Khund Incoming

Characters: Priscilla Kitaen (Voodoo), Koriand'r (Starfire)
Rated: PG-13 for comic book violence.
Summary: Priscilla is headed home for the night, when she comes upon a pair of powerful figures who literally fall out of the sky. One of them is Korianand'r, the other a Khund warrior.
OOC Date: 2017-12-02
IC Date: 2017-12-02
Where: Brooklyn

The wee hours of the morning are usually pretty quiet, at least in comparison to the blaring cacophony of mid-afternoon. That doesn't mean there's nothing going on and no one around. But things are a great deal more sparse. And it's a time of day that is all too common for Priscilla Kitaen. As a headlining exotic dancer - OK, OK, stripper! - she gets off work when the clubs close, and the clubs close when the law says 'shut down the bar or be arrested'. Which is usually sometime around 3am.

That is why, at the moment, Pris is astride her motorcycle, riding through the streets of New York City, heading for the bridge out of Manhattan and towards the much lower-rent borough of Brooklyn. She may get paid well, but she doesn't make enough for a motel room in Manhattan; that's crazy talk. So she rides along, wearing the purple-accented black helmet, visor closed, the black motorcycle jacket that matches the square-toed short motorcycle boots, tucked under the painted-on boot-cut sequin- and bead-bedecked jeans.

It's all just another night in the life. So far.


There's a woman on the street being hassled by a man. On its own, it's not so unusual, and it's maybe not worth stopping a motorcycle for. It's in the details that things get strange. For instance, the woman is a giant, and the man is approximately the size of a Kodiak bear; the woman is the color of gold and the man is the color of grapefruit flesh; the woman's hair is on fire, and the man is dressed in a weird, X-shaped leather harness and finned helmet like an extra in a movie about gladiators; and the hassling is occuring at something like terminal velocity as the two of them plummet from the sky, the woman's hair making a comet of their descent into the sidewalk with enough impact to not just leave a crater twelve feet in diameter but to shatter nearby windows in a spray of glass that twinkles orange and yellow in the streetlights. Car alarms start going off for most of the block.

The cloud of dust and pulverized cement obscures the center of the the crater for a moment; just a moment. The pink man comes flying out of it in a low, short arc, head crashing into the ground, driven by the woman's scissor grip around his waist into a mean-looking suplex.


Well. That's new.

Not so much 'on the street' as 'into the street'. Check. Clearly, Pris pulls the bike up short and steers off the road, booting the kickstand into place as she shuts off the engine and dismounts quickly. Right away, she's not going to be driving through that crater. but more than that, those people don't look entirely human. They could be metas, that much is true. But Pris is thinking that both of them looking that unusual, coming from the sky, and her own luck combine to a large-factor likelihood that one or both of them are aliens.

It's just her luck.

Sure does look like the woman has this fight well in hand, but Pris opens one of the saddlebags on her bike, pulling out and arming a blaster as she then advances, weapon held low but armed and ready, swinging out wide more to surround the situation and come up at an angle than a direct approach.

Her empathic senses reach out, filtering through the natural aggression, pain and outrage, looking for signs of motivation or concern. Sight alone isn't going to tell Pris which one of these is worth rooting for.


Neither combatant is feeling anything especially complex. The woman is furious with an intensity that threatens to scorch flesh from bone, a fire she metaphorically dances through while keeping a delicate emotional balance that allows her to still be oriented to her surroundings; the man is filled with a cold, hateful joy. Neither is hurt badly, though the woman is pressing the attack, flying forward four feet off the ground, her golden fists firing machine punches into his chin. The force of the blows drives him back, away from the building and toward the street, but despite each impact sounding like a grendade exploding, the man can take it. Pris can feel the calculation as he plots his counteroffensive.


The rage Pris can feel rolling off the fiery-haired golden woman is palpable at a whole other level than the norm, but Pris holds against it, gritting her teeth in that helmet as she resists being swept away in the same rage. Her sense of the man's emotions, and the visible fact that he seems largely unaffected by the hammerblows being delivered upon him, tell her that he's likely as strong as the woman, and soon will reverse the flow of this fight.

Zannah would so not approve of this!

Pris keeps low, waiting to time her effort properly. Then she lifts the blaster, taking aim swiftly and then firing. She does not aim at the man; he's likely invulnerable to a blaster of that magnitude. Instead she fires at the sidewalk and street beneath his back foot, the one braced to take the force of the momentum of those punches and keep him upright.

The plan is simple: ruin his footing, and let this woman's punches take him off his feet, ruining his chance at the counter-attack he was planning. It won't end this fight. But it will be an opening. An opening a Coda-trained warrior can use.

Pris hopes so, anyway.


The force of her blows is staggering the woman's opponent, but not much more. There may or may not be time for Priscilla to notice and appreciate the level of skill involved in those punches: machine-gun fists are usually aimed at the torso because throwing that many blows at the face knocks the head around, making the next blow likely to miss, so the golden woman's consistent ability to hit her enemy's chin bespeaks impeccable aim and tight control over the force of the blows. Not that the pink man seems to be impressed, as she's not doing much more than staggering him backward.

Then his foot hits empty air, and he falls backward with a surprised grunt. His enemy doesn't miss a beat, surrounding her fists with twin coronas of green light that she hurls at his chest. They explode and splash out, prompting a roar of more outrage than pain despite their heat being enough to briefly turn the surrounding cement red-hot.


It was only a temporary edge, but it was the best Pris could offer on short notice, and it does seem to have paid off, as much as it could. Sadly it seems that the really impressively upset golden woman needs more help than Pris could provide to neutralize her opponent.

That's a problem.

The still-helmeted woman considers the situation only briefly. If she tries to launch a psi-blast at range, she's likely to zot the lady as much as her target, which would not be helpful. That means she needs a way to direct the blast more precisely: get closer would be good, but touch would be ideal.

Crap.

With a grunt of annoyance stifled by the helmet, Pris yanks off gloves as she sprints forward as quickly as her feet can carry her - fast enough she actually blurs a bit. She's not exactly a speedster, but it's a close thing, really, especially for very short distances.

All Pris has to hope is that she can slide in there close enough to either get a direct line of sight on the target that doesn't include the woman … or close enough to actually touch him.

This could hurt. A lot.


There's no time to think. Her benefactor is charging in for a touch, and, if she's like most humans, she'd be shattered by a single blow. Starfire has just the one choice: she has to immobilize him, if just for a moment. Starfire swoops down to grab the Khund's ankles in her hands and fling them upward, her grip firmly (if ultimately hopelessly) on his tendons as she shoves first up and then brutally down, bending the alien in half, his toes coming down on his upper arms to limit his range of motion for the few seconds she'll be able to hold him in that position.


Pris wows softly - still muffled by the helmet - as she sees the woman manage a pretty serious wrestling hold on the guy. She figures that won't last long, but it is a nice opening. Pris literally chooses the move over her clothes, as she drops down into a figure-four slide on the shattered asphalt with brutal results on her jeans, just to get herself low enough while still sliding along to touch her hand to the target.

She hopes.

If she can make contact, Pris's purple eyes become visible through the visor of her helmet, as purple energy visible pulses out through her hand in that moment of contact, exploding through the target .. and blasting his brain with enough force a mere human mortal would likely just expire from the neurogenic shock. It's a raw blast of psionic energy.

Pris' experience says most figures that physically powerful have almost no telepathic defenses at all. The chances of one managing to stand up to this blast are virtually nil in her experience.

Which is no proof it will work. But it's the best she can provide.


Khunds are tough through and through, not just physically but with the mental discipline of a warrior culture. Of course, discipline only carries one so far when microwave energy is being slammed into the quivering gray(?) jelly of one's brain, and the Khund's eyes remain rolled back in his head for some time after the seizures have passed. Starfire finds herself pitying him; her emotions are quick to turn, Priscilla discovers. But pity, like discipline, only goes so far. Starfire stands up and greets Priscilla. "Thank you for your help, but I must take him far away, before he wakes up. Is there a repository for powerful criminals?"


The woman stands, a mite unsteadily, and then rights herself. Then she flips up the visor, which helps against the muffling of her voice by the helmet.

"Uhm. Yeah. There are a few. Closest one, I think, is the Raft. That's out there, in the harbor." Pris lifts an arm, pointing out towards New York Harbor.

"I have a burner phone. We can call the cops. They can get him put away." It's not the best solution, but it's better than trying to flag down a cop at this hour. And way better than calling one with her regular cellphone. That'd just be ten kinds of painful stupid.


There's no time to argue. X'hal only knows when the Khund will awaken. "Whatever you think is best," Starfire agrees.


"Crap." Pris offers, and shakes her head. "If you really think he'll recover quickly, then we may not have time for the cops. Can you … fly, rather than fall?" It's an honest question. She's not sure of the answer.

"If so, scoop him up. I'll show you where to go." Pris offers, frowning behind the helmet's visage. How is she going to show this lady? Well, that's going to require … help.

Assuming that Kori then picks up the Khund and takes flight, Pris reaches out,concentrating, and projects the image of a NYC map into the alien woman's mind - she's used to alien minds, so she manages, though it's not a perfect mesh, as Kori is the first Tamaranean for her - with a blinking cursor over the location of the Raft, out in the heart of the harbor.

That sent, Pris yanks out the burner phone she's carrying and dials 9-1-1. "Hi. You don't know me. But a fiery flying lady is about to drop a really dangerous bastard on the Raft. You might want to let them know she's coming." Then she not just closes the phone, she rips it in half. Trace that!


Starfire's face is an open book; a dictionary, turned currently to the entry on confusion, as she watches Priscilla's actions. Well, Earth customs, she supposes. Her confusion makes her forget her manners: she snatches the Khund warrior by his shoulders and lifts into the air without a word, then streaks off in a high parabolic arc over New York, her hair blazing behind her. It's rude, but unconsciousness doesn't tend to last long in anyone, and no one wants this guy waking up in the middle of New York.

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