'Well, that's fair enough, ma'am,' Nick states. He detests how many of those on the street refuse help when it's offered, and can't help but continue to talk: 'But look, if you change your mind, come see me, alright? Ask around for the Kaiser Chief, people will know who I am.'

'Woah, Chief, who's the hot chick you've picked up?'

Apparently, helping an old lady cross the road had been handled nicely by his subordinates. Manners? Not so much. Closing his eyes and gripping the bridge of his nose with an exaggerated inhalation, Nick turns to the member of his group who had spoken, an unimpressed expression on a face where it doesn't quite belong.

'Hey, so, Jim?'

'...oh crap, right. Uh-'

'If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, don't hit on the people we're trying to help, in any form.'

'Yeah, uh... I-I'm sorry, ma'am.'

'Cut that crap out, or it's the bat again.' To emphasize his point, Nick reaches down and pops the top off the tube at his waist, letting a hint of a reflective surface show- just enough for Jim to become visibly scared- before popping it back into place and turning back to the lady. He makes to say something else, but cuts himself off for a moment at the sight of someone in what appears to be an extremely fancy white dress entering the restaurant he's next to. The Golden Peking- and Nick notes to himself that that'd be a great place for his team to have lunch in. It looks good, anyway.

'...sorry about Jim, miss,' Nick finally continues, somewhat awkwardly after the mildly-exaggerated pause, 'he's pretty harmless if you're not a terrible person. Just a bit, ah...' He pauses again, turning back to look at Jim proper. The other two gangers- Rick and Mohammed- helpfully offer 'A pervert?' and 'Idiotic' as potential adjectives, which Jim himself takes offense to, though Nick ultimately turns back to the woman again stating 'Both of those.'

And then he thinks to himself, [i]That group of three coming toward us seems a bit heavily armed for a street like this.[/i]

'Hey, so you four stay behind me for a moment, I think I may have business to deal with,' Nick states bluntly, stepping around the woman in front of him in a way that effectively guards her with his overlarge frame. Noting his behaviour, the three men approaching stop a few feet away from the group, the one in the back notably further away than his companions. A "leader from the back" figure, of course, though whether the leader of just this small group or of an entire organisation is impossible to establish.

'Sup, mister,' same-said guy says to Nick, his tone immediately threatening regardless of his target's size. 'You uh, you didn't happen to see, say, a woman in a white dress skulk into that there Chinese, didja?'

'Well, I've seen a lot of people walk in and out of that store since I got here,' Nick states bluntly, stepping forward a few paces to put himself ahead of the doorway too. 'If I have seen a woman in a white dress, though, I'm quite sure you three would be the last people I'd tell that to.'

'Cut the crap, buddy, I ain't got time for this. We have some stuff to, uh, reacquire from her, and your dumb ass isn't gonna stop us from gettin' it back.'

'Amazing,' Nick ponders to himself, 'so that's [i]another[/i] three psychopaths to deal with. Seven this week! I'm on a roll, huh?' he asks the mobsters, who by now are very evidently frustrated.

'I'll say this once more,' the leader states slowly and deliberately, 'move, or somebody dies.'

'Yeaaaah, those guns? Not gonna help.' Nick points out, apparently bored and unconcerned. Though really, that'll only last as long as his fellows don't try to get involved. But of course, Jim turns out to be too big for his britches, and strides forward like the idiot he is, yelling 'Yeah, don't you morons know who this guy is?! He's the freakin' KAISER CHIEF, and if you don't back down now-'

POW.

Fortunately, the aim of whichever thug took the shot is quite bad, meaning the bullet fired isn't as immediately lethal as the claims made. Still, a high-up gutshot is nothing to sneeze about: Jim falls backward beyond Nick's position, screaming bloody murder about the brand new hole in his body, and the Kaiser Chief himself decides enough is enough. Time seems to dilate as he speaks: 'You just fucked up big-time, asshole. That's the last mistake any of you ever make; just for that, I'll take you all out with your own peashooters in three seconds flat!'

'Hah, as if you could!' the leader yells. 'Kill this kid-looking bastard, you two!'

And that's more than enough to set off an already-upset gangster. With a loud roar, the Kaiser Chief rushes the mobsters, the movement of their aiming arms seeming oh-so-slow from his perspective... until he grabs both and forces them up in a way that aims both pistols toward the opposite mobster's head, Nick himself leaning back to stay out of the line of fire, and from there it takes only a quick jolt of the Ripple to make the thugs' muscles contract in a way that forces their index fingers to bend inward...

POWPOW.

As the two creeps blow one another's brains out, and unfortunately shatter the window of the Golden Peking and create a small dent high up the wall of another builder across the street, Nick yells at the gangster 'That's one second for your minions, meaning I have two seconds to deal with you! Thread Barrier!' The two statements seem unrelated - that is, until Nick's wifebeater seems to unravel from his chest outward into a mess of bright green threads, covering a wide area in front of him and crackling with life energy, just as the leader manages to begin firing his own silenced pistol toward Nick. It is for naught, however, as despite the seeming impossibility of it, the individual threads of the wifebeater cluster together against each bullet, completely dissipating its force without so much as snapping, let alone being shredded the way one might expect them to.

'You see that?!' Nick yells at the final thug. 'This shirt is made entirely of cotton and wool! And so's denim, in case you weren't aware!'

'What does that have to do with ANY OF THIS?!' the guy responds, clearly confused yet still firing bullets. 'How the fuck-?!'

'We're at one and three quarter seconds now! AZURE PUPPET OVERDRIVE!' Nick proclaims, the jacket unravelling and extending rapidly toward the mobster, until it wraps itself around the forearm of the guy's firing arm, only to turn the weapon upward toward his head. The man panics, tries to drop the weapon before the inevitable happens, fails as yet more threads grip his individual fingers and physically pull his index finger inward toward his palm...

POW.

And with the thugs permanently disabled, Nick's jacket unwinds itself from the dead mobster's arm, then reknits itself alongside the wifebeater as both revert to their usual form. Nick takes a deep, slow breath, both to calm himself down and allow his body to effectively scan itself for damage, though none has in fact been taken from the fight itself.

'Not even two and a half seconds,' the Kaiser Chief laments, rising up on his toes with one arm extended toward the falling body of his dead foe dramatically. 'I offered gold, and was given dirt in return. What a pity.'

The screams of pretty much everybody in the area ring out as the corpse hits the floor and the gang leader's perception of time reverts to normal, not least of which are Jim's cries of pain at the wound in his abdomen. Turning back to his gang members, he treads toward his companions, the pooling blood from the other two thugs seeming to ripple and spread away from Nick as he walks past them. More dramatic is the effect that arises when he comes near his own gang member's blood: it almost seems to flow backward, returning into its owner's body as though it had never left, and even seeming to remain where it is meant to as Nick lays a hand upon Jim's chest, eyes closing in concentration, sensing his own team member's life energy, where it's strong, and where it weakens.

'D-dude, I think I'm done... he... h-hit something big, probably a-a lung... I can f-feel it,' Jim says weakly, coughing up yet more blood to prove his point. Certainly, the bullet seems to have rebounded and passed out of the target's body cleanly, meaning one of his lungs is punctured twice, amongst other less serious injuries such as a rib cracked at the base near the spine, but nothing that Nick cannot undo in short order. His breathing remaining steady, several pulses of the Ripple spread through Jim's body in just a few seconds, first closing up the holes in his body and realigning the bone fragments of the rib, then reconnecting blood vessels (blood inside rather than outside, of course), bronchi and bronchioles, marrow and nerves, and restoring as best it can the tiny alveoli and bronchioli that have been destroyed outright - quite well, Nick believes, for a severe injury to a complex organ like that - and finally sealing off the holes proper, muscle and bone fusing back together as though never damaged at all.

It doesn't take long for Jim to get back on his feet, a smile on his face and words of thanks on his tongue, at which point Nick slaps the smile away just for good measure. 'Consider all that karma for not learning your lesson about when to say nothing,' he says unsympathetically, to which Jim simply hangs his head and nods.

'Now, is anybody else hurt? Rick, Mohammed?' Nick asks, to which both shake their heads. 'Then miss, are you well?' he continues, turning to where the woman from before ought to be, if she hasn't fled by now.

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