He hesitated a moment before confronting Shane, albeit timidly. “Wh—I-I—“ Leslie stopped a moment to collect his thoughts. “Why did you have to stab me?” His voice was muffled from the mask he was wearing. Spence flinches when Shane stabs the hand, but he nods quickly and jerkily at the instruction -- the order, his eyes skidding nervously left and right. Then fix on Leslie as he approaches. "No markings," he says, low and kind of hopefully dubious. At Leslie's question his eyebrows hike way up. "Why were you groping my brother?" he blurts. Then glances sheepishly at Shane, shrugging. "No markings," Shane agrees. He slouches back in his chair -- it's not quite the same languid posture as before, but one would have to be very familiar with the sharkpup's inhuman physiology to notice the points of tension that linger in his frame. One hand stays on the knife hilt where it pins the hand to the table. The other lifts his tea back to his mouth for a sip. "Shit, is, this yours?" His brows lift. "It was in my pocket, figured you wanted me to have it." Now that he was closer, his condition was more observable. He had dull green-ish skin that was devoid of any moisture. His neck had a very visible scar which was crudely stitched with wire. Around his eyes his skin was noticeably dark, similar to a raccoon. “I-I wasn’t groping anyone!” He spoke more flustered now. “And I, I wasn’t—“ Another pause to collect his thoughts. “I-I just — my stitches got stolen by some rats and I’ve been using metal wires which have been fine so far but I ran out and I can’t go dumpster diving when my limbs are all falling off so I thought maybe if I could get some money I could buy actual stitches but I-I didn’t think that you’d stab my hand!” He ended his run-on sentence at that. Spence leans back in his seat slightly as he gets a clearer look of Leslie. Then looks down at the hand pinned to the table. Then back up at the other teenager as he spills his story. He's studying Leslie more closely all the while. Then finally, when the tale ends he says, faintly exasperated, "Why didn't you try asking first?" There's a slight shift in Shane's expression -- nostrils thinning so much for a moment his odd flat nose has all but vanished. His outer eyelids blink. "Well that does sound like an entire sack of sad." His fingers drum, claws click-click-clicking against the handle of his knife. "Just wanna make sure I got you straight with this sob story though. You -- literally falling to pieces -- need some cash to hold your ass together. You take a look at --" Shane's wrist rolls, gesturing around the sunny afternoon street with a lazy gesture of his cup, ice rattling in the plastic cup as he tips it towards the busy street around them. "Dozens and dozens of humans and your sorry franken-ass thinks, man, you know who I'm gonna roll today? The one other freak I see out here. Life's real fucking easy for all of us, probably no skin off his nose, right?" He takes a small pull from his cup. Sets it back down. "And then, wait, hang on, after you send your ghoul hand to feel my ass up you come complain at me that I took it poorly. Should I be thanking you? I do --" He nods towards Spence, "usually prefer if dudes ask, first." Leslie’s face few more and more guilty as Shane went on, similar to how a child looked when scolded at. Eyes shifted away from him, head tilted down—if he didn’t have his mask on, they could probably see the remnants of his lips quivering. He was awfully quiet now, both his hands clenching into fists. “I didn’t mean for any of this — I mean, i-in the sense that, uhm, I-I—“ Silence. “... I know that I screwed up and I’m sorry for that but I don’t want you to think I’m some — some jerk or something cause I’m not, I just, I don’t know — I was stupid and I-I don’t come to the surface a lot but—that’s also not an excuse—my point is; I’m sorry and please please don’t report me to the police or anything.” Spence blinks at this last plea. Sits up straight, his face contorting into an indignant scowl. "What? We'd never call the cops, I mean..." He sputters for a moment. "This isn't worth anyone getting murdered over, and even if we were that evil --" He flails a hand in his brother's direction. "-- you think they'd listen to him?" "Surface." It's not a question -- just a thoughtful echo, Shane's brows lifting. They drop again soon after with a shake of his head, a soft hiss pushed out through his teeth. "Cops? Jesus fucking Christ, kid, I look like I'm in a murdering mood?" He slides the larger helmet across the table. Picks up the smaller one for himself as he stands, prying the knife -- hand still attached -- out of the table. On his feet his diminutive height is more apparent -- though Leslie is hardly tall Shane himself a a good head shorter, a fact which doesn't seem to bother him much as he waggles the knife (more lazily than aggressive) in Leslie's general direction. "Kinda are some jerk. You needed support my door's been open down at Evolve, no stealing required. No secret of that either half the freaks in the city know." He gestures to Spencer, starts to saunter towards the motorcycle, abandoning his barely-touched chicken on the table. "C'mon, let's get home." “I don’t know what mood you’re in, I-I’m not a telepath!” He whimpered softly. “Mutants don’t treat me any better than humans a—“ Leslie was abruptly cut off at Shane wagging around his hand, causing him to wince in pain. “Can you please not do that? I-I can still feel pain, sort of—depends.” The teen sighed again, his shoulders slouching in defeat. “I don’t talk to other mutants because a lot of the time even they think I’m too gross, so I’ve never heard of ‘Evolve.’” His eyes widened in realization. “Wait, uhh, my hand?” The severed hand made a small wave gesture. Spence gets up more slowly than his brother, his helmet under one arm. "It's in the Lowest East Side, on Suffolk just above Grand Street," he offers helpfully. "You'll probably have better chances with other mutants if you treat us like your people and not your marks." He sounds sincere enough as he dons his helmet and climbs on the back of the bike, his movements sluggish. "Good luck." "I think every dude who's ever felt me up uninvited is pretty fucking gross, yeah. Try a conversation next time, maybe." Though he hasn't relinquished the hand, Shane has stopped waggling the knife around after Leslie's wince. He tucks it (with a degree of care) into the hard-sided saddlebag on his bike. Puts his own helmet on. "You figure out what Evolve is, you can go find your hand there." Shane puts his hands on the handlebars -- doesn't touch any key or button. There's no roar of engine when the bike starts up. Just a quiet hum, a glow illuminating its sleek frame to somewhat Tron-like effect. Rather than take the street, the bike lifts straight up into the air, whooshing off overhead and rapidly disappearing against the clear summer sky.