2013-02-08: Crazy Meets Martian

Downtown Salem wasn't exactly the largest, busiest place on earth, but it was large and busy enough to have a bunch of people milling and driving around in it in the middle of the afternoon. The skies were clear, and it was a beautiful sunny day. Perhaps that was why Ruth Aldine had chosen to come here. Had chosen to walk down the street, blindfold on over her eyes, in a sleeveless t-shirt and jeans with a ripped hole in the knee on this unusually warm day. Must have been a warm front that had blown in.
An hour ago she had left the bus, politely ignoring the stares, and the thoughts that went with them, of the other passengers, exited onto Main and 22nd, and proceeded to a corner of the intersection. And then she'd stood there, facing the diagnol opposite corner, stuffed her hands in her pockets... and waited. And waited. ...Annnnnd waited.
It's then that the disturbance starts. Not some underground beast clawing its way up, no explosions from a nearby bank, not even a high speed chase. No, the disturbance is an eighteen-year-old girl who, up until now, had been silent beginning to scream.
"STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!"
It's the kind of scream that goes on and on until one is out of breath as Blindfold throws her head back, hurls her arms out, palms up as if she expected to actually halt everything in the intersection. The cars, for the most part, ignore her, other than a few drivers turning to stare. The pedestrians waiting to cross or for the bus are startled, but other than strange looks and a few choruses of 'shaddup', life goes on around the protesting teenager.
　
New York, the city that never sleeps! They really should, they must be pooped! There's frission and energy in the hustle and bustle that still thrilles the Martian. Nope, Mars never had anything like Times Square, or Coney Island, or the bodega. Sheer excitement keeps a lot of homesickness at bay. On top of it, bit by bit, Megan's started to feel like it was her own home too. That's pretty neat.
Salem's not her stomping ground, and thus Megan wanders main street looking a touch lost. She wanted to drop in and surprise that nice Kitty girl she met, because humans love surprises. Like those others on the street, who are currently surprised to see a young green woman poking at a cell phone and muttering at it in some alien language. The Quest for Surprises gets put on hold when that scream stops. "Everybody! Stop!" she cries, waving her arms as she rushes through the crowd towards the girl with the blindfold. "Stop, humans!" She crouches down. "What should we stop?"
The humans seem just as nonplussed about a green girl trying to get them to 'stop' as they are about a blind girl. Yeah, there's a few shouts of 'muties' from a car of frat boys that drives by entirely too fast. As soon as she approaches, Blindfold's head whips around like the Martian was some kind of beacon she'd somehow been able to see. She finally drops her arms form their held-out 'stop' positions.
"I have tried. Storm is coming. Lightning with no thunder. Sparks. Yes. Coming soon. They will die." Blindfold points across the intersection at... the Salem City Courthouse. "Pardon? In a storm. You may stop it. Sorry."
Though she's apparently babbling about nothing, she's looking right at the Martian female with a curious frown. "He is not fire, but we will cause it." By now a pair of cops are staring from the courthouse steps across the street curiously, and the people waiting on the bus are beginning to murmur amongst themselves such things as 'What is going on?', 'Some kind of street performance?', and 'Crazy bitch.' Ruth seems unperterbed by the comments.
Megan's eyes go wide. "Me?" she asks. She turns her head to look at the courthouse. It's nice. Park. Columns. Clock at the top. Very Twin Pines, and utterly lacking in the appearance of impending doom. "I...um..." she slides up next to Ruth and wraps an arm about her shoulders, "Fire?" she asks with distinct concern, swallowing hard. There's a sudden harshness in her tone and her free arm jolts out. "Don't call names!" she tells one of the commenters.
"He is not fire, but he will cause it." Ruth repeats herself, barely reacting as Megan's arm goes around her. "It is happening, just like then. Pardon? Yes. In a dream. They will not listen. They will not go. Three will die, the rest will be saved." The dark-haired young woman turns in place, pointing a finger up at the top of the five-story building behind them. It used to be an apartment, but now it's been condemned and was currently awaiting reconstruction.
"It is soon. Sorry. It is now."
Street lamps which weren't even on begin to shudder as a small sound of humming emanates from them. Cars die in the street and lightbulbs pop and spark. On the rooftop appears a man, though on closer inspection he's really little more than a boy. Perhaps nineteen, with red hair and clothing in tatters, looking like it had been patched together only to be shredded and then sewn back up a dozen times after that. His face was scarred and the look in his eyes was a little off, but not as off as that grin.
Electricity crackles from his hands as he begins muttering a low laugh. "Thought ya could kill ME, did'ja? N' gonna try ta kill MY brother? I DON'T F***ING THINK SO!" He screeches, raising an arm as a chaotic blue arc of energy erupts from the limb and streaks towards the front of the courthouse.
　
The Martian nods. "You said that, I just don't know what it means," she says, crinkling her brow. "We could go somewhere and talk and maybe get some delicious coffee?" she suggests. She leans in towards Ruth, stretching her arm an extra bit to try to to nudge at her blindfold. "You could take this off and...." 
*ZAP*
That'll get her attention. People scream in surprise and Megan shares that surprise. She ducks behind Ruth and comes out the other side morphed into full costume. "Everybody stay back!" she declares with a surprisingly loud voice and a wide gesture of her arms. Megan's already floating, and in a moment Miss Martian streaks over towards the big redhead guy. "Stop that!" she chides him, making a loop around him. "Nobody's going to kill anybody! Especilaly you!"
The lightning bolt hits the front doors of the Courthouse, tearing the heavy wooden portals right off of their hinges and causing a medium-sized explosion that fills the steps leading into the building with smoke. Screams come from inside as the heat from the electrical arc flash ignites wood and cloth decorations.
Ruth doesn't move as Megan does her transformation trick, flying up towards the crazed red-headed person. She, of course, had already seen some of this happen, just not all of it. She moves towards the doors to the abandoned building the male was standing on, picking up a piece of rebar to try and pry the rusting lock off.
"They ALREADY killed me, girliiiIIIIIIE!" The red-head shrieks. "Strapped me to tha chair and tried to fry me, but I was simpley REBOOOOOORNNNNRRRRRRGGGGHHHH!" His monologue cuts off as he thrusts a hand downwards, drawing more electricity up through the condemned building, forcing it out of wall outlets and breaker panels.
"NOW DIIIIIE!" And with that, he unleashes a potent portion of that energy in an electric arc or short bursts of electricty that he sweeps after the flying Miss Martian like an AA gun shooting at an airplane.
"You look really alive!" Miss Martian says, finishing her loop around the guy. << Um, hello, miss blindfold girl? >> the Martian's voice in Ruth's head. << Don't be startled, it's just head-talking telepathy. I'm not looking into anything, I promise! How'd you know all this would happen? You're not in on it, are you? >> The eletricty jumps out at her. Shifting aside's her first reaction, but the electricity arcs towards her. "No fair!" she declares, speeding up and then phasing out slowly. Not fast enough, though. The electricity hits the half-phased Martian, sending her catapulting back to collapse to the street with a heavy thunk and a dent in the concrete.
"S'cuz I can't be killed! I'M IMMORAL!" He probably meant 'immortal'. As for Ruth, only silence answers Miss Martian. Something blocks her from easily getting into the young mutant's mind. It's too... chaotic, almost incomplete. A broken, fractured mind of which very much sense can't be made, about as alien a mental landscape as Mars would be to a human.
*KRA-CHINK* The weakened metal lock surrenders to the makeshift prybar about the same time that Miss Martian hits the concrete below. The dark-haired young woman grunts as she pushes open the door leading into the dark. "Through here. From below, pulled into darkness. Through-and-through, surprise attack." Ruth enters the dark building, pointing upwards to the roof, approximately below where the red-haired man on the roof is railing.
And he's up there, chortling madly at his apparent success and unleashing more blasts of energy in the direction of the courthouse, scouring stone and concrete with the forces of his blasts as people run screaming. "I'm commin' for ya, bro! THEY AIN'T GONNA FRY YA!"
　
Megan hits and it knocks her around rather hard. She sits up slowly. "Owie," she says, floating up and then getting to her feet. A quick green streak, not as quick as she really should be. "Down there?" she asks. Miss Martian nudges Ruth's shoulder. "Your mind's very confusing," she points out. "Are you sure you're okay? Are you a telepath too?" she asks. It /would/ explain how she could tell things were about to happen. Megan's learned that some human's with that ability aren't as scrupulous as she is about its use. "I'll go down there if you do?" she says, with a deeply wrinkled brow. "I think he's trying to break his brother out of prison," she says, a beat behind, mayhap.
"Yes." Ruth say simply to the bit about her mind being confusing. "Yes." She says again. "Yes." A third time. Then she points at Megan, very deliberately, and then up at the ceiling. She pumps a fist in the air, the other by her side, lifting up a knee as if she intended to fly up through the roof. Except, of course, Ruth can't fly.
"From below, through-and-through. Surprise attack." A pause. "Sorry. I can be more clear." She points up at the ceiling again. "Go up."
The man on top is still trying to bring down the courthouse, which is now on fire, alarms going off and people screaming. Cops and security personnel have exited, trying to shoot at the criminal, but with a wave of his hands he manages to electrify their guns, causing most of them to explode as the gunpowder in their magazines discharge.
"His brother has already been moved." Ruth says simply. "Hurry. Two are dead, a third will follow."
　
Ah-hah! She gets it. She beams in a wide smile. Miss Martian phases out and goes shooting up through the ceiling. She has to be careful to target it right, and as she rockets through her vision cuts through the layers ahead, finding the man's zapping chargy body. The Martian pulls through the roof and passes through the eletric guy himself. At the last minute she becomes solid again, just in time for her arms to catch him under the shoulders and lift him up. "Hi again big meanie," she says. "You've hurt a lot of people today and that's very super not nice!" she says, as she keeps flying higher and higher.
"AHAHAHA- Huh- WHAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!?" Very quickly, the maniacal laughing and electrical surges shooting out of the male's palms stop, and quickly turns into a scream of surprise and fear. Up, up, and away he goes, toted along like excess baggage by the young Martian. He's struggling and kicking, even as he's screaming, "AHHHHG, F**KER! DON'T YOU DROP ME!"
Not the most mentally-stable individual.
Ruth, well, Ruth merely walks out of the condemned building, her thumbs hooked into the jeans of her pockets as fire and police sirens come roaring around the bend. She 'watches', or at least faces, the burning courthouse that's billowing smoke as the fire truck pulls up.
Unfortunately for Electric Chair, or whatever he called himself, he's already spent most of his electrical energy, and Miss Martian is taking him far away from anywhere he can get more! With a last attempt to get free, despite the fact that falling would probably mean his death, a fact that doesn't seem as if it's sunk in yet, he surges the electricity through his body. It's the not the same strength as what he was blasting earlier, more of a sharp sting compared to that.
　
"Ow! Quit it!" Miss Martian tells 'Electric Chair'. "You're just being super mean now," she says. "Now you're going to stop that. I'm going to take you to the police and you're going to apologize a whole lot, okay?" she asks. She takes the two of them just a bit higher and moves over the courthouse plaza. "See what you did!?" she declares. At least the firemen are here. Megan likes firemen, quite a bit, mostly because they go do what she really, really doesn't want to.
"FSCK YOU!" The psychotic death-row escapee shouts at the Martian. Definitely not language a young lady should hear. "I LOVE what I did! Sentence me ta DEATH, will they!? Just for icepicking some broad and her brats? I needed tha money, I'm a victim of the system!" He tries struggling some more, but with Megan's superstrength, it's all for naught and she's easily able to hold him if she wishes.
"HA! Yeah, bring me down there so I can juice up again! Then I can fry ya and finish what I started, AAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAA! ...Dammit, put me down so I can kill ya already!" Of course, given his apparent ability to absorb electrical power in the vicinity, putting him closer to the streets would be a bad idea.
While he's conscious, at least.
　
"Just because other people do bad things doesn't mean /you/ can do bad things," Megan tells the screaming man. He struggles and kicks and she considers this. "Okay!" she declares. The Martian lets the man go.
He falls.
Okay, there's really no way she'd let him fall to his death. A few seconds later she's upside-down too, grabbing his ankle and looking up - down? - at him from around her hanging hair. "You /really/ sure you wanted that?" she asks. "That concrete's reeeeeeally hard."
And then the man is falling, screaming the whole way. Apparently he wasn't as 'immortal' as he was claiming he was. He's flailing, screeching little a little girl, his eyes getting wider and wider and wider as his pitiful, criminalistic life flashes before his eyes. And then he's caught before hitting the sidewalk.
By that time, over the span of those few seconds, he's a gibbering wreck, sobbing and begging to not be dropped onto the concrete. The meta-human response unit of the local police are on scene by now, ready with their power-dampening cuffs to slap them on him and take him away as soon as he's turned over.
Most of the people are out of the courthouse by now and the firemen have hooked into a hydrant and begun to combat the spreading blaze. Judging by the stretchers with bodybags on them, three people were killed in the initial attack, two security guards and a lawyer who'd been entering the stone building to plea her client's case.
Ruth Aldine stands on the sidelines, across the street. Nobody seems to be paying a blind bystander much attention.
　
Humans really don't like falling. Megan would probably judge them more harshly if they could fly. She waves down at the police, only coming in to land nce she meta-unit's arrived and they have the cuffs. Megan puts him down and stays right close until the police get him cuffed. It's just long enough to let her see the stretchers.
And off like a shot. Because she really doesn't want to see that. A redhead steps up next to Ruth, clutching and rubbing her hands. "Why are humans so fragile?" she asks plaintively.
The electrically-charged madman is led away in restraining cuffs, still trembling and sobbing like the freaky little wretch he is. After he's put under close guard in the back of a SWAT van, he's taken off, meanwhile the other prisoners were being held at the courthouse awaiting trial are likewise herded up and rounded off to another county jail.
The dark-haired mutant doesn't even seem all that surprised at the sudden introduction of someone next to her. At first, she doesn't even seem to notice that she's been spoken to, watching as the blaze is brought back under control. The courthouse would need extensive renovation, but the flames would not spread to the rest of the town.
Ruth finally turns her head. "Machines." She says simply, as if that was all the explanations needed. "Sorry. Yes. Reliance on machines. Ingenuity. Dominating their environment throughout history with inventions of wood and metal and plastic. Yes. Muscles are no longer required. Ingenuity is."
　
"I feel so bad for them," Megan says, her head dipping down. "Being so nasty doesn't seem very smart to me," she adds. Her eyes crinkle and her shoulders slump further. "Someitimes I don't think I'll ever understand this planet," she says. Her feet shift and she scuffles her shoes on the pavement. "You knew that would happen, yeah? How?"
Ruth Aldine, aka Blindfold, turns away from the scene of the carnage and begins walking away. She leaves it up to Miss Martian whether she's going to follow after her to hear the explanation or not. Besides, she doesn't need to be facing the fire to experience what's happening over there. With her fingers tucked into her beltloop, she ducks her head down so her hair partially hides the blindfold over her eyes.
"It's not. For him." A pause. "I saw it in a dream. I can't help but see it. I see everything, all the time. Pardon? I don't always want to. It wasn't always. Different is how it used to be."
And then she stop walking abruptly, turning towards Megan with a quizzical tilt of her head. "I need to go home. Will you bring me?"
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