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Okay, Dimples down. The young man is safe despite being threatened by myriad swords and dastardly folk wielding them. Pullet. Where’s the pale-haired speedster? Where’s the damn air gryphon?! Turning on the spot again, he scans the skies around them and locates Tommy, still riding mostly inside the elemental and then…reality warps. For parts shock and part knowledge that interrupting such a willing could end in disaster, he holds his tongue. The lecture will come later with perhaps a fair bit of crackling for how thunderous his expression is as he squints at Billy. For now, however, he can work with this chaos at hand. After all, Tommy is heading back — at high velocity — and not wearing a lick of shielding clothing or spellwork alike to keep him from bouncing and splatting.
Strange attempts then to rapidly cast a spell to catch said flying Tommy. He mutters a few Words like mad, his hands glowing blatantly with steady light despite the turbulent atmosphere and he’s in time to weave up a net of shining lines, very much looking like one used for fishing. Spreading his arms wide with presence despite his wind-mussed hair and torn and stained officer’s uniform, thus he spreads the net, and with the Vishanti’s good graces, the falling star of a young man is tangled up within it rather than impressed into the rooftop.
*
"Am I dreaming…?" Pietro wonders aloud to himself. He's still in the clutches of the gryphon — is it really a gryphon? Or just a cloud that looks like a gryphon? With lightning and claws… he's seen some pretty interesting clouds in his time, but nothing quite this detailed.
Wait, is that Tommy… flying?
This has to be a dream.
"I remember…. boobs," he mumbles, thinking of the one positive asset that vampire-prostitute, Busty-Something, had (well, she had many positive assets but all of them with decidedly much worse… side-effects? No, that makes her 'vampireness' sounds like chlamydia…)
"They were nice boobs…" he mutters again, as he endeavours to bring his senses and faculties back 'online' properly. Oh that's right, they're flying toward a chapel. In the sky. Via gryphon-cloud-thing.
This is definitely a dream.
"Killer-boobs, though…" he murmurs.
*
Dangerously fast, Pietro is being flung to the floor in the Chapel of the Winds. If it weren’t just Pietro, there’d be a rather interesting streak on the ground.
*
Crap! Billy's the twin that flies, not Tommy. Seeing Tommy fly through the air has Billy looking rather alarmed, but he sees Stephen is doing some strangism and he trusts the Sorcerer Supreme will handle it. Worst case scenario he'll try to do something timey-wimey because that can't possibly go wrong. But for now, he's looking around, and lifting himself up into the air, and with red cape flapping (sadly, not like a smart puppy pet), he's *rushing* off after Tommy and towards the Chapel. He's like seriously not going to walk there: for one thing he's faster flying, for another there's creeps down there wanting to keel haul him! How did he get into this mess?
Those distant dots on the horizon resolve themselves to be infinitely larger than mere specks. No gnats, these, but the lithe and supple shapes of storm clouds in miniature. Bats, if bats were prone to swoop on ozone arcs, and the claps of thunder under their wings resonate across the distance. One best hope they have sought to chase prey other than warlocks, speedsters, and a shabby English officer. Alas no, they’re coming straight for the group.
*
“Look, ma, I can flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy~" is Tommy's reaction to soaring through the air at high velocity. There's not a hint of fear or regard for safety, just a revelling in the awesomeness that is soaring through the air in such a fashion. For just the slightest of seconds, the speedster feels power-envy.
Then he realizes quite quickly that there aren't any /brakes/ on this ride, and there's a half-moment of panic and arms flailing and … then Strange is working his magic and the platinum-haired teen spies the net suddenly in front of him and… *fwoomp!* he's caught like so many fish in the shiny magic net of hope.
"So, uh, thanks whoever did that!" calls out the familiar voice once he's stopped moving around for a few moments. It could've been a number of members of his family. Pretty much anyone along for the ride without a mop of white hair.
*
The other pirate atop the rooftop throws her hands out, calling out to Billy, “No! Stay low, they come for…”
Too late in the chaotic spin of actions. Tommy hurls headfirst into a mystical net and the force of momentum probably twists those cords tightly around the speedster, and knocks Strange back a step or two. Pietro descends at a rapid speed, her relative understanding of his direction diminishing and finally fixing to a solid point. Never mind the angry mob in the street is now running up to the building they stand on, shouting and possibly pulling more than blades to deal with the rogue Spaniard, the Englishman, and a priest inexplicably aided by a buccaneer. Epees sheathed, she flattens her precious plumed hat to her head with one hand and races up to Strange, pulling him by the elbow to urge him forward at a run. Where she goes, presumably, Tommy will.
*
What was Wanda warning about? The seething mass of individual bats shoot lightning between their flickering, flapping wings. Charges build up, released by a cacophony of rising squeaks outside the human register to capture. Sonic shockwaves race ahead of the crackled discharge racing at impossibly neat angles, forming a latticed matrix to cut off forward momentum as Billy flies off.
Another soaring guardian has something far more concerning to worry about. Remember the warning about those invisible sharks? Well, there’s an invisible shark swimming through the sky at a tempting morsel who thinks to bolt at the Chapel of the Winds, a tall spire towering over the city gathered at its feet.
An exceptional bastion of quasi-Spanish architecture, the handsome rounded arches cut from a glowing pale cream gold stone transitions towards white as the building materials alter from large blocks of mortared stone to marble facing or, likely, plaster. There are four open archways turned presumably to the cardinal directions, capped by a bell tower of sorts.
*
His booted feet scuff backwards, never leaving contact with the rooftop, as the impact force distributes through spell and a grounded body with bent knees. With Tommy caught up in Mystical netting rather than embedded in the rooftop, Strange can breath a sigh of relief. Note that it’s a single sigh because everything’s still moving at a brisk pace and those little dots, winged and bearing no one an iota of goodwill, are still approaching quickly.
The brilliant light around his hands fade at a willful thought. With a tugging hand at his elbow by his Beloved, he’s more than happy to get moving. She seems to have an idea of where to go and how to avoid the general offense thrown up by the dimension.
“Tommy, on your feet, let’s go!” He barks, even as he’s falling into long-legged lope beside Wanda. He too can see Billy getting too far ahead and he calls out, “Billy! Billy, fall back!” Man’s got a set of lungs; hopefully he’s heard overtop the snapping flaps of hundreds of bat wings.
*
The streak of silver-haired buccaneer somehow manages to strike the balcony on the top floor of the Chapel of Winds, and use his momentum to run in circles — up walls, across ceilings and the floor again, rather than to go 'splat!' against solid stone. It might even look impressive, were it not for the occasional hand or foot sticking out here or there, where they should not be.
When he eventually stops, he stands there — legs apart, arms at his sides and hands clenched into fists — glaring back at the storm gryphons. "Pietro Maximoff is no bug on a windshield…" he tells them defiantly.
Then he topples sideways like a statue. With a moan.
*
This has to be the craziest thing he's ever seen: invisible sharks and now lightning bats? Fortunately, Billy and electricity have an agreement. After all, it wasn't all that long ago that he was half-convinced he was Zeus's grandson. He reaches his hands out and concentrates, trying to seize control of said electricity and draw it out into a raging ball of plasma, intending to hold onto it in reserve and not fling it at anything. After all he can't *see* the invisible shark. But, he hears Strange and floats back and down, heading for the fam to regroup, "This is the craziest thing I've ever seen." he gives voice to thought.
*
Rest and relaxation? Recovery time? What's that? Or at least that would be the case for most. For Tommy? A second, maybe two is pretty solid in his book — and once those precious [seconds are seized? He's up to his feet in a flash and down to running alongside Strange. Except backwards, because, well. He has to do /something/ to keep himself entertained when moving at a slower speed.
Bored speedster is a bad thing.
However, he /is/ spinning periodically to check what's coming in the direction he's headed towards as to not end up tripping over a barrel or something. Nefarious barrels. Hiding in plain sight like a true villain. "Rogue 5, standing by." he chirps towards Strange. Although he's more running/jogging than /standing/.
*
Wanda has a direction in mind, and it happens to be the same one which Billy runs from. She needs nary more than a backward glance before she bolts at all out speed. The reason is fair: she’s got a gap to navigate between two adjacent buildings, and a leap of six feet may not seem like much unless you happen to be mostly mortal. A two storey drop to a ravenous mob sounds like a whole lot of unfun; the mob is currently snarling and howling for blood, attracted by magic.
“Get the outsiders,” they cry in a single voice. “Invaders! They’ve come to take our bounty!”
Not entirely untrue.
Direction might be easy to dictate: look for the big pointy spire above the other towers, spires, and carillons present. The general layout of rooftops sprawls in radial spokes, albeit rather bent, around the odd square. Cross streets in Port Royal are narrow, dictated by the slopes rising from the seaside harbour to the mountainous backbone ringing in ragtag neighbourhoods. Rooftops tend to be pitched or flat, tiled or covered in a very sticky flypaper, perfectly suitable to run. Balconies and boards strung along the higher route suggest the denizens like to use the byways, but that means buccaneers having a siesta are likely on those rooftops.
The flying bats give another element of trouble altogether. Lightning around them may be pulled, twisting into a ball of plasma. One shrieks. Then a hundred of them shriek. Deprived of their precious lightning, the reaping comes as a shrilling sonic blast chasing Billy. How fast can he run? Probably not outside the speed of sound. And worse, that ball of plasma he had transforms itself…
… into a viscous kraken, the long tentacles swished together to sweep it forward at speeds of… lightning. Except it’s not lightning now, warping and twisting to join another elemental force altogether.
*
“Rogue 5, what — ” Tommy is given a fleeting glance of bemused concern, since he’s literally running backwards beside them. “Never mind! Watch your feet!”
Indeed, do so, for crossing the divides between rooftops, as parkour-friendly as they are, means a determined throw of one’s body towards the gap and a literal leap of faith for some of them. Strange, with long legs, won’t have much troubling with six feet of empty air, especially at full running speed. Deliberately slowing down to keep eyes on his family makes things more difficult.
Speaking of difficulties! That lightning kraken is sure to complicate things.
“Billy!” The name could be a warning; it could also be a command, giving the young man unspoken free reign to deal with the element he claims to own.
*
The gryphon condenses its storm cloud being into a dense mass blocking the way out from one of the cardinal directions, which would correspond to the route it plucked the speedster from. Conveniently it’s the one closest to the advancing group. He might catch a glimpse of a building mob in the streets that way, but it’s questionable. In the breezy atrium, little stands out but a central font, not unlike a baptismal font, carved from stone. Clear water rests in a cistern there, and fine, almost spindly coils of metal support a plain agate stone cut into some sort of egg-like container.
The elder scion of Maximoff drags himself to the edge of the chapel roof, peering down bleary-eyed. Frustrating it is, to him, that the vampiric powers of 'Busty LaRoux' should drain him so entirely — but it is not quite enough to take him out of the shenanigans altogether.
"The peasants are revolting!" he exclaims while rolling onto his back and letting out a rather manic laugh to the heavens — which are full of elemental gryphons and who-knows-what else. The silver-haired speedster's upper lip curls with contempt at his current predicament, and in the space of half a heartbeat…
He vanishes in a streak of silver and blue from the roof.
"No sucky prostitute gets the better of Quicksilver!" he yells, and then immediately follows through with: "Is being not a sentence I ever thought I'd say…" In the midst of his comments, he dashes through the aforementioned 'peasants', sending people flying.
Sometimes it's the clothes that go flying, not the people.
Other times, it's the people and not the clothes. By the time he's done, there's a group of naked, angry folks all mashed and tied together — butts to faces in some cases — forming a vaguely recognisable 'sculpture'… a giant shark in point of fact. Its dorsal fin is actually a nudey butt sticking up in the air, as is its other 'fins'.
Pietro collapses against a wall… and passes out.
*
Of course, when it comes to actually leaping from rooftop to rooftop… well, Tommy hasn't gotten in /quite/ as much training with Hope as he's been meaning to in order to properly put the acrobatics of parkour into effect. So doing crazy backflips over the gaps between buildings? Nope, that's not happening.
Instead, as a minor grace for travelling at the slower pace, he stops at each break in buildings, backpedals and runs at full tilt towards the gap. Only a little hop's needed at that point with momentum to carry him the rest of the way across. Hope would be /so/ disappointed in him for using his powers to achieve this. Good thing the witnesses won't tell her. Probably. Maybe.
"Billy, you alright over there?" Tommy yells out towards his twin — his eyes are focused on the destination and keeping up, but ears are alert in case he needs to double back and come to the rescue.