ic Horrorshow

[Gizmo]

Ghost Girl sized up the scene with a thoughtful tilt of her head. With the the enhancement of their force fields the looters were probably a more immediate threat than their frantic leader but malfunctioning psionic-amplifying doohickies didn't necessarily mean harmless psionic-amplifying doohickies. Besides, he'd managed to get on her nerves.

 

Her scythe appeared in her outstretched hand as she caught Wraith's attention and nodded her chin in the mastermind's direction. Circling silently through the air she got behind him, floating as close as she could without giving herself away. She drew he weapon back and at the last instant her stern expression split into a predatory grin as she shouted, "Aren't you a scythe for sore eyes!" The impossibly black blade whipped through the top of the little man's head just as he was spinning about, the arc catching him right in the face. Defying physics the soul scythe passed effortlessly through his corporeal form, instead tearing away at his last shreds of composure, the icy chill of death gripping his heart as surely as skeletal fingers.

[Fox]

The little man froze up like he'd had the life cut out of him (which, really, wasn't far off from the truth), staring blankly for a moment before doubling over with his hands on his face as he tried to rattle out...something. The noise had probably started as words.

 

Hurt and distracted as he was, he never saw Wraith coming. She dropped out of the sky like a bolt from an alien god, slamming over-sized clawed feet into his body and using his rapidly-crumpling form to push herself back several feet to regard what was left of the would-be thieves. They looked at their boss's body, skidding a couple of feet and not getting up, and they looked back at the heroic, monstrous pair.

 

One by one, two-thirds of the group dropped their psychic fields, carefully removing their harnesses with the practiced, hands-always-visible caution one might associate with people who'd been arrested a lot. The other two flickered, but snarled, pounding their fists together. The noise bounced around the empty lobby, distorting the distant sound of a car driving by outside.

 

"Cowards," one of them growled, taking a menacing step forward. "We finish it, we get him out, we still get paid. I ain't goin' back to bein' nothing."

[Gizmo]

"Aw, buddy," Ghost Girl answered with sympathy that was only mostly feigned for the sake of mockery. "Yeah, you are." With both hands on her scythe she wound up and swung with her whole body, carving an arc through the air in front of the two criminals still intent on fighting. There was an eardrum-popping moment of displaced air in the split second before a concussive wave ripped through the room like a bomb had gone off.

 

The wave passed by those who had surrendered as a breeze just strong enough to pull at their baggy clothes. When it hit the other pair it impacted like a wrecking ball, hurling them off of their feet and flying backward like pebbles in a hurricane. The far wall gave way at the force of their impact, leaving crumbling holes while they continued until one slammed into a streetlamp hard enough to bend it in half and other into a parked car, rolling the vehicle onto its side before he finally skidded to a halt. The quiet of the night outside was broken by a cacophony of alarms and protesting metal.

[Fox]

It was a testament to their experience as a team that Wraith didn't even flinch as the shockwave went through her; it was a testament to her faith in their combined intimidation that she only spared the still-standing, supposedly-pacified bodyguards a glance as her body rippled and reformed. "If you try to leave," she said, the mass in her arms gathering together into heavy, spiked instruments of violence, "we will find you."

 

None of them appeared the least bit interested in stepping between the spooky ghost or the alien thing, collectively holding up their hands and getting out of the way as quietly as they could. Several had already started doing so, anyway - vorpal scythes, it seemed, were above their pay grades.

 

Wraith shot out of the hole in the wall just as the first of the thugs was starting to struggle his way free from the car; his reward was to be driven back into the cement, Wraith delivering a one-two punch to his rapidly-deteriorating psychic shell. If he was smart, he'd stay down. They were so very rarely smart.

 

A few meters away, the less-damaged holdout had managed to roll his way free of a bent lamp post, but hadn't quite managed to find his feet yet.

[Gizmo]

Ghost Girl followed Wraith outside and focused on the glowing figure under the lamppost, letting her ectoplasmic jaw distort to unleashed a torrent of howling cold that washed over him and left jagged rime across the pavement. With an inarticulate shout of defiance the man staggered to his feet, arms crossed in front of his face and force field flaring brighter as he pushed against the localized blizzard, fully committed to continuing the fight.

 

Done with pageantry and theatrics for the evening, Kimber simply rolled her eyes and worked her mouth back into shape. "I'm trying to save you a beatdown here, come on." Sighing she whirled her scythe about and flicked its blade through the henchman's skull, neatly bisecting it just below eye level before passing though to the other side. Though physically unharmed the crescent of supernatural metal tore through his consciousness, snapping the stubborn resolve powering his force field like a taut string. The glow flickered out and he finally fell, eyes wide open even in unconsciousness.

[Fox]

GM

 

The glowing, dome-like head of the last remaining 'monster' turned to look at its unconscious compatriot, down at its own already-cracking, flickering field of willpower-driven force, and brought up its hands in wordless surrender.

 

 

Putting villains through walls wasn't exactly a spotlight to the clouds, but in Freedom City it was a pretty good way to get the attention of the police none the less. By the time they arrived to clean up the remaining goons - conscious and otherwise - the small angry man had regained his senses and could just be heard, nullified and disappearing into the back of an armored law enforcement van, about how "they'd all see when the extra terrestrials came in force".

 

His language was a lot less polite than that, but it's what would go into the report.

 

And so, the day was saved...more or less. With the villains in custody and the threat passed, Wraith and Ghost Girl re-entered the building to see only two of the scientists from upstairs speaking to the police - the third was resting in a chair by the wall, holding an ice pack to a goose egg on his forehead and trying very hard to not look at anything.

 

"I-i-it was Bole, you see," Doctor Hitch was saying to the crime scene tech, who was taking notes and looking like he'd been enjoying the doctors' collective company for about five minutes too long already. "In all the ruckus, w-w-we thought t-t-to move the d-d- the device to a secure safe. Only the three of us have the passcode. Old...old security rules, you see?"

 

"Yes!" Doctor Whale was gesturing, though heavens only knew what his gesturing was meant to convey. "He yelled at us, once the heroes were gone! Oh, yes, you!" He paused briefly, turning his gesturing the heroines' way. "Once you'd gone, yes. He said something about how it was all supposed to be so simple, and we'd messed everything up, and then he hit poor Doctor Browning on the head, and took the device, and...and we don't know what happened then."

 

The tech was somewhat less than impressed, waving his notebook - full to overflowing with tiny pencil notes - at the specter and her metal friend. "Bole's car is missing, guessing he drove off just as the fight down here started. He's long gone, but he's our problem now. You did good."

[Gizmo]

Kimber let her head loll back as she groaned, the sound dragging out just long enough to take on an unsettling bone rattle as it trailed off. "What a jelly doughnut," she muttered in the same tone most people would have reserved for questioning someone's parentage. Knowing that someone who'd looked them in the eye and asked for help had snuck off with the prize while they were busy elsewhere put a sour taste in her mouth but at least everyone was in one piece and they'd taken a lot of very dangerous hardware out of circulation along with its creator. "Well, parts of that were still fun," she opined to Indira, putting her scythe away with an overhead twirl. "We really need to set aside more time for making people wet themselves."