aaron telcontar (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elfstoned) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
savetheearth2013-12-08 02:11 pm
elfstoned) wrote in savetheearth2013-12-08 02:11 pm
[technically closed, but if you can think of a reason to be at LSR next Wednesday, tag in]
Who: LSR staff + anyone who responded to this plotting thread!
When: Forward-dated to this Wednesday, Dec. 11
Where: LSR Clinic
What: Not only is LSR treating numbers-club patients with injuries from fighting the Blood Keys, it's also smack in the middle of where they're operating, on the fringes of the Dead District. At this point, there's no reason for the Blood Keys not to cause trouble here.
OOC NOTE: thanks to the number of volunteers for this plot, this log will be PARTY-STYLE, with subthreads for treating patients, the attack itself, and the aftermath. I know some of you have plans for specific events; feel free to make closed threads for those, just put who's involved in the subject line. Also put in the subject line if you want a Blood Keys NPC; you're free to run them themselves if you like. All you really need to know is that they're about twice as strong/fast/durable as a normal human, and their sight is sci-fi good.
Actionspam and prose are both fine. OK LET'S DO THIS.
The patients from the earthquake were almost gone by now: LSR clinic wasn't equipped to care for many people at a time. The only ones in critical condition were those who had been caught in the collapsed building, but their conditions were stable and they could either be sent home or transferred to a true hospital. The clinic was still fully staffed, though, with Aaron and Mordin both putting in full days.
It looked like things were going back to normal around here, which Aaron for one was grateful for. The increased gang activity made him a little nervous, though; the Blood Keys were getting bolder, and gang negotiations were harrowing at the best of times. Keeping the clinic neutral had never been easy, but it was definitely worth it in the long term.
When: Forward-dated to this Wednesday, Dec. 11
Where: LSR Clinic
What: Not only is LSR treating numbers-club patients with injuries from fighting the Blood Keys, it's also smack in the middle of where they're operating, on the fringes of the Dead District. At this point, there's no reason for the Blood Keys not to cause trouble here.
OOC NOTE: thanks to the number of volunteers for this plot, this log will be PARTY-STYLE, with subthreads for treating patients, the attack itself, and the aftermath. I know some of you have plans for specific events; feel free to make closed threads for those, just put who's involved in the subject line. Also put in the subject line if you want a Blood Keys NPC; you're free to run them themselves if you like. All you really need to know is that they're about twice as strong/fast/durable as a normal human, and their sight is sci-fi good.
Actionspam and prose are both fine. OK LET'S DO THIS.
The patients from the earthquake were almost gone by now: LSR clinic wasn't equipped to care for many people at a time. The only ones in critical condition were those who had been caught in the collapsed building, but their conditions were stable and they could either be sent home or transferred to a true hospital. The clinic was still fully staffed, though, with Aaron and Mordin both putting in full days.
It looked like things were going back to normal around here, which Aaron for one was grateful for. The increased gang activity made him a little nervous, though; the Blood Keys were getting bolder, and gang negotiations were harrowing at the best of times. Keeping the clinic neutral had never been easy, but it was definitely worth it in the long term.
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And then, briefly, it was happening quite slowly. She was still talking, he could hear her voice, see her mouth working and flecks of spittle arcing, and it was... slow. But her voice was not the distorted low-pitched drone he'd have expected. It was stressed, angry, complex. This was unreal. Did he know her? Maybe in passing. He thought he'd seen her around, certainly she didn't look unusual for the area, though she didn't move quite right. Why wear sunglasses on a day like today? There was a gang doing that, right? He'd seen them before and always kept carefully away. Black Keys. No. Blood Keys.
The fluorescent lights in here flickered constantly but were bright enough that he saw through the lenses of her sunglasses. There was a notch in each dark iris... Julien's pulse kept picking up but slow, slow, and a heat suffused his body. A pulse? At like a fifth the normal speed?
And then things were happening in normal time again, and he was stuck with his mouth open, thinking What changed? What now?, and she was yelling at a normal speed, her heart rate fast and normal, and her voice was still wrong, what should he do, and she was much too close and raising the gun-
He jerked away from it and hit his back against the shelves, and a box fell. Maybe that startled her. Maybe she hadn't meant to shoot him. All he knew was the incredible noise of a gunshot at close range in a confined space, and a sudden metallic taste in his mouth, and the shock of it. Somewhere along the line he'd lost the reflex to cry out in pain, so he gasped, air bubbling from two places in his side, reeling, and there was his pulse again.
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His left wing closed around the gun's barrel and wrested it to the side. His right wing beat once against the side of her head - but it wasn't a wing, it was a hand. Fine. As soon as he hit he ignored the pain and gouged with his fingers, scraping that thick spongy skin, snagging that plumage. He brought his right leg up and had a moment of confusion - he couldn't grab or claw when his foot was in a shoe - and drove his heel down on her instep. For good measure he then slammed his knee up into the point where her legs met her trunk.
Without that leg he would have been in trouble, his initial advantage had only been one of surprise. As it was she spasmed, reflexively starting to double over, and he wrested the gun away and took a better hold on it. Ah, yeah, hands, so this involved using his palms, holding it like so...
Humans were famously vulnerable in certain areas. Still, she would recover fast. He didn't think he had the time to hunt for bindings. Fine. He didn't know this gun but close range was always simple. Left leg, below the knee. He fired and kept hold as the gun jerked. She was screaming now, reflex. Right leg, below the knee. He fired.
...There'd be nerve damage. Damn! Maybe he could point out that humans didn't use their feet with much precision. Well, he'd already fucked up and it was going to be an Incident, he just had to try and keep it from becoming a massacre. Somehow. The situation, apparently, had changed, and he'd better change with it.
The immediate danger was over and time resumed its normal pace.
Julien didn't know what to do in this kind of situation. A young agent, just as terrified but trained and focused, had a better idea. It didn't seem to matter that a thousand things weren't right, though it might when things were less dire. The woman was screaming hoarsely, in rage as much as pain. His left anterior thoracic airsac had been pierced and was bubbling, it might collapse, he probably had damaged ribs, but for the short term he was fine. There was a jacket on a hook. He put it on and zipped it halfway, enough to hide his injury, and looked at the woman with wide, wide eyes, keeping the door in his peripheral vision, his pupils nearly invisible points. Tie off her legs to limit blood loss, or move on?
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The first thing he'd done was bar the door to room three like Aaron had instructed, and then he went to usher patients through the hallways to the safety of the office in the back of the clinic. If any of them found the gun in his hands a point of concern, they were infinitely more relieved by the scrubs.
When he didn't find Julien in the hallways, he realized that the most likely place for him was out front, at the reception desk. Where the majority of the Blood Keys were holding the waiting room hostage. That fight was going to have to happen sooner or later, but Ravi was not stupid enough to want to do it by himself.
The second most likely place, though, was the supply room. So he'd check that first. If Julien wasn't there, he'd go back and tell Aaron what needed to happen.
He rounded the corner into the hallway leading to the supply room, and the first thing he saw was the woman writhing on the ground, only partially visible through the doorway. He quickly identified her as one of the gang members and dismissed any concern for her. Stepping into the doorway, he saw Julien standing over her, seemingly uninjured, thankfully. Blood Key hadn't fared so well, he saw.
Maybe if her gang hadn't just stormed the clinic, Ravi would've cared enough to tend to her injuries. Oh well.
"Julien," he barked, "come, let's go."
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ah. Never mind that. Something in him wanted to say something when the new human came in, but in his ribs there was a stabbing, shifting pain, and it was quiet. The gun was not leveled at him yet, so he didn't point his smaller purloined weapon anywhere hasty.
"Sorry! I'm not Julien," he said pleasantly, a light French accent tinting his words. "Where would we be going, please?" His pupils were pinned so tightly that his wide eyes seemed all silver-blue, and his inner eyelids blinked with flickering speed.
It was a pity his stealth didn't work well in confined spaces! The lack of concern for the other human - sociopathy, or a group split? He might have been able to find out if he'd been unobserved.
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Well, that was certainly not the response he'd been expecting. He was obviously caught off-guard and it took him a moment to figure out how to roll with it and respond.
Jesus, those sideways eyelids were freaky. Ravi opted to watch down the hallway instead of continuing to face Julien. "Doctor Strider wants everyone in the office, it is the easiest room to defend."
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The voice he used was not quite Julien's. It was burred subtly, more resonant. A kind of friendly, almost languid confidence hung off each syllable, much starker than in Julien's usual easygoing tone, but his expression was sharp.
"I see! And I suppose... there are more like my friend here-" the woman had pulled herself into a sitting position, back braced against the shelves, and glowered at him through her sunglasses as she held one of her stricken legs "-who are... invaders? Sorry, sorry, looks like I've come in at a bad time!"
He dilated his sense of time for a second and came out of it saying, "You know, I can help you."
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Maybe Echoes could go further than just giving you a few new traits and abilities. That was a chilling thought.
Unsure how to handle Julien, he nodded toward the Blood Key instead. "Probably you should shoot her again or tie her up. Either way." 'Shoot her again' was only a half-serious suggestion; he didn't think Julien was the type of person to do that. But they did need to make sure she wasn't going to be causing more trouble after they left her alone in the supply room. There was plenty here that could be weaponized by anyone determined enough.
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"Coward! Do it, then!" the woman spat with difficulty. She glared with her chin up, pain and stress lining her face, but he saw the flicker of the emotion she was trying not to show. Fear.
There were about twenty reasons not to kill her. He decided not to dwell on any of them.
"She can't stand. -oh, you people can walk on your knees, that's right. Aaah, okay. Hang on a second." He turned his back on the armed human, tense for a betrayal that didn't come, and saw a box of
- surgical tubing, really? Why would humans have something like that? Whatever. "It'll go easier for everyone if you let me do this," he said more softly. She cursed him, but when he leveled her gun, carefully out of her reach, she subsided. The rage in those odd eyes suggested she would try to escape, and he didn't like the way she moved. He made things more difficult by lashing her wrists together above her head, tying her to a support for the shelf, then made a tourniquet for each leg, binding them together at the same time and stealing her ammunition and the knife hiding in her pocket as he did. There was a small pool of blood around her by now, and she had gone paler.
"There we go. Sit tight now." He straightened up, ignoring the sense of hot liquid trapped under his jacket, and smiled at the bearded human. It wasn't a very friendly expression. "Well? Come, come, I can help you fight them off, whoever they are."
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And also WOW NO, NOT ACTUALLY GIVING HIM PERMISSION TO KILL HER. Phrasing it like that was just slightly horrifying. Killing an enemy combatant was one thing, but once you'd disarmed and incapacitated somebody, they ceased to be a combatant. That was why Ravi wasn't shooting her himself.
But he was incredibly relieved to see Julien opting to use surgical tubing as restraints instead of executing her.
'You people?' he mouthed questioningly, flashing the woman a look as though she might somehow be able to explain it. Ah--no, never mind. She wasn't worth shared confusion. He trained his gun on her to back up Julien's threat, keeping her still while he tied her up.
The smile Julien gave him when he was finished was even more chilling. Ravindra stiffened, turning to throw a cautious glance out into the hallway. He was having second thoughts about leading Julien into the office, given the state he was in. "What happened to you?" he asked, looking back to Julien. That seemed like a sufficiently conservative way to phrase it.
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Wiping sweat from his palms he rearmed himself and approached Ravi, eyes still wide and pinned, flickering when he blinked. He didn't hold himself like Julien, or walk in quite the same way. Possible allies or no, there was no way he'd have said the truth here. Or not the whole truth.
"I was just in the area when I met my new friend, here, who missed." He indicated her with a minimal jerk of his head. There was blood on the shelves he'd been shot against, but his clothing had absorbed some. "I didn't bring a gun, but I don't think she has the right license, so that resolved itself. What do you call this place, by the way?"
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"If you are not Julien, who are you?"
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He shifted position, seemingly relaxed, but his weight was evenly balanced on both legs, and his knees were slightly bent. "Really, it's okay if you can't tell me from... your friend." For a moment his pupils expanded slightly, then shot back to being pinned. "I know, I know, to humans we all look pretty similar. Who is he, by the way? What does he do here?"
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Okay well that explained the 'your people' comment. Ravindra and the thug were both, arguably, humans. But, uh. Well. What a thing to hear coming from the mouth of somebody who was also human.
Ravi backed into the hallway, glancing up for any other intruders, and motioned not-Julien to follow him. "Close the door." Whatever conversation they were about to have, he felt it was probably best that the woman didn't overhear it.
How best to handle this without escalating a potentially volatile and unpredictable situation? Playing along seemed like the best way to handle it, but that was difficult to do when they obviously had very different ideas of what the other was seeing. "Ah... Julien is human," he said, giving not-Julien a meaningful look. Hopefully the implication was clear: whatever he thought he was, Ravi wasn't just mistaking him for someone else of the same species.
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He returned the look with a skeptical one. "Really? Becau-"
There was a gunshot and someone yelping whoah, whoah, whoah as another voice went drop it! I'll shoot!, right around the corner. "Later," he snapped, the lazy veneer gone. He was not going to stand around chatting when this was happening - but this wasn't his territory, better not to take the lead.
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Of all the people staffing the clinic, Ravindra was probably the one most prepared to cope with an armed invasion. Two years of frontline combat experience made a big difference in a crisis like this. Knowing that, he took the lead automatically.
Before Julien had even finished forming the word, Ravi was moving to the corner of the hallway. He pressed his back against the wall, both hands on his gun, and leaned around the corner to see what was going on. He thought he'd gotten most of the patients into the office by now, but maybe it was someone who'd escaped from the lobby, or simply someone he'd missed.
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It happened very quickly. A ways around the corner a teenager who ran with some lesser gang had attempted to take a smaller Blood Keys member hostage with an armlock and a switchblade, knocking his sunglasses off. A taller man, also wearing those signature sunglasses, was closing in on them when the smaller one moved.
Faster than humans should he reached behind his shoulder, grabbed the teenager's collar, and threw him to the ground in a startlingly abrupt movement. The knife went flying. The thrower seemed almost as startled as the teenager, but the third party, scowling, leveled a rifle at the prone figure.
Julien would have frozen and shrunk back. The agent aimed and shot the man with the rifle, twice. The first shot grazed his arm, the second went into his shoulder, and the agent pulled back out of their line of sight, face set. Damn it, he really didn't know how to use this gun.
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He flashed Julien a 'what the fuck, bro?' glare, before stepping into the hallway himself to finish that job. Despite, technically, being a noncombatant as a medic, Ravindra had always been one of the better shots on his teams. He aimed quickly and shot precisely, hitting the already-injured gangster once in the chest as he was turning to face them, and then once in the head while he was reeling from the first shot.
He was pretty sure one of those had pinged with a distinctive metal-on-metal sound, which was...odd, to say the least. He didn't focus on it. No time to consider it right now.
One Blood Key down, Ravindra trained his gun on the second one. He didn't shoot; the man was not an immediate threat, but the instant he moved to make himself one, Ravi was ready to take him out too.
This would have been the perfect place for a cool one-liner, if only Ravi were the sort of person to be able to think of them in the moment.
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The agent smoothed down his own feathers before they could get particularly ruffled, metaphorically, and shrugged as if he had wings. Clearly he wasn't a marksman when it came to archaic human-made firearms, why would he be? He didn't think he'd ever had to use one before.
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Seeing another of his crew taken down right in front of him hadn't discouraged him, being shot at hadn't either, so Ravi didn't think that an attempt to negotiate through this peacefully would be worth the time. What he had to do was stop the man before he managed to hurt the kid.
Luckily, the gun was not the only ace Ravi had up his sleeve. One of his Echoes had given him expert knife-throwing skills, and he carried a set of throwing knives with him everywhere. Aiming and throwing was pure instinct for him, completed in the blink of an eye, and much more reliable than a shot taken in the same amount of time.
A knife between the eyes worked just as well as a bullet.
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"Neatly done," the agent said softly. He picked his way around to get closer, peered briefly into the man's staring eyes, almost offhandedly taking the body by the arm and pulling at it. The teenager scrambled free and backed against the wall, holding himself as if in pain and breathing hard. The agent let the arm drop. His face was mostly expressionless, but he still had those bright eyes with the whites showing all around them, the flickering eyelids, and there was a tension around his eyes and mouth.
The agent's footsteps were noiseless or all but and he tread with care, but he tracked blood from the heel of his right foot as he went to the first dead man, the one who had been shot, looking through the lenses of his sunglasses. "This one too. Do they all have eyes like this?" He dropped gracefully into a crouch and pulled the glasses off. Both men appeared to have strange pupils, like keyholes.
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His concern now was with the boy he'd acted to save. Ravi approached him while Julien focused on the dead men, holding the gun aside and trying his best to look nonthreatening while still in charge of the situation. That was another skill honed in urban combat, not one most people considered when they thought of it. "Are you all right?" he asked.
His eyes flashed down to Julien again at the question. Ravi hadn't exactly been paying attention to their eyes, and he couldn't see what Julien was talking about without getting a closer look. "Later." After he got this kid to the office.
He noticed the blood tracked down the hall, then, but dismissed it. Probably from the woman in the supply room.
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"I should have brought my own guns," he said as if to himself as he straightened, inner eyelids shutting and staying shut in a wince as his ribs flared at him. Something was broken. He'd never been shot before. But he'd had ancestors who had flown miles riddled with lead, with eyes and legs destroyed. Some things were more important. "...no, it's as well. We've killed too many humans already."
Around the numb dulling that had for him followed the gunshots, the agent could hear the facility around them, the wind vibrating its supports, raised distant voices and scattered gunshots. The agent was unsure. But he had a much better idea than the part of him paralyzed with reaction.
He was always looking at everything in his field of view, but for the look of it he moved head and eyes to visibly focus on Ravi and the younger human. "You've got to have somewhere more secure- he can be moved, right?" Humans didn't always respond to injury like other people. "This isn't over."
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The direct question came just as Ravi was about to move them to the office. He paused, glancing at Julien. He felt a brief flicker of annoyance, the kind that always accompanied being told to do something he was just about to do, but didn't let it show. "Yes," was his curt answer. "Come." A glance back to the boy, a nod down the hallway, and he led the way toward the office at the back of the clinic, keeping a wary eye out for any more of the gang.
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The jacket was waterproof and showed no blemish. But the cuff of Julien's pant leg was stained now, and he left a partial footprint with each step. Blood was wicking through his shirt, too, just barely hinting on the right side, under the zipper. Traces of sweat beaded his face. The agent made sure not to walk like someone injured, though - it was foolish to show pain if he could help it.
Paging Dr Strider
"Oh, no," Ravi said, with a sigh. "Are you hiding an injury?"
Yup, straight-up, just asking it outright. He knew plenty of guys in the Army who pulled the same shit and he was not here to humour that.
He rounded the corner, urging the teen to go ahead to where Dr Strider waited, guarding the office door at the other end of the hall. Then he turned back to face Julien, giving him a look that managed to be both concerned and admonishing at the same time.
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