For the past few minutes, the surly mercenary had been leaning against a wall in the corner of the room, his facemask unzipped to drape lightly around his neck like a handkerchief as the rest of the so-called team filed in through the elevator. Though most of the newcomers were strangers to him, a few he had recognized, but kept quiet about it. Only when the two speedsters entered did he manage to flash a meager but sincere smile and nod as they came in, a nod in acknowledgement as they passed as an accompaniment. From the minute he stepped out of the elevator until his original exchange with Chris, it had become clear there was definitely a tension with having him around at all. Even as the other capes and suits came barreling in they all had kept a wide berth of the professional vagrant. It made sense, these were all vigilantes and heroes, men and women who put their life on the line to save the day, why would any one of them approach him willingly? His face has been plastered on the news
However, he was more than willing to speak up when Chris handed him the floor, his charismatic, cocky smirk crawling upon his face as he leisurely walked among the group.
“I’d be happy to fill everyone in, since all the meddling kids are here now.” He quipped to Chris, surveying each member now with a quick glance.
“After all, between the group of manimals, the tin cans with machine guns, the epitome of boy scouts, and the girl dressed like she just left a LARP, I think we’ve got this mission in the bag.” “Could you just once take this seriously?” Warden’s voice broke into the room, echoing from a device muffled in War-Pulse’s coat.
“We’ve got valuable time we are wasting on your posturing.” “Alright, alright, keep your shirt on, I’m getting there.” The merc sighed, reaching into his jacket to pull out a device, Chris would immediately recognize it as the one that he had used to project the news reports to the mercenary when recruiting him, War-Pulse happy to confirm this suspicion with a cheeky grin sent Chris’ way.
“Anywho, as some of you may know, my name is War-Pulse, and I’m the only one in this room who may know what you’re up against.” “What my client means to say is that due to his incompetence he is now forced to right the mistakes he has made to avoid a total metahuman catastrophe.” Warden interjected, causing the mercenary’s face to droop and his brow to furrow.
“Y’know, when you say it like that, you make me sound like a screw up.” “Circumstances providing, that’s not wrong. However, it is beside the point, I have collected key intel that will assist in this assault and possible opponents you are to face.” “Well then, why don’t you share that, Warden? If you want to out yourself as the information guru that you are, how about you take the stand?” War-Pulse huffed, flipping a switch and dropping the device to the floor.
“Gladly.” Warden responded, the device coming to a halt right before it smash along the floorboards, hovering in place before supply emitting a blue light.
“Before he came here to assist you, my client was hired to poison Lost Haven’s water supply with a series of poisons. However, the biological attack was thwarted by four possible affiliates with the man my affiliate referred to as ‘Mr. Long Neck.’” As Warden spoke, the blue light began to emit holograms, separated images of the actual fight from what looked like hacked city cameras, each getting a large chunk of the fight before blinking out from being destroyed or deactivated by the fight. They seemed to pause and zoom in on particular characters with each mention of the marauders, stopping first on a woman who was half-woman, half-spider.
“This was the first of the four to assault my associate, her name is unknown, but her lower half had the qualities of an enlarged Black Widow spider, noticeably by the hourglass symbol on her abdomen and the webbing she shot at War-Pulse” The cameras fixated on still images of the woman and her actions during the fight, showing brief moments of her conversing with War-Pulse, and subsequently the moment when she was standing over him and seductively parting his hair before attacking.
“Yeah, webbing, agility, the whole spider-shebang. She said she knew Aubrey as well, which causes a bit of concern.” War-Pulse added, glancing over to the young college girl.
“Unless you know of any other superhuman spider-woman who I quote ‘has a rack that would make Power-Girl blush’.” “Which presents a possible connection with her, Aubrey, and the shark man who also attacked Mr. Pulse.” Warden continued, the images and video beginning to highlight the aforementioned ‘shark man’ and his brief exchange of fists and feet with the mercenary.
“This one’s powers manifested as super-strength, a durable hide, and a bite like a shark, though with some experimentation, we found it certainly bares other similarities with a real shark, like the large influx of nerve clusters located in the subject’s nose.” The hologram highlighted the moment when War-Pulse struck the shark man’s nose to stun him before slamming him into a car by his feet.
“It is circumstantial evidence at this point, but I can’t imagine this to be a coincidence. Considering the apparent high percentage of animal based metahumans now present among both this task force and that assault squad.” “Yeah, but that’s where the similarities end, the other two attackers had very different powersets.” War-Pulse added, motioning to a hollow, faceless man among the holograms as he spoke.
“Namely, one of them had mine.” The man in question was focused on very briefly, as his true form was seen only for a moment before he touched War-Pulse and immediately shifting to become an exact replica of the mercenary.
“Though a few verbal exchanges, we were led to believe this one’s name was Effigy, and his namesake very clearly defines exactly what he can do. By touch, he was able to replicate both the form and powers of War-Pulse. How it is done and to what extent can he mimic a power is relatively unknown. It is advised to give this one a wide berth and attack him from afar, he needs physical contact to mimic your abilities.” “Not to mention we don’t know how many forms he can take and for how long he can hold onto some powers.” The merc mentioned.
“If this guy comes out, hit him hard and fast, the sooner we can take him out of the fight, the less we have to deal with his shapeshifting bullshit.” “Though even with that formidable idea, he may not be the most dangerous of the four assailants.” Warden said, highlighting the last of the party.
“A silver-garbed woman, unknown in name, but the ace in their hand for sure.” “You can say that again, that bitch made me see things...things I’d live forever without ever seeing again.” War-Pulse said, his glare seeming to bore holes into the holograms of her. With every image, his fists clenched in rage, the hum of energy becoming audible as the air around the mercenary began to distort and hiss as kinetic power emanated off of the silver-clad brawler.
“I swear if I see her again...I’ll....” “Curb your enthusiasm, Pulse, you should not fight her again.” Warden replied.
“The woman, through audible commands and what I assume is some sort of pheromone control, she forced War-Pulse to hallucinate, and ultimately cost him the fight.”
“Pheromone control?!” War-Pulse objected.
“Bullshit, that was magic! She waggled her fingers and mumbled some mumbo-jumbo. We’ve seen demons and supernatural monsters, I don’t think magic can be ruled out!” Warden did not acknowledge War-Pulse’s outburst directly, instead continuing with his assessment as if the comment wasn’t brought up.
“Either way, she should be considered extremely dangerous, anyone who has things they’d rather not relive should not engage her under any circumstances. She alone could compromise any one of you without a good mental focus.” “Whatever, that’s all of them, and subsequently all we know.” War-Pulse said.
“Should be enough to--” “Well, not necessarily. There is one more thing that may be of assistance.” Warden said.
“Ah, wait, Warden, I--” “They should know. We may be incriminated, but at this point we all need to be in on the loop if we are to prevent and possibility of failure” “I know, but shouldn’t tin can man know already, do we have to share it?” “It’s necessary.” “Fiiine, but I’m warning you Warden, you’re putting us both on the law’s chopping block!” “Before you found us, War-Pulse had been hired to free a man known to you as Equilibrium from a nearby STRIKE base.” Warden began, the hologram changing to reveal what looks like extensive streams of data before showing a vial, followed by what seemed to be an intensive ingredients list in the solution.
“And the four who attacked us only stopped us after we had succeeded in contaminating three other sites of water filtration. I’m led to believe that the vial they stole from us was instrumental in creating the metahuman bombs currently littering the nation. On top of this, the information we took from STRIKE during the raid of the base informs me that STRIKE managed to quarantine and isolate the contaminates, both keeping Lost Haven safe from our attempts and collecting samples of the data. If someone were to identify and reverse engineer the compound, they might be able to cure the ones who were infected by the current metahuman bombs. That is only a hypothesis, someone with more biological or medical expertise might be able to find out more, but I firmly belief that our poison attack and the current crisis are connected.” “Great, now that I’m officially incriminated and my reputation tarnished, does anyone have any other strategies regarding the current crisis?” War-Pulse huffed, glaring at the party now inevitably judging his actions.
“Or are we just all going to assault the base we think this guy’s in and hope for the best?” 