Scene #737: Hana Hazes Merchants

Owner	Pose
Defiant	As Armsmaster returns to the local Protectorate HQ with Lung in handcuffss, the rest of Brockton Bay continues to operate as it always has. In one poor, non-descript section of the city that falls in a dangerous grey zone between the territories of the Azn Bad Boys and Empire Eighty-Eight, two of the Merchants are skulking about. They're capes, but they're not even C-grade capes. Their powers are so bizarre and their personalities so odious that everyone would rather let them fail at their minor attempts at crime then actually expend effort in dealing with them. Today, Skidmark and Mush are wandering the streets in the crisp evening air, smoking cigarettes. Mush is a hunchback looking fellow who looks strangely like a goblin from some fantasy film. Skidmark at least wears a mask over the top half of his face. Walking down the streets, hands in their pockets, just about to go perform some minor act of villainy.
Hana	Hana has taken a liking to this idea of superhero work. Not that anyone would really believe that the monster was actually a cape and not just some unfortunate creature controlled by one. And yet no one puppets the plant monster as it bumbles along through an alleyway. A bumbling creature with no idea that it'll be running across a crime in progress. The creature drags a backpack behind itself with one hand, filled with odds and ends it has collected from the trash and just lying around. (It may not understand concepts of theft just yet, not completely.) When it spots Mush and Skidmark, though, it pauses and sticks a flowerpot next to itself, pulled out of the backpack, to disguise itself as an upturned bit of decoration, while it observes with a surprisingly cunning disguise. A trick it picked up when it realized people didn't pay attention if it just acted like a flower bush.
Defiant	Mush and Skidmark appear to be in the process of selling drugs. It's not such a bad crime, as far as things go in Brockton Bay, but they appear to be selling to people who aren't quite adults. We sell to everyone, as the Merchants proudly claim. Mush looks over towards the alley, and he frowns a bit. He's a boney fellow with a gut. Just generally unfortunate looking. "Hey, boss? Was that flower pot there a second ago?" "Who cares," Skidmark retorts. He turns back to his customers. "Now, look, are you going to buy this shit or not?"
Hana	There's something that Hana can't quite understand. She looks at the exchange, and considers for a while what they are doing... selling things. Her brain burbles. An exchange of goods. But these people don't look like people that are Good. She considers for a while, and then rolls out from her cover and stops before Mush and Skidmark. Then she stares up at Skidmark and Mush, standing between them and the kids. "Stop," is all she tells them, exactly once. The gurgly-voiced creature doesn't seem all that dangerous.
Defiant	Skidmark and Mush look at each other and say nothing for a few moments. "Is... is this some sort of joke?" Skidmark asks the open air, loudly. "Is someone out there screwing with us?! Har har, the Merchants aren't anyone important?! Well, screw you and your little flower bush!" As Skidmark rants and raves, his two 'customers' seem to realise that they shouldn't be here and they promptly leg it. "You cost us a sale, you little-!" Skidmark snaps, and goes to kick Hana across the street!
Hana	As a foot swings in, Hana has a second to react. And so it does. Skidmark finds that it is an unwise decision to attempt to kick a monster without using some sort of steel-plated boot, when its mouth opens and tries to close around his foot. Should this succeed, all his kick does is create a disgusting SLOSH noise as goo is knocked around inside the plant monster... and teeth catching on soft material. "Kicking is bad," Hana somehow says despite potentially having a foot in her mouth.
Defiant	Skidmark flails his leg, kicking and kicking to try and dislodge Hana now! "Dude!" he calls to Mush, "Help me! Get this thing off me before it eats my leg!" Mush runs over to the alley and finds a particularly trash-infested part of it. He closes his eyes, calls upon his power, and the disgusting detritus seems to combine with him, making him something like... ...a trash elemental. Urgh, gross.
Hana	The foot is stuck in Hana's mouth. And because she is a Monster, she is not particular about what she eats, barring straight-up noxious poisons that would melt most people. And then Skidmark shouts at his partner, and that partner grabs a bunch of trash. This causes a look of wonder in Hana's eye. Oh right. These are villains! Uhh. She considers her current stance as a thing attached to someone's foot. And then uses her claws to plant her feet on the sidewalk, and pull backward to try to upend Skidmark to make him fall on his face. Then she'd let go. And when she does, she'd puff up her body as much as possible, and GLARE at Mush, not backing down from the fight whatsoever. "I eat trash like you fer breakfast!" she bellows at Mush, but she doesn't charge him, bravely waiting for him to make his move, disregarding any danger there is here.
Defiant	Skidmark ends up eating the pavement, face first. "Ow... Son of a..." he murmurs, rolling onto his side and trying to get to his feet. Mush advances on Hana, clad in an armor of paper, plastic and assorted detritus. "Yeah?" he asks, "Well, I think you'll find I have too much trash for you to eat." He slows slightly, however, evidently unsettled by the sheer strangness of what is shouting at him.
Hana	Hana continues facing down Mush, but doesn't forget about Skidmark's presence. She turns briefly to look at him as he gets up, and then turns to look at Mush once more. "I'm not supposed to eat people," she tells Mush, despite the drool that runs out of her mouth. Despite that, she begins to walk toward him, and that's when a brilliant, and Ferocious idea comes to her mind. "But you're bad people, right~? It should be fine to eat you, riiight?" she wonders at him, in an eerie and musical voice. "Hold still," she barks just after that, and lunges forward, snapping her mouth open and trying to clamp it down onto one of Mush's legs, disregarding the trash coating it entirely. She's got a bite worse than a dog. It's more like a shark.
Defiant	Skidmark is busy seemingly drawing a line on the pavement between him and Hana and Mush. It begins to glow. Mush remarks, "That is /not/ cool." He doesn't get anything further out, because Hana sinks her teeth into his leg. It's... kind of like biting into a human limb, although it's hard to determine where the trash ends and Mush begins. Maybe if he had more debris to draw upon he'd be more resistant to damage, but at the moment he obviously is vulnerable. He screams, swearing.
Hana	SQUEEEEEZE. And then she lets go of Mush's leg. Hana considers that the two are regrouping and more than prepared for a prolonged conflict. Having successfully given those innocents some time to run off, she then spits out a twisted piece of tupperware, and rolls across the street at high speed like a Critter, trying to get away from the impending fight as quickly as possible, grab her stuff, and disappear into the dark back alleys of Brockton where she came from.
Defiant	Mush's screams only grow in intensity as Hana squeezes, driving her teeth into his leg! His concentration broken, bits of trash are already falling back towards the sidewalk. He curls up into a ball, injured and in obvious pain. Skidmark can only watch as Hana coughs up a twisted bit of tupperware - did that come off Mush or...? - and bails out of the area like a cannonball. "Let's... call it a night," Skidmark says.