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Central Park has undergone massive restructuring and rebuilding over the last month. It's taken hundreds of man-hours of work to bring it back into a state of civilization once again. The building that had collapsed on its edge has been removed. The grass has been relaid. Many trees have been replanted. Solid has been returned. The rebuilding of the paths, lights, and seating have all contributed to the new ambiance of the Park.
The early evening hour means that it hasn't quite cleared out despite the set sun and darkness that has come over New York City. The crisp late-fall air chills, seen through visible puffs of breath, and impending frost to spread across all surfaces before tomorrow's light.
The sounds of the evening in New York spill from the blocks around, but the Park itself finds strange stillness, even with the single busker on a bench strumming hard on a guitar just to keep his fingers cold, and a fetching couple layered in wool on Park benches with fingers curled around coffees.
*
ROLL: Maximus +rolls 1d20 for a result of: 17
*
Hope went to Westchester. And it's a lovely place, but her father wasn't there. At least there were people there, and they were willing to let her know when he showed up - or that's what they said - but it didn't mean she was entirely comfortable with leaving things in the hands of other people. So once that was done, she came back to the city. The timeslide had dropped her here in Central Park. Maybe that's where he'd show up too. She's wearing a mid-calf skirt in plaid wool with a warm sweater, but the way she walks, kicking at the hem, she doesn't look quite like the typical girl the clothes suggest.
*
For her part, the Queen of Wakanda has been doing what little she can to support the reconstruction efforts. It hasn't been so much, but she did make a sizable donation - fifteen thousand dollars - to the charitable fund established to support all of these efforts. And she also donated a pair of trees to the gardens transplanted from Wakanda, along with a bevvy of flowers earmarked for one of the beds near the playground. She has also actually volunteered her time, once or twice during this month, to actually help lay sod, dig out flower beds, plant flowers, or whatever else volunteers were being allowed to do. Not that she told anyone there that the buff black woman helping them was actually a Queen of a foreign nation. None of their business. But she cares, and she has helped.
This evening, T'Challa is just walking one of the reconstructed paths, appreciating the results of all of that hard work. It is not done, of course, and she knows that. But serious progress has been made in a relatively short period of time. And it is spaces like this that are vital to the health of this society, which already faces so many challenges. Mere darkness, however, has not compelled her to depart her tour.
*
Admittedly the beauties of Central Park diminish for someone familiar with its destroyed state, haunting the woodland copses and patrolling the bridges and footpaths in search of something forbidden. Hands deep in the pockets of her claret leather coat, an enigma walks lightly on the dead grass to muffle her footfalls and occasionally kicks at the leaf litter gathered around the bases of those fortunate oaks and elms which survived the onslaught scant weeks ago. Wanda Maximoff hardly stands out. She wears a scarf around her neck that floats behind her, the lone concession needed for the chill of the day. Her path carries her where it will, indirect, paused at almost every wounded tree and limp bush to murmur some encouragement, to offer some touch. It lies within her to stir what resources she can on behalf of those natural sentries, tapped lightly into a leyline outside the park to give a little energy trickling through. To anyone normal, she's just checking out the woods.
*
Lately, everything seems to go down around Central Park, and while most of what Josh does with his days is planning on making things 'go down' for The Cause, he still knows how to smell trouble. The young man is dressed up in a thick yellow hoodie with a scarf around his face, plus gloves, the better to hide most of his currently golden skin. Despite being bundled into obscurity, he walks with a certain air of confidence about him.
*
Know what royalty hasn't donated a thing to the restoration of this human park? THIS GUY! Maximus had a little fun earlier this morning, and its brightened him up considerably. Nothing like mingling with a bunch of peasants and smelly mutants to drag a guy down, so…a nice walk in the park is just what he needs. He's wearing a nice, classy black suit, and he has a metal tube in his hand about 8 inches long. It could easily look like an umbrella or a mailer, at any distance but close. Behind the dark-haired and confident man are two other gentlemen, dressed in tan suits. One is Blond and one is Brunette. He walks along like he owns the place. AND. He recognizes the yellow hoodie from a distance. "No…could it? Ohhhhh…" he clucks his tongue. "Tra. la. la. This evening is shaping up." Talking to no one.
*
The vibrations in the air shift — a subtle change for anyone unaware, and easy enough to ignore for anyone just going about their business. However, anyone particularly attuned to ripples in time and space may trip on the edge of the interruption. The blip in the space time continuum acts as a strange pronouncement, pushing anyone susceptible without warning.
And the prod varies. For some it may create a dizzying response, complete with a level of nausea. For others? It may present emotionally or physically…
*
Hope staggers half a step at that shift in reality. Ugh. UGH. She knows that sensation. The one that makes her want to puke. She's just never felt it when she wasn't timesliding. She drops a hand to her knee, grimacing and pressing the other to her stomach as she looks cautiously around herself. She knows two people who can do that. One would be a relief. The other would be very bad news. Straightening up, she starts to move more quickly, seeking out a spot where she can make a stand or take cover if she needs to.
*
Herb-sharpened senses pick up something ill-defined and mysterious, and the vibrantly healthy body connected to those senses tenses as nausea rolls through and is restrained. The nearly bald black woman stops in her progress and eyes too sharp to be hindered by darkness peer about as she circles, sweeping, trying to hone in on whatever or whomever could be the source of that feeling of … wrongness. Hands push into the pockets of the light jacket she is wearing, as T'Challa pulls on her gloves. Since signing up with Act-F, she has started wearing her Panther uniform under her clothes whenever possible. It seems that may have been a wise thing tonight.
*
Time cuts oddly around Wanda, so very much in the present, lavishing a measure of care upon a tree with a slice wounded through its bark. Her palms caresses that cut left by some great claw or horn or metal edge, energizing a sleepy oak to pull a few more nutrients out of the soil to fill in the sap-sticky gap. The same tree is likely to support her when the wave of distortion rolls over her, and she practically falls upon the bark when her knees buckle. Eyes glittering unnatural ruby narrowed, her expression a wince, and she rests in place long enough for the unpleasant sensation to pass in a champagne bubble fizz that rests none too well with her. With cover already in place, she forces herself to look about for any signs of turbulence, as it were, though her senses shift almost violently into the mystic spectrum. Dimensional hopping and demonic activity almost never goes without a trace. For everyone else, look! Pretty girl is a treehugger.
*
What is this? Josh isn't especially attuned to space or time, but he is deeply attuned to his own body, down to the balance of vitamins and expression of genes. And something is making him nauseous, but there's absolutely no reason for that: he hesitates, stumbling a moment, which sends his hoodie back, revealing golden skin. It doesn't take much to counteract the nausea, except its back a moment later. There's some environmental cause? Yet he can't detect anything? Weird… For the moment, Josh is so focused on the internal biology that he doesn't notice anyone else. The hell is going on?
*
Crazy as he is, sometimes, even Max doesn't mess with time. That might accidentally make him a genetically engineered cow. Or one little bit of time drift…and he doesn't exist at all. So, the weirdness is entirely unfamiliar. He puts his hands out to the sides to steady himself and immediately those guards drift forwards to help him, though they don't look so great themselves. He is aware of what Josh can do, so seeing /him/ also appearing affected causes distress to flow off him, and his senses to sharpen their awareness. "Always when I say its going to be a nice night…/always/."
*
A brilliant swirl of light, spinning in an array of orange, yellow, and red, sweeps across a grassy knoll next to the first daters drinking a cup of coffee. Simultaneously, the guitarist stops strumming to stare at the light. The pair jump behind the bench to take cover — to the sound of the young man muttering, "This place is cursed! A veritable death trap!"
The swirls speed up and tighten, forming smaller and smaller concentric circles until something begins to form amid the light. The reflection of green and magenta hue through the swirls of light.
But it's not the light swirls that subside or the green and magenta that step through. An army of small nanobots — like a large horde of bees — begins to sweep the area around the still swirling light.
The army, however, seems to chew anything in their path, including the bench separating them from the first-daters hiding behind it.
*
"Shit." Hope has seen some weird and unpleasant things from the future. These things are clearly weird and unpleasant things from the future. And here she is without anything that even almost counts as a weapon and…Reaching her senses out for that tingle that tells her there might be something useful in someone else…No. Not that registers as such, at least.
If her father were here, he'd tell her to run. To get to safety. But he's not, and she's not a child anymore. So instead, she makes a dash for the garden and an abandoned hoe. That should do for a weapon.
*
Spotting the events transpiring over near the bench, the swirling energy vortex of light, T'Challa shrugs off her jacket and pulls up her mask as she charges, flat out, towards the bench and the civilians. "Run!' she shouts. She can't know that those are nanobots; nanobots wouldn't be visible, unless it was multiple self-clinging colonies of them, as by definition they'd be too small to see with the naked eye. but whatever they are, they are potentially dangerous, and sawing through the bench proves it. So she is trying to reach them, hoping she can scoop up someone and get them clear, or cover them with her vibranium-mesh suited body. Which she has no way of knowing if that would be at all successful."
*
LSD is hardly widely available and surely was not the dressing on her salad. Wanda's faintly glowing eyes follow every psychedelic swirl through different wavelengths and pinpoint the diminishing source, her pale gold expression hardening as she draws her conclusion. Under her coat is a knife — or several, in fact. It never pays to come unprepared to Central Park, focus for so much suffering and despair at the heart of New York. Pulling that blade from its sheath, she flips the handle such the cutting edge points outwards, shielded against her leather sleeve. What use is a blade in a nanobot party? Plenty, when one can start siphoning energy from the leyline into a possible telekinetic shield or impulse for later use. It takes her time as she soaks the power into a very specific wavelength, still half-hidden behind the tree. Maybe there are big heroes and little heroes in the world; she's not pretending to be either, staring at everyone who hasn't run away with vague interest, but that whirlwind lightshow most of all.
*
Josh notices Maximus over there, and blinks, lifting a hand up to offer a wave and a quick grin, but then… Curse? Death trap? What the hell is a nanobot? He has no idea, but something terrible is clearly about to happen. Elixir, activate! A radiant gold light flows out about him as his power is brought to bear. To say he stands out is an understatement. But he's betting on a bunch of death-bees might just need some healing before the night is done, so he begins healing himself and switching off pain receptors.
*
If there's one thing Max is good at, its giving clear orders to people he thinks are beneath him. He sweeps his gaze across the greens, noticing that very attractive bald lady just…leaping…mmmm. Wonderful. And that other lady has a knife. Another with a hoe? Brutal. he approves. Brilliantly glowing Elixer? Awesome. Oh, useless, disoriented, human jogger with bits of barf on his mouth? Exactly what he needs. Sharp blue eyes turn on the man and he says, in words that cannot be denied, "Run to the precinct and tell them Central Park is under attack." The metal tube is fondled in his hand in an uncomfortable-looking manner. His guards try to tug him away, "No no…I want to /see/." he answers.
*
The nanobots buzz angrily like the drones that they are, but unlike most technology seen in 1963, they fly in an almost unpredictable way. While machines in the 60s have very purposed ways of operating, these particular creatures act more at will than programming. Patternless, yet communicative, the bug-bots chew through the Park bench, narrowly missing the the young woman hiding behind the bench thanks to T'Challa's efforts. The young man, however, can't seem to get back to his feet, stumbling backwards every few paces to try to put space between him and the robotic beasts.
As the swirling energy array continues to move, the number of nanobots grows in number and scope. Each tendril of orange, yellow, and red seems to become encased in the army that calls for destruction, eating at the world, and spreading like fire ants across the Park's space.
Something in the bugs' programming, however, causes some to cease. Something catches another tendrils' attention. Something reads red. Something must be stopped…. or rather someone.
One grouping actively pursues Hope, flowing towards them as a reminder of incidents that Hope had experienced in another lifetime… or at least another time.
*
Hope dives for the hoe, grabbing it just in time to roll over and face the swarm of incoming bugs. This is all too familiar. Something coming through a portal, through time, and trying to kill her. It's been her entire life. "You." She swipes at one group. "Can go." Turning the hoe, she slams the wide part down over a batch of bots, crushing them into the ground. "To hell!" And so can these skirts, why do people wear these?!
*
T'Challa certainly tries not to wear skirts if she has any choice in the matter. Thankfully, no skirt in her Black Panther costume. She covers the woman with her own body to shield her from the bots, whatever they are, and pushes at her. "Run. Get away." she instructs as forcefully as she can. Assuming the woman does so, T'Challa will try to leap up and grab the stumbling figure of her would-be date and get him clear as well. But she could well fail, and she has no way of knowing if her vibranium-weave suit can slow or stop the threat of these things. Let alone any idea how to battle them.
*
Bots flying through the air as a collective of insects at least behaves in a familiar enough fashion for Wanda's mercurial mind to rapidly calculate their trajectory and speed. Her oaken cover makes for an excellent barrier against mundane dangers and weapons. Bench-munching insectoids do not constitute 'mundane dangers' by any definition in the New Salem or Oxford Coven Dictionaries. The groundswell of power captured in her aura leaves a decided pomegranate cast over her pupils, and it manifests upon the curve of her palm in a distortion. A fling of her arm directs that wave forward to Hope, moving at a speed too quick to idly observe. The package unblossoms as it passes over the time-displaced mutant's shoulder, exploding outwards into a shimmering hemisphere directly ahead of her that might surely deflect the swarm by forcing them to go up, down, around, and backwards. Dear bad news bugs, no one appreciates you attacking the girl in the short skirt just because you feel naughty.
*
Rushing over towards Hope, the golden boy just stays there being all radiantly goldly in the general direction. That way if someone goes down, he can rush over and heal them. He doesn't think the death-bees are alive so he has no effective means of killing them, but damn it all is he going to try to thwart their ability to eat anyone. Is he powerful enough to heal through the swarm attacking? Who knows. Since Hope seems to be a direct danger, he moves to close in near her.
*
"I may need you!" Maximus calls towards Elixer as he moves /towards/ the glow. The bugs seem to have their…little buggy hands full with the others, and he's pretty non-threatening guy in a suit, so that's his move, to get in closer to the portal. And that's when it appears that he just…yells at it? "CLOSE THIS PORTAL!" When in reality he's trying to affect the mind on the other end with a simple command. Advanced mode unlocked. Mind battle commence!
*
The telekinetic burst sent towards the bugs acts as a shield around the mutant girl, giving her some semblance of protection from the onslaught that doesn't easily give up. The bots aren't average machines, they exude some measure of intelligence as they frantically try to move beyond the shield, yet they fail to do so — the solidity of the protection means they can't breach the space.
Nanobots begin to chomp at the young man's flesh before T'Challa can get in front of him to clear him away. Batting away the horde, even as she moves the man, is relatively fruitless. They begin to consume the man, starting at his extremities and moving inwards.
The guitar player seems in rapture of the bots. He continues to stare at the growing horde while he should be running.
Maximus's command gets a strange recoil — an odd kind of feedback — like someone shields themselves from his influence. The command ricochets back, like a psychic echo into Maximus's mind. No, the person at the centre of the field is not a psychic, yet something seems to protect its mind from too much influence. The nanobots, however, respond in kind, with a small collection flying straight towards Maximus.
*
"Josh?" Hope swings the hoe at the bots without breaking stride when the golden mutant appears, surprised. "Hi. Sorry, I'm pretty sure this is someone trying to kill me, so you should probably get out of here," she calls back to him, winding up for another swing when that strange energy stops the attack, pushing it back. Tentatively, she reaches her senses out toward it, just trying to get a taste. When she does, though, she recoils with a step back. Definitely not something easily controlled.
*
"No!" T'Challa cries, furious as she watches the bots assault and massacre the young man. She tries to beat them away, she tries to cover him with her body. But they move around her, and continue to devour the man she is trying to save, and she is covered in his blood and gore. She tries swatting at them with vibranium-infused claws and vibranium-mesh-covered hands, cutting or crushing however she can. If nothing else, perhaps that will leave parts to be examined later to track down and punish the vile murderous bastard or bastards behind this atrocity. Or so she can hope.
*
The roll of magic through Wanda's being holds an amaranthine edge, fully saturated scarlet through its core, and a faint taste of that dyes the edges of her spell. It diffuses with a needled explosion backwards, spikes of force adding insult at completely unpredictable angles and directions that will hopefully confound the insectoid bots enough they have to figure out new flight paths. With any luck they will hit one another or go ricocheting off into the trees, the upper atmosphere, the pond, the portal. On the defensive like the rest of them, the witch ducks behind another of the trees in a fairly low crouch, reaching for power from the leyline to fuel her spell again. All that experience calling up shields under duress while tutored by the Sorcerer Supreme has a few advantages besides burnout and exhaustion. "Fall together! Defense is easier with you not standing all over," she calls out to them, praying that her accented English translates well enough through the excitement. Words slip from her in a language far away from anything Teutonic, the syllables repeated upon themselves. Anyone who can see beyond the visible spectrum in the mystic might perceive the rings of incarnadine light bleeding around her wrists, engulfing them as the mystic petals start to open as the incantation reaches its peak. Otherwise, she's murmuring in terror and scared to death, right?
*
"No one dies if—" Then Maximus is calling for his aide, and Josh looks back to the man for a moment, and then over at the Black Panther. Well, the bugs really ARE eating that guy, so — "No one dies, not you, Hope, not no one. Not if I have anything to say about it, and you know what? I am Elixir. I do!" And he's jogging over towards the man, flinging himself out and reaching a hand out to grab his … half-eaten leg? So gross. The golden light flows over the man and Elixir clenches his eyes, focusing: first he turns the man's pain receptors off, then he pours all the biokinetic energy he can into regenerating tissue. But he keeps an eye over on Maximus, just in case he ends up needing help too.
*
Ohhh, Maximus is probably going to need that help. But, he has heard Wanda's accented voice and he is all about getting protection. He starts running towards her, pointing at the guitar player and yelling at him, "Run, fool, 5 miles north!" Of course the command will wear off long before that. And if not, he'll have met his exercise for a few days.
*
Max's guards will follow him, but they will also give themselves up if the bots close in on their King.
*
Wanda's shields work effectively, putting a barrier between the creatures and causing some confusion and off-filtered flight patterns. While collectively, the technology works like a drone, when any are thrown off-course, it has ugly results for the rest, causing them to tumble, crash, and, at times, explode amid a bright light of blue-energy. Whatever powered the technology has its own force — a strange irregularity that, perhaps, is not of this earth.
The man screams in terror, like an extra in a b-grade horror film. The pain, however, subsides as Josh causes him to numb. The biokinetic energy warms the flesh, and to the touch, it's clear his tissues are at work, engaging in a level of regeneration typically considered impossible. Slowly the lowest tissues begin to form. The cells multiple, feeding each other through ridiculously fast duplicative mitosis.
The nanobots, however, remain in hot pursuit. They seem particularly adept at assaulting both Hope (who a new horde aims to get) and the young man who is currently regrowing a leg.
The guitar player stares at Maximus a beat, but the words and command have him dropping the guitar (he'll regret that later) and breaks into a sprint to run five miles north.
*
ROLL: Hope +rolls 1d100 for a result of: 83
*
That portal is a problem. And if Hope's father was on the other side, he would have come through by now. Wouldn't he? Hope looks around at the chaos, at the young man that Josh is trying to heal, then back to the portal. "Nobody else is dying for me," she declares, bracing herself as she decides to take the risk.
She's not entirely sure what it is that Wanda's power does, but she can feel it. That means she can use it. Opening herself to the power, she absorbs what she can until that odd crimson energy sparks around her hands.
And that's when she makes her move - toward the portal. "No more running!" she shouts, waiting until she's close to set off a burst of that strange energy.
Red light meets blue, technology meets eldritch mutant power, and Hope herself is flung back as the resulting energy rebounds. The time sphere implodes, shrinking into an echo that seems to be in two places at once - with the bugs caught between.
*
Desperate and without a better plan, Black Panther simply continues to try to shield, protect and defend the young man being devoured by the killer bots. She notices the touch of the healer, but does not realize what he's doing. Yet the bots do not seem to be going after him, so she takes a terrible risk, and continues defending the man already being torn apart, and leaves the healer to face his unknown fate. He charged into this danger, so he knew what he was getting into, or so she hopes. There's not a lot of hope to be had, really.
*
The brunette rises from her crouch, and the spell comes alight in the visible spectrum for a heartbeat. Triple bands rotate around her wrists, merging together when her palms meet into one sinuous yantra. Sixteen rays mark the petal points in luminous scarlet detail. "Zid vetrovima." Wanda's eyes are as brilliant as the stolen mutation storming into the time bubble, but this is something different, mystic rather than genetic manifestation. A barrier drops like treacled honey around the knot of Josh and his fallen victim, the Black Panther, Maximus, herself. She moves in closer at a controlled pace, daring go as fast as she deems safe, until the shield encloses her.
*
It's one thing to heal someone: Elixir is a healer of singular talent. But even he has his limits, and fighting against the bots as they try to devour the man is… straining, to say the least. Dizziness strikes him suddenly as a wave of weakness washes over him, but he grits his teeth and concentrates. The man doesn't at all need to remember this, so with a thought he sends him into a coma, but doing that allows the bots to get an edge briefly, and it makes the struggle against them all the harder. But then Wanda and a dome brings relief, and he almost visibly sags, but he keeps his golden hand on the fallen man, the almost liquid seeming golden light flowing continually over him.
*
Maximus moves with Wanda most certainly. Wherever she goes, he and his guards move also. He turns to look at Elixer, finding it difficult to gain ground with the human there. And the black panther, trying to defend the tormented body. Blue eyes shift back and forth, between the two powerful forces, his mind working for a solution, not really out of care, but out of challenge. "Roll with him? Like…crushing ants on a log." It does genuinely seem to be optional.
*
With the portal closed, and the figure missing from its centre, the bugs are no longer multiplying in number. Wanda protects the group from the oncoming onslaught, yet the longer the portal remains closed, the less it seems such protection is necessary. One by one the bots begin to collapse to the ground, losing touch with whoever, or whatever, seemed to send them into the Park. Yet as they fall, that same blue energy causes them to pop and explode as if under some kind of auto-destruct.
*
Hope pushes up onto her elbows, giving the echo of the portal a dazed and suspicious look. "That's…Huh." She twists, turning onto her side to look back at the others. "Kind of surprised that worked." Which is why she's quick to start getting up for real, stumbling a step on the hem of her skirt and brushing herself off as she moves away from what's left of the portal. "Does anyone have a really big…actual explosive?" she asks. "'Cause unless that got whatever opened it, the portal's usually kind of still there."
*
"No explosives … here." Black Panther offers, as she climbs to her feet, still covered in the blood of the man Elixir is busy repairing. She expected him to be dead. Frankly, she expected to lose them both. That she didn't is a miracle about which she had no part. She's going to have to think about that, and decide how to be better prepared for such threats in the future. Not that she has any idea right now what that preparation could be.
*
The barrier floods around the knot of them, sustained by a fair bit of Wanda's concentration and the assist from the leyline she tapped. She gauges whether any of those insects feels like coming their way, and when it grows clear they are not at risk of immediate nanobot reaction, her heavy-lidded eyes flit towards Hope. "Dynamite, warhead, what is this kind of explosive you need?" Strobes of garnet light still flicker around her fingers, tiny thunderstorms in the making, but she closes them in, still not trusting that portal and leaving the healer or the healing man defenseless. Rule one in conflict: the medic gets protection.
*
Always keeping a hand upon the fallen man, Josh crawls up alongside him, and reaches out to rest one hand on his chest, and one on his head. Concentrating, the golden light flows down his hands and through the man: its remarkably how fast the healing is, but there's so, so much damage: still, now that he doesn't have to fight with the devouring bots, progress is rapid. His voice pained, "I've wiped his short term memory, he won't remember… any of… this. No need to scar him for life." He breathes heavily. Finally, he settles back on his ass when the healing is done, the golden light fading into golden skin. He sways a bit, and his eyes roll back into his head and he collapses into unconsciousness.
*
Maximus arches his brows when Josh collapses onto the group. He glances to his guards and they bend down beside the man. "I can move him…before the police show up. I have a suite nearby. He can rest until he's conscious again." And he is SO TOTALLY gonna try to play it cool and kidnap the healer. "There was a mind…behind the portal…I caught a glimpse." He feigns a serious expression. "It could have been Odin." Oh, and also blame Asgard.
*
Hope blinks at Wanda's question, catching up to the group and checking over her shoulder. "Uh…can you do Semtex?" Does this woman look like the sort of person who knows what Semtex looks like? Is Semtex even a thing yet? (Not under that name.) "Er. Sorry. Warhead is probably overkill, but something with a little more boom than dynamite would be good. The thing is, there's got to be some sort of device holding that open, and either the thing earlier damaged it, to it just sort of paused it, and if we don't want it to open back up again, then we need to make sure it's destroyed. So. Big boom."
Her brows furrow as she looks at Maximus. "Preeeetty sure the Norse gods don't do time slides. But, you know. Things happen." And then it's back to Wanda, hopeful. "Explosives?" As if all of this is entirely normal.
*
"I have what may be a better suggestion." the masked figure of Black Panther offers, standing pretty much right over Josh's unconscious form. It will be the first time she has said enough tonight to make that rather odd accent of hers aparent. "If we worry about the police, I have diplomatic immunity. I can take him to my Embassy, where he can be cared for, fed, and his clothing replaced, until he is able to make his own decisions regarding his fate and his interactions with law enforcement." She does not seem in favor of allowing Maximus and his goons to steal away the golden boy.
"If we need explosives, I can summon some here. It will be several minutes before they arrive." Panther offers. Yeah. Draw your own conclusions about how scary that is. Hope she's on the side of the angels.
*
The shield slips away with a banishing gesture, Wanda's fingers dropped from their played position to a more comfortable, natural position. Working her knuckles to pop the tension out from them, she stares at the rift in a different spectrum. Hope could easily mistake her for not paying attention. Calculations whirl; this is a girl who can both give the relative landspeed of a European swallow and its general encumbrance with a coconut relative to headwinds over Tunisia, if she has the numbers available. Languishing in the middle of things, her head is given something of a shake. "Will he be good? This injured man," she clarifies for Elixir's sake, as if it weren't obvious. The heavy Slavic cast of her accent bleeds up through her words, and she pulls her hair back from behind her garnet-studded headband.
"Yes, I can fix this hole. No explosives. No distraction if you can help me there." The request is made simply even as she feels about her pockets, coming up with a package of pink Himalayan salt, of all things. Unfolding the top, she pours a generous handful. Nothing like purified salt for a banishment, and it will be from there she starts that last draining spell. This is what her paygrade is now.
*
Maximus seems insulted. His brows furrow. "I /know/ him." And he stands there, looking at the woman in the suit looming over the golden mutant. "You are acting a little strange. Who mentions playing dress-up with a total stranger-guest? You would claim diplomatic immunity rather than see him on the couch of a normal hotel?" He makes a wince-face.
*
Josh is totally out. He's breathing steadily but if anyone were to try to wake him, he wouldn't wake.
*
Hope moves over to Wanda, watching what she's doing. Some things, she can sense. She knows she picked something up from the woman in the first place. But those…fields? What looked like TK? Nothing. Which means she's definitely interesting. "Okay," she says slowly, glancing back to the others to check on Josh. "What do you need me to do?"
*
"Can your 'normal hotel' assure him of diplomatic immunity and safety from the attentions of law enforcement?" Black Panther inquires, apparently unmoved by Maximus' aspersions upon her words or intentions.
*
"I am going to make the hole go away. It is not fast to do it right. If they fight, make sure they do not fight over here?" Wanda's practicality and her somewhat limited English help in this case get right to the point. She looks more than somewhat distracted, tuned into another wavelength of reality. No smile lightens the mood, but her glittering eyes are turned away rather than reveal the sheen of ruby dust suspended in honey-brown irises. "Thank you. You did well, yes?"
Sewing up the hole in the fabric of reality takes time. Wanda leaves the little group to sort out which unconscious person goes where, and she orhcestrates the invisible without a baton to make her actions seem like something other than an exotic dance. She pinches her thumb to her index finger and draws up strands of the invisible energy to thread and knot. No different than lacing up her corset, not really, except those fine tugs and knots require unshaken concentration. Her wrists cross and straighten as time goes on, pushing back on the rent in reality. After this, she's bound to eat an entire box of satsuma oranges and sleep for four hours.
*
The King of Attilan bursts into laughter. But he doesn't explain why. Or why the golden man would be safe. Just laughs, and then abruptly stops. His face drops into seriousness. "Fine." His chin juts forwards, "Keep him. Play Mommy Cat. Just do not do anything /strange/ to him, or I. will. know." He casts his eyes towards Wanda, working her magic on the fabric of reality, then he turns to go before he has to answer any questions, himself, to the police.
*
ROLL: Maximus +rolls 1d20 for a result of: 5