(July 9th - 1:22pm)
After abducting sword woman I made a strategic withdrawal to a rooftop a block away and waited between some air conditioning units. My force fields can imperfectly bend light around me and my cargo. I was depending on two industrial AC units to be putting out enough magnetic noise to hide my own, and the fact that they were large metal boxes couldn't hurt. Between the stealth, the shadows, and the AC units I didn't expect anyone to be able to see me unless they landed on the roof themselves.
I kept one hand on sword woman's neck, feeling her breathing and pulse for any changes while I watched the sky. I listened to the police chatter with half an ear while I waited. I couldn't make any better sense of their jargon now than I could earlier. I did hear mention of the car crash, but only because I knew where it was. The robbers had been expecting superpowered resistance. I wanted to see who it was, and how fast they arrived.
I wasn't disappointed. Less than 5 minutes after the I made my exit from the scene they came flying in, a pair of adults in bulky swat gear from the southeast. I couldn't tell their gender or age beyond 'somewhere between 20 and 50'. They slowed down before coming into view of the crash and landed on one of the roofs overlooking the street. They were cautious as they surveyed the scene. My C&C modules picked up chatter on the standard paragon band, but like any private chat, all I got was encrypted noise. What surprised me though was a shortwave unencrypted transmission.
[Local]Officer McNealy: Come out with your hands up. This is your only warning. Any show of hostilities will be met with lethal force.
Well it looked like these three had certainly pissed someone off. I really needed to keep better tabs on what was going on around here. The two supers had another brief encrypted chat before one of them took up a sniping position on the roof and the other went down to investigate. I lost sight of them as they dropped below my sightline, but I didn't have to wait too long before there was another brief burst of encrypted chatter and the person playing sniper relaxed and dropped down the street as well.
I took that as my cue to leave. They wouldn't be able to see the flash of light from my teleport, and I didn't know how long they would stick around. I don't like 2-on-1 odds, heck I don't like 1-on-1 odds. I prefer 1-on-7 odds, but I don't have any of my bots with me right now. Confrontations with the superpowered swat duo would have to wait until a later date.
-----
A brief stopover was made at the house to pick up some of my tools and a blanket. I also stashed one of the duffel bags full of money and her sword in the attic, in separate locations. I had no idea if she could summon it, or track it's location. I wanted the sword out of the way, but in a place where it could be retrieved with minimal hassle. I didn't have the time to drop it off someplace else, didn't even have time to finish cleaning up the mess in the office that I had made.
The big uncertainty was how long my cargo would stay unconscious. Sure, I could hit her in the head a few more times. But I wanted useful information sometime later tonight, not in a few weeks. Without knowing more about her physiology I wasn't going to risk permanent damage. Which meant I had a limited amount of time to come up with a convincing approximation of a cell.
-----
(July 9th - 4:37pm)
I ended up clearing out one of the side rooms in the mountainside facility. It was 5'x10' and had originally housed a bunch of industrial transformers. Things that were state of the art 20 years ago, but were now little more than lumps of metal and wire. All of them fell firmly in the scrap category of equipment. Teleporting them out of the room did unhappy things to the places where they were affixed to the wall and floor. But removing a few bits of twisted metal was much preferable to disassembling them and carrying them out a piece at a time. They made dull thumps as they landed on the ground outside. I would have to clean that up later, one more thing on a growing list.
Two heavy mesh covers from a pair of racks elsewhere in the building, some conduit, brackets, wiring, and a box with switches and knobs came together to make an electrified barrier. Or at least what would pass for one until you actually touched it. All it had to do was divide the room in half and look sturdy enough. It was mounted to the floor and walls with six large rubber washers scavenged from the parts my dingbot had disassembled. The box (the purpose behind I hadn't bother to figure out beyond it looking impressively complicated) plugged into the wall, and wires ran from the transformer to the barrier, completing the illusion of something you don't want to touch.
The real trap was door. Located on my side of the barrier, it was a simple faux wood door with a metal handle. I had dragged a set of capacitors out from one of the old CRT television screens they had up here and wired them to the doorknob on the outside. Suspended in the setup was a little under a kilovolt at maybe 50 milliamps. Enough to knock a human on their ass and give them problems getting up for the next few minutes, but hopefully not enough to kill them.
The final touch to the cell was a desk lamp someone had left behind. I had to make a run down to the house and get a working bulb, but it lit up the room rather well once I hooked up one of my spare batteries and transformers. So far it was the only working light in the base. I really needed to fix my power issues.
I ported out of the room and walked over to the corner where sword woman was. She had been under the watchful (if not all that intelligent) gaze of my dingbot. I had recharged his batteries and given it the rather simple task of watching my captive and letting me know if she woke up. She hadn't during the roughly three hours it had taken me to construct her cell. I had managed to remove her mask, boots, belt, and gloves. The rest of her costume didn't have a seam or zipper, just one molded spandex body condom with raised bits of additional armor. I might have been able to burn it off of her with the soldering iron, but that would have been delicate and destructive work. Not exactly something I could fix if needed, and I much preferred to have an ally than an enemy at this point.
I picked her, and the blanket I had wrapped her in, up. Porting both of us into the cell, I put her on the floor and ported to the other side of the barrier. As I had hoped, the jostling and the noise of the teleports started to wake her up. I played with one of her gloves while waiting for her to wake up, not expecting to learn anything from it, more as a show of power. I didn't have to wait all that long.
She came awake with a start and a wince, bringing a hand to her head and muttering something I didn't hear. Her gaze shifted around the room for a few seconds before settling on me. After a few seconds of staring I decided to break the silence.
"I'm sorry about the accommodations, but I have learned that it is better to be safe than sorry." I said, crouching down to be eye level with her. "My name is Terry, and I believe that we have a common interest. You have, along with your friends, shown a willingness to use your powers for personal gain. I am hoping that you would be willing to set your sights on a slightly longer term goals than just robbing banks and destroying property . What do you say Ms ...?" I trailed off, hoping she would fill in the blank.
"Rebecca, just Rebecca" She answered. Then she smiled a bit and added "And I don't care what type of shielding you have here, my friends are going find me, then they're going to help me kick your ass. We don't take too kindly to kidnapping."
I couldn't resist smiling back. "Oh I have no doubt that if your friends were in any shape to help you I would be in trouble. But the cops seemed very interested in them while I was busy hauling you out of there. You should be thanking me instead of threatening me, I saved your ass."
"Saved my ass?" Rebecca parroted back at me. "You tried to shoot me! And don't dismiss Rob and Jake like that. They're just stuck in jail somewhere. And there ain't no jail here that can hold us. They'll bust out of there, and bust into here."
I repressed a sigh at that, I had been hoping for someone intelligent that I could work with. "Yes, saved your ass. I was only going to stun you." I lied "Do you have any idea how pissed the cops are at you? The two that flew in were looking to take you away in a body bag, not a set of handcuffs."
"It doesn't matter, they wouldn't have caught me anyway. They don't even know what I look like." She said, getting to her feet. "One click and I'm just another panicked citizen." Rebecca fit actions to words and pressed something on her body-stocking. One flash of light later and she was standing in front of me in jeans, sneakers, a t-shirt and a jacket. Just like any other person on the street. Her glove that I had been playing with disappeared as well.
She smiled at my lack of immediate response and continued to gloat. "No camera got a clear pic of our faces, and all that those eye-witnesses see are the spandex and powers."
"You really think your luck is going to hold?" I said, trying a different tact "There were two after you today, what about next week? Can you fight off four? Six?"
Rebecca's smile dimmed a bit. "How many banks do you piss off before they post a large enough bounty that the villains start coming after you as well?"
She looked at me angrily before the arrogance came back. "It don't matter, we can hire our own muscle as well. We're got the power now, and we're going to carve our own little slice of heaven out of this city. You would be smart to pick the right side." The last part was delivered with a pointed look at the kludged together barrier.
Great, and I was hoping that I could at least convince her to head somewhere else, like Vegas. She just had to be all gung-ho to start a war in San Francisco. I didn't let my disappointment show on my face (not all that hard anymore) as I flicked a few switches on the box by my feet. "Alright, I'll consider pooling resources, but first I want to see how well you break your friends out of jail. I can port us there, but the cops aren't going to be happy with our arrival."
"Oh I don't think that's anything to worry about." Rebecca said as she pressed something on her belt. Again there was a flash of light. This time she had on much heavier armor, including a helmet with a full face shield. Heavy shoulder pads, gauntlets and boots completed the image of something that could, and had, taken a heavy beating. A nasty looking sword on her left hip completed the 'Dangerous' feeling she was giving off. If I still had salivary glands my mouth would have watered at all the high goodies crammed in there.
I walked up the barrier and gestured for her to backup a bit. Once she had given me enough room I ported to her side of the barrier. "The first jump might feel a little strange, I think the cops are working on some sort of anti-teleportation tech for the holding cells." I said as I walked up to Rebecca and laid a hand on her shoulder.
This close I could see her giving my hand a look through her tinted visor. I just grabbed her elbow with my other hand and said "Look, I don't want to smear us across the outside of the police station. So just give me a minute and let me get this right."
"Right. Just don't fuck up." was Rebecca's only response.
Oh I wasn't planning on that at all. I made sure I had a firm grip on her arm and spooled up my teleport matrix. Rebecca only sensed something was wrong at the last moment, but it was too late by then. Her cry of "He-" was cut off by the roar of light and noise.
I landed in main room of the base still holding her arm. Her scream from the next room could be heard through the wall. I tossed her arm behind a pile of junk and drew my arachnos mace. I didn't have an unlimited supply of the webbing, but getting my hands on the rest of that armor would be well worth it.
Deploying as much of my defensive shielding as I could without being completely cut off from the world around me I ported back into the room. Her screams of pain turned to screams of anger as she saw me again. I didn't have time to try and web Rebecca's feet before she had blew through the makeshift barrier and was taking swings at me. Even with only one arm my shields weren't enough to deflect her blows. I started losing chunks of my mace as I tried to parry them. The fourth attack stuck in the shaft. Rebecca pressed her attack, pinning me against the wall and weapons between us. Unfortunately she didn't have to worry about the mace pressing up against her armor, while I had to worry about the sword that was slowly making it's way though my upper arm.
"I'm going to take you apart you bitch" She said with vicious glee.
Fortunately she was standing right next to me and didn't seem all that inclined to move all that soon. I let go of the mace and grabbed her arm with one hand; repressing a wince as the sword sunk another inch into my arm and I lost some fine motor control in that hand. Rebecca had enough time to glance at my hand and attempt to pull away before it happened. I didn't need any prep time for a port this simple. I wasn't trying to go anywhere but UP, and she was coming with me.
She finished pushing away from me as the port finished, but at that point it didn't matter. I took a moment to wave at her with my good arm before porting back down to the ground. My legs could easily take the strain of hitting the ground at a little over 10 mph, I was curious how her suit would hold up after hitting the ground at 120 mph. Winning via gravity test had not been my first choice, it tends to damage the spoils of war. But between getting slightly damaged goods and losing an arm, the decision was easy. Arms are a real pain in the ass to reattach when you only have one hand to work with.
It took her almost ten seconds to fall the half mile, but she made a very satisfying crunch when she landed. I walked over and picked up a leg. Ignoring the way it bent in more places than it should I dragged the body inside. I needed to get the armor off of her before her blood started to corrode some of the delicate electronics inside.
Notes: To avoid any confusion, yes clank was lying about Rebecca's friends being alive.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
After abducting sword woman I made a strategic withdrawal to a rooftop a block away and waited between some air conditioning units. My force fields can imperfectly bend light around me and my cargo. I was depending on two industrial AC units to be putting out enough magnetic noise to hide my own, and the fact that they were large metal boxes couldn't hurt. Between the stealth, the shadows, and the AC units I didn't expect anyone to be able to see me unless they landed on the roof themselves.
I kept one hand on sword woman's neck, feeling her breathing and pulse for any changes while I watched the sky. I listened to the police chatter with half an ear while I waited. I couldn't make any better sense of their jargon now than I could earlier. I did hear mention of the car crash, but only because I knew where it was. The robbers had been expecting superpowered resistance. I wanted to see who it was, and how fast they arrived.
I wasn't disappointed. Less than 5 minutes after the I made my exit from the scene they came flying in, a pair of adults in bulky swat gear from the southeast. I couldn't tell their gender or age beyond 'somewhere between 20 and 50'. They slowed down before coming into view of the crash and landed on one of the roofs overlooking the street. They were cautious as they surveyed the scene. My C&C modules picked up chatter on the standard paragon band, but like any private chat, all I got was encrypted noise. What surprised me though was a shortwave unencrypted transmission.
[Local]Officer McNealy: Come out with your hands up. This is your only warning. Any show of hostilities will be met with lethal force.
Well it looked like these three had certainly pissed someone off. I really needed to keep better tabs on what was going on around here. The two supers had another brief encrypted chat before one of them took up a sniping position on the roof and the other went down to investigate. I lost sight of them as they dropped below my sightline, but I didn't have to wait too long before there was another brief burst of encrypted chatter and the person playing sniper relaxed and dropped down the street as well.
I took that as my cue to leave. They wouldn't be able to see the flash of light from my teleport, and I didn't know how long they would stick around. I don't like 2-on-1 odds, heck I don't like 1-on-1 odds. I prefer 1-on-7 odds, but I don't have any of my bots with me right now. Confrontations with the superpowered swat duo would have to wait until a later date.
-----
A brief stopover was made at the house to pick up some of my tools and a blanket. I also stashed one of the duffel bags full of money and her sword in the attic, in separate locations. I had no idea if she could summon it, or track it's location. I wanted the sword out of the way, but in a place where it could be retrieved with minimal hassle. I didn't have the time to drop it off someplace else, didn't even have time to finish cleaning up the mess in the office that I had made.
The big uncertainty was how long my cargo would stay unconscious. Sure, I could hit her in the head a few more times. But I wanted useful information sometime later tonight, not in a few weeks. Without knowing more about her physiology I wasn't going to risk permanent damage. Which meant I had a limited amount of time to come up with a convincing approximation of a cell.
-----
(July 9th - 4:37pm)
I ended up clearing out one of the side rooms in the mountainside facility. It was 5'x10' and had originally housed a bunch of industrial transformers. Things that were state of the art 20 years ago, but were now little more than lumps of metal and wire. All of them fell firmly in the scrap category of equipment. Teleporting them out of the room did unhappy things to the places where they were affixed to the wall and floor. But removing a few bits of twisted metal was much preferable to disassembling them and carrying them out a piece at a time. They made dull thumps as they landed on the ground outside. I would have to clean that up later, one more thing on a growing list.
Two heavy mesh covers from a pair of racks elsewhere in the building, some conduit, brackets, wiring, and a box with switches and knobs came together to make an electrified barrier. Or at least what would pass for one until you actually touched it. All it had to do was divide the room in half and look sturdy enough. It was mounted to the floor and walls with six large rubber washers scavenged from the parts my dingbot had disassembled. The box (the purpose behind I hadn't bother to figure out beyond it looking impressively complicated) plugged into the wall, and wires ran from the transformer to the barrier, completing the illusion of something you don't want to touch.
The real trap was door. Located on my side of the barrier, it was a simple faux wood door with a metal handle. I had dragged a set of capacitors out from one of the old CRT television screens they had up here and wired them to the doorknob on the outside. Suspended in the setup was a little under a kilovolt at maybe 50 milliamps. Enough to knock a human on their ass and give them problems getting up for the next few minutes, but hopefully not enough to kill them.
The final touch to the cell was a desk lamp someone had left behind. I had to make a run down to the house and get a working bulb, but it lit up the room rather well once I hooked up one of my spare batteries and transformers. So far it was the only working light in the base. I really needed to fix my power issues.
I ported out of the room and walked over to the corner where sword woman was. She had been under the watchful (if not all that intelligent) gaze of my dingbot. I had recharged his batteries and given it the rather simple task of watching my captive and letting me know if she woke up. She hadn't during the roughly three hours it had taken me to construct her cell. I had managed to remove her mask, boots, belt, and gloves. The rest of her costume didn't have a seam or zipper, just one molded spandex body condom with raised bits of additional armor. I might have been able to burn it off of her with the soldering iron, but that would have been delicate and destructive work. Not exactly something I could fix if needed, and I much preferred to have an ally than an enemy at this point.
I picked her, and the blanket I had wrapped her in, up. Porting both of us into the cell, I put her on the floor and ported to the other side of the barrier. As I had hoped, the jostling and the noise of the teleports started to wake her up. I played with one of her gloves while waiting for her to wake up, not expecting to learn anything from it, more as a show of power. I didn't have to wait all that long.
She came awake with a start and a wince, bringing a hand to her head and muttering something I didn't hear. Her gaze shifted around the room for a few seconds before settling on me. After a few seconds of staring I decided to break the silence.
"I'm sorry about the accommodations, but I have learned that it is better to be safe than sorry." I said, crouching down to be eye level with her. "My name is Terry, and I believe that we have a common interest. You have, along with your friends, shown a willingness to use your powers for personal gain. I am hoping that you would be willing to set your sights on a slightly longer term goals than just robbing banks and destroying property . What do you say Ms ...?" I trailed off, hoping she would fill in the blank.
"Rebecca, just Rebecca" She answered. Then she smiled a bit and added "And I don't care what type of shielding you have here, my friends are going find me, then they're going to help me kick your ass. We don't take too kindly to kidnapping."
I couldn't resist smiling back. "Oh I have no doubt that if your friends were in any shape to help you I would be in trouble. But the cops seemed very interested in them while I was busy hauling you out of there. You should be thanking me instead of threatening me, I saved your ass."
"Saved my ass?" Rebecca parroted back at me. "You tried to shoot me! And don't dismiss Rob and Jake like that. They're just stuck in jail somewhere. And there ain't no jail here that can hold us. They'll bust out of there, and bust into here."
I repressed a sigh at that, I had been hoping for someone intelligent that I could work with. "Yes, saved your ass. I was only going to stun you." I lied "Do you have any idea how pissed the cops are at you? The two that flew in were looking to take you away in a body bag, not a set of handcuffs."
"It doesn't matter, they wouldn't have caught me anyway. They don't even know what I look like." She said, getting to her feet. "One click and I'm just another panicked citizen." Rebecca fit actions to words and pressed something on her body-stocking. One flash of light later and she was standing in front of me in jeans, sneakers, a t-shirt and a jacket. Just like any other person on the street. Her glove that I had been playing with disappeared as well.
She smiled at my lack of immediate response and continued to gloat. "No camera got a clear pic of our faces, and all that those eye-witnesses see are the spandex and powers."
"You really think your luck is going to hold?" I said, trying a different tact "There were two after you today, what about next week? Can you fight off four? Six?"
Rebecca's smile dimmed a bit. "How many banks do you piss off before they post a large enough bounty that the villains start coming after you as well?"
She looked at me angrily before the arrogance came back. "It don't matter, we can hire our own muscle as well. We're got the power now, and we're going to carve our own little slice of heaven out of this city. You would be smart to pick the right side." The last part was delivered with a pointed look at the kludged together barrier.
Great, and I was hoping that I could at least convince her to head somewhere else, like Vegas. She just had to be all gung-ho to start a war in San Francisco. I didn't let my disappointment show on my face (not all that hard anymore) as I flicked a few switches on the box by my feet. "Alright, I'll consider pooling resources, but first I want to see how well you break your friends out of jail. I can port us there, but the cops aren't going to be happy with our arrival."
"Oh I don't think that's anything to worry about." Rebecca said as she pressed something on her belt. Again there was a flash of light. This time she had on much heavier armor, including a helmet with a full face shield. Heavy shoulder pads, gauntlets and boots completed the image of something that could, and had, taken a heavy beating. A nasty looking sword on her left hip completed the 'Dangerous' feeling she was giving off. If I still had salivary glands my mouth would have watered at all the high goodies crammed in there.
I walked up the barrier and gestured for her to backup a bit. Once she had given me enough room I ported to her side of the barrier. "The first jump might feel a little strange, I think the cops are working on some sort of anti-teleportation tech for the holding cells." I said as I walked up to Rebecca and laid a hand on her shoulder.
This close I could see her giving my hand a look through her tinted visor. I just grabbed her elbow with my other hand and said "Look, I don't want to smear us across the outside of the police station. So just give me a minute and let me get this right."
"Right. Just don't fuck up." was Rebecca's only response.
Oh I wasn't planning on that at all. I made sure I had a firm grip on her arm and spooled up my teleport matrix. Rebecca only sensed something was wrong at the last moment, but it was too late by then. Her cry of "He-" was cut off by the roar of light and noise.
I landed in main room of the base still holding her arm. Her scream from the next room could be heard through the wall. I tossed her arm behind a pile of junk and drew my arachnos mace. I didn't have an unlimited supply of the webbing, but getting my hands on the rest of that armor would be well worth it.
Deploying as much of my defensive shielding as I could without being completely cut off from the world around me I ported back into the room. Her screams of pain turned to screams of anger as she saw me again. I didn't have time to try and web Rebecca's feet before she had blew through the makeshift barrier and was taking swings at me. Even with only one arm my shields weren't enough to deflect her blows. I started losing chunks of my mace as I tried to parry them. The fourth attack stuck in the shaft. Rebecca pressed her attack, pinning me against the wall and weapons between us. Unfortunately she didn't have to worry about the mace pressing up against her armor, while I had to worry about the sword that was slowly making it's way though my upper arm.
"I'm going to take you apart you bitch" She said with vicious glee.
Fortunately she was standing right next to me and didn't seem all that inclined to move all that soon. I let go of the mace and grabbed her arm with one hand; repressing a wince as the sword sunk another inch into my arm and I lost some fine motor control in that hand. Rebecca had enough time to glance at my hand and attempt to pull away before it happened. I didn't need any prep time for a port this simple. I wasn't trying to go anywhere but UP, and she was coming with me.
She finished pushing away from me as the port finished, but at that point it didn't matter. I took a moment to wave at her with my good arm before porting back down to the ground. My legs could easily take the strain of hitting the ground at a little over 10 mph, I was curious how her suit would hold up after hitting the ground at 120 mph. Winning via gravity test had not been my first choice, it tends to damage the spoils of war. But between getting slightly damaged goods and losing an arm, the decision was easy. Arms are a real pain in the ass to reattach when you only have one hand to work with.
It took her almost ten seconds to fall the half mile, but she made a very satisfying crunch when she landed. I walked over and picked up a leg. Ignoring the way it bent in more places than it should I dragged the body inside. I needed to get the armor off of her before her blood started to corrode some of the delicate electronics inside.
Notes: To avoid any confusion, yes clank was lying about Rebecca's friends being alive.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy