Behold the Hunters(IC)

[Aoiroo]

Catalyst tapped her receiver as she exited the room,

"I know where the hostages are, the building across from the lab. We need to get the kidnapped first. The grue need to stay here, when we leave ask security to seal the building, and assert that no men are to be within two floors of the Grue and for either hostage to be at least two rooms from any outward facing windows. He can only take male form, and I don't want him going through the floors or the ceilings or the windows to try and take them."

She said this all as she ran down the stairs (no bleeding way she was using the elevators when there was a madman on the loose, asking for trouble), and got to the bottom floor. When she got there she went into the room where she saw KoS with the security,

"Are we ready to go?"

[Ari]

"At once!" the King of Suits said promptly, waiting for Catalyst to take the lead back to her van before falling in step behind her. "I am glad you stayed with that alien. I'm sure I would have had considerable difficulty getting anything like that out of him." he ruefully commented to Jasmine as they raced for the transport. As they strapped in for the drive back to the mad shapeshifter's lair, he suddenly stopped, turned to Catalyst and asked her "By the way, where are the hostages in the building?"

---

The heroic chemist's request was received with initial dubiousness from the security chief, but after the revelation that their shapeshifting enemy was limited to the bodies of men he quickly agreed. The Lab was known for its equal opportunity hiring policy, and that night it payed off better than anyone could have guessed.

The drive back to their starting point, the lofty(although stubby) grey skyscraper opposite Suzerain Labs, was a refreshing blur of action after the last hour or so of tedium, the two heroes arriving with a soft grumble of the brakes in front of the suddenly forbidding place. By now the police had arrived and were combing the alleyway and rooftop for clues as to what exactly had happened. A few officers looked surprised at the pair's arrival and more than one officer began to move closer and offer to help, only to be barked back to their job by the grim-eyed sergeant who nodded shortly to the King of Suits and Catalyst before turning her attention back to the crime scene.

Marceau entered the building for a brief moment, politely informing the very jaded-looking young receptionist at her desk just past the double doors "Miss, I am sorry but I must ask for the codes to this..." he glanced surreptitiously at the nearby plaque reading 'Wrenworth Tower' "...tower. A villain has hidden himself there and has with him a number of innocents. For their lives, we must have that code!" he cried with an imploring look. Without even glancing up from her monitor as she typed away, the receptionist replied "0451, lemme know when you're done there so management can change it." Blinking in surprise, the lean King of Suits beamed and dashed out, calling back "Thank you!"

The basement wasn't hard to find, a short flight of stairs on it's eastern side led down to a green door locked electronically, a grimy and scuffed numperpad on the wall beside it. Tapping in the code, the King of Suits gently opened the door, stepping slowly backwards when it revealed total darkness within, a musty draft and air smelling sharply of corrosive chemicals. Slipping on his night-vision goggles and readying a coil card, he said quietly to Catalyst "If it's all the same to you, I shall go first."

[Aoiroo]

Catalyst nodded and let him proceed into the darkness. She kept her gun at the ready, using only one which she had both hands as she inched behind the door frame to use as cover. Her infrared scanned the darkness for signs of life. She also took some time to process the happenings, chemists being kidnapped, clones replacing people, a shapeshifter in the form of men, a surprise for the mom, and scared grue. She pitied them, no matter what they might of had to do in their name, she hated how they had been treated, what had been done. It was cruel, torture and fear, and only one expectant outcome. Heck there was even the outcome from them being caught, the Lor. She didn't know what was to wait for them if the Lor got them, she didn't know much about how other alien races treated each other, if there was a chance for parley, or if they would survive. There was worry there, she'd intervine as best she could for them after this was done, but for the moment, they were safe, and there were others to be tended for. Hopefully she could find their heat signitures in the darkness.

[Ari]

GM

With a faint rustle and rattle of metal followed by a soft breath of air, another door was opened somewhere in the depths of the quiet basement. The footsteps that followed it were so quiet they almost couldn't be heard even in the echoing room, but their owner couldn't hide everything.

To Catalyst's thermal goggles a blob of roughly-human-shaped heat slid quietly towards them the head visibly moving from side to side as the creature sought to find whoever was with it in the darkness. It's search didn't manage to pick out the two heroes, however, which meant it kept walking closer in a way that was, if not for the crazy situation, would have been hilarious in its obliviousness.

[Ari]

Darting against the rough concrete wall, the King of Suits stared into the darkness and watched with squinted eyes as the dim greenish figure moved deliberately into the room. Even across the floor and looking through night-vision goggles Marceau could tell that whoever they were had every nerve strung ready for an ambush. 'Gah! Our 'Hunter' is so tense I would bet he could catch my cards out of the air and dodge Catalyst's pellets!' he thought irritably, searching the approaching Hunter for any signs of paying less attention to one area than another.

Suddenly, a thought struck him quite forcefully about the head and his eyes widened 'Of...of course! If he is so wary, he will seize on anything!'. With a deft movement the King of Suits whipped a razor card from his sleeve, and snapping his wrist sent the card whirling into the wall at a right angle to where and Catalyst were hidden! 'If this works, we shall be able to strike him from surprise!'

[Ari]

GM

Quick as a flash the figure that could only be Hunter leaped down before Catalyst's thermal imaging, drawing a large and heavy pistol from under his coat and blasting away at where the card seemed to have come from. In a heavy Russian accent the man thundered "You won't take them from me! They are mine!" the stark acoustics making his voice seem to come from the walls themselves.

The shots from his pistol sent shards of concrete sailing through the air, and Hunter got back to his feet, crouched and backing away from the wall and to his right away from the pair. His gaze was fixed on where he thought the attack was from.

[Aoiroo]

It was a shot in the dark, two shots, she should of been able to hit, but the figure in the darkness moved swiftly as she tried to pin him down with her strongest snare. Darn it, she took a step back, trying to think of a defensive position. If he closed the distance, she was likely done, she knew a little bit about grue, touch wasn't an option. She couldn't smoke the place either, it'd blind KoS. She tapped her bluetooth and whispered quietly,

"Do you have any ideas?"

[Ari]

Leaping to the side as he sent a razor-edged card singing through the air, Marceau started hearing Jasmine's voice but answered quietly "I would suggest we bind him, and then knock him out. I will draw his attention." He smiled in satisfaction as the sound of a gun clattering to the ground echoed sharply in the concrete room.

His booted feet tapped softly on the floor as he got into position, squinting through his light-amplification goggles at the figure of their enemy. "I don't think Hunter will be interested in talking now." Louder he called out "Yours? They are their own, Hunter! You can no more own someone than you can own the air!" 'Hm. Perhaps I should work on my snappy retorts.'

[Ari]

GM

The gun torn from his hand with a shout of pain, Hunter scrabbled about the floor as he searched for it, shouting angrily "They are my people, idiot! Them, the clones, all of them belong to me by right!" his hands grew more and more spider-like and extended across the floor as he scoured the floor "When we attacked Russia, we all lost our rights as sapient beings, the Cosmic Mind showed me the truth of our place in the universe, a truth I didn't even fully understand until this year, decades after the evil was done. As a man, I must atone for this evil through the destruction of other evil, and the Family is but the first on my list!" At last his fingers closed on the cold steel, and he jumped to his feet, aiming it at where Marceau's deep voice had come from "As another man, you must understand this! Why else would you fight my evil so viciously? Protonik couldn't understand, too kind to monsters like me!"

[Aoiroo]

Him yelling like that certainly made it easier to am at him. She was surprised it didn't echo. She lined up her shot and hit him up with the stickiest formula she had. As she inched forward she kept the gun level,

"They aren't yours, doesn't matter how they were made. Clone, or no clone, they belong to themselves. They have their rights, and you have yours and those stop the moment you try to kill people. It doesn't matter what they've done, you cannot and will not act as judge and executioner."

Her gun was steady and her voice was low,

"You don't become a monster to fight monsters, you be better then that."

[Ari]

GM

 

With a cry of anger Hunter flailed around, his struggles increasingly constrained as the paintball splattered over him and became a consuming mass of foam, trapping his limbs within itself as it surged around the Grue.

 

"You couldn't understand! I have to do this! They will never listen to anything! My brothers were like them, they refused to yield even when caught!" The foam was weakest while expanding, needing that extra give. Hunter tore one arm free and started furiously tearing at the hardening stuff around his leg, a low rumble of mixed grief and rage coming out of the darkness. To Catalyst's thermal vision his body was quickly becoming a mass of red, the shapeshifter doing his utmost to strengthen his limbs. But for some reason, he didn't actually change shape...

 

"The tools I use I use by right! I am...not...a monster!" he was by now almost crying, and almost free.

[Ari]

"You seem to be the one with difficulty understanding!" Marceau barked angrily, whipping a boomerang from his belt and flinging it at the struggling greenish mass on the floor. It struck home, Hunter hearing it but unable to actually dodge in time, but his thick hide meant the curved metal simply bounced off, clattering across the floor!

 

With a snap of his fingers the King of Suits dove away, calling out "Apologies, Catalyst! Next time I shall be more effective." He promised grimly, already drawing a razor-eged card from his belt. He pitied the Grue, obviously he had suffered terribly, but that didn't excuse him "You might not be a monster, Hunter, but you act like one. Stealing people away and making copies to further a mad scheme, torturing your own kind to force them to serve you. If your cause is so just, lay down your arms and surrender!" 'It won't work, but I ought to try...'

[Aoiroo]

She took the paintball pistol and shot the escaping legs giving a new coat onto the more freed limbs. Leaning forward she looked him in the eyes,

"You don't seem to understand, by your logic, we should kill you, right now in cold blood for your crimes. We should stop you permenantly because that's the only way."
She held the gun level with his forehead,

"But it's not,"
She pulled back her gun and holstered it,

"Don't try to struggle, or I'll just put another layer on it. You're not going anywhere, so if you'd like to say anything useful, now would be the time, otherwise I suggest you hold your tongue cause anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."

[Ari]

GM

 

 

The maddened Grue tugged furiously on his chemical bonds, his limbs creaking audibly as he strained. All to no avail, the foam held him in place like a net of iron.

 

At last his tugs and fevered movements got slower, slower, and then stopped. Looking up at Catalyst he opened his mouth, only for a weak moan of anguish to come out of it. With a dull thud his head struck the cold pavement, and with a truly pathetic sound the Hunter began to cry, sobbing helplessly on the floor.

 

Catalyst's boot struck something hard, which turned out to be a key.

 

The far door had a keyhole on it.

[Ari]

The King of Suits slid to a halt, a card raised in one hand poised to throw as he stared in disbelief at the sobbing Grue on the floor. Sheathing it with a flick of the wrist into his gauntlet the lean man stepped over to the Hunter as his cape swirled behind him, kneeling down and gently lifting the brick-red alien up for a hug. It wasn't very comfortable being pressed against his dirty chestplate and encircled by the rough bulletproof cloth of his sleeves. He was utterly silent for as long as the embrace lasted, then carefully let him back down. Looking down glumly at him for a moment, the man shrugged, muttered "I'm sorry, I wish I could help you" and then turned to Catalyst with a hopeful look "So, what's our next move? Finding the toxin, the prisoners?"

[Ari]

GM

The door Hunter had come through took only a few seconds to locate thanks to the King of Suits' night-vision goggles, and with a grating turn of the key it was unlocked. Swinging a few inches into the next room due to its own weight, the sight that met the unpowered crusaders' eyes was one of cramped evil. A few scattered bulbs illuminated a damp concrete room twenty feet long and twenty-four feet wide crowded with alien technology, including tubes containing at least a dozen people who fit the descriptions of Suzerain's missing employees. A mass of reddish sludge hung in a net from the ceiling.

Navigating the place and finding the horrific compound was a nightmare, the crowded floor having only two rudimentary paths through the clutter from the door to the computer and from the computer to a small and much rougher door that looked like it had been melted into the concrete. This other passage led into a freezer filled with clear packages of chemicals, each marked with an atomic structure that the King of Suits couldn't have hoped to decipher quickly, but which Catalyst easily recognized. The compounds were placed in order of complexity, and as they walked down the short and frozen aisle, Jasmine soon discovered a large, clear canister what could only be the Hunter's cherished poison. It was an amalgamation of everything taken from Suzerain, a compound which Catalyst knew would remain liquid at temperatures below -10 Celsius, but at room temperature would quickly become a heavy gas.

 

The cloning room turned out to be hidden behind another wall opened by an electronic pad, with a single pool of blue liquid where they had been grown and two sleeping clones resting in narrow alcoves. Adjacent was the miserable cell where the terrified few still in Hunter's clutches had been kept. At their release they frantically hugged the two who had saved them, a heavyset young woman asking nervously as she looked past them out the main door "Is...is he dead?"

[Aoiroo]

"No,"
Catalyst took a step back from the woman,

"But he's not going to do anything more. It's over,"
Taking measure of the place, she looked at King of Suit,

"I'm gonna call the lab, have them get a hazmat team in here. Can you contact the Freedom League?"
She was working out the numbers in her head, and she looked at the clones. She walked over to the computer,

"This is going to be complicated,"
Moving through the things she started going though thought exercises before she looked back at KoS again,

"Make sure to ask about the average lifespan of the clones, they may be born strangely, but they should still be sentient, and still human. I'm sure the Freedom League can find a place for them."

[Ari]

Nodding his understanding to Catalyst with a crisp "On it", the King of Suits calmly searched around the cramped laboratory until he found a phone fallen under a desk. Neatly brushing off some debris from its face, he dialed the Freedom league's public number and waited patiently for an answer. Turning to the woman he added

"What your captor has done is reprehensible, madam, but it doesn't give us license to murder him" Marceau told the woman dourly. Nodding over at the shadowed figure he added "He is no threat to anyone now anyway, we-ah! Hello? Freedom Hall? Yes, this is the King of Suits, I'm with Catalyst...no ma'am, we're local crime-fighters, anyway we're in the basement of Wrenworth Tower in North End, we have captured a Grue calling himself 'Hunter' who was the one responsible for the missing persons and materials from Suzerain Labs. He has two clones-no, no it seems to be alien technology. Oh indeed? Thank you very much! Goodnight" putting the mobile in a sleeve pocket, he nodded cheerfully to Jasmine "The League will send a hero down in a minute to take the clones in, apparently Grue clones can survive for decades and these will need a new place to live." he frowned suddenly, and stroked his chin dubiously "This raises several questions. Anyway!" he smiled "A grand night's work! Thank you very much Catalyst, for all you've done tonight. If you want further assistance just say so, I will check up on our errant Grue."

 

With a deep nod to the hazmat-suited heroine, the caped and cowled man ducked out into the dark room. Kneeling next to Hunter he said quietly "Hey. People will be here soon, they'll take care of you. They will make sure you never fall into this again."

Edited March 27, 2013 by Arichamus

[Ari]

GM

 

Hunter lay still, and did not answer, crying softly as 'his' form dissolved into that of a brick red-skinned alien.

 

About ten minutes after the prisoners had been released, and waited awkwardly outside the basement, the Lab hazardous materials van screeched to a halt outside Wrenworth Tower, and a gaggle of men and women in bright yellow hazmat suits hurried down into the makeshift villainous lair. A few minutes later a STAR squad van showed up and parked just behind it. Carefully collecting the dangerous chemicals into appropriate containers took time, and the cramped environment meant one of the hazmat team was free to talk to the two heroes as the STAR squad examined the area for any other vicious secrets.

 

"This kinda thing is pretty screwed up" he commented as the clones were laboriously carried out of their grotto and around the piles of thrumming machinery "but at least it's something we can deal with. A poison gas attack in the middle of Freedom City..." he shuddered "I don't wanna think about that, but we'd have inhibitors on that stuff in minutes, unless a hero with wind powers or something stepped in. Oop! Looks like my shift" he ducked to the side as one of the team stepped past carrying a barrel, nodding at the pair he took her place.

 

---

 

"...So there's plenty of evidence. He's going straight to Blackstone after his trial" the STAR captain said grimly, watching as the officers led the cuffed Grue into their truck. Shaking her head she added "Thanks for what you've done tonight. You've saved a lot of lives, and I guess the Mob owes you a debt. Doubt they'll see it that way!" laughing she shook their hands and jumped into the passenger's seat, the truck rumbling off into the night.

 

 

 

[Ari]

"We're just glad to have been there and able to help!" King of Suits replied as he shook the captain's hand vigorously. He gestured respectfully to the haz-mat suited heroine nearby, adding "And Catalyst did most of the work. I just helped. Bon nuit, and see you later captain" he added with a friendly wave as the officer got in the truck and drove off. Looking around at the bright city streets, the vigilante thoughtfully dusted off his costume and relaxed visibly. With a rustle of rubber soles on the harsh asphalt sidewalk he walked over to Catalyst and nodded gravely. "So..." his face lit up with a brilliant smile "All's well! We won, rescued the prisoners, and saved God knows how many people from a toxic death! I hope those poor Grue get the help they need. I should try to visit Hunter sometime, it's awful being alone like that" he said with a momentary lapse of cheer.

 

Offering Jasmine his hand after removing a glove he said "I hope we cross paths again, Catalyst. And that next time I can be of better help to you. Here," he handed her a small transmitter "just press that little button with the crown and I'll be alerted. It activates a tracer so I can go right to you. And yes I'll try to get a phone" he rolled his startling blue eyes "it might take a while before I can afford it though, maybe a few months. I have...a lot of expenses" Marceau glanced away for a second, more than a little sheepish.

 

Squaring his shoulders and clearing his throat, the lean young man gave the Chemist Champion a brisk and polite hug, and took out his grapple gun. "A good night to you as well, Catalyst!"