ic World Tour: Conspiracy Theory (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

Citizen walked further into the room, striding fearlessly past the unconscious bodies of the battered thugs. "Look for what you came for," he told Indira, "I...wow." He didn't look frightened by her appearance, instead endlessly fascinated as he caught sight of the changes in the girl. "We need to figure out who these people are and what interest they have in you. And make sure they can't find you again." So saying, he shoved his hand into a nearby computer, reaching out through it and everything he could find on their little network. "Just give me a second here," he said, his half-occluded hand glowing a faint green.

[April]

The telekinetic blade dissipated as the telepath glanced around the room, and then shrugged. She cast a surreptitious glance at Indira before kneeling next to the person her blade dropped. Sage's initial shock at seeing the attractive teen shift into a form of living metal gave way to intense curiosity, a feeling that she crushed and shoved aside. Such things would have to wait.

"I'll see what this one knows," she said placing a hand on the unconscious goon. "Then I'll perform a little 'surgery'. I imagine they have more than a few memories I should excise."

[KnightDisciple]

Cobalt Templar gave the room one last sweep, before relaxing and resting his gun construct against his shoulder, a satisfied smile on his face.

"Hm. Not bad. Not bad at all."

He turned to look at Indira, and paused for several seconds, his head tilted a bit to one side.

"Huh. That...explains a lot, actually. We'll have to story-swap a bit more thoroughly later. Right now we need to let these do do the voodoo that they do so well."

He hid the slight discomfort he felt at the thought of Eve so casually performing mental "surgery". She knew what she was doing, and it was likely for the best, all things considered. Didn't meant the thought pleased him, though.

[Fox]

Wraith took stock of the room a final time with those big, featureless black eyes, watching with clear curiosity as Citizen and Sage made use of their respective talents. There wasn't too much time for gawking, though - what with the gunfire and commotion she couldn't know how much time they had before police showed up to ask uncomfortable questions about men and guns and soiled doorways. So she dropped back to all fours, arms becoming oddly-shaped legs again. Her club-tipped tentacles disappeared completely, vanishing into her back even as a number of short, small items like over-sized hairs or undersized feelers grew around her shoulders and neck, waving a bit in even the tiniest wind. Whatever they did they seemed to do a decent job of, as she turned her upper body a couple of times like a dog acquiring a scent and started climbing up - straight up - the side of a stack of crates.

Two things were immediately apparent to Citizen's computer-diving: first, these men (and the larger group they belonged to, though how much larger just wasn't available in the data) were paranoid in a way that made most paranoid people look positively open-source. Their little network was literally a little network, maybe two or three computers hooked up to each other through a very small server, not so much as a single internet connection in sight. They had more of the same propaganda, a good amount of rather cryptic notes about recent and future events, and a manifest detailing - apparently - what was in the surrounding boxes and crates. Most of it was junk, some of it was laughably junk, but a few were inexplicably mysterious, and possibly alien. Other logs made it clear that they'd been buying - cheap - whatever seemed unusual or useful from local thieves and underworld sources, and were now in the process of packing it back up and shipping it...somewhere. No matter how hard he might look, that information simply wasn't anywhere in the computers.

Eve found, fortunately, relatively little that could possibly need editing. For all their paranoia-fueled information gathering and connection-drawing, these men knew depressingly little about anything, little fish in a larger group. There was the distinct impression that they were generally told enough to keep them loyal, to make them feel like part of something, and to feed their alien-based (and often, more generally paranormal-based) fears and little else. One cell of a larger body whose size was unknown, given a mission but given precious little authority.

Her first goon painted a pretty solid picture of how Indira's things had gotten here, though. This bunch had been paying local thieves to steal anything unusual or remotely odd-looking, payment on delivery and no questions asked. Some punk had seen her with something shiny and odd and found an opportunity to steal it, and the now-unconscious rifle-lovers had been almost beside themselves with excitement when they found out what they had, hoping not only to use it as leverage for a better position than where they were but also maybe to use it to bait or track down its owner.

Said owner made a rustling noise from atop a crate, pulling packing paper off an odd-looking bone and a small plastic frame.

[Avenger Assembled]

Citizen deleted every file he could find, turning their hard drives into so much blank filler. Then he overwrote that data with lots of pornography, making sure that between that and the various popup ads and malware they'd now have, that they'd never get anything useful out of these computers without some very embarrassing visits to computer specialists. "Okay, these computers are going to be just about fried..." He pulled his hand out of the computer and wiped it on his jacket, trying to get the filthy stuff off his fingers as if it actually had clung there. "But I think we need to get moving," he said, looking around at everyone. "Has anyone called the police? Is what these men done illegal? I don't know what all the laws are like in this nation."

[April]

"I'm not sure it's a good idea involving the police," she replied reentering the room and dumping the first goon they encountered in a heap with his compatriots. She had taken her time to remove all memory of this encounter from these conspiracy nuts, but she realized that her efforts would only fuel the fire of their madness.

"The Police mean questions, which means involving Indira and her parents." Eve glanced at Sharl, "You saw the look Mr. Singh gave his daughter just because she helped that restaurant. I'm not putting them through that."

[Fox]

"I thank you for your concern," Indira said - hummed - as she climbed head-first down the crates, anatomy rearranging again to bring her upright as she touched the floor. The picture was displaying a hologram of a creature much like her, but bigger, less agile-looking...and perhaps a bit more bronze. She gazed at it with a great fondness, reaching out to touch the insubstantial image before shutting it off again. "But I do not know that we have a choice in the matter: this area is well-populated, and the commotion - especially the gunshot to my head - most likely did not go unnoticed. I am not an...expert...but I do not believe these men were supposed to be here, nor supposed to be this well-armed. It is inconvenient, but perhaps we may be best served by leaving before officials arrive to ask questions I cannot answer."

She paused, and looked...amused? Without much in the way of facial features, it was subtle, but there was something in the eyes. "That we cannot answer, perhaps. We are all aliens here, in our own ways."

[KnightDisciple]

Corbin had watched with great curiosity as the other three young heroes gathered information and covered their tracks.

'Man, these guys move fast. Good to know.'

He nodded at Indira's words.

"Good point. Can everyone fly, or do we need to try bugging out some other way? Indira, you know the area best; should we try to just slip out in civilian mode?"

[Fox]

Indira paused, holding terribly still while she thought that one over. Finally, though, she carefully made her way over to the door they'd come in through, opening the door only wide enough to extend her head on an impossibly long neck up the stairs and just around the corner of the still-open upper doorway to the outside city.

"I think we will be okay," she said (apparently from her body, still in the room), her three black eyes opening back on the rest of her before her extended head made it back down the stairs, "If we hurry. And thank you, all of you - this...this means a great deal to me. It cannot hurt, too, to have these people...how would you say? Off the streets?"

With a little haste and some good fortune (and judicious use of a superpower or two), the heroes were able to get themselves lost into the gathering crowd well before law enforcement personnel pulled into view. They took one look down the stairway into the room and suddenly became the first of many, a collection of police and medics who would probably be spending the next few days trying to clear the area and figure out what had happened. Most of the unconscious goons remained unconscious, but one had woken by the time he was being loaded into a hospital van; he ranted, struggling at the straps he'd been bound with after trying to clutch at anyone within reach. "You have to listen," he was ranting, in clear English. "You don't understand! I don't remember! They were here. They did this! They knew! We were right! You have to believe me - THEY WERE HERE!!"