Doctor Night escapes into a classroom to access the situation. He has seen as least one other hero on the scene and he is hopeful that they will be able to coordinate a rescue attempt.
While Brisk is running across the surface of the building, the lights of the school bus that has been parked in front of the main entrance begin to flash. He and Bug Hunter hear an electronic message coming from the vehicle. "Proximity warning: Unidentified motion within established perimeter. Activate defensive protocols." A machine gun springs out of a hidden compartment and opens fire against the speedster.
The robot is having trouble tracking Brisk at his high speed, and the bullets land harmlessly in the brick exterior.
With his enhanced hearing, Doctor Night can hear gunfire coming from outside.
Bug Hunter is up.
Baxter is taken aback by the sudden machine gun. "Well that's begging for some hurt."
Reaching into his coat he produces an oversized, wicked-looking farce of a wasp, barbed stinger like a railroad spike. It twitches unnaturally in his hand. "Hey bullet-bus, I think you got a bee on you." He taunts as he flings the strange biological weapon.
He then flips around to his open truck and grabs a pack with some kind of tethered rifle. It looks to be some kind of fumigator until the pilot light at the end flicks on. Baxter pulls up his gas mask to cover his unsettling grin. "Let's make some noise."
Bug Hunter's Dart ricochet's off the robot's armored exterior. It doesn't seem to respond to the failed attack.
The man in the room manages to get the students out of the computer lab.
Brisk is up. He is able to get to him without the students in the way, if he still wants to do that.
Brisk charges through the window. The glass fragments as he passes through it, and a shard slices his thigh. The pain causes him to lose balance and he stumbles across the floor, trying to catch his weight. He ends up crashing into the masked man with his sheer velocity.
The intruder is solidly built, and despite short grunt from being slammed into, he doesn't seem harmed by the crash.
The breaking glass catches the attention of the leader who hurries towards the commotion and launches a dagger at the speedster.
The blade grazes his shoulder, drawing more blood.
Valerie senses nothing but confidence from the former hero. "Perhaps that will change soon," he responds when she says her parents are for transactional uses. Once in the room, he pulls a flash drive from within his armor. Valerie puts it in the saferoom computer and opens the single file titled "Sahara." It brings up information on a superhuman named Marsha Sand. She was a small time superhero, but didn't last long in the life, and never got any large recognition. Turns out, she stopped fighting crime when she got pregnant and never returned after the birth of her son. As such, she wasn't targeted during Doomsday and has returned to action in the aftermath. When not fighting crime, she works as a chef in her restaurant. Two other names are listed in the file: Ken Sand and Nathan Sand.
Ken is her husband, he is a joint owner of the restaurant.
Nathan is her son. An eight year old boy who goes to elementary school.
They live on the other side of Boston.
The next thing she notices are files on Marsha's powers. It looks like she can control earth and emit heat energy. In a box below her powers reads the following:
Analysis of skirmish between grunt forces and the hero, Sahara, shows that her energy projection is not true heat, but rather a targeted disintegration. The recovering affected grunts showed decreased levels of water in the body resulting in rapid dehydration, fatigue, and unconsciousness. Sahara seems to be able to avoid killing her targets with the massive loss of water. Recommendation: apprehension for experimentation.
There are also schematics for their house, the restaurant, their son's school, normal errand routes, her hero territory and other facets of the family's daily life.
Siphon studies the information with interest. "Nice. Sounds like fun. Though, what are the odds that this lady marries a guy named 'Sand'? Unless, that's her last name and he took it, but then I gotta ask, why?"
She smirks, and then turns away from the computer to look at Sapphire Samurai. "All right. Looks pretty straightforward. I nab her powers, and then what? Need a secret tunnel dug? Or some guards incapacitated? Looks like there's a lot of options with that power set."
Doctor Night hops back into battle matching the speed of a boss kangaroo from Down Under. His brick wall disappears into the ether as he refocuses his magical energies. With a quick gulp of a ready potion he turns and breathes a line of acid at Gold Skull and any other minion he can catch. He is careful to avoid hitting any bystanders or the speedster.
Line area of effect: 5 feet wide by 30 feet long of acid. Reflex DC 16 to halve the damage effect. Toughness DC 21 or DC 18 on a successful reflex save for any person caught in the effect.
"Actually, we need her contained," says Sapphire Samurai. "We will be needing access to her long term. I can give you access to men and equipment. I just need to know your plan and what you need."
Three of the henchmen collapse in pain from the acid. Even the leader seems to be in agony, though he supports his weight using the handle of his scythe.
Two of the three remaining henchmen return fire at Doctor Night with their machine guns.
He dodges the burst of gunfire easily, but the movement puts him directly in the path of the second.
Meanwhile outside, the school bus robot heads over the window that Brisk ran through and reaches inside to pull grab the speedster.
Brisk sees a giant robotic hand reaching into the room for him.
Bug Hunter is up.
[ooc]And yes. You guys each have a hero point.
Baxter sees the bus-bot drive up to the school and then looks down at the weapon in his hands. "Uh, nevermind." He tosses it back into the truck and slams the doors shut, then runs towards the bus-bot in pursuit. And he's not alone; The dart from before seems to be circling back for another pass.
Doctor Night's mystically enhanced physiology absorbs much of the gunfire.
Doctor Night notices that the henchmen seem to go down pretty easily but still pack a wallop.
Brisk shoots to the left to dodge the robotic hand.
And watches as the hand passes hits where he was second before.
"Is this 'apprehension for experimentation'?" Siphon frowns. After a moment while she quiets some nagging inner voice, she shrugs. "Eh, whatever. You got a lot of intel on her already. It's easy enough to tag her while she's running errands. Or you could have some people stage a robbery of the restaurant. Or even better, stage a back-alley attack while she's patrolling in her hero guise. She comes to my rescue, and boom."
Valerie turns back to look at the intel once more, trying to keep the sour feeling in her stomach from showing up on her face. So what if this hero has a kid? So what if she has a husband, and a family business, and errands and a life that she'd suddenly disappear from? A kid waiting for her at home...
She shrugs again. None of the other heroes she'd taken out had kids like this. None of them... or, she didn't know if they had. She tries to block out knowledge of the kid and husband. It's just Sahara. A hero named Sahara, with neat powers that I'd love to take out for a spin. She'll have a mask on, and I won't have to think that she's really Marsha Sand with a husband and a son... Quiet, brain!
"All right. Um... back alley attack seems best. I'll need a couple guys who'll be getting dehydrated after they attack me for show. You'll need a, um, containment crew, for after. And then there's the matter of my fee."
The hornet dart finds gap in the armor of the robot. The body spasms as some of the electrical systems are cut.
One of the intruders returns fire against the doctor after seeing their companion go down.
But he manages to get himself out of the line of fire again.
Brisk is up.
"Do you have a problem with experimentation, Siphon. If you do, don't ask about it. There is no room in this line of work for weak stomachs." After Siphon gives him her plan, he says, "All right. I can get you ten well equipped men, and a transport to keep her in. When would you like to leave?"
Brisk races through the room sending a barrage of attacks at the minion he attacked before and the boss. As he attacks he says, "Why attack these kids?"
Valerie's pride rankles when she's accused of having a weak stomach. For a moment, it settles her misgivings and she gives him a fierce glare. "I ask about it," she hisses, "because it might matter to you what condition the target is in when she's apprehended."
She keeps her gaze steady while the Sapphire Samurai explains what he brings to the plan. Sheesh. Is Sahara that good that ten dudes won't be enough? I guess it doesn't matter since we need the money.
"Well, we gotta wait until it's time for her regular patrol. And doing this on a day where it's not pouring down rain might be good. Sahara might not even patrol on a night like this. She wouldn't hear a scream unless she was right on top of us either."
She leans out into the hallway and shouts, "Mom! What's the going rate of a super nab-and grab?"
With a flurry of blows too fast to see, Brisk knocks out the leader of the terrorists even through his protective gear.
Doctor Night moves around to line up the remaining henchman in a spray of acid. He is careful not to catch anyone already unconscious or the speedster.
Line area of effect: 5 feet wide by 30 feet long of acid. Reflex DC 16 to halve the damage effect. Toughness DC 21 or DC 18 on a successful reflex save for any person caught in the effect.
Doctor Night manages to catch the remaining henchman. They collapse from pain as the corrosive liquid eats through their clothing and skin.
The busbot reaches into the window again and tries to grab Brisk.
The speedster steps just outside the robot's reach.
Bug Hunter is up.
"We would prefer it if you didn't needlessly damage the merchandise," the Sapphire Samurai says. When she calls for her mom, the villain hands her a card. "Tell you what, give me a call when you're ready to make a deal. Don't make me wait to long." He leaves without waiting for her mother's response.
After he leaves, Valerie's parents come up to her with rare expressions of concern. "What was that about?" her mother asks sweetly.
Glad that his creation worked, Baxter reaches into his jacket to find another. Dangerous business, grabbing around in there, but he had safeguards.
Pulling out another hornet dart he flings it at high speed towards the busbot now only a few feet away. "You like these guys, huh? Made 'em myself."
No sooner does it leave his hand than he leaps into the air, the flaps on the back of his duster pushed up by chitinous places to reveal insect wings. He thrums like a helicopter as he ascends towards where the action seems to be coming from inside the building.
Siphon calls after the samurai, "I'm ready to deal! We're dealing now! What's it worth to you?" She stares after him, stunned.
The sweet way her mom asked her question made Valerie's stomach twist guiltily. They needed the money, but she'd messed it up. "He had a job. It would have been easy, but when I started asking him about what it would pay, he just handed me this card and walked away. It's not my fault!"
She gives the card to her mother. "You call. Or... wait. I could just go get the target now, and then you can negotiate the price?" She wrings her hands as she studies her mother's face.
The dart initially bounces off of the armored robot once again, and it continues to focus on it's initial target.
Brisk and Doctor Night are up. You don't need to worry about staying in initiative order now that there's no enemies between you.
"You did the right thing, Valerie," her mother says. "He probably would have tried to scam you on the price."
What were they trying to get you to take?"her father asks. "He refused to give us any information."
Brisk looks at the strange robot hand and then his hand blurs as he flings marbles at what he thinks looks like a weak joint. Brisk then zips to another room trying to make the robot arm follow him.
Doctor Night tries to short circuit the robot hand with a spray of acid. He then moves away from the window and behind a solid wall to be a more difficult target.
Line area of effect: 5 feet wide by 30 feet long of acid. Reflex DC 16 to halve the damage effect. Toughness DC 21 or DC 18 on a successful reflex save for any person caught in the effect.
Despite her mother's approval, Valerie still heard the unspoken message. You can't do this without us. She nods in agreement and looks over to her father after he asks her what the Samurai wanted. "Some cape who missed out on Doomsday and is back in action. They want her for 'experimentation.'" She adds finger quotes. "Had a ton of information on her. Earth control powers, and some sort of heat-dehydration power. Fun stuff."
Valerie can see the wheels turning behind her mother's eyes. "Did they have any information about living contacts?" she asks.
Her father seems to catch on to what the mother is thinking, "Oh yes! If we can establish a second line of demand, we can start a bidding war for her delivery. Either to what few contacts she has left or to the samurai. Did they give you a plan for their operation?"
All of the marbles miss the robot hand while Night's acid seems to do very little against the armor. It reaches for Doctor Night, having identified him as a threat.
With so little room, the hand never gets close to catching Doctor Night.
All of the combat players can go again.
Brisk feels his bruises clear up as he can move more easily. In a burst of speed he throws more marbles at the machine and says, "Does the masked guy have a remote for this thing?"
Bug Hunter's hornet dart flies around erratically, looking for an angle to attack its prey. In the meantime, the man himself bursts through a window and tumbles to the floor. Standing up, he brushes off the glass and eyes the situation around him. "Yo, uh, raise your hand if you're trying to kidnap some kids." He suggests, brandishing a couple of unnatural-looking insectile objects in his hands.
Valerie looks between her two parents, a bad taste in her mouth. Are we doing ransoms now? She keeps that to herself. "Not likely. Sapphire's the one with deep pockets. Could have brought a containment unit and ten guys, fully equipped. Sahara's family owns a local restaurant. They're not going to be able to outbid him. Plus, won't they go to the cops?"
She checks the weather outside and considers if it's likely to keep raining all night. "Look, he was going to let me pick the plan. But it's nothing I can't do myself. All a bunch of extra dudes are going to do is tip her off that there's a trap. I got enough from his intel to pull this off solo." She gestures to the card in her mom's hand. "I'll call you when it's done."
She grabs a heavier jacket and heads out into the evening.
@Matt Adams 259 - I think that the Busbot was damaged previously in this fight by Bug Hunter and was at -1 toughness when he was sprayed with Doctor Night's acid last turn. If this is true (and the Busbot does not have regeneration) then he would have failed the last save (due to the -1 penalty) and now be at -2 toughness now. :)
Doctor Night is not sure if his acid is powerful enough to defeat this robot but he is willing to give it another try. He tries to singe the robot's arm with a heroic spray.
Line area of effect: 5 feet wide by 30 feet long of acid. Reflex DC 16 to halve the damage effect. Toughness DC 21 or DC 18 on a successful reflex save for any person caught in the effect.
Doctor Night smirks as the strange looking new comer breaks yet another window. Who is this guy now? Insect Man?
He turns to the speedster.
"Quite possibly but I don't have time to look into that now but maybe you do? Grab his helmet while you are at it."
Valerie pulls her hood up, letting it hide her face as she heads to the nearest subway station. She keeps it up while she takes the ride to Sahara's side of town. It's probably not even strapped-to-a-table experimentation. Just getting some readouts, scans, maybe a blood sample... It doesn't have to be like... mine. Her mind flashes back to the treatments inflicted on her -- chemical baths, immersed in fluids with tubes snaked through her body and being bombarded with pulsing energies. Full-on mad science stuff.
She shakes herself out of the reverie. It won't be anything like that. And even if it is... So what, right? She forces herself not to think about that anymore, and instead focuses on her plan.
Siphon gets off the subway one stop ahead of Sahara's neighborhood and takes a meandering route, familiarizing herself with the area. Recognizing an old, boarded-up warehouse as a former hideout of the Busted Flush Mob where she did a job a year ago, she works her way around it until she finds a way in. She explores cautiously, making sure the playing card-themed gangsters hadn't left any traps or surprises.
Once satisfied the old hideout will work as a place to keep Sahara until she can be handed over to Sapphire Samurai's goons, Siphon pulls on her mask and heads out to ambush the hero.
Brisk's marbles find a spot in the armor that had been weakened by the doctor's acid. The glass ball shatters when it penetrates and shrapnel shreds some of the internal circuitry. The hand starts to move erratically and knocks the hunter's dart aside.
Doctor Night's acid seems to do a bit more damage this time, as the constant corrosion wears down the metal.
The hand reaches for Brisk again.
Brisk is able to slip through it's large, clunky fingers yet again.
Go ahead combatants.
Brisk shrugs and races over to the fallen masked man and quickly removes the mask and searches him for a remote.
@Brisk/Matt Adams 259 - I think that Brisk would be able to search Gold Mask as a free action due to his Quickness Rank 3. It would take his move action to get there so he would have a Standard action remaining in my book (to throw marbles). Of course it is the GM's call. :)
Doctor Night repeats his action trying to melt down the mechanical beast.
Line area of effect: 5 feet wide by 30 feet long of acid. Reflex DC 16 to halve the damage effect. Toughness DC 21 or DC 18 on a successful reflex save for any person caught in the effect.
"Keep it up. We are wearing it down!"
When Brisk removes the helmet, he reveals the face of a teenage boy. He looks to be about the same age as the students he tried to take hostage, but with no time to think further he searches the rest of Gold Skull’s body and finds a voice command remote control.
Brisk speaks into the remote, "Stop, deactivate." He then zips through the building to make sure that no more henchmen are hiding out in the building.
Baxter realizes that a lot has happened in here while he was out there. Way more than he'd anticipated. It was like a circus in here.
"Well, uh, I'll just go check on everybody." He concludes out loud, though it appears everyone is too distracted to listen.
Picking his way around the chaos and violence, he begins to look for students that might need help escaping. "Hey kids, let's pack it up. Come on, time to head out."
When Brisk speaks into the remote, the robot pulls it's hand out of the building and returns to its school bus mode. Although, the damaged hand isn't able to fully reconfigure. Instead, it looks like the bus has developed a strange, metallic tumor. Through the hole in the side of the library, you guys can see a media presence developing on the campus with cameras pointing directly at the fight. Now that the fighting has died down, Doctor Night is able to hear them clearly. It seems like the reporters are lumping the three of you in with the terrorists. Probably because you ended up having to fight the reprogrammed school security robot.
However, the reporters quickly change their tune when you bring out the students. The kids are rounded up by the police to take their statements while the officer that had greeted Brisk and Bug Hunter comes over to talk to you. "Hey, you guys had me a bit worried there. Glad everything turned out okay. I hope you don't mind, but I have to take your statements for the record."
Brisk bounces a bit from foot to foot and looks away before looking back and saying, "Sure...but we can do this fast. I am in a bit of a rush."
Doctor Night tries to put his best foot forward with the authorities as the new team meets the press and makes their first superhero appearance in public.
"It would seem that we were all near the scene when the trouble broke out. They stormed through the building and attempted to kidnap the students as you well know."
Doctor Night points to Gold Mask.
"This one was their leader. They all wore strange technologically advanced helmets and obviously had lethal weapons as well. We were able to subdue them and their bus-robot."
"From what I can see there are no injuries among the students and even the trouble makers were taken down without any life-threatening wounds."
Baxter nods along, pretty much just as in the dark as the police. "I guess we were pretty lucky there's still a few heroes around." He chimes in, noting the speedster and the other fellow who shoots acid. "Or, whatever your deal is."
Siphon kept to the shadows and narrow alleys. It wasn't very efficient, she knew, relying on pure luck that she would cross paths with Sahara -- even assuming she was patrolling this evening. A better play would be to wander around in the open, so that Sahara would have just as much of a chance to spot her. But that didn't guarantee Sahara would make herself known, and Siphon's meandering would eventually look suspicious.
By far, the best bet would be to go to Marsha Sand's home and grab her there. But Valerie didn't want to remind herself of the domestic life of this hero any more than she had to.
An urge to stop and go back home strikes her. This could take days, wandering around and hoping to blunder into Sahara. And taking her captive would mean... What? It means another payday. If I leave, there'd just be some other merc they'd hire. And word would get out that I didn't do the job, and Mom and Dad would be all over me and I'd never hear the end of it. No, I just... gotta do it.
She sighs and keeps walking.
Valerie eventually ends up in the Douglas Historical Park. It’s an area of old buildings, museums, and a not insignificant bit of crime. She manages to stick to the shadows and not draw any attention to herself, but even after several hours in the rain, she doesn’t see any sign of Sahara on patrol. As the cold begins to really seep into her bones, she watches a man in a ski mask come from the shadows and attack a woman. He forces her to the ground and tries to take her valuable belongings, but she struggles and calls for help. The mugger hits her, drawing blood from her lip and forces her purse out of her grasp. He turns to run, but the cement beneath his feet turns to liquid. He trips in confusion then the wet cement solidifies again, trapping him. Finally, Sahara comes into Valerie’s view, flying atop her own little stone disc. She grabs the purse and hands it back to woman. She starts talking to the woman for a little bit. Siphon can tell she is just checking the woman over and making sure she is okay.
The police interviews go smoothly. They mostly just need to know how the fight played out inside, how you found out about the attacks, and any prior experience with the criminals.
Brisk looks at the other two and considers giving them some way to reach him, but since he did not have a means of communicating that would not immediately lead to him he shrugs and says, "See you around." and then zips off to change and then return to the garage in the hopes he could feign being there the whole time while his parents were inside.
Doctor Night watches as the speedster zips away. He shrugs and smiles as he knows that amazing happenstance will bring them together when the need arises.
"I am sure that is not the last we have seen of that young lad."
He nods at Bug Hunter.
"Perhaps it was simply our fate to run into each other today. Who can say?"
Even though she'd dressed more warmly this time, the cold was really getting to her. Siphon was really starting to have doubts about whether Sahara would be venturing out in weather like this.
She was about to decide to call it for the night when she came upon the mugging. She watched from the shadows, debating about going out there to help. She was still hungry; the creep from earlier that day had only been the lightest of snacks. But she wasn't a hero, and this was the perfect bait for Sahara -- if she was out that night.
At first, Siphon thought the mugger had just stepped into a puddle. Then she realized the concrete was liquifying beneath his feet. Earth powers. Right. That's cool, but it'll make things difficult getting close.
Then Sahara floats in on a stone platform. Oh, there she is. Earth powers, and flight. Really cool. Also, really hard to get close. Ugh. I should've been the damsel in distress.
She slips around while Sahara is checking on the mugging victim, preferring to have as few witnesses as possible. She looks around the park, trying to figure out the best ambush spot. Problem is, she could go in any direction, including up. I might have to draw her out.
Getting an idea, Siphon slips down the alley nearest Sahara and as she passes a garbage can, tips it over to create a loud crash. She then ducks around a corner and into more shadows.