Alyssa, Avi, Brent, Ginny, Ilad, Silvio (NPC)
It's just starting to shift from morning to afternoon at the Wells Fargo bank in Los Gatos, California. It's as busy as one might expect a bank to be on a Saturday afternoon: those who come in will have a line to wait in to speak to a teller, but the line isn't too excessive. The sky outside is shaded with a hint of chill, and a few people have thrown jackets on for until the day warms up. A thin, professorial-looking man is at one of the counters with the deposit and withdrawal slips, a light jacket pulled on. He is not filling out anything. Rather, he is speaking in a quiet voice to the two men near him: both tall, the taller has dark hair and olive features and a graceful handsomeness to his Mediterranean looks and smiling lips. The shorter, who is doing more of the talking in a crisp, low voice, has buzzed brown hair and an upright carriage that screams military.
Brent Hannigan, one of today's bank customers, is actually waiting to speak to one of the desk employees rather than standing in line for a teller. One long limb jangles nervously as he waits in one of the seats.
One of the customers already present, in line: Aly Carter, pre-work (pre-opening? probably.) in a t-shirt (no porny) and jeans (some sparkle), with a battered black leather jacket on over and sunglasses perched atop her head like a headband. Her hair is in two braids, as it frequently is, both of which hang loose and wiggle as she bops around, waiting. There is a pouch in one hand, slightly bulgy and zipped, and she occasionally turns her head to chat with a blonde companion. Hi there.
There is a tall man in a fedora and a long grey coat vaguely inappropriate to the weather, standing at the very end of the line for the tellers. Looking up at the ceiling, he seems to be counting in his head or something; not actually ready to use the bank's services, he lets a few people go ahead of him in line with a vague mumble of courtesy. His long hair, greying blond, brushes the tops of his shoulders.
Ilad enters the bank on long, even strides. He holds the door open for his brother, turning his head over his shoulder to continue his thought from outside. "--order new checks, while we are at it," he is saying. Totally interesting conversation.
Long night? Late audition? Whatever it was that had Ginny up so late last night is obviously still effecting her this morning. She's dressed in a pair of jeans (Not so sparkly as Aly) and a peacoat that's bunched around her waist with a cup of coffee in one hand and her forehead slowly slipping forward to thunk against Aly's shoulder. "Why am I awake?" she groans.
"Yeah, we should do groceries, after this, too." Avi is following his brother, just as interesting in his conversation. His hair is all weekend mussy, no product yet, and he looks a bit younger than usual, just bumming around in scuffed jeans and his usual jacket. "I have to leave in for my date with Ari," he reminds.
A stocky man, dark chocolate skin and with a sharp, quietly intense gaze enters through the front door of the bank. Jacket hugged close, hands in its pockets, he lingers near the door and takes out his cell phone to peer down and it. His thumb travels over the buttons in what looks like texting.
Another stocky man, this one with startlingly bright orange-red hair buzzed close to his scalp, emerges from the men's restroom and trudges back into the lobby proper. He digs in his back pocket for his wallet. He drifts as he does so absent-mindedly close to the professorial man and his two friends.
"Because you love me?" Aly attempts, grin bright with amusement that isn't -quite- at her friend's expense. "Because you don't want to nap this beautiful day away until your shift starts?" She lifts her free hand to tweak a Ginny-curl, but doesn't move to dislodge her. "Beeeeecaaaause..."
"Yes, yes, your fabled date with the fabled Ariadne," Ilad answers in a low murmur of dry, dry humor. He glances over his shoulder at the newcomer, marking details absently and looking away again. "Oh, thank you," he adds, in thanks to the polite long-haired man with the fedora for letting him and Avi cut ahead of him in line at the teller. He claps Avi on the shoulder. "If it takes /too/ long, I will get groceries without you and you can go."
Silvio's gaze -- come on, you know it's his -- follows the entrance of Ilad and Avi, gaze idly appreciative. It slides along to the teller line, and he takes a few even, languid strides over to approach Alyssa and Ginny in line. "Excuse me, signorinas," he says, the shores of Italy hugging warm to his words, smile bright and charming. "Do you happen to have the time?" Military Doe offers a few final words to the professorial man, glancing over as the orange-red haired man approaches, and then twists to scowl at Silvio's lack of presence. "/Constantini/," he barks. Silvio looks over, and Military Doe's head jerks in the direction of the front door. "My apologies, ladies," Silvio tells the two girls, and then heads out with his companion to leave the bank. As they leave, another man enters: tall and broad, with wavy blonde hair and the hint of a sharp, anxious smile on his lips, he settles in near the doors.
When the Tal-Shachar brothers enter and move past him on their way to the teller line, Brent offers a quick word of hello and a wave, looking a little humorously resigned to be waiting.
"There might be traffic," Avi mutters, slightly embarrassed. His gaze goes to Alyssa and Ginny just on general principles, part of scanning his environment, and he looks amused at Silvio approaching them. Yeah, right, good luck with that dude, his expression says. He settles in beside his brother in line, and lifts a hand in wave to Brent too.
Ilad wiggles his fingers at Brent in a wave, with a glance at him of good-humored, arch-browed surprise. "Indeed there might," he tells Avi a little blandly.
Alyssa has a breath sucked in to answer, but then the man -- Constantini, was it? -- is gone away. The breath turns into a sigh, and a bump of her shoulder as she grins sideways at Ginny. "Because then you would have missed the hot Italian man-- are you still awake down there?"
"Because I'm a sucker," Ginny snorts, lifting her head up enough to choke down a few sips of lukewarm coffee. "And because you're adorable." Another sip when the man suddenly barks, her hand jerking in surprise and spilling some of the drink down her chin. "Christ on a pogo stick," she grumbles, blotting at the stain with a napkin. "Too early for yelling."
And then she's distracted. "I DO like hot Italian men."
A lot happened in that moment, there. "Who /doesn't/ like hot Italian men." Is Aly watching his ass on the way out? Yes.
"Anyway." Avi is moving on from that! He slides hands into his pockets. "I don't think we need to buy all that much stuff. Shouldn't take long."
The long-haired man in the fedora glances back toward the door, tucking his hands deep into the pockets of his long grey coat. Then he turns, looking over toward the deposit slips as though trying to remember whether he needs one.
The professorial man watches Silvio and Military Doe leave, nerves jangling in his face for just a brief moment. Then his resolve firms, expression hardening, and he makes eye contact with the four other men left in his group. It's only then that he pulls the gun out from underneath his jacket. (The chocolate-skinned man and the blonde, both by a door, pull out out weapons as well.) He draws a few steps closer to the teller line and then shouts in a clear voice. "Everybody put your hands up where I can see them!"
Ginny looks like she was about to respond when the call goes out, her coffee clung to tightly as her hands go up in the air instantly. She sends a side glare towards Aly. "I need to stop going place with you."
The redhead and the fedora man both pull weapons as well. The fedora man's rifle gets tangled in his coat a moment, but he manages it, and stares grimly, edgily at those in the teller line.
Avi doesn't immediately obey. He instead looks at Ilad. This is a joke, right? His expression says. Just a joke. Ilad's going to laugh or look dry, right? Then weapons come out, and he pales, and starts to take his hands out of his pockets.
Alyssa says "Oh, god," followed by, "how is this my fault!" followed by -- no, actually, that she keeps to herself. There is a bit of a fumble as she shoves the shop's take into the front of her jacket, zipped just enough that it doesn't fall right back out. Then she starts to lift her hands.
Ilad goes completely still. His hands do not rise; they open out before him, his body held like the weapon it is as he lifts his dark gaze toward the speaker. His gaze flicks sidelong to Avi, down to his hands. He gives his brother a barely perceptible nod, and then sweeps his glance throughout the rest of the room, marking each of the men with weapons, their stances, gauging their familiarity with what they hold.
The blonde has a certain amount of familiarity with his weapon that suggests experience, albeit probably not violent experience. The dark-skinned man and the professorial sort, much less so, but they've at least learned how to use them. "Everyone out from behind the counter," the latter says, continuing in that weedy voice. "Everyone -- together." He jerks his gun to those at desks, gesturing them sharply into the line area with the others. The blonde and the dark-skinned man by the doors back him up with points and gestures of their own guns.
"Because everything scary happens when you're around," Ginny notes with a sigh, but still presses closer to the other girl, not wanting to be too far apart.
Brent freezes as the professorial man speaks first. There, in his seat, he watches for a long moment of shock at the scene unfolding in front of him. /Around/ him. His glance is drawn to Ilad before he tears it away purposefully and lifts his hands. When those in his area are gestured into the middle of the lobby, he stands slowly and obeys.
The redhead's weapon moves back and forth, covering people as they slowly comply with the orders to cluster. He seems like he knows what he's doing -- more or less.
The fedora man grips his weapon as much like a security blanket as an extension of himself and growls, "Quit yer yappin'."
Avi raises his hands, and makes a start toward the together direction by edging in toward his brother, though he makes at least his untrained effort toward not getting in Ilad's way if he ends up needing to do something offensive. "Gonna be late," he says, in a burst of inappropriate and transparently nervous humor.
"Hardly," Ilad answers Avi with a show of blithe confidence in his voice. It is a lie; his eyes are tracking the weapons, tracking the men, hunting for a weak link. The difficulty, essentially: too many guns to too many hostages for one man. He looks back at Avi, and his gaze tracks past him towards Brent as Brent moves, and then onward, marking the women, and then the bank tellers, and all the people looking afraid and lost. He grimaces.
Alyssa manages to get a finger on her sunglasses as her hands keep creeping upward, loosens them so they fall down onto her nose; even so, she squeezes her eyes shut and swallows hard. "Right. Everything scary." She does not, notably, /deny/ this.
The professorial man follows employees with his gun as they shift out from behind the counter, scared, hands raised. "Who has the keys?" he barks quickly. "The manager. Which one of you is the manager?" A short woman in her late thirties pushes her way through the others, chin-lifted, to identify herself as such. The blonde and the dark man draw closer to the group as everyone clusters. The latter focuses his gun on Ilad. "Hands /up/," he says in a quick, quiet voice.
Brent catches Ilad's gaze for a bare moment, and there is something of a plea there. Please don't. Please /don't/. He draws close behind Alyssa, hands still raised.
"Ilad?" There's a question in the name, Avi's voice stretched thin and fragile. Is he going to do something, or is he going to put his hands up too? Avi holds his higher, like he can count for both.
"It's true." It's hissed under Ginny's breath after that comment about yapping. Her hands stay in the air, eyes flickering back at the movement and blinking at the sight of Brent. A nervous little non-smile is tossed his way.
Ilad holds himself very still, looking away from Brent finally, marking Avi only in his periphery. He looks up the muzzle of the gun at the dark man, and very slightly, he smiles. But very, very slowly, he also lifts his hands. Not over his head. About level with it, though.
"Lot of fuckin' posers," fedora man says. He waggles his closely gripped rifle, and turns to stare at the manager. He raises his voice and shouts, "Give him the fuckin' keys!"
The redhead continues to cover the whole group with the slow, controlled motions of his gun. He looks both alert and intent.
Alyssa falls silent, lips pressed together and eyes squeezed shut and pulse racing. (There are so. many. guns.)
(Hands still over her head, too.)
The manager flinches just slightly under the gaze of two different guns on her. "Okay. All right," she says, trying to remain calm. She reaches slowly into her pocket to bring out the clinking metal. "Just don't hurt anyone." She holds the keys out carefully, and professorial takes a step towards her to snatch them away and then hold them out for the blonde. "Make sure you get all of them," he tells the blonde, who nods and moves off with the keys to start locking up the doors. Nervous, anxious, almost impatient, professorial next orders, "The vault." The manager takes an unsteady breath and nods. The man with his gun on Ilad looks a little unsettled by that smile; his grip remains tight on his gun, but it trembles the smallest amount.
With a quiet swallow, Brent shifts in between Alyssa and Ginny to angle himself silently in front of them. His gaze keeps moving, quiet and quick, in Ilad's direction. Watching, dreading, too scared of possibilities.
"Just like in the movies." Again, the burst of inappropriate humor, almost involuntary, from Avi. He edges closer and closer to his brother, and then stays there, glued at this side.
The dark man shifts the sights of his gun, quick and nervous, to Avi. "Shut up."
Ilad stirs as the gun shifts its aim from him to Avi, to make himself more of a threat, perhaps; to keep it where it belongs. His fingers twitch, hands still elevated, the light in his dark eyes murderous. "What foolish bank robbers we have," he says lightly, so lightly. "They think to rob a bank they must lock the doors."
Alyssa opens her eyes, half-opens, eyelids still mostly shut and the brilliant gleam of too-bright, too-green eyes muted by the delicate skin of her eyelids, by the nictating membranes, by the dark sweep of her eyelashes; this is mostly unnecessary, because she still has her sunglasses on, but it is old habit. Fear coils in her gut, dampens her palms, has sweat trickling down her back even in the light spring weather. "Don't," she whispers, though it is hard to tell who it is directed at. She crowds, once she recognizes him, a little closer to Brent.
Ginny is now pressed against both Brent and Alyssa. Maybe if she makes herself small enough she'll go invisible. Wide eyes peek over towards Ilad, her head shaking a little. "Shhhh. Ohmygod," she whispers.
The redhead curls his lip with contempt but says nothing, continuing to sweep them all with his gun.
"That's right, just like in the movies," Fedora says, "except if yer don't shut yer trap it's a fuckin' snuff film, kid, got it?"
"Sorry," Avi says under his breath--whether it's more to the guy with the gun or his brother, it's not clear. He stays silent now--apparently Ilad's words have filled whatever scary empty space his mouth was trying to fill without consulting his brain.
"Who said we were bank robbers?" the dark man says back to Ilad, moving his gun back to him. "I'm very sorry," the professorial man announces to the group, "to have to do this to all of you. But the government isn't going to listen to us any other way." He looks back to the manager and jerks his gun towards the direction of the vault and then follows her. The blonde returns from locking doors. "All right," he says. "Everybody follows." The men begin trying to herd the group towards the vault with professorial and the manager.
The redheaded man steps forward to lend pressure to the advance on the hostages, directing them firmly with the passage of his gun. "Nobody does anything stupid, and nobody gets hurt," he says. He doesn't say 'yet', but he also doesn't really have to, does he?
Alyssa breaks, just a little, in the wake of the dark man's response, and "What do you /want/," is half-sobbed, ragged, before she clamps her mouth shut again and tries /really hard/ not to cry. (No good, very bad day.)
Ginny starts to move along with the herd, hands still over her head as she remains silent. She's a good little hostage.
Ilad holds himself stiffly for a long moment, as though he is going to make the hostage-takers literally prod him into motion with their guns -- but he glances at Avi, and then he glances at Alyssa, catching the sound of her voice; he looks to Brent, and back at his brother, and then simply moves forward, expression tight, body controlled. He watches for an opportunity anyway, tracking the men who force them with every flicker and dart of his eyes.
Avi goes with the rest. He spares something that's trying to be a reassuring smile for Alyssa, as a girl who's crying, but it's not very convincing when he's hanging so close to his brother for reassurance himself.
Set firmly in front of Alyssa and Ginny, Brent begins shifting with the rest of the group. His breath catches and he reaches a hand down to set tight and snug around Alyssa's shoulders when she cries out.
"Respect," the fedora man sneers. "That's what we want, and what we don't get, from those mutie-lovers, those douchebags up in the Cap-it-tol. Keep walkin', lady."
...oh. Under the touch of Brent's hand, Aly's fear winds tension higher. She draws a shuddery breath, manages a weak not-smile, and doesn't cry out again -- but there are tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes, unacknowledged. Just a little bit worse, right?
The vault door is -- well. Large and metal. As one would expect from a bank. "I need one of the other employees," the manager tells professorial, holding bravely onto steadiness. Professorial hesitates, then nods, and his gun travels to the group to pick out an employee and gesture him over. The employee flinches away from the gun and joins the manager at the vault door to help her open it. "If they listen to our demands," professorial says to the group as they work, "then no one will have to get hurt. But we can no longer stand idly by and live in a world where our government supports and encourages the mutant community in its unnatural spread of violence." The blonde and dark man continue with the group, guns up. The latter's gaze focuses for a prolonged moment on professorial, shining agreement in his hard expression.
Brent's grip grows even firmer as he listens to the spewed hatred from the man, growing protective around Alyssa. In a very quiet whisper, he tells her, "I won't let them touch you."
"Right on," Fedora adds in a tone of bright insistence. His gun wavers with the spark of his enthusiasm. It may be dangerous that he is armed.
The creep of a slow shiver walks up Ilad's spine as his gaze narrows. He studies professorial with his hands held stiff and still at either side of his head, his dark eyes intent and focused, as though he can stare a hole right through the man's skull.
"They can't," Aly whispers back, but whether she speaks of the terrorists of the demands they are making is hard to tell. She doesn't say anything to /clarify/, though. Especially not there, not now.
"Why us?" Avi protests, shaking his head at the demands. Not something that has touched him personally (that he knows of) he seems a little confused by the political stance.
It takes a few moments, but eventually the vault is drawn open with a silent shift on its hinge. Inside is -- well. /Money/. The terrorists seem little concerned for it, however. "Everyone in," professorial says firmly. He ignores Avi's question. (How rude.) The blonde and the dark-skinned man set up at the back of the group to urge them into the vault.
Brent is silent at Alyssa's whisper, but his grip is sure. He moves quietly with the group into the vault.
Ilad does not balk at entering the vault. He walks in on slow, even strides. His expression is almost completely inscrutable, except for the rage that burns in his dark eyes.
As he goes in, Avi looks at the money sort of vaguely and numbly, like he knows he's supposed to have a reaction to it, but can't think what at the moment. "It's not air-tight, is it?" he asks suddenly after a moment.
"We should be fine," the manager says, though there is a hint of unease to her words that suggests the bank is not in a habit of stowing people away in the vault. Professorial is the last left outside of the vault, and he stays in the entrance rather than join them. "If they listen to our demands," he repeats, "no one will get hurt. If everyone cooperates, no one will get hurt." The blonde and the dark-haired stay near the entrance to the vault, guns still on the group.
Fedora steps into the vault with the others, angling his weapon and his glare upon the hostages. The redhead stays right back near the professor, though.
"Then I imagine it may be awhile," Ilad says, sardonic. He drops to one knee, looking up at the armed men as he does so with an arch to his brows. Kneeling there, he slowly lowers his hands; one dropped to his side, the other he uses to rub at his neck as though working out a kink.
"How long /is/ it going to be?" Avi asks Ilad worriedly, and then falls silent when his brother drops to his knee. He doesn't seem to know what to do with his own hands now, keep them up or by his sides or in his pockets.
Once the group is inside the vault, one of the female employees begins to breath quite quickly, with growing volume. She keeps eyeing the door, expression terrified. "Please," she says suddenly, fears playing against each other. "Please, I'm claustrophobic, don't make me stay in here--" "Calm down, lady," the blonde says. Professorial gestures the manager and her second employee back out of the vault to begin to close the door. The claustrophobic women screams and lurches bodily towards it; the blonde and the dark-haired man immediately turn their guns on her to stop her, the first of the two putting himself bodily into her path.
Brent draws Alyssa close as they move into the vault, arm warm and protective around her. His eyes fall to Ilad as he speaks, watching him with bowstring-tight posture. Anxiety is writ tight on his face.
Alyssa falls really, really silent (okay, not that silent: there is still the slightly ragged sound of her breathing as she struggles to control her fear, less self-directed now than it was in the first moments of the hostage-taking) as they all file into the vault. She turns her face in to Brent's chest once they stop, says, "They /can't/," again, less desperate, more fierce. DO NOT LISTEN TO THE FOH(?).
"Don't make me fuckin' shoot yer!" the fedora man shouts.
As the terrorists are distracted by the charge of the woman toward the door, Ilad makes a heart-stoppingly quick decision. "Avraham," he says, quick and sharp, like an order, "{be prepared to get them out.}" From his knees, his hand at his side flicks to his pocket. He pulls out the lighter. All he needs is the spark; once caught, he holds a growing circle of flame one-handed and tucks the lighter away. Then he launches himself in a hurtling charge at the men at the door. Before they have a chance to shoot, he blasts one of them full in the body with an abrupt gout of white-hot fire. The other, the dark man, he moves to disarm with the brutal efficiency of his training.
The dark man doesn't quite blanche, but he doesn't need to: as much as he tries, he's no match for Ilad's skill when he's been given time to prepare. The gun is ripped bodily from him. When the flame shoots nearby to catch the fedora man bodily, the blonde shoves the woman away, forgetting her, to turn his gun on Ilad. He fires, aim coming quick before it's settled as squarely as he should like. The vault door, having not completely closed, begins to pull back open to where professorial and the redhead still have guns.
Alyssa pulls away slightly at Ilad's voice: she recognizes tone, if not language, and she has time to say, "What--" before she says, "oh, shit," and she says, "/no/," and everything kind of goes a little bit crazy. (PyrokineticpyrokineticWRONGPYROKINETIC.) (Good thing no one can hear that.)
The man in the fedora screams and gurgles in panic as the searing flame eats hungrily through his clothes, blistering at his skin. The smell of burning hair and roasting meat begins to poison the vault as he hurtles to the floor to roll around and try to put out flames that ... don't appear to want to extinguish. Unfortunately, fire is dangerous; it spreads beyond him, hungry to start burning through the neat stacks of paper money nearby that seem likewise worthwhile fuel.
Something that might be a curse or might be Ilad's name falls from Brent's lips as he freezes at the sight of the man in action. Several of the other hostages scream and shy away from the burning man, but there is no path to freedom to the door, blocked as it is by chaos.
Avi reacts immediately to the tone and order. He starts moving, and as he's moving, his face goes dead with pure incomprehension of what he's just seen his brother do. He reaches out to grab at Alyssa's arm, to move her when he needs to, but then--shots, people blocking the doorway--his momentum peters out.
Ilad slams his elbow into the throat of the man he's disarmed with crushing force, even as he takes the gun in both hands. The bullet slices right through his right side, the side opposite where the knife scar marks his other hip (maybe he'll ... match!). In the adrenal rush of the moment, the pain registers in a blossom like fresh flame in his mind, a hiccoughed grunt in his throat -- but it does not prevent him from lifting his newfound weapon and firing at the blond man. He shoots to disable. Painfully.
The blond man stumbles back and drops his gun as Ilad's shot slices through his dominant shoulder. He slumps down, trying to scramble for it with his opposite hand, as the dark man slams back against the wall with the force of Ilad's blow. Inside the vault, smoke begins to thicken as fire spreads, and the hostages begin coughing. The vault door opens completely, and professorial's gun is trained on Ilad. "Going to kill them, too, you mutie fuck?" he snarls.
Alyssa grabs at Avi when he grabs at her, trying to pull when his momentum stalls -- if they can just get to the /door/-- but no. "Don't be /stupid/," she yells, probably at Ilad (maybe at the guys with the guns), but whatever she is going to try to say next gets lost as she chokes on smoke. This, at least, is a chaos she knows how to deal with: she tries to pull on Avi, tries to pull on Brent. "Get down--!" The air is better there. Duh.
Avi brings the side of his jacket collar up over his mouth to try to filter the smoke a little, though a cough seizes him and he can't stop it. He does get down, to hands and knees. His focus narrows, and caught between the fire and the man with the gun in the doorway, he chooses the gun, tugging on the arm he's caught, to move forward at this lower level.
Brent is frozen, struggling against Alyssa's pull, caught somewhere between safety -- between /common sense/ -- and a fierce, bone-deep sense of loyalty that leaves him stupid. When there are more men training guns on Ilad, when the threat of injury and death for his friend are very real, the latter wins. Regardless of his own safety, he rushes forward, trying not to get in the way of Ilad's fight, but to put himself in the line of fire from the men outside the vault.
Ilad's gaze flickers toward the growing conflagration and his lips part in a voiceless curse, nostrils flaring with the taste of smoke on the air. He stands a frozen moment, gripping his gun, his gaze slanted sidelong to catch on Brent's boldness, certainly no /less/ idiotic than his own. "{Curse you to death,}" he enunciates clearly, to the hostage-takers on the other side of the vault. He notches the safety on and drops the gun to the floor with a clatter. "This is the violence you fight, is it not?" he says, accent heavy, voice thick. He lifts his other hand toward the fire. It begins to cool, to reduce in its intensity. The progress is slow, but it begins to shrink, and with the vault door open, the smoke begins to clear.
"Stay back," barks the redhead, brandishing his weapon. His expression is hot with loathing. "One more inch and I'll shoot."
The fedora'd man is a crumpled, burned heap on the vault floor, singed and smoldering even as the fire recedes.
"Brent--" Avi's focus wavers, and he looks haunted with the desperation, the /need/ to do something to help his brother, clashing the order Ilad gave him. He needs to get people out. But he /can't/... he stands when the smoke clears, and makes this decision. He goes over toward Ilad.
Somewhere in the scuffle and the conflagration and the mess, Aly's sunglasses have gone missing: when she yells, "Brent, /no/," it is with eyes wide, protected from the clearing smoke by the inner eyelids that mute their color; she shifts her gaze down, away. "Don't give them what they /want/." She is maybe a little desperate, a little torn-- there is the door, there is the /door/. But there is Brent. (She doesn't, oddly, seem to fear the flame-wielding Ilad.)
"No one got hurt before you acted," the professorial man says, voice firming with thick resolve as he watches Ilad temper the fires. The blond recovers his gun in his left hand even as his shoulder bleeds; the dark-skinned man, rubbing at his throat, recovers his own from where Ilad dropped it. He is steadier with it when he points it back at Ilad, though fear flickers in his gaze as he watches the man.
Brent stands there, trembling with adrenalin but solid and /there/, between Ilad and the two men outside the vault. Stupid, stupid, he lifts his chin and tries not to let the fear show, even as his hands sweat, clammy-like, at his side.
"The same is true of you," Ilad says, though his focus is distracted. He is bleeding and in pain; he is focused on the hard task of reducing hungry flame to cinder and ash. He closes his other hand over Brent's shoulder, gently tugging him; he glances back at his brother with a dizzy lack of focus beginning to reflect in his expression. As the fire finally dies out, he drops his other hand to start putting pressure on his own wound. He looks very grim.
When Avi reaches Ilad, he reaches out to add his hand to Ilad's over the bleeding, to spare him that effort. "{I'm sorry,}" he says, soft and wavering.
The professorial man tightens his jaw against Ilad's reply and lets it bounce off the armor of zealous resolve. He glances at the dark-skinned man, sharp. The man hesitates for a moment, but once the fire is safely gone, he moves towards Ilad suddenly, gun flipping in his hand so he can bring it down hard onto Ilad's head.
Alyssa starts to move, to dart forward to Ilad once the hostilities have reached an impasse. (Bleeding >> self preservation, fear for self.) She is not the fastest, though, nor is she the closest, and she is kind of watching more in a downward than in a forward direction. (She misses the flip, the swing.)
Not quick enough in his distraction to try and block the blow, Ilad goes down hard under the crack of the gun against his head.
(She doesn't miss the fall.) "/No/--"
At Ilad's touch, Brent finally shifts back, though his gaze remains fierce on the professorial man and the redhead even as he starts to turn away. He's there when the dark-skinned man cracks his gun over Ilad's skull, there to help Avi catch Ilad before he falls too hard, to help put him down carefully.
The redhaired man glances at the wreck of their fallen comrade, and then back to professorial, looking for cues. His gun is still leveled on the hostages, but he seems disconcerted.
Avi gives a sob of breath when his brother goes down, and does catch him, holds him tight, eases him down. His hands are a bit bloody now, smearing, and while he has them free, he takes off his jacket to fold and press over the wound and hold.
The professorial man doesn't look at the redhead, but he tells him, "Get TJ out."
The redhead goes in after TJ. He gives the hostages a wide berth, brandishing his gun at them as he moves. He lowers it, though, to gather the unconscious, scorched fedora'd man into his arms.
Brent helps Avi to settle Ilad on the floor of the vault, hands firm where they hold him even as his body trembles. He watches Avi put pressure on the wound, breath coming quick and shallow. "Oh my God." He drags his eyes from the wound to Ilad's face.
It's only when fedora man is safely outside that the vault closes. The professorial man orders the dark-skinned man and the redhead to stay inside, keeping the wounded blonde outside with him.
"What did he--I thought he'd do something, but--" Avi's words tumble out, getting all tangled up. At least holding the pressure gives him something to /do/. He will /press/. He looks up when the door shuts, and then down again.
Ilad looks pretty unconscious at the moment!
Alyssa is a bit of a skittery thing when she goes down too, beside Ilad -- but it's Brent that she looks at, Brent that she whispers, "I'm so sorry," up at before she looks back down. "I-- know basic first aid?" she offers, voice low, still-- scared. Worried-scared. There is a flicker of a look to Avi, held for a moment -- and then away. "I can press. If your hands get tired."
Also, /someone/ takes Ilad's lighter. For srs.
Aw man.
Aly has one. Shh.
Brent lifts a hand to settle it firmly on Avi's shoulder. "He'll be fine," he says (with absolutely no evidence of expertise to back it up). He skims right over the question of Ilad's fire display. "He'll be /fine/." Now it comes a little harder, as if he's convincing himself.
"No. I've got it." Avi's almost territorial about it to Alyssa, not looking at her. /His/ brother. Don't take away the thing he is doooooooing. It's what is keeping his fragile calm intact. "I should've--"
The redheaded man keeps watching the others with barely disguised loathing on his face. Since one of them is mutie scum, clearly all of them are mutie scum.
The other hostages are also here. Being scared. They just aren't BFFs with Ilad.
Just two of them. Whee.
Are ... mutie scum. Look. Shut up.
Only two are BFFs with Ilad, too. It works.
Both of the terrorists in the vault are generally mean and glarey. Ilad doesn't bleed out for the time being. THE END.
BOOM. GMing by Roz and Vi.