Amalgam Heroes M&M3e (Inactive)

Game Master Reckless

Hangar

Fusion, having flown outside the jet, waves at Quicky as he dashes past her up the boarding stairs. Shrugging, she follows him back into the entrance, then greets Slade with a wave. Still standing in the doorway, she sees Wingblade approach with the bundle she carries.

"Hi there. Here, perhaps we all should look at the dangerous destructive item outside the jet." She joins Shayera on the ground. "Nice of you to show up to debrief us yourself," she adds with a grin.

Looking back at Quicky, she adds. "I think there's some snacks stocked in the cabin along with everything else."

Turning back to Wingblade. "What happened that you had to kill the guy?"

"Cabin, check. Thanks." and he quickly moved into the cabin and starts looting for snacks. He is back out in short order stuffing his face. " Good to see you again. " he managed during a short pause in consumption.

The girl frowns. "Guys. There were three of them. One was really big. One had this weapon, and another shot some sort of light from his hands." She holds it out casually.

Her interest suddenly turns to the food in Quicky's hands. She looks over the assortment, and spots one that grabs her attention. "Pretzels. I've never tried those before. Can I--?"

"Muh huh" he replies while busily stuffing his face and tosses over the pretzels.

Hangar

"And the other had a regular gun? So, are the Atlanteans working with someone else local? Lots of organized crime in Gotham, isn't there?"

Fusion looks at the weapon (but does not take it), hovering her hand over it to sense the general molecular stability of the item or its power source.

Shayera catches the bag in one hand then uses her teeth to tear it open. She holds the weapon out for Fusion to study in the other hand as she takes a deep breath of the aroma coming out of the package. "Salty. Great," she comments, then devours the snack.

In between chews, she answers Fusion's question. "Yeah, the other gun wasn't anything special. But I don't know who those guys were. They were solid, real tough."

She thinks a bit while she finishes the last of the pretzels. "They were taking some women away, calling them 'war prizes' like they deserved them. One of them called me a guppy when he tried to grab me. Never heard someone call someone that before."

Since he eats quite fast (like most other things he does), he goes through the snacks in short order.

"Well I had a fairly boring night. Just moving some crates for someone. I was a bit curious that somehow this guy got my civvie name, which concerns me a bit. I mean to look into him. Name was Richmond Destine. Anyone know of him? Company was Hammerdown Transportation. "

Then he looks a bit pensive. Hmm, trident markings on those crates? Atlantean? Crap, I wonder if I took the wrong job. Better fess up now or I'll look dirty if it comes up later.

"Oh yeah, and the crates I was moving had tridents on them, which does raise a flag now that you mention Atlantean. Honestly, I didn't see anything suspicious at the time. I can show you where the warehouse was. "

In the hangar
Anything any of us know about Hammerdown?

Fusion watches the two snarf snacks and gives a slight sigh. Since her transformation, everything tastes like sawdust... and she doesn't really need to eat anyway, but that's not really the point.

She shakes her head at Wingblade, with a slightly nervous smile. "I'd... rather not hold it, if that's okay. Don't want to melt it by accident." She adds, tangentially, "Don't worry, the plane's rigged to resist should my powers 'slip.'."

"Well, sounds like we need to get to Gotham to figure out what's happening, and meet the rest of the team there." She looks at Blademaster. "Unless you've got any further debriefing to give us, Slade."

Slade finishes reading files and wracking his own brain about the same time Quicky finishes his snacks.

"Yes, looks like they're connected. Richmond Destine is VP of operations for Hammerdown Transportation. Haunt confirmed that Hammerdown was the company moving the tridents, so you two must have been in the same place around the same time. We need to work on your sense of awareness, Quicky."

"The people who attacked Shayera match what little we know about Atlanteans as well. I think it's time we learned more about Hammerdown."

At Fusion's question:

"Yes, time to get moving. Let's pick up Haunt and Blue Spider, and then Quicky can guide us to that warehouse. Seems like our only cncrete lead so far."

Quicky was in DC area, Haunt in Gotham/NY; Where Quicky was they were loading; Haunt saw unloading and assembly. Wingblade was in the DC area, so at least 1 trident has "arrived" there?

Ah. The way the scene was set I thought they were meant to be in the same place, with Haunt essentially swooping in right after Quicky grabbed his sack of money and ran. Ignore that line then.

"All right folks, then buckle up and let's get going. Engines are already warm." Fusion goes into the cockpit and buckles herself in and moves the jet out of the hangar and signals the control tower.

"Tower, this is Blackjet Tango Tango X-Ray, ready at runway 2. Requesting clearance for takeoff."

Slade slides into a seat nearest the cockpit and buckles himself in, clipping his helmet to the mesh on the wall behind him.

Quicky will buckle himself in and start tapping his foot. He's not overly good at letting something else move him in this rom.

Shayera sits down and crosses her arms, then legs, but doesn't buckle herself in. Her wings fold out slightly, anchoring her in her chosen spot. Since no one has taken the weapon from her, she sets it in her lap. So, we're going to Gotham, then? she asks over the whine of the engines.

"Yeah. Haunt's there, and Blue Spider might be too. He's based out of the NYC area in any case."

Blackjet Tango Tango X-Ray, you are cleared for take-off. Have a good flight.

The trip to NYC is fairly smooth, and pretty fast. You arrive without incident.

Once he is deplaned, any sense of nervousness goes away.

"Do we meet them at the warehouse or what?"

When Shayera steps out of the jet, she looks around, bewildered. This isn't-- This is nothing like-- she starts, then launches herself into the air. She flies straight up with several beats of her wings, then casts about at the city's skyline.

She grabs her head and squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, then shakes her head to clear it. She floats back down to the pavement. She smiles weakly. Sorry. Just... forgot where I was for a moment.

Grayson receives a message from Slade as he orders his third latte. He haphazardly juggles the communicator, his wallet and the change, dropping a dollar on the counter as a tip. "Hey, we're at the Starbucks on the corner of 8th and 50th in Gotham. What? I'm here with B-... uh... Peter." the barista at the counter brings a venti soy latte to the counter, looks at the scribbled handwritten and calls out "JASON. VENTI SOY LATTE FOR JASON."
"It's Grayson, but thanks." he mutters as he grabs his drink. He returns to Slade on the communicator.
" Sorry, grabbing a drink to go. I've got some Intel on Brinedart that Pete and I were going over. If you want, we could meet at Josie's. Yeah, she's tough as nails as always. I watched as she kicked out a gang of bikers the other day. She can keep secrets. What? What do you want, a frappicino? All right, I'll bring coffee for everyone. See ya."

He hangs up and packs his laptop. "Petey, they're here. We're meeting 'em at Josie's."

Not sure if there's a PILOT or SHIP affiliated base or building in NYC that we could rendezvous at, so I thought I'd bring Josie's Bar into the mix. Feel free to retcon that to a Baxter building or avengers tower type place if one exists.

Just curious, where did we land? I figure the jet is fairly obvious.

Fusion looks at concern with Wingblade. When Shayera shakes it off, Fusion decides not to pry, but gives her a supportive smile.

She then turns and addresses Slade. "Blademaster, are we trying to keep our presence quiet or obvious? 'Cause I'm..." she points to her glowing blue figure... "Obvious."

"Yeah, ok. Let's roll." He grabs one of the trays of coffee cups that Grayson has for the others and heads out the door with them as he asks, "This was like a work meeting right? So we can expense it? I kept my reciept. Can't believe how much they charge for a dount! And they didn't even have jellies..."

The two continue talking about how expensive life in the big city is as they walk down the street to meet with everyone else.

I imagine we can land on a rooftop and cloak the ship.

Slade thinks for a moment.

"We want to be a bit lower key, but if we take some back alleys and move quick we can make it to Josie's without being seen by too many people. Not like the rest of us are very inconspicuous either." he gestures to his armor and the helmet under his arm.

"If we move fast enough we might get there in time to see Josie kick Grayson's ass for bringing in outside food and drinks."

'For future reference, is there any way you can tone it down? If we want to sneak around it'd be helpful if you could cover the glow with clothes or something."

Shayera rolls her eyes in a huff and compresses her wings in a tight bundle, looking like a jagged mass on her back. "Did you ever get me a new backpack, Blademaster?" she asks as she starts to step out into the street.

Slade rummages around under the seats for a backpack. Assuming he finds one, he tosses it to Shayera.

"Yep."

She catches it easily, then extends one of her claws and cuts out the back with a few deft slashes. She throws it over her shoulders and snugs it around her wings.

"Okay, let's go."

Fusion shakes her head at Slade. "Sorry, this light of mine can't be put under a bushel as it were. But I presume if Waller asked me to join the team she didn't expect me to participate in subterfuge."

"Hm. We'll figure something out when it comes to it."

"For now, let's get moving."

"Urgently? " he asks with a smirk.

"Sure. But you'll have to cover the bill this time."

"Nevermind, I'll just jog. "

Titan Team X

In the upper floors of the apartment building of Grayson Pryde, the team meets for the first time in an official capacity. While everyone has met someone in the group, and you have all agreed to serve together, there are no doubt some trepidation. Rarely has so much power been gathered in one place, and the last time, it was during active war against an alien invasion.

Still, there seems to be some activity that bears investigation, and with weapons being assembled it seems possible that the world may once again be in danger. Rather than an external threat, this time the threat may be coming from an offshoot of humanity, the Inhumans of Atlantis.

What you know:

Two nights ago, Quicky was loading crates marked with a stylized trident into a truck for Hammerdown Transportation in Bethesda, MD. The men he worked with spoke in a strange accent, and the man giving the orders was Richmond Destine, an oily smelling man and the VP of operations for Hammerdown. Destine called Quicky by his civilian name.

Last night, two apparently related incidents occurred. In a warehouse on Gotham's docks, Haunt found an active munitions factory, apparently utilizing materials delivered from DC to Gotham by Hammerdown on behalf of Brinedart, Inc. The weapons were being assembled by squid-men. They are trident-like and can generate blasts of highly pressurized water. Secondly, in DC Wingblade encountered three thugs with low-level superhuman abilities attempting to kidnap some "War Brides". While two of them were armed with conventional weapons, the third had a completed water trident.

Today, Haunt visited a friend who told him that Atlanteans were involved and gave him some surveillance files on Hammerdown and Brinedart. Fusion and Blademaster were being briefed at TTX HQ while Blue Spider was having a pretty typically bad day when the calls came together and the decision was made to meet to go over the information you have so far.

The information in Weasel's files is pretty extensive, including a good deal of surveillance footage of the dock area, where Hammerdown has been making night time deliveries on and off for about two weeks now. The trucks pull into the warehouse at night and drive off the following morning each time. Three of these surveillance tapes show a man in a suit entering or leaving the warehouse. The notes Weasel made indicate that this is Arthur Brinedart, whom Blademaster can confirm is an match for the photos from WW II of Maxiseth, the brother to Atlantis' King. Doesn't look like he's aged a single day.

After the info exchange:

"This surveillance footage confirms this is worse than it already seemed. Maxiseth, or Brinedart as he's calling himself now, is crazy and his abilities are largely unknown. Given he's of the royal Atlantean bloodline, they're bound to be significant."

Or I assume they are, since they weren't mentioned in the stuff above. Is the "not aging" bit something common to Atlanteans or teh Royal bloodline (they age slower?) or is it a clue as to what Maxiseth's abilities might be?

"I think our first move should be to investigate Hammerdown. We're in the dark on the fine details of their operation, and knowing more could give us a way to shut them down permanently, since taking out Maxiseth likely won't put a stop to the weapon operation, or get the already shipped weapons off the street."

"Input?"

"Pardon me if I missed this, but do we know what the weapons are FOR? Who is using them, against what?"

Fusion shifts, leaning against the wall. She then stumbles when the portion of the wall she's touching begins to bubble and melt. She pulls away quickly, and fortunately a few seconds later the wall resolidifies, and she flashes Grayson an apologetic look. "Anyway, also do we have anything on this Destine? He apparently knows Quicky, might know the rest of us too. We need to balance those scales."

"Yeah, I really don't like that guy being up on us in knowledge. Who knows what else he might have? Though if those weapons are as bad as we think, a bunch of street thugs with them could cause all kinds of havoc. "

"There probably are logs and shipping manifests at that warehouse. That'd tell us where the weapons were sent and how many there are."
Looking around at the exceptionally large and spacious apartment, Peter looks amazed. "And the even bigger question, how do you afford a place this big in New York? This is like 20 of my crappy little apartments!"

"We know nothing about Destine, except that he's VP of operations. SHIP and PILOT both have suspiciously little information on Hammerdown or anyone who work there. We've got no dirt on them, no details on their internal structure, or anything else."

"That's why I was suggesting we investigate them first. There might be clues as to what the weapons are for, who they're being purchased by, and anything else we want to know either at that warehouse or in another of their buildings."

"Sounds like we should hit the warehouse. I'll buzz on over there" then seeing Slade start to look at him "At a measured pace and find a place to scope it out from cover. "

"Yeah. Just be careful not to get caught." he states the obvious for Quicky's benefit.

Shayera stands on her tiptoes to look over Slade's shoulders to get a glimpse of the files. Her eyes fall on the picture and she is mesmerized for a few seconds. Then she backs away, shaking her head. "No! I won't, Father! I don't love him!"

She comes to herself, blinking hard to clear her head. "Whoa. Sorry. That guy looks like... " She rubs her eyes hard. "Someone else. Sorry."

Slade mentally files a note that Shayera is more unstable than reports may indicate, but stays silent.

Grayson's eyes grow when he sees Fusion's incident, yet he remains pleasant. Relief washed over him as the bit of wall went back to normal. He casually walked over and brushed a hand across it to make sure it wasn't ruined.

"Well, Haunt replies to Blue Spider, " I guess you can say I'm your typical little orphan Annie." He quickly changes the subject.
"There were at least a hundred of those weapons. I shorted out as many as I could while I was there. By the looks of it, those guys were ready for a quick move, using the warehouse to assemble, and then pushing them out. Slade, what else do you know about this Maxiseth and the Atlanteans? Who could he be using these weapons against?"

It should be noted that if you're from NYC, you will probably know of Grayson Pryde's adoption, seeing as his guardian was a filthy rich businessman bachelor. Grayson's not local celebrity status, but the news would've had a bit on it on both the television and in the paper.

Sledge takes a deep breath, and relays the information he knows from the reports about Maxiseth and the Atlanteans.

"Maxiseth in particular? As I said, not much is known about him except that he's insane, helped the Axis during World War II, and he's of Royal Atlantean blood...so has some manner of superhuman power, like the other Royals we know of. His goal may be the same as it's always been: Kill his brother and the queen, and take the throne of Atlantis from him. But that's just his ultimate goal. In the short term I have no idea what he'd be targeting, but I'd be willing to bet it furthers that plan somehow. He may just be trying to arm his followers and raise an army to assault Atlantis, though I doubt anything that direct."

"His brother, Black Ray is incredibly strong and durable, and has an array of powers based on creating and controlling soundwaves, which grants him flight, echolocation, control over sea creatures, and crushing shockwaves. The other royal Atlanteans have similarly destructive abilities, so Maxiseth should only be approached with extreme caution during this mission. It took the whole Justice Squad to take him down before, so if you encounter him alone, call for backup and try to stall."

"Atlanteans in general are superhumanly strong and durable, and will likely be armed with those trident weapons. Given what the members of this team can do they're not likely to be a large threat individually, but should not be underestimated."

"I can recite the other reports word for word if you want, but that would take a while."

Shayera, recovered, crosses her arms and taps her foot. "Why don't we just fly in when Ar'Tur makes one of his stops and get the answers from him? We know he visits the warehouse from time to time."

"Because capturing and interrogating Maxiseth, an Inhuman with unknown powers of indeterminate magnitude is a much taller order than investigating a hopefully empty or lightly guarded warehouse."

"It may come to that, but should not be our first move."

"Where do you want me to meet you? I'm gonna go scout?" and when he gets a rendezvous location he takes off at a mild pace (200 MPH or so) and circles the warehouse taking a careful look for guards and whatnot. He has telescopic vision so he doesn't need to get too close, and he can keep to cover.

stealth: 1d20 + 15 ⇒ (11) + 15 = 26
perception: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (6) + 10 = 16

Shayera smirks. "Yeah, well, when it comes to that, let me know." Her blades slide out of her forearm, and she starts cleaning her fingernails.

In this case I'm not actually sure what the best place would be. What's the area surrounding the warehouse look like?

Edit: Eh. I'll take a guess.

"See if you can find a building to get on top of that will let you see the whole warehouse. Tell me how many people come and go."

ETA: Ninjaed by several of you... kept coming back and forth to the computer while typing

Fusion frowns at Shayera's outburst, but beyond looking concerned, does nothing when she sees the woman recover quickly.

"Wingblade's question is a good one."

She shifts weight from one foot to the other. "I have stupider questions, but I'd rather get them out of the way: Hammerdown is known SOMEWHERE as a transport organization, or no one would have recongized the logo, and you mentioned Brinedart is 'Incorporated.' This would suggest that at least SOMEWHERE they're registered as businesses. I would presume Maryland and New York would be states to start with. Do we have that information? Even if it's all phony, anything that might be traceable is a start.

"Likewise--they're moving in and out in vans on the streets. So do we have closed circuit camera footage of the vans, where we might get a sense of where they come from and where they go after they leave the warehouse? Even a vague general direction?"

ETA She nods at Quicky. "Scouting works too, but knowing where to get the best vantage would be a help."