[Eiru, Pyracan] Displaced Demonstration

[Razorback]

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Lyddmull Eiru, Pyracan 06:16 PM
In Character Eastern Settlement 04 September 2650
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The area on the eastern edge the Outverser settlement is set on a black, rocky outcropping, perhaps ten feet above the briny teal rustle of the waves. The rock has been flattened and carved into the transportation hub of the settlement, with broad, sturdy plascrete paths angling uphill towards the landing pad and downhill towards the docks. A fused sand path leads west towards downtown.
At the cross-roads between the downtown area and the docks, a primitive baracade has been set up, making a crude square. The baracade is made up of several ground vehicles, as well as street-vendor carts, and bits of wood and metal pulled down from buildings and street decor nearby.
This tag can be changed. See +tag/help for commands.
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Contents:
Paramedic Alhambra <RP>
Exits:
<HO> Hospital <AR> Architect
<WH> Warehouse <UD> Utility District
<LP> Landing Pad <DO> Docks
<DT> Downtown

As evening traffic starts to build, the citizens of Eiru are faced with an odd dilemma. At the main crossroads between the docks and the downtown area, a crude barricade has been erected at each entrance to the intersection. Within this square, about twenty folks of varying race, though mostly human and Pyracani, are calling out slogans which are also hastily painted on signs, held aloft in up raised arms. “Death to Oppressors”, “Go Back to Nalholm”, and “Scalebacks” with a large “X” across them.

Eunji approaches the intersection as she sees the protest. She stops well before the barricade.

“…No, I ain’t finished the file on our John Doe yet, they ain’t stopped comin’ in and I got this call on a…” Al arrives on the scene, trailing off as she squints at the signs. “…whut. The. Hell. Uh, it looks like we got… people protesting Nall here?” Long pause. “Do we -have- any Nall here?” Longer pause. “Well no I’d think they’d be fairly obvious. Yes, that is whut I am seeing. YES, I can read. Asshat. Get me four deputies and a cleanup team.” Straightening her hat and making sure the badge is front and center, she ambles over to a fair ‘personal space’ distance from the barricade. “Uh, good evening, folks. We uh, do not have any Nall here, nor do we have the intention of having Nall here, so if you would kindly disperse, we can put these things back where they go, okay?”

Those who near the barricade might notice that there are actually three individuals with deputy badges within the square. A Hekayti, probably a tourist by his clothing, rises above the barricade near to Alhambra. “Never again, scaleface,” he roars out, rage clear in his voice, “You give us back our people whom you slaughtered.” A finger points directly at the terran woman. Yeah, he’s talking to her. A vegetable cart seems to be part of the barricade, as evidenced by a couple of soft fruits being flung in the general direction of Eunji, not particularly well-aimed though. Cheers erupt from within the protest area.

Eunji smiles as the fruit is thrown at her, only bothering to shield her face from the fruit with her harm. Then she starts walking towards Alhambra, “Sheriff!” she says, “I was just assaulted by these non-peaceful protestors in case you were looking for cause to act!”

Alhambra looks down at herself, raising an eyebrow. She purses her lips. “Okay I’m -used- to not bein’ listened to by Heks, but whut in the hell is this crap? There -ain’t- no Nall here. Go the crap home, and quit smoking whit the hell ever you’re smoking. Fuckin’ hippies.” When the fruit gets tossed, that gets her attention. “Hey! Idiots… wait. Guys whut the hell are you doing in there? Deputy! Seriously.” She raises the other eyebrow at Eunji. “Hey, Missy Eunji… uh, well, I certainly wasn’t planning on taking them out to dinner and dancing, ma’am. The hell you think I’m doing? I can’t even figure out whut the crap they’re protesting. It seems to be Nall, and we ain’t got any Nall. No suitcases here. Go home, people.” She gets back on the radio. “Yeah I’ma need some more help out here, people seem to be cocked up on something and it looks like three of our people are in here. Might have been some kind of large scale dispersed whatsamajigger, or maybe we got some Auks fartin’ around. Get me whoever’s on duty who’s good with science, and see if we can’t borrow a Vollie from the hospital.” She stops as another piece of fruit goes whizzing by. “SERIOUSLY, people, quit wastin’ food! That ain’t funny, now.”

There is indeed an Aukami standing head and shoulders above most of the protestors. But it is a Pyracani deputy that now climbs to the edge of the barricade and yells down to the sheriff, “Back off! You can’t hold us down forever! We’re done being afraid of your threats? Will you kill all of us? Nobody left to step on, then!”

“I didn’t know if you needed cause first, but I’ll let you take care of this.” Eunji then backs away from the barricades slowly.

“Akela, have you completely lost your shit?” Al bellows back, stomping up to the barricade and taking off her hat. “I AM YOUR BOSS,” she says, in the very slow and loud vocal intonations of someone addressing a person who she does not believe speaks the same language. “What. Have. You. Been. Smoking.” She rubs the bridge of her nose. “No, Missy Eunji, here on Eiru we don’t wait for somebody to do somethin’ bad before tryin’ to stop them. I just don’t know whut the hell’s goin’ on, therefore I can not determine the best course of action. People are protesting a thing that does not exist here, er-go, I am not able to address it. Also every goddamned thing I say they’re just yellin’ at me like they ain’t listening.” She turns back to the people. “…seriously, is this some kind of joke? Like somebody’s filmin’ it and no matter whut I say you’re gonna fill in some kind of nasty bullshit later? Don’t railroad me, people, that ain’t right. Please disperse your crazy asses as we will not endanger the water supply by turnin’ the hose on you.”

“GET … OFF … OUR … WORLD!!!” Akela roars out at Alhambra, his teeth bared in rage. About this time, the Aukami reaches into one of the vehicles and pulls a bottle of something out. The tall kamiroid stares intently at the bottle for a few moments, then hurls it out of the barricade and onto the roof of a nearby building. Once the bottle breaks, the roof bursts into flames, speading out with the liquid. The protesters roar in approval, sticks and other items banging on the inside of the barricade as their excitement level rises.
Eunji keeps moving back, wanting to stay out of the way of what is now more than just fruit throwing.

“ALL RIGHT THAT IS A FUCKING NOUGH! Dispatch, get me everybody who ain’t on patrol, I got fire here, do not leave me to manage an entire fuckin’ riot by myself, thank you very fuckin’ much,” Al yells into her radio, and then draws her stunner as sirens start wailing loudly from the direction of the police station. “Always gotta be somethin’. All right, let’s see if I can’t knock out the puppet master up in here, mister funny man…” She draws a bead on the Aukami, and fires.

The stun pistol’s energy crackles across the Aukami’s body, and he shudders, but does not fall. “Get the scaleface!” the call goes up, and the Pyracani on the barricade leaps out in a flying tackle aimed at Alhambra while the Hekayti rears back and charges the barricade, bursting through with a roar as several of the other protesters boil out behind him.

With Alhambra knocked over, Eunji runs over to provide assistance. She aims a kick at the tacker to push him away to give Alhambra time to at least get up.
You paged Eunji with ‘+roll unarmed+striking vs 5’

Alhambra disappears under a pile of Pyracani deputy, as the fire hover arrives and starts extinguishing the blaze. The crew will not hesitate to turn the hose on the crowd should they be unable to reach their destination. Police backup arrives from all sides, working together to non-lethally remove as many moving parts of this small riot as possible. A handful of locals, armed with rope, catch poles, and birdseed rounds, have also come out to help, especially considering this is -their stuff- the rioters are wrecking. Shouts of “Make sense!” “Are you crazy?” “I’m getting your mother!” “No, YOU go home!” start running counter to the protestors. “Get off of me, you stupid crackheaded donkey’s asshole?” Al’s radio crackles to life, and a contrastingly calm voice advises, “There is no -active- psionic manipulation at this moment; however, something is clearly wrong with numerous participants in this protest.” Al makes a face. “Thank you, doctor,” she drawls, with no small measure of sarcasm involved, as she is currently being forced to wrestle her own deputy. With a last, barked, “GET OFF!” she hikes her leg up in an attempt to lever her ‘something wrong’ed fellow off.

The Pyracani is sent sprawling, wincing and holding his back for a second. The protesters rush towards the incoming deputies, some forced back by the pressurized water. The Hekayti, having seen Eunji aim a kick at his comrade, roars angrily at the singer before charging towards her, horns down. He doesn’t make contact though as he rushes by, skidding to a halt as he makes contact with a deputy’s nightstick. The Aukami stands in the breach in the barricade with a predatory smile. A hand is extended towards Alhambra, and she can feel an attempt to lift her from the ground, but she should be able to resist it. Before the kamiroid can put more effort into the attempt, the hose is turned on him and he garbles something unintelligible.

Eunji evades the charge, looking around her for others who may try to assault her but for now staying still satisfied to let the officials start to rein things in.

“I -tol- you to get off,” Al yells at the tumbled deputy, and scrambles to her feet as she feels the tug of telekenesis. “Ohhh-ho-ho-ho,” she growls, lowering her shoulder, as an elderly Lyiri female in the back ground takes down a rioter with one of those broad, weighted nets generally used for capturing large wild game, and a trio of what appear to be local veterinary interns pulls another rioter to the ground with catch poles. Someone yells for a tranquilizer. The police force do their best to restrain downed rioters while defending themselvs from the ones that are still up. There’s more yelling, not all of it Al’s, an assortment of multi-lingual scoldings and admonishments as more locals come to collect their embarassingly dangerous kinfolk. A muffled *choom* rings out as a cart owner defends his property from being vandalized, spraying the street with the particular mix of birdseed and rock salt colloquially known as ‘varmint rounds’. Al charges the Aukami like an infuriated bull.

While all around, “protester’s” are brought down and restrained, kicking and screaming the whole time, the water has forced the Aukami back behind the barricade. A hand is thrown up and Alhambra is stopped inches from making contact with the kamiroid. The olive-skinned giant’s eyes glow red and his mouth forms an enraged snarl as he balls up said hand into a fist. Alhambra can feel a force as if she was being squeezed for a moment, but it seems to disappear quickly. The Hekayti that attacked Eunji shrugs off the two deputies trying to hold him down, tossing one of them directly at the ‘idol’, a ‘Wilhelm Scream’ escaping the man as he goes airborne. He collides into the young woman like a small ton of bricks.

Eunji staggers as she’s hit by the person, but with that, she decides to turn and run and vacate the area.

Chaos continues to ensue, with tranquilizers and stunners and fire hoses and ropes. Younger locals grab stolen carts and try to pull them back to where they belong, while the police are actively working to restrain the protestors before the counter-protest that has erupted in response gets out of hand. A few protestors may indeed find themselves tranquilized, if they don’t stop fighting once they’re down. Still, there are no Nall, but nobody’s interested in trying to figure that particular mystery out right now. Now, they’re just trying to shake sense into people who ought not be rioting. Al’s duel with the Aukami continues. “The fuck you think you are, Darth Vader? I find your lack of -common decency- disturbing, bitch.” Not content to allow said giant to turn his attentions upon anyone else, she charges again, attempting to knock him off his feet.

A group of children have been collected around a corner and away from the trouble. The woman who has done the collecting clearly has her hands full, many of the kids outright bawling. The woman sees Eunji running by and calls over to her with a wave. “Over here, miss!”
The Aukami is unable to stop the charging sheriff this time, and she would feel the clear evidence of armor under his clothes as she charges into him. He staggers back, throwing a hand up in an attempt to psionically hurl her away from him, but while the mental waves buffet her, they do no damage. His glowing red eyes suddenly flicker out, though, when a tranquilizer dart sprouts from his neck, dropping him to the floor with a crash.

“Oh thank sweet monkey Jesus,” Al pants, straightening up and looking to see if the fracas has ended now that the first suspected puppetmaster has been taken down. If anyone on the opposing ‘team’ is left standing, she’ll shoot her stun pistol at them. If not, she will move to help with the restraining.

About this time, a large group of reinforcements arrives from the other side of town. Farm vehicles of varying sorts, plus one mounted knight in familiar bronze armor. How Lyddmull heard about all this is anyone’s guess, but he apparently marshalled most of the folks from the surrounding farms. The deputies and citizens of the town seem to have the situation well in hand, though, and all of the protesters are down and being arrested. They are still very much under the influence of whatever effected them initially, some ferociously trying to break loose as if believing death iminent.

Alhambra chuffs. “My freakin’ head,” she rumbles, stuffing her stunner back into its holster and getting some zip-ties to restrain the tranqued Aukami, waving off assistance from one of the employees of the settlement’s one fuel-and-repair shop. “Denise, no, I don’t wanna be on the tee-vee hog tyin’ an Auk, all the same. But thank you. Holy shitsnacks. Okay let’s get this lot trussed up and ferry them to the lockup ward at the hospital, something as crooked as a barrel full of snakes is goin’ on here.”

The Seamel vaults off his horse, once he decides that there is no one to tilt against. He tosses the reins around a nearby railing and begins to make his way through the area, checking on folks, with his visor pulled up, of course. He finally finds his way to Alhambra amidst the insanity. “Are you alright, my Lady?” he asks, helping a fallen merchant to his feet.

“Quite frankly, I am having a pretty crap week, I gotta say,” Al drawls, going for another zip-tie on her belt to truss the next inexplicably enraged person into a cooperative state. “I got a kid on the loose with a rap sheet fit to choke a moose, and now a random bunch of folks have gone brain damaged and are acting like this place is full of Nall. We took the Auk down but they still freakin’ out. All I can get from the doc is that they ain’t right, which, not for nothin’ I don’t need to have a certificate of psionic medicine to tell you. Deputy Akela knocked me over an’ I think he was gonna bite me, for shit’s sake. They tried to burn down the freakin’ cobbler’s. You know, SHOES? Who gets offended at -shoes-?” She looks around, deflating. “Judas Priest, I’ma be doing paperwork till the cows come home.”

The knight assists in holding down the Lotorian while Al zipties him, avoiding it’s little snapping jaws at the same time. “Could the effect be transmitted by a bite?” he asks, puzzled, “Deputy Akela has been with us since Duke Lomasa was sheriff. I cannot imagine him being turned easily.”

Alhambra shrugs. “I dunno, I mean only the folks who are -apt- to bite are tryin’ to bite, the frickin’ moodring was getting all psychic chokeslam at me, people were settin’ stuff on fire… Kept talking about like, people we’ve killed, and get off their planet, and not just the Pyracani.” She pauses to rub her head and grab some more ties. “I am seriously gonna order a bucket of these. Everybody who showed up later is all normal, so I guess it ain’t contagious? Maybe somebody set off some kind of gas bomb somewhere? I’d say maybe drugs in the food or water but this is like, less’n two dozen people, we’d have more goin’ off if it was a large scale thing. Unless somebody just hit like, one lunch group and that was it.”

“Did we get all of them?” Lyddmull asks, his tone quite matter of fact for someone in the middle of flipping a Lyiri onto his stomach and pinioning his hands back for Alhambra to ziptie, “Hopefully, questioning might answer some of the matter, my Lady. Perhaps a psionic healer as well.”

Alhambra puts a set of ‘mitten cuffs’ on the Lyiri, very similar to the regular zip ties but with thick flexible bags attacked to the ends to prevent claw-through. “Yeah there’s a Vollie… uh, a Vollistan that comes in from the mainland now and again. She didn’t come outside but they had her in one of the squad hovers. Can’t say as if I’d blame her, bad enough these guys are actin’ like they’re trying to drive off a buncha Suitcases we ain’t got.” She stands up, cracks her back, and looks around. “Seems that way… whut a goddanged mess. Undeterred, she goes and starts helping a group push some knocked-over carts back upright.

Lyddmull lends his strength and that of Flamesprite to the relief effort. It turns out that many of the stands and vehicles that made up the barricade belonged to the ‘protesters’. “Did you say that an Aukami was causing all this?” he asks, “Are they capable of telepathic control of others?”

“Weird…” Al drawls, looking at the mess and at the squirming people being packed into ambulances and other emergency vehicles. She shrugs. “I thought maybe it was him, ’cause he was all up front and wearin’ armor and settin’ shit on fire and tryin’ to crush me with his” she turns to direct the “WEAKSAUCE brain power” at the selfsame Auk before returning to the actual conversation, “…but, when we took him out folks kept on freakin’. Psh. I don’t know whut they can do, I just know that -in general- they ain’t got no reservations about doin’ whutever it is they can do.”

“It would seem rather odd for an Aukami to be getting people enraged about the Nall,” Lyddmull replies after setting the vegetable cart that was providing ammo to the protesters back on its wheels, “They live in an area of space I have never been to. The only area that I could not find a way to get into, I might add.”

Alhambra shrugs again, picking up a push broom and shuffling some squashed produce bits onto a pile. “I don’t know maybe it’s funny where they’re from? I mean come on man, they got dainty thugs. Who does that? I mean people were yelling at me like -I- was a Nall. Maybe that’s the, y’know… thinger. I don’t think on my worst day I qualify for being called scaleface, I’m just sayin’.”

“Which one of them called you that, my Lady?” Lyddmull asks, jokingly. Probably. Mostly. “At any rate,” he says, “I suppose our friends have a lot of explaining to do.”

“Y’know, I don’t particularly remember,” Al drawls, looking legitimately thoughtful. “I was just so off-put by how… bugfuck crazy everything was going. Like a bad dream.” She gestures, as she is wont to do when she is trying to explain something that she can’t find appropriate words for. “Like alla these people had an idea in their heads about how this was gonna go down, and nothing I said was gonna make a dang difference. Like… like my lines was wrote out beforehand and stuck in my mouth for them to hear? I seen somebody gettin’ dragged off by his own momma, squalling like he was gonna get killed.” Pause. “Granted he’s PROBABLY up for a whuppin’ when he gets out of the hospital, but…”

“I can only imagine,” Lyddmull says, chuckling quietly as he stops working to stand beside the baroness, surveying what’s left of the damage.”I remember facing zealots from the Church of True Light,” he says, then puts a hand over his left shoulder, “One of them shot me once. And it always seemed to feel that way. Like nothing I said in response mattered.”

“I was all like ‘stop breaking stuff,’ and they’re all like, ‘give back the people you murdered, stop oppressing us’, and then they went and set stuff on fire so I had to get to oppressing them. I mean seriously whut the hell was I supposed to do, let them? Oh, don’t wanna stifle little girl hair Johnny’s creativity…” Al says with a scowl, and starts rummaging around in her pockets, finally finding a battered package of cigarettes. “I hope some folks went and taped it, maybe we can make better sense of it later. Sure as shit couldn’t make any sense of it while I was there…”

“It sounds frustrating,” Lyddmull says with a grimace, flicking the catch to remove his helmet and sighing, “And it is often so in the moment. Sometimes nothing makes sense when such chaos surrounds you.” He leans against a pole supporting an awning for a moment’s respite. “You will figure it all out,” he says.

Alhambra sinks down on a nearby bench with a small grimace as she puts her butt in a puddle of water, puts the cigarette in her mouth, and starts digging around for her lighter. “I don’t LIKE hurting folks. Contrary to whut folks I’ve hurt try to convince people… I dunno, I think they might be workin’, cause seems as if lately people think, I don’t know, like I’ma eat their faces off if I catch them.”

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