ArchivedLogs:Stop trying to help!

Stop trying to help!
Dramatis Personae Hailey, Cage, Chelsea	2014-03-18 After an explosion Hailey tried to escape to not be found out as a mutant. A passing Luke finds her and tries to help out.
Location <NYC> East Village
It was a while after the reported explosion had rocked the building, ambulances and firetrucks were still rocketing by. Hailey the in the closet teen had managed to save four people at the expense of exhausting herself. Burning her hoody which was a cheap synthetic material so it turned to napalm like standards, her clothes, and her skin which was now red, black and boiled. Her hands and fave were covered in ash. Her breathing labored, and her eyes watering and bleary. She had shadow-walked away to anywhere, unfortunately with how weak she was it was a pain to just come this far. In an alley curled up breathing hard she tries to recover, not quite sure why she did what she did or how she would explain the injuries or even treat them or get home. On the street just outside the alleyway, Luke Cage's black Humvee bumps up to stop half on the sidewalk to avoid a speeding firetruck. The big man himself gets out of the driver's seat to watch the truck, and then starts to get back in when a voice calls from inside the hummer, "Dad... no. Look." From the passenger side, a girl in her early teens and almost certainly related to Luke Cage, probably the surprise-daughter who was in the news a couple months ago when Luke was reunited with her. Luke turns to look at the burned girl in the alley and his eyebrows go up. "Sweet Christmas, what happened to you?" He circles around his hummer and approaches slowly, followed close behind by his daughter. "The bomb was way over..." he gestures down the street. "How'd you get thrown over here... alive?" Hailey looks at him with a little flicker of her eyes. "I um...wasn't in the explosion...I was....somewhere else!" She gives the amazing excuse! She holds her side a bit. Her hair seems to be burnt and singed, the blue and black hair coated with ash too. She definitely smells burnt and she looks pretty weak. Too weak to really focus, her powers might flux slightly though in the dark it would be hard to really pay attention if the shadows were changing shape. She looks up at him with her lavender eyes, her ash singed gaze blinking as she coughs. "Shit, you're Luke Cage!" She winces, the hot ash in her lungs making her cough a little. "I'm fine I'm fine, no need to help me." She gives a little grin. She definitely didn't need help from a mutant! After all that meant he could automatically tell she was a mutant! Then he would tell others! Then she would be a freak! Then what would happen!? Luke frowns slightly and looks sidelong at his daughter. She shrugs and says to Hailey, "Hey girl, you're burnt to shit." Luke frowns at his daughter's language, but doesn't interrupt. "Helping people is what he does. Can we just drop you at a hospital or something?" Luke butts in at this point. "I mean, yeah. Cheaper than a ambulance. And probably better than just sitting here, all extra crispy. Or maybe we could call your parents for you?" Hailey's eyes widen as he mentions that. "No! No parents." She coughs a bit and tries to scoot away. In her weakened state the shadows waver a little bit as she tries to crawl away. "Definitely not my parents!" She huffs and wheezes, shaking her head as the pain starts to effect her mental state. "I can't go to the hospital, or my parents. I just have to figure it out myself." She mumbles a bit. She's very cocky and headstrong, and if there's one thing she doesn't want the world or her parents to know? That she's a freak! Luke may look like a big dumb jock, but the detective is far more observant than he likes to let on. Watching the girl carefully for any clues to her injuries he blinks and looks at the shadows as they start to dance and flicker around them. His brow furrows and then he nods, dropping to a knee in the alley but not getting any closer to the girl. "Well you know my name. And this is Chelsea," he says, gesturing at the girl. "What's yours?" Hailey flickers her eyes about a little bit before biting her lip. "I'm uh....Hai......Maxine.." She looks away with a little nod, letting out her breath with a little hiss. "Look, I just can't go to a hospital or call my parents." "And you can't stay here," Luke says. Chelsea pipes in, "But if you go to shelter they'll have to call the cops because I'm pretty sure you're not eighteen, right?" She sounds like she knows what she's talking about personally. "Burns are no joke, ok?" Luke says. "Risk of infection, and I'm guessing some smoke inhalation to go with it. Can um..." Luke glances over his shoulder and then lowers his voice. "Do you heal up? Or is it just a shadows thing?" Hailey looks at him and glares."I don't know what you're talking about! And I can deal with it, I just need to find a first aid kit and junk." She coughs a little bit, shaking her head. "Noone can know!" She hisses and looks at him hard. Luke sighs and shakes his head. He stands, and walks toward the back of the hummer, and Chelsea follows him asking, "Wait, what? You can't just leave her there..." Luke shrugs and opens the back of his truck. "You can't force someone to take your help, Chels." He rummages in the back for a moment, and finally comes up with a red and white canvas package about the size of a lunchbox. Crossing back to Hailey he says, "Like I said Maxine, I can't make you let me help. But you really /do/ need a doctor." He reaches out to hand the first aid kit to Hailey. Hailey winces and takes the first aid kit. "So what, they can mark me as a freak like you? So I can get bullied? So my mom can lose her job? So I can get experimented on?" She glares a little and doubles over in pain from the exertion. "No," Luke says, sadness in his voice. "So you can /live/. I don't know your mom, but if I were her, I know for a fact I'd rather lose my job than my daughter. Your life is in danger, Maxine. I figure that outweighs some bullying. Not to mention, there's a clinic /just for/ mutants, downtown. I'm still willing to take you there, if you want." his body language betrays his expectation though. He backs away, arms at his side, apparently convinced she'll just say 'no' again. Chelsea looks like she wants to object, but doesn't know how or what to say. Hailey looks at him. "I'm not registered! The doctors haven't found out, Mom doesn't know. I'm living as a Human! I am a human! I'm still hoping these....powers will go away. I can't heal like the others.... or anything like that but if I admit it now things go down hill. If my mom loses her job we lose everything! We've lived with nothing my entire life, struggling just to buy food! She finally has a steady job and I'M not gonna be the reason she loses it." She states rather firmly. her hand Shakily taking the first aid kit as she blinks unevenly. Her hand fumbling to open it as her hands shake. Chelsea steps forward, and puts a hand on Luke's arm to get him to step back for a moment. "Hey," she says in a soft voice. "Look, I was homeless for months in this city. And my mutation can be /really/ obvious sometimes." Chelsea clenches her teeth and sighs. Finally, she continues, "I don't know it for a fact, but I'm pretty sure the Mendel Clinic can help you without calling your mom, or the cops. They've helped us several times, and kept everything totally private. Or you know, show up and give them a fake name, and tell them you're a runaway from California or something!" Chelsea brightens at this sudden insight. Apparently she thinks this idea could get some traction. Hailey gulps a little. "What about the mandatory mutant registration! The new rule is any doctor has to give proof to the government anytime an unknown mutant is seen! And I don't want my life ruined just because I got hurt!" She shakes her head a little to clear her vision. Her trembling hands going for the bottle of alcohol. Her tattered melted jacket is pulled off to reveal places where the napalm like poly blend burnt onto her, and where the heated air burnt her. She's got varied burns of different kinds that could heal up well if treated soon. Chelsea presses the point, and kneels next to Hailey. "Well, at least let me help you apply this crap." She moves to help Hailey pull her sweatshirt off if she lets her. "But look, the clinic is totally cool. I'm sure they'd let that stupid rule slide because they're totally pro-mutant." Hailey clicks her tongue. "Just help me out." She sighs and lifts her shirt a little. She grabs a bit of her hoodie and puts it in her mouth. "Here's nothing..." She lets out a hiss and hypes herself up with a couple of breaths before taking the alcohol and just pouring it over the biggest wound on her side. The pain of doing it so fast on a fresh opened wound makes her scream in bloody murder, her power fluxing hard, making the shadows whip around and thrash, knocking and breaking items in the alley before her eyes roll into her head, the small girl gagging before passing out, her whole body going limp and heavy, her hand still gripping the alcohol bottle in a death grip. "Ah shit," father and daughter say in unison when Hailey passes out. Luke bows his head as the onslaught of physical shadow pushes him back a step, and Chelsea grunts as a flying shard of glass from a broken bottle embeds itself in her arm. "Ew, gross," the girl says, completely calm about being impaled. She yanks the shard out and the wound is closing before she even tosses it away toward the nearby dumpster. Chelsea looks to her dad, and he shrugs. "Well, I think she just gave us permission to drop her off at Mendel." He leans down to scoop her up in his arms, and heads for their car. "Sit in the back with her to hold her steady, ok?"