And the Sun Shall Rise [JJones]

Participants: Marc Spector  Jessica Jones
Open/Closed: Closed
Location(s): Be they general or specific
Time of Day: 8pm
Weather: Chilly
Summary: The followers of the Sun King have had a split, while some now follow Moon Knight there are others who wish to see him dead.

These guys weren't playing fair, criminals never do. Moon Knight was surrounded by six - no, seven, he'd almost missed the guy up there on the fire escape - of the Sun King followers. In no way shape or form were these hooligans on the level of say The Hand, but there was undeniably strength in numbers. Seven on one was just not a fight to take lightly, though Marc thought he should at least be glad none of them were armed with anything more than lead pipes.

"You guys not get the memo? The Sun King is long gone, you don't have to be all murdery anymore."

No answer. Of course. The group had been real silent ever since they had first attacked Marc in the privacy of his own kitchen. One minute a guy is warming a pot of ramen noddles and the next you're getting piledriven into your own couch. The crew were keeping real hush hush but it was painfully obvious who they were - emphasis on 'painful'. 

Marc tried to ignore the taste of blood in his mouth and the sting in his side that was likely a cracked rib or two. His eyes kept trained on the men pushing in and trying to encircle him. His dukes were up, sure, but he really would have liked some superpowers at that moment. At least a cruddy healing factor so he didn't have to deal with the aches and bleeding while he completely demolished the idiots thinking they were able to take the Moon Knight.

Khonshu urged him to kill them for the cult's continued insolence against him and his patron. Of course Marc ignored that.

"Just to be clear, that was you guys' final warning. That was the last chance to get off the proverbial ride."

While seven vs one wasn't a fair fight it was hardly the worst predicament Marc had ever found himself him, it was just going to be a smidge longer than a one on one fight was all. And so, with the last of Spector's warnings done with, the fists and feet of an angered schizophrenic began to fly. 

Flashforward about five and a half minutes later and it was apparent that these seven were no chumps. Marc was beaten and even bloodier when three of the seven heaved him over the ledge of the rooftop they'd been scrapping on and down Moon Knight went. Down down down, until he crashed through the roof of another building. Everyone has an off day.

Funny thing about New York City natives: the tunnel vision. Jess got it. She could use it, too, when she wanted. It was a kind of coping mechanism. She didn't care how outgoing or extroverted you were, there was so much going on at every second in every square inch of that damn city that even the most hyperactive brain had to regulate the intake of stimuli. Mind your business. Eyes forward. Walk confidently.

That was just on street-level. The higher up you climbed in buildings, the heavier that tunnel vision became. When your living room windows faced a hundred other living room windows, you and every other person pretended that the others didn't exist. Worrying about being watched by the neighbors of an entire, overly-populated block all the time bred a kind of paranoia that nobody wanted.

Which was why Jessica Jones liked when someone she was tailing for a case lived on the seventh floor.

The PI sat on a ledge just as many stories up on an adjacent building, careful to choose a nook with no nearby windows to spook the natives (she was pretty sure a stairwell was on the other side of the brownstone digging into her back). The hood of the sweatshirt she wore under her leather jacket was pulled up against evening's chill, and every few minutes or so she glanced through the lens of her camera to see that, yes, Katheryne Kowalski was still, zombified, scrolling through social media on her phone while a cringe-worthy television drama played on her flatscreen.

Jess rolled her eyes for probably the thirtieth time since her stakeout began and leaned roughly back against the wall behind her. That was about the time when a sound pricked her ears. It was arguably as consistent and normal for NYC as taxis honking and pigeons sh*tting (which did, actually, make a certain noise when it fell from a decent enough height). The exact makeup varied - breaking glass, splintering wood, the thud of fists and snap of broken bone - but they all meant a brawl of some sort.

Jessica's eyes narrowed. She looked around, trying to zone in on the source of the muted commotion. Movement, across the street and up caught her attention. She craned her neck just in time to see a body start to fall. "Sh*t," she grunted. Jess dropped her camera on the sorry-looking duffel bag she tended to bring along for stakeouts and launched off her ledge.

Catching the falling figure was a crapshoot. And, when she came within a foot of the person and missed, it just showed why she'd never go to Vegas. "Sh*t," she said again. The falling figure hit a lower rooftop and crashed through it. Jess kicked off the wall of the nearest building face to alter her trajectory and, a few seconds after them, dropped through that new hole. "Dude, are you okay?" Jess asked, pushing hair from her face with one hand and reaching out another to help the stranger to his feet.

Marc Spector

So, that hurt. 

Marc tried to recall if he'd ever been thrown off a roof before. He'd been stabbed, shot, thrown through glass windows, run over by jeeps, been set on fire, but no he didn't think he had ever had the pleasure of getting chucked from a ridiculous height of one roof and crashed through another. Marc probably would've cried if it wasn't for all the dust currently in his eyes. There was too much pain shooting through every fiber of his being to adequately describe any of it, he tried convincing himself that feeling anything at all was a positive. But he couldn't just lay there celebrating his good fortune of not being paralyzed. Those stupid idiots who were still following the ways of the Sun King would probably rushing to finishing whooping his ass at any moment. Marc groaned as he rolled onto his side, his legs half curled in an attempt to scoot himself toward a wall that wasn't completely destroyed in his crash landing.

Someone asked something, it was hazy and warbled. It sounded like he had been suddenly thrust into a Charlie Brown cartoon, which given his mental was honestly within probability. Anyway, the warbled voice - he wasn't able to respond to it because he didn't know what the hell it had said and he wasn't about to potentially agree to something he didn't know the terms of. That was how Mephisto got Spider-Man, so he had heard.

"Come...closer."

He looked up through the dust and blood in his eye, the face looking down at him completely jumbled by his rattled head. The shape that was a person extended their arm at him, a helpful samaritan it appeared. If they weren't a concerned citizen he'd already have been freed of his wallet. Maybe he could trust this odd image of a person. For a moment Moon Knight awaited Khonshu's voice telling him not to trust anyone, the voice never came. So that was a plus. ^"Closer." Still, he needed help and it was looking more and more like he could accept it.

Marc grabbed the hand offered to him and pulled, trying to bing the person closer and not so much to get himself up. He pulled hard, not trying to manhandle the good samaritan but purely out of desperation.

_{"Pull this goddamn mask off."} His hoarse voice groaned with assertion in the other person's ear. That was top priority. F*** his aching limbs, f*** the Sun King's followers en route to finish the job they're started on the rooftop, and f*** Khonshu's unexpected silence. All Marc wanted was that stupid mask off of his face. He needed to see. He needed to breathe. 

He then let go of the good samaritan and fell back flat on his back, he needed to conserve the rest of his energy if he was going to bounce back and return to the fight. He was still breathing though, so hopefully his rescuer wouldn't freak out thinking they had just witnessed a death.

Jessica Jones

The room was some kind of disused attic or crappy excuse for "storage space" so the landlord could jack up rent even further. Either way, it was completely unlit, and Jess would've been totally blind if not for the glare of New York City's night coming through the new skylight that'd just been punched into the ceiling.

She squinted, and noticed first the mask. The knee-jerk thought that pricked through her was relief. That meant - good or bad or somewhere in between - that the guy she'd miss midair was costumed in some way or another. Much easier on her conscience than if it'd been a civilian or something like that. The second thought that followed was recognition.

"Moon Knight?" she asked rhetorically as the white-masked vigilante in a heap of rubble beckoned her closer. The bedside manner Jess had been using before almost entirely evaporated. If anything she sounded reluctant and resigned to her fate. "F**k. This means I just stepped into a sh*tstorm of crazy, doesn't it." And it wasn't even a question.

This far into Jessica Jones's career, it was hard to name a street-level superhero or supervillain that she hadn't encountered at least fleetingly at some point or another. She hadn't brushed elbows with Moon Knight that much at all, but enough. That, combined with all she knew of the guy and Jess was lamenting that she'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time to get pulled into whatever the hell was going on.

Against her nature, Jess crouched down and helped ease Moon Knight into a seated position. Following his request, she reached up and peeled the white mask off of his face. Which was about when Moon Knight keeled over and went limp on his back. Her eyes widened and she reached out to check a pulse - it'd just be her f**king luck for Moon Knight to die, right then.

The budding anxiety was reoriented by the rush of blood beating under her fingers. Jess rocked back on her heels and pressed one palm over her eyes. She wasn't even surprised, really.

Marc Spector

Marc was on fire. Flames danced all over his body, he watched his limbs turn to black ash before his eyeballs melted right out of his skull. All he could here was that stupid Sun King laughing in his ears, the sound beating into his eardrum until he collapsed to his knees, no more than a burning husk balled up in the fetal position. The laughing grew louder as it echoed through the blackness that surrounded the burning mass that was formerly Marc Spector. The laugh no longer sounds like raving Sun King, it was more mocking and more familiar. Khonshu had a good hearty laugh.

It took a few minutes but Marc's eyes finally snapped open. He sucked in a deep breath, fully enjoying being free of his mask, and back himself into a wall before finally turning his eyes to Jessica. The sensation of his skin boiling and burning off was now a distant thought as he focused on Jessica closer. With that nightmare quickly going the way that dreams so often went Marc was suddenly reminded of what was actually happening in the now. He stood up quickly, shaky at first but he regained composure and steeled himself almost immediately.

"We gotta get moving!"

He knew who she was, probably the only super powered person around who didn't commit to the job with a tight latex number. She was a superhero but also wasn't. She didn't have a codename...right? 

Marc glanced up at the hole that his body had made in his landing, seeing the broken up remains of the ceiling made him flinch. That was the least of his worries at this point though, there were still the zealots who were probably on their way to finish the job. "There's a bunch of guys crazier than me on their way here. You can fly right?" Was he making that up or was that something he actually recalled about her? The city of New York was crawling with heroes but most of them were your garden variety street level guys like yours truly, it was fortunate for the mad lad that he just so happened to be saved by a hero who actually had superpowers. And if she couldn't fly like he was assuming then at least she'd be able to punch some Sun King worshipping heads off.

Marc wasn't scared of these guys or anything, he'd already kicked their savior's ass so they should - in theory - be a cake walk. The hole in the roof was debating otherwise. So, a sidekick with super strength was a nice little bonus.

Jessica Jones

"Easy, there, buddy," Jess said, making a calming gesture to Moon Knight while he surged onto his feet. She straightened, too, watching him carefully as he shuddered and shook there, ready to dart in and catch him if he passed out or fell over again. Both of which were more likely than him staying upright, she was betting. Moon Knight didn't topple, though, and she raised one eyebrow skeptically at the opening statement.

"Can you, even? You look like sh*t, and I don't say that mildly (this time)."

The look in Moon Knight's eyes was fairly clear that they didn't have a choice in the matter. She was sure it had something to do with whoever had sent him on a one-way ticket to this attic a second ago. To drive that theory home, Moon Knight explained there were guys quote-"crazier than him"-end quote on their way there. Which tracked, and also sucked ass.

Jess's eyes flicked to the beaten-in opening in the ceiling. "In theory, yeah, but in practice is kind of touch and go. Except, when it's not the "go" part it's the "touch" part, and that's the ground. Very hard and at very fast speeds." Her level of competency with her flying varied on any given day, to such a point that she avoided it at all costs. That and the motion sickness. It was a b*tch.

The door to that attic jostled. "Sh*t," she spat, and threw Moon Knight over her shoulder like a sack of crap. The door burst inward and Jess crouched down, then jumped, hurtling through the hole in the roof, past several stories and into the open air above the nearest buildings. While passing the rooftop that Moon Knight had been chucked from, though, a wire wrapped around her ankle. It yanked - hard - and the two of them went crashing down onto that same rooftop.

Jess only barely managed to land, leaving an indent in the ground, and shrugged Moon Knight off of her shoulder, glaring at the creeps that had them surrounded. "Not my fault," she said out of the side of her mouth.

Marc Spector