[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/oBJ38oL.png[/img]
[@Krayzikk] [@Crimmy][/center]

In a minute, the entire convention had gone to hell. To most of the cosplayers inside, being taken hostage was certainly a shock, and they were no doubt cowed by the gunshot, the bomb threat, the loss of power...it was a lot to take in. Brennan's heart had jumped at the gunshot, and his wrist had snapped involuntarily when the bullet hit the phone. Some of the glass from Umeko's screen and camera had wound up buried in his hand. But it was nothing compared to what a bullet in the heart would have been. 

Either the asshole who had just served them ice cream was no crack shot, or the bullets had been unable to pierce the thick meatshield that was now frisking him for injuries.

[color=0072bc]"Babe,"[/color] he hissed quietly, although he knew she wouldn't take him seriously, [color=0072bc]"I'm [i]fine,[/i] fook dis, let's--"[/color]

[color=4169e1]"Brennan, I think they're underestimating us."[/color]

[color=0072bc][i]Oh.[/i][/color]

So [i]that[/i] was the play. As Brennan's eyes adjusted to the darkness, he started to make out the familiar features of his lover - and, in contrast to the serious cast of her face, his face broke into a wolfish grin and laugh. He brushed most of the glass off or [i]out[/i] of his hand, smearing his pants with blood, and shook his hair from his eyes. 

Fighting in these conditions would be nothing new. Although Academy City was so well lit during the midnight hour that it hardly counted as night at all, Brennan did most of his best work under the cover of darkness. Umeko had known how to handle herself in a fight as long as Brennan had known her, too, so that would be no issue. If anything, these conditions had set up a series of disadvantages for those who thought that the two aerospace students were their hostages. After all, it was unlikely as hell that anyone amidst this cabal of lunkheads, with their garish bomb threats, had actually seen the Papal Bulls arc of Kanamin Integral. Alexander Boniface, the Catholic witch hunter who had turned a local cram school into his summoning circle for shadow familiars, had tried to blanket the whole of Tokyo under darkness with the power of his shadow familiars, the Papal Bulls. It had looked like it would be a cour-length arc until Kanamin teamed up with her rival to put an end to him in two episodes flat. Something similar was bound to happen here if the couple put their heads together now.

[color=0072bc][i]Why use Boniface so early in the show, anyway? He had a pretty unique villain design, and they dropped the fuckin' ball casting Sugita for a season-starting bit-length villa--[/i][/color]

...

Umeko was staring at him like she could read his thoughts.

[color=0072bc][i]I'm breaking up with you.[/i][/color]

Her reaction didn't change. Maybe visions of the same arc just happened to be running through her head; her knowledge of magical girl shit was far more extensive than Brennan's, who had just absorbed things through osmosis while lounging on the couch with her, after all.

[color=0072bc]"Hit me wit' it."[/color]

[hr]

[h2]MgRonald's, District 7[/h2]
[@GreenGoat] [@HereComesTheSnow] 

[i]"Hrrrgh."[/i]

In most occasions, one could smell burning hair before they actually felt any pain from it. It was the acrid stench that notified them that something was going terribly wrong with their follicles, and that they should cease whatever attempts at styling, dying, or follicle restoration that they were putting their hairstyles through. 

In the case of the pompadour-wearing young man, styling was practically an afterthought in the mornings. His hair had darkened since the days of his early youth, sure, but that had more to do with his genetics than any sort of coloring that came from a bottle. Speaking of genetics, he was also quite self-assured about the state of his own hairline and follicle density, having thus far avoided the dramatic temple recession and slight thinning that most of the men on his mother's side of the family had dealt with in the turbulent stages of their own youth. His hair was very rarely a problem, and more often served as a problem-solver.

This lunkhead's esper power was going to be a problem.

Grunting slightly as the unpleasant scent began to translate into real pain, the pompadour-wearing man seemed to give in to the natural human instinct of anyone who touches a hot surface - rear back. His hair, however, reared back too against Karasawa's touch, and began to mold again before the eyes of the two restaurant patrons. It did so with surprising force, and Karasawa's hand and wrist were nearly jerked into an unnatural angle as his hairstyle turned into a sidecut - the long on one side, buzzed on the other 'do that had become a fad amongst ravers and the bad electronic dance musicians they patronized. The side it had grown long on - the young man's left - reared up to smack into Hisui, throwing the airborne girl out of her arc before her kick made contact. Karasawa's burning touch had more success in harming him; the young man's teeth were still gritted in frustration and pain, but the New Yorker's wrist had been jerked hard, and as the pompadour-wearing criminal (now a sidecut-wearing criminal) had turned left so his hair would strike into the girl, so too did the man with the magic mane line up a lush left towards Karasawa's liver.

"You're looking scruffy," he said to the boy with the burning blood. "You should try my regimen sometime. It's [i]Vital Sassoon![/i]"

[color=a187be][h3][u]ESPER NAME:[/u]
[b]VI
TAL

SAS
SOON![/b][/h3][/color]

[hr]

[h2]District 7[/h2]
[@NaraK]

"Chief, ahead! We're gonna hit a kid!"

"C'mon, Isami, make the jump! Where's your sense of the dramatic?"

Isami usually saved her sense of the dramatic for the powerful, award-winning documentaries she often screened in her fair time. A sizable number of them had to do with the meat packing industry or with the corners cut by the global fast food conglomerates, which were growing increasingly sloppy with their food, cruel with their hiring practices and wages, and automated from management down, leading to no accountability for the harm they did to workers and consumers alike. Chief didn't like [i]that[/i] kind of drama, though. He liked chicken nuggets and a good C-movie where nameless yakuza were regularly punched in the throat by a clean-cut young actor who the studios thought could appeal to Western audiences. There was nothing wrong with that in theory.

Until you tried to live it in practice.

"I'm going around him!" she yelled.

"[i]Isamiii![/i] Where's your sense of excit--excruci--[sub][i]whatthehell[/i][/sub]--exuberance!?"

"[i]I'm going around him![/i]"

If they had only been of one mind instead of trying to argue about four-syllable words, they might have been able to make the jump without harming Jun in the first place. Instead, Isami chose to attempt to go around both the vehicle that Chief wanted to jump and around the sonic barrier Jun had set up to stop them. One was more successful than the other.

They clipped the very edge of the sonic barrier, driving a thin needle of sound into both their ears that dissipated within seconds, leaving Isami's ears ringing slightly but none the worse for wear. It was the situation of the trike itself, which had clipped the barrier with its sidecar, that was growing increasingly precarious. Though its three wheels afforded it considerable stability, it was now tottering precariously on its sides as Isami tried to overcorrect her steering and recover from the barrier. 

Though not considerable, there was now a risk of it capsizing to the right if they weren't careful - or if the boy they'd avoided in panic could make any more efforts to halt them.