2325/Wild Tigger

Wild Tigger
Date of Scene:	04 September 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Okhotnik, Grace Choi

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Okhotnik has posed:
There will probably be consequences. Lex is almost sure to raise a stink and get herself in trouble. But Diya just couldn't take it anymore. Confronted now with the reality of the tiger inside her, in a way she hasn't had to face before, she has really needed to get hold of Mercy. But as a homeless woman with no address, no phone, and no money for either, she can't exactly just call. So Diya left. She hasn't told anyone about Mercy; she is keeping the coyote a secret, just as she is hoping the coyote is keeping the tiger a secret.

It is for this reason that Diya has managed to jog all the way from upstate at the Mansion down into Harlem. Jogging on Harlem streets in Army surplus gear would draw attention, so at this point she has to walk, slow and steady, like a normal person. It helps a bit that Diya is frankly better showered and cleaner than she has almost ever been as a homeless woman; she's getting fewer stares of disgust or discomfort. Just some curiosity. That, and the usual nerves, as those who are more sensitive pick up on the palpable and mighty aura of a lethal predator that permeates around her, and shy away. Nothing much she can do about that.

Grace Choi has posed:
    Grace has her bike parked on the side of the street, it's a decent enough motorcycle, a more recent Hardly Davidson Street Rod that is her prime mode of transportation. For her part, she'd come up into Manhattan to visit a couple friends, and that visit was now over. She was just finishing up her business, before heading back down to Metropolis. And, while Grace might not be able to notice the aura of a lethal predator, she -can- tell a woman who has the carriage of someone who can handle herself. And, well ... Grace can appreciate a gorgeous woman, even if she is dating someone somewhat seriously. As Diya catches her eye, she doesn't shirk or look away. The rather tall woman watches a few moments and then nods once to Diya, a token of greeting.

Okhotnik has posed:
The ashen blonde Russian glances towards the nod, unused to seeing that. Even dressed in American Army surplus gear, she rarely gets acknowledged by others, except other servicepeople. Spotting Grace's nod, Diya nods in return, assuming Grace to be one of those. She can tell the woman is tall, muscular, and seems contained and capable; she could have served.

Diya is headed past, without slowing down, clearly intent on minding her own business and being about whatever it is she needs to be about.

The car comes around the corner making a point of stomping on the gas to pick up speed faster than should be necessary in city traffic. That alone wouldn't draw any attention, but the vehicle swerves across two lanes of traffic in short order to get closer to the sidewalk. The sidewalk where Diya is walking.

All of this is enough for the hypervigilant PTSD-suffering weretigress to notice what is happening in advance. As such, her sharp green eyes see the front and back windows of the car lowering, and hints of gun barrels inside. She catches the whiff of gun oil and recently-fired weapons with expended gunpowder. And that's enough.

She acts!

Diya leaps forward, yelling as she tries to knock to the ground several of the seemingly innocent citizens along the street, trying to get them down as the gun barrels come out, and bullets start flying.

Welcome to Harlem. Even with gentrification, drive-bys happen. Someone here is a target. And this has the potential to be very bad.

By the way? What the Hell is that subsonic rumble coursing through the air, more felt than heard? Almost like ... some kind of snarl?

Grace Choi has posed:
    Grace looks up as the sound ot the car signals her own awareness. It takes her a few moments, first thinking that the car is about to crash even as she is already standing up. Then, seeing the guns come out, Grace is already grunting something that, if one were near her, sound a lot like, "What the hell -is- it with these people?"
    She's jumping up from her crouch and she is also acting, regardless of whatever Diya is doing. She ignores the subsonic rumbling for now -- because if it's another enemy or something like that? She's going to deal with that later. In the meantime? Grace is running towards that car, faster than a human has the right to run. At least, an ordinary human.
    She manages to get there just in time to grab the back bumper of the car, and she hefts it up easily, lifting the car off it's backwheels. Hopefully it's a rear-wheel drive car?

Okhotnik has posed:
With at least one metahuman visibly involved, one can hope there will be fewer questions asked by the forensics folks when they examine this scene; that they will instead be inclined to handwave away the weird crap that doesn't add up as 'well, metas, whatcha gonna do?'. Otherwise, there might be questions about why there are slugs that did not hit the walls, and are visibly covered in blood, but no one requiring medical treatment for gunshot wounds.

But honestly? The big question most people are going to have later on is: Where the F**K did the g*dd*mned TIGER come from?!

For now, that subsonic rumble gets a lot louder, more pervasive. Diya's eyes have changed colors, though no one seems to be noticing that. One or two folks even manage to stammer some thanks to the woman who knocked them down, enabling them to avoid the gun blasts. None of them seem to spot the fact that there are three bloody holes in the back of her olive drab green coat, with fresh blood splattered from the wounds. Or that Diya is stumbling back away from them, falling in between two of the cars parked on the street, largely out of view.

After all: she's not with any of them. Why should they care? There's still metas and gunplay going on, here!

The car is not rear wheel drive, as convenient as that would have been. And as cheap as the thing is, that rear bumper is already coming apart, the screeching car dragging Grace forward until she could lose her grip on it - assuming she does.

To encourage that, gunmen in the back seat swivel around, gaping a bit, and then start unloading their weapons - one of them a full-auto submachine gun - out the shattered remnants of the back window at Grace in an effort to dissuade her from further involving herself.

Grace Choi has posed:
    Grace has one response to the front-wheel drive car peeling away, and the bumper ripping off. The solution is a pretty simple one, in her mind. And, the process of order is as follows. 1: Deal with the gunners. 2: Find out where that #*$&$ tiger is, and if it's on her side, or not. Grace likes simple solutions. She is neither a planner, or a thinker. Grace? Grace is a do-er.
    And, what Grace does is, when confronted by the backseat gunmen who blow-out the rear window to begin shooting at her is to A: Duck as soon as the guns turn on her and B: simply heave the car upwards with so much force that it literally flips over onto itself, careening end-up, and slamming onto the hood. That will certainly shake things up, and jolt the drive-by gangsters up a little bit.
    "Now you're just pissing me off," she calls to those culprits in the car, which -- now she kicks the back fender of, hard, to send the car spinning, like a top. She lets the car spin a few times before bracing her boot up and letting it collide, hard, with the car to jolt it to a stop, suddenly. Forcefully.
    "Either get out yourselves, after you throw your weapons out the windows. Or, I'll pull you out. One by one. And, you probably won't walk. Ever again. Your choice."

    She hasn't noticed Diya yet, besides having seen out of her peripheral vision the green coated woman pushing several people down.

Okhotnik has posed:
And suddenly the car is flipped over, spinning around, metal crunching, glass shattering. It's a mess. But this was already a mess. The gangsters are not, originally, terribly motivated to give up. They try to get a line on Grace and level some more shots in her direction.

Everyone is pretty well ignoring the slumped form of the vet who fell between the cars at the streetside.

And then there is a roar. A huge, larger than life roar that shakes the windows and sparks atavistic, undeniable fears of ferocious, man-devouring predators. And then another of the nearby cars gets a massive dent in the hood and frame, as a twelve foot long, over thousand pound heavy Siberian tiger leaps up on top of the car, screaming out its rage.

Pardon the panicking civilians. Exit, stage right, stage left, stage center, and Hells, anywhere else they think they can get to that is away from here!

Grace Choi has posed:
Grace yells out a curse, as a bullet slams into her leg. Damn, that hurts, and she goes down on one knee. That, plus couple of shots in her right arm, (the side she'd turned to when the men were trying to shoot out the back window) that are bleeding aren't doing much for her good will.
    And then there is a tiger. A real, goodness to gracious tiger.
    "Oh, shit," Grace mutters, eloquently. So much for dragging bad guys out of the car, and maybe snapping a leg or two. "Shitshitshit."
    Grace has done a lot of things. She has fought invisible spiders. Dead people with nails in their eyes. Cement constructs. Other metas. Drunks. Gangsters. Even some underground fighting.
    Grace has never fought a tiger before. And, as much as Grace likes fighting? This isn't something she's exactly looking forward to. But despite the couple wounds in her, she stands up, "Hey. Fluffy. Over here."
    Because out of all the people here that -could- fight the tiger? SHe's it.

Okhotnik has posed:
Well, 'Fluffy' doesn't seem to be terribly interested in just pouncing on Grace, either, despite its rather ferocious appearance and mannerism.

In fact, the cat is acting like it's in pain, and trying to frighten off others. Not that Grace is expected to Dr. Dolittle that tidbit right now.

Instead, what Grace is confronted with is a ginormous tigress, up on the hood of a car, roaring her guts out at anyone and anything that tries to get close to her. She doesn't take a swipe with one of those massive paws at anyone. She doesn't try to take a bite out of anyone. As long as no one actually attacks her, she leaves them all alone. But she is definitely broadcasting 'do not f*ck with me' at the top of her ginormous feline lungs.

No one is missing that message.

As an odd side benefit? The gangsters in the car are actually scrambling haphazardly out of the car, showing no real interest in shooting at the bast as they try to get away. One even drops his gun as they stumble and tangle over one another trying to get out.

This being a more gentrified portion of Harlem, and the power of cellphones, there will be police sirens closing on the location.

Grace Choi has posed:
    Grace squints at the behavior of the tiger. And, her priorities have changed. The thugs are running off, leaving their weapons behind as best they can. The danger, mostly, has subsided. Grace winces, briefly, looks down at her shoulder, sporting three holes where the semi-automatic hit her, but the bleeding is already stopping. Perhaps the tiger will be able to sense that. Grace isn't near Wolverine's or perhaps even Diya's own measure of self-regeneration, but her healing ability is pretty damn fast regardless. Another day or so, and it'll be lie she never got shot in the first place. Maybe less.
    This? This is an entirely new situation then, as Grace is unsure what to do. "Alright, Fluffy," Grace calls to the tiger. "Not fighting. Right. So, what are we doing?"
    Yeah, Grace is confused. "Don't suppose you like beer?"

Okhotnik has posed:
The cat certainly doesn't act as if it understands Grace's words, but she does seem to understand that Grace is not offering a threat, not coming closer, not intending any harm. And since no one is threatening her, the tigress stops roaring. Stops posturing and threatening.

Instead, the tigress stays up on the car, perched, and turns her head, licking at her shoulder.

And then there's a metallic 'plink' as something falls from the cat, bounces off the car and rolls away.

Grace Choi has posed:
    Grace's eyes move to that 'plink' sound, trailing and trying to find it. She gets down on one knee, being as large as she is, to twist her head and see what might've dropped from the tiger -- a nameplate, perhaps, from a collar she can't see from the huge scruffy neck. "Jesus," mutters Grace, "How the hell does all this shit seem to find me? Now I'm playing Animal Kingdom in the middle of Manhattan," she grouses to herself.
    Briefly, she looks back, knowing that the tiger is going to probably end up somewhere unpleasent, when those sirens arrive.

Okhotnik has posed:
Oh yes. The tiger's ears are flattening as the sirens grow closer. She does not like that noise, not one little bit. She's evne hunching those massive shoulders of hers, crouching down on the car hood, looking around and visibly trying to figure out where to run to get away from that noise.

Grace will find a slightly flattened, blood-coated bullet on the ground under the car. The blood on it is fresh, still wet ... and still warm.

And no: no collars visible anywhere on that scruffy neck. But at least she doesn't understand English, right? So someone can call her scruffy, and she won't get anymore upset than she already is.

Grace Choi has posed:
    Grace pushes her hand into her forehead, "Alright." She exhales, low, and then moves towards the large siberian tiger, "You. Need to get out of here, Fluffy." Tiger's in the city - even oddly intelligent ones that seem to have gotten shot somehow. Grace may put 2 + 2 together very soon, but right now her brain is churning in an entirely different direction. "And, you need to do so without scaring half the city while you're running through the streets. And I have no #*$$ing idea how to do that. So. Here's what we're going to do." She doubts the tiger can even talk to her. "You're going to follow me. Because nobody is going to bother a half-Amazon, and a huge tiger, walking down the street. And then ... we'll figure out the rest. Yeah?"

    She begins to approach the tiger, casually. She's not so afraid for herself. Sure, if she gets scratched, bit, it'll hurt like heck. But she'll regenerate. She's more worried about spooking the tiger, and making it dance off and cause further chaos in the city.
    Still. It's the best idea she has so far.

Okhotnik has posed:
The tigress watches Grace approach, tense and huddled down as the sirens and their noise get closer. But she can tell Grace doesn't mean any harm. When Grace approaches, she does nothing to attack. She eyes that hand with wide amber-green eyes, until the hand touches her fur atop her head and neck, and doesn't hurt her. Just tugs, gently.

Something, somewhere in the instincts of the tigress tells her what to do. And she scrambles over the dented, caved-in car good, and hops down to her feet on the asphalt. Kitty feet do not like asphalt, and she isn't thrilled, but she's tough, and doesn't argue. Instead, she looks up at the big woman, waiting for guidance.

The look almost says, 'Are we going somewhere?'

Grace Choi has posed:
    Grace exhales another breath, long, low. She has no idea what she's gotten herself into. But, she nods. "Alright, Fluffy. You have to be able to understand me on some level. So, let's go." There's a brief glance to the tigress, and Grace, who doesn't know Manhattan as well as she would like, suggests the first idea that comes to her. "Alright. We're going to Central Park." Because - greenery. And, it's a place with some quiet places a tigress can hide out for a little bit. "Just play it cool."
    Then? Then Grace is rubbing her face with her hand, muttering, "Jesus. I'm so losing it." And, with an exhale of breath, the woman's long strides begin taking her towards Central Park.
    To give Grace credit, she gives a 'no-fucks' look towards those on the street as she walks down the city clocks, a huge tigress by her side. No doubt there are pictures being taken. No doubts, a few phone calls being made. But, certainly nobody is going to mess with them. At least Grace was right about that.

Okhotnik has posed:
Oh, no fucks are given whatsoever, as the tigress does not seem to give two tailflicks about anyone until or unless they actively try to impede her progress, loping along easily with the long-striding Amazon. No one but no one is stupid enough to reach out and try to pet the cat, except those who shouldn't be out without minders anyway, and said minders keep their charges well clear of giant killer cats and their killer Amazon escorts.

The tigress does not like loud noises, and really does not like cars. But so long as no one attacks her, she stays under control - grouchy control - until finally they do indeed reach the green spaces of the northernmost expanse of Central Park, towards the Reservoir.

Once there is grass to walk on, bushes to wriggle through, the tiger seems to become much happier, less tense, less growly. She even rolls around on the grass. Whether or not Grace manages to spot another bullet left behind or not, that seems to scratch an itch for the tigress, who then rolls back onto her paws, and then she watches Grace, curiously, tail flicking from one side to the other like some huge furry rope. Thump. Thump.

Grace Choi has posed:
    After they do indeed get into the park, and the tigeress finds some comfort once they're out of the way of the public, Grace just folds her arm as she watches the great beast. Only then does she sit down, frowning at her own bullet wounds. She shoves a hand into her pocket, and pulls out a jackknife, "Damn bullets."
    She opens up the knife, and looks at the tigress, "So. Don't suppose you can tell me where you came from, Fluffy? Don't see any collar. But you sure as hell came out of nowhere."
    Then? Then she's pulling up her shirt, and - with a wince, and a grit of teeth, she's prying the jacknife into the wound, and digging out the bullet. She's more dense than your average human, so it didn't get far and it's easier to dig out than it normally would be.

Okhotnik has posed:
Watching this process, the tigress doesn't say anything. Hello: tiger. But she does watch for a bit. Then she comes up to her feet and walks around, padding on giant but very soft, very silent cat feet, around Grace, and lays down against the Amazon's back, curled around her hips while she's seated, digging bullets out of her body.

Y'know, almost like she can tell Grace is hurting, and she's trying to bring comfort.

Because that's a thing.

Grace Choi has posed:
    "Alright. So. Grace. You've apparently made friends with a tiger," Grace eyes the bullet that spilt out onto the ground, and then the tiger. It's human nature, and she can't help it. Grace hesitantly, finally, puts her hand into the tiger's fur. "So, where the hell did you come from, then?" Her hands move to the tiger's neck scuff, to make sure, in fact, there is no collar there. Weretigers are a bit beyond Grace's experience, afterall.