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JP really only had one thing on his afternoon: Talking to his little girl on the phone and maybe grabbing some pool with Sparkplug. Neither of these things was giving math any serious regard, as evidence just showed. Everything was going great, the lemonade was cold and he was lying in bed letting the breeze pass by letting it come up on 6pm eventually.
"Can't wait t'tell Ameliewe got real walls up. How long the guy say that film gon' take t'develop? Like a week we'll get it back?"
Elmo, flopped in bed next to JP, is on his back, fiddling with one of those funny bits of mysterious tech he's always creating and then messing with for weeks. He's got a dainty little pair of jewelry pliers he's using to nudge things around. "Yeah, 'bout a week. Can't wait to see it." Probably not as much as JP can't wait, though.
JP arches an eyebrow up, and then his head to the side. This was the part where he started telling Elmo something like "le courant galvanique circule dans une direction constante, le distinguant du courant alternatif…" and watch his little brain short out, but no, that's how they got here to begin with. Instead he promised, in dulcet tones, "I get one more random spring stab me in the junk while I'm tryin to sleep there gon' be a no gadget in teh room clause. Ce bien?" There was no heat to teh argument. He was lazy and comfortable and he trusted him. "Yeaaaah me either. I wanna send em to her so she can see we're really buildin a thing Like… a real thing. Nice garage, and I got a place with a door. She gon' be super impressed."
"Ce bien," Elmo says, amused. "Yeah, a real door, ain't no bars or nothin'. Hardly any concrete at all." He nudges his partner with an elbow. "We got a real thing goin' on. Yer gonna get respectable, you're not careful."
JP grinned with tha t stupid tired bullshit grin, rolled his head up and over pressing the grin to Elmo's cheek murmuring, "Tu es le meilleur, chere." The latter got an honest preening grin out of him pointing out, "Je serai," he points to himself, "toujours un scelerat, mon ami. Le roi scelerat!" The finger went up for emphasis. SO prideful when there was the sound of hootin and hollerin outside on teh street in teh late afternoon he didn't pay it much mind. It sounded a racus but when wasn't it boisterous in Mutant Town?"
Elmo tilts his head into it, grinning himself, satisfied and more than a little drunk in love. He's living his best life. A way too busy life, but best. People start whooping it up outside, and he sighs, turns his head to kiss JP, and gets up to peer out the window. Always anxious about sudden loud noises, this guy.
JP smooched back stretching an arm across his eyes. Ten more minutes to be a lasy lasy shit and then he could work on turning that muffler for optimising air flow and noise control. Yeeeeees! Baby barontosaurus with a muffler on it! He was so pleased and it was the distraction he really could use. One hand itched at bare stomach yawning like a lazy gator.
Below there were a trio of mutants, or at least we'll assume the purple floating one was at the very least or he had a weird helium addiction. But there they were doing stupid shit like punting trashcans. "The hell they doin down 'dere?"
Elmo narrows his eyes, taking this in. "Causin' problems on our block, that's what they're doin'. HEY!" he barks out the window. "KNOCK THAT SHIT OFF!" He grabs his jeans, yanks them on.
JP groaned and threw his hand over hte side of the bed fishing around and around looking for, yup, jeans. He pulled his jeans on (show's over folks, time to move on home), and slapped his feet on teh floor and that is when Elmo saw the horror.
Elmo saw it like slow motion; someone with a force quake push hitting one trashcan… then the next… then the news dispenser, and then… oh shit!
JP was about to like his cig, squinting in confusion at the concussive noise when there was a sound that was breaking glass and a HAIL of dimes and nickles raining down on teh pavement.
The spike of heat in th e room was instand as JP's eyes got huuuuuge.
That phone …was toast.
Elmo's eyes get bigger as the force quake ripples down the street and then—SMASH! There goes the Official Designated X-Ternals Phone Booth. "Ah, cripes! Don't kill 'em, JP!" He bolts out down the stairs, clawing his t-shirt on.
|ROLL| JP +rolls 1d20 for: 8
|ROLL| JP +rolls 1d20 for: 20
JP might actually go back to jail for waiting for a phone call from a five year old. Not only was that his phone (because it was in the rules. Ask him how) but it was just widely known on this block that's Gearhead's goddamned phone. His feet slid into his boots and there seemed to be no quarter in his expression (or in his poor phone anymore either!) There was something innately good natured about Jean-Pierre Bonaventurewhere even if he was defending his life he was a bit of a smart ass and tried to enjoy these things unless, as the world was seeing, you interfered with him seeing or talking to his kid. This was not the mechanic, no this was the asshole that went to jail for theft and assault and Elmo had every reason to be concerned as the wiery Cajun planted one hand on teh seconfd floor fire escape, breesing out to it, and let right over it into a one story drop onto the pavement, "Connard, you jes mess withthe wrong fucking phone, mes amis…" okay if he was going away for another 5-8 it at least looked bad ass.
Oh…you really shouldn't fuck with the X-Ternals OR the neighborhood when Nate is walking around. A pissed off Elmo, JP, AND Nate Grey? That's just…..suicidal. Thus, even as JP just leaps outside and onto the ground, the trio of mutants will find themselves surrounded, as from the opposite direction, comes Nate Grey. One of his eyes actually GLOWING with a flaming psionic energy as he looks enraged. He knows about JP's kid and how he waits for phonecalls.
This was a family matter.
"You fucked up." he tells the mutants in front of him, and even as he walked, it was like the street was being ripped to pieces with new things that Nate can smite his enemies with.
Elmo races to the street, and it's a tossup whether he's more pissed off or panicked. Electricity crackles in his hair. "JEANUSHKA! Nate do NOT LET HIM HURT THEM!" It's…the troublemakers he's concerned for? Yes. Because he saw that look in his partner's eye and the way JP went out the window like a tiger defending his cub. "You guys GET THE HELL OFF OUR TURF!" he hollers at them.
|ROLL| JP +rolls 1d20 for: 10
Oh these cats weren't from around here. They really did not really grasp the dangers of a barely dressed Cajun woken up who now couldn't talk to his lil girl when she called. Nate was entirely in step with that. Good.
Of hte three kidsone seemed to be able to create raw force from his hands, which Nate might remember of a young man similar in the future that answered to Richter. THe second was purple and floating dressed casual, and the third looked like he might be a bit of a muscle head though if he was a mutant it wasn't showing.
JP rolled up like a 5'10 thunderstorm crashing down on this cat's partyletting his fingers glance every car on the way over there starting up each one to that there were four running by the time he got to where they were. Funny thing was if you leave things revved up in your wake? That is scary as hell. THey didn't have to know that he let one go to start the next. Their solde job was to start wetting themselves and to fix his phone which they were not doing. This too was problematic for the team and any neighbour who needed to make an outbound call at NOT 6:00 to 6:10 pm on a Tuesday. There was a sign and everything to make it easy! "You better apologize on the count off- Merde' He didn't even count he just threw the first punch.
|ROLL| Elmo +rolls 1d20 for: 9
Punching doesn't count as hurting until JP's up to his elbows in someone else's blood and teeth—it's the appearance of the switchblade Elmo's keeping an eye out for. Everything else aside, he is not letting JP go back on account of a payphone. "Youse guys are IDIOTS! You come into M.T. to start shit at OUR garage?! You see that fukkin' sign says Gearhead's? HE'S GEARHEAD!" He scoops a handful of change from the pavement, charges up all those nickles and dimes, and flings them at the biggest guy. Individually they don't have much charge, but they form a net of crackling charge that zaps the guy halfway decent, making him yell.
Nate watches as JP just throws the first punch! Heh, Nate grins at that. the dick deserved it! Nobody comes between a dad and his daughter, after all. But! As Elmo and JP pick their targets, guess that means he's going for the purple guy. Nate simply makes a single thought and more than likely, the floating purple boy would become engraved in the street. Like a hard gravity impact just taught him who NOT to fuck with.
|ROLL| JP +rolls 1d20 for: 7
|ROLL| JP +rolls 1d20 for: 7
JP was not high powered, and he didn't have to be really. He wasn't super strong, or lightening fast. JP was really just good at what he did and those punches came ONE!TWO!THREE! without enhancement. "That…moi…mon…peteite…tu connard!" Which might have more impact if they spoke French at all. The trip of tiresome troublemakers were not going off without a fight and the grav-blaster who killed the phone was just dazed. He still had survival instincts and as such blasted JP back off of him by a few feet. That was liable to bruise ribs. JP was liable to not care nor notice. THe blaster went to blast the bayou badass looking, honestly a bit scared and out of his element, and pissed from being hit. JP, however, instead of trying to roll away, just let the car hit him. Oh yeah there was that Buick he revved up. It was taking him a half block before he rolled up over the hood and off the trunk. The car squealed to a hald and was now shifting gears to back up.
The muscly guy is coming swinging after Elmo, pissed the hell off from a not-that-strong-but-real-painful shock. He's making a mistake big guys often make with the little electric elemental; he thinks he can get to Elmo for a punch. Elmo yanks streamers of electricity out of the shattered phone booth—it's very little but he pumps his own voltage into it and lightning arcs into his hands. The big guy halts and says a bad word, made nervous. Once shocked, twice shy. Elmo grins at him like a madman. "You wanna dance, baby? C'mon." No. No the guy does not want to dance, especially after realizing his buddy has been mowed down by a Buick.
Yeah..that purple guy is probably gonna stay down, to be honest. With that done, Nate notices that JP got hit by a car. He can still feel the wavelengths of JP's brain, so he's probably fine. Besides, the dude wouldn't just suicide, so he trusts what the Bonaventure gentleman was doing. Meanwhile though, he looks to the muscle guy that Elmo pissed off."Now then…" the ground rumbles. "Elmo…stand back." that…was not a question. That was 'buddy, I like ya dude. I REALLY don't want you to end up buried underneath a bunch of concrete, okay? mmkay.