ic Science Shenanegians (IC)

[Raveled]

GM

Jacob rushed over to the hole in the wall and leaned out of it, trying to spot the fog as it sped away. He punched and kicked the remaining fragment of wall, yelling out in anger and fear. Cathy moved over to Wail, bouncing the crying newborn on her shoulder. "Keith! Oh my god. These men, they blew our wall down! They had guns and... they rushed in and kidnapped Lamont!"

Jacob strode over, pain and anger written clearly over his face. "Please. Please. Please! You have to get my boy back. Promise me!"

[Gizmo]

"Get ahold of yourself, man," LaMarr demanded with a voice steeped with authority. "Turkeys don't kidnap one of my students without bringing a world of hurt down on their heads." He punctuated the statement by pounding one fist into a meaty palm, the size of the hands involved making it a powerful gesture. The absconding vehicle was already long gone but fortunately Wail was no stranger to investigation. Granted, back in the old days Javed and Yelena had been more inclined toward gathering clues while Keith focused on interrogation, but he'd done his fair share of mystery solving on his own as well.

Unceremoniously stepping out of the hole in the wall, he landed next to the unconscious intruders with a thundering impact, leaving two boot-shaped impressions in the pavement. Rummaging through their uniforms turned up their advanced energy weapons, which LaMarr disposed of with a snap, self-destructing ear pieces and a distinctive badge with fine black lines dividing a round shield into individual hexagons. The aging hero had to rack his mind for a few moments, stroking his grey-streaked beard thoughtfully, before he could place it as the logo of a private security company with a reputation for high tech equipment and shady dealings. Which might explain what they want with an inventor like Lamont, he reasoned with a frown.

[Raveled]

GM

While Wail was examining the unconscious bodies of the soldiers who abducted Lamont, he could hear the wailing of a police siren drawing nearer. He turned just as the cruiser was pulling up to the landing sight and the officer within stepped out. To the hero's surprise, it was the same thick-around-the-middle officer who had been at the convenience store. "Hey there, Mr. LaMarr. Small world, huhn? You and me meeting twice in one night like this. But then I guess this sort of stuff is second nature to you." He circled carefully around the unconscious bodies. "So, uh. Mind giving me the run-down on what happened here? We got some reports of an explosion and gun fire."

[Gizmo]

"Less than it used to be," Wail admitted, straightening from his crouch over the unconscious soldiers and cracking his thick neck loudly as aging bones protested faintly to the evening exertions so far. He gave the officer a brief accounting of what had happened since they had last spoken, which didn't take very long given how little the broad-shouldered teacher really knew about the situation beyond the obvious. "Shouldn't have any trouble booking these fools," he rumbled, noting the pile of thugs and the witnesses in the smashed apartment above, "but you oughta know they've got friends with deep pockets. Don't think I got your name...?"

[Raveled]

GM

"Greg Tate," the officer replied, gazing up at the hole in the apartment wall. "Damn. It's bad enough when the bad guys are just knocking over banks or stealing from some big research lab, but it really hurts when they hit the folks on the street. Excuse me." The officer walked back to his squad car and spent a few moments on the radio, calling in the details of the scene. After that he picked his way carefully around the debris, heading for the front door of the building. "I'm going to go up and talk to the family," he said, "but if you need anything, give me a shout."

[Gizmo]

"'Give me a shout,' he says..." Wail rumbled to himself shaking his bald head and briefly rolling his eyes skyward. Letting it go, the experienced hero considered his next move. Assuming Lamont's kidnappers were on the payroll their insignia suggested, he had at least one lead to follow up on. Sloppy carrying ID like that, but they might have just been that cocky. Certainly they would have been long gone before anyone would have had a chance to respond had he not already been on the scene. Cracking his sizable knuckles, he prepared to make some pointed inquiries among those who might have more information for him to go on.

[Raveled]

GM

It had been some time since 1-800-JUSTICE pounded the pavement and trawled the streets of Freedom City for clues, and Wail's name didn't carry as much weight as it once had, but the super-dense street hero quickly corrected that with a few violent altercations. The bleeding and broken street criminals pointed him towards a particular warehouse in Greenbank; it seems that the local gangs there had been pushed out by helmeted brutes who operated with military precision. With a location in hand, the loud lecturer made his way towards the Mona-Glenn bridge, pausing on the south bank to look over to the former train district. Somewhere out there was his student, an innocent young genius, and it was up to him to make sure that the young man was saved tonight.

[Raveled]

Ironclad hovered in the air a couple hundred feet above a particular warehouse in the Greenbank district of the city. The Lab, that tremendous collaboration of intellects and inventors that made up a good part of her world, had been having problems recently. Specifically some very powerful, very highly-restricted chemicals had gone missing and the young genius had applied herself to the task of hunting them down. After a long afternoon of designing a chemical sniffer, she set out on the town, following the aerial trail until it lead her here. Now she was considering how exactly to go about getting the chemicals back.

The heroine's attention was pulled away from the warehouse as she noticed a large figure skulking through the maze of storehouses and old train stations that dotted the district, heading towards the warehouse that she had marked. The battlesuited heroine maneuvered around the figure and dropped to the ground, sneaking up behind him as well as she could. She was a building away when he heard her and spun around. She tensed for a fight -- and then relaxed suddenly. "Wait," she hissed. "I recognize you. You're that hero that teaches in Lincoln, right?"

[Gizmo]

LaMarr had been reflecting that perhaps his days of being able to sneak about unnoticed were over when the faint tapping of metal boots on concrete caught his attention. The gleaming green and gold of the figure he found behind him didn't look particularly associated with the uniforms of the mercenaries he'd handled earlier that evening, but it was question that assured him she wasn't involved with his quarry. Not only would the soldiers for hire have already know who he was, they would have opened with cannons blazing, not dialogue. "Wail," he confirmed in a bass rumble, folding his arms across his broad chest and planting his feet. "Can't say I'm up on all the new tights and brights these days. You'd be?"

[Raveled]

"I'm Ironclad." The armor's blank helmet folded away so Wail could see the young inventor's face and short blonde hair. She blinked at the darkness for a moment as her eyes adjusted, then the armor folded back over her head again and the world was outlined by the suit's sensor suite again. "I'm with the Lab. These guys," she added, gesturing to the warehouse, "stole some very powerful chemicals used in genetic engineering. I've tracked them all over the city, and I believe they still have it stored in the warehouse." She paused and her helmet turned back to regard the older hero. "Why are you looking for them?"

[Gizmo]

Though a little surprised by the youth of the woman behind the metal mask, LaMarr admitted to himself that more and more people seemed surprisingly young to him these days, particularly those in the hero game. She certainly wasn't any younger than he'd been when he first gone by 'Wail'. It took a moment to wrack his memory of recent events and recall what the Lab was; once he had, Ironclad's involvement with the high-tech mercenaries made perfect sense. "Jokers stole a student of mine, too. Smart kid. Nothing like a little kidnapping to round out a rap sheet." He tactfully avoided mentioning Lamont's likely metahuman abilities. It wasn't his place to reveal, at least not until it became more relevant to this impromptu sting operation.

[Raveled]

Ironclad inhaled slowly and deeply when Wail mentioned the kidnapping. "That... that ranks a little bit higher than some stolen chemicals, yes." She turned back to focus on the warehouse, her sensors probing it and trying to peek inside. The fact that she couldn't was very nearly the most damning thing about the whole situation. "I didn't see them bring anything in. I mean, people have been arriving in ones and twos all night, but they haven't been moving any boxes or crates big enough to hold a person. Certainly not a teenager." She fell silent for a moment before adding, "They did open up the roof an hour or so ago and closed it a few minutes later, but I didn't see any aerial craft approach during that time."

[Gizmo]

"They had some kind of flying saucer thing earlier. Could have been cloaked or some other trash." LaMarr was by no means a technology expert and while he'd made a point to stay reasonably current with the various devices readily available to the public over the decades, his general policy when it came to super-science was to assume that anything that had been considered science fiction fare in his youth was probably now a potential reality. "Worst case, they don't have him here and I knock heads together until another lead falls out. Coming?"

[Raveled]

Ironclad nodded slightly when Wail mentioned the flying saucer, and grinned under her helmet when he mentioned kicking the door down and smacking the goons inside around. "Ah, Wail. Never say you don't know how to show a lady a good time." She fired her thrusters and boosted high into the air, coming down boots-first on the warehouse's skylight. She fired the thrusters again and hovered in the air, her combat computer immediately picking out targets amid the well-lighted interior. "Surprise inspection from the teamster's union," she called out. "You guys have been paying your dues right?"

Most of the warehouse workers fled at the sight of the armored heroine literally bringing the roof down, but several pulled out concealed weapons and readied them for combat. Two in particular, a statuesque woman with blue-black hair and a clean-cut gentlemen with rugged features and a bald head, both dressed in conservative suits, glared at her. "A hero," the woman spat. "Well, we can deal with that, can't we dear?"

The man grinned and cracked his knuckles. "Oh, we certainly can." He glanced back and around at the armed workers. "Pin her down," he said. "Don't let he get to the tunnels! Block and Tackle will stop her here!"

[Raveled]

"Block and Tackle, ehn?" Ironclad spun in the air and, after a moment's deliberation, picked out the woman as the bigger threat. It was a deliberation based on her literal size, admittedly, but the young genius had no desire to take her on hand-to-hand. If this was just the front door, then there might be a lot of fighting yet to come and she had to keep the armor in pristine condition. "I wonder what happens to a pulley if you knock out half of it?" She brought both wrist blasters to bear and hammered out a full power shot. It caught the tall woman full in the chest and she was thrown across the warehouse. It was several seconds before she managed to stand up again.

Block turned to watch his wife's trajectory, and once she landed he glared at Ironclad angrily. "You're going to live just long enough to regret that, hero!"

[Gizmo]

"I really don't, little sister," LaMarr told Ironclad with a deep rumble underwritten with amusement. There wasn't time to elaborate before the armored heroine crashed into the warehouse from above, leaving her broad-shouldered elder to tear open the front door and follow her inside just in time to see one of the two presumably super-powered enforces go flying.

Hearing Block's angry threat, Wail boomed, "Big man," before letting out a sonic shout that distorted the air with its force, slamming into his target like a pillar of concrete. The villain went flying backward in the same direction as his wife, but unlike her he didn't get up again afterward, simply lying in a groaning pile while the earsplitting educator continued to walk forward, unabated.

[Raveled]

Ironclad and Wail's blitzkrieg assault had put Block and Tackle on the back foot, but their soldiers weren't so willing to back down easily. Each one of them snugged their weapon up to their cheek in proper position before firing, using short bursts. Their professional manner didn't make much difference to Wail, who simply waded through the hail of lead, but Ironclad wasn't so lucky. Her armor was designed to angle most of it up and away, but an errant shell ricocheted up into armpit and shattered a connection. The suit quickly routed around it, but it brought the flying heroine down to the ground, hard.

After a moment she stalked over to one of the soldiers, who was quickly changing the magazine in his gun. She yanked the weapon out of his hands, tossed it into the corner, and clobbered him smoothly. "Don't you read the papers? Guns get you hurt."

[Gizmo]

Snorting at the pointless posturing of the little men with guns, Wail continued his forward advance unhurriedly until he was in a good position to let loose another sonic bellow, sweeping his superhumanly powerful voice across the room in an arc to throw several of the mercenaries spinning off of their feet to crash into the walls, support beams and floor with a variety of painful crunching sounds. Towards the back of the auditory attack, Tackle pushed her way through largely unhindered and made a beeline for Ironclad, apparently less concerned with avenging her partner's premature knockout than he had been about her being attacked.

[Raveled]

Ironclad checked her sensors and saw the last two upright soldiers readying their weapons. Clearly they were waiting for her to pick a target so that the other could attack her without worrying about retaliation. So, instead, she put out a hand to either side and blasted both of them at the same moment! They were caught off-guard and flung a good distance; neither was going to get up again. She smirked under her helmet and straightened, just in time for Tackle to hit her full in her back and ram her into the wall. She ground the armored heroine's face into the wall, abrading away the concrete. "You're gonna pay for that hit," she hissed. "First I'm gonna tear that armor off, and then I'm gonna really start hurting you!"

[Gizmo]

Tackle's threat was met by thunderous footfalls followed by pain as a powerful fist slammed into the side of her jaw, physically forcing her off of Ironclad and dazing her senses. "Think you're pretty tough, fool?" Wail asked coolly as he took advantage of the villain's disorientation to lock his arms around her from behind, pinning her in a crushing grapple despite her own considerable superhuman strength. "Punk like you wouldn't know tough if it hit you like a ton of bricks. Now quiet down." Looking over to the armored heroine, the earsplitting educator asked, "You alright there?"

[Raveled]

Ironclad pushed herself back from the wall, shaking her head sharply. She did a quick diagnostic and noticed a flutter in one of her shoulder servos. "Not really," she groaned to Wail. "This crazy woman nearly popped my arm off." She routed the suit's power around the damaged section and gave Tackle a hard look. "If I have to end up replacing the should joint because of you..." She hauled back and socked the other woman on the chin; Tackle's head snapped back, but when it came forward again she merely had a bloody lip.

"I've had drinks that kick more than you, little girl!" She spat blood at the heroine and strained against Wail's arms. "Let me go, and we can finish this fight properly!"

[Gizmo]

"Funny how 'properly' sounds a lot like 'so you're not losing', girl," Wail noted with a conversational tone marred by a grunt as Tackle strained against his grip. Tightening his arms kept the villainess pinned but she was strong enough to push back against his superdense muscles and avoid taking any real injury. "Look, we can keep at this all day, but I've got better places to be. You saw what I did to your old man. You really want to make me raise my voice when your head's right next to mine?"

[Raveled]

Tackle tensed against Wail's arms for a long moment, then relaxed and hung against him, limp as a wet noodle. "Alright. I give up. I won't fight you anymore. Just... please let me go, so I can check on Block."

Ironclad backed off a few steps, eying the large woman uneasily. "Why should we trust you? Why are you concerned about what happens to him? You villain types usually aren't up on the whole happy-family, sacrifice-for-another deal."

Tackle's head snapped up and she glared at Ironclad, curling her lip. "I care, you Ñ…Ð¾Ð»Ð¾Ð´Ð½Ð°Ñ Ñука, because he's my husband and I want to make sure he's not dead."

Ironclad swallowed, feeling a blush spread across her face and feeling profoundly stupid for what she had just said. She opened her mouth to reply, then thought better of it and simply looked at Wail.

[Gizmo]

"He's not dead," Wail noted flatly, turning himself and Tackle in the direction of the downed villain and releasing his grip, giving the statuesque woman just enough of a shove on the shoulder to force her a step away in case of any immediate counterattack. "I've got forty years of practice and control backing that up." He folded his arms again and kept a close eye on Tackle from behind his sunglasses. His act of trust wasn't quite to magnanimous as it might have seemed; his voice was more powerful than even his super-strong fists and he didn't need to be standing right next to the concerned wife to use it if it turned out to be a ploy. The aging hero doubted it, however. "So maybe ask yourself what fool thing you're doing where you have to rely on an old man's good mood to keep your partner alive." If LaMarr's tone had been flat before, it now reverberated with ill contained anger and indictment.

[Raveled]

GM

"Some of us have to work for a living," Tackle replied snippily. "We can't coast on old successes, Wail, or live off Mommy and Daddy's money, Ironclad." She tossed a glare over her shoulders. "What? You think superheroes are the only ones that keep up to date on the cape and cowl crowd?" She knelt down and checked Block over, her hands moving professionally and with the ease of long practice. She was apparently convinced that he wasn't hurt too badly, because she lifted him out of the rubble of the wooden crates and laid him on the concrete floor. She took over her suit coat and made a pillow for his head, then sat next to him and watched the pair of heroes. "Well? What happens now? You call the police and report us for... loitering? Trespassing?"