7036/The Golem of Bushwick: Trial By Fire

The Golem of Bushwick: Trial By Fire
Date of Scene:	05 August 2021
Location:	Bushwick <Mutant Town>
Synopsis:	An explosion rocks Bushwick's clinic, and the community comes together to save people from the resulting fire.
Cast of Characters:	Lydia Dietrich, Wade Wilson, Jethro Glass, Raven Darkholme, Monet St. Croix, Clarice Ferguson

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Lydia Dietrich has posed:
It's been a few weeks since the Golem had been activated. Almost a month, now, and it's become something of a fixture in Bushwick. With greater frequency it's been left to do its patrols alone, with only the camera monitor keeping an eye on it. It's been a comforting presence, mostly, willing to do work that people ask it to for a while before it goes back on patrol. It even helped some of the rebuilding efforts by hauling large stacks of lumber when one of the front loaders broke down. Despite its gentleness with the residents and allies of Bushwick, it still remains something of a threat to any who would harm the community. When trouble happens, it moves quickly, much faster than its enormous bulk would imply, and deals with it decisively. Usually it's mere presence is enough to deter and disband any ne'er do wells.

Today it's making its rounds near the clinic, the prescience that Lydia built into it indicating that something is going to happen in the area sometime soon. Otherwise the day seems like any other normal day. The sun is out, the temperatures are up, and people are milling through the streets going on with their daily lives. Just a normal day in Bushwick. What could possibly go wrong?

Wade Wilson has posed:
Wade Wilson arrives on the roof near the gollem with a bag of guns and other rando stuff just waiting for trouble. Who knows what might happen? He has ideas about how to save the world, how to make money from the situation or makes things worse. He has a small talking dice that he plans to roll (but its secretly weighted to be biasted towards heroism. As it is, he has a nice bologna and cheese sandwich decked out with tomato and lettice and mayo and he is REALLY enjoying that sandwich, but left the popcorn popper at home due to the tramau of what happened last time.

Jethro Glass has posed:
     Jethro walks the crowded streets of mutant town with a confident gate. His attention drifts from one building to the next the completely alien sights and sounds like a whole nother world comforting in their strangeness.

     His resting face might make him look like a bit of a grouch with that militaristic streak a mile wide, but he's having one heck of a time just taking in how strange everything is. The people are like something out of one of those weird novels they'd used to sell at the general store. Some with feathers some with scales some with the appearance of demons walking in broad daylight, and yet for someone as lost as he was on most things he manages to hold it all together quite well.

     In his hands he holds his banjo at the ready, scoping out a spot that looks about as good as any other on the corner of the road. He leans up against the nearby wall, and throws a can onto the ground from his oversized pack filled with his earthly belongings and begins to play the most beautiful banjo music he can to entice a bit of coin his way.

Raven Darkholme has posed:
After the last few times of coming to Buchwick while being her beautiful cobalt self, Mystique had decided to to wear a skin others might know but wasn't known by the police. She was quite sick of people attempting to arrest her, so today she was walking a patrol as a beautiful African American woman with long braids, a deep ebony skin that would make her disappear in the darkness, and lots of piercings. She wore a tight fitting tank top in merigold yellow with a light windbreaker jacket over it, a pair of BDUs in solid black and combat boots. Her pistols were tucked against her back in holsters, hidden by the jacket.

Just another day of patrols, nothing to see here.

Monet St. Croix has posed:
Having no official 'uniform' and being out for dinner anyway, Monet is dressed for comfort in black, imitation denim capris pants, a baggy red shirt over a sky blue tank top and black leather flat shoes. She's eating at a Moroccan restaurant near the clinic, occupying an outdoor table where she's enjoying brochettes, aubergine (or eggplant fritters), and couscous with mint tea.

Is she aware of her surroundings? Of course she is, she's Monet. She just doesn't /seem/ to be to the casual observer.

Clarice Ferguson has posed:
    Clarice was, in fact, not on patrol today. Mystique was handling that. Instead, the brightly-colored woman with her magenta colored skin is taking time... off. It was still a foreign concept to her. So even though she wasn't on patrol, as she idly walked the streets of Bushwick, she began to almost instinctively tread the path she took on some of her patrols.
    The sound of banjo music begins to draw her in, however, diverting her steps to where Jethro has set up - and she lingers a short distance away from him, listening to the music with curiosity. It wasn't like any sort of music she'd heard before, honestly - and that baffled her a little.

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
The peace is broken when an unmarked white van careens through the streets and screeches to a halt in front of the clinic. The side panels open up and men wearing all black and matching balaclavas pop out and start throwing hissing propane tanks through the windows and glass doors of the clinic, and follow up with molotov cocktails. It's going to be mere seconds before the clinic goes up in a ball of fire.

The pedestrians are stunned at first, not quite sure as to what is going on until one of them shouts, "IT'S GONNA BLOW!" and then there's a mad scramble to get out of the blast radius. Will they manage to get out in time?

Wade Wilson has posed:
Wade Wilson is not cool with people attacking clinics. He's a walking hospital patient, so he should know. He runs across the rooftop and leaps through the clinic skylight (of course they're a skylight Cid, its what people crash through dramatically, DUH!) and immediately grabs one, maybe even two clinic patients to get them out so they dont look like....him.

Jethro Glass has posed:
     Jethro is playing a rapid fire banjo song his fingers dancing up and down the frets of that stringed instrument. He taps his foot along with the sound slapping that combat boot up and down to the time of the song as his eyes slide shut to focus on the rhythm of the banjo echoing out into the air.

     It didn't matter if anyone paid him as much as it mattered that he had that audience passing by and maybe just maybe one or two might give a listen. He was so focused on his playing that he almost didn't notice the van speed up next to him. His eyes crack open just in time for him to see the men begin to pile out of the van.

     He draws his pistol dropping his banjo onto its leather strap with a clatter. One hand slips over the back of the hammer the other onto the pistols grip as its slung out from its holster.

     Jethro fans the hammer holding his finger onto the trigger as he sends out a wall of six bullets towards the near-do-wells haucking their wares in towards the clinic. The man's lightning fast on the trigger as he is on the banjo but he's aiming for Van itself looking to disable it before the horseless carriage can make its getaway.

Raven Darkholme has posed:
The sound of screeching tires and people screaming draws Mystique/Ayaan's attention, sending her from the side street she was walking back to the main street that the clinic was on, her hands slipping into the jacket to remove her pistols. Under normal circumstances she's just start shooting at the man and solve the problem at the core by ensuring they couldn't come back and do anything again... she wasn't doing that.

Instead of making these a-holes dead, she started to shoot out the tires of the van. If there was going to be an explosion, they were sticking around to enjoy it.

Monet St. Croix has posed:
As the clinic goes up in flames Monet goes into motion. She was down the block and across the street when the ball of fire went up. Moments later she's stood and flew down the street in a blink of the eye (but staying subsonic, its the city after all) to where a woman is attempting to wrangle her two children to safety.

The Monegasques mutant lifts the older of the two children with one arm and, after helping the mother collect the younger, lifts the mother and child with her other and takes flight from the impending explosion, putting her back toward the threatened blast so that her nearly invulnerable body will be between the woman and kids she is rescuing.

"My dollie!" whines the preschool aged child in blissful ignorance of the actual danger while her brother, perhaps eight, whoops in joy at flying all to the obvious chagrin of their immensely terrified mother.

Clarice Ferguson has posed:
    Clarice's attention shifts readily from the banjo player - to the can that shrieks up to the clinic, and her eyes go wide with shock and horror as she sees the first propane tank go flying into the clinic. As she sees a second one being chucked, a portal opens before it and it flies through - out into the vaccum of space where it can do no real harm.
    It's a shame that her view of the man with the molotov cocktail was obscured by the bulk of the van.
    Still, with one potential bomb in the clinic, the young mutant opens a second portal into the clinic itself, exiting near her location as she calls hastily, "This way, folks! Please evacuate the clinic through the purple portal!"

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
It isn't much longer when the molotov cocktails ignite the propane tanks causing a massive explosion within the lobby of the clinic. Glass and debris fly out all over the place injuring those pedestrians who were unfortunate enough to not get clear in time. The fate of those who were stuck in the lobby is unclear as it's now engulfed in flames, and it's hard to see in. Still, a few manage to stumble out of the fire before the explosion hits. A nurse runs up to Clarice, recognizing the mutant and tells her, "Please! There are women and children still in the lobby! You have to do something!"

The thudding of huge clay feet can be heard thundering towards them as the Golem comes barreling down the street. It only pauses for the merest of seconds before running up to the van and slamming its fists down on the hood, caving it in and rendering the engine useless.

Deadpool manages to grab a couple of patients who were in the back rooms waiting for their doctors to arrive, and ushers them out the back door to safety.

Jethro's guns disable the tires of the horseless carriage, making sure that even if the engine were working it would definitely not get away, and what tires weren't shot by Jethro, Mystique hits as well.

Monet gets the children away far enough so that when the explosion happens, debris pelts her back, shielding them enough so they remain unharmed.

All in all there's chaos out in the streets. There are pedestrians laying wounded in the streets, the fire, and the thugs make everything a mess. The thugs, at first, try to escape using the van, but since it's useless now, they take off, using the chaos as their cover.

Wade Wilson has posed:
Wade Wilson is not fireproof but he is Deathproofish (coming to a theater near you, check your local listings) and goes Back In, really wishing that he had had a chance to roll the die and be a Wild Card (tm) but as it is he looks for more people in the rapidly increasing smoke to help them stay oriented and get out though he really wants to get people out quickly so he can do Major Accupuncture on the bad guys (Major Accupuncture having large caliber holes and a wide range of medicinal effects including traveling to higher or lower planes of exsitance for higher periods of time.)

Jethro Glass has posed:
     The shrapnel slams into Jethro catching in his clothes. Though lucky for him he's still wearing his SHIELD equipment underneath his unassuming exterior clothes. Bits of uniform peak through his grey cotton clothing as Jethro collects himself and starts to move, sliding his banjo round the sling and back onto his backside.

     He presses down on the revolver to open the cylinder sliding it out of position along with the barrel and tosses the cylinder into his pocket before pulling a fresh from within and slamming it into place with a loud audible click. His left hand forms a saucer his right hand slamming down into position as he skids to a stop.

     His aim goes not for the men running but for the streetlamps above them, and more specifically the much thinner metal holding up the main bulb section of the streetlamps.

     Breathing slows the world seeming to move at two frames per second as he releases the air from his lungs in one long blow. All the chaos that abounds in every direction fades into the background. The screaming, the crying, and the flames little more than background music to what's coming next.

     He depresses the trigger, and thick grey smoke pours out from the end of his black powder revolver. Again he presses it sending the cloud larger, and again. Three bullets for three street lamps aimed to send them collapsing down onto the heads of some of the running figures.

Raven Darkholme has posed:
That happened way faster than Mystique expected, the explosion sending her rolling away to ensure she didn't get thrown. Coming back up on her feet, she darts over to start helping the nearest pedestrian. She's no medic, but she knows general first aid, and ensure people can be moved away from the burning clinic without risk of further damage.

Across the street and down a couple buildings is a parking lot, and it is there that she starts guiding and helping the wounded get to, even as she dials 911 on her phone. "Someone just blew up the clinic in Bushwick, do me a favor, don't take forever to send medical help, thanks." She says to the operator. "Yes I'll stay on the line."

Monet St. Croix has posed:
A quick visual scan of the area after a polite acceptance of offered thanks from those she rescued, has Monet see the woman organizing a triage area. Despite not having much more than an everywoman's understanding of first aid techniques this is the first thing she offers on her approach.

"I am not medic," Monet starts off with in her French-accented English, "But you seem to be taking charge, so how may I be of assistance?" she asks after flying over to where Mystique is on the phone and hovering a good two meters above the ground, looking down upon the elder mutant in disguise.

Clarice Ferguson has posed:
    "...I'm not fireproof!" Clarice protests, ignoring the lacerations she received from some of the flying glass - but her concern at the thought of people, of //children// trapped in that lobby is clear enough.
    There's no point in her getting any closer to the flaming building - and Creative Use of Portals doesn't require it anyways. After a few people rush out the portal she'd opened - it closes and reopens in a new position in the lobby. Flames lick wildly through the portal - until she manages to open a second pair of portals. The one links the Hudson river to the lobby of the clinic - pouring water in a cascade a short distance from the exit portal, and hopefully allowing people trying to escape the blaze a route to safety.
    "Hello?" She calls through the portal desperately. "Can anyone hear me?" She peers through the water and flames searching for any human like forms and any that she does see - she tosses a javelin towards them, teleporting them with a blink of purple energy out onto the sidewalk.
    A sheen of sweat appears on her forehead, however - perhaps from the heat of the day, or the heat of the fire... Or maybe managing two portals while blinking people out of the flames is straining her concentration.

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
One of the thugs has the unfortunate luck of running near where the Golem is. It reaches out and catches the man's should in it's large grip, and there's a crunching sound as the looming figure breaks the bones in the man's shoulder.

Wade manages to find a couple of doctors who had been blown off their feet, and wrangles them out of the emergency exit, despite their protest that they need to stay and help the wounded. Despite bleeding ears from the concussion of the blast, they make their way around the building and help Mystique stabilize the wounded.

The street lamps that Jethro shoots burst and spark as they hit, and the lamps themselves drop and stun a couple of the thugs as they're hit in the head, preventing them from getting away.

The portal open from the Hudson sends a deluge of water into the lobby, easily drowning out the fires. As another portal appears, a receptionist who managed to hide behind the desk drags out the body of a woman, who is badly charred, and her infant son. "Oh my God," she cries. "These two need help!"

The nurse who seems to be heading the triage looks up at Monet. "You're a super," she says. "Get as many people out of there as possible," she tells her. "Once they're clear of the fire then we can help them."

Wade Wilson has posed:
Wade Wilson starts to feel the heat, and feels resentful that there was no lamp to kick over. If a fire started, its his job to start it. Damn it, none of this is right and he isnt going to get to use the t-shirt gun with glue for new instructions for the golem when it inevitably goes rogue damn it! Rogue wouldn't start to smell like bacon as they kept getting people out...indestructible is a COOL power. Ah cool yeah, imagining ice cold air conditioning right now as he wanders around the flames of hel....the clinic...trying not to think about all of the hor-SNAP OUT OF IT DEADPOOL! NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR A METAPHYSICAL CRISIS...he guides people out or, even better to magic portals making the place a fish fry. Any way out that works.

Jethro Glass has posed:
     Jethro runs as fast as his legs will carry into the crowd as he stows away his black powder pistol. He's on a mission as he travels forward ducking through the people as he attempts to follow one of the fleeing figures.

     Eyes narrow further on his target as he drowns out the surrounding figures zooming in on his quarry. Up and over a hotdog stand he goes lifting up onto a nearby awning to try and keep above the crowd. Jethro is doing his best to keep up but he's no supersoldier, just perhaps the world's finest gunman. He dives off of the awning and towards the goon looking to try and take them out of the equation best that he can.

Raven Darkholme has posed:
It was her very nature to just take charge of situations, to try and keep the calm and get things worked out. Mystique, even in a different skin, couldn't stop that from happening no any more than she could stop breathing.

"We need blankets," she calls out. "As well as water, rags, and as many first aid kits from around the area as possible. You!" she points to a random, unharmed person. "Help that woman and her kids to the triage parking lot, stop staring dumbly at me and MOVE!"

Her tone isn't angry, it is filled instead with a natural authority. Her pistols has already ben replaced to the holsters so her hands were free. She looks to Monet as the approached, "See if you can help at the clinic, get the injured over to the parking lot area. I've called 911, they may or may not actually bother showing up, but until then we need to get the wounded away from the fire."

All of this is also said over the bluetooth headset she's wearing to the operator at 911 who told her to stay on the line.

Monet St. Croix has posed:
A nod to acknowledge the nurse is Monet's only response as she also heard the cries of the receptionist. The young Monegasques woman flies into the building at the speed of a swiftly running human. She pauses by the young woman who yelled and asks, "Do you need assistance before I start searching the building?"

Upon the woman's response to the negative with the shake of her head, Monet says to her, "Find some blankets and get out to the parking lot people are gathering in," authoatively.

The recptionist seemintly taken care of, the flying mutant continues into the building. Monet focuses on areas of the building showing damage, seeking those in need of rescue.

Clarice Ferguson has posed:
    With the flames dying down to a manageable level, Clarice steps through her own portal into the lobby - allowing the water from the Hudson (eww, gross, I know) to wash over her before she approaches the nurse and the injured pair. Concern colors Clarice's features - before she flashes the nurse a reassuring look. "Don't worry - I've got them," she promises. Her Brotherhood comm is activated as she speaks a few simple words. "Dr. Hathaway - incoming. Severe burns and shrapnel wounds."
    She could send the pair to a closer hospital, yes - but she knows the Asteroid's Medical Bay better. And there's a bed that's kept empty so she can teleport severely injured patients directly onto it. With a touch - the pair vanish with a flash of purple energy.
    Clarice glances back to the portal through which she entered the lobby - and she lefts it blink closed, before repositioning her portal to the Hudson over whatever remains of the blaze. Who knew Clarice was such an effective fire fighter?

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
Wade manages to grab another couple of unconscious bodies and drag them out through Clarice's portals. By all estimations he's got most of the people out. There's only a few left to rescue.

"You there," shouts the triage nurse to the golem. "Get in there and help people and stop fooling around with that guy." The golem hesitates, turning its glowing amber eyes from the grunt who its got in its crushing grip, to the burning building. It lazily tosses the man aside, who lands in a crumpled heap, holding his shoulder and moaning and the golem gets to work. It lumbers in through the broken front doors of the building, through the fire, and within moments reemerges with the figure of an unconscious woman, whom it sets down next to the nurse.

Fortunately for Jethro, the man he's chasing isn't a super soldier either. He also lacks the training that Jethro has, and the SHIELD operative easily catches up with him. Being just a normal human it doesn't take much to take him out and secure him.

The authority in Mystique's voice shakes people out of their shock, and they scramble to grab the items that she's requesting. They run to the doors of the neighboring apartments, and knock on them frantically trying to enlist their help. The sense of community the Brotherhood has been trying to foster in Bushwick is finally paying off. People come out of their homes with blankets, buckets of water, first aid kits, and everything else to help. Neighbors help the pedestrians who were caught in the blast but who aren't critically injured bandage their cuts and wounds. Friends help organize the response. As a whole, the people come together to help deal with this tragedy.

It takes Monet a bit to find the rest of the victims in the clinic. One is badly burned, but still alive. Another is on his knees, coughing, light headed from smoke inhalation. A quick sweep of the place reveals that these are the only two who are left.

Blink arrives just in time to see Monet save the last two victims, and now that she's inside, she can easily put out the rest of the fires. In the end, she's left with a burnt and soggy lobby that will take some time to rebuild.

Wade Wilson has posed:
Wade Wilson's eyes twinkle with temptation as the Golem walks up right next to him in the smoking wet building as the ideas of rewriting its instructions inside of its head occur like, "Be Sure to Drink Your Ovaltine!" or "Insult the Earth in Alphabetical Order" briefly consider but there is still SOME fire, and still SOME people to move to the traige centers, so remarkably he does not do the chaotic thing and turns those 'a few people left' to reduce to zero but as the golem, the flying tank and the teleporter do a MUCH better job, he immediately and gleefully runs after the fleeing bad guys, trying to watch for people following them, a distinct and luxiorious smell of burnt flesh wafting through the crowd as he runs after Teh Bad guys (well....tries to...) drawing his Katanas...to...blazing speed of swirling...or is that Scimitars? Why doesnt he use Scimitars again?

Clarice Ferguson has posed:
    Clarice reduces her use of portals to just the one - as she continues to close and reopen it, spraying water on any embers or flames she can find. Periodically, a fish falls through and ends up flopping on the clinic floor, though she ignores it.
    Honestly - she's tired, and she can't waste the energy and portaling //fish// back to their rivers. Sorry, fish.
    Eventually, she steps back out onto the sidewalk, looking around with a slightly dazed look - the portal sealed, and the rest of the Hudson flowing placidly towards the see not too far away. She can hear the broken glass crunching underfoot as she walks.
    Who does this sort of thing? Just... why?

Monet St. Croix has posed:
While the waters are flooding the building Monet continues to make quick aerial dashes into and out of it looking to see if there are any survivors who've been missed, just in case. She keeps the dives brief enough as to allow her to continue to regularly get her breath as she knows better than to turn herself into a victim as well.

Lydia Dietrich has posed:
It's not hard to find the last fleeing goon. In fact, it's not hard at all for Wade to dismantle him into his subsequent parts. This... really doesn't help with the panic, as it causes people to go screaming away from the Merc with a Mouth. At least this one won't be getting away. Except maybe for the head, which is rolling towards the gutter.

Clarice puts the last of the fires out, and Monet confirms that all the victims have been evacuated out of the clinic. Mystique continues to organize and the worst of the burned and injured patients have been evac'd up to the Asteroid to receive immediate treatment. If it wasn't for that, some of them might not have make it.

Sadly, there were two casualties in the blast. The woman that the nurse dragged out and another patient. Fortunately, the infant survived, and will live to grow up healthy and strong, despite some physical scarring.

Two of the three goons are apprehended when the police finally show up, nearly forty five minutes later. By the time they and the ambulances get there, everything is well in hand, thanks to the community of Bushwick coming together.