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"This was not part of the plan!" Roy growls at Tanya, nocking another arrow.
In fact, for the last ten minutes, the 'plan' had effectively gone up in smoke.
Riding high on the endorphins of their liaison and (mostly) spurred on by Tanya's adventure-lust, Roy and Tanya had gone out looking for trouble. Rumors of a street gang had lured them to a bad part of town to deal with some drug dealers who were ostensibly driving uptown and distributing their illict wars to teenagers in another part of the city.
As it turned out, the dealers were in fact metahumans, and there were more than just 'a few' that someone had told Tanya about.
Making a face, Roy turns and flings another arrow downwards. Having retreated (a big ignobly) to a nearby roof, their situation had not improved tremendously. Two big 'bruiser' types of metahumans — massive, strong, tough — were flinging chunks of rebar at them, with enough force to cause real harm. A third had some kind of psionic energy constructs he could fling at Tanya, and was engaging her shadow-force talents in a bizarre duel in midair.
The fourth, a pockmarked skinny youth, flings weak flames at Roy, but range seems to be stymieing him.
*
"You have terrible ideas anyways!" The woman snarks back, eyes beetle-black with the usage of her powers in full play.
Another psionic disc is eaten by the voracious darkness of the viscous anti-energy. The projectiles are being flung just often enough to prevent her from whammying the third metahuman with a blitz of the hypnosis, but wait…just the cocky kid wait.
"How was I supposed to know they had powers?! I'm not psychic!" She literally snarls after ducking a chunk of rebar. "Alright, you — you're mine." The rings of her irises flash suddenly, rising from the ink of the Darkforce's effects on her sclera, and the bruiser to last hock the rebar makes some choking sound before turning and cold-clocking the metahuman next to him. The other bruiser makes a garbled sound of shock and stumbles aside a few steps, clutching at his jaw.
"Frank, the hell?!" Frank, now devoid of anything but the desperate need to separate said jaw from his cohort's skull, dives at him. That particular pair is taken care of as the situation devolves into a dusty scuffle.
The two other metahumans freeze, staring at their friends and then at each other in fearful concern. Tanya sneers in red-lipped appreciation for her work.
"There ya go, you dumb animals, go to town." Her Darkforce recalled about her body slithers in sleek clouds, close enough to brush against Roy if he dares a step closer within her personal space.
*
"GET DOWN!" Roy shouts, instead of welcoming Tanya into his proximity. He grabs her and they hit the ground as Pockmarks flings a truly impressive gout of fire their way, having taken a few panicked moments to build up enough of a store of energy to really force his power into play. It explodes a few feet past them, laying plasmic napalm on the roof.
Roy flicks an arrowhead into the mix and it *poofts* with a payload of black fire suppressant.
Keeping himself over Tanya, he hustles them both behind cover and nocks another arrow. Red heat singes the back of his arms and left side of his face from the proximity of the flames, but without complaint he readies an arrow and flings it downwards at the psionicist who was giving Tanya so much trouble.
It turns out it's hard to concentrate with an arrow in your ribs, and the meta goes down with a squeal of pain and clutching at the red fletching protruding from his skin. Not a lethal hit, but he's down for the count with a broken rib, at least.
"Flamethrower's still down there," Roy says, his voice a bit raspy from the heat inhalation. "I can't get a bead on him. I think he's figured out — " He winces as fire blooms nearby, missing. "That he doesn't need to see us to drop mortars."
*
Her breath leaves her in a high-pitched 'aaoofff!' and even as she attempts to cut the connection to the jealous caress of the Darkforce to spare Roy, she's being gathered and hustled. Wincing for the fact that her own ribcage didn't appreciate the sudden deflation between his muscled body and the roof, she gives him a brief glower before the ire subsides.
The redness of sudden heat showing on his skin draws a hissing grimace from Tanya. "That's unfortunate." The fact that he'll need some cool washcloths when this madness is all said and done or the ability of the remaining metahuman to toss Greek fire without needing to aim? "What are you thinking, draw him out or a stealth attack?" The Darkforce appears again and it takes a subtle manipulation on her part to send it winding lovingly about her body. The blackness of her sclera artfully accents those hauntingly-olive green irises. Points to Roy for being able to meet them.
*
Roy chances another glance. "Flush him out," he says, finally, nocking an arrowhead with a blunt, heavy canister on the end. "I'll drop a concussion grenade into his little cover there. Once he's moving, you hit him with your whammy and try to slow him down enough for me to get a clear shot. I can't hit him with those flames he keeps putting up," Roy explains.
He steps back, aiming down at the man's location through the roof and the wall behind it, then aims upwards, slowly and carefully.
Completely blind, he looses the arrow and it soars up in a big, pendulous arc, and lands right behind the firestarter. It goes off with a *BANG* and sends the kid skittering in terror away from the tremendous noise, and his flames become misdirected and much shorter for a few moments while he tries to get somewhere safer.
*
A curt nod and Tanya waits…and watches. Her odd eyes follow the sky-high path of the arrow and she bends her knees in readiness.
The concussive arrow goes off with a sharp forceful sound and it's like the kick-off gun at the start of a race. She darts out from cover, hurtling over the still-sizzling rooftop's surface with the athletic grace of a hurdle-hopper, and skids short of the edge of the roof.
"Hey, you!" Her voice cracks sharply at first, like a whip, sure to garner attention. It books no argument and tends to draw the focus to her face. "Settle down…" she growls, turning the recrimination into a sultry purr in a show of skillful manipulation.
Surely the young man's innards go to water even as she makes eye contact, stupidly fearless in the face of possible flames, and the slink of her hypnosis into his mind is the slide of an assassin's blade into the kidney. Poor kid. He's a sitting duck now, just staring at her.
*
It's all the opening Roy needs. He steps out of cover and takes calm aim, flinging two heavy projectiles downwards. Gas, thick and noxious, fills the air — one of them a powerful soporific, the other a tear gas that irritates eyes and soft tissues.
Just for good measure, he flings his third arrow down and takes the young firebender through the knee. The kid drops, squealing in pain, and his two bruiser buddies follow not long after as the gasses knock them out.
"Dumb kid," Roy mutters, nocking an arrow but not tensioning his bow yet — no visible targets remain. "I imagine the police will be here pretty soon. A bit of violence is one thing, but the fires are going to get a lot of attention."
*
The last swing of the mind-wiped bruiser flies wide by feet and both thud to the pavement below like sacks of grain. With the flame-throwing metahuman out of commission as well with an arrow to the knee, she can retreat from the ledge that safeguards the roof from open space and back towards Roy.
"No shit, Sherlock. Let's scram. I'll follow you. You can do that zipline — Tarzan bit," and she gives him a wicked grin as she saunters past him, hips and all, towards the far side of the rooftop, away from the shimmering, rising heat of slagged surface.
*
"Anyone ever tell you you've got a foul mouth?" Roy asks Tanya, *smacking* the back of her thighs lightly with his bow as he breaks into a jog and leads them both to the edge of the roof.
He hooks the rappelling line on his belt to an arrowhead, looking around for a good point, and aims high and in the distance with all the force he can exert. The bow *TWANGS* and the cord and arrow fly off — there's a *clank* and the arrow, unseen, folds in half and becomes a grappling device. He reels it until it's hooked, makes sure that it's set, and grabs Tanya roughly in his left arm.
"Hold on!" he advises her — and then steps off the building, swinging across the city streets with nothing but a thirty-yard drop underfoot.
*
Tanya gives the Archer a gimlet glare saved from true irritation only by her curl of a smile. She watches the bolt fly, a thrumming glimmer attached to the zipline, with eyes shifted to normalcy for the subsiding of her Darkforce powers — no more than a muted twinkle in those olive-greens now.
"I'll take it as a compliment," she murmurs before being tucked up against him. "Yeah, yeah, I'm holding ONNNN!"
She'll never get used to that initial moment of freefall, before the strength of the line saves them from the impact to the pavement below. The rush of the air, the feeling of his lean muscles engaging to counter the swing of their weight — her heart in her throat and she laughs giddily despite herself, a light breathy sound that he might catch with her face tucked neatly against his pectoral. A long leg wraps about his waist while the other aligns with the outside of his hip to further limpet her to him in their flight.
*
"That is not a handhold," Roy grunts, as Tanya's hand slides to a purchase point. He brings his legs up at the last second, making small adjustments on the zipline, and the long cable withdraws a few feet so they land neatly on the edge of the rooftop. Roy loosens the rope expertly by a few feet so they aren't pulled backwards, and disengages the cable on the far side, snapping the long cable back towards him and *whirring* it into his belt rappelling system.
He rubs a burned tricep and winces, but makes no complaint. "I need to get to a safehouse and get some ointment on my arm," he tells Tanya. "…do you want me to drop on the street so you can take a cab home?" he offers, clearly hoping the answer is 'no'.
*
She's learning the art of making the landing from such a swing rather quickly. A few jogging steps has Tanya then about-facing on the roof. She grins, the expression truly delighted for that moment of adrenaline-pounding swinging. It melts into something more knowing after a second and she saunters back into Roy's personal space after the the rappelling system is contained once more.
"You make a mess of ointments as it is, so I'll tag along, Captain. Wouldn't want you missing a spot, especially with those burns." She eyes the reddened skin with a softer echo of his earlier wince. "Lead on."
The sounds of approaching sirens give her reason to stiffen, but they hide well atop the roof and the fire trucks following after the cops are no more likely to have noticed them. She relaxes again, blowing a little sigh and tucking a loose lock of dark hair behind her shoulder.
*
Roy has a pretty good poker face, but even he can't withhold a sly smile at Tanya's acquiescence.
It's not like either of them are particularly good at pretending at this point.