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It starts with a burst of green light, searing bright, somewhere between Brooklyn's outer edge and the greater sprawl of Long Island. A sharp, blinding brilliance that vanishes. It's visible for miles around if someone knows to look up. If someone is smarter and can track its vicinity, it lands off from JFK Airport, along the outer shore islands hiding around Jamaica Bay.
In the little enclave of Howard Beach, people at the Cross Bay Diner stare over the muddy sea inlet. Someone has the presence of mind to call the one cop in town, who laughs about weather balloons.
*
The first thing that Ben Reilly did when he left SHIELD (and by left I mean escaped) was decide that his name would be for sure Ben Reilly. Taken after his uncle, of course, and his aunt's maiden name, of course. The second thing he did was con some super into giving him the worst flat in Manhattan. He doesn't have a job. Or an ID. Or anything, really. Panhandling, then a visit to the salvation army, gave him enough money to buy some red sweat pants, two sweat shirts (one for mask making), and a blue hoodie. A black marker was used to scrawl the outline of a spider of some sort. From there a very, very rudimentary webshooter has been made, but only one. He really needs to put his application in at some places. But I digress. He sees that bright light. He was hanging out in Queens, trying to see Aunt May. Not to meet with her, heavens no. That'd probably give the lady a heart attack and would probably end up giving his existence up to Peter Parker. All he wants to do is see her. Know she's okay. It's probably ultra creepy.
So it's a good thing he sees that light.
*
It seems like a normal affair. A call from her cousin who lives in the Howard Beach area, tearful and choked, brought her to the area. At first, upon exiting the taxi she took and meeting her cousin at the door, Rosemarie had thought it was about a newly-annointed status of 'ex'-girlfriend. Nope — a lost cat, the one she knows as Tabitha. Her cousin had been searching for hours and, with no sign of hide or hair of the heavily-striped tabby, it meant the phone call filled with weeping and lamentation.
After a hug and a promise, the librarian had set out on her own to find said cat. Where would Lola go? thinks she as she wanders. At least the weather is nice.
The sudden flash and impact is enough to bring her hands up around her ears, curling up a shoulder in surprise, and Rosemarie blinks. What on earth had that been?! Tentative curiosity leads her through a fence, seawind-worn and missing a few critical slats, to where she estimates the green light disappeared to.
Stepping around the corner of a sea shack leads her to freeze up and utter a crackling squeak before covering her hand with her mouth. She had NOT been expecting THAT!!!/
*
Know who has the BEST penthouse suite in the city, within reason of finding someone that no one would fuss about going on an extended vacation, of course? THIS GUY! And with it comes a limo…and a driver and its /fantastic/. Maximus is riding in style, sometimes controlling the driver to stop in intersections to annoy EVERYONE. Its a bit like pissing all over the city, just to mark it. He sees the flash of light and squints his eyes. Then he murmurs "Kree? I need to find out. Take me to the location of that strike!" And off he zooms!
*
Some handsome old trees line the parallel grid lined by detached Cape Cods and High-Ranch style homes in Howard Beach. This is a sleepy place, firmly middle class, aspiring to greatness one day. Red brick and good old trees sag inwards around a large hole punched where an intersection between residential 163rd Avenue dead-ends at the flat seaside 95th Street. A skinny artificial inlet is only a few yards away. An old Dodge hovers on the edge of the cracked pavement that slopes precipitously down into a hole at least fifteen feet deep. Bumps and edges go dropping down into the dark, where the soil wells up with oily seawater. Its branches tilted drunkenly, a tree dislodged by the disturbance threatens to fall right in too.
The hedges in front of a house are completely blown off their severed stems, a few floating in the water. A bit of mail flames from a broken mailbox across the street.
An enormous Amur tiger makes unhappy grunting noises atop the teetering tree MUCH too small to support the fact it has an oversized apex predator in it. Huge claws gouge wood. Its striped tail twitches. Murder is in those glittering eyes.
On the ground lies a tiny broken collar. Probably someone's dinner.
*
At the sound of a few good *thwips* the Scarlet Spider(tm) (that's what he's calling himself these days) is pulling around the bend on a web, swinging in a wide arc via a lampost. He's about to touch down in an epic superhero landing, but then he notices the giant tiger and flails just a bit as he fires another web and pulls himself away in haste. "There's a joke in here about the cat being let out of the bag, but I'm not going to make it!" He sticks to a lampost, feet and one hand anchoring him. "I hope someone had you de-clawed, bigguy."
*
The Amur tiger heaves a rasping snarl of rage. Not a friendly creeting, to be sure.
*
Rosemarie cannot make herself any smaller in the moment; attempting to draw up taller in the process makes for some very awkward backward steps. Her heartbeat is doing a spastic polka in her ears. Somehow, she hears someone speaking and risks a glance over. Wait, what? Now, up — OH! Another 'eeep!' escapes her as she looks at the young man standing — no, holding onto the lampost — but how?!
"Don't talk at it! You'll make it attack!!!" she manages to whisper as loudly as possible, shards of high-pitched fear sneaking through.
Okay, no, she can rationalize all of this, she can. The tiger, it got loose from somewhere, clearly. The kid on the pole…yeah, there's no logical answer for that except hallucinogens and she isn't the sort to play in that swimming pool.
The Otherness has an answer! Feathers! And….GO.
The back of the blouse rips out as her wings extend from the pockets beneath skin; plumage behind ears and along outside of forearms erupts in reflective sapphire-blue and those wide eyes are raptor-gold, not cinnamon-brown. An errant bit of blue down lifts into the air and drifts off towards the predator lingering on the teetering tree.
Oh dear.
*
And a limo is rollin' on down through this tiger-infested hood. Maximus rolls down the window and then looks up at the tree with a squint of his eyes. "Hmmm…that is not Kree. Ah…lady and…person with webs…is that what came from the…driver, pull closer to the hole." The limo rolls on closer to the crash site, until it can go no further, to see if the whole place is riddled with tigers.
*
"Ugh," cries a sore, weary voice. The moaning little noise emanates from down in the middle of the pit, a watery place enveloped in a tarmac cavern. Something is in there, something vocalizing its woozy lamentations. Dirt skitters across the crater punched by a vengeful fist into the earth.
The cat in the tree balances as best it can, but its great weight sends it teetering. The frantic tail swishing helps maintain balance, but not the creaky groan of wood. It's not a fan of the car, and the cat scrambles backwards as the tree starts to fall…
*
"Good kitty that's a good kitty!" Scarlet Spider exclaims as he tries to act quickly. There was that one time that he read that one story in that fables class back in high school where that little mouse pulled the thorn out of the lion's paw. And as he zips around and tries to web the tree into place so that the big cat doesn't fall and get angry and maybe even get hurt, he wonders about the similarities between gigantic effin tigers and the lions of fables.
*
What on earth is a limo doing here, of all places?! Rosemarie heard the moan and cranes her neck to see if there is indeed another living being in the crater.
A child!
She watches the webbing fly from the young man with a blatantly-open mouth. Clearly, this chick has not seen superheroing in action lately. Too much time stuck in the library.
"There's a kid in the hole, don't let it fall in!" A lancing of shrill avian tones carries through her shouting.
*
Maximus gets out of the car, and the driver just automatically backs up. Less afraid of aliens than the usual bear, Max looks over the edge of the crater, and unless he sees a significant danger, like /lava/, he's going in. "Girl! This way, this way…while the silk man is holding up the tree…" He reaches out his hand, glancing to the ship to see if he can ID it.
*
That's a lot of spiderwebbing to hold up a tree, but deranged tigers are willing to leap off the rapidly lowering tree into the safety of the solid ground. Claws click off the cement and it swings its head around, looking for any morsel to take out its anger on. "Mraaarrr." Grunting more than roaring, it might just be fairly bewildered.
The paw falls on the collar and tosses it away as it pads in a dangerous circle, sizing them up. Swinging men are interesting, and big bad cars owned by rich madmen equally obnoxious. In the end, it goes prowling eagerly after the big red Spider.
Said tossed collar reads Tabitha in a little red heart.
"Moooo-ugh. Llllt-eee!." A nauseous gurgle joins the scent of seawater filling the intersection, little by little. The ground shakes. A dirty hand feels around, connected to a dirty arm, the dirty arm to a dirty body on a slip-slide course from that teetering Dodge on one end. "Pass."
*
"EEP!" exclaims the little spider as the tiger begins to come his way. Operation Flee-Time is go-time, and the Scarlet Spider is a now-now-now kind of guy. TWHIP! Out goes a web that yanks him violently out of the way. An arm and a leg hang behind as he's yanked away, way too close to that thing. He ends up on the roof of the closest home, praying no one is inside if this gets ugly.
*
Someone is indeed home. A light comes on. A sleepy worker pushes open the sash of his window and stares out. "Punk!" Grumbles become a shout as the owner tries to see out. Up. Down. All he knows is the silhouettes illuminated by Max's limo lights. He definitely sounds foreign, more Scots than English. "What the frig are you kids doing on my fraggling lawn?" He shakes a fist. "And don't look at me when I'm talking to you! Get off my driveway you bunch of wankers!"
*
There's someone in charge! The man from the limo, he seems to have a plan. Rosemarie attempts to keep an eye on the tiger, now taking off with marked interest after the kid in the red costume, and edge her way over to the hole. Her wings flutter restlessly, disrupting air and anything loose in the near vicinity.
"Oh my god!" she breathes, covering her mouth again for a second before adjusting the shoulders of her blouse back into place in a pique of irritation. The bottom half of the shirt and the collar are the only things keeping it on her torso. The wings are always so hard on her clothing! Still, she calls out, "Are you okay?!" She has no idea how old the being is beneath all the mud or even whether or not it speaks English.
*
Maximus has a decent amount of strength and he tugs at the arm, quirking his head at what the girl wants. "Mmmm…yes…yes, multipass…whatever you want." Always best to just agree with confused, crashlanded aliens. He grips the side of the pit…and now he has to get back out. He looks upwards and his steel eyes fall on Rosemarie, "I require some assistance! Get a rope or a hose or…a teleportation cube!" His life experiences are not universal.
*
"Wha? Tabby, where's my tabby?" The croaky little voice most definitely doesn't belong to someone very big. The person can't be much older than fourteen with the voice wobble going on, threatening to crack to something lower. He splashes around and digs himself a little, holding up a soggy shirt sleeve. Well. It passes for a wave. "Who…?"
*
Reilly is prancing along the rooftop, trying to get out of the field of vision to whoever is yelling at him. One eye forward trying to make sure he doesn't fall. One eye on that darn tiger to figure out where in the world he is.
*
"Oh! Oh! A h-hose, right!" Turning on the ledge of the crater towards the house, she quickly scans the back of it until…there! It's a bit weather-worn, but the black rubber still holds true even when pitted by the salt carried by the wind. Darting over, she grabs the unwieldy bundle and unwinds it as she makes her way back towards the hole. It gets stuck on something at one point and those wings flap to aid in her tugging. Gnnnrrrrr—WHOOP!
She nearly goes into the hole herself and quickly rights herself with some scrambling; somehow, she manages to avoid plucking her own feathers.
"H-Here!" The end of the hose is tossed down towards Maximus and the mud-covered youngling who can speak English.
*
The tiger is busy prowling around after Reilly, having a much better sense of nightvision than the others, and besides that, it's a great big cat used to hunting very small or very agile prey. It may not have grass to lurk in. But what it has is size, and it leaps up onto the hood of the limousine, trying to get a better vantage for the rooftop.
And well, you know what's impressive? Webbing. And you know what's even more impressive?
A tiger bounding off the hood of the car to go after the prancy kid in a sweatshirt. The hngha-mrat! snorts it makes are clearly a vocalization of some sort.
*
"Oh man, when they said I wouldn't be worth kitty kibble, this is not what I thought they meant!" Ben throws a web out towards a telephone pole and leaps in a large wide arc, taking him back towards where the rest of the group is.
*
Maximus grabs the end of the hose and pulls himself up, holding the girl by the forearm as he helps her out of the hole. Of course, he's alert for that tiger though Reilly seems to be doing a fantastic job of keeping it distracted. "You have your pet up here trying to kill people. Can you make it stop?"
*
"Y-Yes, please, m-make it stop! It's going to eat him!!!"
She of little faith and much feathering is clearly rooting for the web-slinging young man, but she's can't bring herself to do much more than offer out a helping hand in case the mud-covered being stumbles on the way to firmer ground. Mind those talons that exist now instead of fingernails.
*
It's not a girl in the hole, but a young man probably 17. He looks younger when soaking wet and muddy, wearing a t-shirt and jeans. "Eat him? What…" He holds his hands out, clutching hold of Maximus and trying to drag himself up the crater wall. "That's Tabby, she's a cat! A really big cat."
His eyes trail after the feline bounding their way. It's not a mere cat. It's a damn big tiger. "Oh. Well. Um, kitty cat. She won't eat you, she just wants pets. PETS!"
*
"Pets! /PETS?!?!/" exclaims the spider, still on the move. He takes to the street now and is booking. Thank heavens for that spidery DNA that he's got coursing through his body. Spidey Speed ftw. "That's the problem with animals these days! They're entitled!"
*
Maximus helps the boy then, not girl! Not that he can super tell with all the mud. "Yes…well, its trying to eat, so…please…pet the thing." He settles at the edge of the hole after helping the kid out and runs a hand through his hair, slicking it down with mud, which causes a curse. That's when he finally notices the angry Scotsman. His eyes flash blue for a second and the guy goes back inside, silently.
*
Rosemarie is definitely attempting to fade back into her surroundings now that the muddy youngin' is out the crater — why attract more attention, especially with the tiger who apparently needs to be petted?! …she is not petting the tiger. Nooope. Nope. She will nope on out of here if elected Supreme Tiger Petter.
She's not helped by the Otherness and the plumage, however. At least the old angry guy goes away…for some reason. She thought she caught a weird glint of light in Maximus's eyes, but isn't sure given the puzzled expression on her face.
"Y-yes, go p-pet it," she says with half-hearted effort.
*
"It isn't trying to eat anyone," babbles the teen, waving at the yelling spider person. "Whoa, wait, you — uh, thanks? Bye!" He rakes his wet hand through his mucky hair and makes a face. The smell of seawater is pretty strong with this one. He edges away from the broken crater lip and waves his hand in the direction of the large feline.
Taking in a breath, he says, "Hey, Tabby. Tabby-wabby, this way, here my favourite sock-murderin' machine. Heeeere, kitty."
The great big cat comes prowling over towards him. And Maximus. "She's really nice, honest."
*
Now that it finally seems safe, Reilly finally stops running. "Oh, I'm sure. /Sure/. Really nice." Unconvinced spider remains unconvinced.
*
Maximus sits there on the edge and finally drops the bit of hose. "I know you…with the wings. I remember you from a…from a bar, I think. How did I miss the wings?" He puzzles that one and then turns towards the youth with the giant cat. "Who are you and where did you come from? You know this language, but you were in some sort of…crash…what is that goo?"
*
Oh no, she does know him after all! Lux! The desserts! Rosemarie reaches behind her ear to scratch at the base of the fan of feathers extending past the waves of her hair and grimaces. This is a mess. One big mess. If only she had the ability to erase memories.
"Th-They h-hide well." It's unfortunately all Maximus will get from her when she realizes that the four-hundred pound large cat is approaching all three of them. She freezes up again, eyes wide, and the Otherness slowly spreads the wings wide, mantling in a silent threat display that completely mismatches its host's thoughts on the matter.
*
The cat is in no mood to stop. It slows, however, blithely stroking past a limo that creaks when it steps past the chrome fender. Good enough to rub against anything in the range of its striped flanks, tail twitching rapidly several times. The kid grins fiercely, and gives a ruffle of its rather stiff crest.
"Um, pretty sure it's just mud. I mean, it might have been the… rocks? They did kinda go squash under me but it's cool, man, really. Look, you alive, I'm alive." The kid holds up his fairly skinny arm. He squints at it, and then grins widely. "She's totally freaking out. Like, lady, you okay? It's not like she's gonna eat you or nothing. Maybe she'll think you're some duster toy but it's all good."
"MRaaaaaaat." That's the tiger's way of saying pet me. A headbump, however, about knocks the teen over.
*
"Yessss, but what are you /doing/ here. You were in the sky." Maximus takes on a slower pace to his words, which gives the impression that he thinks the boy is not so smart, or at least not good at English. A glance to Rosemarie, "Do not fear, I will /never/ set foot in that rubbish establishment again."
*
"Oh." The quintessential response when Rosemarie can find no other words in her surprise at Maximus's statement. It's a quiet little vowel sound that snakes around her knuckles, pressed to her lips. The Otherness gets the gist of the now-tame tiger and the amount of control exerted by its young handler. The wings slowly lower and the fans of plumage behind her ears settle back to near-horizontal relaxation.
Lucian's going to have a few questions to answer, if she can manage to wrangle the man for a moment.
Her golden eyes flick to the muddied teenager again. The man asked the same thing floating about her mind, no need to echo him aloud.
*
The teen gives Maximus a bit of a weird look. "Actually, I was out convincing the cat to get out of the tree and this thing dropped out of the sky. Didn't really see what, then I was down there. Hurt like the dickens, but maybe I got knocked out by a meteor or something! Must've been cause it bonked me on the head." He seems to find this idea delightful, for all he's messy. Rubbing the cat as he gets back up to his feet, the giant tiger nudges for more pets. He obliges, one hand clenched into a fist around something.
"Really, it was cool. Minus the watery bits. But I figured Tabs needed help getting down and thought 'if only she was bigger' and now she's a tiger!" He nods to them. "Look yourself. Pretty darn cool. Maybe it'd work on you two? I mean, if I thought 'What if they were like twelve feet tall.' Oh! I know!" The kid claps, and then waves his hands. "You totally want to go back to that establishment you're talking about, but you'll be the cool cats. Except it's like your favourite place, right? Now it is!"
And a flash of green light bursts from between his hands and knocks him flat on his ass.
*
Maximus frowns at the kid, holding the stone in his hand. "Yes…obviously I am going back there. It is an amazing place." He rolls his eyes some and then presses his lips together. "So you think you wished your cat bigger?"
*
She's still not entirely sure as to how to respond to the tiger. The wings might have pulled in closer around her body, more aligned with the intimidated feelings rather than the intimidation tactics, providing a flimsy buffer in case of Siberian swat.
The muddied teen gets to jabbering on on a disreputable place and even as she feels something foreign brush over her mind, akin to the prickling of passing heat, she's frowning. Then comes the flash of bright green light and Rosemarie throws up her hands in a flinch. The Otherness does not approve, bringing furled pinions to the forefront to block any further surprises.
"W-What on earth?!" Squinting overtop one broad primary feather at the teen and tiger, she's perfectly confused now. Why does she want to go to this disreputable place? It doesn't sound like a bad idea…but Lux isn't that disresputable.
…she might be biased.
*
The great, furry head of the tiger easily reaches the teen's chest. He scratches Tabitha behind one ear, and she paws at the ground affectionately. As much as a very large, rather tempestuous breed can, anyways. "Kinda? Wasn't so much thinking straight. I mean, dude, I fell in a hole!" He swivels and points at Rosemarie. "Lady, you got feathery bits. You one of those people from Mutant Town? And whoa, a limo! Wait, you're performers! Like that TV show, the… one with the guy, and the host!" He snaps his fingers. "Cool, you could be famous."
*
"Actually, I am not a performer…I am a King." Max studies the youth for a moment and then holds out his hand. "Give me the stone, boy." He says firmly, regally, though there's a tenseness about him like he's ready to lash out with his power if the boy gives any inkling of being about to do anything but.
*
The fans of feathers behind her ears flick up and wide again, dual crests flawlessly transmitting her emotions.
"I'm n-n-not from M-Mutant T-Town, n-no, and I'm n-n-not a p-performer. I'm a librarian." At least Rosemarie nails the title without the stuttering. So, this acquaintance of hers is…royalty?! She eyes him in silent disbelief made sharp for the narrowed pupils within golden irises. He doesn't look like a king…but he sure as hell acts like one, especially with the tone used to address the teen.
Stone? Did she miss something with all of the crazy going on? It's possible, what with the tiger chasing that other young man in the sweatshirt and now lurking beside the muddied teen like it was tame. Lies. Lies and calumny, that thing is not tame. It gets a circumspect stare as well. The Otherness smoothes down the nape of her neck; pat-pat, you're fine, be brave.
*
With the muck in his hair a uniform brown and his clothes a uniform brown-grey, his face a bit dirty and his grin shining white, the teen is a pretty sorry sight. And a happy one, with a giant orange tiger leaning against him and forcing him to compensate by pushing back. "Oh! Oh, totally got it." He nods, eyes widening and then the smile cracking bigger. "I never woulda guessed. You're totally convincing. Only thought that'd happen out in Frisco but… wow! My first king. Do you feel weird being out here and no one knowing? Is that too personal? It's okay, you don't have to — Tabby, stop sniffing my shoes, it's just seawater. Get over it!"
The cat turns its head. Its whiskers flick. Something in that tone does not impress the cat.
And it's not at all Rosemarie's. Tail twitching, Tabby the tiger whuffles and sinuously turns around, padding on broken concrete. The crater isn't far. Teen-Kid, he's all smiles. "Oh, you're hanging out with 'im. You'll probably gonna wanna reverse your limo cause there's nowhere to turn around."
*
Sadly, Maximus doesn't get the slang, or he'd have to struggle with if he should be insulted or not. He just thinks the kid is making light of his royal status. "You are not answering my questions, or acknowledging my words, so why should I answer anything for you?"
*
He rubs the cat, heavy fur plying under his muddy finger. "But I totally did. You asked if I did something and said like, I dunno. I was down in that big crater." The teen looks from Rosemarie to Maximus and back again. "You're a drag king. You're like doing a line or something. And her, she looks all like 'wow.'"
*
Maximus starts to smile…its pleasant at first. Then, it gets broader, and he doesn't stop there. It keeps growing, past what really any normal person would do, until its wrinkled his cheeks into vertical lines. Then his eyes change from blue…to entirely blue, and glowing, and he tries to take over and puppet the teenager.
*
The muddy teen clearly hit his head on something while down in the crater. Like, wow? Hopefully this cadance of speech doesn't catch on anywhere…except in southern California and won't Hollywood take advantage of it.
The royal isn't amused with the flippant kid — what else is new though? That age group is inevitably annoying to various extents. When Rosemarie glances over at Max again, she freezes up.
Okay, that is not normal! NOT NORMAL. A stumble back grants her more space even as the dusky-blue feathers whump the air once or twice. It's clear that the Otherness within her blood wants nothing to do with the Inhuman in his moment. The talons hardened from her nailbeds sharpen more in a moment of Shi'ar blood-power. The hiss that slowly escapes her lips is bidden too by this alien force and ends in a wobbly high-pitched squeak.
"W-W-W-What?!" It's all she can manage, heart up in her throat.
*
The tiger forged of a tabby cat utters a low, low growl. Starting somewhere on the bottom end of audibility, it steadily rises. A sound that cuts deep into the amygdala and right back into the medulla oblongata, the displeasure of a beast is a primal memory putting claw and fang to the very oldest chunk of higher consciousness remaining to humanity. Tabitha is sensitive in ways the kid isn't.
Neither does the cat want anything to do with this other alienness. Its back arches slightly. The burbling moist snarl is a sound from caves and savannahs and pouncing shadows in dappled grasslands.
The kid stares transfixed. Mutant or not, teen or not, alien or not, he's still a /kid/ of 17. And probably concussed but that's beside the point.
*
Maximus holds out his hand again, then time having the teenager walk the stone over to him and put it neatly in his palm. Having mastered one here. His fingers close over it like the petals of a nightblooming flower at daybreak, and then his hand lowers. Then the teenager turns, and walks some distance towards the pit before Maximus then utters, threatening the kid, and Rose, and probably the tiger too if it can understand English, "Were I in my kingdom and come into the possession of something I wish to be secret, I would /ensure/ that it remained so by removing all /witnesses/. I am /prepared/ to be more generous than that this evening, if I can hear the words on your lips…that you will tell /no one/." His blue eyes stop glowing and his real concern at the moment is if the tiger is gonna freak, or not. More normal eyes…though still racked with insanity of course, track the trio.
*
The tiger is still watching. Waiting. Tail twitching.
*
The Otherness is sensitive in a similar vein to Tabitha, said snarling tiger, though it's torn between preserving its host and blatant interest in the stone now contained in Maximus's grasp. It knows that something is different about that stone — innate knowledge. Something powerful, this stone.
Its host? She's quivering hard enough to make every feather vibrate on her body. Tendons strain in an honest war between fight and flight, perhaps even attempted on wing, for all that it would fail dramatically.
She stares at the one who proclaims himself a royal — at least, for long enough to likely cause him some concern. Finally, she whisper-speaks, bolstered on by some semblance of a spine she's found (with the help of the alien blood-powers):
"Th-That's n-n-not yours." The broad wings fold in before her, crisscrossing her body but leaving her face revealed. "G-Give it b-back to him."
*
"No." Maximus answers with a look to Rosemarie. "Now…you should really consider what you know of me, which is practically nothing. Do you want to stand up to me, /girl/?" He belittles effortlessly. "Do it again and I will have you watch as that idiot boy throws himself on a piece of iron, and then /eviscerate/ his cat with its own claws. Or…perhaps you'd like more of a taste of what I am capable of, before you so much as THINK about mindlessly doing what you think is good. Before you could put a scratch on me, I could have every mother murder all her mortal children in a 4 block radius, while their father watched. Shall I make it more clear? /Peasant/." He practically spits out the last word, then starts heading for his limo.
*
"Y-You wouldn't!" The squeaky dismay is crystalline in the heavy silence following the Inhuman's very effective threat. Rosemarie herself has no idea where this frantic bravery is coming from, but there's that saying about bravery and stupidity and it definitely applies here. "The ch-children?! L-Let him go!" She dares a glance to the young muddy teen, to the tiger standing there so chillingly-still, and back to the man.
Her glare knifes him between the shoulderblades if he hasn't turned around by now. "I'll-I'll — " She stutters out, gritting her teeth, before spitting out, "L-Lucian wouldn't l-let y-you!" She has no idea what the heck she's insinuating by this, but hey, it's a name of a person they both know, at least in passing.
That's right. She's gonna tattle.
*
Maximus can fairly well see the logic in just getting /away/ with his new toy…without risking having it taken from him if more super powers show up. Or Inhumans. Its a risk, calculated, and he looks at Rosemarie and slides into his limo in silence, with gritted teeth. First…safe place. Out of here. Away from her and her tattletaling mouth. And floofy wings. THey are so distracting.
*
Said wings flutter wide. The Otherness goads her into an uncharacteristic step towards that limo.
"C-Coward!" It cracks across the air between them. Tears shine at the corners of her eyes, purely frustration and diluted fear. "I h-hope it c-curses y-you, w-whatever it d-does!" Her talons ball into the blouse that threatens to tear further from the weakened collar about her neck; the sharp edges slice through it like a knife through hot butter. At this point, there's no saving it.
*
The tiger is not going to jump after a car. As compelling as that is, and it was willing to leap to a roof from a pounce, not now. It sits on the tarmac and waits for its human to stop staring into a crater at the intersection. Though the kid is correct: Max will need to instruct his driver to go in reverse quite some way and that won't be fast.
*
Maximus does instruct his driver to back a ways and releases the kid after he's gotten to a turnaround point. He has been called far worse, though…perhaps seeing that club he loves so much…he will find Rosemarie there. Now..if her shirt is REALLY coming off? He WILL take a peek out the window to see boobies of frustration.
*
No boobies of frustration; blame the stitching of the seams along collar and lines of shoulder. With an inhalation that shivers, she sniffs once before swiping at her face. Stupid man — with his stupid glowing eyes and stupid scary threats.
"H-Hey," she ventures quietly, taking a few timid steps towards the kid. The tiger hasn't done anything terrifying since it stopped growling, so she'll risk being within arm's length. "A-Are y-you okay?"
*
The tiger isn't about to eat anyone's face off. Yet. The slight shake of the kid's head leads to the teen turning around; he stares blankly at her for a second. "Uh. Uh? I think so. Where did your drag king friend go? He totally stuck you out here, didn't he? She? I mean, they can be real bi…. uh, rude people."
*
"H-He's g-gone. I-Is th-this your h-house?" The librarian with the now-relaxed, half-folded wings points hesitantly towards the sea shack. "Y-You sh-should g-go wash…"
Wait a second, no. There's a damn tiger still here. Rosemarie wipes at her eyes again and just doesn't even attempt to rationalize at this point.
"W-What about the t-tiger?" It's a plaitive question.
*
"Oh. Tabs. I … guess she's a tiger until she's something else." The kid isn't much thinking. He happily pets the cat and wiggles his fingers, bringing the bright-eyed beast around. And then the two of them are pacing off to one of the neat brick homes in Howard Beach.
The boy who fell to Earth and his cat.
And Mad Max.