trans_9 | Altercations Are Inevitable

He'd been peeking around the corner of a building, told Paco to stay there until they were sure it was safe. He'd spotted that guy high-tailing it off, they all looked freaked. He was considering going out sans suit--

When he saw the GIANT BUG on the girl's back and it looked like it had a stinger! CRAP!

There was no time for a warning and he could move faster than he could talk anyway. Without a word, Blue Beetle jumped into action.

To the others it looked like an exoskeletoned thing leapt out of hiding, and was slashing at Will, trying to slice her to pieces with massive claws.

There was no time to transform - but there WAS enough time to panic!

"EEEEEEK!"

Will shrieked, and though she couldn't move nearly fast enough to dodge in human form, she had already had her hand at her chest, where the warmth of the Heart of Kandrakar was comfortingly close, and a brilliant glow emanated from her chest as a bolt of electricity shot from her into her blue-suited attacker.

Oh no! Secret was out!

Well - it would be, anyhow, presuming Will had stunned her attacker long enough to get to a safe distance.

"Hold fire! Don't hit Will!" But then she--blasted the thing away?

Cybil reached forward, grabbed Will and YANKED her back out of the way.

"JAIME!"

Paco wasn't always the best at following directions.

He raced around the building after his friend. Whoa hey, people!

Armed people. Wuh-oh.

"DON'T SHOOT!"

Kate could see Vincent gearing up, and great, this guy was getting right in the way. And he wasn't armed either.

"Get down!" she yelled and launched herself forward to tackle him to the ground and roll them away from the line of fire.

Vincent's mind was reeling from what he'd felt in the old man's mind. He felt terrified and awed all at once.

"The Allfather..." He murmured softly to himself, before his attention was caught by the conflict. He saw the armored humanoid engaged in a struggle with the human girl from 'near' his universe, and tried to subdue it.

For now though, he opted for a non-damaging approach, in case it turned out to be a potential ally. His hands flew through the invocations and he locked eyes on the creature as the spell activated. "HOLD AND BE STILL." He ordered it to remain still, using as strong a compulsion charm as he could manage quickly. "Identify yourself!"

Kara's gun was in her hand as soon as she heard the cries, pointed around aimlessly until she saw what the shouting was about, but by then there was a command of "Hold your fire!" that struck her to the base of her spine, frightened and alarmed as she was. It was the voice of command and of her captain, and Starbuck obeyed it...grudgingly.

He didn't hold. What was a compulsion to TWO wills completely in synch and working in tandem. For a moment, his legs felt like molasses, but he was still trying to break through the crowd and figure out where that thing had skittered off to. He could tell it was bad news.

And he WOULD have identified himself, but he was still gasping and trying to catch his breath from having it knocked out of him by the girl.

Electricity was his friend, typically, but that had been a LOT of electricity.

Pfft. Voice of command? Not in Harper's world. Shoot first, ask questions if you got a chance, and Harper didn't really care if they got a chance. Sorry, bug-thing, you're going down.

Wednesday smoothly withdraws from any lines of fire with the grace of someone who's spent a very large amount of time in combat.

He's willing to let the others handle it, apparently. At least, for the moment.

Murphy stared, gun out and point at the blue person, thing, monster. Alien? "The fuck! Fucking fuck? What the FUCK!"

Connor, in the same pose as Murphy, was only slightly more eloquent. "What the fucking FUCK is fucking happening here? Fuck!"

"Fuck, man! Fuck! It's gonna fucking eat us! Fuck!"

Scared voices, flashes of live fire in the wet green dark illuminating horrible jumping things, and just the entire situation combined made something go "Twannng!" in Starbuck's mind, and she too fired three rapid shots just after Harper's in the general direction of the jumping blue thing.

The bullets were deflecting off the suit--which was worrying the hell out of him honestly, as he was afraid one of them would catch a richochet--and thus out came a wing so he had more control over where the bullets were deflected.

"Wai--"

Breath still not back yet. Something had overloaded, and the scarab was repairing, but--

It was a machine!

No - that was definitely a human-feeling mind in there - wasn't it? Yes. AND a machine-mind as well - a human inside a supersuit.

A human - and definitely not an evil-seeming one, now that Will was concentrating on him. Frustration, pain, but no anger - Will had felt that complex mix of emotions several times herself, in the heat of battle, when plans had not gone exactly as she had wanted them to.

And now she'd shocked him.

Well, no time to think about the details - people were freaking out, and Will was pretty sure that the thing hadn't MEANT to seem as creepy evil as it had, and even if it did, there was always the chance she could reason with it - both of them.

She started to say "I'm sorry! Are you all right?" when Harper and Starbuck began shooting.

No no no! This was bad! Not necessarily for him because the bullets were bouncing off his armor, but -

Wait, bullets were bouncing off his armor! At non-armored people!

Will threw up her arms, and the bullets that bounced off of the blue person-machine's body were suddenly deflected by a force field of crackling, electric energy.

"Stop shooting him! There's a person in there!" she shouted, her chest glowing again as the Heart of Kandrakar semi-materialized on its chain around her neck.

Using her powers in front of near-strangers . . . oh man, the other girls were going to be so mad at her!

This was an ugly little scene. Lots of panicking, but he didn't dare get too close to the fray. Right now, he was still.. well, he wasn't superhuman without his suit, right? Nothing like being handicapped to make you feel damn near useless. Tony had hung back, hearing shots and then gunfire, deafeningly close. Something bad was going to happen if this didn't settle down, and fast.

The girl's voice was a voice of reason, and by then, he was trying to peer around the cluster of people. Too dumb to quit, really. Or did he simply believe in teamwork? Curiosity and the cat.

"A guy in a funny-looking suit? Imagine that.." Tony sounded strained, though the comment was meant to amuse.

Vincent felt the remnants of the spell shatter. He hadn't known the target had two minds. One of them was like nothing he'd seen before, but the other, definitely human, as he'd suspected.

If anyone asked, he'd suspected.

He was just ready to put a shielding spell around it, when another mage, a young girl, did it first. He scowled, but tried to step in regardless.

"Of COURSE it's a person! Why do you think I tried controlling it instead of just attacking?" Vincent yelled in exaggerated frustration, moving himself between the force field and the line of fire. "Now stop shooting!" Energy crackled in his hand threateningly.

"Excuse me! Coming through!" Lucca wasn't used to working with such a large group. When the commotion started she'd drawn her pistol, only to find she didn't have a clear shot. She threaded her way to the front, trying not to cross anyone's line of fire in the process.

She tried to assess the situation.Multiple gunshots, Will yelling for them to stop--then she realized that while the blue figure was pushing its way into the group, it wasn't striking back, despite having had every opportunity. Something didn't add up--

Even as Vincent tried to stop the others from shooting, Lucca took a deep breath and stepped forward, reholstering the Wondershot in the process. There were more than enough guns covering their mystery guest already. She tried to hide the slight tremble in her stride as she stopped just short of Will's energy field and faced the newcomer, hands at her sides, palms turned outward to show she wasn't a threat.

Jono'd had his hand at the edge of outfit, ready to pull down the high neck. It had been in reaction to everybody else's suddenly higher anxiety levels. He hadn't had a chance to do anything, though, which he was grateful for.

Frankly, if they reacted like that to this guy, who knew what they would have done if he'd opened up?

Gordon Bennet, he muttered, smoothing the cowling back into place. Anybody or anythin' we meet in this place is gonna be in the same mess we are. No reason to go 'round like fuckin' cowboys. We're all scared an' stressed. Get a grip.

They were right. Her gun was drawn and trained on the strange newcomer, but she hadn't fired a shot.

"Everyone, stop!"

"Are you crazy?! Look at it! Kill the fucker before he kills us!"

"I said STOP! EVERYONE, HOLD FIRE!" Her voice boomed in a way that, in most soldiers, would reach down somewhere at the base of their spines and grab hold.

Jono's not a soldier, but even he had to stop and listen. He narrowed his eyes at the soldier guy, fully ready to take him down telepathically if he had to.

The "fucker" had finally caught his breath back. He was holding out both hands in a placating 'stop pelting me with bullets, as they sting' gesture.

"Would people stop, you know, shooting at me and electrocuting me for five seconds and let me explain myself? I can barely catch my breath here."

Most mindless aliens were not so articulate.

Or capable of sounding just extremely annoyed over homicidal.

Or apparently (judging from the slight accent that came of growing up in a bilingual home) Latino.

It was a risk, but he did what he thought would diffuse the situation most effectively--and he was worried if they kept shooting, that while HE would be fine, a bullet might richochet. Which meant, yes, he would rather take a bullet than risk it bouncing off and hitting someone.

It was a superhero thing.

He also, in general, trusted people. That they would do the right thing. He was a smart kid, but sometimes it wasn't a smart thing to do.

"Look, look, see? I'm human. Peeerfectly normal human, just like...uh, most of you. I just have a little alien friend hitchhiking along that lets me do cool stuff."

The suit receded, pulled away, showing bare, tan skin underneath, though it looked like it was rubbed raw at first. It was, however, a rather alarming and unpleasant-looking transformation--which he knew, but he was hoping they'd chill out at least until the end 'Surprise! I'm a teenager!" part. At least he wouldn't be naked, because the scarab had gotten good at throwing out its made-from-waste-and-other-things-Jaime-didn't-want-to-know-about clothes as he transformed.

There was ONE problem though, and that was the scarab itself. It wasn't stupid, so much as very very focused. Khaji Da tended to have a one-track mind. Fortunately, that track was no longer 'Kill kill kill!' but Jaime sometimes had to lead it away from being TOO focused on something sometimes.

Jaime saw the bug skittering on a wall behind the crowd.

Therefore the scarab saw the bug skittering. Immediately, it reacted, forming a sort of narrow plasma rifle--kind of an alien sniper rifle--on one of Jaime's hands--one of the ones outstretched in peace towards the group.

It looked like he was taking advantage of the relative calm to fire at them, when the scarab wanted to fire PAST them.

It wasn't dumb. It just REALLY wanted to kill that bug. It seemed dangerous.

Jaime likely still seemed dangerous. He was mid-transformation. His eyes were GLOWING with what looked like quiet menace and there were tracks of black in the skin of his face.

"Scarab, no!" He immediately started recalling the weapon. "Bad timing! For God's sake, I'm trying to calm them down, not--"

Edited 2008-06-22 18:52 (UTC)

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