Log:Wasp Venom, Scene 19

Wasp Venom 2013/10/14 	 Marathon Rewind

19

Champions Mush - Monday, October 14, 2013, 11:24 AM

Newtown

''A seemingly endless grid of primary roads, with some services, and quiet roads of middle-income houses and lawns: this is Newtown, or the Western Sprawl, as it is often known. Founded in the 2020s, in the backlash to the alien mania following first contact, it is an assertion of all that is human, mundane and boring, juxtaposed with the Alien District and those two periods were in history.''

''Newtown is not all uniform; styles of house show the expansion of city like the rings of a tree, and the neighboring districts too have their influence: the poverty of Harrisburg has seeped into the north as wealth has crept into the south and the students have invaded the northeast. Only the Alien District has failed to leave its mark.''

It is night in Newtown: late enough that the usually busy roads see only an occasional car. It is also a section of town that tends not to be patrolled very often, an area with too little going on for so much acreage. It would take a speedster to cover it all with any efficiency.

Speedstering is precisely what Marathon does, and with tomorrow being a school holiday, she's out later than usual tonight, patrolling whole swaths of the city in mere moments.

The quiet buzz of suburban night is interrupted by a gunshot, the squeal of tires and a not-loud crash, then several more gunshots.

Marathon turns at the sound of the first gunshot, then again at the crash... then again as the other shots start sounding off, trying to 'zero in' on the sounds of mayhem. It's as the third of the additional gunshots rings out that she skids to a stop to peek around the corner of a building, to get her first real look at what's actually going on.

Marathon sees a large Suburban has put a dent in the guard-rail of the highway. One head light had been busted out against the rail, but it is not otherwise in bad shape. The driver side door is open but that side of the huge passenger vehicle is away from Marathon as she approaches.

Marathon hits the speed, of course! Off down the frontage road and up the nearest access ramp then down the highway on the far side of the crashed vehicle, then down an exit ramp... all in a blurring blink of an eye as she moves at hypervelocities intended to keep anyone from having a chance to target her while giving her the opportunity to see what's going on.

As Marathon covers the 300 meters between herself and the vehicle it looks like he veered off the road after a tire was blown out. As she passes around the vehicle, she sees two men: a portly man in t-shirt, worn jeans and tennis shoes putting away a revolver in a trenchcoat while another man on his knees falls to one side with blood gushing out of his chest from multiple gunshot wounds.

In a blur of motion, Marathon darts under the next overpass, then back around and up another on-ramp... to skid to a stop standing over the man who's just been shot.

Rewind starts with surprise and both the twitching body and the Suburban turn into fog. A bullet falls to the ground where a person used to be, and the guardrail at the edge of the road is still dented, but there is no paint on the guardrail and no blood on the ground.

Marathon 

''This woman stands about six feet in height, and has a slim but very athletic build, with the long, muscled legs of a runner or dancer. She's wearing a form-fitting lycra bodysuit that shows off her comely figure and the definition of muscles in her legs and arms, and on her abdomen, although the material thickens over key areas enough for modesty's sake. She also wears a helmet with a face-shield, gloves, and boots. The whole outfit looks to be store-bought bicycling gear, but chosen to create the specific image of someone fast. ''

''The suit itself is primarily black in color, but the right sleeve has red, orange, and yellow flames emblazoned upon it. The flames encircle the wrist, then flow in a flaming line up the outside of the arm to her shoulder, where the line of flames turns and flows down across her chest in an angle around her back, coming back around to the front high on her waist, to turn again and flow down over her left hip and down the outside of her leg. Whether the flames end encircling her left ankle or not is hidden by the glossy, black, knee-high boots she wears. ''

''The boots themselves seem to have had flames hand-painted onto them to match the flames on the bodysuit. Her hands are covered with short, black, leather gloves that end at her wrists, and her head is protected by what looks like a bicyclist's helmet, but with a full-face, rainbow-mirrored faceshield. Her hair, whether short or tucked up into the helmet, and her neck are hidden by a cloth 'hood' that she wears under the helmet. ''

''On her back, she's wearing a small, black, nylon backpack, probably to give her some sort of carrying capability, being as there are clearly no pockets on her costume. Her elbows and knees are protected, too, by matte-black, strap-on pads that look to be a match for the helmet -- probably also bicycling gear. ''

Marathon looked as if she was about to bend to pick up the man who'd been shot... but straightens and eyes the 'fat man with a gun' when everything dissolves into smoke.

"... so you shot a fog-dummy just to get attention?", Marathon asks, gesturing at the guardrail. "... and if the car was just fog, too, how come it dented the rail? Is this just some kinda cry for attention or something?"

Rewind

''Rewind is a portly Caucasian man in his mid-twenties, but looks older due to prematurely thinning hair that he is trying to hide with a comb-over. He is dressed t-shirt, worn jeans and tennis shoes under a well-worn black canvas duster-style trenchcoat. ''

Rewind says, almost muttering, "I didn't do nothin." in a bit of a New York accent. "Just lettin' off some steam." He smirks a bit at the pun, but remains wary. He still has his hand in his pocket, likely still holding that gun if the faint bulge of a barrel is any indication. Additional fog starts to form between the pair of them and any potential oncoming traffic.

"Well... maybe you shouldn't be shooting a gun except at a shooting range. Bullets keep flying until they hit something, y'know. You might actually hurt someone with random shooting like that", Marathon says, putting her hands on her hips as she keeps an eye on the man. "... I know what it's like to hafta let off steam, though. Everyone hasta do that, every now and then... but it's a usually better to do it in some way that doesn't have a chance of accidentally hurting anyone."

Rewind gestures around at the empty highway. "He had it coming. The real guy, not the copy. ... and nobody got hurt." He bends over, picks up the bullet (that looks like it has been malformed through contact with a body) and holds it out to Marathon. "See?"

The fog bank is now a twenty foot tall opaque wall.

"Yeah, I see that.. and I'm kinda glad you didn't hurt anyone. You need someone to talk to? ... y'know, to vent if you're this frustrated and all that?", Marathon asks, glancing about furtively at the 'walls' around her, but still trying to see if she can diffuse whatever sort of situation it is by talking instead of just fighting.

"I got friends," Rewind replies a bit indignantly. "Real friends too. Not people like him."

"Yeah, but sometimes it's hard to talk to people you know about problems that might include them, even if only a little bit. Talking to a complete stranger can help, sometimes. That's why text-chatting on the internet's so popular, right?", Marathon replies, still trying her talk-it-down tactic. "I do it /all/ the time, gripe about people I know at complete strangers on the internet", she adds, making a sweeping gesture with one hand, the rolling of her eyes all but audible in her voice, even if it's visibly hidden behind her visor.

Anybody slower than Marathon would have been too slow to do anything about it, but a faint glow from the fog clues Marathon into several things at once. One, a truck is coming through the fog at sixty miles per hour. Two, Rewind is intentionally standing in a different lane than Marathon. Three, the truck is in Rewind's lane and nothing in his body language suggests he caused it or is even aware it is there.

"LOOK OUT!", cries out Marathon, and she's suddenly moving, zipping over to Rewind to drag him out of the way of the oncoming truck at quickly as she can make it happen without going to her truly hyperspeeds.

Rewind hits the grass with a surprised oof. The gun in his pocket discharges, but hits nothing. The driver of the truck hits his horn, and his brakes squeal, but he keeps going when it appears nobody is hurt, accelerating back up to 60 mph.

In a blur, Marathon's standing out of arm's reach. The 'frown' in her voice is audible when she asks, "Did you just try to shoot me while I was keeping you from turning into street pizza?!", hands on her hips, her whole body language combining with the tone of her voice to make her question scolding and accusatory.

Rewind pulls his hand out of his pocket, carefully extracting his jammed finger from the trigger guard so that the revolver remains in his coat. "Owww," he whines faintly. "You hit hard." He appears totally undamaged other than some dew and possible grass stains on his coat.

Relaxing, a little, Marathon nods. "Yeah... maybe, but not as hard as that mack truck would've hit if I hadn't got you out of the way.... you okay?", she asks, her tone of voice no longer harsh as it was, moments ago. "You're lucky I noticed that truck was coming through the fog... and, by the way, can you stop fogging everything up, please? On top of it nearly getting you run over, it might make someone who's driving get into an accident 'cause they can't see."

Rewind slowly considers the departing truck, the fog bank and his current position. At Marathon's speed, watching him mentally catch up is almost painful. He doesn't have a poker face either. Marathon can almost see him try to piece together whose fault this is, rejecting every possibility twice before deciding that, maybe, just maybe, it is his fault. Only then does the fog very slowly dissipate.

"You talk fast," Rewind finally says with a bit of a smirk. "You know that? I thought people in the South talked slow."

"Thanks", Marathon says. "... and, no, I ain't gonna blame you for the fog thing. It's cool to cut loose with your powers every now and then, and it /can/ be kinda fun, too. It's just kinda important to remember that just because we're special, we shouldn't put normal folks at risk for no reason at all, right?" Then, as she crouches down, arms rested on her knees, she adds. "Well... I /am/ fast... and we're kinda in the north. This is Colonial Bay, not Miami, after all", she adds, with a gesture about herself, as if to indicate the city itself. Then, after a short pause, she asks, "... are you saying you didn't know where you are?", in a 'concerned' sort of tone of voice.

Rewind says, "Just when I start to like you, you go and call me stupid. Of course I know where Colonial Bay is. But from New York, this *is* south."

"I'm not calling you stupid... I'm kinda worried that maybe you were hurt, is all... and, well, yeah... I guess if you're from the Apple, this /is/ south. I guess it's a matter of perspective, huh? ... and, really, sorry about that. I really /wasn't/ trying to make you feel stupid or anything", Marathon says.

Rewind hops to his feet fairly gracefully considering his physique, takes off his coat and tries to wipe off the dew on it. It may look like plain canvas, but water does bead on it and it seems resistant to grass stains as well. "I guess I, at minimum, owe you dinner... for saving my life and all," Rewind says, trying a bit too hard to be casual in front of the pretty lady.

Marathon rises to stand, too. "It's not necessary, really. I just heard the gunshots and the crash and came to look. It's what I do, try to help people. You gonna be okay, by the way?", she replies, waving one hand in negation when she turns down the offer of dinner.

Rewind says, "I guess with the mask, dinner is out of the question. So's a movie too, I guess, considering how fast you move. Is there anything I can do to repay you? Say, Friday night? Anybody you miss that you'd like to talk to again or something?"

Maraton's posture changes in a way that says she was about to say something and stopped with her mouth already open, when she realized what she'd just been offered. After a few moments, she manages to say, "... what? You mean you can talk to dead people? Really? ... That's pretty cool, actually! .. and, well, thanks, but I'm okay in that respect, too. And you really don't hafta pay me back, really."

"Well, copies of dead people. But they don't know they are copies," Rewind says with a bit of pride. "That guy, Milton Smeed? with the suburban? He didn't know he wasn't real."

"Oh... well, that sounds like it's pretty neat, if it's really the dead person, even they're just a copy", Marathon says. "You could probably make a good living helping people say goodbye and such. I betcha lots of folks'd pay good money for a chance to talk to loved ones they've lost, one more time."

Rewind shrugs, "I guess. Doesn't seem right to use my powers for money though. I mainly just help people out who are nice to me. ... lots of people aren't. ... aren't nice to me, I mean." He pauses a bit, then adds, "But I'm working on that - making a lasting impact instead of just fog stuff."

Marathon nods. "Well, I'm glad you a nice kinda guy who ain't just out to make a buck", she says. "Just keep being like that and you'll run into more people who're gonna be nice to ya... and anyone who isn't nice to ya just ain't worth your time. Just blow them types off", she adds, making a sweeping motion with one hand. "Anyway... I gotta get back to my patrol, in case anyone else needs my help. Take care, okay? ... and be careful with your gun, too!"

Rewind grins when Marathon talks about blowing people off, like she made some kind of pun. "I will, thanks."

Waving her hand, Marathon says, "Bye-bye!", and then is just /gone/ in a whoosh of air and a blur of motion.