Rough and Tumble (IC)

[Supercape]

Harry the Hound crept low, crept quiet. A cowards blessing was learning how to run or sneak out of a fight, and learn the lesson quickly and well. Fear motivated the learning, and the learning was frequent and strong. No heroic brawler or proud warrior would ever have such experience. 

 

Honor be damned. Fair fighting be damned. Harry was a cop of the streets, with decades of experience. You got to that age in the Fens by being canny. 

 

His eyes wide and black, his ears pricked and alert, even his hair on end, he padded his way to the nearest exit, nose and head jolting left and right, expecting a massive fist or steel capped boot at any corner. Or worse!

[Thunder King]

Crimson Tiger dashed forward and intended to put down Jack. However, at the last minute, Malcolm tried to intercept her punch. She didn't have time to change her target, so she slammed her fist right into Malcolm's jaw, sending him flying into the air. He slammed right into his friend, Jack, and simply fell to the floor. Jack was entirely unaffected by the impact.

 

She realized that Jack might want to avenge his friend, so she backed a safe distance away, hoping that one of her allies could knock him out before he could close distance with her.

[Thevshi]

Inside a dark control room somewhere on the property, the security guard on duty was sitting upright, his attention fully on the bank of screens before him.  His eyes shifted from screen to screen as he looked for any signs of the individual who had escaped from the lower levels.  Then, just as he was about to look away from the screens on the left side of the bank, he saw a man move out of the office area, making his way through the factory floor and apparently looking for an exit.

 

"Okay, I've got him."  The guard said into a radio.  "He is down on the factory floor heading towards the main exit."

 

 

Down in the hallway on the lower level, the number of active combatants was rapidly dwindling as the African American Battle Brother was knocked unconscious by a quick, powerful attack from Crimson Tiger.  The last remaining fighter that seemed to still be in the fight was near Freddy, who had been knocked for a loop by the Battle Brothers.

But before the fighter could try to capitalize on Freddy's disadvantage, Diaz stepped out of the door to the waiting room behind him and delivered a powerful left hook to the side of the fighter's head, knocking him down onto the hard ground and unconscious.

 

"Malcom!"  The blond Battle Brother cried out as he glanced down at the unconscious form of his partner at his feet.  He then quickly glanced at Lucy, Diaz, Crimson Tiger and the somewhat recovering Freddy.  "Alright, y'all win this round.  Best watch out if we meet again!"  He said as he quickly bent down and picked up the unconscious Malcom.  Then he crouched slightly before leaping straight upward, smashing through the concrete ceiling and then through the less sturdy materials making up the ceiling and floor of at least one more floor above.

[Supercape]

"Come back here, ya no good bozos! Yer a pair of cowards!" Shouted the Mess at the Battle Brothers. His body was sagging and weak but his fury strong. One hand was on his knee, the other was waved in a symbolic gesture of defiance At the two of them.

"Till next time, ya cheats! Ill be waiting!" he yelled. He could feel his blood losing its fizz, he could feel his bruises and breaks. He was too tired to give chase.

[Tiffany Korta]

As much as Lucy wanted to catch these two villains she knew she couldn’t quite follow their rapid ascent out of the buildings. And whilst she was quick she really didn’t know the layout of the building well enough to track them down. Beside they were here for a reason, the reason that was standing right there. Decision made she nodded toward Fred a smile at an almost victory achieved.

 

“Fred you better go find out what trouble Harry’s got himself into, we’ll get everyone out of here and call the authorities.â€

[Thevshi]

A few lose chunks of concrete fell from the edges of the hole created by the Battle Brothers' exit.  There were still a couple of the fighters that had been in the fight on their feet, but with the two superpowered thugs gone and all the mobsters in the cheap suits unconscious, the fighters showed no signs of wanting to continue.

 

Diaz brushed off a bit of dust from his shoulder before looking over at the other three gathered in the hallway.  "Wow, that was some serious skills."  He stated with a look of amazement.  "What are you three doing here looking for me anyway?"

[Supercape]

"We come to find ya" wheezed the Mess, standing up to his full five feet and crinking his neck. His blood began to pump down, his muscles deflating a little. He still looked like a sack of melons, but wasn't quite as dysmorphic as before. 

 

"Yer Mam sent us. Told us you get yerself' into a whole heap of trouble with fightin' and scrappin'. Looks like she wasn't wrong" he said, wincing as his joints and bruises sang a merry tune to his brain. 

 

"And I fer one would like to know what happened to make you risk your bones down here?" he asked, a grin of politeness and insistence. "We just got our asses kicked around from one corner to the other. Not that I run from a fight, but hell, this was more like a war!"

[Thevshi]

At Freddy's words, Diaz seems almost to shrink somewhat, shame evident in his stance and the look on his face.  "Fighting is about the only thing that I have been really good at."  He began.  "But getting to the big national circuits is not an easy thing.  So, when I heard about this underground ring in the Fens, I tried it out, managing to win some fights and make some money."

 

"Then I was told about the 'next level,' and how I could make even more money, so I took the chance when it was offered.  But when I got here, I realized how wrong all of this was.  The fights are held in this empty room with ring, the fight being broadcast to other locations where the 'clients' of the guys running this operation gather.  And then there was just the level of brutality that was expected here, I mean, those underground rings are rough, but I saw fighters here get seriously hurt.  So...I decided that I did not want to be part of this anymore, but the guys running this place did not like that.  So they kept me here locked up, saying they were going to make an example out of me."

 

"I'm really sorry you all had to come looking for me and had to go through all this."  He added, his tone very apologetic. 

[Supercape]

"You is all right by me, fella" smiled the Mess, kindly, his muscles sagging but his back straighter. He stretched up to give Benito a pat on the shoulder - a feat complicated by their height difference. Despite his aches and pains, he felt pretty good - flush from the excitement of the Gladiator, and warm from the feeling of helping someone, particularly someone he empathised with so greatly. 

 

"I been where you have, and crawled my way outa there, with the help of my partner" he explained, wondering where Harry had got to. 

 

Damn the coward, I need his brains right now. What would he do? C'mon...think...what would he do?

 

...

 

...aside from asking for money...

 

"I don't wanna leave this place standing. Who was behind all this? I got words to have with him...and by words, I mean lefty and righty..." he grinned, a bloody grin, with the clenching and cracking of his left and right fist punctuating his speech. 

[Thevshi]

"I don't really know who ran this, I think it was someone the mobsters in the cheap suits worked for.  Like the clients that watched the fights via remote broadcast, whoever was behind this did not like getting their hands dirty by actually showing up around here."  Diaz responded with a small apologetic shrug as the group started towards the stairs back up to the surface.

 

 

Upstairs, Harry had been moving through the factory floor towards the nearest exit when suddenly the lights had come on in the factory and a pair of security guards stepped out in the path between him and the exit.

 

"Hold it right there!"  They called out, their firearms out and at the ready.

 

But just then there was a loud crash, as the Battle Brothers came smashing up through the concrete floor of the factory.  The blond Battle Brother still had the unconscious one over one shoulder.  He barely even took a glance around before he was leaping again, easily smashing through the ceiling of the factory and disappearing into the darkness.

 

The two security guards had taken their eyes off Harry and watched as the Battle Brothers made their break for freedom.  "That can't be good""  One of the pair commented.

[Supercape]

Its not good. 

 

On the one hand, he hated guns. More particularly, he hated guns being pointed at him. Although all guns were bad, in his book. A tendency to go off and blow your brains out. He hated carrying as a cop, and he didn't carry now. 

 

On the other hand, the fact that the Battle Brothers were beating a hasty retreat was a more positive sign. He guessed they would only do that if his partner and friends had raised some hell down below. 

 

He would have loved to put his hands in the air, except that right now, they were paws. He would have loved to have pleaded with the security guards that they should not shoot an unarmed man. Except he was an unarmed dog. 

 

He settled for scuttling to the floor like a sleeping dog, and whimpering in his best scared dog voice. 

[Thevshi]

Whatever interest the security guards had in looking for Harry, the sudden departure of the Battle Brothers seemed to have overcome it.  The pair quickly called back to the security office, trying to figure out what was going.  Harry's keen canine hearing could hear the panicked response of what sounded like a young man on the other end, who said that he could not reach anyone downstairs any longer, which seemed to happen only a few minutes after he had spotted a costumed woman enter the stairwell down.

 

The two guards glanced at each other a moment, and then in silent agreement holstered their weapons and quickly began to make their way out of the factory.  This left Harry all alone once more.

 

Down in the underground levels, Freddy, Lucy, Crimson Tiger and Diaz made their way down the hallway and back up the stairwell.  It took only a minute or so to reach the underground garage where the vans had dropped Freddy, Lucy and Harry off earlier.  Much of the area outside the stairs was still pitch black, as a result of Crimson Tiger cutting the power to the lights.  But down one end, they could see a fait bit of light coming down from the ramp back up to the surface...

[Supercape]

Harry bounded out of the factory, keen to make his escape. Even if the flashlights and eyes were not swooping at him, he was anxious. His hair stood on end, and he felt his dog-heart beat out of his chest. 

 

Sweet Mary mother of Joseph, I'm scared as hell. Still, fear keeps me alive! he told himself, trying to console himself against the horrible feelings of dread. 

 

He scampered low, scampered fast, scuttling across the factory floor to reach the sweet smell of Freedom City. Not so sweet or clean in actuality, but hey, it was all relative. 

 

The Mess recognised him of course, he knew the dog of old. 

 

"Hey there partner! still alive, I see!" he said, patting the Hound on the head. 

 

"You betchass!" grumphed the dog in English, through canine vocal cords.