I'm still here! And would love to continue, but I'm not sure what to do, either.
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Cooper nods to Hans and keeps walking, making certain not to let go of Hailey until they are well around the nearest corner. As soon as they are far enough away that his paranoia dies down a bit, he glances across to the other two. "So, uhh. We should probably talk about that. Because I, for one, saw some sh*t." He pauses and shakes his head, rubbing at one eye with the heel of one hand. Because that will clearly get the mental image of that leyline surrounded by enough charnel horror to satisfy Splattercon out of his head. "Blegh. Hailey, you're doing the Eye next time. I feel like I'm gonna start to balding or growing streaks of grey hair from this. It was like a line of something...awful coming off the leyline. I think that's how he's powering all the stuff he's doing. But around the room... You know how Saw was ludicrously gorey? And the sequals kept getting worse?" Again, Coop takes a moment but less to hear a response and more to try to keep his stomach from rebelling. "This was like Saw 375. Guys, what the hell have we gotten ourselves into?"
Cooper, to his credit, keeps his mouth shut for the moment to let Hailey do all the talking. He nods along with her story, keeping his brows furrowed in consternation and offers a weary smile if the EMTs look him over. In response to Hailey's glowing praise, he tilts his head to plant a fond kiss at her temple, before looking back to the injured woman. As soon as they have a moment with the EMTs distracted and a break in attention of the other first responders, he walks calmly and purposefully as far away as he can get from the scene. Preferably toward wherever Hans has disappeared to.
Coop nods in weak agreement and gestures for Hans to scoot if he needs to, which is really just flopping one hand around in the air vaguely. "Yeah. Good call. I haven't got any priors. I bet Hailey doesn't either." "Just help cart her out to the hallway? We'll say we found her there. Let 'em think she tripped on her way out the door," he suggests as he pushes himself up off of the doorframe and straightens up, color slowly returning to his face. The floating woman bobs gently toward Hans so that he might be able to let his magic drop sooner rather than later. "You've got probably three to five minutes to get gone. Unless we all want to zip on outta here and just let 'em deal with the woman?"
Cooper stares at the poor, butchered woman for a long moment, aghast at what to do. Finally, he snaps out of it and takes a deep breath in, thinking quickly. With a flick of his wrist and a snap of his fingers, he almost seems to snatch a bundle of bandages soaked in some sort of salve out of the air. And pays for the prize when the color drains from his face and dark circles blossom under his eyes. He stretches a hand out toward Hans, shoving the bandages at him so that he might be able to sag against the doorframe. "Ugh, that never gets easier. I'll...lift her. You wrap her up. Don't waste 'em, those things weren't cheap." When he speaks, his voice is hoarse as though he had been yelling for hours. "We'll, uhh. Bring her out into the hall. Or something. Call an ambulance," he mutters, almost to himself at this point. Another gesture sends his rippling tendrils of force into the bathtub so they might coil beneath the woman, lifting her straight up into the air.
With a gasp and a wince, Cooper ineffectually draws a hand up to try to shield his eyes from the light. He knows it is futile, that what he sees will be left burned into his mind forever, but reflexive reactions are hard to quell. After a brief moment of his eyes adjusting, he almost cannot decide between retching and staring transfixed at the ley line. Fortunately, Hailey's shout snaps him out of the trance and negates the need for a decision. He quickly snaps his eyes closed and drops the Sight again with a slight shiver at the grotesque visuals, before shouting back. "I'm not a heal-y wizard! Best I can do is conjure up some bandages!" That done, he turns to haul butt back into the bathroom with the other two.
Coop frowns in concentration, calling up his will again to slide the gun out from under the pillow with his tendrils of force. Drawing it up near his face, but naturally facing the barrel away from him, he carefully ejects the clip. Painstakingly, he slips each bullet free into the palm of one of his hands, but he leaves the one in the chamber. Only then does he slide the clip back in again and slip the gun back under the pillow. Insurance for down the road. Once that grim work is done, he takes a deep breath and closes his eyes to call his Sight up yet again, so that he might peer around the room. Maybe that will tell him the source of that abysmal smell.
Cooper keeps poking through the apartment with a frown etched into his features. He does his best not to touch anything directly, instead using his sleeves as makeshift gloves. As he finds his way closer to the bedroom, he wrinkles his nose and decides to follow the scent, eyes peeled for any danger. If Hans is close by, he will try to gesture for him to take a peek in the bathroom. Mostly by pointing at Hans, then his own eyes, then the door where the shower sounds are coming from. Not exactly SWAT level hand signals here.
Cooper eyes the cat dubiously, torn between rushing to help the poor creature and staying as far away from it as possible. There is no way to know exactly what had happened to it without opening his Eye and poking around the apartment. Given how that could very well be a recipe for disaster, he shakes his head and glances across to Hailey. "No idea. Don't touch it. I've opened myself up to the last...two? Three? Whatever. You got this one?" He suggests as he starts looking around for anything in the way of physical identification. Junk mail, bills, receipts, journals, notebooks, pictures, anything that will help them make sense of all this. "Hans, you want to give me a hand with all this? Try not to, y'know. Touch anything. Leave hair anywhere. Bleed on anything."
"Yeah, tell me about it. Maybe when I was younger, but not so much these days," he replies with a bemused chuckle. Dropping down to one knee so that he can get himself at eye-level with the lock, he furrows his brows in concentration and calls up his will. The air between him and the lock ripples as though subjected to a significant amount of heat as he manipulates force to try to set the lock's tumblers just right.
Cooper carefully holds the door open for the other two before stepping inside the apartment building and out of the rain. Aside from the slight nudge that it takes to get over the measly Threshold, he barely notices there is one at all. With a glance back toward the other two, he reluctantly opens his Sight and uses it to trace their way up to the apartment in question. He is very careful to make certain that both Hailey and Hans stay well behind him. The less of their true selves he sees, the more sane he can (hopefully) stay. Only once they get to the door does he close the Sight again, rubbing at his eyes a bit afterwards. "Eugh. That's miserable every time. Door's warded, so it'll be loud if we try to kick it down. Probably," he says as he quickly blinks his eyes to try to get them to adjust to reality. "I can try to pick the lock or we can find a mirror to get in there, if he hasn't warded it that way. Or, uhh. Freeze the lock? I dunno. You guys got any ideas?"
Coop makes a face as he glances over to Hailey, hoping she is better with wards than he is. "I'm admittedly not great with them, which is why I've just got the stuff on my jacket. Only need to refresh it once a month or so. Luckily," he says as he waits a beat for the group to get down the block a ways, "most wards aren't all-encompassing. You can't just make a wall of force that keeps everything ever out without expending a metric buttload of energy." Sliding the door open once the trio have managed a decent distance, he makes to follow the lot of them in the pouring rain.
"We just had donuts and coffee, but I could probably go for some awful takeout. As long as it's Chinese or something," Cooper pipes up. "Say, Hailey. What got you in the supernatural business?"
"Man, stakeouts are not nearly as exciting in real life as they are in movies," Cooper grumbles as he leans his seat as far back as possible so that he might lay back, keeping at least one eye on the front of Madge's place. As much as he can in the 1998 Chevy Suburban borrowed from his next-door neighbors. He is careful not to be too violent with the seat, though, as it is not their car and he did promise to bring it back in good shape. "Do we start talking about ourselves to liven it up or something? How does this work?"
"Stakeout it is! Either of you have a car? Preferably of the Crown Vic variety?" Cooper asks curiously, given that stakeouts on motorcycles tend not to be so subtle.
"Well, you're not wrong. Hailey, any ideas? 'Cause I'm fresh out and a stakeout sounds like the best way to go right about now."
"I mean, we can head straight there. But I'd rather have any info about the guy that we can find first, wouldn't you?" Cooper asks as he zips up his motorcycle jacket and stuffs his hands in the pockets. "Better to get any intel on what we're about to walk into or whatever, right?"
Cooper bids the rest of the other group farewell and, more importantly, good luck before beckoning his friends away. A short walk will do them plenty of good to think and plan a bit. "So, have any of you got contacts in the police? Or some serious chops with computer stuff? I can do pretty okay, but I'm not exactly a Batman, Jessica Jones, crazy-good private I or anything. And we should probably start digging up as much as we can about this guy, as soon as possible. Unless there's something else on our radar that I'm missing?"
"Oh, you know. The usual," Coop replies as he casts a glance toward Hans, "beat him up, take his lunch money, call him names. You might want to invest in a full-body Brazilian wax, big guy. We've got some detective work to do."
"Scrying with a candle? Never tried that, but I guess it's one way of doing things. Russell Carson and Rosier, got it," Cooper mutters mostly to himself as he digs around inside his baseball cap for a pen and paper. "Hans, you speak German. Rattle off a few sentences so we can make sure it's not Dutch or something else, yeah?"
"Well, that answers that question. Russell didn't go to Hogwarts, Madge. Hogwarts doesn't exist, far as I'm aware." Coop leaves pondering that conundrum for another time and heaves an exasperated sigh, shaking his head gently. His stomach still leapt and turned in knots at the memory of the very inside-out corpse on the photo. "You mind giving us a little more to go on? Like what Russell looks like?"
Cooper grimaces at the picture and shakes his head, looking away toward Hailey. "Eugh. I've seen a movie where that happened to somebody. Gross as it gets. And if he did that with magic - which he had to, because I have no idea how else you would - that's breaking the First Law." He reluctantly turns his gaze back toward Madge, doing his best to avoid looking at the photo. "You guys know what that means at all?"
"It's a first name, don't be so friggin' dramatic," Cooper shoots back as he rolls his eyes. "Russell, you said, right? Russell who? He got a last name, this guy? Maybe you can tell us what he looks like?"
"One of your squad had a hand in framing Scoob over there for murder," Cooper shot back before taking a deep breath and shaking his head. Getting into another fight with this lot after the first one just ended would not do any good. "Look, let's start over. I'm Cooper. What's your guys' names?"
"Yeah, this got way too public, way too fast. Let's take a walk," Cooper suggests before pausing and peering around at the group of would-be assailants. "You can all walk, right?" If he gets even a remotely affirmative answer, he will nod and start moving down the street toward Hans's alley. If any of the group needs help, he'll do whatever he can to lend a hand.
"See, you say that," Coop replies as he crouches down to get on eye level with Mister Walrus, "but your boss is going to assume that, since we kicked your asses, you talked. So either you don't talk and get dead or you do talk and we see what we can do to help you guys. Feel me?"
With a relieved sigh, Cooper lets his shield spell drop and he moves to walk across the street toward Hans. "Nah, you guys are gonna have a conversation with us. Then we'll see about letting you go. First, let's get off this street, though." He pauses and looks over to the very fuzzy werewolf with furrowed brows. "You okay, big guy? Your beard seems to have undergone some explosive growth. I'd have for you to be suffocating under the weight of it."
"Guys, Firecrotch and Tubby MacWalrusblubber are getting away! Hans, can you stop the car?" Cooper suggests as he flicks his wrist dismissively to try to drag all of the other prone members of the group into a neat pile on the sidewalk. He starts running to the other side of the street as he works to push the rear wheels of the van off of the ground, in the hope that it is not a four-wheel drive car.
Cooper clenches his jaw tightly as the fire-sprite hammers against his shielding, the transparent field flashing blinding blue with each hit. Much as he would love to give this obnoxious conjuration a piece of his mind, he cannot let up his hold on the humans. They would probably be all too happy to go back to beating on his friends. So, for the time being, he furrows his brows and sends those tendrils back to work trying to pin the lot of them in place. This time, with every intent to get the fire-sprite in on the bizarre game of Twister going on out here. "So much for keeping this discreet!"
[ooc]Not sure if I need to re-roll my grapple checks to try to pin them. Or if there's even a point to doing so, really, considering he can't tie them up with anything.
"Crap! Guys, it's a little fire...sprite...thing! Little help? Anybody?"
At the sight of a grenade of some sort, Cooper pivots and draws an arm up to shield his eyes in the crook of his elbow. The gesture seems enough that he is able to shrug off the worst of the effects of the flashbang. As he shakes his head to clear it, he turns back to face the twin with the bat and draws a nearly invisible field of force around himself. With luck, he can keep this twin occupied trying to beat on him ineffectually for long enough for the rest of his group to deal with the rest. Not to be deterred, his force tendrils snap back upward again to try to snatch at the addict with the same effect intended.
Cooper frowns uncertainly as two of his friends fail their efforts, beginning to have second thoughts as he calls up his will. But not before he tries to get a good look at whatever happens to be in Mr. Mustache's hand.
Tendrils of invisible force slither up around the limbs of their foes to try to haul all four of them straight down to the pavement.
"Nah, hit the meth head first, Hailey. Looks like he's packing. Hans, you take the big guy. Gem and I will get the twins. I'd rather not use the doppelgangers in broad daylight if I can help it, so this'll be interesting. If any of them are wizards, yell at me and I'll swap dance partners with you. Sound good?" His suggested plan finished, Cooper scarfs down the other two donuts he has yet to finish with competitive eating levels of haste. He washes it down with the last sip of his drink before tossing the lot of his garbage into the nearest bin.
Cooper nods and pushes himself up from his seat, moving to shove the remainder of his doughnut into his mouth before grabbing the rest of his things. He chews quickly as he pushes his chair in and makes for the door with an emphatic, "Omwar'!" Which will likely draw a bit of scolding from Gemma, considering talking with his mouth full is hardly polite.
"So, we're not splitting up and Hans isn't gonna try to track them on his own. Does that mean we're gonna just try to throw down in a fairly packed Dunkin Donuts?" Cooper asks as he casts a glance around the establishment as if to illustrate his point. "Because I'd really rather not be liable for a ton of property damage, y'know? Not to mention a lot of people could potentially get hurt."
"Hey, rude. I was gonna eat that," Cooper admonishes without any real weight put into his words, especially when he moves on to devouring the next doughnut in the long line to the chopping block. If anyone looks at him funny about the sheer volume of junk food he is shoveling into his mouth, he explains around the doughnuts, "Magic'f har' work, don' judsh." With a quick sip of his coffee, he clears his throat afterward and asks the group, "So, we're staying to see who it is, right? We want to confront them or anything? What's the plan?"
"Big ol' drafty house with echoey hallways, man. We heard everything," Cooper replies cheerfully, only teasing the larger man just a bit. "But seriously, though. Hunting's cool; never did a whole lot myself, but when you've got the natural talents that I've got, there's no a lot of fun in it. What sort of books do you read?"
Cooper stumbles a step or two before he moves to the booth in question on his own, getting the picture. Sure, it takes him three or four nudges, but eventually he understands. As he settles down across from Hans, he tries to make small-talk in the meantime as the ladies work. "So, what do you do for fun? Aside from sing beautiful solo acts in the shower, of course."
"Easy there, kid. He's just a big guy, he's not gonna come over the counter at you," Cooper teases idly as he tugs his wallet from his pocket, digging within for some cash. "Besides, his bark is worse than his bite. I'll go with maple frosted, thanks." Once all of his massive amount of food is paid for, he moves over beside Hans to wait for it, glancing up to the man. "So, when you sleep, do you dream in German or English? I've always wondered how that works."
Cooper heads straight up to the register with a broad grin as he digs his wallet out of his jeans pocket. "Hey, how's it going? Lemme get a, uhh..." He pauses to skim over the menu before settling on the same thing that anyone should be getting in a donut place. "Boston cream, powdered sugar jelly, any kind of maple if you've got it, one of those chocolate with the rainbow sprinkles, a normal glazed, medium frappe, large french roast, and," He glances back over his shoulder again at Hans with a quirked brow and a bemused smirk. "...whatever the big guy wants. Got all that?"
Cooper gives a big, wide, completely forced smile at the pair of MiBs before following the others out the door without delay. He figures it a bit like staring down a large predator: never let them see you sweat or they'll eat you alive. At the donut shop, he glances between the shop and the marker with a quirked brow. "Really? Dunkin Donuts? This is the most bizarre mystery adventure thing I've ever been on. I think we could probably all go in together if we get something to eat together."
Cooper dutifully follows Hailey to the kitchen and sets to work helping her make all the necessary preparations. For the time being, he simply does what he can to be the best lab assistant around. This seems more like her forte in the first place, so no sense in trying to take over. When she starts chanting and working her will into the charm, he does the same and feeds her a bit of his own. The stronger, the better, right?
Cooper lifts his brows in surprise at the quick appearance of more suits, but really cannot be that amazed. It was just a matter of time in the first place, so hopefully they can get this over with quickly. At their introduction thanks to Hans, he offers a smile of his own that is not nearly as well put-together and shoots some finger-guns at the pair. "Hey there. Yeah, if you value your cell phones, I'd say a few rooms away from the crazy that's gonna go down. Or earpieces. Or whatever crazy tech you guys are packing. Honestly, magic tends to play havoc with guns, too. So really, just watch yourself, y'know?" And with that, he makes for the kitchen hopefully right behind (or in front of?) Hailey, so that they can get to work.
"Ah, I get you, buddy. Say, you know a halfway decent coffee place around here?" Cooper asks the cop conversationally, really just doing his best to look as though he simply wants to chat. Assuming the officer is just standing around for the moment, given that he seems to be the only one here. Policemen are still people too, so there's no reason why he would avoid standing around to shoot the s@&~ with the guy. Or so goes his logic, anyway.
"Sorry, guy, I wasn't. Nowhere near here this morning, honestly. They just threw a brick through the window? Didn't even take anything? What a toolbox." Cooper shakes his head with a frown and stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "Hopefully there's some prints on the brick though, right? Y'know, I'm surprised you're the only guy here. Where's the owner at? You'd think he'd have more of an invested interest in this, wouldn't you?"
Cooper lifts his brows in surprise at the sight of the taped off bookstore, but he heads straight up to the officer. It's not as though he is the one that's wanted, anyway. And not too many people are privy to the knowledge that Hans is very au naturale in the hair department every once in a full moon, so that helps. "Hey, officer. What gives? This place didn't get hit by that big gorilla thing, did it?"
Cooper gathers up his things, or rather his jacket and hat since he does not need to carry much around, and looks around at the others. "Well, come on. Let's get to it, lazybones. We've got clues to follow. If anybody else feels like Scoob and the Gang, please tell me so that I don't feel alone in this. I mean, hell, all we're missing now is a Shaggy. Or a Fred, I guess. I haven't got an ascot."
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