@Old AmsterdamAs Laurie sent her text, her innate awareness as an assassin came into play, and she spied an odd sight indeed - a figure emerged from the grounded man's body, white from what she could see, with segmented rings like blown-up balloons making up its arm, and flat, papery fingers, almost as if it had confetti for hands. Then, it sprang forth at immense speed, charging right to the side of the unaware, chuckling bystander's side and... gently swiping its fingers across his face before it vanished entirely. It was an incredibly anticlimactic sight, almost pathetic in its own way, enough to question whether the Stand had even done anything at all.
Nonetheless, the moment Blue told the man he had promise, his eyes snapped to her, widening with disbelief at first, and then with genuine appreciation. Was he tearing up from just her statement, too? Or maybe that was from the humiliation he’d suffered before.
‘R-really?’ he murmured, apparently unsure how to respond. Even when he spoke, he seemed a bit pathetic, despite his smile. ‘You’re giving me a real compliment for my work? Tha-tha-thank you! Finally, people are starting to appreciate what I do!’ Despite everything, he was smiling, and nearly weeping in fact, only to catch himself as he realised the woman before him had asked a question after all. ‘Some, uh, help with the cards, please, could be... yes...’ He finally managed to make it up to his feet, wincing at the pain in his groin, before realising he’d have to pick up some cards himself and nearly toppling over to try and grab them again, failing at the first swipe and only scattering them further.
As this class act went on, Laurie might have noticed a noise coming from the bystander who had chuckled just a moment ago and been lightly slapped for his contribution. He was, in fact, still chuckling - and the longer it went on, the louder he became until he hit full-blown laughter, loud enough even that he was beginning to draw attention to himself. It was, however, unclear why he was laughing - he didn’t even seem to be noticing the comedian anymore, and as he went to his knees, he was sort of spasming away from nothing, and brushing at himself as if trying to remove something from his body, perhaps to stop something from touching him.
@ProProDisturbed from her ranting speech, the woman frowned down at Leonard as he made his statement, clearly a little bit concerned, but brushed it off after a moment. ‘Er, sure, buddy. I’m pre’y sure I can take care of myself, but thanks anyway,’ she uttered, taking a breath before continuing with the main content of what she had to say.
‘Now as I was saying, these government schmucks think they can rip us off? They wanna go ahead and try to keep taking our money,
our money that
we earned?! How dare they?!’ This was met with a fairly loud cheer from the crowd, and apparently no awareness of how taxes were applied. Once the cheers died down, the speaker continued forcefully ‘I’ve always thought that a person’s work is their own, so why should we be forced to hand off the frui’s of our hard labour to a bunch of rich schmoes who already earn way too much to begin with? You know how much the average Sena’or makes in a year? One hundred seven’y four THOUSAND dollars a year - THREE TIMES MORE than the average American, and that’s just the job i’self! Most US politicians are already filthy stinking rich from their “external enterprises” or wha’ever they wanna call them, and the epi’ome of that is of course the
president of the coun’ry!’ There was clear disdain and contempt for the president in question, a sentiment echoed by very nearly everybody in the crowd; there were one or two “boos”, barely audible over the rest of the cacophony, but one would have to be paying attention to catch them.
@knifemanAt the front of the crowd, Mieke was in prime position to observe as the stunt was performed. There was indeed a pool in place - wide, certainly, but clearly only as deep as the announcer had suggested, with perhaps an extra foot or two of clearance on top, either to hold the designated amount of water or to hold extra for the performer to dive into.
The crowd’s excitement was palpable from how they chattered, but everything died down to a susurration as Lee made his way to the edge of the diving board. With an excited yell, he leapt, twisting and turning in a series of rapid, athletic somersaults on his way down, clearly practiced to perfection.
But, the arc at which he fell was a little too large. Before anyone could react coherently, calamity struck: the man slammed back-first on to the edge of the pool, his entire body folding in half with a disturbing, gory
CRUNCH, the force of impact even bending the material of the pool a little before it rebounded him backward into the water, thankfully out of sight. Still, the effect was dramatic, and everybody present was shocked beyond belief, audibly or otherwise. What had just happened? Had they really just witnessed a man die? No, surely not, they’d never have allowed it.
If anybody was paying attention, they’d see the shorter presenter frown at the display, twiddling his moustache before beckoning the bigger man to lean down to him, the duo beginning to chatter quietly to one another in a language that nobody present would be able to decipher, and only those near the front of the crowd would be capable of hearing to begin with.
@LemonZest1337@LugubriousAs the van pulled up to the edge of the water, people took some notice of it, and in short order of the oversized croc dragging itself out. Most, naturally, were rather scared to go anywhere near an unleashed crocodilian, and so the duo received surprisingly little interference, save one man in his late middle age who stamped up to them a minute later, clearly angry, but even more clearly scared of the giant reptile. If he felt it was a good idea to confront these two, he clearly didn't have a good reason to come any closer.
'Uh, listen, buddy,' he started saying to Arthur, as annoyed and nervous as his body language suggested, 'I don't mind if a big guy like you comes wanderin' through the place, but that
thing is a giant problem.' He pointed in Hogan's direction to clearly indicate what "thing" he meant, with absolutely no awareness of how intelligent the crocodile was. 'Uh, literally. You've gotta get rid of it, pal, or at least keep it in your truck!'
