Virgil Hawkins (shock2ursystem) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-03-06 20:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, nick wilde, virgil hawkins (static) |
Who: Nick and Static
What: Stopping some robbers
When: Recently
Where: A warehouse somewhere
Rating/Warning: Low/none
Status: Complete
It was true what they said: practice makes perfect. Not that he was perfect, per se. He’d been a lot more careful after the incident with Richie, and since then, taking down robbers seemed to be a whole lot easier. The crime fighting in his dreams made it easier too. Here, he broke up regular, every day criminals who usually used easy to magnetize metal weapons. In his dreams, he usually fought supervillians who also had superpowers. Way easier.
He’d responded to a call that he’d picked up on the police channels. The silent alarm had gone off at a warehouse, and Virgil had shown up to see a couple of men piling televisions into a van. He’d disarmed them before they’d managed to get a shot off at him, and he’d just managed to get them to hang out from the ceiling when he heard the police sirens pulling up.
Nick had been out in his car when the call came in. He’d made his way to the warehouse after taking a moment to let everyone on the radio know he was on his way. He heard someone else say that if he needed back up to let him know. He had a feeling he’d show up at some point anyway. He couldn’t say that someone always did, but if you made friends with the right guys, you could always count on back up.
Which just made things weird when he walked into the warehouse (after carefully making sure that things were safe) to find that the criminals already seemed to be tied up. “Uh. Well, that was a lot less dramatic than I pictured it when I got here.”
“Looks like the po-po’s already here,” he said conversationally to the crooks, and with a flick of his finger he let them both fall from their spot on the ceiling. He caught them with his electricity when they were about five feet from the ground so they didn’t actually hurt themselves, and then let them fall the rest of short distance down, where they landed heavily on their backs.
He turned his attention from the robbers to the cop that was standing there and grinned cheerily. “Evening, officer,” he said. “I thought I’d lend a hand.”
The po-po. There’d been a time when he would have referred to them as the po-po. There’d been a time when he was the criminals. Only not really caught so often. If you ignored the time that he really got caught and then agreed to help the police by giving them information on the people he worked for and with, but that was almost another lifetime away. Okay, not really. It had really only been a few years.
Arching an eyebrow at the show of powers, Nick stepped closer. “Well, I guess I can’t fault you for that.” He talked into the radio attached to his shoulder, letting everyone know that the criminals were caught, but he probably needed at least one more person to transport them to the station. “Thanks, I think. I’m...Nick.” He moved to cuff one of the criminals, careful to keep his eyes on the men and be ready in case one or all of them tried to bolt. “Do you do this often?”
“Static,” Virgil said cheerily. He almost lifted his arm for a handshake, but held off last minute. After all, the officer had a job to do and he shouldn’t distract him while there were uncuffed criminals lying about. Even if Virgil was sure they were shocked (ha!) enough not to move. “Oh yeah, I do it all the time. I do the rounds almost every night. I don’t know why I haven’t been getting press, but it’s getting real old. You’d think I’d at least get a mention in the papers or something.” Even though no one read the papers. But it seemed like no matter what he tried, no one wanted to report on the super fly superhero who’d made an appearance in the OC.
Static. Well, that explained a lot. It probably also meant that he was one of the people that were dreaming...unless he missed something altogether. “Sorry about the press?” He didn’t know if that was something that he was supposed to concern himself with or not. “I can always put in a good word for you, I guess. But then I don’t know if people are trying to keep the whole superpower thing under wraps. Crazy things happen a lot around here, so people probably just think they’re on hallucinogens all the time by now.” But whatever.
Virgil had had the same thought. It wasn’t just Static that wasn’t getting in the news, but none of this. On one hand, he was glad. His folks would never be happy if they knew that Virgil had moved to the epicenter of weird. But on the other hand, it didn’t seem quite right keeping such a big thing from the general public. And, well, he had a great face for magazines, if he said so himself.
“Yeah, seems that way,” Virgil said after a moment, sighing. “But hey, if you know someone, feel free to give me a mention. I won’t be too upset if you don’t get me in the news. I’m just happy to help,” he said. After all, he was doing this for more than just fame. It was just that the fame in his dreams was a pretty nice byproduct. “But it sure is nice to meet someone else who isn’t too wigged out by having me help ‘em out.”
“I get the feeling they are trying to cover things up or keep them quiet, but I’ll see if I can’t at least get an honorary mention if there’s any press about this.” It wasn’t much, but it would be a thanks and he thought that was doing okay. This place didn’t really seem like the sort that was looking for superheroes or anything like that. It was a shitty enough time just getting things together as a cop.
“Well, considering everything, I feel like we probably are in the same boat of weirdness. Only I’m not so much with the superpowers.” Unless you counted conning people as a superpower. He had that under his belt. But it wasn’t really something he wanted to brag about. “But thanks for the help and everything.”
“You get the dreams too?” Virgil asked, a little surprised. In retrospect, maybe he shouldn’t be that surprised about it. “But hey, it ain’t no thang. I’d be wasting these powers if I didn’t go out and use ‘em for good, right?” Right. Nick obviously got it, since he was out here doing good even without the powers.
“Oh, I get them,” he said after a moment. “They’re a pain in the ass, but that’s probably about the same for everyone.” He didn’t immediately admit to what his dreams were about, but that was just one of those things. “I guess you have a point. I don’t know what I’d do with super powers.” Probably the same thing. Or maybe not. He didn’t really feel the need to self analyze at the moment when there were other things to consider. “So I don’t know how long it’ll take for the others to get here, but unless you want a million questions, you might want to at least be somewhere they can’t see you. Well, once you hear the sirens anyway.”
Virgil actually kind of liked his dreams, though he knew he was in the minority in that regard. They had their downpoints. While in real life his moms was alive and well, in the dreams she’d been shot and killed while he’d been a kid, and Richie getting shot had been pretty hard to see, though not as hard as seeing it happen in real life. But for the most part, they were kind of great. He got to fly around, saving the day. Everyone loved Static, except his enemies, but he always managed to soundly trounce them by the end of his dreams. And he was always running into dope celebrities.
“Bet you’d be great with them, Officer Nick,” Virgil said, pointing and winking at the Officer. He frowned to himself, listening. Faintly, he could hear the sirens. “You’re probably right. But hey, if you ever need some superpowered assistance, you know who to call.”
Nick was relatively certain that his dreams could be worse. Almost anything could be worse than being a cartoon fox that walked around and talked. Of course, he was also a conman, but that wasn’t actually the surprising part. The annoying part was how little information he really got from the dreams. He got things in flashes. Everything was brief and annoying. Also David laughed at him a lot, but then David was a shit. Yes, they were friends, but that didn’t mean Nick couldn’t call him a shit.
“Eh. I’d probably have used them for...well, I don’t know. Personal gain. Knowing me.” He shrugged slightly. “Probably best to have none and be somewhat honest than have them and be self serving.” Only he could think of about a million different things that would be useful to have and he probably wouldn’t be all that concerned about the self-serving part. He’d just have to be careful about it. Once a conman, always a conman. “If you ever hear someone say static electricity over the radios, that’s probably me. Might as well use random code that no one’s probably paying attention to. Unless you have a better idea.” He shrugged slightly. “But I’ll make sure to call if I need it.” Because that would be easier than doing a lot of running and shooting people. “Good luck with the crime fighting and the media coverage, though.”
“I think you’d be surprised,” Virgil said, willing to believe in the best in the officer. Virgil’d met self-serving cops before, and Virgil didn’t get a bad vibe from the guy. Though, he supposed these were unusual circumstance and he’d never actually met him while he was out of costume.
“Static electricity. Got it, officer,” Virgil said cheerfully. From the pocket of his long jacket, he produced a folded piece of metal, no larger than a slice of pizza. He applied a bit of electricity, and it unfolded into a disc about the size of a garbage can lid. He hoped on top of the disc, which was being levitated by his electricity. “But thanks. Best of luck to you too,” he said, gave the officer a bit of a salute before he flew off into the night.