(( OOC: Thread is set around October, 2012. ))

They lay all over the sidewalk, torn and ruined. Some were scratched, some scuffed or broken. Some were simply torn apart. The monster. The Asian didn't know why he'd done it. The beast. The fiend. The man's eyes glowed red as he smiled a toothy grin at the Asian man in NYPD blues, and calmly snapped another spine. He tossed the broken form over his shoulder, to join a rapidly forming pile. More lay waiting nearby. If Shin had been one to apply human emotions to non-living things, he'd have said the books stolen from the New York city library looked scared. He was. They did. Sick bastard!!

"The New York City Library has asked you to stop," Shin said. His voice shook slightly, a sign of anger he was doing his best to contain.His triangular pupils concentrated on the man, watching him like a hawk. "And called the police." He continued. "I've asked you to stop repeatedly. You haven't harmed anyone yet. You can still end this peacefully. All you have to do is calmly come with me."

The man's eyes were catlike, and too red. His teeth were pointy, all the better to scare someone with, and his fingers? Unusually pointy. As he turned, he pulled his cigarette away from his mouth with forefinger and middle. Lips pursed. The man's streak of silver in his jet black hair caught the light of the sun with a brief gleam. His lips worked back and forth for a second, as if contemplating, turning the potential words over and over in his mouth. A gout of flame hit the pile of ruined library books that had once been in Kealey's care as an answer. Then, calmly of course, he turned to watch the Asian's reaction, popping his unlit cigarette back into his mouth. A trail of smoke drifted casually from his mouth, between his smirking, cocky lips. Shin had thought it had been the cigarette trailing the smoke. He'd been wrong.

"I'm a dragon," the man drawled lazily as the seams of his suit jacket's shoulders split and tore. The back of the jacket was reduced to tatters as a pair of wings pierced through it like twin blades, wing membrane teal, the rest of the wing a scaly red. The transformation concluded 5 seconds later. Gone was the man in the black suit jacket, tie, nice slacks, and white shirt. In his place, as he'd said, was a dragon. To add the exclamation point to his previous statement, the mutant flapped his bus-length wings and growled slash chuckled slash grinned "And I answer to no man!"

Shin hit his communicator button, the summons for any nearby X-men, and went into motion, clearing everyone out. Bystanders fled without his warning, but it helped, and that was the point. "Everyone out of the way! He's dangerous! If you want to hurt people, I'm going to stop you." He shouted as he spun back to face the dragon, now that everyone was out of the way. "Surely you realize that your behavior has made you some bitter enemies?" He snapped. "You shall not pass!! You know that, right?! Better watch out for black arrows, King SMUG Under the Mountain!"

The dragon groaned. "You'll pay for that, impudent whelp! In blood! Mortal! Freaking cop. Ugh!" His nostrils flared as the bad Tolkien references brought the flame in his belly from a boil to a full out volcanic furnace's wrath.

Shin made a mental note to work on his 'talking-down-bad-guys' rapport. This... was bad. He made the mental note as he wisely side-stepped a torrent of flame.

”One coffee black… can I get the pot as a size or do you have something bigger?” Sam asked leaning over the counter of the coffee shop smiling at the barista as she was giving a flirtatious look back. ”So what are you…” Sam paused and stood up looking slightly concerned as he pulled the communicator out of his pocket and saw it was Shin’s distress signal. Sam placed it back into his pocket and shrugged his shoulders. ”If I come back after I take this will you have the coffee waiting for me?” Sam asked as ice started to coat his body and he started to run towards the door. As he pushed open the door he heard the barista’s voice call out behind him, “I’m not paying for it and my shift is over in an hour!” the door shut and Sam was airborne on his ice slide pulling out the communicator again.

”Talk to me Shin,” Sam said as he headed towards the library, which was luckily a few blocks north of the coffee shop he was just leaving. It took him a few minutes to get to the library but when he did he started seeing people running from the direction of said library rather quickly. Well before he landed near the front of the library Sam’s vision started to blur resulting in a splitting headache pain caused from his sixth sense.

Sam shook his head and severed his connection with his sixth sense something was defiantly hot near the library. Sam landed his body still covered in ice and he spotted Shin going head to head with a dragon. ”Since when do you call for backup?” Sam asked shooting a beam of blue at the dragons face, ”Loving the new uniform by the way!” Sam said with a smirk on his face in a slight mocking tone.

(( OOC: Hey CS, the dragon is outside the library. Books are all over the sidewalk. They're by the front steps. Not a big deal, just edit that before you reply to this post. ))

As Sam made his way to the library, Shin filled him in on the situation. New York City Library. Mutant causing trouble, breaking books outside. He wasn't sure why. It had picked a fight with him. He wasn't sure why. He wasn't sure he could handle it all on his own. "Ice beats dragons, right?" he'd asked. Pokemon knowledge had to be good for something.

Head-to-head was a bit of a stretch for what Shin had been doing when CS had arrived on the scene. He was still dodging attacks. The ground in front of the library leading up to the front steps looked like a mess. Books were scattered, broken, and on fire. There were places where claw marks had gouged holes in the concrete.

As he rolled out of the way of one of the mighty claws, a red gauntlet composed of shards flew in to lock into place on his arm. He caught himself with it against the concrete, got a knee under himself, and bolted. Bits of his body were already covered in red armor that gave off a steely sheen. The right upper half of his chest was covered, as was his right arm, from shoulder to fist. Against the skin of his face, bits of shards had been grafted on like a a face tattoo, slightly risen. They were the basis he'd build a helmet on... though snagging a motorcycle helmet from somewhere nearby might have been smarter and quicker. Underneath it all, his police uniform still showed.

Sam's beam hit the dragon square in the jaw. It took a flap back, growling... but Pokemon logic didn't seem to apply. All the better. If it had, the thing would have already started firing off hyper beams and being evolved at a level it couldn't possibly have managed in-game, and Lance would be smirking and flapping his cape like an idiot vampire, slightly off-stage.

The Asian rushed forward to follow up the ice beam with a comet punch of his own, aimed straight at the dragon's left eye. As it connected, the dragon swung its head to knock Shin back. He skidded in his sneakers as he landed on pavement.

"Well, I didn't want bystanders getting hurt by the dragon. And I'd rather take him in than cut loose. Think you can ice off the area to keep people out?" To the dragon, he said, eyes fierce with authority. "You still have a chance to give up and turn yourself in. We don't need to fight like this is a comic book."

The dragon flapped its wings and took to the air. As it flew away, it chuckled "Not a chance."

(OOC: Thanks for pointing that out! I was working and walked away after reading some of it and well… you know how that goes. )

Sam’s first attack did little to nothing sure it wasn’t as cold as it could have been but he didn’t want to do permenant do the dragon even if he was destroying the library. Jumping to the side a little bit as Shin followed his attack up with one of his own Sam nodded his head and then attempted to do as was requested, ”Not sure how much good it will do if the guy just takes to the air!” Sam said as he looked over to the nearest fire hydrant and shot a beam of ice at it.

Running over to it Sam kicked off the top as it shattered in a combination of red and blue followed by a huge eruption of water. Still encased in his ice armor Sam motioned his hand forward and started to direct the water as it turned to ice crystals. Walling up the streets and sidewalks were easy all it took was a little ice maybe a few feet tops but if the dragon could just fly over it. Well that was going to be difficult. ”Ground him!” Sam called as a portion of the nearest street was quickly getting walled up it wasn’t a thick wall or a tall one. It just said, ‘You shall not pass.’

Spotting a few people nearby Sam turned towards them and yelled, ”Yeah just stand outside and watch a fire breathing dragon. GET INSIDE NOW!” Sam finished as he lowered the temperature in the area even more causing the water that was pooling near the hydrant to frost over making it easier for him direct where it was going. His breath was visible and he looked back to the area he had been freezing over. Slightly satisfied he decided it was enough.

”Yo Shin, this will go a bit faster if you could pop a hydrant top or two.” Sam said running towards the sidewalk and pushing up some ice near a building some people just ran into. ”You know, if you’re not to busy!” Sam continued to run towards the next street ice shooting up the side of the buildings as he passed by.

The whole hydrant thing was cool and all (heehee, ice puns), but... as the Asian dodged another dragon punch, he slipped on some misplaced ice and landed hard on his ass. The claw came down a foot and a half from his progeny... and scraped across the concrete as it tried to close the gap. With a fearsome 'eep' of courage, the Asian snapped his hands up to form a checkered wall of black and white shards. It shattered as the claw struck it, but gave him the moment he needed to scurry backwards on his butt. His head was starting to hurt...

"Hey! Watch it!" Shin snapped angrily. His eyes stayed on the dragon as he verbally reprimanded his co-op partner. "Not all of us can easily glide over frozen water, and some of us still want kids!"

Wincing, he tore the shards from his face. The flew past the dragon's eye in a line of red. With a roar of pain, the dragon reared back, dragon hands reaching up to its dragon face. The shards flew back towards the Asian, to join the shards already on his glove.

Shin didn’t respond to his request about popping another hydrant or two and as Sam ran to the next one to pop it he heard his shard wielding teammate complain about the abundance of water and or ice. Really Sam was there and was asked to do crowd control, how else did Shin expect it to get done. ”Really?” Sam asked aiming his hands from the ground where the water was up towards above the first story of a coffee shop where people were crowding around the windows to see the show.

”Then don’t glide on the ice then you’re fighting a freaking dragon!” Sam heard the roar as more water started taking to the streets from the hydrant, which was now topless. ”Figured the last thing you’d want to do is stick to the ground!” Sam half expected him to be on his shards hovering in the air or buzzing around the dragon.

Willing some ice armor to cover his body Sam pushed the water up the walls of the buildings and the doorways and did his best to seal them shut. He shifted his eye towards Shin and the dragon then raised his hand and shot a beam of ice towards the dragons mouth hoping while he was too busy being blinded and roaring he wouldn’t notice his mouth filling with cold. ”Your not still mad about me hitting on your sister are you? Said I was sorry!” Sam asked pushing more and more water from the ground through his hands to the beasts large mouth.

Everything Sam said had simply ticked the Asian off. "That wasn't my sister," Shin shouted back. "You were drunk. She'd left. That was my mom!" Destruction of public property, then shouting at him about it when he slipped and fell on his ass. Then bringing up something in the past, something Sam obviously didn't remember all that well. Gods Dammit, Sam, keep your head in the game.

The dragon's mouth sealed shut as the ice hit it, momentarily quelling his roars. The Asian took the moment's respite to get to his feet, and solidify the armor on his person. Another gauntlet formed in the air nearby, then slipped into place on his arm. As he ran forward, towards the dragon, shards formed in the air in front of him, red like his suit. He gave them time to harden, then got on the shard platform. Even if he didn't like the broken fire hydrants (that would cost the city money, he'd have Sam know), maybe the guy couldn't just form ice from thin air to make walls. They'd talk about that later. Head on the game, Shin. He lifted off the ground as the ice on the dragon's mouth melted away.

”Yeah… that sounds like something drunk Sam would do…” Sam muttered to himself as he shot an ice beam at the dragon this time aiming for his feet as Shin took to the air. ”She looked good for her age?” Sam asked aloud towards the shard manipulator. The Dragon opened his mouth and the little ice that remained fell off harmlessly to the ground with a small thud.

”Glad that worked.” Sam muttered to himself as he turned his attention back towards one of the nearby buildings and raised some ice in front of it. Sam looked at the immediate buildings in the surrounding area, happy with the fact that the doors and windows on the lower levels at least were all iced over. ”that should be enough… for now… unless he starts breathing fire on them.” Sam said to himself glad of the abundance of water making it that much easier to create walls of ice.

”Either way I’m sorry!” Sam yelled as he looked from the ice covered walls back to Shin and the dragon whose paw (or claw whatever dragons had) was wrapping around a small sports car and with a crunch the dragon shattered the glass of the vehicle and launched the car towards the shard manipulator. ”Shin, car!”

Running forward and confident Shin could dodge the thrown car Sam jumped onto a patch of ice and glided forward with the like a hockey player. Skating towards the dragon beast, ”Hey over here!” Sam called out as he shot a few spikes of ice towards the dragon trying to attract the attention.

His eyes hardened as he ignored the words coming out of his frozen friend's yammering mouth. Cold shoulder was a good phrase for it. Right now, the last thing they needed was on-the-fly banter getting in the way of stopping the dragon. It boggled his mind how the man had gone from impertinent and grumpy to openly and violently hostile. He just hadn't seen it coming till the fire had started raining on the books. What they really needed, beyond all the fighting and dodging cars and flames, Shin reasoned, was to figure out what the hell the guy's problem was, and get him in cuffs. Speaking of dodging cars--

He had not been paying attention to Sam. Suddenly, there was a sports car getting increasingly larger right in front of him as he turned his head. The whites around his eyes shrank back as his triangular pupils got larger. Too close. No way to simply fly backwards. With the speed at which it was closing the distance, it'd just continue on into him. To the side, or down? One of those was a better option. Meeting it head-on was out of the question. His mind did the quick mental math and made the call. Glass shattered and metal groaned as the car hit concrete, travelling for several seconds before it scraped to a stop. He'd gotten out of its path, shooting to the left. Now, he hovered in the air on his platform, breathing hard.

The dragon, too, was breathing hard. He was getting tired of fighting ice. Slashing icicles away with its tail was boring, tiresome work. As a being of fire, ice really didn't hold him back all that well. His eye, though? Really hurt. He was mad about that. Where was that loathsome pest, now? His good eye darted around, searching, and found him.

"ROOOOOOOOOOOARRRR!!!!!" He. Roared.

The floating platform lowered the Asian to the ground, then split apart into several shards that moved to coat different parts of his body, building up the armor some more. He'd never actually completed a full shard armor over the course of a battle, he realized. It took too much time. He'd have to make time. (Not that having full shard armor would do anything other than look cool, of course).

"Sam. Let's whack this guy with some swords, okay? And we really should ask him why he's doing this and how we can get him to stop, while we're at it." He added the last suggestion thoughtfully, as an after-thought.

”Love me a good sit down! Maybe we can get some coffee too?” Sam asked smirking as he rose higher and higher while the dragon was keeping his injured eyes locked on Shin. ”He must really not like you!” Sam said in his communicator attached to his ear as he directed the slide over the beast’s head as the sports car bounced away from Shin. Glad his recently tied down friend avoided getting crushed by a car Sam leapt from his ice slide and formed a large ice construction resembling a novelty mallet you see in the cartoons. It was heavy and pulled him down which, was fine down was the idea he just wanted a reptilian landing pad.

While the dragon was looking towards Shin, ”Dropping the hammer!” Sam yelled as the large ice construct slammed into the dragon’s head forcing him down to the ground. Sam made sure once the hammer hit it became brittle so it wouldn’t kill the monster just give him a large headache one that would hopefully allow him and Shin to get the upper hand.

The dragon’s chin hit the ground shortly after the ice mallet hit the top of his head. Sam leapt back and landed on the ground sliding on some water that flooded the streets. ”Can you cage the beast?” Sam asked as a sword of ice formed in Sam’s hand as the other one lifted and started to will ice to latch on to the dragons feet.

Actually, forget shard armor entirely. As Sam hit the guy with a hammer, Shin decided that in this case, looking cool was far less effective than kicking ass and taking names. The dragon roared as he lay on the ground, and Shin shot it a dirty look.

The Ice man suggesting caging, and Shin strode over to the dragon, pulling the shards off his body. "No." He said, voice tight. Sometimes, his power really bothered him, with how long it took to make certain things. A cage would just take too long. Which was funny, because it wouldn't have, several years ago. Funny how that worked. Instead of a cage, he reformatted the shards he'd pulled from his body into shard cuffs (making well and sure he rounded the inside edges, so he didn't cut any scaly dragon's wrists). He pulled the dragon's arms behind its back, avoiding wings as they slowly moved, putting a good deal of force on the lower back with his knee, and cuffed the dragon.

It seemed the fight and the hit had taken the fight out of him. He didn't resist. Maybe a hammer to the head had just made him realize there were more important things in life than late fines and sticking it to the man. As he was cuffed, the scales slid away and faded. He shrunk as the Asian read him his rights, slowly returning to human form.

Shin looked to Sam. "That took too long.... sheesh. The city is not going to like having to replace all those hydrants." Maybe he should have just taken him down quick, on his own.

Sam watched as the shard cuffs were placed on the former dragon as he shifted back down to human size. Shrugging his shoulders Sam looked from Shin to the city hydrants he destroyed to give the city a winter wonderland look. ”Well, it was either that or destroyed buildings and injured civilians.” Sam pulled out his phone and started to dial Cafas’s number. ”Good thing we both know a pink haired guy who should be able to fix them with a few minutes of work.

Walking over to the ice surrounding the first building Sam raised his hand up and turned broke apart the ice into smaller bits of snow and water. The street would be flooded for a bit but the alternative in his opinion was far worse. Sam wasn’t a fan of casualties.

”He up and moving yet?” Sam asked when he started to melt the ice from one of the other buildings. ”He say it was worth the headache?” Sam asked curiously walking back over to the two instead of yelling from down the street.

Somehow, Shin hadn't thought of Cafas when Sam had suggested they knew a special someone. Nope. He'd thought of Mario. But how would they get a talented plumber like that now? Of course, Mario didn't have pink hair. So the second thought had been Cafas, and Cafas hadn't inspired great confidence in Shin, as far as plumbing was concerned, so the Asian shrugged. "Who knows?" He hadn't really gotten off on the best foot with Cafas. Maybe he had missed a crucial dark and tormented past as a plumber? He didn't really know much about the guy's past.

As Sam asked him if the dragon was up and moving yet, Shin shoved the mutant along. He'd already helped dragon to his feet and made sure he knew not to step a toe out of line. He didn't use a collar. Didn't like them, and figured a constant mutant like this might be in pain the entire time said collar was on. But that was certainly an option in the sea of options if he started spitting fire again.

The Dragon Man sneered at him as the ice manipulator asked if it was worth it, and muttered something dark under his breath as he walked along towards the newly-arriving squad cars on the street. They could see the approaching blue and red lights spinning through a sheet of ice.

"He says no," Shin replied with a slight laugh. "Care to cut down the wall so we can get him in a car?" He asked, jerking his head towards the ice.

With a snap of his fingers the wall of ice in front of their car broke apart until it fell into water, which quickly went down the nearest drain. Sam looked to Shin and smirked, ”Yeah, ready when you are.” Sam walked over to Shin’s car as a few police officers made their way past the spots where Sam had an ice wall a few seconds before. HE was glad New York had pretty good drains otherwise the streets would be flooded in water for a long period of time instead of draining as quickly as they were.

Sam waved to a few of the cops as they appeared and Sam pointed to a few of the buildings that were formally covered in ice. ”Crowd control was taken care of. Might want to check out the library though I didn’t get a chance to see what was done to it.” Sam looked to Shin and asked, ”Was it bad?”

After getting his answer Sam looked from the dragon-guy to the damage that was done and the damage that was prevented, ”You know,” Sam said to Shin as he followed him and the dragon-guy who was being escorted to a squad car, ”I wonder if there is a company that dedicates them self to the damage mutants cause. If so they probably make a fortune on insurance.” Sam said casually before he added, ”You up for some coffee?”

"Yeah," Shin replied, eyes darting towards the ice man. There was a hint of annoyance in his voice, over the dragon man's behavior. "He hauled a bunch of books off the shelves and made a bonfire outside. Couple thousand in damaged property, give or take." The library would have to file their reports after they took inventory, and get back to them on that.

Dragon man sighed. He'd be working that off. And all this over some overdue books. Maybe he'd bust out and join some evil organization to avoid the law. Yeah. Maybe that was a good idea. He was starting to get heated ideas about revenge. Stumbling along over a curb, he chuckled darkly to himself.

Shin pointedly ignored the chuckling. "Bet there are some mutants out there who sell 'Mutant Insurance' to people so they won't have to do the damage themselves." He muttered wryly. That was an idea someone had to have had before him, and even if it was a little funny, it really wasn't. He didn't like that idea one bit. "Mutant insurance for the city, on the other hand." He added as an after-thought. "Probably wouldn't be a bad idea..." As for coffee. "Can't really do coffee right now. On-duty. But maybe after I get off." He smiled slightly at Sam.