013. action. closed.

[strikeraid]

Who: Skyler (strikeraid), Harper (duette), mmmaybe Dallen (decelerate), Chuck (swissarmyjesus), and Danny (gogoghostpowers)
When: Today, 02/17, around 4 pm; then today, 02/17, later in the evening; then tomorrow, 02/18, right after school.
Where: In order: Somewhere in the Business District, then somewhere in the Dead District, then like... at school or something I'M GONNA ROLL WITH IT
What: Someone tries to kill him (by accident), he tracks down a certain Key, he tries to kill someone (on purpose).

[ Someone is having a very busy Monday and Tuesday. Let us count the ways. ]

[ closed to Harper (for now!) ]

[ After a long, hard day of school, followed directly by a few hours of scrubbing dicks off the wall, Skyler is almost done with his day. Except he isn't, of course; he still has Blood Key shit to do today and he isn't about to give Helene no for an answer. He does need to make a stop at home, though, and the last buses have already left, so here he is, makin his way downtown cutting through a quieter part of the Business District on his way home. He is not expecting to meet anyone, and he isn't trying to catch anyone's eye. All he wants to do is get home. Seriously.

Nothing in his life ever happens that smoothly, unfortunately! ]

[ / closed to Harper ]

[ closed to Chuck ]

[ After weeks of searching, he thinks he's got the right guy. He's been looking for a new guy, he knows, someone who's been on the ball and stayed in fairly good standing with his fellow Keys. He's even friendly, which is weird enough among the Keys, but so far it appears he's been doing nothing but making himself friends with his timely warnings. Things have probably been pretty cozy for him.

Well, that's enough complimentary bullshit. After all, his fellow Keys did end up leading right towards him in a roundabout way, traveling backward from contact to contact until he reached the right cell, and then the right people within the cell. He follows the alley between the two abandoned buildings down, the other teen's back coming into view. This is the third person from the group he's questioned, and he's got the line of questions down to an art.

He walks towards the guy. He doesn't know his name, so he just calls out to him in a low, gruff voice, a part of his Key disguise. ]

Hey, you. Got a minute?

[ / closed to Chuck ]

[ closed to Danny ]

[ Skyler is stalking Danny after school on Tuesday. I repeat, he is taking his books and jamming them all in his locker, then sitting at the door he knows Danny uses to leave the school, waiting for him to come by. Suspicious? Maybe, but he's pretty sure Danny isn't expecting what's coming next. WHAT DO ]

[ / closed to Danny ]

Comments

[strikeraid]

[ ... What an incredibly convenient coincidence. Skyler takes a moment to steady himself, thinking through his plan one more time - he's probably only gonna get one shot at this, he already knows what Danny's powers entail - before going into a crouch and willing his cybernetics to make him faster.

If Danny doesn't like getting clotheslined in the back of the neck and into a wall, this is probably going to be a very painful experience. He doesn't go as fast as he could - he wants Danny to know how badly he fucked up by screwing with the wrong guy, and flattening him from the get go isn't a good way to do that - but he isn't about to pull a punch. He is going to kill him today, after all. ]

[gogoghostpowers]

[IT'S ALMOST LIKE IT WAS PLANNED OR SOMETHING

Danny is thankful for the fact that he doesn't need to breathe any more, because the speed at which he's yanked back and tossed against a wall is enough to force the air right out of his lungs.

Of course, slamming into a wall like that isn't very pleasant either. He cries out from the pain of the impact. It takes him a few moments longer to finally open his eyes and see what's going on.]

Sk--Skyler!

[strikeraid]

[ He follows up quickly, going to grab Danny by the collar and ramming him against the wall again. Just Like You by Three Days Grace starts playing in the background. I type up my last will and testament. ]

You know what I am.

[ ... Clearly, that's all the explanation Skyler is willing to give him. A hum starts up in the air as white lights form around Skyler, Danny being inside the lights' radius. They coalesce into hard crosses, forming a floating fence that slowly starts to orbit around them, sending the snow falling around in flurries. He is charging up for something. If his intentions aren't clear enough yet, his hands suddenly burst into flames at Danny's chest, and he seems perfectly calm about it, if being perfectly calm also entails being wrapped up in cold fury. GET OUT OF THERE DANNY THOSE LIGHT THINGS EXPLODE ]

[gogoghostpowers]

[Danny has never before had to fight anyone or anything with magic powers. This is all-new territory for him. And yet, even so, he can still recognize that whatever these lights are, they are bad news.

His mind seizes up for a moment, but he still manages to force himself intangible just in time to avoid brushing up against SPONTANEOUS HAND FIRE. Thankfully, intangibility also provides him with an opportunity to jump from the wall to the side of Skyler in the middle of the street. He solidifies again just out of reach.]

Yeah--I know you're crazy!

[strikeraid]

[ He looks over at him, and I hope Danny is standing far away enough because he's going to make his light fence explode now. It shatters the pavement around him and leaves a shallow crater in the wall he had pinned Danny to just seconds before.

Whether he was standing far enough away or not, he's going to charge through the explosion, chasing him down with his fists on fire, pulling back for a punch if he gets close enough. He doesn't seem to want to discuss his current crazy levels at the moment, but if he were to take a guess at his own crazy quota, it'd be high to maxed out. ]

[gogoghostpowers]

Holy--!

[Danny barely has time to get out the way. The only reason he manages to dodge Skyler's blow is due to a combination of going intangible again and flying out of the way. Again, he goes back to solid, but remains hovering about four feet up in the air, staring at Skyler and his flaming fists.]

Forget this--I'm not gonna sit around here and wait for you to cream me!

[He sounds a lot braver than he feels. He's lucky to be flying right now because he thinks his knees would give out on him otherwise. But Danny forces himself to ignore this and fly upwards, taking off. He's staying relatively low, close to the building tops, since he doesn't want to be spotted, and at a brisk, but not terribly fast, speed.

Besides, it's not like Skyler can fly anyway! He's in the clear now, he can't be followed.]

[strikeraid]

[ He can't get away. He starts, his hands coming up and shooting the fire on his hands after Danny in bolts - yes, they are projectiles as well - and then jumps two stories, jumps off a wall for another two stories, landing on a roof, and starts to parkour off rooftops to get at Danny. Because this is a thing he can do. And yes, if Danny is the type to look back, in between the longest of long jumps, Skyler is definitely flying.

So uh, if Danny doesn't look back, Skyler will catch up. Quickly. Very, very quickly. To the point where he will end up throwing a kick into Danny, aiming to force him back down into the ground. ]

[gogoghostpowers]

[When the projectile fire stops, Danny assumes he's safe. He only looks back once it's too late and Skyler's already kicking at him. He's so shocked and confused--how did he follow him up here in the first place?!--that he doesn't get the chance to go intangible.

The kick lands squarely in his chest, forcing him into a plummet in another alleyway. Between the confusion and the pain radiating from his chest where Skyler kicked it (Danny actually feels himself, thinking that his sternum must have been shattered, only to feel a slight shoe-shaped imprint there instead and remember, oh yeah, I don't have a sternum any more), Danny only manages to stop his fall moments before hitting the ground.

He's hovering about three feet from street level and checking himself for any bleeding now, and thanking whatever god there may be that he's still in a pretty desolate path without any passers-by.

Except at the very tail end of that, he realizes that's probably a bad thing, given that there's nowhere to go and no one to ask for help, and there is a Blood Key trying to kill him.]

[strikeraid]

[ He adjusts himself in the air, floating downward. It... looks like he can't fly and use his spells at the same time? That's an arbitrary weakness right there. Okay. He can work with this.

He falls down and lands with a crash right next to Danny - yes, a crash; it's now very clear that Skyler is a lot heavier than he appears to be. Aaand he turns on his wind spell, a strong gust of wind kicking up around him as he moves towards Danny. It's enough to knock Danny back if he's solid, but does wind affect ghosts? ]

[gogoghostpowers]

[The answer is yes, yes it does. Before Danny has a chance to think or do anything else, Skyler lands with all the force of Iron Man Titanium Dude armor and sends him slamming up against the wall somehow.

He thought he was safe, and now he's right back to square 1 in this fight again. He can barely even believe this is happening at all, this is like something out of a comic book.]

[strikeraid]

[ Or a video game, maybe. And unfortunately for Danny, Skyler happens to be the protagonist.

He'll just... Move towards Danny, his wind spell still churning the air around him, watching him get pinned against the wall. He technically has enough juice to bombard him with fire - just light him up - but he's just going to wait until the wind dies (which it will, soon!) Because he's straight up enjoying this. He wants to take this slow. ]

[gogoghostpowers]

[Danny is trying to block the wind from whipping his face much more, but he's finding it hard to keep his arm up against the gusts. He turns his arm intangible, so that it's easier to keep up, only to realize that, while that makes it easier to have his arm up, it also means the wind passes through it as if his arm isn't even there. Fantastic.

It's when he's trying to keep his head on enough to think out another course of action that he realizes the wind has stopped. He lowers his hand and tries opening his eyes again, now that there isn't any wind assaulting them, only to realize that his arm feels...strange.

He looks down and sees his intangible arm, lightly visible, plunged into Skyler's chest, his hand completely out of view. He wiggles it around a bit, kind of freaked out by it, but eventually realizes that the sensation he's feeling is that of passing through organs.

Before he even really understands what he's doing, his jaw clenches as his hand closes in a tight grip around what he thinks is a lung (oh god, it's metal, he has no idea what metal organs are like at all). His arm turns fully tangible once again, fingers now solidly lodged in his chest grasping the organ.]

Let me go right now, or I'll rip your lungs right out of you before you even know what happened.

[His voice is low and uncharacteristically serious and threatening. It's partially unintentional, though--Danny doesn't think he can say it any other way without tripping up and panicking mid-sentence.

But hey, he'll take any advantage he can get in this fight.]

[strikeraid]

[ -- Wait, if he's gonna rip out a lung before he knows what happened isn't it a little late because he's warned him so --

... Okay, wow. That. Does give Skyler some pause. For the first time in the fight, he's legitimately frightened by what Danny can do; it only shows up as some hesitance in his face and maybe a little alarm, but it's there and tangible in the way he grits his teeth.

It's followed by both arms coming up, hands going for Danny's neck. If he snaps his neck before he can take out his lungs, then there's nothing to worry about, right? ]

[gogoghostpowers]

[Danny doesn't even know what Skyler's planning to do to him, he just takes both hands raising as a sign of something bad and yelps. He pulls his arm out of Skyler's chest (no lung attached) and then turns fully intangible to avoid whatever it is he's going to try doing.

If that threat didn't work, then...Danny doesn't know what else he can do. But he needs to get out of here--preferably alive (or whatever passes for alive in his case).

He reaches out and grabs Skyler's shoulders, spreading his intangibility to cover both of them. Then he runs backwards through the brick wall, pulling Skyler back with him so that when he finally solidifies and lets go, Skyler is trapped halfway inside the wall with his torso inside the building and his legs still stuck outside.

Danny stumbles back a few steps just to get out of arm's reach and finally lets out a sigh of relief. Skyler definitely can't get at him now.]

[strikeraid]

[ Yes... Yes he is. Skyler heaves and struggles, and actually lets loose a couple of poorly aimed fireballs, if Danny feels up to dodging them, but he won't be moving soon. Better get out of there, Danny; he doesn't look particularly happy about being stuck in a hilariously awkward position in a brick wall. ]

Run, Fenton.

[ He doesn't sound particularly happy either. And as soon as he figures out how to get out of that wall... ]

[gogoghostpowers]

[Danny thankfully goes intangible just in time to avoid the fireballs, and is about to turn solid again, but then decides against it. He may not be invisible like this, but he's at least a lot harder to see. Plus, he could just walk through another wall right now and Skyler would never know where he went.

But before he does that...]

At least I still can!

[Okay, so his voice nearly died there before even finishing the first word, but he said it! He said something witty to a guy he's got trapped in a brick wall! That done, he now turns his back to Skyler and leaves, walking through another wall into another part of the building, now confident that Skyler can't try anything else on him any more.]