ic The Story Of Tonight (IC)

[Removed.]

Setting the laptop down Mannequin scratched his chin and pondered for a moment. "The laptop hardly had anything that would help us, they may hate technology but they know it well enough to cover their tracks. Not sure what a scientist turned shut-in would be able to help us with on this."

 

Taking another moment of consideration mannequin surveyed the house. It doesn't look like a house that has been raided so these thugs can easily do stealth operations if needed but that does beg the question Woodsman brought up, why go loud?

 

"Woodsman has a good point, it doesn't make sense for them to go loud on this. They have stealth tech so they could of acted at any time and no one would know till it was too late. The only reason I can think of is that this is some sort of diversion to keep the heroes busy while the more important plan is underway. Given the fact the Sniper wasn't here only supports this. Don't think we will get much out of the thugs but it wouldn't hurt to try."

[Kolohehonu]

"Well y'all can go try that. I'll talk to the Van Raaltes. Maybe they know or can think of something." Hyperactive aid before running back into the house. The near human behavior of Mannequin still kinda freaked him out. It didn't take long to find the Van Raaltes. He gave a disarming smile.

 

"Well Doctor we seem to have quite the situation on our hands." He smiled. "Any idea who these people might be?"

[Removed.]

And so there were two. Probably for the best since between the three of us Hyper seems to be the less successful when it comes to talking to the bad guys. The question now is who would make them spill faster between myself and Bowman. Bowman would probably struggle with him trying to pull the whole dark and mysterious act, hard to ask questions when all you do is act mysterious. I'm not the best when it comes to making friends but I have found that this form is very intimidating. No idea why its just a simple artificial bipedal made up of various elements of concert and ceramic. Nonetheless I scare people and that's all we need.

 

Looking down towards Bowman Mannequin pointed a white finger towards himself. "I'll handle the thugs, think you can watch for trouble?" With that Mannequin slowly walked towards the captive thugs letting them know full well in advance that he was coming. Nearing them Mannequin started lengthening the chains making up his body to appear larger than he's giant body already way. He did this slowly letting the chains creak and groan as they were pulled. By the end of it Mannequin took up the space of about 15ft with his elongated limbs.  Coming to a standstill next to the restraint thugs Mannequin lingered for a few long moments before elongating his neck dropping it down face to face with a thug and starred as best as he could right at him. Moments of silence lingered before Mannequin's head was quickly sling-shotted back into place and he hunched over planting his hands on either side of the thugs making a loud thud. With a low rumble that made his voice sound more like a windup music box slowly losing power he said one word. "Where?" while slowly scrapping a blade along the ground leaving shallow indents.

[Avenger Assembled]

Under interrogation, the thugs revealed that they weren't local - they'd actually been hired across the border in Windsor by a recruiter and deployed here without actually seeing their Michigan contact. They were plenty scared, especially when Woodsman made a point of loading his crossbow significantly just behind Mannequin, but eventually it became clear they didn't have much more to say. "We were gonna take them to the Motel 6 and meet up with our guy in the parking lot - that's all I know." 

 

Van Raalte was a bit more helpful - once he'd sent Hyperactive back into the house to retrieve his medication - and his wife's! Like many older people, they both had quite a few daily pills. Once they'd had time to calm themselves from the aftereffects of the struggle and the fright, van Raalte said, "They said something about taking us to their boss, but they seemed to know no more than that. Ach, cretinous thugs," he said, attending to his wife. "There there, Gretchen, did you see, that fellow with the knives cut the one who hurt you, that took care of him..." 

[Kolohehonu]

"Well Dr. Van Raalte and Mrs. Van Raalte the important thing is you are ok." He found paper and pen and at high speed scribbled his heroic phone number on it. "If you are in trouble, or you learn anything new, call this number immediately. If I can't come, one of the other Waco Warriors will be deployed." Hyperactive smiled and nodded. 

 

"Well gentlemen. What do we know? What leads do we have? Do we need to go anywhere?" Hyperactive asked before sitting down. The pain of being shot and kinda blown up was setting in. He let out a sigh through gritted teeth. "Honestly if there's no urgent lead I need some rest."

Edited May 8, 2017 by Kolohehonu

[Avenger Assembled]

"I should prolly get back to Freedom if we're done here," said Woodsman, sitting down on the curb as the sound of approaching sirens got closer. "Hey, we did pretty good," he opined. "We beat the bad guys, saved the nice old people, and maybe we'll get back at this another time if we run into those crazy cultists again." He hesitated a moment, then turned to Hyperactive. "I, uh, don't have any powers and I have a nine o'clock class. Can you...?" He shrugged a little, evidently not wanting to finish his sentence when his implication was pretty obvious. 

[Kolohehonu]

"I can get you both back to Freedom City." Hyperactive said as he looked back and forth between both of them. Yeah he could drop them both off and go home. "Well we need to look into this, but yeah at the moment there's nothing left to do but head back to Freedom. I'm going to try and find some more information. I'll do that starting tomorrow." Hyperactive said before starting to run again. "We can take an easier road back!" Hyperactive shouted. 

 

Hyperactive took a 10,000 mph run back to the city, he needed to get Mystery Master on this. If this was Occult and Tech the Texas Mage would want to know. Maybe Kas knew a Claremont student who was good with tech, he'd need to ask. In any case, it was time to get some rest and nurse some wounds. 

[Removed.]

Thankfully the trip back was far less troubling to Mannequin. Even though he no longer had the need for air there was still that primal fear of having the speedster drop you in the middle of the ocean to drown...Or get eaten by a big fish. Pondering back on what transpired today Mannequin couldn't help but feel a little disappointed in the outcome. There was no new information on those who rob and killed his father. No news on the missing potentially dangerous technology. Some thugs were caught but the mastermind was still at large and would probably come at us in revenge in the future. He never even found out the reason why Dr.Van Raalte was the target. And so Mannequin felt empty handed from the lack of answers he has been searching for for so long. 

 

Perhaps things are not a total loss. Before this Mannequin hadn't met any other heroes like himself and it felt...nice for a change. He was growing used to being a silent vigil striking terror into the hearts of criminals but it got so lonely because the same terror seemed to affect the very people he was protecting. The reasons to why his new featureless form scared people still eluded him. But today was the first time in months Mannequin was able to connect with others doing what he loved to do. They may not see him as a friend yet but being on a good work relationship was all Mannequin needed and perhaps in the future things will change. Maybe tonight wasnt a total loss after all.