One Pill Makes You Larger... (IC)

[trollthumper]

Dragonfly's blast caught one of the gangsters early, knocking him to the ground. The others gangsters opened fire on the gathered heroes, sending bullets into the crowd. As the other patrons scrambled, the gangster's volleys pinged harmlessly off Cannonade's chest, deflected off Dragonfly's force field, and missed the mercurial Slick entirely.

Cannonade looked down at the bullet hole in his shirt. "Really gotta get some stronger clothes," he muttered as he charged forward, taking one of the gangsters right under the chin. As he crumbled like a stack of cards, Cannonade felt his buddy sneak up behind him. He took the other gangster down with a simple backhand.

[Supercape]

Adopting a more traditional fighting stance, Slick sized up the two remaining suits. Quickly dashing forward and ducking under the guard of one, she sprung up and delivered a mighty uppercut that turned out his lights without fuss.

Quite where the last standing suit got his courage from, she didn't know, maybe it was more reflex than rationale. Nevertheless, his finger squeezed around the trigger of his gun. Whether it was Slick's speed or the man's shaky aim was moot: the bullet whizzed past Slick and shattered a bottle of unidentified spirits on the wall of the room.

[trollthumper]

Cannonade danced around the lone standing gangster. "You know," he said, "one of these days, these guys'll just learn to drop the guns and be helpful." He brought his fist down, but the gangster had managed to dodge him; he lost momentum for a second, causing the fist to hit a nearby table with enough force to crack it in half. "It'll make it easier at least."

[Fox]

"Possible," Dragonfly noted, her gauntlet emitting a low whine as it started generating a distortion. "But unlikely."

She brought a hand up and unleashed a twisting, angry-looking shockwave...that the gangster managed to evade with the momentum from his earlier dodge. She swore in Japanese before continuing. "Always guns, or something like them. They think it gives them power or authority or something."

[Supercape]

With one man standing, Slick almost walked up to the outnumbered and outgunned enemy. With a quick feint and one-two combination, her fists pounded into the man.

"And don't get up!" she shouted, almost furious, as her hands did most of the talking. Whilst normally cool, her blood was up. The thin veneer that had kept her fury over human experimentation in check had evaporated as her adrenaline levels rose.

[trollthumper]

The gangster took the punch head on, but somehow managed to stay on his feet. The force of the blow did knock his gun askew, however, causing the bullet to fly right past Slick and into the mirror hanging over the bar. As the gangster tried to regain his footing, Cannonade brought his fist down, but the man managed to step out of the way at the last minute. "Would you just get down already?" Cannonade yelled.

[Fox]

Dragonfly had a few choice words in Russian, this time, as she tried to blast him a second time. "Very evasive," she finally, tersely observed, apparently having run out of foul Russian for the time being. "Surprising."

[trollthumper]

The blast caught the gangster right in the chest, propelling him across the room and into the freshly-shattered mirror. He splayed out against the wall like a slab of beef thrown on the counter, then slid down to the floor behind the counter.

"Yeah, not evasive enough, I guess," Cannonade said. "Guess that just leaves the --"

There was a loud thumping noise from upstairs, and the sound of splintering wood. "...boss."

[Supercape]

"What was that?" snapped Slick, pumped up from the fight and the fury.

"The Boss?"

Barely thinking from the red mist over her eyes, she bounded up the stairs to the front door, flinging it open.

"So who thinks they can use human beings like guinea pigs? Nobodies can do that and get away with it, no matter how big they think they are!!!"

[Fox]

"Wait! Not enough--"

Slick was already gone, though. fast "--information." A few more choice foreign words got muttered - and a helpless, questioning look thrown Cannonade's way - as she brought her force field down to let it realign. Quickly, but carefully, she made her way after the enraged hero(ine?). angry too - sympathetic - control - always always have to have control - impulses dangerous unchecked

[trollthumper]

Slick was first to the door, and the first to break it down. And she was the first to get a glimpse at the roiling mass of flesh inside. The boss had probably gotten into the wares. The mass quivered and reacted more and more, especially as Cannonade and Dragonfly ran up the stairs after Slick. Soon, a face emerged from it -- close-cropped hair, piercing blue eyes, and a mouth twisted into a snarl.

"So you're the irritants."

The flesh resolved itself into something approaching a well-muscled man in a tailored pinstripe suit, but even then, things were... off. One of the arms appeared larger than the other, and the fingers on his left hand trailed off into metal and sparks. And every so often, he twitched, as if realigning his body bone by bone.

"Yeah, I could've gone forever without seeing that," Cannonade said.

"I thought about shutting things down... but it turns out the nutbar's stuff works better than expected." He turned to the heroes. "I can... feel you. Within. You can give me just what I need..."

[Supercape]

Slick was used to odd transformations of flesh, her own "natural" form, never used, was hardly a model of normality. However, this was over and above the mutant hermaphroditic body she was born with. This was just plain warped. It was like looking in a house of mirrors.

The adrenaline and rage was galvanised her, despite the shock. With a few mighty steps, she had careered into the boss, and her powerful arm sunk into the heaving mass of flesh with all her momentum behind her. To slick, it felt like punching a sack of potatoes - she had no idea what it felt like to the recipient.

[trollthumper]

The strike managed to sink into the gangster's flesh like clay, but it clearly had some impact. He reeled from the blow, trying to gain his footing... and to Cannonade's eyes, it looked like the legs were trying to shift into some new form to deal with the blow, stretching unnaturally in an attempt to regain balance.

"Yeah, really didn't need to see that," he muttered as he rushed forward, aiming for the shifting man's solar plexus. The gangster seemed to register the attack on some level, though, as Cannonade's fist bumped off what felt like a solid mass of muscle and gristle.

[Fox]

Dragonfly seemed to find entirely new depths of distinctly un-lady-like words across several languages when she caught sight of the roiling mass of flesh. Part of it, though, was directed at herself. stupid - weakened force field - stupid stupid stupid - kind of mistake that gets you killed

Throwing up a hand to unleash a blast of twisting, fragmented reality at what used to be a human, she backed up out of the room and ducked behind what was left of the door, its frame, and the nearby wall. Pressing herself against the building she let her force field drop, counting the seconds it'd take for her defenses to realign themselves.

[trollthumper]

The blast caught the gangster right across the chest. When reality realigned itself to something more linear, the wound appeared twisted -- there was no torn flesh, no ripped suit, not even a drop of blood. It was rather as if something had stuck a corkscrew in the middle of the man and twisted.

Not that he seemed to notice. "This flesh will hold," he muttered as he tried to regain his footing. "What was weak is strong. I thought he was a crank; he just didn't know what he was doing..."

[Supercape]

Following up from Dragonfly's spatial distortion, Slick clambered on top of the man, paused dramatically, and with all the power she could muster, slammed her arms together brutally in a clapping motion, her fists colliding onto his head.

"Brute!" she yelled, "you have no right!"

[trollthumper]

The blow caught the man right in the chain, causing the head to shift and roil. The rest of the body joined in soon after; the flesh in the semblance of a suit drew inward as the legs began to puddle and thin. With a roar of fury, the boss began to fall away, piece by piece, coalescing into a pool on the floor of the room. Before Cannonade's eyes, the puddle quickly began to sluice between the floorboards. He raced after it, trying to find some purchase on the boards. When that failed, he punched right through, and poked his eye into the layer between the floors.

"Can't see a thing," he said. "Where the hell did he go?"

[Supercape]

Slick dropped to her hands and knees, examining the crack in the floor. She couldn't see anything of course, but her skin was littered with chemoreceptors that equalled the best tracking animal.

"Gone from sight, but I can tell you, he had a good smell on him. By which I mean a strong smell. The smell was bad. Greasy I mean, real greasy. Something wrong with him."

She wasn't lying. Whatever had warped his flesh had made him smell like an accident in an industrial chemical factory.

[Fox]

Dragonfly frowned as she heard the commotion, bringing up her force field and coming back into the room as the last of the guy disappearing into the cracks. "Gross," she observed, very scientifically.

"Thoughts? Trail?" she asked, turning the apparent transformation over in her head. clearly not here - probably - hiding? unconscious? - fluid structure - separation? - 'greasy' - lipid structure...single-celled? absurd - still - dangerous Scowling at the floor, the young woman brought her infravision up. Not that she expected to see a whole lot with it, but hopefully the mass of flesh was still giving off heat. It was better than nothing, anyway....

[trollthumper]

Slick picked up something in the air beneath the cracks. In addition to the smell of old must and splintered rotting wood, there was something faintly metallic. Like the tinge of trace metals in filtered city water.

Dragonfly, meanwhile, scanned the building. One thing quickly stood out amongst the other heat signatures -- a thin, tubular shape burning like a man with a fever, pulsing through the walls of the old pub.

[Supercape]

"There's something down here... odd..." said Slick to Dragonfly and Cannonade. "Metallic almost, which is, of course a rather inorganic smell. I can't place it. Could be our man. "

He looked at the cracks in the floor. "Not sure how we can follow him if he flow like water. Unless we just take the sledgehammers to the floor. "

[Fox]

no faith in science Dragonfly lightly coughed, pointing with a finger to trace the progress of the fever-ridden flesh's progress through the walls. "There....mostly. Possible delay between actual and apparent location. Position only, not as good as Slick's analysis...confined to thin lines. Old pipes?"

[trollthumper]

"Where?" Cannonade asked. "Upstairs? Downstairs?" He thought about putting his ear to the wall and listening for the guy... but given as he had just managed to apparently burst his way through a lead pipe and slide through the walls, he didn't want to be on the other end if the guy could hear back. He'd seen The Blob; that never ended well.

[Supercape]

Slick pointed at the Crack "down there. Or at least that's what it smells like. " She gave a powerful stomp at the crack, which widened it a bit but not nearly enough.

"We need to keep up the chase, or that creature is going to slip through our grasp. And I am not about to let that happen" she swore furiously.

[trollthumper]

"Got it," Cannonade said. He ran right to the wall, taking a break to analyze the building. "Old style pub... in this part of town, most of the construction's probably still wood and brick." He took position and aimed at where the wall met the floor. "Hopefully Doc Metropolis can fix this -- it'd be a shame if a place like this went down completely."

Cannonade brought his boot down with the force of a freight train, driving his boot right through the wooden floor -- and tearing a good chunk of brick out of the side of the building. As the dust settled, something slithered up through the pipe, lunging for him.

"You."