(no subject)
OOC: Storm cannot post in her livejournal. Because she is at Lennox Hill. Unconscious! She will wake up in Lennox Hill and growl and spit and want to talk to Hank because he's mutant medicine liaison now and eventually bluster her way back to Xavier's.
Storm is not crazy, but she is muttering -- a low-voiced murmur, directed to her wrist. The dull repetitive thud of the heels of her high-heeled strappy black sandals hitting the sidewalk comes to a brief halt at a crosswalk; she stands with one hand on the slant of her hip, the other lifted to her face, to all appearances adjusting her earring. Close enough to overhear, one might catch the sound of her voice, soft and dark. "-- you're /certain/ I am in the right place?" Around her, night looms; the streetlamps are flickering into life. Overhead, the sky is dulled by the threat of large, heavy clouds.
On the other side of the crosswalk, Bahir has his hands in his pockets, light coat wrapped close around his body. He looks up at the light, waiting for the other to switch from green to yellow: for don't walk to flip to walk. His foot hovers over the edge of the curb, on the edge of stepping down. A messenger bag hangs heavy on his hip. He drums his fingers impatiently. Green, green, green -- still green. He checks his watch, incredulous, as traffic buzzes past.
The quiet satiating of wanderlust has been leading to more and more new areas of the city to Dorian, as of late, and the metropolitan area has been a refreshing change from Clinton and the Village. Lackluster as they all seem, Dorian has had no reason to express any interest in a soul besides himself and so, he focuses on the finer beauties of architecture and machine around him with a pleased smile etched across his features.
Beneath slowly calming and cultured streets, a subway train whines and screetches as it pulls away from it's station in Harlem to head back downtown - the noise and heated draft wafting up through grated sidewalk. A moment later and Sarah is ascending dirty concrete steps with indifference. In her hand is a hard electric guitar case; on her head is a large and shrouding baseball cap. And she wears her sunglasses at night. Don't switch the blade at the gal in shades - don't masquerade with the gal in shades.
Though the clouds remain unspilled in the sky, the scent of rain threatens in the air and it's getting windier. Ororo drops her wrist from her mouth with a few choice, muttered words. She draws breath, eyes fluttering briefly closed. The wind pulls at the white blaze of her ponytail, tugs at the dark red leather of her spring jacket and at the deep blue denim of her skirt. She opens her eyes again as the wind settles. The light turns. She steps down from sidewalk to street.
Without much to supervise at home, under the cover of darkness, even an area as populated as Harlem is fair game for the Master of Magnetism, who is...well. Obviously, still in the city. Overcoat collar flipped up protectively over the back of his neck, as stiff and black in mood as he is in dress, Erik is advancing along the sidewalk at his usual business pace, brooding ever closer to the next intersection over. The light turns. The walk or don't walk sign turns. It says, 'don't walk.' The sign fizzles and pops, and Erik walks anyway. Signs do not tell Magneto what to do.
Signs tell Bahir what to do: as it flips to walk, he steps down onto the street, brown suede sneaker slapping lightly onto the pavement. He adjusts the strap digging into his shoulder with a grunt, hugging the bag close to his body. He weaves around the surge of people off the curb and into the street. One car is slow to stop. He hangs back. Others don't. Tires squeal! No accident, though. Disappointing.
Spying a comfortable stoop to sit at and cultivate his whimsical mood, Dorian brings his slow stroll to a stop and takes a seat to watch the world around him. Eye flick from person to person as he finally takes stock of the people around him out of sheer curiosity. Hands intertwine an rest across his knees and quiet humming erupts from the youth, stopping only as he watches an accident get narrowly avoided. Horrible as it feels to admit, part of Dorian is disappointed.
The pull of wind whisps at maroon hair but the rest of Sarah's outward appearance remains static - heavy denim of jeans and likewise weight of black leather jacket too stiff to be moved by wind. The woman moves smoothly with the flow of the crowd, to the crosswalk, her face lacking expression. Lights flicker to signal go and she moves - the man in front of her, however, pauses. Bahir receives an impolite nudge to the bum by the neck of her guitar case. By accident.
Ororo eyes the car, blue eyes flashing annoyance. Her temper is short, but not short enough to do anything especially rash as of yet. She moves forward, threading neatly amidst the crowd; her gaze flicks over this passerby and that, hunting for anyone looking young, lost, frightened, possibly bleeding, since you never know with first manifestations -- she hisses a disgruntled sigh, tongue's tip pressed to the back of her teeth. It starts to rain.
The next intersection over is a dilligent intersection, for all that its corners are lacking in pedestrians. It is more productive than Bahir's intersection, very probably due to the fact that Magneto has opted to walk, rather than not walk. Rather than crash into him, however, a buick that had been aimed to mow him down swerves abruptly and inexplicably aside, into the sign post that is now behind him. Glash shatters and explodes forward over the sidewalk. The buick's front end crumples around the metal pole. Across the street, its twin is still smouldering faintly when Erik steps up onto the curb and glances half-heartedly back over his shoulder, scowling more at the unwelcome chill of the rain than he is the wreck. The young man behind the wheel does not appear to be ok.
By /accident/, Bahir rocks back on his heel to jar Sarah's guitar case, hard. "Fucking watch it," he snarls over his shoulder, native courtesy layered over foreign accent. He walks /slower/, quite in Sarah's way, as he pulls his collar up against the droplets that snake down his neck. Sound. Lots of sound. A crash. His hands freeze there, curled tight in dark felt. Surprise jars him a step back, pushing back against and past Sarah toward the sidewalk. If cars are going skidding, it is perhaps better not to be on the street.
The sudden downpour urges Dorian to look skywards and stand up slowly. That was horrendously sudden, but the weather makes him only more unusually ecstatic as his gaze lowers back to street level. A calm sigh, broken by the crashing of twisted metal, jolts Dorian into action and he sprints through the crowd towards the Buick. Eyes dart around to ensure nobody is watching him and he holds out a hand. In moments the Buick unwinds itself around the pole and the drivers side door brutally crunches off, folding into a dense metallic ball before falling to the ground.
"Hah," Sarah scoffs a little at the snarl though stops the momentum of the case from hitting again. Likewise, her own footsteps pause with the sounds of the crash. Eyes widen behind large sunglass frames while her head turns to watch collisions start to mount. The rain is for the most part ignored - attention paid to the elderly appearing, lone pedestrian in the next intersection over. Much slower than Bahir, the woman slinks backwards on the balls of her feet while a slow smirk pulls at the corners of her lips.
Storm turns sharply on her heel, stalling in the crowd like a tall, white-crowned iceberg staring intently towards the other intersection. Metal clinks at the chain belt hooked through the loops at the waistline of her skirt; it slithers in the chain around her neck that bears the silver X that is her pendant; it dangles from her ears in two wide silver hoops. Change and keys and cellular phone lurk in her purse; and of course, there is the com-link, coiled at her wrist and obscured from immediate view by crimson leather. The wind intensifies, whipping rain this way and that, as white mist curls through her eyes. The curse that breathes past her lips is an ages-old reflex, drawn from the streets of Cairo.
Another car swerves wide of the wreck, but manages to regain control. Erik ignores it, much as he is ignoring most things in his surroundings at the moment - an icy attempt to rectify his potentially dangerous level of distraction interrupted before he can turn all the way back around once he realizes that the destruction is ongoing. And not at his direction. Slowly, the angle of his shoulders turns back after that of his jaw and brows knit in vague bafflement.
People make discreet (and less than discreet) exits: /quickly/. As they melt off the streets, Bahir remains. He presses up against the metal of a lamppost, ninj-like, and follows Sarah's gaze. Fixing on the jaywalker, his eyes narrow; others are necessarily ignored. Telepathy unleashes to whip across the distance, thorns of pain lashing at Erik's mind. Fingers clench on the strap of his bag.
Among the people failing to heed the rapid escape is Dorian, who gives the street a good once over before bounding across towards the wrecked car and rushing around to the driver's side. His quick, untrained glance sees nothing wrong with the man in the car, but as he whirls about in confusion, he spots Bahir and Sarah and follows their eyes to the elderly man in the crosswalk.
Sarah snickers quietly, shaking her head in bemused amusement as she bypasses Bahir and stands on the other side of the sidewalk. The electric guitar is placed upon the ground and the woman crosses her arms - her attention still placed upon the master of magnetism as she leans her hip against a fence with complete apathy. People flee. The scene is starting to resemble chaos.
Magneto blazes past one, two, and three tequila to go straight from 0 to floor. Well, nearly. There's a knee that takes brunted impact into the sidewalk somewhere in there - squared hands lifted immediately and forcefully to the sides of his head to flex hard into the increasingly damp and curled silver that resides there. A blunt cry is not quite smothered through the visible grit of his teeth, and what was a fizzle before erupts into an all-encompassing darkness as everything electrical within a highly unreasonable radius succombs to an erratic blast of electromagnetism.
The rain beats down harder. The temperature drops rapidly. Tiny hailstones like tiny, irritating ice chips flying into people's faces start blowing on the wind. Storm's eyes have gone completely white. She strides forward down the middle of the street. And then Magneto crumples. She draws up short, blinking, as her comlink and cell phone both futz into premature death and render summoning back-up completely impossible. It is dark, windy, rainy, hailing. Visibility is not very good. For the second time in as many minutes, Storm swears.
While that may be the Master of Magnetism, Dorian simply sees a poor old man clutching his head and crying out in pain. The inexplicable darkness combined with the rash of weird crap that just happens points the youth towards the conclusion that this is all mutant related. Hooray. Again, Dorian frantically looks around, flattened hair whirling about with the sudden movement, to find some solution before simply calling out through the rain. "Who's doing that to him?!"
Bahir's watch goes dead; his cell phone goes dead. The laptop in his bag whimpers. The lights above pops from life into darkness with a last radiant gasp that leaves him startled, heart pounding. Visibility gets worse, but he does not require visibility. Claws close around the fragile underside of Magneto's mind and dig for weakness. Razors of pain blossom in old, weakened joints.
Then there is darkness. With artificial lights present it was easy to wear sunglasses - without, it is near impossible. Oh, and the weather sucks too. Sarah spits out a harsh swear and her arms uncross to whip off the shades and cram them into a pocket. Magneto's crumpling has finally pulled her eyes away, looking from one person to another with sharp and shaded jade eyes. Too many people are morbidly curious - too many lingered to watch once the crunch of metal ceased - and thus not a single person points themselves out as a culprit.
Magneto's mind is not an entertaining place to be. Particularly when it is in pain. Draconic anger flares violent and unrestrained - a second electromagnetic pulse tearing off into nothingness as his spine arches up and away from the wet pavement - trying to roll over, before the second wave strikes, and he cries out again, muted in the white noise of hail and rain. Dignity has failed.
"Whoever it is had better not stop." Storm's voice rings out sharp and cold, the winds dying an abrupt death to allow for her volume to carry over the pelting of her hail and rain, her own creatures. "When you have the tiger by the tail--" The scene is abruptly illumined: a blossom of lightning flashes, cracking the center of the street. The wind has ripped her hair loose from its tail; it clings, white and wet, to her head and neck. Her eyes blaze white. The lightning does not strike Erik; it strikes the asphalt. Storm strides forward with purpose into the ensuing dark.
Concern, frantic and feral, races through Dorian's mind as he watches Erik thrashing about on the ground. Horrible, this isn't right at all. His head turns to the flash that Storm generated and, quick to jump on the opportunity, he runs out to the anguished man's side. As soon as he's close to him, he sends an explosive push away from himself to throw the civilians, and whoever is creating the psionic assault, aside. Without helping Magneto up manually, Dorian begins to run away, Magneto lifting and levitating beside the youth whether the Master of Magnetism likes it or not.
The clench of pain eases -- not out of pity, but uncertain control as telepathy expands to wrap two minds. Bahir's breath escapes on a curse. He slides his hand up against the support of the pole, leaning weight into the lamppost. There is a moment where pain clears before weak nails scrabble for purchase again, shredding self-control and undercutting already weakened dignity in Magneto's mind. In Dorian's, a blunt hammer of psionic power slams down on perceptions: sight, sound, taste, touch, smell -- that all important kinesthetic sense of up and down. Gone.
Malachite eyes land on Storm with her declaration, the bright lady a beacon in the dead of freezing night with her wild white hair. Sarah's teeth grind in her wicked smile. Long and limber limbs sprint, feet thudding her over a hood of a car to reach the middle of the street while a crude alabastar dagger slips out of concealment. The chill of dead bone, sharp and ragged, slides around Storm, intending to press against the graceful slope of her neck. "Call it off," a gravelly voice hisses behind her.
Magneto is being driveby kidnapped in addition to being tortured - moisture-heavy overcoat wrapped wet around him as he's dragged up into the air against his will. But with eyes rolling white and limbs stiff, it's his mind that is finally attempting to rally against the scrape of psionic talons at his being - the fury that bolsters against Bahir's alien grasp nothing short of murderous.
Storm is jerked to a halt, head flung back. Off-guard and vulnerable, cold bone finds her throat and presses there, holds her there. Her eyes go wide and shocked, her body taut with fear's cold burn through her blood. The warrior's edge bares her teeth, despite the crude blade against her skin. The rain dies. The wind dies. The hail dies. The white mist blinked clear of her eyes, Ororo snarls: "Get off me."
Magneto's momentum throws him into Dorian as Bahir hammers against the young mutant's psyche. Hands outstretch as the youth's world turns to oblivion around him and he comes crashing to his knees. Purgatory? Hell. Desperation, confusion, all are pushed aside as wrath surfaces and Dorian flexes his abilities as potently and potentially non-lethal a manner he's capable of coming up with at the moment and a frenzied gravimetric burst tears across the direct area, starting at what his best reckoning is of a 10 foot radius around himself is and spreading out in every direction. A handful of fleeing civilians, cars, and everything else caught in the force are thrown hard away from the focal point.
"Tell them to stop." There is a perverse and cold amusement in Sarah's mocking alto, directing white-haired witch vocally while spindly fingers clasp about the woman's right wrist, belying appearance with harsh strength. Eyes snap to the sidewalk where Magneto is being carried away on - over? - and watches the man get unkindly placed back down. "Good," she praises Ororo, though a vague confusion paints her voice while cars bend in awkward ways from the area. Sarah waits, a still and predatory patience, and watches Magneto expectantly.
Bahir's body trembles; his clasp on metal is clammy, sweat mixing with rain to make hands slick. As Magneto recovers, he is unable to retain his hold. Telepathy slides from the older man's mind; Bahir's body slides against the lamppost. His mind grays with exhaustion and Dorian's senses flood back in a sudden cacophony to the beat of the gravimetric pulse. The last remnants of telepathic interference distort the radius of Dorian's circle: the women are clear of its effect. Bahir is not. He (and several cars, a newspaper box, his pal the lamppost, a trashbin--) and assorted sundry /things/ go flying. Hard.
Impact registers dimly. Fresh bruises. Perhaps a fracture or two. Soaked to the bone and cold, it's another several seconds before Erik's glare snaps down into focus. A sharp breath inhaled, he shoves himself away from and off of Dorian - over onto his side, and then up onto his feet, dirty and bedraggled, with silver hair plastered back slick as he staggers aside into the nearest wall. Born again, remembering how to balance - how to hold himself. It will all come back in a moment.
A captive predator gone still, Storm stays frozen. Her assailant's grip over crimson leather and the telltale bulge of her defunct comlink holds her; the bone blade at her naked throat holds her. /Hostage/. Fear transmutes to rage, boiling through her in a hot torrent. Silent as the dead, windless air, she jerks back abruptly in as sudden an attempt as she can muster, to throw the woman off-balance; to throw the woman.
A flash and the world returns in a glorious mixture of sensation. Laughter, joy unrestrained, rolls out of Dorian as he pushes himself to his feet and looks around, attention falling on the elderly gentleman and snapping his new taste of life back to the present. A roving glare turns back to the carnage caused...not by Magneto for once before a furrowed brow turns to the Master of Magnetism. "I don't know what the hell just happened but you'd better get out of here before whatever the hell happened happens -again!-" Shit, he's old. Dorian steps forward and looks him up and down. "Can I help you?"
Bahir does /not/ land in a dumpster behind a McDonald's. He lands on the pavement, with a handful of others. Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth. He's so very out.
Sarah is not uncertain in her stance, in the hold of the bone-knife, in the capture and press of woman and wrist. However, a stunned realization sinks passed alert and wary defenses as where she was previously standing - where Bahir is, somewhere - was indeed hit by that blast. "My guitar," she whispers, a pout of concern, and then Ororo moves. Sarah stumbles but is not quite thrown - dagger slipping free from the imposing position as her nimble feet keep her from tumbling. Wrist still held, Sarah digs callused fingers into a pressure point.
Magneto answers with a ruptured mail drop box - damp and deteriorating letters slacking wetly out onto the sidewalk as a claw-curled backsweep of his right hand across his chest flings it hard and fast across the few feet that exist between box and boy. Pupils contracted, irises bleak, he's breathing hard when he finally doubles over and aside into a rasping wince an instant later, the edges of his overcoat still dripping murky runoff into the puddle gathering fresh around his boots. Can I /help you/. /Really/.
Ororo cries out: pain. Fury. Bull-headed in her refusal to be rendered helpless, she slams back in a swing of her elbow, the twist of her aim for the side of Sarah's head, while one heeled foot insinuates itself to hook behind the other woman's ankle in a game attempt at her balance and to turn /around/.
The corner of Dorian's eye catches the movement and he thrusts an arm over his face, a torrent of gravitational distortion thrown up in an attempt to deflect the mailbox.
As much as he would like to, Erik is coldly aware of the fact that he is not in any condition to do much of anything at the moment that does not involve fleeing the scene. A wary glance cast back towards the violent movements contained to the ongoing struggle between Storm and Sarah, he grinds his teeth against a second pang in his side and forces himself to slide off against the wall in the opposite direction - limping at a speed that aims more for efficiency than speed.
The elbow makes a wonderful connection to the side of Sarah's head but Storm should be thankful of the leather she wears as it prevents the gritty bone protrusions from dealing proper damage. The ballcap flies off Sarah's head revealing matted maroon hair and wild eyes held captive beneath crude and curling bone horns. The ankle maneuver fails, however, as weight redistributes to non-attacked foot and Sarah uses Storm's own off-balance against her, tugging at the wrist she still grips on, towards the pavement.
The individual responsible for Magneto's current situation is unconscious and bleeding, kthx.
And to the pavement Storm goes: half a curse ripped from her throat as her back slams against asphalt. She lashes out with a wild kick, imperfectly aimed and hampered by the fit of her skirt. Ororo is not dressed for melee this evening. Summoned from nowhere, out of nothing, taxing her reserves in the extreme, a gust of wind tears from between buildings at cyclonic speed to slam into Marrow instead as the weather-witch snarls in a ragged rasp of rage, "Get -- /away/ --"
A fleeting, shocked expression trails in Magneto's escape, realization of who it is sinking in too late. Late in coming, Dorian's intelligence kicks in and he decides to walk away with his life today, opting instead to turn an angry glare on who he believed was responsible for his senseless cage earlier. The fact that she's locked in combat with a woman in red, well that's just icing on the cake. Dorian slowly begins to walk towards Storm and Sarah, the overturned hulks of a honda and a vw Jetta scraping along the ground and rising to hover several feet beside each shoulder until the distance is appropriately closed. "Hey." The Jetta is ripped in half and slammed into the ground beside him to grapple attention better than his timid start. "Ahoy hoy! What the fuck did you do to my head earlier?!"
Sarah's lips twist in a depraved, sneering smirk of triumph as the woman is judo'd onto the pavement, the skin wrinkling and pinching awkwardly about the bone that distends from her high cheeks. The wrist is let go and the dagger held in maliciously gripping fingers points towards Storm. "I'd pay careful attention to who you're picking fights with, lady." The suggestion is made not a moment too soon as the wind is not so avoidable and tumbles Sarah off her feet, slamming her head in an uncomfortable position into an already crumpled car. She does not move.
Storm breathes out a long, low moan and slumps back against the pavement, staring up and barely seeing into the clouded-dull sky. She blinks several times, repeatedly, the dull throb of the overextension of her powers consuming her senses. Unconsciousness beckons. The last sound she hears is the distant shriek of the sirens.
Storm is not crazy, but she is muttering -- a low-voiced murmur, directed to her wrist. The dull repetitive thud of the heels of her high-heeled strappy black sandals hitting the sidewalk comes to a brief halt at a crosswalk; she stands with one hand on the slant of her hip, the other lifted to her face, to all appearances adjusting her earring. Close enough to overhear, one might catch the sound of her voice, soft and dark. "-- you're /certain/ I am in the right place?" Around her, night looms; the streetlamps are flickering into life. Overhead, the sky is dulled by the threat of large, heavy clouds.
On the other side of the crosswalk, Bahir has his hands in his pockets, light coat wrapped close around his body. He looks up at the light, waiting for the other to switch from green to yellow: for don't walk to flip to walk. His foot hovers over the edge of the curb, on the edge of stepping down. A messenger bag hangs heavy on his hip. He drums his fingers impatiently. Green, green, green -- still green. He checks his watch, incredulous, as traffic buzzes past.
The quiet satiating of wanderlust has been leading to more and more new areas of the city to Dorian, as of late, and the metropolitan area has been a refreshing change from Clinton and the Village. Lackluster as they all seem, Dorian has had no reason to express any interest in a soul besides himself and so, he focuses on the finer beauties of architecture and machine around him with a pleased smile etched across his features.
Beneath slowly calming and cultured streets, a subway train whines and screetches as it pulls away from it's station in Harlem to head back downtown - the noise and heated draft wafting up through grated sidewalk. A moment later and Sarah is ascending dirty concrete steps with indifference. In her hand is a hard electric guitar case; on her head is a large and shrouding baseball cap. And she wears her sunglasses at night. Don't switch the blade at the gal in shades - don't masquerade with the gal in shades.
Though the clouds remain unspilled in the sky, the scent of rain threatens in the air and it's getting windier. Ororo drops her wrist from her mouth with a few choice, muttered words. She draws breath, eyes fluttering briefly closed. The wind pulls at the white blaze of her ponytail, tugs at the dark red leather of her spring jacket and at the deep blue denim of her skirt. She opens her eyes again as the wind settles. The light turns. She steps down from sidewalk to street.
Without much to supervise at home, under the cover of darkness, even an area as populated as Harlem is fair game for the Master of Magnetism, who is...well. Obviously, still in the city. Overcoat collar flipped up protectively over the back of his neck, as stiff and black in mood as he is in dress, Erik is advancing along the sidewalk at his usual business pace, brooding ever closer to the next intersection over. The light turns. The walk or don't walk sign turns. It says, 'don't walk.' The sign fizzles and pops, and Erik walks anyway. Signs do not tell Magneto what to do.
Signs tell Bahir what to do: as it flips to walk, he steps down onto the street, brown suede sneaker slapping lightly onto the pavement. He adjusts the strap digging into his shoulder with a grunt, hugging the bag close to his body. He weaves around the surge of people off the curb and into the street. One car is slow to stop. He hangs back. Others don't. Tires squeal! No accident, though. Disappointing.
Spying a comfortable stoop to sit at and cultivate his whimsical mood, Dorian brings his slow stroll to a stop and takes a seat to watch the world around him. Eye flick from person to person as he finally takes stock of the people around him out of sheer curiosity. Hands intertwine an rest across his knees and quiet humming erupts from the youth, stopping only as he watches an accident get narrowly avoided. Horrible as it feels to admit, part of Dorian is disappointed.
The pull of wind whisps at maroon hair but the rest of Sarah's outward appearance remains static - heavy denim of jeans and likewise weight of black leather jacket too stiff to be moved by wind. The woman moves smoothly with the flow of the crowd, to the crosswalk, her face lacking expression. Lights flicker to signal go and she moves - the man in front of her, however, pauses. Bahir receives an impolite nudge to the bum by the neck of her guitar case. By accident.
Ororo eyes the car, blue eyes flashing annoyance. Her temper is short, but not short enough to do anything especially rash as of yet. She moves forward, threading neatly amidst the crowd; her gaze flicks over this passerby and that, hunting for anyone looking young, lost, frightened, possibly bleeding, since you never know with first manifestations -- she hisses a disgruntled sigh, tongue's tip pressed to the back of her teeth. It starts to rain.
The next intersection over is a dilligent intersection, for all that its corners are lacking in pedestrians. It is more productive than Bahir's intersection, very probably due to the fact that Magneto has opted to walk, rather than not walk. Rather than crash into him, however, a buick that had been aimed to mow him down swerves abruptly and inexplicably aside, into the sign post that is now behind him. Glash shatters and explodes forward over the sidewalk. The buick's front end crumples around the metal pole. Across the street, its twin is still smouldering faintly when Erik steps up onto the curb and glances half-heartedly back over his shoulder, scowling more at the unwelcome chill of the rain than he is the wreck. The young man behind the wheel does not appear to be ok.
By /accident/, Bahir rocks back on his heel to jar Sarah's guitar case, hard. "Fucking watch it," he snarls over his shoulder, native courtesy layered over foreign accent. He walks /slower/, quite in Sarah's way, as he pulls his collar up against the droplets that snake down his neck. Sound. Lots of sound. A crash. His hands freeze there, curled tight in dark felt. Surprise jars him a step back, pushing back against and past Sarah toward the sidewalk. If cars are going skidding, it is perhaps better not to be on the street.
The sudden downpour urges Dorian to look skywards and stand up slowly. That was horrendously sudden, but the weather makes him only more unusually ecstatic as his gaze lowers back to street level. A calm sigh, broken by the crashing of twisted metal, jolts Dorian into action and he sprints through the crowd towards the Buick. Eyes dart around to ensure nobody is watching him and he holds out a hand. In moments the Buick unwinds itself around the pole and the drivers side door brutally crunches off, folding into a dense metallic ball before falling to the ground.
"Hah," Sarah scoffs a little at the snarl though stops the momentum of the case from hitting again. Likewise, her own footsteps pause with the sounds of the crash. Eyes widen behind large sunglass frames while her head turns to watch collisions start to mount. The rain is for the most part ignored - attention paid to the elderly appearing, lone pedestrian in the next intersection over. Much slower than Bahir, the woman slinks backwards on the balls of her feet while a slow smirk pulls at the corners of her lips.
Storm turns sharply on her heel, stalling in the crowd like a tall, white-crowned iceberg staring intently towards the other intersection. Metal clinks at the chain belt hooked through the loops at the waistline of her skirt; it slithers in the chain around her neck that bears the silver X that is her pendant; it dangles from her ears in two wide silver hoops. Change and keys and cellular phone lurk in her purse; and of course, there is the com-link, coiled at her wrist and obscured from immediate view by crimson leather. The wind intensifies, whipping rain this way and that, as white mist curls through her eyes. The curse that breathes past her lips is an ages-old reflex, drawn from the streets of Cairo.
Another car swerves wide of the wreck, but manages to regain control. Erik ignores it, much as he is ignoring most things in his surroundings at the moment - an icy attempt to rectify his potentially dangerous level of distraction interrupted before he can turn all the way back around once he realizes that the destruction is ongoing. And not at his direction. Slowly, the angle of his shoulders turns back after that of his jaw and brows knit in vague bafflement.
People make discreet (and less than discreet) exits: /quickly/. As they melt off the streets, Bahir remains. He presses up against the metal of a lamppost, ninj-like, and follows Sarah's gaze. Fixing on the jaywalker, his eyes narrow; others are necessarily ignored. Telepathy unleashes to whip across the distance, thorns of pain lashing at Erik's mind. Fingers clench on the strap of his bag.
Among the people failing to heed the rapid escape is Dorian, who gives the street a good once over before bounding across towards the wrecked car and rushing around to the driver's side. His quick, untrained glance sees nothing wrong with the man in the car, but as he whirls about in confusion, he spots Bahir and Sarah and follows their eyes to the elderly man in the crosswalk.
Sarah snickers quietly, shaking her head in bemused amusement as she bypasses Bahir and stands on the other side of the sidewalk. The electric guitar is placed upon the ground and the woman crosses her arms - her attention still placed upon the master of magnetism as she leans her hip against a fence with complete apathy. People flee. The scene is starting to resemble chaos.
Magneto blazes past one, two, and three tequila to go straight from 0 to floor. Well, nearly. There's a knee that takes brunted impact into the sidewalk somewhere in there - squared hands lifted immediately and forcefully to the sides of his head to flex hard into the increasingly damp and curled silver that resides there. A blunt cry is not quite smothered through the visible grit of his teeth, and what was a fizzle before erupts into an all-encompassing darkness as everything electrical within a highly unreasonable radius succombs to an erratic blast of electromagnetism.
The rain beats down harder. The temperature drops rapidly. Tiny hailstones like tiny, irritating ice chips flying into people's faces start blowing on the wind. Storm's eyes have gone completely white. She strides forward down the middle of the street. And then Magneto crumples. She draws up short, blinking, as her comlink and cell phone both futz into premature death and render summoning back-up completely impossible. It is dark, windy, rainy, hailing. Visibility is not very good. For the second time in as many minutes, Storm swears.
While that may be the Master of Magnetism, Dorian simply sees a poor old man clutching his head and crying out in pain. The inexplicable darkness combined with the rash of weird crap that just happens points the youth towards the conclusion that this is all mutant related. Hooray. Again, Dorian frantically looks around, flattened hair whirling about with the sudden movement, to find some solution before simply calling out through the rain. "Who's doing that to him?!"
Bahir's watch goes dead; his cell phone goes dead. The laptop in his bag whimpers. The lights above pops from life into darkness with a last radiant gasp that leaves him startled, heart pounding. Visibility gets worse, but he does not require visibility. Claws close around the fragile underside of Magneto's mind and dig for weakness. Razors of pain blossom in old, weakened joints.
Then there is darkness. With artificial lights present it was easy to wear sunglasses - without, it is near impossible. Oh, and the weather sucks too. Sarah spits out a harsh swear and her arms uncross to whip off the shades and cram them into a pocket. Magneto's crumpling has finally pulled her eyes away, looking from one person to another with sharp and shaded jade eyes. Too many people are morbidly curious - too many lingered to watch once the crunch of metal ceased - and thus not a single person points themselves out as a culprit.
Magneto's mind is not an entertaining place to be. Particularly when it is in pain. Draconic anger flares violent and unrestrained - a second electromagnetic pulse tearing off into nothingness as his spine arches up and away from the wet pavement - trying to roll over, before the second wave strikes, and he cries out again, muted in the white noise of hail and rain. Dignity has failed.
"Whoever it is had better not stop." Storm's voice rings out sharp and cold, the winds dying an abrupt death to allow for her volume to carry over the pelting of her hail and rain, her own creatures. "When you have the tiger by the tail--" The scene is abruptly illumined: a blossom of lightning flashes, cracking the center of the street. The wind has ripped her hair loose from its tail; it clings, white and wet, to her head and neck. Her eyes blaze white. The lightning does not strike Erik; it strikes the asphalt. Storm strides forward with purpose into the ensuing dark.
Concern, frantic and feral, races through Dorian's mind as he watches Erik thrashing about on the ground. Horrible, this isn't right at all. His head turns to the flash that Storm generated and, quick to jump on the opportunity, he runs out to the anguished man's side. As soon as he's close to him, he sends an explosive push away from himself to throw the civilians, and whoever is creating the psionic assault, aside. Without helping Magneto up manually, Dorian begins to run away, Magneto lifting and levitating beside the youth whether the Master of Magnetism likes it or not.
The clench of pain eases -- not out of pity, but uncertain control as telepathy expands to wrap two minds. Bahir's breath escapes on a curse. He slides his hand up against the support of the pole, leaning weight into the lamppost. There is a moment where pain clears before weak nails scrabble for purchase again, shredding self-control and undercutting already weakened dignity in Magneto's mind. In Dorian's, a blunt hammer of psionic power slams down on perceptions: sight, sound, taste, touch, smell -- that all important kinesthetic sense of up and down. Gone.
Malachite eyes land on Storm with her declaration, the bright lady a beacon in the dead of freezing night with her wild white hair. Sarah's teeth grind in her wicked smile. Long and limber limbs sprint, feet thudding her over a hood of a car to reach the middle of the street while a crude alabastar dagger slips out of concealment. The chill of dead bone, sharp and ragged, slides around Storm, intending to press against the graceful slope of her neck. "Call it off," a gravelly voice hisses behind her.
Magneto is being driveby kidnapped in addition to being tortured - moisture-heavy overcoat wrapped wet around him as he's dragged up into the air against his will. But with eyes rolling white and limbs stiff, it's his mind that is finally attempting to rally against the scrape of psionic talons at his being - the fury that bolsters against Bahir's alien grasp nothing short of murderous.
Storm is jerked to a halt, head flung back. Off-guard and vulnerable, cold bone finds her throat and presses there, holds her there. Her eyes go wide and shocked, her body taut with fear's cold burn through her blood. The warrior's edge bares her teeth, despite the crude blade against her skin. The rain dies. The wind dies. The hail dies. The white mist blinked clear of her eyes, Ororo snarls: "Get off me."
Magneto's momentum throws him into Dorian as Bahir hammers against the young mutant's psyche. Hands outstretch as the youth's world turns to oblivion around him and he comes crashing to his knees. Purgatory? Hell. Desperation, confusion, all are pushed aside as wrath surfaces and Dorian flexes his abilities as potently and potentially non-lethal a manner he's capable of coming up with at the moment and a frenzied gravimetric burst tears across the direct area, starting at what his best reckoning is of a 10 foot radius around himself is and spreading out in every direction. A handful of fleeing civilians, cars, and everything else caught in the force are thrown hard away from the focal point.
"Tell them to stop." There is a perverse and cold amusement in Sarah's mocking alto, directing white-haired witch vocally while spindly fingers clasp about the woman's right wrist, belying appearance with harsh strength. Eyes snap to the sidewalk where Magneto is being carried away on - over? - and watches the man get unkindly placed back down. "Good," she praises Ororo, though a vague confusion paints her voice while cars bend in awkward ways from the area. Sarah waits, a still and predatory patience, and watches Magneto expectantly.
Bahir's body trembles; his clasp on metal is clammy, sweat mixing with rain to make hands slick. As Magneto recovers, he is unable to retain his hold. Telepathy slides from the older man's mind; Bahir's body slides against the lamppost. His mind grays with exhaustion and Dorian's senses flood back in a sudden cacophony to the beat of the gravimetric pulse. The last remnants of telepathic interference distort the radius of Dorian's circle: the women are clear of its effect. Bahir is not. He (and several cars, a newspaper box, his pal the lamppost, a trashbin--) and assorted sundry /things/ go flying. Hard.
Impact registers dimly. Fresh bruises. Perhaps a fracture or two. Soaked to the bone and cold, it's another several seconds before Erik's glare snaps down into focus. A sharp breath inhaled, he shoves himself away from and off of Dorian - over onto his side, and then up onto his feet, dirty and bedraggled, with silver hair plastered back slick as he staggers aside into the nearest wall. Born again, remembering how to balance - how to hold himself. It will all come back in a moment.
A captive predator gone still, Storm stays frozen. Her assailant's grip over crimson leather and the telltale bulge of her defunct comlink holds her; the bone blade at her naked throat holds her. /Hostage/. Fear transmutes to rage, boiling through her in a hot torrent. Silent as the dead, windless air, she jerks back abruptly in as sudden an attempt as she can muster, to throw the woman off-balance; to throw the woman.
A flash and the world returns in a glorious mixture of sensation. Laughter, joy unrestrained, rolls out of Dorian as he pushes himself to his feet and looks around, attention falling on the elderly gentleman and snapping his new taste of life back to the present. A roving glare turns back to the carnage caused...not by Magneto for once before a furrowed brow turns to the Master of Magnetism. "I don't know what the hell just happened but you'd better get out of here before whatever the hell happened happens -again!-" Shit, he's old. Dorian steps forward and looks him up and down. "Can I help you?"
Bahir does /not/ land in a dumpster behind a McDonald's. He lands on the pavement, with a handful of others. Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth. He's so very out.
Sarah is not uncertain in her stance, in the hold of the bone-knife, in the capture and press of woman and wrist. However, a stunned realization sinks passed alert and wary defenses as where she was previously standing - where Bahir is, somewhere - was indeed hit by that blast. "My guitar," she whispers, a pout of concern, and then Ororo moves. Sarah stumbles but is not quite thrown - dagger slipping free from the imposing position as her nimble feet keep her from tumbling. Wrist still held, Sarah digs callused fingers into a pressure point.
Magneto answers with a ruptured mail drop box - damp and deteriorating letters slacking wetly out onto the sidewalk as a claw-curled backsweep of his right hand across his chest flings it hard and fast across the few feet that exist between box and boy. Pupils contracted, irises bleak, he's breathing hard when he finally doubles over and aside into a rasping wince an instant later, the edges of his overcoat still dripping murky runoff into the puddle gathering fresh around his boots. Can I /help you/. /Really/.
Ororo cries out: pain. Fury. Bull-headed in her refusal to be rendered helpless, she slams back in a swing of her elbow, the twist of her aim for the side of Sarah's head, while one heeled foot insinuates itself to hook behind the other woman's ankle in a game attempt at her balance and to turn /around/.
The corner of Dorian's eye catches the movement and he thrusts an arm over his face, a torrent of gravitational distortion thrown up in an attempt to deflect the mailbox.
As much as he would like to, Erik is coldly aware of the fact that he is not in any condition to do much of anything at the moment that does not involve fleeing the scene. A wary glance cast back towards the violent movements contained to the ongoing struggle between Storm and Sarah, he grinds his teeth against a second pang in his side and forces himself to slide off against the wall in the opposite direction - limping at a speed that aims more for efficiency than speed.
The elbow makes a wonderful connection to the side of Sarah's head but Storm should be thankful of the leather she wears as it prevents the gritty bone protrusions from dealing proper damage. The ballcap flies off Sarah's head revealing matted maroon hair and wild eyes held captive beneath crude and curling bone horns. The ankle maneuver fails, however, as weight redistributes to non-attacked foot and Sarah uses Storm's own off-balance against her, tugging at the wrist she still grips on, towards the pavement.
The individual responsible for Magneto's current situation is unconscious and bleeding, kthx.
And to the pavement Storm goes: half a curse ripped from her throat as her back slams against asphalt. She lashes out with a wild kick, imperfectly aimed and hampered by the fit of her skirt. Ororo is not dressed for melee this evening. Summoned from nowhere, out of nothing, taxing her reserves in the extreme, a gust of wind tears from between buildings at cyclonic speed to slam into Marrow instead as the weather-witch snarls in a ragged rasp of rage, "Get -- /away/ --"
A fleeting, shocked expression trails in Magneto's escape, realization of who it is sinking in too late. Late in coming, Dorian's intelligence kicks in and he decides to walk away with his life today, opting instead to turn an angry glare on who he believed was responsible for his senseless cage earlier. The fact that she's locked in combat with a woman in red, well that's just icing on the cake. Dorian slowly begins to walk towards Storm and Sarah, the overturned hulks of a honda and a vw Jetta scraping along the ground and rising to hover several feet beside each shoulder until the distance is appropriately closed. "Hey." The Jetta is ripped in half and slammed into the ground beside him to grapple attention better than his timid start. "Ahoy hoy! What the fuck did you do to my head earlier?!"
Sarah's lips twist in a depraved, sneering smirk of triumph as the woman is judo'd onto the pavement, the skin wrinkling and pinching awkwardly about the bone that distends from her high cheeks. The wrist is let go and the dagger held in maliciously gripping fingers points towards Storm. "I'd pay careful attention to who you're picking fights with, lady." The suggestion is made not a moment too soon as the wind is not so avoidable and tumbles Sarah off her feet, slamming her head in an uncomfortable position into an already crumpled car. She does not move.
Storm breathes out a long, low moan and slumps back against the pavement, staring up and barely seeing into the clouded-dull sky. She blinks several times, repeatedly, the dull throb of the overextension of her powers consuming her senses. Unconsciousness beckons. The last sound she hears is the distant shriek of the sirens.