8/10/06 - Averillix, Vincent
Shit. SHIT. Can't even go for a walk in this city without walking into a scene. Probably a good thing Lazzaro showed up when he did. My hero. If that asshole had actually hit me with that rock, I seriously might've blown his fucking head off.
Anger management, my ass. I would've counted to ten and then blown his testicles off, too. IA would've loved that. Take back everything I said about Lazzaro's hips. They are manly.
Remember the kid from the subway. 8 million people in this festering shithole of a city, and I run into subway chick again. Let her mutant mojo happen in front of people, scared the crap out of them. Scared idiots, angry idiots. A few more and there would've been a real problem. Good thing it wasn't the busy hour in the park. Sent her home with a uniform.
Haven't gotten used to these mutant encounters yet. Getting easier, like Homicide: still hard sometimes to remember not to blame the vic. Just like Homicide. Same shit. Different bodies.
I have a headache that could fucking eat Tokyo.
---
Central Park North
Like a white dove among crows or diamond among common rocks, Central Park is a welcome refuge from the otherwise nature-lacking urban jungle of New York...a city that, while still becoming, will never be clean or new again. But here, beauty is to be found amid the plethora of trees and open green space, coalescing with cobbled walkways, dirt paths, and the occasional manner of a children's carousel or some such whimsical attribute. Few taverns and cafes line the edges of the park, as well as the famous Tavern on the Green, and the occasional vendor may set up base here during the long summer months. Several rocky protrusions appear to have been purposely placed amid the meadows of Northern Central Park, in lieu of benches there.
[Exits : [U]pper [W]est [S]ide, [R]eservoir, [C]entral [P]ark [S]outh, [Sub]way D, and [U]pper [E]ast [S]ide ]
[Players : Averillix ]
The day's heat has waxed early, reaching its peak just shortly after lunchtime, and the rest of the day bids fair to ride the slow wane down into merciful coolness. For now, heat still prickles across unprotected skin, needling it with hungry nibbles; in the sprawling forest of the Park, however, a lost little breeze explores the paths and gardens with interest, lifting skirts in coquettish flirtation. In Chris Rossi's case it is his tie and hair that teases with the small wind, flipping over the shoulder-hooked drape of his suit coat. One hand thrust in a pocket, shoulder holster and badge bared for the curious, he ambles along a path in blank-eyed peace.
Take /that/, heat wave. Averillix could finally come out in the day like normal people. The same breeze that catches Rossi's tie and hair catches the mutant girl's long green ponytail awhile later. She's wearing pretty standard New Yorker attire - black shirt, white shorts - and goes down one of the bike paths, bicycle helmet on her head. Every so often, before she surpasses someone, she'll ring the little silver bell on the side and call "Excuse me!"
People move aside with alacrity or not, as suits their characters; Chris Rossi, glancing askance, simply pauses in place to watch the flare of green hair flaming towards him. Distant, puzzled recognition stirs in his face, match to the crimp of lips: witness, perp, or vic? Belatedly aware that his neighbors have moved to route a bike path straight at him, he side-steps to blinking distraction.
And then, you know, there's always that one person who refuses to move. Averillix slows down her pace some behind them, eyes narrowed, head tilting backward as she pretends she's falling asleep; there's almost somewhat humorous sort of annoyance to the whole thing. Until the girl bumps into that bush around the curve. She gives a sharp squeak, fett going instantly to the ground to steady herself, and her eyes turn greenish-silver, the edges of the plant setting softly aglow. Think traffic light green.
The convenience of timing: cop that he is, Rossi's attention is elsewhere, knitted and pinned to a tattooed young man skateboarding ominously close to a pair of tourists and, more importantly, their purses. But the former proves innocent, the latter prove suspicious, and so it is belatedly that he turns to the squeak and a passerby's startled oath. "/Fucking mutant/," a middle-aged man exclaims, face paling into instant fright and, more ominously after, the flush of backlash anger.
Eh... She'd heard it before. Earlier Averillix would have probably stared, stopped, and broken down into tears; this one'd learned from a few wise people that hatred was typical. Instead of really even paying the exclamation any mind, she disentangles her bike from the bush, giving a soft giggle to herself, looking to the plant as her own green tones in her eyes start to settle down. "Whoops."
Unfortunately, it is New York, and New Yorkers like a spectacle. The pedestrian's exclamation draws other onlookers on, voices lifted in brash inquiries: curiosity and gossip, which spreads and grows as it passes from person to person. More than one face in the thinly gathering crowd shifts to discomfort, if not outright hostility as the tale engages and engorges. The tree glowed. It grew. It was toxic. /Radioactivity/. "Fucking mutie /bitch/," says the middle-aged man again, fists balling to match the bulge of eyes. "Ruining the park, riding around like /normal/ people--" Cue the policeman. Who is currently engaged on his cell phone, calling back-up.
Averillix can only turn to the man, with a soft smile on her face. That lower lip is trembling some, but there's still a smile that exudes the woman's all-race encompassing warmth. "Excuse me, sir. But, just as you are not able to help the way that you were born, or conceived, than neither am I to have been able." Oh, and she was a foreigner. Hate that too. Instead, she moves to get back on her bike. "I think you should be to saving your insults for someone who has actually done something which is wrong."
"Christ," sighs Rossi, flipping his phone shut. It is a peculiarity of this city, that a crowd can gather where no people existed, materializing out of nothingness for a show. Coat still dragged over a shoulder, he presses his way through the gaps between bodies, the arrogance of the badge smothering complaint where shoulders bump or feet are bruised. A thin crowd, tightening as it grows. "It's like the fucking zoo. --Hey. Move on, folks. Nothing to see here. I should have this recorded. /Move on/."
Authority figure, and yet -- given an audience to perform to, the self-proclaimed bigot turns even more livid, hands flexing in adrenaline's pump: delicious terror and equal hatred, blended into a heady mix. "/Foreign/ muties. Fucking foreigners are even shipping them into America." Insult to injury. Excited, agitated, the man stoops to pluck up a stone and recoils, hefting it in consideration.
"You too." This muttered down at a shuffling little pack of preteens, Vincent seems to have rather conveniently appeared - brows flat and annoyed, grey smoke curling out on the fringes of a snort before he pulls his cigarette out of his mouth long enough to exhale.
Averillix's eyes are starting to whiten, even further as she takes another step back from the man. Being polite wasn't helping. And she was, she was noticing, surrounded by people. The lifting of the rock, though, is the thing that does it; danger; fight or flight. Her eyes quickly shift into a red coloration at the irises, and the grass before her feet starts to rise up rapidly about her, into a thick protective wall.
Surprise and screams shiver through the crowd, several of the spectators scattering at the prods of self-preservation and fright. Caught unprepared by the sudden reverse, Chris staggers a little at a collision ("/SHIT/," he manages, losing his coat) before eyes widen and face pales at the sudden growth. His baritone hardens, slapping Brooklyn's accent in: "Goddammit. Stop that. Are you nuts? --Police, jackass. Put down the rock."
Jackass, being a jackass, manages a choleric hiccup and rears back to throw. One can always count on the higher brain functions of the average New York citizen.
Vincent, now shouldering sideways through the small crowd, hooks a dress shoe in around Jackass' ankle and gives a stiff sideways sweep while his right hand reaches up to jerk the guy's shoulder back. The left, in all of this, somehow manages to get the cigarette back in his mouth. The practiced combination lands Jackass on his back. "I don't get to do that enough." is muttered to himself, his voice then lifting to address the crowd. "It's just /grass/ you assholes!"
"/EVIL GRASS/!" shrills a small boy, lifting a toy truck to send it flying with enthusiastic, if optimistic, aim.
Now people were screaming. And afraid of her. And that lunatic still had his rock in his hand was planning to -hit- her with it. ... Why did she leave the house this morning again? To enjoy *what* wonderful world? As the police officers seem to have gotten things under control, Averillix seems to calm. Minimally. The grass has stopped growing once it gets up to her shoulders, but her eyes stay impulsive red, and the young woman stares out at those gathered, the little boy, shocked. She was a *good* person... Right?
The truck skitters drunkenly across the pavement, coming short under Rossi's up-tilted toe. "Lazzaro," he greets, abruptly laconic. "Damn, you're a sexy man. --You assaulting an officer, kid?" The cop flicks his foot, sending the toy skidding back at the boy, who perversely bursts into tears. Chris shifts, sweeping a jaw-set glance around the murmuring remnants of the crowd before hissing through his teeth. "Hssst. Get the fuck out of here. /Shoo/. Move along and live normal lives like normal people, you assholes. --And you. Do you have any idea how /pissed/ the Park gardeners get when you mess with their grass?"
"Please stay on the ground, or move along before somebody decides to press assault charges. Sir." Jackass seems to opt for option B, so that Vincent glowers after him until he's up and well on his way - then turns his dark glare back onto Rossi. "If only I could get somebody without a dick to think so. You okay in there, Mother Nature?"
The grass dies down out of its protective state as the crowd disperses, quickly falling back down. There's a wave of her hand, slight, and it breaks down to it's normal height, matching with that around it. Averillix however looks like a dog that's got it's pride-and-joy tail cut off - embarassed, and hurting tons. The red fades to pink fades to white silver as her eyes shoot to the ground, and she shakes her head. "I did not know. I am sorry. I could not help what I was doing." Not like the park gardners took care of the trees /anyway/; they were always complaining left and right.
Gossip will fly: in the morning, the New York Post will betray its journalistic fervor by announcing on the front page that the Democrats are raising a pot-belly pig to have sex with Michael Jackson. On page six, it will mention something about a mutant rehabilitation program fertilizing Central Park. In the here-and-now, Rossi rubs a tired hand across his face, cracking his jaw on its way down. "Anyone ever give you a 101 on how not to start a riot in New York City? --Want me to introduce you to my sister, Lazzaro? She's female, last I checked. Balls the size of Manhattan, but no dick."
"I'm not a fan of balls either, shit head. You're gone for what, ten minutes, and you've got a small scale riot and a mutant on your heels? Fuck." Voice slightly muffled around his cigarette, Vincent tugs down the front of his suit coat to work out the worst of the rumpling done in trying to manuever through the crowd, his eyes shifting warily onto Averillix in the process.
Averillix s jaw shifts, just a little, and she peers up at Rossi. Her eyes have turned back to their usual silver, but she's no less shaken. "If you were not to noticing, -officer-" rudeness? From the nice girl who talked to strangers on subways? No; maybe a little annoyance - "I was not the one who started the conflict. And was not the person who was picking up /rocks/." The accent is French, bright, jarred a bit by her former predicament. She eyes Vincent now, too, then looks to her bike. Bell's crooked... "It wasn't. My. Fault."
"Me and the fuck-up fairy, we're close, Lazzaro." Rossi twines his fore- and middle-fingers together to show Lazzaro, peeling away the former as an afterthought to finish the gesture. The green-eyed gaze shifts back to Averillix, its hard bite easing slightly now that riot and revolution are past, in truth. "I remember you. From the subway. Didn't realize you were a mutant. What started it?" Chris jerks his chin towards the overgrowth, skimming a glance across the newly quieted path. "All this. --Dammit. My jacket."
"/Detective/." Vincent corrects Averillix automatically, smoke blown off to the side before his cigarette is replaced, and his gaze turns evenly back upon Chris. "I half think you /are/ the fuck-up fairy, Rossi. You're both all right?"
"If you try to hug me, Lazzaro, I scream rape."
Averillix snorts softly. "I think most people think it is pretty obvious to tell," she mutters. The banter between the cops gets neither a laugh nor - more her style - a perplexed glance. Instead, her nose gives a little twitch. "I had ran my bike into a bush. /Detective/." Vincent is stared at with quickly lightening eyes, annoyance in the knitted brows. "And it started glowing." Not to mention the area now smelled heavily of azaleas.
"Why," asks Rossi, despite himself, "did the bush start glowing?" His dust-covered, trampled jacket is plucked up and grimaced at, before being flung willy-nilly over his shoulder again. Attention skips from the bush to Averillix, then back to: "Yeah. --You okay, kid?"
Vincent has a hard time not chuckling at that, the poorly suppressed beginings of a smile turned aside as he takes a long drag on his cigarette. "So, what, you were speeding and you lost control of th vehicle?"
Averillix's eyes grow whiter, expressng the blush that the darkness of her skin hides so well, and she shakes her head at Vincent. "I was not paying attention to where I was going." She starts to fidget with the straps on her bike helmet. "And, it glowed, because it is what happens when my mutation is... on? Does that make sense?" Well, at least they'd seemed to stop blaming *her* for this.
Chris pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers, eyes closing over the shadow of pain. IA, witness protection, mutant Miracle Gro, oh my. "Can you turn it /off/?" he asks, baritone reined to neutrality. "That talent of yours isn't exactly ... subtle."
"Not really, no - but we'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Just watch where you're going. Rossi may not be around to save your ass next time. Also, a word of advice - if you make plants glow, you might find somewhere a little less organic than the park to wheel around in." Smiling, it's a few seconds before Vincent turns back to Rossi. "You want a tylenol or something?"
Averillix rolls her eyes a bit, shooting Rossi an 'are you serious' look. One perfected from months of watching American TV over in France. "Well, the grass under my feet is not growing, so I would be thinking so..." Slash sarcasm. She shrugs. "It only happened because I was not to paying attention all the way, completely. I can mostly control it. And it is not like it can hurt anyone." And now that she'd classed herself off as one of 'those freaks' she could probably toss Rossi's card g'bye. Fun stuff.
"If you really feel like doing me a favor, you could take your piece and blow my head off. Make it look like an accident," Rossi suggests wryly to Lazzaro, straightening with a rampage of hand through hair. Attention, briefly distracted by the path's first traffic in several minutes, refocuses abruptly on Averillix. Brows stitch. "It isn't the /you/ hurting others, so much as it is--" Well. "You sure you're okay, kid? We'd better have a uniform take you back home. Just in case there are still assholes wandering around. Besides Lazzaro, that is."
Interest flattens into annoyance at Rossi's suggestion, a lazy eyeroll the shorter man's only real answer before Vincent turns once more. "I'm heading back to the station. I'll send one over."
Averillix shakes her head, the ponytail behind the helmet swaying to and fro. "I am fine. And I will be fine, going home on my own. I do it every day, and the subway is not that far away." She thinks. Whatever. "When you are looking like me, you are learning to deal with the looks." Not the positive ones, either. She swings the other long leg over the side of the bike.
A hand drops on the bike's handlebar, pinning it in place. Rossi's hand, his baritone spun dry. "Yeah. No offense, but you're not exactly waving tentacles and squirting green goop wherever you go. From where I stand, you look pretty good. However." Chris cants his head to indicate the rest of the park, with its hidden byways and forests. "There're some scared and pissed off people wandering around Central Park right now, who know what you look like. I'd rather not have someone get hurt. And by someone, I mean you. --Send a car, Lazzaro. They can put the bike in the trunk."
Vincent lifts a hand to signal that he's heard, despite already having made it several paces and not bothering to turn back, one last puff of smoke furling in his wake before the cigarette is flicked down onto the pavement ahead of him and stepped on.
Her bike? Her precious, only means of transportation bike in a -trunk-? As if the subway wasn't bad enough. Averillix grants the police officer a mildly protesting stare, but seeing as how he seems pretty adamant, and she wasn't the arguing sort - typically... The woman heaves a dark sigh, sitting back on the seat and balancing herself on the bike. Great. "I do not live in New York, you know."
"They'll take you as far as you need to go," Chris says mildly, releasing the bike to lift a belated hand after Vincent. A thin thread of humor weaves its way through baritone for: "Asshat. --Come on. I'll take you as far as the Park edge, and we can meet up with the uniforms there." A cell phone flips from his pocket's slack, thumbed and tuned to a memorized number; he tips his head at Averillix, urging her down the path in the wake of his long, easy stride. "--Yeah. This is Rossi. Listen. Lazzaro's heading back...."
[Log ends]
Anger management, my ass. I would've counted to ten and then blown his testicles off, too. IA would've loved that. Take back everything I said about Lazzaro's hips. They are manly.
Remember the kid from the subway. 8 million people in this festering shithole of a city, and I run into subway chick again. Let her mutant mojo happen in front of people, scared the crap out of them. Scared idiots, angry idiots. A few more and there would've been a real problem. Good thing it wasn't the busy hour in the park. Sent her home with a uniform.
Haven't gotten used to these mutant encounters yet. Getting easier, like Homicide: still hard sometimes to remember not to blame the vic. Just like Homicide. Same shit. Different bodies.
I have a headache that could fucking eat Tokyo.
---
Central Park North
Like a white dove among crows or diamond among common rocks, Central Park is a welcome refuge from the otherwise nature-lacking urban jungle of New York...a city that, while still becoming, will never be clean or new again. But here, beauty is to be found amid the plethora of trees and open green space, coalescing with cobbled walkways, dirt paths, and the occasional manner of a children's carousel or some such whimsical attribute. Few taverns and cafes line the edges of the park, as well as the famous Tavern on the Green, and the occasional vendor may set up base here during the long summer months. Several rocky protrusions appear to have been purposely placed amid the meadows of Northern Central Park, in lieu of benches there.
[Exits : [U]pper [W]est [S]ide, [R]eservoir, [C]entral [P]ark [S]outh, [Sub]way D, and [U]pper [E]ast [S]ide ]
[Players : Averillix ]
The day's heat has waxed early, reaching its peak just shortly after lunchtime, and the rest of the day bids fair to ride the slow wane down into merciful coolness. For now, heat still prickles across unprotected skin, needling it with hungry nibbles; in the sprawling forest of the Park, however, a lost little breeze explores the paths and gardens with interest, lifting skirts in coquettish flirtation. In Chris Rossi's case it is his tie and hair that teases with the small wind, flipping over the shoulder-hooked drape of his suit coat. One hand thrust in a pocket, shoulder holster and badge bared for the curious, he ambles along a path in blank-eyed peace.
Take /that/, heat wave. Averillix could finally come out in the day like normal people. The same breeze that catches Rossi's tie and hair catches the mutant girl's long green ponytail awhile later. She's wearing pretty standard New Yorker attire - black shirt, white shorts - and goes down one of the bike paths, bicycle helmet on her head. Every so often, before she surpasses someone, she'll ring the little silver bell on the side and call "Excuse me!"
People move aside with alacrity or not, as suits their characters; Chris Rossi, glancing askance, simply pauses in place to watch the flare of green hair flaming towards him. Distant, puzzled recognition stirs in his face, match to the crimp of lips: witness, perp, or vic? Belatedly aware that his neighbors have moved to route a bike path straight at him, he side-steps to blinking distraction.
And then, you know, there's always that one person who refuses to move. Averillix slows down her pace some behind them, eyes narrowed, head tilting backward as she pretends she's falling asleep; there's almost somewhat humorous sort of annoyance to the whole thing. Until the girl bumps into that bush around the curve. She gives a sharp squeak, fett going instantly to the ground to steady herself, and her eyes turn greenish-silver, the edges of the plant setting softly aglow. Think traffic light green.
The convenience of timing: cop that he is, Rossi's attention is elsewhere, knitted and pinned to a tattooed young man skateboarding ominously close to a pair of tourists and, more importantly, their purses. But the former proves innocent, the latter prove suspicious, and so it is belatedly that he turns to the squeak and a passerby's startled oath. "/Fucking mutant/," a middle-aged man exclaims, face paling into instant fright and, more ominously after, the flush of backlash anger.
Eh... She'd heard it before. Earlier Averillix would have probably stared, stopped, and broken down into tears; this one'd learned from a few wise people that hatred was typical. Instead of really even paying the exclamation any mind, she disentangles her bike from the bush, giving a soft giggle to herself, looking to the plant as her own green tones in her eyes start to settle down. "Whoops."
Unfortunately, it is New York, and New Yorkers like a spectacle. The pedestrian's exclamation draws other onlookers on, voices lifted in brash inquiries: curiosity and gossip, which spreads and grows as it passes from person to person. More than one face in the thinly gathering crowd shifts to discomfort, if not outright hostility as the tale engages and engorges. The tree glowed. It grew. It was toxic. /Radioactivity/. "Fucking mutie /bitch/," says the middle-aged man again, fists balling to match the bulge of eyes. "Ruining the park, riding around like /normal/ people--" Cue the policeman. Who is currently engaged on his cell phone, calling back-up.
Averillix can only turn to the man, with a soft smile on her face. That lower lip is trembling some, but there's still a smile that exudes the woman's all-race encompassing warmth. "Excuse me, sir. But, just as you are not able to help the way that you were born, or conceived, than neither am I to have been able." Oh, and she was a foreigner. Hate that too. Instead, she moves to get back on her bike. "I think you should be to saving your insults for someone who has actually done something which is wrong."
"Christ," sighs Rossi, flipping his phone shut. It is a peculiarity of this city, that a crowd can gather where no people existed, materializing out of nothingness for a show. Coat still dragged over a shoulder, he presses his way through the gaps between bodies, the arrogance of the badge smothering complaint where shoulders bump or feet are bruised. A thin crowd, tightening as it grows. "It's like the fucking zoo. --Hey. Move on, folks. Nothing to see here. I should have this recorded. /Move on/."
Authority figure, and yet -- given an audience to perform to, the self-proclaimed bigot turns even more livid, hands flexing in adrenaline's pump: delicious terror and equal hatred, blended into a heady mix. "/Foreign/ muties. Fucking foreigners are even shipping them into America." Insult to injury. Excited, agitated, the man stoops to pluck up a stone and recoils, hefting it in consideration.
"You too." This muttered down at a shuffling little pack of preteens, Vincent seems to have rather conveniently appeared - brows flat and annoyed, grey smoke curling out on the fringes of a snort before he pulls his cigarette out of his mouth long enough to exhale.
Averillix's eyes are starting to whiten, even further as she takes another step back from the man. Being polite wasn't helping. And she was, she was noticing, surrounded by people. The lifting of the rock, though, is the thing that does it; danger; fight or flight. Her eyes quickly shift into a red coloration at the irises, and the grass before her feet starts to rise up rapidly about her, into a thick protective wall.
Surprise and screams shiver through the crowd, several of the spectators scattering at the prods of self-preservation and fright. Caught unprepared by the sudden reverse, Chris staggers a little at a collision ("/SHIT/," he manages, losing his coat) before eyes widen and face pales at the sudden growth. His baritone hardens, slapping Brooklyn's accent in: "Goddammit. Stop that. Are you nuts? --Police, jackass. Put down the rock."
Jackass, being a jackass, manages a choleric hiccup and rears back to throw. One can always count on the higher brain functions of the average New York citizen.
Vincent, now shouldering sideways through the small crowd, hooks a dress shoe in around Jackass' ankle and gives a stiff sideways sweep while his right hand reaches up to jerk the guy's shoulder back. The left, in all of this, somehow manages to get the cigarette back in his mouth. The practiced combination lands Jackass on his back. "I don't get to do that enough." is muttered to himself, his voice then lifting to address the crowd. "It's just /grass/ you assholes!"
"/EVIL GRASS/!" shrills a small boy, lifting a toy truck to send it flying with enthusiastic, if optimistic, aim.
Now people were screaming. And afraid of her. And that lunatic still had his rock in his hand was planning to -hit- her with it. ... Why did she leave the house this morning again? To enjoy *what* wonderful world? As the police officers seem to have gotten things under control, Averillix seems to calm. Minimally. The grass has stopped growing once it gets up to her shoulders, but her eyes stay impulsive red, and the young woman stares out at those gathered, the little boy, shocked. She was a *good* person... Right?
The truck skitters drunkenly across the pavement, coming short under Rossi's up-tilted toe. "Lazzaro," he greets, abruptly laconic. "Damn, you're a sexy man. --You assaulting an officer, kid?" The cop flicks his foot, sending the toy skidding back at the boy, who perversely bursts into tears. Chris shifts, sweeping a jaw-set glance around the murmuring remnants of the crowd before hissing through his teeth. "Hssst. Get the fuck out of here. /Shoo/. Move along and live normal lives like normal people, you assholes. --And you. Do you have any idea how /pissed/ the Park gardeners get when you mess with their grass?"
"Please stay on the ground, or move along before somebody decides to press assault charges. Sir." Jackass seems to opt for option B, so that Vincent glowers after him until he's up and well on his way - then turns his dark glare back onto Rossi. "If only I could get somebody without a dick to think so. You okay in there, Mother Nature?"
The grass dies down out of its protective state as the crowd disperses, quickly falling back down. There's a wave of her hand, slight, and it breaks down to it's normal height, matching with that around it. Averillix however looks like a dog that's got it's pride-and-joy tail cut off - embarassed, and hurting tons. The red fades to pink fades to white silver as her eyes shoot to the ground, and she shakes her head. "I did not know. I am sorry. I could not help what I was doing." Not like the park gardners took care of the trees /anyway/; they were always complaining left and right.
Gossip will fly: in the morning, the New York Post will betray its journalistic fervor by announcing on the front page that the Democrats are raising a pot-belly pig to have sex with Michael Jackson. On page six, it will mention something about a mutant rehabilitation program fertilizing Central Park. In the here-and-now, Rossi rubs a tired hand across his face, cracking his jaw on its way down. "Anyone ever give you a 101 on how not to start a riot in New York City? --Want me to introduce you to my sister, Lazzaro? She's female, last I checked. Balls the size of Manhattan, but no dick."
"I'm not a fan of balls either, shit head. You're gone for what, ten minutes, and you've got a small scale riot and a mutant on your heels? Fuck." Voice slightly muffled around his cigarette, Vincent tugs down the front of his suit coat to work out the worst of the rumpling done in trying to manuever through the crowd, his eyes shifting warily onto Averillix in the process.
Averillix s jaw shifts, just a little, and she peers up at Rossi. Her eyes have turned back to their usual silver, but she's no less shaken. "If you were not to noticing, -officer-" rudeness? From the nice girl who talked to strangers on subways? No; maybe a little annoyance - "I was not the one who started the conflict. And was not the person who was picking up /rocks/." The accent is French, bright, jarred a bit by her former predicament. She eyes Vincent now, too, then looks to her bike. Bell's crooked... "It wasn't. My. Fault."
"Me and the fuck-up fairy, we're close, Lazzaro." Rossi twines his fore- and middle-fingers together to show Lazzaro, peeling away the former as an afterthought to finish the gesture. The green-eyed gaze shifts back to Averillix, its hard bite easing slightly now that riot and revolution are past, in truth. "I remember you. From the subway. Didn't realize you were a mutant. What started it?" Chris jerks his chin towards the overgrowth, skimming a glance across the newly quieted path. "All this. --Dammit. My jacket."
"/Detective/." Vincent corrects Averillix automatically, smoke blown off to the side before his cigarette is replaced, and his gaze turns evenly back upon Chris. "I half think you /are/ the fuck-up fairy, Rossi. You're both all right?"
"If you try to hug me, Lazzaro, I scream rape."
Averillix snorts softly. "I think most people think it is pretty obvious to tell," she mutters. The banter between the cops gets neither a laugh nor - more her style - a perplexed glance. Instead, her nose gives a little twitch. "I had ran my bike into a bush. /Detective/." Vincent is stared at with quickly lightening eyes, annoyance in the knitted brows. "And it started glowing." Not to mention the area now smelled heavily of azaleas.
"Why," asks Rossi, despite himself, "did the bush start glowing?" His dust-covered, trampled jacket is plucked up and grimaced at, before being flung willy-nilly over his shoulder again. Attention skips from the bush to Averillix, then back to: "Yeah. --You okay, kid?"
Vincent has a hard time not chuckling at that, the poorly suppressed beginings of a smile turned aside as he takes a long drag on his cigarette. "So, what, you were speeding and you lost control of th vehicle?"
Averillix's eyes grow whiter, expressng the blush that the darkness of her skin hides so well, and she shakes her head at Vincent. "I was not paying attention to where I was going." She starts to fidget with the straps on her bike helmet. "And, it glowed, because it is what happens when my mutation is... on? Does that make sense?" Well, at least they'd seemed to stop blaming *her* for this.
Chris pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers, eyes closing over the shadow of pain. IA, witness protection, mutant Miracle Gro, oh my. "Can you turn it /off/?" he asks, baritone reined to neutrality. "That talent of yours isn't exactly ... subtle."
"Not really, no - but we'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Just watch where you're going. Rossi may not be around to save your ass next time. Also, a word of advice - if you make plants glow, you might find somewhere a little less organic than the park to wheel around in." Smiling, it's a few seconds before Vincent turns back to Rossi. "You want a tylenol or something?"
Averillix rolls her eyes a bit, shooting Rossi an 'are you serious' look. One perfected from months of watching American TV over in France. "Well, the grass under my feet is not growing, so I would be thinking so..." Slash sarcasm. She shrugs. "It only happened because I was not to paying attention all the way, completely. I can mostly control it. And it is not like it can hurt anyone." And now that she'd classed herself off as one of 'those freaks' she could probably toss Rossi's card g'bye. Fun stuff.
"If you really feel like doing me a favor, you could take your piece and blow my head off. Make it look like an accident," Rossi suggests wryly to Lazzaro, straightening with a rampage of hand through hair. Attention, briefly distracted by the path's first traffic in several minutes, refocuses abruptly on Averillix. Brows stitch. "It isn't the /you/ hurting others, so much as it is--" Well. "You sure you're okay, kid? We'd better have a uniform take you back home. Just in case there are still assholes wandering around. Besides Lazzaro, that is."
Interest flattens into annoyance at Rossi's suggestion, a lazy eyeroll the shorter man's only real answer before Vincent turns once more. "I'm heading back to the station. I'll send one over."
Averillix shakes her head, the ponytail behind the helmet swaying to and fro. "I am fine. And I will be fine, going home on my own. I do it every day, and the subway is not that far away." She thinks. Whatever. "When you are looking like me, you are learning to deal with the looks." Not the positive ones, either. She swings the other long leg over the side of the bike.
A hand drops on the bike's handlebar, pinning it in place. Rossi's hand, his baritone spun dry. "Yeah. No offense, but you're not exactly waving tentacles and squirting green goop wherever you go. From where I stand, you look pretty good. However." Chris cants his head to indicate the rest of the park, with its hidden byways and forests. "There're some scared and pissed off people wandering around Central Park right now, who know what you look like. I'd rather not have someone get hurt. And by someone, I mean you. --Send a car, Lazzaro. They can put the bike in the trunk."
Vincent lifts a hand to signal that he's heard, despite already having made it several paces and not bothering to turn back, one last puff of smoke furling in his wake before the cigarette is flicked down onto the pavement ahead of him and stepped on.
Her bike? Her precious, only means of transportation bike in a -trunk-? As if the subway wasn't bad enough. Averillix grants the police officer a mildly protesting stare, but seeing as how he seems pretty adamant, and she wasn't the arguing sort - typically... The woman heaves a dark sigh, sitting back on the seat and balancing herself on the bike. Great. "I do not live in New York, you know."
"They'll take you as far as you need to go," Chris says mildly, releasing the bike to lift a belated hand after Vincent. A thin thread of humor weaves its way through baritone for: "Asshat. --Come on. I'll take you as far as the Park edge, and we can meet up with the uniforms there." A cell phone flips from his pocket's slack, thumbed and tuned to a memorized number; he tips his head at Averillix, urging her down the path in the wake of his long, easy stride. "--Yeah. This is Rossi. Listen. Lazzaro's heading back...."
[Log ends]