ic Girls, Interrupted (IC)

[Gizmo]

"That's because you're good people, cariño," Ellie noted, laying one hand palm upward in the middle of the table with a reassuring smile. "Just, y'know, don't go overboard with the grand gestures, okay? You don't have anything to prove." She had a feeling that Mara was partially taking her cues from Eve's recent habit of lavishing huge sums of money on her friends at the drop of a hat, but the inventor's coffers were not nearly so limitless. "The little things add up to mean more anyway."

[Fox]

Mara winced a little at 'don't have anything to prove', but she took the offered hand and squeezed. "Fair enough. Wasn't really planning on grand gestures anyway, just...get the urge once in a while. Have to be more rational about it. Suspect I wouldn't react too well to too grand a gesture myself. It's...good advice. Thank you."

Content to sit quietly for a moment, the young woman finally realized that the onus for a new subject was probably on her; quietly clearing her throat, she adjusted her skirt with her free hand and asked, "Anything interesting recently with you and your brother? Don't...watch much news, don't know if I'd have missed something."

[Gizmo]

Ellie snapped the fingers of her free hand in exaggerated chagrin. "Shucks, wonder if I can still get a refund on that sky-writer," she teased, squeezing Mara's hand back. "Not too much. Cleaning up after small fly, stopping them before they can get established." Although punctuated by the occasional supervillain brawl or bout of general mayhem, the bulk of her work as Jill O'Cure was still spend patrolling the streets of the West End with her brother, on the lookout for muggers, drug dealers and other scum. "Katanarchists have been around here and there, which is kinda weird. Fun name, not so great with banter. Ninjas, y'know?"

[Fox]

Grumbling sympathetically, Mara shook her head. "Hate ninjas. Spend most of my time doing that, too. Cleaning up, I mean." reminder - local arms dealer moving? - interrupt moving shipments between old and new locations - cripple organization while vulnerable "Prefer thugs. Direct, honest. Fond of simple tactics and guns. Ninjas are...like cockroaches. A hundred of them, quiet and all over - walls, boxes, ceilings. And too hard to pin down." She frowned, running her mind back through what she knew of local movement in her part of town. "Haven't seen Katanarchists activity in Greenbank. Will let you know if I do."

[Gizmo]

One of Ellie's eyes squinted slightly at Mara's graphic talk about cockroaches. "And on that note..." she coughed lightly, letting go of her date's hand as their server reappeared with their meals. After refilling their glasses of water and warning that the plates were hot, the waiter departed again for a busier section of the restaurant. The taller girl cut into her chicken without preamble, eyes lighting up as she tried the dish. "Oh wow," she praised as she finished her mouthful, "you should just pick where we eat from now on."

[Fox]

Mara gave a mental sigh of relief, glad that the meal met muster. "Am glad you like it," she noted, carefully cutting into her fish and taking a moment to savor it before continuing. apologize for cockroach comment? - not fit for dinner - best not to bring it back up maybe "Don't eat at fancier places too often. Usually...phrase. Style over substances. And too expensive for portions. But do enjoy this restaurant...like I said. Good balance. Should try my fish - delicious."

[Gizmo]

"Well, so long as you're offering," Ellie replied agreeably as she leaned forward in her seat, toeing the line between suggestive flirting and legitimate interest in trying her girlfriend's dinner selection. Before she could, however, a sudden explosion rocked their table as the front door of the restaurant was blow open in a burst of fire, smoke and noise.

Through the dark cloud and fluttering debris, a figure road in on a silvery, floating surfboard that gleamed in the light of the remaining flames. Clad in a hot pink tube top at least a size too small and a pair of black, baggy cargo pants equally too large, the manically grinning Latina girl threw her hands up in the air as though playing to an adoring crowd and crowed, "Let's make some noise!"

"'Let's make some noise'?" a more modulated voice asked in a weary drawl, metal creaking as the new arrival carelessly tossed what was left of the restaurant door into the street with obviously superhuman strength. Tanned with dusty blond hair and a strong jaw, the man looked surprisingly normal in simple brown pants and a cream coloured shirt. "I suppose that's this week's catchphrase then, Angel?"

The obscuring cloud blew away in a gust of wind that didn't seem to touch anything else, revealing a bald man with sharp features and a glowering scowl making a terse, arcane gesture. "Pheh," the darkly robed villain scoffed dismissively, brandishing a golden scepter with a jackal head motif. "In my age there was a respect for subtlety, not this... garish spectacle."

"Ah, my antediluvian ally, arrest your autogenetic accusations!" A forth member of the bizarre group stepped forward, concealed almost entirely by a heavy black duster and a broad brimmed hat, exposing only a smooth white mask with a moustachioed face painted upon it. He tossed a small, hissing object toward the maître d's podium, sending the hostess fleeing moments before the wooden pedestal was ripped apart by another explosion.

"Enough talking," insisted the final figure, a taciturn looking Chinese man in a simple crimson jumpsuit with a black stripe up the legs and down the arms. Although he made no grand display like his peers, his smooth body language and ready posture suggested a trained warrior spoiling for a fight. Despite his body's grace, his dark eyes seemed to almost rattle in their sockets, snapping back and forth between the frightened civilians.

At the apex of the group, Angel balled her hands in petulant fists. "It was, Blackfire, until you totally ruined it, gawd! Guy, Diehard, mi bellos, find the till and start collecting wallets," she demanded, pointing the restaurant patrons. "Heka, do your magic thing, or whatever. Give the people a show!" After a brief pause, she snapped at the terrified crowd, "What, you don't have camera phones?!"

Against the far wall, Ellie slipped out of her seat and grabbed her bag in one hand and Mara's wrist in the other, dragging the inventor toward the washrooms. "That'd be our cue, Marbar!"

[Fox]

Mara followed Ellie as fast and as quietly as she could, having snatched up her worn cloth messenger bag with the hand that wasn't being pulled away from their table. As soon as the restaurant's door blew open she'd cycled rapidly through surprise, concern, and disgust, finally settling on something akin to a deep and annoyed ire by the time the washroom door had closed behind them. "All the restaurants in all the districts in the city...had to be this one. Today. Odds are just...."

She made a angry sound, digging around in her bag until she came up with a pair of familiar-looking gauntlets. These she pulled on - with more force than necessary, scowling - and pushed closed, whatever unseen latching mechanism that kept them secured clicking into place. Not a moment later they flared to life, a distorted ripple traveling up her arms and across her body to leave her costume in its wake. "Frustrated," she growled accusingly at the door leading back into the restaurant proper. Even her visor seemed irate, flaring to life with what seemed like a little more energy than usual as she habitually ran through some system checks and brought her force field up as a twisted line an inch away from her profile. "Food is going to be cold by the time we're done. If the table survives. Very, very frustrated."

[Gizmo]

"Don't look at me," Ellie protested with mild amusement as she unbuttoned her vest and tossed it atop her bag on the floor. "These things only happen to heroines, not sidekicks." Shimmying out of her khaki pants revealed black tights while she pulled her blouse over her head and added it to the pile along with her bracelets. She was in too much of a rush to make the undressing particularly alluring, but on the upside she was also in too much of a rush to be self-conscious about it, too. Retrieving and slipping on her black top and crimson jacket, she proceeded to tie on the bandanna mask of Jill O'Cure. "Can you toss this stuff in your, uh, 'glove box' for me?" she asked, gathering together the discarded outfit. With that squared away, the medic stepped in closer and ducked under Dragonfly's visor for a quick kiss before nodding back into the restaurant. "Ready?"

[Fox]

Dragonfly's ire dulled pretty quickly when her girlfriend started stripping right then and there - stripping down to tights and then putting on her costume, mind, but the process combined with the kiss clearly short-circuited her brain and she spent a moment just kind of unfocused, reigning her mind back in in time to blush, mumble something unintelligible, and fold Jill's clothing away into personal storage. She shook her head, the noise from the restaurant helping to get her mind back on track. "....right." She scowled again, gauntlets emitting a barely-audible low-pitched whine as she started building a charge. "Ready."

[Gizmo]

"Runners," Diehard remarked as he watched the pair of young women at the back of the restaurant disappear into the washrooms.

Idly picking up the largest piece of wood left over from the destroyed podium, Blackfire flung it with ease into a glass case filled with a decorative display of wine bottles, glass shattering at multiple pitches while liquid cascaded down the wall to pool on the floor. "Not much of a plan, is it?" he mused following the martial artist in that direction.

Leaving Fawkes to terrorize the hostages with a sputtering incendiary while Heka muttered to himself under his breath, Angel brought her hoverboard around as she snapped at the less fancifully clad members of her group. "You can't follow them in there!" the debutante insisted. "It's the ladies' room!"

As Blackfire paused to regard the pink clad villain for a moment as though trying to discern whether or not she could possibly be serious, Dragonfly and Jill O'Cure burst back into the restaurant's main room. The metamagi medic gestured urgently, a shimmering blue force field appearing around a family seated at their table just in time to deflect a small bomb from Fawkes that bounced upward before exploding to take a chunk out of the ceiling.

In the beat of surprised silence that followed, Jill noted that they were outnumbered and divested of the element of surprise. "So..." she began with a smirk, "Who feels like giving up before the severe butt kickings commence?"

"Get them!" Angel practically screamed, balling her hands into fists and snapping them angrily to her sides.

"Now you're talking sense," Blackfire chuckled darkly as he and Diehard advanced.

[Fox]

"Guess not," Dragonfly wryly commented, time - at least, as she perceived it - grinding to a halt as her normally distracted brain turned its attention on assessing the situation. five threats - 'Angel' - poor fashion - attention-seeking? - at least in part - doesn't appear very smart - nominal leader - 'Blackfire' - superhuman strength - 'Guy' - familiar - movie? - explosives - threat to civilians - nice, Ellie - 'Diehard' - trained fighter? - moves like one - unknown final party - Jackal? - magician? - real or fake - assume real

The world sped back up and Dragonfly disappeared, reality wrapping in around her even as it unfolded next to Blackfire, her hand snapping out to grab his arm as soon as it appeared. general assessment - stop calling it 'general assessment' like a robot - avoid physical range of Blackfire and Diehard - Jackal unpredictable element - stay near Ellie Lines spread across his body like creases in paper and the man folded in on himself, twisting away into nothing in the palm of Dragonfly's hand. She vanished again, the distortion closing back in around her as she reappeared back where she started. even odds

[Gizmo]

Blackfire shouted in surprised outrage, a sound that was strangled off as he disappeared into Dragonfly's gauntlet. "See, my partner knows when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em," Jill remarked dryly, placing one hand on her hip with careless confidence. Inwardly, her heart was pounding as she realized that this was the first time she'd been in a real fight without her brother nearby to pull her butt out of the fire if she screwed up. Luckily enough, I've got someone else here with a vested interest in the continued well-being of said butt.

"Abject adolescent antagonist!" Fawkes cried, bounding with surprising speed across table tops, knocking dishes and glasses to crash to the floor as twin, gleaming blades suddenly appeared in his hands from somewhere within his coat. "I arrogate acquittal for my autonomous ally, anon!" Fortunately the odd masked man's haste to attack Dragonfly made him sloppy, his blow missing their mark by a wide margin.

With a high pitched sound of querulous frustration, Angel followed close behind him on her hoverboard. "Gawd, I have to do everything for you guys!" she complained as she balanced on both her hand while delivering a split kick in Jill's direction. While the move showed uncommon balance and poise, the attack itself was sloppy, and no match for the acrobatic young woman's defenses.

"Children and imbeciles," Heka grumbled to himself as he lifted smoothly into the air with a sudden gust of wind that swept up a train of debris into a cloud behind him. Pointing his scepter at Dragonfly, he let loose a blast of searing light a particularly malicious shade of red, evidently with little concern for his compatriots nearby, leaving the inventor to dodge to one side.

Momentarily distracted by the chaos of movement around her, Jill was taken off-guard as Diehard was suddenly everywhere around her, bobbing and weaving with the uncanny speed of an athlete honed for one purpose. The medic took a series of punishing blows across her torso, stumbling backward as the force field she'd brought up around the civilians flickered out of existence with an ominous hiss and pop. Vision swimming, the young woman managed to cough, "...nertz."

[Fox]

Chaos or not, under fire by bolts and knives or not, Dragonfly's immediate attention was on Jill and the beating she took. She almost shouted her girlfriend's name, but caught herself - it'd be the wrong name, and that was entirely more information than any of these people deserved. Panic wouldn't get her anywhere, anyway, and certainly wouldn't help keep Jill safe.

That thought brought focus, and focus brought control. In the space of a couple seconds Dragonfly's expression went from concern to cold, cold wrath; fast enough even to surprise herself, she shot out a hand and...planted it flat against Diehard's chest. The expression didn't change as something deep inside her gauntlet clicked and the metal plating got linked directly into the device's considerable power supply, unloading quite the electric shock straight into the martial artist's torso.

[Gizmo]

Diehard was sent sliding backward a few steps, teeth clenched in pain as smoke rose from the hand print charred into his crismon jumpsuit. Eyes wide and wild, the martial artist took several fast, ragged breaths as the exposed, burnt flesh reknitted itself before the eyes of the rest of the combatants.

Skipping his alliterative banter for the moment, Fawkes renewed his assault on the otherwise occupied Dragonfly with roaring laughter, giving the impression of a predatory grin beneath his smooth, ceramic mask. Bizarre idiosyncrasies aside, he was obviously an experienced knife fighter, landing a long, horizontal slash on the diminutive engineers amid the whirling hurricane of sharpened steel.

"Honestly, the seer idiocy of this time's so-called champions never ceases to astound even my unparalleled intellect," Heka comment airily, his words flowing and immaculately enunciated despite English evidently not being his native tongue. "Dying in the defense of a subpar, public eating establishment? How... ignoble an end."

Circling around the disoriented Jill O'Cure with a smug sneer, Angel taunted, "Aw, little blonde girlfriend comes to your rescue." Swinging her hoverboard in close, she used the platform's momentum to add force to a snap punch at the other young woman's injured midsection.

Marshaling her scattered wits with painful effort, Jill brought her hand up suddenly to catch Angel's blow. "Yeah," she grunted as she set her jaw, face lit from below by the virulent green light that seethed into being about her attacker's trapped fist, ominous dark shapes floating through the glow, "she does. Notice how nobody's helping you." The sickly energy seeped into Angel's hand, flowing through her veins just under the surface of her skin. Finally managing to pull away, she tumbled off of her hoverboard to crash into a nearby table, the affected arm buckling under her weight as she shuddered and threw up on the floor with a weak moan.

[Fox]

Though the knives did no worse than silently scrape along her force field, and Heka's magical assault glanced harmlessly off the large, circular shield she pulled up at her fingertips, Dragonfly had had just about enough of being ganged up on - and more to the point, watching Jill get ganged up on. Her gauntlets built up a twisting spatial charge, and she shot out a hand to grab Guy's wrist, the distortion spreading across him...and then arcing to Diehard, whose distortion in turn arced to Angel. Space closed in around each of them, threatening to trap them all....

....but she cursed (in Russian), recognizing the linking process as far too slow even as her targets managed to duck out of their fate, her pocket gaining nothing but a three-point rush of air.

[Gizmo]

Fawkes managed to roll away from Dragonfly's grip, disrupting the chained effect of the spacial pocket. A quick swipe of his blades as he escaped did little other than providing a brief deterrent from pursuing him as he regrouped, apparently put off balance by the close call. Outside of the gauntlets' range, Heka raised his jackel headed scepter once more, forming a different arcane gesture as a giant, ethereal hand of the same red energy sped forward in an attempt to crush Dragonfly in its grip. The mystical fingers found themselves blunted against the inventor's protective fields, however, leaving her free for the moment.

With an inarticulate shout, a recovered Diehard redoubled his assault on Jill O'Cure, swinging with a terrifying combination of trained precision and total lack of regard for his own well being. This time, however, the medic was ready for him, keeping on the defensive before attempting to form a force field to encapsulate the man in the still smoking jumpsuit. Just as Heka's grasping hand had proven ineffective so did Jill's attempt as Diehard leapt upward just as the bubble snapped closed, feet clearing the distance to freedom by the slimmest of margins.

To one side, Angel attempted to regain her feet before doubling over again with a wet sound of regurgitation, collapsing in a disheveled mess. "...you're despicable," she mumbled weakly before passing out entirely.

[Fox]

Dragonfly growled something unpleasant-sounding in Japanese as Diehard tried to assault Jill, not bothering to try to touch anyone this time - she held out a gauntleted hand and made a fist, a large spatial twist forming and extending tendrils at the nearby villains. Not having to chain the distortions together certainly made things faster - the line of twisted space that reached for Guy Fawkes missed its mark, but Diehard (in his distraction) and Angel (in her unconscious state) weren't nearly so lucky. Lines spread across their body as the world wrapped in around them and they disappeared, vanishing into points of nothingness.

Somewhere in the blank expanse of her dimensional pocket, Angel in all her vomit-stained glory folded into being above Blackfire and fell.

[Gizmo]

"Another accomplice abates!" Guy Fawkes II remarked sharply as Diehard vanished into Dragonfly's spatial rift with a maddened shout. ""Shall we abscond apace, my admired augurer?" the knife fighter suggest to Heka as another well placed skewer was turned aside by the engineer's superior defensive technology.

"Flee?" the ancient Egyptian sneered as his glowing, ruby hand construct made a grab for the acrobatic Jill O'Cure, who was still clearly winded and struggling to remain moving. "Just because the odds are now even? Show some spine, Fawkes."

For once without a ready quip, the young woman stayed a step ahead of the spell and threw a punch dripping with malicious green energy at the masked villain. He proved a little too fast for her, but was now certainly feeling the strain of fighting two opponents at close range at once.

[Fox]

"Not certain I'd call this even," Dragonfly noted, making a grab at the knife-wielding maniac and, unfortunately, missing by a decent margin. "What have you contributed so far? Missed magic and badly-grabbing hands, I think." not good at banter - keep focus off Jill - keep focus off civilians - odds are going to be bad again if trapped enemies escape "Have to wonder why they keep you around."

[Gizmo]

"Bah!" Heka snarled, giving up on the massive hand spell for the time being and resuming his haphazard blasting. "In my age--"

"I must ask you assume a aphonic attitude!" Fawkes cut in with a stained tone, barely dodging the combined assault from the two girls while Dragonfly's shields continued to thwart his knives.

All the combatants paused for a moment a point in the air abruptly unfolded into the form of Blackfire, now with a considerable amount of Angel's lunch spread across one side of his face and shirt. "What the bloody hell was that?" the sandy haired man grated, raising a hand to his face and tearing in a sickening movement. Hair and flesh and cloth tore away as one, revealing a gleaming metal framework beneath as the android tossed the befouled shedding aside, the remains of his cream coloured shirt and tanned visage hanging loosely as he refocused his attention on the heroines.

[Fox]

Dragonfly reached out a hand for Guy Fawkes again, but Blackfire's combination of reappearance and skin-tearing was a bit too distracting for her to hit her mark: she missed by a foot at least, blinking at the metal under the man-machine's skin. what - explains the strength - mmh - unfortunate - doubt Jill's touch will work - curious - useful - distraction? - keep his focus off Jill

Lights danced behind her eyes, Dragonfly's voice echoing not through the air, but in Blackfire's head. What are you? Very curious. Interesting engineering. Built from scratch? Cyborg? Unlikely to be self-created. Don't seem that smart. Hard to tell. Well-built, at least. Engineering seems familiar - don't know why. Will investigate later, when you're in jail. Principles at work are similar to -- It just went on and on like that, at absurd speed, like listening to several rambling scientists all inspect the same creation at once after twenty cups of coffee.

[Gizmo]

"Argh! Shut up, you little freak!" Blackfire shouted holding his head for a moment before taking a swing at Dragonfly, with Heka providing a series of minor blasts to herd her into the robot's range. Thankfully, her mental ramblings distracted him sufficiently to ruin the attack, but with the inventor occupied, Fawkes decided to take a shot at the heroine without the high tech defenses. He managed to tag Jill, but her lightly reinforced jacket took the brunt of the slicing blow.

Grimacing from the effort, Jill applied a faintly glowing hand to her stomach, repairing enough of the damage she'd sustained early in the fight to bring her back to fighting form, though still winded. To her horror, however, another point unfolded abruptly into a still screaming Diehard, who clawed at his face. Unlike Blackfire, his fingernails left bloody trails which immediately repaired themselves.

"Oh, great," the android groaned. "Do you know how long it's going to take to calm him down after he kills you?"

[Fox]

Dragonfly glanced with no small concern at Diehard's breakdown, exchanging a glance with Jill over their new, and rather quickly deteriorating, situation.

She made a fist, a long blade of softly-glowing twisted space forming about an inch from her hand. Trying to dodge or deflect Blackfire's swings and Heka's attacks she weaved in closer to the skin-gouging martial artist, her weapon leaving quiet trails of neon blue in the air as she...didn't really seem to be trying to hit him. Instead she seemed to guide him back a little, distracting his attention and trying to force his footwork to where she wanted it to go. She wasn't an expert swordswoman, but bit by bit she seemed to be getting the result she wanted....

[Gizmo]

While Heka continued to lob deadly bolts from afar, Fawkes and Blackfire focused their malicious attentions on Jill O'Cure, evidently deciding simultaneously that they didn't want to risk getting in Diehard's way as he attacked Dragonfly with an almost rabid furry. The two villains found their attacks going wide, however, as the acrobatic medic forced through her fatigue to bound past them, using the automaton's metal skull as a springboard to tackle the enraged martial artist. Objectively, she knew she was no match for the regenerating soldier, and terror sat like a rock in the pit of her stomach, but the young woman wasn't about to let the madman lay a hand on her girlfriend.

"Get away from her!" Jill shouted as she wrapped an arm around his neck from behind and planted her virulently glowing hand on his face. The effect was immediate, as Diehard's superhuman regenerative powers suddenly turned against him, accelerating to dangerous levels and beyond as the metamagi heroine poured the sickly green energy into him. With a series of disturbing shudders, he stumbled forward a few steps, then collapsed to his knees, bile running down one corner of his mouth before he finally fell face down on the restaurant floor.

Panting heavily, Jill regarded the remaining villains. "Alright then. Who else need 'calming down'?"