5097/Retaliation

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Retaliation
Date of Scene: 09 February 2021
Location: High School, Mutant Town
Synopsis: Anti-mutant protestors come to a high school fundraiser in Mutant Town and things get blown out of preportion.
Cast of Characters: Raven Darkholme, Noriko Ashida, Lydia Dietrich, Quentin Quire, Gabby Kinney, Cable, Mortimer Toynbee




Raven Darkholme has posed:
The anual School fundraiser down at Middletown High in Mutant Town has gotten a lot of news coverage in the last few days due to the recent, very public, assassination of anti-mutant business owner Curtis Moore. With his associations to the Friends of Humanity, and their own social media team posting promises of something big planned in retribution, a lot of people assumed (rightly) that it would be at this very event.

Because there's very rarely this many humans in Mutant Town.

Certainly not this many Humans carrying anti-mutant signs.

Hundreds of protests her have shown up, most of them just idiot bigots riding the coattail for recognition of their personal beliefs, but some of them... oh some of them... The real hotshots of the Friends of Humanity... the martial arm.. are here looking for a fight.

They've come wearing their trademark homemade armor, they've come with baseball bats and chains. A few of them are flexing their constitutional right to bare arms.

"MOORE JUSTICE. MOORE JUSTICE.. MOORE JUSTICE!"

The shout had raged from beyond the fences for hours. Kids inside, all of them really tough when they said they wanted to continue with the fundraiser dispite the possibility of protests, look a lot less excited about it now that they SEE the protest.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
Noriko has had her eye pinned on the news as a result of her last altercation at the Capitol Hill riot that covered the assassination.  She has her reasons, but it's how she found out about this whole powder keg of a situation.  There was no way she could let anyone come here from the school without her being here.  Not after what happened.

The older girl reaches back for Gabby to take her gauntlet.  "We don't want to get separated.  Trust me," on that.

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
When Lydia heard about the fundraiser, and about how there planned to be a protest against it, she decided to come and help out. She had a really bad feeling about this one, and knew that, should she show up, she'd most likely end up in another melee, but she couldn't just sit back and do nothing. These were just kids holding a fundraiser, for goodness sake.

So here she is, glowing green amongst the growing crowd of 'volunteers' who have have begun to trickle in to balance out the small horde of protesters.

Quentin Quire has posed:
Quentin Quire sits on a windowsill up on the second floor of the school, looking down on the protest. He isn't a student, not here, not at Xavier's, not anywhere. He's a grown ass man and a supergenius and a rabble rouser and he greets the shouting protestors by repeatedly giving them the double bird, his middle fingers perpetually aloft.

"MOORE IS LESS ALIVE!" he shouts back with a cackle. If he's meant to display empathy or any sort of sympathy for the loss of these bigots, someone's bound to be disappointed. His t-shirt actually has a printed picture of the dead man screened onto it with X's over his eyes.

Gabby Kinney has posed:
Gabby Kinney was normally the cheery sort when she could get away with it. Today was not one of those days. She wore a mishmash of goth-lite clothing that had a splash too much color thanks to her additions of hightop sneakers that were very loud and bright. Beneath it, though hard to see, was the body armor she used to wear. Before. An overly large t-shirt helped hide that fact though.

When Noriko reaches for her she nods and takes the older girl's hand easily. "Gotcha." A bit quieter she adds, "There's a lot of armed people here. Wish I could bring mine---Is that Quentin?" She squints upward. Yeah there was no mistaking the telepath.

Cable has posed:
    A ratty old red toyota grumbles on its remaining five cylinders into town, outside the picketers and protestors, the driver wearing a heavy carhart coat with the near burlap colored hood pulled up over his head, and wearing a pair of dark sunglasses, though something still seems off with the man.

    The truck pulls to a stop along the curb before shiting the thing into park and hooking his arm out the window to watch the gathering of people. Cable stays as innocuous as possible, and allows a deep sigh to escape his lungs. Being an observer as of now.

Mortimer Toynbee has posed:
It didn't take mutant powers to blend into this crowd. The balaclava Toad wore hid his less than beautiful features, along with some heavy clothes and one anti-mutant sign reading, "MUTANTS ARE SIN!" A sign that was fastened to a baseball bat. Nobody in the protesting crowd paid him a second glance as he blended right in along with the violent protestors, shouting right along with them as he marched about in unison waving his weaponized propaganda.

"HEY HEY! HO HO! MUTANT SCUM HAS GOT TO GO!" he sings along, barely holding back a mad cackle as he joins in the lyrics, rubbing shoulders with his supposed enemies. Waiting for things to really kick off.

Raven Darkholme has posed:
"Hey Hey! Ho Ho! Mutant scum has got to go!" Another figure in the crowd joins in with Toads chant, this one a lithe woman, dark brown hair and creamy white complexion hidden behind a red baseball cap, bomber jacket, and cargo pants. That she's armed is of little concern to anyone around her, that she's pushing her way forward is even less so. She casts a glance back at Toad and inclines her head to him. Wiggling her fingers across her chest, drumming right across the top of her left breast.

A sign? A flirty wave?

The rest of the crowd is joining in with the chant. One of them hurling insults of a most profane nature up at Quentin, "Fuck you, mutie! Go back home!" Because they're not an incredibly enlightened lot in the rank and file.

Those among the protesters who are here for the singular purpose of fighting are notably silent. Clutching their weapons, baseball bats or pistols, steeling themselves around your typical white panel van like the punk kids from 50s movies.

Inside, a couple of the students are growing increasingly nervous. "Maybe we should just leave? I didn't... should we just leave?" A younger kid asks Noriko and Gabby. Huddling a little closer to what she presumes is other students here at the high school.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
"Yeah.  I know," Noriko says following up with pursed lips and a close-mouthed sigh.  She looks around for their chaperone from the school.  Oddly, yes.  "We're going to get in trouble for-Yeah.  Looks like it-"  Noriko looks to the younger kid.  "Hey..." She turns, but doesn't let go of Gabby's hand..Nope!  "Look.  If we have to get out of here, I will get all of you out of here," she says as she looks to each one of the kids.  "I promise you...I can run really fast."

"Where is everyone?" Noriko asks the little kid.

Gabby Kinney has posed:
Gabby Kinney nods solemnly to the other kids with a bright, reassuring grin. "Same. If any of you need help, we're here." Though she does pause a moment to glance off to the inner school doors thoughtfully. "Might not hurt to know the layout though," she mumbles aside to Noriko as well.

"I know I'm small but I'm pretty tough. If they start causing trouble out there, we'll help get everyone out. Promise!"

Cable has posed:
    Cable rolls his eye, both of them really, but y'know, only the one organic one. The metal one rolls too, but that's not... Ahem. Cable rolls his eyes and lowers his gloved metal hand to the crank and rolls it up before turning off the truck and climbing out. His thick coat and pants, and not at all little feet in large black boots clomps to the ground.

    The truck rocks as he slams the door closed and makes his way towards the bed, dropping the gate with a heavy slam before he jumps on it and moves to the back before he lifts his organic fist before shouting, "FUCK. THE. MUTANTS." What does he know?

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
Throughout the kids, Lydia spies somebody she recognizes from the DC march. She makes her way around to where Noriko and Gabby are at and raises a nervous hand in greeting. "Hey," she says. "Glad to see somebody here who knows what they're doing when things get bad."

She looks uncertainly out at the growing crowd of protestors. "There's... there's an awful lot of them out there."

Quentin Quire has posed:
Quentin Quire uses his telekinesis to hover in the air for a moment and turn around to answer the crowd in the way that only he could. Which is to say, he drops trou and moons them, even giving a cheeky slap to emphasize his disrespect, before tugging his pants back up and dropping cackling back to the edge of the window.

"You couldn't fuck me with Senator Kelly's microdick!" he shouts back, telekinetically deflecting a rock that actually gets thrown his way.

Mortimer Toynbee has posed:
It's impossible to see Toad's grin under the black balaclava but he gives his sign a little wiggle back in return of the wave, but keeps his distance from his apparent compatriot. Why cause mayhem in one place when you can do it in two? He takes one hand off the sign to reach in his heavy coat, touching the heavy handgun and knives he has stashed within...along with a ready-made Molotov or two. He was practically a Boy Scout of mob violence when it came to preparedness.

Sensing the mood starting to shift he begins angling himself towards the edges of the crowd now, casting cursory glances at the more well-armed and more intimidating Friends of Humanity that were likewise waiting it seemed for a signal. Did they have one? Or were they just waiting for a spark?

Toad casts a look up at the disrespectful teen mutant mooning the crowd which was instantly growing more agitated. They might not need to do anything at all, Quentin might be all the violent agitator they need to make sure things go south.

All the same Toad drifts out of the crowd a moment, moving among the fringes as he moves near a trashcan and acts like he's lighting up a cigarette as he rolls his mask up a bit. And does take a few puffs. Along with lighting a string of powerful firecrackers that get dropped into the can. Just the thing to sound like gunfire to a large crowd. Whistling nonchalantly he moves away from the can and waits for the fuse and whatever his partner in crime has planned to go with.

Raven Darkholme has posed:
Having caught wind of the protests, News Vans are starting to show up enmasse. Including at least one News chopper hovering overhead, but the police are... not nearly as prevalant here in Mutant Town as they had been in DC. There's a few squad cars, but it's almost a garantee they're here to protect the protesters rather than the mutants. Except for, perhaps, a cursory attempt to show they're trying when shit goes sideways.

Which is a given.

The brown haired woman nods to Toad, hidden among many, as he sets off to cause his spark... She's readying her own. Pulling the handgun from her hip, she retracts the slide far enough to see that there's a bullet chambered, and releases it with a snap. "You sure you're going to need that?" Someone beside her asks with a nervous grin. The woman's cold eyes look up at her, face shifting... creamy white becoming cobolt blue. Brown hair becoming crimson read. The pistol comes up, right in the mans face. "Pretty sure."

*BANG*

A stunned silence falls over the protesters.. Someone screams..

The Friends of Humanity perk up, having waited for this for HOURS..

The firecrackers int hat tincan go off into that silence.

*CRACKCRACKCRACKCRACK*

And then hell breaks loose.

One of the armed and armored FoH members raises an AR-15 and fires up at Quentin. "THE FUCKING MUTANTS ARE ATTACKING THE CROWD!"

Which is technically true.

Only Mystique is already gone again. Changed her appearance and adding her voice, "THERE'S A SNIPER ON THE ROOF!" She screams, points up at the school, "GET THOSE MUTIE BASTARDS!"

And the crowd? Do. They're rushing the fence.

Cable has posed:
    "Oh. Fuck." Cable feels time slowing as that shift from brown to red is noticed by his non-organic eye and the mutant drops from the bed of his truck to the tarp behind it, where a wooden box was stored. The weapon he had used at the former insane asylum not more than a few days ago lays hidden before he draws it up and presses the butt to his shoulder and then slams himself onto the roof of the truck to aim at that -WHERE?! NO!

    Cable pulls away with the gun still resting on the top of the truck and him standing in the back of the bed, the faint glow of his eye behind the sunglasses as he scans around for the Traitor. "Fuck." He growls as he thumbs the safety back on the modified rifle and starts to scan for other FOH targets that are already firing, but, there's none yet in his immediate field of view.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
"Yeah.  I could run it a hot sec," Noriko says to Gabby away from kid prying ears.

Noriko looks over to Lydia for a moment when she arrives and then back to the kids.  There's a hardened look in her eyes.  "Yeah.  Things are going to get bad.  We're going to have to help get the kids out.  Now."  Something has shifted in the Japanese girl.  "I'll do what I can to speed things up."

The SHOT!  The firecrackers.  Noriko pulls Lydia down to the ground.  "Shit sorry.  We move now!"  Off she zips to find a good evacuation spot, or at least a stopover.

"Okay I found a spot.  It's over that way!"  Noriko points for Lydia and Gabby.

Quentin Quire has posed:
Quentin Quire was in the middle of psi-conferencing with Gabby, giving her the basic layout and map of the school in a t three-dimensional psychic projection and so he's distracted and almost misses when somebody shoots at him. Luckily, his brain is hyperacuitive and he is fairly amazing, so he's still able to get his TK up in time, catching a spray of bullets just a couple of inches short of his body, a spattering of lead dangled in the air like a cloud of hummingbirds.

"That's just fucking rude," he says and he condenses his psychic power for a moment into a shoulder-mounted psi-bazooka, unleashing a hard plast of telepathic shockwave onto the shooter and those within his immediate vicinity with a splashy blast of purple power.

Gabby Kinney has posed:
Gabby Kinney tips her head up in time to see mooning going on. Her face scrunches into a difficult to read expression, among which is the thought of how pale that moon actually was, before she clears her throat. There was an obvious tension in the air that wasn't just the fear of the kids. She glances to Noriko with a single nod as she finally releases the older teen's hand to take a few steps away. Best to leave them both room to move if... no, when, it comes to it.

"Hey QQ!" she calls out before thinking REALLY HARD in his direction. She wasn't sure a hundred percent if it would work, but she knew he was a strong telepath. Maybe he'd get the drift to 'listen' in.

**While you're distracting them with full moons couldya maybe share the layout of the school with us? I think we need to start getting the kiddos out to safety.**

Just in time it would seem for all hell to break loose. If the hair on the back of her neck could bristle, it would. The sound of firecrackers was slightly off as far as real gunfire went but that other shot was real enough to someone famiilar with gunfire.

Then Nori's dragged Lydia down, and Gabby cries out the command of, "Active shooter drill!" To the school kids. Heeding Noriko's search she nods and turns to start ushering kids that way using her own body as a blockade if need be.

Mortimer Toynbee has posed:
Now the fun was kicking off, and better still the kid was playing right into it. The crowd lets out a holler as the psychic blast knocks down more than a few people, rocks and more bullets pelting Quentin's way. Mortimer meanwhile hurries to the downed individuals and crouches down over one middle-aged man in particular who is struggling to stand up.

"Hey there fellow, it's OK, ole Mort has you," he assures, just before his knife plunges into the man's chest before quickly setting back into his jacket.

"That mutant killed him!" he bellows, his voice a bit more forceful than most, the benefit of having lungs that would let you stay underwater an hour. With two of them dead the crowd was howling for blood, and worse still the police seem to be looking at Quentin as well, more than a few on their radios. Toad meanwhile hurries away from the dead man before anyone can think to ask him questions, melding into the mob.

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
When the guns start going off, Lydia ducks her head in reflex, and her mind is ablaze with panic. What the hell was she thinking?!? She's pulled to the ground by Noriko, as all hell breaks loose. It takes her a moment for her fear to bleed into righteous indignation and anger. These are just *kids*, and they are being *shot at*.

She gets to her feet, and holds up a hand, the glowing green mist that constantly surrounding her flows forwards and coalesces into a solid green wall that serves as a barrier between the kids and the rioters. She makes it as big as she can, about twenty feet wide and she helps usher the kids to stay behind it. It's strong enough to shelter then from rocks and other thrown objects, should be strong enough for bullets, too, should it come to that.

Raven Darkholme has posed:
The police were expecting trouble, but not of the gunfire kind, so their uptick is a little slow until Mortimer screams that another person was dead due to that mutant, who was now the target of a great deal of attention. In this case, the very bad kind in the form of law enforcement who are shouting very big things like "put your hands up" and "You're under arrest" in varying degrees of colorful language.

It isn't good.

Mystique sneers, slicing her thin, razor blade like knife along someones throat as she passes with a quick flick of her wrist just a second after Quentin lets loose his psionic blast. Under calm circumstances, in a controlled crime scene, it would be obvious that concussive blasts wouldn't cause the kind of patterned blood spray that a razor blade would... but in the middle of what amounts to an all out warzone?

The spray of hot viscera has people startled.

It also has them looking everywhere but where they should be looking...

Especially the Friends of Humanity.

Why would they care that one of their own members was getting into the driver seat of the panel van, anyways?

Or putting it in drive?

Or speeding it towards the gate...

It hits the chain link fence with a twisting crunch of metal around the frame and a jarring RATTLE of brick when it comes to a gut wrenching stop against the side of the school.

The driver having lept out a few seconds before impact, rolls over onto her hands and knees and runs full tilt back into the crowd rushing in through the opening to once more disappear amongst the masses with an entirely new face.

A face just like every other protester! Every other FoH who are advancing on the school with ruthless intent.

Some hurling rocks, bottles, or ready to swing their baseball bats. There's the occational gunfire, but the police are shutting that shit down pretty quickly... and right now they're on the protesters side! So why risk changing that by letting off reprisatory gunfire?

No, the really armed ones aren't as stupid as everyone elses here protesting.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
Noriko wastes little time.  She's taking kids two at a time.  Front pack and back pack for the little ones.  Sometimes backpack and princess carry.  Sometimes a full fireman's carry.  Things get more creative as the move on.

Where is the speedster whisking these kids off to?  Some near byish park where she tells them where they are, to stick together, and to pass along the message to the ones that come after.  "Everything is going to be okay."

Back and forth, back and forth, no time for talking, but she makes sure she keeps tabs on where Gabby and Lydia are.  The speedster sees the truck busting through but can do nothing save for bolt into the school and make sure no one is behind that wall.

Cable has posed:
    "Fuck!" Cable shouts to himself as he watches the van start to move, and realizes what's about to happen and he knows he can't do a thing about that. Not himself. He slips the strap of the rifle over an arm and tucks it to his back, reaches into his coat and pulls out the pistol he carries there, and chambers a round while jumping off the bed of the truck and moving with a bit of a boost from his metallic foot and even pushing himself with a hint of his TK through the crowd to vault himself over the collapsed fence.

    Cable hits the ground on his shoulder and rolls, bringing the pistol to bare and aiming it upwards with his organic hand while his gloved hand is out, like he's trying to use the force to push the crowd back. "BACK! YOU FILTHY FUCKING COWARDS!" Cable shouts, enhancing his voice with TK and even some telepathy. He's certainly going to pay for this in the future with the techno virus.

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
Lydia does a fairly good job of keeping the debris from hitting the kids, or herself for that matter. That is, until one of the rioters decide to make a snowball out of that hard, gritty snow that's filled with gravel and salt used to deice the roads, and toss it at Lydia herself. The salt encrusted snowball tears through her defenses like it was made of tissue paper, leaving a ragged hole with frayed edges, to hit an unsuspecting Lydia square in the face.

She's hit with enough force to knock her on her butt, dazing her with its impact. The forcefield that she'd been maintaining up until now just goes up in a *puff* of ectoplasm as her concentration is broken. She sits there seeing stars, trying to regain her composure.

Quentin Quire has posed:
Quentin Quire is comfortable with all that attention. Negative, positive, hateful, violent, adoring, it all feels good to the egomaniacal psion, the boy literally inviting the attacks with curls of his fingers, hands outstretched.

"That's it, hate me, show me what you are, you dim-witted troglodytes! Let everyone see you for the drooling lunatics you are! You wanna kill me, cause I'm a mutant, because I'm not afraid of you, because I'm BETTER than you, but you can't, because I rule and you suck!" he says.

Through it all, his TK shield catches incoming pelting, discarding it uselessly, rocks and bullets alike, shedding their attacks as he throws his arms out and his head back, just basking in the riotous hatred thrown his way, his drugged brain making him blissed out and riding the emotional waves as the minds of the crowd radiate malice.

"I AM KID OMEGA AND I AM YOUR NEW HATEGOD."

Gabby Kinney has posed:
Gabby Kinney glances back at Lydia with a firm nod of thanks at the cover provided. She helps with the kids, getting them behind the temporary cover Noriko had found until the speedster can come back for them. "Stay here," she urges then as she bolts for the door into the building itself. It's here she digs out a few doorstops she brought with her. Just the rubber ones, but they would do. Let them bang against closed doors of an empty school till they wore themselves out for all she cared! Besides, she could easily find a window to get out elsewhere.

She does chide a bit, "No killing, Omega!" Though she doubts he hears among all the chaos.

Mortimer Toynbee has posed:
     The crowd wanted blood, that part was done and they were coming to get it. Hell it was easy. Now the hard part. Being the 'hero' these children needed to see. It was easy to slip around unnoticed in such a mob, to tear the sign off, his mask, his distinctive goggles set in place. A dark streak zips over the heads of the crowd and Toad is suddenly there in the open, sticking to the wall of the building behind Cable, bat twirling in one hand while the other remains plastered to the brick.

"That's right, keep your hands off these children you no good normies! They're under the Brotherhood's protection!" he crows. With that he flips the bat into the air in front of him, his tongue snaking out to grab it before it snaps out, cracking a half dozen skulls in one sweep. Needless to say this doesn't settle the crowd at all, Toad dodging more rocks before he breaks in through a window into the building and drops to the floor among the children, leaving Cable to deal with the backlash.

Inside he flicks the bat off his tongue and back into hand, a smile on his face that is wider than any normal human's. "Hullo kids! Uncle Mort is here to help! Lets get ourselves out of here shall we?! HOP to it as they say," letting out a laugh as he moves to start assisting with the evac. Ever so helpful as he was.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
Noriko doesn't see Lydia get hit.  She can't be everywhere at once.  There's a lot happening, but the speedster is looking for people about to take their last breath.  Children that were not asked when they came into the world, nor would they be asked when taken out of it...certainly not by the speedster.

"You okay?!" Noriko suddenly appears near Lydia, crackling her hands as she jumps to put herself between the crowd and the others while Lydia gets her wits.  She keeps looking like she's coming out of higher velocity even just standing there as the visuals of her blip this way and that when she continue to scan for kids out of place or those in need.  They're everywhere.

The speedster looks over the whole thing going on with that...guy, sticking to the wall.  "Brotherhood what?"

Raven Darkholme has posed:
In contact with Mortimer, Raven is rolling to her feet and walking in the oposite direction of the crowds with a smirk splay across her face, technically someone elses face, and a hand gingerly plucking a small device out of the pocket of her coat as she breaks out the storming crowd rushing through the opening the van left in the chain-link fence.

Dozens of Friends of Humanity are approaching, hundreds of norms, a few kids still remain, and Mortimer is getting them far enough away. Would their be property damage? Yes. Would their be deaths? Quite a few.

But this is the Empire Strikes Back of the saga...

The long game is a dark and stormy thing.

Mystique rubs her finger over the switch and flips the red cover off the little tag button with her thumb, depressing it as she hops up onto the hood of a police car now abandoned because they're approaching Quentin's position. As she twists down to sit on the hood, her skin shifts blue, her hair hangs red, and her eyes glow a gentle yellow. White teeth visible behind dark lips.

*KRRRRRRACK*

The sonic boom of the explosion inside that van twists the metal of the panel van outwards. It's not enough to level the building, but it's plenty enough to turn the whole damn van into a few tons of sharpnel.

And sharpnel doesn't have a name on it.

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
Lydia puts her fingers to her temple, where the snowball hit her, and pulls them away, wet with slush and blood. "Yeah," she says, shaking her head to clear it. "Yeah. I'm okay." She uses the hem of coat sleeve to clean off the rest of the debris from her face. Wherever the salty mixture touches Lydia, it snuffs out whatever it is in her that generates the glowing ectoplasm. "It's just salt. It... turns off my powers."

It's then that Lydia notices the van, and her brain starts screaming danger! at her. She manages to get another shield up in time, but because of the salt, it's patchy, and isn't able to block all the debris, nor is it able to block the concussive force of the explosion, though it is able to muffle it some. The young woman is blown off her feet, however, tossed into some nearby bushes.

Once again her head is ringing but this time it isn't just her head that's in pain. She looks down to see a jagged chunk of steel piercing her in her gut. "Oh." she says, gently touching it, still in shock, and wincing as pain shoots through her abdomen. "Oh..." is all she's able to manage.

Cable has posed:
    Cable's eye spots the shift in the distance, that red and blue change off on the far side of the crowd, like that's all his left eye is ever looking for but again it's too late.

    "God DA-"

    Too late.

    Cable's left arm reaches up and curls in at the elbow, popping out a hard light barrier as the van reaches catasrophic entropy. The white car goes boom. His barrier holds solid, but his footing doesn't. Cable is lifted by the shockwave, and pushes away from the fence, and he starts to roll through the air, backwards and twisting until he finds the school with his feet first. Falling from there into the shrubberies with several snapping beneath his weight, Cable is going to have some new scars on his back from the shrapnel that caught him on that side where the shield doesn't protect. Face first, Cable slowly reaches for his gun and starts to push back to his feet and grunts a complaint, "Fuck me."

Quentin Quire has posed:
Quentin Quire had been too busy basking to notice the oncoming danger, the explosion ripping him out of his reverie. He doesn't know Lydia, but he sees that she's hurt, the shrapnel going everywhere and some of it caught in his shield with all the rest.

Whoever did that wasn't just targeting protestors, not that he was down with just outright murdering them. SHocking their minds and inviting their attacks, sure, because it was good to show what kind of people they were and it was fun to make them angry, but he wasn't really into the whole MDK thing. Well. He wouldn't say he'd never thought about it. A lot.

Does Quentin consider that he might have contributed to allt his by egging on the crowd? Hell no. They brought this on by being shithead bigots who shouldn't have been here in the first place.

"Somebody's always gotta pull a terrorism and take all the fun out of things," he sighs.

Mortimer Toynbee has posed:
     Carrying one child with his tongue, another tucked under either arm, and a fourth on his back, Toad hops away rapidly, knowing full well that blast is coming and not about to be there when it happens. If a few kids do die well, that would just stir things up all the more and finally get the revolution in full swing now wouldn't it? It's near the park Noriko has set the rest of her own evacuees that he drops them off, the children obviously scared.

"Settle down there tykes, all OK. You see what these humies are out to do though now don't ya? Ya can't be letting them get the better of ya like that. Here, you all ever need a bit of help or find school just ain't the life for ya, you give ole Uncle Mort a call," Toad passing out slips of paper with a number on it. Another, more sinister grin follows.

"And I gots some more gifts for ya. Here ya go kiddos. Anyone messes with ya on your ways home tonight, or you just, feel the need to take back a bit, you use these," Toad passing out the bat, the knife, the molotovs, and last but not least the handgun to one of the children, even giving the last a brief tutorial on how to work it. Because Toad was just helpful like that. Looking back towards the site of the blast, sirens blaring in the air from all sorts of directions now, Toad gives one of the mutant children a ruffle on the head and then starts walking away as if nothing was the matter, while chanting a sing-song version of 'The Fifth of November.'

Noriko Ashida has posed:
"Cool.  Wait, salt?  Huh."  Noriko is already gone, but she doesn't get terribly far because she's immediately blasted off her feet.

'Going to have to figurer that one out,' Noriko thinks on how she was just blasted out of her ability to maneuver as she sails through the air and a lot of other things.  She's got a lot of cycles to reflect on where everything has gone wrong.

Oh yeah.  Came to this shit.

Everything that goes fast must come to a stop, and Noriko was going too fast.  She nails the fence on the other side and stops...eventually.  Then she's back over Lydia, bloody and torn up, but not.  Some of the superficial scratches are starting to scab up.  They don't just knit back together like other mutants with healing factors do.

"Okay.  I got you.  It's okay.  I'm going to take you to get that...looked at."  Not the best choice of words, but Nori says these things very very loudly to Lydia as she stoops down.  "Can I pick you up?!"

Raven Darkholme has posed:
The dust settles and there are a lot of people screaming. A lot of people in pain.. a deathly calm in the aftermath of the ear shattering explosion that has caused so much chaos in what had already become a rather violent display between the people amassed against one another at the High School. The protesters too the lions share of the damage. Multiple people are clutching at pieces of panel van stuck in their legs, arms, chest, and wounds caused by shrapnel flying past. A few teachers as well...

And at least one student, but there has to be more?

The only people who aren't injured, it seems, are the Friends of Humanity and the police. The former because they knew there was a bomb in that van and the latter because they were too far back to get close enough for any of the explosion to hit them aside from knocking them on their ass.

Suffice that the FoH are getting directly the hell out of there. Running in every direction like roaches when the lights come on... and the people nearer the back are running too. It's anarchy, a race to get to safety incase there's a second bomb. A race to get away incase they're blamed for the first one... some people think it was the mutants, and they shout as much against the ringing in their ears following the badaboom.

Save one woman.

She pushes herself up, gingerly plucks earplugs out of each ear, and steps down off the hood of the police care she'd chosen for her seat to watch the show. Blow fingers comb back into her red hair, yellow eyes watching with little ticks as people shout for help, mutant and human alike. A little wicked grin curls her dark lips as she takes a step back and turns, shifting into her appearance and clothing into that of a police officer. Mystique pretends to help people get away, "Hurry! There could be a second explosive!" Directing people away, directing them around her, she changes into someone else when surrounded by the crowd... and as it passes by, she's gone.

Leaving only destruction in her wake.

If you stand in front of us. We'll destroy you.

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
Lydia blinks owlishly at Noriko. "I don't know. I think so? I'm not that heavy." It doesn't come out as snark, really. She's just still in shock and the question just kind of came to her all jumbled like that. "I..." she tries to get to her feet, winces, and thinks better of it. "I'll be okay. The kids. They're the important ones."

But if Noriko decides to pick her up? She's not going to protest.

Cable has posed:
    The ringing in his head and the ringing in his ears, "Fuck." Cable groans as he pushes himself to his feet. The war wasn't supposed to have started yet, but, here we are. Cable slides the rifle back over his shoulder and looks around, those cops and these people, are not the people he needs to be dealing with.

    Not yet.

    The time traveller turns and steps out of the bushes he landed in and turns to move to the side of the school and find his way away from this mess. Overhearing Lydia and Noriko, he grunts, "The kids, the ones left, they'll be fine." Yeah, it hurts to say, and causes the older man to wince, but he's going to help these girls get away now. "Move. There's more to come."

Quentin Quire has posed:
Quentin Quire descends to the ground and shifts his TK to try to help shield escape for the students looking to find it. If he feels guilt, he's definitely stifling it very intensely and makes a pair of psi-pistols in his hands, firing them in the air, "That's enough of all this. Get outta here now! Hya! Hya!"

Noriko Ashida has posed:
"I was asking for permission," Noriko clarifies loudly in all of the confusion.  She still can't hear well and the thought of it isn't something she wants to engage with just yet.

"No.  Stop! Just," Nori growls a little when Lydia tries to get up, her face twisting up in sympathy at the wince.  "Why do I even ask," she grumbles and then looks over at the older guy.  "Yeah whatever dude," she says loudly.  Noriko moves quickly, very quickly, and scoops Lydia up into her arms.  She keeps them as slow as possible while avoiding getting hurt as they shoot off toward where Noriko last saw some emergency responders.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
Nori will also swing by and pick up Gabby on the way because you know she's not that thoughtless.