GM: Sickle
Players: Haley, Chameleon, Jag.
Synopsis: Some white supremacists seek to put the Red Man back in his place. Unfortunately for them, they bite off rather more than they can chew. An open gunfight in a seedy part of town leaves a lot of people hurt, but in the end, things could have turned out an awful lot worse. Especially if three very different, but highly skilled, individuals hadn't been in the area to help limit the worst of the damage.
Date: Fri Feb 26th, 2070.
The wonderful thing about racism, is that racism runs both ways.
Although it is true that the Ghost Riders aren't racist, the Ute nation has been stirring enough trouble that, sooner or later, the specifics of who, particularly, within the nation are racist, and who aren't, blur into insignificance. The fact remains that there have been a bunch of uppity Redskins shooting off at the mouth, lately, and it is about time someone took the time to put them in their god-damned place.
The White American built this nation, it was time the White American took back what they had worked so hard to make!
They had arrived at staggered times, so as to avoid raising too much suspicion on the way there. But now, in this place in town, where only violence and force of arms keeps a tenuous peace, a good two dozen men, all Anglo, some carrying obvious weapons and some wearing obvious armor, is gathering at the main entrance to the BoneYard. Needless to say, this is getting some nervous attention. Many of the stallkeepers start to put away the more 'expensive' goods… and several far /more/ obviously armed and armored Ghost Riders start to appear.
Jag's head peers back through one of the holes in the cinderblock wall as he very blatantly follows Haley with his eyes. "Aie mami," he groans quietly, "Gimmie some fries wit' dat shake."
Chameleon pauses to examine a table of automobile sound systems, then as the merchant packs away half the stock with an eye on the entrance the Chameleon follows her trepidatious gaze and frowns. He makes a decent attempt at 'inspecting the remaining wares' for a few more moments then finds himself a nice quiet place out of the general line of sight to make a few subtle personal modifications.
Jag turns his head back streetside after a moment, just in time to come face-to-face with a few of the gathering toughs. Alone outside the walls. Unarmed. And full-blooded Ute.
Moving with a little dance to her step, Haley seems to be lost in her own internal soundtrack. She walks along her eyes taking in the sights before they turn towards the human making the announcements. Her eyes widen a little, the glint of amusement showing in them brightly. She makes her way into the crowd lacing her hands behind her hips and walking with a stiff legged strolling movement.
It only takes a moment or two to make the changes and the Chameleon steps back out into plain view, though anyone who had been watching him closely might be struck by a moment of disorientation. The clothing matches the bland young man that disappeared into the shadows, but the generic caucasion impression they gave certainly doesn't match the clearly native american blood running through the young man's veins.
He strolls along through the aisles again, this time making a casual effort to make his way to the entrance where the real trouble is clearly going to stem from.
From the crowd, one particularly /loud/ man seems to come forward as the ringleader. His voice raises up above the rest, assisted by a microphone in one hand, though he's got a shotgun in the other.
"Alright you red scum!" He bellows, "We've had enough of you kicking good, hard-working Americans to the curb. It's time we shoved the lot of you back in the reservations where you bel—"
And that's about as far as he gets, before a gunshot rings out. A neat hole is punched into his stomach, and he falls back, looking, honestly, surprised.
At which point, all hell breaks loose.
The problem with crowds is that there's often a stampede when things happen like someone getting shot. Haley moves calmly, but she moves quickly in the direction of one of the stalls. She moves in behind it for cover, keeping her eyes alert for movement.
Jag lifts his hands slowly and carefully drops his hood, exposing his strongly amerind features. The orc youth steps backwards from the nearby tough and back through the hole in the 'containment' wall. "I ain't look'n fer trouble, man"(Ute)
Without waiting to question why, or who, took the initiative to shoot the ringleader, the Ghost Riders take the initiative in opening up into the gathered crowd. Most wielding shotguns or SMGs, the higher end of the Gangland Security market. Because, with all the tensions, they had been set on edge that something like this might happen. This was a lucrative area, too. They couldn't take the risk of the hit to their bottom line.
Unfortunately, friday afternoon is also a fairly busy time, and the chaos proceeds much as Haley had feared. People run away, en masse, and the racists open up just as freely, into the crowd and the gangers indiscriminately.
Chameleon has already gotten the idea there's trouble brewing and thrown his allegiance in with the security staff if his new look is any indication. Once the shooting starts it's a simple matter of throwing on the rest of his gecko gear and going up the side of a container like, well, a gecko. At the top he starts into a run for the entrance with the apparent intent of assisting in ending the conflict somehow.
The ork youth rolls back wit' it and lift his left arm high to block the punch. Reflexively his right hand rabbits out toward the thug, even as Jag cringes with an 'Aw shit, what I do' look on his face.
The thug who had been hassling Jag steps forwards, "Speak English you fraggin' red-tuskin' bas—" Unfortunately for him, the youthful Ork knows his way around a brawl, and he winds up socked in the jaw. It doesn't really seem to slow him down, but it does piss him off something fierce. He looks about ready to break the poor kid in half, even if he is a helluva lot stronger than the human doing the beating. Must be that cowering demeanor.
Seeing an ork in a fight, Haley takes stock of things. She rushes through the crowd and she steps up behind the human. Reaching over his shoulders she pokes her index fingers into the edges of his mouth. She says, "You got to say things like that with a smile mista." She draws her fingers back and the skin neatly splits giving him a grin that literally stretches almost ear to ear. The human falls onto the ground and Haley looks at her bloody fingertips she says, "Oh well, at least he's happy now."
Jag may be taller, stronger and tougher - (maybe even a bit Prettier) - but his heart is nowhere near as into this fight as the scary mo'fuggin Anglo bastard trying to crush his avacados. Luckily, he's pretty much always down for a dance and finally loosens up and settles onto the balls of his feet … at least until that freaky (hot) chick with the pigtails Jokerizes the hombre that was swingin' at him -
Kneeling over the corpse Haley plugs out his right eye and she flicks it across into the crowd as she says, "Keep an eye out for me chumma." She laughs sharply, a rapidfire ha ha ha sound as she looks around for a moment getting ready to sprint for cover.
Giving Jag a friendly smile Haley says, "Cheer up chumma, you look like you've seen a ghost." She blinks and laughs as she weaves through the fight saying, "Oi guess he did see a ghost. They're all over, shootin'." She dives over the counter of one of the stalls and lands next to the owner saying, "Hiya," her tone having never changed despite the actions of the past.
Running might be the word for what the chameleon does, if the speaker were prone to understatement on par with 'Ghengis Khan dabbled in real estate'. A more accurate description might be that he seems to fly from container to container at near superhuman speeds, leaping gaps and dodging obstacles through the simple expedient of leaping over them, snagging a handhold where there is none to whip into an occasional turn and gaining rather than losing speed from the turn. In short, he nearly flies from his starting point to the entrance.
It's a 50/50 split between a feeling of solid dread regarding what just happened to the body of his former anglo dance partner, and his common sensibilities of preserving any appearance of his manhood. For the Spirits sake, a cheerledaer half his height just w-t-f raped the bald thug that sucked up a clean shot that the ork had given him. This just ain't yer day kid, Jag thought to himself as he turned to look over the chaos that had erupted in the Boneyard mere seconds ago.
Sucking it up, the amerind ork ducks and weaves at the best of his ability through the stampeding crowd towards an older woman who was having worse luck than him today. It's obvious that she took a stray bullet - but not so clear how seriously, yet. All the same, say was down, crying, and needed help to get behind cover.
The aggressors are not faring well. Although the Ghosts aren't getting off light, the higher firepower they are packing is clearly making a huge difference as wounded Anglos go down left and right. Still, the Anglos brought more people, and their resolve is holding, for now. One takes a shot at Haley through the market stall she's using for cover. Luckily, some preternatural sixth sense tells her to move her head a little to the left. A second gunman tries to shoot the running Chameleon, but he's just too quick for bullets to touch!
Jag, in his noble effort, gets slammed into heavily by the crowd. But the ork is tougher than he looks, and he stands firm. The crowd breaks around him, and soon he's on the wounded woman, a rock in an ocean of fearful, bloody, panicking bodies.
Keeping a smile on her face, Haley nudges the shop keeper with an elbow she says, "This is great, isn't it hon?" She looks around and she asks, "You happen to have a medkit? Oi am a medic, but Oi wasn't expectin' a gunfight tonight."
Without breaking stride the runner on the rooftops launches himself from the edge of his current container aimed directly at one of the honky bastards. Flight path is true, landing the runner's hands on the bigot's shoulders where the acrobat of doom uses the momentum to bend in the air, flipping himself off of the target and back into the air aimed at yet another of the crowd. The impact isn't much, but it defintely causes a little pain, or at least some massive confusion if the victim's reactions are anything to judge by,.
Jag huddles over the wounded woman, placing himself between her and the anglo thugs - using his broad back to shield her. "Stay calm," he says in his native Ute, using his deep voice as soothingly as possible. With a quick glance right and left, his plans are to scoop the woman up and carry he to the closest cover.
The ork easily scoops the much smaller woman up in his arms and shoulders his way through the fleeing crowd - a bit more roughly than he would have liked, but the end justifies the means. It isn't until after he's got the wounded woman settled on the ground again behind Haley's cover, that he realizes who he's sharing it with. The young ork keeps his gaze trained on the pigtailed psychpath as he puts pressure awkwardly on the woman's gunshot wound. It's ovious that the amerind is scared to death of what he saw Haley do before, but the tusked snarl on his face makes it obvious that he'll give his life to protect the wounded woman if Harley does anything crazy.
Looking over the injured woman, Haley says, "Oh you poor lamb." She shakes her head and she leans a little closer towards her. She looks to the injun ork saying, "Medic, doctor," indicating herself. She paints a cross in the blood of the man she killed on the sleeve of her winter jacket. She examines the woman's wounds and she says, "Medkit?"
Jag narrows his eyes, clearly not believing Haley - or he just doesn't have a medkit - "No," is all he says in heavily accented english.
Chameleon makes his plant again, distracting the poor victim with a little pain from the jolt in the shoulders, but then the momentum carries him beyond into another flip presumably aimed at another member of the crowd of hostiles.
The anglos seem to have decided that they've had enough of this. Almost as one entity, they start to run out of the area again. One of them, however, had enough forethought to bring something along to stop the Ghosts hunting them down through the streets.
It's very easy to miss the small item at first. It comes sailing out of the mass, and lands in front of a surprised-looking Ganger, before it bounces further on past him…
Suddenly, fire is flaring up all around the point of impact, torching several stalls, and starting a roaring blaze in a matter of moments. *FWOOM*
With a sigh Haley pokes her head up over the cover at the sight of the fire. She ducks back down and looks at the wounded woman, she says, "Fire, gotta go," her higher pitched Brooklyn accent is well out of place within the Ute nation.
The ork breaks into immediate action at Harley's command. Cradling the wounded woman once again in his arms, he ducks behind the makeshift shop and moves the frag away from the growing flames. He deep voice roars out in Ute as he puts ground behind himself and the flames: "Help! I need a doctor! This lady's fraggin' dyin'!"
Vaulting over the stall's counter Haley moves to follow Jag, her eyes sweeping the crowd as she yells, "Fire, fire, someone get me marshmallows!" She elbows her way through the crowd tring to keep up with the ork.
From the crowd behind Haley, however, although most of the Ghosts are trying to get the fires out, one big meaty Amerind arm comes around to wrap itself around her neck, "Not so fast Anglo." He says, darkly, "We got to have a little talk, scan?"
With a urk, Haley is stopped by the arm across her throat. She laughs and says, "H-hey, Oi love talkin'." She stuggles to turn her head towards the guy who is holding her as she says, "Any way we can kiss and make up?"
Chameleon's next flip was aimed at one of the other assholes, but apparently the response was a bit more than they expected and the next launch pad takes off and runs. Fortunately, the acrobat of doom manages to land on his feet, and after a moment to assess the situation he heads up the side of another container to get out of the mob and heads for the nearest wounded amerind.
Jag's world peels down into slow motion as he catches one of the Ghosts grab Haley out of his peripheral, "She's cool, I got her" he barks in Ute, baring his tusks angrily at the ganger even as he flexes his shoulders and puffs up with machismo. "Get me a medkit, or get the other wounded out of that fire!"
The Ghost Rider is suitably impressed with the machismo of the ork. He shoves Haley away from him as he releases her, and nods his head to the boy. If nothing else, he had a face he could pin the decision on later. He wasn't feeling brave enough to try his luck, and there were a lot of wounded to deal with.
A medkit is, eventually, located, and the fire doused through the combined efforts of the gang. All in all, four Ghosts, eight of the racist attackers, and sixteen civilians have been outright killed in the crossfire and chaos. Many more are injured, but the figures on all counts would have been much higher had the Runners not been in the area to intervene and lend a much needed hand.
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