2014.05.12 - Impromptu Renaissance Faire

Late afternoon. Central Park. Leaves are starting to show in the trees, the day is sunny with no cloud cover and the park is busy with crowds of people taking advantage of the Spring weather.
Gabriel is in the process of exchanging money for a couple of hot dogs, fully loaded with every kind of topping the vendor has on his cart. Once the exchange is done Gabriel heads back to Phantasma and offers one of the dogs to her, "New York's finest. So, how've you been since the Dark Eternity debacle?"
Phantasma is sprawled upside down on a park bench. Or rather, her legs dangle over the back, her back is sprawled across the seat, and her hair dangles down near the floor as she boredly watches Gabriel getting snackage. Her eyes occasionally dart to crowds of people, sometimes uneasily and other times mischievously, but she was behaving herself... for now.
As Gabe comes back, she slowly rights herself again. The only hint that she's not entirely solid comes as her hair or clothes 'clip' through the park bench, but otherwise she does an admirable job moving about. Holding up a hand, she takes the hot dog firmly, since she's had to many cases of people dropping things THROUGH her hands, but for now sits back peering at it. The question of Dark Eternity has gotten her defensive, as is clear just from expression. Last time after all, she sort of had a... one could call it a bad reaction.
"Huh? Oh! I.." she starts, eyes shifting about. "I've been fine. Woke up in a hotel... stumbled home.. N-nothing big.". She couldn't be any more transparent if she started fading to invisible.
Vasilisa Zhenkov, as the faceless assassin would currently call herself if anyone were to bother to ask, had only just arrived in Metropolis, on a plane coming from Moscow. According to any records anyone would have bothered to check, she was a Russian-born American citizen, working for a major company in Washington, and was currently traveling... which she apparently did quite often.
Today, Miss Zhenkov was moving through Central Park, moving at a relatively slow pace, looking at her surroundings rather lazily... though a trained eye might catch on that she was paying particular attention to a man about twenty feet behind Gabriel and Phantasma, without getting so close to be noticed. The man didn't seem to be paying much mind to her at the moment though.
She stopped a few feet away from the pair on the park bench before clicking her tongue and brushing at her skirt, at some unfortunate blemish in the dark material that apparently only she could see. The man she was following had stopped, and had begun speaking with another man whom he apparently knew, forcing Vasilisa to pause for now, easily within earshot of Gabriel and Phantasma.
Hal Jordan takes advantage of the spring weather. Dressed in a 'Ferris Air' T-Shirt and a pair of gray knit shorts he runs down the footpath at a moderate clip. Nearing the hot-dog cart his shorts buzz which stimulates him to check his wrist watch. He taps it with two fingers and holds it near his mouth, "Okay Google, text Carol running will call you soon.."
He slows watching the text scroll across the tiny screen on his watch face. After a moment her frowns, "Okay Google, text Carol... Jesus, never mind..." He slows suddenly just before the hot dog cart and fishes in his pocket pulling out a phone. Wiping his sweaty hand across his shirt he begins to text quickly with one finger. He taps send.
Pacing back and forth now he alternates between looking at his phone and looking to Gabe and Phantasma while breathing heavily, "Hey.." He says breathlessly if they make eye contact with him. He holds up his wrist showing them his watch, "Wayne Mobi-fit. Piece. Of. Crap."
His phone buzzes. He looks back to it and texts again. 
Gabriel returns Hal's, "Hey." then turn to continue his conversation with Phantasma. He opens his mouth to say something but before he can say anything his eyes go wide, quickly followed by bending over with a grunt, as if his stomach had suddenly cramped. "Crap. Not now..."
Without another word to Phantasma or anyone else for that matter he straightens out, hops over the back of the bench he and Phan had been sitting on and disappears into the trees and bushes right behind it.
It's not entirely clear where Joanna comes from. One minute she's not in the park, and the next she's stepping out from behind a particularly girthy tree. Not that she needs a particularly large tree to hide her diminutive frame, but you never can be too careful. Hands stuffed in her pockets Joanna merges into the general flow of humanity, eyeing the New Yorkers carefully (it's not hard to spot a Gothamite like herself) as if she was sizing them up for various qualities known only to herself. When Gabriel makes a mad dash to the business Joanna takes notice, but doesn't think anything of it. New Yorkers are weird.
Hal gets a noncommittal glance from Phantasma, who raises the hot dog to her mouth and opens wide, only for something to happen to her friend. Her brow goes up quizzically, without actually saying anything or moving the hot dog, only for Gabe to vault the fence and bolt to a tree. Well... She gives a little shrug and takes the first bite of her hot dog, chewing rather slowly.
Now Hal gets more of a once over, with Gabe no longer there to occupy her attention. She starts by looking over his clothes, trying to size up if he's rich or not. She was such a bad girl when unsupervised. Well, he has expensive looking toys anyway. One more glance over her shoulder to see if Gabe was still out of sight, and she puts on a 'friendly' smile. That is to say, cheerful but perhaps a little impish.
"For how much that junk costs, you'd think it could at least work right, na?". Her voice is high, whispy, and... kinda sounds like its coming from further away than it is. Nom! Second bite.
Vasilisa turns her attention away from her skirt long enough to watch Gabriel rush into the trees and bushes before raising a brow and speaking in a thick Russian accent, "I think I will not be eating the hot dogs here..." She shakes her head, and glances at Phantasma and her hot dog for a moment, then at Hal, sizing up the both of them, but for perhaps completely different reasons than what Phantasma was doing it to Hal.
"Perhaps it is broken?" The Russian woman suggests, glancing to Hal's watch. "Or defective... Perhaps you should try a different model?"
She gave one another furtive glance toward the man she was following, eyeing his friend for a moment, then watching as her original target started to walk away. She let it happen. perhaps she wasn't following him to begin with.
Hal returns yet another text and then looks up giving Gabriel a quizzical look as he bounds into the bushes. Putting the phone back in the pocket of his shorts he gives the vendor a sideways look before glancing back to the bushes again as if those two things were somehow connected.
"You'd think." He agrees looking to Phantasma. He glances at the Russian woman with a grin, "I dunno, someone online said they'll get it right in a few patches but for two-hundred bucks.." Shrugging, "..I expected more. Yeah, I know a guy who works for Wayne I think I'll see if I can get him to return it for me." He smiles at that.
"Stay away from the hot dogs." He instructs and with a nod starts to run down the path again.
After Gabriel disappears into the bushes and trees a few seconds go by. And a few more. And a few more.
After about 20 seconds there's some loud rustling comes from the vegetation that was presumably hiding Gabriel then a sapling gets knocked over as a red dragon some fifteen feet or so in length comes out for among the plants and stands behind the bench, neck curving to look down at Phantasma with a bit of a disgruntled expression.
Phantasma seems unconcerned by the repeated warnings, and Garbiel's own plight, slowly taking another bite and chewing long. She eyes Hal one more time as he turns to keep jogging, she seems to wrestle with something in her head. Whichever side wins, she gives a light shrug, followed by a bored wave. The smile has now faded to a neutral look of 'boooored' so commonly found on teenagers today.
While chewing, she pauses to give Vasilisa the once over as well, eyes casually scanning up. Before she finishes her new appraisal though, that dragon comes around the bush and up from behind. As that long neck curves down, she casually tilts her head back. That bored frown starts to curve into something of a mean smile at the disgruntled look.
Lifting her hot dog as though raising a wine class, she repeats "New York's finest!", and takes another large bite.
The Russian woman blinked once, as if unsure exactly what she was seeing when the dragon suddenly popped out of nowhere and turned to look in the direction of the girl on the bench... And then her eyes widened and she took a step back, and then turned her attention back to the man's friend, who had of course also noticed the 15-foot red dragon who had suddenly appeared in Central Park, and really had no desire to stick around. The woman spoke a nasty word in Russian as he started to run from the area... And she saw fit to follow suit. Vasilisa was not a fighter, much less a dragon slayer, she was a normal person -- as far as anyone else was concerned anyway... and she really didn't want that man to get away so quickly, not before she could identify him and figure out where he lived so that she could conduct proper surveillance of him anyway.
"Jesus Christ!" Even though Joanna might try and look like a tough street rat, there's really nothing in her repertoire to prepare her for the sudden experience of a very large dragon. To her credit she doesn't run, but Joanna does inch back and look for the nearest tree in case she needs to take care. "That's a goddamn dragon!" She is also a keen master of the obvious.
So it turns out the dragons have fairly expressive eyebrows. Which everyone learns when Red turns to look at the girl yelling about the 'goddamn dragon' and raises an eyebrow in a way that in a human would say 'really?'. He then turns back to where Gabriel dropped his hot dog and extends his neck down to daintily eat the hot dog, all in one bite.
Red completely ignores the pandemonium he's causing as people start seeing him. They react the way any normal, rational human would: by screaming and running. If they're 20 or over. Most of the 20 and under crowd pulls out cellphone and start snapping pictures or recording video with one person saying, "How much you want to bet it eats her? I'm going to make a killing with this video!"
Phantasma seems as unconcerned, read `bored`, as ever. Until the pandemonium ensues. Then that cruel smile makes a comeback. She eyes the other two, closer people, including one of them bolting. This gets a laugh. "You sure know how to liven the place up Gabe. Here I thought this would be boring." A gentle one-two pat on Gabe's foreleg, which is really just a light chill more than anything, and she starts eyeing the panicking people.
Her lips actually move, forming the words 'Too poor, too shoddy, has kids...' as she sizes up the panicking hordes. The hordes of camera phones on the other hand... She turns to the video recording young'uns, some older than her, and blows them a kiss.... as she slowly fades from sight until she's vanished. Gabe would hear her whispy voice whisper in his ear 'Be right back', as she heads off to terrorize a few punks.
Joanna Black arches a brow right back at the dragon, though her expression is more of a classic Gothamite 'you lookin' at me, scaly?' than a display of fear at the dragon. However, something about the woman near the dragon, who admittedly fed him a hot dog, draws her attention. Joanna narrows her eyes. She knows the look on Phantasma's face, she's worn it herself. The ghostly girl is looking for marks! When she disappears, Joanna blinks widely. "Oh, shit."
Red Dragon lets out a loud sigh, which comes along with twin jets of smoke coming out of his nostrils. Then he takes a 3 or 4 steps (covering about 40 feet in the process) and snaps the phone out of the hands of the kids that talked about making a killing from his video, striking as fast as a snake a 10th his size would.
The kid stands frozen in fear for a few seconds. Until Red pulls his lips away from his teeth and lets the kid see him slowly crunching his phone to bits, which finally sends him and all the other tweens and 20somes running.
As the teens bolt, a few of them stumble suddenly, or shiver violently. A keen eye would even notice the occasional watch, wallet or ring float in the air momentarily before vanishing from sight. Its not like anybody would notice. When finally the crowd is well away, Phantasma slowly fades back into view, her backpack sagging a little more. With a sulky huff, she says "Oh sure, take all the fun", to her companion, arms crossed in disappointment.
Stretching her arms skyward, she sighs "Oh well..", twisting back and forth to work the kink out of her back. She notices Joanna still there however, and smirks. "Well someone has guts at least..." she mutters to herself, slowly walking towards the woman with a lopsided punkish smile.
"Hey there! You ain't runnin." It was a statement, not a question. The NEXT line was a question. "You a super or somethin?"
Joanna Black folds her arms in reply to Phantasma, once she's confident that her own valuables (such as they are) remain with her. "Nope." She replies, though Joanna does take a glance towards the dragon and its conspicuous destruction of cellular technology. "I'm from Gotham." As if that explains everything that needs explaining. Joanna does glance towards the backpack. "And I don't need a dragon to distract people."
Red Dragon drops his lower jaw and lets his tongue poke out the side of it in a draconic laugh in response to Phantasma. When the young woman's attention shifts to Joanna the dragon follows behind her, making the ground tremble ever so slightly with each step. Once Phantasma starts asking questions his head tilts a bit to the side, a clear expression of curiosity.
Phantasma huffs a little, indeed looking momentarily offended. "I don't NEED 'im, I just ain't lettin' him have all the fun!", she says with a tantrum like STOMP that... oddly... makes no sound. Nor does it seem to disturb the grass she's standing on. "Not that it matters, some SOMEBODY scared everyone off before I could start.", she says accusationally, and eyes her red dragon friend.
Eyeing the place, and noticing that with the exception of Joanna, everybody's cleared out of this section of the park, she gives up the act at last. "Ugh.. You know, I am not to blame if like.. Superman or somethin' show's up.", she says to Gabe, and then starts to 'walk' across the lawn to the abandoned hot dog stand. "Anyone else wan' a second? Doubt he'll mind."
Joanna Black can't help but smirk a little when Phantasma seems offended, but it doesn't last long. She's quick to return to her normal, more impassive expression. Hard Gothamite over here, you know. Joanna does look up at the dragon, which causes her to frown some, and try to edge it around when Phantasma makes a break for the hot dog stand. She seems reluctant to turn her back on the lizard. "I think I'll pass on the hot dog in case Superman shows up. I'm not spending the night in jail with a dragon and a girl who can't even stand in the grass properly because I stole a friggin' hot dog."
Red Dragon huffs at Joanna, covering her in smoke and blowing her hair all about. Then he turns to follow after Phantasma as she mentions the idea of having more hot dogs. Where does a ton and a half dragon eat? Anywhere he wants. As long as Superman isn't around.
Phantasma gives a noncommittal 'shrug' and without particularly caring about appearances anymore, she walks THROUGH the front of the hot dog stand. As though it wasn't even there! Rooting around, she starts getting a few more dogs loaded up, but still glances amused at Gabe. "Y'know, they'll last longer if you aren't all huge.". The comment about her standing in the grass gets another frown, and a look of admirable disdain. Joanna isn't the only Gothamite around. Still, "Suit yourself." comes the reply, and she starts setting about a dozen hot dogs on a tray, in a neat little pyramid, for Gabe.
For herself? "Oh hey! Nacho's!". Seems that's all it takes to brighten her expression, loading up chips into a tub and drowning them in cheese. "So...", she mutters, eyeing Joanna out of the corner of her eye. "There somethin' we kin do for ya then? Or you always hang around the scenes of former mass hysteria."
Joanna Black is caught off guard by the jet of smoke that engulfs her. "Aww c'mon!" She coughs, waving at the smoke and trying to clear it away. She does have to turn her back on the dragon, if just to cough away from the stream of smoke. "Ugh. That's not something I thought would ever happen to me." Joanna says to no one in particular before recovering enough to register Phantasma's question. "It's not that hard, you know." She's cut off by another cough. "Jesus." Not much attention is paid to her hair. "I'm going to smell like smoke all day. Look. You can obviously make parts of your body tangible, you can hold those hot dogs. Just make the soles of your feet tangible. That's all I'm sayin'. I'm being /helpful/. Think of the earth like...a big hot dog."
Red Dragon uses his long neck to lower his head almost to the ground in a clear expression of shame then pops it back up to start taking hot dogs off the pyramid, one by one, even thought he could easily eat all of them in one chomp.
In between hot dogs he follows the two girls' conversation like its a ping-pong match with his tail tip twitching behind him slightly as if he was nothing more than a hugely over-sized cat.
Phantasma raises a brow as she starts getting walking lectures from somebody. "Yeah... walk around cities of explosions and supers and thugs and punks and gunshots an' all, solid. There's a plan.", she says, oozing with thorny sarcasm. "Sound advice from the chick tellin' off a frickin' dra~", she begins, but then sees that pitiful scolded dog expression on Gabe. "Oh come on, you could at least ACT all menacing. Shameful.", comes the retort, but she did have an amused smirk on her face. "In any case, I'm happy bein' who I am thankie. Speakin' a which, don't think we've gotten a name offa ya. I'm Phan, this here's Gabe. How bout you?"
"No. Jesus. God. Did you even listen to me?" Joanna lifts her foot and points at the bottom. "The soles. /The soles/. I mean, only if you don't want someone who actually has their eyes open in this city of idiots to notice you. God. Try and do a nice thing." She huffs and walks over to where Phantasma was fishing hot dogs out of the cart. "I'm not going to tell you my name, I've said too much already. Really, it's been stupid. Phan. Gabe. I'm out." Joanna makes to walk past Phantasma, where she attempts to reach up towards the ghostly girl's backpack and retrieve one of those phones, any will do, by phasing her hand through the container.
Red Dragon demonstrates just how fast a dragon can move, again. This time he pokes Joanna with the tip of a claw in the shoulder, sending her stumbling just enought to miss her attempt at pulling a phone out of Phantasma's backpack. Then he goes right back to the hot dogs, eating the next to last one while glaring a bit at Joanna.
Phantasma says, "It takes concentration to only make part of me solid y'know... ain't gonna waste the effort on it if I don't hafta.", comes her reply, dripping in attitude. Well this was getting heated. Turning over to grab a soda for herself, there's a sudden 'YRK!', and a straightening of her body. Much the same reaction most people get after she walks through them. Joanna would feel a penetrating cold. Like she plunged her arm through a waterfall of ice water... only it doesn't stop at the skin. No, it penetrates to muscle and bone.
Joanna falls away before getting to the backpack itself, but it doesn't stop the reaction. "Oy!" comes an affronted cry as Joanna walks past, rearing about, but not really making any action or speech beyond that. Just the prototypical Gotham expression of 'Whats your problem?' Still, seeing her stumble about like that gets Phan to smirk. "See.. now thats why its easier t'just stay ghost.", she says, sounding satisfied."
"Ah, fuck!" Joanna exclaims when Gabe pushes her. Once again caught off-guard by the dragon (not that she would have done much), the cold penetrating deep to her bones captures Joanna's attention before she's fighting for balance. To her credit, she does not fall, but there is a good amount of stumbling. "Ghost. Right." She rubs her hand. "That explains it. Ghosts and dragons...Didn't expect a friggin' ren faire in central park today..." Joanna keeps walking, more or less muttering to herself at this point.
Red Dragon sighs as he chews on his last hot dog then waves a claw in front of Phantasma to get her attention. Once he does he sits back on his haunches and uses the same claw to mime using a phone by putting it up the the area where a human would have an ear, all its digits closed in except for the first and last. He then points at Joanna and watches Phantasma expectantly...
 
Phantasma gives a flustered roll of her eyes, and throws her hands up. "Some people..." she mutters to Gabe. Of course, the teenage punk is never going to assume SHE erred in any way. "Telling me how to be a ghost... who's she think she.. What?!" comes the admittedly overly aggressive response to Phan trying to get her attention. She glances to Gabe's pantomiming, then back at Joanna, then simply shakes her head and says "No... I didn't grab her's. Pah, not worth the time, damn.." and she's off muttering again. No.... she's not bitter!
Red Dragon rolls his eyes as Phan mistakes his message. But watching Joanna continue to make her way down the path he just shrugs, drops down to all fours again, and crouches down so that the shoulder closest to Phan is low to the ground. Which seems to be an invitation for the teenager to climb up...
Phantasma builds herself another dog for the road, not that she'll likely eat it. She's already uncomfortably full from one.. let alone the second she forced down. Yay slowing metabolism. "Rrf... Huh? Oh.. well.." she winces, nibbling her lip and looking for the first time... anxious. "I.. could just fo..." she starts, but sighs. Advice from someone close to her drifts in, causing a brief guilty wince.
Only moments later, she says resigned 'Aw'right aw'right. Jus' lemme grab a pop." She swipes carelessly through the minicooler, and while floating up through the stand she mutters. "Uch.. root beer. Ah whatever." Settling in behind Gabe's headfrill and holding on, he feels likely the most surprising thing. He feels weight and touch! Not... a lot of weight. S he's like 60 pounds, but she's tangible... and not floating and... and tangible. She was also clinging kinda tight. All that argument before aside, she really didn't go solid often.
Red Dragon bunches his legs up under his body then makes a huge leap, spreading his wings and flapping them to gain altitude. After making a few circles over the park he then heads towards Phantasma's theater taking his time to allow the sun to finish setting so that the possibility of being spotted is as low as possible by the time they get there.
Phantasma clings... rather tightly. She wasn't used to this whole 'Trust' thing, let alone flying without it being under her own power. There's a few token mutterings of 'You'll be fine, y ou can fly to.. you can...', before she actually catches sight of that sunset. "You'll be... Oooooooh." Its an awestruck sound, as she relaxes a little, and starts to sprawl out on his head. He'd feel how cool her skin was, just a few degrees above freezing, as she gazes to the horizon. "Huh... I.. wow. Its been a while since I bothered t'look at somethin' like that." Upon landing, the obvious question will be popped, 'Why are you still like that', followed by an invitation inside... if he can manage to get t a shape that can fit. Monster movies all around!
The dragon looks up at the sky after landing and focuses for a moment. It then starts to melt into a huge glob of golden gel, shrinks, and melts into the form of Gabriel again. After a moment he smiles at Phan and then shrugs, "I've been having some trouble... If I don't change into one of my regular forms for too long I end up changing involuntarily. Than I get stuck in that form for 20 or 30 minutes." He gives her this explanation as he follows her into the abandoned cinema. After all, monster movies.
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