Set Fire To The Rain: Looter Patrol
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xp_logsSome people will try and take advantage of any situation. A few of the punchier X-Men go out to convince people that's not a good idea.
Scott and Logan have a bit of a terse standoff with a certain star-spangled Avenger while they're out controlling crowds, and some unexpected history.
It is an unfortunate fact of life that when there is chaos, there will be those that try to capitalize on it. This is true both on the large and small scales - from warlords stepping into power vacuums, all the way down to the person who decides that fire and panic in New York City is the perfect time to get their loot on.
Scott deflected an optical blast off the wall of a building, blasting a brick out of the hand of a nearby looter as he tackled another looter grabbing hold of the bottle of whiskey he'd been carrying out of the nearby store with one hand as it fell towards the ground. "I don't even understand why people do this," he remarked to Logan, "The slightest hint of a disaster and the looters come out of the woodwork in droves." The scene down the street was one of chaos, looters streamed into and out of the buildings and the police that had managed toshow up were completely overwhelmed by the numbers.
"Human nature, bub," Logan said as he ducked a garbage can being thrown at him then laid out another looter with a punch. "We can say all we want 'bout believin' in the better nature of people, but sometimes there's no gettin' 'round the fact that people suck." In the crowded chaos, their X-Men uniforms made them identifiable but the police had enough toworry about besides the mutants in their midst. He grunted as someone slammed a bat into his side then turned to glare at them. He wrenched the bat from their hands and broke it in half before slamming a fist into their stomach.
Ding, clack, clang...
The unmistakable sound of something made of metal ricocheting off multiple surfaces approached them. A moment later, the metal object in question appeared, bouncing off a dumpster with a resounding thud before non-lethally taking out two looters at once and returning solidly to Captain America's red-gloved hand.
"X-Men," Steve said, keeping his voice neutral. It was a good thing he hadn't lost the cowl yet, since he was not only tired but also drawn. This'd turned out to be a hell of a day -- and that was before he and the other Avengers had had to begin policing American citizens. He had no idea why the slightest bit of chaos seemed to make everybody think they could get away with breaking the most basic of laws, but here he stood. "What happened to going home and staying there?"
Scott turned to face the man, holding his arms out at his side to show he didn't want to fight. "What happened to keeping order and the citizens safe?" Scott asked. "It looked like you guys needed some help this time, so we thought we'd stop by. None of us want to see New York descend into chaos again."
Logan took in the star spangled uniform and the shield. He vaguely remembered discussion about the Avengers and their instant dislike of the X-Men. He dropped his arms to his sides and snorted. "And who made you supreme dickwad of the universe? It's a free country, ain't it?" He nodded toward Scott. "Besides, what Cyke said. New York's been through enough without us standin' by and lettin' it get wrecked again and this time by its own people."
Steve frowned, turning to look properly at the second X-Man. He'd been briefed on Cyclops, given his involvement in the fiasco at Ryker's Island, but this was a new one. Or so he thought. "Jim?" He asked, raising the shield to deflect several rocks and chunks of debris that the people were throwing in his direction. "Jim Howlett?"
Logan scowled at Star Spangled Man's words. "Don't say my name like you haven't been briefed on me and everyone else. You and your Men in Black goon squad have files on all of us." He flicked his gaze around them quickly. The crowd was still keeping its distance but that wasn't going to last forever.
"No, that's not -- " Steve had to stop to throw the shield, taking out several looters who thought they could flank him and the X-Men. "The files SHIELD provided us with don't have real names in them -- just codenames." It occurred to him that he probably shouldn't have informed the X-Men of that fact, but it wasn't exactly the most important thing on his mind in that moment. "What the -- where've you been, Jim?"
"Guess you're not as all knowin' and all seein' as SHIELD bills you as." Logan popped his claws and swung them around him accompanied by a menacing growl as he glared at the encroaching looters. The fact Rogers seemed to know him when Logan had no clue who the asshole was made his skin itch. It made him wonder what else was lost in his rabbit hole of a brain. "Couldn't honestly tell ya. Been with these guys for a while now though. And if ya knew me once upon a time, then you'd know I don't throw in with just anybody."
A force beam lanced out ricocheting of the side of a building, off the ground between Logan and Cap, and into a group of looters, knocking their feet out from underneath them and leaving them in a moaning pile of flesh. "I hate to break up the reunion," Scott noted wryly, "but we do have a city full of looters to take care of before you two play catch up." The fact that Cap knew Logan bore some thought and he'd have to mention it to Charles later, but there were more immediate problems for them to deal with now.
"Be a bit one-sided," Logan said. The less Rogers found out about him in the now the better because he evidently knew plenty about his past. That was an issue he needed to solve before they all walked away. "So Cap, ya gonna let us work in peace or do we hafta throw down? You're lookin' a bit understaffed anyway." He waved a hand at the chaos still raging from one side of the street to the other.
Lips tightening in frustration, Steve gave the two men a short, sharp nod. "Consider yourselves officially invited to the party." He couldn't let himself be conflicted right now. Protecting the general, law-abiding population of the city was more important than his worries about finding someone he'd known before the ice. Especially since Jim didn't seem to remember him at all.
After clicking on his earwig, Steve said, "The X-Men are here as friendlies, if you haven't run into them yet already. They've agreed to give us a hand with this."
Garrison and Molly try to cool off some people, and still find time to discuss action figures and male anatomy. Kane's good at multitasking.
Reactions to a city-wide panic tended to stretch the spectrum - there were those who would unexpectedly step up for the people around them, but there were also those that would give in to baser instincts. The X-Men's concern was primarily for the latter, and maintaining law and order in the face of a disaster.
"Looting. Rioting. Shit set on fire. And yet, it is still calmer than a Walmart on Black Friday." Garrison observed dryly. There were a few police out but they were swamped by the panicked crowds. The smash and grabs were littering glass and merchandise on to the street, making it harder to flee from the action. "You take the stores on the left, I'll take the right?"
Molly scanned the crowd, scrunching her nose as people scurried about. She saluted Garrison.
"Works for me! Hey, we could totally practice fight moves if someone get punchy!" she said with a grin, jogging backwards a little as she spoke before slapping her hands together and turning around to sprint toward the crowd.
"Hey! Put that back where it came from! Totally not cool you guys!" she shouted, then, after a moment, cupped the side of her mouth to yell behind her.
"Radio if you need me, Dom!"
"This is not a shopping spree." Kane pulled people easily from their positions near the windows, flinging them into the street. "Enough. I'm happy to overlook a television or a smart phone, but anyone busting glass is going to jail!"
Molly eyed a group of people in front of a store. A guy ran past her holding a pile of merchandise, and she stuck out her foot, tripping him. Boxes and bags of jewelry spilled everywhere.
"Dude. What did I just say?'
"Molly, you want to open that hydrant near you? Let's cool this crowd off."
Glancing over her shoulder, Molly grinned and gave Garrison a simple nod. Yanking a 'stop' sign out of the ground as effortlessly as someone pulling a toothpick from a sandwich, she grabbed it like a bat, then swung, and knocked the top off. Water burst into the air, and stayed upward, so she used the wide part of the sign to direct the water toward the crowd.
"Amscray!" she shouted.
Kane helped with shifting a couple of cars, so the spray forced people to fall back. The display of strength had them running up the street, just to get away. Kane could hear panicked shouts of 'It's the Avengers' as the looters started to melt away.
"I think we need more colourful uniforms. I'm tired of being called an Avenger."
"What?" Molly said with a laugh. "What's totally the best part! In addition to them being awesome, people won't know it's us if anyone looks into it. They'll think they're the Avengers. We can be sneaky."
"They have a big green guy who fights in a diaper. I don't want to be part of that lineup. I mean, think of the toy line? There's hot, sexy Kane, mutant fighting machine, and oh look who's next to him? The green guy who we can tell what religion he is through his shorts."
Molly made a face, then shuddered. "Ew. Thanks for that," she said with a grossed out laugh. "Now I need brain bleach."
"It's not my fault you grew up enough in Asgard that I can talk to you about giant green dongs now. You just got to roll with the dongs, Molly. Roll with the dongs."
Molly shook her head, looking unmoved. "Yeeeah, nope. No dong talking. Now or ever. I can totally do without that," she said with a smirk, folding her arms, then paused.
"Except for Donkey Kong." She blinked suddenly, sighing. "Which isn't--you know what I mean."
Her shoulders slumped. "Aw man I didn't get to punch anything!"
"Regular people. You punch them and you get to learn vividly that humans are eighty percent water."
"Huh?" Molly said, squinting.
"It's- you know what, don't worry about it. Let's keep going. See if we can scare enough back that everyone isn't pulling glass out of their mailboxes all tomorrow morning."
"Right," Molly said, saluting, even as she started to walk with him. After a moment of contemplation, she slipped her hands in her pockets.
"I met a bunch of fish people once. They were made of like 100 percent water."
"If they were made of 100 percent water, they would have been in a cup when you met them."
"100 percent water...ish," Molly said, smacking him in the arm.
"Smartass."
"I have body parts that are even smarter. It's part of my charm."
Molly quirked a brow, then burst out giggling. "Might wanna rethink what you just said, dude."
Wade and Namor attempt to create a new sport - criminal-juggling.
A city-wide disaster, natural or man made, had a tendency to result in a lot of unpredictable side effects. Or perhaps predictable in the broad sense, but not in the particulars. In this case, looting seemed all too expected, which was why the X-Men were covering as much ground as they could, trying to keep the peace.
"Non-lethal, non-lethal, non-lethal," Wade half-sang to himself. He had a guy in a headlock and a pocket full of zip ties. It was a pretty simple thing, really -- make a guy unconscious, zip tie him, toss him to someone better equipped to deal with unconscious, asshole looters. Still, the non-lethal part was the thing he had to keep reminding himself about. It wasn't not because he wanted to go around killing douchebag looters -- it was mostly that all his moves usually involved killing douchebags of one kind or another, so it was pretty much habit at this point in his life.
… "HA!"
It was a sharp interjection, but joyous, most likely connected to the looter who then ran past Wade's zip tied-ying of the criminal element with the fear of god in his eyes. He was desperately holding onto a flatscreen more out of reflex than greed; the cords dragged behind him, scratching on the concrete.
A blur followed, airborne, but this one paused to nod at Wade before depositing two more hoodlums on the pavement like sacks of flour. The Atlantean was grinning broadly. He gestured with a swing of his head, pointing between Wade and the runner like this was the best joke, "He thinks he can get away. Adorable."
Then, Namor was off.
"HEY!" Wade cheered back, dropping the guy he'd just finished zip-tying and moving over to the pair Namor had given him. The mercenary reached into his pocket to grab a couple more zip-ties and then started singing, "I gotta pocket, got a pocketful of zip-ties. He's got a fork, got for fork made of big tines -- oooooh oh..." All things considered, this could've been a whole lot worse. At least his partner was enthusiastic about apprehending people.
There wasn't too much of a pause in beat before Namor reached his fleeing target. Using his trident to extend his reach, the Atlantean deftly caught the back of the looter's jeans, lurching him to a stop, and in one motion twisted the weapon to sweep the man off his feet. The motion continued, seemlessly, in a set of strikes that caught the man before he fell and knocked him high before the king snagged the man again.
Namor was practically grinning as he reached back to swing at the dazed man, sending him into unconsciousness. A quick flick of the trident sent the looter airborne again towards Wade, but before he landed a backflip into a crouch ensured that Namor was there to cushion the man's entry into their growing pile of opportunistic criminals.
Wade kept busy making sure all the looters they were collecting were able to breathe -- and that they were adequately zip-tied. It was strangely zen-like, being on clean-up rather than punch-em-up duty. He wouldn't want to do it all the time, but for now it was nice to just watch Namor fly around and toss quasi-bad dudes through the air.
"You should try and do two at a time!" The mercenary said, laughing as he moved over to secure the newest addition to their collection. "Like juggling. People juggling."
The King raised a solitary eyebrow at him in response, one part clearly working through the mental gymnastics of that challenge, the other letting Wade do his dirty work as if supervising. "I could three with the right leverage. Four if I was allowed to break more than a few bones."
It was Wade's turn to pause. He didn't bother with the eyebrow thing, though he was very obviously considering Namor's words as he finished putting the zip ties on the man in front of him. "Technically, broken bones aren't lethal. So I mean. Let's see if you can hit three. If we get really bored and somebody really deserves it, we can see about four." Glancing up at the flyer, he tipped his head to the side. "Sound good?"
Namor nodded in affirmation, surveying the block as if eager to find more targets.
"You know, back in my day," the King said without a hint of irony and instead a tinge of disappointment, "Criminals had the decency to at least be armed."
"With what?" Wade asked, amused. "Rocks?" Though really, Namor had a point. "These are looters, though. They're like, not even actual criminals. They're opportunists. Asshole opportunists."
"There have always been assholes, and there have have always been scavengers. They stink equally."
The number of looters on this block wound up being impressively high. As they continued taking all comers, Wade had to move on from his original pile of idiots just to make sure none of the ones on the bottom suffocated. He didn't bother looking at his watch, just opened another pouch on his belt when the first one emptied of zip ties.
Namor, however, was going for a speed record. They had made their way through the masses quickly enough, but now the looters were thinning out either by attrition or a gift of common sense from the gods. His smile, which had been pretty much plastered on out of being useful, was almost a pout. He stretched, surveying the city block with a stretch, and proclaimed: "This is no longer fitting of our talents."
"Word," Wade agreed. "I didn't even get to use any of my knives." Not that he was supposed to use them, anyway. Or his guns. He should've brought a bo, that would've been a quality addition to the day's events. "You've got some excellent moves. Despite the no-kill rule, this was a pretty damn satisfying assignment and -- " He broke off, head tilting to the side as static came through his earwig. A moment later, he responded, "New location? Got it." Then, to Namor, "Catch you on the flip-side, Fisher King. Have fun not killing whoever you go up against next."
Scott and Logan have a bit of a terse standoff with a certain star-spangled Avenger while they're out controlling crowds, and some unexpected history.
It is an unfortunate fact of life that when there is chaos, there will be those that try to capitalize on it. This is true both on the large and small scales - from warlords stepping into power vacuums, all the way down to the person who decides that fire and panic in New York City is the perfect time to get their loot on.
Scott deflected an optical blast off the wall of a building, blasting a brick out of the hand of a nearby looter as he tackled another looter grabbing hold of the bottle of whiskey he'd been carrying out of the nearby store with one hand as it fell towards the ground. "I don't even understand why people do this," he remarked to Logan, "The slightest hint of a disaster and the looters come out of the woodwork in droves." The scene down the street was one of chaos, looters streamed into and out of the buildings and the police that had managed toshow up were completely overwhelmed by the numbers.
"Human nature, bub," Logan said as he ducked a garbage can being thrown at him then laid out another looter with a punch. "We can say all we want 'bout believin' in the better nature of people, but sometimes there's no gettin' 'round the fact that people suck." In the crowded chaos, their X-Men uniforms made them identifiable but the police had enough toworry about besides the mutants in their midst. He grunted as someone slammed a bat into his side then turned to glare at them. He wrenched the bat from their hands and broke it in half before slamming a fist into their stomach.
Ding, clack, clang...
The unmistakable sound of something made of metal ricocheting off multiple surfaces approached them. A moment later, the metal object in question appeared, bouncing off a dumpster with a resounding thud before non-lethally taking out two looters at once and returning solidly to Captain America's red-gloved hand.
"X-Men," Steve said, keeping his voice neutral. It was a good thing he hadn't lost the cowl yet, since he was not only tired but also drawn. This'd turned out to be a hell of a day -- and that was before he and the other Avengers had had to begin policing American citizens. He had no idea why the slightest bit of chaos seemed to make everybody think they could get away with breaking the most basic of laws, but here he stood. "What happened to going home and staying there?"
Scott turned to face the man, holding his arms out at his side to show he didn't want to fight. "What happened to keeping order and the citizens safe?" Scott asked. "It looked like you guys needed some help this time, so we thought we'd stop by. None of us want to see New York descend into chaos again."
Logan took in the star spangled uniform and the shield. He vaguely remembered discussion about the Avengers and their instant dislike of the X-Men. He dropped his arms to his sides and snorted. "And who made you supreme dickwad of the universe? It's a free country, ain't it?" He nodded toward Scott. "Besides, what Cyke said. New York's been through enough without us standin' by and lettin' it get wrecked again and this time by its own people."
Steve frowned, turning to look properly at the second X-Man. He'd been briefed on Cyclops, given his involvement in the fiasco at Ryker's Island, but this was a new one. Or so he thought. "Jim?" He asked, raising the shield to deflect several rocks and chunks of debris that the people were throwing in his direction. "Jim Howlett?"
Logan scowled at Star Spangled Man's words. "Don't say my name like you haven't been briefed on me and everyone else. You and your Men in Black goon squad have files on all of us." He flicked his gaze around them quickly. The crowd was still keeping its distance but that wasn't going to last forever.
"No, that's not -- " Steve had to stop to throw the shield, taking out several looters who thought they could flank him and the X-Men. "The files SHIELD provided us with don't have real names in them -- just codenames." It occurred to him that he probably shouldn't have informed the X-Men of that fact, but it wasn't exactly the most important thing on his mind in that moment. "What the -- where've you been, Jim?"
"Guess you're not as all knowin' and all seein' as SHIELD bills you as." Logan popped his claws and swung them around him accompanied by a menacing growl as he glared at the encroaching looters. The fact Rogers seemed to know him when Logan had no clue who the asshole was made his skin itch. It made him wonder what else was lost in his rabbit hole of a brain. "Couldn't honestly tell ya. Been with these guys for a while now though. And if ya knew me once upon a time, then you'd know I don't throw in with just anybody."
A force beam lanced out ricocheting of the side of a building, off the ground between Logan and Cap, and into a group of looters, knocking their feet out from underneath them and leaving them in a moaning pile of flesh. "I hate to break up the reunion," Scott noted wryly, "but we do have a city full of looters to take care of before you two play catch up." The fact that Cap knew Logan bore some thought and he'd have to mention it to Charles later, but there were more immediate problems for them to deal with now.
"Be a bit one-sided," Logan said. The less Rogers found out about him in the now the better because he evidently knew plenty about his past. That was an issue he needed to solve before they all walked away. "So Cap, ya gonna let us work in peace or do we hafta throw down? You're lookin' a bit understaffed anyway." He waved a hand at the chaos still raging from one side of the street to the other.
Lips tightening in frustration, Steve gave the two men a short, sharp nod. "Consider yourselves officially invited to the party." He couldn't let himself be conflicted right now. Protecting the general, law-abiding population of the city was more important than his worries about finding someone he'd known before the ice. Especially since Jim didn't seem to remember him at all.
After clicking on his earwig, Steve said, "The X-Men are here as friendlies, if you haven't run into them yet already. They've agreed to give us a hand with this."
Garrison and Molly try to cool off some people, and still find time to discuss action figures and male anatomy. Kane's good at multitasking.
Reactions to a city-wide panic tended to stretch the spectrum - there were those who would unexpectedly step up for the people around them, but there were also those that would give in to baser instincts. The X-Men's concern was primarily for the latter, and maintaining law and order in the face of a disaster.
"Looting. Rioting. Shit set on fire. And yet, it is still calmer than a Walmart on Black Friday." Garrison observed dryly. There were a few police out but they were swamped by the panicked crowds. The smash and grabs were littering glass and merchandise on to the street, making it harder to flee from the action. "You take the stores on the left, I'll take the right?"
Molly scanned the crowd, scrunching her nose as people scurried about. She saluted Garrison.
"Works for me! Hey, we could totally practice fight moves if someone get punchy!" she said with a grin, jogging backwards a little as she spoke before slapping her hands together and turning around to sprint toward the crowd.
"Hey! Put that back where it came from! Totally not cool you guys!" she shouted, then, after a moment, cupped the side of her mouth to yell behind her.
"Radio if you need me, Dom!"
"This is not a shopping spree." Kane pulled people easily from their positions near the windows, flinging them into the street. "Enough. I'm happy to overlook a television or a smart phone, but anyone busting glass is going to jail!"
Molly eyed a group of people in front of a store. A guy ran past her holding a pile of merchandise, and she stuck out her foot, tripping him. Boxes and bags of jewelry spilled everywhere.
"Dude. What did I just say?'
"Molly, you want to open that hydrant near you? Let's cool this crowd off."
Glancing over her shoulder, Molly grinned and gave Garrison a simple nod. Yanking a 'stop' sign out of the ground as effortlessly as someone pulling a toothpick from a sandwich, she grabbed it like a bat, then swung, and knocked the top off. Water burst into the air, and stayed upward, so she used the wide part of the sign to direct the water toward the crowd.
"Amscray!" she shouted.
Kane helped with shifting a couple of cars, so the spray forced people to fall back. The display of strength had them running up the street, just to get away. Kane could hear panicked shouts of 'It's the Avengers' as the looters started to melt away.
"I think we need more colourful uniforms. I'm tired of being called an Avenger."
"What?" Molly said with a laugh. "What's totally the best part! In addition to them being awesome, people won't know it's us if anyone looks into it. They'll think they're the Avengers. We can be sneaky."
"They have a big green guy who fights in a diaper. I don't want to be part of that lineup. I mean, think of the toy line? There's hot, sexy Kane, mutant fighting machine, and oh look who's next to him? The green guy who we can tell what religion he is through his shorts."
Molly made a face, then shuddered. "Ew. Thanks for that," she said with a grossed out laugh. "Now I need brain bleach."
"It's not my fault you grew up enough in Asgard that I can talk to you about giant green dongs now. You just got to roll with the dongs, Molly. Roll with the dongs."
Molly shook her head, looking unmoved. "Yeeeah, nope. No dong talking. Now or ever. I can totally do without that," she said with a smirk, folding her arms, then paused.
"Except for Donkey Kong." She blinked suddenly, sighing. "Which isn't--you know what I mean."
Her shoulders slumped. "Aw man I didn't get to punch anything!"
"Regular people. You punch them and you get to learn vividly that humans are eighty percent water."
"Huh?" Molly said, squinting.
"It's- you know what, don't worry about it. Let's keep going. See if we can scare enough back that everyone isn't pulling glass out of their mailboxes all tomorrow morning."
"Right," Molly said, saluting, even as she started to walk with him. After a moment of contemplation, she slipped her hands in her pockets.
"I met a bunch of fish people once. They were made of like 100 percent water."
"If they were made of 100 percent water, they would have been in a cup when you met them."
"100 percent water...ish," Molly said, smacking him in the arm.
"Smartass."
"I have body parts that are even smarter. It's part of my charm."
Molly quirked a brow, then burst out giggling. "Might wanna rethink what you just said, dude."
Wade and Namor attempt to create a new sport - criminal-juggling.
A city-wide disaster, natural or man made, had a tendency to result in a lot of unpredictable side effects. Or perhaps predictable in the broad sense, but not in the particulars. In this case, looting seemed all too expected, which was why the X-Men were covering as much ground as they could, trying to keep the peace.
"Non-lethal, non-lethal, non-lethal," Wade half-sang to himself. He had a guy in a headlock and a pocket full of zip ties. It was a pretty simple thing, really -- make a guy unconscious, zip tie him, toss him to someone better equipped to deal with unconscious, asshole looters. Still, the non-lethal part was the thing he had to keep reminding himself about. It wasn't not because he wanted to go around killing douchebag looters -- it was mostly that all his moves usually involved killing douchebags of one kind or another, so it was pretty much habit at this point in his life.
… "HA!"
It was a sharp interjection, but joyous, most likely connected to the looter who then ran past Wade's zip tied-ying of the criminal element with the fear of god in his eyes. He was desperately holding onto a flatscreen more out of reflex than greed; the cords dragged behind him, scratching on the concrete.
A blur followed, airborne, but this one paused to nod at Wade before depositing two more hoodlums on the pavement like sacks of flour. The Atlantean was grinning broadly. He gestured with a swing of his head, pointing between Wade and the runner like this was the best joke, "He thinks he can get away. Adorable."
Then, Namor was off.
"HEY!" Wade cheered back, dropping the guy he'd just finished zip-tying and moving over to the pair Namor had given him. The mercenary reached into his pocket to grab a couple more zip-ties and then started singing, "I gotta pocket, got a pocketful of zip-ties. He's got a fork, got for fork made of big tines -- oooooh oh..." All things considered, this could've been a whole lot worse. At least his partner was enthusiastic about apprehending people.
There wasn't too much of a pause in beat before Namor reached his fleeing target. Using his trident to extend his reach, the Atlantean deftly caught the back of the looter's jeans, lurching him to a stop, and in one motion twisted the weapon to sweep the man off his feet. The motion continued, seemlessly, in a set of strikes that caught the man before he fell and knocked him high before the king snagged the man again.
Namor was practically grinning as he reached back to swing at the dazed man, sending him into unconsciousness. A quick flick of the trident sent the looter airborne again towards Wade, but before he landed a backflip into a crouch ensured that Namor was there to cushion the man's entry into their growing pile of opportunistic criminals.
Wade kept busy making sure all the looters they were collecting were able to breathe -- and that they were adequately zip-tied. It was strangely zen-like, being on clean-up rather than punch-em-up duty. He wouldn't want to do it all the time, but for now it was nice to just watch Namor fly around and toss quasi-bad dudes through the air.
"You should try and do two at a time!" The mercenary said, laughing as he moved over to secure the newest addition to their collection. "Like juggling. People juggling."
The King raised a solitary eyebrow at him in response, one part clearly working through the mental gymnastics of that challenge, the other letting Wade do his dirty work as if supervising. "I could three with the right leverage. Four if I was allowed to break more than a few bones."
It was Wade's turn to pause. He didn't bother with the eyebrow thing, though he was very obviously considering Namor's words as he finished putting the zip ties on the man in front of him. "Technically, broken bones aren't lethal. So I mean. Let's see if you can hit three. If we get really bored and somebody really deserves it, we can see about four." Glancing up at the flyer, he tipped his head to the side. "Sound good?"
Namor nodded in affirmation, surveying the block as if eager to find more targets.
"You know, back in my day," the King said without a hint of irony and instead a tinge of disappointment, "Criminals had the decency to at least be armed."
"With what?" Wade asked, amused. "Rocks?" Though really, Namor had a point. "These are looters, though. They're like, not even actual criminals. They're opportunists. Asshole opportunists."
"There have always been assholes, and there have have always been scavengers. They stink equally."
The number of looters on this block wound up being impressively high. As they continued taking all comers, Wade had to move on from his original pile of idiots just to make sure none of the ones on the bottom suffocated. He didn't bother looking at his watch, just opened another pouch on his belt when the first one emptied of zip ties.
Namor, however, was going for a speed record. They had made their way through the masses quickly enough, but now the looters were thinning out either by attrition or a gift of common sense from the gods. His smile, which had been pretty much plastered on out of being useful, was almost a pout. He stretched, surveying the city block with a stretch, and proclaimed: "This is no longer fitting of our talents."
"Word," Wade agreed. "I didn't even get to use any of my knives." Not that he was supposed to use them, anyway. Or his guns. He should've brought a bo, that would've been a quality addition to the day's events. "You've got some excellent moves. Despite the no-kill rule, this was a pretty damn satisfying assignment and -- " He broke off, head tilting to the side as static came through his earwig. A moment later, he responded, "New location? Got it." Then, to Namor, "Catch you on the flip-side, Fisher King. Have fun not killing whoever you go up against next."
