Christina laughed at having caught Tom off-guard, giving him a bright smile as she piloted Seraph's helicopter through the Kingsdale sky."Smart. I think you have them fooled," she said, tilting the yaw and causing the helicopter to dodge out of the path of a weather balloon, before looking over to Tom again. "I graduated from Hahn with a degree in drama, actually. I was going to be an actress...then stuff happened," she said vaguely. "But I'm pretty good at acting, and I've been trained by Mossad in undercover operations, so I know a few things. I guess that's kind of my superpower, in a way." She smirked. "It also helps that the Wings are a bunch of dumb donkeys...that's really an insult to donkeys, though, if you catch my drift," she added, slowing the helicopter down significantly and lowering it down a couple clicks. The white-and-gold helicopter hovered midair in the sky, and Christina turned to face Tom.
"Powers is OK, but he's out of commission for a hot second. Wings poisoned his coffee with isolene, then they ambushed him in his office. Powers put up a fight, gave Mr. Impressive a nasty bruise on the eye, but they managed to get the upper hand." Christina scoffed. "A bunch of cowards. Anyway, he took a nasty fall...he's alive, thankfully, but he's not going to be fighting the Wings for the moment. We're moving him around the city, not letting him stay in one place." Christina paused, considering whether or not to speak more on the subject, before relenting with a small sigh. "Seraph is working with Zero. It works well...if Zero can get rid of HERO and bring in a new agency that's loyal to them, then that's a big win for them, gives them more leeway to execute whatever plans they have. ICOSA doesn't know, obviously, and they're slow as usual. It'll take at least a week for them to organize and make a decision on EAGLES, and odds are after that they'll just give Seraph a slap on the wrist before giving him the keys." She paused. "And if that happens, we're screwed. So we'll have to change that."
Christina moved the helicopter forwards again, slowly hovering through the wealthy districts of Kingsdale. "Anyway, here's the plan. First, we pick up Starbright. If we don't, the Wings will send two people a lot more sympathetic to them, and I for one plan on milking this disguise for as long as possible. Second, we make a trip to HERO One. This is classified intel, but we have a big vault underground with a bunch of technology, including some tech we have prepared as a countermeasure in case any of you guys decide to go rogue. We'll pick that stuff up; it'll give us a nice edge. Then we take the fight to them." Christina landed the helicopter deftly on the roof of Starbright's mansion. She reached into her shirt and pulled out two devices- a large black gun about the size of a sawed-off shotgun with a black hook protruding from the barrel, and what appeared to be a long black wand with a glowing red tip. She looked over to Tom. "Tom, your face," she said with an eyeroll, putting down the laser pen and picking up a tissue, rubbing at his face intensely. "Holy shit, it's like Priestess has some permanent marker goo in her lipstick, it's not coming off...well, worse comes to worse, I'm sure you two would make a fine pair. Kidding, of course. Stay here." Christina knelt down, putting the laser pen against the ceiling, and she carved out a person-sized circle on the roof. Once she completed the circle, the section of the roof promptly fell in, leaving a clean hole. Christina then hopped in herself, landing inside Starbright's lounge directly next to the couch.
"Nice view," she quipped, looking around, before quickly and very professionally moving towards Starbright. In a split second she had grabbed him by the shirt collar, hauling him over towards her, and simultaneously aiming her weapon upwards, sending the length of wire spiraling upwards and hooking onto one of the rotor blades of the helicopter. Christina (and Starbright) were then sent launched upwards rapidly, pulled out through the hole Christina made and briskly pulled up to the roof once again. Christina then promptly and quite effortlessly chucked Starbright into the bay of the helicopter. "This is for your own safety!" she called before turning back to Tom. "Let's go," she said, hopping into the helicopter and, before Starbright could try to escape, took off, hovering into the air.
"Shit, it's starting to drizzle...Tom, could you be a dear and explain to Starbright what's going on while I focus on flying this piece of crap? Jesus, you would think a millionaire would be able to afford a better helicopter than this..." Christina muttered as she flew the helicopter through the rain. "By the way, Tom, lipstick mark is still there."
@KaijuBaragon@Jumbus
Meanwhile at Target, Nero was down and out in less than a second. The transformation was almost uncanny. One second he was winding up with a merciless blow, and then as soon as Jamie had barely touched him with his powers he had been thrown across a few checkout counters, screaming like a baby. "ARRRRRRRGH!" Nero yelled, sobbing hysterically into his helmet as he tried to crawl away from Jamie, though with little success. He looked around for some type of back-up but found that his ally, trusty old Dungeon Troll, was lying in a quivering ball on the other side of Target. Not exactly much help there. Nero tried to continue his escape but found there wasn't anywhere else to crawl, so instead he continued his mental breakdown. "Pleaseeee don't kill meeeeee!" he moaned as he sobbed into the floor.
Meanwhile, out on the streets not too far away, Wire-Man suffered a much less painless fate as Joseph overloaded his wiry body, the electrical shock causing Wire-Man to shut down. The good news for Joseph was that his stunt was not enough to be fatal, and only caused Wire-Man to faint backwards into the road. The bad news was that the roads in Castleburg are very busy, and one particularly rowdy ice cream truck driver gassed right past, steaming right over Wire-Man and dragging him underneath his tires down the boulevard. A few screams echoed out as Wire-Man was violently hauled off by the ice cream truck, but he was made of wires, after all. He would be fine, right? Right.
@canaryrose@Rabidporcupine
Meanwhile at Polamor Inc, Snake Pit was really screwed this time. His powers didn't exactly work when he was sealed inside of some type of weird tar goop, and now Sir E. Brum was pointing a gun at him. A laser gun. Well, Snake Pit considered his contract with EAGLES totally void at this point. He was still technically a villain, after all, and villains betrayed people all the time, especially when their lives are at stake. And so Snake Pit decided to sing like a bird.
"Don't shoot! Don't shoot! Ah, alright, man, listen, I don't know much about EAGLES, OK? They just pay me per job I do. I'll tell you everything I know, though, just please don't kill me! Listen, man, it's nothing personal, I own stock in your company and everything, you know, really love what you do, just don't kill me...alright, listen, Seraph told me that he needed you to break an encryption for him. He said that Hugo Powers locked all of HERO One down before he died, put the entire building under lock and key, and that Seraph can't access any of the files...Seraph thought you might have the access codes or something, that's why he wants you! Listen, man, that's all I know, I swear, he just wants to use HERO One but he can't, he's stuck working out of that stupid prison island that looks like a fucking castle, Elspore Island or something...that's everything, though, I swear! Please don't kill me, I have a wife and children and everything! Actually, that's a lie, I don't have either of those, but I have two dogs! You wouldn't kill a dog lover, right?" Snake Pit gave Rumi his best puppy-dog eyes as he pleaded for his life.
@Scarifar
Grace's first impression of Pandora wasn't too positive too far, but if she had been in Pandora's shoes, her reception would have probably been similar. Trying to keep her emotions in check, she simply stood there as Pandora wordlessly listened to their plight. She was about to speak again, to propose some sort of plan, but the words ducked back into her throat as she heard a knock at the door, followed by the voice of...a police officer? That was bad. Very bad. Grace nodded at Pandora as the woman commanded her to go upstairs, before going to attend to the officer at the door. Grace didn't need to be told twice, scuttling quietly to the stairs and rushing up into Pandora's little apartment above the flower shop.
Once they were safely removed from the flower shop, Grace closed the door, took a couple deep breaths, and then turned to Patricia, her voice snappish but quiet. "Give me your laptop," Grace commanded, gesturing towards Patricia's backpack with her hand. She took Patricia's laptop, sitting down on Pandora's carpet while opening the laptop. "Purple galaxy? Seriously, Patricia, it's like your begging to look like an angsty teenager," Grace scoffed as she connected to a nearby Starbucks. She was not planning on asking Pandora for her Wi-Fi password. She then navigated to the HERO website. "They haven't touched HERO's website yet...and I haven't seen anything about EAGLES yet. Any official page, at least," Grace noted as she continued to type rapidly. "Nope, not a damn search. Either Seraph has doesn't have editing privilege to HERO's website, which is weird considering Powers is probably dead, or his IT is just awful," she commented quietly, as she continued to search.
Grace dug around the Internet for a hot minute before stumbling across Seraph's personal website. "Ugh, this hurts to look at," Grace muttered with clenched teeth as she scrolled down the page, looking for anything, but again, she found no results. She backed out of the page and was about to call it quits when she was a news article in her recommended bar. She clicked on it, pulling up a large picture of a castle. Grace read the article at a blistering speed, her features growing into a smile as she walked over to Patricia, practically shoving the laptop into her hands.
"Here!" she declared triumphantly, pointing at the news article from CCN. "Look here, this article says that Seraph used to own a private prison called Hawthorn on Elmore Island, just north of Kingsdale...it got contracted out to Coldwater and was used for a few years, but Seraph abruptly ceased operations just after he got his ass fired...but he never sold the land. Which means that Seraph basically owns an empty island. Or maybe not-so-empty." Grace smiled triumphantly. "Of course, we shouldn't rule out HERO One from consideration. It has much better security than some dinky castle that Seraph owns. We should probably split up, maybe scout them both out, and report back, but it might be dangerous to do that...especially now that Seraph probably knows more about my powers, thanks to..."
Grace trailed off, standing abruptly. "Sorry, bathroom," she said a little too quickly, her words coming out choked as she hurried towards Pandora's bathroom, swinging the door shut. Those that paid attention could hear quiet but despondent sobs from behind the bathroom door, which showed no sign of stopping anytime soon.
@Duoya @Zoey Boey @canaryrose @Amethyst
