well I'm a polar bear and my name is bjorn

[parroted]

WHO: the Ex Machina boys and I guess city hall folks can thread amongst themselves?
WHERE: City Hall
WHEN: Monday afternoon
WARNINGS: Violence, language, cruelty to polar bears
SUMMARY: Pherson pays the Mayor a visit. He brings his polar bear. Bradbury objects. There's drama.
FORMAT: UH



Someone had lied.

Or perhaps more accurately, someone had omitted the truth.

Mitchell Hundred finally had an ally from home, but that ally slipped up. He told Pherson he was going to die. And Pherson had worked through all the stages of learning that he was going to go home to die, that he failed the creators, that the green and the violet had failed to work in unison, and that Hundred knew he was dead, he knew Pherson wasn't there anymore.

It was time to remind his brother in arms that he had a nemesis. And regardless of what went on in their home universe, Jack Pherson was very much alive.

Finding Mitchell was always so easy. You just took a stroll to City Hall and there he would be. Getting to City Hall without any of the police going "hey, waitaminute, is that a polar bear?" was more difficult.

And so Pherson strolled right into City Hall, with his ever faithful parrot and his ginormous hound of artic bear, casually as you please.

They were there to see the mayor.

Comments

[parroted]

Pherson had barely time to touch the thing before it started sparking, and he fumbled it, swearing under his breath and dropped it.

He kicked it away from either of them, stepping toward Mitch.

"Childish."

Polynesia landed on his shoulder, flapping it's wings, having been slightly been singed but the short-out.

"And you've upset my parrot."

He stepped forward a bit more, putting his hands down on Mitch's desk.

"Tell me what happened, Great Machine, or I'll call my bear back in here."

[waiting]

Rick loved his gun, but it was about as useful as a second ass right now, considering he'd dropped it sometime during getting slammed into government building wallpaper. When the bear went for his face, it was instinct that made him bring his arms up to knock its muzzle away, realizing how stupid that was when the bear's teeth sank into his arm -

"Motherfu--"

- only to have it stop, Rick's arm still in its jaws. For a moment, Rick wasn't sure what was happening, too slow to process that the teeth weren't going any deeper over the panicked litany of fuckfuckfuck in his head. The bear looked about as confused as he was, muscles in its neck straining as it tried to bite down but couldn't, hot breath and spit running against his skin through torn cloth. Realization kicked in and he grabbed at its muzzle with the hand that wasn't being held in place, palm over the bear's nose while his fingers scrabbled to get a grip along its upper jaw.

He'd been practicing his powers by breaking small, meaningless trinkets, enough for him to be familiar with the tingle under his skin that left his head aching. He tried to summon the same concentration now, gritting his teeth as he pried his arm free of the bear's mouth.

"Come on!" Shit, in the time it was taking him to do this, who knew what Pherson was doing to Mitch? Almost as soon as the thought occurred to him, the bear jerked under his hands, its jaw going slack. For a moment, he thought whatever temporary paralysis had saved his arm from getting ripped to shreds had finally worn off, but then the bear's eyes rolled back in its head and it dropped to the floor with an audible thump, dragging Bradbury with it.

Still half-dazed, he picked his gun off the floor and went for Mitch's door t a stumbling run, bringing it up in shaking hands to train it at Pherson. "Freeze, you dick!" It would have been more convincing if he wasn't out of breath and bleeding from a cut on the temple and more punctures than he cared to think about.

[viced]

Mitch leaned back, trying to escape the forward thrust from his archenemy, trying to slide his chair back so he could move from his now standing position, pulling away, but stymied from much movement by his own chair. The traitor. He could only really just stare at Pherson from a ramrod position, and he very obviously swallowed.

Shit, this was not what he'd been expecting. Pherson had always been delusional, but Mitch had thought of their encounters from his lofty position as a superhero. Here, in his office, he was a sitting duck. He didn't have his arsenal of weapons, or his jetpack to fly off, or gas, he didn't keep a tranq gun. He'd need to, if he lived through this, or once he came back. If he came back. He could never guarantee that.

"I-- You--" he didn't get any further when there was the sound of his bodyguard bursting in through the door, and for the first fucking time since Rick had shown up, he actually looked glad to see him, even though it was the slightest shift in his eyes, a quirk of his lips. A relieved quirk.

"Wow, you took down a fucking polar bear?"

[parroted]

Pherson could hear the bear suddenly going silent, spinning wide-eyed away from Mitchell to stare at the sudden appearance of Bradbury.

"What did you do?"

Followed closely by the revelation that he lost his advantage. He wasn't thinking straight anymore (if he ever was), that sudden loss of the polar bear on his mind and the blind animal fear made him lose his fight instinct to fleeing.

"STOP HIM."

Pherson only really had one advantage left, and sent his parrot after the second gun of the day. But he'd projected his 'voice' enough that some of his other friends heard too - and suddenly there were pigeons tapping against the glass of the window.

He was never really alone.

[waiting]

He was too out of breath to answer his boss with anything more than a nod, keeping his eyes fixed on Pherson as the other man whirled around. Later, Rick would blame it on the disorientation of suddenly finding out there was more to his powers than he'd thought, but right now? After taking down a motherfucking polar bear, it was still the bird that took him by surprise. He swore as the gun was knocked from nerveless fingers and to the floor, the weapon too heavy for the bird to snatch.

Still, it wasn't like he needed a gun to deal with Pherson. Warily, he stepped forward with his fists up, only to be distracted by the tapping of beaks on the window.

[viced]

Mitch also swung his head from his archenemy to the window. Motherfucker he'd called in the cavalry. He watched them warily, looking for the right moment to either duck under his desk, or tell every electronic in the room to kill themselves. Neither option was really what he wanted, but he wasn't equipped to deal with flying birds right now, especially with his taser across the room.

"I hope you've got a fucking plan right about now," he managed, looking between his bodyguard, archenemy, and the window with pigeons tapping on the glass. He certainly didn't have an idea what to do at this point.