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psychoshenanigans2019-10-06 05:36 pm
birdsbirdsbirds) wrote in psychoshenanigans2019-10-06 05:36 pm
Entry tags:
PSL // Station Shenanigans!
She gets the sense that this station is too busy to deal with her right now. She's likely gets brought in for some minor offense--shoplifting, vandalism, being in possession of something she shouldn't have had--and gets shuffled quickly through the intake process. It seems like everyone's at the station tonight, coming and going, checking in, listening anxiously to updates on their radios. Sounds like something big happened a couple of hours ago, probably downtown.
The officer that was supposed to see her in his office comes out, has a muttered conversation with the guard on-duty, and then goes back into the room without another word. The guard apologizes, says that she's going to have to wait while they sort out some issue with their system, and assures her that they should have it sorted out soon.
Which is about when someone strange walks in, escorted by another officer. At least--he seems strange, despite technically looking like a fairly normal person--because he's got this tumultuous aura that clings to him like honey, thick and constant and churning in an uncomfortable way that betrays the calm, perfectly amicable smile on his face. He's dressed in dark clothes, tight pants, nice shoes. He scans the room with a calculating gaze, taking in everything, but his eyes stick on her for just a little too long.
He tilts his head, expression changing subtly to something more surprised, before he gets shuffled forward again. Past the offices, through the hallway. She can just hear the man say, "Holding cells? That's cute," before the officer, in the tone of someone who's been dealing with his sass all evening, tells him to shut up.
And then it's just her, in a waiting room, with a guard and a water-cooler and a limited amount of time before they start looking up her police records.
no subject
The near-riots were Not Her Problem. She'd just been close enough at the time to hear the uproar and make like an opportunistic raccoon, ducking into a busted Wendy's storefront to scoop out the abandoned register. Then she got greedy and stopped for fries, just as three of the 42nd's finest kicked in the already shattered door. Why they'd clumped up against one girl instead of the chaos outside, she didn't know, but she'd put her hands up rather than take a beanbag shot or risk flashing any magic.
So here she is! Parked in an uncomfortable plastic chair in a big room full of people who hate each other! Reeking of chicken and fries she didn't even get to eat! At least the shouting and hatespeech drowns out her growling stomach. Neph locks her fingers around the edge of her chair and scans everyone else waiting to be processed, making her pics for Most Likely To Start Some Shit. If she applies Zinc just right, she can maybe prompt one of them to do just that, create a big enough uproar to pop her cuffs and slip away before anybody takes her fingerprints.
Something flickers in her periphery, a telltale glow that jerks her attention around. Neph's rarely not burning Bronze, rarely not scanning the world around her for magics to avoid or exploit, but she didn't expect to find such a bright signature here. She has to actively squint to see past the lavender gleam of...an illusion? Something like one? There's something off about the color, something too blue-ish to be just an illusion. Neph gets so caught up in trying to decode the active magic itself that she almost misses the person behind it noting her right back. She jerks in her seat as though snatching her hand from a cookie jar, sharp blue eyes locking briefly with the guy's before he's shuffled off.
Shit. "Shit," she hisses, not that anyone notices. Now it's not just her fingerprints she's worried about. That pushes her timetable up a bit. Neph takes a deep breath, lets it out slow through her nose, and reaches for the Zinc in her belly.
The atmosphere in the bullpen takes a noticeable tilt. Tensions twist tighter, voices pitch upward in anger or distress, and all the ugly frustration and injustice and hate bubbles closer to the surface. A snapback-wearing junior with no neck gets up in a cop's face and starts shouting, spit flying. The cop checks him back down to the bench, but his buddies rally, and tackle, and suddenly the side of the bullpen furthest from the holding cells is a scrum of fists and knees and meaty crunches.
Nice. Real subtle.
Neph ducks her head and burns Steel down her wrists, pushing at the cuff mechanisms. They fall away to the floor, and Neph's quick to follow, ducking behind desks and pumping out a thick cloud of Copper, creating a dense Don't Look At Me Nothing To See Here field as she slinks around the corner to the cells. Two uniformed offers dash away to break up the fight, leaving the corridor empty.
The cells are packed, stuffed with all the people who weren't rounded up as a result of the protests. Neph skitters down the row, chasing motes of lavender light, until she's found the right door.
no subject
The first thing Robin does, once he is led into his cell, is sit down with his back to the wall at the furthest possible distance from the door. He brings his knees up to his chest, folds his arms over them, and puts his head down. Presses on his eyes until until he can start to see warm squiggles and lazy starbursts against the backs of his eyelids.
The guy in the cell next to him immediately tries to talk at him with a drunken drawl, which Robin doesn't appreciate right now. Without moving, he grabs at the man's blood and sends him walking, like a marionette, back to his tiny bed. Anyone watching the cameras will see a man suddenly decide to lay down, roll stiffly away from the camera, and take a nap. What they don't catch is the fact that he blacks out the second his head hits the pillow.
This makes the space a little more tolerable. Robin needs space to listen. Space to think. Space to wait.
And he waits very patiently, through the subtle, shifting feeling of energy coming from the direction of the waiting room, and through the audible, tell-tale sounds of a heated argument turning into an all-out brawl. He lifts his head in time to see someone open the door, but feels his attention slide off of them several times--so by the time she's found his cell, he's stopped trying to look, keeping his eyes low and gazing at the ground in front of where he knows she's standing.
"Hello, friend."
He speaks calmly and quietly, but he's barely holding back a grin.
"I get the feeling you shouldn't be here, either."
no subject
This, though, is a lavender so bright it edges towards white. Neph blinks and blinks as though to wick away tears, but the light in question isn't real so her eyes don't water the way her brain thinks they should. She's able to look her fill, to study it from a few different angles, before the cell's occupant calls out to her. The voice startles a twitch across her shoulders, but when she blinks away the Bronze to squint at the person, he isn't even looking directly at her.
Oh. Ohhh. Bright light, strong magic, equally susceptible to fogging of that magic, maybe? Neph scrapes her lower lip between her teeth and eases off the Copper, just a little.
"I mean, they totally did catch me somewhere I wasn't supposed'ta be, but. Y'know. I don't really wanna stick around for the fingerprinting part." She's got a couple months left til her juvie records get permanently sealed, but like heck those digital databases are really secure. "Did they 'print you yet?"
no subject
He sounds very casual about it, as if they were two well-established friends just having a chat. And now that he's got a sense for how she speaks and that she's (in some way) concerned for his well-being, he unfolds from the back wall to come stand dead-center in the middle of the cell.
He's very pale. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, missing his gloves. He wonders if he could get them back before they leave. He manages to look directly at her face this time, though he wouldn't really be able to describe it to anyone if they asked.
"So, did you come in here with a plan, or are we just gonna figure it out as we go?"
He could be referring to a couple of things, but it's probably mostly about breaking out of a police station, or whatever is happening here.
no subject
He probably wouldn't want to be anywhere near her if she'd had her identity logged. Because that's where this is going, right? A mutual breakout? Neph has a bad habit of acting on impulse, so this isn't the first time she's been halfway through a plan before she even realized she had one in the works. As half-baked maneuvers go, she's done way stupider than stepping up to keep the mundies in the dark...and an illusion (or whatever it is) that intense can't be hiding anything good.
"Yeah so about that..." Clock's ticking, already the noise in the bullpen has shifted from frenetic to something with a tempo and rhythm, something practiced. Neph reaches out, hand hovering over the lock without touching it. "Just a sec."
A flicker of Steel, a dab of Iron, and the door glows intensely blue to her eyes. Inside the metal casing, shining nearly white, are the guts of the mechanism. Her fingers twitch infinitesimally as she tugs here, twists there, pushes just there--
The lock disengages with a muted thunk. Neph grins and shoves it away with another smear of Steel, keeping her fingers entirely to herself.
"I might maybe be able to walk us out," she says, stepping aside so she's not crowding the doorway, "But I dunno if my anti-attention field is gonna mess with your whateverthefuck that is?" A wobbly wave of her hand is meant to indicate his, well, everything. All the stuff she can't see, no matter how hard she squints.
no subject
And it's a nice trick. He raises an eyebrow in surprise as the lock not only opens, but the rest moves easily away as well. He tilts his head the other way, as if this would look any different from another angle, as she gestures at basically his entire person.
"Oh, I dunno." Giving an easy shrug, the demigod grins back, "I soak up stuff pretty well. And I ain't in a position to be choosy."
He is, actually, but he'd much rather let this girl keep showing him what she can do, rather than give all of his tricks away early. He doesn't even realize that she knows he's wrapped in an illusory shell, he just figures she can pick up on inhuman energy the same way he can.
He glances briefly at the other people in their dingy cells, all of which are either not paying attention, or good at minding their own business. It seems as good a time as any, so he steps closer to Neph, pulling in his aura closer to himself he does. It would probably make the bright light of his illusion a little less intense for her to look at... But if anyone else in the area can sense magical creatures, Robin will have suddenly dropped off the metaphorical map.
"Name's Robin, by the way," he holds his hand out, presumably for a quick handshake, "Like the bird."