LOG: Monday Afternoon - New York

[xp-rockme.livejournal.com]

With word of a mutant runaway that terrorized a police precinct on the loose, Angel, Gabriel and Arthur go looking for the boy. And they just might get lucky...



Trying to find one person in NYC was, arguably, the hardest thing in the world.

Angel was wholly tempted to fly up and try to get a bird's eye view, but the part of her brain that wasn't frustrated knew that would just cause a hell of a lot more trouble, and that was something she was trying very hard to avoid.

Because really, who needed any more trouble when they were all searching for a kid who had flipped an entire police precinct on its metaphoric head?

She looked back at Gabriel and Arthur. "Alright. So where would a mutant kid on the run from the police hide?"

Gabriel kinda shrugged and waited for Arthur to reply, until he realized that this was apparently his area of expertise. Great. "Oh, man. In New York? Uh..." He furrowed his brow and stared into space as he tried to bring some of his own memories to the forefront. "Subways so you can run, alleys so you can hide. Parks or tourist traps so you can disappear into crowds."

"I mostly just... ran." That was more honest than he'd intended to be. See if he ever did Angel a favor like this again.

And like a homing-missile of friendliness, Arthur hovering near Gabriel's shoulder as if poised to go in for a shoulder-clasp. "Gabriel, I..."

"It's fine." Before Arthur could offer a comforting gesture, Gabriel moved five feet away from him. He stood with his arms crossed, studying a nearby fire escape. "Doesn't matter right now anyway."

He looked to Angel, his expression surprisingly serious. "This is your show. What do you know?"

"Just what the report said. Teenage kid, maybe between fifteen and seventeen, Asian, runaway, they picked him up when he tried to steal a laptop," Angel rattled off. "They didn't get a name out of him before he got away but he's on foot, he can't have gotten that far." She hoped. "Police are out full force-" The ones he hadn't...incapacitated, at least, "so he won't be able to run easily. What're some good places to hide?"

"Well, it's a big city." Gabriel closed his eyes for a second, hoping that if he opened them, he wouldn't be stuck in this conversation anymore. "Runaway teen thief, huh?" He couldn't help the small smirk that appeared. "I'd bet 50 bucks he's in an alley. Kids don't realize that's how you get cornered."

"But, like, isn't the kid smart?" Arthur had been left awkwardly hanging, but recovered enough to start absently play with something between his fingers. He shrugged at the two of them. "Kid knocked out some people, sure, but X-Factor's source at the station went on and on about the kid's vocabulary. Don't get me wrong -- no one has ever excused me of being smart -- the alley idea sounds good."

"This is why I just wing it," the man sighed. "Too many variables."

"Book smarts aren't street smarts," Gabriel responded quietly, not-quite-looking at Arthur before shrugging and looking back-and-forth between him and Angel.

"Well we're not gonna accomplish anything by standing here," Angel said, moving to the first alley she saw. "Start with all the alleys in the area and move out from there. Stick together though. I know he's just a kid but he took down a precinct." No point in dealing with him alone if they didn't have to.

"Yeah." Gabriel nodded, glad to have some action. "How about I do a lap real quick? I mean, I can knock out two of these in the time it takes you guys to hit one. so..." Without waiting for an answer, he started down the street before vanishing in a kind of blur.

Arthur raised a single eyebrow toward Angel. He was still playing with what looked to be a small rubber ball. "So. He's not exactly coping at all, is he? I haven't been brushed-off that fast since my last Broadway audition."

"Broadway -- nope, not asking." Angel sighed. "One problem at a time, I suppose. Right now let's focus on the one we can fix." Lost kid they could help. Gabriel...not so much. "What's with the rubber band ball?"

"I," and Arthur held up the ball grand-standingly, "Had an idea."

Instead of explaining further, Arthur closed his eyes tight for a few seconds before he spun wildly and threw the ball with surprising force in a random direction.

The ball launched toward a large trash dumpster in a side alley, bouncing off it to hit the railing of a fire escape, roll across a rooftop, hit an urban-garden trellis; all before flying into a suddenly-appearing Gabriel's stomach. The impact caused him to cry out as he recoiled slightly from the impact. The ball, however, bounced to the ground and rolled away, moving out-of-sight toward a corner of a neighboring alley obscured by cardboard boxes and trash bags.

"Ow," Gabriel grunted, raising his head to look at Arthur. His eyes followed the ball as it rolled.

The blonde man was already on the move. He shrugged apologetically as he passed Gabe, but left any further words from the speedster for later as he rushed into the small alley to find the ball like some over-sized golden retriever.

The ball rolled and rolled, until it came to a stop next to a pole, and up the pole was a fire escape, and up the fire escape was a dirty pair of eyes, watching them from three stories above.

Angel stepped in, looking around the alley. Then she looked up.

And she smiled. Bringing Arthur along had definitely been a good idea. "Hey kid," she called easily. If this was the kid they were looking for, she had no idea. Just a good feeling. "We come in peace."

The boy responded by turning and bolting.

"Oh good," Gabriel huffed. "This is what tonight needed." In the span of a second, he brushed his T-shirt off from where Arthur's ball had made impact, and then he was off, chasing after their fleeing target and bounding up the fire escape in hyper-speed. He moved in a blur until he was close to the boy, at which point he slowed back to normal speed and lunged to grab him around the chest.

The boy reacted just as fast, taking a can of pepper spray and emptying it directly into Gabriel's face. He pulled his shirt of the speeder's grip and ducked past him, clambering up another set of stairs on the fire escape and taking off across the roof.

There was only a split second for Arthur and Angel to exchange a look in reaction to this turn of events, but it was enough for a silent plan to pass between them.

The grin that crossed the blond's face at the kid's bolting was downright incongruous to the moment.

Suddenly, Arthur was off. In the span of a breath, he had launched himself off the nearby dumpster and onto the fire-escape, and only a few fluid movements of upper-body strength artistry put him right up past Gabe — who was spared a quick apology — and onto the roof in pursuit of the boy.

While Arthur did that, Angel flew up to check on Gabriel, landing beside him. "Easy," she mumbled. Arthur had a bag, hopefully he had some first aid stuff in it. But Angel needed him to nail the kid first.

The boy was sprinting, jumping and swinging around the scattered ephemera of the roof. He ducked down the side of another building and began to scramble down the side of the fire escape.

Unfortunately he miscalculated, and the rungs of the ladder snapped from years of rust and neglect, and sent him plummeting into a waiting dumpster.

It wasn't long before there was a soft metallic ring as his pursuing figure swung off the ladder and landed, perfectly, on the slim corner of the dumpster. His blond head peaked over, concerned, but with a disarming smile. "Are you alright? That was nasty."

The boy struggled wanly, before giving up and resting his head against one of the bags of shredded paper that had cushioned his fall.

"All right copper, you gots me," he said, holding up his wrists as if they were going to be handcuffed. "Take me to the clink."

Angel had peeked over the edge of the roof when she heard the boy fall. "Arthur, trade," she called, hopping down and touching the ground much lighter than she had any right to. "Take care of Gabriel, I've got the kid." She walked over to the boy, kneeling down beside him. "We're not cops, kiddo. We're way too pretty for that."

The man's smile practically pinged. "I'm better than a cop. I'm a television star," Arthur added to Angel's assertion. "You can trust us. Well, Angel here. I have to go play doctor."

With another flex of that smile, he was gone.

Angel plopped down so she was sitting next to the boy, crossing her legs under herself. "Seems like you took quite the spill here. You alright?"

The boy's eyes flicked over her, perched with him in the dumpster, and then he squinted, face impassive as his brain whirred.

mutant, non-threat, steel rebar next to knee, shove in at 14 degree angle, left hand for eye, insert thumb, calculate recovery time...

He shook his head, resetting the clockwork in his brain. He frowned at her.

"No more good cop okay? I've been good copped half to death. Who are you. What do you want. And more importantly..."

His stomach growled loudly.

"Do you have any food?"

***

The diner was quiet. Aside from the four of them, it was only a handful of elderly Ukrainian couples.

Gabriel expected as much, which is why he'd insisted that they take a cab to the Ukrainian blocks of the East Village. Though the fact that they knew him here had been a big pro in this diner's favor. True to form, they hadn't said a word when he walked in with red, splotchy eyes that kept tearing up. It wasn't as if it was the first time.

The group had arrived long ago after a mostly silent cab ride. In that time, Gabriel had gone into the bathroom. He'd turned on a faucet and powered up so that he could keep flushing his eyes in a fairly short amount of time.

He'd returned to find a silver-haired waitress setting down a coffee and a cup of chicken noodle soup at his seat. She turned, and he smiled at her. "Dyakuju," he said as he slid into the vinyl seat, using the one word of Ukrainian he'd picked up from this place. He watched her go, then glanced down at the food and pushed it toward Angel.

"Good news," he said after a second, not making eye contact with the rest of the group. "I'm not fucking blind. Where were we?"

Angel, in turn, pushed the food to the ravenous boy. "I think we were trying to get this one to believe we're not cops and we're not here to toss him in jail. Progress report - I'm not sure how it's going." The cab hadn't been the best place for 'get to know you' time. Not with the nosy cab driver up front who had seemed half convinced they were going to stiff him and kept shooting distrustful glances over his shoulder. "Could give us your name to start. Let us know how we're doing with this trust thing."

The boy was a vacuum, inhaling food to the point none of the assembled adults could tell if he was actually chewing. Miraculously he didn't choke.

He paused to drain his glass of water, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. He was painfully thin and dirty, but the amount of food he was packing away bespoke a mutant need for fuel. And lots of it.

He swallowed and belched.

"Cho. Amadeus Cho. Yes like the composer. Papa Cho played in an orchestra. You gonna eat that?" He pointed.

A plate of pierogis was happily proffered by Arthur, who was alternatively looming to keep watch between shooting reassuring smiles to the group at the table. "Thank you for that, Amadeus."

He shot Angel a thumbs up.

Angel grinned at Arthur before refocusing on on the boy - Amadeus. He was clearly starving - and yeah, that was definitely a mutant metabolism. "I'm guessing you've been on the street for a while?" Probably no parents, then. Or at the very least, no parents he was able to go to. Had he run away? He'd used past tense for his father... Angel noted all this quickly, filing it away.

Amadeus paused to chew, dark eyes flicking over Angel and Gabriel's heads as he calculated. That information was fuzzy. The time before the incident was sharp and crystal clear. The incident ripped through his brain like jagged metal, sharp and coppery, and then-- fog. Hospitalescaperunningrunning. Sharp pain split across his skull and he grunted.

"Can't say, maybe, yes? I have a traumatic brain injury," he clipped the ends of the words. "Getting shot in the head does that." He shoveled more food in his mouth.

"Lucky for me my brain is mutated, it rewired itself around my injury, still works at tip-top speed but my memories are a bit scrambled," he twirled his fork at his temple.

"Bah. Some memories are best left forgotten. I was brainwashed for years and did any of number of things I cannot remember." Arthur paused, considering. "Well, the parts that weren't caught by the paparazzi, filmed, or currently make up Tumblr gifsets. Still! Do you remember anyplace other than New York?"

Amadeus's eye twitched, "Loads of places hombre. I remember everything, it's part of ye olde homo superior package, dig?"

"Which, if y'all want to start your spiel on whatever it is, let's have it out before I finish digesting."

"No spiel," Angel said simply. "Just an offer. You can spend the rest of your life on the streets ripping off bodegas - obviously it's working for you. Or we can give you somewhere safe where you'll have a bed and regular meals and access to food between those meals. Since you seem to like food so much."

Amadeus put his fork down and steepled his fingers. "Well, you're not lying, blondie here is too brain-damaged to lie, and grumples is in grudging disagreement. But there is a catch, yes? Stuff like this comes with catches. Just so you know, my power is a photographic memory with the worst farts imaginable. We're talking chemical weapons grade, homes. So will I have to employ my farts for you in exchange for your room and board?"

"The catch," Gabriel broke his silence and finally looking up from his half-eaten waffles, "is that a year from now, some cocky-ass younger version of you will blast you with pepper spray when you're trying to pay your shit forward."

As he blinked a few tears out, Gabriel grabbed his coffee and brought it to his lips, but he could sense the look Angel was giving him, and so he sighed and put it back down. "Look," he made eye contact with the kid for the first time since his failed capture attempt. "They help mutants. You get somewhere to stay until you get on your feet, and as long as you're a good person who isn't committing felonies or greater misdemeanors, everything's peachy."

Gabriel grabbed the coffee cup again. "I've been you. Other people have been you. It's fucking hard, and all the shit you have to do to survive catches up with you. It doesn't have to. And honestly," he shrugged, "if you don't like it, and if you're as smart as you say you are, you can probably find a way to leave."

Amadeus's dark eyes looked into Gabriel's own, and for a moment there was a hint of the thing inside him. The great whirring clicking, chirping of his brain that calculated possibilities within a nanosecond, and for that moment he couldn't have looked less human.

Then he blinked and it was gone. And the boy sighed, weight sagging onto his 15-year-old frame.

"Fine. You're not lying. I'm going to nap like hell after this so I might as well do it where you guys want me to go."

He picked up his fork and eyed it thoughtfully.

"I wasn't kidding about the farts though. Especially since I've had eggs."