Rally Time

8:15 AM, Friday, June 30, 2009

A cordon had been drawn around the park to the East of the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. Already the park was thronging with protesters at least a hundred strong, an eclectic group of people who at first blush could very well have been a random selection from Los Angeles and the surrounding counties, only with a more imaginative palette that, in a few cases, included blue and green and scales and fur. Waving above the energetic crowd was a forest of posterboard signs with slogans like "REGISTRATION IS INHUMAN" and "ABOLISH THE FREAK LIST." Towering over the rest was a vinyl banner stretched between two poles: "END MUTANT REGISTRATION NOW!"

A cheer went up as a large, bearded man with a black T-shirt, sunglasses, and a face for radio mounted the platform near the courthouse steps - most of the assembled recognized him as Don Iverson, an outspoken and inflammatory radio personality who had never been shy about his own mutancy. He took his position and roared into the microphone:

"Good morning, mutants of Los Angeles! Are you ready to make some noise?"

The response was immediate and thunderous.

"In about forty-five minutes, my good friends Jack Covington and Crystal Villanueva will arrive. Now, you all know them for their work on the big screen. You know them as award-winning and industry-defining artists who just happen to have the X-gene. But if that's all you know about them, then you don't know squat. I have been covering the struggle for mutant freedoms against prejudice and oppression for fifteen years, and I have never met any two people with more passion and more dedication to the cause of mutant rights.

"You don't think they understand the threat of Mutant Registration? You don't think they care, just because their identification as mutants is already public? Anyone who thinks that has a lot to learn!"

An air horn squealed from across the street, where another knot of protesters had formed, for the moment standing a respectful distance away from the squad cars and police officers drawing the line between them. Over the cacophony of jeers and maledictions, one of the other crowd shouted, "Go back home, freaks!"

"And they have a lot to learn, too!" Iverson shouted back, drawing another cheer. "This country has to learn that there is strength in the mutant community that goes beyond genetics! We will not be silenced, we will not be controlled, we will not be intimidated into living like animals! Today we will make our voices heard! Jack, Crystal, we're all behind you. Go into that courthouse and give 'em hell!"

The atmosphere in the van was happy excitement. Jamie was riding shotgun, twisting back and saying something to Scott as Anna took the N Spring Street exit off the 101. "Almost there!" she called out, and her passengers began staring out the windows, each trying to be the first to catch sight of the courthouse, and the rally.

In fact, there were a few different courthouses in the same area, and Anna was craning her neck, staring at street signs and trying to figure out where they were going. She drove past a parking lot on the right that was already nearly full, and ended up turning on 3rd Street, hoping to loop back around somehow.

"The Disney Concert Hall is right here!" said Jen, excitedly. "Somewhere!"

Dónde aparcar? Por favor... Anna's head felt like it was on a swivel, but she finally nosed the big van into a parking lot at 3rd and Broadway. She rolled down the window but was just waved in by the lot attendant, so pulled into a spot and put the van in park. At last. She leaned back in her seat, taking a moment to relax while she dug some cash out of her purse, but the side door was already sliding open and everyone was piling out into the sun.

Alex fairly dove out of the van with his picket sign already in hand - double-plied posterboard on the end of a sturdy dowel rod. On one side, in an assortment of magic marker colors, was a list headed "10 Reasons Mutant Registration Is An Assault On Humanity." On the other, in big block letters, was the much more concise, "FOUCAULT WAS RIGHT!".

He lingered by the door of the van to give Lana a hand down whenever she could jostle through the moving bodies, but he took a moment to get his bearings. "The courthouse is on Hill and First," he said. "Okay, there's Hill Street. We just have to follow that to the right until we see the rally. Must be where they're going."

Two women had just climbed out of a Honda a few rows over, carrying a rolled-up banner between them. Then they shook it out and unfurled it:

"KEEP MUTANTS OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS"

"Oh, sure, segregation solves everything!" Alex shouted.

Jane walked the perimeter of the rally, a grande Starbucks cup in her hand that she sipped from occasionally. The crowd was just getting warmed up, more bodies were entering the park every minute, and the knot of opposing protestors across the street weren't being too beligerant. Yet.

"Geryon," she said into her Bluetooth earpiece, "Remember, if you see anyone from Redencion, you stick with them."

"Got it, Zombie," he replied. "Like white on rice."

"Whatever," Jane smiled, taking another drink of her black coffee. "Everyone else in position yet? We're coming up to the beginning of it."

"Heeeere we go," Tess grinned and loped out into the bright sun with Jen right behind her. While there was no sign trailing after her, Tess hadn't left all the advertising up to Alex (not that he wouldn't have done an admirable job of it.) Over her khaki shorts she wore a loose T-shirt, it's plain white cotton adorned with a bright red X across which was silkscreened: LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL?

Shading a hand above her eyes the woman swept a gaze over the milling parking lot. Jeepers there were a ton of people presumably en route and that meant the actual park had to be a hotspot already, filling up fast.

"Are we bringin' this cooler?"

Tess nodded absently and twisted her torso until she was facing Scott, hips and feet still aligned in the other direction. With a friendly wink she snagged the small Igloo soft cooler from him. It was full of water bottles and a few bags of orange slices, supplies for their little band of revolutionaries.

"Thanks," she said. "Anybody need sunscreen? Guarantee the shady spots have been scoped out already."

Pacing towards Jane from the opposite end of the street, Void made no attempt to acknowledge his fellow mutant. Like the rest of the Brotherhood in attendance at the mornings rally, he was incognito – foregoing grease-paint that was a hallmark of his Void identity in favour of a black Motorhead t-shirt and wrap-around shades that covered his solid-black eyes but did little to hold off the headache that the morning sun was giving him. He found an all too rare shady spot on the pavement and fished into the deep pockets of his skate shorts to find a disposable cell phone; it was so outdated and chunky it would have made a good projectile weapon, if the rally escalated into a brawl. His attention wavered between the crowd outside the courthouse and the phone's small screen as he thumbed a text message, selected the addressee – Jocelyn – then clicked send.

It read: Waiting.

“Friends, don't be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you - but rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ!”

As the small circle of people around Saul Nielsen grew, the young men and women at his side – each of them wearing the same inoffensively coloured button-down shirts and beige slacks as Saul himself – moved with smiles to the innermost ring of the crowd where passers-by and protesters alike were offered pamphlets for the 'Church of the Humble.' Saul stood at the centre of the circle, steel-blue eyes almost unblinking as he met the gaze of everyone around him.

“These so-called mutations are not gifts to us, they are a test – a test of our humility! Our Father has given me a single, noble purpose on this earth and that is to help each one of my brothers and sisters show their humility, by giving them the chance to cast aside their mutations – cast aside this strangeness which sets them so far apart from their fellow man – and once again become equal in the eyes of the Lord!”

She paused as everyone piled excitedly out of the van, taking Alex's proffered hand and hopping out after them. Their enthusiasm was infectious, but not enough to completely overcome the peculiar sense of dread she had building deep in the pit of her stomach.

Lana sighed and half-closed her eyes as the blazing sunlight hit her, sighing happily as it sunk into her skin and warmed her. Energy danced across her hands and made her eyes blaze, until a nudge from Alex brought her back to herself. She slipped dark, glittering sunglasses over her eyes and flashed him a sheepish smile, her free hand smoothing out her soft cotton top.

Letting go of Alex's hand, she turned to grin at Tess. "Sunblock? Who needs sunblock?" She quipped, letting her skin glitter brightly for several seconds.

She passed in front of a sign that said "I thought we already did this in the 60s." Veronica didn't get it entirely. Oh sure, she'd heard of the Civil Rights Movement and MLK and that other stuff, but she'd never bothered to read about it. You couldn't blame the public education system if you've never used it.

Veronica knew, like everyone else, that if someone was going to start some shit, it was going to come from the Anti-Mutant protesters. Someone was going to do something dumb like fire a gun at mutant or stab a mutant or pretend to be a mutant and stab/shoot a normal person, and everything would go to hell via priority overnight mail, handbasket optional. Fear makes people do dumb things, especially when you don't know if the blue skinned guy can turn you into a frog or not. Or eat you like a frog. There was a full riot squad on standby, already embedded into the venue, but not on patrol. No, they got to sit in air conditioning. That was fine with Veronica, she felt better out in the open.

She smelled faintly of sunscreen and Gatorade. She held a cheap white umbrella over her shoulder that kept the sun off of her police blues, which mercifully breathed well. Veronica had asked Stern if she could go in pedal patrol clothes, but he had said no because "the people needed to know that the police were there." She didn't think much of that, but suspected it wasn't entirely Stern's idea, given the LAPD's lousy history with race riots. The umbrella had been a gift of compromise.

Saladin's instructions somewhat conflicted with her undercover job, and Veronica wasn't entirely sure how she felt about it.

It was like a day at the carnival. People swarmed in tight congregations, the buzz of innumerable voices raised in tones of excitement and impatience, music was pumped through loudspeakers somewhere nearby and the tang of fried onions lingered on the humid breeze. Everything was bathed in sunlight, skin glistened, the sidewalk sizzled, colours were vibrant, and the masses wore their colours with pride, the colours of confrontation; there was promise in the air.

Cameron meandered aimlessly through the crowds, taking note of the bold banners and the indignant proclamations of their owners with vague interest. It was an impressive sight, if only for the sheer number of protestors involved, a number that was sure to grow with time, and it was still early. He checked his watch and cut a beeline through the swarm towards one of the larger parking lots. There he saw a familiar van and an even more familiar girl, she stood out from her friends, shimmering like an amethyst jewel. A smile, and a confident step, he approached the band of mutants, wearing a shirt emblazoned with the Darwin fish in a show of good faith.

Aimee was holding Jamie's hand, to make sure the girl didn't get lost while Anna locked up the van and the whole group started moving toward Hill Street, Alex enthusiastically leading the way. Although, to be fair, Jamie was already nearly as tall as she was, so Aimee wasn't sure how much good she was doing.

Anna gathered the younger girl, announcing that once everyone was settled she and Jamie were going to go out to lunch with one of her brothers who was in town for something - Aimee's attention was arrested by a head of dark hair and a face with a dimple that was waving at her, and she grinned excitedly, hanging back until Cameron caught up with them.

Scott rolled his eyes at her as he walked by, but gave Cameron a whats up nod before moving on. Aimee threw her arms around her boyfriend, giving him a breathless kiss. "I'm so glad you made it!"

The Redencion House group was getting further away, but she didn't mind being a few feet behind them, her hand tucked safely into his as they followed the crowds to the courthouse.

She felt a little like a mother hen, her chicks bunched up around her as they moved down the sidewalk. Only one remained under her wing, however; Jamie stuck close while the teens began to spread out, some lagging behind, others bounding forward with excitement.

Anna could already feel the heat of the sun on her hair, and reached down to straighten Jamie's baseball cap. "Just a little further, I think!" she said over her shoulder to Tess, the other adult chaperone for their little field trip.

She was wearing a green shirt with Redención House printed on the back, although she'd considered a shirt to match the one Tess was wearing. In the end though Anna had decided that putting a big red X on her frontside was just asking for too much attention. Plus it looked too much like a target.

The group made it to 1st Street, crossing it and then following it toward the park where there were more people than Anna could have imagined. She reached down and gripped Jamie's hand as the crowd thickened around them.

Stern stood near the radio host with his hands behind his back, his goggle-covered eyes on the shifting border between anti and pro-registration protesters. It shifted and squirmed, reminding the mutant officer of a fault line.

Nearer the crowd stood several of his own MCU officers and some other uniforms from the LAPD. Stern had the officers lined up mutant-mundane-mutant-mundane, so as not to segregate his force and possibly create in-fighting amongst them.

He saw Hu and nodded with satisfaction. He was really starting to rely on her. Stern looked at the rest of the officers and hoped they would prove just as reliable in maintaining peace and order with neutral standing to the two sides.

Just in case, he had a riot team tucked away. He really hoped he wouldn't need them.

"Hey, Mutie!"

Flux briefly glanced over the top of his book to the guard, a Chinese-American man today, and considered stooping to that level and returning the slur. He decided to be the superior man he knew he was and continued to read.

"Your freak buddies are out at the courthouse rallying against the Registration Act. Cops are gonna shut their shit down real fast and ain't nuthin' you can do to stop 'em. We're gonna fill the place this afternoon. How you like that?"

Flux turned a page. "I like it very much. If you bring my brothers and sisters here, I won't have to go find them later when I decide to escape and destroy this place." His nonchalance seemed to unnerve the guard, and he was glad when the jailer stepped back out and locked the heavy doors. Flux raised a fist as the guard cast a surreptitious glance back into the cell.

Power to the Powered. Long live the Mutants.

Alex led the procession arm-in-arm with Lana, and he had to actively restrain himself to keep from pulling Lana out of her shoes. The park was a veritable who's who of mutant rights advocacy - a dozen or so groups were flying their banners in the sticky June air, from national organizations to associations so grassroots you could smell the copy toner on their signs.

Alex had his own homemade sign tucked under one arm to keep it out of the wind, but that didn't stop him from playing tour guide to Lana. "That group of green shirts, that's the Friends of Genetic Freedom. They publish (r)Evolution Monthly. There's Mutant Voice, they're a little mainstream for my tastes, but at least they're on the right side here... Freakwatch, seriously? They've got cojones showing up around this many cops. And over there--"

He stopped short at the sight of someone who had cleared himself a spot in the shade the way planets clear their orbital neighborhoods - a mountain of a man with a cutoff T-shirt and a thick mane of black hair tied into a large braid.

"Speaking of cojones," Alex muttered.

Geryon had seen the Redencion contingent and raised a huge hand to wave them over. "Hey. There's room over here."

Pulling her cellphone out from the small case dangling from her wrist, Spectre read the message and smiled as she tapped one back, telling him she was on her way.

She was waiting for the two beverages she had ordered from the vendor cart hawking drinks at the increasing number of people showing up for the rally. If there weren't so many haters, it might have looked like a freaky festival of some kind. Maybe someday..

Today she was on her very best incognito behavior. She had actually paid for the drinks, even left the man a tip all in her effort to follow orders. She had an important detail today. The group she was keeping tabs on was in view, one girl in particular had her attention. Tilting her head down, the wide brim of her hat shielded her identity as they passed right by her. She was just another lady in a white sundress, buying drinks for herself and her sweetie.

Turning in the opposite direction, she crossed through a line of pitch fork waving, propaganda spewing, assholes. She managed to not plant the idea in their heads to start gnawing on each others body parts, too early in the day for that sort of thing.

Spectre came up behind her partner on silent, sandaled feet, pressing one of the frosty plastic cups of lemonade to the back of his neck in greeting.

Officer Lorrance Duquesne ambled up beside Stern, hands clasped behind his back, a crop of sweat glistening on his bald head in the searing June sun. "It's a damned circus," he muttered. "I just inspected our whole perimeter. No one's crossing our line without us seeing it, but..."

He nodded toward the two streams of human traffic adding to both groups of protesters by the second. "Nothing to stop someone just walking into the wrong crowd and causing trouble."

They'd be stupid to do it, of course, mutant or non, but Duqesne had learned never to underestimate the human capacity for stupidity, especially when there was a whole crowd to egg them on.

Duke pointed at the massive man occupying a healthy chunk of real estate beneath a spreading Japanese maple tree, impossible to miss. "That man, the big islander. That's Noah Makaha, alias Geryon. He's a confirmed member of the Brotherhood. If he's here, chances are he's not alone."

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aimee Connors

"I'm so glad you made it!"

---

"You're beautiful. How could I miss out on that?"

Their fingers interlocked on instinct. Hand-in-hand with Aimee, she was beginning to feel like a natural extension of himself, and Cameron looked giddy to have her at his side. In tow with the rest of the group, they strolled pleasantly through the crowds, allowing Alex and a few others to form their more vocal element.

When they arrived at the stretching maple tree, Cameron gave the burly stranger a nod in greeting and an echo of a smile. Pressed against the trunk, he held Aimee close, content to observe the proceedings with the ease of a spectator on a golf course.

"Seeing all these protestors is giving me the strange urge to burn your bra. Is that weird?"

She giggled, tucked against his side and watching the commotion around them. "Well its not normal!" His fingers plucked at a strap under her shirt, and Aimee swatted his hand away, still laughing.

Noah - or Geryon as he liked to be called - had been around the House a few times in the last month, so she had recognized him when he called out to them. However, he made her nervous, mostly just because of his sheer size. She felt like a chihuahua next to a mastiff, as though he could step on her by accident and never even notice.

Aimee strained up on her tip toes, trying to look over the heads of the crowd. "Are Jack and Crystal here yet? I can't believe they're really going to be here."

Life had a funny way of repeating itself, tossing out instant replays of places or people from the past. Sometimes it was a nostalgic interlude and other times it was just awkward. This was one of the latter. Tess stared at Noah, overcome by the unnerving sensation of suddenly being two people all at once - herself and someone long since left behind, an old shed skin from another time and place. Back in New York, when she and Geryon had lived in the same Brotherhood-funded apartment and she'd gone by Cirque.

It all seemed so ridiculous now. Tess's jaw tightened and she raised a stiff hand in acknowledgment. Geryon was still part of the dangerous extremist organization, yes, but he was ultimately a sweet guy and she couldn't disregard entirely the friend he had once been.

Still, it was with a tense expression that she threaded through the crowd toward him. Tess had no intention of hunkering down next to the massive Samoan. The Brotherhood didn't work in singularities.

When she got near enough to make shouting unnecessary, she greeted him a terse nod and skipped right over pleasantries. "Where're your buddies, Geryon?"

Geryon nodded uncertainly at Tess. "They're around," he said. "Just watchin' out for trouble."

She looked back with guarded skepticism, which was somehow worse than outright disdain. "Look, I'm just here to help watch the kids. Besides..." He nodded down Hill Street to where a sleek, black limousine was gliding toward the rally. "I'm a fan."

There was a crescendo from both sides of the street as the stretch limousine approached - cheers and whoops from one side, invectives from the other, but the limo was on the mutant side of the police barrier that ran down Hill Street. A white-gloved footman hurried out of the passenger-side door and down to the passenger cabin.

From the podium, Iverson took the microphone one more time to make his voice heard above the roar: "Ladies and gentlemen, Jack and Crystal!"

Crystal's legs preceded the rest of her, and that was enough to launch dozens of camera flashes as the footman assisted her out of the cabin. She waved to the cheering crowd and smiled like a sphinx as Jack climbed out after her. He was in a stately pin-striped suit, she in a shapely black dress with a gray jacket, and they may have been attending a premier from the raucous reception of the mutant crowd.

With two lumbering, Ray Bans-wearing bodyguards in tow, the mutant movie stars walked around the rope barriers and began wading through the congregated mutants, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries and apologizing that there were to be no autographs today.

On second thought, this mutant rally gig sucked balls. Chris was alone in his thoughts, and pretty much everything else, as he stood guard of... the peace. The sun was already leap-frogging over the tallest buildings, spearing him with a heat usually reserved for the hottest parts of hell, and it wasn't anywhere near midday yet. He wiped at his pasty, and decidedly un-Californian, brow and looked on with envy at the parade of protestors in various states of undress. It was an orgy of slick golden skin and Paris Hilton shades. On one side of the fence at least.

The other crowd were a more colourful bunch. There was golden skin, of course, but of the bullion variety, and on top of that there were glossy green scales, marshmallow feathers, and dreadlocks wrought from iron. It was a discount store hodgepodge of humanity; the black sheep, penned in, bleating banners of sociopolitical humanist outrage. Oh, if only Professor Bertrand could hear him now.

But how far removed he was from his school days, both in terms of distance and in just about every other metaphorical capacity. He was The Fuzz. Mrs. Wilde was telling no porkies when she said her boy looked good in a uniform. Of course, that was his school debut, he was five years old, and pissed his pants that day, but the point still stood. Fast forward fifteen years and he was still in a uniform, still pissing his pants in fact - but that, emphatically, was the result of a goldfish bowl/irish car bomb double-whammy - and he was alright with it. He was not a rock star, or a superhero, or running his own rent-a-ghost business, as was the plan, but in the starchy rub of his smart police blues, he felt a sense of purpose.

That purpose, however, was not reflected in his current actions, to loiter the streets of Los Angeles like a law-enforcing ornament. A bauble of justice. He was sure of that, which was why he took umbrage to standing around, counting the number of times he shifted the weight from impeccable shoe to impeccable shoe, and being forced to smile at the good citizens and the backdrop of GOD HATES FREAKS placards. It was, as the old phrase goes, a waste of police time. But then again, the likelihood that, if left to their own devices, these two opposing groups wouldn't eat each other was so slim that there was nothing else he and his fellow officers could do but stand, and wait.

Anna put a hand on Tess' shoulder, feeling the tension there as the younger woman looked at Noah, and caught her eye. Something unspoken passed between them, and Tess relaxed slowly, ignoring the big Samoan as the teens they'd brought with them all jostled and clamored to try to catch sight of the movie stars who'd just arrived.

Jamie hopped up and down a bit (next to Ronnie, who was having considerably more success than she), then Noah reached down and picked her up, settling the ten year old easily on his shoulders. Anna laughed at the expression on her foster daughter's face, and handed her their small digital camera so she could take pictures. "Be careful!" she warned her, smiling gratefully at Noah.

Their area under the tree was getting cramped as the stars climbed the stage, waving at the crowd of supporters. Anna looked across the street, toward the other rally, reading some of their signs with distaste. Only a true moron would believe that God hated mutants.

Stern nodded at Shield.

"I remember reading his profile. As I understand it, there are usually two others that are often seen around him. Let's put Ghost on it. Have him wander a bit and see if he can't spot out Geryon's usual partners in crime."

Stern tugged at his neckline. It was seriously hot.

"Wish I could do it myself. As it is, I've got enough to do watching the stage."

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Spectre

Spectre came up behind her partner on silent, sandaled feet, pressing one of the frosty plastic cups of lemonade to the back of his neck in greeting.

---

The ice-cold kiss against the back of his neck made Void twist sharply – but the frown creasing his brow smoothed a fraction when he saw the culprit standing behind him. The corners of his mouth turned upward just a little into a smile that sat uncomfortably on his face. Aside from the peculiar colouring of his eyes, there was nothing about Void's mutation that physically marked him out as a mutant – but his mannerisms and expressions, or rather lack thereof, gave him an air of the inhuman. Accepting the cup from Spectre, he nodded sideways.

“I've just spotted Geryon across the street.” The big mutant was hard to miss; he stood a head taller than most of the crowd.

“Nothing interesting so far,” he added, taking long and much needed sip of lemonade, “But it can't be long before the fireworks start.”

"Yes, the big guy does stand out doesn't he. If we're lucky the attention will be on him while he stands there like an advertisement."

Of course with the new recruits to the LAPD, they had bigger concerns than the local police rabble. Other mutants, barely a step away from being traitors to their genes, were now working with the humans. It was they who posed the bigger problem. Until she had more information on them from the inside, Spectre was only going to make use of her abilities if she had no other recourse. Her part in the events today was not to engage the enemy. Others were in place for that.

"He's not the only familiar face. ", Spectre cautioned nodding in the direction of a few other acquaintances better left in the past for today.

The pure mass of beings gathered outside the courthouse was amazingly intense. Even exhilirating, she thought, slender fingers pushing stylish sunglasses back into place. The sun was, in its usual LA fashion, blazing hot even at the early hour that is was.

A mutation like hers was impossible to conceal, or to write off as a clever contraption or costume for very long. Riley had registered at the behest of her bank when she bought her apartment, in part because there was a tax bonus to doing so, but it also made the powers-that-be at the zoo very happy when she volunteered on her own to do so, as it took the onus off of those employees who could hide what they were and preferred to do so.

She'd been apprehensive at first, and in reality, still was. Riley didn't trust the wording of the new law, and neither did her brothers, both of whom were far more intuitive about things than she was. Thankfully they were shielded by military secrecy provisions, otherwise, they might have lost everything.

Fingers absently tugged at her cropped white tube top, settling it just so, before doing the same with her sleek white shorts...an ensemble both her parents and brothers would never let her out of the house in. While skimpy, it highlighted the graceful strength of her wings, the normally tawny feathers having been temporarily dyed to UCLA blue and gold. The inches of height her sandals granted her didn't help much as she couldn't see much through the throngs - but it was enough to find the others in UCLA colors who happily made space for her where she wouldn't be too much in the way of those behind them.

She spotted Taya off in the distance, her press credentials from the Bruin granting her much better access through the cordons. Hard to miss her roommate, really, whether you noticed her enthusiasm or her appearance first. Riley grinned and shook her head, turning her head with all of the others to cheer the arrival of Jack and Crystal and watch them work the crowd.

Antonio was wandering the crowded park, trying to find some friends from school that had given him a ride to the courthouse and then promptly gotten lost. He was certainly not lost, he knew exactly where he was, there were just way too many people crammed into not enough space.

And all the signs! He batted away a plasterboard sign that nearly took out his face, and then caught sight of a pair of blue and gold wings that could only belong to one person. And then there was the rest of the UCLA group, some already trying to surreptitiously drink the beers they'd snuck in to the park. Antonio walked up behind Riley Grace and tweaked the feathers on one of her wings. "Hope I'm not too late, traffic was a bitch."

He smiled at her, and then caught sight of his traitorous friends, Jimmy and Kyle, giving them a crazy-eyed glare. "I can't believe you guys ditched me."

"Us?!" Kyle placed his hand delicately against his own chest and looked around as though Tonio must have been speaking to someone else. "You were the one that wandered off, dude, chasing that piece of tail. Literally."

Antonio grinned, remembering the girl with a prehensile tail peeking out from her mini skirt, and turned back to Riley. "I don't know what he's talking about."

She grinned as she felt a hand tweaking one of her feathers, turning to find a familiar handsome face behind her. "Nope! Not late...I just got here, in fact. And we all know that the party just doesn't start 'til then."

Shifting, Riley made space for him beside her and arched a delicate brow at Kyle. She was hard-pressed to not laugh, and indeed failed as she snickered. She shook her head, bright copper locks tumbling around her shoulders as she reached up to pat Antonio's cheek.

"Of course you don't...you're pure and innocent. We all know this." she managed with a straight face, while Jimmy choked on his sip of water behind Kyle.

Taya Robbins, of course, was here on business. She'd arrived close to seven-thirty, and she was surprised to learn there were people who'd already been in the park for two hours, and not just the people who were there to set up the podium and the sound system and the rope cordons. This was the mutant community energized and at work. It was exciting, and for all her efforts to remain an objective observer, it was difficult not to get swept up in it.

The digital recorder clipped to her belt had been busy. Taya had interviewed as many of the mutant protesters as had been willing to talk to her and gotten a whole gamut of responses, from concerned citizens to demagogues who were decidedly on the fringe of mutant advocacy. She'd also interviewed three people from the other side of the road in an effort to be balanced. Two of them had been gracious and articulate in their support of registration. One of them, bafflingly, had told her that she was disgusting and that she should be ashamed of herself.

Now she was jockeying with over a dozen other reporters on the path from the sidewalk to the podium as Jack and Crystal approached. There were some decided advantages to looking like a human-shaped cat - when you wanted to be noticed, you generally were.

"Excuse me, Mr. Covington, Ms. Villanueva!" She was only one of a crowd of voices, but she stood on the tips of her toes, which, when you had digitigrade feet added about four inches, and waved her padded paw to the two movie stars until they looked her way.

"Taya Robbins, The Daily Bruin. What's your reaction to the turnout this morning?"

Jack Covington took a moment to process what he was seeing, which was long enough to commit him to answering now that the microphone was in his face. He smiled and said, "We're absolutely thrilled. I can't tell you how much it means to have the support of the mutant community behind us."

Taya decided to chance another one. "What are your expectations for the courtroom today?"

"Oh, we'll tell you all about that in a moment," Jack replied, nodding toward the podium.

"Thank you very much!" And that was her cue to bow out and join the other reporters for the celebrities' address, but she'd made contact, and that was the important thing.

The feline mutant scurried off to find herself a prime location before they all disappeared, but she found herself sidetracked by the man in dress shirts and slacks handing out little pamphlets like they were going out of style. Now, how had she missed him before?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alex Kaine

Alex had his own homemade sign tucked under one arm to keep it out of the wind, but that didn't stop him from playing tour guide to Lana. "That group of green shirts, that's the Friends of Genetic Freedom. They publish (r)Evolution Monthly. There's Mutant Voice, they're a little mainstream for my tastes, but at least they're on the right side here... Freakwatch, seriously? They've got cojones showing up around this many cops. And over there--"

---

Lana did her best to listen as Alex pointed out the various factions who had staked out territory for the rally, waving everything from signs to banners and flags. It was like nothing else she'd ever seen before. The sheer mass of mutants in all of their feathered, scaled, shimmering, rainbow-hued glory...the teenager was in absolute awe.

"Aleksanderr...this is...amazing. I've never...never seen anything like this. Nothing in Saint Petersburg has ever equaled...this...gathering..." her voice trailed off, losing its bright animated tone as her eyes caught sight of one of the myriad of hate groups arrayed along one side of the cordon. She swallowed hard, blinking as she took in the signs they held, the hateful vitriol they spewed making her cling all the more tightly to Alex.

"They really hate us...so much...I..." Lana whispered mostly to herself as her free hand rose to clasp tightly over her silver pendant. "...n-never knew."
She fell silent afterwards, letting Alex lead her where he would as she absorbed a lifetime's worth of hatred toward her kind.

Almost unconsciously, Alex wrapped an arm around Lana's waist and pulled her against his side. The hostility of the mundane protesters was something he almost took for granted these days, but seeing it through Lana's eyes was like reopening an old wound.

"It's always been like this," he said. "Not everybody, but... definitely the loud ones."

He moved his hand up to her bare arm and rubbed it. "It'll change some day, Lana. Everything does. They'll either learn to accept us, or they'll wake up one day and realize they've become the missing links."

"Okay," Anna said, as the movie stars began their ascent up the stage to a roaring ovation from the gathered protestors. "Tiempo para ir a almorzar, Jamie." She reached her hands up as though she'd catch the girl, but Noah carefully helped the ten year old down, setting her gently on the ground and playfully tweaking her ballcap.

"Have fun but be careful," Anna said to the Redencion House teens, Scott the only one who seemed to pay any attention. She looked at Tess, then at Noah, and then back to Tess. "We'll meet you at the van in two hours, but call if you're done sooner okay? Come on, Jamie."

She grinned at her foster daughter, who was flipping through the pictures she'd taken, eyes glued to the little digital screen on the back of the camera. "Get any good ones?" They threaded their way through the crowd toward the back of the rally, avoiding the other side of the park where the pro-MRA groups were gathered, and headed to meet Paolo, her brother who was in town on business.

Duquesne was positioned between Stern and Wilde at the center of the cordon line where both protest groups were the thickest. Given his talents, it made sense to keep him where he could protect the maximum number of people. Stern just needed to be visible. When you could travel at the speed of light, you didn't really worry about response time.

The radio on his belt was busy with assignment details, officers checking in from their stations, reports from around the perimeter. All good so far. It was a familiar soundtrack to patrol duty, a constant reminder that someone had your back.

"Dispatch to all units. We have confirmed sighting of Brotherhood of Mutants personnel in the park. Additional reinforcements are en route."

Duke frowned and glanced over toward Stern. "Additional - which units?"

He got his answer when a trio of police SUVs rolled onto Hill Street in front of the protesters and dumped out a dozen additional officers. They were wearing body armor, and hanging from their belts were the specialized tranq pistols supplied by Jericho and the new razor-thin carbon-coated suppression collars.

"Aw, hell. Captain?" He shot an urgent look toward Stern. "I thought we said no anti-mutant gear unless we called for it!"

The riot cops spaced themselves evenly among the rest of the officers. Both groups of protesters had noticed, and the mutants were getting more restless by the minute.

Whatever had passed between Anna and Tess had done it's duty. Though she wasn't thrilled with the idea of associating with anyone who had loyalist ties to Saladin's propaganda-ridden manifesto, enough tension loosed itself for Tess to focus on the bigger picture. With a wary reluctance, she cast her eyes over the milling crowd. Even with the vitriolic spewing from the MRA supporters, there was a remarkable energy in the air. Charged with a resolute determination, it rippled through the congregated protesters with an intoxicating strength.

"See you, Anna," Tess waved, tugging playfully on Jamie's hair as the little girl passed and watched as they disappeared through the sea of bodies.

"Oh my god, she's so hot."

Completely oblivious to anything other than Crystal Villaneuva slowly mounting the podium steps, Scott stood on tiptoe to try and get a better view. Balance compromised, he reached out a hand to brace it on Tess's shoulder.

She snorted and pulled away. "Yeah, that's what's important."

"Hey, just a supportive observation."

"Uh-huh. Do you - "

It was Noah straightening up that made Tess pause. A guy his size wasn't exactly subtle, it was impossible to ignore the way he stiffened like a brick wall. Tess twisted to look over her shoulder and her face froze when she caught sight of a grim-faced, armoured police officer edging up to the perimeter. Well now. This was...

Her eyes narrowed. Were those collars?

"Oh, that's fantastic," Tess muttered. "Looks like this is a real rally, now."

"We did. This is not going to look good for us. Either someone went over my head, or there was a big misunderstanding. Then again, maybe someone at dispatch thought they would be better off playing Better Safe Than Sorry."

Stern's eyes narrowed behind his goggles as he considered what would happen next. The mundane side of the crowd was getting restless, but in a confident way. It seemed a lot of the mutants were getting restless in a cat-in-a-corner kind of way.

"As long as everyone stays peaceful, we do not have to worry. I want you to focus on defending the mutants. I realize it may be a lot to ask, but it's our job first and foremost to keep them safe. We're here to protect their rights."

Stern got on his walkie. "I need all units to hear me on this, no excuses. There will be no lethal force used here. Any incarcerated mutants will be taken to the precinct and I will deal with them all personally. If anyone acts without my order I will see them suspended or discharged from service if it's the last thing I do."

Stern looked at Shield and voiced his next thought. "I really hope they listen. I'm tired of having our unit treated like decoration."

Antonio grinned unapologetically at Riley, but was quickly distracted as it appeared the speech making was about to start. A ripple of something indistinct was going through the crowd, but the UCLA group was far enough back that it was hard to tell what was going on.

He fingered the steel washer in his pocket, and looked at Jimmy. "Something's feeling weird, man."

His non-mutant friend shrugged, tipping back a beer. "It's probably Crystal using her mojo on us."

Kyle laughed loudly. "You wish she was, perv."

Antonio rolled his eyes, "It's Jack who has the mojo, not Crystal, you morons. Shut up so I can hear them."

"Fuck." No one could hear Veronica mutter a single4 letter word over the general din of the crowd. She stared hard at the pack of SUVs, her mind taking in the angles for all of the new additions. They weren't set up to protect the human crowd at all. She pulled out her contract cell phone, the one that was in Stern's card file.

"New forces set up for assault, not protection. WTF? -VH" She typed, and pressed send. Stern would probably be pissed, since according to the briefing he was the one pulling the strings.She didn't recognize any of the newcomers. They weren't subtle, but they were positioned well. Veronica could see the sudden change in posture from many of the mutants, and some out and and changed locations within their side of the crowd.

Anyone paying attention knew something had changed.

"What's going on?" Aimee was straining to see the stage, even from their prime location. At five foot nothing the crowd around her was doing a fair job of totally blocking her view.

Cameron poked her, then pointed at his shoulders with a smile on his face, and she giggled. But it only took a few moments for her to get on his shoulders, and he carried her weight easily. Her flip flops fell off to the grass and she wiggled her toes, his hands on her knees to steady her as she got her first good look at the park and the rest of the rally.

"Good morning Los Angeles!"

Crystal's salutation sent up a storm of cheers and whistles from the mutant protesters, especially from the male segment. Jack may have been the empath, but Crystal had her own facilities for moving a crowd. Some celebrity writers had rather unkindly speculated that her stunts weren't the only things that defied gravity, but when asked if her beauty was genetically enhanced, she had famously answered, "Isn't everyone's?"

Her smile was downright celestial as she waved in appreciation of the raucous reception. "When Friends of Genetic Freedom contacted Jack and me and asked to stage a rally around our court case, our expectations were high. Well, let me tell you that you haven't just met our expectations - you've blown them away!"

That brought another roar from the audience. Jack stepped up beside Crystal and took over the microphone.

"Take a look around," he said. "You're going to see people of every race, class, and religion in the country. You're going to see non-mutants as well as mutants. Do you know what unites us? It's our humanity. We're here because we refuse to stand by while whole class of people is branded, cataloged and tracked like cattle. This isn't about hiding who we are. Crystal and I have never made that a secret. This is about--"

Jack's concentration wavered for a moment, and something flickered over his face. His eyes were drawn toward the edges of the rally, where a large group of mutants were murmuring uneasily over the arrival of the riot cops, and a few were trading insults with the anti-mutant protesters across the street.

Crystal looked up at Jack with concern and lightly touched his arm.

"This is about fair treatment under the law," Jack said, regaining his focus. "Criminals deserve registration. Sex offenders deserve registration. Innocent men and women, your friends, your family, your neighbors, do not deserve to be registered merely because of their genetic makeup!"

"What a damned freak show!"

Three tall, young men stalked their way though the crowd of mutants. One had a shaved head, one wore a green and black bandanna, one had a black ballcap turned backwards, and all of them had their arms bare and heavily tattooed. When they had first entered the crowd twenty minutes ago, they had been timid and withdrawn. One of them had even dumbly accepted a pamphlet from the preacher with the creepy placid smile. But once they realized they weren't being called out, mobbed, or blasted with mutant eye beams, they had begun to grow bolder.

"Look at the bitch with the tail, man! You'd hit that, wouldn't you?"

"Hell, no, asshole. I ain't a furry. I might go for the one with the wings. I'd make that bird sing."

A dark-skinned woman with snow-white hair turned and glared daggers at the swaggering trio. "Get out of here, assholes. Go join your friends across the street."

"Make us, bitch!" the ringleader crowed back.

"Yeah, one of those cops'll string a collar around your pretty little neck," another one sneered.

"Ha, get a load of cranberry jelly over here!" the third one howled, and he led the way toward the purple girl sitting on some kid's shoulders. "Hey, Crayola girl! You a Lakers fan?"

"Hey, take of your shirt! I want to see if you're purple all the way down!"

Stern opened his work phone and took in Hu's short text. "Well, won't this be fun?"

He returned her text: Not sure myself. Possibly someone working over my head. Stay sharp.

Gangs, the Brotherhood, general human stupidity--it was a lot to plan and predict to keep this rally peaceful. He had hoped he could use his officers to greatest effect as deterrence. Stern knew the value of a visible police car on the side of the road when it came to reckless driving. Surrounded as they were by police, he hoped it would be enough.

Now it seemed someone was taking his plan and stomping on it.

Shield was poised to protect the mutants. He needed to do more.

He pushed the button on his walkie. "Ghost, Hu, take a walk around the park. Talk to folks. See if they're all right. Maybe we can cut down some of this new intimidation with friendly faces and neighborly concern. We want them to know we're still here to protect."

Ripples of discomfort and agitation fanned throughout the immediate crowd, heads turned at the disturbance, Cameron's included, to locate its obnoxious epicenter. The troublemakers parted nervous clusters of protestors, the trademark swagger of the barrio warrior in their step, spitting venom with indiscriminate gusto into the mutant ranks. And when their poison was flung in Aimee's direction, causing her to go rigid on his shoulders, Cameron eased her onto the ground and put himself firmly between them. The encroaching agitators slowed to a stop with precious little regard for his personal space, but with the bite of fire in his muscles, he held his ground. The skinhead was the first to square up to him.

"Sup, hombre? Cat got your tongue?"

When there was no answer, he gave an amused snort and returned his attention to Aimee. Cameron obstructed the advance, bristling like a territorial wolf, but it didn't stop them from leering. One gave a low whistle.

"Shit, son, Barney the Dinosaur's a motherfuckin' playaaa!"

The skinhead's laughter was caught in his throat as he was plucked off his feet and shoved violently to the ground. His hunting pack were immediate in their response. The first punch was dodged on instinct, Cameron clutched his attacker's wrist, and with his other hand clamped against his head, he drove the thug into his friend with a dull crack of meeting skulls. They fell in an angry heap, and with the reality of the situation crashing down around him, he started to backpedal.

Klaus watched the gang member and Cameron struggling and smirked. He had noticed his new anti-mutant gear on the newly arrived law enforcement officers and was eager to see how well his inventions worked in the field.

That was not why he was here. Today, he decided, was too good of an opportunity to pass up in acquiring new mutant samples for his study. He loved DNA. You could get it out of nearly any piece of a person. As such, he had been quietly taking small samples of various mutants' hairs throughout the day.

He now had at least twenty new samples, and he hoped it would all serve him very well. He had been on the verge of taking a sample off of Aimee when the confrontation broke out.

"Now now," he said, placing a hand on Cameron's back so he wouldn't run over anyone. "No need to panic. If you start to run or lose control of yourself, this whole crowd will fall to pieces in a moment. Then people start to run wild, loved ones get trampled, and the police close in and take everyone they can to jail. Mutants get registered against their will. Take a deep breath. You don't want that to happen, do you?"

Klaus needed time to get out of the crowd, and hopefully get more samples along the way. He couldn't trust his position as Administrator of the Jozua Clinic to keep him from being searched. He couldn't afford to lose all that precious DNA.

The brief scuffle shocked everyone in the Redencion group - not the least because of how sharply and decisively Cameron had taken control of it. Alex had pulled away from Lana to back him up, only to see the mutie-haters already in a heap on the ground.

He certainly wasn't prepared to see Heidegger step out of nowhere. One of the greatest individual oppressors of mutant rights in Los Angeles skulking around an anti-registration rally - it was a violation.

"You!" Alex snarled. "You've got a lot of nerve showing your face here, Dr. Heidegger! This isn't your clinic, get out of here!"

"I'ma put you down, perro!"

The first of the Elevens to fall was already up and stalked the distance between himself and the silent kid. He retreated another step and cast an uncertain glance into the crowd, providing the skinhead with the perfect opening. He swung a clumsy right hook, and felt his knuckles glance off a forearm, brought up as a last minute defense. The kid stumbled and found himself suddenly speared by a violent tackle, his attacker's baseball cap tumbled to the ground alongside them, and the brawl renewed.

Aimee's heart was in her throat, as everything seemed to happen at once. The three goons who'd come after her were getting to their feet, eyes angry as they looked at Cameron who was starting to back up. Some other guy had come out of nowhere and was talking, and Alex was shouting at him.

Aimee stumbled backwards into the newcomer as the three mutant haters surged to their feet, having decided to climb the tree behind her but getting tangled up with the doctor or whoever he was in her panic. Noah was turning around, looking terrifyingly huge, as Cameron was shoved to the ground, and then Scott stepped up and punched one of the thugs right in the face.

"We've got an altercation in the east corner of the park, moving in to secure the area."

It was an unfamiliar voice that gave the report, and Duquesne turned to see a knot of anti-mutant riot cops break the line to wade into the crowd.

"What - no. No!"

He grabbed his radio. "You hold your positions, damn it, this is the MCU's jurisdiction--"

"Lieutenant Duquesne, you've been overruled. Brotherhood terrorists have been sighted. This is now a Vanguard operation."

Duke flinched as if he'd been struck, and then cold realization settled in. There was a reason they hadn't been consulted about the reinforcements in riot gear.

The reason was the riot cops weren't LAPD at all.

Like sharks alerted to chum on the water, the crowd around the blow-up began to clamor with a volley of reactions - alarm and concern were heavy players but the overwhelming tide from those who'd been close enough to catch the drift of the current was one of outrage. A lanky young man in skinny jeans and a Ramones T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his hair a sharp forest of glistening silver spines, launched himself into the fray without hesitation and threw out a wide hook at one of the remaining Tres Onces.

Trying to hold ground amidst the suddenly shifting masses, Tess snapped her gaze around to get a mental count on who was where. Aimee was in the tree and Alex was with Lana, radiating hostility at a figure she didn't recognize but he obviously did, and Scott was watching with wide eyes beside her.

"We need to - " Tess started.

But before any instructions to stick together could escape, Scott jumped away to add his fists to the fight and Tess was sent crashing into Geryon as another rally-goer shoved by to put in her two cents, a ripple surging through the gathered crowd.

Jane's circuit of the rally had taken her fairly far away from where things were beginning to go sideways, but even on the opposite side of the park the mutants and mundane supporters of the anti-MRA movement were getting restless.

"What's going on?" a worried looking mother asked the people around her, two small children clinging to her knees and another in her arms. Jane crumpled her empty coffee cup and let it drop to the ground, seeing the line of riot cops beginning to move from their positions on the street separating the two opposing groups.

"Stay cool," Jane warned into her bluetooth. "We don't need to all end up in jail today." She turned towards the young woman, pushing her way to stand next to her as the crowd began to jostle each other. "You should get your kids out of here, miss."

The woman looked up at Jane, eyes wide, and then she nodded. "Okay. Yeah." She was wearing a t-shirt that said I love my kids no matter what their genes are, and she began gathering up her things, depositing the baby into a stroller and trying to buckle her in as quickly as she could. Jane put out a hand, stiff arming a guy who was about to run over one of the other kids, her eyes alert and watching the situation by Geryon as best she could from where she was.

A Harley Davidson Fat Boy Lo rumbled up Broadway, the rider cutting through traffic onto Temple and following it to N. Hill Street. The sleek black motorcycle rolled up on the outer corner of the park in front of the Stanley-Mosk Courthouse, just past a barricade and onto the sidewalk. Ginny Hayes steadied her bike with one foot on the ground, taking off her helmet and shaking out her red hair. She was setting the kickstand when a guy decked out in riot gear headed toward her.

"Hey! You can't park there! Clear out!"

Her eyes tracked down to the slim metallic loops on the guy's belt, and then she shrugged, turning her head to look at a standard LAPD type officer that was standing nearby and also beginning to take an interest in her arrival. "Don't worry, I'm not staying long. He said it was okay," and she jerked her head toward the peroxide blonde officer.

The riot gear guy turned on the other officer, and Ginny walked briskly away, unzipping her slim black leather jacket as she went.

Klaus smirked at Alex. "You mean I cannot support my fellow mutants by attending this rally?" he said into the young man's ear. "Yes, I am also a mutant. Why else would I run a clinic for mutants?"

The crowd around them by now seemed to have exploded into a confused heap of aimless, violent action. Klaus found Aimee suddenly flung against him. He caught her as easily as he could, though it took some effort to make sure she didn't pin him down.

"I shall see you on your next weekly visit to your sister, yes?"

He slipped into the crowd, angling towards the nearest edge to get clear. His people would be waiting to fish him out of the thronging crowd.

Stern heard it too. "You know, times like these I wonder why they bothered with us in the first place."

He was still in charge. He still had the MCU and they still needed to act. Were he not an officer, he would just have light-jumped into the fray to collar or cuff as many as he could. He didn't have the luxury of not being choosy. Vanguard did.

"Shield, see what you can do about containing that riot! Get Hu, Ghost, and anyone else we can to get people out of there!"

Stern got back on his walkie. "I want LAPD between the mutant and mundane crowds. Disperse the mundanes rapidly."

Now it was his turn to take some action. "I'm going in there to see what I can't do to break up that fight before Vanguard gets in there and turns everyone into vegetables."

Stern disappeared from the stage and stood in the center of the writhing group of people, flaring as brightly as he could without causing permanent blindness.

"LAPD! Everyone will step back now or face charges of assault and disturbing the peace!"

He'd been sleeping in his normal place when they'd left. The garage was nice and dark and just drafty enough to allow a breeze through that kept a canine quite cool enough if they were positioned right. Once everyone had left, he'd nosed his way back inside, and positioned himself in the living room on the floor, panting to regulate his body temperature.

At some point, the television had been turned on by somebody, he couldn't remember their name. The news was on.

"It appears that a fight has broken out at the rally, Paul," the correspondent was saying into the camera. "Police in riot gear are moving in to break up the disturbance."

Julian lifted his head to see the television more clearly. The picture was difficult to make out, but he could hear every word clearly, though the meanings of most of them went right over his head. He let a long murmur rumble down in his chest, expressing his curiosity. He looked back at the other person watching the rally with him, asking about what was going on with his eyes.

"Things are going south already.."

Spectre took a last sip of her lemonade and regrettably tossed the still full cup in the proper receptacle. Let it not be said Spectre was not as fond of ecology as she was of evolution.

With a hand on Void's shoulder, she raised up on her tip-toes like a true spectator as a big-mouthed human took down the boy protecting the purple-skinned girl. Spectre's fingers clenched in a tight grip as she struggled to remain as she was, but she held her ground.

With some effort she dragged her gaze to the newest arrivals on scene, knowing exactly who they were and what they were capable of. She had dealt with their kind before. "Fucking Vanguard..", she growled in her partner's ear. "Come on, time to get a bit closer to the proverbial fan.."

First her attention went back to the group clustered around the gang members and the defensive mutants. It was not hard to pinpoint the exact mind she was looking for, she knew it well.

Heads up, hun. Vanguard is showing it's ugly face.

Recognizing the MCU boss man, Spectre acted out of instinct, grabbing Void by the back of the head and forcing his face into her neck. "Shut your eyes!!" The daylight alone was enough to put a hurting on her partner. The singular ability of this mutant would be devastating to Void.

"LAPD! Everyone will step back now or face charges of assault and disturbing the peace!"

There was one thing you could say for Captain Stern - you always saw him on the front lines. In fact, chances were you saw very little else. Duquesne didn't make the mistake of looking straight at the officer shining like a second sun in the middle of the disturbance. Instead, he looked around the perimeter and mostly saw people scrambling away from the epicenter.

Except for the damned Vanguard soldiers masquerading as riot cops - they kept on bulling forward, and the fleeing mutants bounced off them like pebbles before a landslide. And if that wasn't bad enough, their departure had left large gaps in the line that--

One of the anti-mutant protesters ran into the street and hurled a sealed water bottle into the crowd of mutants. Another followed suit with what looked like a can of beer.

"Stop!" Duquesne roared, and he threw out a hand, palm forward, the universal gesture of a man who had nothing but the voice of authority to back him up - except Duquesne had a lot more than that. A shimmering wall of blue light erupted from his hand. The flying can struck the force field and showered the pavement with beer.

With his abilities on full display, Shield pointed toward the two protesters who'd thrown debris. "Walters, Kranchik, arrest those men!"

Something that looked like red fireballs impacted the force field from the other side. Duquesne turned and sent a smaller psychic shield careening into the mutant miscreant, knocking him to the ground.

"We need real reinforcements, this is getting out of control!"

Alex stumbled away from the glowing mutant cop. He'd lost track of the other kids from Redencion, but when the spots cleared from his vision, he found himself looking down a corridor of open grass with a wall of cops in body armor advancing swiftly and silently toward him.

A panicked woman ran across his field of vision and collided with one of the cops. He grabbed her, twisted her around, and forced her to the ground with terrifying speed, and a black collar suddenly glistened around her neck.

Outrage bubbled up in Alex's chest, and before he even knew what he was doing, he rushed into the path of the cops. "That's brutality!" he shouted. "You don't have the right--"

"Out of the way!" one cop ordered, and he put a hand on his nightstick.

"I'm not moving unless you--"

The cop stepped forward and, with mutagen-enhanced strength, batted Alex aside like an insect. The mutant teen went sprawling to the ground, and another man leaned over him with a collar.

Anger and horror warred across her features as she stumbled back, grabbing Aimee's hand as the girl fell towards her, and away from the Doctor. Everything was happening so quickly she felt frozen in place, with no idea where to even try to help first.

The heavily armored soldiers caught here eye as they moved in vicious precision, cutting off the escape of many of the mutants trapped in the midst of the trouble. Instead of helping protect the mutants who were under assault, they waded in and started capturing them.

Throwing panicked and screaming people to the ground and collaring them as if they were animals.

There was no containing Lana's temper the second one of them hit Alex and sent him crumbling into a heap on the ground. She pushed Aimee back towards the tree and the spot where Tess stood as she raced forward. As if flipping a switch, pure golden energy enveloped her hands as they curled into fists and emanated from her eyes.

Before the bastard could collar Alex, Lana's right hand flung forward and let loose a glittering bolt of energy that slammed into the soldier's chest and flung him back several feet, sprawling at the feet of several of his fellows.

She hurled several choice Russian invectives at him as she came to Alex's side. Dropping to her knees, she steadied him as he sat up, fingers trembling with barely contained rage as she made sure he was alright.

Antonio was standing on the cooler that Kyle had brought, trying to give everyone a play-by-play of what was going on, but the LAPD officers that had been standing between the two opposing rallies had moved out of position and pro-MRA people were starting to come across the road. He looked down at his friends, mutants and non-mutants, the fun of just a few minutes ago fading from their faces and being replaced by worry. "Uh, we're pretty far back but I think we should maybe move further." He looked at Riley, and grinned brashly. "Purely precautionary, of course."

People were starting to push and shove around them, and Antonio fell off the cooler, stumbling past Jimmy and nearly running over a little kid on the grass. A tall woman with a hard look on her face hit him with a stiff arm, keeping him from trampling the boy, and Antonio tried to look apologetic as he rubbed his chest.

"Sorry, sorry, didn't see him there."

Stern grabbed his cuffs and placed them on one of the Tres Onces and whipped around to see the Vanguard officers collaring mutants seemingly at random.

"What are you doing!" Stern bellowed. "The source of the disturbance is here, not with them! These gang members are Tres Onces, known for their anti-mutant sentiment! Bring them in!"

Clearly Vanguard didn't care about actual justice. They just wanted to catch mutants. Stern just did not cotton to their bullshit.

Lana's energy attack caught Stern by surprise. She could be brought in for assaulting an officer, but Stern wasn't going to charge her. Vanguard was technically a private company, so Stern wasn't going to bother.

"Miss, what's the nature of your powers?"

If he could, he'd organize the mutants that weren't collared as best he could against Vanguard. And if he had anything to say about it, he'd do his best to make some recruits out of this.

"You're not in trouble, I just need more help than I have getting this situation untangled! These mutants are all innocent, and I'll be damned if I let these people take even one of them away!"

Alex squinted at the blast of light, and for a moment he thought the luminous mutant cop must have intervened, but then he saw Lana leaning over him, shining like a deity.

"I'm fine," he said, though he was shaking with equal parts fear and outrage. He scanned the ground and spotted the collar, lying coiled in the grass like a snake.

She pressed a kiss into his curls with a sigh of relief, the realization of what she'd done finally sunk in. In front of hundreds of witnesses, in front of dozens of cameras, she'd completely outed herself as a mutant. So much for her carefully cultivated control, she thought in one breath, and in the next deemed it completely worth it to have Alex say he was alright.

Lana rose to her feet and spun to face Stern, a mixture of anger and fear dancing across her features. She stayed silent after his question, sick to her stomach that she'd be in terrible trouble for assaulting what looked like a government officer. After all, where she came from, that was nearly a death sentence.

He quickly allayed her fears as he continued to speak, and the slender teenager nodded. "They're sun-based. As long as its shining, I've got an inexhaustible power supply to charge me. I'll help any way I can." Lana replied, her Russian accent thickening her words. As if to underscore them, she lifted both hands and clasped them together, a much larger and more powerful bolt shooting out at five of the troopers who were currently trying to collar a young woman who's seemingly fluid body eluded their every effort. It slammed into them and sent them flying back nearly twenty feet as if they were toys tossed aside by a careless child.

The display of power was breathtaking. Alex had seen enough of Lana's abilities to know they were considerably more spectacular that his own, but even when they'd stolen away somewhere secluded to practice, a secluded back alley or a wooded park, she'd shown a great deal of restraint, as if she'd been afraid someone might see. But now it seemed like she'd crossed a line and put that hesitance behind her, and it was glorious.

Alex leaned over and picked up the collar. It was a greedy, sucking thing, and he could feel it lancing energy from his arm, but the circuit wasn't closed, so it couldn't suppress his power. With a grimace, he reversed the flow of energy, and arcs of blue electricity rippled up the length of his arm as he emptied the collar's power cells. The energy was bitter, numbing, like tainted cough syrup, but by the time he released the collar it was a paperweight.

Alex picked himself up to stand next to Lana before the mutant officer. "I think I can disrupt collars that are already active," he said. "What do you want us to do?"

Holy hell, that grin...

Riley did manage to grin back, lightly shaking her head at his bravado. He seemed to have an endless supply of it, which, she mused, was part of the reason she had such a terrible crush on him.

As the crowd continued to push and Antonio stumbled, she grabbed their friends and pushed them behind her with a fraction of her strength. "Everybody move...no, you too, Kyle. Move it." she nodded, grinning as he went of his own accord after picking up his cooler.

With a thought, her wings expanded by several feet, forcing people to break around her in a wider path as she followed Antonio. Someone had to keep the boy out of trouble.

Jane blinked as a mutant girl spread her wings and effectively created a crowd break, coincidentally buying the woman and the kids a little more time as a slow retreat threatened to become chaos around them.

"You -" she said, fixing the tall guy who'd bumped into her with her eyes, grabbing his arm.

"Ow, hey watch it!" He frowned, but Jane didn't have time for his teenage antics.

"Help this woman get out of here. Can you do that?"

He looked at her, still angry, then at the mother who had finally strapped her struggling baby into the stroller and was stuffing a diaper bag underneath. One of the other kids, who looked to be about five, was holding a blanket they'd been sitting on just a few minutes earlier in his arms, the haphazard bundle way too big for him. The guy's expression softened, but he yanked his arm away from her.

"Yeah, of course."

Jane nodded, then walked off, through the retreating and panicking crowd toward the road where things were getting out of hand. On the stage Jack and Crystal were being hurried off, a strange pool of calm surrounding the actors as their bodyguards covered them up and hustled them toward the courthouse.

Crazy bitch stalked off, and Antonio stood for just a moment, looking down at the two kids who couldn't have been more than five and three, one of them looking terrified and the other mostly obscured by a huge blanket he was trying to carry.

Their mother struggled with her stroller, the grass uneven and making pushing it difficult enough without trying to hold onto her two small children in the crowd. Antonio shot a look over his shoulder, and found that most of the UCLA group had already been pushed by the crowd, a group of blue and gold moving downstream and to safety. Riley was still there, though, her wings acting like a rock in the stream of humanity, diverting the people around them, at least for the time being.

It also made her a target for the MRA loving crazies that were headed toward them. "Come on Gracey," he said, "Grab a kid and lets go." He looked at the mom, her pale face growing paler by the moment. "If that's all right, ma'am."

"Yes, yes, please. Thank you." She sounded like she was going to cry, but the stroller finally started moving and Antonio scooped up the boy with the blanket, tucking the latter under his arm and the former on his hip. After another moment he managed to put his hand in his pocket, touching the washer he had there and concentrating.

Más vale prevenir que curar, he thought, as his skin took on the dull metallic gleam of steel.

She paused for a second, watching him pluck the little boy up in a practiced motion, remembering that he'd mentioned one of his brothers having children. Riley shook her head and turned to the little girl, a miniature copy of her mother, smiling softly as she gaped up at her.
*
"Hi sweet-pea...what's your name?"

"Emma."

"Well Emma, I'm Riley. You look very pretty in green, is it your favorite color?" Riley said, her voice soft as she lifted the little one into her arms and cradled her close. Though her lower lip trembled, Emma nodded and managed not to burst into tears just yet.

"Are you an angel? Mommy says angels have wings."

The tiny voice was so earnest that she had a hard time not giggling. Pleased that she managed to suppress it, Riley shook her head. "Sorry, sweet-pea, I'm not an angel...just a regular girl who was born with wings."

In front of her, Antonio had scooped up Emma's brother and activated his own gift while the childrens' mother moved forward with the baby securely in his stroller. Ignoring the voices that were beginning to clarify and get louder behind her, she just kept walking, chatting with Emma as if nothing were wrong and hoping it would calm the little one down. A tiny hand reached up from clutching a stuffed bear tightly to tentatively touch her brightly painted feathers. Riley smiled and fluttered them ever so slightly, leaving a blue feather in Emma's fingers, much to the child's delight.

Once clear of the thickest part of the crowd, they stepped onto pavement and she paused long enough to hand Emma to her mother, who gave her a grateful look. "When you have the time, you should bring the kids by the L.A. Zoo...I'm one of the staff there and I could give them a tour of all the birds we have living there. Just ask for Riley at the gate."

Unable to resist, she leaned down and tickled the baby until he burbled and laughed for her, before motioning to Antonio with a tilt of her head. Her look very plainly said 'keep going, I'll be there in a minute', and she could only hope he listened. Not that he ever had before, but she swore he would...someday.

Turning her back to them, she crossed her arms over her chest and snapped her wings out sharply, with only a rush of air to herald the motion. A hip cocked to one side, and an arched brow spoke volumes in a tone that sounded vaguely like Clint Eastwood. The scattered nut-jobs following them had paused what they thought was a safe distance*away before they tossed a few choice insults her way, the words ugly and unrepeatable. But it wasn't anything new, and as such, she sighed with audible disappointment and didn't dignify them with a response. Instead, Riley shifted her stance and flapped her wings once...generating a silent rush of air that knocked them back on their collective asses in an inelegant heap.

She spun and reduced her wings to their usual size as she did, rushing to catch up to Antonio and the now wide-eyed Emma who watched her over her mother's shoulder as her older brother watched equally wide-eyed over Antonio's. Riley winked at them both.

Though Void only caught a split second glimpse of Stern's flare, pain exploded behind his eyes. He'd barely had the time to blink the spots away from his vision when a second flash like lightning cut through part of the crowd, hurling an armoured soldier back into a group of his squad mates.

Enough was enough. Tossing his empty cup aside, Void strode forward into and through the crowd. One of the riot patrol caught sight of him phasing through the bodies of two retreating protesters and naturally went on the offence, shield thrust forward and baton swinging for the head with a blow that struck nothing but air and almost sent the riot goon off balance. Five feet ahead, a young mutant on the verge of a nervous breakdown spun around suddenly and, getting a glimpse only of a talk figure clad in black advancing towards him, fired a volley of bone-hard projectiles from his fingertips. They whistled into and out of Void, embedding themselves instead in the bullet-proof vest of the Vanguard soldier who had regained his balance and briefly resumed his efforts to play whack-a-mutant, before swooning to the ground as Spectre trailed her fingertips up the length of his spine.

Veronica had managed to escort a sizable amount of non-mutants to the exit of the park. The ones with a sense of self-preservation, anyway.

Then the molotov went airborne. She drew her gun without thought, driven purely by habit, and pulled the trigger. The bullet broke the glass, and the airborne fireball ran out of fuel before it hit the ground. Stern was right. Things were running the ragged edge. She pulled away from the retreating crowd toward the fray.

"Get fucked."

There was a razor-edged precision of meaning in those two words; a substitution of eloquence for linguistic efficiency, and in dealing with one of the government's genetic storm troopers, it was a fair trade-off. His self-important gesticulations were broken by a beat of surprise, in which I capitalised and swept past in pursuit of the redhead who'd fingered me as an accomplice in her illegal parking. Under the circumstances, the infraction was a trifling chickenshit matter, but it wasn't the ill-placed Harley that concerned me; it was the redhead herself, and the unmistakeable purpose in her step as she breached the simmering masses.

Suddenly, the park went supernova. Every shape became a dull, featureless silouette under a scintillating shower of light, brilliant beams lanced the treetops and set my entire field of view ablaze with small twinkling spots. A pair of sunglasses were snapped hastily over my eyes and I charged onward through the crowd, closing in on the flaming-haired biker as she pressed against the surging crowd. Once she was in reach, I clamped a hand around her arm, and turned her on the spot.

"You're going the wrong way, miss. It's not safe over there."

Ginny looked down at the hand on her arm and then at the cop, a dark spot in her vision from the unexpected light show moments earlier. "That's sort of the point. I am going to get my sister," she explained, her tone indicating that it didn't matter what he thought, she was going anyway.

"You know what -" She reached out her free hand and grabbed his upper arm, checking over her shoulder and 'porting into the crowd. She paused only for a moment, teleporting again with the cop in tow, and they both fell down, the spot she'd reappeared in was thick with people and their sudden arrival sent a few civilians flying.

He released her arm with surprise, a wave of nausea probably washing over him while the smell of sulfur burnt his nose, and Ginny pushed up to her feet, scanning the crowd. A riot cop came at her, and she ducked under his initial blow, putting her shoulder into his gut and throwing him off his feet. Everyone official seemed focused on a huge Islander with four arms -

Ginny gritted her teeth, catching sight of a purple girl clinging to the tree trunk about twenty feet off the ground. Aimee. A flash of light to the side of her made Ginny throw up her arm to shade her eyes, but she was already moving toward her friend.

Geryon had parked himself between the tree where the kids were huddling and the majority of the commotion, though he'd lost sight of Alex and Lana somewhere in the fray. Fortunately even angry, panicky people tended to shy away from a seven-foot, three-hundred-seventy-pound land mass and anything it seemed to be guarding in its shadow. And Geryon had a very large shadow.

Squinting through the sunburst, Geryon cupped a hand over the bluetooth headset in his ear to try to shut out the cacophony all around him. "You got any instructions for me at all?" he shouted. "I'm in waist-deep over here and Doom Patrol is headed straight for me."

The rushing crowd parted, and four Vanguard troopers pressed toward Geryon, leveling their tranq-pistols at the immense mutant. "Get on the ground! Get on the ground now!"

"Are you friggin' kidding me?" Geryon said, and he pulled he bluetooth out of his ear and dropped it in the grass. "Not even a 'hands in the air'? 'Cause I can do that better than anybody."

"I'm not warning you again!" the trooper bellowed.

Geryon sniffed. "Good, I don't wanna hear it again. You think those mosquito darts bother me? Hell, you don't have a collar that'll fit around my neck."

The trooper nodded to his comrade on the right. "Take him down."

"Yeah, you wish-- what the hell?"

The Vanguard trooper had lifted what obviously wasn't a standard-issue tranq gun - the chamber and bore were far too large, and when the weapon fired with a puff of gas, it was evident why from the oversized dart stuck in Geryon's chest. He whipped it out and stared at it, for all the good that would do, until his fingers started convulsing and the dart tumbled to the ground.

Geryon took a step toward the trooper and moved to thrust a new arm out of his chest, but the limb came out half-formed and almost immediately dissolved back into his flesh. He stumbled, looked down at himself, and tried again. The resulting limb was a huge, tumorous club that took most of the mass out of his gut. He howled in pain and toppled to the ground.

"The hell did you do to me?" Geryon roared, and he pulled the useless mass back inside him, only to have it ripple back underneath his skin and burst into dozens of sprouting, writhing, and dissolving limbs all across his back, as if a horde of homunculi were straining to burst out of his body. He looked up at his tormentors with tears streaking his massive face. There was nothing he could do to stop his own mutation from waging its war on his body.

And then, as quickly as it had started, it stopped. Geryon's shirt was in tatters, and his skin was a battlefield of bruises and bleeding cracks. And what was more, he was powerless. He collapsed into the grass, heaving and exhausted.

The trooper who'd shot him barked into his radio, "Team four to home, we've got him."

"Screw you," Geryon rasped. "Have fun draggin' me in."

The four troopers surrounded him and, two to an arm, lifted the helpless mutant to drag him away.

The world tumbled through a hazy kaleidoscope of colour and into it I was spilled, limbs crashing around me. Clods of grass and dirt were pressed between my fingers like putty, and as the earth inverted itself, I clung for dear life. Here, the noise was overwhelming, a mad symphony of violent cries and thundering feet. I looked up and saw the carnage unfurling like something from a Paul Greengrass movie, so I shook off my shakey-cam vision, and pushed myself up onto my feet. The teleporting redhead was gone and I had been deposited into the eye of the storm.

"Hey! Freeze!"

Despite the practiced clarity and authority of my cop voice, the punk fleeing an unconscious chameleon-skinned mutant failed to heed my words. My legs sprung under me, and after a short sprint, the thug found himself ploughed by a full body check and pinned against a tree. He struggled as I snapped on my cuffs, spitting Spanish venom, and was stripped of the bandana concealing his face - green and black, colours with which I was becoming rapidly acquainted.

"Moore, take this punk to the boat, will you?"

Officer Moore, one of the latest non-mutant additions to the MCU, was sporting an impressive gash over his left eye, almost combat ineffective from the flow of blood. He closed in and relieved me of the gangbanger with no shortage of perfectly harmless cop-criminal rough-housing.

"And sort out your eye," I approached the chameleon mutant, and spoke into my radio: "This is Ghost. I've got a two-four-zero, victim is unconscious and in need of immediate medical assistance."

Aimee had made it up the tree, panic carrying her higher than she'd intended, and now she was looking down on everything, partially hidden by the canopy of leaves. Cameron was standing at the base of the trunk, doing his best to get Ronnie to jump to safety, and Scott was lying on the ground, the guy who'd flattened him running away.

She didn't even want to think about what was happening to Geryon. It had been sudden, terrifying, and she'd had to close her eyes. And then suddenly she wasn't the only one in the tree. A familiar odor wafted through the air, like rotten eggs, and the tree shook.

Aimee opened her eyes, and then gasped. "Ginny! What - how?"

"No time to talk kid, let's go." The red headed woman grinned, but there was a tightness around her eyes as she looked down bast the branch she was standing on toward the ground.

"Wait, no, Cameron -" Aimee looked down desperately. "Cameron!" She waved wildly, trying to catch his attention. Ginny reached down and caught her arm, and then they were gone.

With the situation deteriorating rapidly it was time to quit with the passive stance. Their objective was currently right in the middle of the worst possible location and they needed to get her out of here before some Vanguard goon threw a collar around her neck. Of course, she seemed to be doing fine on her own. Good genes.

About to bust loose after being relatively restrained for so long, Spectre was grinning like a kid in a candy factory as she pulled the wide brimmed hat off her head, tossing it. She shook out her lengthy white-blond hair, not giving a damn who recognized her now. Let them get in her way, she had scum suckers to deal with.

"Alright who wants to play Spectre Says...", she focused on the nearest Vanguard trooper, even as he was fastening a collar around the neck of a young mutant who looked like he had... rabbit ears..? The ears evidently were sensitive to sound and picked up on her approach. He looked to her with pleading eyes.

Ticking a finger back and forth in admonishment, Spectre spoke in a school teacher tone. "Ahh, ahhh, ahhh! Put him down."

He complied, turning on her. She smiled brightly, batting her eyelashes over bright green eyes. "Now.. go kick the shit out of that guy." She pointed to the next trooper in line, convincingly his co-worker that he was, without a doubt, the enemy and vice-versa.

And so it went. Disregarding the fact that she was alerting any psychic sniffers to the use of her abilities, Spectre redirected as many Vanguard employees as she could, letting the MCU officers do their work without having to worry about the invasion of the mutant snatchers. One by one they were making their way closer to the girl.

"Lana.. Lana!" Spectre called out, trying to get her attention.

Her breath caught in her throat once more as she caught sight of four of the soldiers dragging Noah away. He'd been the only thing standing between the rest of the Redencion House kids and the melee that erupted. While she didn't know anything about him past his name that had come from one of the others, no one deserved the treatment he was getting.

That made her infamous Russian temper blaze bright once more.

But she couldn't help Noah since the soldiers had begun to heavily guard the retreat those dragging him were taking. Lana would be damned if she didn't try, however.

With a vicious streak she couldn't account for the origin of, Lana added the sun's heat to her energy bolts instead of holding it back. Now was not the time to be timid...especially when there were people getting hurt. She flung both hands forward and launched two sizzling bolts toward the nearest of the soldiers, a slightly sick expression settling on her features as they were tossed back. Their armor warped and cracked under the intense heat and trained or no, they panicked and tore it off as the skin beneath began to blister and burn.

Its an emergency and they deserve it...its an emergency and they deserve it...she repeated the mantra to herself, under her breath and in Russian. Lana turned at the sound of her name echoing in an unfamiliar female tone. Blinking, she sought out the source and found a stunning woman dressed in white nearby. Without a second thought, Lana shouted at her to duck and launched a third white-hot bolt at the soldier coming up behind her.

A chorus of popping sounds reached her ears before the searing, burning pain asserted itself. She lifted a shaking hand and touch her neck and shoulder, fingers coming away slick with her luminous, bright green blood. Pale green tears filled her eyes and spilled across her cheeks as the young woman staggered back a step towards Alex before falling to her knees.

"Aleksanderr...I...think I...been...shot?" Lana said...or at least, tried to, given the way her words were slurring together.

The fight was little more than a clumsy tangle of limbs as Cameron and the gangbanger struggled for supremacy. Everything else was a mad strangle of light and sound. An infection of panic spread throughout the crowd, and people started to disperse, a couple of hysterical girls actually scrambled over them in the rush. He froze suddenly, under the weight of his attacker, and cast his gaze into the crowd, beyond the crowd, through it, as if in search of something, or someone. A row of knuckles struck his nose so hard it made his eyes water.

The world swam in tears for a heartbeat, then he turned his gaze on the gangbanger, who went suddenly rigid. Cameron wrenched the hands from his body and swung his own up to clap violently against the head of his attacker, who fell limp and spread-eagled on top of him. Once free of the deadweight, Cameron rose to his feet and after one look at the line of emerging riot troops, he joined the rest of the stampede in flight. Light popping sounds punctured the air and the ranks of mutants started to thin.

There was a bottle-neck effect at the nearest exit, people were packed close, pushing each other forward, their fear amplified to dangerous heights with each new volley. A soft whistling sailed past his ears, felling a young trio of mutants before his eyes. It was suicide to stick with the crowd any longer. He took off at a tangent, sprinting towards an unobstructed fence, and to freedom, when he felt a sharp pinch in his arm. His strides became heavy and sluggish, he rounded a tree for cover, and sought to catch a glimpse of his new enemy when he crashed into a police offier.

Everything had exploded with the singular intensity brewed from nuclear reactions and in a blink, a breath, the park had been transformed from a clamoring union into a chaotic sea of rushing bodies too tangled to decipher. A spike of panic surged through Tess and she yelled out as Alex and Lana were swallowed up by the milling bodies, her voice lost in the rising tide of shouts and echoing cracks of revolution.

And then it dominoed. Within a few seconds it seemed as though their entire cluster had splintered, become shrapnel in the wake of the riot-gear laden police bomb and blown off to the four corners of the earth.

Shit, shit. Tess felt as though her heart was going to crack through her ribcage it was hammering so hard as she slogged through the crowd, digging in with elbows and knees and using her elastic gift to wind her way through until she could reach Scott, the only one still within eyesight except for Cameron by the tree, and only then because he was unconscious.

"Scott!" Tess shouted, grabbing onto the shirt of a snarling, pitch-eyed mutant and using the leverage to yank herself the last few feet to the teenager's side. She ducked down, pulling a shoulder up to deflect a charging vigilante, and frantically pressed a pair of fingers to his far too pale neck. A thready pulse throbbed against the whorls of her fingertips and a knot of relief jerked so tightly within her stomach that for a moment she felt sick with it.

It was a short-lived respite. They couldn't stay here, Scott would be trampled in short order, or worse, apprehended by the police -

The goddamn police. Jesus, there was supposed to be some kind of control standard, wasn't there? Muscles throbbing with adrenaline-fueled tremors, Tess hitched her arms under Scott's shoulders, preparing to haul him away in spite of basic first aid protocol (she figured the don't-move-a-victim rule was overridden by the possibility of becoming a pulpy splatter otherwise) when the hissing static of a radio and the business snap of an order-issuing voice sounded from behind.

Tess whipped around with a snarl, ready to go to the mattresses if it was the only option left with the outcome of just getting the fuck out of here with the kids, but was brought up short by an all-too-familiar face. The president in drag would have been less of a shock than the impish uniformed man straight out of the past that stood there.

"Chris?" Tess breathed, so startled that it was less a confirmation and more a wondrous query. The shock was quickly replaced by a wash of priorities and the woman's face slipped into one of determined purpose. She dropped back down by Scott's side. "Help me move him!"

The momentary sense of order had dissolved into chaos again, but at the forefront of Alex's consciousness, like the supernova at the center of a cluster of shattered planets, Lana was collapsing to the ground, her internal luminance fading like a dying heartbeat.

"Lana!"

Alex slid to his knees in front of her buoyed her under the arms, but she was collapsing against him, and the honey-sweet glow of energy he was used to sensing from her was gone.

He looked around in a panic and found the platinum-haired woman who had called out to Lana a moment ago. "Help me!"

"I've got you." Veronica pulled the dart from Cameron's arm and slung him over her shoulder. They'd met briefly, before she went undercover. With the cacophony barely anyone paid the police blues and the boy much mind. Her supernatural awareness made the ever-shifting battle much easier to navigate as gene-amped soldiers clashed with natural mutants. Flame, water, goo, beams of energy, raw muscle fought darts, muscle and collars.

It was a clusterfuck.

She paused to what would seem random to an outsider. Two Vanguard troopers landed in front of her with a wet thud. It seemed like they fell from the sky. Veronica kept moving to avoid the ball of acidic goo that followed shortly after. Fucking Vanguard. Until they showed up, there had been a shot at making it through this whole thing without a riot. She made it to an untouched car, and set him down against the tire opposite of the ruckus.

"Mute," She stated between breaths, "how are we doing?"

She didn't give him a chance to respond before she punched the car door. It dented deep. Veronica didn't look remotely phased.

"Fuckin' god those shit-nosed cowardly ass-lickin' bastards. I wanna shoot every last fuckin' one." Body armor or not, at close range, with the right angle, her bullets could pop through. She punched the car door again.

The succession of resounding clangs jolted Mute from his drowsy stupor. Down the left side he was dead; his leg was heavy, his arm limp. He sucked ragged breaths to stem the creeping numbness and fumbled for his celphone. He managed a cynical half-smile in response to Veronica's beautiful string of expletives.

"So surprised?"

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tess Abrahams

"Chris? Help me move him!"

---

It felt a little bit like time travel, seeing Tess stood there, her face pleading from the heart of the swarm. In an instant, I was back in school, skipping lessons and mastering the fine art of spectacular skateboarding dives. I was a clown in fancy dress and alien skin, drowning in a turbulent sea of responsibility, and just as suddenly, my senses rubberbanded, snapping my arse two years back to the future. I gave a nod and rounded the unconcious kid.

"Take his legs. Ready?"

We lifted in unison and started to shuffle against the oncoming current of protestors. Over the violent din I called out, demanding a safe thoroughfare from the manic crowd, but it was useless, like being caught in a school of frightened fish. They battered my arms and shoulders as they pushed past, jostling our fragile load, my face clenched to bite down the indignant temper. Opposite me, Tess had turned Poe's favourite shade of pale.

"Are you okay?"

Trusting the girl as she trusted less then a handful of other people, Spectre ducked in time to avoid the blast of white hot energy that flew above her head connecting with the soldier behind her, throwing him backward. The girl had just saved her ass. Her amazement was short lived however when the popping sound surrounded them Lana staggered to her knees.

The boy with Lana looked pleadingly to Spectre calling for help, but she was already on her way to them, cursing at the situation.

He's going to be pissed at me. Spectre thought grimly.

One last soldier stood between her and Lana, and Spectre was all done playing nicely now. He took aim at her with a dart-loaded gun and she only glared at him, her bright green eyes seemed to bore right into his mind. She concentrated with enough vicious energy to give herself a nosebleed but she brought him to his knees, clutching at his eyes that he was now convinced were burning out of his head. She convinced him of pain upon pain, and the gun dropped from his hands. Picking it up she pistol whipped him with it, crashing it against the side of his head hard enough to cause a burst of blood at his temple. When he crumpled to the ground she stepped over his body and reached Lana's side.

Down on her knees she assessed the damage and felt for a pulse. "Void!", she hollered over her shoulder.

Looking to the young man, Spectre didn't think it wise to leave him behind, and Lana would need a friendly, familiar face. He would have to come too. Wiping the blood from her nose, she addressed the concerned young man. "She'll be alright. but we have to get her to help right now."

"Our friends are right over--"

Alex looked back the way he'd come, or the way he'd thought he'd come - he saw the tree, but he couldn't see Noah or any of the Redencion contingent still hanging around.

He turned himself so he could loop Lana's arm around his shoulders, and he struggled up to his feet with her hanging over him. That was enough for him to realize he couldn't carry her far on his own, whatever visions of heroic chivalry he'd had galloping through his head. She was only an inch shorter than he was, and he... yeah. He really needed to start working out.

"Where can we go?"

With each step towards Spectre and the girl, Void became more tangible until by the time he reached Lana's side, he was completely solid. He didn't waste any time with introductions and, before Alex could object, gathered Lana up in long, lanky arms and began to fade from view.

“Parking lot. Now.”

While Void took care of Lana, Spectre urged the young man along gently but firmly. "This way.."

"I'm Spectre. That was Void, he will take care of her. We are here to help you, but please try to do as we say until we are out of this mess." She led him from the fray in the middle of the, now ruined, rally across the crowded street, sensing where her invisible partner was heading. Inside the garage, she had only to follow the drops of green splashing onto the cement floor to know where to follow.

Minutes later they were on their way out of the parking garage with the man at the gate waving them through with a smile. "Have a nice day!", he called, even though just across the street mayhem was breaking loose.

In the backseat of the jacked SUV, Spectre had Lana's head in her lap, keeping pressure on her wounds.

Stern needed a plan. He needed a way to get everyone to stop. Flaring hadn't worked before, and it was too much work to knock everyone out, even if he was light-jumping.

The whole thing stank. People were out of control, shot, wounded, hopefully none dead. All he knew was that if this situation could be used to make his unit look bad, it would.

"Shield, it looks like Vanguard got what they came for. They didn't need to do it like that, though. Jeez. When Vanguard takes Geryon away, I want crowd control on this area. Keep it enclosed as best you can, so we can get these people uncollared and on their way."

"Hu, Ghost, are you all right?"

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Chris Wilde

"Are you okay?"

---

That was a question that didn't come with an easy answer. The shorthand was no. No, because other than the fact that they'd managed to snag a parking spot with relative ease and hadn't forgotten the cooler at home in the rush to leave, nothing had gone okay. Everyone was gone, blown to who the hell knew where, and now even the oranges were just a flattened mess somewhere back in the fray.

But she nodded anyway, trying to catch her breath and stay rational. Scott jerked like a wind-rocked hammock between her hands and Chris's and it was an almost divine surge of relief to finally break through and set the teen down at the edge of the grass, within the reinforced safe zone of a medical team that had set up on-site.

"The kids..." Tess battled back a claustrophobic rise in her windpipe. "I was with a group from the House, they're still - fuck, I don't know where they are, I have to call Anna, shit, shit..."

Chris didn't look like he knew what she was talking about and of course he didn't. They hadn't seen each other in years and the current circumstances didn't provide a background for a genuine reunion.

While the paramedics tended to the limp-limbed Scott, Tess whipped out her cell phone and dialed Aimee and then Alex, the connection clicking over to voicemail on both.

Where r u?

Normally it was an almost physical assault to use text speech but time was of the essence. Tess punched in Anna's number next and pressed the phone to her ear, reaching out to squeeze Chris's hand.

"Thanks, I don't... if you hadn't been there..." she trailed off as the radio holstered on his hip crackled to life. Tess nodded at it and hugged her stomach anxiously as she waited for her call to go through. "Go ahead, go ahead. We're okay."

"Tess?" Anna put her phone to her ear, holding it in place with her shoulder. "What is going on? There are all sorts of -"

She looked across the table at her older brother who was distracting Jamie from the televisions over their heads that someone had helpfully tuned to the breaking news. No sound of course, making it hard to know what was happening. Anna clicked her mouth shut, letting Tess actually talk.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Stern

"Hu, Ghost, are you all right?"

---

It felt wrong to leave Tess alone in that state, but she knew as well as I did that there was work to be done. One last fleeting moment of misguided chivalry, I hesitated, eyes fixed on that friendly face from the past, my conscience weathering a battle of conflicted duties. Steeling myself, I nodded, and disappeared into the crowd.

"Ghost here. I'm good, captain. I've got eyes on a minor altercation to the south. I'm moving in."

"It's a mess, Anna, everything fell apart and there's... there's guys with riot gear and tranq guns attacking the crowd; they took Noah down and hauled him off for no reason - I don't know who they are but they're not LAPD, they seem to be pissing them off, too." Tess's voice was strained and tight and her eyes never stopped sifting through the crowd in the desperate hope that one of the jostling faces would be a recognizable one.

"Scott's hurt, we're at the EMT tent on the south end of the park right now," her grip on the cell tightened instinctively. "Anna: I can't find the rest of the kids."

Her heart thudded at Tess' words, and she looked over at Paolo who was watching her face carefully as he paid the bill. Jamie was putting their hardly eaten meals into to go boxes. "Everyone has cell phones, you text them and let them know where you are and tell them to meet at the van. That was the plan anyway. I'll head there with Jamie and Paolo will come meet you and Scott. It will be okay."

Even as she said it, Anna wasn't sure it would be okay, but it was important that she keep Tess calm. And herself. The baby kicked at her side, a faint pressure that quickly faded. "Just stay with Scott. He's covered under our insurance, make sure they know that if they decide he needs to be transported."

"Okay. Okay, yeah." Tess didn't sound sure, but they ended the phone call and Anna nodded to her brother.

"Did you get that?"

"Si," he said, signing the bill with a flourish and getting to his feet. "Where am I going?"

"EMT tent at the south end of the park. Tess is there with Scott - you've seen their pictures I think, Jamie was showing you on the phone earlier - I have to go to where we parked the van and see if anyone showed up there."

They left the noisy restaurant behind them and Paolo made sure she took a long route back to the parking lot - one where there wasn't a chance of her getting mixed up with any of the chaos from the rally. Ronnie was at the van, hopping from one foot to the other, a text from Aimee came in shortly after that, informing her she'd been spirited away by her friend Ginny and was on her way home.

Anna texted Tess to let her know about Ronnie and Aimee. It was going to be a long ride home if they couldn't find Alex or Lana, but leaving without them seemed impossible.

In the end Scott was deemed fit to go home, and Paolo convinced her to take the kids they had back to Los Santos. He would stay and look for Alex at the park, talk to the LAPD officers there and see what he could find out.

The ride home was quiet.

"No." Veronica stated coldly, and huffed. She felt so hamstrung, unable to retaliate with her full skillset against these... she was too angry to find a word. This rally actually had a chance, and those pieces of filth ruined it. The 3-11 and anti-mutant groups, they could have handled. But fucking Vanguard had only one agenda and didn't give a shit about anything but arresting a big bad mutie. Stern came through on the radio, making sure his people in the field were in one piece. Credit to the LAPD for a change, they actually served and protected today.

"I'm fine." She replied, and took another look at her quiet comrade. "You should arrest every Vanguard soldier present for inciting a riot and endangering the public." Veronica let her hand off the radio. Hot tears filled her eyes.

While his body waged war upon the sedative in his veins, he studied Veronica, surprised by her tears. Something stirred within him, a vicarious rush of anger which helped cleared his mind and turned his resolve to stone.

"Let's do it."

He struggled to his feet with the help of the car behind him, and secured a hand on Veronica's arm:

"Vanguard has a new weapon. They used it on Geryon. It was like something from a horror movie. We should check it out."

He gave a slight nod, gesturing at one of Vanguard's stragglers across the street, who was busy snapping a baton against the legs of fleeing mutants. On his hip there hung an oversized tranquilizer gun. A thin smile stretched across Mute's face:

"I see brutality. Do you?"

She wasn't scared, just... angry. Veronica made it a point to be detached. But this... this was a disgrace. A big, thick spit in the face of every American. The anger washed over and faded, burned out like the first match dropped into lighter fluid.

"I can't. Not now." She pointed at the badge. Mute looked a bit shocked.

"Today is a write-off. I'm going to get these bastards, but it's gonna be on my terms."

Mute relinquished his grip on Officer Hu and stood, finally, under his own power. Swaying slightly, he watched the lone Vanguard goon regroup with the horde of soldiers piling into a riot van, it was an opportunity missed. He understood, however, the last thing they wanted to do was blow their respective covers before hundreds of eye witnesses and news cameras. In his ears, Veronica's voice sang like cold steel, he liked this woman.

"Our terms. I'll be in touch, V."

He gave her a parting glance that was at once playful and deathly black, and limped away.