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Tweak says, "It's French...we're frenching."

Allana Solo (sanguinesolo) wrote in wariscoming,
@ 2011-03-29 18:57:00

Entry tags:

allana solo, clark kent/superman

Who: Clark and Allana (and the unluckiest NPC muggers in Lawrence)
What: Muddled heroics
Where: The apparently sketchy streets of Lawrence
When: 3am-ish
Warnings: Violence, language
Status: Incomplete

Most people did not respond to mysterious threats on their life from unknown sources by going out for coffee at 3am. Then again, most people hadn’t grown up in a royal court and then in an ex-senator and ex-smuggler’s home knowing, through instruction repeated so many times the rules became intuitive, never to sit with your back to a door, never to turn around until someone had completely left the room, and to always mark the entrances and exits to a space when you entered it. If Allana reacted to the possibility of attack or assassination with fear, or even with what most people would have considered appropriate caution, she would have long ago have given up going out all together, and would probably have been regarded with puzzlement by a family that compared kidnappings of its children the way some people compared bouts of the chicken pox. Besides, she’d missed the diner this past week or so when Jen, with her bullet wound and then her mysterious inability to heal and subsequent return to the desire to snack on the living, had taken up most of her mind. It was still a present worry but, for now, there wasn’t much she could do about it.

So she’d gone out to the diner for coffee around 1am, Dance, Dance, Dance by Murakami tucked under her arm, and let the grumbles of slow-moving waitresses, muttering workers on break from their night shift jobs as janitors or security guards, and slurring of college students from KU grabbing a coffee to sober up before they headed home wash around her in a soothing hum. The waitresses and regulars had smiled and waved at her, she’d gotten some reading done, and she’d just been Allana Smith for a little while, completely unremarkable aside from some apparent insomniac tendencies. It had been nice, definitely the sanity-saving part of her day, but 3am brought the onset of drowsiness and she paid for her coffee and headed out into a light drizzle, pulling the hood of her jacket up so that it hung over her face and hair and putting in her ear buds to listen to her ipod on the walk home.

She was about halfway home when she felt it, a disturbance in the Force that came from fear reaching its breaking point and the malice that had caused it. Slowing her steps she pulled out her headphones and put a hand on her lightsaber, tucked away safely in a pocket, edging towards the disturbance until she could actually hear the voices, hushed and rough, at the mouth of an alleyway a few feet in front of her. A woman, a night worker at the nearby hospital judging by her scrubs, probably on her way to the bus, was surrounded by three men in hooded sweatshirts. As Allana approached, still feeling out the presences around her to make sure there weren’t demons nearby, that this wasn’t a trap, the woman tried to dart around one of them and he cursed, catching her arm and swinging her around so that her back hit the wall with a dull thud.

“Look,” the man started, “just give us your fucking—“ and then grunted in surprise as Allana collided with him, doing her best to imitate the drunken stumble she’d seen the college students in the diner modeling. The woman reacted instinctively, grabbed Allana’s shoulders to steady her and pull her back, and Allana locked eyes with her for a moment, put the full force of her compulsion behind a whispered command—“You’re going to run until you’re somewhere safe. You won’t look back or worry about me.” The woman took off without so much as blinking, streaking past a bewildered, and rapidly becoming irritated, group of muggers and disappearing around the corner.

All of which left Allana standing in a semi-circle of angry criminals. She was certain she could deal with them, would even enjoy doing it after the week she’d had, but if she was going to take out a lightsaber or use the Force it was probably better not to do it on the sidewalk and so she began backing away into the alley, pretending to be scared enough not to realize she was trapping herself.

“Um, look, I’m really sorry. I only have like a dollar on me, so, um, just let me leave maybe?” she tried, pitching her voice higher as she backed away, drawing them after her. That sounds helpless right? Kitten up a tree? Come on just follow me, just a couple more steps…

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whenyouseered
2011-04-13 05:44 am UTC (link)

Clark found Allana's question more difficult to react to than the fact that she was actually able to defend herself against the attacker who had launched himself at her. This was Lawrence. Alternate universe Lawrence, where a whole lot of people seemed to have powers or skills that came in handy when it came down to defending themselves. The whole self-defense thing, at this point, wasn't something that Clark could bring himself to stumble over much anymore. The Jedi thing, though? Yeah, it was something that he was definitely still working on getting used to. He blinked at the lightsaber for a moment, shook his head, then stepped to the side, ensuring that the exit was blocked. The other two would have to go through him to get out of the alley - that was, of course, if they could manage to give Allana the slip first.

"What's wrong with my cape?" He couldn't help but ask, reaching up to tug at the collar of it thoughtfully. "It's perfectly practical. It's...it - it matches my costume. And -" One of the two attackers lunged at Allana, the other decidedly lurching around the two to make a break for it. The epitome of bravery, this one, Clark thought, grabbing the man before he could so much as put a single toe outside the alleyway. "My mom made this costume for me," he said pointedly, as if that would explain everything about the colorful, bizarre state of his attire. Clark hauled them the man up by the scruffy collar of his shirt, lifting him completely off his feet. The man squirmed under his grip, but it was useless. He gave up after a good moment of wriggling around, took a moment to breathe, then started up again when he realized that, hey, maybe he was actually dealing with a Superman, because how else could someone be this strong?

Clark looked at him and sighed. "You don't think there's anything wrong with my costume, do you? It's good, right? Heroic...and stuff?" The man sputtered out something incoherent. Clark shrugged, tapped a finger to the side of his head, and let him slump to the ground unconsciously.

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sanguinesolo
2011-04-15 01:25 am UTC (link)

“What’s wrong with a cape?” Allana repeated incredulously, eyes narrowing as she stared at Clark, clearly wondering if he was joking. The man she had pinned to the wall with the Force gurgled out a strangled protest as she became distracted trying to think of which answer to give first. “Oh hold on,” she grumbled at him as she eased her hold a bit then turned back… just in time to see the second man lunge at her. For a moment she was disoriented, the split of her concentration between holding the first attacker and dodging a second attack slowing her down so that she barely avoided his swing. She thought about using her lightsaber but she didn’t actually want to hurt someone who hadn’t hurt anyone else yet. Though, she mused as she reached out with the Force and sent him flying into the wall to join his friend, not for lack of mediocre attempts. Maybe the Code would cut me some slack.

Once the two men were pinned to the wall, their fingers (the only parts of themselves they could currently move) twitching furiously, Allana turned back to Clark. “Okay, I mean, I get it. Moms do weird things. But, like, my mom made this soup the other day that I am pretty sure actually ate a pot. I love my mom but I did not eat it because I kind of want to live, which she is fine with because she also wants me to live. So it’s kind of the same thing here because it is impractical, you have to admit. Like,” she turned back towards the muggers, “you two, isn’t that big dangly bit of fabric hanging off his back the first thing you would grab in a fight?” She eased her hold on them a little in unison with the question so that they could answer.

“Put me down you fucking insane bi—“ the man’s jaw clicked shut again forcefully and Allana rolled her eyes at him. She turned back to Clark, about to ask what they should do with the muggers, when an idea suddenly occurred to her. “Oh, wait, did your mother give you this costume on April first? Because my friend told me that nothing you do on that is intended to be taken seriously. Which is a really weird sort of custom so I could see how you could get confused, you know, forget what day it was or something,” she suggested helpfully.

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whenyouseered
2011-04-19 05:31 am UTC (link)

"Except, half the time, my opponents can't even pull it hard enough to make much of a difference," Clark pointed out, arms folding over his chest in defiance. Really. His cape was fine. Martha Kent had thought long and hard about the design on his costume and, as far as Clark could tell, she had long since figured that the cape was more than ideal. It went with the flight, right? Plus, it made him look kind of intimidating. In spite of the bright colors that made up his costume, that was. Also, more to the point, Clark was pretty sure that the cape brought out his features. The red of his cape hit the red on the symbol in his chest perfectly, which toned into the blue spread throughout the rest of his costume and brought a real shine into those eyes of his. Furthermore, the cape rid him of that chunky feeling that he seemed to discover every time he slipped into his costume without it. Really, all around, the costume in itself was just as much about style as it was practicality. Surely, as ridiculous as it may have been upon first sight (Clark wasn't going to deny that, seeing as he, too, had been more than horrified when his mother first presented it to him), the costume worked for him. It had to, right? Otherwise, by now, more than one person would have called him out on the ridiculousness of his cape.

Okay, okay. Maybe Clark was trying too hard to come up with practical explanations for his costume. Still, he wasn't about to bad mouth something that his mother had gone far out of her way to make for him. The material that made up his costume was born of raw Kryptonian material, which meant that his mom had gone through hell and back to get it to do what she wanted. Clark wasn't about to look down on the hard work and dedication his mother had put into making what he was wearing today. She may not have been anywhere near where he was now, but he was far from interested in shooting any disrespect her way. Pa Kent would cross over from both the grave and one universe to the next to give him the sternest look of disapproval he could muster the second he so much as dared considering doing so and, frankly, Clark knew he'd never be able to fight the unbearable wave of shame that never failed to follow whenever that happened. Twenty-one years old and Clark still felt like a little kid being lectured whenever he thought of letting that old man down.

"No," Clark replied, watching as the muggers twitched on the wall curiously, "she didn't. It wasn't a joke. This is what she made for me and she made it with good intentions in mind. It's...kind of important that I wear it." Not only to protect his own identity, but as a symbol. It represented both where he came from and what he was going to do for the world. Or try to do for the world. Clark wanted to help everyone as best as he could, even if that meant he had to wear an ideally ridiculous looking costume to do it.

"Maybe you should let me take care of these guys?" Clark offered helpfully, looking to one of the nearby poles standing on the corner. It was a little comic book cliche to his character and all that (yeah, yeah, he'd been reading up on how this world had decided to portray their version of himself), but Clark wasn't entirely against wrapping that pole around the four of them and calling the police. It'd be a good way to contain them, it'd give Allana reason to take off, and Clark could keep an eye on the scene until the cops got there.

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