Players:
Summary: A mysterious traffic glitch almost gets Theo run over.
Date:March 21, 2010
Log Title Red light, Green Light
Rating: Log Rating.
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. //
It's sunday so Caleb has no classes today, thank god!, Barnes likes to keep you busy, he's heard about this place Mutant Town, apparently everyone here has powers, he's not a mutant but he thinks its still ok for him to go here, hes dressed in blue cargos, a red t-shirt, a black jacket, is wearing black Airwalk trainers, his white hair is gelled in a casual bedhead look and his violet eyes are glowing faintly as is the yellow stone on the silver wristband on his right wrist. He's leaning against a tree watching some of the preformers on the street.
Description set.
This is one of the few places that Robin can walk around without standing out too much. Not because of anything unusual about her appearance, but rather the fact that a glowing blue puppet, of approximately the same build and size as her, seems to follow her wherever she happens to go. She wears a nice black jacket to keep from getting too chilly, a pair of black slacks and a pair of boots, as well as her usual assortment of jewelery. She brushes some of her hair aside, carefully making sure none of it is obscuring her vision or the painted lens of her glasses. She turns towards the boy who's with her, noting, "I used to spend a lot of time in this part of town."
"I heard about this place from Mike and Rashmi earlier," Theo says, "I was wondering what it was like." He seems a little unimpressed with the appearance. "I thought maybe it'd look a little better. Didn't any mutants get the superpower of cleaning things?" He asks. He looks mildly uncomfortable with the state of things, and as they pass a poster that is drooping, he takes a moment to stop and fix it, pressing the tacky stuff back against the brick wall. When he turns back, he catches sight of the performers,
"Hey look!" he exclaims, pointing toward the street performers excitedly. "It's real street performers! I heard about them back in Virginia, but I've never seen any in real life before!"
"I am a little beggarman, a begging I have been, For three score years in this little isle of green, I'm known along the Liffey from the Basin to the Zoo, And everybody calls me by the name of Johnny Dhu", Caleb begins singing under his breath, his Irish accent just right for the song, he smiles as he watches a man do a trick with some fire.
Robin shrugs at Theo and says, "Well, it's not a rich part of town. Mutants don't exactly get job or housing protections…" She looks towards the subject of his interest, though, watching the street performers. "I never saw any when I was living back in my hometown in Kansas, but I've seen quite a few in the last couple of years," she comments, adjusting her glasses a little bit. The puppet, despite not wearing any glasses, makes a motion to do the same thing. "I wonder if they're mutant performers?"
The shorter teen shrugs. "Beats me," Theo responds. He notably hasn't asked Robin about her powers, and seems to have avoided talking about his own, whatever they might be. "I dunno if it's as cool if they are though, at least, if they're doing tricks that are done with their powers. It's kinda like cheating, don't you think? Wanna go watch them?" He bends down to pick up a slurpee cup. Without yet having spotted a trash can, he just holds on to it, waiting to see a proper recepticle before discarding it.
"Of all the trades a going, sure the begging is the best, For when a man is tired he can sit him down and rest, He can beg for his dinner, he has nothing else to do, But to slip around the corner with his old rigadoo", he's still singing to himself as he walks forwards to throw some change into the fire guys hat, he spots the other two teens and the weird blue person but Caleb is pretty shy so he doesn't go over.
Robin shrugs and says, "Well, I don't know. If you learn how to do something really well with some kind of power, there's nothing unimpressive about it. I guess I'd just have higher expectations of mutant performers, that's all." She bites her bottom lip for a few moments at Theo's question and then shrugs, "Sure, it wouldn't hurt to go take a look."
Theo presses the cross walk button as they reach the intersection before the performers, and it immediately turns green. "Oh wow, that's convenient," he comments, and without looking, begins to step into the street. However, there is a car that seems to think his light is still green as well, which…well, it is. The old dodge charger doesn't seem to have any intentions on stopping, either.
Caleb may be shy but when he notices a car heading for the other two teens, hes a skilled freerunner, so he is fast, he runs over and tries to knock the them out of the way, then phases to let the car go though him. (He hasn't actully knocked them out of the way, you can decide if he does.)
Robin reacts, but she doesn't react quite as quickly as Caleb does. She plants her feet on the ground and raises her hands above her head, taking control of her puppet. The puppet, Blank, can move quickly, but does not start running before Caleb has already arrived.
Theo looks over to see the oncoming car as it blares its horn, and he freezes in his tracks. Not the best of options he could go with. His eyes go wide, and he is caught completely flat-footed by the slam from Caleb, and goes flying backward toward the puppet. He doesn't weigh very much, and the hit sends him like a rag doll. The car screeches on its brakes, but without enough time before it passes through the phasing Caleb and out the other side. The driver screeches to a stop, screams a few obscenities at Caleb and Theo after he realizes that he didn't kill anyone, and then slams back on his gas and drives off.
Caleb may be shy but he doesn't like being sworn at, "Oh fuck off you prick, learn how to work your brakes!", he walks out of the road with an angry look on his face, he calms himself down and looks to the other two, "Are you two ok?, why did you step into the road?, were you trying to hurt yourself?"
Robin reverts to a more natural position, blinking a few times rapidly, and says, "Geez, what was that about? Why didn't that person slow down?" She doesn't see that the vehicle had a green light, only that it seems okay to cross the street. She raises eyebrow slightly as another vehicle seems to cross over, but doesn't investigate further, instead checking with Theo, "Are you okay? You should look both ways, even when you think it's safe to cross!"
Theo is most decidedly disoriented. "I- It was green!" he insists. He points back at the sign to indicate to Caleb. It's counting down the seconds before it turns red again. He likewise doesn't notice that the light is still green, not until another car comes through the intersection as well. "What the heck?" says, noticing now that the light was green. "What kind of screwed up city has broken traffic lights like that?"
He picks himself up, still a bit shaken, and his adrenaline still pumping and heart still racing. "Thanks," he adds. "I thought I was gonna be a pancake." Oddly, he managed to hold on to the stupid slurpee cup.
Caleb sighs, "Still, green light or not, if he'd been paying proper attention to the road he would have slowed down, fecking idiot", he grins, "I'm glad i got to you on time, something tells me your powers arn't exactly made for avoiding cars, I'm assuming you're mutants as you're in Mutant town?, or do i need to make a run for it?"
Robin gestures towards Blank and says, "Yeah, I'm a mutant." The puppet waves in response to being referred to, and Robin shrugs, "Anyways, you don't really need to run away from non-mutants in Mutant Town. Things are kind've reversed here."
Theo nods, "Yeah, me too," he answers. "Never been here before, thought it'd be cool to visit it since we're in the Big Apple and all." He looks around. "It's weird, all that happened, and its like nothing just happened. New York is weird. Something like that happen in Manassas, you better believe there'd be a crowd."
Caleb nods, "yeah, i know what you mean, back home a car driving out after 12am got a crowd", hes a little worried, hes supposed to be hiding his powers and this is the second time he's revealed himself since he came to the city, which was monday.
Robin nods in agreement with that and says, "Are you both from small towns, too?" She's from a very small town, where anything out of the ordinary is cause for a big scene. She pushes her glasses up her nose, making sure that the painted lens aligns and obscures her left eye. "And I think that Mutant Town is even weirder than the rest of New York."
Theo nods, "Well, kinda. It's about thirty-five thousand or so. Kind of a suburb I guess. I'm not like from Kansas or anything like that," he explains. "It's good to know I'm not the only person around here that's new to the area."
Caleb smiles, "Yep we be the new guys", he runs a hand though his hair, "So how do you guys know each other?"
"We go to the same school," says Robin, not mentioning what exactly that school that is. "My name is Robin, and this is Blank," she says, gesturing first towards herself and then towards the puppet. She adds, "And I'm not really new to the area anymore. I've been in New York for the last couple of years."
The boy agrees, "And I'm Theo. I just started at her school on Friday, so I've had one whole day of classes." He nods over at the street performers. "I'd never seen any street performers before, so we were gonna check'm out." He laughs, still a little nervous at the thought. "Didn't think I'd be part of the show, though. That's a whole different kind of street performance." Yes, that's right, a bad pun.
Caleb grins, "Well nice to meet the two of you, but i gotta go, i've got some errands to run, but heres my mobile number incase you guy wanna meet up sometime", he takes a pen and some paper out of his pocket and writes down his number, before offering it to his first potental friends outside school, "And try not to get hit by anymore cars", he jokes, before turning and walking back to the main part of the city.
Nodding, Robin takes the number from Caleb and looks at it for a few moments before offering it to Theo. After Caleb heads off, she comments, "He had pretty quick reflexes." She smiles and looks towards Theo, "Well, should we keep on our way to the performers? We should be on the lookout for any other cars, though."
"Sure," Theo says. "I think I'm going to watch the lights both directions from now on, though. That's a weird glitch to have." He looks up at the light, then quickly goes to drop the slurpee cup in a trash can near some newspaper dispensers before jogging back to Robin. "There, didn't wanna be carrying that around all afternoon."
Robin nods at Theo and says, "Yeah, a really weird glitch… I've never seen something like that happen before, myself. It's always worked perfectly." She scratches the back of her neck lightly and says, in response to the second bit that Theo says, "Yeah, probably for the best to toss that out. The downside of picking up litter is having to pick up litter."
"So you think you're gonna call that guy?" Theo asks, "He gave you his number," he holds up the slip of paper that Robin had handed him. The light turns green again, and Theo watches both ways before starting across the street this time. "Pretty nice guy if you ask me. After all, he just saved my life, he can't be that bad."
Robin shrugs at Theo and says, "I dunno what I would call him about. It would be kind of weird, I think. You might want to give him a call to thank him, though, so hang onto it." She starts walking across the street, also sure to check that everything is in working order.
Theo shrugs. "I guess," he says, and stuffs the phone number into his pocket. He watches as the street performers continue their show. "Wish I could do cool stuff like that, bet I'd make some good money," he says. "Though, the school said they'd give me fifty bucks a week for allowance, which is a crazy amount of money."
Robin nods and says, "Yeah, it's way bigger an allowance than I got back home, and it's more than I ever made when I first moved to the city…" She bites her lip in contemplation at that, "And I've been jealous of street performers before, for sure. They definitely have an edge when it comes to soliciting money."
Theo nods. "Yeah, that's for sure. Still, it'd be cool to be able to do that stuff anyway, just for fun." He looks back at the street again, "Too bad we can't turn what happened back there into some kind of paying gig," he says. "Maybe we could run a scam."
Robin nods at Theo and says, "Running a scam is always a good plan. Probably the best way to make money these days. But for best results, you may want to try the internet, and not getting run over by cars."
