Your Day In Court [IC]

[Brown Dynamite]

With his small portable torch out of fuel, Foreshadow opted to rely on his trusted standby.  The collapsible Escrima sticks that were always kept on his person.  Time was of the essence and every little bit of effort was needed to break this surprisingly resilient animated rope.  It was this mindset that made the costumed acrobat a bit over enthusiastic in his swing as he struck against the surprisingly thick material that made the up the mysterious tether.  But even with as much force as his body could muster in his assault the rope continued to hold.

 

"How do I end up running into slippery animated objects time and time again.  Is their a villain wholesale on bringing lifeless objects to life that I missed out on?"  Whether it came to living carpets or rope, Erick never had the best of luck against moving inanimate objects. This time was no exception to the ongoing ruse the universe was playing on him.  Luckily it wasn't a one man operation.

Edited November 8, 2013 by HG Morrison

[Supercape]

"Aw there he goes again!" grumbled the Hound through dog vocal chords. The sound was English, but it took a little bit of tuning in again.

 

Even with four legs, there was no way he could keep pace with his partner's turbo charged blood, or, it seemed, the hangman. He still had the scent in his nostrils however. 

 

The mongrol dog jumped back into the chevvy, and shuddered again at the sight of the dessicated body of the Mess, all blood drained from his body. 

 

I'll never get used to that...

 

He hopped up ont to the drivers seat. 

 

Damn, no hands....

 

He stared at his paws, and in a moment, he was back in his crumpled mac with crumpled hair and crumpled tie. With very human hands that gripped the steering wheel and ignited the engine of the car. 

 

"Outta the way!" he hollered, beeping his horn. 

 

"Crook to catch!"

 

He sniffed again. Even in human form, his nose was superior to that of his regular homo sapien friends. It was just never as good as when he was in canine form. The scent was lost, even if the memory of it was stored in his brain. 

 

Fortunately his partner left a grizzly tale behind him, of blood spots where he landed and bounded. 

 

Just follow those...

 

He stuck his foot to the wheel and sped off, without thinking of the danger he was putting himself in, for once. 

[trollthumper]

Bloody Mess's blood-infused form swung through the streets of the city, giving chase to the hooded man with the noose. There was still a fair bit of distance between them, even as the culprit kept looking back to see if his pursuer was gaining. When he saw that Mess was keeping a fair pace, he dedicated his attention to forward motion. Anything to get away. 

 

---

 

Cannonade, meanwhile, was having a lot of trouble with a piece of rope. "Think we can talk about where this came from," he said, "once we get the guy out of it." With that, he drew his hand back, planing it in a stereotypical karate chop. He didn't really care for precision - he just wanted this thing to fray and fall apart. He brought it down on the rope with all his might, hoping to slice it in half -- 

 

-- only to see a few fibers tear away, even as the brick under the rope was reduced to powder for an inch. 

 

"What the hell did he put in this stuff?" 

[Supercape]

"I see ya, ya damn bozo!" yelled the Mess through bloody lips. 

 

And they where, quite literally, lips made of blood. His whole homunculus body oozed. When he spoke there was a funny gurgling sound. 

 

His blood was his power, super charged and fizzing, and he carried on bounding through the streets of Freedom City like a rocket, leaving a trail of bloody patches en route. 

 

"Why don't ya stop and hang around a while?" he shouted as he downed his head and aimed his bloody form straight at the fleeing villain. He was fast, and his aim was true, but he was not quite fast enough - with the Hangman moving away at the last minute leaving the Mess oozing past him, full of frustration. 

[Tiffany Korta]

This situation would almost be comical, all these heroes struggling with one rope, if a person life wasn’t at risk. The one consolation was that all these people didn't stop to determine if this life was worth saving they just tried to save them without even thinking.

“All of us together should be able to defeat one rope? Maybe if we timed our attempts to bolsters each others efforts?â€

 

Even as she spoke though she carried on putting tension on the rope hoping against hope that one of them could break the thing even as they tried to organise thing for all their benefit.

[Supercape]

Meanwhile...

 

"Get outa of the damn way ya bozo!" screamed the Hound as he slammed on the brakes and beeped his horn. Some drunk was weaving his way across the road, and responded to the polite request to move his behind with a one fingered salute and a slurred expletive. 

 

"Holy Sweet Jay See!" cussed the Hound, slapping his forehead with his hand. "What the hell is the hero business anyway? Did the Centurian have to deal with street bums crossing the road in front of him? Did the Centurian have to race after his partner in a clapped out old car held together with rust and nails?" he asked. 

 

The car shot a bolt of smoke and engine burp to emphasise the point. 

 

"Don't fail me now, lady!" he patted the wheel of the car, and slammed on the accelerator, mounting the curb and racing on through the city to his partner, knocking over a hot dog stand in the process. 

[trollthumper]

The man with the noose around his neck turned to look at Bloody Mess. He was dressed in a body stocking that concealed his face - save for his eyes - in a strange simulation of an executioner's hood. Over this, he wore top-of-the-line body armor, and threaded through the many hooks and loops of the armor was a single length of rope that seemed to be twitching and convulsing against his form. 

 

"I do not answer to you," he said, as with a flick of his wrist, the rope seemed to coil around his forearm like a boxing wrap. "I answer to the highest authority." He drove the fist into Bloody Mess's sanguine form - it shouldn't have hit as hard as it did, but it felt like taking a cannonball to the gut. "This city needs a justice your kind will never provide." 

 

With that, the man in the black garb turned and dashed off into the night, swinging over the city. 

 

---

 

Under Revenant's assault, the supernaturally tough rope frayed and snapped as gravity won out - in more ways than one. The would-be victim only had enough time to shout out "FFFUUUUUU--" before Cannonade reached out and grabbed him around the waist, pulling him close like King Kong dragging a lovely blonde up a building. 

 

"Hey, easy there," he said. "Not gonna let you become street pizza. Now, let's find somewhere to set you down." Finding a patch of soft soil, he dropped from his rough handhold to the ground below, his quarry still in his arms. He set the man down on the front steps to the building, where he very quickly embraced the joy of solid earth. 

[Tiffany Korta]

With some relief that the rope had finally given up it quarry. BUt there was no time to savor the victory as letting go of the brickwork to attempt to catch and soften the guy’s fall. Luckly Cannoade beat her to the punch and instead she lande fairly softly some distance from them.

“Is he okay? Is he in any fit state to tell us what happened to him?â€

A very quick head count showed that he wasn’t the only thing that needed to be dealt with straight away.

 

“Hound did you see where Bloody Mess was heading off to in such a hurry? I suspect he’s got himself into trouble again...â€

[Brown Dynamite]

Rather than follow in the others footsteps Erick elected to stay behind for a moment.  Visually inspecting the room in a rush to try and get a handle of what happened prior to their victim being hung out by the living noose.  There were obvious signs of a struggle as the apartment was left in shambles.  The furniture was practically in ruins.  The frames that once protected the man's photos smashed with bits of glass left all over the place.  Foreshadow assumed it happened during the beating instead of being signs of a personal attack as he didn't have the evidence to jump to any such conclusions for motivation.  All over the place electronics were cast aside turned over to show that the brawl involved moving around the residence.  

 

"Looks like the poor guy didn't stand much of a chance.  This was probably a straight beating before the finale.  Tch.  Nothing to go on though."

[Supercape]

As the Hangman departed, he left behind a small present for the mess, a thick curling explosion of smoke around Bloody Mess. 

 

The Mess wafted his hand uselessly in front of him but the smoke was thick, and his small arms, made of sloppy congealed blood seemed only to make the smoke thicker somehow. 

 

"I gotcha! I gotcha! You ain't getting away, mister! I'm gonna sock it to ya, give you da old one-two!" he said, against all evidence as he swung without effect into the smoke. 

 

"Ah damn!" he cursed as the smoke eventually cleared and the Handman was nowhere to be seen. He somehow felt that his bloody form smelled like a box load of cheap cigars the way it had soaked up the smoke. 

 

He fizzed and cursed for a moment before bounding back to scene of the Crime. 

 

"Oh for the sake of the lord! where is he going now!" complained the Hound, slamming on the breaks as he saw the trail of blood arc through the streets of Freedom City. Grumbling to himself, he slammed their Chevvy into Reverse and pulled back to the meet the rest of the heroes. 

 

"The old lug did get himself into trouble" he explained to Revenant. 

 

"I had him, I had him...I nearly had him" said the dimunitive pint sized blob of blood next to him, slamming his fists together in vexation, as he tried to explain to Revenant, Foreshadow and Cannonade how he very nearly had the culprit. 

 

"Ah hell, I left my body back in the car" he said, looking down at his bloody body and the mess it was making on the crimescene. His blood was certainly contaminating the place. 

 

"Back soon" he said, jumping back to the car. 

 

"You don't want to watch that bit" sighed the Hound, imaging the sight of his partners bloody form vaulting into the withered dessicated husk of his body, through the mouth, and once again expanding into the sack of muscles he normally was. 

 

"All I can say is, it looks better than when he pops out. Which ain't saying much" he groaned. 

 

"Now, what we got here?" he asked, surverying the crime scene. 

[trollthumper]

Before his departure, the Hangman locked eyes - as close as he could - with Bloody Mess. "We'll meet again," he said. "Perhaps, then, you'll see things my way." With that, he hurled a pellet to the ground, and fled at hideous speed as thick smoke filled the air. 

 

---

 

Back at the apartment, the man from the apartment was practically hugging the sidewalk when the cop car pulled up ten minutes later, sirens blazing. Two cops stepped out, one young and rumpled, the other older but almost unflappable. The older detective looked over to the man, who was still massaging his neck where the noose had bitten tight. 

 

"You breathing all right, Alvarez?" he asked. "Seems to be something going around."

 

"Screw you, detective," he said. "Not in the mood for crap jokes."

 

"Aw, you hear that, Chris? Everyone's a critic." 

 

The younger detective stepped forward to the heroes. "You'll have to excuse my partner," he said, "his attitude's terminal. I'm Detective Bradshaw, that's Detective Flynn. Thanks for stepping in there."

 

"Not a prob," Cannonade said. "Your partner said 'something going around.' This isn't a one-off, is it?" 

 

"We've been trying to keep this under wraps," said Bradshaw. "Alvarez is maybe the third, and the first one he did up publicly. We've got two confirmed thus far, and we would've ruled 'em as suicides if it didn't take CSU half an hour to cut through the nooses." 

 

"Let me guess. These ain't random." 

 

Bradshaw paused, trading a look with his partner, then sighed. "Other two vics were career criminals who walked out of court on their latest wraps. Alvarez is the latest. Walked off a charge of possession with intent to distribute."

 

"They didn't prove anything," Alvarez called from the stairs. "They found me innocent."

 

"No, Damian, they found you not guilty," Flynn said. "Your lawyer should've explained the difference." He looked up to the broken window. "Then again, I guess someone thought they could get you on appeal..."

[Supercape]

Harry the Hound sniffed the air. 

 

"So, we gots ourselves a do-goodin Vigilante roamin' the streets of Freedom City? What is the guy? A policeman? widow? or a D.I.Y expert who just happens to be really good at tying knots?" he asked everybody. 

 

"Whats the deal with this rope, anyhows? you sent it off for analysis, I guess? those brain boxes at the forensics found anything on it? what's it made of? some super duper fibre? weaved with the latest alloy from the Atom family? or we got some voodoo deal going down...like the hairs of a seventh son of a seventh son?" he said, avoiding Revenants eye. He couldn't help find Lucy both beautiful and talented, but also differently-alive. And whilst he knew some serious spooky stuff happened in Freedom City, it always gave him shivers down the spine. 

 

Then again, a whole lot of stuff gave the hound shivers down his spine. 

[Brown Dynamite]

"If someone's taken to playing judge, jury, and executioner.  It would make sense why the apartment looked a right mess.  There was no love lost in that beating. He really wanted to get to Alvarez" Foreshadow added.  Taking a moment to ponder the whole seventh son of the seventh son.  He never really go the whole prophetic mage thing.  Which was of course ironic all things considered.  But seeing the future wasn't something Erick held as being set in stone.  It was seeing a possible future.  A concept that made him opposed to prophetic this has to the concept of absolute prophecies, such as those he had occasionally heard floating around the city. 

 

"Even without knowing all the intrinsics of what the rope's made up past pride hurting stuff.  And believe me, I feel like hitting the gym a bit more often.  I have to ask.  Will he try again or move on to someone else first?  If this really is the start of a trend, this could possibly be his first known failure he may not take to it well."  

[Tiffany Korta]

Lucy stayed silent for a few moment processing the little they’d found out so far, maybe Fred and Harry were running off on her. It looked like they were all together on trying to solve this mystery before more people got hurt or worse, they may all be criminals but they didn’t deserve the fate that Alvarez almost suffered. She walked over and greeted the two detective’s with her normal charming smile.

 

“If this isn’t random then this hangman must be picking his victims somehow. Is there any connection with all these victims? I’m only taking a guess but it might have to do with their trials themselves, did they share a council or judge in common?â€

[trollthumper]

"Techs are having trouble with the noose," said Flynn, "but say wear and tear indicates each one was used before our particular vics did the hemp fandango."

"As for common links," said Bradshaw, "we're still looking. First vic, Steve Lamont, tried for attempted rape, acquitted. Second vic, Leland Morse, tried for armed robbery, acquitted. Our would-be vic, Damian Alvarez, tried for possession with intent, acquitted."

"Yeah, I'd say that's a link," said Cannonade, "but an obvious one. Anything else?"

"Just one thing," said Bradshaw. "Vics all had public defenders."

One of the techs came down from upstairs. "Ready for you in the apartment," he said. He offered booties to the heroes. "You may want these..."

[Brown Dynamite]

Foreshadow took the booties and stretched them out over his boots.  Preparing to enter the crime scene while mentally lamenting how silly the booties looked.  He didn't really take the occult as anything more than something  that science has yet to explain.  Magic was just a name for whatever perception or superpower we had yet to fully identify as far as Foreshadow was concerned.  But that didn't mean there weren't enough people floating around with a grounded belief in the stuff.  Enough to say apply some old magical myth as justification to a killing spree.  "Y'know there's an old myth about some nooses.  Each guilty person taken leaves enough of the heebie jeebies floating around so that the noose gets stronger from each execution of the guilty.  It's fitting that a hound of justice would have such an item if you considered the Hand of Glory, the specially prepared hand of a hanged man, that thieves used in a possibly not too separate myth."

 

Scratching his chin he'd begin to ponder out loud on the lack of an apparent connection.  Public defenders were no worse than those in private practice, even  if the attorneys had all managed to instead get a dismissal with prejudice it wouldn't be that surprising of an outcome on its own.  Unless the evidence was really overwhelming.  "Now, I'm not going to be shedding any tears for these guys.  But not to compromise my own objectivity or even shoot down the talent of our wonderful public defenders.  But is there any chance we could review those court records?  Alvarez's crime, alleged crime, doesn't exactly sound like the guy's discriminating between violent offenders.  There's got to be a common tie to our mysterious friend or else he might as well just start going after Jaywalkers too."

Edited January 2, 2014 by HG Morrison

[trollthumper]

Cannonade slipped his booties on as well. He didn't need to worry about the hair - recently, he'd added a small cap into the stitching that would help prevent stray hairs from falling out. He knew that the helmet wasn't the best protection for his secret identity, but at least this way, he wouldn't be leaving DNA. Probably wasn't a good idea for summer, though...

 

The apartment was, to say the least, a mess. Turned-over shelves, a cracked TV, even a broken coffee table. It appeared that Hangman had taken no half-measures in dealing with Alvarez, and it was a wonder he'd still been conscious when he'd gone out the window. Half of the noose still dangled out of said window, affixed to an exposed pipe that ran close to the wall. 

 

"Didn't think there was a way you could really mess a place like this up," said Flynn. "But where there's a will..."

[Tiffany Korta]

For a few second Lucy watched the bubbling and sizzling of her flesh, it didn’t hurt but it did startle her for a few seconds. it could be nothing but it wouldn’t hurt to get someone to check this all out so she waved over one of the white suited technicians.

“Excuse me but could you take a sample of this? Be careful though I don’t think it’ll hurt you but it has a rather unfortunate effect on my poor undead flesh.â€

 

The whole business with the residue seemed to take all her attention and she forgot to give the room more than customary glance.

[Supercape]

Harry and Freddy sniffed around the building with a sharp eye and, in Harry's case, a sharp nose. He had been on the police force long enough to know how to do it. He could do it well, too. He wasn't the best, but he would have made a top detective any other day. It was just he was lazy, dishevelled and unprofessional. 

 

His eye remained professional. 

 

And, in his estimation, the crime was too. 

 

"This place is a clean as a whistle" he concluded, straightening up and running a hand through his unruly mop of hair. He had to fight thr urge to light up, instead fingering his lighter in an obsessive ritual. 

 

"Just some residue, some chemical or something.." he concluded. His nostrils could pick it up, but he didn't know what the hell it was. 

 

"I can run it through some tests down at the Bloodhound Agency. Although a chemical lab might be better, if you guys have one to hand" he said. 

 

"But the thing is, this scene is very suspicious. Nothing should be this clean. Nothing human anyway..."

[Brown Dynamite]

Foreshadow took his second look around the apartment.  Now with the added distraction of others there with him.  Keeping his attention on what everyone else was doing served to distract him from giving the investigation all the attention it deserved.  Which in turn left him turning up zilch.  Things like bubbling undead flesh warranted not being completed focused.  Finding nothing newer than he saw with his earlier examination of the room which concluded that the place had been thrashed.  A conclusion one merely needed a pair of eyes to draw.

 

However, Mess & Hound were apparently faring much better.  Something that made Foreshadow happy that there wasn't merely one set of eyes in the room.  The level of cleanliness was indeed a curiosity to him. He considered that it was unlikely that the chemical residue was some sort of solvent to cover up one's tracks, unless their friend had a lot more time to work than one would expect.  So he focused on the fact that perhaps it came back to the noose, and having less direct involvement in the room.  After all the guy did seem to have a rope right out of some really macabre occult lore.  Events could have been manipulated in such a way to make for a virtual locked room scenario.  But then that wouldn't hide traces of the original owner with it.  It warranted examining the residue to be sure.

 

Foreshadow did indeed have a dedicated lab on hand.  One he would have gladly offered up.  If it wasn't for the little caveat of it residing under his home.  Privacy that he was hesitant to offer up too easily.  "I could take them back to my lab to run the test if you can get enough of the residue to split it up from multiple perspectives.  Unless the good people in blue would let us borrow the precinct's crime lab."

[Supercape]

Harry stopped fingering his lighter, and turned to Foreshadow. 

 

"I reckon I could, at that. But don't see what good it would do. If you got the lab, you got the know how, lets hot tail there..."

 

He gave a subtle nod to the 'boys in blue', unseen to them, but for viewing by Foreshadow. 

 

"Best do this between ourselves" he whispered to the caped crusader. "Not that our police force ain't got the chops, it just that they ain't the fastest bunch. We'll be tied up in Red tape, be like running through mud" he explained. Maybe he was egging it up a little, or more than a little, but he also knew the police. They did tend to slow things down, compared to the freedom of the private investigator. Procedure, Buerocracy...all for good reasons, but all impeding the practice. And besides which, the Police still viewed him as lazy, unprofessional, and sloppy. 

 

Well, they weren't too far from the truth. But he didn't want those looks and those insinuations tonight. 

[Brown Dynamite]

Foreshadow relented the red tape was a fair point and honestly it was an option he wouldn't have explored had he been working alone.  Tiptoeing around the risk that someone would grow curious and try to make their way to the actual residential area of the manor.  "Alright.  I  suppose I can't argue with that.  Besides it is an opportunity to use the service entrance and all.  I do, however, have a house rule.  No going upstairs.  The hat I hang there isn't one accompanied by a matching cape so to speak."

 

That said they did still need the police for something.  Although Foreshadow wasn't sure of exactly where in the room the chemical samples were.  Transporting them was a simple enough matter.  He just didn't want to stick a specimen inside of an unused utility belt compartment if he didn't have to help it.  "Yo, can we have some specimen bags or the like?  We'll take our order to go."

[trollthumper]

Transcript from The State of New Jersey v. Hangman:

 

FORESHADOW, called as a witness on behalf of the State, testifies as follows:

DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. WATERSTON:

 

Q: Please state the nature of the chemical retrieved from the surfaces in Mr. Alvarez's apartment.

A: It was designed for heavy clean up duty. The street name, I believe, is a buzzard bomb. Colloquially known thanks to the fact that it breaks down, dead, human matter. Goodbye dust, fingerprints, all those essentials in crime scene investigation.

Q: Sounds like a scourge for crime scene analysis. What sort of distribution does something like this have?

A: Definitely problematic. It's a relatively new invention. Comes with a bit of exclusivity you can't walk down the street and pick up one of these bombs. Someone would have to have contacts in the know to even track it down or maybe even a security clearance if it got into government use. Or else every Tom, Dick, and Harry would be running around cleaning up their messes after going on a crime spree.

Q: But were you able to trace the buzzard bomb back to the distributor?

A: That's the thing about exclusivity. There are only so many stones you have to turn over to find the hiding rat. We tracked it down, but our friend over there didn't make it easy for us.

[trollthumper]

Delaney Court

11:53 PM

 

Some men were able to make technological miracles out of an old ham radio, a car battery, and a few bottles of Pine-Sol. Freddy Gravitz was somewhere down the scale from those lofty tiers, but he still knew his stuff. 

 

His toys and tricks had secured him a reputation in the neighborhood - one he kept as quiet as possible, but still solid enough to get some protection. Mind you, that was against gangsters, undercover cops, and the players who had the lofty ambitions of supercrime but none of the hardware to back it up. Five superheroes turned out to be another thing entirely.

 

That was how, after a corridor of unconscious gangsters, broken automatons, and very low-rent wall-mounted claymores, the five came to rest in the basement apartment of Freddy Gravitz, who had long since given hope of scrambling for the window and escaping. "All right," he said, "what is it you putzes want?"

[Brown Dynamite]

Foreshadow grinned as he calmly made his way towards Freddy Gravitz.  "We're putzes now?  Freddy, can I call you Fred?  I think I'll call you Fred.  Fred, I think you and I have grown close enough in the hassle it was to find you that I don't have to waste my time and yours giving you the worst night of your life.  But I could be wrong, and we could have a less than amicable meeting here.  I hear you never get over back pain fully, that'd be a theory to test."

 

Foreshadow then put his hands up.  "But we're getting off track.  You want to know what the putzes want?  We want to know whose been partaking in your latest business venture.  The buzzard bombs.  And let's skip the part where you tell us you don't know what I'm talking bout Fred buddy.  Because, not in any mood to refresh your memory."

 

After being shot at, almost electrocuted, and whatever manner of pain the combination of gangsters, robots, and entertainingly enough gangster robots Foreshadow didn't have the patience to dealt with the amateur craftsman without veiled threats.