|
  |
The robbery is going quite well: it's a restaurant where well-to-do people are eating, and well-to-do people tend to carry cash in the era before credit cards. That and valuables. The Devil Dogs gang is made up of mostly poor Irish men, but since they had the piece of mind to wear masks, no one can really tell more then that they're white. There's four with guns, and six with various bludgeons, and its these goons that are walking around the crowded restaurant collecting the various spoils.
An elderly woman sobs, holding onto her husband's dead body. He resisted. These guys are not brooking any resistance— but it is that gunshot that ended the old man's life that drew the attention of Freefall.
He's all in black, and his outfit looks… thick on him, which may imply some level of armoring. He has a black mask as well. The door was guarded, but he pushed in and as the gun was raised up towards him, Freefall dodged with deft dexterity to the side and reached out to touch the man's shoulder. The touch is brief, but suddenly he's calling out as he falls *hard* up to the ceiling and crumples there as if up were suddenly down. A moment later a lot of attention is on him, but he's immediately sprinting— leaping up and twisting in the air to land deftly on the *wall*, as he runs. Its more shock and disorientation then anything else that keeps the remaining three gunmen from hitting as the bullets fly. As he runs he reaches behind to where two black batons were, pulling them forward to link them together— they click and become a staff, and with another click a two foot straight blade slides out of one end, the weapon becoming a nasty looking spear.
Danny looks a little bit like a hippie. He hasn't had to go into the office and he's been left to his own devices for a bit, and so he's wearing a pair of linen pants and a long tunic-like shirt with a pair of sandals on his feet. However, as he passes by and witnesses what is going on inside, he is given pause and just takes in what is going on for a moment, watching the men inside, and Freefall running along the wall. There's a slight furrowing of his brow and then Danny makes his way inside. He uses the distraction that is Freefall to move quickly over to one of the gunmen that isn't paying attention.
It doesn't take long for him to disarm the man, unload his weapon onto the floor and then deliver a quick press of fingers to just the right pressure point that drops the man to the ground. The gun is cast aside, and he turns to the nearest people next to him and begins to direct them to head out the back while the men aren't looking.
When Freefall pulls out that blade, he looks curious, considering for a moment, and watching, but his attention is distracted by another of the men who watched him take down his buddy. As soon as his arm comes up with the gun, Danny drops down to his knees and slides in close, reaching up to grab the man's arm and pull it downward as fast as possible so that when the shot goes off it lodges itself in the bottom of the nearby wall and not a nearby patron.
There's a click, as Freefall notices there's company— and so he decides to alter his tactics. The blade slides back into the staff, even as he leaps up— spinning in the air, and suddenly finds himself falling down… *fast*. The staff extends outsideways from him and he braces his arms and suddenly it slams into two of the guys, one the last gunman and another a thug. The crack is loud and hard and very likely at least fractured some rubs, but as he pulls the bad guys 'down' from his perspective— which is now towards the far wall— he tilts himself and finds his feet settling onto the ground, all mundane like.
The staff spins in his hand expertly and lands a crack on the head of each of those two goons.
A calm but serious voice calls over to Danny, "Thanks for the assist." He turns his masked face to look with no concern out at those goons who are armed with bats and tire irons, and the grin is heard in his voice, "Hello, boys." His staff is held before him with clear confidence.
He manages to disarm the second man, dragging him downward to the ground before wresting the gun easily and like the first, emptying it and casting it away. The guy thinks about getting up, but when he looks around and sees that all of his buddies have been handled, he opts to stay where he is. Danny glances up then and over toward Freefall, giving him a nod of his head. "You looked like you had a handle on it but, a little help never hurts."
Looking over toward the dead man on the ground, he shakes his head slowly. His attention turns toward the couple of goons with the bat and tire iron and then looks over to Freefall as though in question as to whether he had them or if he wanted assistance.
Twisting the staff, it splits into two batons, and he slides them back into the holster at the back of his back, before he wanders over to where the first goon is still attached to the ceiling. He's groaning, but since he hit head-first, he might just be seriously injured, "Guns are a bit of a problem." he admits, "Some creative acrobatics…" that utterly defy gravity, "…usually leads to bad aim for a few shots, but once I start in with people with guns its important they are neutralized very, very quickly. Thugs with baseball bats are not a concern." He eyes the various bad guys, then glances sideways to Danny, "Do we tie them up for the cops?"
"I try to neutralize the ones with the guns first," Danny says, nodding to the two that he took out. "I figured you had a handle on the others." Then he considers, looking at them and says, "Figure that'd be a good idea." Looking over to one of the servers he asks, "Have you got any twine? Rope? Tape?" The man nods a couple of times and says, "Sure.. be right back." He stares at Danny and Freefall for a few moments longer and then he turns to take off back into the back to bring out some tape. "I don't feel like leading them around town and I'm pretty sure that they'll be coming for them soon enough."
"I'm afraid he might not survive." Freefall gestures to the crumped man above him: what might be very odd is the pooling of blood, on the ceiling. "I couldn't be gentle with the binding." He doesn't sound especially sorry. He looks at the survivors, "Don't anyone get any ideas, or you'll join your friend with at the very least a broken back if not a broken neck." The threat is delivered with an unconcerned casualness. But he looks to Danny after, and offers a gloved hand, "I'm called Freefall. For hopefully obvious reasons."
"Can you bring him down a little less violently than you threw him up there?" Danny asks critically, eyeing the man on the ceiling. It's not that he's particularly sympathetic to the man. "I can probably at least stabilize him for the police to deal with him." There's a glance over toward Freefall, however, because if there's no chance of bringing the guy down lightly and he's going to die in the descent, then there's not a lot he can do about it.
"Danny Rand," he introduces himself. He's not wearing a mask and doesn't seem to be making any effort to conceal who he is. "I'll take care of getting these guys tied up." And when the server returns with good old fashioned duct tape, Danny gets to work on binding those he'd taken out first, then the ones that Freefall had clonked over the head.
"Doesn't… rushing in and disarming people with your real name and face get problematic?" wonders the vigilante. A sigh can be heard behind the mask; but Freefall crouches, and jumps— actually, he does a standing back flip perfectly, and the moment his head is pointed down he stretches his legs out and he lands on the ceiling in a easy crouch. But he touches the crumpled man and that man immediately begins a feather fall. For his part, Freefall does a repeat of the flip-and-invert-gravity check that is much faster. Only then does he consider, "I could have bound you to the ceiling if you wanted to treat him without moving him— much." he notes, but. Next time? He stalks forward a bit to give an air of menace to the criminals while Danny ties them up.
"It doesn't seem to give them any stronger a grip on their guns," Danny says in reply as he moves over toward the man as he descends to the floor. He crouches then by the man and he takes up a meditative position, which is interesting in the middle of the chaos of the restaurant. With the criminals subdued, the patrons have begun to flee, no longer under threat of fire. The staff seems relieved, and the kitchen staff a bit befuddled but all of them seem content to let the two strangers deal with the armed folk.
Danny focuses, and then he lays his hands on the crumpled criminal, channeling energy from himself into the man. It takes a little bit of time and throughout it he's quiet while Freefall menaces the others to keep them in check. When he finishes, he wobbles a bit and takes a deep breath, opening his eyes again. It takes quite a bit out of him to heal a broken neck, but while the man is going to be in a lot of pain — he won't be paralyzed. Which will be convenient for the cops. Danny binds him and then peels himself up off the floor to help get the others secured. "Could have.. but this worked."
There's nothing fancy in Freefall's outfit: its clearly all pure practicality, meant to armor himself as much as current technology allows and hide his identity. But he watches, and when one of the goons tries to pull on his bindings during the healing, he frowns. The frown is heard in a coldness of his voice, "If you annoy me, I will take you outside and bind you up like I did that other man." he threatens, "You know what happens when there's no ceiling to crumple against? You continue falling up. And up." His voice gets colder, "You might stop falling up before you run out of air. No guarantees." This seems to effectively silence them, so he turns to Danny, "But don't the authorities ask questions? The mask isn't for these idiots, its if one gets killed. I'm not sure a prison exists that can hold me but them trying would be really annoying."
There's definitely nothing fancy about Danny's current attire. He looks like a hippie, all told, though a clean one with clean clothes. But he doesn't seem to be hiding anything at all. And he doesn't seem to have any armor at all, for that matter. There's a glance between Danny, Freefall, and the goon struggling, but the warning seems to do the trick and he doesn't seem inclined to add any further commentary. "That hasn't been a problem," Danny says. "I haven't had anyone get killed yet." Though it's relatively well known that he did stand trial for murder, but was framed, and acquited of all charges. Matt Murdock's a hell of a lawyer, they say. "Though, I do find not lingering when the authorities are on their way is generally a good idea." He turns toward one of the bus boys and says, "Keep an eye on these guys til the cops come?"
"And guys?" Freefall reaches behind him, pulls out one of the batons, and it spins in his hand before there's a click and a two foot long straight-edged blade emerged, "Do find another career. This gentleman here might not be able to be backup next time, and if its my blood or your blood, I don't really consider the decision a long time." With that, he gives a nod to the bus boys, a tilting of his non-existant hat, and he heads towards the door. "You're right, sticking around is bad." Once outside, he glances around, "Need a lift somewhere? Or, want to see something extremely trippy?" The grin on his voice is heard easily.
Danny gives one more cursory look around to make sure that everything seems to be in place and that the situation is under control, and then he strolls right on out the front door, hands folded behind his back and whistling a little bit to himself. Once they are outside, he considers the offer and says, "I was thinking of just walking but.. now you've got my curiosity. Sure, show me something extremely trippy." This seems to entertain Danny, who leans up agianst the wall a bit down the street from the restaurant, safe enough distance away, and crosses his arms in front of him, studying Freefall with interest.
Freefall walks down the street a bit, gesturing Danny to walk beside him— near to the building, "Let's go for a walk." he agrees, tone light, "A walk that no one has ever walked before." And he steps forward, turns, leaps, and as he leaps his body reorients midway so down lands him lightly on the building itself. So there he stands, as if the wall was down, while Danny is perpendicular to him. He offers a gloved hand over to the other man, "What is the world? It depends entirely on your perspective. The perspective of nearly everyone is that the center of this planet is down, and the heavens above is up. Come, see something from my perspective." If Danny takes that hand, his center of gravity will immediately shift so that the building is indeed exactly 'down', and he will fall— a foot or two, so no danger. But with his acrobatics, he may recover nicely.
Danny seems content to follow along and see what it is that Freefall might have to show him. He laughs, raising an eyebrow and says, "if you've walked it, doesn't that sort of disqualify it as a walk that no man has ever walked?" He watches the turning and leaping as Freefall suddenly walks perpendicular along the side of the building. That is trippy. He does take the offered hand, though, and the shift is sudden and there's a moment where his eyes go a ltitle wider before his natural acrobatics kick in and he lands on the wall with only the slightest bobble as he gets used to the new perspective. "Well.. that is pretty trippy.. " He glances around, suddenly trying to reorient everything around himself for a moment.
"I haven't ever walked up *this* building." replies Freefall with a soft chuckle, "So my words were true. Its not true no man has walked a walk *like* this one, but *this* one precisely? Never before, and what street in this city can that be said for? Come. It's better higher." And so he strides with confidence up the building, seeming perfectly at ease at the horizontal world of impossibility. The farther they move up the more visceral and real the new perspective tends to become. He explains in a soft voice as he walks, "Gravity is the ultimate force of connection. Every atom in your body is connected to every other; connected to every atom in this planet, to every atom in the sun, to every atom in this galaxy, to every atom in this universe. It is the force that binds. True, the farther the atoms are away from eachother the weaker the strength of the binding— but it is not nonexistant. Here, on the local level, I am the master of this connection. The Earth called to you with a strength we name one gravity— the exact force all those trillions of tons of weight can exert on you is the strength that holds you to the surface. I made a new force, bound every atom of your being to it, so now it is drawn… to a spot upon the horizon that draws no one else. You and only you: well, you and I." Another chuckle is offered, "The binding, the drawing together, for us it is as if the Earth had no sway at all. A field of gravity attuned to you alone now holds you— and the whole of the universe is lessened in some tiny but true amount for you no longer are connected to it. For a time I take from the universe, but always I must give back in the end. The connection of the cosmos can only be delayed, not denied."
Danny laughs a bit at the clarification and says, "I see." Though when Freefall says that it is better higher, he looks up higher long the building as though considering just how much higher it would be better. It seems, however, that he is game to go higher, and without hesitation, he follows along, letting the way be lead up and along the wall of the building. He glances down every so often, and there is a certain feeling of twisting in ones guts as they go a bit higher than he's used to, and he's used to quite a bit of climbing and scrambling around high places on his own. This, however, is quite something else. He listens as they walk along and the physics is somewhat lost on him, but the connection to the cosmos seems to at least hold some meaning. "So for right now you've created some sort of alternate gravity that sticks us to the side of the building. How long will it last? If I get far enough away from you will I fall off the side of the building?" But mostly he seems to be enjoying the thrill of just being up so high as he strolls along, turning around in a slow circle, and then another.
"As long as I will it— am capable of consciously willing it— or for as long as a day after, if I will it to last." They aren't really high up already, maybe a few floors, but that's enough to be deadly so the vertigo is completely understandable. And only when that far up, does Freefall pull his hand up to gesture, and he steps near and tries to lay a hand on Danny, "Trust me." he says before hand, and if he is trusted and lays a hand, he explains, "There is now a second source of gravity— which pulls most of you up. While the world is sideways and the perspective unlike any other, consider if gravity is not your lord. Jump, Danny Rand. Jump not to the stars but to steel and glass so far beyond what any man man jump." If he jumps? He has the strength he has, but the weight of a tenth of such a man. Freefall pulls his blank mask off away from faces that might give witness to his crimes of justice, "I am, in the light, named Chance."
Danny nods as Freefall explains how long it might last. A few floors up is still a lot higher than he's used to just strolling across the side of a building. Sure, he might climb that high, or higher, or pull himself onto balconies, and jump from place to place, but generally speaking, this strolling with just his feet touching the side of the building? This is pretty far out. He seems a little distracted for a moment, but when Freefall reaches out toward him, he nods, apparently giving his permission. The man hasn't given him a reason not to trust him yet. He looks out across the way to the other buildings around them and considers the command to jump. He seems to consider which way to go for a moment or two, then looks back over toward Chance. He studies the man's features for a moment and then he grins, offering a hand, "In the light, I'm still Danny." And once that hand is shaken, if accepted, he does in fact jump, and off he goes sailing away from the building.
The sound of laughter ia shared with the wind when Danny takes to it. Few people can jump with the power of ten men, but Chance knows what it's like. He crouches, and with an elegance and grace he leaps and even spins twice before slowly— so slowly— descending 'down' to the side of the building. "Freefall, because nothing binds me." he explains, but says more seriously, "It is dangerous, my mutation." Thus he reveals what he is, "It is a burden, to bear. I will always do what is right. I will never care for the rules. So I do not take my mask off, lightly. If I know a murderer, but a technicality of how evidence is handled, means the judges set him free? Is that justice?"
Danny takes that leap and while he does no acrobatics, because this is the first time he's done anything like this, he does seem to take to it with relative ease as he comes back to the side of the building once more, grinning broadly. He nods at the description of the name and says, "It works for you." Then he says, "Admittedly, sometimes I am called the Iron Fist, Guardian of Kun'Lun, but I usually just go by Danny. It's a lot shorter." But then he raises a brow just a little bit and holds up both hands, "I actually really did not kill anybody. I mean Matt's a great attorney, don't get me wrong — but I was actually genuinely framed."
"You wanted to try to heal a murderer." Chance says simply, as if this makes Danny's not-killing obvious, "I… don't care." He frowns a moment as he walks up the glass of the horizontal world, "No, its not like that. There is right and wrong. The weak should not suffer the strong: the evil should not prey upon the good. But. A man killed my father in cold blood, and the law let him off. My father was a cop. They beat up the man who killed him, and I can accept, that was not right. But they were his brothers in arms: they stood the line between chaos and order. And when a man murdered one of theirs, they…reacted." Freefall, Chance, his voice cold, he looks at the world in crazy perspective, "The man was let off, by the law, on a technicality. Rhw murderer. You were innocent, Danny Rand. That man murdered my father, and all knew for a fact, but the law set him free. For you the system worked. For me, the system failed bitterly. I do not begruge you the success of the truth of your innocence — but who spoke for my father?" He is silent only a moment before adding, "I did."
"I wanted to heal a murderer enough so that he can stand trial for what he did," Danny says as he strolls along. "But more than that, because I don't want to be a murderer, myself. Which is not to say that I would not kill in self-defense, but I will usually try other options first." The longer that they walk and talk, the more that he seems to become accustomed to not only the strange perspective but the strange lightness as well, and he walks a little more naturally, with a bit more confidence. When Chance talks about his father, then Danny makes the connection between the statement and the story. "Sorry, there's a lot of folks out there who still think I did it," Danny says, explaining the reaction a bit. Then he nods and says, "The system did fail your father." There's no qualifiers to that. He simply agrees, that that was the case. He glances over toward Chance, "So now you fight crime? Make sure that the bad guys don't get away with getting off on technicalities?"
"What is murder?" That is Freefall, Chance's, first question. "A man stood before a door with a weapon ready to use it. It is murder to kill a man who threatens you none, but if a man is a threat and you do him violence, are you a murderer? You approach this question on the subject of self-defense, and I appreciate that, but what do you consider when the man is the aggressor?" He shrugs, wandering languidly along the side of the building. Owning the space around him, in an odd way. He reaches a hand around, "I see the world only as those who I ask to join my world see it, what is murder?" He shrugs, but he does nod, "The system failed my father." But then he considers for a time, "Now I do what is within my power to serve justice. The system, I don't have any respect for. It operates on rules and systems that work, don't work. Justice is an ideal. You can serve a system and that system can fail. You can serve an ideal and you can fail. I will take my failings for myself."
"Murder to me is killing, or allowing to die when you have the capacity to preserve life, someone who does not wish death, and who is currently no threat to those around them. Killing an armed person who is attempting to kill you or others is not murder. I could have let him die, certainly. But I would not have felt that I had done the right thing at the time," Danny says. "I don't necessarily expect others to adhere to my own personal feelings on the matter, though." He folds his hands behind his back and strolls along, nodding as Chance answers what he does now. "So you serve Justice, and you accept the consequences of your own choices for doing so." He nods, "I wouldn't say that I necessarily serve justice, but I try to help people where I can and when I can. And I take my own consequences for the choices that I make."
Striding against impossible architecture, seeing skyscrapers lay long the horizon of the sky. Seeing cars zip to and fro where all sense says tehy should fall. They may even draw some attention from beyond the building which they walk. To these, Chance has no attention. Instead he looks intently to Danny. "I have no particular ability to preserve life." He says first, "I do not begrudge you that you tried to save the man there, who may have killed the old man— if not he, himself one of his compatriots, and in my mind, all were guilty. All were murderers." He shrugs slightly, turning to cross his dark covered arms over eachother, but as he holds his mask now his expression is considering. "I consider it never a failing to save a life; but I will not preserve a life that deserves death, myself. Moreover…" He frowns, "The man who killed my father, who admitted it, who was judged innocent as a matter of law but who was as guilty as any man who has ever lived— I killed him. I gave him to the sky. Am I a murderer?"
Danny considers all of this thoughtfully, hands still folded lightly behind his back as he looks out along the side of the building, ''above'' to neighboring buildings, not paying much attention to any other people or the traffic below. He is more lost in the conversation. "If all of them are complicit in the crime, then yes, I could see that they could all be considered murderers regardless of who actually killed the old man," he says as he considers the perspective that Chance puts forth. "And thus, as murderers, then all of them would be equally deserving of the justice of death. If only the one who directly killed the man were responsible, then the others, while criminal, would not be considered murderers. If all are complicit and thus murderers, then yes it wouldn't have mattered whether the man on the ceiling was the one who killed the man or if he was simply part of the overall crime." He seems to mull that over. Looking over toward Chance he says, "Are you a murderer? I wouldn't say so, not for killing someone dangerous who proved that they had already killed once, and could not be brought to justice for the crime committed in the normal sense. He'd already been tried and freed."