2020-08-01 - Factum fieri infectum non potest

August wanders towards St. Mary's, drawn the way people with Glimmer are drawn. He knows he shouldn't, knows he should go to Espresso Yourself to wait for Eleanor to be done for the day. He turns his Outback down a different street, though, parks in front of the church and cemetery. "What are you doing here?" he asks himself. He thinks he can feel Gohl's blank burial plot staring back at him as if to say, 'You know.'

He gets out and heads in, hesitant and wary. He's in his post-work clothes; a battered old Led Zeppelin tee, worn jeans, heavy hiking boots.

Vic is here, because this sort of large event with lots of civilians is a perfect place for someone trying to take over a city's criminal enterprises to make a statement about their power and authority. It's got the ex-cop's hackles up. Normally she couldn't care less about fancy statuary or church whatsoever, but she can feel the pull of the energy these things have. So rather than just lurk from a distance and watch with binoculars from her truck, she's parked the Ram and walked into the churchyard. The tall woman is in 'work mode', and not of the TiBS variety. She's in black BDU's, a black tank, and black tactical boots, with her hair in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Despite the heat, she has a dark denim shirt on top, left unbuttoned, but there to hide the pistol at the small of her back.

Itzhak also follows that magnificent honker of his, cursing to himself luridly in Yiddish. But his shaman's instinct won't let him rest, buzzing in his ear until he gets in the car and drives. He shoots a glance towards August as they converge. "You too, huh?"

It was to Gray Pond, the place where Lyric had advised Ravn not to go that they find themselves headed for. But when they get nearby the church, she notices the people and with a curious look to Ravn she motions towards it. "We need to go there first. Just to look around." Can she feel the tug? More than likely and it sparks her interest so she leads him towards it, noticing several faces that are familiar. Her steps slow and she looks between August and Itzhak. "You too?" She hadn't intended on coming. Or bringing Ravn, but here they were!

"Uh, sure?" The black-clad Dane seems pretty content to just follow Lyric's lead wherever it goes -- he's new to town, he's seeing the sights, and he's almost virginally innocent of how things actually work here. Following her lead he looks at people -- and at the church, and the church ground, and anything else, really -- with the curiosity of a tourist. New lamb to the slaughter for sure.

August gives Itzhak an upnod, eyes on the church as the nuns and Priest come out. "Yeah," he says, distracted. Last tour. Right, he'd read about this in the paper, hadn't he?

He sees Lyric and that new server from TIBS, along with the other server from TIBS, the who's not so hot at her job but seems capable of handling herself. "Careful," he tells Ravn, which doesn't sound ominous at all.

He nods at the nuns and priest and, with a sidelong glance at Itzhak, heads inside.

Vic's dark blue eyes sweep the grounds of the church, looking for any more of Joey's people. Rosencrantz she recognizes and frowns, heading his way. Then there is Ravn. Goddammit. He's been in town all of ten minutes and he's gonna get killed already. Wasn't he warned about the Pond? She's sure she warned him about it. It's where she's marked off to dump any bodies for disposal on the other side. There are some TiBs regulars about as well, which is a bit problematic if she has to do her real job here.

The passing nuns and priest have her head snapping towards them, as if looking for a threat. She may not volunteer the information, but she went to Catholic grade school. There may be some PTSD related to nuns and rulers and knuckles there. "Rosencrantz," she greets the mechanic. "Ravn," she adds for the barback. The latter she gives a look too, one of disappointment, as if saying 'OMGWTFBBQ weren't you told to stay clear of that damn pond?' Then she turns on a booted heel to head for the church proper.

Itzhak still isn't exactly sure who Vic is, but she works for Joey and sure looks like she means business, so he'll take it. Lyric coming up with someone he doesn't know, though? "Lyric," he hisses at her, striding into the church on those long legs, "who the hell is this? Who the hell are you?" to Ravn. "Stay behind me, you got it?"

Yeah, caution is on everyone's mind and even the Priests don't seem to settle Lyric. The greeting from the others is met with an equally cautious smile of her own but it's strictly a movement of her lips that doesn't reach her eyes. The worry in them is too thick for the smile to break through. The greeting from Itzhak though has her thumbing towards Ravn. "New to town, very new. We'll be behind you guys no worries." A slight tug at Ravn's sleeve to ensure he doesn't go cruising to the front. "Safer here." Perhaps Ravn could feel the tension in the air, if he can't feel the pull of the statues. Last Tour also echoes in her mind. So final sounding. Foreboding!

Ravn blinks at the older man's warning. Wasn't that -- oh, right, botanist guy from the bar whom people keep telling him to buddy up with. Warning him. He tries to not let it show but he's definitely paying attention to his surroundings now because if five days in Gray Harbor have taught him anything so far, it's to pay a lot of attention. Stephen King would love this place. Stephen King probably vacations here.

Then, suddenly, Vic, looking serious as intense as she apparently always does. He waves at her, oblivious to her actual work, still thinking her just a fellow server at a beach bar. "Hey there. Lyric's showing me the ropes a littl--what?" Itzhak's sudden hiss causes him to raise his eyebrows and -- take a step backwards. It's possible that for a tourist he's actually got some kind of survival instinct after all. Frowning, he falls quiet, watching.

"He's--hey." Before August can stop Itzhak from going and instigating a confrontation that ship has sailed and passed through the Panama Canal. He moves to Itzhak's side, says to Ravn, "Sorry, he's just like this." He chases this with a look he has to use almost as often as The Face; the 'apologies for my friend, you'll get used to him or try to kill him' look. Then, to Itzhak, "He's new, okay? Don't get up in his face." He nods towards the church. "Come on."

Once they're inside August wrinkles his nose, resists the urge to pull out the bandanna he carries for work and cover his face. Ugh, who needs this much incense? Catholics. He eyes the dude who's clearly not into the tour, making a mental note of him as he studies the statues, keeps an eye out for weird, yellow flowers.

Vic's internal cop radar goes off at the man who doesn't seem to fit in. Anyone looking her way might think much the same of her, someone who doesn't belong there, and who may be up to no good. Like knows like. She bumps Itzhak's elbow lightly, the only other Kelly crew member here, and tips her chin towards the odd man out. Then she begins to maneuver her way through the tour group to try and get behind him for a closer look, searching his form for any concealed weapons.

Itzhak, like the song says, is tense and nervous and he can't relax. He wrinkles his nose at August, though. "Don't call me out like this. Look," to Lyric and Ravn, "just--just don't do anything too stupid." Thus speaks Gray Harbor's biggest hypocrite. He glances sharply at Vic, gives her a minute nod, looking towards the weird guy.

Lyric is certainly iffy on it, but she does pay attention to the reactions of those she considers friends. Inside, she looks around, surprised that everything seems calm. Perhaps with the draw here, she'd expected Ghostbusters Library sort of chaos. Her attention is drawn to the guy that Itzhak nods towards. "I won't do anything stupid." Not as long as she's remains unthreatened of course. "What do you see?" The question given towards the others. Namely those looking towards that guy.

Ravn opens his mouth as if he contemplates saying something, then shuts it. Suddenly he's -- quiet. Quiet in the fashion of someone who is realising just how far away from home he is and how far out of his depth he is. Something is going down here which, at least to a Danish tourist, feels like having taken a wrong turn at Philalelphia, and oh fuck, I'm on a Hollywood movie set except this is real. He isn't certain what to say or do, but he's vividly remembering watching Bowling for Columbine a long time ago and feeling like he ought to be making certain to be a lot closer to the door -- on the other side of it, in fact. Very quietly he nudges Lyric's hip with one gloved hand and nods slightly towards the man whose concealed weapon he has in fact spotted.

August listens, trying to pretend to care. It's not too hard for him to fake; he did have to pretend to care about all the Christian stuff in school as a kid, after all. At the very least he knows not to be disruptive, unlike some people.

The guy makes a reach for something. August is about 100% sure it's a gun. He signs, 'Gun', as subtly as he can, and reaches out for the trigger, hammer, and firing pin, hoping to cripple them before the guy has a chance to use it.

Vic's eyes narrow. There's a shape she's spotting on the guy, but though it might be a weapon, it might be his wallet for all she can tell. She grunts quietly and ponders her next move. Distraction? Keep him focused on her instead of whatever target he came for? She moves up beside him, makes like a bored housewife here with the rest. "What did I miss? I came in late, can you fill me in?" she asks with gleaming blue eyes, a bright smile and, Jesus is she possessed? No one here has likely seen Vic like this, she's BUBBLY. She even clasps her hands in front of her, giggles, and raises her shoulders straight armed, to give him a bit of a cleavage boost. It's a TERRIBLE effort at fooling anyone. She must be out of practice. Way out of practice. Also, if this is how she flirts, it's clear why she's single.

Then he's reaching for his gun and she's put herself right there like a moron.

Itzhak may not be the world's most observant guy, but...actually there's no 'but' there, he noticed the man is drawing a gun and he didn't notice anybody else's attempts to deal with it quietly and he's just flinging himself at the guy eager to take him down. While cursing at him in Yiddish. Loudly.

It happens like in slow motion even though it's really not. The man, her eyes were already on him, so Lyric catches sight of him drawing his gun. Her eyes widen and she whispers harshly to Ravn, "Get down! Get DOWN!" Her voice rises a little and she watches as Vic is near the shooter. All she can think to do is attempt to fling the gun from him, but he had the benefit of knowing what he was doing and when, so she's late on the draw as she tries. But it doesn't stop her from trying. Itzhak's running for him also distracts her and she looks tense, certainly not wanting anyone to get hurt!

The idea of going for Gun Guy does not occur to Ravn at first; in part because the tall Dane has got literally no experience with people carrying guns unless they are in fact uniformed police (in which case, don't start bothering them doing their jobs), and in part because, well, hello, the guy has a gun, what the hell are you supposed to do besides hit the floor and ask yourself why the fuck did I decide to go to this insane country, I could have been backpacking around the Netherlands, or Shanghai, or anywhere else that has heard of gun control.

Vic moves in front of him, giggling like she's been grazing on the finest Amsterdam weed. For a moment Ravn wonders if it's even the same woman -- she certainly doesn't sound like the hard-eyed, intense woman who was lecturing him on safety and tentacle monsters earlier. The penny spins a few times, then drops as he understands what it is she's trying to do. He edges closer, nurturing some vague idea that Vic is the distraction and he's going to club the guy over the hea---

--Nope. Suddenly, flying person. Ravn does a double take, and then another as the flying person in question fails to take down the man with the gun. Lyric hisses at him, and while he will no doubt be very embarrassed about it either, he obeys before thinking. Down!

August is busy trying to be careful about how he disarms the guy, concentrating almost entirely on that, which makes him the only person on the side of 'deal with this discretely'. Itzhak goes flying at the gun-toting jerk--not a surprise, if we're being honest--and Lyric tries to yank the gun out of his hand. Vic attempts to be distracting. Ravn does a smart thing, he hides! August thoroughly approves. Pews are nice and solid, lots of wood to put between you and bullets which might still go flying.

Might? Make that do. Just one shot, into Vic. August sucks in a breath in surprise, grabbing a pew for support. And now this guy is coming right for him, with a knife. The gun's probably out of commission, so August gathers force around himself to soak the incoming blow he's almost certainly not going to be able to dodge or block.

Blam! Vic freezes in place, that faux girlish look on her face seems to melt away, going to the cold, hard, blank place that the enforcer goes when it's time to make the donuts. For a moment she doesn't seem to recognize that she's been shot at point blank range, but as she feels the wetness down the front of her (admittedly holey now) shirt, she staggers back and pulls her own gun to try and fire on her way down to the floor.

Vic falls towards the floor, and it's like an action movie in slow motion. As she tips backwards, one hand swings behind her body, curling around the grip of the Glock 21 tucked into special back holster on her belt. She swings it up and her finger brushes off the trigger safety as she fires on the gunman. Her back hits the ground, blood fountaining from her wound, but she manages to stay conscious somehow. Was this a hit on her? Who was it for?

Itzhak has an awful choice to make: defend August or try to hold Vic's ribcage together? There is an awful lot of blood and gross shit happening to Vic right now so that's what he does, grabbing her as she falls and getting covered in blood as he wads up her shirt and compresses the wound. Which is slightly the definition of 'sucking chest wound'. "Hey, you're okay," he tells her anyway, although he's going a little pale, "just nicked ya, looks way worse than it is."

So much is happening all at once. The man shot Vic then took a knife after August! Lyric is no healer so she leaves that to the others and after focusing she goes for the knife, trying to take it from the man and bring it to herself careful of the others around them. There's nothing to say right now, actions mean more in the moment, at least for Lyric anyway. Catching the knife, she turns it on the man and there's a fierce growling sound from her, a protectiveness. Their own. It's something she'd said of the inhabitants of the city and she was intent on following it. Protecting their own. She wields it and looks like she has every intention on using it on the shooter!

Depending on whom you ask and your perspective on the whole, Ravn is either a simpering coward who stays down on the floor while his employer is getting shot -- and returning fire -- or a smart cookie who hits the deck when told to; whatever your preference, he focuses the thing in his mind, the power he's always thought of as the poltergeist, because that knife is the real issue here. People don't get stabbed if there are no knives present on the scene. He visualises it as hard as he's able, the knife pried from the shooter's hands by an invisible force, flying out a window (no doubt the church board would have issues with this but it's not a concern at the moment) and hopes -- because magically swiping a nut in a shell game or lifting a key from someone's pocket while they're distracted is one thing, and disarming an active stabberoo in a combat scenario is in another league entirely. Here's to hope -- and to still on some level thinking you're the only guy on the planet who can do something like that, and hence, feeling very morally obligated to try.

If he'd only realised that Lyric already went for it. Let the mental tug-o-war ensue. Please don't remind him that Lyric is a million gazillion bazillion times stronger at this game than he's ever been.

August makes a sound halfway between a shout and a scream when that knife goes into his left shoulder. The shoulder that's got more than a bit of hardware keeping it intact, some of which takes a beating. Vic's injury is throbbing over there, nauseating him, and now his shoulder is on fire, if he needs surgery for that--

The simple solution occurs to him: break this asshole's neck. He's obviously here to kill someone, and given the way things are right now, August has to assume it's Itzhak. Rage and pain are convincing.

...he can't make himself do it. Fortunately, Vic has no such compunctions, and August collapses to the floor of the church with the guy's body. He stares at the ceiling of the church, dazed, for a handful of seconds, frowning like he's trying to figure something out.

His eyes roll back, and he blacks out.

Vic is still watching the guy, seeing what her shot has done, before the blood loss makes it too hard to keep her gun hand elevated and it drops to her side, her head lolling to fix Itzhak with a dead-eyed (but so far mercifully alive) gaze. "You must be," wheeze, "terrible," gurgle, "at poker." Blood dribbles from the corner of her mouth, slicking her teeth crimson. "My gun," she hisses to him faintly. "Disappear it for me." So she doesn't get charged in this. Just a victim! Nothing to see here!

Itzhak huffs unamused laughter, whispers harshly, "You got it. Just stay awake, yeah?" Oh God, Roen's covered in things nobody wants to think about but hey he passed out, that's good. Prying her gun from Vic's fingers, Itzhak slips it into a pocket--where it should not fit, and yet, it does, without even a lump to give it away. And he gets Lyric to get him the knife, to follow it. They're going to need that. While he does these things he looks at Ravn and grins in an utterly primal way, more a baring of teeth, his hand on Vic's chest. "Welcome to town, pal."

Lyric holds the knife in hand and is pretty hesitant to hand it over. Something or someone else was trying to get it from her so she wasn't about to let it go! Finally, at Itzhak's request, she grudgingly gives it over to him with a proper frown. "I want it back later though." Hey, everyone needs a knife. Even Lyrics!

The knife isn't flying out windows. Moreover, it is resisting his efforts. Ravn finally manages to get his bearings and indeed, realises that the knife has already been situated at safe distance from the man who is -- well, let's be fair, the shooter is probably not going to knife anyone, at least not unless he gets up and scrapes most of his brain off the floor first. It's safe to stop mentally tugging at the thing. Which Lyric is holding on to -- good. Lyric knows what she's doing. Lyric can glue grown men to chairs with her mind. Amsterdam. I could have gone to Amsterdam, but no-o, it wasn't far enough away from home.

He breathes out, sends Itzhak an are you fucking kidding me? look, and gets up. "Bloody hell," the man murmurs in an accent that would do the BBC proud. "We need to call an ambulance."

Perhaps mercifully, Vic passes out from blood loss not too long after making sure Itzhak takes care of her weapon. That screaming from the church ladies was starting to give her a miserable headache. She slides into the gentle embrace of unconsciousness before the paramedics arrive to take her to the hospital. She fucking hates hospitals. They leave records, paper trails, and cost money. Joey and Felix are going to be pissed. Before she's lights out though, she rasps at Ravn, "Need a...raincheck...on the docks..."

With the weapons taken care of, Lyric takes a moment to look around. August and Vic were in bad shape. Itzhak and Ravn were fine much like her. A sympathetic look is given to the latter. "Are you alright?" Realizing this had been pretty traumatic for most anyone who wasn't used to such things.

Keep a stiff upper lip as the British say. Ravn is not a Brit, granted, but the concept is by no means foreign to the social circles he grew up in either, and he's surprisingly good at it once he's managed to peel himself off the floor. Goodness, I'm far from home.

"I'm... I don't think I'd say no to a cup of something somewhere," he replies to Lyric's inquiry. "This is... Can we just say I feel very very foreign at the moment?"