Post by marlowe wiedmer on Dec 21, 2012 18:54:15 GMT -5
“Welcome to the jungle, bitch.” said Erick, generic musclehead accomplice.
Marlowe knew then and there that he hung around some classy fellas. They had been trailing this little trickster for a couple of blocks now. Brooklyn was already a dangerous place to be out and about after hours. Moloch’s ragtag coterie lowered the survival rate just by being present. Their target was a missing youngster, which meant they first had to look for this damn kid. Marlowe didn’t mind a loaded mission but banding with his fellow mobsters was the worst experience. They were powered nitwits, whose eyes have been open for quite some time now. Instead of expunging demons, absorbing magical tomes, and frolicking with fae, these crooks wanted fast cash. They didn’t mind being slaves to a madman. Marlowe was unfortunately mafia, if you haven’t heard about them, you soon will.
This kid did something that earned him a spot one of NYC’s vilest shit-lists. This brat looked a little young but Marlowe couldn’t afford to have a conscience. He literally could not afford it. These oddjobs were his livelihood and the only cash-flow keeping him in The New School. Though, the student was upset at how sprightly his target was. The little bastard veered into a nondescript alleyway. This excited Marlowe’s femme fatale of a partner, who sped in after him. The two masculine mobsters took their time, giving the street a looksy. Marlowe, specifically, squinted and viewed the astral landscape. Brooklyn was uncanny but not magically so, yet.
“Alright, let’s bag him. Boss wants him hot, fresh, and… well actually neither of those.” Marlowe stabilized his eyesight and started into the alleyway. Both Erick and he found out that the path wasn’t a dead-end, so they caught up as fast as they could. Luckily, Linds trapped the target by parkour-ing over his shoulders. Small-fry was toast.
“Awh, look at him. Let’s make him beg!” said the offbeat girl. To put it simply, such mannerisms made her markedly unattractive to Marlowe. The college student was the leader here, and in times like these, he was the one whose hands were bloodied. Killing a kid wasn’t the worst thing he’s done. Don’t think he couldn’t live with himself. He raised his thumb and index finger like a gun, aiming at the heart of the mark.
“Fuck that, look how small he is. He’d change our minds. Bro, any last words?” Marlowe licked his lips and sighed. By no means was he proud of this.
Meanwhile, Erick was being a pleasant bloodhound, sniffing out any witnesses. The one place Marlowe didn’t acknowledge caught Erick’s attention. The overhead fire-escape. The brute’s nose flared, and he pointed his submachine up high. Careless of his allies, Erick let loose a barrage of bullets at the metallic staircase. Without delay, Marlowe’s ears popped. He turned which gave the brat enough time to slip between him and Erick, right out the way they came in. At once, Linds pursued. Marlowe focused all his attention on this obscured bystander. This was too bad. Marlowe would have to kill two people tonight.
*Marlowe’s working with two magical amateurs. They aren’t herd, since technically Marlowe’s part of a herd. They’re E rank and in their late teens. Erick (male) has an uzi and enhanced conditioning. Linds (female) has explosive, pyrotechnic projection (x-men’s jubilee) and some gymnastic skill. I’ll play them both. It’ll give me something to do. C:
Post by varnock acerbi on Dec 21, 2012 19:08:12 GMT -5
Christ... He had been following these guys for ages now and all they had been after was some kid. He wasn't exactly their best choice for stalking some of the Mafia either, but what can you do? When the people paying you give an order, you follow it. Said orders had him following some Mafia that had gone and pissed off someone in the Agency enough to warrant someone tracking them to gather further information. Course he hadn't learned much yet. Just looked like a few thugs trying to kill some kid. He definitely wasn't happy about that, but at least they would be more focused on tracking him rather than keeping their eyes out for followers.
Or so he thought at least. The fire escape was a blessing and a curse it seems. It provided a way up or down as needed, but it left him in a pretty bad spot right now. He had hoped no one would notice him and hadn't counted on one of them being a god damn bloodhound. There were three of them too... Not exactly the best situation one could be in. He let out a small sigh as the bullets started to fly and grabbed the underside of the next level of the fire escapes rails to lever himself up and out of the way of the barrage from below. Lucky for him most of the shots ricocheted off the metal of the escape anyways.
A quick thought left him holding a book filled with his special kind of magic. Of course from this distance not much would be of real help to him other than a few guns that would have the same amount of trouble reaching them as theirs had reaching him. The pages fluttered on their own towards one of the hundreds as the grip of a pistol stuck out from the center of a page that rippled like water. He removed it with a bit more force than was necessary and let the book flutter to another page as he took aim to fire at those below him. At least this way he had a ward or three ready if they started trying to blow him to smithereens.
Sometimes kids get lost. Sometimes they get lost for weeks, and that's why Seraph's out here on the streets. Because last he heard, it was likely that the kid would be around here. There were dealers up and down this street, and the kid wasn't exactly clean. But his mother had begged Seraph, and Seraph couldn't really blame her for wanting her missing son back.
When he hears gunshots, he doesn't expect to see his target. But sure enough, there he is, cowering and shaking, barely a teenager and already on the road to corruption. But there are three other people surrounding him, and Seraph's unarmed.
Well, he has his lighter, but he's terrible at pyromancy while he's in this form. The only thing he can do is take bullets, and it'd be more of a nuisance than anything. Getting more clay is always a hassle. Hm.
He decides to keep towards the back, takes off his jacket, and pulls his lighter out of his pocket. He glances to the man with the books, one that probably can't see him from where he's hugging the wall and sends a telepathic message: I am observing silently from an advantageous position. Give me but a few moments and I shall be more than a mere witness.
Hopefully this would work. He flicks on the lighter and holds it over his coat, focusing hard on the flame. Slowly, the coat begins burning. Now to find a better fuel source...
...There's a dry recycling bin. And he'd just ruined is nice jacket. Well. Fuck. And the burning jacket was likely to give away his position. As quick as he can, Seraphiel tosses the burning clothing into the bin, reaches in, and scoops up a handful of flame. He stands in front of the burning bin, the fireball growing.
But charging this attack is leaving him prone, and that's probably not the best thing to be at the moment.
Last Edit: Dec 21, 2012 19:25:26 GMT -5 by seraphiel
Post by marlowe wiedmer on Dec 21, 2012 20:34:12 GMT -5
And just a few moments ago, Marlowe thought this undertaking was in the bag. Signed, sealed, about to be delivered, but nope. Erick’s interruption came at literally the worst time. The student had set up such a climatic, deciding scene, but the Oscar-winning performance was pooped on by gunfire. Life works in mysterious ways. To further that statement, enter the ghostly wordsmith.
“Aye, bruv. Slime ovuh there cookin’ up. Best get the fuck outta here. ” Lupin appeared in the astral plane, away from any physical danger. The overlapping plane allowed telepathic communication, much to Marlowe’s dismay. While shots were fired, Lupin swaggered towards Marlowe from some shadowy threshold. He pointed down the alleyway at a distant danger which only fretted the young man. One obstacle was a hurdle. Two was a mountain. Marlowe didn’t trust his odds right now. Moloch always droned on about sticking with a partner. Linds broke that rule in the heat of the moment, but a child wasn’t really an issue, was it? Two v. Two wasn’t supposed to happen, though. That’s simply not how the mafia worked. Lupin draped an arm over the twenty-year-old’s shoulder. Marlowe wasn’t in the mood.
“Erick, we got more company. Kill this rat. I’ll be right back. ” Erick snarled in agreement. The burly mobster knew when it was time to grab cover. His bullets weren’t hitting squat, and with the altitude difference, this mousy stranger had a better hand of cards. He steadily moved back, still facing forward, behind a navy blue dumpster. Frustrated, Erick grabbed a stray cement block from the ground and fired it at the fire escape. He was no quarterback but he could heave heavier things with one hand. The gym-going mafia-man made lemonade, because he had a finite amount of lead and an infinite amount of uncertainty.
Linds chased the boy up another fire escape on the other side of the alleyway. The kid’s reflexes matched her own, so she kept pace and waited for a misstep.
Marlowe walked through Lupin’s ethereal form, something the rapper-ghost hated. He had no reason to be self-conscious. It’s not like anyone else could see him. As he started towards the newest guest, he watched a clever fire-making process. Pyro. “Yep.” Marlowe quickly respired…a cloudy gas. He did this slowly while walking, involuntarily. Upon noticing his smoke leakage, he started switching up his path, stepping like a slow-motion speed skater. He smiled at being obscure. It was hilarious. The smoke raised a story-high, obscuring the rest of the scene for this newcomer as well.
Post by varnock acerbi on Dec 21, 2012 20:47:39 GMT -5
Varnock turned his head at the psychic intrusion and forced down his natural assault when he heard the offer of help. The mobster he was aiming for didn't seem to be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he had more than enough brawn to make up for it if the mangled bars near him from that cinder block was any indication and he had the crazy chick mirroring him across the way. Well at least he could make use of that block of cement lodged into the bars.
He took a moment to spawn another book, a journal to be exact, and pressed the block of cement into it. The thing may come in handy as a projectile of his own later after all. Course will that damn smoke coming up from down there things might get a little... messy. he moved as silently as he could further up the escape towards the roof with the smoke muffling him and hiding him from view. Worst case scenario he could sacrifice a book to blow a few paper explosives to mask his escape. He was loathe to waste a perfectly good book like that though.
He fired a few shots down into the smoke that were aimed for the general point of origin and around the dumpster in case the stupid one was moving out of cover. Varnock sighed quietly once more. What he wouldn't give to have Ellen around to act as eyes for him. he kept the cinder block laden journal ready with the ward pages of the other just in case. He was thinking it might be high time to get the hell out of dodge unless his fire wielding ally(?) proved very useful in a fight.
Last Edit: Dec 21, 2012 20:50:27 GMT -5 by varnock acerbi
Seraphiel wants to go after the kid, get him out of here, but that's not an option when there are obstacles in the way. And the first obstacle? That smoke. The area's soon obscured, and Seraphiel can't see a damn thing. He doesn't bother removing his shades. He just stops breathing, because why pretend he has lungs when there's nothing inside this body but a six-winged beast of flame?
The fire grows and he sends it flying blindly into the smoke. Hopefully it'll hit something, and that something not being the kid. That would kind of suck. As soon as the first one goes off, Seraphiel grabs for another handful of flame, then another. With a burning orb in each hand, he waits to see if he needs to fire again.
Post by marlowe wiedmer on Dec 22, 2012 14:52:25 GMT -5
Smoke pissed off everybody but Marlowe. Erick, for example, totally lost his mark and was aiming at a silhouette behind the cloudy veil. One specific close call rang his eardrums and stunned him for a brief moment. The first creeper’s gunshot pierced through the plastic dumpster cover and ricocheted in its metallic walls. The resulting noise was as if someone let a spaz ring a church bell. Staggered, he left his cover with a dash and jumped to grab ahold of the fire escape’s ladder. He proceeded to climb with a gun in his hand and hate in his heart. Linds also felt some indirect harm from the smoke. Marlowe avoided the first fireball with some ease, considering distance and cloud cover. The fireball didn’t just dissipate in seconds but managed to head in her direction. As she finally caught the little boy in her hands, she had to leap down to the ground, from a story-high, with him in her hands. They both rolled into a wall, squeezing each other, and were knocked unconscious from the impact. Everyone’s target was static now, but first a fight was to be had.
“M, this oldhead ain’t a simp. I can tell. Stay wary, kid.” Lupin shadowed his friend and observed the scene. His interest was piqued so he drifted off towards the fire escape magician. Perhaps, the rapper could get a better look. Maybe this creep had a badge or something swinging all obnoxious-like. He figured any ID would give Marlowe a bit of knowhow in dealing with this situation. Obscured to even the awoken, Lupin blended into the shadows and climbed the building.
Marlowe took off in the other direction and stopped smoking, stalking this newcomer and staying close to the walls. If this pyro thought M was in the middle of the alleyway, he was dead wrong. The student crouched low and again cocked his ‘handgun’. The smoke started to rise at his position, giving him a misty view of the stranger. He stabilized his psionic pistol, aimed with his index finger, and shot a bullet of radiant light towards the pyro’s chest.
Post by varnock acerbi on Dec 22, 2012 15:06:45 GMT -5
Of all the days to get into a fight with mobsters... He was about to start practicing Assault again now that his Warding had reached a more powerful level, but he was virtually unarmed right now. Of course he still had a bit of bang for his buck. Being able to control paper to a minor extent and having knowledge of the runes needed to keep energy within it allowed for some... interesting applications of force.
He withdrew three slips of paper from a page in his first book and tossed them towards the fire escape once he had made it to the other side of the building to hide from sight behind the box-like structure that held the stairs down into the building. With any luck his pursuer wouldn't see them coming until they blew up in his face.
From a third person perspective, that of our ghostly interloper, they would see a taller man wearing a white mask and thick black coat dashing up the final bit of the fire escape to hide on the roof after tossing some kind of paper seal down onto the ground. They could be anything to those without the knowledge on how to identify them. All in all he was pretty hard to identify.
Last Edit: Dec 22, 2012 15:07:03 GMT -5 by varnock acerbi
The fires in his hands go out and Seraphiel staggers back. The clay in his chest has cracked and there's a bit of his essence showing through, glowing beneath the wound in his torso. Rebuilding it could take a while. But it'd be difficult to phase out of this body without causing some damage to the puppet...
He checks for a bullet and finds none. Interesting. He grabs more fire from the bin, this one bigger, and then sends it flying at a nearby brick wall. Hopefully the blast would cause an explosion which could be... not so smart. Yeah.
The recycling bin is starting to fizzle out. Soon, Seraphiel will need more fire.
Post by marlowe wiedmer on Dec 25, 2012 23:58:41 GMT -5
All cozy in his new Nike pajamas, little Devon of Brooklyn, NY slept so peacefully. He dreamt himself as a magician fighting off spirits within his dreamy fade. All he really had to do was look outside to see the real-life mayhem. If he actually did, the agency would have a case on their hands but probably not. The kid would’ve most likely thought he was still dreaming.
Unlike these physical lames, Lupin prowled the scene by hovering casper-style. The deceased rhymer reached the rooftop in little time and crept closer to the first meddler. He examined the fool but couldn’t get much on him. The ghost did peep a tome of some sort, as the guy rushed to the condo’s staircase erection. What followed motivated Lupin to call out. Three pieces of paper flew from the meddler’s spot to the fire escape. In this same fire escape, Erick was leaping from one floor to the next with power-jumps. It made a bit of noise but not like what was to come next.
“Your boy E’s in trouble.” Marlowe had no choice but to ignore. A bullet, even a normal one, to the heart wasn’t something you just shook off. Heck, it wasn’t something you recovered from. This cat wasn’t magi; he probably wasn’t human. Moloch told him that some wakers were on some next-level stage of power. Of course to scare him, the mafia don told him that he was one of them. Still, something was fishy about how unaffected this guy was. If you had some impenetrable factor, you still felt bullets. The medium squinted, and his eyes switched to a blue tint. He saw a trancelike vista of the Brooklyn alleyway with a sepia sky replacing a navy blue one. At the end of the alleyway was…not what he just shot a few seconds ago.
“What the…ERICK!” Marlowe calls out to his friend. Explosion answers. Just in that moment, Linds was struggling up on her feet. She looks up to see her colleague falling to what could be his death. The gymnast shoots off like an Olympian runner and slides to catch the heavy man. The impact was rough and appeared to be decisive for both mobsters. Somehow Linds retained consciousness and Erick grunted in pain. Marlowe turned to witness this all but shifted back to see another attack coming his way. He dived to the right, and the fire blast’s force propelled him a little further.
“What the hell are you? A demon?” On his side, he gripped his right wrist with his left hand and released a ball of psionic energy from his palm. The recoil rolled him to his other side, facing his fallen mates, and he used the momentum to get to rise to his feet. Back turned, he was a bit open for attacks but committed. Now was the time to settle this mission. Marlowe wasn’t sure if he had much time left.
Post by varnock acerbi on Dec 26, 2012 2:27:56 GMT -5
That... That worked a lot better than he had expected actually. Knocked his pursuer all the way off the building into a nasty collision with his partner at the bottom. Time to finish things off and question the last one alive. He readied the cinder block from before in a way that almost physically said overkill. He plastered more explosive paper tags on the thing before absorbing it back into the book and walking to the edge of the roof to point it downwards. Time for the fireworks.
With a fluttering of pages and a face devoid of emotion Varnock sent the cement block turned explosive down like a bullet towards the two downed mobsters. If that wasn't enough to take them out of the fight for at least a little while, nothing was. He turned his attention to the area the psionic blast and words had come from before taking a few shots that were aimed low into the smoke. He didn't want to kill this one after all. A simple maiming should do just fine for information gathering.
He eyed the one who had chosen to help him curiously once he got a moment though. He had taken a bullet to the chest if what he could see was any indication, but it didn't seem to stop him from shooting enough fire to roast most of the alley. He decided to check him out after this was over just in case.
A demon? Seraphiel opens his mouth to speak, but a ball of psionic energy hits him square in the face, sending his sunglasses flying. Chunks of clay hit the ground and crumble apart. The body falls to the ground as two, then four flaming wings slip out of the hole where the body's head should be.
The seraph has his reasons for wanting the clay body and this is it. He stretches his wings, each one four feet long. Occasionally a humanoid figure could be seen in the flame, but mostly it was just an amorphous ball of flame surrounded by six burning wings.
He chooses to speak telepathically rather than aloud: the seraphim's voices are designed to sing praises, and loudly. Waking every sleeper within the block wouldn't be good. I am no demon and the implication offends me greatly. I would advise you to abscond before I decide to act upon my wounded pride.
Post by marlowe wiedmer on Jan 6, 2013 17:47:24 GMT -5
Rushing to meet his mates, with what felt like a sprained ankle, Marlowe caught sight of the falling cement block in his movement. He saw Linds raise her arm to turn the brick into pyrotechnics, but that would only drain her into a seizure. Marlowe, again, had to save his fellow mobsters from demise. He raised his hand in that familiar pose and let loose a psionic bullet towards the cement. What occurred was a blast just as large as the previous one. If it was any louder, they’d be waking up sleepers and getting the attention of the fire department. That wasn’t optimal at all. He wasn’t sure if these outsiders even figured that.
Idiots… He was thinking everyone, honestly. Looking down at his colleagues, looking up at the mysterious party-crasher, and finally, looking behind at something from behind the curtain. Marlowe has had quite a few telepathic conversations in his life. Moloch, Lupin, and many of the gloaming spirits had such abilities. Never before had he felt so focused in on what someone was telling him. His eyes squinted at the blinding wings emerging from the hole where a face once was. The mobster knew which battles to pick. This wasn’t one of them.
“I hear you loud and clear. Coterie, abort.” Marlowe closed his eyes, swallowed, and turned to two perpetrators struggling to their feet. Everyone was pissed now. “You messed with the wrong guy, spirit.” He shouted so that his words reached the being. “I’d keep an eye on that kid, if I was you.” Marlowe started to emit his smoke. In seconds, the three disappeared leaving nothing but an alleyway pothole opened.
[Late post, fellas. This is your thread now, if you want.]
HIDDEN in plain sight is a modern-day supernatural noir game set in New York City and sprawling the rest of America. Magic is real, and so are angels, ghosts, gods, vampires, and witches. It doesn't matter if you believe in them, because they're coming for you either way.
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