ic Monkeys on Parade

[Fox]

Nocturne

 

"Your faith in my grasp of the villainous mindset is noticed and appreciated," Natalia deadpanned. He probably wasn't wrong.

 

She took another careful glance around the building, trying to think like...well, a fair number of the people she'd known. Back-and-forth banter when she'd been old enough to retain it and too young to have been allowed to retain it. "....I might be less interested in the fake engineer's comms, and more interested in security's, assuming they didn't put them all in the same channel. It's a good bet that their boss just volunteered the soldiers he thought looked most villainous for the job, anyway, without...thinking too much about it. He seems the type." She drawled that last bit, unsure how she felt about the stereotypes. If the shoe fit, maybe. "I'd be interested if I was going to break in, too, and was careful enough to plan my attack - which I am. I wonder if they're already listening," she added, idly curious.

 

"The rest is harder. If you were a villain, why would you break in to a show like this?" The question was, apparently, not rhetorical - it was meant to be, at first, but there was genuine entertainment value there and toward the question mark she pitched her voice up, raising an eyebrow at her classmate in expectation.

[Gizmo]

"Oh, well. Probably to make a violent, public example of May, I guess," Ryder replied with a grimace but surprisingly little hesitation. "Show that even making a deal with the biggest bully in class can't protect her. If you're managing through fear you don't want people making rational decisions in their own self interest so you can't let them think they have options. And there's already reporters here so it's free publicity, if that's what you care about." It wasn't that hard to put himself in that headspace, really. He just had to think about any of the awful reasons he'd heard people give to try to excuse their behaviour, ignoring what seemed like common sense to him. "Grabbing some science weapons might be a bonus if you're just like a mid-level bank robber, that sort of thing. Actual super villains have enough respect for their own aesthetic that they're not going to start using somebody else's beat up gravity glove just because it's sitting there." He absently patted his conspicuously moving satchel. Meeting Natalia's eyes again he shrugged expressively. "Or maybe not! It's dangerous to generalize too much about people, maybe they're super into ridiculous missiles like that guy has!"

[Fox]

Nocturne

 

"No, you've basically got it." There was approval in her voice somewhere, but she didn't dwell on it, instead ticking items off on her fingers. "Greed, glory, anger, intimidation, mis-aimed conviction. And insanity, I suppose, but it's rarer than you'd think." She paused. "Rarer than some people think. You know, Cricket, I don't think you'd fall for that one, media or not. Well done."

 

She laced her fingers behind her back, eyebrow still raised. "In my expert opinion? May's not stupid, and probably doesn't do business with anyone who's really crazy. If they're really connected to proper criminal groups they probably want to send a message...and recoup their losses. They can't afford to look like fools, it invites trouble and makes them look weak to their competition. So, either we wait and hope they show up, or make this a more appealing target, or prick their pride somehow until they have no choice but to charge in no matter what security looks like."

[Gizmo]

Ryder's grimace melted into a beaming grin at her faintly given praise with the ease of stretched spring resuming its resting state. The boost of positivity seemed to inspire something and he clapped his hands in excitement. "Oh! Oh, you're right!" He quickly looked about the room for the closest journalist with a camera in tow. "I've been thinking about this as a crime thing when I should be thinking about it as a promoting local businesses thing! We just have to Charlotte's Web it!"

 

Indicating for Natalia to follow he made sure his camera was clearly visible in one hand and held his phone up to his ear in the other then began walking purposefully past the news team. "I don't care about the SEO, Tabitha!" he shouted into the phone in his best unreasonable customer voice. "Trust me, any tech blog that doesn't have pictures of that armoured gorilla suit on their front page yesterday is going to look like dinosaurs! Yes that's bad! Dinosaur DNA is old news, Tabitha! The future is robot gorillas!" He passed directly by the journalist over the course of his tirade, seemingly ignoring them altogether until he's rounded the corner of a nearby booth, where he paused to see if they'd taken the bait.

[Fox]

Nocturne

 

Natalia was, all at once, the spitting image of a dutiful assistant - no more or less than half a pace behind Ryder, hair pulled neatly back in a simple band conjured from her bag, coat buttoned across her torso to play the serious professional to Ryder's exuberant new-media manic. "If Tabitha can get Henry and their camera down here within the hour, we could beat the rest to a full picture spread," she noted, glancing over her sunglasses as she typed away at her phone. Her voice was entirely too clipped and professional to be Natalia's. "Tag line: 'an army of armored heroes'? Perhaps 'guerilla gorilla', to play up the masterpiece hidden under questionable gorilla aesthetics."

 

She wasn't used to lying and manipulating as anything but a solo act. It was a novel experience - she looked forward to doing it again. Smiling wouldn't behoove the part she was playing, though, so she saved that for their hiding spot where she position herself out of sight of both crowd and Ryder.

[Fox]

GM

 

The effect on the other expo attendees was immediate and, for an improvised performance, remarkably effective. The newer news types broke ranks first - the blog-keepers, the fresh voices, the little people with something to prove. Then came the bigger names, the newspapers, the capital-R Reporters, who wouldn't bear to be beaten to the punch...or at least couldn't afford to not evaluate the lead. Even the reporter wielding her high-impact notepad got swept up in the mix, though she seemed a bit less sold than the rest.

 

From the heroes' position, they couldn't see May and her robot clearly anymore - nor could they hear her, the engineer's lack of enthusiasm failing to carry even after she reluctantly stepped out of her bubble. The reporters had fervor to spare, though, and their voices would sometimes drift over each other and some increasingly-confused security (who were already checking in with each other over comms):

 

"Of course it has to be the future of-"

 

"-could never replace the well-known heroes, but could you imagine-"

 

"-never gonna work, the budget's not-" "Basically creates its OWN budget-"

 

"Probably better without the monkey-"

 

"Can't be worse than last year's program of-"

 

"-nestly prefer it headless, can't imagine..."

 

"Surprised the guards could even contain this, much less keep the rest-"

 

Somewhere, the servers hosting multiple blogs, media centers, and social media platforms started to spin up to accommodate a series of new pictures and short-form articles about robotic gorillas and the future of armored warfare, domestic and abroad. It wasn't the story of the century, but it had caught traction in a way too improbable to be random and too random to lose steam.

[Gizmo]

As it became clear that the proverbial pebble had turned into a rockslide of interest Ryder led them to a nook between two booths, concealed from view by overhanging vinyl and unevenly assembled aluminum bars. "Haha, wow. I vote we don't tell May it was our fault she had to talk to that many people," he suggested, peering around the corner before ducking his head back out of sight of the sudden press scrum. "Tricking people with you is a lot less stressful than normal, y'know. Maybe you had a point about being a corrupting influence." He shot Natalia a cheeky grin and began unbuttoning the bottom buttons of his shirt, revealing his oversized belt buckle and a sliver of abs.

 

"Spread out and keep an eye on things, everyone. Mag, you're with me." The Robugs burrowed their way out of his bag where he placed it on the floor, hopping, skittering and buzzing away in their respective manners to find good hiding spots. The little white and magenta praying mantis robot visibly preened at being singled out and sat atop the bag looking up expectantly.

[Fox]

Nocturne

 

It took Natalia a half-second too long to drag her eyes back up and reply; her sunglasses could hide the former but the latter was an unforgivable weakness. ".....no, I don't think we'll be telling May. She can enjoy the mystery of it." There had been other words in there. What had the other words been? Oh, right. "I am an ideal influence, Cricket, and you would be well-served by learning everything I have to teach."

 

She popped open a hidden seam on the side of her bag, pulling a long and flowing black garment from what should have been padded lining. "We've known each other for...how long? And already you're lying to the press and setting ambushes to free known villains. Just imagine what depravities I'll have you doing in good time. If you're going to use that belt," she added, frowning, "I don't suppose it has a 'subtle' setting? They're all distracted, but not quite that distracted, Cricket."

[Gizmo]

"And you're already risking your safety to help capture some criminals without anyone else getting hurt and reduce the prison time of someone who needs a second chance! I should definitely see what else you can teach me." Ryder's rejoinder was as quick and cheerful as his grin as he placed his hand atop the belts chamber switches. "Subtle, right."

 

As he toggled the chambers in sequence the belt's computerized voice loudly announced, "CYMK! Dream in colour!" Raising his arms to either side Ryder commanded in a low stage whisper, "Chitin! Online!" With a burst of displaced air that send the costume in Natalia's hands and the vinyl walls of the trade show booths flapping and the light show of armour pieces emerging from their pocket dimension and locking into place he donned his heroic persona.

 

The multifaceted eyes of his helmet lit up with a dim glow as the suit powered up and from her perch nearby Magenta leapt to him. Long forelimbs became two fins across the top of the helmet while the rest of the Robug's body unfolded to integrate into the faceplate in a splash of white and hot pink. The belt chimed in again, "Orchid Mantis Instar! Say your prayers!" and brought forth a chest piece in the same colours styled like a spread of broad, spade-shaped petals, flexible overlapping hip plates and a pair of dangerous looking blades that started at each wrist and curved back past his elbows. Finally as the wind and lights died down the eyes turned a contrasting green.

 

"Okay, so maybe it's a little conspicuous," Chitin admitted off of Natalia's unimpressed look, "but there's more!" He pressed something else on his belt and faded from view entirely, disappearing from the boots up. This close to him she could see the slight outline of the armour in the air, its adaptive camouflage taking a moment to catch up as he moved but it was overall an impressive bit of stealth, considering.

[Fox]

Nocturne

 

Natalia held her breath for a moment, sinking back against the booth wall as she waited to see if anyone had noticed Ryder's...display. Fortunately, security seemed stretched thin with all the sudden attention their bait was attracting, and there weren't many passers-by at this end of the booths, unused as they were.

 

She let the breath out, folding her robe over one arm. "I appreciate your dedication to style in your armor-summoning, Cricket, I do. But, to be clear," she said, unbuttoning her blouse to reveal a simple undershirt. The former got stashed in her bag; the latter would be more comfortable under the costume. The pants would have to do as they were. "You can design and build a set of armor that comes out of nowhere and turns you invisible on demand, and you can't design an build a mute button? Or a volume knob, I'd have settled for that if you'd turned it all the way down." She wouldn't have, but she could pretend. Either way, she felt better once she had the robe on.

 

Sunglasses joined the blouse in her bag, swapped for a mask that she apparently hid well under the already-concealing hood. Her favorite were the boots - a tall cuff of leather and some subtle metal around the base of the foot redesigned them completely, good for her ankles and anonymity both. "I cannot turn invisible, however, so unless you can cover both of us I think I'll be staking the expo out from here."

[Gizmo]

"Can't justify aesthetic design flourishes right now, being very sneaky," Chitin whispered, the blurred outline of an emphatic shrug just visible enough for Nocturne to catch. "I'm going to get a better view of May. Ooh, we should get like radio earpieces or something for next time! I'll just ask one of the Robugs to check in on you, in case." After a ghostly thumbs up he slipped out of the space between the booths, moving cautiously to avoid bumping into anything or anyone and to give the armour's adaptive camouflage a chance to keep up. Reaching the wall of the convention centre he pressed his gloved fingertips against it, the Mantis Instar's wall crawling hardware finding purchase. The toes of his boots followed suit and silently and invisibly he began scaling the up toward the ceiling.

[Fox]

GM

 

With Chitin along the ceiling and Nocturne hidden at ground level, their waiting could begin.

 

And continue.

 

And continue, long enough to make one worry that it might never really end. Even the expo floor started to empty out a bit, though it was never quite empty - the crowds instead thinning down to the enthusiasts, the staff, and the reporters who still smelled a story in the air.

 

Nocturne had long since stashed herself in a booth, but from his position Chitin suddenly observed a number of things in rapid succession: first, his suit's radio picked up a high-power radio signal that was noise to him, but apparently deeply unpleasant to the security staff - they all clutched their ear and fell in varying states of conscious distress. Second, May (who had snapped her head up from her work, but seemed far less distressed) very calmly reached under her gorilla and activated something - likely her sound barrier, given the barely-visible distortion around the edge of the podium.

 

And, third, the doors at the far end of the expo floor burst open and a fair group of men stormed in. They wore suits, all of them, in an assortment of styles and fit, all but two armed and masked. Those two were clearly brothers, if not twins, and stood at least a head above their peers - and what heads they were! Square, scowling faces with heavy (if neatly-trimmed) brows and long sideburns, growling with teeth too long and too wide for comfort. Large, broad hands on long forearms so hairy they may as well have been furred, sticking out of rolled-up sleeves and cracking their knuckles in anticipation of a fight. They were, in the most literal sense, either very man-like monkeys or very monkey-like men. In Freedom City, they were probably both.

 

"MECHANICA!" one of them roared; the literal chest-beating that accompanied the challenge might have been amusing if he hadn't followed it up by grabbing a heavy table one-handed and flung it over the heads of the remaining (and panicking) crowd. "SETTLE UP! EVERYONE ELSE DOWN!"

[Gizmo]

“Wow!” Chitin’s voice rang out from overhead, boosted by his helmet’s speakers. He shimmered into view mid-backflip, tumbling down from the ceiling to land in a couch atop a huge display of a rocket’s cross-section. Glossy white armour over matte black with bright magenta pops of colour made for a stark contrast for the suits of the varied primates on the showroom floor. “I was starting to worry you guys weren’t going to show up but I get it now! Had to nail the outfits, totally.” He gave a broad, apologetic shrug. “Now, the bad news is this really isn’t going to do the way you were planning on. Which is probably frustrating so I wanted to get that out there right off the bat, yeah? Any chance I could convince you all to put down the guns before anybody gets hurt?”

[Fox]

GM

 

The sound of Nocturne's hand hitting her face was entirely drowned out by the guffawing of the first of the suspiciously monkey-like men. "I like him!" he said, anger momentarily forgotten as he elbowed his brother in the ribs hard enough to shove him sideways. "Look at him! At least he knows style when he sees it."

 

The other brother seemed less amused, tugging his jacket back into place. "Anyone could. What's frustrating is that we're on the clock. You wanna talk, hero, you talk, but we've got business to take care of."

 

The criminals broke down the middle, each brother cutting a path across the floor around the sides of Chitin's display. Their flunkies did the same, sticking close to their boss and waving their weapons at the bystanders to keep them at bay.

 

If May noticed, she didn't show it - as soon as the besuited crime muscle had shown up, she'd reached into the guts of her machine and started tinkering with something. And all the while, the civilians alternated between cowering away from the guns and trying to tend to the security personnel, still down in pain....

[Gizmo]

Chitin shook his head with a little sigh then rolled his shoulders. As he did the curving attachments on his forearms sprang outward, locking into place at an angle to resemble the forearms of a praying mantis. With a faint hum a brilliant pink energy filled the inner arcs to form glowing energy blades. The armoured teen hopped off of his precarious perch with a soft, “Hup!” and dove directly into the left group of armed intruders.

 

His boot connected with the shoulder of the first gang member on his way to the floor, knocking the man's gun off centre, where a slash of his arm blade bisected it into two lumps of metal. A whirling snap kick went wide of the next closest target but led into a backhanded blow with the blunt side of an arm blade, cracking audibly into a jaw. A leg sweep and pair of armour-assisted punches dropped the third, leaving Chitin standing between one of the monkey-like leaders and May's installation. “I did ask about the guns, man. We don't have to do this."

[Fox]

GM

 

The masked, besuited gang members were not prepared for Chitin's attack - nor was their boss, at that, though he seemed to recover quickly enough. "....no," he said, turning his oddly-simian head toward Chitin and cocking his neck. It made an awful cracking noise. "I think we did have to do this."

 

Monkey men, it turned out, were very fast. One arm lashed sideways to club Chitin across the helmet, and before he could get his balance back he found both his arms pinned at the wrist in a single long-fingered grip. "If you didn't want anyone hurt," said the villain, "that was real, real dumb of you."

 

His brother growled something inarticulate, but neither slowed nor moved to help - though he did wave one of his flunkies away. "You back my brother up," he growled at one. "You, go find something to shoot at the hero if he gets back up. You, stop the girl before she gets that thing working!"

[Fox]

Nocturne

 

"Rude."

 

In all the commotion, Nocturne had very calmly stood up and walked out of the booth, almost-invisible bubble of gravity forming around her as she curled black-and-gold dust around one hand. "You understand, of course," she said, black and gold motes playing across an upturned hand like dust, "that he's the good cop. He gave you a chance to be good monkeys and sit down. We could have gotten you a banana. I'm sure there's a fruit platter around here somewhere."

 

The simian gangster, already winding up for a punch with his free hand, locked into place as she made a fist and lashed at him with unseen force. His grip on Chitin loosened, making a good but insufficient struggle against a more fundamental power. "I'm the bad cop. Bad monkey, no banana."

[Fox]

GM

 

The flunkies had their orders, and the appearance of another hero only reinforced them. One rushed around the display toward Chitin, training his gun - but with the two still grappled together, he couldn't get a clean shot, and seemed to have the level head to not risk it.

 

One rushed toward the more practical missile display, hopping into a small aiming seat and priming what should have been a very deadly weapon indeed.

 

The last, ordered to stop May, aimed to do just that - and literally, bringing his gun to his shoulder and firing several rounds toward her and her mechanical creation. But then, May was no fool - the sound bubble she'd brought back up had apparently come back with somewhat more oomph to it, most bullets stalling in mid-air as if they'd been fired into liquid. As each shot sent ripples through the bubble's surface, though, one lucky bullet just managed to slide through...and directly into May's leg.

 

It was a curious thing, more visible from Chitin's perspective than Nocturne's (however distracted that perspective might have been): that last bullet shifted slightly, angling just so as it passed through to hit her as if deflected instead of stopped, catching May as she stood with her hands at her machinery's controls. At least the angle had been good - that hit would hurt, but it would hardly be fatal, and she'd immediately started tending to the wound.

[Gizmo]

"I don't really think of myself as a cop at all,” Chitin confided quietly as the Monkey Brother holding his wrists went abruptly stock still. “Like, I'm just one guy like everybody else, yeah? But she's gonna be mad enough I let you grab me without me messing up her cool line about the bananas, too."

 

As shots rang out next to May's barrier, however, the armoured hero's demeanour changed dramatically. “Yeah, we're done with that." He broke his hands free from the frozen grip with a sharp jerk and dropped low as the gang member angling for a clean shot turned their gun toward him. Ducking under the Monkey Brother's raised arm he rose in an uppercut powered by the suit's motors that took the gunman clean off of his feet and continued through two more audible impacts off of his mantis-like weapon before the man hit the ground.

 

Spinning on his heel to face the first of the gang's leaders again, Chitin toggled the chambers of his belt. "I warned you this wasn't going to go the way you imagined it. You need to wake up." The magenta light coming from the inner arcs of his arm extensions grew in intensity as power was rerouted, glowing from behind the edges of his armour's panels. "CYMKutters!" the belt announced cheerfully just before Chitin crossed his arms in front of his helmet then swung them wide in a pair of blows that rocketed his target clean through one booth and its exhibit and most of the way into another. The after image of pink X lingered in the air where the hirsute muscle man had been a moment before.

 

Without further discussion he took off in a sprint toward the intruder firing on May.

[Fox]

Nocturne

 

The remaining gave an inarticulate roar of fury, beating his chest and visibly getting...larger? Definitely more monkey-like, at the very least, teeth more pronounced and hair subtly shaggier as he bounded to intercept Chitin. More rage than monkey and more monkey than man, he threw a punch that was too telegraphed to not dodge, but it took a large enough chunk out of the nearest display to tell everyone watching that dodging had definitely been the right choice.

 

Considering Chitin's delightfully lethal display so far, that was all well and good in Nocturne's eyes; she left him to it and turned her attention toward May's would-be one-man firing squad, who was already pivoting to try to find a shot on Chitin. He never got the chance: with his attention elsewhere she made a face, and a gesture, and sent him flying into the nearest concrete pillar. He made a very satisfying noise as he wrapped around it, cracking the plastered surface, and then he stopped making noise at all.

 

A strangled but triumphant cry drew attention to the foe on the missile platform as he punched a big red button - the missiles were released from their clamp, made an ominous humming noise, and then sputtered a few sparks out their back-sides in the tradition of bargain-brand misfiring fireworks. The would-be artillerist made a decent and far less triumphant imitation of that sputter, hitting buttons at random on his console in vain hope.
 

Less attention-drawing had been the other two villains present - one had disappeared into the chaos of the initial panic but the other, a thin man with already-crazed hair, paused near an emergency exit to shout, "IT'S PRONOUNCED, 'JIN'!!" before kicking open the door and fleeing out the back of the building.

[Gizmo]

"Whoop!" Chitin somersaulted under a burly blow that broke a booth's desk in half, rolling from the remaining Monkey Brother's left side to his right before popping back up to his feet. "Oh hey, what am I seeing here? Physical transformation tied to emotional state? That's actually super interesting!" He took a pair of swipes at his hulking opponent's flank but was forced back by a mighty two-handed smash. Hopping back a few steps the armoured teen bounced from foot to foot, focusing on evasion for the moment. "Right, sorry, we're doing inarticulate rage right now, got it!"

[Fox]

Nocturne

 

"YOU ARE SEEING CRUSH YOU!!" explained the monkey-man past a set of teeth a bit too large for his mouth, swinging both hands together where Chitin's head had just been; they didn't land, but they hit each other with considerable force - force enough to make a shockwave that billowed a nearby banner.

 

Nocturne scanned the room, sighed, and picked a spot between the missiles and the raging ape; her dust collected and grew, less particulate and more overlapping dots of black and gold that clung to everything in the area. "Kneel," she demanded, and the area did: anything not sturdy enough collapsed, flattening to the floor. Even the angriest ape stuttered, dropping one leg to its knee and freezing under a weight Chitin couldn't feel from just outside the effect's circle.

 

The last surviving minion had managed to scramble back in his seat, barely escaping his doom - though his success didn't do much to decrease his panic, and he immediately started working at the missile controls again. Another missile sputtered, paused, and then fell directly out of its clamp with a clatter and no boom.

[Gizmo]

"Buddy, c'mon. They're not real missiles. Please just surrender, okay?" Chitin called to the panicking flunky with a hand to the side of where his mouth was underneath his helmet's faceplate. Shaking his head sadly he turned back to the kneeling Monkey Brother. "Well. This doesn't feel great." He'd have said it didn't feel sporting if he'd found any sport in these sorts of confrontations in the first place. He couldn't just leave Nocturne holding the enraged criminal in place indefinitely but still, it was clear his heart wasn't entirely in it as he unloaded a powerful one-two punch combination across the monkey-man's brow.

 

Seeing his target battered but still clinging to consciousness Chitin let his shoulders slump and rolled his head back to stare upward. "Maaaaan..."

[Fox]

Nocturne

 

The besuited villain was, if nothing else, stubborn - increasingly unfocused, he could be seen flexing against the invisible force of gravity to no avail.

 

"This is just kind of pathetic," Nocturne agreed, striding forward - she put a hand on the man's shoulder, almost gently, but the noise he made was less gentle and more like he was getting squeezed, hair flattening against his body as the ground beneath his foot and knee cracked. And, still, he gave nothing - nothing but a snarling noise, inarticulate and furious as ever. "You know we can keep doing this forever? There's really nothing left for you."

 

The man on the missiles carefully considered Chitin's words and, nodding more to himself than anything, tossed his gun away and made a frantic break for the doors. Who would even know he was gone?

[Gizmo]

The erstwhile gunman's first indication that someone had indeed noticed his attempted escape was a droning buzz growing steadily louder. The source became clear as a bright yellow wasp about the size of a baseball began circling his head. Simultaneously a sort of similarly oversized, light blue grasshopper began leaping about his feet, forcing him to dance back and forth as it seemed to be anywhere he was about to step. Amidst the chaos he was just barely able to notice a glossy black horned beetle watching from the side of a support column, slowly shaking its head back and forth in warning disapproval.

 

Chitin rubbed the back of his head as Nocturne berated the restrained Monkey Brother. "I'm not going to pretend that isn't pretty impressive. It's not great for the armour to do this too often but..."

 

"CYMKutters!"

 

Wisps of superheated condensation rose from the panels of his armour as he stood over the finally incapacitated besuited criminal. "Hoo. Gotta make some heavy duty cuffs or something for these situations. Thanks for keeping all that so contained, Nocturne; could have really gotten out of hand!"