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It's certainly the kind of weather to make the window shoppers come inside rather than lolly-gag about on the streets. Not yet snow, but the threat comes in ever sideways cut of the autumn wind. Still, the leaves are pretty when not blown about and collecting at the gutters on the streets. This section of New York bustles as does Macy's. Inside, the decor is shifting towards Thanksgiving, with appliances pertaining to the cooking of large meals and large birds on full, cheerful, bright display.
Steve is out on a walk between meetings. In blue button-down and slacks beneath a brown bomber jacket, he's in civilian mode as he considers one of the latest deep fryers. A frown and a mutter to himself, "…why not just cook the turkey in the oven? Don't fix what isn't broken." He then looks up and around the expansive place, curious as to the faces around him.
*
The perfectly nice autumn day shouldn't feature a perfectly nice yellow streak between the thick white clouds sailing along on a brisk breeze. Shop girls roll out the newest line of polyester dresses and pants on floor two oblivious to the trouble. Floor three has all the cute coats for the season being straightened up by ladies who wear white gloves, and they don't pay attention yet. The incumbent rattle sounds like thunder to the fellows outside in the warehouse at the back. At least one large float is being manhandled into place and inflated as a test of who knows what. Macy's is a scene of calm and order. Economic prosperity shines through every window and 'sale!' sign. It looks pretty as a picture. A picture about to have a rock thrown at it right into the central court flanked by wrought metal fencing to keep kids from toppling six floors down. All so peaceful. All about to not be peaceful.
That trajectory leads right for Macy's. It's a nice clear building alone on the block. The largely vertical descent goes right for it. But that's not Super-someone coming to get his ten percent off for being elderly discount. No, it's a woman, tumbling end over end.
*
Tamborine- Check. Guitar- Check. Harmonica with one of those neat-o neck holster things- Check. Dead Girl is ready to be a one corpse band.
She's standing outside of Macy's playing a cheerful song on her guitar, as she stomps in time, letting the tamborine chime out in a chipper way as she blows away on the harmonica.
It's total folk-chaos! But then, there is someone falling from the sky, red eyes narrowed as tries to figure out what, exactly, is falling towards her, "Hey, that looks like a lady.."
*
Julie is checking out the season's fashion with a …largely skeptical eye, perhaps, but then there's… Sonic booms and something… Tumbling? She doesn't need to see it to sense that, leaning out over the rails to glance toward the atrium's skylights.
*
The smell of burnt air is kind of strange. More like metal of a jet's afterburner or the scorch left in the air in the wake of a wildfire. Not right to be ozone. Not the same as a diesel bus bumping along. The flame halo left by atmospheric friction trails behind her right as the woman and fade out. Chunks of material go with her, burning up on the descent. There is a rooftop rapidly approaching. Does anyone on the street listening to the renegade folk songstress care? Probably not so much. Slow motion spiralling duets with gravity but a body the size of a human isn't much against a whole planet. Flaming debris crunch onto the road. The sidewalk is peppered by bits of hot ash. A fist-sized metal meteor goes through a window and — oops, that's a mistake in the kitchen section as it skids over the floor right up to Steve Rogers. Special delivery from Universal Postal Services. The bigger one no one signed for smashes into the roof and sends tiles flying. Inside, fancy furs are knocked over the rail to rain down on the lower floors along with a rack. Any many flooring tiles. No one likes last season's lino anyways!
*
Steve's in the midst of explaining that no, he isn't interested in the deep fryer, but thank you, he'll be working through the holidays to a shiny-smiled young assistant on the floor when he hears the first of the sonic noises. He falters and looks around and then towards the ceiling.
The first impact is enough to make him shrug up a shoulder and step in front of the young woman named Paige by her name tag on her blouse. She screeches and crouches down, joining a brief cacophony of other yells, yelps, and general cries of shock at more arriving debris. Picking up this Paige, he then high-steps back a few feet in order to put more space between the crisped, half-slagged metal ball and themselves. Once he ascertains it's not an immediate threat (other than destroying the section dedicated to cooking utensils with an interstellar fury), he looks around to see the chaos unfolding farther within the store proper. Someone shouts about a body and that's enough to make him leave Paige where she stands, still trembling with hands pressed over her mouth in shock.
"Excuse me, move! Move, please!" His voice carries as he makes his way through and around the mess now contained within the store, over to where a small crowd is already gathering, still half a dozen feet back from whatever is in the circle. He steps authoritatively into the ring and…stares. "Oh my God," he breathes before kneeling down beside the figure, uncertain of what to do right off the bat. SHIELD. SHIELD is going to know about this, one way or another.
*
"Oooh…." Dead Girl says as her body goes sort of translucent- a crash of metal all around her. Towards the danger she goes, her instruments just sort of falling to the ground without much ceremony. Towards the woman!
How lucky Dead Girl can fly! AT least, when she's insubstantial- trying to close the distance between herself and the falling woman.
Hopefully she'll get there in time to snatch her out of the sky….
Of course, that means two of them are falling now- because as it turns out, DEad Girl *Can't* fly while solid, "I got you!" she calls out, "I mean, we're both falling now- but at least you're not alone, right?" she shouts as she gathers the woman close into her arms and looks down at the wreckage and all the rest.
Dead Girl might be dead- but she moves like an acrobat, now. Dancing along the wreckage as one might expect a hero of a more living nature to do.
Of course, she can't really fly like this- so when they eventually hit the ground, Dead Girl's legs snap like twigs! SNAP! But, most of the worst of it is taken up by the Dead Body- and not by the falling blonde. "Whoop!"
Dead Girl collapses, with the falling woman on top. "Hey, are you okay?"
*
Julie reaches up with a hand, at first, by reflex perhaps trying to arrest the spinning of whatever's coming down, and perhaps throw anything off balance headed for her… or the nearest child, that she dashes to scoop up and pull out of the line of fire, "Mammamia!" she exclaims a bit. She glances around to try and reorient to what's just happened… and if there's any more debris still raining down.
*
The falling figure has no pithy comment when snatched. No cocky grin for anyone, no Starkian quip. Her expression is blank, the hints of small tears in her clothes and grey soot smudges under her closed eyes all wrong. Her shoes are melting around the rubbery soles but not falling away in glops of material. Dead Girl may have caught her but that doesn't stop the unconscious body from cratering the floor when they impact. No acrobatics there. She hits and sends out cracks in different directions. A sale sign falls over. Burning bits float after her. Broken plaster and glass make for regular hazards. The furs have landed in a pile for stunned shoppers to scowl at. Mink or rabbit, which for this season? When the noise settles, minus a few chunks of debris hitting the ground outside, it's still painfully obvious the woman was recently alive. Might still be alive. Her battered clothes smoke a little. Disturbingly they are still intact. Must be Stark super polyester, the fabric that wouldn't die. Dead Girl receives no response for the question. Neither does Steve for that matter. Her chest's movements are weak. But now Macy's can have the foundation ready for their new Christmas exhibit, Santa in a pit of ice.
*
The Captain does recognize Dead Girl, most definitely now from their brief time spent recently in Central Park if nothing else. He winces at the state of the unconscious blonde woman having made such a shocking impact — literally — into the once-quiet day in shopping heaven. Not only that, but…eidedic memory makes for a wide-eyed recognition of the woman to boot. He masks it as best he can.
"Here, move, we've got to her to a hospital." Read: SHIELD, because no standard, run-of-the-mill human being survives both entering the atmosphere as well as smashing through multiple floors of a building, much less wrecking the pristine flooring of Macy's. Steve makes to remove her from wherever she splays, be it within Dead Girl's relative embrace or upon the cold tiled flooring, and into his arms, slung across them with ease given his serum-boosted strength. "Is anyone else hurt?" he then asks, looking at Dead Girl for an answer as well as Julie now in turn, spotting her nearby to the cluster of people.
*
"Oh, I'm fine!" Dead Girl offers as she begins to stand on clearly shattered legs as if it really didn't bother her- still holding the blonde woman carefully as her legs start to snap and crack and return to their former wholeness. "I think this lady needs some help, though." she offers, as she easily hoists the blonde. "Man, this place is a mess…" she says, as she looks around- a piece of glass falling from above to spear Dead Girl in the skull. She frowns. "Is there something in my hair?" she asks then, "It feels like there might be something in my hair."
*
Julie is, meanwhile, picking her way through the crowds, grabbing for a fire extinguisher she spots along the way, saying to various shoppers doubtless beginning to panic, "You're awright, you're awright? Everyone awright?" She picks her way along, making some haste for the escalator, letting blast with the extinguisher rather like she's done that sort of thing before. "Gangway, you guys…" She hops onto an escalator rail and sit-slides down a flight, surveying damage and… What else might be falling.
*
"Thank you, m'am!" This shout-out to Julie, who takes professional control of her part of the situation at hand. "I've got her," he then says to Dead Girl, carefully working the unconscious blonde woman to a more comfortable position in his arms. "I'll be sure to let her know what you did, catching her, once she wakes up. I need to get her to safety for now." Steve speaks, low and intense, to Dead Girl before he begins walking away with the woman slung in his arms. A few shouts of confusion go up and at least one person shouts for him to stop, where is he going?! "Official government business, excuse me," he says back in an evenly serious tone that brooks no argument.
With that, he leaves the scene of the impact behind and the beginnings of the arrivals of local emergency and police departments. Of course someone from SHIELD is on site, an agent, and Steve can be seen talking briefly to him before they both go to a nearby ambulance. The blonde woman is hustled inside, the Captain disappearing along with her, and the vehicle departs from the site with lights and sirens blaring.
*