Jack saw only black dust, which he guessed was the cremated remains of the figure, and sighed, getting ready to fly back up the the room. As he started to drift upwards, he heard a yell from one floor above him. A man was half-standing out of his broken window, shaking his fist and yelling at Jack. The meta sighed and kept hovering lazily upwards, eventually coming face to face with the man.
"Do you know how much this is gonna cost me you piece of sh-" the man started, red in the face from yelling. Jack stopped his words with a simple glance, then rose his right hand and flipped up his sunglasses for no more than half a second. In that glare, the man half-ran and half-fell backwards, screaming and shouting words that only a fellow lunatic would understand. Jack's glasses went back down and he smiled.
"Just what I needed to make my day" he said happily, flying up the rest of the way and entering through the broken glass, slowly going around the house and looking for things, although it was clear he wasn't trying very hard.
"Tell me about it..." Drago rubbed the solid chin of his enclosing helmet, his tone slipping to the uncharacteristically casual for a moment, "That guy hits like a-"
"Ahrm." he stopped and cleared his throat, reverting to the distant, emotionless voice again, and gave Harbinger a nod, "Good."
"That gives us something to work with." he stated while slipping off the stool again, one of his backpack's arms curling as far back as it could and fishing a folded-up spiderling from a compartment, transferring it to Drago's waiting right hand.
"See what's going on outside." the man told the machine, which expanded its legs and dropped to the floor stante pede, skittering out the door. Then Drago turned to the two again, "I'm going to run a chemical analysis of that air freshener. Stay here. If I happen to come running out of the bathroom screaming about killing the frog prince...well, you get the picture."
With that, he proceeded into the WC, his target the destroyed device of the bartender's mention - which of course didn't mean that he'd narrowed his search solely to thus.
What existed to be found here...?
--------------------
"Girl." the Sky Commander corrected, though purely factually, tapping the claws of his fingers against the guard on his left lower arm, bringing up the holographic display of the tanker's address, "This is where we go."
"Warmaster?" he turned to Cher'tak with a questioning look, "Are you with us? If so, have you transportation...?"
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
Characters
"Got any milk?" Millions suddenly asked the bartender cheerfully as Drago went into the bathroom.
Dr. Lore pondered the combination of the safe while listening to the others in the front room. The safe didn't look high tech like the ones she had at home, so she wondered if the safe would lock permanantly if she put in the wrong code too many times. Figuring she was overthinking herself, she started putting in possible codes anyway.
11234... 22341... 14432...
"He lives in the Rogue Isles; of course he'd think guys following him in suits are Crey. Just like anyone in the States with that same situation would think it's the CIA, FBI or something of that nature. Just 'cause these guys were in suits doesn't neccesarily make them Crey. There are other possibilities.
"Speaking of which, there's another lead I think we should follow. According to Manning's paperwork, there's two witnesses to the abductions and they were shot at with some strange ammunition. They were taken to the hospital in Port Oakes; I could give them a call to check on them. Maybe they'd be up for an interview..."
32341... 42321... 22431...
The first few codes weren't working, but she wasn't giving up. Punching and prying the thing open was an absolute last resort. And since this day was going so well, there was a high chance there was nothing in the safe at all. Still, unguarded safe in an empty appartment broken in by villains, the inevitable had to happen.
"Hey, anybody out there good at Codebreaker? There's a safe in here..."
((Edited for codes... I don't think any of them are right, though... oh well XP))
The Freedom Server Wallflower (shhh, sleepy)
Angelfish on DrunkDuck.com
Dr. Lore at HeroCon 2008
Arc 67690: Out For Blood
--St. Martial: J.W.'s Lounge--
Grumbling, the bartender retrieved a surprisingly clean glass and retrieved a gallon of milk from a refrigerator next to the bear spigots. He filled the glass and set it in front of Millions. He then turned to Harbinger.
"That'll be a buck, and don't make me fight you over it."
"The kid's not mine, he can pay for his own drink."
"Look, I know we're not the United States, but the legal drinking age here is still twenty-one. The kid shouldn't even be in here, but he is. That means one of you is taking responsibility for him, and the Arachnos guy doesn't strike me as the kind to do it. I know he ain't yours, but that don't help you right now. In an establishment like this, the guardian has to pay for the drinks of the minor. Keeps you on your toes and makes sure you're taking responsibility."
Daemon glared at the bartender and wondered what kind of Twilight Zone he'd wandered into. He looked to Millions, then back to the bartender. Finally, grumbling, he paid for the drink.
"You didn't put any vodka in that, did you?"
"Of course not. These may be 'The Rogue Isles,' but there are some lines you just don't cross..."
The demon nodded and looked at the laptop for the surveillance system. On a larf, he clicked on the play button in the display program and watched the rest of the meeting to see what it was he'd said.
In the video, as he resumed eating, the man in the suit didn't just leave the bar. He got up and noiselessly entered the bathroom, only to re-emerge a few minutes later. This caused the viewing demon to curse and he kept watching to see what it was he'd actually said. A moment later, he walked into the bathroom, there was a popping sound, and he came charging back out, screaming.
The bartender shouted at him to pay the bill, but Daemon ran out, howling "They took my hands! I gotta kill Toad b'fore the Princess eats the kittens! Power to the mongoose people!"
This got Harbinger and the bartender to chuckle.
-----
--J.W.'s Lounge: Restroom--
Drago's chemical analyzers were fortunate. While the rest of the bathroom was still kept clean (as J.W.'s employees were legally obligated to do), the blasted air freshener remained in its state of explosive disrepair until J.W. could find out what kind of insurance money he could get from the wreckage.
The chemical residue, despite the cleanser chemicals seeping into the fringes of the blast radius, was actually quite complex. Apart from the soot, there were dried remnants of something that definitely was not air freshener. He couldn't tell immediately if it was some form of mind control agent, and his scanners were getting recognition errors, but he withdrew a cotton swab and a plastic cylinder, took a swab of the stuff and placed it within the container. Perhaps he could get some analysis from some of Arachnos' lab boys. He certainly had enough on Grun to get the green-tint-haired goon to help, and perhaps the nut head was looking for something new to base his latest crop of chemical research on.
----------
--St. Martial: Four Suits Casino: Room 1209--
The robots did a lot of structural damage, but there wasn't much else to find. Some elicit drugs were in the bed, the closet, the refrigerator, the cupboards, and in the toilet reservoir. It was a leafy drug, ground up into bits and known for being smoked in various ways and sometimes used in baking. The medicine cabinet, oddly, had cold medicine and a prescription strength aspirin with a note "for migraine-strength headaches."
The unusual thing, before the fight with the mysterious assailant and the robots tearing through the place, was that the apartment didn't look to have had a struggle. It looked like Blight Carver had left without incident and the mysterious individual showed up just to wait for the investigators.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
Drago couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of Vernon. That man had his own way about him, to be sure, and he was anything if not diligent.
Still...he stared at the vial before his face...time was of the essence here. No, he couldn't wait for von Grun. He needed answers now - even if it was just eliminating more potential groups involved.
Drago looked around, making sure there was no one else in the bathroom but him, then leaned his back against the door to guard against surprise visitors. He removed his Wolf Spider uniform's left glove, the clawed, 'monstrous' hand beneath slipping out of the smaller casing quite neatly, the skin-tight glove of the shrink suit beneath (an assembly of metallic-cool and -slate grays that looked almost organic, like a second, outer skin) giving up function as it detected it to be no longer needed.
He then did the same with the sleeve, rolling it back from over the high-tech arm guard it hid, the gauntlet almost resembling something from Vanguard, fastened about the lower arm's scaled, pitch-black skin by a pair of parted straps. A mental command started the analyzer, a holographic casing becoming solid in the air. Drago placed the vial within it and called up a comparison to everything in the thing's database, including Arachnos, Freedom Corps, Nemesis Army agents and more.
No matter if the comparison found anything, he'd at least end up knowing what the stuff was and what it was supposed to do - for instance, if it specifically made demons crazy or had a more general 'audience', worked via body, mind, or soul, et cetera.
As for the comparison, did it find anything? Or was this stuff just something completely new that pretty much no one knew about?
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
Characters
Millions stopped listening to everything around him the moment the glass of milk was set down He lifted it up, and a second later the entire thing was gone. The noise it made as he swallowed for odd, as with most people it made an "ulp"ing noise. For Millions, it made an odd settling noise as if a sponge were absorbing it as it entered his mouth.
"Have you tried just ripping the door off?" Rose commented as she found Dr. Lore. "That's what I usually do with safes. I'm better with software."
"You're right though, need to follow up on those witnesses. He also mentioned lots of interested groups in these dissapearances, but I'm probably being lazy when I suggest we could break into Freedom Corps and steal what the Candy Canes have on the missing regens."
Infinity
Sam Varden 50 MA/Reg Scrap
Doomtastic 50 SS/Inv Brute
Ceus 50 Eng/Kin Corr
Cinderstorm 50 Fire/Fire Blaster
"Affirmitive," answered Cher'tak to Arek's question. "Course: Undivided."
Eyes flicking about behind his helmet, Cher'tak mentally called up the information Wong had downloaded to the hero issue communicator partially integrated into his suit and nodded after a second.
"Objective: Steel Canyon, Bronze Shield. Suggested action: Take tram. Faster transportation: Rikti-make: Unavaliable."
Statesman said let there be heroes, and there were heroes.
Lord Recluse said let there be villains, and there were villains.
NCsoft said let there be nothing, and there was nothing.
Jack stopped looking around and walked over to his comrades near the safe. He sighed and knelt down next to Dr. Lore and studied the safe fort a couple seconds while Rose talked. As she suggested tearing the door off, Jack immediately shook his head, saying without much patience "No. If there was anything of value behind there, tearing off the door could damage it. There are much more, civilized, ways of breaking open safes."
The mentalist turned to the Dr. and asked "What are the numbers that you know?" He could have read her mind, but since she was not any threat at the time, doing so would result in severe pain. He scratched the side of his leg idly as he waited for the answer.
--J.W.'s Lounge: Restroom--
The chemical analysis came back with a 95% match. It wasn't from any criminal source as Drago was expecting, however. Instead, it was a pharmaceutical company, Sedadyne, a company known for primarily synthesizing sleep aid medication. The company had come under minor scrutiny a couple years earlier, due to some kind of mixing SNAFU that made one of their flagship brands more potent than it should have been, and had almost been absorbed into the Crey Corporation. However, an unknown party stepped in, purchased the company and retained its original staff, and it was learned that the SNAFU had been caused by a small collection of disgruntled former employees.
Drago knew the story well enough, it was typical Crey behavior, except the part where they botched it in the end. Normally, the organization worked flawlessly, their agents driving the wrench deep into the workings of the competition. Wherever the corporate espionage failed, however, they always had their plethora of specialized muscle to do the trick anyway. What stopped them? Who was the mysterious saving grace of the pharmaceutical company and why was he getting a near-perfect match from these chemicals to one of their drugs.
The scanner also gave him more history on the drug, as well. It turned out to be something that never reached the market. It was intended for use on all types of people, human and meta human alike, to help them get the rest they needed. Clinical testing indicated that patients wouldn't really sleep, but portions of their brains would shut down and rest sporadically, leaving the rest to function as normal. This essentially turned the people into living zombies, and they were highly open to suggestion because most of their logic centers were typically off while the rest of the body moved about as if it were in a dream state. The project was deemed a failure, but somebody seemed to have kept the formula and altered it for some nefarious purpose.
----------
--St. Martial: Four Suits Casino: Room 1209--
((Before you guys go any further, I have to point out that you're about to rip open a safe that's owned by what appears to be a very paranoid stalker. Something seems dangerous about that... Or maybe I just want you to crack the code... You're not getting any clues that the guy's intelligent, after all.))
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
"Fortunate that I brought short-range warp equipment then." Arek replied with a nod, tapping the guard that covered his right lower arm this time, "Please, step closer."
Once they had, the draconian let the sequence go, the gauntlet's innards whisking the three away and to the address of Bronze Shield - well, the approximate coordinates, at least...
--------------------
Drago couldn't help but be intrigued. A suggestive compound modified to carry a suggestion in itself. The idea shone of brilliance...and general impracticality to just about anyone who didn't know exactly where the compound's target would be.
This meant whoever was behind this had been watching Harbinger Daemon for some time - or installed remote-activated psychotropic compound dispensers everywhere he was likely to do. No, that last one seemed just a little too far-fetched. It was probably the first.
Returning sleeve and glove to their former places, Drago stepped back into the bar and conveyed his findings, then inquired of the red-skinned man if he'd noticed anyone tailing him in the time before his exposure. If not, they'd just have to check out Sedadyne Pharmaceuticals.
Which was where, exactly...?
--------------------
Outside on the street, the spiderling had by now observed what it felt was enough. Seeing the broken windows in the building across the street, as well as a man flying up into one of them, the machine determined that should be its next observation point, and thus made its way over.
It did so quite quickly, though chances were that if Chaos Red spotted it, he could easily follow the mechanoid - well, maybe until it started simply climbing the wall like the creature it stood based on.
Whatever may be, the spiderling made its way into room 1209, jumping from windowsill and onto floor at about the time Jack asked his question of Dr. Lore, its spindly metal legs producing a characteristic staccato clack in their landing on the wooden floor...
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
Characters
"The numbers are 1, 2, 3 and 4." Dr. Lore answered Jack. "But the combination is five digits, so there's a lot of posibilities." She lastely tried 44321 before letting Jack take over. Before she could respond to Rose, Jack did about ripping open the safe. True, they didn't want to damage anything valuable. Besides, ripping open digital safes was overall a bad idea.
Then, an idea came to mind.
"Hey, Rose," she called back into the front room, getting up and walking there. "Lemme look at that laptop. The combo might be in it somewhere."
The Freedom Server Wallflower (shhh, sleepy)
Angelfish on DrunkDuck.com
Dr. Lore at HeroCon 2008
Arc 67690: Out For Blood
((You are awesome sir, you've given Red something technical to admire and prize. I appreciate it, greatly))
-- Just Outside JW's Lounge --
A strange robot is not the most uncommon site on the Rogue Isles. A robot that climbs a vertical wall with little to no effort however, was something Chaos Red took notice of.
Red loved tech, it had fascinated him since he was a kid. His obsession with tech always got him into trouble, and sadly, it seemed to keep him impoverished too; and yet like an addict he kept going back always wanting another technical challenge.
He studied the robot and couldnt tell if it was of Arachnos design or not; he assumed it was, but he couldnt be sure. Arachnos networks were extremely challenging to hack, not like Freedom Corps. The problem with the Corps was, they liked their employees too much, gave them too many chances. As a result, a lot of incompetent system engineers were kept on the payroll. Red once opened a security worm into one of Corps mainframes that took weeks for them to discover and eliminate. He stole a lot of valuable tech that day, how come he didnt profit from it all?
Because Im an idiot, he said to himself in disgust, buttoning his coat to fight the cold. It's freezing again and Ill have to scrounge for a squat to sleep, he thought to himself.
Dreading another cold night, in a condemned building, he decided instead to watch the robot. If the time was right and the opportunity was there, hed snatch the thing, deactivate it and then sell it on the black market (and finally make the kind of money he deserved).
It seems the addict, had once again decided to obtain another fix.
((If you need the spiderling to complete its 'mission' I can ensure later, its defense mechanisms teach Red a lesson. Or you can write that part yourself if you prefer. Just don't kill the poor guy obviously. 
))
"!, 2, 3 and 4? Well, the logical next step would be..." Jack said, and punched in the numbers in order and added a 5. As he reached towards the safe to try and open it, he heard a clack come from somewhere in the apartment. He made no move except to continue to do what he was doing, trying to open the safe. If it did not budge, he would move to 12346, and so on, his fingers moving faster than most would have thought normal. Not on par with a superspeeder, but certainly not scoffable, either.
As this went on, Jack sent an all but undetectable mental probe through the apartment. If whatever had just entered had any semblance of a brain, Jack would know. He ignored Dr. Lore and Cassie's mental signatures, and the electronic pulses the robots gave off while still punching numbers.
OOC:
Hey Doodaa. I think they meant that there are only four digits to use. You can't go over the number 4.
Cassie almost sighed at the destruction her bots were causing. "Enough, guys. Back here before you bring the roof down on us", she commanded, and the bots obediently assembled front and center. She activated the teleporters on the five smaller ones, sending them back from whence they came. But Mac she kept with her, mostly becuase she still didn't trust any of these others any further than she could throw them. Which wasn't far since she wasn't gifted with any form of enhanced strength.
---------------
Pax quite notably didn't step closer as Arek instructed, instead choosing to utilise her own form of teleport. Oddly though she disappeared in a golden flash several seconds after Arek and Cher'tak had, when the pair arrived they found her leaning casually against a lamppost as though she'd been waiting for them. There were after all, advantages to being a time-traveller.
[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: STOP!
[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: WAIT ONE SECOND!
[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: WHAT IS A SEAGULL DOING ON MY THRONE!?!?
OOC:
I think I'm right, for once. If you read Dr. Lore's post on page eight, her second if my memory isn't going whack, then it shows her using codes that have five digits but all include 1, 2, 3 and 4.
((it was my understanding it was a full 9 digit keypad, but a five digit code and there were only fingerprints on 1, 2, 3, and 4))
Jack noticed that Rose's brain signature, while fuzzy and more eratic than average, was indeed human though distorted by large amounts of electricity buzzing through her. Made reading more difficult, but not impossible.
Rose cocked her head towards the laptop. Still resting where she had set it, Rose pointed as she walked by, "Yeah, over here. I already copied everything I thought was useful, it's all yours Doc."
Once that safe was open, there probably wouldn't be much left for them here. Blight Carver was missing, their only lead blew himself up...
"Hey, Cassie, your 'bots keep video? You have a picture of that idiot we just wasted?"
Taking another look around the room, Rose saw a small robotic spider on the floor. "...is that one ours?""
Infinity
Sam Varden 50 MA/Reg Scrap
Doomtastic 50 SS/Inv Brute
Ceus 50 Eng/Kin Corr
Cinderstorm 50 Fire/Fire Blaster
((Correct. Only 1-4 have prints on them, the other keys weren't pressed before. And Chaos, if you'd like to have your character go after the spiderling, by all means - just remember that it just climbed a building and went into it through one of the broken windows. So if he wants it, he's going to have to follow it into an apartment full of supervillains. 
))
The spiderling indeed had a semblance of a brain, though whether it was enough to call a mind stood up for debate. A relatively simple optronic system governed its behavior, a tad more advanced than what Arachnos tended to usually employ in its arachnobot drones, but then this type of spiderling was already a little different than the standard model, employing slightly more resistive armor, quicker maneuvering speeds, and altogether a better assault and tactical suite.
For now though, its directive listed merely as 'reconnaissance'. It didn't really care about being detected or not, and thus made no extraneous motions when Jack spotted it. So long as it could just squat where it could best observe, the little mechanoid was perfectly content...
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
Characters
((Villains if you choose to spot Red and "deactivate" him, feel free to smack him to kingdom-come. Just don't kill the poor guy of course! He's level 20 in-game, which gives you a crude idea of his level of power if you'd like a barometer))
Chaos Red stood astounded at the dexterity of the robot spider he had spied coming out of JW's Lounge.
"God damn, if that ain't the coolest robot I've seen," Red thought to himself and he smacked his lips in admiration.
It was time to feel a little pain, and undergo a process Red loathed, but was often necessary. He took a deep breath and then flexed his biceps, and kept them fully flexed for half a minute. The muscles stretched, his heart rate surged and this activated the biomechanical tattoos on his arms. This ionized his blood so quickly, so that electrical arcs began to form and swirl around his body.
At first, it was just wisps of lightning dancing briefly around his shoulders, but as his muscles surged with power, eventually he was surrounded in a circle of crimson electricity. He could then direct the ions at will. In this case, he would direct them to bombard the ground at alarming speed, creating loft and eventually a reasonable semblance of flight. His black leather jacket contained a substantial amount of rubber to help provide some protection from the swirling electric arcs around his body.
Red hated these powers, he had crafted them hastily and then had crudely improved their technology as time went by. It used a combination of the electrical manipulation techniques he had learned while he was a member of the Freakshow gang and the "living tattoos" used by the Tsoo.
So he just refined the Freakshow's powers so that it didnt require massive generators strapped to his back. A real scientist would scoff at his crude hacks, but for Red this was the best it got. Mostly he hated them, because they were damn painful, and if he stayed in this state for any real length of time, hed be covered in burns and scars afterward.
He drifted up slowly towards the window and apartment to see what the robot was off to. He was an easy mark for any *real* super-villain. For Red was just a kid with a crude homemade hack for a super power
((Remember, guys, the spiderling could be any one of the hundreds that patrol St. Martial on a regular basis, anyway. Sorry Devious 
Also, to clear up the discrepancy of the code...
Heh...
It's a ten digit keypad, 1-9 and a 0, with the 0 flanked by "Cancel" and "Enter." However, after Dr. Lore's cunning strategy, and one I've always been bothered seeing used with extreme success in cartoons, only the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 are "highlighted." It's a code that uses only 1, 2, 3 and 4, but needs a fifth number, one of which is 1, 2, 3 or 4.
The fortunate thing is that the input mechanism doesn't seem to have a "Lock" function (considering that throughout the apartment, there are bags and bags of... Herbs... This could be understandable), but that doesn't mean there isn't another brand of security in the safe...
So far, I haven't seen the code I have in mind for it applied. For hacking attempts, you could probably jimmy the keypad off the safe, but that would cause me to "roll dice" over here to see what happens...
Also, Red, we usually "assume 50" over here, because a character's current level in-game is actually a very fluid thing up until that point. You could hop on a really awesome team or snag a Strike Force, and suddenly you're 2, 3, or even 5 levels higher than when you started the day. Still, it's understandable why you'd have your character practicing a more "civilian" behavior in such a circumstance.))
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
((Sorry? About what? I never made any mention that it looked special in any way. Also, what about some IC posting, hm? 'Drago' is waiting for where he might head, and the people that just arrived at Bronze Shield's place could use a location update. ))
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
Characters
((For what is worth, many characters of mine "park" themselves at level ranges, to match who and what they are in roleplay. I don't have a single level 50 on any server (my highest is 39), and I've played since December 2004. Sigh, yes I know, I suck!
So Red's staying the 20-something for at least a year, and in fact has been at that level range since 2007. Also he's the kind of character you should be able to push around. He's a punk - a technical wizard punk - sure, but he's not *awesome*, he's just trying to survive as a low-level outlaw.
I hope that won't muddle things too much. I just want to offer up a character others can push around, intimidate and even defeat if they want; or maybe employ to do things "beneath the dignity" of greater characters.
If that's gonna mess things up, I'll adapt. But Red isn't omnipotent. He's smart, he's savvy, but a real heavyweight should be able to make quick work of him if necessary.
He's also broke, penniless and destitute, that helps drive a lot of 'drama' for him.
Again, I hope that doesn't mess things up, or that I am not acting like a problem child. I just like Red being secondary/tertiary in both power and importance.
And Red can just assume the spider is unique, only to discover it is a basic bot. He's prone to mistakes anyway, no problem there.))
Rose copied the photos and the journal, transmitting them to her compatriots. "Blight Carver got paranoid before he up and poofed. Sending out some survielence photos, of guys in suits. Carver's best guess was that these were the guys after him, but he had no idea who they were."
Rose smirked, her voice laced with amusement, "He suspected Crey, and my contract says I'm not supposed to find them guilty."
She closed the laptop and set it on the table, if any of the others wanted it, they were welcome to it.
"I should have watched CSI instead of Heroes..." she grumbled as she looked around the room.
Infinity
Sam Varden 50 MA/Reg Scrap
Doomtastic 50 SS/Inv Brute
Ceus 50 Eng/Kin Corr
Cinderstorm 50 Fire/Fire Blaster