Isle of Glass: Off-Roading
Feb. 28th, 2019 05:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xp_hawkeye posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsThanks to Dom's tech savviness, Clint and the rest of his team locate and catch up to Lyton, but she's very intent up not being caught. Cue car chases!
"Okay, so… she's not stopping and I don't actually feel like having to pay for car repairs or whatever to legit run her off the side of the road… anybody object blowing up her rear tires? Like, with uh… magic or something? T?" Clint asked, keeping their SUV up as close to Lyton's as he could without rear ending her. All those offensive and defensive driving classes at SHIELD were really paying off now.
"Sure, that sounds perfectly safe," Topaz deadpanned, gripping her seatbelt. In her top ten ways to die, 'a high speed car chase with Barton driving' was not one of them. "I've always wanted to see if I could aim at the wheels of a moving car."
She reluctantly unbuckled, shuffling forward so she was leaning against the dashboard, eyes fixed on the tires. She frowned for a minute, then held out a hand, and a shimmering bubble formed around the wheel. The hand clenched, and the tire popped as it was compressed.
Matt was mostly ignoring what was going on, breathing evenly, "She's nervous, she wasn't expecting Clint's driving being able to keep up and doesn't want to get caught," he said, listening in on the other car.
"Awesome," Clint said, swerving a bit to keep his 'not paying for repairs' goal reachable. Lyton's immediate slow-down as she lost control of the car and attempted to right herself only to overcorrect left him a narrow margin to both avoid her car and the pieces of shredded tire flying past them. "T, can you tell me how bad she's freaking out?"
"Pretty bad," Topaz said, trying to focus. "She's thinking about legging it if she doesn't crash into a tree or something first."
"Hey bro," Clint said. "You think you can catch her if she takes off?" He watched the car in front of them veer to the left, only see it swerve almost violently to the right as Lyton overcorrected again. "She keeps to the same course she's on now, there's no trees for her to hit."
"Of course," Matt grinned. Chase was fun. Futile for the person he was after, but fun. "Tracking her is as easy as tracking you when you've had Mexican."
This day had gone from bad to worse in a matter of hours. In the morning, she'd felt safe and secure in the knowledge that she had bodyguards, they were going to protect her, nothing was going to happen… and now Janet was part of a car chase.
Topaz bit her lip, eyes following the car, and she cast a shield straight ahead of it.
Janet felt like she was in an amusement ride as the car kept bouncing around the fields. Her car bounced off an invisible wall, spiraling into a field, and then hit another, continuing to do so until it finally ran out of momentum.
As soon as they were close enough, Matt pulled himself out of the window, using their momentum to launch himself towards Lyton's car. He lacked super speed and strength, but he didn't need it right now. The chase was on and he couldn't resist a grin as he flipped toward the crumpled, hissing car.
Dazed, Janet glanced toward her rearview mirror, eyes widening at the sight of some man running madly in her direction. Cursing under her breath, she fumbled at her seatbelt before stumbling out of the car, purse firmly in hand. As she scrambled away from the wreck, she scanned her surroundings, hoping desperately that an escape would show itself. A police car, a friendly Samaritan, a freaking portal to another dimension… and then she stopped.
She had had an escape route all along. One eye on the approaching man and another on her purse, she quickly pulled out a silver box. With trembling hands, she extricated a small key. Dropping the box and her purse, she began chanting, eyes closed, as her hands clasped the key in front of her. Almost praying, she repeated the mantra over and over again, until a shimmery, almost incandescent bubble started to enclose her from top to bottom. Within seconds, she was gone, leaving behind her belongings, a ruined rental car, and absolutely nothing else on the ground.
It wasn't until a moment later, when the noises of the world came rushing in, that everyone else realized there'd been no sound during the teleportation process.
Topaz had been slumped in the passenger's seat, only half paying attention as Matt pursued Lyton. It would be easy, she was just a human, chase her down and —
What. The. Hell. Topaz bolted upright immediately, eyes fixing on the woman as the sudden feeling of magic spun through the air. She could just make out the key in Lyton's hands. Mysterious key plus magic. "Fuck," she hissed, throwing herself out of the car and running surprisingly fast toward Lyton and Matt.
She was too slow, of course. Lyton disappeared before she got anywhere close, but she kept up the run until she was standing next to the purse and the box, breathing heavily.
Matt tried to reach Lyton, to stop the portal, but when he threw his billy club, it fell impotently on the ground just past where she'd stood.
Topaz could still feel magic, and reached out instinctively to touch the air in front of her, yanking back immediately when the air — and her hand — started to shimmer. "Ooooookay, so that's a portal," she mumbled, taking a step back and beginning to move slowly in a circle around the shimmering air, trying to mark the space off as she examined it.
"Three feet to your left, if you stop now, is where the air stops distorting," Clint said, having followed Topaz as she made her mad dash toward Lyton. "It's kinda warping? But it's sort of shaped like an egg? So... round. Ish."
"Where'd she go?" he asked, as if Topaz would know the answer. Retrieving the weapon, he resheathed it on his thigh holster, "She was chanting and then, nothing. Poof. She did poof, right?"
"Nope," Topaz said with a surprising amount of confidence. "She opened a portal and forgot to close it behind her. Portal opening 101, never leave the door open. This is why amateurs shouldn't play with magic."
Glancing back over his shoulder, Clint checked to see if Ev and the others had caught up to them. Farther down the road, he could just make out their SUV. "We're probably gonna wind up going after her, right? I feel like that's a thing we're gonna do."
The second SUV full of mansionites arrives and Clint briefs them on the developments so far.
Molly hopped out of the SUV she'd ridden in with Ev and Namor, immediately noticing the tire tracks that had torn through the empty field ahead of them. Blades of grass, dirt, and chunks of black rubber were everywhere. She glanced up, eyes following the path toward what made the tracks, and found the car in the middle of the field, its tires blown to shreds, right next to what appeared to be a portal. Clint, Matt, and Topaz buzzed about as they canvassed the scene. It reminded her of something out of The X-Files. She'd just started watching the show and all it's 90s-ness a couple of months ago.
"Can I be an honorary agent? 'Agent Hayes' sounds amazing," she said, turning to Ev with a hopeful grin.
"Sure, why not. Consider yourself deputized, even though that's not at all within my authority." Ev mirrored her expression as he turned off the ignition and followed her out. Only the rest of the team was there, as far as he could tell. Lyton's mutant bodyguards had disappeared into the airport while Clint's friend Rachel had decided to head back to the mansion. "Magic portal into the unknown. Fun."
"I agree," Namor intoned without a trace of Ev's sarcasm — in fact, he was almost chipper. "The unknown will be refreshing after having to deal with unpleasantness." He left that hanging with a small gesture that implicated… everything. This was just another egotistical insult to the universe, afterall. Namor, well-practiced in this, had been rattling them off the entire car ride. The Atlantean exited the car with a pep in his step, the smug grin he'd been wearing since someone had mentioned magical artifacts still on his face.
It was time to get to business.
"Hey guys!" Clint called, waving over as the others pulled up. "Lyton went through the portal. T's pretty fascinated by it. We figured we'd follow her. Any of you especially want to come with? Or stay behind. It's probably a smart idea to have at least a couple people make sure nobody else gets through."
Topaz was busy drawing a line around the portal — or more specifically, carefully burning a line into the grass. "Going through the mysterious portal to nowhere isn't generally recommended," she commented to no one in particular. "But Lyton didn't start screaming horrifically when she went in so it probably won't do any harm to poke our heads in and scout it out before we go. No one tell the magic class I went into the unknown portal though. I'm working on this thing where I can pretend I know what I'm doing."
Eyeing the portal. Molly sighed. "If people are going in I'll stay here. In case like… something comes through. I can punch it until it takes a nap." She really wanted to go through, but it was more of an adult thing to stay there. Who knew what they were dealing with? If something came out on this side, she didn't want it to make it very far.
Namor, meanwhile, was staring down the portal like it was a personal challenge. "I am the master of the very ocean depths. The unknown does not frighten me."
Ev nodded at Clint. "You all go. I'll stay with Agent Hayes here, in case Lyton has any other allies waiting to help her. Be care— just don't do anything extraordinarily dumb."
Clint eyed the portal, its faint warp shifting minutely, and then glanced back toward Ev. "Right, yeah. That's definitely the plan."
"Okay, so… she's not stopping and I don't actually feel like having to pay for car repairs or whatever to legit run her off the side of the road… anybody object blowing up her rear tires? Like, with uh… magic or something? T?" Clint asked, keeping their SUV up as close to Lyton's as he could without rear ending her. All those offensive and defensive driving classes at SHIELD were really paying off now.
"Sure, that sounds perfectly safe," Topaz deadpanned, gripping her seatbelt. In her top ten ways to die, 'a high speed car chase with Barton driving' was not one of them. "I've always wanted to see if I could aim at the wheels of a moving car."
She reluctantly unbuckled, shuffling forward so she was leaning against the dashboard, eyes fixed on the tires. She frowned for a minute, then held out a hand, and a shimmering bubble formed around the wheel. The hand clenched, and the tire popped as it was compressed.
Matt was mostly ignoring what was going on, breathing evenly, "She's nervous, she wasn't expecting Clint's driving being able to keep up and doesn't want to get caught," he said, listening in on the other car.
"Awesome," Clint said, swerving a bit to keep his 'not paying for repairs' goal reachable. Lyton's immediate slow-down as she lost control of the car and attempted to right herself only to overcorrect left him a narrow margin to both avoid her car and the pieces of shredded tire flying past them. "T, can you tell me how bad she's freaking out?"
"Pretty bad," Topaz said, trying to focus. "She's thinking about legging it if she doesn't crash into a tree or something first."
"Hey bro," Clint said. "You think you can catch her if she takes off?" He watched the car in front of them veer to the left, only see it swerve almost violently to the right as Lyton overcorrected again. "She keeps to the same course she's on now, there's no trees for her to hit."
"Of course," Matt grinned. Chase was fun. Futile for the person he was after, but fun. "Tracking her is as easy as tracking you when you've had Mexican."
This day had gone from bad to worse in a matter of hours. In the morning, she'd felt safe and secure in the knowledge that she had bodyguards, they were going to protect her, nothing was going to happen… and now Janet was part of a car chase.
Topaz bit her lip, eyes following the car, and she cast a shield straight ahead of it.
Janet felt like she was in an amusement ride as the car kept bouncing around the fields. Her car bounced off an invisible wall, spiraling into a field, and then hit another, continuing to do so until it finally ran out of momentum.
As soon as they were close enough, Matt pulled himself out of the window, using their momentum to launch himself towards Lyton's car. He lacked super speed and strength, but he didn't need it right now. The chase was on and he couldn't resist a grin as he flipped toward the crumpled, hissing car.
Dazed, Janet glanced toward her rearview mirror, eyes widening at the sight of some man running madly in her direction. Cursing under her breath, she fumbled at her seatbelt before stumbling out of the car, purse firmly in hand. As she scrambled away from the wreck, she scanned her surroundings, hoping desperately that an escape would show itself. A police car, a friendly Samaritan, a freaking portal to another dimension… and then she stopped.
She had had an escape route all along. One eye on the approaching man and another on her purse, she quickly pulled out a silver box. With trembling hands, she extricated a small key. Dropping the box and her purse, she began chanting, eyes closed, as her hands clasped the key in front of her. Almost praying, she repeated the mantra over and over again, until a shimmery, almost incandescent bubble started to enclose her from top to bottom. Within seconds, she was gone, leaving behind her belongings, a ruined rental car, and absolutely nothing else on the ground.
It wasn't until a moment later, when the noises of the world came rushing in, that everyone else realized there'd been no sound during the teleportation process.
Topaz had been slumped in the passenger's seat, only half paying attention as Matt pursued Lyton. It would be easy, she was just a human, chase her down and —
What. The. Hell. Topaz bolted upright immediately, eyes fixing on the woman as the sudden feeling of magic spun through the air. She could just make out the key in Lyton's hands. Mysterious key plus magic. "Fuck," she hissed, throwing herself out of the car and running surprisingly fast toward Lyton and Matt.
She was too slow, of course. Lyton disappeared before she got anywhere close, but she kept up the run until she was standing next to the purse and the box, breathing heavily.
Matt tried to reach Lyton, to stop the portal, but when he threw his billy club, it fell impotently on the ground just past where she'd stood.
Topaz could still feel magic, and reached out instinctively to touch the air in front of her, yanking back immediately when the air — and her hand — started to shimmer. "Ooooookay, so that's a portal," she mumbled, taking a step back and beginning to move slowly in a circle around the shimmering air, trying to mark the space off as she examined it.
"Three feet to your left, if you stop now, is where the air stops distorting," Clint said, having followed Topaz as she made her mad dash toward Lyton. "It's kinda warping? But it's sort of shaped like an egg? So... round. Ish."
"Where'd she go?" he asked, as if Topaz would know the answer. Retrieving the weapon, he resheathed it on his thigh holster, "She was chanting and then, nothing. Poof. She did poof, right?"
"Nope," Topaz said with a surprising amount of confidence. "She opened a portal and forgot to close it behind her. Portal opening 101, never leave the door open. This is why amateurs shouldn't play with magic."
Glancing back over his shoulder, Clint checked to see if Ev and the others had caught up to them. Farther down the road, he could just make out their SUV. "We're probably gonna wind up going after her, right? I feel like that's a thing we're gonna do."
The second SUV full of mansionites arrives and Clint briefs them on the developments so far.
Molly hopped out of the SUV she'd ridden in with Ev and Namor, immediately noticing the tire tracks that had torn through the empty field ahead of them. Blades of grass, dirt, and chunks of black rubber were everywhere. She glanced up, eyes following the path toward what made the tracks, and found the car in the middle of the field, its tires blown to shreds, right next to what appeared to be a portal. Clint, Matt, and Topaz buzzed about as they canvassed the scene. It reminded her of something out of The X-Files. She'd just started watching the show and all it's 90s-ness a couple of months ago.
"Can I be an honorary agent? 'Agent Hayes' sounds amazing," she said, turning to Ev with a hopeful grin.
"Sure, why not. Consider yourself deputized, even though that's not at all within my authority." Ev mirrored her expression as he turned off the ignition and followed her out. Only the rest of the team was there, as far as he could tell. Lyton's mutant bodyguards had disappeared into the airport while Clint's friend Rachel had decided to head back to the mansion. "Magic portal into the unknown. Fun."
"I agree," Namor intoned without a trace of Ev's sarcasm — in fact, he was almost chipper. "The unknown will be refreshing after having to deal with unpleasantness." He left that hanging with a small gesture that implicated… everything. This was just another egotistical insult to the universe, afterall. Namor, well-practiced in this, had been rattling them off the entire car ride. The Atlantean exited the car with a pep in his step, the smug grin he'd been wearing since someone had mentioned magical artifacts still on his face.
It was time to get to business.
"Hey guys!" Clint called, waving over as the others pulled up. "Lyton went through the portal. T's pretty fascinated by it. We figured we'd follow her. Any of you especially want to come with? Or stay behind. It's probably a smart idea to have at least a couple people make sure nobody else gets through."
Topaz was busy drawing a line around the portal — or more specifically, carefully burning a line into the grass. "Going through the mysterious portal to nowhere isn't generally recommended," she commented to no one in particular. "But Lyton didn't start screaming horrifically when she went in so it probably won't do any harm to poke our heads in and scout it out before we go. No one tell the magic class I went into the unknown portal though. I'm working on this thing where I can pretend I know what I'm doing."
Eyeing the portal. Molly sighed. "If people are going in I'll stay here. In case like… something comes through. I can punch it until it takes a nap." She really wanted to go through, but it was more of an adult thing to stay there. Who knew what they were dealing with? If something came out on this side, she didn't want it to make it very far.
Namor, meanwhile, was staring down the portal like it was a personal challenge. "I am the master of the very ocean depths. The unknown does not frighten me."
Ev nodded at Clint. "You all go. I'll stay with Agent Hayes here, in case Lyton has any other allies waiting to help her. Be care— just don't do anything extraordinarily dumb."
Clint eyed the portal, its faint warp shifting minutely, and then glanced back toward Ev. "Right, yeah. That's definitely the plan."
