Cocked and Locked and One Up the Spout

[Pee-Dee]

Petunia skips back, holding her phone tauntingly out-of-reach. Her little streak of nastiness has come out to play ever since she found out how Muzzle played her.

"Is there a problem?"

[Phobia/Pierce Fobster]

There was something mortally dangerous in the detective’s cool gaze. If Pierce didn’t know what he was looking for, he would not have seen it. He has Spinister’s emotional impression etched into his mind from their brief encounters and he compares that with what he’s seeing now. it was... difficult to forget someone like the helicopter.

But did she remember?

“Did you ever go by the username 'Spinister'?” he asks quietly after a rather long pause. He really, really didn’t want to be courting death, even if death didn’t remember who she’d been.

[Spinister]

Esprit makes an expression of very mild confusion and slightly befuddled offense and looks to her steampunk wedding ring. She replies quietly, "I'm married. And not that old."

Oh, she thought he said 'spinster', right?

(No, Esprit heard him exactly correctly. She and Ned will need to pay this librarian a visit. The librarian does not need to know that.)

[Rampage/Xavier Goodkind]

"Yes, there's a problem," Xavier says, pursuing Petunia. He makes a grab for her, one hand aiming to catch the front of her shirt, the other trying to close tight around the wrist holding her phone.

"You keep on invading my privacy."

[Pee-Dee]

"It doesn't work that way in nim-null." Petunia bares her teeth in a smile as Xavier grabs her shirt. The phone disappears into her back-pocket, but he still might grab her by the elbow. "You're in public. It's been legally established for years and years that you don't have a right to privacy in public."

[Phobia/Pierce Fobster]

“Ah, I meant no offense,” Pierce says, ducking his head demurely. The expected reaction would usually be an attempt at correction, asking if they’d heard him right. He did specifically say ‘username’ after all, not a personal insult to her marital status or age. The fact that this wasn’t the expected reaction was rather interesting- and rather foreboding.

“I suspect it’s actually a rather unusual combination of ‘spinning’ and ‘sinister’, not actually ‘spinster’,” he explains with an slightly awkward shrug, taking a step back to head off back to the library. “It does answer my question however. I’m sorry about bothering you then.” If this wasn’t Spinister, then there wasn’t too much to worry about. If it was Spinister, he’s pretty sure he’d just made himself a really obvious target in some manner. Hopefully not the bullseye sort.

And of course he turns around to see Xavier grabbing Petunia and blinks. His eye twitches.

[Spinister]

Spinister will just scare Phobia half to death later.

Someone who is a spinster might use 'spinster' as a username! Esprit stares at Pierce and says, "Like the space robot on the UN list? Why would I use some evil space alien as a username?"

She obviously looks around him. Oh, so he's distracting her from his boyfriend. How amateurish. Esprit starts to stalk over towards Det. Dahlia and Xavier.

[Rampage/Xavier Goodkind]

"And I say you don't have the right to take pictures of me and mine without my permission!" And clearly Xavier's word is law. It certainly should be, anyway.

Oh damn, that woman Pierce was talking to is heading towards them. And Pierce is looking at him, now. Double-damn.

Xavier makes one last grab for Petunia's phone, not particularly concerned with the fact that it probably looks like he's trying to forcibly grope her rear, then tries to give her a strong shove away before turning and running.

If he's lucky, she'll chase him. If not, then... well, he's not sure what he'll do then. The universe should always just go exactly according to his plans.

[Pee-Dee]

"Hey!" Petunia squawks as Xavier forcibly gropes her- and steals her phone! "Okay, that is theft!"

She takes off after him, glancing back only long enough to see Esprit coming to back her up.

[Phobia/Pierce Fobster]

Well, because evil robot names were cool. There were probably people out there whose userhandles were ‘genociderules111’- killer robot names weren’t too far off. Of course Pierce doesn’t answer that because he’s too busy being dumbfounded by the amount of reckless idiocy going on in front of him.

“Xavier!” he yelps when his boyfriend forcibly gropes the detective, fisting his hands in his hair. “No- stop! What are you even doing?!” And then Xavier runs off with the phone. Pierce just freezes and stares after them with something akin to horrified indignation on his face. Then his mind catches up with what just happened and he takes off after the redheads.

“Xavier!” He probably doesn’t have endurance to catch up with them, but he will damn well try.

[Spinister]

Police generally are not supposed to think that evil robot names are 'kewl'. That would be unprofessional.

Esprit is fit and in shape. She can totally run around and jump on rooftops all night. Anyway, so she takes off jogging after Det. Dahalia, who is running after Xavier, and then Pierce is running after her. Cue chase music!

[Rampage/Xavier Goodkind]

Xavier feels a pang at Pierce's calls, but ignores it, continuing to race off with Petunia's phone.

He leads his pursuers on a not-especially-merry chase, managing to stay just ahead of them as he heads for one of the seedier and relatively abandoned areas of the city. He makes his way around, over, and through various obstacles, shoving past startled and angry people, and occasionally dumping something into Petunia's path - not too much, though. He doesn't actually want to lose her. The other woman, on the other hand...

Luck grants him assistance with this in the form of two men carrying a large mirror stepping out onto the sidewalk in front of Esprit.

Panting, Xavier ducks between two empty warehouses, then comes up short as the ground in front of him runs out, ending in a sharp drop of several meters into the Detroit River. Glancing behind him, he quickly runs to hide around the corner of one of the buildings, pressing his back to the graffiti-heavy wall.

[Pee-Dee]

Grimly, Petunia jumps over a mess of rusty pipes. Up ahead, Xavier ducks between two empty warehouses, but when she comes there, he's nowhere in sight. Just a piece of ground that runs out past the warehouses.

She slows, slows, comes to a stop. Someone else would have reached for their gun, but she has more certainty in her hands and arms and sawblade teeth. Not enough stupidity, though, to go charging into a perfect ambush.

"If you think I'm that stupid, you've got another think coming."

[Phobia/Pierce Fobster]

Human bodies sucked. They sucked a lot. Every time he thought it couldn’t get any worse, the body just up and throws even worse at him. Pierce is thoroughly winded after only five minutes of sprinting- an extremely frustrating predicament for a machine that had previously traveled tirelessly for hours on end and at a much greater speed.

It was sheer willpower at this point that keeps him at least walking instead of collapsing in a miserable pile of weak, useless meat. He’s lost sight of the other three, and he can barely even feel them at the edges of his sense. There is a voice in the distance that sounded like the red-headed detective he'd been talking with. He has to catch up with them and make sure Xavier wasn’t going to do something stupid- and he just knows that the younger man WILL pull something stupid.

[Spinister]

If this was Cybertron, carrying mirrors in front of Spinister would be an offense punishable by immediate execution.

Spinister just made that up, but it's still true.

Esprit takes a wrong turns due to mirror shenanigans and loses the trail. She starts to backtrack and does something intelligent: she calls Det. Dahlia's cellphone, which may still be held by the redheaded man.