16088/You Can't Do That On TV

You Can't Do That On TV
Date of Scene:	16 October 2023
Location:	Times Square
Synopsis:	Something Crazy happens to a couple of Young Avengers at Times Square
Cast of Characters:	Teddy Altman, Kate Bishop, Kay Challis

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Teddy Altman has posed:
London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful.

Okay, so that's the general idea of that quote, but Teddy Altman sometimes has to wonder if the coiner of the quote was mistaking frenetic energy for hopefulness. Seen from above, it's very much like a terribly busy anthill full of incredibly neurotic ants- and that's the view he's got of the city right now as he glides on green wings. Times Square in particular is very much... well, VERY, even on a Sunday night.

He's trying this out, very much eager to give Billy's group a try, even if it's him stepping into the group thing a lot earlier than intended. But, you know, Billy-

"So... er, Hulkling here. I'm not seeing anything out of the ordinary." He re-evaluates this statement, "For New York, I mean."

Another second, "Over. Do I have to say over? I'm sorry, I'm still new at this," he chuckles.

Kate Bishop has posed:
    Kate is sipping an apple cider flavored ice latte as she sits on her bike near Time Square watching the tourists. She is in her full Hawkeye gear as well.

    The Tourists passing by are equal parts thinking she is a Hawkeye Impersonator or perhaps the Real Thing. She isn't waving away anyone taking pictures or videos with their phones regardless. Then again she isn't trying to collect money.

    To the comms "Well. When there are just a couple of us on an Op or Patrol probably not. Some people like to make clear they are done talking in a serious situation." she sips her drink. "We may not see anything out of the ordinary. Half of doing a patrol, outside Gotham at least, is to be seen and provide people with a sense that they are protected."

Kay Challis has posed:
    Ask and ye shall receive. No sooner have Hawkeye and the Hulkling announced that there's nothing out of the ordinary when there very distinctly is. It starts off on the video wall on the corner of 42nd street, where the constant stream of advertizing is interrupted by footage of strange riderless motorbikes that appear to be constructed out of animal bones riding around a dark and dusty desert-like landscape. It's a touch on the macabre side for a Times Square display, but nobody really thinks much of it until several of the bikes crash out of the screen and land in Times Square itself, sending pedestrians scattering, and causing numerous traffic collisions as cars driving up 42nd street attempt to get out of the way. Fortunately with the speed of traffic at this busy crossing, none of the collisions are serious.

    The bone bikes rev their engines noisily, as if some ghost biker gang were here to scare the natives. They drive in short circles, pointing this way and that as if studying this new environment they have found themselves in. As people have the time to realize just how out of the ordinary these riderless bikes are, the screaming and running starts. The screaming seems to be just what it takes to fire the predatory instinct of the bone bikes, which start to run down fleeing pedestrians.

    On the screen more bone bikes are visible driving around the dim landscape as if pursuing something there too, but a few of them are pulling away and approaching the screen. Soon there's a small group of bone bikes crowding around it, moving in close as if investigating the inner surface of the screen. One drives forwards suddenly but bounces back, colliding with the screen. Two more follow, one coming to the same fate, the other breaking through to join its fellows that have already made it into Times Square. More and more of the bone bikes are drawn away from whatever it is they're doing on the other side of the screen to investigate this apparent route through to a place with far more prey available!

Teddy Altman has posed:
"And that just happened, didn't it?" the Hulkling says, fapping in place for a moment as his wings keep him aoft. "That just- okay, I've got this!"

A moment of thought, and he starts angling down to swoop down towards the square. His first moment of engaging the enemy ... vehicles is an attempt at side-swiping one of the bone-cycles trying to run down a fleeing young woman. He goes at it feet first, hoping that his momentum and his bulk will be enough to knock the bike on its side-

Kate Bishop has posed:
    Hawkeye watches the bikers when they circle on the TV, musing to herself about a new horror streaming show, or perhaps a new video game.

    That musing is utterly dispelled as she watches the first ones burst from the TV and circle innocent New Yorkers like predators.

    "Welp... so much for nothing unusual even by New York standards...." she dismounts her bike as Hulkling swings down to engage directly with the creatures. At least she thinks they are creatures, based on how they are behaving.

    "I wonder what they are doing on the other side..." the behavior they still had on screen has her thoughtful.

    Still people are in danger, so she steps into action as well. "Try to keep them away from people fleeing.... they are attracted to running but I doubt we can get people to shelter in place!"

    Arrows start to fly, she goes right from normal to explosive though, these things are made from Bone not flesh.

Kay Challis has posed:
    The Bone Bikes are somewhat more fragile being made of bone than they would be if they were made of metal. Hulking kicks are sufficient to break bones, and the wheels in particular turn out to be a bit of a weak point, constructed from relatively fragile rib bones bound together with ropes of dried tendon.

    Explosive arrows are effective too. While a piercing arrow head wouldn't really do much, the force of the exploding heads is enough to shatter the construction of the bikes, and without gas in the tanks there's fortunately no fiery after-effects to deal with. The bikes individually are no great threat to superheroes, but they do appear to be pack creatures, and more and more of them keep managing to find a way through the screen. Before long they identify the two Young Avengers as a threat -- or possibly rivals -- and small gangs of Bone Bikes home in on the pair, driving in circles around them as individual bikes look for an opening to dart forwards on the attack.

    As if to answer Kate's contemplation, the scene on the screen continues to show a chase going on there too, if with an increasingly small pack of bone bikes as more and more make it through to Times Square. The prey the Bone Bikes on that dusty plane are chasing finally comes into view, a woman hanging from the handle bars of one of the bone bikes, attempting to ride it as the bike tries to shake her off, and other members of the Bone Bike pack snap at her heels, the skulls that take the place of the bike's fuel tanks attempting to get in close enough to bite.

Teddy Altman has posed:
"I think I didn't think this through."

This is, well, because now there is a circle of bone-cycles trying to come in for the kill from his vulnerable flanks. Fortunately for Hulkling, being a shapeshifter means that your flanks can be as vulnerable, or as not, as you want them to be. Thickening of the skin into a strong hide is already one of his basic card tricks. Sprouting a strong tail to lash at necrobikes trying to come from behind? Done. But, it really isn't solving the problem of more bikes coming across the screen.

"Wait, I've got an idea!"

He changes tacitcs. Instead of Fighting Stronk Boi, he switches to Flying Monkey tactic. He takes to the air and attempts to grab one of the nearest bikes. If he is successful, then what follows is an attempt to fy over and throw the bike at the screen.

Because, surely, that will destroy the screen, the /portal/, and leave a shattered video screen in its place.

Surely.

Kate Bishop has posed:
    "I think there is an victim in there..." and honestly Kate has a bit of a bad feeling about the Idea as it is executed. She has her hands quite full though as more of the bikes have poured through the screen and have focused on the heroes now.

    She snaps off a grapple arrow, hooking it to her belt and yoinking herself up out of the middle of the fray to much higher ground on top of one of the platforms below where the ball drops every year.

    She is still firing midair though, using a different sort of rope arrow, a set really. One arrow spearing into one circling bike and the other into a second. She is hoping to have them and the metal line betweem them do damage to more than the initial two.

    

Kay Challis has posed:
    Kate's rope trick is highly effective, at least in the immediate term. The Bone Bikes behave in a rather animal-like way, but they're not the smartest of animals. They obviously don't feel pain, because neither bike reacts particularly to having an arrow sticking out of it, but nor do they have the sense to change their behavior because of it. The pair continue to circle despite the trailing rope, and before long the pack attempting to surround Kate is hopelessly tangled.

    The Hulkling's bike fling is on target, and so it should be given the screen is so huge. The result is a shattered Bone Bike and a huge gaping crack in the very expensive Times Square video display which is undoubtedly going to result in insurance companies asking difficult questions later. What it unfortunately does not achieve is ending the threat of further Bone Bikes breaking through into Times Square, because the small crowd of Bone Bikes who have been bashing into the rear side of the screen attempting to follow their pack-mates through simply drive through the new hole in the screen and come skidding to the ground to join the fray.

    There are now only a few Bone Bikes left visible in the screen, still chasing the Bone Bike with its somewhat desperate rider. Seeing where the other Bone Bikes have gone, she wrestles the handlebars -- tibia and fibia, it looks -- and leans hard to the side, driving her mount towards the newly created hole in the screen. The last four Bone Bikes follow after in hot pursuit.

    The rider reaches the hole in the screen and the Bone Bike hurtles out into Times Square, wheels spinning wildly as it bucks and struggles to throw her off. The Bone Bike lands badly, shattering into a pile of bone as it hits the ground, leaving the rider tumbling in a heap with a loudly yelled "FUUUUUCK!"

Teddy Altman has posed:
Rookie mistake. It's a rookie mistake. That's what will be used as a consolation, later, for him. Right now, though? There's the realization that he just made things /worse/, and he needs to make them better somehow.

Flying down, he lands next to the woman who just proved that she has the best set of lungs in Manhattan, and rushes to her.

"Are you alright?" he says, running to check just how badly injured she might be. There's a lot of things to deal with right now, but focusing on one injured civilian (... who rode through the screen) is a thing he can do.

Kate Bishop has posed:
    Kate probably won't rub it into Teddy's face too much later. She will definitely point out why it seemed like a good idea, and why as it turned out, it was a bad one. Stupid magic really.

    "Keep her safe Hulkling all these stupid things seem to be after her...."

    She pulls out a trick arrow, well two of them, and fires them down on each side of Teddy and Kay, where they explode into grease slicks.

Kay Challis has posed:
    "No I'm fucking not alright!" the erstwhile Bone Bike rider yells back at Hulkling without the faintest hint of gratitude as she picks herself up out of a heap of collapsed bones, and pulls a bleached rib from the tangled mess of her hair. "Jesus, does it look like I'm fucking alright?"

    The four bone bikes in hot pursuit of the rider might have caught up with her while she was busy shouting at Teddy if it wasn't for the pair of arrows Kate fires, the twin oil-slicks placed perfectly to intercept them as they attempt to flank their victim and attack from both sides. The four are moving fast and skid out of control as soon as they hit the slick, one pair crashing off into the side of a car who's driver is struggling to negotiate the fleeing pedestrian-filled crossing and ending up in pieces, the other two crashing into each other and getting their wheels tangled together.

    The bikes Kate had strung together are beginning to untangle themselves, but there's still time to deal with them before they get loose. The remnants of the pack that had originally closed in on Teddy pursue him to where he's checking on the 'civilian'. "Behind you!" she calls out. "Fuck!"

Kate Bishop has posed:
    Kate pinches the bridge of her nose briefly, breaths in, then sighs a breath out.

    She has to assume Teddy and the ungrateful Jane he is trying to rescue can handle the small pack. She turns an arrow of a slightly more explosive variety down into the tangled up ones that had been pursuing her. She doesn't want them to get free and make the situation even worse.

Kay Challis has posed:
    After Kate's exploding arrow the pack of Bone Bikes is thinned down but not entirely out. However at that point the video screen decides to finally give up the ghost in a shower of sparks, and the remaining Bone Bikes -- along with the many piles of bones that make up the ones that have already been destroyed -- flicker with video noise and blink out of existence.

    The rider climbs to her feet and looks around before dusting herself off, a valiant but doomed effort as she seems to have picked up about half the grim desert she'd been in before. "Where am I?" she demands. "Fuck. This looks like Times Square. Is it the real one though?" She eyes Kate and Teddy suspiciously. "Great. A Beast Boy rip-off and a palette- and gender- swapped Green Arrow. I'm in some fucked up alternate dimension aren't I? Everything else looks normal for Times Square, but that isn't saying a whole lot."

    She breathes out a deep sigh. "Take my advice. Never watch Heavy Metal music videos on a magic television that likes to eat people."

Teddy Altman has posed:
Teddy, actually, has met Beast Boy. He knows what the boy be like. "-he's actuall much smaller," he begins, "And that's Hawkeye-" and he clarifies, "The other one." Very helpful, Teddy. "Wait, you were behind all of- what exactly-"

Deep breath. It's all a bit much for Teddy on his first patrol, truth be told. "Just who the fuck are you?"

Nobody tell Billy he just swore, he'll immediately suspect he's been replaced by a clone.

Kate Bishop has posed:
    "Excuse me. I'm not Green Arrow, I'm Hawkeye. Green Arrow operates out of Starling City not New York." she skip hops down, parkour really to get back to ground level now.

    "She is some sort of dimensional refugee from the sounds of it Hulkling, got to be why she knows Green Arrow of all people and not me, I'm a better archer and easily more famous." she seems serious about that too.

    There is an arrow fired and a straggler bike is wiped from this mortal coil. Not sure they are blown to hell, that would be more complicated and not in her quiver. Do skeleton bikes go to an afterlife.

    "That said, yes Beast Boy is a friend of mine, and much smaller than Hulkling." her bow is tilted towards Jane. "So eaten by magic television lady, who are you?"

Kay Challis has posed:
    "Green Arrow is Green, you're purple," the bike rider explains patiently. "Complementary colors. Ask anyone. He's male, you're female. Palette-swapped, gender-swapped. That's got 'alternative dimension' written all over it. Trust me, I know these things. I wasn't /literally/ eaten by the television, fuck. Televisions don't have mouths." She pauses a moment. "At least in my dimension they don't. Maybe you do things differently here."

    She looks around, seeking any more indications that this is indeed an alternative dimension, but nothing is readily apparent. And Teddy seems to know enough about Beast Boy to make the size observation, while Kate claims they're friends. Maybe this isn't an alternate dimension after all.

    "You know Beast Boy?" She asks. "About so high..." she holds out a hand at waist level, far shorter than Beast Boy actually is, "member of the Titans? Garfield Logan? Adopted son of Rita Farr and Steve Dayton? Just checking we're talking about the same one here. 'Cos I've known him since he was about five and he's never mentioned a Purple Arrow or a Giant-Sized duplicate."

    She still hasn't introduced herself.

Teddy Altman has posed:
"Uh, yeah. Dude, I hung out with him about... three weeks ago? He was catching frisbees for kids at the park." He really shouldn't need to clarify this, but if you've met Garfield, you know that, in fact, you do, "He was being a dog at the time." Because Gar could have easily not if he was feeling particularly goofy.

"I just met him then, we haven't known each other long. And-" peers at Kate, "She's known him through the Titans. But right now we're the Young Avengers-"

"And who ARE you?"

Kate Bishop has posed:
    Kate wobbles her hand at something said. "I'm also a member of the Titans with Gar. He never mentioned anyone like you, though I never asked so there is that." she frowns looking Jane over. "Anyhow, Titans operate out of Metropolis not New York." she slings her bow over her shoulder and sighs.

    "If you actually know him, you should come to the Tower and talk to him. He isn't that short and I still think you are either time displaced or dimensionally displaced."

    "It's 2023 by the way."

Kay Challis has posed:
    "Yeah he's probably never talked much about the Doom Patrol because Steve Dayton is a fucking asshole," the woman who refuses to give her name explains. "He only really likes Rita, I think. She's less of an asshole, though almost as annoying. 'Jane, be a dear and do all the things I can't be bothered to do for me would you?' she says, mimicking a distinctly actorly voice. Presumably this means she's called Jane, and is part of the Doom Patrol. This is about as much of an introduction as anyone's going to get out of her, so live with it.

    "2023. No shit," Jane says. "That's the present for me to. And I'm well aware of where the Titans is. I was there at the fucking tower a few days ago. There was a woman with pink hair, and Kid Flash had turned into a teenage girl. Gar was out though. Fine, I'm back in my normal reality I guess. So much for hoping I'd ended up somewhere that made sense. Which just means I'm stuck in fucking Manhattan and need to get back to New Jersey. Flit! FLIIIIT!"

    Jane starts yelling "FLIT!", turning this way and that, as if calling for someone who might be in the area. "Damn it Flit, don't fucking leave me here."

    Jane shimmers, and her hair turns blonde. She turns to Teddy and Kate and beams a wide smile at the pair of them, then raises a hand and gives them a cheery wave. "Hiiiii!" she says, valley girl. "Byeeee!" she says, vanishing.