Public Anomie [IC]

[trollthumper]

Joe turned to the guy in the peacoat, finally processing who it was with the caw. "Hey, Crow," he said. "Not bad. A lot of guys go casual these days." He looked to Ironclad next. "And that's not a bad ensemble, either. Can't see Silhouette, but given how she operates, I'm guessing she's with us. I guess that just leaves Geckoman..."

"Oi, mates!" Joe turned to find Geckoman, approaching around the corner. He'd abandoned the green, all right... or at least allowed it to migrate to his hair. The rest of his costume looked like it came from a photograph of the early days of punk. "Who's up for a night on the town?" he said in a butchered accent that could best be described as "aggressively Cockney."

"...yeah, that'll do," Joe said. "Gang's all here. Let's hit the club."

Inside, things were starting to ramp up. No live acts had taken the stage - at least, not yet. The main floor of the old church had long been converted into a dance floor; kids of all scenes slamdanced, skanked, or just languidly danced on the main floor, depending on what came from the DJ's booth. The pews had long been moved into what was now the bar area; patrons flocked to and from the bar, taking seats in the pews and keeping a watch on the floor.

"All right, time to ask around," Joe said. "Remember, if anyone presses you, go to the fallback positions - Joe Strummer was a god among men, there need to be fewer chain record stores in the city, and Good Charlotte is an abomination before the Lord." With that, he broke from the group, sinking into the crowd.

[Raveled]

Jessica panicked slightly as Joe slipped away from the group and they fragmented into the crowd. She took a deep breath, which wasn't the best idea in the close confines of the club, and moved out onto the dance floor. She tried to groove and shake like the rest of the nubile teens on display, but her acute awkwardness at the whole situation meant that she quickly abandoned that idea. In fact she soon found herself sitting at the bar, letting her spine conform to the shallow curve of the pew. Something caught her eye and she glanced up at a corner, where a cheap webcam was apparently playing the part of a security camera. The young genius' mouth curved into a wicked smile and she reached out with her mind, diving right into the club's security system.

It was child's play to brush past the bog-standard firewalls they'd installed and take control of the system. She panned the cameras around (well, as much as she could when they were effectively taped into place) and scanned the crowd from several different angles. She wasn't entirely sure what they were looking for, but she was sure that she'd find it first.

[Aoiroo]

Silhouette made some notes of the people who approached, she already knew what Jessica looked like, Crow didn't surprise her that much. Geckoman, well she had to honestly guess if that was his actual hair color, if not then either that was the best semi-perm dye on the market or he'd have to redye or go a few months with that tuff of grass. Joe took charge of the situation, she was a bit glad he knew her well enough to know she wouldn't come out in civilian attire and couldn't help but lightly giggle at Joe's amendments of punk culture.

When they went into the building, Sil more or less kept her eyes on everyone but Joe. She absolutely knew he could take care of himself, he proven that much. The other three, she didn't doubt so much as worry, they were all so young. Not that she could really compare, she had maybe five years on them at most. Still she knew for fact that it was mid to late twenties when someone really got set in their ways so much so that they have a very very hard time changing, but younger than that there was still development even if it was a little bit and a hiccup like say implanted suggestions could really mess someone up.

[Quinn]

The second Morgan entered the club, it was like he was a whole new person. His steps were somewhat faster, more self-assured; he'd done this kind of thing back in Boston, legwork, asking lots of pointed questions, and just plain listening. And he was getting very, very good at it. The teen stuffed his worries vis-a-vis Summers into the back of his mind, there'd be time to panic over whether he was going to be expelled after they busted this psychic criminal.

With that in mind, Morgan Crowe went to work. He walked around the club like he owned the place, dancing here and there, buying a soda or two and asking discreet questions, leading those he talked to, slowly drawing out the answers he was looking for, while keeping one hand on his bag strap at all times. He wasn't quite sure what the feeling would be like, but the second he got an inkling something wasn't quite right with his head, he would be out the door and coat on in a heartbeat.

That did give him an idea, however...

Coward. I know you'll hear this eventually. And if you keep hiding, I'll just think it louder. Weak. Cowardly. Scaredy-cat. You want to shove your knives into some innocent guy's brain, just 'cause you don't like his music? Come out, I dare you.

[Raveled]

Jessica cycled through the cameras, her eyes dropping half-closed as her perception of the physical club around her faded, replaced by an overlay of its electronic sensors. There was a bundle of information, flowing from camera to camera; there was a knot of data as sales were made and rung up at the bar; there was a woman being held against her will in the manager's office.

The woman's eyes snapped open at that one and she stood up straight, easily spotting the spiral staircase that lead up to the second level and the manager's office. She made a beeline through the crowd to it, still half-immersed in the digital world. She sent out three messages -- a text to Joe, telling him to meet her at the stairs, a text to everyone else telling them to get ready for action, and a command to the manager's electronic doorlock to open itself.

[trollthumper]

Joe had been keeping his ears open on the dance floor, hearing the same variation on the same tale with the circumstances changing. Here a Goth kid whose best friend had returned to school shedding the black and dismissing his "morbid" phase, despite the fact that he'd been perkier than a puppy before hand. Here a high schooler whose best friend had pawned off his game collection, saying he didn't need to lose himself on fantasies. Here a street punk who noticed the Crusaders had been thinning out in his corner of town, and he'd even seen a few of them about the town, dismissing their violent and racist past

While I'd like to think they managed to pull their heads out of their asses from sheer force of will, Joe thought, the pattern kinda says otherwise. Someone's at the core of this... but where the hell is he?

That's when he received Ironclad's text... and as he looked up across the dance floor, he noticed shadows dancing in the windows of what was once the rectory, two figures in a struggle. Ask and ye shall receive, he thought as he took off to meet Ironclad.

[Quinn]

Morgan sipped an iced tea and kept a suitably fascinated expression on his face, as he heard the the latest account of the evening of how some dude with a tendency to dress from head to foot in black suddenly started wearing beige slacks and white shirts. He'd been listening to a lot of these, and drinking a lot of iced tea, truth be told. But a pattern was starting to emerge, something definitley fishy; a lot of the people who'd come back...re-educated (his mind rebelled at referring to it in that particular euphemism, but it seemed to be the most apt) had apparently recently mentioned they were visiting this therapist's clinic. The Faith Wilkins Centre.

He took another sip from the drink and nodded politely as the fellow who'd been talking about his buddy's personality about-face finished off his own drink and headed onto the dance floor. Then his cellphone started vibrating; he idly took it out of his coat pocket and flipped it open, scanning the text message. A smile quirked his lips as he noted the request to get ready for action, and he threw back the rest of the iced tea.

Showtime.

[Aoiroo]

Sil got the message on her radio link and was sprinting towards the stairs ASAP. She kept an eye out and found the others had gotten the message as well, including Crow who was taking a second to put on his costume. It sort of made her glad she hadn't bothered the civilian blend in, that sort of thing was so troublesome to deal with.

As she ran to the room things like doors or crowds hardly slowed her down as she sliped through the cracks and ran up the stairs until she entered the room without hesitation. Still she kept hidden, sticking to the wall getting ready to strike.

[Raveled]

Jessica met Joe at the stairs, quickly unfastening the velvet rope that blocked it off. "Hat up," she said to him, "and keep security off me. There's one guy up in the manager's office. Body armor and camo pants, very partisan-chic. I'll handle him myself." At the last moment she slipped the steel rings off her fingers and handed them to the man. "Watch these. Don't want to break them when I armor up."

The young woman jogged up the stairs, touching the bracelet on her wrist. The blinding energy field that unfolded was shielded from the rest of the club by a partition that blocked off direct sight of the office door; said door opened at a touch from Ironclad's gauntleted hand. She spun in, raising one wrist blaster and aiming it directly at the armored man's head. "Put the lady down gently," she said, "and come quietly. Contrary to popular expectation, I don't like hurting people but I will if forced. Oh yeah," she added. "Don't say anything, or I'll push you through a wall head-first."

[trollthumper]

Joe reached the top of the stairs about the same time everyone else did. There, he saw what Ironclad had seen over the cameras. The man was well-built, about average height, and clad in black and blue Kevlar from head to toe. He currently had a woman in her early 30s dressed in Goth wear in an arm bar, pressed against the floor of the office.

"Hey. Asshole." That caused the costumed man's head to turn. "Let her go now, or you're leaving here through the skylight."

"You don't understand what you're doing," he said. His voice had an unnatural timber, like he was speaking through gravel or dragging a file across the roof of his mouth. "She sells delusion. Tells children to give in to fear, and rage, and doubt. Leads them into loss."

"Yeah, 'cause the kids down there look so freaking distraught."

"Like you would understand. You wear your loyalties on your sleeve. A group of thugs and street toughs who think they exemplify honesty and industry. You're no better than she is."

"Nope." He entered a fighter's stance. "But I bet we look like freaking moral exemplars next to your screwed-up ass."

[Aoiroo]

She both hated and loved talkative villains. She hated them because usually the more they had the say the more likely they were just trying to delude themselves that they were in fact justified for their actions and that there course was in fact the right one. She loved them because deluding yourself was something hard to do without a bit of concentration on said delusion so they paid less attettion to the shadows around them and this time was no different.

Silhouette jumped out of the shadows like a pit viper taking the man from behind with a quick sweep to the legs while she took one hand and dug it into his brown loches getting a good grip while she plowed him faceforward into the floor. Once he was down it was pretty easy for her to use her knee to exert her full weight down on his torso and one of his arms while she held the other with the hand holding onto his hair. She did all this while continiously pushing down on his head so his face was kissing the carpet,

"Shut up."

[Quinn]

It didn't take much to spot the chaos erupting in the office, given that four heroes had just piled in there, and the crowd nearest was raising worried voices. The teen was up and off the seat in a heartbeat, into the nearest washroom and from there to a stall. Not the nicest place to change, but needs must when heroics are in the offing. Morgan didn't even need to think as he threw on the boots, coat, and hood, tying the bandanna around his face in a few seconds flat. Inwardly, he racked his brains, trying to come up with something sufficiently scary to say; he was working right now in the footsteps of guys like Arrowhawk, or the Raven! This was it, patrols against spookitys were one thing, but this was his first genuine arrest!

Don't mess this up, Crowe. Don't mess this up.

As Silhouette ground the strange man's face into the ground, another figure clad entirely in black stepped out from behind Cannonade, his boots hitting the ground with quiet thuds as he walked up and kneeled beside the would-be criminal. Motioning for Silhouette to let his head up briefly, Crow fixed the man's eyes with his own avian ones, speaking in a tone he'd deliberately pitched to mimic an angry Headmaster Summers. Slow. Cold. And gravelly (which, Morgan noted with some irritation, was positively murder on the throat.)

"Takes a certain level of stupid to pull a crime in Freedom City. Assault. Battery. Psychological abuse. Nasty stuff. You're under arrest."

[Ecalsneerg]

Geckoman, however, did not see his allies rushing away in pursuit of their adversary. Rather, he had somehow ended up in the middle of the floor, and had become somewhat extricated in a large circle pit. While craning and leaping trying to get a good look around the club, his efforts were somewhat futile.

Gasping for air, he emerged near the bar, his mohawk somewhat dented by someone's arm slamming into his head. "Woah," he breathed, wiping the sweat from his brow. "... where is everyone?"

[Raveled]

Ironclad powered down her weapons as her fellow heroes stepped into the fray. They certainly looked like they could handle one guy in Kevlar. She started feeling distinctly superfluous when her gaze landed on the woman the bad guy had just been trying to choke. She went over to her and carefully lead her away from the developing fight, making sure to stay between her and the combatants. "It's alright. We've got this handled." She took the civilian down the stairs and around the edge of the dance floor, finally sitting with her at the bar. Ironclad's helmet folded back and away, and she brushed a lock of hair out of her face. "Are you alright? Do you know who that man is?"

[trollthumper]

"No idea," said the woman. "He was waiting for me when I came in from the floor. Knocked me down, told me I was selling despair. Told me to give it up or he'd be back."

"With more than harsh words, huh?" Joe turned to the bound man. "Y'know, I gotta wonder what kind of creep goes around trying to save people through brainwashing..."

With a quick stride, he was across the room. He reached down and pulled the mask from the man's head. He wasn't trying to be gentle or easy about it - he felt the Kevlar tear under his assault. The mask came free... and Joe found himself staring at a guy who couldn't have been older than 20. His face was rough, still bearing a few traces of acne, but he had the build of a linebacker and close-cropped brown hair.

"...can't say I was expecting that."

"You don't understand," the now-not-so-masked man said. "She preys on children. Tells them to lose themselves in sorrow and decay. She can't be trusted."

"Yeah, and you look like a real expert on what the kids want."

[Aoiroo]

Silhouette sat down quietly as the others took their turn, but eventually she took the mans face and shoved it back into the carpet once more.

"No, you don't understand something so why don't I spell out some facts for you. You are in a room with four individuals who have fought real monsters, creatures who spread decay and sorrow as well as death and destruction in their wake. Each one of us has our own specialty in dealing with them of course, but there is an impressive list and story we can all share where we have thrown down and beaten creatures who would have killed you, and probably the entire contents of this club without a second thought. In comparison, what you are? You couldn't even stand up against just me."

Pulling his hair this time she pulled him up from the carpet,

"Now, do you feel like cooperating now? Give us some answers perhaps? Because you aren't a monster I don't think, but if you continue to resist we can give you a monsters treatment and I'm sure you've seen the news about what happens there."

[trollthumper]

"If you were the heroes you claimed to be," the man in the Kevlar said, "you would help them. The lost, the lonely, the distraught. They are... they are..."

The young man blinked, as if he was coming out of a trance. He looked up from the rug to Silhouette, then to the others. Panic slowly crept in as he realized he was technically being held within the confines of his interrogator.

"What the hell? Where am I? What am I doing in this suit?"

"Y'know," Cannonade said, "I'm just rearing to hear the answers to those questions myself."

[Raveled]

Ironclad pursed her lips and leaned forward in her chair, using all the tips for social speaking she'd read up on. "The man we're looking for seems to be some kind of mind-controller," she told the other woman. "He seems to hate -- well, quite a lot of things, really. Loud music, roleplaying games, liberal political parties -- pretty much anything that wasn't on Leave It to Beaver. Have you noticed anyone else disappearing from the, uh, scene?" The heroine took in the whole of the club with a wave of her hand. "Bands, singers, regular customers, promoters, agents, anyone like that?"

[trollthumper]

"No bands," said the manager, "but we've had a few regulars who've been staying away. I thought they were just sick or busy or something - you get that with kids sometimes, real life overtakes 'em. I mean, I heard rumors that there was a place these kids were being put through the ringer," she said. "Where they were given the whole 'moral decay' hard sell. Happy shiny moral righteousness, all that stuff. 'Be a better you.'"

Meanwhile, up in the office, Joe looked to the young man. "So, mind shedding a little light on the subject?"

"I... I don't remember a lot. I remember a hospital, and... I don't know what happened..."

Joe took off out of the office and down to the dance floor, where he found a moshing Geckoman on the main floor. He put a hand on his shoulder. "You any good getting info from guys who've had their memories pulped?"

[Aoiroo]

Sil backed off of the kid when it was clear he was just another victum, way off. She perched herself on the office desk with one knee in an arm with the other dangling down. She looked a small and lonely like that even if she just took down a man eight five inches taller and sixty pounds heavier as she sighed. The faceless mask didn't give way to the expression on her face when she said,

So another victum pushed into this whirling sea of psycological bulls#*t. How the hell are we supposed to know who to fight?

Looking at the man she said with a weak voice,

"How's your back?"

[Raveled]

Ironclad listened to the woman and blinked once, twice, three times. In that space she had inputted the key phrases into several choice search engines and crawled through page after page of possibilities. In a moment she had a lead and in another she had a plan. "Listen," she said, leaning in close to the woman, "try to remember some names, if you can. I have to go talk to a... colleague."

Ironclad stepped away from the bar and hovered in the air, hunting for a familiar face. She saw two close together and zipped over, the downwash of her jets clearing the press around Cannonade and Geckoman. "Gentlemen," she said, dropping to the dance floor with a solid thud. "I think I have a lead. A new therapy center north of the river, specializing in young people. Their rhetoric sounds a lot like what our friend upstairs was going on about. I think it'd be worth checking out."

[Ecalsneerg]

Joe took off out of the office and down to the dance floor, where he found a moshing Geckoman on the main floor. He put a hand on his shoulder. "You any good getting info from guys who've had their memories pulped?"

Geckoman wiped a thin sheen of sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. "I could probably try, yeah." He looked around warily. "I might need a quieter, calmer place to do it, though. This isn't the most productive place for a delicate psychological situation." His voice had less of its usual manic cheeriness, and carried a more professional, experienced edge.

Ironclad stepped away from the bar and hovered in the air, hunting for a familiar face. She saw two close together and zipped over, the downwash of her jets clearing the press around Cannonade and Geckoman. "Gentlemen," she said, dropping to the dance floor with a solid thud. "I think I have a lead. A new therapy center north of the river, specializing in young people. Their rhetoric sounds a lot like what our friend upstairs was going on about. I think it'd be worth checking out."

"Leads are good. Huge fan of leads, they help solve crimes," said Chris absently, fingering a frayed bit of denim on his jeans. "But I thought you guys wanted me to help deal with someone with damaged memories? I can't really do both at once. What's the plan?"

[trollthumper]

Joe looked from Ironclad to Geckoman. "Think we'd be better off trying to get what we can out of the guy's head," he said. "We've got a lead on where the place is. That's good. But we don't know what's going on in there. We know there's one guy who's good at pulping minds. But we don't know if he's got anyone else with him, and how many guys he's got under his thumb. More we get out of this guy before we go storming the castle, the better off we'll be."

[Quinn]

Crow stepped forward from the corner he'd been standing in, having quietly excused himself from the interrogation once it became painfully obvious his appearance was once again a tad more intimidating than would have been neccessary.

"Faith Wilkins Centre, yeah. Heard the same name around before I got here. Lot of teens dropping out of the scene, parents getting them into 'therapy'." He resisted the urge to use air-quotes on the word 'therapy', instead restricting himself to a far colder tone than earlier. Psychic re-education. Manipulating the minds of innocents. This was something that flat out would not be tolerated. The young hero's voice went completely flat, with a distinct undertone his friends had referred to as "walking across their grave scary".

"Give me half a night. Less, maybe. Depends on luck there. Do surveillance, intelligence, planning. Very good at that. Then we kick him in the teeth so hard he'll be spitting them out for a week."

[Raveled]

"Breaking and entering is one way to do it," Ironclad admitted gingerly, "but I was thinking of walking in the front door. I generally don't like to bring the Lab into crime fighting -- that's not really what it's for, after all -- but if I approach the center with the offer of a mutual research project or even a grant, I should be able to meet a few of the higher-ups. Of course," she added, "I don't need to talk to them. I just need to be near their computers for a few seconds."