Doktor, Banker, Breaker, Thief (IC)

[Dr Archeville]

Time for my first trump.

"I have been called wild, and a card," the mystery man exclaimed, "but I am not Wildcard. But that was just the first of your three guesses -- two more to go! So, now, the second one, but this is a visual clue." He placed his hands on the edges of his seemingly worn jacket, "I am going to draw something from my pocket, slowly; it is a simple device with no moving parts." He waited for Breaker to indicate his agreement, then pulled out a simple black hard rubber ball, about as big as a billiard ball.

I wonder if he'll piece together that the lack of any obvious bulge in the pocket from which I drew this. And that this jacket is an altered version of my Labcoat.

Final calculations...

He tossed the ball lazily between his hands. "Now, watch carefully..."

Suddenly he threw the ball to the right, bouncing it off a wall, ricocheting up off the ceiling, striking one of the henchmen smack in the back of the head! It bounced again, and again, and again, careening off walls and desks and thug's heads, knocking some off-balances and into one another. One staggered back and conked his head on the marble counter, one stepped to the side to avoid the doomsphere but slipped on a loose pen rolling on the floor, another bolted and tripped over the dangling power cord from a coffee pot.

All as the Doktor had calculated, based on quick reads of the environment and the quick reads he'd done of the henchmen's body languages. In moments, all fifteen were down, and the simple black rubber ball rolled to a stop at the "old man's" feet.

"Study your maths," he said with a wink and barely-concealed smirk. "Key to the universe."

Mentally exhausting, but worth it!

[Quinn]

Breaker was distinctly unamused. Well, not entirely. He was half-amused. The show was quite entertaining, but those were his boys. He looked flat at the old man, and two big ham-sized fists were made obvious to the Doktor.

"That right there? Not nice. VERY not nice. If I hadn't made a deal, I'd be turnin' you into a greasy spot on the floor. Next time I'll know better."

The powerhouse looked flat at the old man, cracking his knuckles in turn. The elderly gentleman could almost see the hamster wheels in his head turning faster and faster; he mused out loud again.

"Okay, so you're a smar'ypants. Bit of a jerk, but a smar'ypants. And y'like to make it obvious you're a smar'ypants. I'd say Conundrum, but nah, 'e's got class, from what I 'eard. You like to play with toys, but Toy Boy never tackled the Innerceptors..." The powerhouse leaned back in a very self-satisfied manner, and smiled; this time, wickedly. "Nah, you strike me more as a Doc Otaku. Where's your Angels, Doc?"

Oh, snap.

[Dr Archeville]

WHAT?!

FIGHT FIGHT FIIIGHT!

Not going to lose my temper... not going to lose my temper... stick with the plan... stick with the- oh, scrap it!

The 'old Russian's' jaw clenched, and he glared daggers at the mohawked man. "You think I'm that... that depraved, unimaginative little..."

In a smooth, practiced motion that should certainly not be possible for a simple elderly merchant, the man's hand darted into another pocket in his jacket and pulled out a slim silvery wand, studded with tiny buttons and splitting into three tiny barrels at one end. As he drew the item his thumb danced over the studs, and it hummed to life. The man was enveloped in a soft blue aura of light, shot through with tiny electrical arcs dancing all across him. His clothing shifted as the electrically sensitive fibers reset to their original position, and the makeup and prosthetics on his hands and face melted or burned away. In seconds, the 'old Russian' before Breaker was gone, and before him was a much younger man with long blonde hair and a pristine white labcoat.

Then he turned the wand on the would-be thief, quick as a snake, and unleashed hell upon him.

"That is who I am."

[Quinn]

Breaker's eyes went as wide as saucers, though his voice was remarkably dry.

"...Ah, crap."

BOOM.

The explosion enveloped the powerhouse, and he and the chair promptly separated company. The body bounced over the floor, cracking the tiles, and he impacted one of the desks with a resounding crack. Breaker's head was practically spinning, and it swayed drunkenly as his arms were slung on the broken desk - resembling for all the world a wrestler on the ropes.

And to add insult to injury, the blast practically flattened his mohawk. He looked up at the Doktor, quite dazed, and grinned lopsidedly. Missing a tooth.

"Ow...so worth it."

[Dr Archeville]

Ha!

YEAH!

No!

Dammit!

Archeville breathed in sharply through his nose, then exhaled slowly out his mouth. "I am truly sorry for that. If you recognize me, you know I have had some... setbacks over the past year, and my nerves are still a bit... frazzled. I try not to let my anger get the best of me, to find more unconventional solutions to the issues before me rather than barreling through, but, well, when someone compares me to- ah, but that it not important."

"What is important, Markus Flint, is you." The Doktor lowered his Screwdriver, but his eyes never left the criminal before him. "You are mildly clever -- you suspected your guess would cause me to tip my hand, though I doubt you suspected just how hard I would tip you -- so here is a final math problem for you to consider. There are two numbers, each representing a group of targets you could fight. You do love to fight, do you not? The first group," he held up one finger of his empty hand, "contains all the heroes out there, superpowered and not, from the Freedom League to the local police. The second," another finger went up, "contains all the crooks of the world, from world-class threats like Overshadow to his agents in SHADOW, from Malador the Mystic to the lowliest demon-worshiping cultist, from the Crime League down to the gangs peddling drugs around high schools. Which is the bigger number, the bigger group? Which will give you a bigger number of targets to fight?"

Be smart, Flint.

[Quinn]

Breaker looked up at the Dok with a gimlet eye, then shrugged his big old shoulders. His expression was actually somewhat sad - though the clubbed and swiveling condition his head was in obscured it a bit.

"I am wha' I am. An' fightin's all I know 'ow to do. So if they show up an' cause a ruckus, I'll fight 'em. Just like I fought your transformin' Grue bully-boys when they rolled onto our turf." At that mention, his eyes narrowed. But he didn't do anything more than flex his hands, and gave his head a quick shake. He still looked pretty dazed.

"Bloody 'ell, wha' was that blast, anyway? Hurt like bloody hell, it did." Shake-shake. He looked back up at the Doktor, still grinning with a few missing teeth. "But I still got m'last guess, don't I? Doktor Viktor Archeville." He nodded in a self-satisfied manner, then winced. Shook his head again. And then - rather abruptly - met Dok's eye. "Oh, one more thing. Lot of my boys got sent to the 'ospital in that shindy."

The grinning, mock-cheery face promptly turned very angry, in a shift that was both frightening and intimidating. He enunciated his next words very clearly.

"You really shouldn't have let me get my wind back."

It was surprising how fast Breaker was on his feet. And even more surprising how fast that fist was descending to Dok's head.

[Dr Archeville]

Stupid, stupid...

Archeville's Screwdriver snapped up and unleashed another blast on Breaker, but he was ready for it, and powered through as he reached and and caught the Doktor in a chokehold. One hand at the doktor's throat, the other closed around his Screwdriver-holding hand, it looked to Breaker like he had the science hero right where he wanted him.

Good thing my cyberpathic abilities let me operate my Belt without having to touch it!

And then the Doktor disappeared.

Breaker felt a slight disorientation as warped gravitic forces played hob with his inner ear, and he could almost 'feel' Archeville popping back a few dozen feet behind him. And then he felt another energy blast, this one catching him in the side as he was turning to face the hero.

"I take back what I said, you're not nearly as clever as you think."

He said something about 'my Grue bully-boys' attacking his 'turf' -- did a Metaceptor hit his gang? Is this... personal for him?

[Quinn]

The blast sent Breaker sprawling, and his shoulder clipped another desk as he went down - denting the wood as opposed to the skin. Parts of the oversized mohawk were now quite flat, although some of it managed to stay up. It was obvious - the boss was unsteady on his pins. Badly unsteady on his pins - it looked like one or two good shots would put paid to the gang boss.

But he got up. Again. Three blasts to the body and head and he was still standing. One hand gripped the desk corner, the other rubbed the spot where the blast had impacted.

"Ow."

Despite his bruises, the powerhouse moved fast. His hands gripped the other half of the desk, muscles underneath the (now quite abused) leather jacket bunched. Breaker let out a bass roar that shook the windows, and before the Doktor could blink, his vision was filled with a polished and practically flawless mahogany desktop - swinging around to explode on his chest from and with incredible force!

[Dr Archeville]

Stupid, stupid...

The words going through Archeville's mind were the same, but now they were directed at himself rather than Breaker. All this time he had yet to put up his full force field, seeing as he was doing so well and the crooks had yet to proven a true challenge.

The speed and strength he'd shown in leaping up and locking me into that chokehold should have been a rather big clue that this confrontation was not going to go as smoothly as I had been anticipating.

The Doktor's labcoat and the low-level continuous force field his Belt provided did offer him some protection, so the blow did not knock him out. It did dislocate his jaw, and sent him flying back to the vans, slamming int the large sacks of stolen money.

[Quinn]

Breaker stared at the hole in the van that Archeville had literally gone through, and blinked as the dust and bank notes settled, revealing the hero's supine form. He'd picked up a granite countertop to throw next, but seeing as how the good Doktor was unmoving, he let it drop to the tiles (didn't take a hand off it, though). Breaker let himself flop down, wheezing - talk about a hard hit. He even grinned slightly. Or winced. The fact was obvious - he thought he'd knocked out Herr Doktor Viktor Archeville.

"Damn, man - if I'd known ya'd skipped eatin' y'greens and takin' y'vitamins, oi'd've gone easier on ya." Chuckle. He let out a mild groan after that - three clean shots weren't good for his constitution.

"Tha' was for Jimmy. And Mick. And Sam. An' all the other bozos from my crew and the ci-..." Blink. Topic-swap. "...Folks from my crew what got the 'eck kicked outta them by your monsters. Bloody 'ell, I'm a bad man, but what you did with those...things...call it evening the score. Aye, that's it." He rubbed the top of his head. "Man...I was hopin' for some Freedom Leaguer t'come down here and whup me; big ol' shindig - a respectable one, where I'd get beat down right and proper and then clapped up without losin' my rep. Then you come in an' it gets all complicated. Dangit - first I get decked by some punk girl 'oo don't even go up to my pecs, then you show up and send this whole scheme to 'eck...t'ain't fair, y'know?"

[Dr Archeville]

Archeville grunted, reaching up with his empty hand to feel where his jaw had been smacked. "No, Flint, it isn't fair. It's not fair that I keep getting blamed for-"

He slumped in a bit, lowered his tone, "no. No, that's not true. I may not have been the one who grew those things in my laboratories, or sent them out across the globe through my ArcheTech teleporters -- that was the thing that took me over, the alien that sought tho throw the world into utter chaos. But long before it took me over, before it made me its puppet, I knew there was something there, lurking at the edges of my mind. I thought it was nothing, that I could handle it, that I didn't need any help with it. I hid it from my friends, my allies, my teammates." A sneer of contempt -- self-contempt -- came to his features, "so it was me, my arrogance that lead to what happened, and I'm never going to fully make up for it all. And even if I could, the folks I most want to won't give me the chance to do so, won't even look at me or hear me out. So why bother?"

Because it's the right thing to do. Because no one else can. Because otherwise the monsters win, and all the good I have done will have been for nothing.

[Quinn]

Breaker's face was actually rather humorous, if the situation wasn't so strange. He stared at the Doktor for a moment. His jaw was half-open as what Dok said registered. Then blinked. Then blinked again. The villain leaned back on a busted desk and spoke in a somewhat awed voice.

"...Bloody 'ell. Your problems are a 'eckuva lot bigger than mine."

He rubbed at his own jaw in cadence; the blast had left more than few bruises on the bulletproof skin, and it was starting to swell. Owie. Silence reigned in the building, punctuated by the odd drop of plaster from the ceiling and the sound of approaching sirens. Breaker seemed to ponder something, then he tilted his head. Then his face twisted in slight irritation. Then he said something real incongruous.

"Tha', and I'm prolly the last person who can answer tha' question; I don't bother period." Pondering. Then he looked at the Dok with a tired expression. "Right, clear the air - so it wasn't really you that sent those bully-boys that sent some of my boys to the 'ospital, or it was but it really wasn't, your friends're bein' right jerks about it, I just slapped you with a desk an' now I'm not sure if y'deserved it, everything's gone to 'eck, an' both of us look like ruddy 'ell."

Chin-rub. Ponder-ponder. Then he threw up his hands.

"Screw it. I give. No reason t'fight anymore, I'll be goin' t'jail soon anyway like I wanted - respectable-like too, and you...eh. You look worse 'an I feel, mate."

Weak smile.

A beat.

Another beat.

"...Want t'go for a beer?"

[Dr Archeville]

'I'll be goin' t'jail soon anyway like I wanted' -- like he wanted? Why would he want to go to jail? I definitely need to keep an eye on this one.

Archeville grunted again, "better not be some American swill, that'd be adding insult to injury."

And then he laughed. It started as a soft chuckle, but soon swelled to a gut-buster as the absurdity of the situation struck him. "Oh, this is rich -- to think, you may be the only 'drinking buddy' I have now!"

Well, there's Harrier, I suppose, though I'm fairly certain he can neither suffer nor enjoy the effects of alcohol.

The police soon swarmed in, waiting a few moments after it seemed the fighting had stopped. They were surprised to see Breaker still standing, and more surprised to see he came along quietly. His henchmen -- the fifteen on the floor, and the two still bawling in the vault -- were also carted off. When Archeville gave his statement, he made sure to point out that Breaker had let the hostages go; at the trial, he asked for leniency, and for the judge to consider putting him on the Project Freedom rehabilitation program.

He also snuck in two bottles from his own home microbrew, which they shared just before the trial got underway.