Players:
Summary: Dingo attempts to get his own brand of justice after he witnesses some police officers shoot a mutant.
Log Title: Injustice
Rating: R (LV)
NYC- Thompson Square Park
Thompson Square Park is a small park in the middle of Mutant Town. The benches might need a fresh coat of paint, the fence might be rusted in places and the pavement is raised and has cracks but it's all part of the mutant haven and fairly relaxing. Trees and grassy areas are in between the many paths, there are a few structures and benches along the path as well as a special area of the park that is marked 'the dog walk'.
Scene
Ah another uneventful night in Mutant Town. Dingo supposes that it is a good thing that nothing terrible has been happening lately, but it makes his patrols a bit uninteresting. The sand mutant sighs and shivers as a cold breeze blusters past, deciding to change directions and head back through the park. He stops suddenly as he hears shouting. After determining the direction the sound is coming from, Dingo takes off. He runs to the edge of the park and stops again, frowning at what he finds.
“Leave me alone! I don’t want any trouble!” It is a green skinned woman with pink eyes. Someone Dingo has seen at Nowhere multiple times. She is currently surrounded by six men who look less than friendly at the moment. One of them jumps the girl from behind, grabbing her while one of the men in front of her begins punching her in the face. She screams and lets out a blast of pink light from her eyes, sending the man in front of her flying back.
Dingo was rushing forward to save the girl when she lets out that blast. “Well well Carmencita…Didn’t know you could do that.” But he is too far off for the girl to even know he is there. There are a couple more blasts of light from the girl as she attempts to fend off her attackers. Dingo continues to approach slowly, trying to think of something witty to say to the gang.
Dingo stops suddenly as he hears shouting and gunshots coming from the other side of the park. He darts forward as he sees the girl drop, stopping next to her and bending down. “Carmen. Carmencita. Wake up Carmen.” He can see already that the girl is dead. He looks up to see who shot the gun, seeing two officers advancing on him.
“Oh shit, I think that’s Dingo. Look at his costume. You there! Freeze.” But Dingo doesn’t freeze. He moves forward in a determined manner, not hesitating at all when the police open fire on him. They turn and run, getting into their cruiser at the end of the park and taking off down the street.
Dingo glances back at Carmen and the shocked looking gang members one last time. “I don’t have time for you right now. Do yourselves a favor and never show your faces in this city again.” Much of the sand that he used during the Mutant Town War is still sitting in this park. He pulls it around himself and takes off down the road after the police cruiser. He cannot see once he takes the form of his sand Dingo, but the car’s siren gives off such a strong vibration it is easy for him to follow.
Meanwhile
NYC - East 42nd Street
Traveling from East to West in the center of Manhattan is 42nd street. The long street is home to Grand Central Station, United Nations, Bryant Park, New York Public Library and Times Square. This street has many stores and restaurants tailored to the more upscale and tourists of the city. There are also many theatres along this street for Broadway Musicals and motion pictures.
The night isn't quite as cold as it has been for the past few weeks, but due to a small temperature spike yesterday it feels much colder than it actually is to the people in the city. The wind is a bit chilly, but it is infrequent and not terribly strong. This part of the city is finally starting to die down after being crowded by the rush hour crowd. There are still many people walking West from Times Square who are all dressed nicely, apparently a Broadway play just let out. They are now entering the many restaurants lining the street, a few of them hail taxis and get in.
Homework: Watch a musical and do a report on the use of music within a broader story. The wording of the assignment was much more complicated, but Mason has been to see Wicked tonight because of it. But not alone, oh no! A fellow celebrity, Kayla Thompson has been on his arm for the evening. Kayla's fame is a bit less significant than Mason's, but enough that both of them have opted to wear sunglasses for the evening. It may be night, but they don't need anyone inventing some huge relationship that isn't there. It's a fling, and the actress and pop star are both content with it.
A white dress shirt with a black tie, white dress pants, and a pair of sneakers to go with them. They laugh and talk as they head down the street, nothing too significant on their minds.
Homework: Startlingly for those who know Rashmi, none. With her new class schedule, the only thing on her itinerary is shopping for the upcoming dance. And shop she has, bags swinging from her elbow as she threads her way through the post-play crowd. Pausing to adjust the knit cap that now completely obscures her hair, she hefts her bag, weaving around a particularly grumbly investment banker as she walks toward the closest bus stop.
As Mason walks further from the theatre the crowd thins a bit. There are a few glances at him and his date as they walk past, but no one seems certain enough to approach him. One woman hesitates and almost stops him when Mason walks past a record store with his poster in the window. She shakes her head as a saxophone player nearby starts playing one of Mason's songs and walks away, assuming she's just seeing things.
Rashmi has less of a problem with people recognizing her. She does come across a sudden flood of people walking in the opposite direction from her. A few of them don't even try to step out of her way. One woman steps out in front of Rashmi and tries to force a pamphlet about the end of the world into her hand. "Repent! Repent!"
Over at the nearby United Nations building a meeting has just adjourned which meant that those who participated were now spilling out the front doors heading to their next meetings or to grab a bite to eat or what have you. In the case of Tony Stark he and his guards are coming down the steps heading towards a food cart parked at a busy street corner that supposedly sold decent food. Once the trio of men reach the cart and their food is handed over Tony walks down the street with his tie flipped over a shoulder and listening to the others discuss the plan for getting to Tony's next meeting all the while shoving condiment loaded food into their mouths.
It would appear that as soon as the flood of people arrived they all vanished, stepping into restaurants and vanishing into the subway like water down a stormdrain. A few people continue to mill about the street, no one even looking as the sound of a siren approaches from the south.
A few moments later a police car comes racing up the street from downtown, honking and weaving past taxis as it moves. Several of the Taxis honk at the cop car in an agitated manner before seeing why it is moving so fast. They all pull off to the side of the road before the massive sand dog rampaging down the street crushes their cars. Not too far behind Dingo is another line of police cars, one or two of them calling over their loudspeakers for the creature to stop.
The car Dingo is chasing swerves to avoid hitting a truck and crashes into a car parked on the side of the street. The siren cuts out and Dingo hesitates for a moment before leaping in its general direction. He lands on the parked car and begins ripping it apart, the three story tall sand monster tearing into the steel with relative ease. The police in the car seem to be uninjured, though they are slightly confused as to why the mutant is attacking the other vehicle.
Mason laughs, "Only if that turns you on," he answers the girl with a teasing smile. The young actress opens her mouth to answer when Tony Stark exits the UN building. "Oh, Mason! It's Tony Stark!" She exclaims and bounces as she points. "Holy crap, it is," the teen agrees. Upon Kayla's insistance, Mason starts toward Tony, only to be cut off by the sudden event of the sand monster causes a complete shift, however. Both of the famous teens scramble backward, but Kayla more so than Mason. She's off and running. Mason, he pulls back to one of the buildings a good distance away, and glances around. Crap, there went his chances of scoring for the evening. He doesn't even know which way his date ran. Surrendering to the loss, he looks back at the monstrous scene unfolding before him. "Wow…"
Rashmi whips around as the sirens can be heard down the street, eyes widening for a moment. Once the police cars, and their tremendous quarry barrel into view, the redhead's startled expression becomes horrified, then incredulous, then furious. Hefting the clothes bag hanging from her shoulder, she grits her teeth, then against all advisability, stops forward as close as she dares to the parked car, taking a deep breath and tilting her head back to look at the giant dog's face. "WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM, DINGO?!"
The trio of men comes to a stop to watch the crash with accompanying angry sand monster. Tony pops the last bit of his food into his mouth and undoes his tie handing it over to one of his guards. "Take care of that for me. If I destroy that tie Pepper will never let me hear the end of it." In fact Tony has time to hand his suit jacket over to the same guard as it will take a moment for the armor to sail through the air as it is down the street in the parked car that Stark had taken to the UN building. A nearby angry yell draws his attention away from the sand to see Rashmi stepping out into the open. With the armor close at hand the remainder of the clothing Tony wears disentigrates being replaced entirely by the golden armor as the red pieces come into view heading for Stark to assemble around him.
The police that were being chased get out of their car and begin running toward the police cars that were chasing the mutant. Dingo seems to hesitate after he manages to rip the roof off the cars he's attacking. He thrusts his muzzle into the vehicle and pokes around a bit before looking up and glancing around. Dingo rises up out of the top of the beast and glances around, seeing rashmi and the running cops.
"You! Yeah, you! You're a mutant right? Stop them! They shot a mutant kid in cold blood!" It would appear that he didn't hear Rashmi yelling at him. Before explaining exactly what is going on he sinks back down into the creature and takes off after the men again. They leap to the side and he continues to barrel forward past them, stepping on the hood of one of the oncoming police cars and causing the airbags inside to go off. The beast seems to have trouble finding the police he is chasing after, almost as though it cannot see them.
Nevermind, that must not be Rashmi, hair is too short, and she'd never yell at people like that. Still, Mason goes a little white as he hears Dingo's name. He backs up some more, watching the drama unfold. At least the Iron Man is here. The pop star seems frozen, uncertain what to do. Does he help? Heck, no, that could be dangerous.
Rashmi pauses as the giant sand dingo galumphs down the road, her free hand coming up to pinch the bridge of her nose. Letting out a rough breath, she shakes her head. stomping toward the fleeing policeman, hands up in a gesture of surrender. "I'm not like that idiot," she calls, voice a touch more level. "I'm just going to ask, officers. Is he even *remotely* at all close to the truth?"
Being able to hear everything around him thanks to the wonders of a powersuit coupled with slightly better hearing than normal Tony is making his way towards where Rashmi is now holding up her hands at the collection of police officers. "Officers, lower your weapons she is of no danger to you. I am personally vouching for her but you might want to explain the situation quickly as I need to put a stop to this situation before innocent people end up with more to worry about than getting sand in their suits."
The police men glance out from between the Taxis and level their guns at Rashmi. "Stop lady, you with this guy?" One of them gestures toward Dingo, who is presently ripping apart the Police Car he landed on. They lower their weapons when Iron Man shows up. "Oh thanks God you're here, Iron Man. Yeah we responded to a fight in Mutant Town. Some Mutant freak was shooting these beams at some human kids and we shot him. Dingo there went ballistic and chased us the whole way." They leave out the fact that the mutant was defending himself against a gang.
There is a sudden bout of gunfire behind the group as the police chasing Dingo open fire on the sand monster. Dingo seems not to notice and continues ripping the car apart, seeming not to notice that he is being shot at at all. One of the police gets out of the car beneath him, but the other appears to be trapped inside of the vehicle.
Mason ducks down a little as he hears the gunshots, not leaving his hiding place. He watches as Iron Man starts taking a more active role. It's comforting, kind of. The only problem is that He's not certain what Iron Man can do to the human sand storm.
Rashmi draws in a deep breath, letting it out softly. "Okay," she says, voice neutral, "okay. Okay. *Why* was the mutant shooting at the others? And, um, you might want to hurry. He looks like he's as blind as well as stupid, um… but he's going to take another look around. Soon."
With a general idea of what happened to start this situation, and Rashmi cleared with the police so she's not treated as a part of the problem, Iron Man rises straight up then takes off down the street where the police are opening fire on sand like idiots. Because obviously bullets will really stop sand. Sigh. "Hey there!" The armored Avenger comes to hover in front of the sand monster. "You failed obedience school didn't you? Stay!" With himself in the way the police at least stop firing weapons pointlessly and Tony doesn't expect Dingo to actually listen to him.
The officer speaking to Rashmi shrugs. "He was in a fight with some kids. He started shooting them, we stopped him. Just doing our job. Now we've got that psycho after us. If you're really a mutant maybe you should try and redeem your people by stopping that monster over there."
Dingo does not respond to Iron Man when he appears. The sand monster makes no indication that it can see or hear him. It does seem to know that there is an officer in the car below him. He takes a paw off of the vehicle and bats at the side of the car, knocking it sideways and eliciting a cry of pain from the officer inside.
Mason's powers suddenly occur to him. This sand monster probably can't really do anything to him. Cautiously, he takes a few steps out, adjusting his sunglasses. With that, he takes a few steps out into the street. He glances around, finding a discarded hoody, and puts it over his head, covering his outfit. The old hoody in place, he makes his presence known. "Hey!" he calls out, rushing toward the sand monster after he's slapped the car to the side. He waves his arms wildly, trying to get the sand monster's attention. "Look over here, you knucklehead!" he calls out. "What's the problem, huh?" he asks. "Just chill for second before they get crazy." He's visibly trembling, but he's making his best shot at intervening.
Rashmi's eyes narrow at the challenge, spheres fading into view and revolving slowly over her head. "Officers," she says, taking the tone of Infinite Patience, "I think that I would like to take down your badge numbers, and know what precinct you're working out. I'll be speaking to your Captain regarding that *incredibly* thoughtless comment. And now I *very* much would like to know, as I'm sure the law offices of Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Halliway, *why that mutant you shot was in a fight.*"
The officers involved in this situation have quite a lot to worry about considering their brief explanation but at the moment their behavior was the least of everyone's worries. With Dingo still tossing cars around, and people in them, Iron Man flies down to a nearby fire hydrant and pulls the cap off the front allowing the water to gush forth soaking the ground before using his hands to try and get the stream to aim higher at the moving sand. Mason providing the perfect distraction to allow him to get to the hydrant in the first place. Hopefully the kid doesn't end up getting tossed about the street or worse.
One of the officers speaking to Rashmi reaches for his gun as the spheres appear. "Listen lady, I think that the situation at hand is a bit more important than why some mutant kid decided to attack some other people. Even if he was attacked first he still shouldn't have used his LOOK OUT!" He pushes his partner to the side as the police car Dingo was attacking is slid over to where the three were talking.
Dingo mills around slightly. He cannot find the officers that he was chasing earlier, but all those bullets inside of him have him thinking twice about reverting to human form with all of these police officers around. There is a clattering of metal as several dozen bullets are pushed out of the creature and rain down onto the street below.
Dingo moves toward the direction he believes the other cars to be and is just about to step on Mason when the hydrant strikes him in the left flank. The construct turns suddenly as large portions of his chest are blasted away by the water. Dingo back-pedals and attempts to charge the hydrant from the side, shrinking down slightly so that he can mend the area of missing sand on his side. He leaps toward where the hydrant is, assuming there is an officer there.
Mason backs up, watching as Dingo is struck by the water. "Okay, you don't want to listen to me?" he says. "Let's see if you listen to this." He chases the sand monster, trying to catch up to it as it charges the hydrant. "Wait, dangit, you're supposed to stay put," It's clear that Mason isn't all that great at this superhero thing.
Rashmi whips around as the car squeals toward the three of them, spheres lashing out and smacking into the upper side of the car at top speed. Three spheres each, slamming into the corner of the passenger-side hood and trunk at ninety miles an hour are certain to right any car on its side. The moment the vehicle drops back down, she's sprinting *toward* the cruiser, shouting over her shoulder, "there's still an officer trapped, GET OVER HERE AND HELP!" *Something* has awoken the girl's temper at full steam, it appears.
At least Dingo is no longer three stories tall but seems to have adapted rather quickly to the spray of water and is coming straight for Stark. When Dingo is close enough to his position Iron Man pulls the hydrant off allowing the water to shoot about the entire area raining down heavily. It's more than likely that there is a collision between Dingo and Iron Man which would result in the two sliding down the glass of a coffee shop like giant rain drops.
The officers by Rashmi rush forward and try to pry the car door open. Finding it particularly difficult they reach through the window in an attempt to pull out the other officer.
Dingo continues to move as he is doused with water, his outer layers that are struck with the water becoming damp. He slams into Iron Man and breaks right through the wall of the coffee shop, sending sand and shattered glass flying into the establishment and raining the patrons with harmful projectiles. The construct moves slowly toward the hydrant and stomps a leg down ontop of it. The wet sand on his body repositions itself onto the leg over the hydrant and he breaks it off, leaving a large pile of sand covering the hydrant as he shifts his dry sands to return to normal form. He is much smaller now, only about one and a half stories tall.
Mason scrambles back from the water, trying to avoid the nasty messiness. The teen takes advantage of the monster's attention on Iron Man, and he charges forth on the blind beast, both fists outstretched to plunge into the closest leg, and then spread his fingers out, and pull his arms back in order to dissipate one leg and cut him further down to size.
With the officers occupied on getting one of their own out and making headway, Rashmi steps back, nodding to herself. Turning, she leads the charge toward the coffeehouse, her spheres arcing out and slamming on the giant dog's flank, her voice once again at top volume. "OPEN UP DINGO! YOU'RE MAKING EVERYTHING WORSE AGAIN!!"
Force fields from Tony's armor extend outward from himself to try and sheild as many of the people in the shop from the debris as possible. It is brief but at least something to try and keep the people from harm. Now undearneath the massive amount of sand Tony tries grabbing a hold of it to see what will happen and finds it a solid form instead of something giving underneath the prodding. "Will you quit flailing around? Don't make me put you down." If Dingo decides to fight with Iron Man then the poor guy had his warning before he took repulsor blasts at close range.
The officers by Rashmi end up pulling the trapped man out of the car. A few of the police men that were chasing Dingo go over to help. The other officers run into the coffee shop to help the people that were inside when Dingo slammed into the wall. One officer runs to the hydrant and attempts to dig it out of the sand.
Dingo twists his head around inside of the shop, the rest of his body still being outside of the building. He snaps his jaws a couple of times before being struck in the face by Iron Man's blasts. The monsters head explodes in a shower of sand and the headless body jerks back away from the building, hesitating for a few moments as the loosed sand returns to reform the head. Dingo rears back and prepares to slam into the building again when his rear leg disperses. It is an odd feeling, something he has never experienced before. He feels Rashmi's spheres slam into him but they simply sink into the sand being and pass through the other side.
The dingo turns and looks in the general direction of Rashmi. Dingo rises up on the back of the beast again and crosses his arms, frowning down at Rashmi and glancing at the missing leg with some concern. The sand is still in the area, but it seems to have dissipated. He holds out a hand and the dissipated sand returns to the leg, reforming it. "What do you want? Did you catch those officers?"
Mason stares back at Dingo, not realizing that it's Rashmi being spoken to. "No, I didn't catch anybody, now cut it out," he answers. He adjusts the shades and the hoody, ever conscious of his identity, lest he give himself away. While he makes a good show with his voice, his posture is clearly that of a young man who is rather intimidated, inching back as he speaks.
Rashmi, by contrast, is far from intimidated, eyes narrowing at Bruce as he rises from the construct. "You've got your own problems now, *Dingo,*" she replies, voice flat and hard. "You think it's okay to just start tearing up the city like this?! Get *down* here *right now* and get yourself arrested. My *God,* how many people did you just endanger?!"
There's a little tinkling sound as a door is opens with Iron Man coming out from behind it even though there's a huge hole in the store front. The door swings shut behind him as people inside scramble backward to hide behind the comfy couches arming themselves with little decorative pillows for good measure. A glance from Rashmi to the hooded kid and he calls out to the young man, "Hey, Beiber! Get to safety will ya?" As Rashmi is quite nicely ordering Dingo to come down from the sand construct which is a sensible request. To that he adds, "Come down. There's no sense in this wild ramapage. You're clearly not going to get your point across by throwing your weight around downtown."
The police are quite busy now checking the people in the building for injuries. A few are talking over their radios, but rather than coming to the aid of the officers the rest of the police appear to have just blocked off the streets surrounding this incident, seemingly trusting that Iron Man and the others will take care of this problem. The man that was pulled out of his vehicle seems to be waking up now. The men Dingo was chasing? Gone. It seems they didn't want to stick around to see who will win.
Dingo surveys the scene and frowns. "You LET THEM GET AWAY!? My God Krashmeen!" It seems he doesn't actually know the girl's name. "They KILLED one of US! The filthy human bastards KILLED one of OUR PEOPLE!" He actually does jump down off of his construct to walk toward Rashmi. He laughs in her face, "Allow myself to be arrested? For what? For taking justice into my own hands? I'm not going to sit by and let…What? Who are you? Go away." That second part was to Mason. The construct behind Dingo moves to nonchalantly swipe Mason out of the way with a paw.
Dingo turns back toward Tony as he speaks. "Iron Man? What is he doing here?" He seems legitimately confused by the appearance of the Avenger. "Oh that thing that blew me head off. Must have been you, eh?" He smirks. "Tell ya what, help me get those bastards who killed the mutant boy and I'll forgive your treatment of my people, k? I promise I won't kill them right away. I'll bring them to Magneto. He'll decide what's best."
Mason's hand comes out to swat back, meeting the paw of the constructed dog, and shattering it into a cloud of sand, leaving the boy unscathed, though covered in sand. "Cut that out," the teen answers in an annoyed tone. "You're getting sand in my hair." The ease of deflecting the blow gives him a little more courage. "You don't get it, you stupid old fart, they are our people, too. You're just a racist bigot. You're like a nazi. Hail Hitler! Let's wipe out everybody a little different than us! You should be ashamed of yourself."
Bruce's casual disregard of human life breaks something inside Rashmi, visible by the way her face scrunches up, cheeks flaming. And then, amazingly, her hand swings out, balled into a fist; the redhead is actually taking a swing at someone for the first time. It's not an exceptionally *stong* punch, given her lack of intensive training, but a punch to the cheek nonetheless. "YOU COULD HAVE KILLED A *DOZEN* PEOPLE YOU IDIOT!! The four of us are the only ones who *care* about that boy BECAUSE OF YOU!" Now *shut up,* *get arrested,* and *I'll* get those police officers hauled into court before *you* can do mutants anymore damage, *got it?!*"
This has turned into a sort of mini soap opera at this point as police start to close in around the small quartered off area. The hooded kid is of course only digging himself into more trouble with his comments but seems to be able to at least keep himself from being harmed. "Any taking of life is unacceptable as is running around like a half cocked idiot. I'm not even going to bother with the rest of your inane comments." Of course this is when Rashmi unleashes her fury upon Bruce with a nice cross to Bruce's face which wouldn't help matters at all but it was brilliant to witness. "Turn yourself in and allow people to do their jobs to set things right. This…" waving around the general area that has been destroyed, "does not help the wronged."
Dingo raises an eyebrow when Mason diffuses his construct's paw. The construct looks down at it's leg as though in confusion before the limb is regrown. "Leave that alone, it's mine." He shakes his head, "And wake up you stupid kid, it's not ME that's trying to wipe out the other race. The HUMANS are trying to kill US."
Dingo turns back to Rashmi just in time to get punched in the face. He doesn't move much, but his head does turn to the side from her impact. "Ow! What the Hell, Keeshma!?" He folds his arms and turns to look at the police down the road. "I wasn't going to "Kill a Dozen People"." He makes air quotes as he says that. "You know I only kill those who actively attack our people. So a few humans got hurt in the cross fire. Maybe they'll think twice if ever given the chance to harm one of us."
Dingo turns back to Iron Man and smirks. "Turn myself in? Get arrested for protecting Mutant Town? That would end well. They'd decide they want me locked up and I'd just slip through the window. Or if I decided to stay the death toll in Mutant Town would suddenly skyrocket. They need me there. And I'm not going to let them die because of a few idiots with skewed senses of judgement." He turns sharply to look at Rashmi so that she knows he is talking about her, too.
Dingo walks closer to the young woman and points a finger in her face. "Find them. Find them and get them off the street. I'll be watching the news. If I think things are going to soft for them? I'll take things into my own hands again. Got it, sweet pea?" The dingo behind him begins to degrade, the sand seeming to blow away in a sand storm. "One week. You have one week." And then Dingo is gone as well, joining his construct as a sandstorm which blows down one of the nearby subway tunnels.
Rashmi glowers at Bruce as the ultimatum is given, turning around and whipping off her hat as the mutant terrorist blows himself out of the way. "Thanks a *heap,* Bruce, you jackass," she mutters darkly, sucking in a breath to steady herself before looking up to Tony. "Okay. Mr. Stark? I need to ask you a favor… Can you, um… Help me get the badge numbers of those officers he was chasing. I hope he's wrong, but I want to be sure. And if he's *right,* well…" She shakes her head, sighing to herself. "I'm almost going to *have* to hit them as hard as I'm able to… legally."
With the departure of Dingo Tony comes over to stand near Rashmi as the cops continue to try and handle the situation with the injured and to make sure that none of the overturned and shredded cars were dangerous in the sense that they could catch on fire. "I'm alright. Nice cross by the way," he says pulling the helmet off to tuck under his arm next to his side. "I'll do what I can, Rashmi. It's a shame there aren't camera's posted anywhere in Mutant Town that footage can be pulled off of. Let's just hope that they do not turn out to be exactly as Dingo claims."
~ Fin ~
