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xp_logs2008-03-01 09:02 pm
x-tatiana.livejournal.com) wrote in xp_logs2008-03-01 09:02 pm
Cornered: Arrivals and Interruptions
Terry and Jennie were sent on a retrieval, and rescued Tatiana, taking her back with them to Xavier's.
Terry adjusted the comm in her ear as she stepped out of the car. They had a fair description of the mutant they were looking for but not where they might look for her. The motel had been closer so they'd stopped there first but with no better result than getting sworn at by the inhabitants of the room. The best lead they had was the impression of kitchen work that Xavier had gotten from her. Checking every restaurant in town sounded tedious but such was the glamorous life of an X-Man. Glancing over the car at Jennie, Terry shrugged, "All American diner or local pizza joint first, do you think?"
"Gimme one sec," Jennie fished in her pockets, coming up with a quarter. "Heads is pizza joint?" she flipped the coin and caught it, smacking it onto the back of her hand. "Tails. Diner it is." Jennie put the coin back in her pocket. Secretly, she was quite glad that Terry was with her on this go-round. She didn't fancy another powers accident with another Mutant In Peril.
"Lead on, kemosabe," Jennie gestured for Terry to go first.
"I've lived here eight years and never been upstate. Does that seem weird? I think it's weird," Terry mused as she started briskly down the street, listening with half an ear to the conversations going on around her. They'd parked a bit away from the diner itself so at first the sound of it was drowned out by music pouring from a record store. But that didn't cover the sound of shouting for long. "Trouble. Sounds like it's around back. Not much chance it won't be our lass, I suppose."
"Well, with the way that our lives are? Probably not," Jennie sighed and squared her shoulders. "I'll do the hitty if you do the talky?"
Terry nodded, somewhat distracted by what she was hearing, "That worked last time."
In fact, hitty seemed to be what the situation would call for, as there was a group of six or so men surrounding a figure out by the dumpsters. Jennie couldn't see who they had cornered, but from the shouts, she figured it was probably their new charge.
"For crying out loud, why can't I ever get the ones where it's show up at the house and talk to the parents and I don't get turned into a dog or fight a mob," Jennie muttered. Much louder she called, "Hey! There seem to be a problem back here?"
A high pitched squeal echoed against the concrete brick of the buildings. It was something that was arguably inhuman, a noise that the vocal cords of Homo sapien couldn't create on their own. That almost-scream was followed by something that was much more familiar; the sound of a man in pain, the odd mix of shout and scream following the surge of the others yelling. If answering Jennie had been a passing thought, it was gone now. The injured stumbled backwards, the blood that had spattered his coat whipping the others into a frenzy.
And cornered, her claws and one arm matted with blood, was Tatiana. Not recognizable as the average girl she'd been some five minutes before, but instead she was a mixture of human and rat. She was cornered, the tears darkening her fur were all too human. Instincts had won out, it seemed, until she'd seen the blood. Now she was just a frightened mess, the survival instincts still at war with her own horror over what she'd done.
Terry hissed out a command to the small crowd of shocked bystanders, voice reverberating with power, playing on their fear to scatter them. The fewer witnesses the easier this would be to deny later. She couldn't get through to the attackers so easily though. That would be up to Jennie.
Jennie cracked her knuckles and then her neck, squaring her feet firmly and leaving her posture open. One flung red disk sent one of the mod sprawling over an untied boot lace. Another was felled by a charlie-horse. The others turned to see the girl in the ponytail and black leather. She smiled and beckoned them with gloved fingers.
They surged forward, and Jennie motioned for Terry to go to the right with a jerk of her chin. The first attacker, a man with dirty blonde hair and breath that just reeked of booze ran forward and tried to backhand Jennie across the face. Jennie calmly caught his arm and used the man's own forward motion to toss him over her hip. Turning in time to smash an elbow into a second man's nose.
Terry fought her way past the last of the crowd, delivering a sharp kick to someone's instep with her reinforced boot heel, and placed herself firmly between the girl and her attackers. Jennie would take care of them, she knew and she so gave them her back without hesitation, dropping into a crouch in front of their target. "Hey there, what say you we get out of here? I'm Siryn." The hand she extended was gloved in black leather.
Tatiana was cowering in the corner, blood spattering her muzzle, the brown fur matted and her clothes in tatters. Even as Terry watched, the fur started to shorten and bone structures started to shift. Sucking in a breath, Tat didn't trust herself to speak. Not after that, not after she'd just caused... Her claws had torn into him, at the end. She'd tried and tried to get away until something took over and she'd just moved- Instinct. Isn't that what they said about rats? It was frightening how there was only the least resistance against her claws, the way the blood had spattered and he'd finally moved back. She didn't even know where the two women had come from, but she honestly didn't care.
Because she'd said out. There'd been no threat, and Tatiana reached for the hand with her own, thankful the claws were starting to recede. She finally opened her mouth, and there was something wrong with her voice. High and squeaky, almost panicked. "Please, I... I didn't mean to-" But she had. When she'd gone for him, that's what she'd meant to do. "I didn't want to hurt him."
"Course you didn't. Sure it's always hard to control yourself when you're scared and it's natural to fight back when someone's hurting you." Despite the chaos around them, Terry's voice was dead calm and friendly. She grasped the girl's hand tightly and pulled her to her feet. Checking behind her, she saw that Jennie had the situation well in hand but her sharp ears picked up a distinctive wail heading their way. "Sure we should be going. There'll be trouble if you stay and you look like you're in no condition to face it."
"I- I'm not-" Tat stammered even as she stumbled because of the shift in the bone structure of her feet. It didn't hurt, really, it was just... jarring. Her clothes were in tatters as she lifted her gaze to look at Terry, seeing her as a lifeline. "I don't have anywhere to go." She blurted it, before she closed her eyes tightly. "N-Nevermind. I'll make do." She could find a place, so long as she could get away from here. Away from New York, maybe. Run to Canada.
Meanwhile, the crowd had gotten smart and instead of the one-attacker-at-a-time thing the power rangers seemed to be so fond of, two of the men tried to go for Jennie at once. Jennie snap-kicked the one on the right, improbably knocking him into his partner. She then ducked as her first blond assailant tried to swing a pipe at her head from behind. She smashed her elbow into the guy's crotch, and he gasped in pain, collapsing into a fetal position. Jennie stood and clucked her tongue at him.
"Naughty," she taunted, and then gave him another kick in the stomach for good measure. Jennie threw a quick glance over her shoulder, Terry had the girl, good, and looked back, only to be tackled by one of the men she had just flung to the ground. That one had a severe case ofhemorrhoids suddenly flare up, and he yelped. The girl pushed him off and got to her feet, flicking her sweaty bangs out of her face, and beckoned them again with fingers that glowed softly red. Her grin was just a hair shy of feral.
Just a kid, Terry thought. She wasn't going to last making do on her own and frankly, Terry didn't plan to let her. "Come with us. We'll get you looked at, make sure you're not hurt. You can decide what to do while you're going to do when you're not a slave to your instincts. Thinking clearly can be a bit hard for new ferals." She paused, noting the girl's hesitation and added, not unkindly, "Not to put too fine a point on it, lass, you've really only got one way out of here anyway."
"I know. I mean, yeah. I need help to get away." She was shaking, the adrenaline starting to fall like a rock. "I just-" Her eyes welled with tears as her eyes flicked from Terry's face to her hands, the remains of her sleeves streaked with blood. "I just-" She just ripped someone apart, she thought. Through her mind's eye, it was worse than she thought. The panic magnified the amount of blood, the severity of the injuries she'd caused. "'M gonna go to jail." She didn't really know who Siryn was, but she seemed to be in control. Seemed to- Seemed to be doing better then she was.
And she wasn't a cop.
"I've gotta get out of here." Her hands shook as she sucked in a breath. She didn't know if it was the right thing to go with her, but she knew that staying was the wrong one.
"That's a girl." Most people had scattered, the ones who hadn't were focused on Jennie. Terry reached up for her com, "Roulette, I'm heading out. Got the girl. Follow when you can." At Tatiana, she smiled and nodded her head. "This way. Don't worry, no one's watching us right now." Grabbing the girl's hand again, she pulled her away down the alley at a quick jog.
She ran. Not waiting, only lagging a step behind Siryn because she didn't know where they were going. She was waiting, though. Waiting to hear someone yell that there was the girl from the diner, that she'd killed that guy-
That she was some kind of monster. She'd thought that if she'd been careful enough, that it wouldn't happen again. That she wouldn't have to worry, that it was some freak reaction. Maybe it was. Maybe... Maybe she still wasn't a- Wasn't one of them. That was it. She wasn't one of them. Maybe there was something wrong with the animals, something that made whomever came into blood contact change. Maybe-
"What about her?" The other girl. The one who'd stayed behind. "They'll arrest her. Think she did what I did." She half-stopped, tugging on her hand to get it free. "We've got to go back."
"She'll be just fine. We're here to get you out. If you throw yourself back in there, that defeats the purpose." Terry tugged the girl back into motion. She could force her into the car but that would probably not be the best beginning this.
They were answered when the last of Jennie's assailants went flying past, crashing into a pile of garbage and lying still. "Okay guys, let's beat it before the pack of drunken louts decides to go to the nearest bar and recruit more," she said, slightly out of breath.
"But- But the police-" Tat was twisting to look over her shoulder, but still stumbling over her own feet as she followed Siryn. She almost stumbled into the car, before she actually managed to stop so she could get in it. "I- The blood-" She didn't know if these were the kind of people who'd care, but... That was the last thing she needed. "W-Where're we going?" Suddenly- Really suddenly, like when you have an idea in the middle of the night and it makes you sit up in bed- she realised that she was just about to get in a car with two strangers. Who saved her from getting beaten into a pulp, but still.
Terry paused in the act of the bun out of her hair, turning back to face Tatiana directly. "It's a school for people like us. Don't worry. It'll be all right." She smiled and reached into a pocket on her belt, tugging out a slender black object. "Here, take my phone. If you don't feel comfortable at any point, you can call the police. There's a GPS in that. We're here to help, lass. I promise you."
"You can trust us. We'll make sure you're looked after and more importantly, you're safe," Jennie said, nodding and trying to project Calm and in Charge.
Tat stared at the cell phone, and rather got into the car, the solidity of the object in her hand seeming to ground her in an odd way. The last thing she was going to do was call the police, especially after- after that. "Okay." She said it quietly, staring down at the phone, not even really talking to anyone in specific before she looked up. "... Right?" Right. It was okay. Somehow.
Terry adjusted the comm in her ear as she stepped out of the car. They had a fair description of the mutant they were looking for but not where they might look for her. The motel had been closer so they'd stopped there first but with no better result than getting sworn at by the inhabitants of the room. The best lead they had was the impression of kitchen work that Xavier had gotten from her. Checking every restaurant in town sounded tedious but such was the glamorous life of an X-Man. Glancing over the car at Jennie, Terry shrugged, "All American diner or local pizza joint first, do you think?"
"Gimme one sec," Jennie fished in her pockets, coming up with a quarter. "Heads is pizza joint?" she flipped the coin and caught it, smacking it onto the back of her hand. "Tails. Diner it is." Jennie put the coin back in her pocket. Secretly, she was quite glad that Terry was with her on this go-round. She didn't fancy another powers accident with another Mutant In Peril.
"Lead on, kemosabe," Jennie gestured for Terry to go first.
"I've lived here eight years and never been upstate. Does that seem weird? I think it's weird," Terry mused as she started briskly down the street, listening with half an ear to the conversations going on around her. They'd parked a bit away from the diner itself so at first the sound of it was drowned out by music pouring from a record store. But that didn't cover the sound of shouting for long. "Trouble. Sounds like it's around back. Not much chance it won't be our lass, I suppose."
"Well, with the way that our lives are? Probably not," Jennie sighed and squared her shoulders. "I'll do the hitty if you do the talky?"
Terry nodded, somewhat distracted by what she was hearing, "That worked last time."
In fact, hitty seemed to be what the situation would call for, as there was a group of six or so men surrounding a figure out by the dumpsters. Jennie couldn't see who they had cornered, but from the shouts, she figured it was probably their new charge.
"For crying out loud, why can't I ever get the ones where it's show up at the house and talk to the parents and I don't get turned into a dog or fight a mob," Jennie muttered. Much louder she called, "Hey! There seem to be a problem back here?"
A high pitched squeal echoed against the concrete brick of the buildings. It was something that was arguably inhuman, a noise that the vocal cords of Homo sapien couldn't create on their own. That almost-scream was followed by something that was much more familiar; the sound of a man in pain, the odd mix of shout and scream following the surge of the others yelling. If answering Jennie had been a passing thought, it was gone now. The injured stumbled backwards, the blood that had spattered his coat whipping the others into a frenzy.
And cornered, her claws and one arm matted with blood, was Tatiana. Not recognizable as the average girl she'd been some five minutes before, but instead she was a mixture of human and rat. She was cornered, the tears darkening her fur were all too human. Instincts had won out, it seemed, until she'd seen the blood. Now she was just a frightened mess, the survival instincts still at war with her own horror over what she'd done.
Terry hissed out a command to the small crowd of shocked bystanders, voice reverberating with power, playing on their fear to scatter them. The fewer witnesses the easier this would be to deny later. She couldn't get through to the attackers so easily though. That would be up to Jennie.
Jennie cracked her knuckles and then her neck, squaring her feet firmly and leaving her posture open. One flung red disk sent one of the mod sprawling over an untied boot lace. Another was felled by a charlie-horse. The others turned to see the girl in the ponytail and black leather. She smiled and beckoned them with gloved fingers.
They surged forward, and Jennie motioned for Terry to go to the right with a jerk of her chin. The first attacker, a man with dirty blonde hair and breath that just reeked of booze ran forward and tried to backhand Jennie across the face. Jennie calmly caught his arm and used the man's own forward motion to toss him over her hip. Turning in time to smash an elbow into a second man's nose.
Terry fought her way past the last of the crowd, delivering a sharp kick to someone's instep with her reinforced boot heel, and placed herself firmly between the girl and her attackers. Jennie would take care of them, she knew and she so gave them her back without hesitation, dropping into a crouch in front of their target. "Hey there, what say you we get out of here? I'm Siryn." The hand she extended was gloved in black leather.
Tatiana was cowering in the corner, blood spattering her muzzle, the brown fur matted and her clothes in tatters. Even as Terry watched, the fur started to shorten and bone structures started to shift. Sucking in a breath, Tat didn't trust herself to speak. Not after that, not after she'd just caused... Her claws had torn into him, at the end. She'd tried and tried to get away until something took over and she'd just moved- Instinct. Isn't that what they said about rats? It was frightening how there was only the least resistance against her claws, the way the blood had spattered and he'd finally moved back. She didn't even know where the two women had come from, but she honestly didn't care.
Because she'd said out. There'd been no threat, and Tatiana reached for the hand with her own, thankful the claws were starting to recede. She finally opened her mouth, and there was something wrong with her voice. High and squeaky, almost panicked. "Please, I... I didn't mean to-" But she had. When she'd gone for him, that's what she'd meant to do. "I didn't want to hurt him."
"Course you didn't. Sure it's always hard to control yourself when you're scared and it's natural to fight back when someone's hurting you." Despite the chaos around them, Terry's voice was dead calm and friendly. She grasped the girl's hand tightly and pulled her to her feet. Checking behind her, she saw that Jennie had the situation well in hand but her sharp ears picked up a distinctive wail heading their way. "Sure we should be going. There'll be trouble if you stay and you look like you're in no condition to face it."
"I- I'm not-" Tat stammered even as she stumbled because of the shift in the bone structure of her feet. It didn't hurt, really, it was just... jarring. Her clothes were in tatters as she lifted her gaze to look at Terry, seeing her as a lifeline. "I don't have anywhere to go." She blurted it, before she closed her eyes tightly. "N-Nevermind. I'll make do." She could find a place, so long as she could get away from here. Away from New York, maybe. Run to Canada.
Meanwhile, the crowd had gotten smart and instead of the one-attacker-at-a-time thing the power rangers seemed to be so fond of, two of the men tried to go for Jennie at once. Jennie snap-kicked the one on the right, improbably knocking him into his partner. She then ducked as her first blond assailant tried to swing a pipe at her head from behind. She smashed her elbow into the guy's crotch, and he gasped in pain, collapsing into a fetal position. Jennie stood and clucked her tongue at him.
"Naughty," she taunted, and then gave him another kick in the stomach for good measure. Jennie threw a quick glance over her shoulder, Terry had the girl, good, and looked back, only to be tackled by one of the men she had just flung to the ground. That one had a severe case ofhemorrhoids suddenly flare up, and he yelped. The girl pushed him off and got to her feet, flicking her sweaty bangs out of her face, and beckoned them again with fingers that glowed softly red. Her grin was just a hair shy of feral.
Just a kid, Terry thought. She wasn't going to last making do on her own and frankly, Terry didn't plan to let her. "Come with us. We'll get you looked at, make sure you're not hurt. You can decide what to do while you're going to do when you're not a slave to your instincts. Thinking clearly can be a bit hard for new ferals." She paused, noting the girl's hesitation and added, not unkindly, "Not to put too fine a point on it, lass, you've really only got one way out of here anyway."
"I know. I mean, yeah. I need help to get away." She was shaking, the adrenaline starting to fall like a rock. "I just-" Her eyes welled with tears as her eyes flicked from Terry's face to her hands, the remains of her sleeves streaked with blood. "I just-" She just ripped someone apart, she thought. Through her mind's eye, it was worse than she thought. The panic magnified the amount of blood, the severity of the injuries she'd caused. "'M gonna go to jail." She didn't really know who Siryn was, but she seemed to be in control. Seemed to- Seemed to be doing better then she was.
And she wasn't a cop.
"I've gotta get out of here." Her hands shook as she sucked in a breath. She didn't know if it was the right thing to go with her, but she knew that staying was the wrong one.
"That's a girl." Most people had scattered, the ones who hadn't were focused on Jennie. Terry reached up for her com, "Roulette, I'm heading out. Got the girl. Follow when you can." At Tatiana, she smiled and nodded her head. "This way. Don't worry, no one's watching us right now." Grabbing the girl's hand again, she pulled her away down the alley at a quick jog.
She ran. Not waiting, only lagging a step behind Siryn because she didn't know where they were going. She was waiting, though. Waiting to hear someone yell that there was the girl from the diner, that she'd killed that guy-
That she was some kind of monster. She'd thought that if she'd been careful enough, that it wouldn't happen again. That she wouldn't have to worry, that it was some freak reaction. Maybe it was. Maybe... Maybe she still wasn't a- Wasn't one of them. That was it. She wasn't one of them. Maybe there was something wrong with the animals, something that made whomever came into blood contact change. Maybe-
"What about her?" The other girl. The one who'd stayed behind. "They'll arrest her. Think she did what I did." She half-stopped, tugging on her hand to get it free. "We've got to go back."
"She'll be just fine. We're here to get you out. If you throw yourself back in there, that defeats the purpose." Terry tugged the girl back into motion. She could force her into the car but that would probably not be the best beginning this.
They were answered when the last of Jennie's assailants went flying past, crashing into a pile of garbage and lying still. "Okay guys, let's beat it before the pack of drunken louts decides to go to the nearest bar and recruit more," she said, slightly out of breath.
"But- But the police-" Tat was twisting to look over her shoulder, but still stumbling over her own feet as she followed Siryn. She almost stumbled into the car, before she actually managed to stop so she could get in it. "I- The blood-" She didn't know if these were the kind of people who'd care, but... That was the last thing she needed. "W-Where're we going?" Suddenly- Really suddenly, like when you have an idea in the middle of the night and it makes you sit up in bed- she realised that she was just about to get in a car with two strangers. Who saved her from getting beaten into a pulp, but still.
Terry paused in the act of the bun out of her hair, turning back to face Tatiana directly. "It's a school for people like us. Don't worry. It'll be all right." She smiled and reached into a pocket on her belt, tugging out a slender black object. "Here, take my phone. If you don't feel comfortable at any point, you can call the police. There's a GPS in that. We're here to help, lass. I promise you."
"You can trust us. We'll make sure you're looked after and more importantly, you're safe," Jennie said, nodding and trying to project Calm and in Charge.
Tat stared at the cell phone, and rather got into the car, the solidity of the object in her hand seeming to ground her in an odd way. The last thing she was going to do was call the police, especially after- after that. "Okay." She said it quietly, staring down at the phone, not even really talking to anyone in specific before she looked up. "... Right?" Right. It was okay. Somehow.