Cheesetopia (IC)

[horngeek]

Catherine thought as she stripped out of her shirt and jeans, revealing her costume beneath. "I'd agree with miss Fleur.

Okay. My powers mostly focus on... well, the best way to describe it is vector manipulation- I can alter the direction and amount with which forces act on objects. I can use it to throw stuff around, protect myself from attacks, enhance the force of my own punch, jump further... to be honest, I'm pretty much a Powerhouse who uses something other than raw muscles."

Finally, she tied her mask over her eyes. "My codename's Vector."

[Avenger Assembled]

Getting into the air wasn't easy; the mayor had initially protested "The sheriff can handle it! Really!" But when the heroes were determined, he gave his assent with a shrug. As Gaian Knight flew, a speeding black and white patrol car followed them on the streets below, sirens blaring as they made their way through the town to the dairy on the other side. The city itself was still and quiet from the air, with few people on the streets: the only strange sight was around the police station, where a parking lot full of a wide variety of cars threatened to burst out onto the two-lane road next to the old brick structure. Along the streetside of the jail, several fire and dairy trucks were parked, firemen and dairy workers walking around and working around both, the aftereffects of what looked like a milk spill just visible at their feet.

At the dairy proper, the heroes found an odd, grim scene: a dozen dairy workers and policemen were lined up outside the manager's office, open steel jugs of milk turned sour nearby, and the dead body of someone in a police uniform was stretched out in front of the building's steel door. With its cinderblock walls and nearly windowless construction, the building that still bore the sign REED DAIRY along the wall looked tough to breach. Evidently the uniformed man by the front door hadn't succeeded, from the grim damage to his torso he'd stopped the shotgun rounds that Fleur had heard earlier. The sheriff arrived on scene just a few minutes after the heroes and quickly parked to assess the damage.

"Oh, jeez," he said, his face turning pale. "I knew Cedric was going to go nuts one of these days, but this is...that's Wally Park, one of my deputies. Oh, geez..." He went to tend to the body, amid a strange scene. None of the cops on scene had evidently called in about the murdered officer, at least not as far as the heroes could see, and the dairy workers with the milk pails had clearly been with them. As for the dairy itself, despite the manager evidently barricaded in his office, the site itself was still in active operation, uniformed workers loading milk trucks and running machinery in the barns behind the reinforced building at the front. "Cedric's been on edge for a while now with that sovereign citizen crap, and it only got worse after Benjy won that contest," one of the other deputies offered. "He hates cops, and he hates capes."

[Fox]

"It's nice to meet you, Vector. Hopefully four of us will be overkill for whatever's going on, but I'm not one to turn down help, and hopefully we can find your friend while we're at it. As for the car...."

He frowned, mulling the memory over. "...I dunno. It's probably nothing, just something seemed off about it."

The hero broke the platform apart as soon as everyone was off it; most of the remains just sank into the earth but a small group of stone shards floated up to hang, suspended, behind him. Tiamat's hand was resting on her mace as soon as she saw the body, but she didn't comment.

"So...catch us up," Gaian Knight requested, glancing to the sheriff. He was pretty sure any of the three of them - four, if Vector hadn't been exaggerating - could get into that office, but information rarely hurt. "We're just here to help - 'sovereign citizen crap', and a contest?"

[Electra]

"The essay contest," Fleur reminded Gaian Knight. "'What the Freedom League Means to Me.' We were going to meet Benjy for a photo op along with the judging this afternoon." Her eyes were grim, her uniform already stained with blood from kneeling next to the deputy she'd been too late to save. "I just hope Benjy is at the festival and not here right now." She turned to the sheriff. "Can't you shut this down?" she asked, pointing to the dairy. "From the smell of those casks, the milk's already no good. We're going to need quiet and space to work if we want to sort this out."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Oh, you know, the usual stuff, the government's taking his money, the superheroes are all out to get him," said the sheriff with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Who can follow with these lowlifes? Normally he'd be at the festival by now, but the mayor and I told him he should stay indoors and keep out of sight if he couldn't keep his mouth shut around supers. I guess that was a mistake. If we can get him to the door again, I can probably take him from long-range," said the sheriff, unholstering his pistol. "We gotta keep this milk comin', lady," he told Fleur with great fervor, and might have gone off if someone hadn't shouted from inside the barricaded-off manager's office.

"Don't listen to them!" yelled what was probably Cedric from what looked to be behind the door, the barred-over window at top cracked open by what looked like gunfire. "They're crazy! They're all crazy! This town has gone nuts! I swear to God I did not want to shoot that man, but he came in here trying to get at me and my boys and I had to do it! Look at the jail! Look at where they're keeping people! And don't drink the milk!"

[horngeek]

Vector stepped in front of the sheriff, glaring. "For heaven's... there's no need to shoot him, we can end this without anyone else getting killed."

The blue-costumed superhero thought furiously. Charlotte's call, how... friendly the townspeople had been.

And the fact that, apparently, dairy production was more important than clearing the scene of a crime.

She turned her head towards the window. "...what do you mean, don't drink the milk?"

[Fox]

"Let's just discuss things before anybody does anything regrettable," Gaian Knight insisted in as diplomatic a tone as he was capable, holding up his hands and addressing the building and the police both. "We've already lost one person, let's not lose any more."

He rubbed the back of his neck, sizing up the building and silently wishing there were fewer guns about. "I remembered Benjy, but a contest and some...ah, anti-establishment leanings seem a little too-"

"Lots of people hate the law and folks with power," Tiamat supplied, frowning. She'd put her untouched milkshake down - if the strangeness of frozen drinkables hadn't been odd enough, the sour milk nearby certainly put her off consuming it. "And lots of people are 'on edge'. Most of them don't start killing. When people start killing people, something has to set them off."

"Right, that. I'm with Vector, I think - Cedric, what's wrong with the milk?"

[Electra]

Fleur frowned as she took in the whole scene, all the parts that didn't make sense. "That doesn't sound like sovereign citizen talk," she pointed out. "It sounds like he's afraid of you. Either way, if he has his children in there with him, you'd better not go in there with guns blazing!" she scolded the sheriff. "We need to know a lot more about what's going on here." A quick reach into her pouch netted a big handful of seeds, which she tossed in the direction of the cinderblock building. "We'll keep him under wraps," she said, loudly enough for her words to reach into the building as well. "He won't go anywhere, but you can't get at him, either. Everyone's going to be safe until we assess the situation!"

Under wraps was the right term for it, too. Even as Fleur spoke, vines were crawling up over the building and encasing it in a living wall of green, while trees sprang up in a thick and leafy protective fence. In moments, the manager's office looked like something lost in the middle of the jungle for decades. It would be a lucky bullet that even found the building, much less made its way inside, and there was no way anybody was getting out anytime soon.

[Avenger Assembled]

As the plants erupted from the ground to surround the dairy office, suddenly the ground began to shake beneath everyone's feet as a powerful, localized tremor shook the land near the dairy. A deep, basso roar echoed in the air as cans flipped over and windows shattered as if something deep beneath the earth was stirring and howling in frustration! As it did so, the sheriff, his deputies, and indeed everyone the heroes could see staggered as one and clutched the sides of their head as if something there was stirring and roaring as well. When the earthquake stopped, the sheriff and the townsfolk looked at the heroes and suddenly they didn't look so friendly anymore.

"Kαταστρέφω!" they shouted in an eerie Greek chorus as they charged the heroes, guns blazing and fists raised as the entire area seemed to converge on the quartet of heroes outside the dairy! The townsfolk might have been civilians, the sort of people who heroes should hold back against when they fought, but from the look of murder in their eyes it didn't look like they would pay the heroes the same favor. And even their charges weren't safe yet; as the heroes watched, one of the dairy trucks spun around with a squeal of tires and began rocketing faster and faster, with a roar of its big diesel engine, towards the protected shelter of the dairy office!

[Electra]

"Oh, I hate when this happens," Fleur exclaimed, even as she brought up her hands in a defensive posture. She was especially glad now that Amaryllis was safely back on Sanctuary; though it was rare that a villain concentrated on the harmless-looking plant controller, it was much better not to be carrying vulnerable cargo! "Try not to hurt anyone too badly, this has got to be some kind of mind control! Maybe it really is something in the milk!" She waved her hands and suddenly, yards away, thick tree-trunk vines crashed their way out of the earth in front and to the sides of the speeding truck. Whiplike tendrils wrapped around it, and in seconds the truck was twenty feet in the air, spinning its wheels helplessly in the grip of the plants.

[horngeek]

Vector nodded at Fleur's comment. "Dont't hurt anyone. Got it."

As she watched the sherriff drawing his gun, her mind worked furiously, figuring out a trick she had the idea for a few weeks ago, but hadn't yet had the time to properly figure out. she'd seen strength-based superheroes smash the ground to knock out groups a hundred times, and theoretically, she should be able to mimic that with her powers.

Time to give that a try. Vector lifted her foot and stamped down on the ground, her powers amplifying the force of the impact and the force of gravity on the soil, creating a ripple in the soil in front of her that died about before reaching the buildings, but still caught a half-dozen of the mob.

[Fox]

"Nice," Gaian Knight complimented - apparently to both women's accomplishments - as the rest of the cops advanced. He was pretty sure he could take out the people who were still standing...but that wouldn't be likely to leave anyone to talk to, and it wouldn't hurt to at least try to neutralize someone without knocking them out.

Well, unless they shot him. That would probably hurt, but at least it wouldn't be the first time.

The earth mover's hands glowed with a soft golden light, and the ground under the sheriff twisted upward like it had come alive, reaching and flowing across his legs. "Not to point out the obvious, but if the milk's doing this to people we have a whole town full of trouble back there."

[Avenger Assembled]

The ground shook and trembled alarmingly as Gaian Knight tried to ensare the sheriff, but whatever power Fleur had been pushing against earlier evidently had other things on its mind and he faced no serious opposition. The sheriff was quickly swallowed by the Earth below without a shout. The other officers had no such problem, though, and shouted in one terrible voice: "Σκοτώνουν τον εχθρό του την θεϊκή αγελάδα! Καταστρέψτε τον! Καταστρέψτε" as they opened fire on the not-at-all bulletproof Fleur de Joie. Luckily the plant controller was far more agile than she'd been when she started out, thanks to the League's intensive combat drills, and nimbly avoided the barrage of small-arms fire from the attacking cops.

[Fox]

Tiamat nearly snarled as Fleur de Joie came under fire, and for a moment her teeth were a lot pointer than anyone's teeth had any right being. "I get what you're going for, GK, but don't you really think you coulda saved that for when there were less of them around? Hey! You lot!"

She cracked her knuckles, striding into the group of mind-controlled cops with apparent disregard for their weaponry and training and laying down some punishment, rapidly and efficiently taking each man out...sometimes with the man next to them. "You people had your heads messed with, and I'm real sorry about that," she growled, looking for all the world like she really wanted to enjoy the brawl and just couldn't, "but you can't go shooting at people who are trying to help."

[Avenger Assembled]

Teagan's descent into melee with the attacking officers let her end the confrontation in seconds; by the time she'd stopped for breath, the cops were as down for the count as their chief was restrained. At the sight of the heroes' victory, the nearby dairy workers turned and fled: not one by one or even in an individual group, but like an eerie array of puppets all running in unison. From the sound of things inside the truck, bound and held with plants, it sounded like Fleur's captive wanted to do the same, but the viney bonds around the delivery truck held them tight. The city was eerily quiet now that the fighting had stopped, even the dairy was free of mooing and other animal noises. The smell in the air was of sour milk and blood from the neglected , an unpleasant combination to say the least.

From inside the wrapped-up dairy office came a shout, "We've only got another day's worth of food in here! Can you at least get my boys out of town somewhere safe?"

[horngeek]

Vector smiled as the fight ended. "Good, we didn't hurt anyone too badly... um, I'm assuming the Sheriff is fine, Gaian Knight."

As the voice came out of the office, Vector turned to Fleur. "Can you do that for them? I think it'd be a good idea to get them out of there anyway."

She then turned back to the office, wrinkling her nose at the smell of the rotting milk. "While we take care of that, can you tell me a couple of things, please? What happened here, and what did you mean by the people in the prison?"

[Electra]

"Don't worry," Fleur called reassuringly to the people inside the house. "You're all going to be safe. I can send you out of town until everything is settled, but we need to know what you can tell us about what's going on in the town." She opened a window in the wall of plants to correspond with the building's window. "Is something wrong at the dairy? Why is everyone yelling in... Greek, I think, and acting possessed? Has it been going on long?" With the crisis over, she lowered the truck to the ground, but took the precaution of setting it gently on its side so it wouldn't be going anywhere for awhile.

[Fox]

"The sheriff's fine," Gaian Knight assured Vector, making his way over to the man-shaped cocoon of rock and - with a brush of his hand - expanding the nose and mouth air holes to an opening the man could speak through, if he so chose. "He isn't going anywhere for a while, but he's safe - thought we might want someone left that we could talk to. Ah - Tiamat, would you mind...?"

"They called us the enemies of the...'holy cow'," his companion supplied after a moment of thought, complete with skeptical finger quotes. "Or 'divine cattle', maybe. I guess that'd explain the milk...hm. Hey!"

While the others were speaking to the man in the office, she'd made her way over to Gaian Knight and proceeded to flick the stone-encased sheriff in the forehead. "

[Avenger Assembled]

"" hissed the sheriff in a voice that didn't sound like his own. "" the thing speaking for the sheriff said with a malevolent leer. ""

Looking through the window opened in the dairy office, Fleur could see the occupants: Cedric Reed, a middle-aged man with a florid face and balding head, and two boys of about twelve: Benjy and Hightower. The contest winner and his brother looked relieved to see their heroes, albeit very tired. Both of them with a child's weight, they were sitting next to a mini-fridge and a pile of empty bottles. Their father was obviously on edge, shotgun still in hand as he talked. "Thank Heaven you folks got here in time. All we got to eat in here is Twinkies and Coke, we were gonna have to make a break for it soon. I don’t know what’s gotten into everybody. Must be some kinda drug. I heard about this sorta thing happening in France one time when some ergot fungus got inta the wheat, but not with dairy before. Not here or anywhere. This here used to be my dairy before it turned into cuckoo-land central.”

"Pa, the crazy people?" offered Benjy. Cedric spoke at that.

"I don't spend a lot of time in town," the dairy owner confessed. "With my wife out of town, I spent most of my time around the boys. Everyone's been so busy getting ready for the festival, I saw people...people startin' to go crazy, grabbing strangers in town, the postman, some tourists, and force-feeding 'em cheese and milk. I went to the sheriff about it. Big mistake, because he and his deputies were keeping the tourists in the jailhouse, and the minute I walked in he knew I wasn't with them. Good thing I left the boys in the truck...I just managed to get back here with three squad cars behind me," he added, gesturing to the cop cars all around and his own red pickup. "I never actually shot a man before, but the deputy, he had some kind of lockpick and I..." He paled and looked down at the shotgun in his hands. "I had to save my boys."

[horngeek]

Vector accompanied Fleur, heading to the dairy office. She listened to the story, thinking. "It's all right.

...two questions. First, when did you first see this happening? Did... anything change before that, or was this the first unusual thing to happen?"

She paused, biting her lip gently. "And did you see any of the people being held prisoner?"

Vector wanted to ask if he'd seen Charlotte- she was worried about her friend, after all... but if he hadn't seen anything in the first place, the question was moot. "Um, Fleur? Even if he hasn't, I think we should head there first. Get any potential hostages out of town."

[Avenger Assembled]

"There was a meteor came down about a week before all this started," said the dairy owner thoughtfully. "Came down north of town up by Breakwater Spring. They had a couple of guys come over from the state university, but they swore the thing broke up when it hit and there weren't pieces enough of it to take away. Made the brightest yellow flash you ever saw up in the sky," he added, rubbing his chin as his sons gathered around him. Soberly, he added, "Yeah, I saw 'em. Locked in those cells, getting sprayed down with raw milk, with nothing but cheese and yogurt to eat. Tryin' to make them like they were, I guess? Didn't look like they were hurtin' em besides that, but a couple of days with nothing but milk is going to be its own problem." he added, a remark that might have been funny under other circumstances.

[Electra]

"That's a good idea," Fleur said to Vector. "We'll go that way as soon as we're finished here." She turned to the window again and did a quick assessment of the occupants. The man and the two boys seemed all right, sound of mind and healthy enough for people who'd had nothing but processed corn syrup to eat or drink for the past few days. Tired and scared, but not mind controlled. "I'm going to send you to a safe place at my headquarters," she told the dairy owner. "It's very safe, and there'll be food there, changes of clothes for you and the boys, and first aid kits if you need anything taken care of. You'll be alone there for a little while, but don't worry. As soon as this business in town is taken care of, I'll come and bring you back."

She paused for a second. "I just have one question. You're the dairy owner, how did you manage to avoid contamination from the milk? It seems like it's everywhere around here."

[Avenger Assembled]

"I, uh, don't actually drink milk," confessed Reed sheepishly. "I'm lactose intolerant in a real bad way, and so are the boys. I actually came into the cattle business through working with beef cattle, but I met my wife back in ag school and decided to move out here to her family business when we got hitched." He shrugged and actually, despite everything, blushed. "We tried to keep it from spreading around in town, thought it would make the business look funny, so I don't think anybody rightly knows but my wife and our doctor over in Ten Commandments. The boys and I just drink soy."

"Are we going to Sanctuary?" asked Benjy, looking up at first Fleur, then his dad. "I read about that when I was writing the essay! Sanctuary's cool! It'll be..." He coughed and seemed to remember the gravity of the situation. "We'll be okay there. I knew the Freedom League would save us. And you too!" he added with a boy's awkward smile to Vector and Teagan. "Thank you!"

[Electra]

Fleur smiled at Benjy. "That's right, you'll be spending a few hours on Sanctuary. I'm sorry things have worked out so that you couldn't read us your essay at the festival, but if your dad says it's okay, when everyone is safe again, I'll give you the full Sanctuary tour, all right? Now everything is going to be very green for a moment, so don't be scared." As she spoke, a vine snuck its way under the door and sprouted a flower big enough to encompass all three civilians with its soft pink petals. It engulfed them for a moment, then settled to the floor, the people inside gone.

"All right, that's three people safe and out of the way," Fleur said with some satisfaction. "Shall we go to the jail and find your friend?"

[Fox]

Gaian Knight was frowning under the cloth that covered his face, and raised a hand as Fleur spoke. "Ah - one concern," he said. "I was talking to Tiamat while you sent the others off; it didn't seem right to worry them, but, ah-"

"You're at risk, and the sheriff and cows or whatever know it," Tiamat finished with all her usual finesse.

"...right, yes. I feel fine, and if they're hosing down prisoners and forcing them to eat a bunch of dairy what little we had might not do much to us, but it's something to keep in mind. They've also been supplying three counties with this stuff, so the problem's a little bit bigger than we expected." He took a deep breath before continuing, running a hand back under his hood to rub his neck. "As for getting the prisoners out: I could probably tunnel us under the jail, but whatever this thing is, it's been shaking the ground - my tunnels are good, but it's a risk we might not want to take. There's something down there that I just can't quite...." He frowned, and behind his goggles his eyes glowed gold for a moment. "There's something down by the water table, spreading out from what I'm assuming is the meteor area he was talking about earlier. I don't like it."