march catch all

[unmakeme]

WHO: Natasha Romanoff and others
WHAT: guarding the perimeter, fighting monsters, helping during the blackout
WHERE: the housing building, the perimeter, beyond the fence, wherever

NOTES: Natasha has an open top level for the festival during the beginning of the month. If you have any questions, or would like a custom starter, PM me or hit me up on plurk. Also, I'm totally fine with getting tags in actionspam if that's how you're comfortable writing, but I'm comfortable writing in prose. So in that case, our styles won't match. I'm good with it if you are.

one
Natasha's still not thrilled to be here, but she accepts that she's stuck. She also accepts that she's not going to be able to fulfill her quota and get home if the whole place goes to shit in the next couple of weeks. Ill fitting or not, her world is still hers, and she has a right to it. She might not have a right to much, but she figures her place on the planet is something she can safely claim.

She takes her job with the Guard, and she does it well. She's good at it, and even the members who don't like her (or hold a grudge) can see that. She figures things will get a little less tense eventually, though she doubts she'll make many friends. Which is fine by her. It's weirdly satisfying getting back to her solo roots. She takes patrols at odd hours, the ones no one else wants to take. She puts herself on call 24 hours a day.

Even when it's not strictly her shift, she still takes rounds along the perimeter. It's soothing, and everyone is stretched so thin.

two
Natasha is still not entirely sure how her violent outburst upon her arrival landed her a solid job. She's also not sure how she managed to swing a shared room all to herself on an otherwise abandoned floor. It seems too good to be true. Still, it's the only reason she's been spending time in her room. Alone does not have to mean lonely, and she needs the quiet to think. Even when the power begins going out in the building, she doesn't mind. Until people start heading up. Her floor's power doesn't go out and it's definitely not because she's stacked the deck in her favour, making sure her floor draws on the grid with priority. Which is a great idea, until people start heading up to take advantage of that fact. She's the only occupied apartment, all other doors locked, but there's still the balcony. She can hear conversations out in the shared space, people taking advantage of power outlets with juice.

It's only a matter of time before someone figures out that one apartment is occupied, meaning there's also a fully functional bathroom. She's expecting the knocks on her door, but that doesn't mean she's thrilled about it. Still, she answers, opening the door but keeping the doorway blocked with her body. "Yes?"

two and a half
On the hunt for some privacy, Natasha heads to one of the abandoned floors with a large shared living room. Once she's there, she sets herself up with a battery operated lantern and a book on one of the couches, a snack on the table in front of her. It's creepy, but she's alone. She starts out alone, at any rate.

three
It's not strictly her job, but everyone is stretched pretty thin, and she's trying to make the best of this. More than anything, she's trying to remember that the people around her are not the people to be blamed for what's happened to her. So when there's talk of looting and other criminal activity taking place when the power to the city's marketplace area goes down, she heads over there. More than once. Sometimes with a partner, sometimes without. Either way, she operates more or less the same. the only real difference is her willingness to attempt conversation if there's someone with her in a chatty mood.

Anyone on the wrong side of the law, though, received no mercy. She offers one single warning to drop their weapons and put their hands on their heads. She hopes no one actually listens to her, because she wants to hit things, and criminals are an ideal target.

WILDCARD!
If you have another idea, lay it on me.

Comments

[keepitup]

He's been mistaken for a bird, and a plane, but Ray Palmer has never been mistaken for his co-worker before. Fellow Perimeter Defense Engineer and Coordinator Tony Stark. If she ever tells him, he'd laugh, and then probably tell Tony the next day at work.

But right now, Ray's flying with purpose. He'd heard about the attacks — or maybe these are only semi-attacks, since the creatures always seem semi-serious about attacking. Either way, he's come to check it out, and maybe put a stop to it if he can. The Perimeter Guard is already spread thin as it is. They can't afford to keep amassing in one spot on the wall on a regular basis. It just makes everywhere else less safe.

That's when he sees a woman though, chasing after the pack on foot. From up here, Ray can just barely make out her face, and then he watches as the pack realizes she's after them and turns around. She has some kind of weapon with her, but as Ray's scanners start to analyze, he he lifts an arm and aims an energy pulse towards the ground. Even if he doesn't hit the creature directly, it should do enough to scatter the pack. That way they won't all go for the red-head.

[unmakeme]

He means well, she's sure of it, but when the beam of energy hits the ground and the beasts scatter, she curses sharply under her breath. She looks toward the sky, to the man flying in a circle above her head. "Don't let them reach the trees!" She is literally shouting into the sky. What is her life? They're scattering. This is the opposite of what she wants. They're no longer in a tight knit group that she can pick off one by one. At no point does Natasha think of herself as the prey here. She is the hunter. The monsters should fear her.

The one who was headed for her initially made the mistake of swinging wide. He did not head back for his pack, but out behind her. Which means, as he corrects, she might be able to intercept him if she's quick enough. She doesn't look up to see if Ray has heard her, is doing as asked. She just runs, head down, arms held in tight like a sprinter. Disoriented and desperate to rejoin his pack, the monster in her sights doesn't even see her coming.

[keepitup]

Is that a curse? Ray can't actually tell from this high up. Maybe she's thanking him for his help, though, normally people look up when they do that. But Ray really doesn't have time to contemplate this further, because before the woman yells up those instructions, he's already flying after one of the ones that started to bolt.

"Oh no you don't," he says to himself, before aiming and taking another shot. It takes him a few tries, but he nails it in the end, and one of the creatures goes down.

[unmakeme]

Natasha dispatches hers just as quickly, with a far more hands on approach. She jumps on its back, a hit from the baton with the full weight of her momentum behind it, combined with a shot of half voltage from her Bites, and it stumbles. Doesn't quite collapse, and she uses an elbow to the base of the skull, a pitching forward of her weight to take its feet out from under it. It hits the ground hard, and she leaps off just in time to keep from being pinned beneath it as it rolls, an attempt to use its own momentum to bring itself back to its feet. Doesn't get that far, though, and she brings her heel down hard, her full weight behind it at the point where skull meets spine.

The body may continue to twitch for a moment, but she knows it's not getting up again. She just turns to the remainder of the pack, starts running again. The man in the suit, he's not letting them reach the cover of trees. His shots don't hit every time, but they are loud, and bright, and now these creatures know they mean death. He doesn't have to hit them, necessarily, he just has to keep them from going where the two of them can't follow. "Back to me!" she shouts, hoping he's close enough to hear her. "Herd them here!" It's difficult to hit a moving target when you can't anticipate the movements, she knows that, and an animal running scared does not move rationally.

[keepitup]

Wow, Ray thinks. That woman must be a gymnast. Because surely she can't be a member of the League of Assassins. They couldn't be here.

... right?

Or maybe they could be, he thinks, as he watches her further, and sees the way she breaks a monster's neck with her heel. But Ray snaps out of it fast enough, since he is sort of flying right now, and he gives her a nod even if she probably can't see that he does it from that far away.

Herding is something he can definitely do.

"All right, let's make this count," he breathes into his helmet as the energy beams start to go off again. The creatures almost always startle when they see it, and some immediately begin running back the way they came.

[unmakeme]

It is exactly what Natasha was hoping for. They scatter, they turn back, and now they are scared and desperate. As good as the fight might have been with her tailing the pack, picking off the stragglers one by one, this panic in them is going to make for a much better fight. It's the wrong kind of adrenaline, not at all what she should be looking for, but it's what she can get. She'll take it.

Her face turns up to look at the man in the flying suit, very briefly, and she grins. Nicely done, not-Stark. Then her attention is pulled back down to the situation at hand. She vaults over the back of one creature, leg hooking around the neck, electric current jumping from her knuckles as she punches down at the base of the skull and sends it crashing to the ground. It's a hard hit, one she feels in her bones, and not only because the current catches her, too, even through her protective suit. She's up again quickly as the time between the electrocution spasm and the collision with the beast that had been running right behind it is the blink of an eye.

She has a knife in a sheath on her thigh that she could go for, but it would not be as satisfying as the solid one-two thunk as she caves in a skull with the batons. The pack's size has been cut in half now, and Natasha feels completely in her element. This is her normal. It's where she fits in, where she belongs, in the center of the storm.

"Again!" Why waste the energy chasing when she's got an eye in the sky to bring it all to her?