The end.
The air is quiet and chill, the Long Island lampposts glowing clear and unimpeded just overhead. Jamie loiters on the edge of the yellow-grey between light and shadow, adjusting his trenchcoat in a mildly finicky manner. He glances up at the underside of the lamp. "This is the one Magneto hung me from. Tada."
Monet looks up at the lamp for a moment. Her frown looks a little unduely pouty due to the still-healing reminders of her encounter with Bahir al-Razi. She crosses her arms beneath her chest, inhaling a slow sigh. "And so we have a starting point at least, mm?"
In charcoal twill and dark slacks, Ellen walks through the cool autumn evening with her head tipped down. The spill of the street-lamps catches the bob of her ponytail as she walks up the sidewalk, shining pale-bright before she is swallowed by the shades between the pools of light.
"Yeah. And my tranq came in. One of three." Madrox fidgets further with his trenchcoat and pulls it just back so Monet can see the faintly unusual shape at his hip. "So if we run into Magneto's cat? We are so covered." Beyond the fidget, Madrox seems more or less chill. Flip. Not expecting much. But as he turns into the light, he catches a blond bob and he freezes.
"Really, I almost wish we would run into her. After having to deal with the tremendous humiliation of being /arrested/, honestly." Monet trails off instead of continuing though. She has spent the last two days refusing to directly acknowledge that she harmed Natalie Simon, but whining endlessly about the police. She lets out a tempermental little huff as she turns to follow Jamie, only to nearly step into him when he freezse. "Would you walk?" she snaps. She has not spoted the blond woman.
Ellen is wholly oblivious to the attention she may or may not have drawn. Her stride is slow and short, and her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her coat, her gaze tipped downward and her frown set deep into her expression. She walks along and minds her own business!
"Monet," Jamie says and latches his hand on her shoulder before withdrawing into the shadows. He can't, of course, drag her with him. "I think she's coming." His voice is thin and strained with surprise and plain and simple unreadiness.
The pull at her shoulder is not met with stubbornness, for once. Monet moves readily with him, actually following Jamie's lead. (This in itself is likely more of a miracle than the possibility of finding Ellen.) Monet withdraws into the shadows alongside her investigative partner and she immediately tries to spot Ms. Dramstadt, both visually and with the weak scope of her telepathy.
Valkyrie walks, and her stride is measured in weariness. The dull malaise has burned itself as deep as her bones, and her gaze is tipped down. The shape of her consciousness is unusual, the low-level busy of monitoring her own internal systems semi-consciously creating a constant buzz of activity.
Madrox slips his hand beneath his collar and makes that scratching motion. That indicates he is deactivating a certain safeguard. "I'm going to send a dupe up ahead, to get her attention." He interposes himself subtly, half thought, between the light and Monet. Protective a bit. And then he hits himself in the thigh as quietly as possible.
Monet hunkers down a little, struggling to push her weak mutation out to take a better measure of Ellen's awareness, but her limits are severe. Instead, she watches as Jamie prepares himselves. "I'll follow the dupe in, at a distance," she whispers to him.
Ellen pauses a step, checking her watch at her wrist and then glancing up into the clear darkness of the sky. Her gaze falls to the street again, and she resumes walking, tucking her hands back into her pockets.
Madrox comes to existance next to Jamie-Prime. They exchange glances, a brief and tense acknowledgement, and then the dupe turns away and trots up ahead to the next pool of light and through, aiming for one more pool ahead. A two pool gap between himself and the other two. As he goes, he whistles loudly. And main-Madrox whispers at Monet. "I'd rather you didn't."
Ellen's gaze is drawn by the sharp sound. Her eyes widen, and then narrow, clear and sharp as she stares at the dupe (or the bait). She halts, and her hands slip out of her pockets again, fingers curving slightly as she stills.
"Me too," Monet tells Jamie Prime, before she starts skirting away from him. Instead of moving so clearly forward as the dupe is, she is working through the shadows, doing her best to remain unseen. She is back-up.
Madrox exhales and draws the gun from his hip. The dupes allotted to firearms have studied obsessively, but this is dark and different than the firing range. The dupe continues to walk, only a little slower. He stops on the verge of the second pool of light to pick up something off the sidewalk.
"You." Ellen's voice cuts like the crack of a whip. "Stand up."
From the shadows, Monet watches intently. She is a good few dozen yards away, however. She glances around quickly, looking for something she could use as a weapon if she has to. There are no handy chairs sitting nearby, however.
The dupe stands, his motions gradual and wary. He even puts his hands up. Madrox crouches, attempting to draw a bead on the woman he simply cannot see clearly.
Ellen steps boldly into the light, the bare skin of her hands -- deadly weapons -- pale in its brightness. "I know you," she says, coolly accusatory.
Monet inhales slowly and holds it as she watches Madrox, even a duplicate Madrox, confront Ellen.
Madrox draws backward, also further into the light. "Yes," he says, voice wavering between thin and calm. Madrox draws his bead on the illuminated and hesitates. He crawls a little closer. He's not sure he can reload fast enough. It has to count.
"Am I to believe that this is a coincidence?" Ellen's voice drops low and bears a patina of snarl. Her body is still, but poised to strike, muscles taut.
Monet tenses herself, like some silent mirror of Ellen. She tries edging closer, to bring her meager telepathic abilities better in range with the intent of being able to divine an attack before it comes.
"Why would I seek you /out/?" the dupe asks, slow and miserable, his hands still raised. But his body is very tense as well. Taut breeds taut. Madrox stops crawling and draws another bead, ranging up, ranging down. Neck or back. Small target that may be more effective, large that he's more likely to hit. He centers on the latter and tightens his finger on the trigger.
Ellen's strike is swift, and if it is not unpredictable: the speed of her motion is startling, snakelike in its suddenness but hardly superhuman. Her fingers wind vise-tight around his wrist, her jaw set, her nostrils flared and her eyes grey-pale and hard in the lamplight. Coldly she says, "Perhaps you are a fool."
Wincing in the shadows at the intensely fast motion of Ellen's hand, Monet curses to herself. She starts forward, her stealth no longer held so precisely as she works at closing the distance. Adrenaline and her temper are both flaring at seeing even a dupe Madrox in mortal danger.
Madrox jerks back too slow and too late, but his reaction is different then the last Jamie Ellen ran across. He grabs at her wrist on his. "Let go of me," is frightened, but intense in its fear. And Madrox, paling, sweating cold, can wait no longer. He fires.
Hand tightening on his wrist, Ellen starts to smile -- and spits out a "/What/--" as the tranquilizer dart cuts through the heavy twill of her coat to pierce her skin. Disoriented, her gaze drops as a part of her consciousness fissions to witness the passage of the unfamiliar chemistry into her bloodstream. "Bastard," she snarls, slurring, and power ordinarily as precise as a scalpel wreaks indiscriminate havoc in the dupe's internal systems. Her head turns back and forth.
The dart hits and Monet accelerates. She hurries toward Ellen and the dupe, forgetting her attempts to remain unseen completely. There is suddenly a dark-haired woman in full light of the pools of light the streetlights cast bolting toward the confrontation.
The dupe holds for as long as he has full control over his body, his fingers digging as Monet makes her appearance. But this lasts a number of seconds. In the next paired instant, he is screaming. The moment Jamie-Prime shot his dart, he began rummaging in his pants for his one spare, but as the dupe goes from whole to badly, badly damaged, his hands begin to quake. The dart, retrieved, rolls from his fingers onto the sidewalk. "Monet!" he cries out, not really /knowing/ where she is.
Ellen drops hold of the duplicate, shaking her head a little faster and lifting a hand to her temple to shield herself from the encroaching dizziness. She staggers, and flails more or less randomly towards the shadow out of the corner of her eyes that is the approaching attacker. "No idea what you're dealing with," she says, or half-yells.
Monet runs right at Ellen. Here's a surprise, she is counting on brute force. She does not break her stride as she cocks back a fist and comes right at the Valkyrie, with every intention on slamming her fist into the blond woman's head at a full run. The potential impact there is akin, likely, to being hit by a car.
The dupe drops, scream ended, attempting to do nothing more in his last moments save draw breath into lungs that will not work, pump blood through a circulatory system ripped past repair. His nose and mouth are soused with blood. He is going. Jamie-Prime fumbles numb after the fallen dart and retreives it by clapping his palms together. But the gun is gone. Beneath his knee, maybe. What-- "/Monet/?" He gives up. He staggers to his feet toward the light.
Saved from a crushed skull and the ensuing death or brain damage that might occur only by the drugs in her system and their effect on her balance, Ellen stumbles to her knees in the spin of her flail.
Monet is not very subtle. Once Ellen is spun away and drops to her knees, she /shrieks/ at Jamie. "Pump her full of the shit, Jamie. /Now!/" She takes a handful of steps back, toward the dying dupe, the sight of which makes her visibly shudder.
Madrox staggers onto one knee once he makes his goal. Here is the light. Here is Monet. Here is every-- As Monet begins her shriek, he forces himself standing and clasps his hands so tight around the remaining dart that they white-knuckle. The needle is /out/, not toward him. Which is good. The dupe makes his last attempt at a gasp and for just a second, Madrox is able to force his head clear. He dives to his knees and thrusts the needle into Ellen's neck.
With a last hiss, Ellen collapses to the sidewalk and falls unconscious. It is not pretty. There may be drool.
When Jamie jabs the needle into Ellen, Monet has to put a quantifiable effort into restraining herself. She was drawing back to kick the woman, in case the tranquilizers didn't do their job. Instead, she quickly yanks out her cell phone and offers it to Jamie. "Police. Fast. I'm too wound up to dial," she says, her tone clipped and tense.
The dying process is finished, and Jamie stays crouched beside Ellen, death-white and shocky. He does take the phone, his hands still trembling, and dials with slow, uncertain jabs of his finger.
Slow uncertain jabs are far superior to ones that would shatter the plastic of the cellular phone. Monet stands over Ellen, every muscle in her body tense as she watches the unmoving woman. Her attention snaps to Jamie at a sudden thought, "What the hell do you do with the dupe?" she blurts.
Madrox has jabbed and without word or explanation, shoves the phone back toward Monet and goes crawling toward the dead body. Without, assuredly, /thinking/, he puts his hand on its chest. Then he turns his head aside and just kind of throws up.
Taking the phone back, Monet speaks into the phone. "Yes. My boyfriend and I have had a confrontation with Ellen Dramstadt. Yes, the mutant one. She is incapacitated. Yes, really. We need police and..." She looks with concern toward Jamie. "An ambulance. I have no idea how long she will be out. Hurry." She rattles off their location before hanging up the phone. "We need to restrain her, James. Give me your shirt or something," Monet insists. Only after that does a look of concern show up.
"I can't absorb him." He talks! Jamie rubs the underside of his trench sleeve against his mouth and spits. Once. "Just another dead body. /Shit/--" he shrugs off his coat and nudges it toward Monet. And throws up again. This one's just a short puke, however. Efficient. "Are you /okay/?" he mumbles. "She didn't touch you?"
"Her face touched my fist," Monet says, frowning and looking down at her knuckles. She picks up Jamie's jacket and looks down at Ellen. "I /feel/ okay," she says. "I suppose I could be dying very slowly..." Shaking her head Monet starts using the caot to tie Ellen's arms behind her back, doing as little touching as she can.
"You should get checked out," Jamie says, and pulls himself away from the corpse-that-is-himself. He wipes his mouth again, this time with his knuckles. "Just in case." And he pulls himself back by Monet, pushing as close, really, as is comfortably possible. "I don't think we can hide m- the body."
Done shoving Ellen's limp form around, Monet turns and does something uncharacteristic. She grabs onto Jamie and hugs him tightly. The force of her hug is jarring, but she holds back enough that it isn't likely to actually be painful. Police sirens can already be heard approaching.
Madrox does not even stiffen at being roughly handled. He grabs Monet back. His arms are limp, his body still-shivery, but he holds with all the tenacity he has left. "I'm sorry I dragged you into this," is so subdued as to be whispered.
She clings onto Jamie tightly, quiet in her sudden desperation to have him close to her. Monet's fingers even dig against his back a little. She doesn't address his apology, but instead takes a deep breath in as the sound of police vehicles approaching becomes loud enough that their arrival is immininent.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he repeats, downright tearful now, but his repetitions fade as the police close in. He's just quiet then.
Caught.