Hated

Characters: Starfire, Phyla Vell, Klavdiya Vasiliev, Jean Grey Shuri; NPCs: Psimon, Mammoth, Shimmer, Jinx, and Gizmo
Rated: PG-13 (Language, violence)
Summary: Motivated by an ad in the criminal world's premiere publication, the Fearsome Five inflicts a vaguely scientific test upon an area that's already seen more than its share of trauma.
OOC Date: February 26th, 2018
IC Date: Evening; February 26th, 2018
Where: Mutant Town - Harlem - Manhattan, NY

SEVERAL HOURS AGO

"Ghhh, just gimme five minutes with this piece of crap," Gizmo grouses while turning a heavy, metal dodecahedron over and over in his hands. "At least figure out what it does before we— "

"But that wasn't the deal, was it, Myron?" Psimon interjects with an air of finality. "'Let a tiny, impatient man have his way with the prototype, then deploy it in Mutant Town?'"

Scowling, Gizmo dumps the device back onto the table and sulks into an iced coffee nearly the size of his head. Beside him, Jinx glances up from phone-scrolling long enough to cast vaguely interested glances around the table, notes, "The odds of it being actively dangerous to us are poor," retweets, then continues, "if we're ignoring the incredibly high likelihood of costumed idiots showing up to get in the way of this…" A pause as she considers. "… gentrification scam?" a faintly curious look bounces around the table, earning shrugs and silence. Waving a hand around as she looks down again, she appends, "Obviously."

"That," Psimon exhales, clearly exasperated even as he gently - almost lovingly - running his fingers down one of the device's faces, "would be what the device is— did none of you read the ad?" Caressing pauses as he, too, peers around the table, skipping right by the shaggy, redheaded hulk hunched at its end who couldn't care less about anything other than the waffles stacked up before him. Sneering, groaning, the man with a hat pulled low over his mind inevitably drops his gaze back to the device. After a muttered, "Of course not," he turns his head and taps a nearby window where a bodega near the edge of the Mutant Town is visible. "We— "

"Trigger the device. Use those lame mantras or whatever, so we're safe. Make sure nobody screws with the device." Pale fingers rest reassuringly against an arm the size of a sequoia. "Break shit if we get bored; hurt anyone who gets in the middle've any of that," a frowning Shimmer flatly rattles off. "Right?"

"And," Psimon tacks on, a grin spreading once he's taken a second to look at up at the pale woman, "get so rich we can cancel our subscription to the Underworld Star."

"Yeah, whatever, mate; Me an' Bar're going on a road trip as soon as the money hits our wallet. Let's just get this little shindig started, eh? We're bloody dyin' here…"

THREE MINUTES AGO

Atop a bodega's roof, Psimon stands amidst four other fearsome super-criminals, raw energy crackling from the radiantly magenta grooves of his glass-encased brain. Each other member of the group shares a faint halo in the same shade and a soft, begrudging chant: "Psimon will protect us. Psimon will shelter us. Psimon will keep us sane. Psimon will protect us…" Looking out over the denizens of Mutant Town, the psychic's thin lips draw back into a knowing smirk while the pale, slender fingers of his right hand caress across the recessed panels of a melon-sized metal dodecahedron cradled in his left.

"Gizmo: you'll be taking care of analysis from the air, obviously. Shimmer and Mammoth, muscle; Jinx, you'll be keeping me company as I enjoy the show from the ground. Are we clear? Don't interrupt the mantra to respond; just show me that you can do these simple things," the psion orders in a sneer. He sets his fingers into grooves already prepared for them, then, and squeezes— just like the man who contacted him after he responded to the Underworld Star ad said to.

Here and there throughout the neighborhood, sensitive minds are treated to a sour note from an unseen player; perhaps five seconds later, warmth begins to radiate outwards from the bodega, touching every mind in its wake with the wrath of a virtuoso moved to cast an unruly instrument into the fire.

Perhaps thirty seconds after Psimon activates the strange device he and his crew were paid to trigger and observe, a man with four legs accidentally scuffs a pair of size 30 shoes, triggering an argument— and then a brawl as simmering rage finds the perfect crack to bubble through.

Two and a half minutes after activation…

NOW

… fights are breaking out throughout perhaps half of Mutant Town as whatever Psimon unleashes hits the edge of its range, while other residents whose boiling anger lacks an easy target have taken to more wanton destruction of vehicles, buildings, and whatever else they can get hands, appendages, and other assorted power manifestations on. If there's any mercy, it's that - so far, at least - the effect only seems to have taken hold of a relatively small percentage of residents, catalyzing lingering frustrations in some until they reach a fever pitch; this is tempered by the fact that everyone else is stuck in the middle of what could very easily become a problem that consumes the entire neighborhood, given enough time.

Jean Grey is among that latter group, having come today to volunteer; while she's managing to keep the inhabitants of a soup kitchen safe beneath a bulwark of psychic calm, this is only a stopgap as the seething emotions outside steadily gnaw at her on consciousness. Making matters worse—

*THOOOOOM!*

— a burly man with enormous ram's horns seems to have picked the kitchen as an outlet for his anger maybe thirty seconds ago, and despite telekinetic reinforcement, the wall is beginning to crack.

911's been called many times over, but police response in particular is inconsistent in the best of times— and there's no telling what, exactly the results of mixing rioting mutants with unprepared police might be.

Gizmo zips overhead on a jetpack, watching intently through a telemetry harness.

Shimmer and Mammoth are— somewhere, lurking; waiting.

And amidst the unfolding chaos, Psimon hovers along the sidewalk a few inches from the ground, a faintly interested Jinx beside him. Now and again, when an energy blast or flailing mutant gets too close for comfort, a wave of Jinx's hand brings earthen walls or restraining vines up for protection.


Starfire likes Mutant Town. She's marginally less likely to get stared at there than most places (or at least, stared at for fewer reasons), and there's an absolutely aMAZing German/Korean fusion food truck she likeshave you tried the Bavarian pretzel and bulgogi sandwiches? she really wanted to take Phyla-Vell to, with all the confidence of a tourist who feels like having visited a place three times gives her license to claim some kind of kinship with it.

She does like Mutant Town, though.

She's eating sauerkraut and fried chicken out of a paper bowl and giggling at Phyla-Vell for being way too cute when the first explosion— no, wait, that was the sound of an impact— goes off. She shoots a quick glance at the Kreeternal, smiling eagerly. "I hear a sound as of battle! Quickly, let us investigate!" She drops the bowl on the ground in her eagerness, hand extended toward Phyla-Vell's to take in her own.


Danger has come to Mutant Town, and is threatening Hunter's Pride. Given Hunter's own psychological issues and her hypersensitive nature, one would expect she herself would have succumbed to this psychic perversion. But her will is a powerful one; just as she holds the power and the rage of the tiger in check, she resists this outside force, at least for now.

Instead, Hunter has taken action to protect her people. She has commanded them to stay inside the soup kitchen, and since she is already outside - she never goes inside with them - she is going to deal with the ram-headed man. She steps in front of the wall, hands up and ready. "You. Stop. Now."

Simple words, spoken with force from the Apex Predator of Mutant Town. Truth is, it is unlikely to stop the man. But Lexi and the firehair would not appreciate her dealing with the man violently without warning him first. So Diya starts with a warning, and holds herself ready for something more when he charges again. Mighty as he is, he's a lot less threatening if you sweep the legs.


Earth is strange. But, at least, Phyla-Vell is starting to see just why her father cherished and protected it so much. There are much more unusual worlds and peoples to someone who was raised close to Earth's culture, certainly. But it isn't the landscape or the technology or even the diverse range of superpowers and evoutionary branches. It's the people. The people are all weird. Bizarre. Unique. And that makes them worth protecting.

Or at least, worth patronizing their trucks of food.

Which is exactly what she's doing, or trying to do, staring at her Bavarian pretzel as she angles it in her hand and scrunches her brows together. "Don't laugh! I just don't get where you're supposed to start eating it. Do you untangle it first or-"

But her wonderment comes to an end as soon as Starfire's giggling does. Blue eyes snap Starfire's way. And as one of those eyes bleeds towards a radiant gold, Phyla mirrors that smile with a grin of her own, seizing the Tamarean's hand in hers. "Let's!" And off she flies. Pretzel securely lodged in her mouth. She's not giving up on that, not yet!


A few minutes ago a Wakandan flitter lifted off from the top of an apartment building and headed for the troublesome area. The young pilot was a bit busy, though… luckily the ship or or less flew itself.

"Interesting. Curious energy signatures." Shuri said to herself (or more likely to a recorder for later study. "Psionic, I should think. Note - move the psi-static and damper projects to high priority on the list." she says to noone in particular. Still, there's a chirp as her non-volilitional AI assistant made the change.

Finally reaching one of the powerful signatures (though not the source of the broadcasting signal), Shuri sets the flitter down on a rooftop, hovering and still stealthed just above the surface. She exits, dressed in her war armor, though she's added a black mask - a snarling panther. Then she's at the edge of the roftop looking down at the mutant ramming his horns into the side of the building. "Hmm." she takes aim…


"Pick UP your FUCKIN'— godDAMNIT!" an older man grouses when Starfire cruelly litters the ground with Gerean treats. Deep purple seethes in his eyes as he shakes a fist at departing aliens, but the blasts that follow are wide of the pair, fired with more blind rage than anything approaching accuracy.

The SUV that comes flying at them maybe ten seconds later is also hurled with a fair bit of rage, but the shaggy, red-maned behemoth snarling up at the pair has thrown a vehicle or two in his life; he's developing a pretty good arm for it. Some of the remnants of the clothing store he and Shimmer - presently perched upon one of his shoulders - clinging to his beard wisp vanish with a wave of her hand, replaced with wisps of sedating vapor rushing upwards in an effort to corral Starfire and Phyla; whether or not they dodge the car, she means to pump that vapor into the air around them so that whatever he throws next has a sluggish target to hit.

Shuri's in a great position to see the Hunter and the Ram squaring off, but Gizmo, in turn, is in a great one to see Shuri, reticles bouncing across his HUD to settle upon her armored form. He wheels around to put him in front of herself as a broad grin spreads, and soaring higher into the air, he unclips a pair of palm-sized bombs fall towards Shuri's roof, each packing the punch of a few frag grenades mashed into one handy package.

As for the Ram and the Tiger: he does what his every instinct screams to, roaring as he takes off towards the woman who would dare command him—

— catching an expertly placed sweep—

— and sliding roughly across the ground; the eventual impact against the kitchen is far softer than it would have been otherwise.

The introduction of an Apex Predator seems to have had a curious effect on minds increasingly removed from higher reasoning, however: as the Ram struggles to regain his feet, a wiry, scaled woman lunges after the Hunter, intent on clinging to her and sinking needle teeth into her neck. Acidic spit flies after Diya from the mouth set in the protruding belly of another man lumbering towards the kitchen; a local shop owner with no powers beyond catfish whiskers and weirdly smooth skin races after her with a broken off broomstick.

"— interesting," Psimon murmurs from a block or so away. Turning his eyes towards Jinx, he wonders, "Why don't we see about getting ourselves a bite?"

The dodecahedron sits cradled against the malicious psychic's midsection as he and Jinx stroll; he's only absently caressing it a little, now.


Is there someone in that land vehicle? Starfire can't tell, and can't take the risk of just dodging it or blowing it up (which would be worse: shrapnel is a thing). Her solar stores are fairly well charged today, and she's feeling strong enough, so she takes the most reasonably alternative. She flies into the SUV with arms outstretched in a wide V to catch it. The impact is definitely tough on her ribs, but she knows how to roll with a punch, and being in flight when it happens actually makes that job much easier. Just let the vehicle's own momentum carry her back!

"Beware ambush!" she cries, her voice diminishing noticeably ask it takes her about seventy feet to slow the car and herself down enough to set it properly on the asphalt where it belongs.


The Hunter does not start lashing out with lethal force, but she is getting angry. The fanged woman is twisted with and thrown into the bath of the acid-spittle charger, and the broomstick-wielder is disarmed forcefully and tossed face-first on the sidewalk. Hunter is, as one might assume, far stronger than she appears. But she's also getting upset, and a low subsonic thrumming rumble is starting to emanate from her as she squares off, still protecting the kitchen and those inside. She has thus far proven to be keenly enough aware of her surroundings that none of these attacks has been a surprise. But even she has her limitations, and if she's actually rushed, she may well not be able to pull her punches - and she hasn't even thrown one of those yet.


Beams arc wide around Phyla-Vell, in searing bolts of raw heat. The would-be Protector of the Universe responds in a calm, rational way of, "Hey! Try that again, and I'll turn you into litter!" … and then proceeds to lose her pretzel, flung from her mouth in the midst of her shouting. "Oh, d'ast!" curses the Kreeternal with a deep-set frown of annoyance. "Can this day get any wor— "

And that is when a car is flung at them. "— se." That frown just deepens all the more as Quasar detaches from Starfire, trusting the Tamaranean to take care of the vehicle as she turns her attentions towards the large man and his companion. "Big man falls hard," she growls, Quantum Sword flashing into existence against her palm. "News at eleven." She doesn't really know what that means. But she's heard it once or twice, and it sounds appropriate, and so, her battle cry delivered, Phyla -flings- herself towards the duo, sword in hand. "I've got it, Starfire!" Readying her swing with reckless self-assurance — and not quite paying attention to how the effects of a vapor she hasn't quite noticed is starting to slow the motion of her sword swipe. "Bring it on, villain! Wait — what-?" Sometimes it doesn't pay to fling into things head-first.


"Fool!" Shuri berates herself for not paying enough attention to her surroundings. Best not to think of five things at once when there's a crisis unfolding at one's feet. Her mask tweets an urgent warning, both of Gizmo and the projectiles. She curses as the bombs go off around her. She really has no time to dodge, but then she doesn't need to - what isn't covered in vibranium weave is protected by forcefields. So, the bombs make a mess of the roof but both the concussive force and the shrapnel are absorbed by the suit - the projectiles stopping at the surface of the armor as they're robbed off all their kinetic energy. Some of that of course is rerouted to replace the field reserves while most is shunted to her gauntlets. Her own reticles lock onto the flying foe and she fires - concussive ennergy to return the favor for the bombs. She doesn't want to kill the person, after all.


With a thunderous crash, the ground quakes within seconds of Starfire setting the car - riderless, for the record - upon it.

"Little match girl," Mammoth roars from the bottom of a shallow, super-powered leap-induced crater, "wants to get in the way of me and Sel's ROAD TRIP, DOES SHE?!"

Another leap sends him hurtling after the Tamaranean, hands splayed to try and seize and slam her into the SUV she just saved. An enormous specimen - nearly seven feet and three hundred pounds of solid muscle - what the shaggy behemoth lacks in rigorous combat training, he more than makes up for with violent enthusiasm and the sudden explosiveness of super-strong muscle.

When Mammoth went leaping past Quasar and his blade to chase after Starfire, Shimmer promptly flipped off of his back to focus her attention on the Eternal. Along with steadily increasing quantities of sedative vapor entering the atmosphere, the red-mopped woman elects add some chlorine to the mix as a nasty smile forms. Her hope is to make the would-be Protector's subdual hurt, but risking the introduction of an element of panic to the table only serves to make the situation more volatile; fortunately for Shimmer, she prefers to live on the edge.

A ways down the street from the Hunter and the addled residents looking to topple her, Jinx freezes and slowly raises a hand. Just seconds after Diya brings the broomstick-wielder down, an explosion rips through concrete a few feet away from her; the kitchen shakes but stands. Jinx couldn't care less about it.

She, too, is interested in the Hunter, Psimon's protective measures serving to buffer her natural affect such that she's plainly dangerous but not to the point of crippling her. Such is her respect for the Hunter's threat that her hands are already beginning to work another spell after that gas explosion, the sorceress meaning to trap her quarry in a tangle of rapidly, impossibly enlarging weeds.

Above the fray, Gizmo catches a bolt of return fire that grazes past his jetpack and sends him spiralling precariously through the air for a few seconds before he manages to right himself; he'll be flying with a tilt, though. Given how easily Shuri soaked those bombs - and the fact that he did prep for analysis over enforcement - he decides to try and barrel roll away from her to zoom towards another section of Mutant Town in the hopes that she'll worry about his teammates, or the locals, or anything other than little ol' him.

Meanwhile, as Jinx gestures at and slowly advances upon the Hunter, Psimon just stands there at the end of the street, smirking and staring at the soup kitchen as magenta seethes along his mind. The panels of the device against his hip sheds light in muted hues.

Inside, Jean Grey's brief respite of only having to cover its inhabitants on a single front is interrupted when her eyes snap open wide and she falls to her knees, clutching her skull.


Starfire wants dearly to take a moment to reassure the chaotic mess of fleeing people that help is come, but it would be a waste of time. There's no soothing a panicked mob except removing the source of the terror: the violence. The hundreds of pounds of violence currently coming at her, at a velocity there's no time to think about, only to react to in the same way she did to the SUV: here comes an attack, so she flies into it before its momentum can build up, her heart and her fists ignited with burning, green rage that would become starbolts if she wasn't angry enough to want to feel the satisfaction of punching this man who interrupted a beautiful date.

Her battlecry is much shorter and less articulate than Mammoth's, just a roar of combat joined.


The weeds rise up, and in one smooth motion Hunter skins a large matte-black bladed combat knife, slashing through them with tremendous strength and considerable accuracy. She's kept busy by the effort, to be sure, but she definitely does not go down easy. Noticing the fire-hair having fallen inside the bubble, however, concerns her. Hunter is well aware she alone cannot protect or control her Pride from what is happening here.

If one were truly tuned in and paying attention, one might spot a rippling along Hunter's skin, a twisting to her muscles not accounted for by her movements. The basso rumble increases in pitch and power. The monster inside the soldier is awakening in anger.


Shuri sets her war system to keep tracking Gizmo, in case of a return, but it appears there are more important things to deal with at the moment as her foe has seen fit to leave the area. Good enough for now. No, the more important things are the source of that roving exotic energy field, it's nearby now.

Shuri leaps from the rooftop, to land on the street feet first, the pads of her boots absorbing this kinetic energy too. She moves towards the soup kitchen, this seems to be the focus of the situation at the moment. Cars being thrown at people, people throwing themselves through the air at each other… well, the costumes and the energy signatures suggest they can take care of themselves.


Phyla-Vell swings — and misses entirely, her golden blade carving through the hide of a nearby car as if it were made of little more than tissue paper. "What-?!" gasps the half-Kree, turning her gold-and-blue gaze towards the direction in which Mammoth lunges. "How can such a big, stupid, awkward thing move that fast?! Ngh-" The Protector of the Universe grips her head as she lands on her knees, teeth gritting. What is this feeling? Her mind swims as chemicals pump through her blood, clutching her sword for support as she lifts herself up — and feels that intense pain -burn- through her lungs the next minute she catches her breath. Phyla-Vell huffs out a surprised exhale of irritation as chlorine infiltrates her system, her glare instantly -snapping- towards Shimmer. She's having a hard time focusing, still catching up on just what this woman is doing to her system. But for now? For now, Phyla-Vell stalls for time by attempting to break the Fearsome Five member's concentration as her bracers gleam gold — and the very air around Shimmer, well, shimmers as she manifests a large battering ram to -slam- into the villain's midsection at high speeds.


Mammoth isn't just strong, he's tough: when the warrior princess meets the shaggy man, a fresh crack of thunder snaps through the air, blowing out a few still-intact windows. She's plenty capable of outmaneuvering his artless attempts at grappling before lashing out with strikes of her own; in turn, he seems capable of weathering those scintillating punches as each crashes against him with the force of a sledgehammer on a steel wall, making him flinch and rage - pushing him back, gradually - but causing little obvious harm.

At first.

Barely held stellar fury gradually takes its toll. Each blow landed sears a little more of his flesh beneath the black and gold uniform until he's practically smoldering— and while he continues to flail and grunt and scream incoherently at that point, it's clear that he's slowing down.

There may be a brief moment where the weeds seem endless, each slash of the Hunter's matte knife merely revealing another layer of entangling growth sprouting to take its place. Persistence will eventually win out - there are only so many weeds, no matter how densely they may be compelled to grow - but while the Hunter focuses on keeping them pruned back, Jinx is already working on her next trick. An undulating twist of narrow wrists draws asphault and concrete together into a writhing knot and an upward thrust shapes that knot into a hand reaching for the sky; the clawing motion that follows brings the creaking, cracking construct down to try and wrap the Hunter in an earthen grip and squeeze the life from her.

Because Jinx was truly tuned in and paying attention, and doesn't particularly want to see what that twisting physiology might bring.

Shimmer spots the trick of the light around her just in time for fingers to twitch, and then the breath is driven from her body with a sharp, "Fuck— !" and she crumples to the ground, wheezing. Wild gestures from the arm not wrapped around her body serve to transform pockets of air around Phyla into blistering, blinding phosphorous, but it's a desperation move; she needs more time to ramp up to full effectiveness. "Fuckin'— fuckin' try-hard slag…" she gasps while slowly picking herself up.

Approaching the soup kitchen, Shuri gets a glimpse of Jinx's attempts at subduing the Hunter and Psimon just— standing there, watching in the distance, smiling— though, the smile slowly begins to fall away as the Wakandan scion nears. She also has a great vantage of the ram-horned mutant groggily - stubbornly - retaking his feet and staggering back into the middle of Jinx and Diya's fight, putting himself in harm's way without a care, just to get a little bit of revenge.


Starfire is tough too. Nowhere near Mammoth's level, of course, but training counts for a lot, and staying inside his reach so he can't land a fully extended punch blunts the worst of it, even if she feels like a chihuahua in a dryer from all the mid-air tumbling and rolling necessary not just to reduce his blows but to avoid his grabs. It's in one of those rolls that she lands her final punch: not on Mammoth himself, but on the sky, fist shooting upward in triumph as she scream-cheers, "Quasar!" No more than that, just a celebration of Phyla-Vell's impending victory, like she's a spectator at a wrestling match.

And while Mammoth is whipping his head around to see what's about to happen to his sister, Starfire isn't above taking her own win, with a viridian glare that hammers the behemoth back into one of his own impact craters, groaning and smoking the stinking fumes of scorched hair.


A roar no human throat could ever carry echoes thunderingly out from beneath the asphalt hand as it collapses over the Hunter and she disappears from sight, apparently taken. Nothing but earth and street rock and cement bits for the angry ram-horned mutant to pound on, but he probably pounds on it quite furiously. There's no sign of the Hunter, however.

Then muscles that may well be as strong as that ram-horned mutant, perhaps even stronger, exert dozens of tons of force, tearing apart the asphalt and concrete. Claws that shred easily through unreinforced concrete tear through what remains, as a ginormous creature of orange and black fury is revealed, and another roar easily dozens of times more powerful and louder sounds, beckoning with atavistic horror to likely most of those in the area, the lizardy hind-brains of most humans and human relations quaking with terror when confronted with an enraged oversized Siberian tigress.

And it does seem as though the tigress knows the source of her troubles, as she leaps a good thirty yards or so in a single bound towards the purple-haired sorceress and the glowing psionic. She'll be sneezing at the magic, but she's coming. And she is not happy.


With one blow, Phyla gets the time she desperately needs to collect her thoughts. That window is narrow, and as she sucks in those gasping, burning breaths, her eyes sweep around her, quickly assessing the situation. People rioting. Something controlling them, maybe? Others that are clearly here only to incite. The large one, this woman, three others…? Why is it so hard to focus? Why does she feel so… sluggish-?

And then realization dawns upon her in the vapors in the air, in the chlorine in her lungs. And as Shimmer slowly recovers herself, Phyla-Vell's eyes narrow, the right glowing a furious gold as the Quantum Bands sear. Gold warps around her lower face… and slowly forms into a functioning gas mask around her mouth, filtering the air out around her as her right hand clenches into a fist. "Try-hard? Oh. You want me to actually try?"

Phosphorous blisters, bleeds into existence — and Phyla -launches- herself forward at dizzying speeds seconds before that phosphorous bursts in blinding expulsions, seeking to do nothing less than give Shimmer a nice, possibly jaw-breaking right-hook to lay her out flat on her ass. Maybe she's just a little annoyed. Maybe. "Alright. I'll try harder. … And -you're- the slag." And here, Phyla-Vell looks up just in time to see Starfire claiming her own victory, flashing the Tamaranean a supportive thumbs up and an excited smile. So far, this is apparently a great date.


Shuri gasps reflexively as the Hunter's roar echoes around the urban jungle, then she stares a moment in awe as the tiger makes an appearance and starts tearing up the sidewalk. There's a curse in what is probably an unfamilar language to anyone in earshot.

Luckily, there's something to keep her from watching the creature in silent awe - several things, really - a chirping to remind her that the power source is RIGHT THERE NOW THANK YOU PAY ATTENTION and Jinx, also doing her best to attack the tiger. Though, to tell the truth subduing her might not be a bad idea. Psimon though, is something she needs to deal with. Unfortunately she didn't bring along any sort of energy dampener and there's not time to make one now, probably.

That being is a man with a clear skullcap - he's clearly not normal. So, she doesn't feel too bad about firing a blast of concussive energy at Psimon, hopefully enough to make him drop his little toy. She's dreading the response if it doesn't work, though.


The Flinders siblings both find themselves clinging to consciousness by the tips of their fingers. Mammoth is technically better off in that regard, but something about half his body being nearly as red as his hair makes doing much more than snarling and grunting into the earth infeasible; Shimmer's just quietly groaning and bleeding from a split lip and missing tooth.

A roar slices through the air and threatens to colonize the minds of those who hear it with primal terror. Locals who felt inspired to focus blind, consuming hate upon the Apex Predator - driven by self-preserving instinct seated deeply in the ancient roots of their beings - feel inspired to crawl or run the hell away from the kitchen in the wake of it while Jinx freezes mid-gesticulation. It is possible that the sorceress underestimated the Hunter's potential for violence, given the shattered concrete and stone gathered where she was, and while she manages to swallow her heart back down in time to throw her hands up and greet the incoming Hunter with a flare of fire…

… it's really too late for her to do much more than pray that there's still a shred of the lady left in the tiger, because she certainly doesn't know any spells quicker than a fang or a claw.

The aura of calm within the soup kitchen grows weaker by the second despite Jean having settled into just— sitting there, staring at one of the walls, grimacing— though, the grimace is slowly beginning to flatten towards something more neutral. The atmosphere's getting tense as people stuck together while the world goes nuts outside snipe, growl, and glare at one another, but nobody's thrown anyone or anything through any walls— yet.

Outside, Psimon has fully traded a self-indulgent smile for creeping dismay as his eyes widen. He is dimly aware of Shuri's approach and her ill-intentions for him, and there's a faint shimmer of telekinetic force around his body… but his mind is elsewhere. The Wakandan princess' concussive bolt shatters his barrier on its way to rocking his head to the side and dropping him to the ground. The device tumbles out of his grip, panels still glowing ominously.

This close, Shuri's sensors can probably tell that the device is running out of juice… but it's still working away in the meantime, merrily pumping hate into the atmosphere along with the strange energy it exudes. Here and there, screams of pain and anger rise amidst breaking glass and shattering brick as residents continue their descent into madness.

Above the fray, Gizmo sees which way the wind is blowing - begins to feel oppressive heat as his own deeply seated anger at his unappreciative teammates roils in his gut - and elects to try getting the hell out, jetpack contrails twisting through the air as he zooms away from the chaos.


Starfire soars through the air to meet Phyla-Vell halfway, clasp the Kree's face in both hands, and kiss her quickly but intensely in celebration of the victory. Once that priority is taken care of, she releases Phyla-Vell to spin around in the air, scanning. "Now: where do we find the architect of this madness?" More specifically, how does an alien in a burg full of rioting, superpowered humans tell what the problem is?


A wall of flame is a terrible, terrible thing to a creature covered in fur. But a weretigress of Hunter's power heals almost anything that does not kill her, and she won't be in that flame long as she sails through the barrier and slams bodily - nearly half a ton of her - into the sorceress to lay her out. The only proof that there is more lady than tiger in control - or more soldier, at least - is the fact that what hits Jinx is a shoulder, not a claw. It's just massive blunt force to knock her down, not a potentially killing blow.

Smoking and singed, growling with anger, the tigress keeps bounding along the shattered sidewalk, heading for the fallen psionic and the scented source of all this mental pollution. What she may do when she arrives? Only a telepath could tell, and they all seem quite busy.


Because she is a hero, Phyla-Vell is -just- nice enough not to take the petty route and kick Shimmer in the ribs while she's down. It is a struggle, however. "Call -me- a try-hard slag, I'll show -you- a try-hard slag, d'ast-" she begins to grouse — only to have Starfire helpfully abort her annoyed complaints with the sudden and surprising press of a kiss. The Eternal's eyes widen, but the gesture is soon returned for however briefly it lasts, and she's left smiling dumbly in the aftermath, levitated just a bit off the ground as she looks around herself at the madness.

"Mm," she murmurs, as her bands glow, lashing out to try to bind, encase, or otherwise subdue rioting denizens of Mutant Town with various hard light constructs as she can — as she spots them. "If my history files mother showed me on Earth are correct, we need to look for the one who is angrily monologuing… or the mysterious artifact that is glowing with an ominous light." Blue eyes narrow. Her lips purse. She stares at that device, glowing ominously. Her head tilts.

"Maybe that?" she helpfully supplies.


Her gambit successful, Shuri invokes a routine to put in a call to the approriate authorities for dealing with super-powered villains - likely the Justice Defenders or SHIELD, probably both.

"Secure the device!" she calls behind her mask, her voice amplified to cut through the remaining chaos. She starts moving towards the fallen Psimon and the dodecahedron, though warily as there's an immense tiger headed for the same direction. After seing what the being can do she ratchets up the concussion level in case a confrontation occurs. "Don't touch it! It seems to be running out of power." Yes, the very thing Phyla is interested in.


Currently, the dodecahedral architect of the evening's trauma is on the pavement near a local soup kitchen, a couple feet from a glow-domed criminal who's trembling as he pushes himself up on all fours. There's a wicked bruise forming on the side of his head thanks to Shuri's concussion bolt, adding an unsteady sway to his posture.

"… for the money…" he mumbles to nobody in particular. "Didn't mean anything…"

Telekinetic barriers periodically flicker into being around him, but at this point, getting him ready for the authorities seems to be a foregone conclusion.

Which just leaves the device and the mutants it sparked.

Quasar's bands efficiently corral a good number of them, while Diya's sheer affect is still serving to cow rioters in a progressively wider radius; the range of her particular brand of quelling doesn't reach as far as the device did, but at least her movement towards Psimon means that it's spreading.

Shuri's HUD provides ETAs for the appropriate authorities: a matter of minutes, between the calls already placed and the receipt of what may well be a higher priority alert from the Wakandan scion; the device won't quite be out of juice by then, but it'll be close.


Starfire zooms in to the glowing D&D die with the plan of taking it up into space and giving it a throw, only to stop in disappointment as the cyber-woman commands against. She says a word in Tamaranean that roughly translates to 'phooey' and crosses her arms over her chest in a forbidding gesture. "Very well, pointy-eared friend," she assents, less grumpy than disappointed. "I shall stand watch over it. Let the one who would take it come through me."


The bounding, charging tigress snarls and roars at the glowing-headed psion and the glowing device that seems to be the source of the sneeze-inducing wrongness that seems to have polluted her neighborhood and endangered her Pride. Only the hovering presence of the Tamaranean scion prevents her from pouncing on and attempting to destroy the device, all reasoned advice be damned. She skids, and then bounds away to land firmly - very, very firmly - on top of Psimon. And then she leans over and roars at point-blank range, her mouth mere inches from his head, just to make her point.


As the last of the people who propagated this mess have either been subdued or escaped, Phyla-Vell lands near that strange dodechahedron with the faint beginnings of a frown touching at her lips. Her head tilts, just as Starfire is waylaid in her efforts of what Phyla can only assume was an attempt to chuck the thing into space. That'd be what -she- would do.

"The simplest solution is to just throw it into the sun," she helpfully says aloud, just in case there was anyone wondering her opinion. "But if we want to take the foolish route, then fine. I'll help restrain anyone else still rioting. Kori — Starfire, let me know if anything comes up." And with that, Phyla flies off, constructed cuffs at the ready as she gives a final glance back towards the roaring tigress. She blinks. And nods once in approval. She likes that cat's style.


Shuri sighs behind her panther mask. "As much as I would like to study the device, throwing it into the sun is a viable plan. Taking it out of the area should reduce its influence on these people. So… do as you will. Othwerise the authorities will take control of it and this may not be in anyone's best interests except their own." she pauses a moment. "They shall be here monentarily. Perhaps it would be best if most of you were not here when they arrive if you do not wish to face further confrontation with those authorities, yes?" She looks specifically at the tiger as she says this.


"Yay!" Starfire just shy of squeals before cheerfully stripping the awning from the nearest bodega to use as a sling for the device (Shuri did warn her not to touch it, after all) and enthusiatically wrapping it up as she promises, "I shall return shortly, cute cat friends!" Then she's blazing through the air, a golden comet soon lost in the daylit sky.


Nearing the edge of Mutant Town…

"Art.. ART! Shut UP, NOTHING, I'm just watching Tarzan, Jesus Christ!" Gizmo barks into the phone he built into one of his gloves. "Come ON, man! We're getting the band back together, Artie old buddy! You, me, Neutron, Deuce, Charger… I've even got a GREAT caper all lined up for us: a nice, simple armored transpo hit…"

In relatively short order, remaining rioters are bound in golden cuffs; villains sizzle, bleed, and cower; and a princess slings at least part of the problem into space at impressive speed, angling to feed it to the most reliable furnace in the system.

Swiping blood from her nostrils, Jean staggers out of the kitchen to take a look around at the chaos outside; fixes on the guy with the dimming, exposed brain in the distance; grimaces; then turn around on her heels, already working on the alibi she'll give the authorities. Once they're gone and the migraine dies down, she'll be pitching in with the clean-up.


With the threats ended, the madness curtailed by the absence of the device, the enraged tigress finally stalks away from Psimon and lopes back towards the soup kitchen and her Pride. With the force field down, she has people to check on, including the fire-hair, who did not seem to be doing well earlier. She seems to have no interest in the authorities, or any credit. She just wants her people to be safe. And now they are.

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