Without A Paddle

August 08, 2017:

An accident in the East River exposes the local wildlife to a dangerous mutating chemical… And forces a disparate group of exceptional individuals to act quickly to prevent the chaos from spreading.

East River, New York City

A river located between Manhattan and Queens. The scenery is very nice. The water is not.

Characters

NPCs: Various unfortunate civilians and mutated animals (GMed by Kingpin)

Mentions: Superboy, Constantine, Phil Coulson

Mood Music: [*\# None.]


Fade In…

7 AM. Radios across NYC and New Jersey gear up their morning shows with live coverage about some sort of tanker having a crash and spinning into the river. Numerous DJs had made cracks about how the East River just canât get any more polluted than it already is. There were cracks about how some hated celebrity or another could go swimming in it now, maybe it would improve that personâs face. Standard morning show fare.

2 PM. A pleasant enough afternoon either on the Jersey side of the river or the New York side of the river. Little sailboats are taking tourists around, people are doing their thing, business as usual.

At least until a GIANT GOLDFISH HEAD bursts through the water of the river. Itâs the size of an SUV. The body that follows? The size of about 19 busses strung together. It almost looks like a cross between a goldfish and a Chinese dragon. It swallows a little sailboat (sorry, tourists) and leaps 8 feet into the air before diving beneath the surface of the waves again.

And if people got the feeling that was all that was wrong, there are screams as some definite ROUSes, human-sized rats, basically come surging out of the water to assault the tanker clean-up crew.

And then there are screams up and down the river as various individuals are confronted with these walking crosses between catfish and people. They seem awfully stupid, but they open their mouths to reveal big vicious teeth. One of them tries to bite someoneâs head off. Itâs ugly.

Then there is the pigeon thatâs the size of a small jet, one that does its pigeonly duty by offering a bright white deposit to the top of a swank riverside apartment building.

Calls, texts, news reports, and a general bunch of â?WHAT THE ACTUALâ is going out. It wonât be hard for any heroic type in any corner of any part of either place to hear the call of âOh god, save us from this…this…WHATEVER THIS IS.â

The report had Step moving to gear up. She wasn't sure what she COULD do, but something had to be done to save people from pigeon duty. She set out shortly after the first few tweets hit her hastag feed, ditching the last few hours of her internship work at the DA's office. Mom was sick, yeah, that's the ticket and not a huge stretch.

spoiler leaps from her skycycle, having set it to auto hover over her location by about a hundred feet anytime she drops from it, and breaks her momentum on the ribcage of Snappy McFishFace trying to bite a civilian.

"Get clear," she tells the person, staff pulled free so she can use it to keep out of arm's reach of these things. First, get civilians as clear as possible while trying to figure out what the heck happened here. Really, that NONE of the other Avengers responded has Spoiler annoyed. Annoyance she'll channel into figure this out and keeping innocents safe. Choice words can be had… later.

EARLY IN THE AFTERNOON, THE DAY BEFORE NOEMI BEGINS HER INTERNSHIP PROPER

@si14_real - I am going to go and look if this thing is a mutant #mtwitter
@si14_real - stop yelling at me!!! (list of @s omitted)

"Twitter," Noemi lets out a sigh as she comes up towards the river, looking out with her lips pursed, the afternoon sun warded off by shades, a T-shirt and hip-hugger jeans keeping her more or less together. A fish-man with horrid teeth appears in front of her.

Noemi looks over the rims of her glasses and says to him, "Hi! Are you a -"

The fish-man lunges forwards to bite Noemi's head off.

RIGHT NOW NOEMI is throwing herself towards the river, the fishman's teeth having gotten lodged in carbide 'bones' to its no doubt substantial distress. Then someone whacks it off her, and Noemi tells Spoiler, "Thanks! Hi!"

A beat passes. "I don't think these are mutants," she tells Spoiler.

Early morning means 'commute to college' for one Xiaoyi Chen, who retains not only the discipline of rising before the sun necessary to living on a working farm, but also the habit of pushing herself harder than strictly necessary: typical overachiever. The weight of books in her bag attests to the one-or-two-too-many classes involved in her schedule; the 16oz yes-cream, no-sugar coffee she's clinging to with both hands attests to the late hours necessary to carve her way through that course load.

So she's still navigating her way through a fog of drowsiness that a morning run was not sufficient to dispel when
when —

Up the street from her, a building, an entire building, is suddenly whitewashed by —

She stops dead in her walk, even as citizens on the sidewalk all around her turn tail to run. Stares, as pedestrians whip past her and the screaming begins, unconvinced she's not misinterpreting what just happened, surely not, it's so gross, it's —

An enormous beat of wings overhead draws her gaze sloooowly up. "…ah."

She ought to get to class. She has work to do, the city is a veritable hotbed of supernormal individuals, she's had next to no training for her abilities and isn't on the radar of any kind of local law enforcement…

But, the little voice in her head says, what could have caused that pigeon's mutation to such a size? How is it sidestepping the physics of remaining aloft? Can it satisfy its new metabolic requirements or will it suddenly plummet into the river?

And by the time it finishes asking those questions, she's already sprinting toward the riverfront, coffee discarded (and backpack bouncing on her back, because hell no she's not leaving her expensive textbooks behind).

While Atli has made many places in this city her campground, by far her favorite is Stark Tower. The best part about Stark Tower was that sometimes, in her drunken, space-goat flying stupor, she'd wake up to see a metal angel of red and gold pulling a blanket over her while fending off Toothgnasher's amorous advances. It made the hangovers a little more reasonable, but certainly not the memories that raked and crawled through her time-warped mind.

This morning the hangover was particularly debilitating, and though she did not have a magical blanket this morning, she did have Toothgnasher's loving bite to her shoulder to pull her from her abyss and draw her to a flailing start that gets her to her feet just in time to hear more of the goats braying and carrying on.

"Woe, Toothgnasher, what do your fair eyes see? I.. Hel's Bells!" This, she remarks to seeing the pigeon, and smacks a hand to her face to make certain she is not seeing things. Her ire immediately turns to the goat, who for once, looks dumbstruck. "I had warned you about eating the pigeons! They have summoned an aspect of vengeance against you! LOOK WHAT DESTRUCTION YOU HAVE WROUGHT!"

Toothgnasher looks up at Atli, her fierce condemnation punctuated by her hands on her hips. Then Toothgnasher looks to the pigeon, scraps a hoof against the roof of Stark Tower, and powers into the air trailing the same colorful trail one might expect to see in the wake of exiting the rainbow bridge.

Eyes wide at the goat takes off, Atli barely catches it's tail, mere seconds spanning the distance before the Space Goat's war-cry splits the air and it takes Asgardian and Goat both head-first into the side of the giant pigeon with bonecrushing force.

News about tanker spills is definitely preferable, to Bucky, to the kind of news that has been saturating the media 24/7 lately: aka, news about himself. But with the typical attention span of the average American, ever since the verdict dropped several days ago, the media has already started to clean itself out of the nonstop trial coverage, though the occasional WINTER SOLDIER: HAVE WE LET A PSYCHOPATH ROAM FREE?? headlines still crop up.

The question might be salient, because said potential psychopath is currently roaming free along the banks of the East River, walking with Jane down a path by the water, and looking irritable, because she's just asked him a dumb question. But not too irritable, because after everything, it's nice to see that she's still able to walk out wiht him and ask him dumbass questions.

"No, I wasn't around when this was still a stream," he's explaining, with the attitude of a man who has answered this kind of question many times before, when suddenly a goldfish jumps out of the river. And then a pigeon —

Bucky winces, with the instinctive dismay of a native New Yorker.

There is a brief silence, before he turns to Jane. "Do you think it's too soon if I start shooting in public?" he asks, bleakly.

The ball is flung. It bounces ineffectually at the flopping carp-creature. But Bart's no longer staring at the screen of his cellphone. He's staring at the water where something so much larger had just vanished. "….whoa."

The slowest but undeniable grin begins to spread across the teenager's face, terribly at odds with the utter panic and screaming that's erupted what with the emergence of multiple gigantic creatures. Everyone's too busy running, or trying to record things from their phone. They don't notice that one brown-haired boy just suddenly seemingly…not there.

There is however a blur of red and white that might just be caught about the area of the appearances. Giant monsters from the bay. Awesome. He has got to see what all this is about. Oh. And save people. Yeah.

Dani listens to the news. She even pays attention to it. The fact that a tanker crashed earned a frown from the woman, but not too much of a second glance.

Not when she was in the middle of her hunt for Scott Summers. She wanted to give him an update on herself, on where she's been the last year or two, and also get the low-down on everything with the Mansion. Or rather the X-Men. While her search for him resulted in a whole lot of nothing that didn't stop the black-haired woman from searching out other familiar faces.

It's only as the morning turns into afternoon that Moonstar finally starts to check off other items upon her mental to-do list. One being exercise Brightwind. That's what she was in the middle of doing, walking and flying through various scenarios before her phone blew up. All those alerts were quickly looked at and then Dani and Brightwind were on the move. And while Dani has her psychic weapons always available she likewise grabbed her more physical weapons as well.

Now high above in the sky there's a streak of white (which has nothing to do with the pigeon) as a winged horse zips through the air. Dani, for her part, will try to take everything in with her bird's eye view. "Well, can't you see something like this everyday." Mutters the Cheyenne, then more serious, "Bird first then the rest." Shouts Dani and with a whicker of acknowledgement Brightwind veers for that oversized pigeon. Her bow will be palmed, as will an arrow, as the two head for the same target as Atli and the … goat?

2:00 PM OR THEREABOUTS

Did you know that there's a man-made island in the middle of the East River?

It's not really enormous, or anything, but it's big enough, a project about a decade old. It's lightly forested, like somebody decided to build a patch of parkland in the middle of the river, and, oh yeah… It has a T-shaped tower on it.

TITANS TOWER, OPERATIONS ROOM.

"No, really," Red Robin says into the comms, making sure his costume is secure and ready to go. He didn't need to do much during the incident at Central Park Zoo, so he'd hardly consider that or his flight with Zatanna a proper combat test, but… "There's some kind of giant animals. And maybe some fish people, the reports are pretty confused so far. Something about a giant pigeon taking a crap on a building."

There's uproarious laughter over the line.

So he's guessing at least Superboy isn't going to make it, not without possibly crashing and dying from laughing too hard en route.

"Okay, well, who else have we got?" the leader of the (possibly Teen, depending on who you ask) Titans asks over the general line, already moving towards the elevator to head up to the roof. "Impulse, I see you're already on the scene," because he was probably goofing off and happened to be in the right place at the right time, which is honestly fair enough in the vigilante's reckoning. "What do you see down there?"

Sitting shotgun with Sally Stojespal is usually something of a gambit— you never know if you're going to get a calm, reserved driver with a lot more skill in city driving— especially New York's version if city driving— or the girl that puts the pedal to the floor and rides free.

Yawning widely into the back of her hand, sharpened incisors bared as it looks like her jaw is damn near going to un-hinge, Sloane Albright lets out a loud, wide yawn while adjusting the SHIELD baseball cap sitting atop her orange hair. "Look, I'm not saying that he's the best guitarist in the world, but he's definitely, like, the best. Or at least one of them. Especially if you like the old stuff."

Peering out the window, Sloane's body shifts in the seat and she sits very upright very quickly. There's /giant goldfish/ and /oh god it's a giant sea snake dragon thing what/.

Her hand reaches over to grip her friend's arm. "Sals."

Not long after that— parking spaces permitting— Sloane's sunglasses and hat are left behind, the young Inhuman dressed in a dark sleeveless blouse and shorts, feet tucked into flats. Running to the railing, fiery orange eyes go wide. "Holy /shit/."

Speedsters, cyborgs, superhumans, and … is that a goat? Sloane draws in a breath and puffs out her cheeks, looking somewhat grave. "This is gonna be… nuts."

"Are you sure?" Jane asks Bucky Barnes with gentle, sombre innocence.

"I mean, it's OK if you don't remember. Dementia occurs with increasing incidence among the old." All is said with sweet, soft-spoken empathy, and around one half of a shit-eating grin, as she tightens her arm around his, comfortably led along on the first semi-normal evening after weeks upon weeks of stress, grief, and ever-present worry.

The tension has not completely abated, nor has the darkness of perpetual sleeplessness left its haunt from beneath Jane Foster's eyes, but she looks better now than she has in months. All of it is because the man at her side is, once and for all, declared innocent by the country around them.

Assholes, she thinks, looking on the distant city with a cynicism that did not exist a month ago. None of them deserve him. Her, either.

"We should get you fed," she announces, leaning briefly into Bucky. "You think we sh — oh."

Her eyes look flatly upon all this weird, weird world has to wrought. As Bucky mentions shooting, Jane briefly zones out.

She makes a face. "You know, we could just go home. Call John. This looks like a John problem.

When the elevator opens up in front of Red Robin, Zatanna Zatara is already there, having stopped by to check in on the Titans headquarters before venturing off again to do whatever it is teenaged magicians did in their off hours. The look on her face, however, suggests that she has been listening on the open line and her expression is indescribable. "Okay, first it was the Boner, then it was a French brain in a jar and his pet rocket launcher-toting gorilla, and now a giant pigeon doing what? Oh my god, the rest of my social circle will never take me seriously ever again. Telling John about the Boner nearly killed him, Red. The only other guy I know who survived multiple apocalypse scenarios nearly died just hearing about my latest adventures in superheroing because I turned some guy who calls himself the Boner into a clam. Was it always this way?"

She has yet to actually come up with an acceptable costume, with her black shorts, tanktop and a pair of knee-high boots. But considering that she isn't about to let Red venture out there by himself in what seems to be yet another uncontrollable situation, she's pulling her black and violet domino mask from the phone and putting it on her face.

It's a rant; nothing so lengthy as others she has made, but he'd know by the amusement in her expression that she's just giving him crap.

This might change if she runs into Jessica, or Bucky or Jane out there wearing her ridiculous get-up, but what are the chances of that? They're probably still having celebratory marathon sleeping after the last few weeks. Right? Right.

"So Bart's already there?" she wonders, following the caped vigilante. "Wow, he really is the fastest kid alive."

For the moment, it's the sedate and calm driver. Perhaps a little animated, enjoying the discussion. "Okay, sure, Gilmour is a wizard. But May's a physicist as well! He launched space probes!" Sort of. And then there's a pause. "But I won't argue about his earlier work. It's just - eh?" The hand on her arm, and the concern, gets a hard blink. So does the East River - it's a little reminiscent of home, usually. The small river that flows through her hometown; there's always a twinge of nostalgia when she thinks of it.

It wasn't quite as big and heavily trafficked as the East River, admittedly, but New York loves going all-in on doing things right.

It wasn't quite as stocked with gigantic homicidal sewer rats or fish-people monsters either, but New York loves going all-in on doing things wrong.

Parking spaces are for people without SHIELD badges. She floors it, pushing the Lotus to every inch of its capability to get to the waterside as soon as possible…traffic barriers and chains notwithstanding, as one of them crunches hard off the front bumper.

Standing next to Sloane, Sally nods. Her outfit's typical, though conceding to the slightly cooler weather - the white racing jacket, grey shorts, thighhighs, and leather ankle boots. "Right…" In an instant she's on the phone to SHIELD, describing everything. And then, ICER drawn, she'll follow her friend into battle.


"Giant raticates, pigeottos and a gyrados!" comes Impulse's response. He sounds way too gleeful about it, and he may just very well be speaking a foreign language unless Tim's nerdery shows. "…and Sahuagins? -oh, teeth!"

At least it doesn't seem like the creatures have gone too far, although the giant pigeon might be a problem. "They're all coming out of the river! And- is that a goat?" The red and white-clad teen comes to an abrupt halt by the river again, taking a rare moment to take in the situation. And hopefully he doesn't scare the crap out of Jane and Bucky when he suddenly appears. "Yeah, Rrrob if you're coming by air then watch out for the flying goat attacking pigeon. Oh hey-"

He pauses, clearly distracted as he happens to look over at Bucky and Jane. "You're that guy…" Bart. Really? Now?

The giant goldfish dragon makes another brilliant, arcing leap into the air. His name was Timmy once, and once he swam around in a little bag at a carnival, till someone threw a quarter into a cup or something. He then lived in a bowl for a bit, until Things Happened, and he found himself just kind of left to "Run Free" in the river. Since that time, Timmy the Goldfish's life was gloriously uncomplicated. He ate and he swam and he grew. He was an awfully big boy for a goldfish already, and then some Nice New Stuff entered his river and he became a GIANT. Life is GREAT. Now he can create veritable STORM SURGES on the boardwalk when he flips and flies and twists and twirls. Wheeee!

The giant pigeon lets out a booming: "COO COOOOOOOOOO." Another white bomb, which is really just an expression of his LOVE if you think of it, flies towards the street, where it will no doubt make the day of some heroes. It has this reaction, you see because a giant goat just rammed into it and broke some of its little birdy ribs. It does what any pigeon would do. It squawks in fear and tries to flap away with all its pigeony might.

Spoiler staggers a fishman, and Noemi is saved. They now have 5 fishmen surrounding them thinking they look just like bait. Better than crickets! The fishmen leap for their prey. They have arms now. LIFE HAS IMPROVED. Arms are great for catching food.

A wharf rat catches a cleanup worker in a hazmat suit and thoroughly mauls him. The other rats follow, cause that smells like food to them.

Sally gets Phil on the phone and hears, "Damn it! I don't have a single jet to give you, there's this" (EXPLOSION SOUNDS) "thing in Nebraska today, and ano" (EXPLOSIONS, STATIC) "do us proud, Agent." See? Sally? Shield has a presence here, just like it should. The presence is Sally.

"You're welcome. Hi," Spoiler replies quickly, staying near Noemi since she didn't cut and run for it. She smacks another fish back and away before keying her system to check for any other coms in the area that she could have DELPHI latch onto for her. Events this big are going to bring a lot of attention and if a mass of supers all start trying to work without coordination this might get messy fast.

"Mutant or Magic, but doubtful that it's Magic. Whatever it is, you need to get clear," Spoiler states, kicking yet another away. Two left, and SPoiler's mind is a whirl. She's just trying to keep the civilian protected now that they are mostly surrounded.

"Delphi, soon as you have a lock on an outboard com, patch me in," she directs her uplink to Oracle's system while prayig there's more out there than just NYPD.. NJPD..

"Give me I moment. I'll get you up and out," she tells Noemi while using her staff to bash the fourth fish inthe side of hte head in hopes of staggering him into the fifth.

"Spoilers: I've got a flying bike. Just need to free a hand," says the blonde purple and black batling.

"Hey, when I say mutant, I mean as in homo superior," says Noemi, who looks towards the incoming fishmen as one moves forwards. She ducks it and then she starts to… smoulder? It's definitely some kind of outgassing reaction and it's making a loud crackling noise. She seems to be changing color from 'grey-tinged caucasian' to 'black rock or metal of some kind.'

Halfway turned she throws her elbow into a fish-person, perhaps to help her rescuer. This is at least a sign that she's not a HAPLESS civilian. However, she can, maybe, whack on one mutated humanoid - Spoiler's fish-whacking powers are clearly in a different league.

"Fine! But how many of these things are there?!" she answers Spoiler as she finishes turning into a piece of carbide. She is also incidentally uncomfortably if not dangerously hot to the touch!

Crap, Noemi thinks: Emma said I shouldn't do this stuff in public. Well, it's fishmen, she thinks: I can't exactly un-identity myself, retroactively. It's not like I'm running for Congress.

Was it always this way?

"Pretty much," Red Robin replies. He knows full well that sometimes you just need to let Zatanna rant and get it out of her system, whether she's being completely serious in her complaints or not. "It's basically evenly split between bizarre B-movie stuff, themed psychopaths who want to eat your spleen, and the imminent end of the world." He pauses, consideringly, a gauntleted hand reaching up to brush at his black hair, styled upwards in his cowl-less Titans costume. "Sometimes it's a combination of any two, or all three at once. Maybe a giant pigeon raining effluvia on New York is actually some really obscure prophecy."

It doesn't take long to reach the roof, the black and red strips that make up his current costume's 'cape' trailing in the breeze off of the river, where… Yep.

Yep.

"Thanks for the heads up, Impulse," he replies to the speedster, looking at Zatanna and giving her a small, helpless shrug. Bart is, after all, gonna Bart. "Keep an eye out for—"

He trails off, his head tilting slightly at another signal, one only he can hear. Behind the featureless white lenses of his domino mask, his eyes hood.

"Spoiler's here," Red Robin says, to Zatanna and Impulse both. "There might be other Avengers on the scene. Try not to do the whole 'superhero misunderstanding fight' thing today," he adds, walking to the edge of the Tower's roof. At a mental command, a charge passes through his 'cape', a reverse piezoelectric effect causing the strips to become rigid, forming wings. He turns to look at the Princess of Prestidigitation with a lopsided grin. "We've got bigger fish to fry."

Bucky rolls his eyes, but he tolerates Jane's bullshit with reasonably good humor. He's happy she's just back to being a little shit. "I don't remember cause I wasn't there, Jane," he says. "I don't even know if the East River was ever a stream. I know you're a millennial and all but you have to have SOME sense — "

Stuff happens. Jane suggests maybe they should go home and call John. "JOHN is a problem," Bucky grumbles, though with a certain air of muted affection. "I think we should probably do something, maybe it'll be good publicity or some shit, I don't know." And speaking of publicity —

Oh hey — you're that guy.

Bucky jumps, whirls, and for a moment he's all Winter Soldier, his arm humming in instinctive defense — up until he sees it's a kid, appeared from nowhere. He sighs, a little audibly. "Yeah, I am," he says, right before he plays entirely to trope and pulls an anti-materiel rifle just shy of five feet out of his phone, like a sort of modern-day Excalibur. Best thing Zatanna ever did for him. Well — one of.

Shifting the weapon into his left arm, he hands the phone to Jane. "Your P90's in there if anything gets close," he says, in the 'dating the Winter Soldier' version of a couple storing things in one another's pockets and purses, before he hefts the rifle, braces its stock firmly against his right shoulder, bipods it with his left arm, and takes a shot for the pigeon.

Moonstar is noted. His aim is too good for him to be overly worried about accidentally catching her unless she jukes in a weird way, but he aims distinctly away from her anyway, towards the opposite side of the bird.

This is the Hour of Toothgnashing! Or so the goat thinks, oblivious to it's status as a goat, a steed, and often pillow. Instead, it thinks itself a hero. Instead, it goes for the throat. It's teeth snap at the pigeon's neck as it tries to flap away, mostly because the goat has come to love the taste of pigeon. Not that it only loves pigeon, mind you. It is fine with eating bikes, cars, police officer's nightsticks, and the undergarments of those who break beds with it's Asgardian friend.

It eats alot of undergarments.

Atli, for her part, knows only the freedom air can provide, bouncing off of the injured pigeon to tumble through the air and towards the shoreline. A certain old man and young scientist may even see her sail overhead, until she sees the gold-fish creature.

Her eyes go wide, wild with the fire of battle - the perfect way to shake off a hangover! - and she reaches for Jarnbjorn Reforged, the sword turning to spear as lightning connects with her mid-air.

"VILE FIEND! YOU KNOW NOT WHAT TERROR YOU HAVE BROUGHT YOURSELF, FISHLING! FOR I AM ATl-" and then her voice becomes a haunting echo of nothingness as her trajectory takes her right into the creature's mouth, leaving to quite the anti-climatic ending to her battlecry.

It's for the most part other people that Iso has to worry about as she cuts toward the river down that street, until somewhere high overhead, tailing the outsized shadow of a bird that should not be, a goat delivers a nasty surprise to the pigeon, who then delivers a nasty surprise to the world below. Still looking up as she paces the thing, Iso's eyes widen as a cob of white…stuff grows…and grows, and gets closer, and closer and no way no effin' way…!

She ducks her head, lifts her hands, cradles her head between her guarding arms, and flakes of pale blue light erupt in sudden, opaline brilliance over the contours of cheeks, nose, crown, the lines of her exposed arms and legs. The air around her gains absurd density, forming a spherical shell, cycling outward pressure that successfully deflects the torrent of bird crap and keeps her clean and dry.

Of course, it manages to enhance the splash radius for most of the people around her, but —

"Sorry!" She's already sprinting, wincing at the kicked up splatter from underneath her shoes. "Sorry, sorry! Gotta — I'm just going to, you know, help!" You know — somehow. She's not figured that bit out just yet, but she has time.

Reaching the waterfront, she's forced to take a truly great risk: she slings her backpack underneath a car parked on the side of the street, banking on the fact that nobody in New York City gives up a parking spot without better reason than 'monstrous pigeons and people-eating catfish.' And, freed of that burden, flicks a glance down the walk, taking it all in.

Oh those poor heroes below. So much ick. That stray thought might flit through Moonstar's mind, but it's pretty faint. There are other matters to keep track of. Like goat, girl, pigeon and whatever other craziness is happening below.

Back to the pigeon, Dani nocks an arrow upon bow string, but doesn't quite aim or shoot yet. Instead, she reaches out with her empathic senses to that overly large pigeon. The flood of feelings that comes from the feathered beast causes the woman to flinch. Hunger. Pain. Sickness.

It's enough for Moonstar to quickly break contact with the bird's mind, even as Brightwind dips his wings closer to his body to gain a bit more speed. The physical arrow that Dani had a hold of is quick tossed back into the quiver upon her back. Then her hand comes back around to bow and as she draws the bow string back a psionic arrow forms within the bow.

Thankfully, for the duo, they neither juke nor jink weirdly, instead staying on the straight and narrow so Dani can let loose that psionic arrow. She's aiming for right between the birds eyes; to stun, not kill.

With that arrow loosed, Dani can't help the quick jerk and lean she does as she catches sight of Atli falling. "Aw dammit!" Shouts the Cheyenne, even as she watches the other woman fall down, down and down - only to be swallowed.

Still, the Cheyenne doesn't order Brightwind down, not yet. Not with the bird up here still.

The violent woosh of air is loud enough to turn Sloane's head— and cause her to shield herself as a lash of white poo-goo catches her across the side and back. Orange-tinted eyes wide, she looks down at herself, then looks in Iso's direction, then back into the water as Timmy the Grand Goldfish of Gulping makes his second round. Sloane's eyes turn back to the water—

"There's people in the water." Freezing momentarily, hands closing into fists, the Inhuman stares for a long moment. She looks— other heroes, costumed, some changing their forms and some pulling guns right out of holy shit is that the new smartphone?— and then takes a few steps back.

'You're not a field agent. You're not an Avenger. You're not a superhero,' Sloane tells herself.

Exhaling hard, her brow furrows, resolute. "… I got this."

In a burst of movement, Sloane sprints across the ground before making a decent jump into the air, foot catching the railing along the river before pushing off into an aptly inhuman dive, arms pitched forward in a flash of fiery orange hair and the shimmer of irridescent blue scales. Hitting the water with barely a splash, she's just the surface of the river, fiery orange eyes adapting quickly; senses becoming more sharp.

Sloane also swims /incredibly/ fast, making a bee-line toward thrashers and crashers, all the while hoping she does not become fish flakes or the target for more giant bird dung-spray.

"Wow." Hey, pulling a rifle out of nowhere- or rather his phone is pretty awesome. Hearing Red Robin's voice in his ear gets Impulse's attention back on track. "Uuuh…okay?" Yeah, he has no idea what you're talking about, Tim. But he supposes he should probably jump back into things. People seem to have the bird and the things on land handled. The waves however are really picking up as the giant goldfish-ydos seems to be having a ball, leaping around in the river like that.

Impulse points in its direction. "Guess I better get in there." He waves at Jane and Bucky and then- disappears in a blur and a brief gust, speeding along the walkway to get people clear of the water being thrown up in the fish monster's wake before whipping up gusts of wind to keep the water back in the river where it belongs.

"Hey, how do we take out a giant goldfish?" he asks idly over the Titan's comms.

"I'm not a millennial," Jane grouses amidst all the chaos. "I grew up with grunge music. Didn't even have a cell phone until college." As if!

Talk of good publicity brings a slight downturn to the corners of her mouth, an idea that she doesn't waste too much energy or hopes on; seems like Dr. Foster is fresh out of altruism. Any bright-eyed good intentions she had not too long ago are well dried-up, and cynicism braids all the through the light way she exhales. "If you think so," she says, without any real candor. "Remember you don't owe them anything."

And then — someone is suddenly /there/.

Bucky reacts before Jane does, thanks to supersoldier reflexes and his wealth of training, and when she finally follows suit, it's with a half-step back and widened eyes. She gawks transparently at Bart. Costume — check. Appearing out of /nowhere/ — check. One of the 'capes', as John calls them? And he recognizes Bucky. In the background, she offers a bemused, half-of-a-wave—

And he's gone again. The velocity blows her dark hair back. Jane blinks owlishly. "That was a thing."

Passed the phone, however, and told of a familiar weapon (much smaller, and used by her, at Bucky's insistence), Jane sighs gustily. "You know, we should probably try to see what's sourcing all that BS, rather than firing guns and going all Murica at it."

The whirlwind of raucous sound made by all this pandemonium can be heard for blocks — and in the case of some heroes of New York City, dozens of blocks. It was the screams and honking horns that drove Matt Murdock to leave his for once quiet office and head to his apartment. It was the radio reports of New York's oversized fauna that led him, while changing into his body armor, to take one more rarely used item from his arsenal as he made his way up to the rooftop, there to parkour and scale his way from the west side to the east.

When Daredevil finally closes the last avenue and surmounts the project towers that overlook the East River and the melee below. He surveys it all in his own singular way before muttering, "Jesus Christ." That is a lot of birdshit.

He draws the baton and its attendant grappling hook from the holster at his calf and, with a running leap, literally swings into the frey, aiming to land around the Winter Soldier and one Jane Foster. He's still reasonably new at this — and arguably out of practice after a two month hiatus — so he barely sticks the landing, stagger running a few steps before he brings himself to a stand. Hook retracted, the billy club is sheathed in favor of —

the katana on his back. He picked it up after a disastrous night of fighting demons at Radio City Music Hall taught the still-fledgling vigilante that not all of his opponents would deserve his brand of non-lethal circumspection. The word is out among the criminals of Hell's Kitchen that its resident Devil will break your hand or even your back, but won't snatch a life. Apparently, the glint of the slender, sharply honed blade he draws from behind his back, the oversized pigeons and rats of New York's Lower East Side aren't so lucky. For them, Daredevil is going full ninja.

"Can't you two stay out of trouble for a week?!" Daredevil shouts as he closes the distance with Bucky and Jane.

"THIS ONE IS NOT MY FAULT," Bucky yells back.

Do us proud? She gives a look at Sloane, shrugs. "We're it. For now, at least." She glances skyward as a shadow passes over, and watches a flying goat roars downward into a gigantic fishmonster. She's back on the phone, trying to wrangle whatever kind of police and paramedics she can - then putting out a call for anyone with a SHIELD communicator.

As the shield protects one person against the splash of pigeon graffiti, it makes things worse for others - oh dear /god/ that's going to be horrible. This outfit is forever destroyed, but she manages to shake her head and clear her mind. Her nose, less so.

"This is Agent Stojespal, Triskelion Branch. If there's anyone else available, I'm with an enhanced, and we're at the East River." A rat interrupts to chase Sloane, and she jerks the trigger on the ICER twice while scrabbling backwards to get away from it. "I'm setting up a mobile communications node," she continues, breathing a little harder. And hoping like hell that the ICER dendrotoxins work on whatever the hell these are.

Time to go to work; and she runs after her Inhuman friend to keep her covered. Once she's in the water, Sally knows she's a total powerhouse - and there's no way she's letting Sloane get ambushed on the way.

"There's an enhanced in the water! One of ours, blue scales and red hair! She's on our side!" Close enough - and then meanwhile she's got to find a little more protection. Her combat skills have improved…but she's a long way from being any kind of master shooter.

Meanwhile the old man and scientist stay where they are. Checkers in the park, ignoring the madness going on around them - mostly. The old man's clearly winning, while the scientist doesn't seem to care so much. "So big guy, how's that medical-stuff working out for you?"

"Pretty good…nice and mellow." The scientist can't help a yawning shrug. "Kinda does weird stuff to you, though," he says, looking around. "Though…hey is Michael Bay filming a movie or something?"

The white haired old man turns, looking over his shoulder at the madness everywhree. He shakes his head and grins, going back to the game. "Nah, can't be. Not enough explosions. There! King me!"

The scientist just shakes his head and laughs. "Oh, just go excelsior yourself already."


The catfish men are being fairly well battered by Noemi and Stephanie, but they are still a thing. Stephanie will at least be able to summon her bike though, because all 5 of them decide they're sick of food that fights back. There are big crowds on both sides of the river trying to run over each other in their haste to get away. The catfishmen school breaks in 5 separate directions to try to pursue some of that food instead.

Moonstar's bolt hits, but so does the Winter Soldier's far more deadly shot. The pigeon coos its last as it goes spiralling. Down, down, down…it's totally going to smash and kill quite a few panicked people unless someone does something about that, but no pressure.

The rats are viciously tearing people apart still, but Sally does successfully ICER one

But those trying to save people from Timmy? No problem; they are up and out of the water. Timmy is having the BEST LUNCH OF HIS LIFE and he dives under the water to go enjoy that, blasting water up and over Bart with all its might.

"If that's the case, the Brujeria's gotta work on its options a little," Zatanna tells Red, following him up to their present vantage point and then staring at the rest of what is happening from across the way. Her expression flattens.

"What."

At the sight of that grin, the raven-haired witch gives him a long look. "….why are we friends again?" she wonders, though her lips turn up into an answering smile. "And look at that. Is that a smile? Are you smiling in costume, Red? Do you mind if I take a picture for posteri— "

VILE FIEND! YOU KNOW NOT WHAT TERROR YOU HAVE BROUGHT YOURSELF, FISHLING! FOR I AM AT

"….okay, I think the giant goldfish just ate someone." She moves to take a running leap off the building. Not because she's feeling particularly reckless, but because she wants to preempt any desire from Red to carry her up in that wingsuit of his. So she sprints, and she jumps.

The wind kicks up, swirling around her ankles at the single utterance of a spell, and causes her to drift towards the disturbance at the lake. It is nothing as fancy as flying, but give her time.

First, it's very calming to Spoiler that this isn't a hapless civilian. Secondly, it's slightly embarassing that she mistook the girl's comment about mutant to mean the fish things instead of herself. The correction earns a nod from the blonde as she continues working to down the fishmen near herself and the carbine mutant. Who is getting warm enough to feel smoldering at her side.

"More than enough. If you're getting on the bike, you're going to have to chill out," Spoiler says, sounding not phased by the meta at her side. Just as she's parrying another fishguy, her comm pings on a SHIELD frequency. She's familiar with it from looking through Avengers computers and the few times she was in the Triskelion. Look. There was Joker and May and it was craziness.

"Acknowledged, Stojespal. This is Spoiler, Avengers. I've got a mutant with me as well. I'm on the other side of the river. There was a flying pigeon and a giant fish in the river. I'm still trying to contain my end and will get airborn as quickly as I can manage… ENahnced in water, our side. Understood. I'm scanning for other comms in the area, oh for the love of…" Spoiler sighs as the school of catfishmen break of. The staff collapses and she stows it back at hte small of her back.

"Alright. You look like you can handle yourself," she says to Noemi as the bike gets low enough for her to leap up and grab it to haul herself up.

"Stojespal, five packs catfishmen, runing the streets, Jersey side. I'm working to contain, but any agents you can dispatch this way would be appreciated," Spoiler says as she's off, pushing her bike after one group with one hand, a smoke bomb in the other. Sure, she had planned to get Noemi up and out, but… mutant, could throw a punch. Spoiler notes that the girl is safe enough on her own. Spoiler flings a smoke bomb down at one group to delay them, hoping to have time to spin toward another group while queuing up the 'net' on her bike.

She's not a millennial, Jane says. "You're practically a baby," he replies placidly, checking his weapon, though he does turn a troubled eye on her when she reminds him he owes people nothing with that cynicism in her voice. "Maybe not some of the people out there," he says, "but there are others I do owe something."

And suddenly — Bart, who is gone almost as quickly as he appeared, leaving Bucky blinking in his wake. "They get 'em younger and younger these days," he remarks to Jane, bewildered, before he's distracted by the fact that holy shit, the fish just probably ate someone. Did she mean to do that? Maybe she meant to do that. Grounded as he is, though, Bucky can't exactly do anything about it. What he can do it put an anti-materiel bullet through the eye of the pigeon with his customary pinpoint aim.

Bucky lifts his eye from the scope as his shot and Moonstar's, both, hit home. With the vague air of satisfaction of a job well done that doesn't involve any thorny moral issues, he lowers the rifle and slings it back into his left arm — though that doesn't last long, because the bird is probably going to fall on some people. Hopefully… someone does something about that, though probably Jane wouldn't shed any tears at this point. She's busy telling him that they should find the source instead of going full MURICA.

"Jane," he says crossly, "my best friend runs around calling himself Captain America, what do you think I'm gonna do?" He pauses. "OK, what do you think is sourcing it — ?"

And Bucky startles a second time as Daredevil pops onto the scene next to him. "…You have a sword now?" he wonders of his erstwhile lawyer.

His mind still on Jane's thoughts they should stop this at the source, he turns to look out over the river. He shades his eyes with his right hand — and spies someone floating over the water.

"…Is that Zee out there?"

"I smile," Red Robin replies, defensively, though he does so to Zatanna's back as she takes a running leap off the roof, inspired by her hearfelt desire to not get toted around like an airborne bag of potatoes again to develop her own means of rudimentary flight. He can, of course, completely understand that. Knowing that he was going to be working alongside friends who were flying metahumans, and remembering the extreme difficulty of maintaining proper dignity while flying piggyback on Wonder Girl or Superboy's shoulders, was a decent part of the motivation behind the development of his flight pack.

"Since when do I not smile?" he adds, in a dissatisfied mutter. "Just because I'm not grinning all the time light Nightwing, everybody always…"

His complaints trail off, as he also leaps off the edge of the Tower, the thrusters in his backpack and the spread inertrite-weave wings letting the former Boy Wonder soar easily.

"Let's table the goldfish for now, Impulse, there might be people under that falling pigeon and the rest of us aren't really fast enough to get there in time…" Honestly, now he's even more mad at Kon. Flying and superstrength would come in handy right about mid-pigeonfall. For the moment, all he can really do is match speed with Zatanna, and…

"Spoiler," Red Robin transmits directly to the Aubergine Avenger. "We're in the air over the river. Any sign of what might be causing any of this?"

"ICERs function normally against them!" If anyone else has the nonlethal not-a-firearm, at least it's an option. Granted, the sound of gunfire means most folks aren't carrying one of their own, but Sally doesn't have the usual Glock. And it isn't as if she keeps a sword in her car…note to self, start doing that.

Spoiler? That name she knows, though not through a typical route. "Alright, got it. I'm at the riverside, there's - oh dear god. Rats, and -" She shudders and manages not to throw up, seeing the carnage forming and knowing she's got one option. Charge.

The ICER is emptied at the group of rodents, trying to keep her shots away from the humans and victims. A snap-reload with her only spare magazine, and another eight shots get sent into the pack, as she runs toward them. Whatever is still active is going to meet boot and fist.

"Hey!" Noemi says, moving to get back up onto the low-slung sky cycle along with Spoiler. She then…

… waits for phone conversations to pause, and after Spoiler throws smoke bombs and doesn't talk to The Man at some length, she figures it's safe to intrude.

"This is going to sound weird," Noemi says, "and I'm not trying to butt in, but if there's some kind of underwater bullshit going on out there, I can get down there. They won't even be able to see me!" She says nothing about smelling, which she may fatally regret in about two to three minutes.

At the waterfront, it takes Iso only moments to absorb the situation, though it's likely to take her far longer than that to comprehend suddenly existing in a world in which this kind of thing apparently happens often enough that people are showing up to deal with it and tossing out cool, collected commentary, the way they do in television or movies. For her, all of this is new — so new that even though she notices the plummeting bird, she knows intuitively that she hasn't had enough training to suspend it safely. Not something of that size. The last time she failed to restrain herself was Wulingyuan, at the farm, the house surrounded by Ennilux agents; she'd panicked, unleased a wave of force so strong that it had blown the house apart, chunks of wall landing miles away. If she gets it wrong here, people who aren't bounty hunters are going to die. The massive pigeon is heavy, and even if she could calculate its rough weight and speed to discern the appropriate amount of force with which to counter (she can), she just isn't sure she can control that force.

There's another option, though.

One arm flung out, wisping vapors of white energy trailing from the corners of all white eyes. Swirls of it accumulate around her outstretched limb, hand used to direct her intentions, which are (sadly) this:

A knot of pressure forms in the pigeon, condensing down impossibly, liquid and air and metal and tissue slowly being driven into more and more compact space, shrinking within itself, crumpling, compacted, crumpling inward on itself —

And then suddenly released.

The results are…

Explosive.

The street was painted white. Now, it is white with red and pink polka-dots.

You're welcome, New York.

It's easy getting people out of the way of being swept into the water, and at a glance, Impulse catches sight of someone in the water to fish people unfortunate enough to have gone overboard already. Maybe they'll need help with pulling people out- OH GOSH INCOMING DELUGE

"-glub," is about all Red Robin might catch as the young Speedster stares up at the water that's about to be dumped on him. A very determined look settles behind his yellow-tinted goggles as he takes off, running circles to create a small tornado…which turns into a waterspout…

…well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

"Well that's gross," Noemi says as she sees a giant bird explode in the middle distance.

Moonstar's SHIELD comm pings to life and the Cheyenne takes a second to answer the call to arms. "Agent Moonstar up here -" She say neatly enough, even as she watches her arrow leap towards the bird, "I've got eyes in the sky and I'm up here with the bird." And then that bird is hit, both by arrow and bullet, but it's the bullet that cuts short the life of the pitiful thing. "Aw dammit who's the ass that shot to kill?" Wait, was that said over the comm gear? Yes, it was, now she adds, "Clear the area below us! I'll see what I can do."

And just like that Brightwind is dropping much like the bird; like a rock. Only they're too late. Too late in the sense to do anything. Not when she can see the bird's form shrinking inward, growing smaller, smaller, until finally it explodes. Chasing the falling bird as she was, both Dani and Brightwind find themselves awash in bird guts. Or bits of splattered bird guts, that is. While it causes the woman to recoil in an instinctive response (and even Brightwind) that doesn't stop their descent downward. The two only pull up when they're close enough to the ground to make a landing and the when they hit the ground there's a solid sounding *thump* from the winged horse. Even before Dani slides to the ground Brightwind is already /shaking/ himself quite hard. Trying to remove the bits of guts that now dot his once pristine white coat.

Also, winged horse and rider landed near the river, likely visible to Bucky, Jane and anyone else nearby.

"Maybe I like to mix it up sometimes," Daredevil says, a touch defensively, to Bucky on being pressed about his choice of weaponry. He'll come up alongside the pair and survey the scene. This kind of mass chaos messes with all his carefully calibrated powers of attention, turning his 'world on fire' into an impenetrable inferno. But there are signal flares that help him make out the big picture. That goldfish swallowing a man, the snipershot against the poor pigeon, the —

—whiff of something very, very familiar. "Oh, God," he says, closing the eyes hidden behind the red lenses of his mask. "EVERYONE STAY OUT OF THAT WATER!" he shouts. After that outburst he concentrates, sifting through a multitude of sensory impressions, honing his focus to the sharpest of points that searches relentlessly for —

"Jane," he says suddenly, grimly. "I think I've got your source."

And then, the pigeon explodes. Gross.

Somewhere high above the city, a goatly angel cries as it's would be meal is suddenly beset on all sides by those who hate pigeons even more than it does. Toothgnasher blinks once as the pigeon detonates from within, the single scrap of feathers and flesh stuck in it's teeth the only prize it has to hold on to as it's sent tumbling from the sky to land on a car.

Right next to what's left of the pigeon's head.

Sensing victory, Toothgnasher leaps to it's feet and rushes the open-beaked, bullet riddled, arrow-stunned, decapitated head and slams horns first to carry it through a storefront with a momentous crash!

Meanwhile, deep inside the belly of the beast, Atli considers her options. "Hello? Is this the afterlife? Grandfather? I swear I smell your cooking." Energy flares and crackles on her spear, and she points it to the mangled forms of bodies, crushed in what remains of their boat. "It also looks like your cooking…" Finally, she decides this is not the afterlife, and raises her spear upwards.

Outside, the sky will darken, crackling overhead. Rain will begin to fall and the wind will gust, sending pigeon-puree spiraling through the streets.

Then, comes the lightning!

Three times it strikes the goldfish, though with it's size and mutation, who knows if Atli will do anything more than fry the normal fish who are likely trying to flee the river in droves.

Head breaking the surface, Sloane's arm extends to snag one of the overboard civilians from the water and head toward the walls, using her strength to almost /throw/ her rescue-ees from the river and onto dry land. Kicking off from the wall, her legs snap and her head tilts, keeping focus as she continues to accelerate through the water far faster than she has any right to; (un)natural speed and creative use of hydrokinesis propelling her along further, faster.

Of course, those going up from the water let out their fair share of "Wah!" and "Whoa!" and a Wilhelm scream for good measure.

Twisting like a corkscrew in the water with a scissoring kick of her legs, Sloane stops only long enough to see the blur of lightning swirling around and then /oh shit the waterspout/.

Head breaking surface just long enough to throw one more person up to land, her head snaps to look in the direction of the Daredevil, eyes blinking owlishly wide. Then her head turns to the rain, the storm, and—

oh no fish fry bad pls no

Spoiler glances over her shoulder at Noemi, grateful that the mutant dialed down the temperature to climb on behind her.

"I'll buzz-" Spoiler pauses as Robin's voice cuts in. She looks toward the river, purple painted lips parting faintly in a relieved half smile. She turns back to Noemi.

"I'll buzz the water. Dive in. There are contacts above it. I'll alert them," she tells Noemi as she speeds toward the river, launching a net at a group of catfishermen as she goes.

"Tanker spill earlier this morning; it's empty. Been watching it all day. Whatever was in there had to have already done it's deed. No other traffic in the area positioned to set off Simpsons like wildlife in the river." Spoiler replies to Tim's communication, making sure to tap over to those coms before she shifts to the more open comms frequency.

"I've got others at the river trying to contain Gigantofish. I'm dropping off the meta with me into the river. She'll be invisible once she hits water," Spoiler informs over the comms before glancing over her shoulder at Noemi. The blonde inhales just as lightinign flashes toward the river and Spoiler yanks her bike to the side and speeds away.

"New plan. Let whoever THAT was deal with the river issues. We'll take care of the fishmen!"

"Robin! Check in! WHat the hell WAS that?" Spoiler keys over to her family comms as she heads towards the next batch of fishmen.

The smokebombs slow down the fishmen, but not for long. One of them catches up with a civilian and has himself a nice lunch. Really, the fish men and giant rats are not really as hampered as they could be in their pursuit of a great meal.

The dragon, now…Timmy's havin' a Day.

First there's this tornado. It isolates him. Where is his water? He flops unhappily. Flop flop flop. The riverbed is still a little wet. Mud flies everywhere. And now Timmy is covered in pigeon goo. Timmy thinks that's pretty gross…

The good news about the tornado is of course Timmy's isolation. The bad news is that water and chemical are actually flying everywhere. Showering folks. And then there's LIGHTNING. BZZZAPPPPPPT. That's not a great day for anyone still in the river— increasingly hard, for sure, given Bart's actions— and it may not be too great for anyone standing near the river—

But hey, Timmy's dead.

The rumble of thunder has Impulse jerking his head skywards. That sure isn't natural. It's probably a bad time to be impressed though. He sees where that lightning is headed, and he hasn't forgotten that there's someone in the river.

Without a second thought (but let's be serious, when does he ever have those?), the Speedster breaks away from his little cyclone of water. At least the water that disperses will help with the mess of pigeon? Maybe? The blur of red and white goes right over the end of the walkway and into the river itself. Or rather over.

Impulse goes full speed, the lightning racing towards the water out of the corner of his eye as he races for Sloane. "Go, go, go!!!" He reaches out to grasp the fish-scaley-mermaid-wha?? girl to haul her out of the water, feeling the charge of electricity at his heels, trailing him as he races for the opposite side of the river.

Unfortunately for Sally she's not looking skyward. Instead she's back on the communications network; making sure they're at least all able to talk to each other. There's an odd accent for those who haven't heard a Sokovian before, but it's not too hard to follow even over the radio. "Moonstar, Spoiler, what is going on in the river? What the hell…is that a water-tornado!?"

She's pretty damn sure Sloane isn't doing that.

But thoughts of checking on their allies, or getting further status updates ends when she reaches the group of rats, trying to save whoever's left. The ICER bullets aren't the best aimed; a few go wide - but a few more at least strike home. And then, grabbing at a piece of debris that's long and maybe hard enough, she slams it forward into one of the giant rats.

Her form's a little rough, but it's a solid hit with the rapier analogue. Unfortunately she's discovered a new truth - a sword used just to make a touch point stays in your hand. A sword that goes through the ribs and into the guts…stays in the target. She can't yank it clear in time, and just lashes out with one boot at a second rat in a snap kick.

Then they're on her. Teeth bite down hard on one thigh, and Sally screams and tries to pound the thing off of her. Fortunately for Sally…the rats weren't looking skyward either. The supercritical mass of the imploding pigeon sprays debris and Other Things across them, sending her gun and phone into the river and knocking the rat-being loose. Incidentally, also smacking Sally's head against a chunk of concrete.

The creatures lose interest in this meal. The rats turn to find something that doesn't smell nearly so horrible.

"Well, somebody blew up the pigeon," Red Robin answers Spoiler. He assumes it was someone, and not some urban legend about the pigeon eating a giant piece of bread or something. "And it looks like someone is hitting the fish with lightning." He's pretty sure it isn't Bart, who is more the 'making water funnels' kind of Speed Force guy, and less the 'lightning everywhere' type. And it doesn't seem to be Zatanna either. "I don't see Thor around anywhere, so your guess is as good as mine."

But that leaves other problems. Monstery problems.

Red Robin has a lot of sensory input to sort through, his suit's computer systems and visual and auditory enhancements providing him with a lot of detail - enhanced further, of course, by the fact that he rigged the other Titans' costumes to also relay to his - the HUD in his mask tagging various things, a distant shout about staying out of the water.

Oh. Hm.

"Zee, Impulse, Spoiler - don't let the water touch you!" the vigilante orders, adding the other Family member on the fly while he dives towards Zatanna, putting his wings up to block as much of the (nasty (and possibly tainted)) East River water as he can, though Zatanna is probably better up to the task than he is.

"Zatanna and I will help reinforce the Queens bank," he transmits shortly afterwards, already rushing in that direction. Red Robin (almost) always has a plan, of course, but some plans are simpler than others.

Which is why he drops out of the sky, boots first, on one of the ravenous mutant catfish trying to eat a passerby.

The water is Sloane's domain, but she isn't lightning-proof. She isn't quite faster than a lightning bolt, either— but she can hear a voice calling to her on one side, and it's that thing that is moving toward her /really really fast/ with an arm outstretched— and then her hand is up. The next thing she knows, she's being taken across the water, across the river, faster than she can process what's actually going on.

Bart's comms may pick up one thing from the aquatic Inhuman, the steady, longer-than-humanly-normal deep-breathed yell of "What the shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!"

Somewhere, Toothgnasher feasts on pigeonhead. Specially, the eyes. Delicious.

Somewhere, Atli is tilted over as her lightning does.. well. She can't really tell how effective it was, tossed too and fro as the thing flops around. Finally, she decides, she must cut herself from… wait. Wait. Is that a bottle of…? IT IS! There are few human liquors she enjoys, all are watered and weak, but this one has a peculiar flavor she finds both repulsive and thrilling all at once. The perfect cure for her hangover!

Atli rummages the bottle of Sambuca from a very dead hand and then upends the whole thing, beginning the aimless walk back up the gullet of the fish, all the while chugging away.

Eventually she will emerge, quite possibly to the rush of water. When she surfaces, it's with a wince, staring at her diluted bottle with a scowl.

"Hel's Bells and Loki's swinging sack! IT NEVER ENDS!"

Maybe I like to mix it up, Daredevil says. Bucky weighs this statement. "That's fair," he concedes.

And then someone blows up the pigeon. Bucky and Jane, fortunately, are a little too far away to get showered in the gore, though it is still extremely disgusting to witness. …And smell.

Then, someone ELSE lands nearby, on a literal winged horse. Bucky has only time to glance in their direction, bewildered, before the horse enthusiastically cleans its pelt by shaking all the gore off — and some of it splatters onto Bucky, who happens to be right at the edge of the splash zone.

"I feel like I'm being punished for something someone else did," he grouses, as he wipes off his rifle and shoves it improbably back into his phone, swapping it for a pistol. He checks the weapon, sights, and fires for some of the rat people, specifically selecting targets close to civilians.

Daredevil remarks he found the source to Jane, to which Bucky cocks an ear, but does not interrupt.

The street itself looks like the results of an especially nightmarish game of Splatoon, broad swaths of white and red running pink along the seams where the fields of each meet — or a canyon into which paint-filled balloons were lobbed like grenades.

And Iso? She'd really just wanted to learn more about what caused the breakout of bizarre violence. Instead she finds herself standing in the middle of a street drowning in puddles of unthinkable things, splattered with pigeon blood that she'd been too busy causing the explosion of to defend herself against. In a white t-shirt. And shorts. And white sneakers.

The amount of effort that went into doing what she did, as mixed as the results have been, requires her to sit back against a heavily fouled parked car and collect herself. It's not the expenditure of that energy that's so draining, it's the controlling of it, still lacking in finesse. She settles back, wipes her face as clean as she's able, and squints as she tries to track the events still unfolding: water spouts, thunder and lightning, people silhouetted against the sky.

She had wanted a more exciting life. She probably should have been more explicit with the universe about what that meant.

"-ow, a little louder, huh?" the Speedster winces at Sloane's yelling. His feet hit solid ground in no time, and he skids to a stop on the opposite walkway, blinking as he processes Red Robin's warning.

"Aw, seriously? I have an armful of wet fish lady!" Pause. "No offense," he adds as he looks at Sloane, lowering her to the sidewalk before adding, "You okay?" Because it looks like there are still things trying to eat and attack people, and yet for all that he could have been fried a moment ago, Impulse sure doesn't seem all that concerned. Not that it isn't a normal reaction from someone who'd been raised in VR.

The Sokovian girl manages to stagger back to her feet, shaking her head to clear it from the hit. Her nose has gone from tortured to screaming in terror to simply nonfunctional, or else she has a concussion - either one, right now, is more than fine. A tentative step gets a yell of pain; Sally grabs a broken sign's metal pole and hauls herself up to her feet that way - and starts dragging herself toward the cluster of rats.

A vaguely familiar man to one side starts shooting, picking off the beasts easily - but there's more than a few of them still there. Maybe she can give him a hand. "Hey! Saray patsyuk!" Shithouse Rat - a very nasty thing to call a rat, despite its accuracy, and not an ineffective way to get their attention.

So is hurling the signpole at them, despite falling to the ground, trying to keep their attention on her. And hopefully ignoring the civilians they're menacing, or the expert shot who's picking them off one by one - but she is finally out of the fight, able to do no more than glare at the damn things before she passes out.

The wall of water rushes at them from below. With Red pushing forward in an attempt to shield the rest, Zatanna moves quickly - a single backwards word throws up an ephemeral shield over the both of them, though it would barely be seen were it not for the liquid wake rushing over them and leaving them unharmed. Towards Tim, she gives him a brief wink.

Orders dispensed, she twists sideways, to follow Red's trajectory towards Queens Bank and coming up to the bevy of catfishmen wreaking havoc on the sidewalk. The strains of magic let her go, unraveling like intangible strings, causing her to land knee-first right into the face of the catfish guy next to the one that Red has just given a faceful of boots to. Moving sideways, she cocks her fist back and launches a surprisingly well-taught punch towards the next.

"Talk to me, Red, what's the plan," she says, though she doesn't look at him. Flanking the caped vigilante, she doesn't dare lift her eyes from her surroundings.

One of her hands is stretched out, glowing white blue, radiating a fragment of her pure, potent magic in readiness. The other has her obsidian obelisk planted securely between her fingers. She doesn't know what she's going to do with both just yet; unlike Red, she tends to think on her feet, guided in the end by the heat of the moment. She is not at all practiced with long-term strategies.

"Suppose you have a point," Jane concedes of Bucky Barnes in possession of a few personal debts — though by the look in her eyes, she seems to think him long-owed. In a credit balance against the state of the world.

Her attention inevitably swerves down on the screen of the phone, which leads Jane to unfortunately miss some of the things Bucky catches — man-eating fish and whatnot — though by the weariness alleying her eyes, it's hard to wonder if the scientist would even have it in her to care. It's been a long few months, and she's not on best terms with American society at the moment. Especially lately. Part of her thinks they can go rot.

But Bucky wants to do something to help, and Jane will do anything for him, namely bypassing calling up any weapon of her own to instead hit an app for some of her stored scripts. He's the soldier; she's the engineer.

And then there's an exploding pigeon. She ducks an instinctive step into Bucky, taking shield in his larger body out of fear of /possible spray of substances she doesn't want to think about./

"Touche," she answers about Steve, dark eyes still on her phone, working along with a multitasking obliviousness hinted upon implicit trust — trust that Bucky will keep an eye on things as she sorts through string after string of pre-written code. She's /surely/ written something for — aha.

Then, a Daredevil. Jane glances up in surprise, before her eyes soften with familiarity to see /a man with horns/. "This one isn't /my/ idea," she answers briskly, with a double-take on the sword. "When did you become a Genji main? Just try not to /break my armor/ this time."

Somewhere amidst that, Bucky mentions Zee. Jane cranes her head up with surprise. "What? Here? Not getting shit on, I hope? I guess there's one way to find out —"

She snaps off a quick text to Zatanna. 'THAT YOU? :poop: :poop: :thumbs_down:'

Back to work. "I need something — to amplify — babe, I need you." Jane reaches out impulsively for Bucky's left arm, her insistent free hand to try to arrange the limb straight, a knuckle rapping on the plates. "Open up. This should be simple. Pythagoras always said the universe hums with its own harmony, so we just solve for the probability distributions in the quantum harmonics. Should point us at what's responsible. Magic, something else, or —" she stops. She considers. "Or it just oscillates enough to call it all here into ground zero of crazy times."

She shrugs. She activates a program that calls familiar, sorcerer's runes down Bucky's steel arm. Daredevil mentions the water, and Jane considers it with a frown. "Really. I seriously don't want to have anyone touch the East River, but we'll need a sample."

And then a Dani is here, on a /winged horse/, and with all Jane Foster has seen and done in the last half-year: THIS one is new. She gawks.

The old man and the scientist continue their game, glaring occasionally at the noise around them. A mutual harrumpf from both of them announces an impending dialogue.

"Man, this city's gotten noisy. And the pigeons are getting worse!" He swats the air as a decidedly oversize grey feather nearly lands on his head, knocking it away.

"Tell me about it. It's a damn crime, isn't it. You know, I remember when -"

"No. Don't start. I know you remember when this place was bought from the dutch, you're so old."

"Why I oughtta - hah! There. That's what you get for leaving him there too long." Click clack, and the last scientist's piece is taken, a grin of triumph on the old man's face.

The scientist groaned. "Bah. You know what's really a crime? It's four bucks for a small bottle of soda these days. C'mon, let's play again and then get something to eat. I got the munchies."

"A Genji-what?" Daredevil asks Jane distractedly. His best friend and his girlfriend would pick up on the cultural reference instantly — but Matt Murdock? Not so much with the Overwatch. His only frame of reference for Genji is the Tale.

But nevermind all that: to business. "I think that tanker was carrying a chemical I've come across before," Daredevil says with a point of his blade towards the grounded ship. "It can change people," he says, before adding a grim: "And apparently animals too. The stuff in the river is seriously diluted. If you want to grab a sample, the ship's the place for it."

Then someone riding a pegasus lands beside them, and the man in red gives them a short, sharp nod.

Water-tornado? Spoiler couldn't spare a glance back to the river to locate that, but there are few that she knows of capable. No. Think about that later. Right now, there are catfishmen to battle away from innocent peole. And water to get away from.

"Confirmed chemical addends, Robin?" Spoiler asks on that new com that pinged into her suite. Her blue-green eyes flick a glance at the two new-to-her people on that frequency.

Zee. Impulse. Spoiler notes the names, but leaces off the rest. Because possible Thor sightings and exploding pigeons… She'll deal with those mind-bombs later. Right now, she's got a flying motorbike to pilot with some one on the back of, civilians to try to rescue from fishguys along side her ex-boyfriend and two of his superfriends, one of whom sounds WAY too much like her more recent ex-boyfriend for her own comfort. Again, to be dealt with Later.

"The plan: save civilians from fish guys. Four packs left, is my guess. Smoke doesn't slow them down for long. I'm coming in hard on the pack on 42nd," she informs the Titans group, leaving SHIELD comms alone for the moment. A brief glance behind her.

"Lava-girl? I'm going to jump off. You hang on to the bike, alright?" Spoiler says to the girl behind her, setting the bike to once against hover over her head but with the option for Noemi to take limited control. It won't go too far, but if something attacks the bike she can try to get it to dodge. And without any further warning, the moment Spoiler's on a crash course for the fishmen, she leaps clear and once again uses a fish to break her fall so her fall doesn't break her.

"Lava-girl!? Don't you know what a carbide - uh - okay," Noemi says, sliding forwards.

"I'm real glad I didn't try to gel up, in hindsight," Noemi says once Spoiler's dismounted. She then fiddles with the controls a little, /gently/, to try and get the hang of it.

When did you become a Genji main? Jane questions.

"I understood that reference!!" chimes up from a certain someone in the background. Tim Drake's long-ago gift has not gone unused. Many fifteen year old have cried salt tears since that day. "I hate Genji."

Focused on shooting as he is, however, he doesn't pay much mind to anything else up until he suddenly hears 'babe, I need you.' And then Jane is tugging at his left arm.

"You need my what?!" Bucky questions, before Jane is wrangling his left arm straight. He looks at her, deeply unimpressed, as she just knocks on his arm to enjoin it to open up. "Rude," he grumps, but he obeys. The metal plates whine and then lift like the ruffling of nervous feathers, cracking open to expose the technomagic Jane has scribed all over it.

"Uh," he says. "Solve for whatever you need to solve for, I guess." He's helping.

Her arms are thrown around his neck; her eyes clamp shut, the next thing she knows there's solid ground beneath their feet. Eyes batting wildly, fiery orange eyes getting their focus, she's being set on her feet by the speedster while catching her breath, hands on her knees. 'Wet fish lady! No offense.'

Sloane's back straightens, hand raising. "None taken! I mean… thanks for the save."

Squinting, looking back across the river, her expression is somewhat incredulous— it /just/ clicks.

"What the hell, we're on the other side of the river already…"

Brightwind's coat is as clean as it'll get until a proper bath can be had; and no, he doesn't seem to care that he splashed some on Winter Soldier. As for that lightning and thunder, that's a familiar sound to the Asgardian horse and as such, he instinctually raises his head skyward.

By this time Dani is dismounting with well-practiced movements and her booted feet make a similar thud albeit softer. So much softer. To the chatter on the SHIELD frequency, she'll say, "Can't tell. I'm ground based now. Call if an evac is needed, we'll come get you." Even as she speaks, the Cheyenne is already sweeping the area with an assessing eye. She looks to Bucky, Jane and Daredevil and then beyond. If there's a familiarity there for Bucky and Jane it isn't remarked upon, instead the black-haired is all business. There are people that need help and she can do just that.

Though she does recognize the two for who they are. Who wouldn't? Their faces have been all over the news and being part of SHIELD doesn't help either.

The nod from Daredevil earns a similar response from Dani, but /again/ civilians in danger. Like many of the heroes it's back to the task at hand. An arrow is pulled from the quiver upon her back and with a *twang* that arrow is loosed upon the rat creatures. A second and then a third arrow will be likewise pulled, before they're sent on their way. And while she has SHIELD approved weaponry upon her self, she sticks with bow and arrow for now.

The winged horse, no matter being gawked at, stays close to Dani's side. It's only when a creature comes close that hooves will be used to gnash, smash and crash.

"Nothing confirmed yet," Red Robin replies to Spoiler's question. "But better safe than sorry - you said it yourself, tanker leak and then things in the water started getting monster-y. I'll take some samples in a minute." When people aren't in immediate mortal peril. He does also want to figure out why that bird exploded. Was it a natural consequence of an unstable, spontaneous mutation? Or did someone make it blow up by some means? Like a bomb down the throat, or… Something.

Zatanna saves them from getting soaked with the possibly tainted, and definitely gross, water, and flashes him a cheeky little wink, which draws a faint sigh of both exasperation and amusement from the currently winged vigilante.

"Showoff," he calls her. Rightly.

But there's other stuff to deal with, as they move to the other bank, and Red Robin crashes into a monster. His cape loses tension, turning back into a set of strips of cloth, before it reels into his backpack and gets out of his way: Staff out, he's already moving after more of the fish-men.

"The plan is what Spoiler said. Stop the catfish things from killing anyone. Protect civilians and kick some ass."

It is, after all, very stress relieving to beat the stuffing out of monsters. You don't even have to hold back like you would with people. Which is a plus, because they're more likely to be trying to eat you than people.

Depression sets in. After all, the alcohol is gone. Her goat is gone. Even the fish, which had cradled her so lovingly in it's gullet, was gone. Well sortof. And so the Daughter of Woden floats, staring into the sky with a forlorn expression, slowly swirling as she coasts down the river until she nudges into the shoreline and a fishman stares down at her.

It opens it's mouth, fangs glistening, it's roar deafening, right up until a hand closes around it's ankle and pulls it into a sudden swing.

Atlis finds her footing, and the fish man's face contorts in abject horror, webbed fingers flailing and eyes bulging right up until she lets go, sending it tumbling through the air, across the city, and into the it's final, sudden stop that pancakes fishman guts everywhere.

Right against the unbreakable window of Tony Stark's office.

Yep. She's not sleeping up there tonight.

With a sulk the young Asgardian trudges from the water, and cups her hands around her mouth. "Toothgnasher! Come, foolish goat! I will roast your bones over a fire! Or perhaps we shall feast a meager victory together instead, at this 'Taco Bell' I have heard of."

"Oh, sorry- did you wanna go back to the other side? It seemed easier going in one direction." Impulse seems a little puzzled, because yeah, of course they're on the other side of the river. "I can get you back across- although Red Robin said there's something about the water. …although it's a little late to not come into contact with it," he notes. And then he remembers his manmade waterspout, turning to look across the river, but it's gone, or taken care of, it seems. Oops. Well, he didn't know!

"Giant fish is down, I think someone blew up the pigeon… But there are still fish people to take care of." He uncups a hand from his earpiece, glancing at Sloane.

By now, at least, the monster count is starting to decline, as are the thoroughly splattered crowds, who are finally getting out of there. Shots fired into rats certainly help to decimate that population, and Titans and such are doing a good job of dealing with the fish. There are still certainly a few more here and there to take out, and the 'something in the water' that started all of this which Jane is working on, but at the very least, the Whackadoo of the Day is starting to chunk itself down into something like a manageable problem.

"Ditto. You run it through yours, I'll run it through mine; compare results later?" Spoiler quips as she flips off her landing fish, staff once more in hand. She keeps moving, like Tim, finding a bit of stress relief in the act of letting go and just moving; a punnch flowing into a kick into a flip leap into a volley of thrown small impact explosives into a sweep of staff. She targets the fish that are the biggest threats to civilians as she can manage without it occurring to her that she made a call about a plan, and it got taken up by a Team Leader and followed. She just latched on to the 'oh yeah! we should take samples of that water. damn i'm blonde, why didn't I grab it earlier in the day?' thoughts as she takes out that frustration on the last few fish near her. Nor does hse have much thought spared toward Noemi correcting her. No idea what carbine really IS, Spoiler just latched on to 'She was HOT', and tried to find the way to convey that without actually saying Noemi was hot. That was not a thing that needed to happen right now, with Tim in range of her comms.

….and kick some ass!

"Roger!" Zatanna pauses. "Ten-four? Affirmative? I figured now that I'm investing myself in this, I should be using—"

Her smartphone vibrates in her pocket. Furrowing her dark brows, she calls up a Time Screen in front of her just before a few of the other catfishmen launch themselves at her, and find themselves in a pocket where Time moves impossibly slow - the same trick she had devised when the Darkness-clotted seraph had attempted to destroy her in the High Line a few months ago. As they struggle through the intangible film, it gives the young woman the time to pull out her phone and looks at the text from one Dr. Jane Foster.

'THAT YOU?' followed by a few poop emojis and a thumbs-down sign.

She doesn't know what it means, really - the request for identification is apparent, but the string of emojis are…there's really only one way she could interpret that.

A few minutes later, Jane gets the following reply:

'I'M WORKING ON THE COSTUME SITCH I PROMISE OMG' ::sadface:: ::sadface:: ::sadface:: ::tomato::

The tomato is an accident, and one that John will probably rant about if Jane ever mentions it to him, from a pass of her thumb when she shoves it in her pocket and hurls the suspended catfishmen into the nearest heavy walls in an effort to knock them out.

"Red," she says. "I think Bucky and Jane are around here too somewhere."

Jane Foster, physicist and amateur technomage, valiantly ignores Bucky's grumbling.

"It's not rude," she retorts absently. "Not like there's anything I haven't seen before." Pulling the SIM chip from Bucky's borrowed phone, she feeds it into a power conduit, relying on the inherent magic to bridge some of the necessary connections.

Her head turns to Daredevil's explanation, and it duly lifts her eyebrows. "Not magic? That's a first." Is that /ever/ a first. "My organic chemistry is so-so, but I'll remember more on the way there. Thankfully, I've programmed a host of scripts I call my INTERNS — /some/ people use this stuff for manipulation of reality, blah, blah, why not just write something that helps you with scientific minutiae? OK, your plan then. We hit the ship, James puts his left arm in whatever chemical we can find. My current script should parse what the hell it is."

Jane frowns to herself. "It seriously changes people? Into crap like — like that?" Her eyes look upon the monstrous animals.

Her own phone beeps. She glances momentarily at Zee's text back.

'NO YOU'RE NOT ::POOP::' is the quick reply.

"I put my left arm into WHAT?" is Bucky's opinion about this.

A moment later: "You want me to put my arm in stuff that CHANGES people?"

In vengeance, he reads Jane's text conversation over her shoulder. Why a tomato, though, he thinks?

I think Bucky and jane are around here too somewhere.

"That explains the high-caliber gunfire earlier," Red Robin replies, a blur of red and black as he takes down the rest of the catfish-monsters with his battle staff, his fists and his feet, in an unbroken flow of brutally efficient violence. "Hopefully nobody tries to blame this on Sergeant Barnes somehow. Though if this is mad science, it's more likely to be Doctor Foster's fault."

Probably a joke. Probably.

She's a physicist after all, not a molecular biologist or an organic chemist.

The important thing in the short term, as far as the young man in the red and black costume is concerned, is that the chaos is contained and casualties were kept to a hopeful minimum… But if there is something in the water… A frown tugs at the corners of his mouth, the expression probably more familiar to those who've seen him in costume - whichever costume, he's had a few in his time - than a smile, as Zatanna cruelly pointed out earlier. If the water's contaminated, there's no way to calculate how many people were exposed. Especially if the affected creatures themselves are tainted enough to transmit whatever was responsible. Who knows what all that pigeon poop is gonna do.

"Okay… Good work, I think that's the last of the fish guys. Spoiler, Zee, check for any injured civilians. I just need to check something." And like that, Red Robin vaults a railing, his suit's wings unfurling and taking the sky over the East River. Looking for, well… People who are conspiciously not still trying to run away from all this crazy stuff.

"No, turns them into crap like me," says Daredevil pointedly as they make their way to the tanker truck, though in tones low enough that it won't carry beyond the trio. Turns out Zee isn't the only one Jane Foster has called poop today. "Though its effects and mileage vary pretty wildly. Depending on its level of concentration and — other factors, I dunno — its effects can be temporary or permanent." A beat, a grim and gravelly: "We need that sample."

Which may be why the normally pugnacious vigilante is playing guard duty on a venture to collect it, rather than skewering rats.

"I'm on it, Robin. I'll clear this end," she says, summoning her bike to help her out. If Noemi's still with the bike an apology is given and she waits for the woman to dismount so Spoiler can get to the first aid kit in the compartment under her bike's seat. Time to put her First Aid Badge to good use.

What? Steph's a Girl Scout.

"Oh, uh - sure - good working with you, ma'am," Noemi says as she leans off the bike and goes for a handshake. "I'm glad you're all out there. Can you tell Superman I said hi? I'm a fan."

Red Robin's flight over the city does reveal someone. A red haired woman who is vomiting her guts out. She puts her hand out to catch herself, doubling over. There's no exterior signs of any powers though. Maybe the pigeon poop just did her in?

With all the fish people being taken care of, Impulse has a look around this side of the river. It's a little late to be concerned about being exposed to possibly contaminated water when you've been pulling drenched people out of the water that had been sloshed about by the giant goldfish, on top of getting said water to not drag anyone else into the river. He's a little worried about Sloane given she'd been in the water, but at least she hadn't gotten fried like Timmy.

And since Impulse can never stay in one place long, he's having a look around for himself, just in case any fish or rats or what have you might've been missed. That's one way to dry out his suit, at least.

"Into whatever substance — James, it'll be fine," Jane promises, with the demonstrative long-suffering of a scientist forced to explain herself to the layman. "Your arm is titanium alloy with a sensorimotor facsimile. Considering it should only affect biological tissue, you'll be fine."

She pauses. "I think. No — OK, OK. This is fine. This is the scientific process. I can write a secondary script that barriers the coordination complex. Keeps ligand exchange — this is good. This is fine."

That is her mantra on the way to the ship, trying to parse a fix for the mad science that is ABSOLUTELY NOT HER FAULT, TIM DRAKE. Following Daredevil's guide, Jane takes a turn for quiet, seemingly a multi-process in her own respect right now, her considerable mind working in ten directions —

— and none of them 'tact'. Daredevil's remark cuts Jane deep to the bone, past all her distracted calculations. "I didn't — " she stutters. "I'm sorry." Her eyes pinch. "This made your — I'll get that sample."

With a call of her phone, using an additional app to quickly write line after line of her newest idea, Jane links it to the runes that flicker and disappear again off Bucky's arm. "I warded you. Just touch a bit. We'll collect anything else into STUFF."

Somehow, Bucky manages to combine trust in Jane's genius with a deeply suspicious look at said same genius. Don't ask how, it's the magic of living with a person like Jane Foster.

Also the fact she keeps parroting 'This is fine.' He thinks he saw a meme like that once, and nothing was fine.

Especially not Jane, after that huge social blunder. Bucky winces. Oh, that was bad.

When prompted, however, he does touch the stuff, though he does not look best pleased about it.

"It's fine," Daredevil says tersely, though not unkindly, to Jane's apology. "And yeah, this — or something close to it — is what got me in the eyes." He remembers it, of course: the acid bite, the sense that the world itself was dissolving into black. And in a way it did, until he learned to cobble together a new one out of red.

And that may be why the hero of Hell's Kitchen holds his distance from the liquid Bucky Barnes is gathering with his metal left hand, though something about the cant of his head suggests the full brunt of his powerful sense of attention is layed on that green goup into which the Winter Soldier dips his metallic fist.

Upon contact, sigils light the length of that steel left arm — the fusion of magic and science humming through every gear and circuit. Exposure to the chemical sparks the wards to life, protecting his limb inside that halo glow, that white light illuminating Jane's watchful face.

She consults her phone, and the script gives her an immediate chemical read-out, her eyes tracking and calculating valency.

Gravitas holds her face in silence, pensive, as she proves it's all too true — organic chemistry is /not/ her specialization, but she'd read recently on it, enough for chemical synthesis of some of her recent projects. The rest is just a test of her considerable genius.

Within minutes, she varies the code routed in through her phone, forced to design — on the spot — a solvent to neutralize this. And she went out tonight to /rest/.

"This should do it," Jane promises, implementing the script.

It changes the substance on his metal fingers. Green goes blue. "Put your arm in the East River. Hopefully this works."

Bucky Barnes puts his arm in the East River in what has probably got to be just like…the gigantic crap cherry on all the crap life has been throwing his way at him.

To the naked eye, nothing much happens. But to Matt Murdock's nose, and Jane's science read-outs, and the read-outs of anybody else who is trying to keep track of such things, the Green Goo, as it shall thereafter be called, does indeed neutralize itself. It's just real hard to see the blue transformation in water that is just…it's not ever going to be blue ever again, that's all. But there definitely will not be any more Timmy's, or giant pigeons, or other Things of Unusual Size to plague the good citizens any longer.

Man. Some evil corporations and evil corporations which then bought out evil corporations. They just gotta find drivers which will stop crashing and spewing their green goo everywhere! Sheesh.

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