Open RP One-Track Mind

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Reyn

Reyn

Sleepyhead
Staff member
BLACK BOX
Grant Howell had got on the train at approximately 6:15PM,-and, in the entire half-hour he had been sitting there, not a single person had recognised him.

Perhaps they didn't care. Perhaps not everyone was tuned-in to missing persons reports enough that they'd recognise him beneath the hood, behind the mask, below the vacancy. Perhaps the past week had rendered him completely unrecognisable. All were likely, all were bleak. Grant would be glad he couldn't think about it; if there was any clarity about him during the journey, he would've already got off the train and thrown himself in front of it. Perhaps that's what people thought had already happened.

He was sitting in the carriage alone, on one of the side-facing seats; staring blankly at his reflection in the darkened window behind it. He'd be glad he couldn't see it, as well; he really did look awful. Bloodshot eyes sunk deep into his skull, an angry red burn-mark taking up most of his neck, blisters across both wrists that were weeping into the fabric of the hoodie, cementing it to his opened skin as it dried; no wonder people were avoiding him, he looked like a wreck- an accident waiting to happen, or perhaps just waiting to be recognised as one. His jacket was pulled tightly around him, one last act of self-defense before he fell into oblivion, and it seemed a little bulky for a man of his presumed frame. Perhaps he was just cold. Perhaps the demotion had hit him harder, financially, than it seemed.

People moved past, almost as oblivious to him as he was to them.

He hadn't yet reached his stop.

this was a closed thread but i CHANGED MY MIND its open heheahe

grant will start doing crimes next round, but he's a reported missing person atm, if that's enough reason to be there at this current stage. if not then lmk and i shall MOVE THINGS ALONG
 

Sam had almost missed the train. She’d barely managed to scoot in between the doors as they were snapping shut, ending up in a deserted carriage. Sighing with relief, she took a look around. There was a single man in the car with her. Given there was an entire aisle, she chose to sit down the row from him. But that put her in just enough range to see him.

And for a moment, something about him tickled her brain. She looked at him, long and hard. He didn’t even seem to notice as she did. Finally, she stood up and walked a few steps closer, then stopped. No, this was definitely the guy. She walked the rest of the way over to him and sat down across from him.

He didn’t look exactly like the photos that Sam had seen of him, but there was still enough to tell it was him. “Grant Howell? Is that your name? People have been looking for you.”​
 

​
Steel Plaza Station
Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh's Light Rail system wasn't like Los Angeles' Metro Rail in many ways. For one, it didn't really extend all that far through the city. Unlike larger rail systems, the Pittsburgh Light Rail (or The T) only had three actual rail lines with two of the three starting and ending the same exact locations while the third branched off at the last tenth of the paired lines off to the Library neighborhood which ironically enough didn't actually contain a single library. Secondly, The T didn't actually connect with Pittsburgh's own Union Station, the very station a certain well-dressed woman had just arrived at just the other day.

Carmen Victoria Carnifex sat quietly, legs crossed, as she awaited one of the city's trains while a rather large and imposing man in a tailored suit stood next to her. The aura the man exuded had deterred several individuals from interacting with the woman beside him, something she found herself rather thankful for. To be honest, the entire station's atmosphere made her want to go back to her apartment above Pinnacle and take a bath... maybe two. However, she was here for a reason. A purpose. In fact, it was related to one of the reasons she'd chosen this particular city.

"
A King's ransom,
" Carmen whispered with a smile before turning to her associate, "
Ivan, be a dear and snag me one of those mocha lattes dear Auggie said I'd like from that shop over there.
"

The bear of a man nodded once before walking over to the little coffee stand called Crazy Mocha. To be honest, being here made him rather nervous and was loathe to leave his employer alone for long, but he also knew better than to question her on trifling things. Ivan Dimitrievich had already let his feelings for today's outing become well-known in the car over here. Though he would never say so out loud near his employer nor the man himself, but Ivan was sincerely missing Mr. Davenport's presence right now. Only he could dissuade the Tsarina's more impulsive decisions.






Pittsburgh, 2023
 
He didn't respond. To him, there wasn't anything to respond to; just the ever-present drone of oblivion, flat and unchanging. Everything else was void. Grant just stared ahead, swaying a little as the train hit a bump in the track, but otherwise completely unmoving. It looked like he was asleep. It looked like he was dead. His stop was coming up- not that he had any way of knowing until they arrived, but his stop was coming up. He'd remain seated as the train pulled to a halt.

There was better signal at the platform than there was on the train. Good enough that Grant could hear a click- and then, to him, silence.

"Get out of my fucking way!"

He bolted upright, pushing past the commuters towards the door, stumbling off the train. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck it was crowded. He hated crowds- he always had. There were too many people these days, and none of them knew how to fucking drive- and the ones that did couldn't do it properly, always taking up half the road. That was the thing, really. People took up space. He used to be able to ignore it, to push down his fury and just let them carry on their inconsiderate, miserable, wasteful little lives, but something was different today. Today, he felt compelled to act.

Grant was armed. He remembered that. He could feel the shape of the guns pressing into his skin, the weight of them pulling down his jacket, the chill of the metal piercing through his spine like needles. There was pain, as well. The sores on his wrists, his neck, his head, all burning, but he was burning brighter. He could push past that. He could push past it just like he could push past those vermin on the train. He could push past anything.

He continued walking for a bit, ignoring any attempt to talk to him, when he came to a sudden stop. It was crowded here, as well. Too crowded. Too many people, too much noise- he could hear it through his silent headphones, all this fucking noise. That was it. That was the last fucking straw.

A voice came through his headphones- one only he could hear.

And, once it had said its piece, he reached for his gun, and started to fire at the crowd.
 

Sam backed off as the man pushed past her. She watched him rush off the train. She debated, for a moment, of letting him go. She grit her teeth and then turned and ran off the train as well. She had a bad feeling about the way he had moved, the way he had yelled at her. She sighed as the doors slid shut behind her. Hopefully, Todd would forgive her for being late.

“I’m going to fucking regret this.”

She moved quickly, shifting through the crowd, looking for Grant. Then, off to her left, she heard gunfire. She turned and immediately dashed toward the source, abandoning her search– only to find herself looking at Grant, who was firing his gun into the crowd. Civilians were screaming, now, and running away as fast as they could. Sam saw parents lifting children and running away with them, saw men and women running together, but she also, to her horror, saw civilians dropping, bleeding, falling and not moving.

She moved quickly, running straight for Grant. She dropped her bag halfway there, with her boxes and boxes of lunch, and she slid in behind him. She didn’t have her hammer, so she fisted her hands together, and she swung for the backs of his knees, hoping to make him drop, and maybe drop the gun. Sam could hit hard, even without the hammer, and she hoped that would be enough to take the man out long enough to take the gun away from him.​
 

Gunshots. That was what made the white-cloaked figure pause in their steps within the vacant alleyway, as if taking in the surrounding noises. The sound of wheels on asphalt, and frequent footsteps paired with ambiant chatter, was the majority of the noise they had to sort through. A first, they thought they simply misheard. Maybe a firework had gone off, or a prank of a similar note, but hearing the sound go off a couple more times quickly drew that line of thought to a close, and the hooded figure racing out of the alley to get closer.

Cleric had been about two blocks away from the shooting, aimlessly wandering for naught but to aid anyone injured. You would think after being mugged and frisked on more occasions than he's helped anyone, that Cleric would come to the conclusion that being a vigilant was not for him; but for whatever reason he continued his nightly escapedes. Or, maybe for reasons like this; where he turns a corner and see people fleeing, and others downed, is the reason why he continues to be reckless.

This time, Cleric moved on auto-pilot. Time was of the essence for those wounded, and when it came down to it, he wasn't a fighter. While it was counter-productive to not take out the shooter first, Cleric didn't know how long the scuffle with the gunsman would take if he tried to fight them head-on. Even worse, is if Cleric was shot in a vital spot, then he would be incapacitated for longer than time would allow those wounded. Of the two options at hand, helping others was Cleric's top priority.

Those who were still as a corpse were who he rushed to first; if they weren't dead, it was possible they were critical, which meant they could still be saved. Collapsing to his knees beside the closest, stillest body, Cleric grabbed their shoulders. First to shake them a bit to get a response, then to place a hand on their neck to check for a pulse. With a quick glance in his surroundings, Cleric took a quick mental note of how many people had fallen.

"Be careful!"

Cleric's own pulse had sped up at the sight of someone trying to fight the gunman. They were either brave, confident, or stupid. He didn't know. He didn't process further than that first impression, not even the call out towards them, turning his attention back to the person beside him once he felt a pulse. Healing took less than a minute, but it still took time he couldn't afford to waste, his eyes scanning for his next patient while keeping tabs of the scuffle at hand. As long as his body didn't betray him, as long as he could move, Cleric was going to help however he could.

 
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Ivan had just returned with his employer's coffee when he heard the sounds of the train rolling into the station. Admittedly he didn't know if this was the train the boss was waiting for, but the look on her face said that it probably was...or it could just be her excitement at the coffee. Truth be told, the Tsarina was a bit of a mystery to him sometimes. She certainly wasn't anything like her uncle back west, and even he was seen as a bit of an oddball in their circles. There were days when the woman before him was almost like his dear babushka back in the Rodina, the Motherland; she looked out for Ivan and his brothers as though they were her immediate family. Then there were days when the Tsarina earned the moniker many in the Bratva called her: imperious, mysterious, and terrifying.

Days like today, though, just served to remind Ivan that he had a lot to learn from Mr. Davenport.

"
<Thank you, dear Ivan,>
" the woman said in a faintly Moscovy-accented Russian with a faint smile as the trained came to a stop, "
<I suppose it is too late to ask for their menu for sweets. Oh well, let's get going.>
"

Ivan nodded and held out a hand to assist Carmen in getting up from the bench. She'd just taken his hand when the unmistakable sound of gunfire filled the underground station. Moving to position himself between his boss and the source of gunfire, Ivan had just managed to draw his SIG SAUER P320-XTEN from his shoulder holster when three rifle rounds hit him in the torso. His body armor had stopped the first hit, but not the second while the third had hit him in the gut, just off the midline. His mouth moved to call for Carmen to run, but no sounds came out as his body failed him.

Carmen Victoria Carnifex, watching all of this with a look of mild surprise, took in a deep calming breath as her body's structure on an atomic level changed slightly. Looking at the gunman, she began wondering why such a thing would be happening here of all places, but that rabbit hole would have to wait for a bit. There was a slightly more pressing issue in front of her, after all.

Taking a moment to evaluate the overall situation, the woman of less-than-legal-means saw a veritable bloodbath as various nobodies who'd just been trying to go about their day were eviscerated by military-grade gunfire. Her neurons, expanding by the millisecond, caused time to slow down similar to a soldier's perception in battle.

CRACKTEENGK

The force of the rifle round glancing off her left cheek was a bit jarring, but the noise was even more uncomfortable. Her eardrums became a bit more...more as the cells that made them up seemed to increase in number...but they didn't. The cells themselves just became more dense. Such a thing would at least help her not go deaf from the close-range rifle fire. Tinnitus was not something she wanted to deal with today. Looking at the gunman, for the briefest moment, Carmen honestly debated changing the man's body structure on a more macro-level into fine paste and pinkish mist, but then she saw a flash of red hair moving very quickly towards the gunman. A girl. Young. Heroic. Foolish.

CRACKSRPT-KAHK

Carmen looked down to her right hand and once again felt a vague notion of uncontrollable fury rise within her breast like a rudely awoken dragon before she collected herself again. The fresh coffee spilled out of the two neat holes in her paper coffee cup as the rifle round that went through it embedded itself in a nearby concrete pillar. She really needed that hero-girl to handle this faster.

Well...might as well get more coffee.





Pittsburgh, 2023
 
Sally Fields mom got out of prison today.
It had been 10 years since she was arrested for possession with intent to sell. 10 years of missed birthdays, graduations, boyfriends, breakups, and so much of her young adult life. All that time and now all that was left between Sally and her mother was a quick train ride. Sometimes she thought this day would never come, part of her had quietly stirred on the idea that her mom wouldn't make it out of there alive.

She was waiting on the train platform playing Hearthstone on her phone when the screaming started. "HE'S GOT A GUN!" her eyes lifted from her screen and her body froze. You only ever saw this kind of stuff on the news. It was heartbreaking but, you never thought it could happen to you until it did. Everyone liked to think they'd be the one to attack the gunman but, most know deep down they'd just run away. Sally froze.

Bodies dropped all around her as the barrel of the gun swung across the crowd. It was almost her turn and she couldn't even move. She was supposed to have dinner with her mom for the first time in 10 years, who was gonna tell her that Sally couldn't make it. She closed her eyes.

Then she opened them; a circle of swirling black and teal had opened up in the path of the bullets. She heard the loud CRASH of white tile shattering, to her right, where another swirling circle was facing the wall.

"Can you walk?" Half-Life said, kneeling down beside her. "no" Her voice was sheepish, she was clearly afraid. "Alright then I'm gonna move you okay?" A portal opened up beneath the girl and deposited her closer to the exit. The shock of it all seemed to stir her into action and she started running.

The scene was carnage, there were bodies on the ground, one person running around trying to heal whoever they could, a bulletproof bystander, and someone (who seemed more skilled than your average civie) taking on the lone gunman.

He wanted to follow up on her rushing assault, drawing his own pistols he fired three shots. One aimed at the hand holding the gun, one aimed at the shoulder to try and open up the guys stance, and the final shot right between the eyes. The benefits of having guns that couldn't actually kill people was that they'd still feel all the pain without any of the mess.

"You picked a bad day to get yourself kid. You've already hurt enough people so why don't we put the gun back into our backpack and sit tight, alright."

He slowly approached as he talked, keeping his guns trained on the shooter. They needed to buy time for the people around to get out of here if they were going to fight, there was too great of a risk of even more casualties.
 
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Thomas had just walked down to the subway, and was buying a ticket when a bullet ricocheted into the glass booth in front of him. The wonderful girl inside, who just a moment ago had taken his money, was cut off mid-sentence by a spray of red.
What the fu-
More gunshots rang out, and people around him started to fall. As he swung around to find cover, he couldn't help but notice all the blood. There were more bodies than any coroner would know what to do with. One or two people were tending the fallen, but the weapon causing the chaos was still firing.
"Aw, hell no!"
Thomas ran for a coffeeshop nearby, and nearly collided with a woman standing outside. She looked rich, even from her posture, but also... slightly dumb. After all, she was just standing there as the big guy next to her fell hard to the ground.
"Hey lady, unless you want to be swiss cheese, I'd get under something. And fast!"

This was not Thomas's best day so far.
 
Wasn't violence meant to be cathartic, or something? Wasn't letting out your anger meant to, y'know, get it out? It was the physical symptoms that let him know things weren't working out for him. The tension running through his muscles, the tremble in his firing-arm, the way his jaw ground against itself, threatening to wear his teeth to flat, shattered discs within his bleeding gums. He felt like a swollen battery- except he had already exploded, hadn't he? So, why was it getting worse?

The noise, that's why. The screaming. Jesus Christ- even when they were good and dying, the hordes always managed to piss him off. Couldn't they just take this gracefully, for once in their short fucking lives? Couldn't they just shut the fuck up- leave him in peace, try to die with some dignity so he didn't leave the station with a headache? All these cries for help- did they think anyone was going to fucking listen?

Ah. It looked like people were.

He should've expected it, really- he had no idea how it had slipped his mind. People's first response in this sort of situation is to help each other, the sanctimonious fucks. He could spot some in the crowd, running around, playing doctor. Did they know how pointless this all was? Did they know they were just prolonging the inevitable? If the wounded didn't die here, they'd die in hospital- and, if they didn't die in hospital, they'd probably end up dying from another of Pittsburgh's famous freaks. Why cling to life now, if not to make his all the worse!

In all the carnage, Grant had almost forgotten his own vulnerability; and there was a sound behind him. Someone had managed to sneak up in the distraction, getting themselves in the perfect position to punch him in the fucking knee. He had braced for something, at least- that helped him balance. He moved his leg forwards, following the movement- turning what would've been a collapse into a mere stumble. He stepped forwards and kicked his other leg out behind him, hopefully getting the unknown assailant right in their smug fucking, worthless fucking, arrogant fucking face.

And then-

"FUCK!"

-there was pain.

Grant stumbled further, fury burning behind his eyes almost as hot as whatever the fuck had lodged itself in there. He turned around, looking for the source of the wound, but found nothing- shit. Shit, was there one of those freaks here? Or was the rage causing him the worst migraine of his life?

It didn't matter. It didn't fucking matter. What mattered was that there were too many fucking people here, even with all the dead. What mattered was his anger.

He spotted another gunman in the crowd- weird-looking fellow, like he had crawled out of a grave. Or a local comic convention. Grant raised his gun and aimed one burst at him, then turned around to aim the second at whoever was at his back- assuming they were still there, of course.
 

The man didn’t go down, but he did stumble. He lashed out with a leg toward Sam and connected with her shoulder, hard. She allowed herself to roll, just as she caught sight of the– zombie? Oh god, it was that teleporter from the bank, the one who had come in after Sam and Nat had been ditched by that asshole whose name she refused to dignify. Fuck, he had seen her hair before, there was the potential he could identify her if he paid close enough attention.

He shot bullets at the man, bullets that…disappeared? There was no blood, no bullet holes, nothing. Well, that was new, but then she supposed that she hadn’t seen the extent of his powers. Whatever he did, the man reacted as though he had been shot, stumbling and checking his body for wounds. Then, he started to turn on her.

Well, if the teleporter hadn’t recognized her already, then she was definitely about to out herself as a meta. She coiled tension in her legs, and then with the help of her heat, which she condensed and then released in a hard stream under her feet, she lept up high into the air. She made it about eight feet in the short time she had to prepare, and then as she came down she swung her leg. She pulled it in a hard arc, aiming to take the gunman down by the neck.

She caught sight of the woman, who was standing, looking at her ruined coffee. Fuck. They needed to take this guy out fast before any more civilians were injured. What looked like her guard was down, unmoving, as were several other civilians. She had no idea why the woman wasn’t running– wait, she wasn’t running? Sam frowned as she fell through the air. She wondered if she had been shot, if this was shock. Either way, she’d have to check on the woman after this.​
 

Walking calmly through the train station-turned-battlefield, Carmen possessed a slight amount of concern for Ivan behind her, but forced herself to remain calm as one of the city's many heroes was on the scene and possessed some kind of healing ability. So her only focus now was to snag a new coffee and...oh. A random young man had nearly run into her before...yelling at her to get cover. Thinking how sweet it was that some innocent man in Pittsburgh was concerned for her safety and less about how he'd nearly stepped on her $1,650 leather slingback pumps she'd ordered from Prada, the woman simply smiled briefly before continuing on her way. After all, she'd found it best to simply remain calm in this sort of situation.

Having reached the little coffee shop, Carmen peered over the little counter to see the workers cowering behind their rather thin cover.

"
Excuse me, but I seem to have suffered some structural damage to my fresh cup here,
" the somewhat tall woman declared with a warm smile, "
Would it be possible to get a new one?
"

The coffee shop workers both looked at her with shock that, for the moment, surpassed their terror at their current situation. One, a shorter blonde girl with thick curls, just stared while the other, a taller lithe tattooed male with a black fauxhawk, just pointed at himself and the girl before shaking his head.

"
Oh, that's fine. I'll help myself.
"

Walking around the counter, Ms. Carnifex tossed her wasted coffee cup in the waste bin before wiping her hands off with a towel next to the espresso machine.

"
Now, my man before had gotten the Columbian Roast with some chocolate, but I see here there's something called the 'Love Story'. Almond and Vanilla Latte. Is it good?
"

The blonde girl barely nodded as the pair watched her wordlessly.

"
Well alright then. I don't suppose you two would be...no...I thought not. It's fine. I'm sure I can figure it out. Sometimes the best way is to just sort of muddle your way through things, you know?
"

Entirely eyeballing the measurements on the coffee, Carmen felt rather proud of her latte. Of course, the menu-version didn't involve it being only 50% coffee (and that was on the high-side) with the rest being various creamers and chocolates.

KrrrackSHHHHHHHHHHHH

An errant round punctured the espresso machine next to her; its boiler unleashing a torrent of boiling water and steam. Luckily for all three behind the counter, the round had hit it on the side away from them all.

Going to need these heroes to really get this shit together. I have other things to do today,
 Carmen thought as she watched the little red haired girl and what could only be described as a bad cosplay of some literally horny zombie do battle with the gunman.





Pittsburgh, 2023
 
He could feel the tension in the brief pause of gunfire. As he approached and talked the kid was still processing. It wasn't even a second yet it still felt like minutes had passed before he got the answer to his request. "Right" Amidst a sea of exasperation the words fell quietly from his mouth. These people never gave up because that would be too easy. The amount of resolve it took to go to this level of extreme wasn't something that would go away with a wisecrack; even if it was a well crafted, ill timed, wisecrack. That was part of his job though. The more jokes he made the more it seemed like he had a handle on the situation AND the more attention he would draw away from the people who couldn't heal a bullet wound in 24 hours.

He opened a portal and stretched it wide enough to extend past him incase the gun started spraying wide. Most of the shots passed through and were sent into the ceiling. The rest of them went low. He felt the bullets rip through his legs spattering black blood across the ground. The guy let loose another burst of bullets at the other woman who was trying to solve this with brute force. He reacted quickly, opening a portal in front of her to intercept the bullets and send them away from the crowd.

The two of them were about to go at it street fighter style which made it hard for him to hit the right person. He would have to turn his focus to crisis management for the time being. There were alot of people who would need a much faster exfiltration than they were having. He started with anyone that could be reasonably be within the shooters field of view, including a lady who was making herself a cup of coffee. Opening portals in their paths to send them towards the exit while keeping himself moving and ready to intercept more gunfire if he needed to. Then he would move on to anyone else who had minor wounds that were slowing them down. The severely wounded would have to go last since dropping them out of a portal could do more harm than good.
 
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