The Prelude to Justice: Routine Investgation


Halorin

 

Posted

((The Prelude to Justice is a recently formed roleplaying Supergroup on Pinnacle. We consider ourselves to be a moderate to heavy roleplaying group comprised of mainly street-smarts and urban oriented heroes. We'll be posting pieces of our story here from time to time. Here's a piece to a scene in our first storyline, Clean Slate. If you'd like to run missions with us, roleplay, or apply to have a character join the Prelude, feel free to reach us at our forums. The Prelude to Justice Forums. Enjoy the read!))

Paragon City had been uncharacteristically warm this season. Citizens usually hurried down Paragon’s seedy streets clutching heavy coats close to them. Their cold breath huffed into the open air as they stood impatiently at the Yellow Line. Heroes could be seen high above the city’s skyline wearing warmer sets of spandex, Kevlar, and whatever else they used as protection from some of the city’s more dangerous activities.

But not this winter.

Halorin ran swiftly through the night. 2:30 AM. He liked to make his hits late. Less citizens to worry about. No cops, usually. Just less of a headache, and Hal was no fan of migraines. Steel Canyon was the city’s business district. If there was a large corporation or some bigshot using their bank accounts and political power to overcompensate for other lacking features, they had shop set up somewhere in this part of town.

Newspapers, dust, and various junk that littered a city fallen from grace swept up in an elliptic circle as Halorin raced past. Cars jostled and a few alarms would go off when Hal stepped it up a notch or two. He was agile. Vaulting neatly over link fences and springing off of cars at 75 miles an hour. Halorin jumped from the hood of a truck to an awning of a building to springboard into the air and land on the roof of the warehouse he was tasked to scope out. He landed in a graceful front flip, making minimal sound.

He stood up and looked around. Nothing. There was a bum across the street, clutching a paper bag with the lip of a bottle poking out. Halorin shook his head. Just a quarter mile away there were skyscrapers from a guy clinging to alcohol, the last thing the poor chump had going for him. Can’t save everyone’s day, Halorin figured.

The costume Halorin wore appeared flashy and heroic, however most anything Halorin did served a purpose. Serge from uptown set him up right. His outfit was formfitting, a little thicker than typical spandex. It was some sort of synthetic, durable armor. Serge ranted and raved about it for a full 15 minutes, of which Halorin heard about 30 seconds. He caught the essentials. Stops most conventional firearms, to an extent. Would hurt like Hell in the process, but it’s better to have a bruise than a window for a stomach. On the inside there was material to keep Halorin dry. Hypothermia wasn’t going to be a problem, but Halorin didn’t see himself winding up in water too often. He couldn’t control fish with his mind and he had no plans of stopping the evil Sammy the Sea Otter who was bent on robbing Paragon City Aquarium, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

His utility belt came with the works. Slots for pills, stimulants, recorders, trackers, lockpicks, handcuffs, you name it. An extra communicator was a nice touch. He’d never know if the one integrated into his costume’s left hand would short out.

The domino mask Hal wore around his eyes wasn’t to make him look like a raccoon, though a journalist in the local paper wrote an article to the contrary. However, the mask could grant Halorin night vision, infared vision, and could let him see feeds from security cameras that it could link to.

An ex-thief in hero’s clothing had many tricks for the do-gooder trade. When the powers of Jeet Kune Do, street smarts, the mutant ability to control kinetic energy, the latest technology, and an ego combined it wasn’t Captain Planet that would jump out. Halorin wasn’t one to make Saturday morning cartoons about. He didn’t mind that too much.

A smirk came to his lips as he approached the ledge of the warehouse’s roof and looked down the narrow alley alongside. There was a window he could probably get through. He doubted there was an alarm. His snitch said that these guys have only been using this warehouse for about a month now and they’ve been assured it wouldn’t be touched by whoever was funding this operation. An hour’s worth of being Hal’s punching bag didn’t produce the name of who that ‘whoever’ was, so Halorin figured he’d find that out later.

Later would have to come pretty soon, too. Wilkins has been on Halorin’s [censored] all week. He was supposed to have followed up on this lead days ago. Hal assured Wilkins it’d be looked into tonight, though. There was something about the urgency in Wilkins’ tone. He must run across assignments and jobs like this all the time. Why does he care so much? Halorin lowered his brow. Halorin was no Calculus expert, but even he knew when something didn’t add up right.

Halorin brought his left hand up to his mouth and spoke quietly, “This is Halorin. I got an assignment out here in Steel Canyon. Coordinates should be posting on y’er comms, whoever’s out there. Might get sticky so it ain’t gonna hurt t’have some back-up. Who’s out there?”

((This is just one piece of a scene called Routine Investigation. Click the link to read what's been written so far!))