ic Bad Medicine

[Supercape]

GM

 

Friday 1st October, 15:07pm

 

The Beginning of Rush Hour...

 

A busy street...

 

It happened in a flash. 

 

The truck was stuck in traffic, beeping its horn in frustration. But then, lots of people where stuck in traffic and beeping horns in frustration. This was Friday evening rush hour. Freedom City was the city of heroes, but for all its super powers, it was not immune to traffic congestion. 

 

The truck was marked full of hazardous chemicals. 

 

And then, it got hit. 

 

Three. No four. No five men, marching out a nearby van, in full orange jumpsuits, headphones, and gas masks, and wearing heavy rifles, fired - gas grenades it looked like. 

 

Knockout gas. 

 

Everyone fell asleep - pedestrians, drivers, the hot dog salesman at the corner, the street performer playing "The Ace of Spades" on a rubber band and a smoked kipper, and the preacher with a megaphone and a particularly individual interpretation of the old testament that did not hold him back from telling the world of his unique revelations. All of them hit the floor, snoring heavily. 

 

Cars swerved into one another, crashed. Alarms sounded, and injuries - from minor to more severe, peppered the streets. 

 

And one car crashed into the Truck. 

 

The chemicals started flowing freely into the street. An unpleasant smell to say the least, and from the warning signs on the truck, a toxic one too...

 

 

[Noniad]

Afternoon traffic was always terrible, and Fridays seemed to be worst of all. Everyone tried to leave work early to beat the rush hour traffic, which just made rush hour start earlier.

 

Alexander slammed on his brakes and hit the horn when the van in front of him suddenly stopped. Seconds later, a group of armed men poured out of it, one stopping to glare at him through his gas mask. Apparently he hadn’t taken kindly to being honked at, because after a moment he raised his weapon and aimed it directly at him.

 

The gas canister smashed through his windshield as Alexander ducked reflexively. He kicked the car door open and rolled out before it filled the car. The hollow thuds of the guns were still audible as the thugs continued firing, and a thick cloud of the toxin started to spread out over the street. He saw multiple drivers falling unconscious as gas filled the street, and cars almost immediately began crashing into each other.

 

He dashed through the smog, his super speed allowing him to avoid the numerous minor collisions. Once he was across the street, he was able to disappear from the view of the attackers (if they were even still looking at him), ducking into an alley to change into costume.
 

Moments later, Starchaser dropped out of the sky, touching down in the smoke-filled street. A cursory glance of the scene confirmed that one car had crashed into a chemical carrying truck, and the danger associated with those chemicals was immediately obvious. He might not have been able to identify the specific chemical by sight, but he knew he needed to get the driver of the car that had hit it out of there, before the chemicals pouring onto his car splashed onto him. Then he’d deal with the people responsible for this.

 

He raced forward, reaching the car in seconds and pulling the door open to rescue the driver.

[Thunder King]

Tyrone was driving along when he spotted the carnage. He saw what was happening, and knew he needed to act quickly. He pulled his car off to the side of the street and grabbed the bag in his back seat. He dashed out of his car and quickly stepped into a nearby alley. He made sure he wasn't being observed, and unzipped the bag, dropping it to the ground and stepping toward it.

 

The suit responded automatically, as if knowing his intent. It slithered out of the bag, a mess of slick green tendrils. It snaked up and down his body, covering him from head to toe before shifting into a hardened shell.

 

Rather than run out of the alleyway, he crawled quickly up the side of the nearby building. Tendrils shot out of him in all directions as he made his way quickly up the wall.

 

Once he was on the roof, he leaped down into the middle of the traffic. Two tentacles extended from his shoulders and reached into the gas. They plucked people off their feet and pulled doors open. The tentacles wrapped gently around the waists of the uninjured and pulled them free of the gas.

 

He saw Starchaser arrive on the scene a few moments before he began to help people, and hoped the other hero wouldn't get the wrong impression.

[Supercape]

GM

 

The men clambering out of the van were somewhat slow, perhaps because of their overalls, helmets, gas masks and headphones, which must have limited their field of vision and certainly their hearing. They acted more like mindless zombies than trained soldiers. Having said that, they strode into the gas without fear. 

 

And perhaps with justification. 

 

All five swung the barrels of their heavy weapons at Paragon, and unleashed a thin stream of chemical spray - a vivid pink colour, as it so happened, at Paragon. The men were by no means crack shots, and the chemical spray swung wide most of the time. Where it landed, it hissed and bubbled, eating through metal, pavement, and cutting a neat dissection of the poor hot dog stand. 

 

The loudspeaker through which the rambling preacher had been extolling the virtues of kipper oil caught a glob, too, and it promptly fizzed and exploded, to nobodies great lament. 

 

Stargazer caught one gun's full eject straight in his might chest, and his nostrils caught the full smell of acrid smoke...

[Thunder King]

Graft bolted towards the men in gas masks. All anyone on the street saw was the vague outline of a green blur, hurling at top speed at the attackers. He slammed his fist into the first man and sent him flying and skittering away, unconscious, and out of the caustic chemical range.

 

Then, he turned and punched at a second man. Something shifted, though, and the man fell directly into the caustic chemicals that were pooling around the area.

 

He wasn't about to let anyone die, so he stepped into the chemicals. The suit reacted poorly to the chemicals, burning at his feet. He growled in pain, but plucked the man out and tossed him away from the chemicals. He would probably still need medical care, but at least he wouldn't dissolve.

[Noniad]

The driver who had crashed into the truck would awake some time later, finding himself on a bench on the sidewalk, safely away from the chemicals slowly eating through his car. Starchaser, meanwhile, returned to the pileup to help more of the civilians. As he reached one of the cars, the group he had seen firing gas grenades around the street earlier strode out of the fog, now armed with different weapons.

 

With machine-like precision, the five of them turned to face Starchaser, raised their weapons, and fired streams of a bright pink chemical. The hero turned away, raising one arm to protect himself from the unidentifiable substance. The noxious scent of toxins mingling with molten metal and bitumen filled his nose. While most of the chemical had sprayed harmlessly past him, two streams had hit. One splattered harmlessly over him, dripping off with little discernable effect. But the other splashed around his upraised arm and hit him full in the face! Starchaser yelled at the sting of the chemicals, quickly wiping them off his face, but able to feel that they'd burnt through a little of the energy protecting him.

 

When he looked back up, two of the thugs were gone, likely having run off into the mist to deal with whatever task they had come here to do. Starchaser leapt at the remaining three, targeting the one who had hosed his face. As he pulled back his arm, though, he remembered that he was dealing with humans here. He let some of the strength go out of his blow, wanting to make sure the man lived through it, and then struck.

 

His fist connected with the man's stomach, sending him back a step from the sheer force of the blow. But that was where the effect ended, and the thug stepped forward again. Starchaser had felt the protection of a bodysuit underneath the Gasman's overalls, but that didn't account for all of it. It was apparent that they were simply much stronger than ordinary human beings. The why of that was another matter - Starchaser wouldn't hold back against them any longer.

[Supercape]

GM

 

The Gasman struck by Stargazer staggered back a few steps and  reeled before straightening up. He was only of average height and build, but his strength would make an Olympian proud. For all that strength, however, it was no match for the full might of Starchaser unleashed. 

 

In retort, the man levelled his head and gun, and gazed through smoky dark goggles at Stargazer. He did not - perhaps could not - say a word. The five gasmen had been silent as the night throughout the operation. He merely fired a gas grenade straight into Starchasers chest. 

 

The grenade itself was no more than a gentle slap, but the knockout gas soon filled the air around them once more. 

 

The other two gasmen marched into the damaged lorry, oblivious to the spilled chemicals. Their boots fizzed and burned, a nasty, plastic smell adding to the already rich mixture of aroma's in the air. There was a horrible feeling it was not just their rubber boots that burnt, but the flesh underneath...

 

Whatever the case, the men seemed oblivious to the danger and the pain. They were like mindless fanatics to their task. They marched in, and marched out, each carrying a heavy barrel of chemicals with ease. 

[Noniad]

The grenade bounced harmlessly off Starchaser's chest, even as a fresh cloud of knockout gas filled the street. He looked about himself, and proceeded to simply hold his breath as he walked through it, following the Gasman. When he caught up with the pair, they were already stepping back out of the damaged lorry, each with a full drum of chemicals. Definitely not ordinary humans then, if they can lift one of those.

 

Starchaser stepped forward before the Gasman closest to him had time to react. His fist lashed out in a wild, but powerful swing. Despite the apparent clumsiness of the strike, it connected hard with the Gasman's chin. The blow lifted him clear off his feet. When he hit the pavement, there was no further movement. Starchaser narrowed his eyes, then turned to face the remaining attacker, setting his feet apart in anticipation of an attack. "So, only one left. Mind telling me why you're here?"

[Supercape]

GM

 

The last masked man stood placidly for a moment, as if devoid of wit, the barrel still in his arms. 

 

Then, a hiss of gas, churning inside his helmet. The faintest whiff of purple flavoured gas emitted from the sides of his respirator, before he started dancing a convulsion. 

 

After the briefest of moments, he stopped, dropping the barrel, which must have weighed a mighty amount, with a resounding clang on the tarmac, before sinking to his knees, and then dropping down face first, to a crack of his mask as it hit the pavement. Whether he was dead, feigning, or sleeping was up for debate, but it was a pretty good slump by anybodies measure. 

 

Meanwhile, the screams died down, to the sound of applause from the bystanders, whilst the sizzling chemical spill continued to slowly ooze from the damaged truck, hissing up odious chemicals. 

[Noniad]

Starchaser took a half-step back when a puff of gas began churning within the final Gasman’s helmet. Fortunately, the suit itself seemed to have retained its integrity, and none of the gas (whatever it was) was escaping into the street.

 

The sound of applause reached him, and he turned to give the bystanders a smile and a wave. Reassurance was important, but he needed to make sure that there were no extra little ‘surprises’ waiting for them. It wasn’t a great leap to assume that someone other than the Gasman had been behind the attack. While it was possible that the Gasman’s respirator problems had been somehow automatically triggered, Starchaser was not one to take chances. 

 

He continued to smile to the crowd, turning a slow circle as he did. His eyes were blazing white as he scanned the entire area, trying to spot something out of the ordinary, hoping he could see someone who would be linked to the attack. Hopefully, he could preempt any further attack - whether by more Gasmen or by something else - before it threatened the civilians.

 

A parked van, or to be more accurate, its occupant, caught his attention. Coincidence could explain a lot, but it wasn’t nearly a good enough reason to dismiss a man decked out in laboratory gear, sitting in a shabby van this close to an attempted chemical heist. Add to that the fact that the scientist seemed furious about something, and it seemed to be a lead worth investigating.

 

In the blink of an eye, Starchaser had taken off from the scene of the crime and landed directly in front of the van. He smiled through the windshield at the questionable driver. “Good afternoon, sir. Care to answer a few questions about your presence here?â€