milliways_bar | (no subject)

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The first thing Pearly notices on arrival in Milliways is that the world is smaller, much smaller, far too small. Not in the sense of space – he’s used to the cramped alleys and underground cellars of the Narrows or the Five Points – but in that his vision is restricted. He looks up at the ceiling with a quiet snarl, razor eyes rolling back in his head…no Avenue of the Nine, nor the Twenty. No Sarganda Street, no Diamond Row. Nothing.

He looks around, glaring. The knife in one hand drips blood on to the floor, and he wipes his face with the other, which holds a gun, single-barrel, ivory handle. His mouth opens to speak to the place at large – the first saloon in a long time not to quiet at his entrance – but then his eyes fall upon the Observation Window.

….oh. Oh.

The knife drops to the floor, and everything else melts away.

[OOC: I strongly recommend reading this post before tagging, and perhaps his profile as well. Open until whenever!]

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When Thor rushes past Pam to the scene, she's only just slightly taken aback. She didn't expect a...well, a superhero. In a cape.

Okay. Whatever, this will work.

But not even the thunder in his voice or the electric aura will stop the two men currently in a deathlock on the floor.

Pam's eyes widen in horror when she sees the state of Eric's face, and she knows full well what he can do when he gets a firm grip on Pearly's jaw.

"Eric!"

Her voice is firm, but with that note of desperate pleading.

She has no idea how to stop Pearly but she can stop Eric. And when he stops, she'll trust Thor to step in for good.

Eric hears Thor, but there is no way he is stopping when someone is pressing silver to his face-

- and then he hears Pam. And he trusts her enough to pull away, the flesh sticking to the silver gun tearing away from his skull with a sickeningly wet sound.

He screams as he lets go of the man's face. And tries to land a swift kick to his balls as he rolls away, one arm shielding his face from contact with the floor.

Edited 2014-09-19 16:50 (UTC)

It's a kick that lands home, and even while he's got a hand up to grab his face he curls and snarls, and then rolls to get at him again. His face is quite mad now, twitching all over the place, eyes flicking around like rats trying to escape a barrel, cracks opening and closing in his cheeks every time he growls out a word.

'...goddamn bastard, you're gonna-'

Whatever Eric's going to do is lost as Pearly flings himself towards him again.

Are either of them strong enough to match an Asgardian? Who knows. Thor would slam Mjölnir down between them if he were surer enough of the sturdiness of these floorboards. He drops it more gently instead -- having mental control over your weapon is very useful -- and slams himself between them instead, dropping to one knee in the bare space between the combatants in the instant that space exists. One hand on Pearly's chest and one on Eric's, and he shoves them each backward, without being too gentle about it.

At least one of them is injured, but they're stubborn enough to fight like this, in the middle of the bar, and formidable enough for the other vampire to have fetched him to address it. Better to stop the fight abruptly and deal with bruises later.

"Enough. Cease this now."

Pam feels Eric's pain and rage so deeply that she's almost numb, even as her body trembles with it.

She cries out when Eric pulls away and his skin tears off--

Jesus fucking Christ, that thing's face--

The second Thor separates the two, she immediately moves without thinking. In a flash she goes straight to Eric's side, kneeling beside him with one hand grasping his arm, the other hand pressed to the back of his neck. Her touch is soft and reassuring, and make no mistake, she will do her damnedest to pin him to the floor if he tries to retaliate at this point.

[OOC: New tagging order: Pam-Eric-Pearly-Thor!]

He is hiding his face and Pam will be able to feel his body tremble with rage and pain. He is using his other arm to shield his ravaged face but despite the pain he tries to move toward the freak again.

Because Pam is there and he has to be between them.

The pain is making it hard to think, so he is running on pure instinct now. And that tells him not to show weakness and to protect his offspring.

Pearly's on his feet, panting like a dog, looking down at them and enjoying every second of the man's agony. Well, that's what you deserve if you mess with him, and the fact that blood is dribbling out of the sharp gouge marks at the corner of his jaw doesn't mean a thing. The pain is like needles under the skin, but that's OK, his adrenaline eats it up and he won't feel it properly until he calms down.

He glances over at the man that got in the way. His eyebrows go up. For a second, surprise shows - that cloak is very red, that armour very shiny...he approves, yes yes, very good...but more, it's that the man himself seems - what's the word? He's just more there than most people, saturated in the gold of his hair. Pearly is momentarily derailed by it.

Then he shakes his head, and starts forward again, though with a tiny bit less conviction. But the gun's still in his hand, and it shoots bullets, and he's plenty angry enough to finish the job before asking the guy how he does that.

Okay, the vampires probably have each other in check. Maybe. Enough for Thor to leave Eric be for the moment, and turn on Pearly.

His patience is... let's go with extremely finite. Especially when he's already told them to stand down twice. (They owe no fealty to him, but that's not the point. He's still in authority here, by bone-deep assumptions and by his Security badge.)

So when Pearly moves forward again, it's greeted with one large hand fisting in the collar of his suit and hoisting him up onto the tips of his toes, and the other grabbing both gun and gun hand to shove the barrel down to point at the floor.

"This bout," he growls more or less in Pearly's face, "is over."

(This puts Pearly's face quite near the red cloak and the gleaming, delicately worked navy maybe-leather and steel of Thor's armor. In case that's relevant. His forearms also bear fabric wrappings of that same red, under ornate vambraces.)

Pam understands Eric's instincts better than anyone, and she knows what he's driven to do even in his state. And even so, the most she can do is to grab at his jacket when he tries to move. He would protect her no matter what the cost. Even if the threat has passed.

"Holy shit."

She gapes up at the red-cloaked figure as he lifts Pearly into the air.

She could've sworn she's seen similar runes on that giant hammer before.

Wait, he has a giant hammer.

She didn't catch his name but now she's wondering if Eric's ancestry has anything to do with this.

The who and the how hasn't quite registered with Eric yet.
He manages to get to his knees and one hand, despite Pam's best efforts and then he stops, as his opponent is no longer charging him.

That's good. He could use a moment to regroup.
He can feel how his cheekbone is trying to get back in place and so he moves his arm so he can reach up with one hand instead and press the shards of bone into place.

The crunching noise is quite loud. And very unpleasant.

Edited 2014-09-19 19:02 (UTC)

Pearly hears it. His eyes light up, and his mouth splits into a grin, even hanging by someone's fist as he is.

'Ah, you're welcome for that,' he says, merry as anything.

Then his face cracks once more, and he lets out a single loud snarl, right back in this golden man's face. It's like a dog snapping once at someone who comes too near his bone. Then his skin smooths back over, and his eyes flicker to the red, and the shiny shiny steel, and the way light catches in his golden hair. He cranes his face forward to get closer to the metal, enjoying the reflection back into his eyes.

'You're a strange one. Where'd you come from, then? You're taking up too much of the space, but that's alright, it's alright, you're a concentrated man, aren't you? There's too much of you inside that body. Years since I've seen anything like it.'

There is no obvious expectation that anyone else should understand any of this, and he doesn't seem overly bothered about being held up like this. Because he's shiny, see?

Edited 2014-09-19 20:12 (UTC)

...

Yeah, whatever.

"How did this begin?" The question is direct to all of them, but it's Pam he looks at. She's the one who seems both capable of useful answers and not currently engaged in putting her face back together, not to mention the one who had the sense to come for him.

Since lava-face snarly guy seems okay with being hoisted up like this, he gets to stay semi-dangling for a minute more. If Thor starts to feel adverse magic or the guy tries to bite him or something, then it may be time for Mjölnir.

It takes a second before she realizes that the other big blond guy in the room is addressing her.

A hand on Eric's shoulder, her eyes snap to Pearly's face and her crimson lip curls in disgust, regretting that she'd even said one word to him. She then looks up at Thor.

"I was flirting with him," she says, her tone flat and blunt, but with another sharp look at Pearly. "And then he got all pissy and held a fucking gun to my neck. It's made of silver and it burned my skin. That was when Eric came in to defend me."

And then it got a little out of hand, but she's not going to say that.

"I felt her pain," Eric grinds out.

His face is still a bloody and gory mess, despite the way his body is repairing itself. It is slow going both due to the size of the wound and the prolonged exposure to the silver.

And it hurts like a bitch.

"I told him to fuck off and he found it amusing. "

He groans, briefly closing his eyes and the forces them open, looking directly at Thor.

(They'd spoken once; he was not the Thunderer his people had sacrificed goats too, he was sure of that - but still, he had not seemed unreasonable).

"She is my Progeny. My child. And he was hurting her."
Child is a meaningless term. But humans react to it. Perhaps possible gods do as well.

Pearly rolls his eyes at this, and moves his gaze to the red of the cloak. He drinks it in, but after the window, it's making him itch.

'Put me down,' he says, his tone deceptively quiet.

'I'll leave him be for today.'

"Do you know where you are, and the rules of this place?"

That's definitely just to Pearly.

The Norseman vampire knows. He's been here for some time. And his child, his Progeny, she's under his eye and she knew to fetch Security, so it's safe to assume she does too.

"I tried to tell him," Pam insists.

"But he wasn't listening to anything I was saying. He was too busy staring at that goddamned Observation Window."

She turns her attention back to Eric, giving his arm a subtle squeeze. His face is healing slower than she expects, and it worries her. He'll need to feed on fresh blood after this.

"We both told him."
Eric sounds hoarse.

Granted, the insults may have overshadowed it, but they did still tell him.

He briefly allows himself to close his eyes and lean ever so slightly on Pam. Just for a couple of seconds.

Edited 2014-09-19 21:18 (UTC)

The vampires are entirely ignored. He opens his mouth to say 'New York' because where else would he be? But he remembers something about the end of the universe now that the colour mist has been worked out a bit, and his eyes are pulled back towards the window at once.

Just because he's never seen that in New York before, doesn't mean it's not there. It's a very strange place, his city.

He smiles again, only its harder this time, and his fingers start curling again.

'Put me down.'

It's on the tip of Thor's tongue to say You want down? and slam him to the floor. It's honestly not anger, even if it would be kind of satisfying. This is the kind of thing Thor and his circles consider an acceptable attention-getting technique.

But they're surrounded by vulnerable mortals. This guy's an unknown quantity, and so is the blast radius of whatever powers he might have.

He lowers Pearly a little, enough to have his weight on his own feet again, though he doesn't release him. Instead, he begins to steer Pearly towards the lake door, or at least attempts to do so.

"You and I will continue this discussion outside. Or in a cell: that choice is yours."

And then probably there will be cell time. But there are a lot of breakable people between here and the jail cells, and he doesn't really want to smash up the Security office if things go down that way.

To Pam and Eric, over his shoulder, he adds, "Thank you. I'll speak with you more later. If you need a healer, get one."

To get more details, and to get the woman's name to compliment her on her sense, and for a general look, I realize he escalated it, but next time please TRY to bring the superpowered fights outside until a Security member gets there? request for Eric. Also to make sure his face gets healed up right, ouch.

Edited 2014-09-19 21:44 (UTC)

Pearly...does not like being steered. No one's done such a thing for years, and he still hasn't worked out exactly what's going on here. He frowns as they walk, ordering things in his head, and realising that he may well have lost some time in front of the window.

He looks back, but Thor's hand is solid and he can't help but go along. His temper starts to rise again, and without thinking about it his resistance increases the closer they get to the back door. He's taking him away from the window - and leaving the vampire behind?

...it hits him for the first time, truly, that he's not in New York any more. No one would touch him like this in a bar in the Five Points, no one would dare talk to him the way everyone has, and while death threats are nothing new, he's pretty sure he'd know by now if there were any vampires around the city.

'No no no. I don't think so, golden man.' He digs his heels in a few paces from the back, and remembers that he still has a a gun.

'New York's back that way.'

Edited 2014-09-19 22:42 (UTC)

Pam uses every ounce of subtlety possible to make Eric to get to his feet. The most she will do to physically help him is to hold him by the elbow for balance, because now is not the time for him to lose face (so to speak).

She can still feel his pain, his simmering anger. But she pushes him through it. It's in her eyes, the set of her mouth when she looks at him. And even if his face is a gory mess, she will still look at him as if he was perfect.

Eric eventually rises to his feet and she slips an unseen hand under his jacket, pressing it flat to the small of his back. Stand up straighter. She remains slightly behind him, just at his shoulder, demure and deferential. Mostly just for show. She is certainly no damsel in distress, but he is her Maker, and she will do whatever it takes to make him look good.

At Thor's words, she nods. "We'll both be around for a while," she says, glancing up at Eric.

Fuck, he's pale. She needs to get him upstairs to his room. And then find a human he trusts to feed on.

As soon as Thor leaves with Pearly in tow, Pam urges Eric to walk toward the stairs. Through sheer willpower, she won't have him stagger or falter. No. Not here, not now.

But once they're in the stairwell, and out of sight, she wraps his arm over her shoulders and presses close to his side.

And he follows her lead, walking quietly and not too slowly as long as they are in full view. Head held up, back as straight as he can manage. Letting everyone see his face.

And - not crumbling, exactly, when they are in the stairwell, but folding down, resting his weight on her briefly. Resting his unhurt cheek against the top if her head. Whispering, "Min Pamela," in Swedish. My Pamela. Letting her know she did well. Before taking a breath, pointlessly, and pushing ahead.

It fucking hurts. Everything hurst.
And he is still low from getting shot. TruBlood will only get you that far and though he's fed once already, on Jay, this new hurt is taxing him beyond what it ought to.

One foot before the other.

He indicates his own room with a small nod and once there, he steers for the bed and sits down heavily.

Edited 2014-09-20 04:38 (UTC)

"It is," Thor agrees, without slowing.

"Come. We'll talk."

As soon as they're through the back door, he plans to summon Mjölnir to his hand, release Pearly's gun hand just in time to grab it, and fling them both flying across the lawn to a more isolated patch of ground.

But if Pearly's resistance gets too stubbornly annoying, hey, they can fly through the back door too!

And bullets won't hurt Thor unless there's a whole lot of magic or other supernatural power behind them, although they will annoy him.

'I don't wanna talk.'

He's a good orator, when he's lucid and in his groove. Inspirational, even - at least to his criminal underlings. But here, beleaguered, and manhandled by...whatever this man is, it's natural to revert to the curt Irish barks of his youth.

He tries to twist against the grip on his back, straightens his legs to prevent movement, his face once more going flat with anger. A second later he relaxes entirely, only to twist back the other way, trying to swing his free fist around to smash into the back of this guy's head.