Habitat for Metahumanity (IC)

[Quinn]

The brute's punch went straight through Push's force field, striking home in the kineticist's gut. A whoosh of air escaped his lungs as he watched the man go flying by, and when the raider's feet hit the ground, he whirled. The mutant drew his hands together and started focusing, twin orbs of raw force coalescing over his palms. Push roared as he drew one arm back, hurling the blast with as much power as he could muster.

"Oi, scumbag! CATCH!"

The first blast hit with the proportional kinetic force of a freight train, splashing across the brute's chest. And seconds after that, the second bolt struck home, right in his gut. Push threw his arms outwards again, channeling more raw energy for the next barrage...

[quotemyname]

Blueshift finally finished ruining the set up of the circle. All at once... nothing happened. The techno savant was at a loss.

"But that should have..." She looked all around her, and finally saw the motionless crowd. Fumbing with her belt, she drew a small device and held it to her lips.

"Attention, Haitians! Please proceed to your homes in an orderly manner. This area is not safe!" They didn't respond. They didn't move. They didn't even acknowledge that she was speaking to them over her miniature loudspeaker.

Her brain calculating things at a lightning speed, she realized what the problem was, "Push! They won't move! What did you do? What's holding them? We need to get them out!"

[Ari]

While that was happening on land, Marceau finally opened his eyes and groggily observed his surroundings. The mass of water that met his eyes caused him to groan, which he instantly regretted. The pain washed over his body from his head to his back, reminders of the crushing blow to the face he had taken, and the crash into the water he had absorbed.

With slow deliberation, he fumbled with his wrists, revealing small rotors folded neatly into the bracers. With a flick of a switch on his shoulders the fins rolled out and took up rigid positions pointing down his arms.

With a weary sigh, he then carefully drew out rotors concealed in his boots.

Laying back on his back in a floating posture, Marceau gave a gloomy moan of pain at the fresh jolt of nearly nauseating pain from the punch to his skull. Drawing himself taut, with ankles and wrists aligned, the King of Suits clenched his hands into fists and pressed down on the hidden button in the palms of his gloves. Jack of Spades, you really have got to stop being right all the time he thought blearily, as the rotors took hold and shot him off in the direction of the shore at immense speed.

Another press of the button brought him to a gentle® stop against the sands of the beach, the back of his head bumping against a small rock bringing forth a short bark of anguish. Lying in the shallow water, Marceau checked the rotors Like Jack O'Spades said, only enough for one charge. Shame that he thought.

Getting to his feet, he slid the rotors back into place, took eight steps, and fell headlong onto the sands, the cold, recent trauma, and exhaustion from keeping afloat all conspiring to send him into a half-conscious state. His last clear thought for a while being an irritation that he hadn't been quick enough to dodge the punch.

[Azuth65]

Wisp's temper was more than slightly inflamed as she saw the shotgun wielding punk stumble to his feet. She called up her will and in another plume of white and crimson smoke, launched another violent assault on the man. Her first attack was a dropkick to the small of his back before she reappeared in front of him delivering a powerful uppercut where she finished by grabbing his wrist and throwing him into the outhouse they'd spent most of the previous day constructing.

[quotemyname]

The man in the Fatigues went sailing back across the sandy beach. The multitude of blows delivered by Wisp at high speed from unexpected angles had been enough to rock his world. He'd never had been able to see her grab coming, nor resist his own momentum being used against him.

*CRASH*

The Tracer bodily demolished the hastily constructed outhouse.

[Cubist]

I must be awake... my ribcage never aches when I'm unconscious...

Fortunately for Jubatus, he reverted back to his default tempo of 6, and correspondingly reduced local gravity, when he slept. Where am I -- okay, somebody on my side must've moved me. Find out later, thank 'em. The impact of the shotgun blast still hurt, but his personal low-G status eased the pain to some degree. And if I crank it up to tempo 40 -- ahh. Much better. Checking his watch, the cheetah discovered that he'd only been 'out of the loop' for a small number of seconds; he sped up on top of the heroes' 'command post' to see how much the situation might have changed during that short period. Big guy in him-shaped crater, check. Jerkwad-with-gun in ruins of outhouse, check. Friggin' crowd of drugged-out zombies, check. Looks like things are going our way thus far... but what about the zombie-maker? That nimrod's still off the field, ay-eff-ay-eye-kay. Could be a second wave, for all I know. Best if we're prepared. Good thing I spent all that time worrying about battle plans last night...

The fastest cat alive zipped back into the heroes' ad hoc HQ, downshifted to a tempo of 1, and activated his commlink to talk to everyone: "Jubatus here. I'm okay, and I've reviewed the battlefield. Zombie-maker's unaccounted for, so [bg=green]I'm invoking my Master Plan bonus[/bg] we better be ready for a second wave. Suggested roles for everyone: Blueshift, you should get upstairs as airborne intel and coordination. Push, you're our heavy cannon; central position, everyone else serves as active armor for you. Wisp, you should exploit the bejeezus out of your mobility advantage -- things like draw fire as a decoy and teleport to safety before the shots hit, f'rinstance. Marceau, I think you oughta stick close to Push and watch his back. As for me, I'm basically 'Wisp II: The Second Decoy'. Jubatus out."

After relaying his suggestions to the rest of his comrades, Jube upshifted and zipped over to hogtie the jerkwad-with-gun in a few loops of duct tape.

[Azuth65]

Wisp vanished again from her position by the circle to attack shotgun boy again. In a cloud of red and white mist, she appeared a few feet over his his prone form. Allowing gravity to do her work for her, she held her feet straight down so she'd plant both feet into his midsection. Just as she was about to hit, her opponent rolled to one side and stood. Her follow up move, a leg sweep, was just as easily dodged. Rolling backwards, she vanished in another cloud and returned to her self-appointed post by Blueshift.

[Quinn]

"Little busy here, Blue!"

Push drew his arm back and shoved another charge of energy into the palm, throwing his other arm down towards the locals. It didn't take much to reverse the paralyzing link, a miniscule jolt of juice to each person and physics took over from there; soon the entire crowd could shift their arms and legs, albeit slowly at first. Nodding in satisfaction, the kineticist reoriented himself on the bulky muscle-man and let rip with another blast, the warping shot soaring through the air seeking a target...

[quotemyname]

For a moment, it looked like it would go wide. Then suddenly, it curved in towards it's target and slammed straight into the chest of the big man on the ground. The master of kinetics must have put a little more spin on it than was obvious. He was hurting after that attack, that was for sure.

Push's celebration was cut short, however. It seemed the release of the energy holding the citizens of the island was starting to take effect. The first thing they could move was their eyes. Which, all at once, widened in terror.

The Haitians broke and ran, shrieking and screaming as they made a direct line toward the cover of the jungle all at once. For anyone who's ever seen a European world cup riot on the news, the outcome of the next few seconds was already obvious. First it was a little girl that fell, she couldn't have been much older than seven or eight, still clutching a ratty old teddy bear. "Help!" she screamed, just barely audible above the din of the stamping feet of the crowd. Then it was a boy, followed by a woman. Then another, and another, and another. In just seconds, the number of people at risk of being trampled to death skyrocketed, countable only by perhaps Blueshift and Jubatus.

A high pitched cackle rose above the roar of the crowd, "Eeeeheeeheheheheee!" One member of the crowd had remained rooted to her original spot. The dark skinned woman with dreadlocks was dressed just as the others were. Plain clothing, save for her more home-made looking spun clothing. Her wrists sported jangling charms and bracelets of assorted metals, and even bone. "That was a fine trick you pulled, Push! Even threw me for a loop for a few seconds. But no matter. You've been dumb enough to listen to that Blue Bitch and release me. Poor, stupid Push. Tsk tsk." Her voice was like nails on a chalkboard. "Now be good little heroes and go save some poor innocent people! I've caused enough damage today. Undoubtedly, you'll be out of my hair before too long." A glowing circle in the sand surrounded her, she raised her hands, and made an odd, awkward gesture curling some of her fingers into a fist but not others and spoke a short incantation. In a puff of smoke she disappeared, and reappeared next to the man who'd been put through an out-house, another casting of her teleportation spell brought the pair of them next to the stunned form of their massive comrade. "Now, run along, and save the children!" she shrieked, a confident smile stretched across her lips. She folded her arms, as if confident they wouldn't dare pursue her before performing their duties to society.

[Cubist]

When the crowd started moving, Jubatus wondered why Push had undone his kinetic lockdown; this wasn't a good time to ask about it, however, so Jube tabled the question for the present. The fact that the ex-zombies' initial activity was in the direction of the jungle, away from the construction sites he and the others had been working on, was at least potentially good... and then the collective motion graduated to a full-on stampede. Son of a [bg=black]xxxxixx[/bg] [bg=black]xixxx[/bg]! was the cheetah's reflexive thought as he upshifted and blurred into action.

Job One was rescuing people in danger of being trampled. The fastest cat alive decided he'd go for children first; they were more likely to trip and fall in the first place, and once they did fall, their smaller, more-fragile bodies meant they were more likely to absorb worse injuries from being trampled. Jubatus zipped into the swarm of people, actually running on top of people's shoulders to keep from getting (literally!) lost in the crowd, looking for 'holes' in the mass of bodies which indicated where someone had fallen to the ground. His inhumanly-slim body proved to be useful in this situation, as he needed that much less clearance in between bodies to reach down and grab hold of a fallen person. And then somebody spoke -- the first words uttered by any member of the crowd:

That was a fine trick you pulled...

Jubatus growled to himself. Who was that idiot woman? There were still people in peril of being trampled to death, so the cheetah merely memorized the location of her little magic circle, and got a good whiff of her scent, as he whizzed by from one potential victim to the next. After the immediate problem was dealt with, he'd definitely recognize her scent when he encountered it again...

[Ari]

Marceau had staggered to his feet, the throbbing in his head a sickening wave of pain that came with each beat of his heart.

His own pain was forgotten however, when he heard the beginning of the commotion, and that jeer of the witch who appeaered to be the mistressmind behind the attack. She apparently was laboring under the idea that the people who had come to make new homes for those who had lost theirs so horrifically would see fighting her as a priority. Marceau couldn't speak for the others there(though he grudgingly acceded that it would be nice if they could apprehend the witch and her comrades to keep them from causing further harm), but he thought keeping the terrified Haitians from accidentally killing anyone to be much more important.

With a strangled cry of "Look where you're going, fools!" he fired his grapple gun at the closest of the houses, wincing as he realized how much would need to be redone due to the foolishness of the witch and her allies.

Using the momentum from the swing, the King of Suits dove into the crowd, knocking down a heavyset man who was about to collide with a much smaller man and potentially endager them both. Diving here and there through the stampede, Marceau raced from fallen citizen to fallen citizen, snatching them from harm's way and carrying them out of the crowd, stopping for an instant to catch his breath and then returning to the fray. He had to check, elbow, aggressivley intercept and headbutt far more people than he would have wished to, and felt deeply embarresed that the best he could do at the moment was call out in French "<I'm very sorry!>", but he told himself sternly that it was all he really could do at the moment. A yellow-tan blur out of the corner of his eye that he saw intermittently told him that a far more able member of the team was assisting him, his relief at this knowledge being unecessary to spell out. Knowing it was one of the few things he could really do at the time, he kapt at it, racing through the crowd bent low, snatching people from the stampede's hundreds of feet and getting them clear of the crush of bodies.

He wondered if they would need to chop more wood, or if there was a surplus. He honestly couldn't recall...