Pop
The instant that Mage and Spider-man arrived on the rooftop, Mage groaned. There were no lights on, he couldn't see a thing and hadn't thought to cast a charm on his eyes allowing him to see in the dark.
But that didn't mean that his ears weren't working. The sound of Daredevil's scream of pain told him that the hero had been injured, most likely severely.
"Bullseye!" Mage yelled, hoping to at the very least distract the man.
"More blind mice! How fun," Bullseye replied, and Mage could hear the grin in his voice.
"Watch out!" Spider-man called.
Relying on the strength of dragonhide, Mage simply pulled his cloak tight around him and dropped his head. The feeling of half-a-dozen thunks impacting his cloak told him that the marksman had just attempted to skewer him with something sharp, without success.
Obviously, the man could see in the dark, an advantage that Mage wasn't going to allow him to keep.
With a vicious swipe, Mage incanted the most powerful lumos solem that he could.
This time it was Bullseye's turn to scream in pain, a scream that was accompanied by the man ripping off the night vision goggles that he'd been wearing and throwing them away. Mage watched warily as the man staggered away.
But it was only a feint. Bullseye suddenly snapped around, throwing a pair of knives blindly towards Mage. Mage, of course, didn't waste a second, instantly banishing the knives right back where they'd come from.
A second scream was ripped from Bullseye, this time accompanied by him gripping his right wrist with his left hand, one of his daggers embedded to the hilt through the marksman's hand.
And then the globs of webbing hit the man, sending him stumbling backwards, only to trip over the low wall that encircled the roof before plummeting over.
Both Mage and Spider-man raced to the edge, firing magic and webs after him. Mage's spell hit Bullseye a fraction of a second before Spider-man's line. The two opposing forces, one to catch him and yank him back, the other to stick him to the side of the building saved his life, but his left arm was badly dislocated and possibly broken in a couple of places as well.
In the light of Mage's lumos solem, the two heroes could see that Bullseye was caught fast, with both arms dangling uselessly by his sides. The man, Mage could tell, would be extremely lucky to ever get full use of his hands again.
"You right to take care of him?" Mage asked his partner.
"Yeah, no worries," Spider-man replied. "I'll swing him by a police station before taking him to a hospital."
"Good," Mage nodded. "I'll take our friend back to Avengers Tower. There's a brand new medical ward there that needs to be broken in."
ooo00ooo
Gwen stood behind the counter of the Den, shocked into inaction. This was a situation that she'd never encountered before, and it wasn't even nine o'clock in the morning.
People … customers, knew the drill. You walk in, either take a seat and wait for a waitress or you come up to the counter, order, eat your meal, pay and go when you were ready. People did not simply walk in off of the street and start redecorating. With some type of fruit of all things.
As the young woman with dirty blonde hair seemed to almost waltz across to the fireplace and begin placing garlands of the weird orange fruit at seeming random places on the mantle, Gwen caught the looks from not only her fellow workers, but also some of the customers. Even David, the Den's chief chef, had come to the kitchen door to watch the bizarre sight.
Finally, Gwen took a deep breath, straightened to her full height and marched around the counter and up to the woman.
"Can I help you?" Gwen asked, a touch more harshly than she'd intended.
The woman didn't seem to catch Gwen's irritation and simply 'hmmed' as she continued looking around the Den with those large blue-grey eyes of hers.
"Look, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave," Gwen stated. "You can't just come in here and start putting … putting whatever those are all over the place."
Gwen had trailed off slightly after getting a good look at the orange fruit. They were like nothing that she'd ever seen before – they were sort of like a cherry, she supposed, only orange.
"Dirigible plums," the woman supplied, finally looking at her. "And it's okay, Harry won't mind. They'll help keep the nargles away."
This last was said in a whisper as she leaned in towards Gwen, a whisper that still carried throughout the room.
"Wait," Gwen said, latching on to the only part that had made any sense. "You know Harry?"
"Of course. Did you think that I would ward against nargles for just anyone?" she replied.
Once again, her words made absolutely no sense. What in the world was a nargle? This woman was obviously mentally unstable. But, now that Gwen was listening, she caught the British accent that the woman spoke in.
"You knew Harry from back in England," Gwen said slowly.
The woman nodded before drifting to the closest table and beginning to lay a wreath of d…d… plums around the menu card.
"We've been friends for years. We went to school together, you see. He was also one of my best teachers," the woman replied.
And then it clicked. School. Harry hadn't told her much about his other life – Peter was the one he talked to most about that sort of thing – but Gwen knew enough to piece one and one together. This woman wasn't making sense because she was talking about magic things.
Knowing that, Gwen made a decision.
"How about we find you a seat and I'll bring you something to drink? What sort of tea would you like?" Gwen asked, steering the woman towards an unoccupied out-of-the-way table.
"That sounds lovely. Do you have some Earl Grey tea?" the woman asked.
Gwen gave an inward sigh of relief at the normal response. "Of course."
"Wonderful. It's always nice to have something from home when you're away. I'm Luna, by the way, Luna Lovegood," the woman introduced herself.
"Nice to meet you, Luna. I'm Gwen," she smiled. "I'll be right back with your tea."
Gwen left the woman happily arranging more of the strange fruit on the table in front of her. Her eyes flicked to each of the other garlands around the room. For now, she'd leave them alone. And if they were to prevent … nargles – whatever those magical creatures were or did – away from the Den, then that could only be a good thing, right?
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