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Summary: Dingo tries to run a non-mutant owned business out of Mutant Town. Robin & Vincent decide to intervene.
Log Title: Get Out of My Town
Rating: R (LV)
NYC - Mutant Town
Mutant Town, also known as District X, has become a haven for mutants. This section of town doesn't care what you look like, accepting all mutants no matter what their appearance. Most of the businesses in this section of town are mutant run ranging from small convenience stores to clothing shops to restaurants to night clubs. The buildings here aren't the high rise buildings you might find in mid-town but most are about 5-6 stories high. Mutant Town might not be the most luxurious section of town, in fact it's fairly run down, but this section of where mutants are safe and welcomed regardless of race, religion and culture.
Scene
The night is bitter cold. It hasn't snowed in several days and a bit of rain followed by sunshine has reduced the snow around the city significantly. The sky is currently clear and the weather man claims that there is to be no snow this week, but the wind still sends a chill to the bone.
There are few people outside in this part of town tonight. The few small businesses at the end of this mostly residential street do not appear to be drawing in too many customers currently, and that suits Dingo just fine. The man walks down the street in his costume, nodding to a couple as he passes by. The couple give him an odd look and whisper something to each other before continuing on. Dingo stops halfway down the street and pulls out a touch phone, pulling up a map and double checking an address.
Dingo's costume consists of a body suit with a duster overtop and a pair of motorcycle goggles. The body suit is mostly black, but has tan gloves and boots. There are a few aboriginal designs drawn out in tan in the black areas of the suit. There is a stylized tribal paw print in the middle of the chest and on the back of the duster. The duster itself is made of a brown leather material and seems specifically tailored for the man. He shivers as he stands there. The suit looks nice and is designed to work with his powers, but it is unfortunately not very warm.
A subtle rumble comes from a small blue-ish car, as the driver shifts up a bit too early, causing the car to jitter as well. Vincent takes his hand off the gear shifter and hovers it over the weak but warm air vent above the radio. Inside he mumbles quietly to himself, "Stupid cold weather. Stupid snow." in a stream of increasing inappropriateness. The car continues down the street at a steady but slow pace, as the driver remains cautious about the road conditions, until the blinker signals right, and he pulls into a parking spot on the street. Vincent climbs out, his scarf wrapped tight around his face, and a toboggan keeping his head warm. Layers of shirts, a jacket and a large over-coat that was at one point too long for his legs, but the tattered and damaged lower inches prove that it's custom tailored for Vince, though the tailor was misuse and a few stumbles.
"I think we might've stayed a little late," says Robin idly, scratching underneath the painted lens of her glasses lightly, "Not a good habit on a school night." Her puppet doesn't respond. Why should it? It's just an extension of Robin's own being. The two walk in complete synch down the sidewalk, stopping when they spot Bruce for just a pause. She pulls her jacket over herself closer, trying not to shiver too much in the cold, but she really does not have the mass that some do to keep her warm.
Dingo continues to look at his phone for a few minutes before looking up again and nodding. He puts the device in a pocket and walks right past Vincent. The man seems to pause for a moment when he sees Robin and Blank before deciding not to try and walk between them and walks around them instead. He heads directly for a bakery a few doors down from where they are and stops in front of it, frowning at the closed sign. Dingo taps on the glass a couple of times and elicits a head shake from the older couple inside. It seems they're still in there closing up shop and don't want any further customers tonight. Dingo shrugs, lifts up an arm, and punches it straight through the glass in the front door. Rather than unlocking the door and opening it he transforms his body into sand and passes through the broken glass before recomposing himself.
The car beeps loudly and the signalers flash yellow for a moment, after Vincent presses the lock button and he turns to get onto the sidewalk. His teeth clatter and click on themselves as he shakes slightly in the wind, despite his clothing. The self healer watches Dingo walk past with a quick second glance, mostly due to the man's odd clothing, or more specifically, the color of his clothes. Vince shrugs his gaze off and looks forward as he seems to walk on, but the sound of breaking glass causes him to stop and turn. His timing is more or less perfect as he watches the later half of Dingo flow into the impromptu gateway. The voice in Vincent's head speaks up, forcing the young mutant to turn around and rush towards the felon.
Again in synch, both Robin and Blank turn around towards Dingo, Robin's sigle eye wide as a saucer when she hears the shattering glass. Her hands raise into the air as she takes the puppet into her conscious control, and a dead expression comes over her face. The puppet dashes at a sprinter's pace and unlocks the door from the inside to open it up. The puppet, being mute, points at Bruce and then raises a hand in the 'stop' position.
The people cleaning up inside of the shop look like a married couple, both in their upper 50's or lower 60's. The wife screams as Dingo breaks the glass and the husband turns on the intruder with a broom. He blinks a couple of times when he sees Dingo transform into sand and decides not to approach the mutant. "You…You just get out of here! I'll call the police!"
Dingo moves forward in a casual manner now that he is inside of the shop. He looks around nonchalantly and leans against the display case, looking down at the sweets within. "I always liked this little shop. Nice place, nice neighborhood, nice shopkeep. And then the police decided they didn't like the bloke who owned it. Had him hauled away." The man's hand turns into sand and he smashes it down onto the glass display box, eliciting another scream from the wife. He reaches in and casually grabs a cookie.
"And when he got taken away, you folks got this shop, eh?" He takes a bite of the cookie and nods in approval before continuing to speak. "Not bad. But not the right place for it. You see, this is MUTANT town. The businesses here should be MUTANT owned businesses. We can't have you mundanes moving in here and taking up our property. We're proud, you see. Like to support our own kind. So how about you move back out of here, hmm?" It's at this point that Dingo notices the puppet. He glances at it and takes a second bite of cookie. "Yeah. How about you go home and let me handle this, eh?"
Vincent runs past Robin with a few blinks in her direction, but looks forward as he slides on the sidewalk and stops right at the door. Awesome, he thinks to himself, totally Risky Business, but with pants. Vince raises hands in front of his chest and cracks both of his wrists as he walks behind the puppet, his boots cracking the already broken glass. "I think you should go home instead." Vincent notes, lowering his voice while adding some grit to it. Trying to sound like a bad ass, instead of an 18 year old kid.
The puppet has limited means of expression, seeing how it does not have facial features nor a voice. But Robin does her best: The puppet shakes its head at Bruce's request and gestures outside the door, touching where its lips should be and gesturing to Bruce and itself back and forth. This is a suggestion for a discussion outside (where her voice is).
The couple seem a bit confused by the appearance of these two newcomers. The husband looks back at Dingo. "We have every right to have our business here. We've never discriminated against mutants here and we're not gonna leave because some cocky bastard like you doesn't like mixed company." He gestures menacingly at Dingo with his broom as his wife cowers behind him. There's a thumping sound upstairs and the sound of footsteps coming down a staircase in the back room. A man in his mid twenties comes through the door and looks a bit confused by the situation. "Stay back, dad. Mom, go call the cops."
Dingo frowns at the people in the door and then turns to look at the son when he appears. "Oh look…Kids. How about you go play Candy Land and let the adults discuss all this property stuff. Ya probably wouldn't understand it that well." He seems generally unconcerned with the arrival of all these new people, walking over to the older couple and moving right past them as they cower slightly. He steps behind the counter and punches the register, causing it to open. "How about I just take this and donate it to the embassy, and y'all move out by the weekend. That sounds reasonable, hmm?"
Vincent sees more than he needs to, and he moves past the puppet, and runs at Dingo. Heavy boots crunch the glass scattered around the floor as Vincent attacks, his left hand reaching forward over the counter grabbing at Dingo's collar and his right drawing back to deliver a hay-maker to the man's jaw.
Blank, the puppet, looks around quickly to assess if there is an accessible weapon present, but decides to operate a similar technique to Vincent. The puppet is unusually strong, not what you would expect from anything that had the same scrawny build as Robin. It is about as strong as a human can get without being classified as superhuman. It dashes forward and swings its fist at Dingo's gut.
The woman screams again as the two in the doorway attack. She runs to the back room and can be heard moving up the stairs a few moments later. The son grabs his father's broom and attacks like the others, rushing Dingo and swinging the broom handle sideways at the man's back.
Dingo quirks a brow as Vincent comes toward him. His fingertips turn to sand, the effect spreading up his arms and across his body until only his head and clothing are left unaffected. The man turns as the woman runs, the distracting allowing Vincent enough time to land a punch squarely on the man's jaw. He stumbles back a bit right into the broom coming from behind. The handle to the broom shatters as it strikes Dingo, but he seems not to notice. Blank's punch will also elicit no response, the puppet may notice that punching Dingo is like punching a cement wall.
Dingo shakes his head and backs up a few steps, spitting out blood and bringing up an arm to wipe the rest away. "Nice shot. Won't happen again, mate." He dematerializes into sand and moves over the top of the counter, rematerializing next to Vincent and aiming a punch at the man's kidneys. He is still in his mostly sand form, causing his fists to be as hard as cinderblocks. For the moment he appears to be ignoring Blank and the baker's son.
Vincent pulls his hand back and shakes his fingers out for a moment as he takes a quick step back, before throwing his next attack, but the broken broom, and the man dissolving across the shattered counter. Vincent brings up his hands to get ready for a hard blow, but then the mutant aims low. Years of training at Xavier's, and years of training at private school kick in at the same moment, causing him to turn; he can't block the blow, however he can lessen the damage done to him, causing the cinderblock blow to get his lower ribs instead. Vincent doubles over, his hand grabbing his side, after the sound of snapping bone, but he doesn't fall to his knees, not yet.
The puppet, at seeing the methods of attack from the owners, takes a step back to contemplate the situation. She looks at the normals there and gestures for them to leave harshly. They have no chance of standing up against Dingo, and she does not want them to get hurt. In the meantime, she glances about the store in order to find anything that she might be able to use that would harm a sandman.
The shopkeep's son frowns down at the end of the broom he is still holding and drops it, moving to stand between the fighters and his father. "Go! Get out of here before he hurts you! That's that Dingo guy who's on the news all the time." The man begins pushing his father back, trying to usher him into the back room.
Dingo smirks at Vincent and leans down after administering his blow to bring himself face level with the other mutant. "Yup, that's me!" He glances over toward the son. "So I'll take care of these two and then we'll discuss your moving out." He looks back to Vincent and reaches out to scuffle the teenager's hair. "There ya go. You got to play hero and it didn't turn out so well. So how about you go home before I really have to hurt you."
Dingo seems to be continuing to ignore the puppet. He assumes it is another mutant, but seems to think that it just has some odd physical mutation and lacks anything that could harm him. The shop doesn't have much in the way of 'weapons', though there are shards of broken glass on the floor, a small baseball bat behind the counter, and a fire extinguisher toward the door to the back room.
Vincent frowns harshly at Dingo's touch, and the fact that he's not trying to be hero, he's trying to just do the right thing. But he takes a deep breath even as his broken ribs begin to mend slowly. Standing up slowly he releases his breath and concentrates on keeping the pain down. Mental training from the school and his hard lives, have definitely taught him a thing or two about pain tolerance. Vincent turns around, and half way he spins the power of his turn into an attack as he shoots out his left foot and aims it high towards Dingo's chin.
Glass? Probably not. Baseball bat? If it's anything like the broom. Fire extinguisher? Hmmm. Because the puppet does not have any physical characteristics that would aid, it is time to experiment. The puppet dashes towards the fire extinguisher and picks it up, trying to get a good angle. It's fortunate that Robin takes fire safety seriously, like all good mutants should, because Blank does not have much difficulty operating the things, being sure to take an angle that won't inhibit Vincent too much.
The shopkeep and his son look at each other and move through the back room door. The father runs up a set of stairs to the apartment above and the son gestures to the puppet when he sees her pick up the extinguisher. If that happens to work he's got a couple more back here. He collects up two of them and sits them by the door before running up the stairs himself, pulling a cell phone out of his pocket as he goes.
Dingo holds up his arms in front of him as Vincent attempts to kick him, blocking the blow with his forearms. "Hey! You seem to know how to fight pretty well. Not bad, kiddo." With his hands up like this the others may notice that they look a bit more dangerous than normal hands. It would appear that Dingo reshaped his fingers to look like claws. He rears back and prepares to swipe at Vincent when the extinguisher hits him.
Dingo rears back in alarm, the extinguisher being used is apparently a pressurized water extinguisher. It hits his upraised arm and blasts a few of his fingers off. The man frowns at his hand and sidesteps so that Vincent is between himself and Blank. He appears to be having a hard time keeping his hand together now, the sandy mush appearing a bit less dangerous than before.
Vincent's foot drops to the ground and he pulls it back close, standing up straight ready to throw another attack. He stops this time to watch Dingo's fingers reform and his raises his arm, and pushes the blades out of his arms, but doesn't make them spin all the way out, keeping them hidden still in his sleeves. Preparing to block the slashes coming from the sand mutant when the squirting and hissing sounds explode from the extinguisher. Vincent turns to follow the mutant as he sidesteps, and yet Vince doesn't care as he sprayed in the back as he raises his own right hand, the blade coming all the way around, resting in his fist, covered in blood and sending quite a bit to the floor with a splat. He brings his bone blade down quickly to try and sever the wet sand from the man's arm.
From a distance, Robin grins. Jackpot. Blank reacts to this revelation by jumping an unnaturally far jump over Vincent, and seeming to hang in the air. It points the extinguisher down at Bruce, gesturing down at Vincent with its head to indicate a threat. Anything becoming sand can be sprayed, and anything not can be cut.
Dingo shakes his wet hand a few times and prepares his other hand to attack the man in front of him. "Well, no time to play around it seems." Before he manages to land a blow on Vincent the man's bone blade slices through his arm, causing it to fall to the ground with a plopping noise. The sand simply moves back toward the man's body and disappears into his foot. The arm reforms in sand again, but it is now dry. The wet sand is down in his boot now.
Vincent dives out of the way of the sand storm and starts to get back up. His blade still dripping blood from the tip as his arm quickly zips up the lacerations, as he looks up to Blank and gives a nod just as Dingo re-enters the shop. Vincent steps forward, no emotion on his face as he holds out his hand with the drawn blade, and ducks as he swings a huge back hand, but as he drops to the ground, Vince tries to sever the massive salt hand from the sand being.
Dingo glances up at Blank as she leaps into the air. The spray strikes him in the chest and causes him to stagger back. He disassembles his body again and rushes the two of them as a small sand storm, breezing past them into the kitchen beyond. There is a bit of spattered wet sand against the window, so it would appear that the man left part of himself behind. There is a bit of clanking coming from the next room and Dingo comes out through the door again fully formed. He stands about fifteen feet from Blank and makes a backhand motion, his arm extending beyond it's normal length and transforming into something white. He apparently replaced what was washed away with salt from the back room.
Vincent dives out of the way of the sand storm and starts to get back up. His blade still dripping blood from the tip as his arm quickly zips up the lacerations, as he looks up to Blank and gives a nod just as Dingo re-enters the shop. Vincent steps forward, no emotion on his face as he holds out his hand with the drawn blade, and ducks as he swings a huge back hand, but as he drops to the ground, Vince tries to sever the massive salt hand from the sand being.
Blank is indeed knocked back against the wall by the salt hand unexpectedly reaching out so distantly. The puppet doesn't fall, though, merely seems to squirm in pain for a moment, but holds the extinguisher tight, spraying once more at Bruce, though in a less methodic manner than previously.
The blade passes through Dingo's salt arm, but the arm is not severed. In fact, Dingo shows no indication that he felt the blade at all. The wet sand on the floor begins to snake its way slowly toward Dingo, picking up speed as it gets closer to his body. Dingo is struck again by the extinguisher, causing the salt arm to sever when the jet passes through. The severed apendage also snakes its way back toward him, the wet portion moving much more slowly than the dry. Dingo shakes his head and looks down at once was once his arm. He then glances up as he hears sirens approaching. "Ah damn. Sorry kiddos, can't stick around and play Squirt Guns with ya." The salt reattaches itself to him and his arm reforms. "But seriously. You're obviously both mutants. You want a bunch of humans moving in here and buying up our town?"
Vincent's looks over to the door at the sound of the sirens and looks back over at Dingo, but he doesn't respond to his question. The blade on his right hand spins at the wrist and goes back into his arm, causing another series of lacerations, but it doesn't seem to bother Vince. He does stand up and moves over to the door, his role is over in this situation.
The puppet makes a few gestures to explain that it can't really respond to the question before gesturing outside and making the talking gesture again before shrugging. Outside, it could have talked, but now is not the time for discussion. The puppet then just vanishes with a, well, with nothing. There's no sound when it disappears, or even a disturbance in the air. It's just gone.
Dingo quirks a brow as the puppet vanishes and shrugs when Vincent doesn't respond. He steps into the back room and there is a great commotion as he whips up a quick storm to trash the place. A few moments later he's gone, having left through the window in a cloud of sand and salt.
The police will show up far too late to do anything useful. After speaking with the shopkeep they will advise him not to go to the media about the situation. It would only lead to fear among the other shops in the area and that was probably Dingo's intention all along. If they is still there when they come downstairs, the baker's wife will offer her heroes each a cake from the part of the display case that was not destroyed.
~ Fin ~
