16474/Shadows of Bushwick

Shadows of Bushwick
Date of Scene:	11 August 2024
Location:	Bushwick (Mutant Town), Brooklyn
Synopsis:	While out on 'patrol' in Mutant Town, investigating rumors of some kind of demon prowling the night Kitty is beset upon by two SUVs full of 'Friends of Humanity' thugs. Fortunately for her, the rumors about the demon were true.
Cast of Characters:	Shadowcat, Spawn

---

Shadowcat has posed:
The streets of Mutant Town are eerily quiet at this hour, well after midnight, when the city's usual hustle has faded into the shadows. The primary sounds are the hum of traffic not far off, the occasional drip of water from a leaky pipe, someone's TV on too loudly, some muffled angry shouting between a couple of guys that sound ready to square off, and a far distant police siren. Mutant Town, with its run-down tenements and overcrowded townhouses, seems almost peaceful in the stillness, though Kitty Pryde knows better than to let her guard down here.

Bushwick, or Mutant Town as it's more commonly known, is a place where mutant culture thrives despite the rampant poverty and crime. The neighborhood is a tightly knit community, primarily populated by mutants -- many with visible physical mutations that make them stand out even in a crowd. It's a place where people find solidarity and acceptance, but also one where danger lurks in the alleys and behind closed doors.

Kitty walks along the cracked sidewalk, her hands shoved into the pockets of her leather jacket. The cool night air brushes against the exposed skin of her midriff, her black crop top barely offering warmth, though it does offer a tongue-in-cheek picture of two crows sitting on a limb above the words 'Attempted Murder.' Her dark washed jeans are ripped jeans are faded in places, but they allow her the freedom of movement she might need if things go sideways tonight. She's not here by accident. She's here to investigate.

Rumors have been swirling about some sort of paranormal monster plaguing the area. The residents are frightened, speaking in hushed tones about sightings and strange occurrences. Kitty had heard enough to know it was worth checking out, and now she's here, walking the dimly lit streets, her senses sharp and ready.

The familiar neon signs of mutant-owned businesses are mostly dark at this hour, their colorful lights replaced by the cold glow of street lamps. A few bars and clubs are still open, spilling music out into the street when the door opens to expel a staggering drunk, but even they are winding down, their patrons heading home or to wherever the night takes them. Kitty's eyes scan the alleys and doorways as she walks, looking for anything out of place, anything that might give her a lead.

She's not just investigating. To some extent, she's bait. Out here alone, in the heart of Mutant Town, she's daring whatever is out there to come find her.

Spawn has posed:
Spawn has been in the area since just before sunset. The monster has been for the last couple of days, since he found out that the people of Bushwick formed "neighborhood watch groups" and are proud of the slight decrease in anti-mutant violence. It's those groups who make up most of the reported sightings, but it's always just a fleeting glimpse. Green eyes glow in a dead-end alleyway, but there's nothing there when they check it out. The beat of leathery wings heard overhead, a big shadow passes overhead, sometimes a terrifying look at the belly of a huge flying thing caught in the street light that shines up into the sky.

The Hellspawn made some of those appearances just to let people know he was in the area, but some of them were legitimately sharp-eyed and sharp-eared watchers catching him off his game. Tonight the thing is out again. Some chatter overheard from a neighborhood watch patrol says so, and every time the wind blows somebody swears they heard those massive wings flapping.

Right this second, Spawn is tailing a young mutant woman. She seems out of place in the area, at this time, but the intentions he picked up on first sight don't follow with a troublemaker. The prey he's after would be broadcasting hate, disgust, and caustic contempt -- not caution and... is that... is that really a little wish to get into trouble? Spawn is following this bait the way fishermen follow schools of small fish when hunting predators in the water. He keeps to the rooftops, leaping across gaps when he needs to, not using the cape because he doesn't want to give himself away.

Shadowcat has posed:
Kitty's boots make soft, almost inaudible taps against the cracked sidewalk as she walks, her thoughts focused and alert. The air is still, the distant sounds of the city fading into the background as she makes her way through the nearly deserted streets. She's passed by a few late-night stragglers, none of whom seem to take much notice of her, and she's just about to round the corner when the quiet night is abruptly shattered.

Two SUVs come tearing down the street, their headlights cutting through the darkness and illuminating the sides of the dilapidated buildings with a harsh, artificial light. For a split second, they look like they might just be some reckless drivers, but they screech to a halt -- one in front of her, the other behind -- boxing her in on the narrow sidewalk. The doors of both SUVs pop open simultaneously, and six figures step out with cold precision.

Kitty takes a couple of steps back, but she keeps her composure, her hands withdrawing from those jacket pockets as she assesses the situation.

The first four men are bruisers, all of them tall and broad-shouldered, built like linebackers with the expression of bouncers who've seen it all. Their outfits are a uniform mix of dark tactical gear and steel-toed boots, with "Friends of Humanity" armbands prominently displayed on their sleeves. Their faces are hard, set in determined scowls, and they move with the confidence of those who believe they've already won. Each one of them holds a stun baton, crackling with energy, and there's an unsettling glint in their eyes as they advance toward Kitty.

But it's the other two that give her pause.

The fifth man is wiry, with short-cropped hair and a nervous energy that makes him seem jittery despite his calm exterior. He's holding what looks like a modified tranquilizer gun, the kind you'd expect to see in a high-budget action movie, and his eyes dart around, as if anticipating any sign of resistance.

The sixth figure is a woman with close-cropped blonde hair and a cruel smile playing on her lips. She's wearing a sleek, high-tech suit that seems to shimmer in the dim light, and on her belt is a small device that hums ominously -- some sort of inhibitor or power dampener, designed to neutralize mutant abilities. The woman's gaze locks onto Kitty's, and for a moment, it feels like the temperature drops.

"Heyyyyyy," Kitty sing-songs, her hands coming up as her brown eyes flicker between all of them. "Geeze.. there sure are a lot of you just to deliver one pizza. You guys must take the whole thirty-minutes-or-its-free thing _really_ seriously..."

There's no laughter.

"Now, sweetheart," the woman purrs, stepping forward with predatory confidence. "Why don't you come quietly? We wouldn't want to make a scene in such a charming little neighborhood, would we?"

From far overhead, there's the caw of a crow closing in. And those with telepathic powers would sense that it's no ordinary bird. It's _highly_ intelligent and sentient and... not actually a bird at all, even if it might look like one. It's some sort of alien, and it's not at all happy about what's happening to Kitty.

Spawn has posed:
Spawn isn't that kind of telepath. The caw of that crow, long considered a harbinger of death, just becomes part of his entrance. Its defensive intentions don't concern him. What does concern him, far more than thugs with stun batons and the arrogant wish to hurt somebody else, is the pair with higher tech weapons and the cold malevolence they radiate.

The kind of telepath Spawn is won't be clear to either Kitty or her alien protector unless they can pick up on the directed hallucination he broadcasts only to the group of assailants -- unless each of the six can resist it, it's something like a nuclear blast right in front of each of their own eyes. That means a blinding flash which comes complete with a sense of intense pain like retinas burning right off the eyeballs, and it's loud enough to create an instant migraine headache that feels like shattered eardrums. Those affected even have the momentary sensation of warm fluid trickling out of the ear canals, but that only lasts for the split-second before the heat rises until they can feel every cell in their body begin to vaporize at once.

Kitty and her crow, and anyone else not affected, would see the trio of metal chains, blacker than the asphalt they dig into, which shoot from above to anchor and then pull the seven foot tall and four hundred pound Hellspawn from sky to earth in an instant. The thud of his landing can be felt underfoot, but otherwise the asphalt remains unbroken. As his "grapples" retract there isn't even a mark left where the hard metal spikes impacted the road.

By the time the vision clears, the monster stands between the two apparent leaders and the girl in the short t-shirt and faded jeans. He just stands there though, making sure the prey gets a good look at him before he makes another move.

Shadowcat has posed:
The four bruisers with stun batons are the first to react. Their faces contort in agony as they stagger back, clutching at their heads, their batons dropping to the ground with a clatter. The wiry man with the tranquilizer gun tries to raise his weapon, but his hands are shaking so badly that he nearly drops it, his eyes pinched and one hand on his head as if he's seen something far worse than anything he could have imagined.

The blonde woman, who moments ago had all the confidence in the world, now looks stricken. She stumbles back a step, her eyes locked on the hulking figure in front of her. Whatever power she thought she had, whatever control she believed she wielded, it's clear that it's slipping through her fingers.

Kitty takes two more steps back, caught off guard by the sudden appearance of the towering figure, and bumps into the wall of a building. Her eyes widen, taking in the sight of the seven-foot-tall Hellspawn standing between her and the group of aggressors. She glances at the goons, noting their sudden confusion and the terror spreading across their faces.

The crow, circling overhead, lets out another sharp caw, its intelligent gaze fixed on the scene below as if assessing the situation. Kitty's eyes dart between the Hellspawn and the now utterly disoriented group of would-be kidnappers. She knows she has to keep her wits about her, but the arrival of this new player on the board has shifted the balance in a way she didn't anticipate.

"Hey, big guy," Kitty says, her voice a little too apprehensive to be completely calm but carrying just enough casual bravado to mask the tension in the air. "I'm guessing you're not here to deliver pizzas, either."

The woman with the inhibitor stumbles back another step, her cruel smile now twisted into a grimace of fear. The wiry man drops the tranquilizer gun altogether, his hands going to his head as he struggles with the hallucination that's still playing havoc with his senses. The bruisers have mostly taken to their knees, groaning and clutching their heads, but as their vision starts to clear, they're looking frantically between Spawn and their leaders, most of them already backing up further.

Spawn has posed:
In the moments while the Friends of Humanity are still collecting themselves, when Kitty speaks to him, Spawn's head turns to regard Kitty Pryde. He doesn't have eyes, just that glowing green balefire where eyes should be. This close, the girl can get a really good look at the flames licking around his leathery mask where his eyelids should be. The smoke rising from their corners doesn't seem to be affected by a passing breeze. There is no mouth on that featureless face but the mask moves as if jaws were moving underneath it when he rumbles, "Don't watch," in a low tone that was meant to be soothing but probably isn't.

As he turns back to find the skinny guy and the woman in the high-tech suit now backpedaling, he raises the oversized bracer on his right hand as if studying the punch-dagger spike that sticks off the front. "Face," he says quietly, before looking past the spike to the face of the tech-suited woman, "or gut?"

Shadowcat has posed:
That... face. Well, not _face_. That... mask. The flames. The giant, menacing appearance. Kitty knew of some with similar appearances, but she has no idea who _this_ is. No idea what his intentions might be, how far he might go, or whether she's next on the menu after the immediate threats are neutralized.

Still.

"Wait," Kitty blurts out, her voice a plea rather than an order, her hands raising in surrender as if to show that she meant Spawn no additional harm -- she just didn't want him to start impaling people who were, essentially, unarmed.

"Please."

She takes a step out to the side, giving him a bit of a berth, and just as she does, both of the SUVs shift into gear and take off. Only three had gotten out of each, leaving the drivers in place, and they both raced into the night, leaving their comrades behind to deal with whatever the hell (literally) had descended on them.

"Surrender," she says, looking from Spawn to the two obvious 'leaders' and then the goons. "Turn off your device and surrender, and you'll be taken into custody."

Kitty's brown eyes shift back to Spawn, hopeful, as if to say.. 'Right?'

Still a plea rather than an order. Either way, the woman starts frantically groping for the device on her hip to turn it off. Whatever it was wasn't helping her against Spawn, anyway. Maybe it was doing something to Kitty's powers, if she even had any, but she hadn't demonstrated any so far.

Spawn has posed:
The Hellspawn drops his gauntleted fist to his side, which means under his cape, and even though the mask over his face only bears the one expression of intense malevolence there's something like exhasperation in the air. "Custody is for theft, kid," is transmitted as an audible hallucination, directed only to Kitty Pryde if she receives it. No reason to let the soon-to-be recruits in Hell's army know that he's entertaining a plea for mercy.

It's a conversational tone, deep and smooth, human-like. "Do you understand what filth you waste your pity on?"

Shadowcat has posed:
Like the rest of the X-Men, Kitty has been trained extensively to resist telepathic attacks... but this isn't an attack, is it?

It's.. different. It creeps in around the edges, and rather than immediately trying to fight it or use her powers to resist, she takes a calculated risk. She lowers her defenses. She takes a moment to see what Spawn would do with the opening. And she's not upset with the results.

"I do."

Her own voice is soft, spoken out loud to the now confused-looking 'prisoners' who await the decision of their fate.

"Killing the helpless doesn't advance our cause. We aren't them. We show mercy."

With that device disabled, Kitty looks around at the six nervous figures.

"Hands and knees," she orders. "All of you. Right now. Let's go! Hands and knees!"

She's already starting to walk around behind them as they start to move. There's little doubt that Spawn could take control of the situation again -- could pretty much do whatever he wanted to any of the hostages. And if he left? Well, the 5'6" brunette in the crop top would still be left with six very angry thugs to deal with on her own.

But as long as Spawn stayed, they seemed to remain compliant to Kitty's orders, even as that crow lands on a flickering street lamp nearby.

Spawn has posed:
Instead of pointing out that leaving them alive doesn't advance Spawn's cause, or even deter other members of the so-called "Friends of Humanity" from coming back here, and since Kitty left herself open...

A memory is broadcast at Kitty's mind, from the first-person perspective.

The memory belonged to Al Simmons, but it isn't hazy or misty or watercolored. It's as vivid now, broadcast into Kitty's consciousness from the Hellspawn, as it was when he lived it. Sixteen months in a prison camp -- faction deliberately withheld. They didn't know Al was under orders to locate their facility and assassinate their leaders. They caught him because the CIA hooked him up with a two-faced informant, so he was taken with stun batons when he showed up to a meet. The burning sting of those batons, so much like the ones carried by Kitty's attackers tonight, is like being hit by a dozen wasps all at the same time, all in one spot.

The facility Al woke up in was as low-rent as you can get. Abandoned warehouse or fortified barn, maybe. The "cell" is just a cage meant for the transport of dangerous animals. It's not tall enough to stand up or wide enough to lay down. There are three other cages lined up alongside it, empty, but Al is still crammed into his with a cellmate. That one isn't even American, just meta-human. Both make a concerted effort to urinate through the thick-gauge wire mesh walls, but neither have any choice other than to defecate through the wire-mesh floor into an oversized pan which can be pulled out for disposal but is only cleared when it's full. Both occupants were stripped before being jammed inside, and there is no bedding. It's bad enough when that wire-mesh digs into the flesh, preventing anything like "rest" and never even mind sleep, but when the tray is overfull Al could feel it against his skin too. Eventually it would overflow, and that's when they would empty it, so even when the sewage box was empty the stink soaked into the floor around the cage was unbearable.

It gets so cold at night that the two have to huddle together for warmth, and the body odor is as bad as the sewage stink. No telling whose it is. "Food" amounts to a plate containing hard-tack rolls and an old Bell jar full of murky water, for the prisoners to share. They leave that on the floor just outside the cage door, where the prisoners can just barely pull a roll inside, through the wire mesh, if they're willing to skin their hands doing it. The only way to drink is for a prisoner to reach an arm out to lift the jar, then pour it through the wire and try to catch it in the mouth.

Every day, both prisoners are taken out for "exercise." Exercise amounts to one being strapped to a chair while the other is tied to a metal bed-frame with the springs intact like a grill. The one in the chair gets beat on, or worked on by the torturer du jour, while the one on the bedframe is subjected to beatings with sticks and electric shock provided by a car battery wired through an inverter. There is no interrogation. The group demands that Al Simmons should renounce his country, and capitalism, and family, in front of a camera, but Al knows that if he gives in they'll just end it as gruesomely as they can and send copies to his wife back home. When the meta-human is strapped to the chair, Al finds out about his healing factor. It isn't fast, but they can inflict the same horrors day after day after day and just stuff him back in the cell. The sound of the screams when they pull out his fingernails, or his teeth, or his earlobes, with a pair of fat pliers is the kind of thing that makes the soul cringe. Sharp, ragged breathing follows, weeping, and the meta-human can't give in because they don't want anything from him but to inflict pain for what he is. When Al is in the chair, they just turn the juice all the way up on the bedframe and let the meta-human writhe and shriek in unending burning pain while the American gets a beating designed to keep him alive and regretting it.

(continued to next pose)

Spawn has posed:
Day after day after day, time blurs until the living Hell of it became eternity. Al's ultimate rescue, or escape, or whatever end there was to it, is not included in this full sensory-hallucination matinee.

For effect Spawn deliberately replaces the faces of his *actual* torturers with the faces of the ones Kitty Pryde is now arguing should be let go, scot-free.

The whole upload takes as much time as it takes the crow to fold its wings on its perch.

Shadowcat has posed:
Kitty is half-way around the group of jack-booted thugs when the hallucination takes its hold. She didn't have anyone to blame but herself, honestly. No one asked her to leave herself vulnerable. She certainly had no reason to trust a giant... monster?... with flames coming out around his mask.

In real time, those six 'prisoners' are keeping an eye on her, even if they are compliant... for the moment. But those 'visions' aren't just visions. They're experiences. Experiences of torture complete with the sights and smells and mains and struggles...

It hits her like a solid punch to the gut, and Kitty wavers in place, almost seeming to lose her balance. Emotionally overwhelmed. Physically overwhelmed. She was suddenly nauseous, clutching at her stomach as she dropped to her knees and dry-heaved once.

And that momentarily lapse is all it takes.

One goon shifts like a cobra, grabbing the young by her ponytail and yanking her into his arms, dragging her to the ground and wrapping his arms around her head in the perfect position to snap her neck.

"BACK OFF," he yells, "OR THE GIRL DIES."

And none of them wait to see what's going to happen. The scrawny guy is already going for his tranq gun and the woman is fumbling to try to get her device back on.

Spawn has posed:
This whole time in physical reality, since everybody got on the ground, Spawn has just been standing there like a statue while his green eyes literally smolder at the woman and her skinny pal with the tranquilizer. He had been relaxed for about a minute, arms and hands obscured by his cloak.

It's impossible for anyone but the monster itself to know *how* he could tell what was going to happen during his negotiation with the girl, but it's all about hyper-alertness and that empathic sense of emotions and intent. So before the goon lunged at Kitty, Spawn was turning his body halfway toward him and affixing those balefire eyes on the man. By the time the goon lunges to grab Kitty and drag her to the ground, Spawn's un-armored left hand was already emerging from that crimson cape which seems to flow down his back like a fountain of living blood. The cape withdraws from the black-leather-wrapped arm to reveal a pretty mundane semi-automatic pistol, Glock if you know your hardware, but there is no holster on that hip and there is no sign of anywhere else that the weapon could have come from. The little metallic snap of the hammer dropping comes at a point when the girl is being pulled down, the gunshot rings out and starts echoing up and down the street just before the goon starts talking, and in the exact moment that the goon has Kitty down like a human shield the bullet-in-flight is already between her and him. So the punctuation to his threat is the sudden impact of that little dome of hollowpoint lead flattening into the center of his forehead and ripping on through the bone and brain matter with a little explosion of moist goop at entry and exit. Kitty is still in a headlock, though.

He's more negligent about dropping lead into the skinny guy's face -- his arm just curls back across his chest and the gun goes off with barely enough time for him to turn back and aim. It's a solid hit, having taken more time because Spawn deliberately slowed down to prevent over-taxing the pistol's rate-of-fire. That shot is led enough to catch the guy just as he started to make his move, so it's more like he dove into the bullet than it is like he got shot while reaching for his weapon.

The woman with her device is more or less ignored as a non-threat. Instead, Spawn turns to face the three remaining goons. The sense that something worse than a bullet to the forehead is in store just radiates from his being.

Shadowcat has posed:
Kitty Pryde had a lot of 'special' abilities -- or at least several with varying uses. Not one of them, however, was 'super speed' or 'enhanced reaction time.' Even as her body was drug over backwards by the ponytail, as she continued to retch, she was momentarily helpless, too stunned by the haunting images still floating in her mind to react to what was happening in the here-and-now.

And things were happening in the here-and-now at the millisecond level.

By the time Kitty landed on the goon that had grabbed her, she was in the arms of a corpse and the skinny man with the dart gun was no longer among the living, either. She heard the sound of the scream before she even processed that it was her own, and by the time she got her wits about her, Spawn was already turning his attention to the other goons.

The woman was still fumbling with her belt. That sharp realization was like a slap in the face.

All at once, Kitty phased, rolling not 'out of' but 'through' the arms of her captor and out across the ground. Her hand, similarly, went right through the middle of the woman with the device, and Kitty plucked it off of the woman's belt, drawing it back to her.

"STOP. FIGHTING."

The words are growled in rage, Kitty's own anger bubbling up as the woman turns on her in surprise, and then Kitty's fist comes up to punch the other woman in the face, spinning her back around. Not unconscious, but dazed.

Spawn has posed:
The giant thing from Hell actually has to restrain himself to let everyone take stock of the situation. It's less for Kitty's benefit than it is to instill fear in those who are about to die. While the X-Man takes on the slick-suited leader, the three body-armored and steeltoed thugs take in the series of events. Two turn to run while the last panics and fumbles a pistol of his own out of his pants.

Spawn starts walking toward the gunman, keeping his own mass between the shooter and the girl behind him, but his attention is affixed on the ones who want to get away. Two shots drop them in turn, not dead but kneecapped, while the last one gets off one shot of his own. It's not that his gun jammed, just that Spawn moves fast. While the injured continue trying to drag themselves off down the street, the Hellspawn keeps advancing on the shooter with grim intent. His chest soaks up lead with and between each long stride, but by the time the gunman's hammer clicks on an empty chamber there isn't so much as one penetration. Each of the slugs is embedded in Spawn's leathery armor, just stuck in place.

That last one turns and tries to run, but that's the point when the monster gives a demonstration of real speed. By the time the goon gets faced the other way and takes one running step, he bounds hard off of the seven foot tall nightmare in the flesh. He might have fallen flat on his ass, if Spawn hadn't stuck that right-hand fist-spike straight through his guts and picked him up off the ground until the two can lock stares for a long, torturous moment.

Shadowcat has posed:
Still feeling the after-effects of that full-sensory torture hallucination, it's a wonder Kitty has as much of her wits about her as she does. The absolute horror of that environment -- something she never expected to experience, something she wished she could un-experience -- still sat with her. But it wasn't as if she hasn't been through her share of trauma.

It's not as if she hasn't been possessed before. It's not as if she hasn't been through her own version of hell and nearly killed one of the most important people in her life as a result. She may not look like much -- all mousy features and plain brown ponytail. She didn't have a cool suit of armor, a cape, or terrifying mask, but she was no stranger to trauma.

The guns are going off even as that woman tries to get up onto hands and knees so she can turn and kick Kitty in the face, but as soon as she does, Kitty grabs her leg and the woman sinks six inches down into the concrete sidewalk. It makes her look like she was crawling across wet cement when she suddenly sunk in and got trapped there. Her arms and legs are both stuck in the ground.

"LET ME GO!" the woman shouts, whipping her head around indignantly.

It's then that Kitty has her first chance to look back around at the surrounding carnage. Bodies. Blood. And Spawn still there, with a man impaled and held aloft, bullets still stuck in the front of his armor.

Instead of retreating, Kitty keeps herself between Spawn and the woman she'd trapped inside the sidewalk -- one of the few remaining members of their little kidnapping party who was still breathing. And she's already pulling out her phone, tapping in a quick number and before pulling it to her ear, her eyes never leaving Spawn and the man who literally drips blood down that fist-spike.

"Hey, it's me," she says when whoever picks up on the other side. "Some Friends of Humanity guys tried to nab me in Bushwick. ... I'm fine. ... I need you to call it in. I don't know how many are still alive. One, at least. But a bunch... um..."

Spawn has posed:
The timer has been ticking down on that dying tough-guy since he came into physical contact with the Hellspawn. He screams in pain and rage while blood seeps down over the monster's spike and gauntlet and hand.

Finally, the terrorist hanging there focuses his eyes on Spawn's glowing balefire and snarls, "Burn in Hell, freak!"

Spawn cranes his face forward until those eyes are all the goon can see and, aloud in a voice that sounds like a creaking hinge on a door that closes veeeeeeery slowly he answers, "I do." That's physical speech, and it sounds like it hurts. It sounds like a death rattle somehow formed into comprehensible words. Spawn punctuates the confession by giving his right wrist a negligent flip, which hurls the guy aside at a brick wall. There's a single, loud, gut-twisting crunch as the man's bones shatter and when he bounces off to hit the ground face-first there's a bloody splat on the brick wall for good measure. The man is still breathing, with gurgly sucking sounds to prove that the broken bones punctured one or two lungs. He tries to move, then tries to scream, but all he can really muster is a twitch of the arms and legs and a grotesque choke that spews out flecks of blood.

Since he had to put himself in that man's path, during his attempted escape, Spawn is positioned to take a quick look at Kitty Pryde where she's disabled the female leader and then posted up as if to guard the woman. One of the bright, sickly glowing eyes suddenly flashes dark and then bright again before the monster turns around and begins stalking toward the pair who still try to crawl away.

Shadowcat has posed:
There's little doubt that whoever was on the other end of that phone heard the shout -- likely as well as the resulting thud and splatter against the brick wall. It wasn't exactly quiet.

Whether they heard that other voice, though -- 'I do' -- was unlikely. Not against the rest of the ambient nose, the moans and the screams, the woman still demanding to be released beside her.

"Yes, there's still... I have to go."

Even as Kitty pulls the phone away, a man's voice shouting something can be heard before she ends the call and shoves the phone back into her jacket pocket.

"Wait!... Wait. Please..."

Kitty's finally standing, then, her hands held aloft in front of her as she watches Spawn advance on those men crawling away.

"I saw what you wanted me to see." Her voice is still a little unsteady, but she's pushing through it. "I saw what they did to you. It's unforgivable. But they may know something. They're defenseless. Let me take them in for questioning. You don't have to kill them..."

It's not the blood she's afraid of. It's not the gore that she even seems to be phased by. Spilled guts, broken bones, bullet holes through foreheads. None of it's distracting her or turning her stomach. It's the darkness that claws at her. It's her own darkness, stirred up by those images of torture, that's making her hands shake.

"Please."

Spawn has posed:
Spawn's prey are the ones already dead, dying, or injured. Their intended victim's pleas for mercy makes him stop in his tracks. With his back to her, illuminated in the dim glow of Bushwick street lights, that red cape seems to flow down his back like a river of blood.

"It wasn't about what they did to *me,*" that auditory hallucination answers Kitty Pryde, but only in her own mind. The surviving members of the Friends of Humanity only hear the mutant girl talking as if to herself, and only see the monster standing there like a terrifying statue that radiates pure malevolence. Even the woman stuck in the asphalt can still feel it, dimmer than the ones closer to the Hellspawn.

While the pair with bullets through their kneecaps keep crawling, each of them using both hands and one good foot to crawl a few feet per minute, Spawn reverses direction to put his balefire eyes on Kitty's face again. He doesn't turn, instead the face emerges from the collar of the cloak and his armored chest emerges from the flowing back of the cape as if he had walked through himself from the opposite direction. When the transmutation is complete, by sheer coincidence, his armor has repaired itself enough that one of the bullets stuck in his torso drops to the road with a dull clatter.

"Why do you care *when* or *how* they go to Hell, when you know it's where they belong?" that smooth, rational-sounding human voice wants to know. There's an edge of irritation in the tone, now.

Shadowcat has posed:
It's soooo eerie, the way he stands there like a statue, and then suddenly shifts. It's subtle at first. It's not easy to tell exactly what's happening when his form starts to ripple. But then it's abundantly apparent. He just... changed direction. In the absolute creepiest way possible.

Which is saying something for a woman who routinely phrases through people.

Kitty swallows hard, trying to keep her voice steady despite the turmoil churning inside her. The darkness that Spawn's vision awakened in her is a familiar, unwelcome presence -- one that she's fought to keep buried for years. But this... this is different. This is a chance to make a different choice.

It didn't help that it was a choice in the face of a giant figure with flames around his mask, who she knew nothing about. That makes it substantially more nerve-wracking.

"I care," she begins, her voice firmer now, "because they need to face justice. Real justice. Not just a one-way ticket to hell without a trial. We're better than them. We don't become the monsters they already think we are."

Her eyes don't leave his, even as her hands shake at her sides. "Let me take them in. We fight for something better, don't we?"

Kitty's gaze shifts briefly to the leader she's phased into the sidewalk. The woman's eyes are wide, fear replacing the earlier defiance. Kitty knows that look too well -- the realization that there are things out there far more terrifying than mutants.

"Please," she repeats, her voice softer now, almost pleading. "I don't know who you are, but I _want_ to know. You stepped in and saved my life. I owe you. You _would_ have stepped in and saved him... the man you were with. You would have, if you could have. There are already people on the way. Let me phase them like I did her."

There's the briefest of gestures back to the woman, but Kitty doesn't take her eyes off of Spawn.

"Then you and I can talk, if you're willing... I'm pretty sure you're the whole reason I came here tonight."

Spawn has posed:
"But *they* are the reason I came here," the Hellspawn's imaginary retort pops back at Kitty Pryde the instant she finishes talking. "Why don't we take a real vote, from the real residents of this neighborhood? Why don't we ask the mothers, the sons, the parishoners whose friends and families lost someone to these trash?" There's no particular emphasis on these questions. It's just the implacable logic of a thing whose only purpose is to collect souls, but who for some reason is willing to discuss it with a woman who would be less than half his age if he was still alive. "Why don't we ask the survivors, who will never play catch or win a footrace as long as they live?"

The seven foot tall abomination begins striding toward Kitty. "I think you don't want to know what they think because you know they would agree with me. You've done things your way for a long time, and you've changed nothing. Your neighborhood watch made them come less often, but now they come in larger numbers, with better weapons."

Shadowcat has posed:
"Yes," the word is venom as it leaves Kitty's lips, throwing out a hand to gesture around Mutant Town, "let's turn it all over to mob rule so hatred and fear fuel every decision, because THAT has worked out so well for us in the past."

The anger is there in the dark brown of her eyes, having flared up suddenly at leaving the fate of the... prisoners... to the populace at large.

"Witch trials. Public executions of innocent people. Stonings. To say _nothing_ of the fact that fear is _exactly_ the same thing that's motivating them! So by all means, let's just add fuel to the fire."

She's pointing at the men crawling away. It's all she can do not to take a step back when Spawn starts towards her, but she holds her ground, looking up at him without making a single threatening gesture.

"Someone once told me that over a lifetime, there are only four or five moments that really matter. Moments when you're offered a choice -- to make a sacrifice, conquer a flaw, save a friend, spare an enemy. In these moments, everything else falls away." She pauses. "I'm not a murderer. I am not what they're afraid I am. Less often _is_ change. We _will_ overcome the bigotry, but we won't do it through mass murder or angry mobs."

Spawn has posed:
"So you're the girl who walks down the beach, throwing a few starfish back into the surf after thousands were washed up during the storm. You made a difference for those paltry few," the voice rolls into a dark chuckle as it concludes, "with no realization that you were only feeding the predator that ate it later." The chuckle builds into long, drawn-out laughter, and since the sound of it is only a hallucination broadcast into Kitty's mind it also conveys the fact that the laughter is at the futility of her own right-minded philosophy.

Having reached the spot where Kitty stands, the Hellspawn positions itself aside of her and facing her so he can execute a deep bow while gesturing with one hand toward the two men who continue to crawl away. His cape swirls up suddenly, even though there isn't any wind, and gives a flourish to go with the magnanimous gesture.

"Go on then. Throw these poor, unfortunate creatures back into the sea."

Shadowcat has posed:
Kitty's breath catches as the laughter reverberates in her mind, that dark chuckle like nails on a chalkboard. She fights the instinct to flinch, to step back. But she holds her ground, swallowing hard against the bile rising in her throat. She's not sure what's worse -- the horror of what Spawn is saying or the creeping fear that, deep down, he might be right.

But she can't afford to think like that. Not now. Not ever.

Kitty takes a slow, measured breath, letting it out in a steady stream. The gesture of that bow, the mockery in it, tightens something in her chest, but she forces herself to focus. Her eyes flick briefly to the men, still pathetically trying to crawl away, before returning to Spawn.

"If you think I'm naive," she begins, her voice low but firm, "you're probably right. I've seen enough to know that the world isn't fair. That good people suffer and bad people get away with things they shouldn't. But I refuse to believe that the only way to fix it is to become as monstrous as the ones who cause the suffering."

She steps closer to him, just a few inches, but it's enough to make her point. Her heart pounds in her chest, but she doesn't back down.

"Maybe I can't save everyone. Maybe some people are beyond redemption. But that doesn't mean I stop trying. It doesn't mean I give up on the ones who can be saved. Even if it's just a few. Even if it's just one. Because every life matters, even theirs," she nods toward the men, her expression hardening. "And if we lose sight of that, if we start deciding who lives and who dies based on our anger, then we're no better than the monsters we fight."

She turns her gaze back to the men, her voice softening just slightly. "I'll take them in, and they'll face the consequences of their actions. But it won't be at the end of a blade or a bullet."

She looks back at Spawn, her tone resolute. "That's the difference between us. And that's why I'm going to keep fighting my way."

And then she's walking towards the men that are crawling away, to crouch beside them, to place a hand on each one of them and phase them just a couple of inches into the asphalt. It doesn't take much to root them in phase.

Spawn has posed:
Spawn straightens from his bow while Kitty speaks to him, evidently not inclined to continue the mockery beyond making the point of it. Those baleful green eyes follow her as she heads off to phase the crawlers into the road surface. He leaves her to the task while she puts her particular brand of "cuffs" on the men, not betraying the disappointment and disgust he feels for himself about sacrificing his own need to collect souls in order to placate the girl who simply failed to grant the only thing he asked of her.

While the thing stands there a car turns onto the street from a few blocks up, so he takes his glowing green eyes off Kitty to look that direction. The car stops suddenly, headlights flooding the scene of carnage as well as a nearby corner where a few locals have gathered to rubberneck on the scene. The spectators remain as the driver shifts into reverse, executes a sloppy 4-or-5-point-U-Turn, and then speeds off the other direction.

Shadowcat has posed:
Kitty's phone vibrates in her pocket just as she finishes phasing the last of the men into the asphalt. She stands, taking a deep breath to steady herself before pulling the phone out and answering it on speaker. The voice on the other end is a woman's, calm but urgent.

<< "We're about five minutes out, Kitty. We'll handle the police, but they're almost there. You need to wrap this up quickly." >>

Kitty glances around, her eyes narrowing as the distant wail of sirens becomes more pronounced, growing louder with each passing second. "Got it," she replies, her tone clipped but appreciative. "Thanks. I'll be out of here before they arrive." She ends the call and slips the phone back into her pocket.

Her gaze shifts to Spawn, still standing there, his glowing green eyes no longer on her but on something else down the street. She follows his line of sight and sees the car that had briefly stopped, now speeding away in the opposite direction. The locals who had gathered to watch the scene from a safe distance don't linger long, either, dispersing as the sirens draw nearer.

Kitty makes her way back to Spawn, her steps quick but controlled. She stops just a couple of feet from him, her voice steady but tinged with urgency. "We should clear out before the police arrive. They're going to be taken into custody, and they'll face justice, but it's best if we're not here when the cops show up."

She pauses, searching his face -- or what she can see of it behind the mask. "I know this wasn't what you wanted, and I appreciate that you didn't... push things further. But we need to move."

The sound of approaching sirens is nearly on top of them, echoing off the buildings around them. Kitty's eyes don't waver as she waits for his response, hoping that he'll agree to leave peacefully. There's no time for further debate, only action.

Spawn has posed:
"I was never here," echoes in Kitty's head as the Hellspawn fades from view. "If you still want that talk, say something before you go and something else when you're where you want to be."

The vanishing takes as long as it takes the hallucination to play out in the girl's head. A ghostly after-image of greenish smoke hangs in the air where the Hellspawn had been standing, leaving the outer shape of the monster and just the outlines of its eyes until a passing breeze disperses that too.

He seems to have promised that he was not really gone, but he really seems to be. The only evidence of his existence is the mess he made of these Friends of Humanity.