1964-10-14 - Assassins, vomit, and poetry.
Summary: There's a fight! At a cemetery!
Related: If there are no related logs, put 'None', — please don't leave blank!
Theme Song: None
cannonball douglas gary corvus peter 


.~{:--------------:}~.


"Be silent in that solitude,
Which is not loneliness- for then
The spirits of the dead, who stood
In life before thee, are again
In death around thee, and their will
Shall overshadow thee; be still."

There is a pause from the young man sitting on a bench in the cemetery, lit by the moonlight. "…That's Poe." He says, "It just kind of popped into my mind." Doug Ramsey, AKA Cypher, whose codename can literally be interpreted as 'A man of no importance', reaches into a brown paper bag and takes out a fried donut, the kind caked with cinnamon and sugar, and takes a bite out of it. He watches a cloud go over the moon, and then holds the bag out to Sam

"So." He says, "At dinner, I kind of picked up a little bit that there was something on your mind? I didn't think it'd be polite to bring it up in front of Jay or the others." Then he takes another bite of his frycake and talks with his mouth full, before he swallows, "…My powers have grown, over the past few years. I pick up on all sorts of things now, including non-verbal cues. If I sit and listen I can even understand birdsong." He snorts, stifling a laugh. "Birds are filthy little monsters!"


Not too terribly far away from where Douglas is talking, atop a little hill—wet with old rain and littered with the first fallen leaves of the season, Peter Parker is standing in front of a gravestone with his back towards a trail that leads to the main drag. He's wearing a simple auburn jacket over plaid shirt with a pair of light brown pants. Saying whatever he had to say he turns slowly and begins walking down the pathway, heading over to where Doug is seated upon the bench.


Its chilly. Autumn can be like that, and the human standing in front of a grave stone. It had been a few minutes ago that he had put away the chrome, metal flashlight, back in his pocket, a necessity to make sure he had the right one, even in moon light. Gary stood there, in silence, for at least a few moments. He wore a deck coat that looked like it came from a surplus store or the thrift store adjacement to; A scarf wrapped around his neck catches the wind briefly, before its smoothed down. There's a moment's hesitation, then he bends forward, picking some errant detrius- leaves and some overgrown grass- away from the stone's base, before straighening back up, shoving his hands back into the hand-warming pockets of the jacket. He stares at the outline of the stone, the angle of moonlight leaving the wording illegable without his light.


Cannonball takes the bag from Doug and sits there on the bench with his flannel shirt unbuttoned by 2, and his legs set wide, claiming a fair portion of the bench. He rustles the bag SO MUCH just getting out a donut and seems totally oblivious to all the wrinkling in the cemetary. "Does hangin' out with you mean I end up hearin' a lot of poetry?" He cocks his head and looks over at the other mutant. "Just me and Jay makin' up is all. He had a hard time of it when I suddenly…left. I'll tell ya, but only if ya don't tell no one else." He takes a bite of the donut. "So…how many a these people are vampires?" He makes a gesture, generally, towards Peter and Gary, who seem interested in the graves.


Doug says, "Well… I admit, Poe's not for everyone, but his verse is better than Lovecraft's prose." Then Doug says, "Your brother has scars; they run deep. I understand. After I got back to New York I looked in on him when I could, and made sure he was doing okay. He has a strong support network of… very strange friends. So really it's a lot like all of us during school." Then he says, "Whatever you share with me is between us, unless you're in danger. In which case, as one of tres Idiotas, I am honor-bound to try to help you get out of it BEFORE I tell anyone else, so you're good." He watches Peter and Gary, and says, "…No. But both of them have their hearts buried here."


The sound of heavy footfall rings out from near the Civil War tomb stones. As it turns out not everyone is here enjoying the sceneary. Three men appear to be chasing after a blonde haired man. "You'd think that they'd of sent their best." he teases, hooking a sharp left and putting a monument between himself and his pursuers.

Good timing on his part because a gunshot rings out, a portion of the horse exploding off. "Get that slippery fuck!" the man in the front yells, frustration written clearly on his face. Looks like there might be another buried here before the nights over.


Once the gunshots ring out, Peter's body jolts into action as if taken over by some other power. In a well practiced move, he feigns fear and begins to run for the cover of the trees not too far away. He's not scared, of course, but needs to give the impression he is. He must be a track and field star, given how fast he runs, as he dips behind the treeline and disappears from view.


Gary stares for another few minutes, lost in reveree, "I… I'm sor-" He starts. Maybe he had something else to say. Maybe it was just going to be that word. Whatever the length, the monolouge was inturrupted, and despite every other instinct the man /should/ have developed, that sound, here, in this setting, jars him, causing a violent flinch, a jump over every feature. He looks up, not sharply, but nearly dazed, before his internal monologue smacks him in the spine, and he drops behind the gravestone he was staring at moments before, "Sorry, Roddy." He breaths, his hand reaching into his pocket, only to find that damn flashlight. He produces the battery-weighted, metal-bodied torch out of his pocket, gripping it firmly as his head peeks up to get a bearing.


Cannonball watches the boys scatter and he stands up. He takes a look at Doug, up and down, pondering the guy's skillset for this sort of thing, then lifts one of his coltish legs and kicks the back of the bench to try to send Doug off into the bush behind before he can get all valorous and get himself shot. "Aint been so long that I don't know you'd find some way a gettin' yerself shot in all this. Stay down, Ramsey." Then he jogs forwards a few steps. "Hey there, Gentlemen! I don't take too kindly to ya bustin' up General Lee there! How 'bout we stop tha shootin', like yer a bunch a drunks from Cooter's!"


"Hoof!" Doug winds up falling off the bench and into the bushes. Good thing he wasn't holding the donuts. "Wha" He extricates himself from the bushes, and says, "There were *raspberries* in there" And then he looks up, and scoffs, to himself. "Oh no you don't, Guthrie. You don't get to bench ME like I'm fifteen again—" He takes the long way around, keeping low and ducking behind monuments and high gravestones to try and come up behind… whoever they are.


"We don't have time for this, kill hi-" The man starts, only to go wide-eyed and pause. His men lower the gun from Sam and turn to see what Doug had the pleasure of watching. The man they were chasing, Corvus, has pushed a gladius clean through the leader's midsection.

"Didn't they teach you not to take your eyes off the prize?" He rams his shoulder into the skewered man's back and pushes him forward, using his body to eat any incoming fire.


There's an odd mechanical sound just before a blue and red figure leaps out from the tree-line, aided by his webbing. He lands onto the wet grass leaning low with his hand bracing himself upon the wet ground and the other at the aim. "Alright, boys, everybody go ahead and say what team their on to make this sort of thing easy. I hate it when we pick teams and that guy over there gets picked last. Yeah, you." It's not clear who he's talking to. "That sort of thing can be traumatic."


From a distance, in the moonlight, it was difficult to tell exactly what was happening; Or at the very least it was difficult to not dispute that you'd just watched someone bring a knife to a gunfight and take the lead with it. He shakes it off. Something was happening, that was sure, and it looked rather mutual. Gary was likley about as fragile as any of the gunmen, but probably a bit more nosey. Besides, no telling how organized the gunmen were, and it was probably a little surer to go where there might not be any gunmen in a few moments, then to a gate with folks looking to avoid witnessess. He advances towards where the bloody game is being played, using memorials and crypts for pragmatic, if sacraligious cover and concealment.

He blinks at the sight of someone of the spider persuasion. Just how many did the city /have/? He grumbles a bit, yelling as he's moving, "Its a northern graveyard, chum! There's not many rebels buried here!"


Cannonball is no longer sure which one of these is the good guy or the bad guy. He glances up at Spidey, though, and seems to be in agreement. So, he can temp solve it so they can figure out who really deserves to be fought. He takes a few running steps and then tries to blast off the ground, paralell to it, and grab hold of the surviving pursuant and tumble him a solid 20 yards away. "Lets have a chat about killin' folks..huh?" He tries to ignore that he's literally in the home of the Yankees.


Doug looks up, just in time to watch a sword go through a man's guts. His eyes widen, but the fact that he doesn't immediately recoil in horror speaks of a youth full of Weird and sometimes Horrible — and there are Stories. So many stories, more than any good Mormon boy should have. Sam was there for most of them. Well that and the good lord above gave Doug a dose of courage that didn't come with any force-fields, regeneration or super-strength. But that damn foolhardy courage — oh, he has that in spades.

Which is why he gets up, and says, "I think that was a disproportionate *use of force*. He glares. "You had better drop the Pompeianus Gladius and chill out, man, while somebody *CALLS THE POLICE*—" Of course in this era, that means they'd have to go to a payphone. And that PROBABLY should've been him.

But again, whatever higher power is out there gave Doug Ramsey a lion's heart and a dose of courage way out of proportion to his mutant power.


|ROLL| Cannonball +rolls 1d20 for: 14


"Oh, he won't die." Corvus assures Cannonball as he yanks the sword free and rolls over the man's back, retracting the blade on the gladius and holstering it before he hits the ground. "Call them if you must. I'll be found out who sent them by the time they get here." Adjusting his glove he approaches the last man standing, before drawing back and knocking him out with a slap.

"Now, I think we can all calm down, yes?" His eyebrows raise as he looks from person to person, hoping they'll just side with him on this one.


Spider-Man straightens as Cannonball talks about killing folks, assuming he means, like…not killing folks would be the southern man's vote. "I'm on his team," he says, pointing a long finger towards Cannonball. As Corvus speaks, Spidey tilts his head and looks for clarification, "Anyone understand what's going on? Do we know that guy's not gonna die? Things are weird outside of the city."


Gary 's body peeks out from the masoluem he's hiding behind, 15 or 20 feet from the action, as things wind down from the dynamcism of an open fight. A hand still wrapped around his flashlight, he steps slightly out, eyes drifting towards the younger man drifting things down, then to the super-human who had taken a survivor. Spidey just gets a look, and the swordsman gets most of the consideration, addressing him, "Slowing down is fine. Seems like you're the one dragging the respective hounds, though. A little disrespectful to lead them here, doncha think?"


Cannonball tries to wrestle the gun away. "No killin'. And no clue what's goin on. But…ya can all start explainin!" When his cornflower eyes drift towards where he left Doug, he can see that the guy has gotten himself right into the thick of things again. "Gol Dang it." he mutters and then looks at Corvus with a frown.


Having glared and made his defiant statement, Doug's attention is turned to the guy Corvus stabbed. Doug got rudimentary first aid in school, same as all of them, but most of what he knows is "Aw, heck" He looks down, and says, "This guy's hurt bad, he needs a doctor" He looks at the blood on his hands, and then wipes it on the grass. He pulls his coat off, and tries to stanch the bleeding. "SOMEBODY CALL FOR AN AMBULANCE—" He looks up at Corvus, and says, "I get that they're criminals. I really do. But have you ever thought about the blood on YOUR hands, man?"


"I said he wasn't going to die." Corvus moves over to the man he stabbed and produces a small tube from a pouch near the blade. Tearing the shirt away he applies whatever's inside and it appears to stop the bleeding and hold the meat together. "See, right as rain." With that out of the way he glares down at the man.

"In my defense, I didn't know I was coming here. I was hoping to find it empty, but you take what you can get." Those thin fingers of his wrap around the thugs throat and he picks him straight up off of the ground, apparently he's much stronger than his thin frame would suggest. "Now, how about you take your friends and scurry back to whoever hired you, else I decide to dirty my hands more. Vivere militare est."


"So, pardon for asking the obvious question. I feel like the teacher is going to roll her eyes at me for this one, but, what did these guys do? They were chasing you? Why? And you're almost killing them, but fixing them up? Why?" Spider-Man still confused, it seems.


"Would be assassins." Corvus explains with a slght wave of his hand before dusting himself off. "Though I don't know why they'd go aft-" He stops and straightens up, eyes going wide. "Oh no." Without offering any further explination he turns and starts sprinting away, back towards the city proper. Clearly he was letting those men stay close, because he's fast.


Corvus goes home.


Gary clears his throat, a bit, "At a dead sprint, we're at least a minute or two from the telephone lines, and I don't know if any of us paid attention hard enough attention to which outbuilding had a payphone in it." He offers, apologetically, to Doug, as he fishes around in his pocket for a pack of cigerettes, producing it, and slipping one into his mouth, now that he's at little more sure of the lack of sharpshooters. The zippo opens with a clink, and illuminates his face, briefly, "That's easy bec-" He cuts himself off as the man just /books/ it. "Harder." He says, quietly, his brow furrowing as he frowns.


Cannonball lets go of the guy, but keeps the gun in his own hand. He seems to know how to work one, since he unloads it, spilling bullets onto the graveyard ground, before he hands it back to the guy. "Sounds like its yer turn to make a choice. He's sayin' run on outta here and ahd take him up on it." And presumably, with their quarry gone, they go. "What'd he say anyway, Dougy?" He picks up the bullets from the ground, casually.


Doug fixes Corvus with a steely look. "Ab irato! Bella, mulier qui hominum allicit et accipit eos per fortis. *Nemo iudex in causa sua*!" He watches Corvus flee, and then looks to the others, and at his coat, and at the blood on his hands. And finally, he says, "Sam, oh God, there's blood everywhere, it's all over me, I'm gonna puke—" And then he turns, and hurls into the grass, from the coppery smell of it. "*Blerrrrrrrrch!*" The donut, the cocoa he had, his dinner, all upchucked. He's got a lion's heart, but only a human's stomach. "Hurrrrrrrk!" He's left dry-heaving in the grass. "Huh… huh…" He tries to find something not bloody to wipe his mouth. "Huh… 'to live is to fight'." Then Doug says, "Bovis stercus."


Spider-Man just sort of stares. He's pretty sure the stabbed guy is fine and that the situation is under control. "Yeah, well…So, you see…I think it's time ole Spidey makes his way…uh. Outta here. It's been real, guys." He even begins to tip-toe backwards still not sure how these assassins got stabbed, how that stabby guy just bolted, and how there's some kid puking over there. He never thought he'd say this, but things seemed saner in Manhattan.


Gary shakes his head a little bit as the last guy takes off. And just like that, things are over. He speaks around his cigerette, "That sounds like an authoritarian's life motto…" He cocks his head, "What did any of tha-ahhhhh, oh. Oh, that- I'm sorry kid." He says, taking a tenative step forward and craning his neck to ensure that blood-sick young man is okay, before looking at the person directed as Sam, "He uh… wait, who are you guys and why are you playing Paladin in a graveyard?" He watches spidey start to move away, and inclines just inclines his head. He kinda gathered what the webbed crusader was all about at least.


Cannonball points at Spiderman. "Awww…naw, man…anyone got a camera and can get a photo of me with this guy? My little sisters would have a heart attack, you know." He drawls out as he approaches Gary and Doug. He gives Doug a pat on the back. "Sorry about the donut. That's a right shame." Then finally holds his hand out to Gary, "Nicetameetcha, Ahm Saaaaam Guthrie, hero…or…somethin'."


Doug wipes his mouth with one hand, and says, "Stercus accidit. I liked that coat. Got on my shirt, too. Stercus accidit." Then he says, "Doug." Then he jerks a thumb at Sam, "Sam's friend." He looks up at Spider-Man, and says "Hey, we meet again, wall-crawler… least this time nobody got turned into a meat popsicle." He looks up and shakes his head. "You sell yourself short, Guthrie, but then again, you always did. Hey Spidey!" He reaches into the pocket of his ruined coat and takes out a little book of poetry — Pablo Neruda. It miraculously didn't get blood on it. And a pen. "Can you sign this for Sam?"


Spider-Man stops mid back pedal and goes slump shouldered. Clearly the adoration is an elixir to all of the awkwardness, "Well, for the fans…" he says in a silly voice. He takes the pen and begins to scrawl, "Dear Sam. Stay out of cemeteries. Your friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man."


Gary accepts Sam's extended hand, giving a firm, if cautious shake, "Gary." He responds simply, to both Doug and Sam. No last name or occupation. Then again, what occupation was going to beat hero, after all, "I'm starting to think the 'hero' population of the city might be a little much, considering two mutants with the need to run towards a gun fight happen to be… patrolling? A cemetary." He responds, somewhat flatly. Spidey gets his fame on, and Gary simply snorts, "Well, not everyone believes the papers, I guess."


Cannonball takes the book of poetry back from the webslinger and grins, then tucks it away. "Hey, I could ask the same about you, Spidey. What're YOU doing here too? I was just hangin' out with this guy somewhere we thought would be kinda quiet, to catch up. Sorry ya got involved, there, Gary. You need an escort back to yer car or anything?" He smiles and when he does, twin dimples appear on his face.


Doug rubs the back of his neck. "Naw, we're not patrollers. We were just catching up. Old friends. You know how it is. You don't see one another for a few years and it might as well be twenty." He stands there, the wind ruffling his hair, before he looks to Gary, and then says, "I'd offer a handshake but I still have some of that guy's blood on me. I do need to call the police though, so I'll just—see if I can get into the caretaker's office to use the phone."


"Official Spider-business, of course," Spider-Man says without hesitation. "Papers, really?" to Gary. "Really? We're going to go there, now?" Spidey seems genuinely perturbed by the implication. That J Jonah Jameson seems to have that effect on him. "Office is right over there," Spider-Man says as he points towards a small house looking thing over on the hill. Seems like Spidey has been here before.


Gary raises an eyebrow at Doug, "You're a mutant too? I was just talking about the webspinner and your friend." Gary says, giving a bit of a sigh at the implication of… something, before giving an eyebrow raise at Spidey, "Well, sorry, I just figured more people might know about you from them then from the viscious rumors being spread on amataur radio?" He barb's back. He looks in the direction of the caretaker's office, and does some mental math, before shaking his head at Cannonball's offer, "No. I need to go finish talking to a friend of mine." He responds, in a quieter tone.


Cannonball tips his head and gets a more solemn look, then. "Sorry fer yer loss. We'll…let ya get back to it, I spose." He lifts his hand and rubs the back of his neck. He does look the normal fellow over though, to make sure he's alright, and just packing that flashlight. "Doug…ya need to get cleaned up so ya don't put blood all o'er the office. Gah, lemme help ya." Then he takes a jog step to catch up to the do-gooder.


Cypher pauses, and then interjects with, "J. Jonah Jameson's got a good record on Mutant Rights and he's always speaking up for the people in Mutant Town, but his Spider-Man hate really makes his paper look like a rag. I like Peter Parker's photography, though. He really captures the meaning of what he's looking at." He glances to Gary, and shrugs. "Well, some of us fly through the air at tremendous speed… some of us can flawlessly conjugate verbs in Latin." And then he trots up to the Caretaker's Office. Locked. Hnh. Well… nobody's paying attention, and somebody's injured. Desperate times. He throws a rock through the window and unlocks it, before he climbs in and rinses his hands in the bathroom sink, before he calls 911. He apologizes for breaking the window, even. "Yeah. Yeah. There was gunfire and somebody got hurt." He'll come back during the day and pay for the window. He looks up at Sam, and gives him a sheepish smile, before he hangs up the phone. "…I gotta give a statement to the cops when they get here. So. While we wait, we got interruptedyou can tell me if you want, or don't, if you want to keep it to yourself." Then he huffs out a breath. "I was having nice evening with my buddy and some chucklehead ruined it because he decided to cut through the cemetery"


At the mention of the cops, Spider-Man knows it's time to hit the road. The idea of the police is one of the few things to pull his mind away from the irritation that is Jameson. "Yeah," he says limply to Gary, not even sure what he means by that. He gives the departing men a nod and turns to finish his jaunt to the trees so that he can get back to more familiar surroundings.


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