PI - Kitty - RL time Tuesday, April 30, 7:00 am Pacific ------------------------------------------------------- (This log takes place shortly after April 29's scene with Pete Wisdom, Seishi, and Seravina.) Pete Wisdom: Rather tall, but standing with an eternal slouch, Wisdom carries with him an aura of disreputability even when he's shaven and his clothes are clean and pressed. His left eye is covered unceremoniously by a black patch, a nasty scar running from above his eyebrow through down to his nose; other, lesser scars appear elsewhere. His remaining eye is a distractingly bright blue, and reflects a bitter cynicism, and it's apparent from the lines around it that he's likely earned the right to be jaded. The man's face is thin and pale, and his nose looks to be a bit thicker than it should be at the top, as though it'd been broken before but set correctly. His hair is jet black and somewhat long on top, though it's been cut recently and is short enough in the back; it has a tendency to fall into his face and shade his expression. Suits look absolutely natural on Pete, which is good, because it's all he'll ever wear. The one he's wearing now (which bears a remarkable resemblance to the one he wore yesterday, and the day before that, et cetera) is black, made of a fairly respectable fabric, and cut to a 'modern' style (which isn't the same as a modern style). Both the jacket and the trousers look almost streamlined; their lines coincide with Wisdom's. The lapels are narrow and point a bit upward, there're three buttons down the front instead of two, and his tie (made of matching material) is narrow. Around his neck, sometimes visible, is a thin silver chain from which conflicting pendants hang: a silver Star of David, smooth from age, and a tiny St. Jude medal. Shadowcat: By costume standards, this one is almost practical. The wearer is a woman, just below average height, slim and athletic. Her stance is confident and daring. She wears a sleeveless bodysuit of plain black knit material; it's possessed of a cowl that hoods her face, half-hiding a black mask. Her mouth and jaw and neck are the only skin visible, pale, Caucasian. Blousy gray sleeves are caught in just below the elbow by black gloves. Similarly, gray tights yield to black boots high on her calves. A sash of a paler gray is knotted around her waist, the ends fluttering as she moves. Perhaps it's that sash, or perhaps it's just the woman behind the hood and mask, but she has a decidedly piratical air. Pilot Street Intersecting West Main to the west, traffic flows heavily through this busy Beacon Harbor street. This street is lined with businesses and services related buildings on both sides. The famed Lighthouse Hospital is located along the north side of the street, its emergency room has one of the best trauma units in the country, and is often quite busy. Constructed of steel and black glass, the monolithic Beacon Harbor Police Headquarters is two blocks west of the hospital and on the other side of the street. At night, the streets are only a touch quieter than the day, as neither of these places close. Other businesses, wedged between the hospital and police, do quite well thanks to the high volume traffic. Northgate Avenue intersects Pilot to the west of the police headquarters and leads into the heart of Chinatown. ****************************************************************************** It's actually /not/ Pilot Street that Wisdom's currently walking down - it's a side street he's taken to avoid going past the patch of pavement that may or may not actually have blood on it. Either way, he doesn't particularly consider it a good idea to go check. He might not feel anything, or everything might come crashing down at once, and neither is something he needs to experience. So, beautiful avoidance; he wanders blindly up the pavement of a quiet sidestreet at ten in the evening, his mind on fire and his heart numb. He's not even cold, though he should be. Avoidance is a wonderful thing. Sometimes, the universe even lets you get away with it. Streetlights stand in their solemn ranks, their light shimmering off the slick pavement: it's not raining /now/, but it was earlier, just enough to wet down the roads. For the moment there aren't even clouds overhead; from a darker street stars would actually be visible. If someone were looking up. The drivers of the cars that occasionally pass, headlights brightening and vanishing, don't have much reason to either. One doesn't need to be looking upward, though, to catch the blue glow ahead. It reflects just as well as the streetlights do, for the moments it flares. And even if one weren't looking, there's a brief startled cry, a woman's, followed almost precisely a second later by the sound of impact. Something parts ways with her an instant before that strike, a fluttering sound as it uncoils from her shoulders - barely-distinguishable silhouette, above the sprawled, half-stunned body in the road, dark outline against darkness. Even when the headlights of the car turning onto the sidestreet sweep over her, from their distance away, it's hard to make out the figure in black and gray against the asphalt. But the silhouette above comes clearer: bat-winged, pudgily draconic, familiar. A horrified panic completely freezes Wisdom for a half second - too close, it's too close to what just - but whoever it is needs to be got out of the street, right now. He starts forward, and /that's/ when the dragon registers. And Pete's heart once again nearly stops, but he still doesn't make a sound. Now? Now he /can't/ make a sound, but blessedly his limbs are responding properly to his brain's commands; he shrugs off his coat as he runs over, so his white shirt is visible in the headlights. See, it'd be great if he could just scoop her up and dash her across the street, but the paramedic in the back of his head screams that he can't move her until he's sure neither her back nor her neck is broken. So he just makes himself damn visible - extending a fiery yellow glowing hand and glancing back with incandescent eyes to help discourage the car from running into them /or/ stopping to try and help. And he's having trouble breathing, he's so desperately afraid she /is/ badly hurt or worse, or that she's just as unreal as the last turned out to be, that she'll just melt away. Unfortunately, this means he's ignoring the dragon. First thing he does when he gets down on one knee to check? It's supposed to be asking if they're all right. But no - it's putting a feverish hand lightly on one shoulder, quite unable to choke any words out just yet. Solid! As if that would matter. Very visible. Imagine the scene from the poor driver's point of view for a moment: that white shirt's motion prompting a slam on the brakes, brakes and tires alike complaining with a sudden squeal, and then there are glowing eyes and a burning, glowing hand and a miniature dragon grasping a dark-clad woman's sleeve in its jaws and trying futilely to haul her upright through sheer overstrained willpower ... The oncoming car slews itself into the other lane, narrowly missing a parked car, and back out again well past them, picking up speed again. Not staring in the rear-view mirror. Someone is going to go home tonight and get very, very drunk. Maybe more than one someone, as that dragon snorts faintly-illuminated smoke, shooting a glower at Wisdom that's hateful and defensive even by /its/ standards. The touch of his hand on the woman's shoulder might be heartstopping: in the moment when the car's brakes shrieked, there was a familiar sensation, air not touching them for a moment, nothing to breathe, ground a fragile shell of substance underfoot. Reflex phasing at the noise, and dragging the hand on her shoulder /with/ her, despite the dizzy sway and half-slump against that hand that the effort cost ... and then the car is past and they're solid again, air in lungs, and the woman's head is tipping back to look up at him. Wide brown eyes, stunned, familar. Her lips move for a moment, but she doesn't seem to be able to say anything either. Oh god, oh there is a god and quite possibly said god doesn't hate Wisdom as completely as he'd figured. The dark-haired man - wearing a patch? - gasps as they go solid again; his hand had reflexively tightened against Shadowcat's shoulder as she phased them, and now it loosens again, but doesn't let go. His face, dimly visible in the light from the streetlamps, is *his* face, if different. And -finally-, finally, he manages to get something resembling speech out. Something he just can't finish. "You making us intangible always makes me wish..." Back off, dragon, keep away. "Don't even /say/ it," Shadowcat finds the breath to gasp, and then she's flinging her arms up around his shoulders, dragging herself up to kiss him fiercely. She's simply not worried about stability. If she's too unsteady to hold herself up, well, he's positioned better; if he falls over himself, well, the street is /close/ this time. So is the dragon, whose response to this particular demonstration is to let out an indignant squawk and try to bite a lock of Pete's hair with the intention of making a firm effort toward dragging him away with it. Or it out of Wisdom's scalp, whichever comes first. Ungrateful beast. Oh, he *won't*. As if he could with Kitty occupying his mouth so adeptly, as if he -wants- to finish it. No, he most certainly doesn't wish he was dead. But he just saw - but he just /stopped/ it. Wisdom's not quite getting up yet, he's still in what's basically a genuflect, down on one knee, not falling over. He's also not thinking at all clearly. And then he's got a snippy bastard of a dragon biting at his head and he wraps an arm around Kitty to make up for breaking off the kiss to bat at Lockheed with an again-glowing hand. "Sod off, Lockheed!" Oh, oh the look on Wisdom's face is just as full of seething anger - *DON'T* you even, Lockheed. Don't interrupt /this/. The at least partially genial antagonism of yore flares up briefly into actual hatred, just because - well. This is *too* important. And he can't let go. He physically can't. Batting produces a faint yelp, and the dragon darts back out of reach hastily - glaring back as if more than willing to test flame against hot-knives. Almost. Except that there's not /just/ Wisdom there, which leaves Lockheed hovering impotently, seething right back. The young woman clinging against Wisdom's chest opens her eyes again, but the tears standing in them - and for that matter, spilling out of them - are blurring her vision much too much for her to make out his expression clearly; the one she's imagining is quite enough, though, for her to yield to an instant of helpless laughter and press her face against his shirt. "Wisdom," is all she says for a moment, quiet and broken joy. Not even a 'don't you dare fry my dragon.' Just his name. And then, with the unsteady seriousness of one who's hovering just this side of hysteria, "I think we need to get out of the road," still muffled into his chest. At least one of them generally has their common sense intact. "Oh my god," says Pete in a breaking half-sob, half-laugh. Yes, they need to get out of the road. Hasn't he heard, seen a heartrendingly real mental image that's proof positive they need to be out of the road? Not even waiting to see if she /can/ stand on her own, Wisdom slides his other arm under Kitty's legs, keeping the one he'd already had wrapped around her where it is; just off the macadam, onto the pavement, against the front of a building, there - that's all he's aiming for. He lifts her up, seconds away from considering himself utterly mad. "Here, Pryde," he says softly, "have you broken anything?" Other than me, possibly. Shadowcat starts to try to move once he does, and ... somehow isn't remotely upset by being forestalled, under the circumstances. Her arms settle a little more comfortably around his neck as she leans in against him to take inventory. He's warm, and he smells good, and his voice is the same, and ... and she focuses, for the first time, on the street. "... only my sanity," she answers weakly after a moment. Strange place. Dead man. Not, for the moment, complaining. "And I never had all that good a grip on that anyway. Just bruises, I think, and my ankle's gonna you're /alive/." There's not even a pause as the sentence breaks into another one. Lockheed perches himself irritably on a mailbox, wings extended gargoyle-like for balance. And at her words, Wisdom's arms tighten almost convulsively - not /too/ tight, but pretty tight - around Kitty. Don't you melt away. Don't you - shit. He's starting to think. It's going to hit him. He continues to /completely/ ignore Lockheed, and once he's at the very back of the sidewalk, he leans against the wall and they both go down; his knees have buckled. Can she see the look on his face now? It's twisted up and he's crying helplessly, still not letting go. Not even remotely letting go. Pete can't even bring himself to care what this Kitty must think of him, because everything's come rushing back at once. Absolutely everything. He can't even talk. Alive? Back to life, maybe. On the ground again - but they're out of the road, and unless he picked a building that's about to collapse, safe for the moment. And the universe does not hate Pete Wisdom /that/ much. Kitty pulls herself up a few more inches, pressing her cheek against his; it happens to be his blind side, and the eyepatch can't be all that comfortable for either of them, but at the moment she's failing to care herself. Impossible to tell whose tears are whose, and who's clinging the harder would be almost as tricky to figure out. It's all right to take a little vacation from thinking now. It really is.