2014.03.22 - There She Is, Miss America, There She Is

It's Friday night. Jocelyn didn't always end up in some rough area of the city, but she happened to today. She'd been following up on something unpleasant, and had spoken with one of her contacts. She did have to do some detective work due to her job with X-Factor. Of course, there were more than a few illegal things happening around here. Most of that, Jocelyn didn't worry too much about. You couldn't stop every criminal deal, and she'd learned that dealing with the kingpins was far more effective.
Of course, about two hundred feet away, there's a mugging going on. An elderly gentleman who wandered into the wrong part of town is getting beaten on in an alley by about five or so "young gentlemen". They're armed with pipes and are not-so-subtly demanding money, mocking the old man, and all-in-all being general ruffians.
Just another night in Hell's Kitchen.
Some distance above, the air sizzles for a moment and vibrates as a star appears in mid-air. It is your standard five-pointed star and it casts a light of its own- before shattering into sparks that become nothingness. Out of that hole in the air comes a blur of red, white and blue that lands, themed sneakers first, on the pavement, sending bits of concrete flying.
The young woman nestles one fist in an open hand, and cracks her knuckles. "Are you really that stupid? Nobody told you that this was a bad idea?" she asks bluntly of the five 'gentlemen'. This was the danger of dipping out to other universes to indulge in her favorite Korean barbeque restaurant, which didn't exist in this dimension.
Who was that, a young Captain America, in female form? Jocelyn moves closer, but doesn't intervene yet, instead slipping around a corner to observe with her sight. The young woman's energy signature would be eass enough for her to distinguish, and she knew a shortcut to possibly get to the injured person.
"Nice pyrotechnics show, kid. Get that at the costume shop, Captain?" one of the men sneers as he steps forward, brandishing a pipe. "Didn't nobody ever tell you to mind your own business around here?" He takes a swing at the costumed woman. Nobody said he was bright!
Miss America only raises an eyebrow as the pipe is swung at her. There is a loud *clonk* and America Chavez's hazel eyes turn on the man as, after sustaining the blow and even bending the pipe a little with her head, she reaches up and bends the pipe all the way with one hand, seemingly without effort.
"My turn."
The star-spangled sneaker comes up towards the man's groin- granted, it was only at a very fraction of the strength that she was capable of using, but it wasn't likely that he'd get up anytime soon from that if it connected.
"Who's next?" she asks, one corner of her mouth turning up into a smirk as she advances towards the other men.
The man goes flying, and he's out of the fight. Two other men glance at each other and turn to run back down the alley, turning the corner and getting out of sight. They want nothing to do with this chick.
The other two, however, advance. One of them draws out a pistol from the coat, while the other one appears to grow another foot in height and another foot in thickness. The thick guy wordlessly takes a swing at the young woman, and his blow would be MUCH more powerful than the one that the guy with a pipe had.
"We're not just your ordinary folk either, girlie," the gun-wielder says, letting his buddy do the work for now.
The smirk turns into a full smile at the reveal.
"Good, I was afraid I was going to be bored."
The woman doesn't move and takes the full blow, which apparently sends her flying and into a set of crates at the end of the alleyway with a satisfying *crunch* of wood.
The man fires his gun at Miss America repeatedly, and the bullets fly towards the woman, each one splitting into three separate bullets as they do so. They're moving fast and are deadly accurate, aimed right for the woman's heart. Meanwhile, the big guy jumps up and forward, bringing his fists down in an attempt to smash the young woman into the pavement.
"We do live to entertain children like you".
From where the other two men ran, there's the sound of some punches being thrown, and the bodies of the two men can be seen flying into the wall, where they slump to the ground, knocked out for the moment. Apparently they ran into a little bit of trouble.
The teen seems to be pummeled by the blows- is she unconscious? Until one tan hand comes up and pushes -hard- against the other's fist, stopping it as she now uses her full strength. She quickly stands up and looks down at her jacket, where bullet-holes have ruined the material. Yet she doesn't seem to be bleeding.
"Do you know how much getting these costs me?" She asks with irritation and stomps hard on the ground with all of her strength, causing a massive tremor that spreads out from the impact point.
The tremor heads towards the two metahuman bad guys. The gunman is knocked flat on his back, but the super strong guy is able to withstand it, and reaches out to try and grapple with Miss America Chavez. He's very, very strong, about on the level that the young girl is, and now it's just a matter of him taking the girl seriously as a physical threat, or at least he believes so.
"Don't care about your designer clothes. You're ruining our night," the strongman growls.
If the woman is paying attention to the rest of her surroundings, she'll notice that despite the tremor being strong enough to shake buildings, it seems to only go right down the alley, not impacting the buildings at all for some reason.
Miss America Chavez narrows her eyes- her tremors had never worked that way before, but she puts it down to a different universe. Maybe. She's too busy grappling with the large creature.
"Your night isn't the only thing," she says, as she takes off upwards, flying at top speed while keeping her iron grip on the man just as he was holding on to her. Could he fly? Imagine the fun we'll have finding out together.
Up in the air, Miss America Chavez might see a young redhead sneaking up on the gunman. A quick strike to the back of the man's head lays him out. She lifts the man up and puts him in a pile with the other two thugs.
Meanwhile, the tall man looks...a little alarmed at being flown up into the air. "I would say put me down, but that would be stupid," the man says. So instead he tries to bring his feet up and push off with all his might, trying to launch himself away from the woman and catch onto a building. If he succeeds, he'll try to get away, abandoning his 'friends', and likely send Miss America Chavez flying off in some other direction unexpectedly. If not, he'll probably tear a lot of muscles if the woman manages to hang into him.
So there was help-- good. The man tries to free himself- and America lets him, just to see what he's capable of. As predicted, she is sent in a completely random direction, but her flight is extremely precise- it only takes her two sharp turns to head back towards the man.
She had been clocked at a top speed of 50,000 miles per hour... outrunning her is not going to be much of a possibility. The teen accelerates, brow furrowing and the right corner of her lips rising, both hands in front of her as a fist as she aims herself like a living projectile towards the mutated goon as he went for one of the buildings.
It wasn't like Jocelyn really had much to do. She was mostly just on clean-up duty here. She hadn't even changed into her costume, figuring she could explain herself with some basic martial arts skills.
Until she realizes the man needs healing. Well, crap. Jocelyn heads over to the man and starts medicing him with her healing powers. He's already unconscious, so fixing the wounds would be easy. And he wouldn't have to ask questions about who was doing what. Fortunately, her healing abilities weren't super flashy.
As for Big Angry Man, he turns and attempts to strike the woman's fist with his own. However, he doesn't account for the additional force generated from the speed, and he screams in pain and falls from the building he'd latched onto, striking the ground and passing out, likely having shattered the bones in his arms from the impact.
The teen lands on the street next to the thug and checks for vital signs. When she verifies that he's not gravely injured, she looks around and sees... the redhead doing something with the man. She observes quietly to see what it is. In case she was part of the super-powered gang and she had to swat her away.
The elderly man's breathing evens out, and he seems to be more comfortable. More regular and more normal, really. It's hard to tell from here, and given the wounds were likely covered, for the most part, by the man's clothing, it's hard to tell just how much healing happened. But something good did obviously happen.
The redheaded girl straightens up and looks over at the obvious superhero. "Nice work," Jocelyn compliments to the teen who was just a shade younger than Jocelyn, though she couldn't know that from this distance.
America walks towards Jocelyn, hands in the pockets of her jacket. Which she'd have to replace. Damn.
"Same to you," she says evenly, looking at the man. He does not look as bad as he did when she first arrived. "I'm not asking any questions. The big guy down there could probably use some of what you do. I don't care if he never plays tennis again," she says, "But just the same, it would be good if he's alive by the time they come to take him away."
"Mutant healer," Jocelyn responds. There were other abilities, but that was the relevant one. "Don't think I've seen you around before. New in town?" Jocelyn asks. She strolls over to the big guy and gives him...a little healing. He'll live. But he's going to stay knocked out for a little bit. "Afraid I don't keep any extra-strong chains on me to tie these people up. Hopefully they'll stay knocked out long enough for the authorities to arrive," the teen comments. Or whichever hero group got summoned to take them into custody, given their powers.
America clenches her fists. "They'll stay down. One way or the other." She puts one of her sneakers on top of the large thug, indicating that she intends to stay here until the proper teams arrive. But probably not stay longer than that, especially for questions. "New, yeah, you could say that. I'm Miss America," she says. "And you go by?..."
"Flarebright". It's the name Thor had given her, and one she did use on occassion. Especially when she didn't need to give out her normal codename or real name. Jocelyn offers a nod as the woman puts her foot on the thug. "Good. Figured you'd have it under control, keeping them around. This part of town gets stupidly drunk often enough that usually this sort of stuff only happens with non-powered people". Which weren't too difficult to deal with, when Jocelyn ran across them.
"So who are the players here?" America says, looking at 'Flarebright'. "The Avengers?" she tries. There'd been Avengers in many dimensions as often as not. Maybe she'd luck out and Stark would be somewhere getting hot tubs of money instead of paying heroes to join his club.
There's a tilt of her head. "You're not from this time period, or this reality, or both. Right?" Jocelyn had run into...a lot of people. "You got the Justice League. Avengers. The Titans. Legion of Super-Heroes is another. Group of heroes from the future who got dumped here. The Young Allies and the Infinite are active, as are the Fantastic Four". Nope. Not mentioning the X-Men here. "It's a pretty diverse when it comes to the heroing community around these parts".
"Something like that," America says, pursing her lips slightly. A lot of groups, some sounded familiar like the Avengers, of course... but the Justice League? Never heard of it. Young Allies-- not the Young Avengers? This reality was getting interesting. "Sounds like it. You should go and get to a phone. Just to make sure someone /is/ coming." And to keep her from asking questions. From what she said, it sounded like the girl was familiar with dimensional and time travelers. She wondered if she was going to run into someone she kew.
"Already on it". Jocelyn pulls out a phone and sends a text to the authorities. Routed, of course, through her YAL app for security, along with useful security bonuses from being a phone the X-Men gave her. Yeah, cracking it would be hard for anyone. "They don't have cell phones where you're from?" Because, really, any reality that didn't have cell phones was officially weird. And backwards.
"I never bothered with them." Just like she didn't bother with that Yamblr nonsense. Another question comes to the brunette's mind, "How does the police deal with all of this? Heroes and mutants and the sort?" She remembered the registration all too well. Was glad to have been 'elsewhere' during a good part of that mess in that reality.
"There are registered heroes. Something like this, they'll probably call in some help, or have some drug to keep them knocked out until they can transport them to a cell, or something like that". Or they might ask the hero who did the work to help out. "As for mutants...well, mutants are still discriminated against. Humanity still fears mutants around here. So I'll be making my exit shortly". Because mutants don't like having conversations with officers. Too much distrust of them.
The more dimensions change, the more dimensions stay the same, it seemed.
"Then I'd grab your picnic basket and skip out while you can still pretend you're heading to grandmother's house," America says. "I'll be here long enough to get these packed up."
It seems like she was going to have to keep an eye on how things were going, especially this registration.
"Fair enough. Have fun chatting with the officers," Jocelyn says. And she turns and heads down the alley and around the corner, disappearing from view, leaving American to deal with the paperwork.
Welcome to this reality. Paperwork, like taxes, is eternal.
Category:Log