Victimized

Summary:
December 27th, 2014: Drugged-up villains run wild in the Greenwich art scene, amidst a rising tide of flames. Flash and Audrey come to the rescue. Nash, having sown this havoc, gathers the fruit in the end.

The Artbreaker Gallery and the Larouche Theatre

Two cultural centers and art hubs of the Greenwich village community, about to get trashed.


Characters

NPCs

  • Mammoth - Moronic Mutant Tank
  • Mindbender - Hallucinatory Illusionist
  • Bushwhacker - Cracked-Out Cyborg
  • Puma - Feline Mercenary
  • Art and Theater Snobs of various levels of prominence and worth.
  • Bleeding Hipsters

Mood Music:
[* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo9pU1q8sy8]


It's beautiful night for the art scene in Greenwich village. On one side of the street, an art gallery shows the latest works of Marc Anger, an artist whose paintings and sculptures have at least been the toaste of people who wear ironic glasses and grow sculpted beards. The gallery itself is built from an old building, vintage as they say, an old fashioned wooden building with a thick iron grate and fence out front. Once, it housed a pawnshop, back in the 1930s, the sort of place poor immigrants came to sell family heirlooms for a scrap of bread. Now, college students stare at pictures of genitalia covered with Froot Loops while eating cheese and crackers at twenty dollars a mouthful. Progress.

Across the street, a place, this one a bit more traditional - Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's genderbending comedy full of wit and wisdom, performed at the Larouche theatre. The company has been together for twenty years, and this is their anniversary performance. Lorne Thomas, the esteemed director, is doing his last run before retiring to smoke his pipe and read his books in New England. The theatre is packed, tickets hard to come by, the air full of love and excitement.

Underneath the stage of the theatre, two men slowly come awake - One, Bushwhacker, a mercenary who replaced his lost arm with a four-barreled gun, psychotic on his best days. The other, Puma, a man who once carried the hope of his tribe until he perverted his bestial gifts for money. Both men have faint memories - lips in their ear, a voice, soft and soothing, promises of money and more, so much more. Then the bite of the needle in their neck. They didn't feel the other needles. Full of steroids, amphetamines, cocaine, PCP, jacking up their already damaged brains with hallucinations and mania.

In the art gallery, in the staging area in the rear, locked up amidst priceless treasures, another pair - Mammoth, of dim wits and massive muscles, seven feet and able to punch through a truck. Mindbender, illusionist, thief for hire, and the only female of the four. Similar concoctions, their minds tripping and full of hate as they stumble to their feet and head towards the crowded areas.

The floor to the theatre stage bursts open with gunfire and claws, screams in the air. The doors to the storage areas of the gallery are punched through, the people beyond beginning to feel their worst nightmares bleeding into their eyeballs.

Nobody paying much attention to the woman standing behind the gallery, inhaling the smell of gasoline as she drops a match, disippating into a mist as the flames leap up. In moments, the theatre will get the same treatment.

Now, the game has begun. Let's see who's come to play.

Audrey can't afford twenty dollar cheese and crackers. She can't afford the dollar fifty hot dogs on the corner ten blocks away. But the galleries here often have displays in the windows, and that's as much culture as Audrey can get on her budget. So every now and then, she swings through the area to linger over the window displays until someone decides she looks suspicious. Tonight, though, it looks like there's much more suspicious activity going on than a scruffy young woman staring at art she couldn't afford in a million years.

It's the smell that catches her attention first. Sharp. High. Gasoline. Frowning to herself, she takes a few steps toward the alley, just in time to see…a match? "Hey!" she exclaims. "Hey, don't do that!"

"What's that?" Cisco Ramon says as he wheels himself toward a middle console. He throws the headphones over his ears trying to see if he can figure out the disruption. His voice grows louder as he calls back to Caitlin Snow. "Something's going crazy down in Greenwich." And then as if the thought triggers something, the smiling techy can't help but add, "I wonder if the hipsters and their hair tonic started on fire."

But Caitlin isn't in the mood for jokes. Whatever Savitar did to Barry Allen-the latter resting in a hospital bed as best he can next to Snow-was pretty severe. Early she'd told Cisco that it would have killed a normal person.

Luckily, though, Barry's body has some remarkable healing capacities. In her expert medical opinion, Caitlin told Cisco she thought he'd be out a couple of days if he got the needed rest.

The young woman with auburnish brownish hair, and porcelain skin comes out into the main room with a perturbed look.

"What is it?" she asks him, leaning against the metallic doorway.

"It looks like there's some art party. Someone's torching it." >_<

Nash turns and looks towards Audrey as she calls out to her, her round-lensed sunglasses hiding her eyes. She holds a black-nailed finger up to her lips in the universal "hush' gesture, but she can't hide the wide, wide smile on her face as the flames leap up and she dissipates into nothingness, particles vanishing and dispersing into the darkness. Inside, the screams grow louder as the Bushwhacker climbs first up out of the hole in the theatre. His eyes bulge, maddened, and he starts to shoot, blowing holes in chests of the dignitaries in the front row, mostly critics so they won't be missed -that- much. Puma's practically foaming at the mouth, sniffing teh air as the first hints of fire hit his nose.

In the gallery, Mammoth grasps a hipster skull, flinging the guy right to the front of the building to shatter through the glass in front and hit the iron grate. The iron grate that someone has not only closed, while no one was looking, but chained and padlocked. Just like the doors of the theatre across the street.

Nash coalesces again behind the other building, singing softly to herself, "Humans roasting…on an open fire…burnt flesh stinging at my nose…I don't know something Eskimos," she laughs, striking another match.

Audrey's brows rise as Nash disappears, and she turns quickly in a circle, looking for…What, exactly, is she going to do here? Fire extinguisher. There has to be a fire extinguisher somewhere inside the restaurant, because that's the law. Except when she runs toward the front doors, there's no way in. That's going to be a problem. She takes a few deep breaths, trying to focus, to figure out what she can do about this problem.

The lock. She can pick the lock. Probably. Hopefully. Quickly, she rummages into one pocket of her cargo pants, pulling out a pair of lock picking tools and starting on the lock keeping the chain in place.

"I have to go," Barry says as he pulls himself out of the bed. Caitlin turns back with a pointed finger and a shake of the head, "Absolutely not, Barry, you're in no condition whatsoever to even think abo-"

"Caitlin, I'm going."

Barry winces as he walks up towards the computer bank, getting a worried look from Cisco. "What are we getting?"

"The doors see to be locked. Shots fired. Place is burning," Cisco says, with nary a joke to be had.

"Alright." In a-well, flash-Barry is gone, as is his state of the art red suit, tearing down towards Greenwich.

It only takes a second or two, but Barry, now masked as THE FLASH buries his shoulder into the front door, just in front of Audrey and tries to bash it in at high velocity!!!

With both buildings lit, Nash reintegrates atop a nearby building at the end of the street, high above. She sits cross-legged on the edge of the roof, her leather jacket loose over her shoulders, Joan Jett staring angrily out from her chest. She lights a cigarette and reaches over to dig into one of the cans of Pringles she stashed up here earlier. "Oooh, look at that, hero number one. Trying to pick the lock, very Nancy Drew, I can dig it, OH, shit, you did it! Good job for you."

And then the Flash rushes in and bashes open the freshly unlocked doors, sending him careening into the art gallery at blazing speed, revealing, to him, a panoply of still images of hipster's leaping for cover, tattoos and piercings akimbo. A massive, beefy man, shirtless, appears to be screaming, squeezing one man's head until the blood runs out of his eyes. With him, a woman with a colorful costume of crimson and black, braided hair, sunglasses and…

Mindbending hallucinations, generated to anyone who gets near her, warping senses into night terrors and secret fears. Some people claw at insects under their skin, others scream for mothers they lost too young. Goodness knows what it'll do to Barry Allen - or if he'll be able to do anything to stop it before they rip his mind asunder.

Audrey yelps as Barry comes speeding through the doors, jumping back to get out of the way and staring at what she sees inside. She knows those sorts of looks. Normally she's the one causing them. And she's here, which means she could get blamed for it. Which is a problem for her. She steps back from the door just as someone comes stumbling out - which is when she disappears from view entirely. Then, from the shelter of the doorway, she starts to toy with the light of the flames inside the restaurant. Gently pulsing light illuminates the safest path toward the doors, while brighter light concentrates around the musclebound man and the strange woman. Targets here!

Barry comes to a straight stop as he gets within the distance of the mindbendingly powered woman. Suddenly, everything is dark and Barry is in his bed. He can hear something going on downstairs. Some sort of commotion. Suddenly a woman's scream rings out and he leaps out of bed, heading down the stairs.
The shadows and light within obey Audrey's commands, highlighting the forms of Mindbender and Mammoth. Mammoth has begun just senselessly pounding someone into the ground with what appears to be a massive phallus carved out of repurposed beer cans, the man beneath screaming crying out, "Somebody help me! This is my art and it is dangerous! Do you think I want to die like this?!?"

Meanwhile, the Flash is only two feet shy of Mindbender, the villainess lost in her own haze, the drug cocktail Nash injected into her veins leaving her stumbling until she actually runs into the hero, clawing at him with her nails.

Sirens can be heard in the distance, police and fire heading this way. The theatre across the street continues to burn, the doors straining as the people trapped inside with the madmen killers uselessly attempt to escape.
Audrey really, really doesn't want to get involved in this. Really, really, really. But she can't quite just let a bunch of people die for nothing. Still invisible, she braces herself, takes a deep breath, then runs into the gallery. Get the Flash free, and he can finish the job, right? Maybe? Now all she has to do is hope the other woman's illusions aren't based on pheromones or something. Good thing she's not planning on breathing.

Invisible, she runs up behind Mindbender, picks up a convenient piece of debris, and winds up to clock her in the back of the head.

Mindbender's nails pierce the skin around the Scarlet Speedster's mouth, but in his mind the scene is different.

He's down in his living room, back in Central City. It's all happening again—the lightning, the crackling. This time he's faster, but not fast enough, and his mother lies in a pool of blood upon the floor. "NOoooooOOoOoooOoOooO!" the Flash yells, blue eyes wrought with fear and anguish.
And suddenly the world rushes back into Barry's eyes and ears as Audrey, wielding what appears to be a well-sculpted buttock crafted out of a car bumper, has smacked Mindbender to the ground, the illusionist succumbing to the blow and the cocktail that was probably a little too much for her in the first place. She even starts to shake and jerk on the ground, having a mild aneurysm as a result of the blow to the head and the amphetamines. Surely she'll be fine, though. The rest of the gallery has fled out the door, leaving only the eight foot tall angry freak now looming over Audrey as she smacks the only person in the room he recognizes.

Across the street, the doors finally burst open, a blast from Bushwhacker's arm blowing the chain and door's apart. Puma flings a few bodies ahead of them into the street, giving a catlike hiss as he pounces on top of a parked car, a necklace of fingers around his neck, fangs gleaming in the night.

The sirens grow closer. The flames grow higher. Nash opens her second can of Pringles. Sour Cream and Onion. Mmmmm.
Nothing to see here! Not after Audrey drops the bludgeon, at least. And if Mindbender is spasming down there, she doesn't particularly care. Crazy lady was slaughtering people in a burning building. Audrey's just fine with leaving her. In fact…

At a thought, flames surge up around the monster coming up behind her. Or at least they look like flames, and in a building that's already burning, maybe he won't notice that they're not real. Audrey isn't sticking around to find out, though. Still invisible, she leans over to try to tug the Flash up. "Move!" she whispers, coughing at the smoke. "This place is coming down!"

The Flash tries to shake the cobwebs out. First a severe, severe, concussion and now this. He follows along with Audrey and ends up outside, seeing the other building in flames.

"Barry?" Cisco's voice comes through the headset. "Are you alright?"

"How fast do I have to turn my arms to blow out flames?" he says, apparently to no one.

"Pretty fast," Cisco says as he grabs out the pad of paper and begins to do the calculations.

With a heavy sigh, Barry begins to spin his arms at unbelievable speed, trying to blow the building out like a birthday cake!

Audrey gets a good view of the Flash in action, left still kind of dazed as the Scarlet Speedster begins to run arond the building at breakneck speed, then super breakneck speed, then unbelieveable breakneck speed. The flames begin to sputter and fan out. Puma leaps for one of the nearby buildings, claws sinking into the concrete as he tries to make his getaway. Bushwhacker, though, continues to try and shoot Flash, far too fucked up to realize that he should be doing the better part of valour, especially as police and fire trucks enter the far end of the street and bear down on the tragedy.

Audrey needs to go. There's an actual, costumed hero on the scene, and the authorities are going to be here soon. And all of that assumes this crew of villains wasn't being paid or controlled by someone else for some reason. So once Barry's up and moving, Audrey starts to jog down the street and away from the scene of the crime. Of course, so do two other Audreys, in two other directions, before all three of them disappear.

The Flash attempts to put a shoulder into Bushwacker, slowing down slightly so he doesn't slice the guy in two! From there, he sees Puma trying to make a getaway as well, and he tears out and upwards along the wall, trying to apprehend Puma before the monster can get away.
The Flash does a good job. His shoulderblock sends Bushwhacker flying, tumbling head over heels to crash into a nearby wall, his skull cracking unconscious from the impact. As for Puma, he didn't really expect anyone to be able to chase him up a building, plus he wasn't thinking that clearly anyway. Flash can snatch him down easily, beating the feral mercenary senseless in the blink of an eye.

A giant, Mammoth shaped hole is found in the brick of the building behind the gallery. There's already discussion of finding a way to make it into some sort of permanent urban art piece. Something for the neighborhood.

Audrey slips away unnoticed. Only the Flash, likely, even saw her face.

In the end, 150,000 dollars in property damage. Fourteen dead. Thirty five injured. Most notably, Marc Anger, the artist, is in critical condition, with a severe concussion and fractured ribs after Mammoth beat him senseless with a beercan dick. And Lorne Thomas, the longtime director on his very last night of applause, sits in the hospital on a ventilator, his lungs damaged by all the smoke he inhaled, and his arm broken from being trampled in the stampede. Despite their injuries, though, both men are expected to make full recoveries and return to their productive, wonderful lives. The Flash and Audrey saved the day, saved their lives.

Too bad, then, when Nash visits them each that night. Marc sees it coming, Nash grinning as she smothers his scream for help with a pillow and uses that same pillow to muffle her gunshot as she perforates his skull. She tries to wake up the old man, but his morphine drip's too stubborn. The best she gets is a groggy gurgle when she puts the barrel of the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger, fading away and drifting out through the window before the orderlies and respond to the sound of the gunshot.

Each man has a note pinned to his hospital gown - "Once a victim, always a victim." Signed with a lipstick kiss.


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