The Sound and the Fury

[Primer]

You would think the slogans would get more original. What with Ellis Island, the cure fiasco, and Alcatraz it isn’t as if the baseliners haven’t had ample opportunity and reminder to grease the wheels of the gears in their little brains, yet as Primer moves carefully through the crowd the signs that he sees hoisted above the heads of the mass of people contain only the usual. ‘HUMAN RIGHTS NOW!’ is scrawled in red on one ‘SAFETY FOR CITIZENS’ on another, bobbing and weaving through the air like ugly balloons tethered to their unseen owners by crude wooden sticks. Perhaps that’s another rung on the evolutionary ladder- ability to create slogans that aren’t quite so very banal. Though ‘we don’t need a cure’ is hardly any better. We’ll have to work on that. Taskmaster will have some ideas I’m sure.

At the thought he turns and looks over his shoulder for the other mutant, he’d asked the mercenary to make sure Manslaughter didn’t run off and start hurting anyone--yet. Such things worked better timed. Ferus is doubtless in place by this time, scouting out the police force, ready to warn him the second anyone began thinking about interfering.

“We’ll wait until he starts the speech.” he reminds them quietly, lips hardly seeming to move as he conveys the message, eyes glued to the platform set up in the middle of Times Square where Grayson Creed is straightening his shirt, shuffling a few cards, so much smaller and more vulnerable looking here amongst the crowd than on the news. “And we’ll be subtle about our involvement. Genetic superiority doesn’t mean much when you’ve been trampled.” he adds, throwing a good-natured grin at Taskmaster who is not what most people would refer to as ‘unobtrusive’, though he has no doubt the mercenary can shift to accommodate whatever adjective he wants to pin to him for the right cash reward. “And remember Manslaughter- we do well here and I’ll take you to the nursery and let you pick out as many flower-bulbs as you want.” then to Taskmaster again- “Make sure he puts on the mask I gave you when I start.” disorienting the psychotic pain-controller is definitely not on the agenda for the afternoon.

Creed is stepping up to the microphone and raising his arms straight up into the air, palms facing outwards, asking for silence with the same gesture football players use to celebrate a touchdown. Grandstanding like he isn’t about to spit out some of most carefully planned hate speech of the century.

Oh I’m going to enjoy this.

----
Grayson Creed (FoH leader):

The crowd has seen him now. He closes his eyes briefly and feels their eyes seeing for him, seeing only him, focusing on him until he swears he feels heat from their gaze. He’d been shy as a boy, dreading the first day of school when each member of the class stood at the front of the room facing that long row of desks, that bored sea of drooping eyes. It wasn’t until he’d realized the synthesizing power of righteous anger that he had begun to love the crowd. With God at your shoulder and morality in your right hand like the Biblical flaming sword you could fuse the crowd together, forcibly transcend them to new heights of consciousness. Today he will make them understand.

He opens his eyes, lowers his arms, and speaks into the hush of the curious crowd, voice electronically amplified to scour every alcove and alley of Time’s Square for impressionable ears.

“We are gathered here today to remember innocent lives lost. Margaret Talmadge was on her way to visit her grandchildren.” he pauses as the large projector screen behind him flicks on to show the first slide in a power point presentation an aide had designed- a photo of an elderly woman smiling and hugging two toddlers, grey hair blowing into her face and watery blue eyes squinting into the camera. “She never made it.” the picture dissolves into one of an arm sticking out from beneath a pile of twisted steel and concrete. It was actually taken in 1994 after an earthquake in Los Angeles, photos of the wrecked subway train hadn’t been available, but Creed had decided it would serve as a nice illustration anyway.

“This is the mutant threat in action! This is what we want to protect you from!”

More close up shots of artfully suggestive carnage.

---
“They say they don’t need a cure and I say they’re right! What they need, what we need-“

Primer turns back to Manslaughter, smiles kindly at the boy. “Put on your mask. Then hurt him.” he whispers.

“Now for the rest of you…”
---
The crowd/ Eloise Saracen

This is the worst date ever. Eloise sighs and taps her foot against the crowd, sliding a sideways glance at Geoffrey as he stands straight and tall, enraptured by the man on the stage. It definitely hadn’t been her idea to come down to this rally with a bunch of politics-obsessed freaks listening to their King Freak lecture on whatever it is the politically minded are foaming at the mouth about these days. There’s a new Will Ferrell movie out and she wants to see it. Popcorn, soda, the back row she thinks longingly, running a hand through her hair.

Geoffrey reaches out to grab her hand, that earnest look she usually finds endearing enough to excuse all his zealotry shining at her like a string of Christmas tree lights. Right now though she doesn’t want to play along. I’ve had enough of this shit. Maybe he should find a girlfriend who gives a damn. she wrenches her hand away, scowling, but even that isn’t enough suddenly. She has to show him she won’t stand for this. She has to show him how much she hates this, hates him. She raises a hand, raking her nails across his cheek and he cries out, startled, then as he turns towards her looking just as angry as she feels.

She hits the ground as he lands a clumsy, wildly thrown punch to the side of her face and lies there in shock for a moment. A kick to the stomach sends her rolling sideways and she cries out, afraid now beneath her pulsing anger because it hurts so much, she hears a snap when he kicks her again and tries to curl in around the broken rib even as she screams not with pain but with the desire to cause it, to rip, to rend to tear him apart, tear them all apart…
---
Crowd control units/ Sergeant Ruddings

“What the hell?” a section of the crowd has gone insane. Oh no. Oh shit. He’s seen riots start before and there’s usually warning- a part of the speech, a trouble maker standing out. It must be mutants.

He pulls out his gun and signals his fellow officers to head towards the pocket of chaos, but it’s growing even as they run towards it.

[[Aaaand GO! Remember, starting your own threads is encouraged!]]

[Tony Masters]

Hiding in mutant-hating crowds, during the middle of the day, with a stainless steel skull-mask on, and trying to be relatively inconspicuous is not an easy feat. Taskmaster excels in things that he's seen other people do, but he's never seen someone trying to do this.

He tugs the baseball cap a little lower. It's not that he's afraid of getting caught; he could easily escape from this mob crowd, but he's afraid that maybe there's a Texan in the bunch. God knows he doesn't feel like getting shot today, even if he's got the body armour on.

In his concealing coat's pocket Taskmaster can feel the gas mask, intended for Roger once the stuff hit the fan. He'd have to remember to activate his own, otherwise he'd be running about rather erratically.

“We’ll wait until he starts the speech. And we’ll be subtle about our involvement. Genetic superiority doesn’t mean much when you’ve been trampled.”

"I hear that. Besides, I'm the king of subtle." He tips his head slightly to the side, giving his boss a quick glinting glance then focuses back on the ground. No need to be spotted before the fun really started.

“We are gathered here today to remember innocent lives lost. Margaret Talmadge was on her way to visit her grandchildren. She never made it.” As sad as the story is, Taskmaster can't help the roll of his eyes.

"Nice. Real original approach there Numb-nuts." He mutters, avoiding the prying gaze from the young woman next to him.

“Put on your mask. Then hurt him.” He pulls Roger's mask from his pocket, already knowing how to get the boy to obey.

"Here ya go, Roger. Put this sucker on and do what the boss says and I'll give you a box of popsicles after we're done. A big box. With chocolate flavoured ones." He promises, knowing that Roger would probably revel and be forever obedient. A tap to the temple of his mask ensures that his own gas mask is activated.

“Now for the rest of you…” Party time. Shedding his coat and ball cap, Taskmaster pulls his navy hood up over his head, grinning as the surrounding people recognize his Death appearance.

The effect of Primer's pheromones are astonishing; the shocked and fearful rally-goers immediately turn angry and hate-filled. Most of them pick fights of their own, but a few approach Taskmaster and his charges.

"What? You wanna fight, bitches? I'm gonna smash your ass all the way back to your momma's womb." Admittedly, his strength does not reside in insult throwing.

With a pounce forward and a swing of the legs forward, Taskmaster's feet collide with the closest pair of combatants. The recoil from hitting their torsos is enough to vault him backwards in a flip, letting him land perfectly. The two he hit are thrown backwards into the pulsing, furious crowd, where they're swallowed with a swarm of fists and kicks.

Another rogue mob member grabs him from behind and locks his arm around his throat, tightening with a surprising amount of strength. But after all his years of training, Taskmaster's stronger, and vaults the man up over his shoulders with a well-practiced heave.

Brushing himself off casually and satisfied that everyone is busy dealing with the others around them, he walks back over to Primer and Roger.

"Like a giant bar fight. I always win at those." Taskmaster grins and settles back against a lightpole to watch the massive, inexplicable rebellion.

His fun, however, is cut short when the advancing police catch his attention.

"Hmmm, this ought to be interesting."

[Manslaughter]

Roger gives an uninterested gaze to the crowd around them, his vacant eyes searching each face, as though there is the chance he might know one of them. Some eyes catch his and a few look away quickly, surprised at having someone stare at them, or embarrassed that they had been staring too. Humming a measure or two of a song, he suddenly becomes aware of Primer saying something. In a distant way, Roger hears and understands, but he makes no open acknowledge of it. He simply makes no facial movement at all until Primer's attention turns directly towards him. And remember Manslaughter- we do well here and I’ll take you to the nursery and let you pick out as many flower-bulbs as you want. The boy nodded in a way that one might to a memory of a song, envisioning a stretch of tulips and roses and daises...

We are gathered here today to remember innocent lives lost. Margaret Talmadge was on her way to visit her grandchildren. Roger blinks at the picture on the projector screen, suddenly distracted by a loose thread on his shirt and that he starts pulling at it with two fingers. She never made it. The collective gasp of shock makes the boy snap his head up to attention, but bonelessly, as he lets it droop almost onto his shoulder. Even the sight of this carnage makes him shiver, and the corners of his lips twitch as he slowly smiles. "Bye, bye, lady..," Roger whispers almost silently, although no one around him has heard it, as his mental abilities have been off-and-on at work until they had arrived. He continues to have a dreamy look on his face while more equally disgusting displays of disembodied and disembowled bodies draped over wreckage with bits of them scattered in more places that they could be in appear on the screen.

Put on your mask. Then hurt him.[/color] Stretching his face into a smile, the boy nods, only understanding the words 'hurt him.' Here ya go, Roger. Put this sucker on and do what the boss says and I'll give you a box of popsicles after we're done. A big box. With chocolate flavoured ones.[/color] He licks his lips slightly in anticipation; popsicles are good. Yes. They never let him have any at the white building, worried about the stick inside the popsicle part. He feels a mask being shoved into his hands, his fingers barely grasping it so that it doesn't fall on the ground. The boy's body begins to sway slightly, this perfect vision of flowers and treats dancing around in his head, only broken by the continuous babbling of the silly man on the podium. Roger grows irritated with the man, the way he's yelling and shouting and waving his fists. He opens his mind searching for the psyche of Creed, circling around it until he's sure it's the right one. He's still talking? "Roger will fix that.. he will, he will.." He says in a sing-song voice while he slowly brings the mask up to his face. At first, the slight twinge the boy gives as a test seems to have no effect, and the man is still talking.

So Roger gives him a sharp stab in the throat to make him shut up; the equivalent of throwing a brick at his neck.

[Primer]

Even Primer himself is rather surprised at how quickly it all goes to hell. Only minutes after he released rage onto the rally-goers around him the assembly has become a full-scale riot with the Brotherhood contingent standing in the middle of a roiling mass of screams and random violence. It’s like they were just waiting for an excuse he thinks with a small smile, raising his eyebrows as one man actually runs another through the stomach with the handle of the sign he’d been carrying.

He registers Taskmaster’s quipping as the other mutant deals with those foolish enough to try to take their pheromonal rage out on those the mercenary’s been hired to guard but when he turns his focus is on Roger. While he realizes the necessity of giving the boy a gas mask a part of him doesn’t like losing control over the mentally unstable teen and even though keeping an eye on him is Taskmaster’s job he figures it can’t hurt to double check.

"Roger will fix that.. he will, he will.."

Primer turns curiously towards the platform, where Grayson Creed is screaming “Mutants! Mutants!”[/i] and pointing upwards as if he expects God to be on standby to strike whatever he’s seen down from the sky. Then, presumably as the impact of Roger’s strike hits him, Creed suddenly crumples, clutching his throat and convulsing. Well that ought to keep Manslaughter happy Primer decides, now what was that idiot shouting about? He slides on a pair of sunglasses to protect his eyes from the afternoon glare (no reason to risk harmful UV rays for a quicker look after all) and winces as he recognizes the winged figure of Warren Worthington III surveying the crowd from the air. With the other activist affiliated with the X-men he knew it was always a possibility that they would run across each other in the field but had hoped to delay it, and potential recognition, as long as possible. Hopefully he’ll be too busy herding whatever little lost lambs have found their way here for him to bother with me. With that he shakes the concern off and focuses his attention back on the ground where he has other things to worry about.

Things like the NYPD officers charging towards them.

"Hmmm, this ought to be interesting."

“Oh yes.” Primer agrees softly, “Those face-shields will work against tear gas but they really should close those bottoms and sides off. All sorts of air currents can get in.” he adds with a smirk, stepping back a bit to blend in with the crowd before concentrating on feelings of trust tinged with submission. “They’re over there! By the speakers!” he yells, making his voice high and panicky, directing the police towards what, in his opinion, is far too calm an area of the crowd. Influenced to trust by the emission the officers whirl, making their own assumptions about who ‘they’ are, and aim their guns at a mass of humans who instantly panic at the threat and start running every which way to get out of the line of fire.

Beautiful. Primer’s feeling quite pleased with himself and his team, the plan is going off flawlessly so far. If they haven’t learned to think twice about upsetting mutants by now maybe they never will but this ought to be a step in the right direction anyway. He starts to smile at the thought but the expression falters and becomes a frown as a section of the crowd near the other side of the square goes as suddenly still as they had been angry a moment ago.

“What the hell?” he mutters with angry consternation, pacing forward unthinkingly as people begin to make their way calmly towards the nearest available alley. That’s impossible. There’s no wind there and pheromones can’t be telepathically blocked…are the X-men calming them down somehow?

He looks back at Taskmaster and Manslaughter for a moment, torn between investigating and sticking to the plan. Then a man aims a punch at his head and as he narrowly avoids the blow his decision is made. I can’t keep the rally going and protect myself on a trip across the square…hopefully whoever’s doing that will stick around. I would love to meet them. And then preferably kill them so they can’t pass on that little trick.

[Jolt]

It's been thirteen hours. Thirteen hours, forty-eight minutes, and eighteen, nineteen, twenty seconds since he staggered free from a smoking gap in the wall when the machines overloaded and the beds caught fire from raging sparks. Will can only distantly remember a burly prison doctor leaning over him, marveling that his fever was rising at an alarming rate, and that even the restraints used to bind him down were heating up against his flushed skin. That is, until they ripped off the cot and hurdled across the room after his body ignited in a spasm of electricity.

Prison had been fucking prison--fucking hell to boot, and he had the scars to prove it. Gone is the orange jumpsuit they'd forced him to wear, now donning civilian clothes that he undoubtedly got by any brute means necessary.

Will has been wide-awake for the past forty-eight hours, a combination of his fever--that had since broken--and the natural high that his power was giving him, thrumming up and down his nerves and making him move, making him feel like he had to do something, like he had to run twenty miles or scale the side of a building with only his hands and feet and nothing to catch him if he fell. His shoulders are bowed inward, his face twisted into an almost frightening sneer that is wide-eyed and unfocused from a lack of sleep.

His fingers are twitching.

"Fuck..," he hisses beneath his breath as he stumbles out into a clear ray of light, turning his head to shield his eyes from the sudden onset of sunlight. He snaps his head up at the sound of shouting and screaming, masses of people locked limb and limb and beating the shit out of each other and the rest of them standing around with blank, dreamy looks on their faces. Will growls as he notices the battered pieces of anit-mutant signs. "Bastards!" he growls, clenching his fists. This battle, no, this war of backasswards evolution momentarily makes him forget the horror stories of prison, and he forgets it even more when a man in front of him whirls backwards with a fist to lash out at the nearest person, because that short guy was looking at him funny. There's a crunch of knuckle and rib and face and feet and pavement as they roll across the ground. The guy is bigger than Will, but he is not a match for someone who's been a prisoner for the past six months, someone who's spent every waking moment of their lives wishing they were dead because death had to be better than prison.

His lips is split where a hand found his face and his head is bleeding where it made an untimely meeting with the street. Will staggers free of the combat with a snarl, the crackle of electricity starting at his hands. Another man is rushing at him, apparently the one Will had just rendered unconcious was a friend to him or an aquaintence, or just had every intention of kicking his ass at the moment. "Fuck you!" Will barks, feeling the anger swell around him until it was within him, the energy building until it expells from his forearms down to his fingertips in a powerful cloud of electricity that sends half a dozen people bowling backwards, and the poor sap that had been coming at him some yards away until he lands on the sidewalk.

[Tony Masters]

"Roger will fix that... he will, he will..." Taskmaster let's out a held breath that he didn't think he was holding. He had figured that getting Roger to cooperate would have been the hardest part of this whole plan, and with that now aside, they could sit back and laugh at the ensuing panic.

He snickers as Creed buckles over when Roger gave him one of his little painful pokes. Sometimes, being a bad guy just plain rocks.

“Those face-shields will work against tear gas but they really should close those bottoms and sides off. All sorts of air currents can get in.”

"But you know, you have to give them at least a little credit. Fending off hoards of angry dudes is hard work." Hard work, but then their so easily manipulated by something so incredibly simple. Primer's pheromones, for instance; created by nature, enhanced by evolution, and probably one of the most potent forms of influence on the planet. You just had to love it.

Taskmaster catches sight of the calmer, more civil area of the crowd about the same that Primer does, and cocks his head at his employers annoyed outburst.

"Looks like maybe we're not the only ones here." As if confirming his statement, a bolt of lightning erupts from the stage. "Oh...now that's pretty cool." Taskmaster mutters as the wind begins to howl. "We've got a bit of a meddler in our midst, and looks like they're blowin' away all your pheromones." And before anyone can order him to do the obvious, he takes off towards the stage, intent on ridding the scene of the mutant that had dared to intervene.

Leaping up over the heads of the fighting crowd, Taskmaster covers the distance surprisingly quickly, vaulting off the odd shoulder to reach his target.

"Alriiiiight! Who wants to tango?" He yells, grinning from ear to ear as he pulls his katana from its sheath against his back. Taskmaster touches down and skids to a stop, holding the sword in front of him offensively, pointing it towards the white-haired weather witch. "Woah...didn't think I'd be fightin' a woman today. Oh well. Let's dance, sista!"

[Rogue]

[Coming in from "Above the Insanity"]

As she moves over the crowd, a few try to jump up and grab her; she avoids easily, but it’s … confusing. Shouldn’t they be scared, instead of almost-rabid, ..trying to pull her out of the sky? Whatever, though, no harm in it (it’s not like they could hurt her, anyway...).

As she gets lower, and closer to the kid, she’s starting to feel a surge of anger – whatever he’s doing, it’s hurting Creed; can’t be that bad to just let the man pay for once, can it? Hell, she’d like to get over there and….

Wait, no. No…One of Ororo’s breezes sweeps across the area, and it’s like suddenly the anger fades out, and …she really really doesn’t like the way her thoughts had been going. …Right, focus now, though. She’ll deal with …whatever that was… later.

She drops down so she’s just above the boy holding the mask to his face, reaching down to pluck him out of the crowd. A little ride ought to break his concentration on doing whatever he’s doing well enough, right?

[Manslaughter]

He's enjoying himself.

Roger feels in control for once, the exhiliration of being superior and above someone with the power to tell them 'you will obey' is enough to give him the fix of heroine or a hard drink. He is too young at heart to know the shuddering feeling of pleasure blossoming through him, but this, this is close enough, gripping the base of his spine and making his body become lax as Creed's pleas go unanswered and unassisted. Roger has a feeling that he talks too much anyway, all bark and no bite, lots of pretty guns and nothing to show for it. "Gun's no good if you can't aim it right..," he murmurs with a soft sigh, narrowing his eyes behind the mask he is still holding to his face. He contemplates just taking it off, as it is making his face feel hot and sticky, making his mouth dry. Roger is thirsty now, and the spasm of agony Creed is feeling are starting to taper as Roger begins to loose interest. It's taking too long.

In a split second Roger's mental attention turns, and then his attack resumes, gripping Creed's lungs as though caught in a vice that is being turned and turned and crushing the air out until there is no room to breathe. Fight or flight impulses are surging around him, and he can feel every flutter of a heart, bat of an eyelash. He can feel and see them all without having to look.

And then Roger looks up, almost face to face with Rogue as she hovers over him, arms outstretched, as though to take him far, far away. But Roger doesn't want to go. He is startled, nonetheless, and the mask drops from his face, forever revealing his unforgettable stare and giving her a clear view of his face. Everything he was feeling is all gone now, and there is nothing but the panic of the crowd and the decreasing space between the girl hovering over him and his person. She looks like his sister in a way.. the deep-set sparkle down there in her eyes, that pays some semblance to the young and the living. He doesn't answer to his sister, and he most certainly isn't going to answer to her. "...no..," Roger says defiantly to her, his mind subtle jumble of broken concentration as the powerful mental stabbing on Creed subsides to nothing. He doesn't matter now. He has many enemies.. if Roger is lucky they will finish the job for him. He's busy now, driving upward with his mental attack and searching for Rogue's psyche, wanting to see how well she could fly when he's trying to mentally stab daggers between her eyes.

(I hope that's okay! Let me know if you want something changed..)

[Ororo Munroe]

> Maybe we’re dealing with some kind of gas attack? Like a psychoactive drug, or something. Clearing the air around the crowd might help snap them out of it… Storm, Sofia, do you think you can do that?

Clearing the air? Ororo prides herself on being relatively quick on the uptake. “You mean, something like Wallflower’s powers? That would explain what’s going on, certainly. One updraft, coming up. Sofia? Please assist me as you are able.” Ororo wasn’t sure what the extent of the young girls abilities were, or how much control she had, but every little bit helped. Almost immediately, the wind shifts direction, gusting upward and out. If these really are some kind of pheromones, hopefully I can disperse them enough, or this madness will start all over again.

Her concentration is interrupted by what appears to be a man rushing the stage. “Angel - it seems to be working, though I appear to have some company… stand by.” The man arrives on stage and pulls out a katana. Interesting…

> "Woah...didn't think I'd be fightin' a woman today. Oh well. Let's dance, sista!"

A katana. Are you serious? Electricity crackles near Ororo’s eyes, and she makes a fractional glance upward. Flashes of lightning play off the clouds far above the plaza. She then looks back across at her adversary, seemingly saying, If you insist.

Ororo lifts off the ground, and with a forceful blast of wind, a brilliant fork of energy cascades downwards towards the bladed weapon.

[Rogue]

She’s almost there – she’ll have him in a moment. She reasons she’ll take him up, onto a roof or something – she won’t drop him, but keeping him up high, and far enough away ought to do for now, right? Far enough away he can’t hurt anyone and make things worse….

Then he’s looking up at her, weirdly intense, yet seemingly blank staring blue eyes, and, though she can’t hear over the noise of the crowd, his "...no..," is plainly obvious. Rogue doesn’t think much of it – she’s not giving him a choice in the matter, anyway, and it’s not like she’d expect him to agree in the first plac--

And then there’s a sharp pain in her head, straight through, dead center and sharp…like a knife straight through her forehead. Both gloved hands are clutching at her head, now, and she wavers in the air slightly as her concentration falters, automatically trying in vain to push against the pain like she’s sometimes found works when it’s psyke-related… but this isn’t helping. It’s something else, some outside cause…

Focus. She has to stay up – if she falls, and she ends up touching someone, hurting someone… She doesn’t want to start a panic, make things worse...

She pulls up, eyes closed, still holding her head, and she’s aware, vaguely, of the fact that she’s shaking - the effort expended to just go up, stay up, combined with the pain makes it hard to stop that, and…

…And then she’s falling towards the crowd below, not able to stop but trying her best, knowing that whatever impact is to come from the fall won’t hurt even a fraction as bad as what’s happening to her head – not for her, anyway, but she doesn’t know haw far up she was when she stopped falling, or what’ll happen to the person (or people) below when she hits... Except that somehow she can’t quite care right now because this really really hurts…

[Warren Worthington III]

(( Picking up from Let's tell the world we're unheard ))

As he dives in on the hopeless task of intercepting Rogue before she kills her target, Warren notices a few discrepancies. The boy’s gas-mask is one, and the disturbing expression on his face is another, but the kicker is how Rogue suddenly veers off, putting altitude between her and her former target.

OK, scratch theory number 2… this kid isn’t a civilian bystander after all. He alters his flight-path as she does – though not nearly as abruptly, and he takes a moment to indulge in muttering under his breath about aerodynamic principles and powered flight, sounding rather a lot like Dr. McCoy used to about Drake’s powers, before finally pulling out of his dive.

When she stalls out at the top of her climb, though, she’s obviously ballistic; her abortive attempts at stopping her flight doing little or nothing to change her trajectory. Whatever that kid did to her, it clearly had a kick to it.

"I’ve got Rogue," he calls into his comm as he matches her velocity, "but the kid she was targeting put some kind of whammy on her!"

It occurs to him as he moves in to catch her that he’s not sure how much she weighs… she’s got a steel-tough body like Toni, so she might be exceptionally dense. A few moment’s attention to the rate at which she’s displacing air makes her mass clearer, though, and he adjusts his angle of incidence accordingly.

"Just relax, Rogue," he shouts out, feeling an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, "I’ve got you. What’s the deal with that kid?"

[Primer]

"Manslaughter.” Primer’s sidled up alongside the teen the second Rogue lets go of him and launches herself back into the air. “You’re doing well, but you need to hide from these people if you’re going to hurt them. If they see you they’ll try to stop you or take you back.” he lets the boy supply what ‘back’ might mean, after all it’s a safe bet that anyone in the Brotherhood is going to have some sort of tragic past and he’s found through experience that being vague when frightening someone into compliance is almost always the most effective strategy, the individual almost always having a deep-rooted fear he couldn’t know that will quickly fill in the blank spaces.

“Just take a few steps back and stand behind a crowd. Then hurt the man on the stage more if you’d like.” he mutters, nudging the boy towards a knot of people so focused on the battle with each other that they probably won’t go after Roger. And if they do he’ll probably surprise them quite a bit he adds in a sort of vicariously self-satisfied mental tone.

He’s about to resume concentrating on pulsing anger out into the crowd again when he feels a blast of air against his cheek, coming from the direction of the stage. So they’ve figured it out then. That was faster than I thought. Oh well, no matter how smart they are they can’t undo what we’ve already accomplished- a beautiful demonstration of the complete inadequacy of humans to defend themselves against mutants. Though he’s already satisfactorily accomplished his goal for the situation, complete chaos and a few human injuries, it never hurts to add some icing to the cake. Right now taking Creed down might be a possibility, depending on how good of a distraction Taskmaster is. He turns towards the stage where the mercenary is battling off the weather manipulator, with her distracted his pheromones should continue to be effective. With Roger distracting two of their fliers right now the X-men are certainly weakened but still, the Brotherhood is outnumbered and getting caught and dragged before some do-gooder tribunal is definitely not on the agenda for today… he pauses for a moment before raising the communication device to his lips and sending his message over the wireless channel to Taskmaster’s mask.

“Distract her as long as you can but if it’s going badly get out of here and meet us by the van. I’m going to keep emitting but we’re gone if it looks like we’re going to be found out.” with that he breaks the comm link and renews his concentration on anger, stepping in front of the place where he hopes Roger has begun to back away to act as a visual block. Better pretend to be effected too with Worthington so close… he lets out a scream of his own and throws himself towards a few punches he knows he can duck, keeping a peripheral glance trained on the X-men nearby.

[Tony Masters]

It's funny, he would have thought that maybe he'd have gotten a better response out of her. Maybe some surprise, a gasp, anything to show that he'd had some sort of effect on her.

But nooooooooooo, he gets a lightning bolt. And it's not until the fraction of a second before it strikes that he realizes he's holding an impromptu lightning rod.

Fuck.

He feels the tingle in his fingers and the tips of his ears as his mask heats up slightly, frying the audio and visual readouts. No matter on that though, he wouldn't need them, especially after his suit has finished rerouting all the electricity down the exterior of his body and into the wooden stage beneath him.

Taskmaster's not a stranger to being electrocuted, so he'd made the appropriate adjustments to his combat gear. And very glad he did too.

Once the ringing in his head has subsided, he shakes his head furiously.

"Whruuuuuffffff....Damn girl! That was brutal!" Sticking his katana/lightning rod into the wooden platform, he leans on it as he tries to clear his dazed thoughts. After a moment, he dashes off again, leaving the sword behind. Being struck by raw electricity once had been bad enough, no need to suggest it happen again.

Running, he grips his two pistols and holds them ready. He recalls a kung fu master he'd seen in China and uses the memory to good use, dashing up the wall backing of the stage, and then kicking outwards, lunging towards the lightning-tossing woman in leather. Hands outstretched, he fires off three shots before forcing himself to spin and land with a roll. He hadn't been aiming to kill (that wasn't their purpose at the rally), just wound and distract.

Unfortunately for Taskmaster, he lands at the edge of the calming crowd, and they don't take to well to the sound of gunfire. The panic is genuine, not pheromone-induced, and they start screaming and running, urging some rather inappropriate language and desperate leaps from Taskmaster.

"Come on, people! Like you haven't seen a gun before! Right to bear arms? Remember?!" Using a screaming woman as leverage, he hurdles himself back up onto the stage.

“Distract her as long as you can but if it’s going badly get out of here and meet us by the van. I’m going to keep emitting but we’re gone if it looks like we’re going to be found out.” Nah, this wasn't bad. Not ideal, but not bad.

"Confirmed Sprite-boy. You just keep the dope flowin' and I'll keep Breeze-girl dodgin' bullets." To affirm the statement, he takes aim and sends out a salvo of bullets, sending each just to the side his opponents limbs. "You just keep sittin' there, doll face, and I won't bloody up that nice leather of yours." Another shot past the right of her head is an obvious warning.

[Sofia Mantega]

[[Coming in from 'Oh, let's tell the world we're unheard' with Josh!]]

“Oh, I’m sorry! You don’t know about my telekinesis. Well…You do now, anyway. And you can relax - only way you’re going to drop out of the sky is if I’m falling with you. Maybe we can compromise until you trust me a little more, though?”

“…Right. Okay, I can do that,” Sofia says, attempting a confident tone but clearly she was still working on convincing herself that this really would continue to work, that gravity wouldn’t suddenly remember it’s supposed to be accelerating her earthwards now. She breathes a relieved “thankyou” as Josh instructs her to put her arms around his shoulders and quickly does so, feeling much more comfortable having something concrete to hold on to, even if it wasn’t actually doing anything. “Thank you,” she says again once she’s situated comfortably, this one a more general, all-encompassing offer of thanks, for not leaving her in the crowds, and picking her up and letting her tag along with them with whatever they were doing.

Despite her acceptance of the whole floating-in-midair thing, Sofia is relieved when they touch the ground, but it doesn’t last as she feels the still angered presence of the people surrounding them. She looks around, taking in the scene, feeling her anxiety rise the longer she stood watching. Her winds started up again around her, a calming force—she’d never noticed such a connection between the wind and her emotions, but then again, she hadn’t dealt with such fluctuating emotions very much—even if it wasn’t happy with her father, it was at least a constant in her life, she had a solid somewhere to be, unlike now where she was going from moment to moment, completely clueless as to where she was going and what she was doing.

“You’d better come with me. I don’t want anyone to try to hurt you again.”

This is new, this concern for her wellbeing, especially from someone who is almost entirely a stranger, but she accepts it easily, overwhelmingly glad not to be alone anymore. She holds tight to his hand as they begin running, thankful again to have something physical to hold on to.

“So, um…is there something I can do to help?” She doesn’t want to be the little kid tagging along and weighing down everyone else, with whatever they were doing; she wants to be useful, wants to feel that she’s not wasting their time and effort to protect her. And they’re mutants too! She’s never had that familiarity, and certainly doesn’t want to lose it. I don’t want them to leave me as soon as it’s safe again… “Warren said something about…using my wind to clear the air, right?” Her winds are restless, still swirling around her, and the crowd is still raging.

[Pyro]

OOC: In honour of P-Day... whee. Old school Pyro, complete with the crappy battle cries and randomosity. Playtime! Backtracks quite a lot, so excuse the deviation

”Look…” – John squints at the girl’s nametag, and still can’t work out what it’s meant to say beneath the stars and smiley faces and other random *embellishments* ‘As-yet-unnamed-coffeehouse-skivvy’ probably felt made it scream ‘Have a nice day now’ (they don’t, at least not to him – they’re just incredibly irritating and make her look about six years old, definitely not mature enough to handle the serious business of making coffee) – ”Missy Barista-Sister. I don’t care what you call it in trendy-coffee-house speak. Big, black, lots of sugar. Not difficult.”

”Decaff, sir?” The death glare answers that one neatly enough. ”Ooo-kay. Take a seat. Have a nice day now”

John is, of course, having the antithesis of ‘a nice day’, and asks himself – not for the first time – why the hell he decided sneaking out to the rally was a good idea. The thought ‘Maybe ‘ro and Warren were right’ is enough to make staying almost a point of honour, much as this mundane bullshit and that of the far grander scale being spouted by the irascible Mr. Creed grates. Fucking homo sapi… oh no, we didn’t just think that. Nope. Nothing but love and respect for the flatliners here..

Creed, however, it’s okay to hate – the way he’s parading around like a fucking messiah, spouting his doomsday nonsense about the ‘mutant problem’. It reminds him a lot of Magneto, really, back when they’d been in the speech making game and not the dying one. Except that Magneto wasn’t talking shi… No, we didn’t think that either. Fuck, John, what’s with us today? Fingers crossed Joshy’s got more important stuff going on because you’re signing your own fucking death warrant as far as convincing them you’re not a closet terrorist goes

… because that’s sort of why he’s here, right? Proving to himself, as much as anyone, that he’s past the stage where anything anti-mutant makes the red mist descend and the random carnage begin. Because he’s totally past that. Totally. The fact that he’s not burned anything yet is down to control, not the anti-smoking policy leaving clicking a lighter out of the question, and if he keeps fumbling twisting the wooden coffee stirrers (which totally isn’t a displacement for Replacement!Sharky… nope) so there’s a rapidly growing pile of splintered bits then that’s just because he hasn’t had his caffeine hit yet. Obviously.

”Insane, isn’t it?” … and shit, he hates that he jumps when Princess Perky arrives with the coffee, though he’s still able to flash a grin because at least someone understand that it’s all batshit, isn’t caught up in the ecstatic reverie and… ”What they let the gene freaks get away with…”

… ah, of course not.

… no, this is a test, isn’t it? A challenge to pass unnoticed and not do anything stupid. So he bites back the urge to tear her a few new orifices and just nods – ”Oh yeah. Dangerous mutie scum, the lot of them” – only the slight instinctive sarcastic bite letting him get the words out without choking on them. Just drink the coffee and go. All that’s happening is Creed’s being an ass. If the ‘hood was going to make a move, they’d have done it by…

Oh fuck. John’s been in enough riots – hell, he’s sparked (hah, clever… not the time though) enough of them himself – to know how it works, and this… isn’t that. There’s always a rumble before hand – a sense that something’s coming, like the moment before a storm when the air’s charged with electricity and just waiting to break. But this comes from nowhere, and explodes out of nothing, and it’s just… not right. Even the swell of panic here in the coffee house *tastes* different, because it’s a reaction to that, while the riot itself is just like someone flicking a switch, which points towards…

The shout goes up – ”Mutants!” – Yeah, no shit, Sherlock – though it’s only after that, when Creed’s on the floor, convulsing and clutching at his throat, that he’s certain, because that’s an old friend at work, isn’t it? Fuck… If Roger’s around, then that means he’s got to have a babysitter, because the Brotherhood are evil but not insane, and not likely to let the little psycho run around unchecked and… yeah, a few seconds later still Team X have swooped into action and it’s the standard slugfest.

John’s not, by any stretch of the imagination, a hero; he’s a realist. He knows when he’s outnumbered, and if there’s an escape route, then he’ll be the first down it. So throwing himself in to *all that* doesn’t seem like the best way to survive, and fuck saving the world, he’s putting his own skin first. Besides, it’s nothing Storm and co can’t handle… Time to make a swift exit before anyone decides to renew old acquaintances.

Or at least, that’s the plan. Until he gets outside. Because there’s something funky going out that flips a switch in him same as it did the crowd and it’s just like Boston; some bastard’s dared make a move against his people, so they’re going down. Period. Helps that the ‘bastard’ in question is Roger, part of the ‘big enemy’, but really anything with a pulse that pisses him off is on the fast track to fiery death right now.. and though it takes him longer than he’d like to find the figure in the crowd it helps that he knows what he’s looking for, and really, how many psychopathic redheads are there out there?

*Click-fwoosh* ”Hey, Rog.” The first shot comes off as a warning, just a few inches off (and yes, that’s definitely a mistake, down to being distracted. Nothing else stopping him wanting to hurt the kid). ”Didn’t we have this discussion before? About what happens when you play with my toys?”