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It's been awhile since there's been some normals causing trouble in Mutant Town, but that's what's happening today. There's a gang from out of neighborhood, armed with pipes, walking down the street calling out names, smashing windows in both cars and buildings.
They aren't as organized or quite as violent as the Friends of Humanity were, back when that was a thing, but clearly this is a group of 'activists' for the rights of 'regular people'.
There's a scrawney teenager— probably 18 but barely— green and scaled, and he tries to duck into an alley, but one of the goons notices, grabs him by the shirt and drags him out. "Hey, you freaking mutie. What are you supposed to be?"
There's an easy dozen of them.
Chance wasn't here as Freefall, he wasn't here to hunt for Justice, he was just here. Stepping out of the Eight Ball, he turns and sees the gang, and immediately frowns. He prefers to be masked when he's a vigilante, but…
The man begins a quick jog towards the gang, "Hey, assholes, leave the kid alone."
Clarice could hardly believe the news when she heard it. There was a whole section of New York where Mutants could live freely. Of course, once she heard, she had to check it out. The young woman slipped into some more civilian clothes, and with a 'blink', her portal popped her at the end of the alley so that she would be able to stroll out without a problem - since teleporting into the middle of Mutant Town would probably still draw looks, despite the fact that she has pale magenta skin, purple hair, and an elfin appearance.
Her hair pulled into a ponytail, she's wearing a simple green t-shirt and blue jeans as she she gets accustomed since where she was, just before she heard the voices. "…excuse me?" she asks quietly, pushing some hair over her ear. "Is there a problem here?" She's unarmed from the looks of it, and just looks like another poor soul that ended up with a mutant ability that changed her appearance and little else.
Lorna had taken up residence in Mutant Town, for better or for worse. She'd already nailed one guy to the wall for possibly being a mutant hunter that day, so she was most certainly not going to miss the chaos caused by a bunch of kids smashing up windows. Unlike Chance or the other young lady, however, when Lorna came bolting down the street at the sounds of breaking glass and shouting.. Well.. She wasn't going to give a warning.
Anger lit up her features as she came barreling to the fray, her hands flying up to yank at the pipes in their hands with her powers and send said weapons flying out of their reach.
The green haired mutant wore a pair of battered jeans, boots and a leather jacket. Looking much more like a greaser from the '50s than anything that one could consider fasionable. But at least it was functional…
One of the thugs turns to look at Clarice's words, "Mind your own—- oh you're a freak too." He hisses and makes a rude sign, lifting his crowbar threateningly.
That's before all the pipes and crowbars and the like go flying. A couple of them look to Lorna, recognizing her hands as her being responsible, so move in towards her.
For his part, Chance is a man of action; as he nears to the goons, he reaches out to touch a pair of them. They rebuff him, glowering in disgust— or try, because a moment later they *crash* into eachother in a sprawling tumble of legs and arms and shouting. They try to pull away and manage, just, before crashing in together again: a bone is heard snapping that time, as an arm got in the way of perverse gravity. Then he leaps— and goes up, and up, and up, leaping over the whole group to come settled down on the other side, a figure of pure grace in motion with both the jump and the landing, even if the jump itself was clearly unnatural. He glances at Lorna, flashes a grin, "Mind if I have one of those pipes?"
"Yes. I'm one of them too." Clarice says, as she watches the action unfold. Dropping her hand to the side, one of her gars pops into existence, and with a flick of her hand, she throws it at one that just addressed her. He disappears with a blink of green light.
..and reblinks into existence over the New Jersey landfill, where he falls into a mountain of garbage.
Several more small gars are formed in the magenta mutant's hand. "Anyone have suggestions for a donation. Hell doesn't count."
Lorna grinned as part of the gang turned their focus toward her. She had a good amount of pent up anger, and was more than willing to get in closer with the baselines that were causing trouble. When Chance sprung up into the air and landed beside her, she nodded at his request. A pipe lightly floated over to his waiting hand while she plucked two more from the air.
The others started to spin around her defensively and she dove forward toward the nearest of the still standing boys.
"Want to try toying with me?" She snarled, and threw the pipes from her hands, which of course, lead the stream of other pipes to follow, beating at the would be attackers from all over. A smack here. A clubbing there.
Spinning the pipe, Chance nods to Lorna, "Left my batons at home, expected a casual night out— hey." He glances over when he notices Clarice's contribution, "I'm going to assume you sent the guy somewhere comfortable?" He gives a respectful nod to each in turn. "'Scuse me, ladies." And then he shoots into the air. If one looks closely, from the look of his clothes and hair, he is literally falling *up*, not flying. But he arcs over and lands himself on the other side where he was to begin with, "Now, boys, the ladies and I would like to have some serious words with you. It seems you missed the message: Mutant Town is *protected*. If you let the kid go, we won't break anyone elses bones. If you don't, I will absolutely break at least one bone in your body, if I don't dropkick you into the sun."
The two guys struggling to not be stuck to eachother are still struggling. Against his better judgement, one comes at Chance, swinging. There's nothing supernatural about Chance's speed, but he is a trained fighter and gymnast, and so crouches back out of the way, reaches up to tap the guy, and he *crashes* against the side wall. Hard. The man blinks, and looks around, confused, and begins crawling *up the building* as if the wall were the ground. He's got himself a bloody nose, and a hurt leg, it looks like.
"As I was saying…"
"Comfortable is a relative term." Clarice explains simply. "But if you want to handle this all on your lonesome and try to impress me and the other girl…" she could be heard rolling her eyes if she had pupils. "What do you think?" she calls over to Lorna. "Do you think we should let him have all the fun?"
And of course, in answer to that question, the next gar is flung towards the two men that are tangled together. Where do they end up?
In the middle of the general population at Stryker's Island. It seemed to be a 'comfortable' place, as Chance put it. Dropping into her own portal, she ends up popping up next to Lorna.
Lorna was busy while the other two exchanged threats and banter. Several of the pipes were now bending and snaking around arms and legs, becoming rope like under the magnokinetic's direction. Unless there was a jaws of life around, those boys weren't going to be getting free anytime soon. Finally, that taken care of, Lorna turned her green eyed gaze toward the others that were still being peppered by the blows of the few remaining pipes.
Then, when it seemed Lorna had had enough of watching that for a breath or two, she threw her hands up into the air. Whatever metal was still on the human's persons—belt buckles, zippers, buttons clasps and jewelery? She hoisted them into the air by that.
"What is it you've got over there? Gravity powers? Cause if so? Totally groovy." As Clarice popped into existence behind her, Lorna grinned wickedly.
"Oh no, no. I was thinking about seeing how much these guys enjoy being magnetically stuck to a car or something."
"Well, as long as they're not too relatively comfortable." Chance breaks off into a run towards the side building, jumping and twisting at hte last moment; and as he lans sideways, down is quite clearly along with that other guy who is crawling. And who gets a smart rap to the back of his head— he falls down against his ground, the building's wall— as Chance runs by then leaps off with a flip to spin acrobatically and land properly down again. He flashes a grin towards Lorna, "Gravity, yeah." He agrees, then tilts his head, "Magnetically? So we have half the fundamental forces of the universe covered, while the other lady here appears to just be ignoring physics." The grin for Clarice is friendly, offering, "I'm Chance." before he turns and crosses his arms and looks at the thugs with a much less friendly expression when its clear Lorna has the matter in hand. "I did promise them broken bones. Should we leave them for the cops instead?"
"Oh? Police? I mean, I could just drop them right in front of the Patrol Sergeant's desk." comes the response from the magenta colored mutant as she sends out yet another spike of teleportation energy, and another anti-mutie blinks away. "I guess I can leave the rest for you two to play with." she offers with a smile. "Clarice. Nice to meet you, Chance. Not so nice for them."
Lorna shrugged, "I had no intentions of giving them to the police. What are the police gonna do? Let them go with a call to their parents? It's more likely they'll try to get us thrown under the metaphorical bus for attacking them." She snorted, and waved her hands, directing the last of the pipes to slap over a few of the mouthier gang member's lips as a sort of gag.
Still, Chance earned a grin from the green haired girl. "Mmhm, magnokinetic here. Never met a mutant that could control gravity. Very cool." She settled her hands on her hip. "I go by Polaris these days. Nice to meet you, Chance, Clarice."
"But that won't get them arrested— here they've committed vandalism, assault… If they get dropped in the police station, as far as the police are concerned, they're victims of mutant-on-human violence." Chance wrinkles his nose, but he does allow for Lorna, "Then again there's every possibility the police wouldn't do anything even if they were caught red-handed." He grins at Lorna, "Well I've never met a magnokineticist… Though control gravity might be stretching things. Looks like you can just reach out and control magnetism. I can control an object's intraction with gravity."
"Sorry, my powers are complete bore. I just teleport things." Clarice says with a shrug of her shoulders. Though her attention drifts to the boy they were about to attack. Making her way over to him, she frowns a little. "Are you alright?" she asks quietly. "If you want, I can get someone to walk you home. Or at least get you outside of where you live, if you want me to."
Lorna nodded at Chance. "Yeah, and I'm sure they'll love to run to the papers about that too. See the headlines 'When Mutants Attack!'." She arched a brow and glanced toward Clarice briefly as the woman turned her attention to the poor mutant that had been accosted by the gang of humans. A look of sympathy crossed her features. "Is he okay? I've got a cache for a first aid kit a block or two over. I've been setting them up around town to try to make it easier to keep people alive." Then her focus returned to Chance as he talked about his powers a bit more. Her grin returning to life.
Lorna says, "Yep. I sort of am just a giant magnet. Being able to control how something interacts with gravity though? Groovy.""
"Nothing boring about teleportation…" Chance laughs softly, "I have to fall at something if I want to get somewhere, and I can fall at about 110mph before breathing and the elements not to mention pressure starts being a problem. Don't get me wrong, that's fast, but not worrying about the space between has certain logistical benefits." He nods over to the kid that Clarice talks to, "You're safe now, kid." He nods, "We'll keep an eye out." He shares a grin over with Lorna, "We're all special. That guy…" He nods over to the guy passed out 'laying' against the wall, "Guy's lucky I just didn't bind him up."
"Do you consider the landfill in Jersey to be far enough away? Sure." Clarice offers, and smiles. "I get how hard it is to look different." the elfin looking woman offers before she nods. "Yes. Noone else will be hurting you today." she promises quietly before she straightens up. "So, this is Mutant Town. I'm sorta new to the area. Things like this happen often? I mean, do the local police turn a blind eye to any attacks on mutants?
Lorna glanced back to Chance, "Oh man, and I thought the puns people made about my magnetic personality were terrible. I can just imagine the girls falling for you." She snorted into a laughter at that, and coughed after a moment, glancing back to Clarice and nodded. "Jersey sounds perfect. Can you clean up the rest of the trash here? I hate to see them littering the streets here."
She grinned faintly. "Well.. welcome to Mutant Town. Where the cops don't care if you're not baseline. Right along side increased crime rates, systematic oppression, rising poverty and trumped up charges." She settled her weight back on her heels.
"Oh and expect to run into some self-rightous nutjobs ready to tell you that it's wrong to stand up for ourselves. That happens frequently too."
Chance groans at the pun Lorna made: he's heard that, all right. But, "They'll go through the motions to vaguely look as though they're investigating human-on-mutant crime, but really, they'll use it as an excuse to blame the mutant for something, as oft as not." Chance frowns, shaking his head slowly, "And not that long ago— there was a massacre. The 'Friends of Humanity' killed like sixty eight people in the neighborhood, not all mutants even." Chance answers Clarice of his point of view on the cops, and nods for Lorna's assessment of the neighborhood, "At the same time…" he points over to the Community Center, "Its also where its okay for us to be us, where we come together to help eachother, and where we can feel like an actual community. As much as we can, while keeping our heads down." His tone says what he thinks of THAT.
Lorna nodded to Chance's words. "They locked up and burned a whole building of mutants alive out west. And things haven't been so hot here since then either. Kids going missing, snatched off the streets. Either returning up dead a mont or two later else where or never being found at all." She exhaled a breath, grimacing as she nodded toward the two.
"I'm gonna go check the other streets, make sure that these guys are all that showed up tonight. It always happens in waves." She she muttered dryly, and offered a wave. "I'll see you guys around hopefully."