Potomac Calls to Chesapeake - Wrapup
Oct. 25th, 2021 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsDuring the ritual, Doug has an...unfortunate reaction. And then things get really awkward when Clea provides first aid.
Doug had hung back during the ritual, letting the magic types do their thing. His part of the job was to make sure they weren't interrupted, and then tie up the loose ends regarding Delegate Sleazington of Lower Douchebagina. He was occupying his time during the ritual by cataloguing the list of tasks needed to create a trail that led to a much more prosaic end for the man when a brief bit of vertigo hit him and he wavered on his feet. He tugged at the collar of the jacket he was using to keep the rain off, feeling sweat gathering there. "Is it supposed to feel this warm for the ritual?" he asked Clea in a soft voice so as not to interrupt the main events.
Clea turned towards Doug who was looking pale, "It depends on the ritual. But since this isn't a ritual with much fire, no." Her hand was already on his arm to steady him. "What do you feel?"
"...itchy," Doug answered, scrubbing the palm of his sweaty left hand against his pants. He leaned forward, putting his hands on his knees and trying to breathe deeply and regularly. "And a little nauseous. What the hell. I mean, I thought about having a crab cake at that market, but I got a steak sandwich instead, so it's not like the nature wossname should be mad at..." He wobbled on his feet, abruptly leaning heavily on Clea's steadying arm. "Light headed," he added to the list of symptoms.
Clea looked around and then pulled Doug away from the ritual taking place. Once they were a decent amount away, "Sit. I think you are having an allergic reaction to something. My dad had the same symptoms when he got stung by a bee two years ago."
Doug looked around sharply at the mention of bees. Not that he thought the Nazi bee guy had abruptly shown up, but some traumas definitely lingered. "But I'm not allergic to bees, or seafood, or..." He looked down at where the synthetic 'skin' of his nanite prosthetic was...rippling. "That's...not good..." he muttered.
Clea looked down at the skin and then back at Doug, and knelt down in front of him. "Doug, talk to me about what is going on?" She was pretty sure what he was experiencing but if it wasn't any of those things, she had no idea.
Why would the nanites be so agitated? Doug blinked owlishly at his hand, trying to...
Oh.
Oh shit.
He couldn't tell whether the shortness of breath was from the abrupt realization or possible anaphylaxis. (Both? Both was definitely NOT good.) "The nanites, they..." he gasped. "They filter the effects of that blood curse." He took several more panting breaths. "Y'know, the negative effects of a huge fuckin' magic spell?" He grasped futilely at his jacket, trying to rip it off weakly.
"I, uh..." he trailed off as his knees gave out and he collapsed roughly to the ground.
"Shite." Clea moved around and picked him up and dragged him away from the magic even further. Quickly she cast a summoning spell for an epi pen and looked down at him. She cast another spell to remove his pants and looked up at Doug's face. "I hate you so much right now." She looked at the nanites. "Especially you."
"Whu..." Doug was still conscious, but his thoughts were sluggish and he had mostly only managed to be of some assistance rolling his body away from the ritual so as not to just be dead weight. Then as Clea's eyes came up to his face and then back down, Doug looked down as well. At his extremely bare legs. "Where'd my...pants go?" Somewhere in the back of his head that was still coherent, there was a joke to be made about how the British referred to underwear as 'pants', but he was definitely not in a place to make it.
And then the EpiPen was jabbing into his thigh, and his heart approximately doubled its speed. His left hand pounded several times against the ground and he grunted loudly. As the initial effect started to taper off he laid back into a sitting position against a wall. "Ooooooooooooof."
After a brief checking over by Clea, which mostly involved him awkwardly trying to pull his jacket so it would keep the rain from falling on his abruptly naked legs, Doug was definitely still woozy enough to have virtually no brain to mouth filter. "Hey, remember that alternate...thing?" he asked Clea. "And you were like 'you're too young for me'? Was that, like, a daddy kink thing or are you some kind of ageless eldritch...whatever?"
Jubilee and Gabe re-home the nature spirit into a better place. The "Maryland: Mountains to the Sea" exhibit at the National Aquarium.
"Sooooo, up for a bet on how quick I can do this thing?"
Jubilee was currently sitting on one of the wooden poles outside the National Aquarium, enjoying the view as she watched the absolutely deserted boardwalk. Where normally drunks, out-of-towners, and people looking for a quiet place to fuck would be slowly trickling by, it was a smorgasbord of absolutely no one, the perfect time for thieves of all types to be out and about. Well, if it hadn't been for the murderous crabs, but for the moment they appeared to be elsewhere, which meant she had time to make bets with her teammate.
She grinned at Gabriel and waggled her eyebrows in an effort to appear encouraging.
"There's a Hamilton in it for you."
Jubilee's British accent was a horrible combination of Amanda's natural cadence and every bad American pretending to be a British actor ever. Frankly, if it hadn't been deliberate, it would definitely have been grounds for several months of remedial training with one Douglas Ramsay, King of making you regret you needed remedial training at all.
Gabriel rolled his eyes from under the raincoat that he'd liberated from an overpriced menswear store near the Inner Harbor. "No bet," he said, sounding a bit more gruff than he'd intended. But given that he'd been wet for what felt, to him, like hours, he decided he was allowed to be a little salty. "I don't like to tempt fate. And honestly, I lost my sense of how long it takes normal people to do anything, like, years ago. It's all slow to me."
He glanced at the marble box in his arms and let out a small sigh. "But I hope we can do it fast. I'm ready to get rid of this thing."
“Speedsters, always so cranky,” Jubilee noted as she took the marble box from him and slid it into the harness she was wearing. She normally kept tools of the trade in various pockets but given its bulk, it would do better in the little pouch she kept between her shoulder blades. “I’ll be on comms, don’t forget to chat to me or I’ll think you don’t love me anymore.”
"Less talk, more with the B and E, please," Gabriel, clearly impatient and ready for a hot shower and a plush bathrobe, said. "I didn't do much research, but it's an aquarium, so..." He shrugged. "Locks, digital and analog. Cameras, obviously, both in the tanks and around them. I can speed through this thing, but it'll only get us so far."
“Dude, for like, serious? I am the least silent person both of us know. It’s like, in my name even. Jubilation ‘not silent at all’ Lee. If I’m not talking, I’m dead, or a shapeshifter.” Jubilee moved as she talked, slinking through the shadows cast by the still rainy streets, and then paused as she reached the first part of her ascent. “Ya know, I wonder if that’s how you could tell Kevin wasn’t me? Cause like, he doesn’t talk as much or would he like talk just as much and then feel dirty afterwards cause he prattled on about like, the best food in New York for hours. Oh man, we have to test that. Take a note, Dude.”
It was like a staircase, honestly. She’d had harder climbs back in New York and even there the entire city was a giant climbing gym. She’d been taking time lately to really test herself on Olympic level courses to keep up her hand strength and hang time.
It took her moments to reach a way in that wasn’t guarded by cameras. Most basic public spaces' security didn’t include surveillance for their above spaces. Which was odd honestly, given the amount of BASE jumping that went on. Still, this particular public building wasn’t tall enough to jump off in that way.
“I wonder if this place is tall enough to use a wingsuit on?”
Gabriel sighed. More than ever, he just wasn't in the mood for her chatter. "I don't know," he said wearily. "The slope on the glass ceiling is kind of weird. I don't think anyone's trying to jump into this body of water, though. Seems kind of... grody."
From his pocket, he pulled out a second phone and began swiping and tapping. "I'm gonna get into their network and try to clear out some of the tech." Actually, he was going to follow a list of instructions that he'd been given by Felicia. He wasn't entirely sure how this all worked, but she did, and that was enough for him. If she ever left, he'd get smart about digital security. "Some of the motion sensors are probably networked. If I knock 'em offline, it'll make it easier to run through the place without getting noticed."
"Do what you can, but if we have to we can always go back in and wipe things later." Jubilee pulled herself up and then peered through one of the many windows in the facade. She could probably just burn her way through the glass, but she got the feeling the idea was to not leave a trace behind, which meant finding an open way in. Maybe there'd be something higher up? People always left windows open when they were high off the ground like there weren't people around who would see it as a challenge. "You see any blind spots on the upper floors?"
"Hold on." He tapped out a text to Felicia. "Let me check the background I was given, But I bet you can just make it look like the glass got broken by the storm." Gabriel, looking at his screen, frowned and hit a few more buttons. "Nobody will think anything of it. Just chalk it up to climate change or whatever. Storms more violent and..." His phone pinged.
"There's a women's bathroom on the harbor side, about 3 floors up, toward the end of the building." Gabriel squinted, looking in that vague direction. "Maybe three windows from the right? It looks on that hill — kind of a waste of a view, honestly — but no cameras in or around there. Guess they trust the marine biologists not to take home a whale."
Two more taps, and he slid his phone back into his coat's pocket. "Also, not to brag, but I knocked the network out. So if someone's monitoring cameras off-site, they're... well, not. You should be clear."
“I wonder if Namor would like a whale? Or maybe a Dolphin? Ooh, don’t they have squid hats? I’m sure I saw squid hats when I was casing the place.”
Jubilee pulled out the small device she used to break glass out of one of the pockets in her vest and broke the window in front of her in time with a peal of thunder. Not that anyone would be listening right now but it was the something of the thing, she forgot the word. Whatever, she was in at least.
“Any physical security left?”
Most of the buildings here had been evacuated but it was always a good question to ask before you went waltzing into a place.
"Can't be sure, but I think they evacuated and got the hell out of dodge." He strode from his place on the pier to a service door on the side. It appeared to be a card-enabled magnetici, and he wondered if he could break it. "Might be someone lurking in there, but I doubt it. In the middle of a freak storm, who'd try to break into an aquarium?"
“Random mutant weirdos apparently.”
Jubilee had already secured her line to the outside of the building and was repelling downward to the ground inside.
“They really should have had that in their security briefing.”
Gabriel snorted. "I'm sure." He pulled out his phone again. "I'm gonna go quiet for a bit while I try to break in through a side door. If I use my powers right, shouldn't take me too long, but you know... entertain yourself, and I'll meet you inside."
“If I steal a Dolphin because you can’t multitask, I’m telling Marie-Ange it was your fault.”
Jubilee was obviously joking however as she went silent for a time. It was an easy walk once she’d reached the ground and pulled her rope down with a flick to disengage the grappling hook.
The silence was almost deafening though, given how loud the Aquarium was normally with the sound of people. She paused for a moment at a particularly interesting exhibit to wave at the fishes before moving onward toward the one they’d decided to stash the sea spirit.
“Almost there.”
"I know," he replied, appearing next to her in an instant. "Boo."
It was only due to the fact they'd been working together for years at this point that Jubilee didn't jump half a foot and try to melt him to the ground. She did however take a weak swipe at the back of his head, easily missed given his abilities but it was the principal of the thing.
"You asshole, you know you can't scare me. Did they say where to drop this thing?"
Gabriel shrugged. "Well, I don't think we should put it somewhere, like, particularly fun or interesting. Hanging out with the stingrays or the jellyfish doesn't seem like, you know... retribution." He scratched his nose idly. "But no, there's a Maryland exhibit we're supposed to dump it in. The kind of place kids will be dragged on field trips until climate change takes over and this entire building's underwater."
"Boring watery wonderland it is then."
Jubilee led their way into the exhibits, stopping by a closed tourist shop to pick up two Squid hats on her way before they reached their destination.
"The palace awaits!"
Doug had hung back during the ritual, letting the magic types do their thing. His part of the job was to make sure they weren't interrupted, and then tie up the loose ends regarding Delegate Sleazington of Lower Douchebagina. He was occupying his time during the ritual by cataloguing the list of tasks needed to create a trail that led to a much more prosaic end for the man when a brief bit of vertigo hit him and he wavered on his feet. He tugged at the collar of the jacket he was using to keep the rain off, feeling sweat gathering there. "Is it supposed to feel this warm for the ritual?" he asked Clea in a soft voice so as not to interrupt the main events.
Clea turned towards Doug who was looking pale, "It depends on the ritual. But since this isn't a ritual with much fire, no." Her hand was already on his arm to steady him. "What do you feel?"
"...itchy," Doug answered, scrubbing the palm of his sweaty left hand against his pants. He leaned forward, putting his hands on his knees and trying to breathe deeply and regularly. "And a little nauseous. What the hell. I mean, I thought about having a crab cake at that market, but I got a steak sandwich instead, so it's not like the nature wossname should be mad at..." He wobbled on his feet, abruptly leaning heavily on Clea's steadying arm. "Light headed," he added to the list of symptoms.
Clea looked around and then pulled Doug away from the ritual taking place. Once they were a decent amount away, "Sit. I think you are having an allergic reaction to something. My dad had the same symptoms when he got stung by a bee two years ago."
Doug looked around sharply at the mention of bees. Not that he thought the Nazi bee guy had abruptly shown up, but some traumas definitely lingered. "But I'm not allergic to bees, or seafood, or..." He looked down at where the synthetic 'skin' of his nanite prosthetic was...rippling. "That's...not good..." he muttered.
Clea looked down at the skin and then back at Doug, and knelt down in front of him. "Doug, talk to me about what is going on?" She was pretty sure what he was experiencing but if it wasn't any of those things, she had no idea.
Why would the nanites be so agitated? Doug blinked owlishly at his hand, trying to...
Oh.
Oh shit.
He couldn't tell whether the shortness of breath was from the abrupt realization or possible anaphylaxis. (Both? Both was definitely NOT good.) "The nanites, they..." he gasped. "They filter the effects of that blood curse." He took several more panting breaths. "Y'know, the negative effects of a huge fuckin' magic spell?" He grasped futilely at his jacket, trying to rip it off weakly.
"I, uh..." he trailed off as his knees gave out and he collapsed roughly to the ground.
"Shite." Clea moved around and picked him up and dragged him away from the magic even further. Quickly she cast a summoning spell for an epi pen and looked down at him. She cast another spell to remove his pants and looked up at Doug's face. "I hate you so much right now." She looked at the nanites. "Especially you."
"Whu..." Doug was still conscious, but his thoughts were sluggish and he had mostly only managed to be of some assistance rolling his body away from the ritual so as not to just be dead weight. Then as Clea's eyes came up to his face and then back down, Doug looked down as well. At his extremely bare legs. "Where'd my...pants go?" Somewhere in the back of his head that was still coherent, there was a joke to be made about how the British referred to underwear as 'pants', but he was definitely not in a place to make it.
And then the EpiPen was jabbing into his thigh, and his heart approximately doubled its speed. His left hand pounded several times against the ground and he grunted loudly. As the initial effect started to taper off he laid back into a sitting position against a wall. "Ooooooooooooof."
After a brief checking over by Clea, which mostly involved him awkwardly trying to pull his jacket so it would keep the rain from falling on his abruptly naked legs, Doug was definitely still woozy enough to have virtually no brain to mouth filter. "Hey, remember that alternate...thing?" he asked Clea. "And you were like 'you're too young for me'? Was that, like, a daddy kink thing or are you some kind of ageless eldritch...whatever?"
Jubilee and Gabe re-home the nature spirit into a better place. The "Maryland: Mountains to the Sea" exhibit at the National Aquarium.
"Sooooo, up for a bet on how quick I can do this thing?"
Jubilee was currently sitting on one of the wooden poles outside the National Aquarium, enjoying the view as she watched the absolutely deserted boardwalk. Where normally drunks, out-of-towners, and people looking for a quiet place to fuck would be slowly trickling by, it was a smorgasbord of absolutely no one, the perfect time for thieves of all types to be out and about. Well, if it hadn't been for the murderous crabs, but for the moment they appeared to be elsewhere, which meant she had time to make bets with her teammate.
She grinned at Gabriel and waggled her eyebrows in an effort to appear encouraging.
"There's a Hamilton in it for you."
Jubilee's British accent was a horrible combination of Amanda's natural cadence and every bad American pretending to be a British actor ever. Frankly, if it hadn't been deliberate, it would definitely have been grounds for several months of remedial training with one Douglas Ramsay, King of making you regret you needed remedial training at all.
Gabriel rolled his eyes from under the raincoat that he'd liberated from an overpriced menswear store near the Inner Harbor. "No bet," he said, sounding a bit more gruff than he'd intended. But given that he'd been wet for what felt, to him, like hours, he decided he was allowed to be a little salty. "I don't like to tempt fate. And honestly, I lost my sense of how long it takes normal people to do anything, like, years ago. It's all slow to me."
He glanced at the marble box in his arms and let out a small sigh. "But I hope we can do it fast. I'm ready to get rid of this thing."
“Speedsters, always so cranky,” Jubilee noted as she took the marble box from him and slid it into the harness she was wearing. She normally kept tools of the trade in various pockets but given its bulk, it would do better in the little pouch she kept between her shoulder blades. “I’ll be on comms, don’t forget to chat to me or I’ll think you don’t love me anymore.”
"Less talk, more with the B and E, please," Gabriel, clearly impatient and ready for a hot shower and a plush bathrobe, said. "I didn't do much research, but it's an aquarium, so..." He shrugged. "Locks, digital and analog. Cameras, obviously, both in the tanks and around them. I can speed through this thing, but it'll only get us so far."
“Dude, for like, serious? I am the least silent person both of us know. It’s like, in my name even. Jubilation ‘not silent at all’ Lee. If I’m not talking, I’m dead, or a shapeshifter.” Jubilee moved as she talked, slinking through the shadows cast by the still rainy streets, and then paused as she reached the first part of her ascent. “Ya know, I wonder if that’s how you could tell Kevin wasn’t me? Cause like, he doesn’t talk as much or would he like talk just as much and then feel dirty afterwards cause he prattled on about like, the best food in New York for hours. Oh man, we have to test that. Take a note, Dude.”
It was like a staircase, honestly. She’d had harder climbs back in New York and even there the entire city was a giant climbing gym. She’d been taking time lately to really test herself on Olympic level courses to keep up her hand strength and hang time.
It took her moments to reach a way in that wasn’t guarded by cameras. Most basic public spaces' security didn’t include surveillance for their above spaces. Which was odd honestly, given the amount of BASE jumping that went on. Still, this particular public building wasn’t tall enough to jump off in that way.
“I wonder if this place is tall enough to use a wingsuit on?”
Gabriel sighed. More than ever, he just wasn't in the mood for her chatter. "I don't know," he said wearily. "The slope on the glass ceiling is kind of weird. I don't think anyone's trying to jump into this body of water, though. Seems kind of... grody."
From his pocket, he pulled out a second phone and began swiping and tapping. "I'm gonna get into their network and try to clear out some of the tech." Actually, he was going to follow a list of instructions that he'd been given by Felicia. He wasn't entirely sure how this all worked, but she did, and that was enough for him. If she ever left, he'd get smart about digital security. "Some of the motion sensors are probably networked. If I knock 'em offline, it'll make it easier to run through the place without getting noticed."
"Do what you can, but if we have to we can always go back in and wipe things later." Jubilee pulled herself up and then peered through one of the many windows in the facade. She could probably just burn her way through the glass, but she got the feeling the idea was to not leave a trace behind, which meant finding an open way in. Maybe there'd be something higher up? People always left windows open when they were high off the ground like there weren't people around who would see it as a challenge. "You see any blind spots on the upper floors?"
"Hold on." He tapped out a text to Felicia. "Let me check the background I was given, But I bet you can just make it look like the glass got broken by the storm." Gabriel, looking at his screen, frowned and hit a few more buttons. "Nobody will think anything of it. Just chalk it up to climate change or whatever. Storms more violent and..." His phone pinged.
"There's a women's bathroom on the harbor side, about 3 floors up, toward the end of the building." Gabriel squinted, looking in that vague direction. "Maybe three windows from the right? It looks on that hill — kind of a waste of a view, honestly — but no cameras in or around there. Guess they trust the marine biologists not to take home a whale."
Two more taps, and he slid his phone back into his coat's pocket. "Also, not to brag, but I knocked the network out. So if someone's monitoring cameras off-site, they're... well, not. You should be clear."
“I wonder if Namor would like a whale? Or maybe a Dolphin? Ooh, don’t they have squid hats? I’m sure I saw squid hats when I was casing the place.”
Jubilee pulled out the small device she used to break glass out of one of the pockets in her vest and broke the window in front of her in time with a peal of thunder. Not that anyone would be listening right now but it was the something of the thing, she forgot the word. Whatever, she was in at least.
“Any physical security left?”
Most of the buildings here had been evacuated but it was always a good question to ask before you went waltzing into a place.
"Can't be sure, but I think they evacuated and got the hell out of dodge." He strode from his place on the pier to a service door on the side. It appeared to be a card-enabled magnetici, and he wondered if he could break it. "Might be someone lurking in there, but I doubt it. In the middle of a freak storm, who'd try to break into an aquarium?"
“Random mutant weirdos apparently.”
Jubilee had already secured her line to the outside of the building and was repelling downward to the ground inside.
“They really should have had that in their security briefing.”
Gabriel snorted. "I'm sure." He pulled out his phone again. "I'm gonna go quiet for a bit while I try to break in through a side door. If I use my powers right, shouldn't take me too long, but you know... entertain yourself, and I'll meet you inside."
“If I steal a Dolphin because you can’t multitask, I’m telling Marie-Ange it was your fault.”
Jubilee was obviously joking however as she went silent for a time. It was an easy walk once she’d reached the ground and pulled her rope down with a flick to disengage the grappling hook.
The silence was almost deafening though, given how loud the Aquarium was normally with the sound of people. She paused for a moment at a particularly interesting exhibit to wave at the fishes before moving onward toward the one they’d decided to stash the sea spirit.
“Almost there.”
"I know," he replied, appearing next to her in an instant. "Boo."
It was only due to the fact they'd been working together for years at this point that Jubilee didn't jump half a foot and try to melt him to the ground. She did however take a weak swipe at the back of his head, easily missed given his abilities but it was the principal of the thing.
"You asshole, you know you can't scare me. Did they say where to drop this thing?"
Gabriel shrugged. "Well, I don't think we should put it somewhere, like, particularly fun or interesting. Hanging out with the stingrays or the jellyfish doesn't seem like, you know... retribution." He scratched his nose idly. "But no, there's a Maryland exhibit we're supposed to dump it in. The kind of place kids will be dragged on field trips until climate change takes over and this entire building's underwater."
"Boring watery wonderland it is then."
Jubilee led their way into the exhibits, stopping by a closed tourist shop to pick up two Squid hats on her way before they reached their destination.
"The palace awaits!"
