3036/Invasion of the Whisperers, Chapter IX

Invasion of the Whisperers, Chapter IX
Date of Scene:	02 November 2017
Location:	New York City
Synopsis:	Zhao Lin and Caroline Ramsey meet in Luke's Bar, bigotry ensues. Title unrelated.
Cast of Characters:	Zhao Lin, Shatterpoint, Emma Frost

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Zhao Lin has posed:
    Zhao Lin stumbles into Luke's bar sometime past midnight. He looks like he's had a few already, and in fact is taking a drink from the gourd canteen he carries with him as he practically stumbles through the doorway. The snow leopard martial artist makes his way to the bar, casting only a cursory glance around the rest of the room. He slumps into a seat, spinning around on it once, a full 360-degrees to come around and face the bartender.

    "Bartender," he starts, "Give me a -hic- whisky, neat." He fishes a couple of bills out of his pocket and sets them on the bartop. "Leave the bottle," he says. While his drink is being poured, Lin takes another look around the bar. It's a weeknight, still, which makes it pretty quiet - just the regulars hanging about. One or two of them don't exactly look pleased to see this man covered in fur, but Zhao Lin is used to getting looks from people, and he just ignores them for the time being.

Shatterpoint has posed:
    Caroline is already there. Quiet and calm, down the way from Lin. She's purchased what must be twelve, no, twenty shots of vodka, straight. She seems... Overly pensive. She isn't there with anybody, instead just... Drinking, alone, in a bar. It's another experiment, really- she wants to see if alcohol even works on her.

    By now, based on her bodyweight and the fact that she's still thinking about whether it'll do anything, she's very clearly determined that... It doesn't.

    This bodes... Well, in a way. After all, she has to imagine if alcohol doesn't work, most other poisons probably don't, though she'll never get the truth of that without drinking a gallon of bleach or downing a bottle of pure arsenic. Idly, she sets the last shotglass down, and begins to think to herself. What's next?

Emma Frost has posed:
    Seated at the bar, with one hand on the tall counter top, next to her clear drink is a striking blonde with bored eyes looking anywhere but at the man seated next to her. He is chatting away drastically as he in totally into the blonde.

    "So like I was saying, that night, Boss Mike, Tribble and like, twenty other guys were all down at the piers and we were all completely beyond wasted. I did my best to calm every one down, but then this dude at the fire-party smashed one of the support struts and BSSSHHHH! Like the whole thing started to collapse, so we had to run away as fast as we could."

    Emma looks up at the man and then sighs as he keeps going.

    "Like we barely got away but then we didn't want the party to end."

Zhao Lin has posed:
    Zhao Lin considers the others in the bar for a moment, and picks up his whisky. His gourd is hooked on his belt again, for safekeeping. He takes a drink from the glass, draining about half of it, then picks up the bottle in his other hand. Departing his seat, he makes his way over to where the blonde woman is being bored senseless by her companion. He leans against the bar between the two of them, interrupting the man's story, facing Emma.

    "Hello, my name is Zhao Lin," he starts - he's a little familiar, she had met him once before some months ago, but only briefly. "What's a place like you doing in a lady like this?" He flashes her a broad grin, his long tail giving a sway, before he notices Caroline further down the bar with her mass of shot glasses. "Woah. Looks like someone has a problem," he muses aloud, "And I -hic- do not think it's the alcohol." He watches her now, for a moment, while he empties the rest of the whisky from his glass, only to replace it with some more from the bottle in his other hand. "Care for a drink?" he asks Emma, regardless of the fact that she has one sitting right in front of her.

Shatterpoint has posed:
    Caroline, frankly, has a lot of problems. Alcohol is not one of them, but that's hard to tell considering what she has around her. She slips from the bar, as the tender comes over and begins to pluck at the glasses she'd emptied, and as he gets to them, he nearly drops one, due to how cold the glass is.

    She pauses a moment, looking over at the table containing now three individuals. She's still somewhat across-the-bar in terms of distance, but she's observing somewhat obviously. Last she saw Emma, the blonde was incapacitated by a monkey. She's just making sure that Emma is okay, but she's also somewhat recognizable.

Zhao Lin has posed:
    Zhao Lin chuckles a little as Emma excuses herself, only to disappear out the door a moment later. He turns to the man he interrupted, and grins up at him. "Saved you the trouble," is all he says, before he slips away. The man who had been talking to Emma, while angry at Zhao Lin for interrupting, hurries to catch up with Emma, though who knows if -that's- a good idea.

    Turning now to address Caroline, the leopardine man takes a few stumbling steps towards her. He looks rather intoxicated, like he can barely keep on his feet. He points at her with two fingers, the rest of them keeping a grip on the bottle of whisky. "You look like you need a drink," he says to her, "Come, I will give you the good stuff." He grins again, stumbling back over where he had been seated at the bar, setting the whiskey and his glass down. He leans over the bar, grabbing a glass from behind it, ignoring the bartender's protests. Zhao Lin unhooks his canteen from his belt, and uncaps it, pouring some of the clear liquor into the glass, sliding it over in front of the seat beside him. He looks at Caroline again, giving her a questioning expression, one brow raised expectantly.

Shatterpoint has posed:
    Caroline watches Emma leave, perhaps a little too much, but the exact motivation for that is difficult to really scrutinize. When the blonde leaves, her date in tow, Caroline slips her hands into the pockets of her jeans, and starts to move along.

    ...Until the cat-man steps in her way. Her path blocked, Caroline raises a brow behind her sunglasses, which she wears despite time of day, and in addition to that, despite the fact that she's inside. Nobody questions it, because nobody has any reason to care. She offers this little sigh, but nobody who -isn't- dead would refuse the drink, so she can't. As she grips the glass, it frosts up a little, which is difficult to peg as something that it was before she handled it. Then, moments after she picks it up, she drinks it down without even pausing. After all, at seventy-percent alcohol, this particular spirit is not the kind you drink for the -taste-. Which, luckily, she can.

Zhao Lin has posed:
    Intoxicated though he may appear, Zhao Lin is still quite astute, and he knows the glass wasn't frosted before Caroline picked it up. His brow raises slightly, but he doesn't say anything about it, instead taking a big gulp from his own glass. He sets it down, refills it again. He considers her for a moment, then introduces himself. "My name is Zhao Lin," he tells her, "What can I call you?" He refills her glass, from the bottle of whisky this time - he can tell it doesn't make a difference to her. After all, nobody slams down a glass of baijiu like that without grimacing, unless they've got an impressive tolerance for it. "Who was that woman?" he asks, "She seemed to have your attention for a moment. Someone you know? You had a falling out, perhaps?" He's really just fishing for answers, who knows what he'll get out of Caroline.

Shatterpoint has posed:
    Caroline doesn't speak. Not necessarily because she can't, but because it's best that she doesn't. When he asks her name, she merely shakes her head, signing just a touch in a way that he likely doesn't understand, but it's not uncommon for someone not to give over their name. In response to his questions, she offers a small shake of her head. She doesn't look sympathetic or sad, she just doesn't -really- know the blonde all that well, or, really, at all. It'd be easily gleaned that they'd met, but no more than a meeting.

Zhao Lin has posed:
    Zhao Lin chuckles softly, his tail swaying behind him. He doesn't speak sign language - his English, even, is rather heavily accented, Mandarin Chinese being the only other language he knows. "Not a talker. I understand," he says, taking another drink of whisky, "Conversation is not for everyone." He pauses a moment, glancing sidelong at Caroline. He looks like he's about to say something else, when there's a tap on his shoulder. The mutant feline twists around in his chair, looking like he's just about to fall off it, to look up at three men behind him. They're all about twice his size, and they don't look too happy with him.

    "Time for you to leave, freak," the first one growls, reaching out to grab Zhao Lin by the collar. He almost gets him, too, but just as his hands are about to close on the fabric, Zhao Lin slips off the barstool, hitting the ground with a thud and a groan. "I think I had too much to drink," he says, "I could have sworn there were three big, ugly, smelly apes telling me I had to leave a bar. Oh, a quarter!" The man reaches for Zhao Lin again, but he's too slow! The snow leopard dives between the man's legs as though grabbing for a coin on the floor, with a tumbling roll that brings him back to his feet on the other side of the group. He stumbles and sways a little bit, as though trying to get his bearings. "...How did I get here?"

Shatterpoint has posed:
    Caroline turns in her chair, to face the three on the other side of Zhao Lin. For a moment, she kind of figures they're there for her. That, however, is not the case, as they properly confront the leopardman. She'd heard of this- of this bigotry towards people considered mutants. Part of her understands it- after all, she's from the 60s. It's not really -new-, just in a different package.

    She has been told to lay a little lower than she has been, though. She's more or less about to act, when the man she'd been... "Conversing" with.... Exectutes a maneuver that tells her he's got this basically handled. She isn't really... For the faint of heart. Whatever the leopard does to them is almost certainly more palatable than anything Caroline will- though she's prepared to, if necessary.

Zhao Lin has posed:
    What happens next certainly gives away that Zhao Lin isn't exactly as drunk as he appears. "Hey! Get back here!" The man who had tapped him on the shoulder tries to grab at Zhao Lin again, but the leopard-man stumbles forward just out of reach, and then immediately back, throwing an elbow to the man's face! It stuns him, and Zhao Lin suddenly twists around on the balls of his feet, right into a rooted stance, and drives both fists into the man, one in his chest and the other in his stomach. There's an audible grunt as he's thrown backwards into a table, crashing into it and shattering the otherwise quiet atmosphere of the bar at this hour. Zhao Lin holds that pose for a moment, his entire body steady as a rock, muscles taut and eyes sharp, hands turned inward and clenched as though he's holding a pair of small cups. Then he sinks backwards, stumbling a bit, and he pulls out his gourd to take a drink from it.

    The other two men watch in astonishment as their buddy is thrown into a table by the force of that blow, but they aren't about to back down! The both of them reach into a back pocket, pulling out switch blades, which they snap open quickly. "Alright, time for you to bleed, you furry freak," the one on the left snarls as they advance on the martial artist!

Shatterpoint has posed:
    Caroline is silent throughout this. The man's fighting style is interesting, and amusing- it's something she's never seen before as... Well, she's spent the last sixty years without Jackie Chan. Which, admittedly, is some form of crime.

    Then, the men up the ante, and in response to that, Caroline twitches just a little bit. Issue is, that the martial artist seems to be capable of handling himself. She's on edge, somewhat- but they weren't packing real -heat-, so she wasn't about to step in. There's a lot that a hand to hand combatant like Lin can do about switchblades, after all. She's reluctant to stay out of it- but she'd rather not have anyone take offense to her operating outside of Haven or Gotham.

    As well, again, she was told to lay -low.-

Zhao Lin has posed:
    Growing up on the streets of a small town in China, Zhao Lin didn't have the luxury of Jackie Chan movies, either - though he is familiar with the man. He's famous, after all, especially in China.

    Zhao Lin goes a little wide-eyed when the knives are drawn, and he waves a hand at them. "Hey now, I do not want to cause any trouble," he starts, backing away a couple of paces. It's a trick, though, to get him in reach of a bottle of beer sitting on the bar. Zhao Lin suddenly grabs it, and whips it hard at the man on the right. It hits him right in the face, smashing against his skull. The man on the left looks at his buddy in surprise, a reaction which costs him dearly as he immediately receives a foot to the jaw for his trouble. He goes crashing into another table, slamming down hard onto it. Zhao Lin wastes no time in taking out his last opponent, grabbing hold of him and slamming his face into the bartop with a brutal-sounding *thud*, and he lets the man slump unconscious to the floor.

    Looking around him, Zhao Lin grimaces a little. "Ah... yeah. I know, 'get out of my bar'," he asides to the bartender, who's clearly getting rather upset at the man smashing his tables. Zhao Lin pulls out a wad of cash - who knows how much, but it's a -wad-. He puts it on the bar. "Sorry for breaking things," he says. He gives Caroline an apologetic smile as well.

Shatterpoint has posed:
    Impressed by the display, Caroline offers something of a mild shrug at the end. Sure, it's flashier than what she would have done, and likely, frankly... A lot more -fun- to fight that way, if fighting can ever be called "fun," a concept that Caroline entertains only insomuch as she admits the possibility- but won't take part in its reality. It's also a hell of a lot less intimidating than what Caroline does. It's sort of -meant- to be, though. That style of combat, Caroline can tell, is somewhat intended not to be taken seriously, on purpose.

    When the barman kicks Lin out, Caroline follows suit, seemingly not bothered by the happenings, but rather thankful that there had not been more of them- or, indeed, that none of them had been a more modern sense of the word Armed. If there'd been five of them, or a gun among the lot, she'd have felt essentially obliged to step in. As it is, these men will wake up in a bit to some bills and embarrassment.

    Caroline would have put them in the hospital. Not everyone likes that. Still, she follows the leopard outside, to make sure that these men weren't some form of advance force, with more waiting outside.

Zhao Lin has posed:
    Zhao Lin hadn't quite been expecting Caroline to follow him outside, though he offers her a broad grin when he sees that she has. He's back to his apparently typical mildly-swaying self again, bottle of whisky in one hand. "I apologize for causing a scene," he says to her, "I do not prefer to draw attention to myself, but some people are..." He glances towards the entrance to the bar again, perhaps making sure they're not being followed. "...Persistent."

    His tail sways behind him, and he takes a swig straight from the bottle this time. He doesn't even bother to put it in a paper bag first. After that display in the bar, it doesn't seem likely that he has to worry about the police catching him. He considers Caroline for a moment, perhaps with more scrutiny than one would expect out of someone who's drinking as much liquor as he has. He doesn't seem to expect her to say anything, though. He's growing quickly accustomed to her silence, as well. Finally, he smiles at her again. A strange reaction, perhaps, given what she likely receives from strangers. "It is good weather, at least. I will walk with you, if I may?" He knows she likely doesn't need his protection. She swallowed a glass of 70% alochol like it was nothing, and that was -after- 20 shots of whatever. He knows she's got to have something serious going on, and that's the kind of person he prefers to be on the good side of.

Shatterpoint has posed:
    Caroline keeps walking, not necessarily minding the company. She nods in response to his final statement, but her demeanor makes it somewhat clear that she doesn't necessarily fault him for the presence of the brutes. One can only do so much to stay out of the eyes of people whose hatred is irrational. Frankly, the more irrational, the more they -seek- what they hate. Like the opposite of phobia.

    She offers this small shrug, seemingly not having any problem with him accompanying, but her wanderings are just that- wanderings. She knows the layout of Manhattan well enough to know where she's going, when she wants to go somewhere specific... But she isn't going anywhere like that right now.

    Truth be told, being on Caroline's good side is both good for you, and not very hard. As long as you're not the sort of person to attack somebody in a bar for being the wrong kind off person, she isn't likely to take offense to you. All the better, really, and all the easier for Lin. As yet, she still hasn't said anything, though more ominously, she still hasn't reacted in any way to the alcohol. Her steps don't hitch. She's not swooning or falling over or vomiting.

    Yeah, she's got something serious going on.

Zhao Lin has posed:
    Zhao Lin's own stumbling walk seems unusually measured, Caroline would likely notice after a while. He never bumps into anything he doesn't intend to bump into, he nimbly steps over things on the ground that would be unpleasant to walk on, for him or the thing. All the while he appears to do so inadvertently, through the medium of his drunken swaying, like he just happened to step this way or that by pure accident. He also seems quite content to do the talking, and he's somehow gotten on the subject of his childhood, telling her stories about his shenanigans growing up on the streets of his hometown in China. It isn't hard to be on his good side, either, it would seem. Zhao Lin seems prepared to do most of the work himself, as long as nobody is actively opposing it. All in all, his company is not unpleasant, and he walks with Caroline for some time, just talking to her - occasionally asking her insignificant questions that can easily be answered with a nod, or a shrug, or something akin to those gestures. When he does finally take his leave, some time just before the sun has begun to rise, he only offers her a farewell. There is no phone nor address attached to him, but, as he tells her, he does not doubt their paths will cross again.

    And then, quite simply, he and Caroline part ways.