ic Freedom's Finest #1: Cat Scratch Fever

[Gizmo]

The two well equipped enforcers on either side of Wildcat's unfortunate target didn't hesitate to open fire on the black clad vigilante, their rifles disgorging electric blue bolts of energy into the air, sizzling with the distinct scent of ozone. Anticipating where there barrels would be pointing by the time their fingers squeezed the trigger kept him out of the worst of the barrage but a pair of bolts still caught him in his left shoulder and forearm, stinging sharply like he'd just grabbed a red hot iron. Gritting his teeth carried him through but it was nothing he was looking to experience again if he could help it.

The remaining three paramilitary thugs concentrated on Jill, coordinating their blasts with cool, methodical efficiency that spoke not just of training but experience. They might as well have been green recruits, however, as the masked medic twisted to the side then dropped nearly parallel to the parking lot before snapping up in a single, smooth motion that sent her into a graceful airborne spin. Bolts of energy left blackened marks on the unfortunate minivan behind her before she landed lightly with one hand raised, her expression cool and dismissive. The rest of the attack was intercepted by dinner plate sized force fields that appeared everywhere her attackers tried to aim.

[Gizmo]

"I consider myself a pretty patient woman and I admit I don't have the whole story here," Jill announced, walking steadily forward with plasma bolts splashing ineffectively against her force field, her expression hard, "but people are getting sick and you chuckleheads are getting in my way." Without warning the glowing barrier of coherent blue light dropped away and the acrobatic metamagi became a blur of crimson and virulent green that ducked down into a somersault and came up too close for the leader of the group to bring his weapon to bear effectively. "That's a lousy place to be. Own medicine, taste of, et cetera, et cetera."

A hand wreathed in a sickly, uneven glow cracked into the soldier's exposed face hard enough to produce an unpleasant sound were it collided with his nose and clamped on. The effect was immediate as the man toppled to his knees, complexion turned an ashy shade as he struggled to hold himself upright using his rifle as a crutch and emptied the contents of his stomach all over the pavement. "Hhuuurgh--!"

[Mad Scientist]

"Faugh, that reeks!" Wildcat protested, flinching away from the violently ill man.  "Seriously, you have puke powers?" he demanded a little desperately of Jill.

Skipping forward over the incapacitated body of his first opponent, he closed ranks with the next two.  Still playing cautious -- avoiding getting your ass shot off by the narrowest of margins tended to make one wary -- he lashed out with a quick jab at the man on his left.  Unfortunately, in the process of keeping half of his attention on the guy on the right he misjudged the distance and his blow came up a full two inches short of its target.

Whiff.

Embarrassing....

[Gizmo]

Jill rolled her eyes at the disgusted outrage while rolling her entire body to avoid another volley of rifle fire from the similarly revolted hired guns. "How about you worry less about my-- 'Cat!" Whatever glib banter she'd been in the middle of delivering was cut short as one of the remaining soldiers, a heavily built woman with strands of dark hair sticking out from under her helmet, took advantage of the feline themed hero's distraction to tag him squarely in the chest, the smell of burnt flesh immediately competing with the fumes from the pile of sick. Wildcat didn't go down but from the way he staggered backward it was clear that it was only iron will power keeping him on his feet.

"Enough," Jill snarled, inwardly berating herself for not wrapping up the skirmish more quickly before anyone could be seriously injured. Crackling blue light burst violently into a diffuse sphere around her right hand as she lifted it into the air then brought it down as though slapping a table. In response a force field with the rough shape of an open palm and the size of a bus crashed downward from overhead. Where it touched Wildcat and the teenager still recording everything with his shoulder mounted camera is passed through harmlessly but when it struck the gunmen it tossed them painfully into the pavement like insects beneath a flyswatter.

Barely sparing a moment to make sure that they were all down for the time being, the Interceptor rushed over to Wildcat's side, steadying him with one hand. "Easy, Kitty, adrenaline and machismo are only going to take you so far." Her free hand glowed again with a softer, dappled hue, something like sunlight streaming through a leafy canopy. Without preamble she placed it over the smoking holes in his uniform and the pain almost immediately subsided, replaced with a gentle warmth that spread through his frame. "More tricks in my medicine bag than just 'puke powers', lucky for you. How you feeling?"

[Mad Scientist]

Wildcat had never realized that he could be aware of what his spleen felt like, but he was pretty sure that he had felt it bruised, at the very least.

Decidedly unsettling.

The fact that the pain had been only short-lived was a comfort of sorts, less so that he had needed to have his ass hauled out of the fire against a squad of goons with guns.  Hardly very heroic of him.

"Don't call me 'Kitty'," he replied -- perhaps his choice of heroic identity hadn't been the best one, all things considered.  "And...thanks," he admitted grudgingly.  All things considered, he'd really rather not be able to taste whatever-it-was that a spleen contained in the back of his throat, so it was hard to be critical of someone who possessed such a potent and immediate healing ability.

His fingers traced the damage to his outfit for a moment, and he turned hard eyes on the downed and groaning goons.

"All right -- now that you've flattened them, what's next?" he asked.  She had clearly carried the day -- she had earned the next call.

[Gizmo]

"Hey, I don't make the rules," Jill told Wildcat, letting out a breath of relief to see less experienced hero none the worse for wear, pride withstanding. She'd used her autoimmune overload to start rather than her force fields because she'd wanted the legislation quoting goons to feel what the victims of the tainted beverages had felt when she should have been focused on stopping the conflict before anyone had a chance to get hurt. Get your priorities straight, Espadas. Out load she just patted Wildcat on the shoulder and continued, "Heal laser wounds, give an annoying nickname. That's just how it goes. As for what's next, though..."

She walked over to the leader of the leader of the paramilitary thugs and crouched in front of him as he struggled to light himself with one arm while his other hand clutched his stomach, matte black uniform now stained with bile. "Listen. Hey, c'mon, pay attention here, listen." She snapped her fingers in front of his face until he focused on her, grimacing and opening his mouth to spit out something rude. She silenced him with a lifted palm and a look. "I'm not going to threaten you, man, but you have to admit that this is not a good position for you, yeah? I am going to find your boss one way or another and short term and long term this goes a lot better for you if you don't make that any more annoying a process for me than absolutely necessary. We on the same page here?" The soldier closed his mouth and gave the masked woman an uncertain look, eye flicking over to look at Wildcat in search of some kind out out.

[Mad Scientist]

Wildcat wasn't so sure he bought these 'rules' of hers, but he filed it away for future use.  Save day; assign annoying nickname.

His extremities were still tingling from the aftereffects of being healed by Jill's powers, and he felt just a little...odd.  Hopefully the echoing sensations would fade soon, because they were more than a little distracting.

He followed her over when she began interrogating the leader of this little band, pausing to scoop up one of the discarded energy drink bottles along the way.  He turned it over and over in his hands as Jill spoke, his amber eyes fixed on the man who might just have some answers.

And when the man turned to him in appeal, without changing expression he grasped the bottle in both hands and with a twist of his wrists ripped it noisily in two, letting the shredded pieces clatter to the ground before folding his arms across his chest.

If the guy thought there was a good-cop, bad-cop thing going on here, he had who was who in the wrong order....

[Gizmo]

The hired gun scowled, looking back to Jill. "You power freaks think you can do whatever you want and nobody can stop you but the boss has your number. You'll get yours and nothing you do to me is going to stop it!"

The medic raised an eyebrow above the top of her bandana mask. "Well that went from quoting regulations to racist ranting pretty quick." Her brows lowered in thought as she began to put the pieces of the puzzle together. "...the toxin in the drinks targets people with a metagene, doesn't it? That's why it only affected some people and why Wildcat could track it so easily." The defeated thug smirked unsteadily and she grabbed the collar of his uniform with a snarl. "Idiota, that's got to be a tenth of the population in Freedom! Most of them would never develop powers in the first place and there are plenty of powers that have nothing to do with genetics! You might as well be murdering random people!"

"Gotta k-kill some mice along w-with the rats," he shot back, his eyes unfocusing as he began to loose consciousness. "S'what the boss says. This was just the trial. 'Proof of concept'. H-heh..." He slumped over, whatever stamina he'd had expended. Jill released his collar and let him fall face first into the puddle of his own vomit, face contorted in carefully controlled anger.

[Mad Scientist]

Wildcat was...well, shocked was the word.

"These people...are crazy!" he protested, turning a worried look on Jill.  "They can't do this, can they?" he demanded, but was all too sure that yes, someone could very well do this, despite the ludicrous collateral damage.  He himself, likely Jill, and thousands of other people were in danger.

Damn.  Fati, Mom and Pop -- his family could be in danger, if he understood correctly.  Just because none of them had powers, didn't mean that whatever genetic quirk had made him turn out the way he had wasn't lurking dormant within them.

Hell no.  Not on his watch, in his neighbourhood.

"We're not letting this happen," he said grimly, and turned to stalk over to the van the corporate goons had arrived in.  He was going to toss it -- somewhere in there there had to be something to let them know who was behind this -- papers, computer equipment, even a jacket with a company patch on it.  Something.

[Gizmo]

The van's nondescript exterior belied just how much had been stuffed into its interior. One corner was taken up mainly by what Wildcat was able to infer was the charging station for the high tech weaponry the mercenaries had been using while a compact locker held extra pieces of the matte black tactical gear they'd all been wearing - including a suitably replacement for his own ruined shirt if he was so inclined. While the equipment looked complicated and presumably expensive it had obviously been installed in some haste, bolted in at an odd angle to accommodate the extra seats that had been shoved in as well. Judging from the mismatched colours that caught his eye the GPS unit installed in the dashboard was aftermarket as well. Pulling up the most recent addresses proved easy enough, providing him with a a handful of high traffic areas like the strip mall and one location along the South River that took him a few moments to place. When he finally made the connection his blood ran cold: the water filtration plant for the entire western side of the city.

[Mad Scientist]

Wildcat didn't feel any compunctions about snagging not only a replacement shirt out of the van's small supply locker, but also a tactical harness with equipment pouches and attachment points.  Hopping down out of the back of the van, he dropped his loot and stripped off his ruined shirt as he filled Jill on on what he found.

"GPS unit has a number of addresses in it like this one, but that's not what we need to worry about," he growled, tossing the remains of his shirt aside and stooping to pick up the new one.  "They've been to the west end water filtration plant, or it's on their to-do list," he told her grimly, pulling the shirt over his head and tucking it into his pants before grabbing up the tactical belt.  Something like that could probably come in pretty handy, he imagined.

"If they get that crap into the water supply...game over."  Getting the tac harness backwards at first, he switched it around and figured out how to shrug into it and fastened it about his waist.  Yeah, he'd have to keep this.

"You got anyone on speed dial who can do stuff with water?" he asked, recalling Wander's advice about calling in backup when things got too big, and wondered if this was one of those times....

[Gizmo]

Jill muttered something about boys feeling the need to take their shirts off around her in an annoyed tone as Wildcat changed but her expression turned more serious as he explained where there next stop was. "Actually, I do, but we're not waiting around to see if she can make it in time to help. Get back in the van." Standing up as she finished securing zip ties around the thumbs of the unconscious goons, she tossed the last of their weapons' power packs into a pile several feet away and turned to the stunned spectators. "If nobody's called the police yet... hey, maybe get on that, alright? You, show them your footage and you two, make sure nobody drinks any of this sludge," she directed, talking to the teen with the camera equipment and the two young women who'd been hired to hand out samples, respectively.

Getting muted nods of understanding from each of them, she dashed to the van and slid into the driver's seat, glad for the small favour of finding the keys still in the ignition. "You're going to want to buckle up for this," she told Wildcat before peeling out of the parking lot with a screech and heading toward the filtration plant. She kept one hand on the wheel and stuck the other out the open side window, raising it high and letting it light up with alternating blue and green light in a makeshift warning light while making liberal use of the van's horn to warn pedestrians and other traffic away. The feline themed pugilist got the impression this wasn't the first time Jill had driven an emergency vehicle but that didn't do much to quiet the urge to hang on for dear life.

[Mad Scientist]

Wildcat had taken 'buckle up' for nothing more than a typically dramatic statement made for emphasis as it so often was, but it took very little time for him to realize that JIll had been quite serious about it.  Hurriedly fastening himself in, he gripped the armrest hard enough for it to creak under his grasp as they took a turn with far more displaced inertia than he was used to.

The fact that she only had one hand on the wheel wasn't doing much to ease his concerns about their rate of passage.

'Uh, you've done this before, right?' was what wanted to come spilling out of his mouth, but he figured that it might be a bit inopportune of a statement to make.  And if she hadn't made this kind of drive before, he probably didn't really want to know that.

"So.  When we get there, any plan beyond kicking ass and taking names?" he inquired over the rush of air through the open window.  He couldn't even offer to take the wheel so she could focus on her light show -- while he had a license, he didn't have a ton of experience at driving, and certainly not enough to come through something like this unscathed.

[Gizmo]

Jill slammed the heel of the palm into the van's horn again as she took them rocketing through a yellow light, heading south. "The important thing is keeping the poison out of the water, 'Cat." Even with her foot pushing the gas pedal to the floor the medic's voice was steady, any pretense of levity or teasing gone from her tone. "I want to nail this scumbag to the wall, believe me, but that has to come second to keeping everyone safe." The calm, controlled training of an emergency responder had taken charge over the swashbuckling flair for the dramatic. At the pace she was setting it didn't take them long to reach the border between Grenville and Greenbank, the van shuddering as they crossed train tracks and the South River came into view and with it the water treatment plant. "We're here."

[Mad Scientist]

Wildcat's door didn't exactly blow off its hinges as they came to a stop, but it did slam open hard enough that he had to catch it on its rebound before it slammed right back shut again.  Having shed his seat belt, he piled out of the van, and did a quick survey of the area, looking for signs that anyone had been nearby recently, sounds of activity, or that damnable scent that had been all over the energy drinks.

"If they've been here, we need to find where they got at the water," he growled, fists clenching and unclenching unconsciously.  "Hopefully they haven't actually added anything yet.  If they haven't been here yet...then what?" he inquired, glancing at Jill as she too exited the van.

[Gizmo]

Not far off across the gravel covered lot they'd pulled into another nondescript van was parked, its opened back door facing toward the newly arrived heroes. A cursory look was enough to confirm that it had been similarly retrofitted as the one they'd commandeered, though this vehicle had a different set of metal braces installed instead of extra seats. It was a bit of a leap but from their curved shape Wildcat suspected that until recently they'd been supporting barrels or cylindrical tanks.

Leaning against the hood of the van was a heavyset man dressed in the same black tactical gear as the thugs from the strip mall, too engrossed by his phone to have noticed their arrival yet, while his partner paced near the entrance to the water treatment plant, his back currently turned to them.

[Mad Scientist]

Well.  It looked like the poison was already in play, which meant they had no time to waste if they were going to have a chance of stopping it from getting into the water supply.

Facing Jill, Wildcat pointed at himself and then made a walking gesture with his fingers.  He pointed at her, then put his knuckles together and waggled his thumbs like he was typing something.  The thumbs turned into a quick thumbs-up, and then he broke into a sprint across the parking lot toward the man pacing at the plant entrance.

His stride was a graceful bound, a good fifteen feet between footsteps, and he hurled himself forward at the end, a powerful leap that covered at least forty feet and brought him in with a solid impact, foot-first, into the unsuspecting goon.  They didn't have time to play around, and he wasn't pulling any punches.  His blood thrilled as things got violent again, and his pupils dilated with anticipation.  This.  This was who he was, and why he was out here.  This.

[Mad Scientist]

The shock of impact flared up his leg, the limb flexed just enough to avoid injuring himself when mass met mass.  The goon...well, wasn't quite so lucky, truth be told.  The man, pacing, had just turned back in time to catch the foot in the chest, eyes going wide as the dark mass of the vigilante hero hammered into him with an impact akin to a car wreck.

The goon left the ground entirely with the transfer of force, breath rushing out in a single, pained gasp that left nothing further to be expelled as he slammed down to the hard pavement of the parking lot.  His head bounced off the unyielding surface, and he lay still.

Wildcat, on the other hand, kicked off again at the point of impact, bouncing back a couple of feet to land with a crunch of bootsoles.  He whirled about to face the other goon by the van, but had a fair bit of confidence that Jill would be able to handle him.  If prior evidence was anything to go by, that was....

[Gizmo]

By the time Wildcat turned around all that was left was to watch the second guard collapse to the ground with a pathetic gurgle, knees collapsing beneath him and phone slipping from his fingers to clatter against the gravel. Stepping primly over the twitching hired gun Jill waved her hand over her shoulder to beckon the feline themed pugilist into the water treatment plant at as quick a pace as she could manage without completely giving up the element of surprise.

Past some basic administrative space were dull metal catwalks circling around huge turbines with chipping robin's egg blue paint, environmental system working in vain to counteract a pervasive, clammy cold. The sound of rushing water through the pipes along the walls and ceiling was almost deafening and Jill risked speeding up, her footfalls against the catwalk drowned out. Heading downward at an angle, the next chamber greeted them with the reservoir itself, a wall about half Wildcat's height preventing anything from rolling into the water.

Accidentally, at least. Another quartet of figures in the now familiar paramilitary outfits were hefting barrels from a stubby utility vehicle at the direction of a disheveled middle-aged man in a labcoat, moving toward the water supply.

[Mad Scientist]

Wildcat just stared for a moment, aghast, realizing just how close they had cut this.  If they hadn't been looking into this problem, if they hadn't teamed up when they did, if Jill hadn't been driving like a maniac...they would have been too late.

If they weren't already.

"Can you drop that...thing you have, block them from getting to the water?" the young hero hissed to Jill, darting an anxious glance her way.  Regardless of whether she could or not, he couldn't afford to just stand around and leave them free to cause more criminal mischief.

Breaking into a sprint, he bounded across the floor toward the quartet and their handler with increasing speed.  He launched himself over them, clearing the mass of men with relative ease, and came down facing them in a sliding three-point stop that was sure to garner some attention.

"What's up, Doc?" he asked in a snarly rumble, keeping his profile low while providing a distraction for Jill to take advantage of.

[Gizmo]

Jill was way ahead of Wildcat, flinging her hands out toward the reservoir. With a sharp crackle of bioelectricity a translucent blue barrier formed, extending the short wall around the water several feet over the heads of the men and women lugging around the barrels of poison. Startled, The man in the labcoat took a step away from the shimmering wall, before Wildcat drew his attention. "Mongrel whelp!" he snarled, eyes gleaming behind his spectacles with what was very clearly madness. "You're too late! I won't let your half-man conspiracy taint the purity of this city any longer! You'll only be the first to be wiped clean! Destroy the barrier!"

At his shouted command the paramilitary thugs opened concentrated fire on Jill's force field with their high tech weapons. Already straining from the size of the construct, the young woman grunted with effort as she maintained it despite the battering. "'Cat, I'm tied up here," she called with a noted of gritted frustration. "You need to take that froot loop down!"

[Mad Scientist]

Wildcat's upper lip lifted off his teeth quite unconsciously, and he crouched a touch lower as he faced the raving scientist.

"Mongrel's a dog, Dr. Fruitloop," he snarled.  "I'm a stray."  Uncoiling, he pounced upon the man in a standing leap that covered the distance between the two of them.  His fist came hammering down, hard, in a blow that should have knocked the man clean from his feet and out of consciousness.  The fact that only one of these things occurred indicated that the man had more than just a white lab coat and bigoted zeal going for him.

The blow knocked the labcoated man from his feet and sent him sliding back a couple of paces, and Wildcat snarled again in triumphant anticipation.  Perhaps next he would see how many of the gun goons he could knock down by pitching the mad doctor into their ranks....

[Gizmo]

Whatever Wildcat's knuckles connected with under the labcoat obviously wasn't yielding flesh but didn't feel quite hard enough to be metal or the tactical armor the armed thugs were sporting. It was enough to keep the raving scientist from falling immediately to the vigilante's attack but it didn't stop him from stumbling backward awkwardly, nearly losing his balance. Wildcat didn't have long to capitalize on the momentum, however, before two of the hired muscle came to their employer's aid, sticking to fisticuffs at short range. One, a burly man with a neatly trimmed chin strap beard caught the feline fighter with a lowered shoulder while the stockier woman beside him contributed a solid punch to the chin. Meanwhile the remaining thugs gave up on trying to burst Jill's force field and instead opened fire on the metamagi medic herself, forcing her to split her attention between evasive acrobatics and keeping the toxin out of the water supply.

[Mad Scientist]

Wildcat saw a momentary flash of stars, but managed to rock his head back enough so that was the extent of the damage rather than having his cage rattled but good.

Skipping back a pace, he lowered himself into a half-crouch and glared balefully at the pair of goons who had piled into him.

Wait -- was it still a 'goon' when it was a woman?  Goonette?  Goona?  He'd have to remember to look that up later, just in case there was an actual difference.

Not wanting to take a pummelling at the hands of people who were paid to be assholes, he dialed back the ferocity of his attack in favour of being a little more cautious.  He likely didn't have to hit them as hard as he could in order to do some damage, and he wouldn't be doing anything to them at all if he was busy spitting out teeth.

Unfortunately, caution didn't translate into scoring a telling blow, and his hesitation must have telegraphed his punch enough for chin-beard to avoid it handily.

[Gizmo]

The man in the labcoat got back up to his feet with a groan while Wildcat was busy with his underlings, holding the sides of his head less like someone nursing a concussion and more like someone trying to keep his brain from leaking out of his ears. "N-no! NO! I'm the one who sees, you blind fools! I'm the one who heard his voice, heeded the warnings!" Throwing his coat to the floor of the filtration plant he revealed what had blunted the effectiveness of the feral vigilante's knuckles: a vest strapped around his torso and over his shoulders and very nearly covered with long tan lumps connected to each other with bright red and blue wires. "The serpent has awoken!" the deranged man insisted as he fumbled for a small remote dangling from the vest. "I will make the city clean again!"

Seeing the bomb, the paramilitary thugs shouted in surprise, quickly losing interest in attacking the heroes or whatever they'd been promised in return for their services and made a break for the exit, back the way Wildcat and Jill had come.